Archive of Our Own ^beta

Seb pulled up to the Kippens’ house in his pickup. He got out, grabbed his bag out of the backseat, and started walking to the door. Before he made it, it opened, and Amber came running out to greet him. She practically jumped on him in a hug, and he dropped his bag, so he could pick her up and spin her around.

When he set her down, he saw TJ walking up to them. He rolled his eye affectionately. “Jeez, you two act like you haven’t seen each other in years and not,” he pretended to check his watch, “two weeks.”

“It’s good to see you, too, Teej.” Seb pulled him into a side hug, before picking his bag back up, so they could follow Amber inside.

He put his stuff down in Amber’s room, where he was staying that night. “So, TJ has to work later, but I was thinking first we could go to The Spoon, and you could meet our friends?” Amber suggested.

Seb smiled. “That sounds good.” He was looking forward to meeting Amber and TJ’s friends, especially Andi and Cyrus. Because teasing his cousins was always fun.

The three of them walked into The Spoon and found everyone already waiting for them in the big circular booth in the back. Amber put her arm around Seb and introduced him. “Everyone, this is our cousin, Seb. Seb, this is everyone.”

He waved at them, and they waved back. Amber sat down on the end across from TJ and everyone scooted down a bit, so Seb could sit next to her. “Ok, let’s see if I can do this.” From how much TJ and Amber talked about their friends, he felt like he knew them all already. He pointed at Cyrus. “You’re obviously Cyrus. I recognize you from TJ’s lockscreen.” TJ and Cyrus both blushed, and the girl next to Cyrus pretended to gag. “And you must be Buffy.” He looked at her. She weirdly looked almost exactly like Gina, but he decided not to mention it. He turned to the boy next to her. “And Marty I already know.” He smiled. “Amber and TJ said we like you again.”

Marty shrugged. “Yeah I should hope so. So how’s the farm? Do you guys still have that one really mean chicken?”

Seb shook his head. “First of all, it’s still a ranch. And nah, he died about a year ago.”

“And he was delicious,” TJ added.

Everyone laughed. “Wait, aren’t you a vegetarian?” Buffy pointed out.

TJ shrugged. “I make exceptions for animals that try to kill me.”

“A chicken tried to kill you?” Buffy asked, disbelieving.

Seb nodded seriously. “Chickens can be pretty vicious.” He shook his head and looked at the guy sitting next to Marty. “And you’re Jonah, right?” He remembered Amber showing him pictures of him back when they where dating. Jonah nodded. Seb smiled at the girl sitting between Jonah and Amber. “And you must be Andi.” She nodded. “I recognize you from Amber’s lockscreen.” He just smiled innocently as they both blushed and TJ snorted. Amber kicked him under the table, but it wasn’t very effective because of the angle they were sitting at. He didn’t even flinch.

“Ok, now that we have introductions out of the way. Let’s order.” Amber quickly changed the subject, and flagged down a waitress to take their orders.While they were ordering, he noticed Amber subtly pull out her phone and type something. Right after she put her phone away, he felt his own vibrate in his pocket. He pulled it out, and checked it.

😈: I will feed you to your own pigs

He just laughed and put his phone away without responding. After the waitress left, Buffy turned to him. “So, Seb, do you have any embarrassing childhood stories about TJ and Amber?”

Seb laughed. “I do.” He felt more than saw the looks both Kippens were giving him. “But I think I probably shouldn’t.”

Cyrus, Buffy, and Andi all turned to him with identical pouty faces. He laughed. “But then again,” He smirked at Amber. “What are cousins for if not embarrassing each other?”

“Remember that you said that when we meet your friends,” TJ said.

“Especially Carlos,” Amber added with a smile.

“On the other hand…”

“Nooo,” Andi whined. “I wanna learn about their childhood.”

“Yeah, I need new blackmail material,” Buffy said. “TJ still won’t even tell me his name.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t even know his name,” Seb said.

Cyrus turned to TJ. “Seriously?”

TJ shrugged. “I told you. Only like five people know, and they’re all named Kippen.”

“Or about to be named Kippen,” Buffy muttered.

“Please, we all know TJ would take Cyrus’s last name,” Amber said. “But only for the puns about Cryus making him a good man.”

They all laughed as TJ and Cyrus blushed.

“Anyway, I think Seb was about to tell us embarrassing stories about Amber and TJ’s childhood,” Cyrus said to change the subject.

Seb looked at Amber who just sighed and gestured for him to talk. “Fine, just put us out of our misery already. But remember I have just as many stories about you.”

Seb smiled. “Yes, but I have no shame.” Amber rolled her eyes. Seb turned to everyone else. “Ok, so they used to come stay on my ranch for like two weeks every summer.”

