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abvjTitle: your smile is a thin disguise
Summary: They forget - sometimes these things are just bound to happen.
Rating: pg
Author's Notes: 2,610 words. Slight spoilers for the movie Country Strong in case anyone cares. Thank you to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
leobrat for the quick beta and just generally being awesome. Just slide right on by if RPF isn't your cup of tea. All remaining mistakes are mine. These people obviously aren't.
Forlexiesloan because she asked ages ago. Sorry I'm just now delivering.
It starts in a bar.
Leighton buries herself in the corner during principle photography, sweater loose around her shoulders, feet crossed as they stretch towards the other side of the booth. Her glasses slip down her nose, neck of a beer bottle dangling from her fingers – she prefers white wine in public, champagne at parties because it is part of the act, but here, now, when it is just her and her thoughts, she reverts back to the habits of her sixteen year old self. Her hair is curly, her face is bare, and she flips through the days rewrites, mumbles her lines in the back of her throat.
"You don't look like you're from around these parts, lady," he says. Garrett has the twang down to an art, wears his cowboy hat like it's a badge of honor even when the cameras aren't rolling. It annoys her. She never fails to let him know it.
"Drop the act," she says, and he smiles like he's Beau, like he's trying to scam her into bed just so he can forget about the rest of the world. "It doesn't work on me."
"Oh?" He slides into the booth across from her, shifting her feet out of the way. "Really now?"
She really doesn't like him at first.
(In case you didn't already know: it doesn't last long.)
This thing between them, whatever it is, starts long before his hand ever slides into hers – the calluses on the tips of his fingers reminding her that he is unlike anyone she's ever known.
Leighton wants the part so badly that she rehearses weeks up until the audition, runs lines with Blake and Penn, perfects her accent with Ed. Practices the walk and talk, perfects the movement of her body until she embodies all that she perceives Chiles Stanton to be.
She gets the call her first night back in New York after a long hiatus. There is a party at Ed's and she goes because it's tradition, because these people are her friends, because it feels like the thing to do – even if it has long since been her thing to do. It's loud and she can barely hear her manager over the thumping of the bass and the laughter flowing around her. She makes a beeline for Ed's bedroom and shuts the door behind her, leans her back against the door to steady her weak legs.
Leighton cries when her manager tells her the part is hers, the laughter thick in the back of her throat as the tears slip down her face.
Later, Chace narrows his eyes at her and cocks his head to the side. "I don't get it," he says, joint between his lips and a beer between his fingers. He offers the former to her. Leighton shakes her head and simply smiles, palming her red cup of something fruity and awful back and forth.
"Don't you want something more than this?" she asks and she hates the way she sounds – wistful and innocent, horribly idealistic. Chace doesn't pick up on it though, just laughs and laughs like she is saying the funniest thing in the entire world.
"What's better than this?" he replies, opening his arms wide dramatically. It is more of a statement than a question, and Leighton doesn't bother with an answer because Chace isn't looking for one. Besides, she's not sure if he would get it anyway.
The first time they kiss, they're shooting a scene. It's awkward and messy. The director is in her ear telling her where to place her hands, which way to angle her head, how to position her body against his. Garrett laughs, the sound low in his throat, and she's so close to him at the time that she feels the vibrations in her chest.
"I think we need to practice this a little more," he says, perfectly in character even though the cameras aren't filming. Rolling her eyes, Leighton curls her hand into a fist and shoves him hard.
"Don't be an ass," she tells him primly, but the smile on her face gives her away. His fingers curl around her waist, his neck bending as he swoops down low, breath fanning her neck.
"You like it," he breathes and she shivers in spite of herself, looks up to see the smug grin curling wide at the corners of his mouth.
They nail the next take.
She warms to him slowly. Not because of him, really, but because of her. Leighton doesn't trust easily. She doesn't allow people to stand too close or know too much. She is a private person and she understands that in this sort of business that is a conundrum. She understands that you forfeit your privacy for fame and fortune, but that doesn't mean she has to allow this business to creep into every crevice of her life. That doesn't mean she allows handsome men to get too close without any warning or thought.
