DID SOMEONE SAY RETURN OF THE PROM AU

reminder: piper is sable, theo is strong, dante is smoke

language warning + cuteness +real awkward

The first kiss is a mess. More specifically, Piper is a mess. She's drunk and emotional, and it's never a good mix. She blames it all on Dante, that arrogant insufferable prick. He's playing at conjoined twins again with Aubrey; it's a slightly incestous game, considering that his lips are reluctant to leave hers. But it's his sister hosting the party, and, though it's completely dismal and sad, Dru is her only real friend. Piper goes, and hoards all the alcohol she can find. Theo finds her an hour later, when she's just a mellow pile of badly organised emotions.

"Piper, you're a wreck," he says, grinning broadly at her as he untangles her fingers from the vodka bottle. "A fucking trainwreck." Still, he sits down beside her and takes a swig, though the liqueur is too warm to be pleasant. Piper leans on his shoulder, reaching limply for the bottle that just eludes her grasp.

"Please…" she whines. Normally, she's far above begging, but the sight of Dante sucking face with Straight A Aubrey can only be washed away with raw spirits. And it happens like that; a twitch of her head, a twitch of his, an awkward sideways collision that Theo does not quite reciprocate. She pulls back, and leaves a small shiny trail of saliva on his lower lip.

"Sorry," Piper whispers, after a moment, and she is; she never imagined her first kiss would turn out like that, so sad and dismal and lonely, so accidental, so Theo. She was never meant to chase him; after all, she is the one who always runs away, without fail.

Then her father has his accident, and the seat belt nearly strangles him; after that, he can barely speak, and he doesn't leave the house. It's a pity kiss, really; Theo was only trying to ask if she was okay. The school bell has rung, and the students have all trickled away, and she is failing at shoving her books into her overflowing locker. There must be something in her face; her red-rimmed eyes, her pallid skin a vocal declaration of her hysteria. Piper's always hated crying, and now she hates that he, of all people, is the one to see her do it.

"It all gets better," he murmurs to her, as she spins to face him. "Trust me." And she should, because she guesses he knows better than anybody. But she doesn't have it in her; can't find a part of her that takes comfort in his words.

"He's not dead," she snaps, but this is where the conversation dies. Theo initiates it; a small, soft peck, so far from the awkward drunken clash of their first romantic encounter. Her lips are chapped. His aren't, but his breath smells of smoke anyway. It isn't perfect; she hates the taste of cigarettes.

After that, there are near-misses, awkward almosts, a game of evasion and avoidance. Piper can only remember the clumsiness of the first two, and she doesn't trust their tentative friendship to survive another.

The third time, she is prepared, and the ashy reek of smoke is gone. It's Theo's birthday, and they hide from his discordant parents. It's not hard, in his sprawling home estate, and so they tuck themselves away the garden undisturbed, plates piled with cake (she tells herself she's there because she loves cake, nothing more). It's a perfect, balmy day, blue sky streaked with tiny clouds and overtures of romance. Third time's the charm, they say, and so she falls under its spell. Its spell and his lips and his mint breath. After, as her lips tingle and her blush grows, they eat their cake in solitary mirth. She fucking loves cake.