Chapter Text
This is what happens:
“You take cocoa instead. Extra whip.” He bends his head down, mouth right at her ear. “It’s a drink, not a dessert, Miss.”
This is what does not:
“You know, you can tell a lot by someone’s breakfast order.” He bends his head down, mouth right at her ear. “Plain bagel, plain cream cheese? Boring.”
Try to keep it all straight
This is what happens:
“You should come out with us,” Kihal says, shimmering like a mermaid in her sheath dress. “It’ll take your mind off everything.”
She thinks about that, about putting on a dress and nail polish, about being handed a solo cup without a smile, about sitting in a sterile room for hours while men debate about when something could be called rape if it didn’t even happen, about stuffing a wad of cash in a backpack and having a bus drive her over the biggest leap she’s ever made.
“N-no,” she says, turning back to her laptop. “I’m fine.”
This is what does not:
“You should come out with us,” Kihal says, shimmering like a mermaid in her sheath dress. “It’ll take your mind off everything.”
The no is on her lips, ready to fall, but then she thinks about a smug smirk, about a breath that sends shivers down her spine, about him saying, plain bagel, plain cream cheese? Boring.
She’s not boring.
“Sure,” she says, steeling herself. “Do you have another one of those in my size?”
Kihal claps her hands together, mouth wide and wolfish. “Now that’s the spirit.”
This is what happens:
A girl stays home, she kisses a boy, she slowly over the course of years discovers she wants to kiss another boy, things are complicated and simple, but a happily ever after awaits, as much as this life allows.
Happily ever afters are, after all, only soft tragedies in the making.
This is what does not:
Oma and Opa’s bed and breakfast had been on the outskirts of town, buried deep in farm country, so off the beaten path they hadn’t gotten a paved road to her house until freshman year of high school, when the whole two mile span of road that constituted her neighborhood up and paid a contractor to do it. There’d been some kerfluffle up at town hall about it, after the fact, but Opa had just leaned down afterward, hat in hand, and told her, it’s better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission.
It hadn’t really made sense to her until later, when the town took over repaving it, putting in sidewalks and making it up to state code, that she realized – it was the only way it would have gotten done. No one was going to pay to pave a cowpath, especially not the people in town, who wanted Starbucks and McDonald’s and an upgrade to suburban. But once it was done, their pride hurt to think someone else was making them look bad, look impoverished and negligent – and it helped that it was the poor farmers they were turning their noses up at who did it.
…But that was neither here nor there. The real point was, the cable companies certainly weren’t going to pay to run wires out there – they only did after Oma and Opa saved up enough to get FiOS so that the guests wouldn’t complain so much about running up their data – and Oma flat out refused to get a dish, saying Opa would be up there breaking his neck every day to see how it worked. To be fair, she was probably not wrong.
So there wasn’t much reason for her to have an expectation for a club, not when her weakest trivial pursuit category is pop culture, but she’s seen the beginning of The Matrix at least twice – before she falls asleep – and this is…not that.
There’s only three clubs within an hour’s drive, and the one in town is where the Venn diagram of safe and cheap collide. It’s first floor is restaurant by day, the second a club by night. A good enough compromise, except that both floors share a lobby, leaving the glittering club crowd to stand with the evening diners, waiting for their tables.
She shifts, out of place as Kihal and her friends artfully stack their wraps on a single hanger, much to the displeasure of the coat check attendant. As one of the few sit-down restaurants that isn’t a pizza parlor, the first floor is busy, and there’s a family of five along with a few couples that look to be on their first handful of dates, pointedly ignoring the miles of legs parading past them. Shirayuki glances at the menu on the wall to distract herself from the number of inches she’s adding to that count.
This is a terrible idea. She should really just – catch a bus home, or something. Kihal poured her into lace and leather, but it can’t change that this isn’t anywhere near her scene.
“Yuki!” Kihal calls out, already standing in line. There’s no bouncer outside – there’s not nearly enough people in western Massachusetts out on a Tuesday night to make them feel selective about who they let it – but there’s one inside by the stairs, checking something people keep handing him –
Oh, an ID.
