I show up with heart a-blazing

Needless to say, once the idea of a party in the name of appreciating Rose had been brought up to the actress herself, there was no chance of it not happening. Just because Nick and Rose had been able to resolve their issues and were happier together now more than ever did not change that.

“Ehehehehe!” Rose had laughed her head off at the idea. “A party to celebrate me! Oh, how wonderful! Simply fantastic!”

She had no issue with letting Nick go so she could focus on planning her own party. Whether that was her ego talking or her desire to shoulder some of the burden herself was difficult to say- but Vivian had been happy to go along with it.

“You sure about this?” Kim asked the heiress as Vivian began gathering stuff for the party from the hotel’s storage. Mainly streamers and the like. They weren’t going to throw some big overnight party that would capture everybody’s attention. Just a small little celebration at lunchtime to let Rose know how much they cared about her.

“It’s alright if you don’t want to help!” Vivian assured the other girl. “I don’t want you to do anything you’re not comfortable with- especially if it feels like I’m giving you orders!”

She shook her head firmly.

Kim gave the heiress a dubious look. “…No, I’ll help,” she said, picking up a box of decorations once she was sure that nothing Vivian had said could be construed as an order. “I just don’t see what the big deal is, myself.”

“What do you mean?” Vivian looked at her, confused.

“This isn’t like the burger thing where you were trying to make a good impression on everybody and giving us all an opportunity to have some fun,” Kim pointed out. “It’s just a party to celebrate Rose- one person.”

Kim didn’t have anything against Rose per se, but since Mary was the first friend she had made when she came onto the show, she wasn’t a fan of the actress repeatedly picking fights with the other woman. Them being roommates hadn’t changed that for her yet. So the idea of throwing Rose some big party in her honor wasn’t exactly a humongous appeal. “Are you guys really that close?”

Vivian shrugged. “I guess it depends on how you define close. I mean, she’s not as close as you and I are, right, Octavia?” She looked over at her butler who was carrying a box under each arm, and batted her eyelashes.

Octavia gave her a neutral expression. “…That is an accurate statement, Lady Carrington,” she replied. “I am approximately ten feet away from you, whereas Miss Beausoleil is not even in the same room as we are. Ergo, it is correct to state that I am closer to you than she is.”

Kim covered her mouth to stop from laughing while Vivian just rolled her eyes. “Very funny, Octavia,” she scoffed.

“Were we not discussing geographical coordinates?” Octavia raised her eyebrow.

Vivian decided it was better to not play her butler’s games, and turned back to Kim. “To tell you the truth, the way she idolizes me a little, it’s flattering, don’t get me wrong. But I really want to become friends with her, for real! And maybe this party is the perfect opportunity to do so!” She gushed with excitement.

Kim shrugged. Vivian did definitely have easy motivations to understand, she couldn’t deny that. She sympathized with the heiress’s wish to make friends, having had so few herself growing up.

“And I feel the same way about you, Kim, just so you know,” Vivian said sincerely, looking at the other girl.

Kim gave her a frosty look in response. “…I see. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t idolize you and want to be you like Rose does.”

Vivian shook her head. “No, that’s not what I-! I’m talking about us being friends, Kim, come on, stop teasing!”

Kim wasn’t really teasing. She sighed. “Vivian…”

“I know, I know.” Vivian would have held up her hands in surrender, if not for the heavy box she was carrying. “You don’t have to tell me, I get the message.”

She knew how much Kim disliked the constant pressure of friendship. Especially when it was coupled with other questionable behaviors on her part. Vivian would have to be better about stuff like that if she ever truly genuinely wanted to make friends with the other girl.

And she wanted that desperately.

“Does that mean you’re going to hold a party in my honor?” Kim asked sarcastically. “…Wait, no, don’t answer that.”

She shook her head. Whatever answer Vivian gave would probably make things even more awkward between the two of them.

