ooey gooey
"I just don't understand why it always has to be at my place," Amber practically groans, complaining when she sees Chad begin to rummage through her pantry for snacks.
Mindy just gives her an unsympathetic glance from her seat on the couch, already cozied up with Anika. "Can't you share some of mommy and daddy's money with us?"
Amber was the only one of them who didn't live on campus. She instead had a luxury two-bedroom apartment all to herself a few blocks away, hence, why her place was always the preferred spot for hangouts. Her family sucked but, god, were they rich.
"Yeah," Chad agrees with his twin when he sees a packet of goldfish on the top shelf of the pantry, fishing it out, "Us peasants deserve a taste of your wealth too."
Tara approaches Amber from behind, placing a placating hand on her shoulder. "Thank you for letting us use your apartment again for movie night." She gives it a small squeeze before yelling, "Right everyone?" Signaling for the rest of the squad to agree.
She gets a slew of Yeahs and Thank yous except for Mindy who imitates a deep and gruff voice, shouting "Whipped," Hidden behind her hand.
Anika slaps her arm which makes her dramatically wince before boldly exclaiming that she needed a kiss to make it feel better.
"Yeah, I know you are, Meeks." Amber teases as she passes by them on the couch, taking a seat on the recliner that had wordlessly been designated as her's. If anyone else tried to sit in it, they were promptly kicked off. It was just an unwritten rule.
"Can we get pizza?" Wes asks to no one in particular, looking around the room to gauge reactions.
The mere sound of his voice makes Amber want to rudely shove him out of her apartment. She'd heard that he debated even coming tonight, the breakup still fresh on his mind, but Tara had insisted that he come for civility's sake.
When Amber had cornered her about it earlier, demanding an answer for why Tara had forfeited a Wes-less night, she had only said that if Liv and Chad could still be friends after their break up, why couldn't she and Wes?
"Well, Liv isn't coming tonight!" Amber had argued.
"She's working, Amber. Y'know, what us lesser people have to do to go to school here."
It was a low blow, but it had shut Amber up pretty quickly.
And usually, Tara's altruistic nature made Amber feel unbearably endeared, but she kind of wished that Tara would just be a bitch and tell him his lips felt like uncooked hot dogs or something.
Chad gives him a fist bump and they begin discussing pizza toppings, passing the phone back and forth.
From the corner of her eye, Amber sees Tara begin approaching her. "Scoot over," She demands.
Amber has an ample amount of space to spare. It was a big recliner and she didn't take up a lot of it, but it was, like, sacrilegious to let anyone else's ass touch this chair. It was Amber's seat.
To her credit, Amber didn't necessarily care if Tara sat there when it was just them, but letting everyone else see that would just expose her Tara-shaped weaknesses.
"No," Amber immediately declines, "Go sit with Mindy and Anika." She nods her head to the couple squished against one corner of the sofa.
Tara scoffs, "No way I'm third wheeling," She quickly turns around to face them, "No offense."
She sees Mindy's shoulders shrug from where they're hidden underneath the blanket that she and Anika are sharing. "None taken, you don't wanna know what happens under this thing anyways." She shakes the blanket a bit for emphasis.
Everyone in the room shares a look of disgust, including Anika. "She's kidding," Anika quickly exclaims. "You're so fucking gross," She says this much quieter just to Mindy.
Mindy just shrugs again, "You love me," She declares, kissing Anika's forehead before she pulls her closer to her chest, tucking her chin atop jet black hair.
"Whatever," Anika grumbles, but doesn't pull away.
Amber watches the interaction with a small wrinkle in between her eyebrows.
They had met Anika on moving-in day freshman year, with Tara and Mindy sharing a dorm while on the other side of the shared bathroom dormed Liv and a random assignment, which was Anika.
Mindy had been instantaneously enamored, begging Liv on multiple occasions to switch rooms, but Liv had declined just to spite her. This hardly deterred Mindy though. She spent the entirety of their first semester trying to charm the other girl, and to her credit, she was pretty successful.
Anika had fit into their group seamlessly, her witty banter and light-hearted nature making her a shoo-in for a seventh member of their OG Woodsboro group. Even Amber liked her, and that was saying a lot.
