#lovekilling

based on the stuff we plotted ( 1 / 1 )

         the summer is ending, wes has been able to tell not only by the noticeable changing of the weather, but by the way the sun is beginning to set much earlier each day. he’s thankful for it tonight, because the faster it gets dark out, the more likely it’ll be that autumn will want to leave. she’ll quip about how the lighting wont be as good for possible photos and insist they go somewhere more photogenic as soon as golden hour has ended. today the two of them are on a ‘ date ’ to vancouver’s annual say goodbye to summer fest, which is basically just one of those traveling carnivals that overly cautious mothers refuse to let their children go to in fear that the rides aren’t up to code. wes’ mother certainly isn’t happy that he’s there today for that reason, but autumn wants him here, so he’s here. luckily it’s not exactly a date. almost the entire cast is here thanks to the producers, including charlotte, who right now happens to be standing just a few feet ahead of him as he and autumn wait in line to ride the ferris wheel. she’s joined by emilia and jack, and the three of them are laughing at some tiktok jack has claimed is the funniest thing of 2021. they’ve noticed that wes and autumn happen to be in line behind him and have exchanged pleasant hellos, but considering what emilia and jack are aware of, he doesn’t blame them for not exactly trying to strike up a conversation with the two of them.  

it’s been about two weeks since the news of autumn and wes’ relationship went public, and while the group in front of him have all been acting completely cool about it, wes knows that it must be painfully awkward standing beside them. it’s all wes can think about, and honestly he’d much rather be paranoid about what charlotte is speculating than listen to autumn blabber on about the last guy she was seeing before they got back together. she’s been talking about him all afternoon, complaining and loudly proclaiming in front of listening ears: “he was almost as bad as you, westy! but just almost.” wes has been miserable the entire time they’ve been out today ( and really, the entirety of their ‘ relationship ’ ), but he’s been doing an excellent job at hiding it, keeping his expressions limited to: half smiles, intrigued looks and playful eye-rolls that to the two of them are entirely real. sometimes he wishes that he weren’t such a good actor, that he wouldn’t be able to keep up this charade -- but wes cannot risk the foreseeable wrath of his mother that will come with fucking this up.

        “so cool that the studio bought us all tickets, right?” autumn asks, inserting herself into their conversation. she’s batting her eyelashes, desperate for the groups attention to be on her considering the fact that wes’ is definitely not. he’s more focused on charlotte, especially now that autumn is preoccupied, her back turned to him as he’s able to openly stare at the girl he really wants standing two feet away from him. “you all wanna ride together? it’ll be fun!” autumn suggests, tugging on wes’ arm without actually looking at him to see if this is something he wants to do. all five of them crammed into one ferris wheel cart doesn’t exactly sound like the most fun idea, but wes doesn’t say anything in protest of it when the group decides to agree. wes can’t imagine that charlotte really wants to, but the look on her face is impossible to read, and he doesn’t want to be staring for too long trying to figure it out. it’s hard not to stare and truthfully, admire when the sun is starting to cast a rich glow over her, and while wes thinks she always looks beautiful, he doesn’t think he’s ever seen her in such a marvelous light before. she briefly catches him staring, luckily while the rest of the group is now preoccupied by a work-in-progress tiktok that autumn wants their opinion on, and wes doesn’t hide the fact that he’s looking at her. he puts on a half smile and nods in her direction, like he wants her to know that he was just thinking about her. 

        her wedding was coming up, the time approaching faster than what rosie would’ve liked. and all the while, she found herself engaging in a whirlwind affair with slater. rosie should’ve stopped it after that first night but she had found herself unable to, that familiar sense of infatuation for the woman who should’ve remained her best friend creeping back in. as selfish and greedy as it sounded, rosie wanted slater all to herself again. which is why she had been engaging in an affair in the very first place. but with their time rapidly drawing to a close, rosie knew that she needed to stop things before it got out of hand.

      if wes thought the two weeks without charlotte before the photoshoot were rough, he had no idea how unpleasant the following two were going to be. at least before the photoshoot he was able to text charlotte, now he can’t even bring himself to open his messages with her and see the last thing he sent: whatever see you in two weeks. he has some serious regrets about how their last interaction went, but he’s too stubborn and broken up over that picture of charlotte and jordan to reach out to her and apologize. are they actually dating, or is this all in his head? why the hell was charlotte kissing jordan’s cheek after their amazing day at the lake? it’s like everything other than their last text exchange is leading him to believe he was being played. besides, it’s not like they’ve gone out of their way to make the magazine issue a retraction, or even bothered to send out a clarifying tweet to their fans that they’re just friends. maybe this was what wes had wanted in that moment, but he didn’t think they’d let it go on this long. and as each day came and went and neither of them set the record straight, wes continued to grow more disillusioned.