The girls walked back to the Banquet Hall in silence for a while. An uncomfortable silence that Vivian wished desperately to break, but couldn’t think of a way to do without upsetting the other girl even more.

At this point, her biggest priority was not antagonizing Kim. If it wasn’t possible to earn any positive points, at the very least, she didn’t want to lose any.

And to Kim’s credit, she at least understood the stress Vivian was feeling at the moment. She knew that the other girl had a compulsive need to not be disliked by other people, even when that was completely out of her control.

The problem was, Kim didn’t really know how to interact with Vivian the way the heiress wanted, either. She just wasn’t comfortable with it.

In Kim’s mind, they weren’t friends. Yes, she had taken this Sick Day in order to give Vivian a chance to change that- in a manner of speaking- but she wasn’t quite sure what that would actually entail in this context.

For now, she was just giving Vivian a chance not to make an ass out of herself. That was the best she could do at the moment.

I just don’t know what I should do, she admitted to herself. Vivian… she’s a billionaire, but I can tell that she’s still a good person deep down. Or at least, she desperately wants to BE a good person, even if she isn’t one.

Was it the selfishness of that desire that bothered Kim? Was that it?

The notion nagged away at her, like a mosquito sucking on her blood. Finally she stopped and turned to Vivian with a serious expression on her face.

“Hey, answer something for me, okay?” She meant that to sound a little politer than it came out as, but oh well.

“Hm? Oh, yeah, what is it?” Vivian asked, eager to show Kim any side of her that the other girl might want to see.

Kim bit the inside of her cheek. Was she really about to ask this?

“…Do you think… you’re a good person, Vivian?”

It was a doozy of a question. And honestly, she had no idea how the heiress was going to answer.

Vivian stared at Kim, and the shocked expression on her face spoke volumes.

While Kim and Vivian and Octavia were getting supplies for the party, Mary and Holly were on food detail. Even though the party would be held in the Banquet Hall where they had access to the most delicious food they could pick from, Mary had been insistent. Even though she and Rose had their issues, she wanted to do this for the other woman. Because she understood what it was like to be in Rose’s position.

Although she wasn’t entirely sure if she was happy about the idea of Rose legally becoming Nick’s second wife (whatever legally entailed in this context) she respected her desire to take her relationship with him to the next level.

Cooking her a meal to show her support was the least she could do, wasn’t it?

…Well, Rose sure didn’t think so, because she had insisted that she do the cooking herself, to Mary’s utter disbelief. Luckily, Holly had her back, and the two girls were insistent enough to keep the actress out of the kitchen.

The only problem, if it could even be called a problem, was that they weren’t the only ones who were insistent.

“Gina, you’re burning it!”

“Shut up, Dani, salmon tastes better with a bit of char, haven’t you ever eaten high-end sushi before? Huh?”

“When have you?”

“Errr… lot’s of times! I get it ordered up to my room, just so you know!”

“Ugh, whatever.”

Gina and Dani were bickering again, as usual when food was involved.

“I knew it was a mistake letting them join in the cooking,” Mary sighed in exasperation. “They should have just left everything up to us!”

“Hey, come on!” Holly patted her friend on the back. “They’re doing their best! They wanted to volunteer! Besides, wouldn’t it be better if you helped them learn?”

“I’ve taught them plenty,” Mary protested. “It’s not about technical skill at this point, it’s about their egos and their individual preferences clashing!”

“AH! Holy shit!”

“Gina, it’s on FIRE!”

“Shit shit shit!”

…Okay, maybe it was a little bit about technical skill.

“Both of you, away from the stove!” Mary waved her spatula in the air like a mace. “Back, back, back! Let me in!”

Needless to say, the salmon ended up with more than just a little bit of char.

“Anything to say for yourself?” Mary crossed her arms over her chest and stared at Gina with the kind of intense look in her eye that brought back “fond” memories for the punk girl of when her mother used to scold her. The fact that Mary made her kneel on the floor next to Dani in contrition didn’t help matters, either.

