Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Pairing: Ray/Stella.
Summary: Stella doesn't how she got here. Except she totally does.
Author's note: Wow. Two in one night. Reviews are great appreciated!
a people person in the loosest term of the word
Ray/Stella
When you say love is a simple chemical reaction
Can't say I agree
'Cause my chemical, yeah, left me a beautiful disaster
Still love's all I see
Anna Nalick- Catalyst
Stella Yamada doesn't know how she got here. Well, that's a lie. She knows how she got here. She picked up her feet and followed her friend, Steph to a party. She just doesn't know how she got to be in this particular predicament.
She's pretty sure though, that as soon as she gets out of this God forsaken room, she's going to kill Steph. It's the blonde's entire fault anyways. Stella was perfectly fine staying in their dorm, studying. Well, not studying, she's pretty sure that she would have Skyped Mo, or Olivia, hell, at that point she would have Skyped Charlie, she just wanted to talk to her friends.
Steph took one look at her, rolled her eyes and shook her head. "No. Get up. Get dressed. You're coming with me."
Stella frowns and puts down the book she was reading. War and Peace, suckas. "No. I'm fine where I'm at."
"Stell, you haven't been to one party yet. You need to come. It's Halloween!"
"Why would I expose myself to that? I'm not a people person."
"Bullshit, you're in a fucking band, this means you're a people person." Steph sighs and sits down on her bed. "Look, I know that I'm like…second best and stuff and that I'm not your best friend but you're kind of mine…so suck it up and come with me."
Stella can feel her face soften, just a little bit. Okay. It goes like this, after high school; they all went their somewhat separate ways. Wen and Olivia went to California, Scott and Mo to New York and Charlie to Stanford. And Stella? Well, Stella went back to Rhode Island. Except…Rhode Island is different. Not different different, but just different. And maybe this has to do with her more than the actual place but the friends she thought she had back here, aren't so much friends as acquaintances now.
Except Steph. Her blonde haired, blue eyed, legs up to her neck roommate Steph, who's studying Physics. It always amuses Stella when she watches Steph verbally abuse men who try to talk down to her. It's an odd friendship, but one that Stella wouldn't trade.
Except for now. "I'm there for an hour. That's it. And I'm not dressing up."
Steph grins, claps her hands and lets out a squeal. "You don't have to! Dress like your usual rock star self and we're golden!"
They're not golden. In fact, Stella is locked in a bathroom of all places with the last person she thought she'd see. Ever.
Ray Beech.
"Glad to see you haven't changed, Yamada."
"Don't talk to me." She snaps. She bangs on the bathroom door but she knows it's useless. The music drowns out any noise she tries to make.
"Well we're stuck here, so we may as well do something."
Stella has many somethings in her head. All of which include trying to hide a dead body. "Fine. You want to talk? Talk. What the hell are you even doing here?"
Ray grins. "I'm here on a full ride. Soccer scholarship."
Of course he is. God. "Wow. What a surprise."
His grin falters (did it really or is she just seeing things?) "No need for sarcasm. I thought we were past that."
They aren't past that. In fact, they've spent the last three years of their lives throwing sarcastic comments at each other and she sure as hell isn't stopping now. "You've tried sabotaging Lemonade Mouth at every turn, even after Scott joined, so you expect me to play nice now?"
Ray frowns. "You stole my best friend! And I stopped sabotaging senior year, thank you very much."
Oh. Right. "Whatever." She says stubbornly. "I still don't like you."
"Well, that's too bad. Because you're still stuck with me."
"I'm studying Kinesiology." Ray tells her after a half an hour passes and silence reigns in the bathroom.
"Great."
"It is great. What are you studying?"
"Why do you care?"
"I don't. I'm making conversation."
She sighs and balls her fist. She should probably get over this stupid high school rivalry that she managed to bring with her to college but there's something about the blonde haired blue eyed guy in front of her that makes her blood boil. "Don't make conversation. Don't try talking. I don't care that you're here on scholarship. I don't care that you're taking kinesiology. I don't care about how many games you've won, lost tied, I don't care."
That shuts him up. But somehow it doesn't make her feel better. In fact, seeing him nod, sigh and stare off to the side, makes her feel worse.
"He's a good guy." Scott tries telling her.
"He's an asshole." Stella snarls back at him.
Scott sighs and looks down at his lemonade. "Stella, you haven't really given him a chance."
"Why should I? He gets his chances from everywhere else, I'm not going to bend to the will of some spoiled little rich boy."
Scott stares at her and then shakes his head slowly. "You don't even know him. Yeah, he's an asshole half the time but the other half, he's a good guy Stella."
"Ray Beech has never and will never be a good guy."
Stella still thinks she's completely right. Ray Beech has never been a good guy and probably will never be a good guy.
Except, she can't ignore the feeling in the pit of her stomach telling her that she may just be wrong this once.
Another half hour passes in silence.
"Do you have a phone?" Stella asks wearily.
"Oh, we're talking now?"
"Answer the damn question, Beech."
"It's in my room, Yamada."
"Mine too." They lapse back into silence. "I'm studying law."
Ray snorts. "That doesn't surprise me at all."
Stella bites back a smile
"I used to think you were awesome in high school."
Oh. My. God. Things were going fine. Things were going okay. They started to talk, seeing as how Stella finally admitted that sometimes, resistance is indeed futile. They talked about school and movies and books and even sometimes music. ("Yamada, Muse is not considered music." "Oh, I'm sorry and N'Sync is?" "Pssh, who do you think you're talking to? I may look like a surfer dude but I'm a hardcore Johnny Cash type of guy.")