Gwyneth plays nice while she's on set, but as soon as the director releases her for day she's gone in the blink of an eye. It's the same way with Tim and most of the others because they have families and lives outside of this place, outside of their work. Leighton tries not to envy them that when it ends up being her and Garrett and just a few other lonely crew members at craft services on a Friday night halfway into their tenure in Nashville.
Garrett is a method actor; he tries so very hard to allow Beau to creep into every part of his existence, and he starts carrying around the guitar constantly, the object permanently slung over his arm. He has it that Friday night, strumming a few lines of something that isn't a part of the program she memorized her first day on set. She's chewing on a panini and sipping a diet coke as she watches him play, the words of something familiar settling on her shoulders and pressing in. She follows the flow of his nimble fingers with her eyes as they work the strings of his beat-up guitar.
After a moment he pauses, the melody stopping short, and she laughs when he catches her staring.
"What?"
Shrugging, she pushes her empty plate to the side and leans back in her chair. "Nothing," she says. Then, after a moment, she continues quietly, "You're going to be somebody someday is all." The soft southern twang she worked so hard to perfect seeps through out of habit. She hates it.
Laughing, his fingers go back to gliding over string and wood. "You already are somebody."
He doesn't look at her as he says it, his head bowed, but she watches the smile spread to the corner of his mouth.
"That's awful nice of you."
Still, he doesn't look at her, doesn't say anything either, and she doesn't expect him to anyway.
They stay that way for a while – Leighton across from him at the table, her feet curled underneath her as he plays the chords to silly love songs for her.
She bites her lip, looks anywhere but at him. There's a beat or two where she just listens to the evenness of his breathing, watches the rise and fall of his chest.
"I’m not what I seem," she says quietly, eyes floating upwards, connecting with his. There is a short span of time where she forgets how to breathe, where he smiles too earnestly, too real, and reaches up his hand to run his fingers along the curve of her jaw, to tuck a stray curl behind her ear.
"Maybe that's what I like about you," he replies through his teeth and for a moment they just stand there, his palm flat against her face, their breaths mingling in the space between them. Leighton gets lost in the moment, feels herself leaning in, her line of sight twitching from his eyes to his mouth and back again.
Somewhere in the distance the director yells cut and Leighton lets out the breath she didn't realize she was holding in.
The second time they kiss it isn't awkward or messy. There aren't fifty people standing around telling them what to do or say or how to angle their heads just the right way. The second time they kiss, she leans in and up, tip toes carrying her weight as she brushes her lips against his with ease and precision, his mouth warm and solid and inviting as it slides over hers.
Leighton is slightly drunk, her mouth dry from too much tequila and not enough food, but she's not drunk enough to not know what she's doing, to not know how to play this off if it all goes horribly awry. Besides, he tastes like beer and stale pretzels and Garrett – familiar and dangerous all at once.
The way he kisses her back tells her he has been thinking about this just as often as she has.
Still, he pulls back, lips fumbling towards a smile, fingers reaching up to play against the skin of her neck. "Shouldn’t be doin’ this,” he drawls.
Nodding, she focuses on his mouth, rests her weight on her heels. "You're right. You're probably right."
"Though, I guess..." he trails off, tightens his fingers just slightly in her hair.
"You guess what?" she laughs, shifting her weight from heel to toe, rocking back and forth in the process. She wants to kiss him again, to lean up and brush her lips against his once more time just see what he does, how he will react.
Garrett shakes his head, drops his fingers to his side. "This is a bad idea," he says in a way that tells her that is not what he wanted to say. He's playing it safe and she doesn't blame him for it, but that doesn't mean she has to like it.
