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There are some nights where Nel wishes she didn’t make such good money from bartending so she would have better motivation to quit.
Tonight is one of those nights.
Working the bar comes with its perks and its risks. She makes good money in tips. She knows exactly why she makes good money in tips and she dresses accordingly, even though she never dresses like that when she’s at home or off the clock— she just calls it her work uniform. It’s no different than all of the women who work at restaurants who have to dress up to show off their ‘assets’, right?
But with that comes the creeps.
In most cases, Nel can handle herself. Nine times out of ten they would just rather talk to her tits than to her face and she can deal with that. If eyes are the only things they’re putting on her, and they slide her a nice tip afterwards, then it is what it is.
But some nights, there are troublemakers. And Nel can usually see them from a mile away.
Take the man at the bar. He’s way older than the typical age demographic of the place since it’s mostly an indie music venue with overpriced booze and bar snacks, but dresses like he’s at least a decade if not two younger than he actually is, and the more he drinks the more he starts leering openly at every woman who walks by— all of them probably too young for him.
Nel is just starting to think she should cut him off (no matter how good his tips are) when he starts laughing so loud he must be bothering other people around him. Thankfully the music hasn’t started yet, because people tend to get uppity when a drunk idiot is bothering them during their favourite undiscovered hit band’s best songs, and cranky people usually don’t tip as well.
Nel makes her way over to see if she can get the guy to calm down, but as soon as she walks up, he immediately turns around on his stool and gives her the biggest grin he can manage.
He has a receding hairline in spite of the fact that his hair isn’t very short in the back, and a tiny little mustache that does nothing to make him look any less creepy. The big smile isn’t helping, either.
“Hi there honey, you’re just in time,” he slurs, and Nel suddenly wishes she had cut him off a couple of drinks ago. Then again, on a night as busy as this, it can be harder for her to keep an eye on people— especially lightweights. She didn’t think a guy his age who obviously loves to go to bars to creep on young women would be one of those, but she supposes you can never really tell sometimes… “I need another drink.”
He pulls out his money, but before she can tell him he’s cut off and she won’t serve him anymore, he reaches across the bar so he can put it in her cleavage.
“You can… hic… Keep the change. Buy yourself something pretty.”
Nel is actually genuinely stunned for a second. It’s one of those situations where she has no idea how she’s supposed to react. Usually the creeps don’t get that bold, or if they do, they just try to grab her tits or her ass when she’s bending over to get something from under the counter. She’s almost surprised she’s never had this happen considering the fact that she shows off as much cleavage as possible when she’s at work (for the tips, of course), but it also seems like one of those things that doesn’t happen in real life, just on TV.
“Hehe… Y’know, a pretty girl like you shouldn’t be working a job like this… If you were my girlfriend I would make sure you wouldn’t have to stand around getting leered at by creeps all day… Whaddya say?”
“Why you…!”
Before she could slap the teeth out of the guy (her job be damned), someone grabs him by the back of the shirt.
Nel expects it to be one of the bouncers, but with the place so full tonight they have their hands full anyway, and they’re not really paying that much attention to the bar.
But it’s not; it’s a woman she doesn’t recognize.
“You really should have stopped drinking a while ago.”
Even though Nel knows she should say something, she’s too busy just sort of staring at the woman who has randomly come to her rescue.
She’s beautiful, for one. That sounds creepy considering Nel’s only in this situation because of creeps leering at her, but it’s just the truth. She can’t look at her and not think about it!
She has spiky blonde hair and striking green eyes and the face mask she’s wearing has the pattern of a shark’s mouth on it. She’s got a really cool looking leather jacket on, too, that Nel can’t help but notice.
“Maybe you should mind your own business!” The drunk creep spits as he tries to get out of her grip, but she ignores him as she hauls him out of his seat and waves someone over.
Again Nel assumes it’s going to be the bouncers, but she’s surprised again, because this time it’s private security.
The bar doesn’t have private security (other than the bouncers obviously), so she knows right away that the people who walk up in plain black t-shirts with SECURITY printed on the back in big white letters must be people who work for the band.
And that’s when she suddenly realizes that she does recognize the woman who has come to her rescue— just as the security people take the drunken creep away for the bouncers to deal with and slap a lifetime ban on.
She didn’t realize it before because of the face mask covering the lower half of her face, but the woman who slides into the spot that was just conveniently vacated is most definitely the face she’s been seeing on the posters pasted all around the bar and up and down the street in anticipation of tonight’s performance.
Now she knows she’s being rude, because Nel should be thanking the person who just came to her rescue, but all she can do is stare at her with wide eyes and her mouth halfway open.
“Are you okay?”
She snaps out of it when she realizes she’s actually being spoken to, and she feels her face heat up with embarrassment at being caught like that. She laughs and puts her hands up.
“Y-yeah! I deal with stuff like that all the time, honestly… But thanks for helping out, he might have started getting upset!”