But looking at the couple now, a foreign feeling settles deep in her chest, and she has to consciously peel her eyes away in an attempt to get it to dissipate.
"Do you see now?" Tara pleads, "Their coupleyness is nauseating, scoot over."
Amber doesn't budge though, crossing her arms and staring up at Tara through her eyelashes.
It's a playful, almost flirty kind of look, but Tara also knows that Amber can't help it. It was like her resting face. That doesn't mean it stops her from squirming under her watchful gaze though.
"You could go sit with lover boy?" Amber coos, gesturing towards Wes who was sitting on the ground in front of the couch, resting his back against the cushions in a crisscross applesauce position.
Tara turns around, glancing at him while he pointedly avoids her eyes, without a doubt hearing Amber's malicious teasing.
Being the good friend that he is, Chad quickly takes a seat beside him on the floor and throws an arm around his shoulder. "Sorry, T, he's taken," And the jock grins wide before he plants a wet kiss on Wes' cheek that the artificial blonde has no time to avoid.
Wes' face scrunches up a bit at the slobber as he wipes it off with the back of his hand, but he gently elbows Chad's side in acknowledgment. "Thanks," He says sarcastically, but Chad replies Thank you all the same.
Tara rolls her eyes, huffing out an audible sigh through her nose.
Fine, if Amber wanted to play that way.
Tara drops her weight onto Amber's lap, which makes her let out a surprised, scandalized gasp.
Tara quickly shifts her weight around so that she can reach down the side of the recliner, pulling the lever so that the footrest shoots out.
Amber's hands are raised beside her head, like she was in a surrender position, clearly flailing around from their close proximity.
It's not like they've never cuddled before, that definitely wasn't the case. Amber was actually a notorious cuddler, though she'd never admit it to anyone else. At night, if she didn't have a person, then she was snuggled up to a pillow. It was honestly really adorable.
It was simply the PDA that was making Amber so flustered. She didn't like being affectionate in front of other people, it just wasn't her style.
Tara takes the dark green throw that's resting on the armrest and throws it over their bodies before her hands rest high on Amber's thighs, prying them apart so that she can settle in between them.
The touch sends a sharp thrill down Amber's spine, even if the setting could not be less ideal.
"Jesus, Tara," She hisses, tone borderline scolding.
She deeply regrets wearing shorts.
Tara shuffles a bit more, making herself comfortable on the seat before fully lying back, letting her head rest snugly underneath Amber's chin.
Her hands are lower now (thank god) sitting casually near Amber's kneecaps.
Amber finds it awfully concerning that the heat that had traveled through her body hadn't vanished yet.
To be frank, Amber has felt physically unwell the past few days.
And it wasn't even Tara's fault!
Okay, maybe a little, but not directly.
Well, actually...
It is, maybe, a teensy bit, absolutely Tara's fault, but only because she got Amber thinking about it in the first place.
It was actually starting to get in the way of her studies, and call Amber what you will, but a failure was not one of them. She was getting on that dean's list this semester.
But every time Tara laid a hand on the small of her back, or let their sides brush against each other, Amber sort of shifted into this raging teenage boy and then all she could think about was pinning her against a wall again like when they were fifteen.
Tara hadn't even brought it up again after the mohawk boy situation.
She seriously had just dropped it like she had never asked Amber in the first place, and Amber was still debating if the repercussions from that incident were worth the peace that came after.
She briefly thinks this is worse, because now she has lapses in judgment where she thinks she imagined Tara asking her it at all, and that would mean the moments where she zones out and daydreams about what it would feel like to have Tara's legs wrapped around her head were just her own, devious mind.
It was like she was hallucinating.
Hallucinations of a very flushed Tara beneath her body, scratching at her back while-
"Whose turn is it to pick the movie?" Wes' voice cuts through her stream of thought, and it's maybe the only time that she's thankful for it because she was becoming acutely aware of how warm Tara's body felt against her front.
"I think it's Amber's, actually," Mindy answers, staring expectedly at her.
Amber shakes her head, laying her hands on the armrests if only to make sure that she doesn't touch Tara with them.
"I don't know, someone else can pick." She relinquishes her choosing rights this time because, with the headspace she was in, she would end up choosing Fifty Shades of Grey or something.