Leighton laughs it off, stumbling a little as she searches for her keys inside her purse. Once she finds them she slips the key to her rented house in the lock, listens to it slide into place and uses her shoulder to push the door open. She pauses there in the doorway, one foot over the threshold and inside, the other not, hopeful, toes pointed towards him. She waits for him to say something, to stop her. She waits to build up her own courage to murmur softly, want to come in?
Neither happens. After a moment she steps fully inside, mumbles see ya' tomorrow? instead of all the things she wants to say.
Garrett doesn't stop her.
They don't talk about it – not in the morning in make-up, not when he brings her coffee during their lunch breaks. They don’t talk about it a week or two later when they find themselves alone on a Friday night, nothing but silence and the sounds of his guitar between them.
He does, however, ask, "What do you think you're going to do when this is over?"
Leighton picks at the crust of her sandwich and actively doesn't look at him. She shrugs. Says, "Go back to New York, I guess," and catches a glance of him sideways. He's not looking at her either.
"Yeah," he replies and she wonders what this means, she wonders if he wants to pretend that kiss outside her door in the dead of night never happened or if he's waiting for her to bring it up. Whether he’s waiting for her to be the man and make the move. Leighton wonders why everything has to be so damn complicated all the time. "Yeah," he repeats, like it all makes sense now, like he has finally gained some new-found knowledge he didn't have before. "That makes sense."
"Yeah," she replies, her tone clipped and her laugh short. "Yeah, I guess it does."
Garrett doesn't look to see her roll her eyes, but she's pretty sure he knows she's doing it.
In February they have a week, maybe two left in Nashville. She finds him alone, on the outskirts of the set. He's got a script in his hands, all of them searching for their next project. His hair is unruly and his beard is too long, but she slides into a seat next to him, folding her legs underneath her.
"What are you going to do after?" she asks quietly.
Shrugging, he sets the scrip the side and turns to face her. "Haven't gotten that far yet." He looks at her for a beat before turning towards his hands, watching the movements of his fingers as his thumb and forefinger rub together over and over. "I hear New York is nice this time of year."
Leighton laughs and he smiles softly at the sound. It is the first time in a long while that the sound, this moment with him reminds her of Garrett and not Beau. "It's not, really. It's still colder than anything. Blake says there are still mountains of snow on the ground from the blizzard last month."
"You're there, though," he says too softly, and quickly adds the addendum, "You like it there, I mean." He's not looking at her when he says it and she wonders how he can look the way he does, talk the way he does, and not have any game whatsoever.
Still, she laughs. "That is very true."
The director calls it a wrap on a Friday and on Saturday most of the actors and crew go to a bar on the outskirts of Nashville, the one where filming commenced months before.
The third time they kiss it is in an empty hallway near the bathrooms of said bar, her back against the wall, his knee between hers. He catches her off guard and she's not sure what exactly has shifted between them to bring him here, before her like this. Though, Leighton decides she doesn't even care, really, because he's leaning in and his breath smells sweet, like mint and beer, and he is looking at her like he always does but it is different or something. It's more. It's been so long since she's fumbled during this type of thing, and she laughs and tries to look away, stutters something incoherent because when he's trying, when he's really honest-to-god trying, Garrett is even more irresistible than usual.
Leighton's fingers twist in his jacket, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. She leans her head back against the wall and just sort of looks at him, decides then and there that if he wants to kiss her he should. She's not putting in the effort this time. She’s tired of doing all the work.
He does. He leans in closer, his mouth working over hers softly, like he knows her, and she figures he does after all these months, after all those takes in their underwear, after all those kisses between Beau and Chiles. But this is different. This is more. This is so, so much more. His fingertips ghost over the skin of her cheek, the angle of her jaw before tangling in her hair. He says her name, the syllables getting caught in her throat.
When he pulls away she is still resting her weight against the wall and she's thankful, really, because her knees are starting to feel weak.
Garrett presses a kiss to the crown of her head. "You wanna get out of here?" he drawls and Leighton just laughs, reaching out for him to pull him closer so she can rest her forehead against his shoulder.
"I thought you'd never ask."
