DISCLAIMER: Guiding Light and its characters are the property of Proctor & Gamble. No infringement intended.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
You Trained These Lips When They Were Champs
By gilligankane
The kiss still lingers in her mind; if she tries hard enough she can remember the taste of too sweet fruit punch and chewy chocolate chip cookies mixed with the gin in her martini and she can feel Natalia's smooth face under her own smooth hands. She can remember how it was so different from kissing Phillip and Alan and Buzz and Frank and Bill and Josh – how it was softer and neater and it felt right.
She used to think she'd kissed all types of people: sloppy one, biters, nippers, slow burners, passionless, drunks.
She used to think she was at least an expert on kissing.
But like everything else in her life, Natalia just threw out the book on that too.
Because in that one kiss, that three and a half seconds of pure confusion mixed with pure denial with a little bit of suppressed longing thrown in had been on her mind constantly.
And now that they're together – well, really, hidden in the shadows and the stairwells and the corners and behind loaded glances – it consumes her mind and her every waking minute and her every sleeping thought.
She used to be so good at this: love 'em and leave 'em.
But Natalia won't go away.
So she stands too close and smiles too wide and looks too long and hopes that no one notices.
Except that she can't wait – physically, mentally, emotionally – for Natalia anymore, because she's faltering under the pressure and the expectations of being Olivia Spencer.
It's unfair to Natalia, she knows. But she also knows that it's not fair to her.
"Could you focus? Please?" Natalia's voice shatters her thoughts. "Where are you anyway?"
"Uh, sorry, I was thinking about…about the Lumbard account."
Natalia looks skeptical. "The Lumbard account?"
"Yeah, that one."
"We don't have a Lumbard account, Olivia."
Oh, Olivia thinks to herself. Should have thought that through.
"Olivia!" This time, Natalia doesn't just shatter her thoughts, she drops them off the Empire State Building and Olivia almost jumps clear out of her skin.
"What? Gosh, can't you cut a girl a break?" Olivia throws up her hands. "I'm done for now anyway. It's…" she glances at the clock. "It's already 2:00. If we leave now, we can go get Emma and head home for dinner."
She says it all on autopilot, and when Natalia doesn't say anything after a few moments, Olivia turns around. Natalia is staring at her, a mix of pity and hope in her eyes.
"Olivia…"
Then she realizes that she said "home" but she's living in the Beacon now with Emma; across town from the farmhouse; far away from the farmhouse and the home.
She tries to backtrack. "What I meant was I can pick up Emma at school and get her back here for dinner on time, for once this week," she says sarcastically.
And the entire time she's talking, her eyes are locked on the south corner of Natalia's face, tracing the line of her upper lip and fullness of her bottom lip.
She watches the way Natalia's mouth is parted slightly, and she can almost see the air going in and out, in and out, in and out.
"Natalia, I…"
But she can't do this anymore.
She's never been a "sidelines" kind of girl; never been the one to sit around and wait for someone else to get it together; never been a waiting girl at all.
So waiting around for Natalia to "get used to this" or to "feel comfortable" isn't as easy in reality as it is in theory, and in this moment – just in her office on a casual Friday in the early afternoon – she suddenly doesn't care if Natalia isn't ready.
All she wants to do is kiss Natalia once.
Just once.
So she throws caution to the wind, prays the door is locked, and makes up her mind.
Just like the first time: her eyes are narrowed, she has a good purpose (at least, she thinks she does), and her hands are locked behind Natalia's head, pulling – forcing – them together.
But this time it's different.
There's no blaming it on anyone but themselves, and Natalia's mouth is soaked in the iced tea they had at lunch, not fruit punch courtesy of Emma's school, and this time Natalia's hands aren't just hanging, they're moving, wrapping themselves around Olivia's waist, tangling themselves in the fabric of her sweater.
The first kiss was passion and fire and heat and forceful, because she was trying to prove a point then.
Now, it's languid and comfortable and tapered but the heat is still there, still palpable and Olivia finds herself searching to hold onto it, to keep it and foster it until it explodes inside of her, leaving her breathless.
But when Natalia pulls away, Olivia's breathless all the same.
"Olivia," Natalia says again, but this time it's a whisper, pressed against Olivia's lips.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she says, over and over again, but Olivia isn't really sorry, not at all.
Because she wanted to do that, and Olivia Spencer is the kind of woman who goes after what she wants.
Whether or not Natalia was ready.
"Stop, stop apologizing." Natalia's murmurs take a few precious moments to get through her head, but eventually, she hears Natalia and what she's saying and she presses forward again, kissing every inch of Natalia's face that she can reach.
And Natalia is kissing her back, with just the same amount of fervor and the same amount of desperation.
Olivia – the confident, exuberant, lively Olivia is back, smiling and happy.
Natalia just smiles back at her, the younger woman's eyes bright with tears, with her body pressed up against the edge of Olivia's desk.
"Do you know how long I waited to do that?" Olivia asks in a whisper of wonderment, trying for suave and ending up coming off as a sixteen-year-old boy finally getting his kiss with the prom queen.
My God, she thinks in horror. I've turned into The Geek!
"Not as long as I have," Natalia whispers in response.
Olivia laughs into Natalia's hair, taking in the clean scent of honeysuckle and dryer sheets, and wraps her arms around the small waist in front of her.
She used to think that she was good at this kind of stuff: seduction and coy glances and kissing.
Then she met Natalia Rivera.
And found out that she wasn't really good at anything.
The End