Work Text:
It's starting to get colder outside, early in October. But inside the studio is even more frigid, the air conditioning fighting against the countless lights and machines whirring around. Angela grabs a hoodie from the merch team and slips out in between shoots to the benches outside.
She's surprised to see it occupied, first seeing the faded red hair glowing under the sconce overhead. "Oh. Hey, Angela," Damien says, looking up from his phone at the sound of gravel crunching beneath her feet. "Is someone looking for me?"
"No, I—" She digs the toe of her boot into the rocks. "Sorry, I'm disrupting you. I'll go back in."
"Wait, it's okay!" he calls out, and he scoots over to make space on the bench. "Needed some time alone, too?"
Angela shrugs and drops down on the seat beside him, leaning back on the concrete wall. "Something like that," she mumbles now that he's close enough to hear. Her voice is in shambles, alternating between shoot days and rehearsals for a musical in three weeks.
"What's your last one?" Damien asks. "I've got Monopoly."
"What nerd edition are you playing this time?"
"Ha ha." Damien rolls his eyes at her and accepts her giggle as an apology. "And you?"
"Ugh, challenge pit." Angela groans and tilts her head back, lightly knocking against the wall.
"At the end of the shoot day?" Damien asks, incredulous. "They're really counting on that gas leak energy, huh."
"And I always deliver," Angela jokingly salutes at the building behind them. Damien laughs again, eyes meeting hers for a second before they both dart away.
It's quiet, just a little cold even under the thick hoodie of Smosh's upcoming winter merch. Angela finds herself leaning against him, sharing warmth. He doesn't move away, doesn't make space.
(He wasn't like that before. Or maybe she was too afraid to try getting this close to him. But four years of knowing each other does that to people— makes it easier to try new things, say things they never would have had the courage to say.)
Angela hears a notification on her phone. A quick glance at her screen tells her all she needs to know, and the frustrated groan she releases echoes out in the open air.
"You okay?" Damien asks, and Angela almost feels bad for making him look so worried.
"Nothing, it's just— It's some dickhead I met on a dating app. 'You free tonight haha,'" she reads out in a silly voice, fighting the urge to gag. "Fucking idiot. As if I'd respond to that."
The aggression in her voice shocks Damien, and he stares at her with wide eyes. "Sorry, I—" Angela clears her throat. The warmth of embarrassment starts to creep up the back of her neck. "It's been pissing me off. The apps— no, not just that. Everything about dating annoys me."
Damien laughs it off, shaking his head. "You're good. Just shocked, is all." Now he clears his throat. "I didn't know, uh, you were on the apps."
Angela shrugs, trying to fight off another wave of irritation just from hearing about it. "Just for a few weeks now. I mean, I tried the traditional way first, got some friends to set me up."
"And how'd that work out?"
She sighs, rounding her back in a deep slouch. "The girls were great, except we're all much better off as friends— and I really did become friends with a few of them. But the guys?" Angela groans. "Lame. Made me think my friends didn't know me at all."
Damien laughs, and Angela feels a warm hand on her back, stroking gently. "That sucks."
"Yeah, but lame is better than… fucking stupid and horny and ugly and—" Angela sits up with a growl, meeting his eyes with a sad stare. "Damien, you have no idea. I feel like I've dated every eligible guy in LA. It is brutal out there."
"Hear, hear," he laments, hand still on the small of her back. She feels his thumb rubbing small circles on her spine, finds herself staring at the pensive look on his face.
"Why have we never dated?"
(Angela's eyebrows are somewhere up there, way too far for her to yank back down.)
There are a hundred different ways to answer this— some more diplomatic, others more explosive. Not in an angry way, of course; more like explosive with… awkward laughter, with redirection, with every manner of yes, and that Angela's mind could think of.
But Angela doesn't expect that the yes, and she would choose is:
"I don't know. Why haven't we?"
———
Chanse responds to the news with a cackle and his nose one inch away from the camera. "You're insane," he hisses on the other side of the screen.
