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Kelly groaned. "If you don't quit clicking that pen, I'm going to break it," she warned.

Fred, the only other occupant of the small room their study group had booked that evening, began twirling the pen around through his fingers instead. "I'm bored," he lamented.

With a sigh, Kelly checked the time on her phone.

6:28

Her twin brother, Sam, and their friends Linda and John were supposed to meet them to study for their upcoming Economics exam nearly half an hour ago, but they were nowhere to be seen. She checked through her messages once more to confirm that no one had put an ETA into the group chat.

The five members of the study group had been friends since kindergarten, their friendship luckily carrying them clear through attending the same university after high school. With so much experience with them, she should have known there was no use expecting them to show up on time. But that wasn't even the real issue.

It was bad enough that they were standing her up so soon before their exam opened. The fact that the only person to show was Fred - immature, childish, infuriatingly charming Fred - was just adding insult to injury.

She'd spent the majority of this semester trying to avoid spending time alone with Fred, because she only ever felt one of two ways around him. Most of the time it was annoyance and the desire to smack him on the back of the head. The other part of the time, though, his smile was enough to send butterflies fluttering around her stomach - and she did not need that right now.

Setting her phone down, she pulled her ECON-391 textbook from her backpack and let it fall on the table with a resounding thud. If no one else would help her study, she'd at least study on her own.

"I'm bored," Fred said again, rolling around in his chair on the other side of Kelly's table. "I'm boooored."

"Then why don't you find something productive to do?" Kelly asked through tight lips as she leafed through the pages. "Like, say, study for the test?"

Fred shook his head. "No, I don't think that will do it," he said resolutely, then lay across the table, trying to force his way into her line of sight. "I know! Let's play a game."

Kelly raised an eyebrow at him. "You realize this exam opens tonight, right?" she asked.

Fred just looked up at her with wide green eyes.

With a groan, Kelly slapped her book closed. "Fine. Ten minutes. What game do you want to play?"

Fred's smile was almost worth the points she could practically feel slipping from her exam grade. "I don't know," he said. "Something fun."

Kelly reopened her textbook.

"Alright, alright, I'll think of something," Fred said in a rush, grabbing the back of her hand to stop her from turning any more pages.

She did her best not to let the sudden hand contact put a twist in her stomach.

Keeping one hand against hers to ensure she didn't do anything drastic - like start studying again - Fred drummed his other fingers against the table as he thought. Finally, he slapped both hands flat against the table with a triumphant grin. "Smash or pass!" he declared triumphantly.

Again, Kelly lifted her eyebrows. "Smash or pass? As a student of an esteemed institute of higher learning like UNSC, I didn't think you'd be so crass."

Fred rolled his eyes. "Fine," he conceded, "court or pass, your highness. We'll play it this way - we take turns showing each other a picture of a movie character, and we say whether we'd date them or not." He stared expectantly at her for a moment before finally saying, "It'll be fun, trust me."

Kelly wasn't convinced, and she let it show.

"You wound me," Fred said, laying it on thick in his tone. When her expression didn't change, he pulled his phone from his pocket. "Here, I'll go first," he said, swiping across the device in silence for a moment. Finally, he turned the phone for her to see it. "We'll start off easy," he said with a wink.

Kelly took in the visage of Rick O'Connell from the 1999 cinematic masterpiece The Mummy, then rolled her eyes again. "If the character was played by Brendan Fraser, then my answer is 'court,'" she said with a grin.

Fred nodded good-naturedly. "Right, good to set our ground rules at the start I guess. Your turn."

She hesitated, questioning whether she was really going to go through with all of this, but in the end picked up her phone as she thought of characters for him. Finally, she came to what felt like an easy option and slid her phone across the table to him.

He barely glanced at it before saying, "Pass," and turning to his own phone.

"What?" Kelly asked incredulously. "You're passing on Padme Amidala? I thought you were a huge Star Wars nerd."

Fred held up a finger. "I am," he defended himself. "If you gave me Princess Leia my answer would have been different, but Padme? She died because she was sad."

He spoke so seriously about it that Kelly couldn't help but smile. Luckily for her, Fred was already tapping away on his phone again in search of the next picture and she had time to regain her composure.

When he slid his phone in front of her she narrowed her eyes. "Is this Sean Connery?" she asked incredulously.