He follows her to New York.
Summary: They forget - sometimes these things are just bound to happen.
Rating: pg
Author's Notes: 2,610 words. Slight spoilers for the movie Country Strong in case anyone cares. Thank you to
leobrat for the quick beta and just generally being awesome. Just slide right on by if RPF isn't your cup of tea. All remaining mistakes are mine. These people obviously aren't.For
lexiesloan because she asked ages ago. Sorry I'm just now delivering.It starts in a bar.
Leighton buries herself in the corner during principle photography, sweater loose around her shoulders, feet crossed as they stretch towards the other side of the booth. Her glasses slip down her nose, neck of a beer bottle dangling from her fingers – she prefers white wine in public, champagne at parties because it is part of the act, but here, now, when it is just her and her thoughts, she reverts back to the habits of her sixteen year old self. Her hair is curly, her face is bare, and she flips through the days rewrites, mumbles her lines in the back of her throat.
"You don't look like you're from around these parts, lady," he says. Garrett has the twang down to an art, wears his cowboy hat like it's a badge of honor even when the cameras aren't rolling. It annoys her. She never fails to let him know it.
"Drop the act," she says, and he smiles like he's Beau, like he's trying to scam her into bed just so he can forget about the rest of the world. "It doesn't work on me."
"Oh?" He slides into the booth across from her, shifting her feet out of the way. "Really now?"
She really doesn't like him at first.
(In case you didn't already know: it doesn't last long.)
This thing between them, whatever it is, starts long before his hand ever slides into hers – the calluses on the tips of his fingers reminding her that he is unlike anyone she's ever known.
Leighton wants the part so badly that she rehearses weeks up until the audition, runs lines with Blake and Penn, perfects her accent with Ed. Practices the walk and talk, perfects the movement of her body until she embodies all that she perceives Chiles Stanton to be.
She gets the call her first night back in New York after a long hiatus. There is a party at Ed's and she goes because it's tradition, because these people are her friends, because it feels like the thing to do – even if it has long since been her thing to do. It's loud and she can barely hear her manager over the thumping of the bass and the laughter flowing around her. She makes a beeline for Ed's bedroom and shuts the door behind her, leans her back against the door to steady her weak legs.
Leighton cries when her manager tells her the part is hers, the laughter thick in the back of her throat as the tears slip down her face.
Later, Chace narrows his eyes at her and cocks his head to the side. "I don't get it," he says, joint between his lips and a beer between his fingers. He offers the former to her. Leighton shakes her head and simply smiles, palming her red cup of something fruity and awful back and forth.
"Don't you want something more than this?" she asks and she hates the way she sounds – wistful and innocent, horribly idealistic. Chace doesn't pick up on it though, just laughs and laughs like she is saying the funniest thing in the entire world.
"What's better than this?" he replies, opening his arms wide dramatically. It is more of a statement than a question, and Leighton doesn't bother with an answer because Chace isn't looking for one. Besides, she's not sure if he would get it anyway.
The first time they kiss, they're shooting a scene. It's awkward and messy. The director is in her ear telling her where to place her hands, which way to angle her head, how to position her body against his. Garrett laughs, the sound low in his throat, and she's so close to him at the time that she feels the vibrations in her chest.
"I think we need to practice this a little more," he says, perfectly in character even though the cameras aren't filming. Rolling her eyes, Leighton curls her hand into a fist and shoves him hard.
"Don't be an ass," she tells him primly, but the smile on her face gives her away. His fingers curl around her waist, his neck bending as he swoops down low, breath fanning her neck.
"You like it," he breathes and she shivers in spite of herself, looks up to see the smug grin curling wide at the corners of his mouth.
They nail the next take.
She warms to him slowly. Not because of him, really, but because of her. Leighton doesn't trust easily. She doesn't allow people to stand too close or know too much. She is a private person and she understands that in this sort of business that is a conundrum. She understands that you forfeit your privacy for fame and fortune, but that doesn't mean she has to allow this business to creep into every crevice of her life. That doesn't mean she allows handsome men to get too close without any warning or thought.
