A Visitor With His Own Plans

Lauren was still staring at the mirror when she felt it.

Britney's hands slipped beneath the hem of the skirt without warning, fingers hooking into the waistband of the unicorn panties on either side. Lauren barely had time to register what was happening before Britney pulled, a swift, decisive tug upward that wedged the fabric firmly into place and left no question about the intention behind it.

Lauren gasped, her hands flying down instinctively. "Hnngh…what are you—"

"Just making sure everything is sitting correctly," Britney said pleasantly, smoothing the back of the skirt down with two brisk strokes as though tidying a loose hem. Her hands lingered for just a moment at Lauren's lower back before withdrawing entirely.

Lauren stood rigid, cheeks blazing, hands pressed flat against the front of the skirt. The wedged fabric was immediate and impossible to ignore, a constant, humiliating presence with every breath she took.

Britney gave her a light pat on the backside. "Perfect," she said softly. "Everything exactly where it should be. And Lauren." Her voice was gentle but carried an edge underneath it, thin and certain as a blade. "Don't adjust it."

Lauren opened her mouth.

Britney simply looked at her in the mirror, patient and unhurried, and waited.

Lauren closed her mouth.

She did not adjust it. She was not entirely sure why. Only that something in Britney's expression made the alternative feel considerably worse than compliance.

Britney collected her clipboard and tote with the easy composure of someone wrapping up an ordinary evening of volunteer work. She held the divider open and tilted her head toward the gap.

"Shall we?"

It was not a question. Lauren moved anyway.

The backstage main area hit her like a wall of noise and light after the contained quiet of the changing space. Racks of clothing crowded the perimeter. Assistants moved in quick, purposeful lines. Models stood in clusters, glossy and composed, speaking in low voices. Music continued to thread through from the other side of the curtain.

Nobody looked at Lauren immediately.

Then one assistant did.

Then another.

Not with alarm. Not with recognition. Just with the faint, involuntary attention that something slightly unexpected draws. Lauren felt every glance like a small, precise burn. She kept her chin up out of habit but her usual stride was gone entirely. The wedged fabric **** a careful, stiff-legged gait that bore no resemblance to the measured glide she had spent years perfecting. Each step required negotiation. Each step announced itself.

She crossed her arms over her chest and kept moving.

Britney walked beside her, relaxed and easy, as though accompanying a friend.

"You have a few minutes before your next call," Britney said, glancing at her clipboard. "Plenty of time to compose yourself."

Lauren said nothing.

She was focusing on walking in a way that did not look like she was focusing on walking, which was considerably more difficult than it should have been. The skirt shifted with every step. The unicorn waistband rose and retreated against her midsection. The altered heel created its familiar, persistent tilt. She planted each foot with deliberate care and stared straight ahead and tried to look like a person who was simply crossing a room.

She was not succeeding.

Then she saw him.

He was standing near the curtain entrance, one hand in his jacket pocket, scanning the backstage area with the slightly lost expression of someone who had talked their way past a door they were not supposed to come through. He was looking for her. She could tell by the way his eyes moved across the room, systematic and expectant, waiting for a familiar face to resolve itself out of the crowd.

His eyes passed over her once.

Then continued moving.

Lauren stopped walking.

He had not recognized her. The freckles. The rosy cheeks. The gloss. The fuzzy cardigan and the too-short skirt and the careful ponytail Britney had softened into something girlish and unguarded. He had looked directly at her and kept looking.

The humiliation of it landed somewhere deeper than everything else had.

She took a half step backward, angling herself behind a rack of garments, putting fabric between herself and his eyeline. If she could get back to the changing area. If she could find even five minutes and a compact mirror and something to work with, she could fix enough of this to be recognizable, to be herself again, to not be seen like this by him of all people.

She was still calculating the distance when Britney raised one hand above the rack and waved.

Bright. Cheerful. Unmistakable.

"Roman, over here," Britney called pleasantly.

Lauren's stomach dropped.

His eyes found Britney first, then tracked sideways, and Lauren watched the exact moment recognition arrived. The slight double take. The confusion that crossed his face as he tried to reconcile what he was seeing with what he expected. He started toward them and Lauren took an instinctive step backward, then another, putting distance between herself and the approaching recognition, buying herself seconds she did not know how to spend.