“Somehow, I can’t picture Amber on a ranch,” Andi said.

Seb laughed. “Well, it happened. And my parents put them to work. To build character or whatever.”

“I don’t think it worked,” Buffy said. “Can we send them back?”

“Ow!” Cyrus exclaimed, bending down to rub his shin.

Amber gave him a guilty look. “Sorry, Cyrus. I was aiming for Buffy.”

Just then, their waitress came back with their food, distracting them all from the conversation. Everyone dug into the food, momentarily forgetting the conversation. After a few minutes, Jonah asked, “What were we talking about before?”

Amber rushed to answer, “Seb was just about to tell us about his play.”

“That’s not…” Buffy started to say, but Amber put up a hand to shush her, giving Seb a pointed look. Buffy just rolled her eyes.

TJ jumped in. “Yeah, you’re playing Sharpay, right? How’s that going?”

Seb knew exactly what they were doing, but how could he pass up an opportunity to talk about High School Musical: The Musical ? He sighed dramatically. “Ok fine. I guess if you really don’t want me to talk about the time you fell in cow shit, I cant talk about myself.” He pushed his hair out his eyes. “Yes, I’m playing Sharpay.” He couldn’t stop himself from smiling as he said it because he still couldn’t quite believe it was happening. “And it is as amazing as can be expected. We just took pictures for the programs last week, so I got to put on the costume and makeup for the first time, and it was so much fun.” Technically, they’d had to redo picture day after they saved Miss Jenn’s job, and it went much better the second time around.

“Ooh! Can we see?” Andi asked excitedly.

Seb nodded and pulled out his phone. He found a selfie he and Carlos had taken together that day. He handed the phone to Amber who passed it to Andi.

“Wow. You look amazing.” Andi looked up at him as she passed the phone across the table to Buffy. “Who did your makeup?”

“My friend Kourtney. She’s on costume crew, and she’s basically amazing at everything. She does makeup tutorials on youtube, and I’m kind of obsessed with them.”

“Do you ever wear makeup outside of theatre?” Buffy asked. “Cause like, this is a good look on you.”

Seb shook his head and looked down. “Nah, I come from a family of cowboys, remember? I’m pretty sure the only makeup in my house is what my mom wears to church.”

Andi, Amber, and Buffy shared a look. “I have an idea,” Amber said. She turned to her brother. “TJ, don’t you have to be at work soon?”

Seb was confused, and TJ was slightly startled at the sudden change in subject. He looked at the time on his phone. “Oh shit, yeah.” He looked at Cyrus. “Do you want to come with me?”

Cyrus nodded and smiled. “As long as the kids don’t try to teach me how to do a cartwheel again. I still haven’t recovered from that.”

TJ laughed. “Don’t worry, Underdog. I’ll protect you from the scary six-year-olds.”

Amber looked at Buffy and Andi. “Girls’ day?”

Buffy and Andi both nodded excitedly. They all looked at Seb. He smiled at them. “Sounds fun.”

Everyone started to get up and get ready to brave the cold outside world. TJ and Cyrus left in the direction of the gym after saying goodbye to everyone. After Marty gave Buffy a kiss, and they both waved goodbye to everyone, Jonah and Marty left to go play video games or something (after Buffy vetoed their first idea of Jonah teaching Marty how to skateboard. Seb assumed there was a story there, but he decided not to ask.) The girls led Seb down the street in the opposite direction.

“Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise,” Amber said. All three of them were smiling.

“Let’s just say I know someone who both is amazing at makeup and has plenty of experience hiding things from her parents,” Andi said.

That only made Seb more confused. But he was also excited. He didn’t know why, but he liked being considered ‘one of the girls.’ He’d never really had a ‘girls’ day’ with anyone other than Amber and his sister before.

Eventually, they reached a door that said ‘Cloud Ten’ on it. Andi pushed it open and held it for everyone else, letting Seb go first. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was expecting, but he didn’t think it was this. It was some kind of fancy salon, maybe? He had never actually been in a salon before, but that was the first word that came to mind. Everything was clean and white, and it smelled like the dressing room of the theater. He loved it.

A woman walked up to them. Her hair was up, revealing an undercut. Seb liked her already. She crossed her arms and raised her eyebrow in a way that was trying to be intimidating, but wasn’t really. “Hi, girls.” She looked at Seb. “Who’s this?”

Amber answered for him. “This is my cousin Seb.”

“We were hoping you could give him a makeover?” Andi added, with an expertly perfected innocent smile.

