"I have gathered you here today," Cora announced. "Because I am having a fashion crisis."

"...You invited us to Shake Shack to talk about your fashion crisis?" Siena questioned.

Cora shrugged, grabbing a fry off the tray in front of her. "I wanted fries. And you are the two most fashionable people I know."

Next to Siena was Anais. They were an almost amusing sight to behold—Siena with her dark hair hanging in loose waves and her ensemble of all black clothes; Anais with her blonde hair pulled up into a top bun and sporting an outfit of bright colors. They might have only known each other for a grand total of five minutes, but they balanced each other out nicely.

Anais grabbed one of the fries from the communal tray. "What's the problem?"

"Since I've been really bad at shutting up about it, I'm sure you're both aware that the Tonys are in a month. I need a dress, but my bank account says I definitely do not," Cora explained. She felt like she'd had her big, dramatic fashion moment at opening night and now she didn't know how to top it. As a tentative afterthought, she added, "And I need to upstage Rasmus. I can't let him show up looking better than me."

A smirk quickly formed on Anais' lips, which then turned into a full grin. "Ah. So this is really about the boy, then."

"Do not call him the boy. And no, it isn't," Cora insisted. "He just...happens to also be involved."

She glanced at Siena for backup, but Sie just gave a sheepish shrug. Traitor. "Sorry, but I think I'm with her on this one. It's not like you have to go up onstage and present an award or anything."

"Look," Cora said stubbornly. "I don't know if I'll ever get to go to the Tonys again, so I want to go all out while I have my chance. That's all."

"I have a friend who rents out dresses. She's got some really cool stuff, even some vintage ones. I can send you her number if you want," Anais offered, though she didn't appear fully prepared to drop the whole Rasmus thing.

"Perfect."

"But...this really is about the boy. I swear I've never seen two castmates try to compete with each other so much."

Cora resisted the urge to audibly sigh; Siena snickered a little bit.

"If you want to talk so much about boys," Cora offered, narrowing her eyes at Anais. "We can have a nice chat about how you're always making heart eyes at Gideon when you pass him in the hallway."

At the same time as she protested "I do not!", Siena asked, "Ooh, who's Gideon?"

"Gideon is Rasmus' dresser at the show," Cora explained, picking up another fry and biting off the tip. "And the guy Anais has an obvious crush on."

"It is not obvious!"

"Ha!" Cora slammed her hand on the table a little too loudly, making herself jump and a few people around them shoot her dirty looks. Oops. Her palm came up feeling vaguely sticky, which was a little concerning. "So you do like him."

Anais glowered at her and silently shoved a fry into her mouth. Then two, then three.

But she didn't tell Cora that she was wrong this time.

Cora bowed her head and scrunched her scarf up over her mouth, attempting to shield as much of her face as possible from the December wind. The air was brittle, sharp enough to feel like someone was running the edge of a knife along the surface of your skin with each gust. The winds were always stronger out here on Long Island than they were back home, billowing off the ocean with unrelenting force.

Next to her, Natasha was visibly shivering in the sparkly holiday dress that she'd picked out just for the art department's winter formal event. Part of her hair was tied back with a silver ribbon and her cheeks were adorned with shimmery highlight that made her literally glisten. She hadn't been able to make it to the party her freshman year because she was sick with a cold, so this year she'd wanted to go all out for it.

The problem was that her date had yet to show up.

"Where the hell are you?" Nat snapped into her phone.

Cora could barely make out Rasmus' voice, sounding nowhere near as apologetic as it should have, at the other end of the line. "I don't know if I can come, Nat."

"What do you mean you don't know if you can come? You were supposed to be here five minutes ago!"

For a second, silence. Then—

"I know, I just..." he mumbled. "How am I supposed to get along with your friends when I haven't even met half of them?"

Natasha grit her teeth, but whether it was more so against the wind or out of irritation, Cora wasn't completely sure. "Well, maybe you would know them if you ever bothered to hang out with me anymore."