"Jesus, are you feeling okay?" Mindy asks, shooting her a weird look, noting how spacey she sounded. "You're usually putting someone in a headlock for the remote."
Tara shuffles again, pressing even further back into her.
She sucks in a shaky breath, "I'm fine," And it comes out more aggressive than she intended, "I've just run through all my options, someone else pick."
Amber grabs the remote and plans to toss it into Mindy's waiting hands just a few feet away, but its trajectory flies lower than it should've and hits Wes square on the cheek.
"Oops," She deadpans, not sounding apologetic at all. She did say her aim wasn't very good.
Tara slaps the inside of her thigh underneath the throw. "Sorry," She immediately wheezes out at the contact. Her throat felt like it was closing in on itself.
Wes hands the fallen remote to Mindy behind him before rubbing at his face, which was steadily turning red, either from annoyance or the hit. Amber took pride in both.
"Nice arm, Freeman," He grumbles, giving her a glare.
"I said I was sorry," She weakly retorts, but everyone in that room knew that she wasn't really.
Mindy eyes the way Amber's hands restlessly twitch on the cushion, her face contorted almost in discomfort as her eyes dart aimlessly around the room.
Tara on the other hand looked eerily relaxed. She was usually a little ball of nerves, bouncing off the walls and rambling about random things, especially on movie night. Her favorite hobby was asking questions about a movie that none of them had seen yet, but she looked so thoroughly content.
It was like they had switched places... It was suspicious.
"We're watching Midsommar," Mindy announces as she puts on the movie.
Tara shouts out an excited Yes! At the same time Amber releases a dramatic groan.
She shouldn't have given up her choosing rights.
Tara had made her go watch it with her in theaters when it first came out, and Amber just honestly didn't get it. Weird and freaky was usually her forte but this was just another level of insanity that she couldn't grasp.
"What," Tara cranes her neck back to get a look at Amber's face, "Scared, Freeman?" She murmurs lowly so that she doesn't disrupt the movie.
Amber rolls her eyes, though Tara turns back in time to miss it.
"I just don't have pretentious film taste."
Tara, disbelieving, teases, "I'll hold your hand if it makes you feel better."
"Bite me, Carpenter."
Tara twists her neck so that her lips are resting right beside Amber's ear, ensuring that no one else can hear her when she whispers, "I will if you ask nicely."
Amber thanks every deity on this plane that the lights are turned off because she feels her face heat up to an unholy shade of red, bright enough to flag down a helicopter.
And though Tara can't see her properly, she knows she accomplished the intended reaction when she feels Amber's legs unintentionally squeeze together, just slightly, and she faces the TV again with a satisfied smirk in place.
༼ つ ╹ ╹ ༽つ
Tara would not stop fucking moving.
Whether she was scooching back into her, or absentmindedly running her palms up and down the length of Amber's thigh, Amber was about to do something drastic, like throw Tara off her body and onto the ground, or flip their positions so that she could pin Tara's arms above her head.
Either/or, details, details.
Amber leans down, her lips brushing the shell of Tara's ear. "Are you having a spasm or something?" She hisses after Tara pushes her ass back into Amber's frame for maybe the fifth time.
Tara turns around, feigning innocence. "What do you mean?"
Amber couldn't take it anymore.
She finally moves her hands from the armrest where they'd been dutifully still the entirety of the night, and grips Tara's waist, lifting her slight frame up and over so that she was no longer sitting in between Amber's legs, but beside her.
It was relatively easy. Tara was small and Amber thought the gym was an effective way to destress.
Tara lets out a small squeal of surprise as she's manhandled, landing with a brief thud.
She glares at Amber's side profile, but the girl pays no mind, all of a sudden keenly interested in whatever was transpiring on the screen.
Tara slouches down into the comfort of the cushion, tilting her head so that it rests on Amber's shoulder, but she shrugs it away.
"Get off," Amber whispers, pulling away.
Every touch was making her impossibly hotter. Any more and she would have to toss the blanket away and it was really cozy.
"Why are you being such a bitch?" Tara asks, frown in place. It's not said with any real malice but it makes Amber scoff all the same.
