Archive of Our Own ^beta

Lip gloss and blue jeans. Soft skirts and flannel shirts. Sweet honey and burning wood. It was the little things Raven loved about summer, those half-contradictions that made up the story of her life. She wanted to piece that story together, wanted to see beyond the bubbly girl from Mistral that Summer showed to the world. So one night, when the boys were out and they were sat on their bare-threaded dorm carpet, she asked. It was mostly “where’d you get that shirt?”s and “how’d you get that tear?”s until the question that had been bubbling up in her the whole evening burst out. “What does your lip gloss taste like? I never wore it as a kid and now it seems a bit late—”

“See for yourself.” said Summer, leaning in with a mischievous glint in her eyes. So that’s what Raven did.

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t kissed Summer before. Aside from the twins, all of the members of Team STRQ had kissed at least once. They’d come to the mutual understanding that while none of them wanted anything serious, they wanted to be involved in some capacity. And yet, this kiss felt different. The start of a new chapter of their relationship. Maybe it was the unidentifiably sweet taste of Summer’s lip gloss (“Apple,” she would tell her when she asked again in the mornings, a tangle of limbs on the floor) or the silence of their dorm on a Tuesday night. For whatever reason, Summer’s soft lips and silky hair under Raven’s hands felt more real than ever before. Long gone were any fears that this was just a dream. No, they fit together with a kind of wonderful imperfection that Raven could never fabricate. Summer’s crooked grin as they parted only grounded her further.

“How was that?” she asked, though she seemed to already know the answer. Raven envied Summer’s natural, glowing self-confidence that somehow never seemed to edge on pompousity (which, really, was an unnecessarily pompous word).

“It was really nice,” Raven replied breathlessly. Every part of her felt more alive, from the sparks of electricity in her chest to the buzzing in her fingertips. “And I know it sounds a little silly, but you make me feel safe.”

Summer’s cocky expression melted into something gentler as she raised a hand to cup Raven’s face, fingers curling behind her ear. She swiped the pad of her thumb over Raven’s cheek. “It doesn’t sound silly at all. I’m glad I make you feel like that. You deserve it.”

And Brothers, Raven would have been happy if she’d died right then and there, gazing down at the most thoughtful, kind girl she’d ever met. The girl who’d stay home with Raven going over her fashion choices instead of partying. The girl who would stay with Raven even if she said something kind of weird. The girl Raven loved. And because of those reasons and because she could, Raven leaned in for another kiss.