“Hey, I mean… I tried my best?” Gina forced a hopeful smile onto her face.

“It was my fault,” Dani apologized glumly. “I was distracting her…”

“Yeah! Exactly, it was Dani’s fault!” Gina shamelessly seized the opportunity to pass the buck, leaving the tomboy aghast.

“What!? Hey, I was trying to be nice!” Dani protested. “You’re the one who burned the damn thing!”

“Right, like you said, because you distracted me.”

“How did I distract you, huh? I want the exact definition.”

“Um… because you’re dummy thicc and the clap of your ass cheeks kept drowning out the sound of the timer?” Gina cheekily responded.

Holly held her sides and burst out laughing while Dani took advantage of Gina’s transformation and delivered a swift smack on her ass.

“I think you’re more to blame for that than I am,” she said sarcastically.

Mary sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. As grateful as she was that Gina and Dani were trying to improve their culinary abilities, the way they tended to bicker whenever they entered the kitchen together was really making that difficult.

“You two are just lucky we have more food available,” Mary said bluntly. She shook her head and sighed in exasperation.

There was only so much her cooking abilities could do. If only Amelia was here to keep the two of them in line. But nooooo, she had to choose this morning to resume her reading lessons with Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin.

With the four of them “handling” the cooking (dubious) that just left one group of girls busy at work on other party details. Mainly arranging the Banquet Hall and getting it looking nice.

“Dawn, do you need a footstool?” Sylvia asked, unable to hide the smirk on her face.

Dawn glared at her. “I’m just decorating the table,” she snapped. “Where are those three with the room decorations? Marley?”

“Hey, don’t look at me.” Marley held up her hands. She was using a stepladder to hang streamers up as high as she could reach. “Carly’s the one who has psychic perception of all that stuff, you’ve got the wrong sister.”

“I could be the right sister, though,” Rose called up from the base of the ladder. She was supposed to be supporting Marley’s weight for her, but that was more work than she signed up for, for a party in her honor.

Hadn’t she done enough already? Using her transformation to copy Carly’s and turn Marley into her sister so the two of them could go their separate ways was enough work on her end- especially considering the emotional overload she’d gone through.

“I still don’t get why Carly wanted to split up with you, Marley,” Sylvia said, stroking her chin curiously. “Is she really that focused on spending time with Nick today?”

“She’s being nosy is what she’s doing,” Marley groused, climbing down from the ladder. “But, well… I get it, you know? She’s trying to work on her relationship with Nick right now. It would be kind of a jerk move on my part to get in the way of that.”

“A jerk move like hanging out with Nick when it’s supposed to be his day with Morgana?” Dawn pointed out. “Ella, back me up here on this.”

She turned to Ella, who wasn’t actually doing any work. She was mainly minding her own business since, like Rose, she had wanted to be on cooking duty but was prevented from doing so.

“Huh? Oh, uh… yeah, I guess?” Ella mumbled. She had only been half-listening.

Rose picked up on that immediately. “Oh? Do you not feel that way, Ella?” She asked, turning her attention to the other girl as Marley climbed back up the stepladder to connect the next section of the streamer.

Ella bit her lip and looked between the two animal girls. “I… well… …If I was in her position, I might do the same thing,” she admitted.

“Really?” Sylvia was surprised to hear that. “So you’d be horning in on Daddy’s date with Morgana too, then?”

Ella’s face turned red. “She’s not… …horning in,” she mumbled. “Morgana said that it was okay for her to come along while she and Nick spent time together today, so she accepted… that’s it. Is that really a problem?”

Dawn shrugged. “I mean, I guess not, if Morgana’s okay with it,” she conceded. “I’m just not sure that she really would be.”

As Morgana’s closest friend, she knew how easy the other girl caved into pressure. And while she didn’t see any of that directly from Carly, she had definitely gotten weird vibes from her goth friend ever since she came back with Nick and Rose earlier.