Angela, still hiding underneath her blanket, looks like a purple blob in the tiny box at the corner. "Was that bad? Should I not have said yes?"
"Why the hell not?" Chanse sits up, way more alive than he usually is at a sudden eight AM Facetime call. "Girl, you've liked him since we started working there."
"What—" Now it's Angela's turn to sit up, glaring at him through the phone. "I have not."
Chanse's deadpan expression is scathing. Do not lie to me, bitch, his raised eyebrow says.
"Do not lie to me, bitch," he also says out loud. "I was there. I was in half of those videos where you were the dumb boy pulling on his pigtails in the playground."
"That is—" (an unfortunately accurate statement) "—not true. I was just getting to know him. I was getting to know everyone!" Angela huffs. "I was shitting on Shayne just as much as I was shitting on Damien."
"Shitting on Shayne, hitting on Damien." Chanse shrugs emphatically. "Ange, just admit it. There was something there, at least at the beginning."
(… God damn it, Chanse.)
Of course there was. Angela's too old to lie to herself like that. She did like Damien, felt this weird… something between them every time they were put together in a video. And because she didn't know what that was, she did what felt natural to her: she teased him, she whined, she made jokes about it.
And Damien—the saint that he was—just laughed along. He said there were times when he genuinely wasn't sure what she felt about him (and she genuinely didn't know either). But they kept working together and laughing together and making each other laugh and—
Damien became her friend. Genuinely. A good co-worker and a good friend. Then she heard he was dating someone (and she certainly felt nothing about that), and then she drowned herself in work, and now… they're here.
Years later. Friends— who are about to go on a date.
She doesn't even know if she still feels that way about him. Maybe that something is gone. Maybe it was just a side effect of meeting someone new, someone interesting.
"How do people go out and date their friends?" Angela asks after a minute of silence. "I mean— going on a date is just trying to get to know someone, right?" Chanse nods. "But I know him. I've known him for years now. All the basic shit, the filler questions just to get it started, I know that already. I feel like we go the other way around most of the time—from dates to friends—but this feels like going backwards, you know?"
"Yeah, I get that." Chanse hums, deep in thought. "You're right; dating is about getting to know him. But maybe instead of painting on a blank canvas, it's about looking at what you know in a different way. Seeing him differently. In a… date way. A relationship way."
"Whoa, relationship?" Angela crosses her arms over her chest (with her heart about to leap straight out at that thought). "Slow down there, buddy."
"You are hopeless," he says, running his fingers through his curls in frustration. "Fine. Just think about— I don't know. If you want to kiss him at the end of the night or something."
At that, Angela turns bright red, ducking away from the view of the camera.
"Okay. Guess we know the answer to that," Chanse mumbles, that awful smirk on his face telling Angela exactly what he's thinking: gotcha, bitch.
———
So this is about seeing Damien differently. Observing his intentions and acting with intention.
She almost dolls herself up like she normally would on a first date until she realizes that that doesn't… feel right. It feels like performing, like putting on that song and dance that always leads to failure anyway. (Besides, Damien has seen her at her very worst: all those bits and characters that made her look and sound like a feral dog. Or sometimes she was just crying on the studio floor in fits of laughter.)
Instead, she dresses up nicely enough for a night out and waits for his text with one hand on the doorknob, her leg shaking almost as badly as Spork's. And when he says he's near and is about to pick her up, Angela feels every ounce of inhibition seep out of her as she walks out the door.
Fuck it. Let's have fun tonight.
Damien's car is waiting for her at the curb, and he reaches over to open the passenger seat door for her. "Hi," he says with a little huff, the seatbelt digging into his chest.
"Hi," she says back. Angela feels herself smiling, not even able to control it as she settles beside him and buckles herself in. A pause, as the interior light fades to black and her sight of him adjusts in the dark. "You look… different." With a hesitant hand, she brushes the hair hanging over his ear. "Back to brown?"
"Hah, yeah," he says breathily, eyes following her hand as she pulls it back to her lap. "The red was getting harder to maintain, and… yeah."