Her heel found the cable before she did.

The altered heel caught the edge of it at exactly the wrong angle, and the small, persistent imbalance Britney had filed into it weeks ago collected its debt all at once. Lauren's ankle rolled. Her arms swung outward. She grabbed for the nearest garment rack and missed it entirely, fingers closing on empty air, and then she was falling forward with nothing to do about it.

Roman caught her.

His hands found her shoulders automatically, steadying her, pulling her upright, and for one long, excruciating moment they were face to face at a distance of approximately four inches. His expression moved through surprise, then concern, then something slower and more uncertain as his eyes traveled across the freckles, the rosy gloss, the softened ponytail, the fuzzy cardigan, all of it assembling into a picture that almost but did not quite match the person he had been looking for.

"Lauren?" he said. The uncertainty in his voice was the worst part. He was not entirely sure.

Behind her, she heard Britney's quiet, satisfied exhale.

Roman straightened, his hands still on her shoulders, and took her in properly for the first time.

His eyes moved over her slowly. Not unkindly. Not with the frank, appreciative assessment she was used to receiving from him, the look that had always confirmed what she already knew about herself. This was something different. Slower. More careful. The expression of someone trying to solve something without wanting to be caught solving it.

His gaze traveled from the softened ponytail down to the fuzzy cardigan, lingered briefly at the bare strip of midriff, dropped to the too-short skirt, and came back up again. Something shifted in his face. Not recognition exactly. More like the uncomfortable awareness that something did not add up, that the person standing in front of him was simultaneously entirely familiar and subtly, inexplicably wrong.

He opened his mouth, closed it, then tried again with a smile that Lauren could not quite read. It sat slightly wrong on his face, warmer than the situation called for, the corners of it curled with something she could not immediately name. She had seen that smile before, she was certain of it, but never directed at her quite like this, never carrying whatever it was carrying now. It looked less like relief at finding her and more like satisfaction at finding exactly what he had expected to find. "Laury Bear." The nickname landed differently than it ever had before, too comfortable, too easy, as though he already knew what he was walking into. He dipped his head and pressed a kiss to her cheek, lingering just a moment longer than usual. "There you are. I've been looking everywhere."

Lauren said nothing. She stood very still and let him look and focused on keeping her expression neutral, which was the hardest thing she had done all evening. Something sat uneasily at the back of her mind, quiet and unformed, not quite a thought yet. Just a feeling. The particular feeling of being the last person in the room to understand the joke.

Then Roman's gaze moved past her shoulder and his expression opened into something easy and warm.

"Britney," he said. Not surprised. Not the greeting of someone encountering an unexpected face. Just easy recognition, the kind exchanged between two people who had spoken recently enough that running into each other required no adjustment. "Hey, I didn't know you were involved with this."

"Volunteering," Britney said, stepping forward with a bright smile. The smile she gave him was different from the ones she had been wearing all evening. Less patient. More familiar. The smile of someone greeting an ally rather than managing a target.

Roman laughed. Too easily. Too readily. A real laugh, relaxed and familiar, the laugh of someone greeting a person they had always gotten along with perfectly well. He leaned past Lauren to give Britney a brief, easy smile, the kind exchanged between people who had never had any reason to be anything other than comfortable with each other.

Lauren looked between them.

She had never seen them speak before. She had never seen them occupy the same space without the established geography of their social world keeping them at a careful distance. Britney was her rival. Roman was hers. The two things had always existed in separate territories and the sight of them smiling at each other with the relaxed warmth of old acquaintances felt disorienting in a way she could not immediately account for. It was too comfortable. Too unguarded. The ease of two people who had not simply met before but who had met recently, and often, and without her knowing.

Neither of them looked at her while they greeted each other.

She was not sure either of them needed to.

Roman turned back to Lauren, still smiling, and pressed a second brief kiss to her cheek.

"You look..." he started. Paused. Reconsidered. "A little…different," he settled on, with the diplomatic caution of someone who understood they were navigating something without having been given a map.

