#everyone say thank you angie for voting for this to be fwb au

[erikahenningsen]

Cady/Regina #1 plz

1. A kiss on the cheek

A/N: A continuation of this prompt

"I have to tell you something," Cady announces the moment that the door to Regina's bedroom shuts behind them.

"Is that why you were wiggling around like you had to pee in the car?" Regina asks. "I was going to suggest you get tested for a UTI."

Cady makes a face at her. "That's not funny."

"Thanks for the feedback."

"Anyway," Cady says, dropping her backpack onto the floor with a thud. She takes a deep breath, like she's about to give Regina the nuclear codes or something. "Aaron and I kissed."

Regina feels her smile freeze on her face. Obviously, this was a possibility—an inevitability. She had given Cady pretty much the hardest shove imaginable to do the deed. Yet, somehow she isn't prepared for this. For how much it feels like a punch to the gut.

Who knew sure, I'll teach you, the girl I have a crush on, how to kiss your boyfriend with my own mouth would backfire in this way? Regina immediately pushes the thought away; the longer she can keep from naming what she's feeling, the longer she has until it's real.

Right?

"Oh," she says, pretending to busy herself with taking her books out of her backpack and arranging them on her desk so she can get her shit together. "That's, um. Great."

If Cady picks up on Regina's forced response, she doesn't show it. She sits on the bed and sighs dreamily. It's all a little too cliche for Regina, and she briefly contemplates telling Cady to leave.

"And I just wanted to thank you," Cady says earnestly as Regina runs through a list of medical crises she could reasonably be having that wouldn't require her mom to get involved, and comes up empty.

"You're welcome," Regina says quickly. hoping this conversation will end there.

"Because it was perfect," Cady continues, blissfully unaware of the five-alarm fire raging in Regina's brain. "We went out to dinner, and when he dropped me off he walked me to my door, and I was a little worried because I had gotten garlic bread."

Regina runs out of things to straighten on her desk and turns around, feeling a little bad having her back to Cady for this entire conversation. Cady is grinning from ear to ear, that giddy, goofy smile Regina once thought was reserved just for her.

"But I just went for it, and I wasn't nervous at all," Cady finishes.

It isn't until Cady asks, "Are you okay?" that Regina realizes that she's just been staring at Cady in silence.

"Oh, yeah," Regina says. "Totally. That's really great, Cady."

"Are you sure?" Cady asks. She stands and crosses the room to Regina. "You're looking kind of red."

"I'm good," Regina says, more firmly. "Really."

Fake smile. Eye contact. Brief touch to Cady's arm. Totally under control.

"Okay," Cady says more brightly, obviously buying it.

Then, she does something Regina did not plan for: she wraps her arms around Regina's shoulders and hugs her, a brief but tight squeeze that immediately envelops Regina in Cady's perfume and the spices Cady's mom cooks with that seem to be permanently embedded in Cady's clothes.

Reflexively, she hugs back, and prays Cady doesn't feel how fast her heart is beating.

Cady rocks up on her toes and does something she's never done before: she kisses Regina on the cheek.

"Again, thank you," Cady says, releasing Regina and heading back over to her backpack to pull out her calculus textbook, like this is just a normal Thursday.

"Anytime," Regina says faintly. Her skin burns where Cady's lips touched her cheek.

She doesn't get much studying done after that.