Gwyneth plays nice while she's on set, but as soon as the director releases her for day she's gone in the blink of an eye. It's the same way with Tim and most of the others because they have families and lives outside of this place, outside of their work. Leighton tries not to envy them that when it ends up being her and Garrett and just a few other lonely crew members at craft services on a Friday night halfway into their tenure in Nashville.
Garrett is a method actor; he tries so very hard to allow Beau to creep into every part of his existence, and he starts carrying around the guitar constantly, the object permanently slung over his arm. He has it that Friday night, strumming a few lines of something that isn't a part of the program she memorized her first day on set. She's chewing on a panini and sipping a diet coke as she watches him play, the words of something familiar settling on her shoulders and pressing in. She follows the flow of his nimble fingers with her eyes as they work the strings of his beat-up guitar.
After a moment he pauses, the melody stopping short, and she laughs when he catches her staring.
"What?"
Shrugging, she pushes her empty plate to the side and leans back in her chair. "Nothing," she says. Then, after a moment, she continues quietly, "You're going to be somebody someday is all." The soft southern twang she worked so hard to perfect seeps through out of habit. She hates it.
Laughing, his fingers go back to gliding over string and wood. "You already are somebody."
He doesn't look at her as he says it, his head bowed, but she watches the smile spread to the corner of his mouth.
"That's awful nice of you."
Still, he doesn't look at her, doesn't say anything either, and she doesn't expect him to anyway.
They stay that way for a while – Leighton across from him at the table, her feet curled underneath her as he plays the chords to silly love songs for her.
She bites her lip, looks anywhere but at him. There's a beat or two where she just listens to the evenness of his breathing, watches the rise and fall of his chest.
"I’m not what I seem," she says quietly, eyes floating upwards, connecting with his. There is a short span of time where she forgets how to breathe, where he smiles too earnestly, too real, and reaches up his hand to run his fingers along the curve of her jaw, to tuck a stray curl behind her ear.
"Maybe that's what I like about you," he replies through his teeth and for a moment they just stand there, his palm flat against her face, their breaths mingling in the space between them. Leighton gets lost in the moment, feels herself leaning in, her line of sight twitching from his eyes to his mouth and back again.
Somewhere in the distance the director yells cut and Leighton lets out the breath she didn't realize she was holding in.
The second time they kiss it isn't awkward or messy. There aren't fifty people standing around telling them what to do or say or how to angle their heads just the right way. The second time they kiss, she leans in and up, tip toes carrying her weight as she brushes her lips against his with ease and precision, his mouth warm and solid and inviting as it slides over hers.
Leighton is slightly drunk, her mouth dry from too much tequila and not enough food, but she's not drunk enough to not know what she's doing, to not know how to play this off if it all goes horribly awry. Besides, he tastes like beer and stale pretzels and Garrett – familiar and dangerous all at once.
The way he kisses her back tells her he has been thinking about this just as often as she has.
Still, he pulls back, lips fumbling towards a smile, fingers reaching up to play against the skin of her neck. "Shouldn’t be doin’ this,” he drawls.
Nodding, she focuses on his mouth, rests her weight on her heels. "You're right. You're probably right."
"Though, I guess..." he trails off, tightens his fingers just slightly in her hair.
"You guess what?" she laughs, shifting her weight from heel to toe, rocking back and forth in the process. She wants to kiss him again, to lean up and brush her lips against his once more time just see what he does, how he will react.
Garrett shakes his head, drops his fingers to his side. "This is a bad idea," he says in a way that tells her that is not what he wanted to say. He's playing it safe and she doesn't blame him for it, but that doesn't mean she has to like it.
