Work Text:
Olivia White realizes she might be in love with her best friend when they’re both sitting in her dorm room.
College doesn’t mean Lemonade Mouth splits up, just that they have to work a little harder to balance everything, and after four years of high school/being local heroes, they’re pros. So Oliva is sitting at her desk, frowning at a particularly indecipherable part of a textbook, and Mo’s on her bed with those giant, Disney-princess-level eyes. They’re half studying and half ignoring the fact that they have finals in a week, because it’s only the second quarter of freshman year and it feels like they have all this time stretching in front of them.
Olivia forgot what that felt like, to not feel a clock running out all the time, worrying about what comes next, and now she has four whole years stretching ahead of her, safe and secure and not as desperate as high school. She knows who she is now, or something like that, and it turns out that every year away from being fourteen makes the world infinitely smoother. Mo and Olivia are the only ones who ended up at the same school, Stella took off for Oregon and Wen’s in upstate New York and Charlie decided to try Minnesota of all places.
They applied to a lot of the same schools, all five of them, but when it actually came time to pick, they’d all gone in different directions. Which is fine, because they love each other, no matter what, and a band they started freshman year doesn’t mean someone should ignore a school they really like. So three of the members head to different parts of the country, Stella gets a new mullet and Wen’s skin doesn’t sunburn anymore, and Charlie reports back that Minneapolis is surprisingly cool.
And in the same way that it’s not weird for Wen to go across the country, or for Stella and Charlie to go north, it’s not strange when Mo and Olivia pick the same school in Arizona, without even talking about it.
The whole band is a team, obviously, but they split into subgroups sometimes, Stella and Charlie with matching chips on their shoulders, Wen and Olivia with the loyalty born from failed puppy love. Their group’s token blondes (a joke started by Stella) date for exactly three months, before mutually deciding that it was a bad idea and slipping back into their easy, uncomplicated friendship. And a few weeks later, for reasons that she doesn’t really share, Mo comes into school with red eyes and stops smiling at Scott, and that’s that. They make a rule, no intra-band dating, and pinky-link in a circle as a promise.
So Mo and Olivia, unexpectedly, become the heart of Lemonade Mouth, the duo at the center of it all. When Stella’s fiery passion and Wen’s youthful optimism can’t be summoned, it’s the steady, gentle combination of Mo’s drive and Olivia’s intuition that keeps them going, tides them past bad shows and rainy days and bouts of the flu. They might not reach the same emotional highs as the rest of the band, the fervor that forces Charlie to practice all night long, or the anger-turned-power that roars through Stella’s body during their best shows, or even Wen’s giddy, racing writing explosions.
They’re something else, both steady and careful and quieter when the situation doesn’t call for much noise, biding their energy and showing up every morning of senior year with consistency and muffins. It’s always been them, on the same wavelength, heads tilted against shoulders, Mo showing up to hold Olivia’s hand when her dad comes home, and Olivia going to every single one of Mo’s recitals.
The first time they play at Madison Square Gardens Olivia grabs Mo’s hand when they all bow without a second thought, and Mo clings back tightly, like she was waiting for exactly that. It’s unspoken within the band, how when it comes down to the wire Olivia and Mo will always pick each other, but no one can bring themselves to mind because that’s why all of this works. They end up at the same school because of course they do, because maybe the universe can’t imagine them apart either.
But this particular day, one of a stream of similar ones that have come before and will happen after, isn’t supposed to be important.
It’s just another long session of Olivia squinting at her reading and Mo dropping her pencil off Olivia’s bed for something to do, it’s not supposed to be much of anything because they aren’t even hanging out, just studying. They aren’t roommates, but Mo spends more time in Olivia’s room than she does in her own, and there’s nothing different about today. It’s just that, for some reason, when Olivia looks up from her book like she has a million times before, she gets sort of lost in the way Mo’s soft brown hair wafts around her shoulders. And when their eyes connect, Mo smiles and something in Olivia’s stomach cracks open.
It feels like that moment in a movie, when the protagonist’s entire world gets turned upside down, or like when Dorothy Gale clicks her heels and wakes up in her bed again, unable to see the world like she could before.
One minute Olivia White is just Olivia White, lead singer of Lemonade Mouth and owner of too many pencils, but then Mo’s eyes sparkle, and it’s exactly the same look that she’s seen a million times before, but this time Olivia’s entire body unravels.
She must make some kind of noise, a strangled gasp or choke on the air that’s supposed to be rushing cleanly in and out of her body, and Mo lifts her head, forehead crinkling with worry. Are you okay? her eyes ask, and Olivia tries to nod yeah I’m fine without giving away the fact that her basic understanding of the universe has just been shattered. Mo lifts an eyebrow, like she knows Olivia way too well to believe that, but she turns back to her laptop.
Olivia takes a deep breath, tries to still the racetrack patter her heart’s decided to take up, and does her best to think about anything other than her best friend’s soft smile and careful fingers tapping across the keyboard. (She thinks that she’s felt like this before, every time Mo sings “She’s So Gone,” with all the hair flipping and flushed cheeks and how Olivia wants to hug her extra tightly afterwards. Like, maybe she should have guessed at this before.)
Olivia makes it with her secret for exactly one week before confessing. It weighs heavy in her stomach, pinching between her ribs, and she briefly considers calling Stella, who has plenty of experience with this sort of thing, or Wen because he’s a good listener, or even Charlie because he’s the best at keeping secrets, but the thing is that she always tells Mo everything first. And this feels like it might be the most important thing she’s ever had to say, hey I might’ve been in love with you for literally ever, and as much as she can’t tell Mo, she can’t imagine confessing to anyone else first.
And Olivia is a lot of things, a good granddaughter, a forgiving friend, an organized student, but smooth and chill have never been her forte.
Mo starts looking at her funny on day five, when they’re walking from the dining hall in the morning and she leans into Olivia’s side like she always does, tucking herself in close against the cold, and instead of squeezing her hand Olivia pulls back like she’s been burned. Day six is worse, Olivia keeps sort of forgetting to breathe whenever Mo smiles at her, and so by day seven she really can’t keep this to herself anymore, not if she wants to keep her blood oxygen levels normal.
They’re right outside Olivia’s dorm, standing on the sidewalk and looking out at the field across the way, when Mo giggles, warm and soft in the evening air, and Olivia’s heart seizes. Before she knows what’s happening she turns, and Mo (always in perfect sync) pivots at the same time. They’re face to face, close enough that Olivia can smell the vanilla of Mo’s lotion and coconut of her shampoo, and she wants to say something. But Mo smiles, and her eyes clear up, and when Olivia’s hands reach out, seemingly of their own volition, Mo lets herself be tugged close without complaint, closing her eyes with a relaxed openness behind them, like she knows what’s about to happen.
When they kiss, half lit by a streetlight ten feet away, blanketed by the cool evening air and whatever electricity is zapping between them, Olivia feels like she's onstage, like this is what she was meant to do.