Lauren opened her mouth to respond.

His hands found her waist from behind.

It happened naturally, easily, the way it always did, his palms settling at either side of her waist as he stepped close. Except it did not quite feel natural. His hands did not land at her waist the way they usually did, resting lightly, casually. They settled lower, deliberately, fingers spreading wide across the soft flesh at her sides, thumbs pressing gently inward toward her stomach. His fingers wrapped around her and he gave a gentle, affectionate squeeze.

Lauren felt it everywhere at once.

Without the shapewear, without the firm, reliable compression that had always been there to meet his hands, there was nothing between his fingers and the soft, unguarded flesh at her sides. She felt the gentle squeeze register directly against her skin, felt the slight give of it, the way her body yielded softly where it had always felt firm and controlled beneath his hands before. His thumbs traced a small, slow arc across her midsection, unhurried, exploratory, as though acquainting themselves with something new. Something that had not been there before. Or rather, something that had always been there and was only now available to be found.

Her own hands flew to his immediately. "Roman, I—"

He had already pulled her closer, arms wrapping fully around her waist in a comfortable embrace, forearms resting against the bare strip of her midriff below the cropped corset. She could feel the warmth of them against her stomach. She could feel her own softness pressing back. He gave another slow, deliberate squeeze, fingers pressing gently into the soft flesh at her sides, and she knew with sudden, horrible certainty that it was not affection. It was inventory.

She pushed at his hands. He held on, not loosening his grip by a single degree, reading the gesture as playfulness, squeezing gently once more.

"You're tense," he said, his chin dropping toward her shoulder. His hands did not move. "Everything okay?"

Over Lauren's shoulder, Britney watched with an expression of serene, patient delight.

"She's just a little nervous," Britney said, her voice warm and helpful. "Aren't you, Lauren?"

Lauren said nothing. There was no answer she could give that would not make things worse. Agreement would invite sympathy she did not want. Denial would invite questions she could not answer. So she stood inside Roman's arms and said nothing and focused very hard on keeping her expression composed, which was becoming increasingly difficult.

She was acutely aware of everything at once. The tissue paper sitting unconvincingly in the sweetheart neckline. The unicorn waistband pressing into her hips. The bare strip of midriff exposed between the cropped corset and the too-short skirt. All of it within Roman's immediate reach, within his eyeline, within the easy range of his hands. All of it things he had never been allowed to find before.

She had managed boyfriends before. She had managed Roman. The careful choreography of closeness, the strategic placement of arms and angles, the way she had always ensured that what his hands found was what she had decided they would find. That system was gone entirely and there was nothing to replace it.

Roman responded to her silence the way he always responded to her silences, by pulling her closer.

His arms tightened around her waist, drawing her back against him, and she felt the full warmth of the embrace settle in. Normally she would have leaned into it. Normally this was exactly the kind of moment she enjoyed, his attention, his hands, the confirmation of it. Tonight every instinct she had was pointing in the opposite direction and she could not act on any of them without explaining why.

His forearms rested flush against her midsection, pressing lightly into the soft flesh at her sides. She could feel exactly where his arms lined up against her, exactly where the gentle rolls of her waist met the inside of his embrace, the slight give of her skin against the pressure. She pressed her own arms down against his, trying to create some barrier, some distance, and he interpreted it as her settling in and held on.

His fingers moved. Slowly. Almost absently, the way you might drum fingers on a table while thinking about something else entirely. Then they drifted lower, an inch at a time, unhurried and patient, until they found the soft swell of flesh between where the corset ended and the skirt waistband began. He did not pause when he found it. Did not hesitate or pull back the way someone might if they had stumbled onto something unexpected. His hands simply settled there, palms curving naturally around the gentle rolls at her sides as though that was precisely where they had been heading all along.

His fingers closed in a slow, easy squeeze. Not exploratory. Not accidental. The practiced confidence of someone who had been told exactly what they would find and had arrived to confirm it.

Lauren shifted slightly, pulling at his forearms with both hands, attributing the wandering to nothing more than Roman being Roman, affectionate and unthinking in the way he always was. It did not occur to her to question the particular patience of it, the way his hands had traveled with such quiet purpose to land in exactly the right place. She was too busy managing everything else to notice what his hands already seemed to know.

