There were a myriad of reasons as to why Moxie shouldn't have accepted Cruella's offer to hang out in her hotel room after their outing with Eddie and Axel had ended—including but not limited to the fact that she was less sober than she had anticipated she would end the night. Maybe she needed to sober up and think clearly—but saying no to someone like Cruella wasn't for the faint of heart. She had stood there after the offer was laid out, completely innocently and without any sense of obligation, and wondered if she was about to make some irrational mistake she would later come to regret. But then that would require admitting that she had made a series of choices that led them to that hotel room in the first place, and Moxie wasn't about to run through the nine circles of regret over something as silly as wanting to be around a pretty lady.

"Do you want anything to drink?"

"Surprise me."

So much for sobering up.

Moxie began to feel dizzy. Not because of how drunk she was, but because of her close proximity to Cruella in a private setting. She couldn't escape the sweet scent of perfume that washed over her like a blanket, nor the warmth of her aura. Her outfit which had previously been impeccably stylish now had lived-in folds as evidence of the night they had shared together thus far. The glitter that adorned her eyes had settled into the creases, and the natural flush of her cheeks peeked through the rest of her makeup.

Ritchie Mendoza was the elephant in the room when Cruella locked the door behind them, shutting the two women off from the rest of the world.

While Moxie had mostly forgotten about him during the majority of their time together, he hadn't completely disappeared. Not from her subconscious or the public's appetite for that matter. She was embarrassed to admit that she knew the latest headlines placed him somewhere in Europe, partying away until the sun came back up. There were even a few snapshots with his arms around a leggy blonde who wasn't Cruella. (That was why her name was trending again that week.) (Not that she ever truly slipped completely out of the headlines. Even when things weren't about her, they were about her.) Moxie wondered if that was one of the reasons why Cruella had snuck away to New Orleans for the week.

"This hotel is nice. A helluva lot nicer than our place," Moxie commented as she looked around the hotel room, not that she had much to complain about. A roof over their heads was a roof over their heads. The interior was as gorgeous as the exterior; not at all unexpected considering they were in New Orleans. "Remind me to get hotel recommendations from you next time."

"Oh, I have a whole list of hotels I like to stay at all over the country. I'll send you the doc link." Cruella waltzed over to the mini bar and rifled through it as if they hadn't just come from a bar. All of the water bottles had already been emptied. "I've been on the road for the past ten years straight, so I've already built up a nice roster. Slowly building up my international list too."

Moxie had spent a lot of time on the road over the years as well, but many of those trips, particularly those before Mick and Moxie became a performing act, were with her entire family. It made everything feel a lot more personal, being able to spend time in a new city with her family. She knew she wasn't physically home, but she still felt at home in those hotel rooms playing card games and fighting over who could build the tallest paper cup tower out of stolen stashes from the housekeeping carts.

"Ursula and I went a little crazy with our spreadsheets." Cruella laughed. "Star ratings. Pictures. Reviews. Practically an entire essay. If you ask me, it's kind of a masterpiece."

"Must've been kind of... lonely. All of that traveling around by yourself."

"We always had some kind of supervision. Managers at least. My mother when she could get off work."

"What about your—"

"Oh, he was long gone by then," Cruella interrupted. "No love lost there." It didn't sound believable. "It was fine. Great. More of a good time than any kid even knows what to do with."

"Still. That's..."

The idea was that child stars were constantly surrounded by people, but Moxie heard too many stories about how those people were so often different from the kind of people who should be in charge of working children. Based on all of the little crumbs fed to her, Moxie guessed Cruella had her sister and not a lot else.

"I mean... Mick and I had each other too, but our parents were always around. Made sure we found a way to spend quality time with each other no matter where in the world we were. That was the only reason I survived living on the road for so long. It's so easy to lose track of everything that seems to ground you when you spend so much time not really having anywhere solid to land."

Cruella shrugged. "Yeah, I get that. I guess Ursula and I always found a way to have a lot of fun, even when we had no idea where we were in the world. Seemed to take our minds off everything else."

"I'm glad you two had each other."

"We got to do all the cool shit most kids wished they could do. Who can complain about that?"

There was a time when Moxie would have agreed. The King siblings got away with doing a lot of shit at an age when they should have been enjoying just being kids. But that kind of clarity only emerged with hindsight.

"But then you realize there's a reason most kids aren't allowed to do everything they want."

The blonde starlet spun around, highlights glittering like her hair had been sprinkled with diamond dust. She was mesmerizing to an impossible degree. A hundred and ninety-nine degrees. When she looked at Moxie like that, all eyes half closed and lips open just ever so slightly, she felt like burned rubble waiting to be stepped on.

