#*short

But right now Kat isn’t a movie star with an award-winning smile. The top of her convertible is down and her dark hair is being whipped in the wind; her red lips are split into a wide, uncharacteristic grin. Beside her, her best friend is laughing, honey-colored hair streaming like a golden banner behind her as she whoops and sings along with the radio, a girl as full of the sun as Kat was with the moon.

Elise’s lips move along with the lyrics of the song, her hair getting caught on her glossed lips as the wind off of the Pacific ocean tosses it. Her eyes are half closed with ecstasy, her mascaraed lashes fanned across her lightly freckled cheeks like feathers. Kat smiles, her hands on the wheel. Elise could always make her smile.

She is a collection of fragments of poetry, pieces that yearn to settle her head on Elise’s shoulder, to have Elise’s fingers tangle in her own, pieces that imagine Elise doing carelessly, casually intimate things. Adjust the scarf settled in Kat’s hair, clasp a necklace around her neck, smile up at Kat from their bed in the morning, her mouth a rosebud and her honey hair spun sunshine.

Elise sings a lyric, her eyes closed and her hand over her heart. Her blouse’s sleeve slips off of her shoulder - Kat, without taking her eyes off of the highway in front of them, reaches over and tugs it back up. Elise’s hand catches her own, brown eyes like coffee meeting hers. There is something in Elise’s eyes, Kat notices. Her breath might have caught in her throat.

Your glasses are ridiculous, is the only thing Elise says. Her coffee eyes glitter. Kat scoffs a laugh, extracting her hand from Elise’s and steadying the steering wheel. In the rearview mirror, Kat catches Elise’s eye.

Her sunglasses are out of place on her, an icon painted in vintage clothing and red lipstick and glamor like an Old Hollywood starlet. Kat had bought them with Elise months ago, when they had gotten drunk and went to a drugstore to go shopping for orange juice and miscellaneous groceries. A stupid thing, a silly thing, a reckless thing that only two drunk girls in their early twenties would even dream up.

Elise had picked the mirrored, heart-shaped sunglasses from a cheap display and crookedly pushed them onto Kat’s face. Kat had drunkenly laughed and bought them, then and there. Seven-dollar sunglasses on a million-dollar face. The next morning, waking up beside Elise hungover and feeling nothing like a movie star, Elise had put them on Kat’s face again, gently pushing her hair behind her ears.

Kat’s heart might have stopped.

What was it that the articles said about her? Her lips are red, her clothes are vintage, and her lovers are many. How many men had she fucked, women she kissed in bars and alleys and in the dark, people she had left heartbroken and hanging? How many lovers has she kissed and tossed aside, pinning her dark hair back and putting on another layer of lipstick, putting up wall after wall after wall? The industry was brutal, and Kat had to be even more so if she wanted to make it out alive.

They fucked her because she was beautiful and powerful and cold. They fucked her because if they did, maybe that made them beautiful and powerful too. They fucked her because maybe it gave them power over her, made them hope that they could thaw Kat Carter’s cold heart.

But Elise is singing, a living sunbeam who’s been beside Kat’s side for almost two decades. She catches Kat looking at her and offers a glittering, glorious smile - Kat smiles back, genuinely laughs, says you have hair caught in your lip gloss before turning back to the road. The Pacific Coast Highway is long and winding and beautiful. Ahead of them, the sun is setting; maybe Kat and Elise will park the car and go to the beach, chasing the sunset like they had when they were children.

Park the car, Elise says, her eyes crinkling in the corners. Kat wants to smooth the creases out with her fingertips. There’s a scenic outlook there, Elise points. Her nails are painted dark purple, slightly chipped. Always chipped. The sunset is beautiful.

Kat parks.

Elise steals Kat’s hair scarf, tying the pink and gold silk over her hair. Kat beams. Before she opens the convertible’s door, she slips a tube of lip gloss out of her purse and holds the applicator to her rosebud mouth - Kat makes to open her door, but Elise’s hand on her cheek stops her.

Wait, she says, voice teasing. Hold still.

She uses the mirrored, heart-shaped lenses of Kat’s cheap drugstore glasses to apply the gloss to her mouth. Kat’s flushing, her heart beating out of her chest. Elise’s hand is still on Kat’s cheek, her sweet coffee eyes focused as she swipes gloss onto her lips. Despite herself, Kat can’t stop watching.

Strawberry, Kat says, her voice hoarse. Your gloss is strawberry, right?

Peach, Elise replies. Her smile turns devilish. Want to try it?

Yes, Kat wants to plead. She’s never believed in any God, but she wants to sink to her knees right here in her old silver convertible off the side of the PCH and beg. Yes, she wants to pray, let me kiss the gloss off of your lips and taste it, drink in the taste of you like sweet nectar. I never believed in any God, but please.

Peaches are my favorite, is Kat’s only reply. She swings her door open and steps out, her loose dark hair in beachy waves across her shoulders. Elise’s honey hair looks almost strawberry blond in the sunset, two strands pulled in front of her face beneath the scarf. Her lips shine in the light, flecks of glitter and a sheen of gloss. Kat wants to kiss her so badly it’s a tangible ache.

Fragmented pieces of poetry, like this moment. Peaches and gold leaf; sunsets and the California coast; rose-gold, dying sunlight turning the cold gray water into a Monet painting. A beautiful girl, roses and honey and sunshine, smiling at Kat with nothing but affection in her eyes.

Maybe Monet’s paintings had been chasing this.

Kat had fallen in love countless times, on film or in secret or in front of flashing, merciless cameras. But here, she falls in love with the same girl again and again.

It’s always Elise. When would it - why would it ever be anyone else?