And then his lips found her neck, warm and unhurried, pressing just below her jaw in a place he had kissed a hundred times before. Whatever thin thread of suspicion might have been forming in the back of her mind dissolved entirely beneath the familiar gesture. She had always tilted her head and let him. Tonight she went rigid instead, shoulders rising, jaw tightening, every muscle in her body pulling away from something her hands were not free to stop.

His lips moved to a second kiss. Lower. Slower.

His fingers continued their quiet, tightening at her waist.

"There," Roman murmured against her neck, his voice low and easy. "See? Nothing to be nervous about. I know you'll do great."

Over Lauren's shoulder, Britney's expression had settled into something that was almost tender in its satisfaction.

Lauren turned her head.

Britney was looking directly at Roman over Lauren's shoulder, lips pursed into an exaggerated kiss, then one eye closed in a slow, deliberate wink. Not subtle. Not even attempting subtle. The kind of gesture exchanged between two people who had stopped caring whether they were seen.

Lauren's stomach turned to ice.

She looked up at Roman.

He was not looking at her. His eyes were fixed on Britney, and the smile on his face was the same one Lauren had not been able to read earlier, the one that sat slightly wrong, too warm, too certain. He held it for just a moment, his gaze lingering on Britney with an ease that had nothing to do with Lauren and everything to do with something she had not been invited into.

Normally, she would've made a huge scene over something like this. However, dressed as she was in this **** state, she felt helpless and unable to do anything, not wanting to draw more attention to herself.

"Roman." Lauren's voice came out smaller than she intended.

He looked down at her then, unhurried, as though returning from somewhere pleasant.

Britney smoothed her skirt and tucked the clipboard under her arm with the brisk efficiency of someone whose work here was temporarily complete. "I'll be back in five," she said lightly, already turning. She did not address Lauren specifically. She did not need to. The words were not for her.

She walked away without looking back.

Halfway to the curtain, Britney slowed for a moment beside Roman. Her hand brushed his as she passed, quick and practiced, and Lauren caught the small, unmistakable motion of something being slipped into his waiting palm. Roman’s fingers closed around it without a glance. The exchange lasted less than a second.

Lauren watched her go, a faint crease forming between her brows as a small, unwelcome flicker of concern stirred in her chest. Looking back up at Roman, she found him watching Britney leave with an expression she could not quite place, unhurried and satisfied, the same expression he had been wearing since the moment he walked through the curtain.

Before she could speak, his lips dropped to her ear, his voice low and warm, barely above a breath. "Don't worry about Britney," he murmured, the words easy and unhurried, as though the suggestion were the most natural thing in the world. "Just us now. Some alone time." He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, slow and deliberate, the gesture so familiar and so wrong in this moment that it made her skin crawl rather than settle.

His hand moved.

It drifted from her waist, slow and deliberate, traveling downward along the outside of her hip until his fingers found the hem of the too-short skirt. They lingered there for a moment, then continued lower, easing beneath the fabric.

Lauren's hand shot down immediately, grabbing his wrist. "Roman, stop. Not here."

He did not stop.

She pulled at his wrist with both hands, fingers wrapping around it and tugging. It accomplished approximately as much as it had with Britney. His arm did not move. His hand continued its unhurried path, warm and certain. She had set boundaries with Roman before and he had always complied without question, retreating immediately, apologizing even. That version of him felt very far away right now.

He had always been easy to manage. She was only now considering the possibility that she had never actually been the one managing anything.

Roman wasn't listening. It was clear he already knew something she didn't. And whatever Britney had slipped into his palm, Lauren had a feeling she was about to find out what it was.

She pulled harder. His wrist stayed exactly where he had put it, held in place with a quiet, effortless strength that made her own pulling feel very small.

His hand did not withdraw. Instead it moved decisively, palm flat against her hip, pushing her sideways with a single, purposeful motion that left no room for negotiation. Lauren stumbled slightly with the suddenness of it, her altered heel catching against the floor as he steered her behind the nearest rack, then another, the garment bags swinging on their hangers as they passed. The noise of the backstage area closed off behind them and the corner swallowed them whole. It happened in the space of three seconds. She hadn't had time to open her mouth let alone register what was happening until the racks were already around her.