"And how am I supposed to do that when you rarely invite me to anything?"

"I don't invite you because you don't bother to show up half of the time!" Nat cried, but then pinched her lips shut to regain her composure. Cora didn't know why she was doing it—Rasmus deserved to be yelled at—but perhaps Natasha knew something that she didn't. She obviously knew how to get through to him infinitely better than Cora did. "Look, I get it, whatever. You'd rather go drinking with your buddies than come to some boring school party with me. But can you at least give me a little heads up next time so that I can find someone who actually cares?"

"I do care, Nat," he tried to convince her. "But you're gonna have more fun without me there. I promise."

Cora rolled her eyes. Her patience with him was already worn down to one minuscule thread. They'd been rehearsing for their winter cabaret this week and she was absolutely certain that he'd come in hungover one day. It made him even more short-tempered than usual and he'd been snapping at her for tiny mistakes like he was the damn director and not just her classmate.

"I hope telling yourself that makes you feel better," Nat said into the phone, her voice smaller than it usually was. "But it sure as hell doesn't help me."

She started sniffling as soon as she hung up, which made Cora want to punch Rasmus North even more than she typically did. But the whole issue at hand was that he wasn't here where she could punch him, so she shrugged her jacket off and draped it onto Nat's quivering shoulders.

"You're gonna be okay."

Nat was wiping tears away from her eyes, but she nodded. "I know. I don't even get why I even bother anymore when it feels like I lost him a long time ago. But...he's still my best friend. I know that's pathetic, but he is."

"He's pathetic," Cora amended. "Not you. You're amazing."

"Thanks," Nat mumbled, smiling weakly and fiddling with the ribbon in her hair just to give her hands something to do. "I'm not sure what to do now, though. I don't think I want to go alone."

But the night was far from over. There was still time to fix this.

"You're not going to go alone," Cora promised. "Just give me a minute to go get changed. I'll be your date."

Cora leaned against the doorframe of Rasmus' dressing room, brushing a damp strand of hair out of her face—she'd just taken a quick post-show shower.

"God, I'm exhausted. Kissing you is hard work."

They'd just finished their tenth show in a row. Today was Memorial Day and people always flocked to the theaters on their days off, so instead of having Monday as their day off of work like they normally did, they'd done two shows today and would have tomorrow night off instead.

Rasmus was pulling the tee shirt he'd worn to the theater back on. There was something interesting about watching the way the muscles in his arms and chest moved as he threw it on over his head, something that made her recall all the hours she'd spent silently observing Natasha conjure up swift, messy drawings of the people who passed them in her sketchbook. Cora felt an odd sensation in her stomach as she looked at him, but pointedly staring away from him would have felt even more wrong.

Once he was fully clothed, he joined her in the doorway, facing her and leaning his back against the opposite edge of the frame. She hadn't planned on lingering—she'd only come so that they could walk out to the stage door together—but she wasn't opposed to hanging around for another minute, either. Her sore limbs were thanking her for finally standing still for a minute.

"Not as hard as dealing with that damn dress."

Cora felt her lips curve into a little grin. "Surely you've gotten the hang of it by now."

Her eyes narrowed when he took a step forward to place a hand under her chin, tilting her face up towards his. She was close enough to smell the sweet scent of the cologne that clung to his skin, to see each tiny flicker of his dark eyelashes as he studied her.

"You look a little too pleased by the idea of me getting used to taking your clothes off," he told her, clearly amused, which earned him a firm smack on the arm from her.

"Rasmus North, it is truly a miracle that I have somehow put up with you this long."

"On the contrary-" her gaze briefly dropped to his lips as they formed a small smile "-I'm starting to think you kind of like me."

It was only then that her brain finally seemed to process that she was standing way too close to him. She pulled away, his hand falling back to his side as it slipped out from under her chin.

"That is the most ridiculous thing you've ever said," she said in as haughty of a tone as she could muster.