“What kind of makeover?” She asked, looking at Seb. And suddenly they were all looking at him, expecting an answer.

“Um… I don’t know. I’m not completely sure what’s happening?”

Andi looked at him to explain. “This is my mom, Bex. She’s a makeup artist.”

“Oh.” Yeah, that cleared things up.

Amber handed Bex her phone. “Something like this, but a little less Sharpay Evans, and a little more Sebastian Matthew-Smith.” She made dramatic hand gestures to go along with each name.

Bex looked up from the phone and raised an eyebrow at Seb. “Are you ok with this?” He nodded. She smiled. “Ok, where should we start?”

Amber reached over and grabbed Seb’s hand, holding it up. “How about a manicure?”

Bex looked at his hand, her eyebrows scrunched up. “Do you work with your hands a lot, Seb?”

He shrugged. “I mean, yeah. I live on a ranch.”

Bex nodded. “Ok. Manicure it is then. You can go pick out some colors while I set everything up.”

They all took of their coats and threw them on a couch in the waiting area, and then Andi grabbed his hand and led him over to a wall of nail polish. It was a little overwhelming. “So, what colors do you want?”

“Um…”

Amber reached over his shoulder and grabbed a light pink bottle. “I think pink suits you. What do you think?”

He smiled and took it from her. “I like it.”

Andi grabbed another bottle and held it out to him. It was a sparkly gold. “And you can’t go wrong with glitter.”

He took it and held it together with the pink one. They looked really good together. He felt Buffy look over his shoulder and nod. “I like it.” The girls all smiled and led him back over to a table Bex was now sitting at. He handed the two bottles to her.

She smiled. “Good choice.”

He sat down across from her and put his hands on the table. “So how does this work?”

“You just sit there and relax, and I do all the work.”

He nodded. He could do that, right? As she started cleaning and clipping his nails, he looked over as the girls walked back over to the wall of nail polish to get colors for themselves before walking back to a nearby counter to do each other’s nails.

“So what are you thinking?” He looked back at Bex. “All of them pink except one gold accent nail? Or some kind of design?”

A design did sound kind of fun, but… “I wouldn’t want you to put too much effort into something I’m gonna have to take off in the morning.”

She gave him a sad smile, but didn’t comment. “So, most people do the ring finger for the accent. Does that sound good?”

He nodded.

She opened the pink bottle and started painting his nails. “So… I’m guessing your parents don’t know you’re here then?”

“It’s… complicated.” It’s not that he didn’t think they’d be supportive. It was that he just didn’t know . And that terrified him. They weren’t actively homophobic, but they had made some comments about TJ when they found out about Cyrus that didn’t sit right with Seb. And he didn’t know if it would be better or worse if it was their own kid.

She nodded and looked at him in a way that made him feel like she was reading his mind. “I get that.” Did she get it? He tried to remember what Amber had told him about Andi’s mom. “Honestly, if you had told me just five years ago that my mom would ever tell me she was proud of me, let alone buy me a business, I’d have told you you were crazy.” She smiled at him. “And if you had told me I’d end up living back here in Shadyside. And liking it…” She shook her head and huffed out a short laugh. She glanced over at Andi before looking back at him. “Honestly, the most believable part of this whole thing is that my daughter ended up coming out to my parents before I did.”

“Really?”

She nodded and moved on to the gold nail polish. “Yeah, I mean, I didn’t even realize I wasn’t straight until after I left Shadyside, and after that, there just didn’t seem to be much point in telling them, you know?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

She smiled and check to see if his nails were dry so she could to a second layer. After a second of silence as she painted, she asked, “So, the other boy in the picture Amber showed me, is that your boyfriend?”

Seb blushed slightly. “Well, we haven’t actually used that word yet. We went to Homecoming together, and we’ve been acting coupley, but we’ve been so busy lately, we haven’t really had a chance to talk about it.”

She nodded. “Hmm, you should probably do that. Communication is important in relationships and all that.”

He nodded. “I know.” He’d certainly seen the evidence of relationships that lacked communication just within the musical. He was still slightly scarred from what he’d dubbed the ‘What I’ve Been Looking For Incident.’

She closed the bottle of the top coat she had just put on his nails and looked up at him with a smile. “Done.”

He looked down at his nails. They were beautiful. They both stood up, and the girls came over. He showed them his nails, and they showed him theirs. Amber’s were purple and sparkly. Andi’s were the pan colors, and Buffy’s were the ace colors with little demiromantic flags on each thumb. After a round of everyone complimenting each other’s nails, Amber announced that they needed a picture and handed her phone to Bex. Bex took several pictures of them in increasingly ridiculous poses as they tried to show off their nails.