The racks filled with clothes formed a loose corridor around them. Nobody could see them from the main floor. Lauren was aware of this the same way she was aware of everything tonight, too late and too completely.

His lips had not left her neck.

She tilted her head despite herself. It was reflexive, the way breathing was reflexive, her body responding to something her mind was actively arguing against. She had always liked this, his mouth at her neck, the warmth of him close behind her. She liked it now, which was the most infuriating and humiliating thing she could have felt given the circumstances. The two things sat side by side inside her, the unwilling pleasure of it and the acute, burning awareness of everything she was currently wearing and not wearing, and she could not resolve them into anything manageable.

She pressed her lips together and stared at the back of a garment rack and said nothing.

His hand moved from her hip down to her thigh.

Lauren's breath caught.

His fingers traced the inside of her thigh, slow and patient, and her body responded before her mind could intervene. She hated that. She hated how easily the careful, furious composure she had been maintaining all evening simply dissolved under his touch, hated that her fingers loosened around his wrist instead of tightening, hated the small, involuntary sound that escaped her before she could stop it.

She pressed back against him slightly. Just slightly. She could not help it.

His lips moved against her neck, unhurried, and his hand continued its slow path upward, tracing the inside of her thigh with the particular patience of someone who knew exactly where they were going and saw no reason to rush.

Lauren's eye's closed.

She forgot, briefly, about the toilet paper in the sweetheart neckline. She forgot about the freckles and the rosy gloss and the too-short skirt and the careful ponytail that no longer belonged to her. She forgot about Britney and the tote bag and the falsies zipped safely inside it. She forgot about all of it because his hand was warm and his mouth was at her jaw and for approximately thirty seconds she was not thinking about anything at all.

His fingers found the waistband of the unicorn panties.

She registered it dimly, the elastic beneath his fingertips, the slight pause as he found the edge of it. Her mind began to surface slowly, reluctantly, like something being pulled upward through water.

Then he pulled.

Not slowly this time. Not with the patient, clinical efficiency Britney had used. A single swift tug upward, decisive and deliberate, the waistband yanking high against her skin, the fabric wedging firmly into place with considerably more insistence than before.

Lauren gasped, her eyes snapping open. "Roman—"

He turned her toward him in one smooth motion and kissed her. Not gently. Not the brief, casual kiss he had pressed to her cheek earlier. This one was deliberate and unhurried and it lasted long enough to make the point clearly. Her protest dissolved somewhere between the intake of breath and the contact, her hands pushing against his chest and then not pushing, her mind still forming the sentence his mouth had just interrupted.

When he pulled back, his expression was easy and unbothered, as though the kiss had been entirely spontaneous and had nothing to do with stopping her from finishing what she had been about to say.

His hand settled back at her hip, light and certain, as though it had always been there.

"Shh," he said softly. "You're okay."

Lauren found herself facing him now, turned by the momentum of the tug, close enough to see the easy satisfaction sitting in his expression. Before she could reorient herself his hands had found the back of her skirt, palms settling against her, fingers spreading and squeezing with a leisurely, unhurried confidence, as though this too had always been the plan.

The squeezing was gentle. Almost playful. The casual handling of someone who felt entirely at home with what they were holding.

Lauren's mouth dropped open. "What do you think you're—"

He kissed her. Again. The same as before, deliberate and unhurried, her sentence disappearing cleanly into it. His hands did not move from where they were. The unicorn waistband remained exactly where he had put it, high and insistent and impossible to ignore, the fabric bunched and uncomfortable against her skin, a constant reminder she could not reach down to fix without breaking the kiss and she could not break the kiss because his hands were where they were and she could not—

She stopped thinking in sentences.

When he pulled back, his expression was exactly as unbothered as it had been the first time. As though none of this required any explanation.

From somewhere beyond the clothing racks, Britney's voice floated through the garment bags, bright and cheerful and perfectly timed.

"Lauren, you're up in five minutes."