When she looked up, Fred let loose a burst of laughter. "I looked up Indiana Jones but ended up with this picture of his dad," he wheezed. "It was too good to pass up."

Kelly raised one eyebrow. "And if my answer was 'smash'?"

Fred stared blankly for a long second, but finally managed to focus his eyes again. "Well, your highness," he said, laying it on thick with a fake accent, "that word has no place in the game of Court or Pass. But to answer your question, young men all over campus would cry out in one voice of sorrow and anguish."

She smiled and leaned back. "Well, I suppose they can rest easy - I prefer guys my age." She nearly convinced herself that she hadn't, in fact, subconsciously looked him up and down as she considered her taste in men.

Even if she had, it wasn't like that meant anything.

Over the next few minutes they went through a long line of pictures. Kelly passed on Dean Winchester and Jim Halpert and chose 'court' for Han Solo, Stiles Stilinski, and Raylan Givens. Fred, on the other hand, had chosen to court Sarah Walker, Peggy Carter, and Viola from Chaos Walking, while passing on Gamora, Bella Swan, and Claire Dearing.

It was nearly 7:00 when Fred finally proposed they play a final round before giving up on the rest of their group and leaving the library. When Kelly agreed, he warned, "This is the final round, so make sure it's somebody good."

She thought for a while, vacillating between options. Nyota Uhura, Jyn Erso, and Ororo Monroe all came to mind, but none of them really felt like they were worthy of the coveted 'final round of Court or Pass.' Finally, a thought struck her.

Glancing nervously over the top of her phone at the boy sitting across from her, Kelly closed her internet app and instead opened her camera. She glanced up once more to make sure that Fred wasn't looking at her before snapping a selfie.

The picture turned out better than she'd really expected it to. She was just wearing a worn-out hoodie from her highschool track team with her hair up in a ponytail, but the study room lighting brought out the blue highlights in her otherwise brown hair nicely and it didn't cast any embarrassing shadows across her face.

Tapping her toe anxiously against the table leg, she decided to speak before she lost her nerve. "Ready," she said, her voice coming out a little quieter than she meant for it to be.

Fred was still squinting intently at his screen when she spoke, but he looked up at her for just a moment and - was that a tinge of pink in his cheeks? No, she must have imagined it. His thumb worked on overspeed swiping through pictures until he finally seemed to find what he was looking for.

He slapped his phone face-down on the table, looking up at her with a half-grin and saying, "Ready."

Kelly hesitated, nerves suddenly bunching up in the pit of her stomach and making her feel dizzy. "So, who goes first?" she asked, stalling for time as half of her brain tried desperately to talk her out of going through with her decision.

It could ruin the friend group, her mind argued. He definitely doesn't like you, you're embarrassing yourself.

"Same time?" Fred proposed, eyeing the phone in her hand curiously.

Against her own better judgment, Kelly nodded. She held her phone out to him, feeling the warmth of his fingers as they briefly made contact with hers as he took hold of it. With her other hand she palmed the phone Fred slid across the table to her.

Fred held up three fingers, dropping them one-by-one as he counted aloud, "Three . . . two . . . one."

Though the curious part of her mind was itching to know who Fred had chosen for her last round, she couldn't make herself look at it. Instead she was transfixed, watching with a growing pit in her stomach as the boy across the table stared at the picture she handed him.

It took him a moment to realize what he was looking at, but then he did something she hadn't expected at all.

He laughed.

Of all the things he could have done, the jerk laughed.

Kelly felt her cheeks begin to burn. "I was just going along with your stupid game," she said defensively. She crossed her arms over her chest, his phone laying forgotten on the tabletop.

"No," he wheezed in response, trying hard to control himself, "I promise I'm not laughing at you." When he saw her expression his laughter subsided, though he was still chuckling softly. "I'm really not," he said, his eyes looking more sincere than they had any right to be. "Just . . . look at the picture on my phone for me."

Kelly rolled her eyes. She didn't want to do anything for him. But then her curiosity won out over her bruised ego. Slowly she picked the phone up, and finally stopped glaring at Fred long enough to flick her eyes down to the screen in her hand.

It was a picture of a young man, his legs clad in white football pants, army green helmet and jersey-wrapped shoulder pads in his left hand. His usually-messy black hair was even more mussed than usual, his face flushed red and glistening with sweat after the game he had just finished.