“Can you send me those?” he asked Amber as they all looked at them. “I want to show Carlos.” Amber smiled and nodded, selecting all of the pictures and sending them to Buffy, Andi, and him.

“Is Seb’s name in your phone just the cowboy emoji?” Andi asked, looking at Amber’s phone.

They all laughed, and Seb just shrugged and decided not to tell them what Amber’s name was in his phone.

Bex clapped her hands together. “Ok, makeup time!” She led Seb over to a chair in front of a table with a mirror, and practically pushed him into the chair. “So, have you decided what you want yet?”

He shrugged. “You’re the expert.”

She smiled. “Well, I liked the asymmetric thing you had going on in that picture Amber showed me. That’s a very Queer Look.”

He smiled. “Yeah, I thought that was cool.”

“Any particular colors in mind, or do you wanna stick with pink?”

He shrugged. “I like pink.”

She smiled and nodded before turning to look through the makeup on the counter. As she put the makeup on him, she explained everything she was doing: what she was using, how, and why. He was still getting used to the feeling of someone putting makeup on him, and it felt a little weird, but he liked it. It was almost comforting, in a way.

When she was done, she stepped to the side, so he could get a better view of himself in the mirror. “Woah.” He had gold eyeshadow over one eye and pink eyeshadow over the other. Both of them were very sparkly. And he had pink lipstick and a light blush. And eyeliner and mascara. It wasn’t necessarily better than Kourtney’s, more like differently good. Or amazing. It was kind of similar, but also different? And this time, it wasn’t for a costume. He didn’t look in the mirror and see Sharpay Evans. He looked in the mirror and saw himself . He almost wanted to cry. Almost. He didn’t want to ruin the makeup after all.

The girls came up to him and practically squealed in excitement, shouting compliments that he couldn’t even really understand, but that made him smile nonetheless. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this happy, or this much like himself, outside of a theater.

After another round of selfies, Seb and the girls put their coats on and left. They walked over to where Seb’s pickup was parked, and he got in the driver’s seat. Buffy asked to be dropped off at Marty’s house to “make sure they haven’t killed each other or started anything on fire.”

Seb pulled up in Marty’s driveway. Amber looked over at him from the passenger seat. “Weird being back here, right?”

He just nodded. He almost felt like a kid again, sneaking out with TJ and Amber to hang out with Marty every time he stayed at their house.

“Do you wanna come in?” Buffy asked.

He shook himself out of his thoughts and turned back to look at her. “Can I?”

She shrugged. “I don’t see why not. Come on.” She got out of the pickup, and they all followed. She opened the door and walked in without knocking. They followed her into the living room.

Marty and Jonah looked up at them from their video game. “I thought you were my mom,” Marty said, confused. “I thought I heard her car.”

“That’s because all pickups sound the same, Martimus,” Seb answered.

Buffy snorted. Amber put her arm around Seb’s shoulder. “Seeing a pickup like, time to play my favorite game: ‘Is That a Cowboy or a Lesbian?’”

Marty paused the game and stood up. “Ha ha.” He looked at Seb. “Nice makeup.”

“Thanks.”

He reached out and held Buffy’s hand, pulling it up and looking at her nails. “Nice nails.”

“Thank you,” Buffy said with a smile.

He looked back up at her. “Oh, I was actually talking to Andi.” He turned to Andi as Buffy’s face fell. “I mean, you did them, right?”

“Thank you, Marty,” Andi said.

Buffy hit him on the arm. “You’re such a jerk.”

He just shrugged. “Yeah, but you love me.” He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek.

Andi and Amber turned to each other and pretended to gag. “I think that’s our cue to leave,” Amber said.

“Yeah,” Andi added. “Jonah, do you wanna come with us?” She pointed at Buffy and Marty. “Escape from the lovebirds?”

Jonah looked at them and shrugged. “I’m good.”

Amber raised her eyebrow. “Seriously? I thought being a third wheel usually made you uncomfortable.”

“Well, maybe Marty and I just aren’t as gross as Cyrus and TJ,” Buffy said.

“To be fair, that’s a pretty high bar,” Amber said. “But you two are almost as bad as them.”

Jonah shrugged again. “I don’t know. They’re different.”

Amber rolled her eyes. “Ok, suit yourself. Come on, ladies. Buffy may have abandoned us, but girls’ night is far from over.”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “Sorry, there’s only so much Kippen I can take in one day.” She looked at Seb. “It was nice to meet you, Seb. Good luck with,” she gestured to Amber, “ that . And break a leg as Sharpay. If you’re as good as you look, you’re gonna kill it.”

He smiled at her. “Thanks.”