“I guess Morgana has been kind of off today,” Rose agreed. “I mean, she was really direct with Nick earlier. She was practically breathing down his neck to get him to fix things with me, and even followed us up to my room. …Not that we did anything untoward, or anything,” she added with a snicker.

From the top of the ladder, Marley rolled her eyes in exasperation. But since, in her memories right now, she had been living with Rose all her life as her annoying little sibling, she was willing to grant the blonde a little more leeway than she would have under normal circumstances.

“I think maybe… Morgana might want to talk to Carly about, um, that thing you were talking about before,” Ella said shyly. Her face burned just at the thought of it.

Dawn realized immediately what she meant. “Oh, yeah, that thing. Yeah… …Now that I think about it, Carly is probably the best person she could ask besides Gina. Given, well, you know, her general vibe and stuff.”

“What does THAT mean?” Marley asked. She had only been half-paying attention to the conversation, unlike Rose, who wasn’t even bothering to hold the ladder at this point. “Hey, Rose!”

“Right, sorry, sorry,” Rose said, grabbing onto the ladder to stabilize it.

“Oh!” Sylvia finally got what Ella was talking about. “Yeah, now that I think about it, you’re totally right, Ella! If anyone’s going to be okay with letting Morgana spank them in front of Daddy, it would definitely be Carly! She’d totally be into that!”

Dawn wasn’t sure if Carly would be totally into that, but she wasn’t going to argue.

Sylvia was right on the money- Carly was open to a lot of stuff when it came to sex, especially sex with Nick.

If Morgana wanted a safe person who she could practice that sort of thing with, Dawn was hard-pressed to think of a better option than Carly.

She was a better choice than Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin, at any rate. And Nick might actually be okay with accommodating the two of them, given how good the sexual chemistry between him and Carly was.

…Was it wrong that Dawn was a little jealous? Or was that just a normal thing to be feeling under these circumstances?

“Okay, okay, you guys lost me,” Rose interjected. Her eyes were wide with curiosity. “What’s this about? Morgana spanking someone? You’re kidding me, right?”

The idea of Morgana being kinky like that was a completely foreign concept to Rose. She couldn’t picture the goth girl taking a dominant role like that in a sexual scenario if her life depended on it, and that was AFTER seeing how direct she’d become in getting Nick to solve their problem.

Unable to resist hearing more, Rose rushed over to join in on the conversation. “Okay, you guys gotta be honest with me,” she insisted. “What’s this about Morgana and spankings? I’m dying to know, this sounds good!”

“Wait!” Marley looked down at Rose in a panic. “Rose, hold on, you can’t just-!”

*SPLOOSH!*

Rose turned around at the slimy sound behind her, like a water balloon filled with cake batter popping on the ground.

“…Oh, shit. I totally forgot,” she admitted sheepishly, looking at the slimy residue covering the ladder courtesy of her inadvertently violating the ten-foot boundary to go join in the girls’ conversation. “Whoops. Sorry about that, Marley.”

She walked back over to the ladder and Marley reformed herself on the ground.

“…Don’t worry about it,” Marley seethed at her, not at all receptive to her “sister’s” apology. “New plan. How about YOU climb the ladder, huh?” She shoved Rose towards the ladder in a way that wasn’t exactly playful.

“What?! But it’s MY party!” Rose protested. “Come on, you guys, back me up!” She pleaded with the other girls. “It was an accident!”

Dawn, Sylvia, and Ella all wisely decided against getting involved in a sister spat, and went back to gossiping about what Morgana, Nick, and Carly could possibly be getting up to.

“…Gee, I feel so appreciated,” Rose said sarcastically.

Marley felt a little bad hearing that, especially after she remembered how Rose had run out that morning in tears.

But then she remembered the time when middle school Rose had hidden her hairbrush the morning of her high school picture day, and she got over it.