underneath the lights || hsmtmts

thorns with my petals | gina x nini

{Author's Note: so... this is a rewrite of 2x12, featuring the makeup room scene between gina and nini. the dialogue stays fairly the same, but i swear it's worth reading that portion for both the small changes (and less small changes) and the undertones. the pov gets sorta mixed up at times, but it's primarily gina's. 

i really hope you enjoy!}

the night they opened beauty and the beast went so much better than the cast could have asked for. well- outside of the little snafu with ricky's harness going missing and them having to do the transformation differently... but that was an issue for another time. 

but even better, tonight was the night gina got to go on her first ever real actual date. sure, maybe ej caswell wasn't the person she ever anticipated going on her first date with, especially not when they met, but he was a really sweet guy, and she felt excited to be doing it. getting a whole other "first" out of the way.

she wants to. really. 

she'd actually even considered kissing jack at the airport before she left for the night, but it just- it wasn't quite right, they'd known each other the span of a day. he had given her his number on that paper airplane though, one of these days she'll probably reach out. it'd be nice to have an airport buddy. maybe that was just her once in a lifetime thing, her just for a moment. 

and if she goes deeper into her thoughts, maybe, just maybe, there was something in her that didn't want ej to be her first kiss either. but that couldn't be the problem. she probably just wasn't ready for it. this was just one date, she didn't need to kiss him anyhow. that's not how it always goes. it's just how it goes in the movies. 

except gina's always secretly liked those movies. having the perfect first date with the perfect guy followed up by the perfect first kiss when she's dropped at her doorstep, with her foot popping when they kissed. mia thermopolis had it right, it wasn't the perfect kiss if your foot didn't pop. 

or well... that's what she expected anyway. gina's never been kissed. 

she's never been good with firsts either.

what she doesn't know is that by the end of tonight she will be kissed, just not necessarily by the person she expected. 

and maybe this first will be a sort of second chance. maybe that too will make all the difference. 

--

it was her second opening night of her junior year and nini was thrilled to have watched her castmates put on such a good show, and honestly, the girl was genuinely kind of glad her song got taken out, as offended as she had been at the time. it wasn't who she is now, it was where she thought she was all those weeks ago. it meant the world for a moment, but now meant nothing more than a memory, along with the start of something brand new that she never saw coming. 

she always thought ricky was her start of something new moment, the person who would make her feel over the moon as she fell head over heels for the rest of her life straight into his arms. ever since they were those dumb kids who kissed in the tree house, she knew they were meant to be. 

as it turns out your first love is likely not going to be your only love. sure, she thinks maybe one day they could come back to each other, but for now, that possibility is the last thing on her mind. she's finding a new beginning. 

whatever that may look like. going back to what was solely a friendship with ricky was likely just the beginning of the changes ahead.

besides the the struggle to write ricky's card, the night had gone off mostly without a flaw for nini. she'd checked in on their beast right after the show to see how he was feeling about miss jenn's rather dangerous comment, and he'd told her they could talk about it later, but later would likely have to be another day, as they were both rushed off to get out of costumes and makeup.