Kihal and her friends giggle as they hand over theirs, horizontal ones that don’t look like the funny vertical ones Zen and Kiki had shown her, talking about stupid under twenty-one licenses, and j-ops. The bouncer squints at them, but waves them through.
When Shirayuki nervously hands over hers, the man says “What the hell is this?”
“It’s a state ID,” she tells him, trying to hide how her hands shake. “For when you don’t, um, have a Driver’s License?”
“You don’t have a Driver’s License?”
She flushes, feeling it stretch from forehead to chest. This really isn’t the time to try to explain that she breaks out in hives thinking about driving anything more heavyweight than a golf cart. “N-no.”
The bouncer looks positively put-upon, mouth rucking up into a scowl. “You’re not twenty-one?”
“Um, no.”
With a sigh, he pulls out a big, thick black marker, and draws two huge exes on the back of her hands. “There you go,” he says tiredly, shoving her ID back in her hands.
Shirayuki stares down, uncomprehending. “But my friends –”
When her gaze skitters back up to the group, they all are glaring volumes at her, and each page says, don’t fucking rat us out. Kihal shakes her head over the bouncer’s shoulder, little more than a twitch.
Shirayuki sighs. “Never mind.”
It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust when she’s admitted into the stairwell, lit only by half-hearted strip lighting at the edge, and the scintillating colors shafting through the plastic bead curtain at the top. Kihal and her friends mount it with no problem; stiletto heels hanging half off the stairs as they bounce up, jabbering excitedly.
Shirayuki takes one look at the narrow hall and shallow stairs and feels faint. This is definitely not up to code.
She clomps up the stairs, wincing every time her toes jam against the narrow steps. There was no way for whatever old-timey carpenter to know that his luxurious townhouse would be converted into a restaurant-slash-night club a hundred seventy-odd years later, but she wishes he had thought to accommodate a full human foot with the size of them. She knows that people back in the day were smaller but – she’s five-three for heaven’s sake. There had to have been people taller than her during the industrial revolution.
With the copious aid of the rickety railing tacked into the wall, Shirayuki finally makes it to the top of the stairs, pushing aside the strings of beads that separate her from the club.
She instantly wishes she hadn’t.
It’s dark in here, but not a cool, futuristic dark full of leather and sunglasses worn no matter the lighting conditions, but rather the same sad dimness of her hometown’s pub, just with fluorescent track lighting. The music is – certainly present, booming out of the speakers to the clear entertainment of everyone inside, but either she doesn’t listen to the right music, or this remix has lost the entire tune of the original. Under the treacherous wedges Kihal’s lent her, the floor is movie theater sticky.
“How about you, Yuki?” Kihal hooks an arm around her neck, lips cocked in a grin. “Who’s your type?”
Shirayuki blinks at her owlishly, taking in the predatory glances the other girls are giving the bar. They must have been talking about – drinks?
“I’m not twenty-one?” She lifts both her hands, showing them the thick black exes on her hands. Kihal’s lips twitch.
“That wasn’t the question,” she tells her, squeezing her close. “Though clearly we have got to get you a better ID.”
“That one for me,” says one of the girls, tossing her head at a man at the bar, tall and broad-shouldered and looking like he could lift the sedan they came in with all of them still in it.
“I’m going to take small, hipster, and sensitive,” another one chimes in, and when Shirayuki sees a guy in thick-rimmed glasses whose legs dangle a little more than most on his bar stool she realizes – boys. They’re talk about boys.
Panic tangles her tongue in her mouth. She doesn’t – she doesn’t do this. She can’t just – pick, like guys are a side order on a menu, regular fries or sweet potato.
She always gets the steamed veggie option anyway. She doesn’t know how to translate that into real life terms, but it means she’s scouring the bar with a mood edging to frantic, and of course, of course –
The crowd parts, and he’s there.
