"You're staring."

Moxie brushed the comment off. Rather poorly by anyone else's standards,  she could assume.

"No, I'm not."

"The fact that you know what I'm talking about without asking means I'm correct."

No matter how many years went by of them knowing each other more than they knew themselves, Moxie and Mick could never indeed hide something from the other. That undeniable and endearing kind of sibling understanding was hardwired into their DNA. Most times, it was a gift. Other times, it could be conceived as insufferable, namely when she was called out for something she failed to recognize herself.

She took a final swig of beer before placing the empty bottle on the counter and hopping back onto the ground. Her brother's attention followed her every move, more amused than anything else. It was problematic to complain about him keeping a watchful eye when she was caught staring at the blonde starlet whose name never seemed to leave the headlines, even in the time since the King siblings traveled back to Los Angeles, but it wasn't like the Queen girl made that difficult either. Cruella Queen was a glitter bomb that popped in and out of the kitchen, snatching whatever she could get her hands on and dragging along a string of constant chatter that always seemed to follow. It wasn't as if Mick and Moxie didn't have to deal with that kind of attention as well to some degree, but she found it much easier to drown out the sound when it was directed at someone other than herself.

"Please refrain from your Moxie commentary while I'm trying to find a... distraction."

She usually had a good eye for the right people at these parties—the ones who could help her forget about all the nonsensical mischief that ran 24/7 in her head—but this party was proving to be a bust. Lana was preoccupied with flirting with Rami who looked like he was about ready to run back home, Mick was slumming it with his bored sister, and Moxie was losing any hope of getting laid tonight. At that point, she didn't want to anymore. (Fucking Christ, who was she?)

Cruella Queen disappeared back through the doorway with her on-again (off-again?) boyfriend in tow. Moxie still wasn't sure what exactly he did for a living. Maybe Ritchie Mendoza was simply just... Ritchie.

Mick snapped his fingers in front of her face. "You're still staring."

"And you're still annoying," Moxie quipped, shoving his hand away. The most annoying part was that he wasn't wrong. She had been. And she had also been caught doing so red-handed. Subtlety wasn't her fucking strong suit, okay? Especially when there was a pretty girl around. "Where's Lana?"

"Where do you think?"

Moxie groaned, tossing her head back. "Lovely."

"She's also trying to find her distraction."

"Lana doesn't need the distraction," Moxie argued. "She just genuinely enjoys the company of others. And everyone else enjoys her company, too."

Her brother burned a hole in the ozone with how strongly he looked at her. Nowadays, he felt more like the older sibling with how much he looked out for her. The best part about them being at the party was that there were too many distractions going on for him to truly get a good look at her and dissect the abnormalities of her behavior. Moxie could be a grump sometimes, but she was often better at hiding it. She wasn't even sure what it was that prevented her from enjoying herself tonight. If she didn't waste too much brain power thinking about it, the likely answer to her question was that she was more exhausted from rehearsals than she had realized.

"Where's your distraction?" Moxie directed pointedly at her brother with an expression too smug for its own good, treating her simple feat of saying literally anything as a gotcha! moment. '

Mick had kept to her side for the entire duration of the party thus far. Through rose-colored glasses, she imagined a loyal dog sitting quietly next to their best friend. Realistically, he probably looked more like the unsuspecting friend who was handcuffed to the most annoying person on the planet who had thrown away the key and pressed the record button for the sake of so-called mindless entertainment.

He shrugged before tossing a couple of pistachios in his mouth. (Who the fuck put out pistachios for a house party?) "You don't need a distraction when you're living in your own world."

"Not all of us can live in the fantastic world of Mick King."

"You're so adjacent that it's practically yours." He looked briefly at the empty doorway. "Maybe if you stopped pining after unavailable people—"

"Oh, now I'm pining after her?" Moxie mused with a crooked smile.

"Positively devastated to lose the grace of her presence," Mick added before taking a sip of his drink. Something in a red cup. Even at that tax bracket, those would never go out of style. "How now will you ever get the chance to sweep her off her feet and propose after a mere two meetings?"

Despite her unexplainable discomfort, or something less easily described, she laughed—loudly, unabashedly, and freely. It was, yet, another unsurprising outcome when she spent time with her favorite human. "Who gets the dowry if we're both women?"

