Dinner is awkward, in that it mostly consists of James verbally flailing around like a headless chicken and Logan trying and failing to be subtle about digging for information, which just freaks James out more, which just makes Logan more suspicious, and so on and so forth in a self-sustaining loop of boys are stupid. Carlos, bless him, is too preoccupied with his corn dogs to contribute to the idiocy. For the time being.

"Hey, is it okay if I eat in my room? I've got a ton of homework."

She doesn't, but she knows Logan will be too distracted by approval of her supposed studying habits to connect this to James acting like a freak, and she seriously can't watch this anymore.

"Of course. Do you need any help?"

Which, yeah right, but it's his way of showing he cares, so she won't roll her eyes until her back is turned.

"No, thanks."

She grabs her plate and hightails it out of there, because she loves her boys but she needs to focus (read: scheme), and they are really not conducive to that, like, at all.

Not because she's freaking out too.

Because she's so totally not.

Oh fucking fine, so maybe she's in way over her head, but that's never stopped her before.

If she can extort a crazy CEO, save Dak Zevon's life, become Russell Brand's manager, taser giant security guards, run a damn company (for three hours, but still), and (by far her most impressive accomplishment) keep all four members of Big Time Rush from death, prison, or permanent disfigurement, then she can damn well seduce a guy who already wants her.

Which, yeah, obviously. Obviously she can do that, because seducing people is basically just making them do what you want with your boobs, and she's been able to make him do whatever she wanted since before she even had boobs, so that part's not even an issue, really.

But there are issues, plenty of them, and normally she'd already have a plan to get around that, but this whole thing kind of snuck up on her and she's not sure how she's supposed to deal with it. But she has to.

She has to deal with it because he won't and she's tired of avoiding him and feeling weird and awkward when he's around. She's been waiting for the whole 'turns out we have ridiculous amounts of chemistry and I all but soak through my underwear every time you so much as look at me' thing to go away, but it's not going to, and they're going to do this eventually so they have to do it now. She was not even kidding about that whole 'greater good' thing.

Because they have two years before she's legal, and if she thought they could stay close and keep things platonic she would wait it out, but that's pretty clearly not going to work. It's either give in or spend the next two years (she really cannot stress that part enough) distancing themselves form one another, which, no. She'd be miserable and he'd probably die in some exceedingly stupid way, assuming they even had the will power to stay away from each other in the first place. Also, they live together, so that would just be impractical.

But James is James is James, and James makes poor life decisions and then clings to them like a coked up octopus.

Ergo: seduction.

And then sex. But, like, normal sex, not...

Not that other thing. Or, okay, not never That Other Thing, but definitely not yet.

If she's going to participate in something, she should be able to think it without blushing so hard her face aches. She should probably even be able to say it, like, out loud, with words, and nope.

So, all Other Things, temporarily off the table. Just a little bit of psychological warfare, and then sex.

Easy.

Okay, not easy. Nerve-wracking. Borderline terrifying.

And, it's not like he wouldn't wait, he would, indefinitely, if it meant she'd be more comfortable, but she honestly doesn't think that would help. It's not that she's not ready, or that she's not sure; it's that she's not going to have any idea what she's doing and he will and she won't be able to bullshit her way through because he's known her literally her entire life and is infuriatingly perceptive when he wants to be. No amount of time will make any of that less true.

And she loves him and she trusts him and she wants him and nothing is going to make that any less true either, so.

Clearly, what she needs to do here is call in some reinforcements.

He can honestly say that before The Incident, he'd never thought of her that way. He'd never even thought of thinking of her that way. He didn't think?

But, well, now he is. Thinking of her. That way, and also other ways. All the ways, really.

It's a problem. A big, illegal problem that is going to get him killed.

And, ugh, could he have been a bigger pervert about it? He knows that on a scale of one to But Why, spanking is really not all that kinky; he isn't really all that kinky, either, but she probably thinks he is because he'd opened with "I want to spank you until you come" like a fucking lunatic. She should've pepper sprayed him, not-

Okay, fine, she'd been into it, but that didn't really mean anything. She's sixteen (oh, god) and he is both naturally gifted and well practiced in the fine art of dirty talk. Hell, he remembers sixteen, if a hot (read: identifiable as a human female) older woman had talked to him like that, in that tone of voice, he would've either come in his pants or fallen over dead. It would not have mattered what act she was describing, or if he actually liked the thought of it, or if he would have been comfortable actually doing it.

Which, she probably wouldn't be, right? Right. Sure, most of the girls he's been with liked it rough, to some degree or another, and that was before he even really knew what he was doing, which he does now, because a long-ish term relationship or two does wonders for a guy's sexual horizons. Or maybe it's just a long-ish term relationship with Lucy Stone that does that, but whatever. His horizon's, they are broad, much like his magnificent shoulders.

Where was he going with this again?

"I still can't believe you managed to keep Katie here all day without, like, chaining her up or something."

Oh, right. Hell.