"'Cause if you lay on me, then you're gonna fall asleep, and then I'm gonna have to wake you up, and then you get all grumpy and-"
"I do not get grumpy!" Tara argues, raising her voice a little.
Mindy groans. "Hello," She whines, "Some of us are trying to admire Florence Pugh here."
"You've watched the movie like four times, Mindy." Amber comes to Tara's defense, even if she was a little irked by her behavior right now.
"Yeah," Mindy quickly agrees, "And I'm trying to enjoy the fifth time in peace, so please, shush!"
They're a little more than halfway through the movie now. Amber can't believe she let her pick a three hour film, but again, she supposes it's kind of her fault.
Tara maneuvers Amber's arm so that it wraps behind her shoulders, allowing Tara to rest her cheek against Amber's collarbone.
"Grumpy," Tara mutters incredulously, "I'll show you grumpy."
Amber doesn't try pushing her away again, only because she knows she'll lose if she tries. Tara was very serious about her affection, and Amber supposes she wasn't entirely opposed to giving it, but with the thought of sex fresh on her mind, she doesn't quite know how she's going to endure the rest of the movie without combusting.
༼ つ ╹ ╹ ༽つ
Tara does end up falling asleep, much to Amber's dismay.
Somewhere within the last thirty minutes, she feels the arm slung over her stomach go limp, and the soft breathing of the girl on top of her even out, fanning gently against the side of her neck.
Amber sighs.
Tara was bad at taking naps. She'd always wake up groggy or irritated, feeling less rested than she had before she slept, but when Amber cranes her neck down to confirm that Tara is in fact asleep, she can't quite muster up the willpower to wake her up.
Her face, lit up by the flickering TV screen made it look like she was glowing. Her lips were gracefully parted, her eyelashes resting dutifully against the top of her cheeks. If she ever caught Amber staring at her like this she'd never hear the end of it.
When the ending credits finally roll, Chad gets up to stretch out his back before going to flick on the ceiling lights.
Amber's hands are immediately shielding Tara's closed eyes, making sure the sudden brightness doesn't startle her awake.
"Damn," Mindy mutters, casting the girls a side eye, "This is like her favorite movie and she fell asleep."
Amber doesn't comment, but she also doesn't miss the inquisitive look she receives from her.
"Okay, movie's over dorks, get out." She demands, though it doesn't sound very assertive when her voice was barely above a whisper, not wanting to wake Tara up yet.
Anika groans, turning over to press her face into Mindy's stomach. "Can we spend the night?" She asks, voice muffled by the material of Mindy's sweater.
Amber hums like she's considering it before quickly deadpanning, "No." It makes the couple pout.
Mindy throws her head back against the headrest, flailing her arms like a child while she whines. "But, whyyy," She draws out the vowel.
Amber quickly shushes her, glancing down again to make sure that Tara hadn't woken up.
"You stayed over last week," It's a weak argument but it's all she can come up with.
"But you're letting Tara stay!" Mindy interjects.
Amber rolls her eyes. "Tara literally has a vice grip on me right now, a bulldozer couldn't pry her off."
"Yeah right," Wes butts in, his voice feigning nonchalance but there's an undertone of insecurity that Amber absolutely relishes in.
"Fine," She challenges him, "Wake her up then."
Their animosity for each other was palpable, growing even more vicious when they got to college and he started actively pursuing Tara.
Amber had frequently been the topic of disagreements between Tara and Wes, and Wes the topic of disagreements between Tara and Amber.
It all felt very Twilight-y.
Wes, eager to prove himself, especially to Amber, stands up from his spot on the ground and gingerly walks over to them, almost like he was worried about getting his head bitten off, which was a real and genuine concern around Amber.
But when he determines that he's not going to suffer any bodily harm, he gently lays a hand on Tara's shoulder, exposed from the fallen blanket.
This actually does make Amber want to do something violent, but she refrains because she suspects the payoff from this interaction will be far sweeter.
All eyes in the room are on them as Wes gently shakes her. "Tara," He calls gently, but when she seems unprovoked, he says it a bit louder, shaking more intently, "Tara, movie's over."
This gets her to stir, letting out a low rumble in her throat as she hides her face farther into the crook of Amber's neck.