His back is to her, the cotton of his shirt pulled taut between his shoulders, and there’s just something about the way the sleeves wrinkle around his bicep, the way the thick bristle of his hair is haphazardly tousled like he just rolled out of bed, the cocky tilt to his head –
It drives her crazy. She wants to march right up to him with her big, black exes and argue with him about how a plain bagel and cocoa is not dull. She’s not boring.
She gasps, ducking her head, cheeks suddenly hot from shame. This isn’t her. She doesn’t like arguing. She hates confrontation. There’s no reason –
“Oooh,” Kihal coos, pressing their cheeks together. “The guy with the Henley making a bid for freedom? Not bad. Not bad at all.”
“N-no!” She hopes the light show the DJ is putting on makes her blush less obvious. “That isn’t –”
“Oh my.” Kihal pulls away with a grin, eyes still fixed to the bar. “Looks like he’s interested too.”
Shirayuki’s gaze darts to the bar, and he’s clearly seen her, smirk curling his lips in a way that infuriates her. He raises his beer in a mocking salute, and she snaps her gaze away.
“I’m not thirsty.”
He’s not going to ruin her night.
She promises herself that when they first wind their way onto the floor, making a circle and just enjoying the music. It’s – good, at first. Shirayuki is definitely not as practiced as the other girls – school dances had always seemed a little silly, when she didn’t have anyone she wanted to dance with – but they’re eager to show her, pushing her hips into a good rhythm, showing her how to roll her body.
But it doesn’t last. Of course it doesn’t.
Boys start sidling up, slipping in behind a girl to match her rhythm. The first one that tries is sent away, and so is the second – but the girls are clearly planning an all-night siege of the dance floor, and one by one they start peeling away, drinks in hand.
And then she’s alone again.
She can see them, if she looks hard enough – one girl up at the bar, leaning close to hear what her date wants to whisper in her ear; Kihal on the floor, tangled up with a guy who is clearly a good kisser; and another –
Well, she’s definitely discovering some of that guy’s advanced skill set, that’s for sure.
Shirayuki’s eyes skitter away, face flushed. It’s just her now, dancing alone to music she doesn’t know or particularly like, and there must be some sign tacked to her back, because there’s not a single guy that’s come up to her. Not that she – she doesn’t really want to have someone rubbing up against her like a cat in heat, trying to drown her in drinks but –
But it would be nice to not be ignored.
Her rhythm falters on the floor, and the bus schedule flashes temptingly in her mind’s eye. If she left now, she could make it to the stop in time for –
Heat presses all along her back, and an arm snakes over her shoulder, holding an impossibly green drink. She stares at it like it’s poison, like it came in a red solo cup and –
“You looked thirsty,” her own personal problem murmurs into her ear, or somewhere just above it.
She’s standing stock still, frozen in something between fear and annoyance, and across the floor, Kihal meets her gaze. Her eyes shift to just over Shirayuki’s shoulder, narrowing as she sees the handsome face, the distinctive scar above his eyebrow –
Shirayuki forces a smile on her lips, shaking her head, falling back into an awkward sway.
“Most guys bring a closed drink,” she tells him, like two hours make her some sort of expert on club behavior. Still, it seems like common sense.
“I considered it.” He’s moving behind her, matching her, but there’s a respectful distance between their bodies. Aside from the arm over her shoulder, they’re not touching at all, giving her plenty of space to move away. “But everything in a bottle here sucks.”
“So I should take an open container from you instead?” Strangely enough, she’s not worried about something being in it. He may have been a pain in her ass these past few weeks, but –
But there’s a difference between someone who does petty pranks, and someone who does that.
“You don’t even have a name,” she says, trying to convince herself more than anything. The green drink is – it’s not precisely tempting, but she’s intrigued. If he thinks he knows her so well, she’s more than a little curious what he’s brought.
“I do.” His mouth sits right by her ear when he says, “It’s Obi.”
Her mouth should not feel so incredibly dry. “That’s a nice name.” She licks her lips. “But I’m not – I can’t drink.”