Oh, Angela remembers this. "And… you booked?" At his little shrug, smile bashful but still pleased, Angela grins and moves to squeeze his hand. "That's amazing, Damien. Congrats."
He's staring at her hand. Again.
When Angela pulls it back (again), she shoves both hands into the pockets of her jacket.
(Control yourself! Margaret Qualley screams in her mind.)
"Let's celebrate?" she says, smiling through the warmth in her cheeks. Damien nods and smiles back for a second before driving away.
He takes her to a strip of restaurants a few minutes away from her place. Pretty classy places, usually not her type (nor his, she would have thought). The conversation in the car is standard fare, mostly revolving around 'how was your week?' since they struggled to find a free night for both of them. Angela's in the middle of a wardrobe malfunction story when she realizes Damien's been silent for a while now, struggling to find a parking spot in this busy street.
"We could do valet—" Damien muses out loud.
"On this street? No way. Valet costs an appetizer and a drink here," Angela says, now looking around to help him. "Where's the restaurant?"
"That one on the right— shit, I could've gotten that spot if I didn't circle the block again."
Angela looks out the window and sees a line spanning two restaurants. "That one?" She points out, and Damien's face falls. "Did you… get a reservation?"
"No, they didn't take reservations. I thought we'd be early enough to get a table," he says, voice dejected, shoulders slumped as he stops behind a car— oh, and they got a free spot too.
The atmosphere turns frigid, colder than the October air outside. In the silence, Angela watches Damien's expression from the side of his face, her worry growing at the sight of his stiff jaw.
"Hey, Damien?" she says softly, barely louder than the whirring of the car A/C. "Can you turn that corner and stop at a side street somewhere?"
"Yeah, no problem." Traffic clogs up the street until they can finally make a left and pause at a residential area. As soon as he puts it in park, Damien falls forward and rests his forehead on the steering wheel. "Shit, Ange. I'm sorry. This night sucks."
Angela unbuckles her seatbelt and leans forward too, resting her cheek against the glove compartment. She sees his breath stutter and realizes the seatbelt's digging into his chest again, cutting it short. She reaches forward and unbuckles it for him, comforted by the sight of him taking deeper and deeper breaths.
Then she leans forward again and waits. Waits until he turns to look at her, his gaze soft and eyes tired.
"I just wanted this night to go well. I wanted it to be perfect," he mumbled. "But I messed it up already."
Angela shakes her head, her temple digging into the hard plastic of the dashboard. "How could it be ruined? It hasn't even started yet," she whispers in response. And she hopes he can hear all the excitement and optimism in her voice, all the hope she has that this night won't just end right here.
"If it didn't have to be perfect, if you could just have a normal, comfortable date," Angela says, "what would you really want to do?"
Damien sits up a bit, now resting his chin on the steering wheel. He stares out at the street in front of them, the headlights shining bright and illuminating a few people walking along the sidewalk. They're all dressed up, some of them with friends, some of them as couples. And as much as Angela usually wants to be at the heart of the party, wants to feel the pulse of the city and the people around her, tonight she just wants to be with Damien.
"I'd… take you to my place. We would order some food and… I don't know. I'd show you my cats. And we would just talk, mostly."
Angela's still facing sideways, watching as his jaw and shoulders relax, listening to the soothing timbre of his voice, with none of the panic that she felt just minutes ago from him.
"Your place on the first date, huh? You must think I'm easy, Damien Haas," she teases, and that panic returns to Damien's face as he whips his head to apologize to her.
But as he sees her grinning at him, face smushed against the glove compartment, that panic melts into fondness, a fondness that Angela must be mirroring right back to him.
She sits back up, buckles her seatbelt, and reaches out to squeeze his hand again. "That restaurant sounded great, but this sounds even better."
Damien turns his hand over and presses their palms together. A new touch, reciprocated this time.
As soon as Angela's able to take a breath again, she puts his hand back on the wheel and grabs her phone from her pocket. "Now get going. I'll order Postmates on our way there," she says, staring down at her phone even if she still feels the weight of his gaze on her.
