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“Alright,” Matt says on his first date with Not-Tanya, “If we’re going to do this, I’m gonna have to lay some ground rules.”
Matt had thought about how he was going to go about this. He knew he was playing with fire, he knew that, but damn if the fire wasn’t hot. Matt decided he wasn’t going to try to bullshit this. Letting her know anything was dangerous, sure, but she already knew something or else she wouldn’t be pursuing him. He wanted to know what she knew, and he wanted to have sex with her, and he wanted to get to know her. He’d play to his own strengths, and he knew himself well enough to know that his strengths most definitely did not include lying.
“Ground rules?” Not-Tanya asks. There’s a smile to her voice and a slight tilt to her head that Matt reads as lightly sardonic.
“Ground rules. I am not tanking my grades for you. I am not skipping class for you, no matter what. If you are going to attempt to kill me, abduct me, suborn me, or otherwise majorly disrupt my life in any way, you will not do it during finals.”
She laughs, the sound light and airy. Nothing about her betrays the way her heart speeds up in alarm, not a twitch of movement, not a breath, not the slightest tensing of muscles. Damn , she’s gorgeous.
“What,” she says, “Has that been a concern in the past?”
Matt shrugs. The first part was, certainly, and the whole school knows it.
“And if I decide not to date you because you’re a crazy person, as well as being incredibly rude, springing rules on me like that on our first date?”
“Then I guess I was wrong about you,” Matt says. But he knows he’s not.
“So, you think I’m the sort of girl who bows to ridiculous ultimatums do you,” she says, she’s changing tack just a little, less naive midwesterner, letting just a little danger creep into her voice and body language (not that she hasn’t been poised to leap into action this whole time. She has never not been on guard at any point that Matt has observed her), “And I suppose I won’t be allowed ground rules of my own.”
“I think you’re the kind of girl who wants something from me, and while I don’t mind letting someone as gorgeous as you are try to use me, I refuse to ruin my life over it,” Matt says, “And off course you can. I mean, I reserve the right to say no, but if there are lines you don’t want me to cross, I want to respect that.”. And it’s that last, of all things is that really catches her off guard.
“I’m sure I’ll let you know if I think of some then,” she says, and she says it almost without hesitating, almost without missing a beat, but her words aren’t quite smoothe, aren’t quite sure, like she doesn’t have a script for this, and she isn’t used to not knowing what to say. Who have you been dating, Mystery Girl, Matt thinks, if you’re this certain your boundaries won’t be respected.
“Alright,” she continues, “I agree to your terms. I won’t purposefully tank your grades, or ask you to skip class. And I won’t try to kill you or kidnap you or turn your poor, lovesick heart to the dark side during finals. I notice that all those things are still on the table for the rest of the semester.”
She says it like a joke, but every word of it is true. She means to keep her word to him. Her honesty, the fact that she can be honest where it counts, that’s the real dealbreaker for him. Because he loves her lies. He respects her skill in them, doesn’t have a problem with them morally. He doesn’t even think that lying’s necessarily a sin, depending on the circumstances. But the truth matters to him. Elektra hadn’t lied to him, not once, but at no point was she honest with him. And Matt knew that, at least a part of himself did, but he let himself be swept away. Elektra never lied to him, but if he asked her “are you trying to hurt me?” he thinks she couldn’t have said “no” and it come out as truth. That’s probably why he never asked.
Of course, that’s not quite the question he’s asking Not-Tanya either.
“Well,” Matt says, “I wouldn’t want to ask more of you than you can promise. I do want to kiss you sometime tonight, you know.”
Not-Tanya makes a sort of “hm” sound, like a verbal raised eyebrow. It’s neat, Matt didn’t know you could do that. “And if I’m the sort of person who goes around murdering boyfriends, why would you assume I’m telling the truth?”
“Oh, I know you mean what you say,” Matt says, “Whether you’ll stick with it or not we’ll have to see. But I think I can trust you.”
She laughs in a light, why wouldn’t you? sort of way, but her body language is… Matt can’t be sure, but the way her posture relaxes just slightly, the way she angles herself towards him, he thinks it means that she’s sorry, he thinks it means she thinks he can’t.
Honestly, it just makes him want to trust her more. He’s always loved to prove people wrong.