"You actually get to pick a man at random to pay both of you as a wedding gift."

She held out her right hand, wiggling her fingers at him. "Pay up then, bub."

Mick curled her fingers back toward her, pushing her arm into her chest at the same time. "You have to land the girl first for that to work."

"But you are suggesting that you will give us money if it happens."

He smirked. "Don't get your hopes up."

"Ouch." She feigned being hurt at the second suggestion of her failing to woo the blonde starlet. Not that she was actually thinking about doing such a thing. She had her luck with strangers occasionally, but Cruella Queen came off as someone with a lot of baggage, by her fault or otherwise,  not even including her boyfriend.

A loud ruckus broke out from just outside of view before a group streamed through the kitchen door and huddled around the opposite end of the island counter, signaling Moxie's need to make a great escape for her own sanity. Mick immediately recognized the look on her face, ushering her out in front of him as they made their way into the living room.

The party had grown since the two of them were hiding out in the kitchen, and though Moxie considered herself well-versed enough to blend into the chaos to accomplish her goal of—pardon her—getting laid before jetting off on their tour, her mind had already written off tonight as a bust.

Unfortunately for her, Mick had other plans. (He had better luck in almost every facet of life.)

"Text me when you're ready to leave, yeah?" said Mick, looking down at his phone, mind already drifting off somewhere else. He had found his distraction after all.

It didn't take long for Moxie to become swept up in the current. Her performance was Oscar-worthy as she mingled with vaguely familiar faces and people she had been warned to keep at arm's length. It always felt like some strange game of hot and cold where she was told to be mindful of the people she surrounded herself with and take advantage of the proximity no matter what the cost. There was no such thing as bad press, after all. Not in the minds of those who were poised to profit the most. Growing up in the industry granted her some valuable insight that she used to steer clear of obvious danger, which she understood was a stark privilege compared to the wide-eyed and bushy-tailed naivety that flooded the city, but it was also the removal of a veil she long ago lost of the magic that she once imagined existed here.

Once it got to be a little too much, even for someone who learned at a young age how to paint a fake smile on her face, Moxie escaped outside to wait for her brother to come find her. She usually waited a bit before sending him a text, giving him whatever time he needed to fill up his internal socializing meter. Some nights were quicker than others. On other nights, Moxie was better at acclimating to her environment and was by his side, laughing and having a good time.

She briefly scrolled through different emails she had yet to respond to and sent her polite but concise replies. Most of the correspondence related to work was handled by Roxanne now, which was a relief, but Moxie liked to maintain some sort of handle on things pertaining to her work. It often felt like the only way she could be in control of her own outcome instead of letting her life fall into the hands of someone else.

For the second time that night, Cruella Queen captured Moxie King's attention with little to no effort. Like a moth to a flame, Moxie found her attention drifting slowly over to the blonde starlet who stumbled out of the house, tossing muted obscenities at someone behind her. Seconds later, the man moxie had come to know as Ritchie Mendoza, said starlet's on-again, off-again boyfriend, followed with a stern look on her face.

While Moxie was fortunate to have been surrounded by mostly upstanding individuals in her career thus far—with some rare exceptions that she was, luckily, able to handle—there were some experiences universally shared by every woman. And though she knew nothing of these people and their relationship, and probably had no business caring this much about strangers who were having what mostly appeared to be a standard argument, her instinct hardened her into defensive mode, locking her phone and tucking it into her pocket so she could stand quickly if she needed to.

After a few seconds, it became clear it wasn't needed. (She still thought it better to be safe rather than sorry.) Ritchie hurled some choice words at Cruella before darting back into the house, making sure to slam the door as hard as humanly possible.

In those moments that followed—not with any true silence, as the sound of the party continued to thrum steadily in the background—Moxie felt as if she were intruding on something. Not by any fault of her own as she had been outside first, and it wasn't as if the two of them had made any effort to conceal their arguments. But the woman, the myth that was Cruella Queen, stared up at the sky, closed her eyes, and released a deep breath that looked as if it had been ripped from the very center of the universe.

Moxie found a burst of confidence and cleared her throat, instantly capturing Cruella's attention. "You alright?"

"I know you."

Physically, she didn't react to Cruella's response. Not in any discernible way. But on the inside, she felt her stomach twist like she was a damp towel being wrung out. "Yeah?"