She shoves one of her black exes in his face, but he catches it with his other hand, running his thumb over the bones of her hand.
“There’s a difference between can’t,” he murmurs, chest so close she feels his breath against her back. “And not allowed.”
There’s something about his touch that makes her lean back into him. His chest stutters under hers, but he shifts closer, enough that his heat radiates against her spine. “I-I shouldn’t.”
“Shouldn’t isn’t the same as won’t.” He’s a little too tall to fit her, though the wedges help. She shivers as his breath curls over the shell of her ear, and promptly wishes she hadn’t.
She grabs the drink to cover it, taking a long sip, and –
And it’s good.
“This tastes like a Jolly Rancher,” she tells him, impressed. His chest rumbles against her back.
His hand hooks over her hip, tugging her flush against him. His knees bend so that he fits against her more naturally, and he guides her in a slow sway of her hips as she continues to sip at her drink.
“I thought you’d like that,” he rumbles, mouth grinning against her ear. “You seem weak for sweet shit.”
She wants to be angry about how close he comes with that assessment, but the alcohol calms her nerves, and the way his body is moving against her, moving her with him, feels far too nice. There’s a nice fizz under skin, like pop rocks against her tongue, and she – she’s enjoying it. She doesn’t want it to stop.
The last song blends into the next, sliding from a pulsing beat to something slower, something that smooth grind instead of swaying hips. Between the two of them, he’s clearly the better dancer; as soon as the beat shifts, he slows them to a bare drag that sends all the heat simmering in her right between her legs.
His hand slides down her arm, leaving lightning crackling over her skin, and when he wraps it around him, her hand falling right on his nape, she can’t – she doesn’t –
She sinks her fingers right into the bristle of his hair and tugs.
Oh god, the noise he makes. She’d worry she hurt him if it wasn’t so – not that. She feels flushed all over, and she just – just doesn’t know how to make it stop. Or if she wants it to.
“Are you following me around or something?” she asks, not as accusatory as she would like. “Is this part of your whole…business deal thing? With Haruka?”
“God, if I could get Haruka to comp my drinks by doing this with you, I would,” he panted against her neck, “but no.”
His hand drops from her arm, sliding down the lace of her dress, right over her ribs, thumb tracing just slightly against the slope of her breast, and –
And, oh god, she wants more of that.
“No,” he breathes, the fingers on her waist spreading wide, slipping just a little lower. “This is definitely just me.”
“Too bad.” The words come out closer to a whine than she means too, but – god, she can feel his lips against her neck, and she – she has never done any of this, this whole kissing thing, but she’s getting really, really interested.
She swivels her hips into him, like she’s seen Kihal do, and – oh god he’s hard, right against her.
His hands catch her, holding her a bare inch away from him. “You might not want to – you might want to rethink that.”
She rolls her head to his shoulder, baring her neck to him, and does it again.
“Jesus,” he hisses against her pulse, lips laying hot kisses along the column of her neck. “I should have – I really shouldn’t have just stuck with following you – oh fuck.”
She’s not sure what she does, but he’s tilting her chin back, and then his lips are on hers, tongue slipping between them and –
“Haah,” he sighs, “that’s a really good Midori sour.”
“Are you sure?” she murmurs, lips brushing his with every word, smoother than she’ll probably ever be again in her life. “Maybe you should get another taste.”
He spins her around, one of his thighs slotting between hers, and then – then it is so much more than dancing. The leather skirt of her dress is riding up, and his hands are roaming everywhere, not gently, and hers are in his hair, and his tongue –
Well, it’s not where it usually is, that’s for sure.
She’s not sure how long they’re tangled like that, but he pulls back like he’s struggling to come up for air, his dick hard against her belly. He gapes at her, mouth swollen, trying to form – thoughts, probably; she’s having the same problem herself – but there’s something so inviting about it, about how soft his face is after she’s kissed him, and she leans back in –
His hand on her ribs stops her, and she find herself looking into his eyes, thin rings of gold catching the light. “Hey,” he breathes, “can I take you home?”