Scott gets paired with Allison.
Allison is—she’s cute. When she smiles, everything about her face is warm and open, and Scott can’t help mirroring the expression. She’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt when they first meet, hair pulled up in a messy bun, comfortable. She holds her hand out for Scott to shake and he takes it.
“Scott,” he says.
“I know,” she says, letting her hand slip from his. “You’re the new guy, right?” She leans in, stage whispering, “Mm, fresh meat,” and shocking a laugh out of Scott.
“Yeah, well.” Scott dips his head down and rubs the back of his neck nervously. “Be gentle with me?”
“But that’s no fun,” she says, and it’s so obvious that it fails at being anything approaching sexy, but Scott thinks that’s the point. His stomach does something strange and fluttery anyway.
“You two are already sickening,” Erica calls, draped across one of the prop couches.
They’re scheduled to shoot some tame looking couple-y shots—“To build your story,” Lydia tells him, rolling her eyes— because Neckz ‘n Throats is apparently also invested in something resembling plot to go along with all of the dominance play. Deep down, people want to be made to believe it. Or so Scott has been told.
Allison sneaks up behind him when he’s getting something to drink. He hears her coming, but still acts surprised when she grabs his wrist and says, “Come with me if you want to live.”
Allison laughs a lot, and it makes Scott laugh, too. She wraps her arms around Scott, pulling him into a tight hug. She tugs at his hair, and at the neck of his shirt, pretending to bite him. Scott picks her up a few times, carrying her like a princess while she pretends to swoon.
The video of them is fifteen minutes of them chatting on a love seat, Allison’s legs draped over Scott’s thighs.
“You like big guns? That’s— is that, like, a euphemism or—” Scott says, grinning, closing his eyes automatically when Allison leans in to brush away a fallen eyelash. She’s been touching him a lot. Quick brushes of her fingers smooth out a wrinkle on his shirt or brush something off of him, sometimes just to touch.
“That’s good. You tried,” she says, rolling her eyes, but she’s smiling back. “But no. My family is big on self-defense, you know. In case the world ends or someone tries to steal my fries. But, uh, I like archery better than the—better than guns.”
“Archery?” Scott tips his head to rest against the back of the loveseat, watching her, and forgets for a moment what it must look like.
“Yeah. Like,” Allison says, holding up an invisible bow and arrow, firing it off into the distance. “Like that.”
“So, you’re like, lethal. You could just totally— you could totally wreck me.”
Allison drops her arms and leans in close, close enough for Scott to feel her breath against her lips, and says, “You really have no idea.”
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