Her lips are red, her clothes are vintage, her lovers are many. But here and now, her lips are red, her clothes are off the sales rack at a department store, and her lovers are but dust in the wind. She is Kat Carter, movie star and heartbreaker, and she is in love with stardust.

The poet longs to be the poem, the painter to be the painting. Kat longs to be what the sunset was to Elise. She was completely mesmerized, honey hair fluttering in the wind and her eyes turned towards the water. Kat stands next to her, puts her hands on the outlook’s stone railing.

Elise’s hand gently covers her own. It’s beautiful, she says, her arm pressing against Kat’s. Kat wants nothing more than to hold Elise’s hand, press her fingers to her mouth, put her arms around Elise’s neck and thread her fingers through her hair. It makes her ache, the yearning.

She is beautiful and she is untouchable. She is light on water, a mirage shimmering on burnt asphalt roads, the flick of a paintbrush that gives a painting life; the Mona Lisa’s smile, the look in the eyes of the Girl with a Pearl Earring. She is a breath, a heartbeat, a single step away.

Elise looks over at Kat. Her brown eyes don’t turn gold in the light; Kat has never wanted them to. Her eyes don’t need the romanticism of light eyes to be beautiful. They are deep and dark and rich, slivers of dark chocolate and the depths of the Pacific at night, the exact shade of freshly-brewed coffee in the morning and glittering like the city of angels at twilight.

Kat takes the step, raises a shaking hand and places it on Elise’s cheek. She is gilded in dying sunlight, gold and gloss and peaches and silk. Her lashes are lowered, shadows streaking the rich brown of her irises. Elise’s lips part, and she places her hand at the nape of Kat’s neck, idly twisting one of her dark locks between her fingers.

Suddenly there is hardly any space between them, just Elise’s faint freckles like constellations that Kat could never see and her parted lips, covered in glittering peach gloss. A breeze stirs up Elise’s honey hair, and she briefly smiles as she extricates a few strands from her lips where the gloss caught them. Kat’s heartbeat is on the high line she once saw in New York.

The sun sinks below the horizon. In the afterglow, there are two silhouettes in a scenic outlook on the PCH, beside a silver Mercedes convertible, so close that there was only a sliver of sunset behind them. Kat almost wants to laugh; her movies could never fabricate a moment like this. She didn’t think that a camera could pick up what a moment like this meant.

Elise’s mouth curves into a smile. You’re beautiful.

When her lips touch Kat’s, it’s barely a brush. A butterfly’s touch, there and gone. And then she smiles against Kat’s red lips and kisses her, harder, her other hand buried into Kat’s dark hair. Kat’s fingers are twisted in Elise’s not-quite-strawberry-blond locks, brushing bits of hair away from her face as the wind blows harder. Elise laughs, comes up for air, kisses her again.

And Kat, Kat is flying. She has played lovers and the loved, had played at love herself for a year or ten. But nothing could ever come close to this. It is every swig or shot of liquor, every minute spent burning rubber and soaring just past the speed limit on the road, every reckless decision or movie premiere or brokenhearted ex-lover Kat has ever made, attended, or left behind.

“No! It has to be him. Please?” you were basically pleading Woong at this point. Looking up at him with your puppy eyes, hoping to sway his decision.

“You know, y/n. I really don’t see why you like him. Of course it has to be this guy! His personality is so much more interesting. Wouldn’t it benefit the plot?”

“… Woongie… You have to know that when you’re playing these types of games… plot makes no difference. It’s basically all happy endings anyway. You need to feel the connection between you. And I’m feeling nothing with that guy, so we’re going with him.”

From beside you, Woong puffed out a small “fine” as his lips curled down, forming a frown. You chuckled at the sight, finding the scene incredibly endearing with Woong semi-curled up on your bed with the tiny pout.

It’s a Saturday afternoon and you are sat in your room. In front of your computer. With Woong. The screen displaying the words “Love Knight and his Runaway Princess”. The both of you had visibly gagged at the disgustingly cheesy title a couple of hours ago but soon felt yourselves get sucked in by the gorgeous visuals of the characters.

Woong had subconsciously wrapped his arms around you and gently set his chin on your head. You didn’t mind, of course, as you quickly scanned the five boys on the screen. Your fingers clicking on the buttons, going through all the guys before you got to the character you liked. Woojin was his name. A handsome name for a handsome knight, you said out loud without meaning to. Woong’s frown visibly deepens as he groans out a rather dramatic y/n doesn’t love me anymore.

You threw Woong a look as he used your previous strategy of puppy eyes to try and coax you into complimenting his name too. You, however, ignored his pleas as you concentrated back on the screen and the game. When you clicked play, you could still hear slight protests spilling from Woong’s mouth but you completely ignored it as you input your name into the box.

A couple hours after going through the surprisingly decent storyline, both you and Woong were in emotional turmoil. Poor Woojin had gone through so much as a kid… and so had fictional y/n.

“Woongie, can you pass me that tissue box? I think I’m crying real tears.” You said as you dabbed the side of you eyes with the sleeves of your t-shirt.

Woong immediately stretched his hand out to grab the box beside him, muttering a small I think I need it too as he passed it to you.

As the two of you sobbed at the ending of the gloriously beautifully cheesy game, you tackled Woong into a hug.

“I’m so glad we’re not like Woojin and fake y/n.” you said as you wrapped your arms around Woong’s neck and pecked his cheek.

“Believe me when I say I am too. And believe me when I say you’re my favourite princess.”

“Oh, I’m not sure if you’re mine though. Knight, I mean.”

You wish you had took your phone or your camera out at that moment to capture the utter shock painted on Woong’s face. But you just laughed and the sound filled Woong’s ears as he bursted out laughing too, gently hitting your arm in retaliation as you gasped in shock.

“How dare you raise your hand against a princess!”