And yet she didn't stray all that far from his side as they headed out to the stage door. She would go to her grave before she ever admitted it out loud, but she felt an infuriating compulsion to reach over to him, to hold his hand. Because even though she hated him, she missed being noticed. She missed intimacy.

So she hadn't completely hated the way he'd touched her for those few seconds, held her face in his hand like she was something wonderfully delicate instead of something he wanted to break.

Cora was finally starting to believe that maybe, just maybe, he really could be gentle when he let his guard down. But perhaps her mind was just playing tricks on her because of how badly she wanted that side of him to exist.

They were met with cheers from the audience members waiting for them outside of the stage door, and although she greatly appreciated flattery any time it made its way to her, it felt even better to receive it after pushing themselves through ten shows without any day of rest in between. She hadn't felt like she was at her best tonight—how could she be when she was so tired?—so it lifted a weight off of her shoulders to hear that even just one person still enjoyed the show.

But even after two months of doing this, there was still a piece of her that occasionally got overwhelmed by the chaos of it. Five playbills were thrust towards her to sign at once; a camera brightly flashed in her eyes only for the person holding it to scamper off into the shadows before she could see their face. She tried to greet each person who wanted a picture or an autograph with her—to have a genuine, albeit brief, interaction with them—so it made her insides twist when people just wanted to stick a phone in her face and run away. In the back of her mind, she wondered if Rasmus was ever bothered by it, too.

As she was nearing the end of the line, she spotted two faces in the back of the crowd that looked vaguely familiar. Where had she seen them before? Cora tried to keep a smile plastered on her face, knowing that it would be perceived the wrong way by everyone around her if she suddenly frowned in concentration, but her heart jumped in her chest when she realized that they looked like those girls who had seen her and Rasmus in Starbucks.

The ones who had seen her angrily storm away from him.

It made her mad at him all over again, but continuing to act mad was going to do absolutely nothing to change the problem, to change how total strangers perceived the two of them. So when the both of them were done signing autographs and were ready to head home for the night, she made the split-second decision to loop her hand through the crook of his elbow while they started walking off towards the subway station.

His skin was warm under her fingertips, unsurprising considering that it was early summer and they had basically just been doing cardio for two hours. Rasmus glanced over, making no effort to hide that he was baffled—since it was well past dark, they were too far away for anyone else to see their facial expressions now.

"I'm sorry," she told him under her breath. "I have to look like I like you. Did you see that those girls were back? The ones who saw us at Starbucks?"

"Ah," he said lightly. "So that's what this is about. You don't want people whispering about us."

"I don't want people scrutinizing our every move," she corrected. "Is that so wrong?"

"No, it's not wrong. But this-" he wriggled his arm a little bit, but not enough to dislodge her "-is also going to get scrutinized."

"Okay," Cora shrugged, not completely sure where he was going. "So what? Let them think we're friends."

For some reason, that made Rasmus laugh. Now, Cora allowed herself to frown.

"What?"

"People aren't going to think we're friends, Cora," he smirked. "Has it not occurred to you by now that we always look like we're going home together?"

Well, shit.

That hadn't occurred to her, but she couldn't precisely tell him that he was being ridiculous again, either. One of the obvious consequences of living in the same apartment building was that they took the same exact route home. For all she knew, people had seen them going in and out of the building together.

Her grip slacked on his arm. She glanced over at him. His jaw was set; his eyes roaming around the sidewalk ahead of them almost as if he were trying to prevent himself from looking directly at her.

"You could have brought that up before now if it was bothering you," she said tightly, though she frankly wasn't sure why this riled her up so much. It wouldn't be the end of the world if people thought they were dating—maybe it could even generate good publicity. "Does it?"

"No, I guess it doesn't bother me," he said smoothly, so characteristically unfaltering that Cora told herself that she surely must have been imagining that he avoided her gaze. "After all, what's the harm in acting for a little while longer?"