He shakes her again. "C'mon, time to go home, Amber is kicking us out."
And Tara actually whines, sort of like a child would, and lugs almost her entire body on top of Amber's, repositioning herself in a way that pressed practically the entirety of their fronts together. "No," She gruffs out, voice still heavy with sleep, before she literally buries her entire face into Amber's chest, hiding it.
As much as Amber hated PDA, especially in front of her friends (they would hold it over her for weeks,) Amber delighted in the way Tara was acting right now, especially if it was at Wes' expense. It almost made her want to grab Tara's cheeks and place a wet one right on her lips. Almost.
"Tara-" He tries again, but Tara just blindly reaches a hand out towards his face and pushes him away, almost poking his eye out in the process.
Wes steps back with his head hung low.
Anika and Chad try to hide their laughs behind their hands, suppressing them with poorly concealed clearing of their throats and coughs.
Mindy is less polite about it as her shoulder actively shakes with her laughs, whipping out her phone to take pictures of Tara draped over Amber's body.
Amber holds a hand out to try and block her, acting like she was shooing away the paparazzi. "Cut it out, Minds."
Mindy just scoffs, shaking her head. "No way, I thought that I'd be dead before I saw the day Amber Freeman went all ooey gooey."
"Ooey gooey?" Amber mocks, "What are you five?"
"Whatever," Mindy easily brushes her off, "You want these or what?" She asks, flipping her screen around so Amber can get a look at the photos she took.
And it irritates her immensely because, yes, she does want them, but she instead opts for clicking her tongue in annoyance and turning away.
"Ooh!" Anika squeals, "I do!"
"Oh my god, me too!" Chad chimes in, because seriously, it was just perfect blackmail material.
Amber groans, loudly and unfiltered this time.
"Okay, get out now, for real. You're all giving me a stroke."
Mindy and Anika both get up from the couch while Chad guides a crestfallen Wes out to the door.
"Will you lock up for me?" Amber calls out to them as they're leaving.
"No,"
"Yes,"
Are the answers she receives from Mindy and Anika at the same time, but she knows that Mindy is always the one who does it anyways.
That leaves Amber and a still half asleep Tara on her chest.
She briefly debates just carrying her back to her room, but she figures that the jostling will wake her up anyways and it wasn't worth the struggle of fumbling off the recliner.
Amber's fingers lightly trail up and down her spine, grazing her fingers over the thin fabric of her shirt.
"Pumpkin," She mumbles into her ear, "Time to get up."
She hears Tara mutter something incoherent against her skin before she murmurs, "Don't wanna," Quietly.
"I told you you get grumpy," Amber teases, gently adding her nails to the mix as she scratches along Tara's back, following the same trail of her spine.
"I'm not grumpy," Tara says, waking up a bit more, "Just comfy."
"You'll be cozier in bed," Amber tries to persuade her, but Tara doesn't look like she'll be getting up anytime soon.
"Can't we just sleep here?"
"No," She quickly declines, "Last time we did that I woke up with back pain so heinous I thought I was going to be paralyzed." Amber shudders at the memory. She had to go to four chiropractor appointments afterward.
"Sorry, grandma."
Amber jabs the side of Tara's rib, making her jump.
"C'mon, I'll take you to that tea shop you like in the morning."
"You were gonna do that anyways," Tara asserts, still not removing her face from Amber's collarbone.
Every time she talks, Amber can feel her lips brush against the sensitive skin, but it feels marginally more bearable when they weren't in a room full of people.
"Whatever," She says noncommittally, because unfortunately, Tara was right. "Just get off, my legs are starting to fall asleep."
But instead of doing as she's requested, Tara just shifts some of her weight off of Amber's body and off to the side, in the process tangling their legs into some sort of vague pretzel formation, but in doing so, her knee somehow gets wedged in between Amber's thighs and one small movement sends it pressing up against-
Fuck.
Amber breathes out a quiet, strangled moan, bordering on a sigh as her eyes squeeze shut at the unexpected sensation.
Amber's nails are suddenly digging into the small of Tara's back, digging into the tense muscle as she's trapped beneath her body.
"Tara," She can barely keep her voice steady, the last vowel getting stuck in her throat, "Knee," Is the only syllable she's able to grit out, jaw clenched so tight she's scared she's gonna crack a molar.