They even talked about high school, which is apparently, how this conversation ended up coming around.
"So, Liv and I were talking and we think Ray likes you." Mo tells her one-day at lunch.
This causes Stella to spit out her lemonade. "I'm sorry, what?"
Olivia smiles. "Ray. Ray Beech. We think he likes you."
"You're delusional."
"We're not." Mo insists. "He stares at you whenever you're not looking and he won't let anyone else tease you. Scott told me that he punched Brian the other day because he called you a bitch."
"It's kind of romantic." Olivia tells her. "In a weird twisted way."
Stella rolls her eyes. "Oh. God. You two really are delusional."
"I'm sorry, what did you just say?"
Ray turns red and shakes his head. "Nothing. Nothing, just forget it."
"It's not nothing!" Her voice raises an octave and ohGod, she's starting to get hysterical. This cannot be happening to her. It's impossible. Because he's Ray Beech and she's Stella Yamada and there is no way that Ray and Stella should ever become RayandStella (holy crap, getting ahead of yourself much, Stella?)
"Besides college because it seriously is really fucking hard, I've never worked hard in my life for anything, but with you…Jesus Yamada, I worked my ass off to make sure you noticed me." Ray says. His voice is thick and kind of harsh and if Stella admits it, a little defeated.
"You hated me!"
"I never said that!" Ray defends just as quickly. "You jumped to conclusions and obviously those conclusions haven't changed at all." He folds his arms across his chest and laughs bitterly. (Stella winces, the sound harsh to her ears). "I thought they said college was a time to start over."
Stella opens her mouth to say something, when the bathroom door suddenly busts open.
"Stella!" Steph shrieks. Before Stella even knows it, the blonde yanks her off the cold tiled floor and hugs her. "I've been looking all over for you!"
Stella pulls back and sees Steph's red-rimmed eyes. "Have you been crying? What happened?"
"I thought you were lost! And you wouldn't answer your phone and I couldn't find you and I was scared something happened to you!" The blonde busts into tears and it's so sudden that Stella has no idea what to do. So, she wraps her arms around her friend and hugs her.
"I'm fine. Just locked in the bathroom."
"Dude," Ray's friend says as he pushes his way into the bathroom and holds out a hand for his friend. "Remember, pull up, wiggle and slam down hard. This door has always been like that."
"Yeah." Ray mumbles, his eyes looking everywhere but at Stella. "I keep on forgetting." He pushes past the two girls without looking at them and walks out the bathroom and down the hall.
Stella doesn't know whether to be completely livid that he knew how to get out the entire time or to close her eyes and let the smell of his cologne (seriously, what is it?) waft through her senses.
"Stella?" Steph sniffles and tugs at her arm. "Come on. Let's go home. I promise not to drag you to a party ever again."
Three weeks later
She's in the library, drumming her pencil along the tattered spines of books, when she sees him. He's sitting at a table in the back; books and binders sprawled across it. He has a pencil behind his right ear and earphones plugged in. She idly wonders what he's listening to.
"I used to think you were awesome in high school." Those ten words have been crawling through her brain ever since their disastrous meeting in the bathroom.
She confided in Steph a few days later and the blonde patiently listened to her as she rehashed locked away memories.
"Oh, Stell," Steph says quietly, a smile playing on her lips, "he really likes you."
Stella groans. "No. He doesn't. He can't. You have no idea how big of an asshole he was."
"Was being the operative word. Think of it like this, guys like that…they have an image to protect. They can't be seen as sappy because it unmans them. He obviously couldn't tell you how he felt because you're in a league of your own. It's the rule of high school. You date inside your clique. It makes everything easier. But seriously? He really likes you."
"Let me guess, you dated the quarterback and that's how you know all of this?"
Steph snorts. "God no. I like my men older thank you very much. My boyfriend rides a motorcycle and has tattoos. Trust me, the star quarterback at my high school was too terrified to even look at me."
"You constantly surprise me." Stella laughs.
"Well, you never know, this Ray guy may surprise you too."
Before she realizes what she's doing, she's crossing the distance between the tattered books on the shelves and his table in the back. She stops next to the empty seat across from him. She clears her throat. "This seat taken?"
He looks up shocked at the interruption and sits up straighter. He takes out his earphones and looks at the empty seat in front of him and then at her. "No. It's all yours."
"Thanks." She slides into the seat and reaches down to get her books out from her bag. When she comes back up, she sees him staring at her. "Take a picture." She snaps.
He laughs. Loudly. "I'm glad you haven't changed."
Yeah. Whatever. She won't ever admit that she's happy he did.
Stella doesn't know how she got here. Well that's a lie. She does know. She blames Ray.
Stella isn't a people person (no, for the last time Lemonade Mouth doesn't count). But staring at Steph as she ignores the stares from men and the waves from wannabe cheerleaders to make her way up the stands to where Stella is sitting, and watching Ray run back and forth across the field juggling the soccer ball…well Stella can get used to being a people person.
"Glad you gave him a chance?" Steph grins knowingly.
"God. Shut-up."
Ray Beech and Stella Yamada became a couple a few months ago, officially making them RayandStella. Which should terrify her.
(FYI: It doesn't).
Soooo corny! What do you all think? Most of these one-shots are not going to be this long. Probably just the first ones, establishing the relationships and stuff. But it'll go back and forth between the past and future and present and what not. Hopefully, they make sense as they come along.
Reviews are greatly appreciated!
Much love,
Bex.
P.S. Any mistakes are mine and mine alone. I apologize if they offend anyone! Thanks again for reading!