The car starts again, sputtering briefly before it drives off, lighter inside than it felt before.
———
The food arrives just as Damien pulls the key out of the car, and Angela watches with wonder as he carries all the bags up the stairs and opens the door with one hand, wearing that tight dress shirt he's worn at the office before. (Hey, a girl's allowed to admire.)
"Hi girls! The food's here," Angela calls out in the apartment, hoping to catch a glimpse of the cats before they run away. The most she saw was a flash of Zelda near her food bowl before running into the open bedroom door, chasing after Damien who's changing into something more comfortable (what a shame— uh, who said that?).
She's been to his place only once: he hosted a game night slash housewarming party with some people from the office, and Angela was shocked to get the invite. She expected some of the older cast, of course, people from Games… but her too? He didn't serve alcohol—doesn't have it in his house until now—but Angela was giddy with gratitude the whole night.
Angela goes to the kitchen and looks through Damien's cupboards, remembering that he kept his plates there and his utensils in the drawer beside the fridge. She struggles a bit with the bowls at the top shelf, props herself up on the counter—
And two warm hands hold her shoulders and pull her back down. "I got this, Ange. Don't worry about it. Take a seat already." She feels his voice more than she hears it, the rumbling of his chest going straight through to her beating heart.
She turns around and looks at him properly for the first time that night: dressed in a soft sweater now, hair still a tad too dark from the fresh dye. His warm gaze makes her lean back a bit, hip bumping against the edge of the counter. (With each passing second, Angela's answer to Chanse's question becomes clearer and clearer to her.)
"Food's getting cold," Damien says, now gently guiding her to the side so he can reach up at the cupboards. Angela sticks around to take a few from him, and they transfer the food from plastic containers to actual bowls, and he even sets up placemats and utensils.
When Damien dims the lights and takes a seat across from her, it actually sinks in: this is a date.
Except they don't do the usual twenty questions— where did you grow up, what did you study, where do you work, do you know this person and that person.
They just… talk. About what happened to them this week or something silly Spork did to get her attention while she was writing a sketch or what new piece of trash Freyja chose as the greatest toy to ever exist, ignoring the piles of things he bought for her over the years. They talk about what they're excited for in the coming month (the opening of her next show, a con he's doing in New York) and their favorite shoot this past week (redeeming herself on Wavelength, screaming so much at a Reddit story that sound had to turn off his mic for a few minutes).
Then when they finish dinner but still feel too stuffed for dessert, they talk about other things. Like family— What's it like growing up with a much older sibling? It felt like I was always catching up to her, but then I realized I was always trying to catch up with everybody. So… it was probably the autism, all this time. Or friends— You're so good at keeping in touch with people from all over. Yeah, I travel so much that I'm bound to come in contact with them eventually. It's a bit of effort, but it feels good.
And then… "Why'd you ask me out?"
They're washing the dishes together—only because Angela insisted that she help clean up—and the activity is a good excuse not to look at him.
Not to look at each other, it seems. Damien's scrubbing even harder at the nonexistent sauce on that plate.
"Because… you were talking about how much you hated dating everyone in LA," he mumbled. "Had to try and save the city's reputation somehow, you know."
Angela laughs, bumps shoulders with him (well, her shoulder to his arm).
"How did I do?" he says suddenly, still looking down at the last bowl in his hands. She knows what he's asking. It goes beyond the joke, cuts closer to what this date was all about.
"You did great," Angela says, taking the bowl from him without looking up from her hands. "I'm having a great time."
"So… talking me down from a panic attack, serving your own food, and washing my dishes is a night of fun for you?" Now she can hear the smile in his voice, feels it in the elbow that bumps against her arm. "Maybe you are a little easy, Angela Giarratana."
She laughs again, hitting him with the wet dishrag before hanging it on the handle of the drawer. "You'd be surprised at how badly these first dates usually go. This is a treat for me," she grumbles. With the dishes all dried and put away, she turns to sit on the edge of the counter. Damien turns to face her and watches as she speaks.