"You and your brother. The Kings."

It sounded so cringe whenever someone said it like that. Like they were something special. Royalty. Considering they named their newest album MONARCH, they couldn't be too upset at anyone else having that perception of them.

"That's us." After reading Cruella's body language and deciding it was safe enough to move closer, Moxie stood up, dusting her hands off on her pants. "Are you sure you're alright? That sounded—"

"It's so nice out, isn't it?" Cruella stepped around the driveway, twirling her arms like a skirt fanning out as she spun around. "I like LA this time of year."

Moxie had no idea how to respond. Small talk about the weather in the middle of a driveway—to whom she had no idea it belonged—while in the middle of a party was a bit of foreign territory. And though it wasn't the distraction she had expected for the night, Cruella Queen was even harder to look away from up close.

"I kind of miss the snow already," Moxie said before clarifying. "Toronto."

"Strangely enough have not been yet."

Moxie cocked her head to the side. "Not even for a show?"

(Maybe she shouldn't have been surprised. So many artists didn't tour in Canada.) (Ugh.) (The other blondie was at least stopping by at the end of the year.)

"Nope." She turned suddenly toward Moxie and held out her hand. "I'm Cruella, by the way."

"I know." Moxie still held out her hand. Her short, chipped black nail polish was a stark contrast to the stiletto red splashed across Cruella's nails. Everything else about her was pale—her skin, her blonde hair, the pink hue of her flushed cheeks, and even the dress she wore hanging loosely around her soft curves—except for her sharp claws. "Moxie. King." (Obviously.)

Cruella smiled before letting her gaze drift back toward the front door, haunted by a ghost that had already moved on for the night. "Is it weird that I think the most annoying thing he's done is complain about being dragged to see Barbenheimer?"

She exhaled it so breathily, so casually that Moxie couldn't decide whether to stare blankly or laugh uncontrollably. Even though she had lived through the phenomenon that was the Barbenheimer experience and had subsequently been enlisted to fight for the cause by the shared brain cell that is Stevie and Maverick, Moxie found the statement so comical, the idea that anyone could genuinely be upset about seeing two world-class films, that it was hard to believe.

"What?"

Cruella nodded solemnly before cruising toward the area Moxie was previously sitting down and taking a seat. The latter hesitated for a beat, analyzing the situation, before joining her. She occupied the space between Cruella and the front door.

"He didn't talk to me for a whole week afterward. He was that annoyed."

"That's..." Weird? Deranged? Positively bonkers? "Strange. I'm guessing he didn't like it."

"Not liking it would have been an improvement over how he felt if you can believe someone would ever have that strong of an opinion about a toy."

"Seeing as how ever conservative media lost their shit when it came out, I'm not that surprised."

Moxie recognized the look on Cruella's face immediately. It was an expression worn by every woman and femme-presenting person at least once in their lifetime. Hell, the expression held platinum fucking status and held no concerns about missing the requirements for membership renewal every year.

The displeasure of dealing with men was unmatched.

"He couldn't even give me a good reason for not liking it, you know?" Cruella looked off into the distance, her eyes never clinging to one spot on the skyline for more than a second. The whole world was stretched out at her fingertips, but she couldn't find something to hold onto. "I mean, I get it. There were things to criticize, like with any movie. But he just scoffed like—like...." She drifted off.

Going for it, Moxie added, "Like Ken in his patriarchy era."

"Yes."

Cruella Queen bore the weight of a ridiculous opinion brought on by someone who couldn't even form two coherent thoughts about a piece of media, and Moxie continued her dance of confusion of not knowing how to react. Whether to lean into the absurdity of it all or proceed with caution. She wasn't known for being shy or quiet, and yet there she was, enchanted by this stranger that didn't quite feel like a stranger, which was a conundrum itself given their careers and their casual proximity.

"At the end of the day, it was a film about a doll. It could only criticize capitalism and patriarchy so much when the ones who financed the film had an agenda. But my god, can women not have something fun and silly, but also has a little more substance than just hey, here's one shot in an entire three-hour-long film with only women who rarely ever speak to one another?"