"You know... It's so interesting..."

Moxie raised a brow. "What is?"

"I've heard stories about you." Cruella took a sip out of a tiny bottle with unnaturally blue booze. "Lots of stories."

"Really?" That was never the start of something good. And yet Cruella was being flirty about it, which made Moxie feel a little... tingly. "I'm not sure if I wanna know what you've heard."

"Nothing bad. Everyone who's ever met you seems to fall in love." That was hilarious coming from someone charismatic enough to interrupt an entire bar's night to force them to sing Happy Birthday to a skinny white man who desperately needed to be introduced to the miracle of dry shampoo. "Kind of like Stevie. I wasn't really surprised to find out you two are friends. No matter who you're talking to, you make that sort of impression that makes everyone want to know more. Have to know more."

"Stevie is very lovable."

"I've heard so many stories about how much people love you," Cruella continued. "How much they want to be like you. How you can pull a good time out of a hat like a magic trick. A party girl. That's who I thought I would eventually meet. And I knew I would. I had to. I made sure that I did. But then I did and you're just... you're so different than how I thought you'd be."

Moxie wasn't sure what to say. She had never felt so frightened at being seen before, let alone by the person whom she had spent the last however many weeks with her thoughts wrapped completely around her. (Truthfully, she had lost track of time.) (Someone could have told her right then and there that she had been infatuated with Cruella Queen for years and she would have believed them.) Moxie was the deer standing in Cruella's headlights. Or the lonely audience member standing in the shadows, watching as the crowd around her screamed for the larger-than-life figure on the stage.

"Different in a good way?" Moxie hoped she didn't sound too desperate for the right answer.

Cruella smiled. "What do you think?"

"I think you're the only one who can tell me." Moxie twirled the end of her shirt around her finger. "What did you mean by you made sure that we met?"

Cruella turned back around briefly to finish preparing their drinks. She possessed mystical powers, being around to turn something as unappealing as hotel mini-fridge booze into something Moxie actively wanted to drink. Or maybe Moxie would simply do whatever Cruella wanted her to do.

"What if I told you I was a mastermind?"

Moxie would believe it.

"Maybe us running into each other at that party was some divine intervention." It had certainly felt that way. Like all the stars had aligned at exactly the right moment, in the right life, with the right twist of fate. "Or maybe I knew a person who knew a person who knew you would be there and I thought, why not?"

It might have just been some sweet talkin'. Looking back on their introductions didn't seem as cinematic as Moxie saw it through her rose-tinted glasses. (Women falling for women could be so dramatically poetic and that was just another reason why Moxie loved being a lesbian so much.)

"Before we get into this—" Cruella gestured between them. Neither woman was mistaken about where things were heading. It was only just a matter of time. (And if Cruella was being honest, she might have orchestrated this very moment too, while Moxie was simply happy to be along for the ride.) "I have a question to ask."

"Sure."

Moxie had some self-restraint. She didn't have a problem waiting until Cruella got the answers she wanted.

"Who was that guy you were talking to?"

Except maybe that answer.

"What guy?"

Cruella rolled her eyes before floating over to sit in the other empty chair. She quickly discarded the hair tie she had used to pull her hair up into a ponytail earlier, along with a few dainty pieces of silver jewelry. "The ugly old dude who ruined your night. I saw him before Axel showed me his pictures."

"Nobody ruined my night. The night isn't even over yet."

Who did Moxie think she was, acting like it wasn't obvious she was trying to avoid the conversation? Axel?

Not that it mattered. It was clear by the look she flashed over her shoulder that Cruella wasn't about to be tricked into ignoring the glaringly obvious stain from that night. A nasty splash of red wine against an otherwise pristine white carpet.

While she thought of how to answer without blowing the lid off of everything she had spent years trying to suppress, Moxie accepted the drink, clutched tight between her hands, and took a tentative sip. All things considered, it was tasty. And despite the swift subject change, Cruella was a great drinking partner. She didn't have quite the same audience she had at her perfectly manicured fingertips inside that bar, but Moxie was just as enamored as she had been then.

"Might be a bit of a mood killer," Moxie finally said.

"I think you're underestimating the mood."

They laughed. Subtle flirting was kind of overrated sometimes.

"I also don't... I don't know if that's something I want to share just yet. Or ever."

Not even the highly recommended therapist that Moxie used to see could claim any knowledge of what had happened to Moxie, and she wanted to keep it that way despite knowing it probably wasn't helping her in any way. Hell, she knew it wasn't. The fact that those memories could distract her from someone as pretty and alluring as Cruella meant something.