"For the longest time, dating made me feel… small." At Damien's raised eyebrow—and the quip she knows he's going to make—she continues, "I am small, I know. But I mean small like… like I'm just another face in a crowd of faces. Another name to cross off on a list."
She sighs. "To be fair, the apps are like that. It's all about snap decisions. I do it too, obviously. It's just how that game is played." Angela picks at the hem of her skirt. "But it's exhausting. Starting over and over again, never building a connection.
"And because it's all about that first impression, there's so much… pretending. It's all about the performance, you know? Being this… cool girl who works in entertainment who just listens to dumb jokes and laughs along with every shitty thing people say." Angela doesn't realize her fists are clenched until Damien's hands wrap around them, slowly unfurling them digit by digit.
Palm to palm, he holds her. "You've listened to a lot of shitty people," he laments.
"I have," she says. "And when it's shitty guy after shitty guy, you start to wonder if you're the problem. If that's what you attract. If that's what you deserve."
"You don't deserve that," he says, and she feels how much he means it in the hand that squeezes hers. "I'm sure of it."
She smiles. I know that now.
The kitchen door opens with a creak, and a meowing Freyja pushes it forward with two heavy paws. Not even glancing Angela's way, she heads straight to Damien and rubs against his shin. "Ah. Duty calls," he says, and Angela watches with a smile as Freyja winds through his legs with each step he takes toward her food bowl.
Angela follows soon after, walking slowly through the hallway and admiring Damien's memorabilia and pictures. She's struck by how sleepy she suddenly feels, how comfortable she is already.
In a slight daze, she catches Damien sitting on the floor, watching Freyja eat. Quietly, Angela sits beside him. Neither of them speak for a while, and the sound of Freyja pushing food around on her bowl fills the empty space.
Damien takes a spoon and starts guiding the food toward her mouth. "She's not spoiled, I swear," he says quietly.
"What a princess," Angela teases, keeping her voice down as well. "I have to feed Spork like that too sometimes. It happens when they're old."
When Freyja licks the last bit off the spoon, she turns around, stretches, and walks right over to Angela, settling comfortably on her lap. Stunned, Angela is barely able to whisper, "Is she usually like this?"
Damien is biting back a smile, eyes soft and bright. "So you are a pet whisperer," he says, and when he reaches over to scratch Freyja's ear, she unfurls and starts kneading on Angela's thigh. "Sorry about your clothes though."
"I don't mind." Angela scratches under her chin and melts when the cat starts purring at her touch. "This whole night was… nice. So nice."
"Good. I'm glad," he says, gaze cast downwards. "You… said something earlier. I can't stop thinking about it."
At that, Angela looks up. "Oh. I'm sorry."
"No, no. It's a good thing." He chuckles a bit. "My bad. I hate it when people are being cryptic too."
He's stalling, Angela can tell. She waits.
"You said all those dates made you feel like you were performing. First impressions and all." His voice is cautious, cards still close to his chest. "It's… it's like that in relationships too, somehow. Way beyond the first date, the first impression. The first year, even."
Angela looks up at him, trying to keep the shock out of her expression. He doesn't talk much about his previous relationships, and their circles (unsurprisingly) don't overlap. All she sees are smiles on Instagram, hears brief mentions of where they've been and what they've done.
And then nothing. She has to hear from her friends who heard from other friends that it's over, and it's never mentioned again.
"In a lot of my relationships, I'm… catching up to them. Keeping up with appearances. A lot of it is a performance," he starts. "And I don't blame them for that, you know? I guess that's the world we live in, the people we're surrounded by."
"Show business," Angela adds. Damien nods in understanding.
"Exactly. We're like that too, a little. We have to be seen." He pauses. "To be seen is to survive in our world."
"But that should be about work," she says. "Not about relationships."
Damien shrugs. "Is it really possible to separate those two? Yes, our relationship is ours, but how it's seen affects our perception, our jobs, our opportunities. At some point, my relationships felt more like working relationships instead of something real. It felt like work. It felt like a performance, constantly."
