Author’s Note: So this is one of the prompts I filled during the fluffy prompt fest following my completion of Fire and Water’s saga. Liana Mir gave me Occie/Stone and first kiss. This moment had been in the back of my head since I first met those two, and so it was not hard to write.
Stone always knew what he wanted. Occie didn’t see it the same way, not at first.
“Oceana Washburne, I love you.”
She gave Stone a look, shaking her head as she did. “You don’t know what love is. None of us do.”
He sat down next to her, his legs making hers look short and scrawny, but Stone had always been big for his age. That was what the Landons said, anyway. Her parents acted like he’d done something wrong somehow, but she didn’t know what that could have been because Stone was one of the best behaved kids she’d ever met.
“Yes, you do. You love your parents, don’t you?”
She hesitated, looking back at the house. She didn’t think they were listening, and she didn’t know that anyone would understand if she said she didn’t think she did. She shrugged.
Stone frowned a bit, but he tried again. “You love your brother.”
That time she nodded. That felt right. She knew Cress better than anyone, and they were close. They were twins, so everyone expected it, but she could feel him sometimes, like she knew exactly where he was even if he wasn’t nearby. That was silly, though, and Oceana didn’t do silly. “I’m not your sister.”
“I know that. I love Terra, but not like I love you.”
Oceana frowned. “That doesn’t make sense, Stone.”
“Yes, it does,” he insisted. He took her hand. “I’m going to marry you someday.”
“I am not playing house today or any other day. I think that is one of the stupidest games ever created. I don’t see why anyone would want to pretend to be our parents. I don’t even like—I just think it’s dumb.”
Stone leaned over and kissed her. Not the sort of kiss her parents stumbled over giving her, not the kind of thing Cress did when he was feeling sentimental, but a kiss like on television or the movies. She reached up to push Stone away—she’d said she wasn’t playing house, why didn’t he get that?—but he let go and touched her cheek. “I’m not playing at anything, Occie. I love you.”
She stood. “We are not getting married, and I am never playing house with you again.”
“This isn’t a game. Someday you’ll know that.”
She rolled her eyes, but she found herself tracing her lips as she walked inside. She wasn’t going to admit that she’d liked the kiss.