fool (lester averman)

chapter thirteen

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chapter twelve: tiny animals

a/n:

this is kinda stolen from one of the original drafts of the D2 scripts LMAO

TW-- A SCENE DEPICTING SEXUAL HARASSMENT TOWARD THE END.

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When Rory thinks of beaches, she thinks of white sand and clear, cerulean waters. She thinks of Lake Como and Monaco, and the cliffs of Santorini. And, while Venice Beach definitely pales in comparison to all of those places, she finds that it's so much more when a little girl comes bounding down the boardwalk to demand that the only girls on Team USA sign her art book.

It took them a while to get here. After a scramble to get their stuff together and purchase any extra amenities from the hotel shop, it took Rory another twenty-something minutes to manipulate their bus driver into taking them this far away from the premises without a Hendrix-approved adult. But, by God's good grace (and the fifty-dollar bill that slowly slid across a table in the direction of a man who was eating a sandwich), they did manage to get there while the sun was high in the sky. Their spot is in a perfect place, slightly removed from the commotion of the boardwalk and far enough from the water that Connie can spread out the king-sized sheet she stole from somewhere in the hotel.

(When pressed about it, the brunette simply pleads the fifth.)

"Hey, everybody say cheese!"

Julie's met with groans and mild complaints as the flash of her camera goes off. None of them were prepared-- more than half of them in the middle of shedding their cover clothes, and Goldberg looking in the opposite direction-- but Rory, who'd been talking to the blonde when she pulled the handheld machine from the depths of her bag.

"You've got to stop doing that." Kenny says, exasperated. "You're becoming the paparazzi."

Rory snorts a laugh as Julie tells the figure skater to, kindly, go fuck himself.

"Say, Julie?" Rory grabs the hem of her shirt and pauses her sentence to pull it off in one fluid motion. "When you get those developed, do you think you could get me copies? I want some for my wall."

Whilst Julie grins widely and nods her head, the rest of the team begins to coo at and mock her playfully. Dean even loops an arm around her shoulders and hugs her, talking to her in some honeyed voice he'd use with a baby, until she elbows him in the stomach hard enough to make him grunt.

She doesn't respond to their taunts, but her face and neck glow red with embarrassment.

It remains as they're forced to move on and figure out how to keep the sheet from flying away.

Putting her sunglasses on top of her head and pulling her hair out of her face, Rory dips into her bag to search for one of the two or three bottles of sunscreen she brought with her. The choice of a Baywatch red bikini was a bold one (inspired by the enthusiastic urging from Connie and the way that Julie just kept saying how nice she looked) and, even if she still has her shorts on, she can already feel the sun starting to burn her skin.

That, and the lingering eyes.

In her peripheral vision, Guy shoves Averman. She pretends like she doesn't hear him jokingly tell the redhead to stop drooling.

"Wait!" The few people who were drifting to the water stop to turn to her. Rubbing the lotion into her bicep, she gestures weakly with the bottle. "Sunscreen!"