He leans back, tilts his head to the ceiling. "They cared more about how happy we looked in pictures instead of how happy we actually were. And I wasn't happy. Not at all."
She hears the exhaustion in his voice, feels it in the heavy shoulder that leans against hers. And though she doesn't know exactly how to comfort him, Angela finds herself saying, "I'm not like that."
She knows what she's implying. That she's next in line, that she'll break whatever awful streak he's been having in these relationships.
And as terrifying as that initially feels, it's what he promised to her too, when he asked her out on this date— that he'll be better than all the shitty guys she's met before.
A little scared, but certain. Angela sees his intention and acts with hers.
She leans over and kisses him.
Angela feels a rough palm on her cheek, gently guiding her chin up to meet his lips perfectly. Her hand slides up his chest, past his broad shoulders, her elbow hooked around his neck. Warm lips, gentle until they get braver, tongue and teeth meeting in perfect time with each other.
It's perfect— no practice, no performance to be held in front of an audience. Quietly just them in a dark corner of Damien's apartment, only the sounds of their heavy breathing and the slow drip of the kitchen sink on the other side of the wall.
Angela wants more, wants to feel body against body, feeling more than curiosity taking over her limbs, starting from the churning in her core. She moves to kneel up and straddle him— forgetting there's a sleeping cat on her lap, leaping off her with a disgruntled meow!
"Oh shit— sorry!" Angela calls out to Freyja, now running to hide in the corner behind the couch. The disruption makes Damien laugh, surprisingly, though his eyes are dark and his breathing's heavy. Angela knows she doesn't look any different.
Damien kisses her again, heatless this time. "Hi," he whispers, lips an inch away from hers.
"Hi," she echoes back, a giggle blooming from her chest. "That was… nice."
"Just nice?" he pretends to ask, not giving her a chance to answer before his lips are on hers again, teeth digging into her bottom lip the way she knows he likes to. She bites back when he eases up on her, and the groan that escapes him makes Angela's toes curl in excitement.
And though there's nothing she'd love more than to stay down here and keep making out with Damien like two insatiable teenagers, the early morning call time tomorrow makes Angela (hesitantly) get up and get going— but not without stealing a kiss or two more, giggling when his greedy hands slide up the side of her thighs as she stands.
They both hesitate at the front door, but the beep from Angela's phone tells her that the Uber must be nearby. Damien keeps his hands by his side, and Angela stuffs hers into her pockets. Necessary precautions, for both of them.
"You could stay the night, you know," Damien offers, and the thought makes them both laugh.
"Wow, couldn't even wait for the third date to pull that trick, huh?" Angela teases (though if the timing were better, she doesn't know if she'd be able to say no to him).
Damien shrugs. "The offer still stands."
She shakes her head, still grinning, the absurdity of this situation dawning on her. The difference a few hours could make in how she sees him— everything's changed.
"You know," Angela bites her lip before continuing, "I wasn't sure about going on this date."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, I thought— I don't know. Dating a friend would be weird. That we'd have nothing more to learn about each other, that… it would just be like us hanging out," Angela says. "We'd end up discovering that there's nothing there, you know. Nothing new, nothing special."
Damien nods, chewing on her words. "And what convinced you to go?"
"Chanse said something stupid." Angela smiles. "Something like, all I had to do was decide if I wanted to kiss you or something. Don't overthink, just see what happens."
"Well, now we know the answer to that," Damien says, and Angela rolls her eyes at the smug smile on his face.
Another beep on her phone. The driver must be here.
"Good night, Angela," he says, one hand on the doorknob leaning over her. It takes everything in her not to pull him in again; instead, she whispers a good night, Damien in response and walks quietly to her Uber.
When she looks back, he's still waiting by the door, phone in his hand. A few seconds later, her phone beeps.
Are you free next week?
Angela smiles, types out a response before the car can even shift from park to drive.
How about tomorrow?