Roman's hands left her with a single, light pat against the back of her skirt. Not hard. Just enough to punctuate the moment.

"You'd better go," he said pleasantly. "Don't want to keep them waiting."

Lauren stared at him for a moment. The words she had been trying to say since his hand first moved were still somewhere inside her, unformed and useless. She could not find the beginning of any of them.

His hand found the small of her back and pressed, gently but decisively, forward. One smooth, unhurried push that set her in motion before she had made any decision to move.

She took a step. Then another. The clothing racks parted around her as she emerged from the corridor of garments back into the open backstage area, the noise and light of it landing on her all at once.

Her hands moved instinctively toward the back of her skirt.

"Lauren." Britney's voice came from directly ahead, clipboard raised, expression bright and professionally expectant. "There you are. You're up."

Lauren's hands froze at her sides.

There were people everywhere. Assistants. Models. A photographer repositioning near the curtain. Two event staff crossing the floor with headsets on, both glancing her direction as she emerged. Every single one of them between her and any possibility of privacy.

She could not reach back. Not here. Not with all of them watching.

The unicorn waistband sat exactly where Roman had put it, high and unrelenting, the fabric bunched and wedged with a thoroughness that announced itself with every step. She shifted her weight slightly, hoping the movement would settle something. It did not. She shifted again. It made things marginally worse.

Britney fell into step beside her immediately, not beside her exactly, slightly ahead, moving at a pace that required Lauren to keep up rather than walk alongside. The clipboard was already raised, already consulting something, already in the middle of an evening that had no time for Lauren's disorientation.

"Hurry, let's go," Britney said, not looking back, her stride brisk and purposeful. "Lighting is set, they're waiting, straight on from the curtain, no stopping."

Lauren blinked. "I need a min—"

"We don't have a minute." Britney's hand appeared briefly at Lauren's elbow, not gripping, just redirecting, a light touch that somehow moved her three feet to the left before she had registered it. "You're already late. Walk and fix whatever you need to fix."

She could not fix what she needed to fix. That was entirely the point. Lauren opened her mouth to say so and Britney was already four steps ahead, gesturing toward the curtain with the clipboard, exchanging a quick word with one of the headset staff who nodded and reached for the curtain pull.

It was happening too fast. Everything was happening too fast. Lauren needed thirty seconds and a corner and both hands free and she had none of those things and the curtain was right there and Britney was still moving and—

Britney stopped just short of the curtain and turned, giving Lauren a single, sweeping look from head to toe with the focused appraisal of someone conducting a final check. Her eyes traveled the full length of her. The softened ponytail. The freckles and rosy gloss. The tissue-filled corset with its hollow sweetheart neckline. The bare strip of midriff below it, soft flesh gathering visibly above the white belt where the corset's cinching had nowhere left to redirect it, the gentle muffin top sitting out in plain, unguarded view. The too-short skirt with the white belt sitting neatly at the hip. The altered heel. All of it exactly as she had left it.

Her expression settled.

"You look good," she said simply. Brisk and certain, the tone of someone signing off on finished work.

She stepped aside.

The headset staff pulled the curtain.

The lights hit Lauren like a physical thing, white and total and merciless, swallowing everything behind her in an instant. The music surged. The cameras began their rhythmic, indifferent flashing. The audience resolved itself out of the brightness, rows of faces turning toward her in unison, expectant and attentive, waiting for the composed and polished figure they had been promised.

Lauren stumbled forward over the threshold, one heel catching the lip of the stage, her arms swinging out briefly before she caught herself. She blinked against the glare. The too-short skirt shifted with the stumble. The unicorn waistband announced itself with fresh insistence. She straightened, or attempted to, one hand flying to her hair, the other pressing instinctively against the front of her skirt, her eyes still adjusting, her body still negotiating the competing discomforts of the wedged fabric and the altered heel and the tissue paper and the lights and the cameras and the faces.

For one long, exposed second she simply stood there.

Blinking. Off-balance. Unguarded.

Everything Lauren Adkins had spent years making sure she never looked like, all at once, in front of everyone.

Behind the curtain, Britney watched with a devious smile.