they’re back on set now, the last place on earth that he wants to be, going to a fucking table read ( like he hasn’t memorized the script already ), and wes is absolutely dreading seeing charlotte. before the photoshoot, being back here in vancouver was all he dreamed of, and now being surrounded by the supporting cast and crew is like the stuff of nightmares. he’s wandering through the trailer park dressed in all black, wearing a ridiculously expensive pair of gucci sunglasses, with a reusable black coffee mug in one hand and his phone in the other, heading in the direction of the multipurpose room to convene with the rest of the main cast for the first table read of the second half of the season. when wes had originally started reading the script, he’d been unimpressed, not exactly pleased with the direction he and charlotte’s characters were being taken -- but now that he and charlotte aren’t exactly a thing anymore, he’s almost grateful for it. it seems as though lakynn and oliver have found themselves in a love triangle -- and it looks like they’ll be doing a lot less kissing, which means that he and charlotte will be doing a lot less kissing. 

wes doesn’t say a word to anyone when he enters the building. he makes a beeline for an empty chair, doesn’t bother to remove his sunglasses, and immediately immerses himself in his latest level in brickbreaker. there are two empty seats beside him, one of them that likely would’ve occupied charlotte if everything hadn’t blown up the way it did two weeks ago. seats begin filling around him quickly, but not the two on either side of him. he doesn’t watch to see who sits where ( despite how curious he is to see whether or not charlotte and jordan are sitting beside each other ), he refuses to allow his eyes to lift from his game until he’ll hear the director begin the reading. but there is one thing that causes him to be distracted from his game. 

       it’s honestly kind of embarrassing how hard wes has worked to make this photoshoot happen. before the return to los angeles, there had been no official out of character cast shoots, no magazine spreads to create buzz about the show, and while going out of his way to help with publicity is something that wes does not want to do -- there is a plus side to it all: charlotte will be there. wes knows how to work his mother; asking her to make the photoshoot happen would not be the right way to go about it. she’d only question his sudden interest in marketing and inevitably discover his true intentions through a targeted line of questioning. so the practical way for wes to go about this ( which is the way he has to handle most things he wants with his mother ) is to make her believe that this is all her idea. she has the connections and surprising authority to have it all set up by the start of following week, and she does, all thanks to wes’ surreptitious intervention. 

from the moment they touched back in LA wes has been devising ways that he can covertly allow himself and charlotte to see each other. it’s been difficult, considering both of their schedules and the fact that wes can never seem to escape his mother, but a few options have made themselves possible. unfortunately each of those excursions had to be cancelled -- but this one is impossible for her to skip out on, because it’s an obligation for little boxes. over the past week wes has been dropping offhanded comments whenever it seemed appropriate about other developing shows advertisement campaigns. did you see the spread in US for the new joshua bassett show? it looks terrible. i just got the worst ad for that new amazon prime series with kathryn newton -- it was a photoshoot of the cast in wrestling gear... garbage. paramount+ can’t advertise for shit, this twitter campaign is embarrassing. he went as far as to leave a couple of magazines around the house and left his laptop unattended and open on the teen vogue website to showcase the most recent thing capturing the minds of todays youths -- and to wes’ delight, his plan worked. by the following morning she had a photoshoot set up with the entire cast for seventeen magazine by monday. 

there’s a part of him that wants to pull charlotte aside and tell her of his grand gesture, setting this whole thing up to see her, but the opportunities to do so are going to be extremely limited, and he thinks he might rather spend those two minutes they might have together kissing her madly than brag about the way he’d manipulated his mother. when they get to the studio, wes and his mother are the last to arrive, and while she unfortunately will be staying the entirety of the shoot, wes knows that actually paying attention to what’s going on is the last thing on her mind unless wes is the one being photographed. whatever’s going on behind the scenes is irrelevant to her, and from the moment she finds a place to settle down, she’s preoccupied by her phone and wes is free to do as he pleases. it’s been like this for just about as long as he can remember.