His right arm was draped over the shoulders of a friend - a girl, wearing a (at the time) brand new track hoodie, the stadium lights making the blue highlights in her brown ponytail shine brilliantly. The first two fingers of his right hand poked out from behind her head in the childish portrayal of "bunny ears" - a dumb joke he had played on her in every picture they'd taken together since they were children, and the source of her nickname Rabbit.

It was a picture of him - a picture of them - taken after the state championship game their senior year of high school.

"Pass," she said flatly.

Fred's smile was undeterred. "I don't know," he said, rising from his chair and pacing around the small room, "I've got a picture here that says you might think differently."

"You have no such thing," she argued, ducking her head to hide the grin working its way onto her lips. "Now," she said, standing and shoving her textbook back inside her backpack, "I've wasted an entire hour not studying for my exam, and I'm going home. Give me back my phone before you embarrass yourself with any more delusions of endearment."

When she turned around, she found herself face-to-face with a pair of smiling green eyes.

"Delusions of endearment?" Fred said, the smug challenge clear in his voice.

"Yes," she confirmed dryly, holding out her hand.

"Fine," Fred sighed, stepping close enough to return her phone. "But if you're so sure," he continued, taking another step toward her, "you wouldn't mind if I performed a little test, would you?"

She suddenly became very aware of how close they were, and no matter how badly the stubborn part of her wanted to just grab her phone and walk away, the rest of her wanted to see where he was going with this.

Fred slowly took another step closer, the smug grin on his face fading ever so slightly as he watched her face closely to ensure that he wasn't making her uncomfortable. When he felt confident that he wasn't alarming her he leaned forward, reaching up with his left hand until it rested gingerly on her cheek, his fingertips curling in the hair on the back of her head and his thumb brushing her earlobe. Then he started to move his face closer to hers.

Of their own volition - and to Kelly's everlasting embarrassment - her eyes slid shut and her face turned upwards toward his. Her lips tingled as she felt is gentle breath wash over them, steadily drawing closer until -

Until he stopped short.

She waited in silence for several seconds before opening her eyes to glare into his, mere inches away.

"So," he said softly, his breath tickling her skin as he spoke, "was that reaction one of my delusions as well?"

Though they were too close for her to see it, she could tell by the crinkle in the corners of his eyes that he was wearing a maddeningly smug grin. She wanted to shove him away from her and call him a jerk.

"If I say it will you just shut up and kiss me?" was what came out instead.

Fred nodded, the evidence of his smile becoming even more prominent. "But of course, your highness," he said, altogether too proud of his own dumb joke.

She sighed, the last shred of dignity left to her unsuccessfully trying to lock her lips shut before she breathed, "Court."

Finally he pressed his lips against hers, and her stubbornness abandoned her completely. She didn't even realize that she was kissing him back until her fingers were tangled in his hair and she had lifted onto her toes to bring herself closer to him. She didn't know if they had been kissing for a second or for an hour, but at that particular moment she couldn't bring herself to care.

It was almost as if time had stopped. Like she was floating in outer space, and he was her only source of oxygen.

Until she was brought crashing back to Earth.

"My best friend . . ." a painfully familiar voice said from behind them, "and my best sister?"

A second voice added, "It's about time."

"Wait a minute, I thought I was your best friend," a third voice interjected.

Kelly groaned, pausing to rest her forehead against Fred's for a moment. While her brother reassured John that they were best friends, but his statement would have lost all of its symmetry if he had led with 'my second-best friend,' she pulled back far enough to take in Fred's face.

With no small sense of satisfaction, she saw that his cheeks were as flush as hers felt.

"Do you want to get out of here before Sam gets any more dramatic?" Fred whispered, his eyes sparkling mischievously.

Kelly nodded emphatically.

When she turned around, she took in the sight of their tardy study group. John and Sam were in a corner, discussing the semantics of her brother's earlier outburst and the importance of hyperbole in everyday conversation. Linda, on the other hand, was holding the door open for them.

With a grateful smile to her friend, Kelly grabbed Fred's hand and ran.

Author's Note: This is my first run at doing a more legitimate romance/kiss description attempt. I am mortified by it, but hopefully it didn't turn out too terribly.