Leighton laughs it off, stumbling a little as she searches for her keys inside her purse. Once she finds them she slips the key to her rented house in the lock, listens to it slide into place and uses her shoulder to push the door open. She pauses there in the doorway, one foot over the threshold and inside, the other not, hopeful, toes pointed towards him. She waits for him to say something, to stop her. She waits to build up her own courage to murmur softly, want to come in?
Neither happens. After a moment she steps fully inside, mumbles see ya' tomorrow? instead of all the things she wants to say.
Garrett doesn't stop her.
They don't talk about it – not in the morning in make-up, not when he brings her coffee during their lunch breaks. They don’t talk about it a week or two later when they find themselves alone on a Friday night, nothing but silence and the sounds of his guitar between them.
He does, however, ask, "What do you think you're going to do when this is over?"
Leighton picks at the crust of her sandwich and actively doesn't look at him. She shrugs. Says, "Go back to New York, I guess," and catches a glance of him sideways. He's not looking at her either.
"Yeah," he replies and she wonders what this means, she wonders if he wants to pretend that kiss outside her door in the dead of night never happened or if he's waiting for her to bring it up. Whether he’s waiting for her to be the man and make the move. Leighton wonders why everything has to be so damn complicated all the time. "Yeah," he repeats, like it all makes sense now, like he has finally gained some new-found knowledge he didn't have before. "That makes sense."
"Yeah," she replies, her tone clipped and her laugh short. "Yeah, I guess it does."
Garrett doesn't look to see her roll her eyes, but she's pretty sure he knows she's doing it.
In February they have a week, maybe two left in Nashville. She finds him alone, on the outskirts of the set. He's got a script in his hands, all of them searching for their next project. His hair is unruly and his beard is too long, but she slides into a seat next to him, folding her legs underneath her.
"What are you going to do after?" she asks quietly.
Shrugging, he sets the scrip the side and turns to face her. "Haven't gotten that far yet." He looks at her for a beat before turning towards his hands, watching the movements of his fingers as his thumb and forefinger rub together over and over. "I hear New York is nice this time of year."
Leighton laughs and he smiles softly at the sound. It is the first time in a long while that the sound, this moment with him reminds her of Garrett and not Beau. "It's not, really. It's still colder than anything. Blake says there are still mountains of snow on the ground from the blizzard last month."
"You're there, though," he says too softly, and quickly adds the addendum, "You like it there, I mean." He's not looking at her when he says it and she wonders how he can look the way he does, talk the way he does, and not have any game whatsoever.
Still, she laughs. "That is very true."
The director calls it a wrap on a Friday and on Saturday most of the actors and crew go to a bar on the outskirts of Nashville, the one where filming commenced months before.
The third time they kiss it is in an empty hallway near the bathrooms of said bar, her back against the wall, his knee between hers. He catches her off guard and she's not sure what exactly has shifted between them to bring him here, before her like this. Though, Leighton decides she doesn't even care, really, because he's leaning in and his breath smells sweet, like mint and beer, and he is looking at her like he always does but it is different or something. It's more. It's been so long since she's fumbled during this type of thing, and she laughs and tries to look away, stutters something incoherent because when he's trying, when he's really honest-to-god trying, Garrett is even more irresistible than usual.
Leighton's fingers twist in his jacket, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. She leans her head back against the wall and just sort of looks at him, decides then and there that if he wants to kiss her he should. She's not putting in the effort this time. She’s tired of doing all the work.
He does. He leans in closer, his mouth working over hers softly, like he knows her, and she figures he does after all these months, after all those takes in their underwear, after all those kisses between Beau and Chiles. But this is different. This is more. This is so, so much more. His fingertips ghost over the skin of her cheek, the angle of her jaw before tangling in her hair. He says her name, the syllables getting caught in her throat.
When he pulls away she is still resting her weight against the wall and she's thankful, really, because her knees are starting to feel weak.
Garrett presses a kiss to the crown of her head. "You wanna get out of here?" he drawls and Leighton just laughs, reaching out for him to pull him closer so she can rest her forehead against his shoulder.
"I thought you'd never ask."
He follows her to New York.