"Hm?" Tara hums, who, genuinely confused in her barely coherent state, simply ruts her knee just slightly higher, but it's enough for Amber to groan at the friction as one hand desperately reaches under the blanket to push at Tara's thigh.
"Wrong way, dipshit," Amber groans, finally letting out a deep breath when Tara quickly processes where her knee is pressed up against and pulls it away, sitting up.
But instead of completely removing her body from Amber's, like any sane person would do, she just moves her leg so that it brackets the entirety of Amber's frame, straddling her hips.
Amber figures she still must be half-conscious or something.
"Sorry!" Tara squeaks out, clearly blushing as she stares down wide-eyed at Amber's similarly flushed face.
Amber just lightly shakes her head at her friend's antics. It was an honest mistake.
"It's fine," She brushes it off, "But, bed. Now. Seriously." And she raises her hands to Tara's waist, gripping the flesh, wholeheartedly prepared to push her off, but her movements stutter when she feels the warm skin of Tara's hips, exposed from her ridden-up shirt.
Tara glances down to where their skin connects, then back up to Amber's eyes, pupils dilated so intensely that her iris' looked black.
"Eager, much?" Tara asks with the intent to tease, but the mirth gets lost in the nervous way her eyes keep flickering down to Amber's lips
Amber tugs her bottom lip between her teeth, gnawing on it in contemplation before she releases it with a small pop.
"Who says we need a bed?"
And oh.
Oh.
Tara needs her inhaler all of a sudden, the implication of the words hanging so heavily between them, she's certain that they had somehow weaseled their way into her lungs, making them feel heavier and heavier.
Their positions somehow grow more compromising, flashes of Amber taking her right here on the couch, pulling her body down with those hands on her hips. These images fill her thoughts and she can acutely feel herself grow wet.
Tara's almost certain that this is a bad idea.
Amber thinks so too.
But the premise was borderline addicting.
They were best friends, best everythings.
Tara doesn't know what life is without Amber, and she doesn't ever want to find out.
Amber was one of her first friends, her first kiss. The first person she told when her dad left, and the first person she drove around town when she got her driver's license.
This? This was just for fun, a curiosity that could be mutually quelled.
It'll be like that one time when they were sixteen and Amber had asked Tara to give her a hickey to make Jill Roberts jealous, only this time, just... more.
But she would be damned if she ever let it get in the way of their friendship, all because she was so incredibly turned on.
"Y'know, I didn't mean to pressure you," Tara says, voice barely above a whisper, "We don't have to do anything, I was just being horny."
Amber grins, a bit too cheeky for her taste. "What," She drawls out, "You've been annoying me about it for the past few weeks and now you're backing out?"
Her hands slide down from Tara's hips to the sides of her thighs, her movements so maliciously slow that Tara is certain it's some personalized form of torture.
And Amber looks so pretty under her, Tara briefly thinks.
Almost fully laid down with her back pressed against the reclined cushion, her hair a bit mussed and the collar of her humongous t-shirt sliding off of one shoulder.
Tara can see the birthmark on her collarbone peeking out from under the fabric and she suddenly has an overwhelming urge to lean down and trace the edges with her tongue.
"Got me all excited for nothing."
Tara shudders.
Her mom was an absentee, and a drunk, and just overall wretched, but she didn't raise a fucking pussy.
She leans down, hovering over Amber's body as she places both her palms on either side of Amber's head, relishing in the way her hands tighten on her thighs.
"Was me grinding my ass against you all night not a good indication that I definitely don't want to back out?"
Amber grins cockily, "God, you want me so bad."
Tara just leans down even further, her face so close to Amber's that if she lowers herself just a smidge closer, then their lips will brush.
"I am seconds away from giving you the worst blue balls of your life." Tara threatens, though it holds no merit when they both know she's too aroused to stop.
Amber quirks a disbelieving eyebrow and voices as much. "You wouldn't,"
"Wanna find out?"
And Amber, who ate a cricket once in the second grade after being triple-dog-dared, who went skinny dipping in the lake on the outskirts of town last January because Chad had called her a 'wuss,' had never been one to back down from a challenge.