If only Moxie cared about herself enough to do anything about it. She could spend a lifetime worrying about someone else before tending to her own wounds.

Cruella tried to catch her eye, but Moxie dodged. "Can I get a small hint as to the scale of this—"

"It's something I haven't even told Mick about."

"Oh. Oh." Cruella leaned back. "Got it. In that case, you don't have to say anything. But I'm here if you want to." Quietly, she added, "I'm here if you don't want to. Never want to. Either way is fine."

The silence between them stretched out for longer than Moxie could gauge. Her drink went still apart from the subtle tremors that rippled through the surface like a monster descending upon an unsuspecting city of innocence. A thin layer of condensation slipped from the glass between her fingers. Moxie couldn't calculate how much of her brain was occupied by a ghost of her memories and Cruella Queen.

"Do you ever just..." Moxie stumbled over her thoughts. They seemed to be running a hundred miles per hour. "Feel guilty for something that someone else did to you? Like you somehow did something that made it happen, and now you can't stop yourself from feeling bad about it, even though deep down you know it's not your fault."

Cruella stilled. Flicked her eyes away for a brief moment before settling back on Moxie. If Moxie believed in an afterlife, she would have found a way to curse Patrick to hell for trying to ruin their night. (Among other things.) (He had many reasons for Moxie wishing he would go to hell.)

"I hate that we both know what that feels like."

"Do you want to talk about—"

Cruella silenced her with another look. More devious than the last, but still tinged with a blue hue of sadness.

"You're right. Might be a bit of a mood killer."

Silently, they both agreed it wasn't the time or place to unravel any of those threads. The drinks were swiftly consumed and their glasses tossed aside. Moxie and Cruella closed the space between them, more hesitantly than the former would have anticipated. She stood there, questioning how the stars could have aligned so perfectly to allow her to stand in front of a goddess built of pure beauty. She replayed what Cruella had said earlier on a loop in her head, desperate to proclaim that Cruella was the woman everyone wanted to be. The woman everyone wanted to emulate and admire and love, and Moxie was just glad she got to stand there in front of her.

Cruella tucked a piece of Moxie's hair behind her ear. "God, you're so beautiful it hurts."

"I—" Moxie's eyes shifted down to her lips. "I don't want to be beautiful. I mean, I don't want to just be beautiful. I want to be hot. I want to be sexy and showstopping and breathtaking. I want to be the person you can't take your eyes off of."

Moxie spent a lot of her life trying to fit into the mold of what men wanted to see in a woman. And then once she realized she had zero interest in what men wanted, because what did that matter when she had no interest in men herself, all of that validation she sought had shifted into something else. She dressed how she wanted, but also how she thought other women wanted, but also how she thought a woman who liked other women had to dress. She lost track of what she wanted. Whether it was to fit in or find herself. But that also meant running away from the idea that she could want to be wanted a certain way. That she could feel sexy for herself and for someone else, someone that she desired.

There was no mistaking the glint in Cruella's eyes. It wasn't from her innate need to rattle anyone's cage. Cruella wanted her. She felt it in her eyes, in the electricity sparking through her fingertips, in the way she stepped even closer to Moxie until their breaths mingled in a slow and trepidatious dance.

"Baby, you're already all of those things," Cruella whispered before smiling. "You're a fuckin' knockout."

Without another word wasted, they closed the gap.

As she had been for the past few weeks, Moxie drowned in her thoughts of Cruella. Every kiss sunk her further and further into the abyss until Moxie lost the desire to breathe again. What would be the point if she wasn't seeing Cruella amongst the stars? Her skin was smooth as silk. Her floral scent washed straight over every inch of her body. Moxie tangled her fingers into Cruella's luscious golden locks, tugging her even impossibly closer. While she adored women in heels, and tall women in general, Moxie thought it delightfully pleasant to angle Cruella's face up with a delicate finger under her chin now that Moxie had her height advantage returned since Cruella's heels were gone.

Cruella Queen carried herself with the confidence of a woman who not only knew what she wanted but also knew that she would get it no matter what. However, now that they were together, indulging in their sweetest desires, Cruella had folded past the mask she wore for the public. She was putty beneath Moxie's hands, moving eagerly toward the bed until she lay beneath her. Clothes were discarded at a perfectly slow and deliberate pace. Moxie felt skin against skin and knew they had reached the point of no return.

Beautiful. Hot. Cruella gasped both until every breath was taken away. Something of great divinity. The damn mastermind.