"Right." Moxie nodded and kicked her foot out, paying a little too close attention to how "Barbie was never going to please everyone. It was too woke for conservatives because, well, of course, it was, too mean to men, even though it demonstrates how patriarchy harms men as well as women, even if not as much so, and it's not progressive enough for liberals because it doesn't unload thirty years' worth of women's studies on us. Women get one major, big-budget film a year if that, and we can't simply enjoy it for what it is, even in all of its simplicities. The future of feminism hangs in the balance any time we put women at the front and center, and give them something unapologetically for us, you know? I mean, they literally spell it out in the movie. Women and things geared toward women will never be safe from double standards."

Once she paused, Moxie was able to recognize the slight tangent she babbled on and could have felt slightly embarrassed about it, aside from the fact that she wasn't because she was nothing if not a Barbie and Greta Gerwig defender, but was only met with a smile when she turned to Cruella once again.

Their eyes remained locked for what felt like minutes. Instead, Cruella let her smile drift elsewhere, leaving a cold front to wash over Moxie's exposed arms. Los Angeles wasn't the most beautiful city on its own, she often thought to herself, but some of the most interesting people she had ever met called it home. That made it infinitely better than its reputation.

"Exactly. You get it."

"I'm sorry you had to deal with a man's opinion about Barbie."

Cruella laughed quietly. "He's done worse. That's just the most annoying thing."

Moxie had a million things she thought she should say. She didn't say any of them.

"Bet your brother loved it."

"Oh, Mick wouldn't shut up about it. Rated it higher than I did. But you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who liked it more than Stevie and Maverick." Moxie wasn't sure if either of them had met Cruella yet, but she could assume that if Cruella knew of her, she must have also known of the disaster bi August Leo duo. They were legends in their own right. "Maverick still hasn't stopped singing I'm Just Ken."

"Bet he sounds great, at least."

"Better than Ryan Gosling, but don't tell him I said that."

"Gosling or Maverick?"

"Both." Moxie breathed in, breathed deep. "Listen, I don't want to pretend like I know you or anything about your relationship but—"

Moxie was interrupted by the sound of Mick stumbling out of the party with his arm wrapped around a guy's shoulder. He looked familiar, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. And truthfully, she wasn't sure she cared because all she could think about was how she wished she could jump back in time to five seconds ago when it was just the two of them.

Did sapphic women always fall this hard this quickly? Moxie would text Stevie and ask for a second opinion.

"Ready to go?" Mick said with a sloppy smile, his eyes half closed. "I called the Uber."

"I called the Uber," the guy chimed in.

It took no time for her to jump into big sister mode, and she leapt up to his side and took him from the guy's arms. Mick was generous with putting his weight on her; Moxie, thankfully, had enough practice to keep him standing.

"Thanks," she told him. It stuck after a few seconds that this was Bronx Harlow, Cruella Queen's best friend and another musician. "You didn't have to do that. He would've figured it out himself. Eventually. Or he would have found me. Eventually."

Bronx smiled, far more handsome in person than in pictures found of him online. Unlike his best friend, he spent most of his time out of the spotlight, allowing his music to speak for him more than his public persona. He was lucky, in that sense. Moxie knew that to someone like Cruella, it wasn't quite as easy as deciding to do that.

He turned to Cruella with an expectant look. "Ritchie was looking for you."

"'Course he was."

Her eyes met Moxie's once more, this time a little more sad than before, and she managed a small wave before straightening her shoulders like she was ready to jump in front of the cameras at a highly televised press conference.

"If you're ever in the mood for a Barbenheimer double feature, you can find me. We'll have frosés and everything. I'll even paint my entire house pink for the occasion."

Moxie nodded and shifted her feet as much as she could while practically carrying him on her back. (How did he get this drunk in that amount of time? Fucking hell.) "I'll hold you to it."

Mick's face lit up like the Fourth of July. "Barbenheimer? I know the movie is about the man who created the atomic bomb and everything, but getting lost in Cillian Murphy's eyes is worth the three-hour runtime alone."

"You can come too," Cruella said as she shoved Bronx back toward the door. Her earrings glistened like glitter underneath the porch lights. "As long as you're aware you're not getting a seat on the supreme court."

"Deal." He held up his hand, the one not clutching Moxie's shoulder, and waved back at the starlet. "Bye, Barbie!"

She laughed and snuck one last glance at Moxie before turning her back to them. "Bye, Ken."

...

long live the smidorii love interests meet  at a house party scene.