Her voice sounds way too high pitched and she’s laughing at things that are definitely not funny.
The thing about Nel is that she’s been working at a bar for long enough now that she’s pretty much immune to flirting. People try to do it with her all the time, but when she’s on the job she just sort of turns that part of herself off.
Mostly because she would never in a million years go out with someone who thinks it’s a good idea to flirt with their on duty bartender. Or anyone else who has to be nice to you in order to earn the money they need to live. It’s just a creepy thing to do.
Most people think that means she’s good at flirting.
Those people couldn’t be more wrong.
Of course, this totally isn’t flirting. This is just two people who are both at work right now having a totally normal and not at all flirtatious conversation! She’s just thanking a nice stranger who also happens to be very pretty and be a singer for a band which is just WAY too cool!
“Glad to hear it. Can I have some water?”
Nel is glad to have something to do with her hands instead of making stupid hand motions, so she gladly goes to fetch a bottle of water from the fridge for her rescuer (who’s name she can’t remember even though she really should be able to and she feels awful that she doesn’t, her name is on all the posters for fucks sake—) and by the time she comes back to her with it she’s managed to take at least one deep breath to calm herself down a little.
It’s totally just the adrenaline from dealing with that weirdo that has her heart beating this face and her brain working this slow. Totally.
“Here you go! On the house! You know— Since you’re—”
“Thanks.”
She takes the bottle and spares Nel having to embarrass herself further, but she pauses and does a double take with a raised eyebrow that has Nel breaking out into a spontaneous sweat— especially since she’s looking directly at her chest.
“You’ve— got something.”
The woman gestures vaguely at the area of her cleavage, and Nel practically jumps as she suddenly remembers that the guy had shoved his money right between her boobs!
She lets out a little squeak as she turns around quickly so she can pull it out of her shirt (stuffing it into her pocket because she deserves to keep it for herself after something like that) before she turns back around and tries to just laugh it off.
The woman is laughing too, and Nel really hopes she’s laughing with her and not at her— unless she’s laughing because she thinks she’s cute or something like that, that would be okay! Probably…
But Nel doesn’t have time to ask, not that she likely would even if she did because wow that would be a super embarrassing and not at all normal thing to ask someone you just met, because someone comes over to get the woman’s attention before scurrying off somewhere looking harried.
The woman shakes her head and pulls down her mask— letting Nel see her face for the first time, and she feels pretty stupid for not having recognized her before— and drinks most of the bottle of water before rising from her seat.
“Looks like it’s showtime,” she says. Nel offers to take the bottle for her so she can get rid of it and the woman hands it over.
“Break a leg up there!”
She has a pretty serious looking face, but Nel can see the tiniest twitch of a smile when she says that, which makes her heart flutter even more.
It’s stupid and she knows that it’s stupid but hey, considering the kind of creeps and weirdos that she gets to deal with every day, it’s nice to meet a customer who’s pretty and nice, even if she’s probably never going to talk to her again because even if her band isn’t exactly super famous (why would they be playing in a place like this if they were), she’s definitely way too cool to spend her time flirting with random bartenders.
But she watches her walk away, and goes back to her job, serving the rest of the customers (some of whom have gotten pretty annoyed waiting for their drinks while she’s been busy getting harassed).
And when the set starts, Nel can’t take her eyes off the stage.
Another reason she likes the job just enough to not want to give it up in spite of the sort of things she has to deal with on a regular basis is because of the live music she gets to hear. Not all of it is to her taste, but pretty much every week she gets to hear some new up-and-coming band that is popular enough that the bar can charge a massive cover on top of the ticket price, and she doesn’t even have to pay anything— she just has to keep working through the show.
Tonight, though, it’s probably a good thing she got that ‘tip’ from the creep that was thrown out, because she isn’t doing a very good job at paying attention to her customers.
The band introduces themselves as the Bestias. Their lead singer, Tier Harribel, is the woman who helped her out— but the other three women in the band are just as pretty, and the music they play is loud and intense and has the entire crowd captivated.
Nel isn’t sure she would even be able to remember a single full song, the entire performance just bleeds together into one continuous sound that captures her attention the entire night until suddenly it’s over and Tier is thanking the audience as the applause even of such a tiny crowd manages to drown her out.
She promises herself that she’s going to look up the band as soon as she gets off work, because if they sell merch with the lead singer’s face on it, she’s pretty sure she needs it in her life.
You know. For totally not at all creepy reasons.
She’s doing exactly what she said she would do and looking up the band’s website when she finishes her shift and nearly walks right into the lead singer on her way out of the bar.
Like, literally almost walks into her— Tier actually grabs her arm to stop the two of them from having a direct collision that would probably knock one or both of them over.
Nel has had a long night and it’s like three in the morning and she’s so tired that it takes her a second longer than it probably should to realize what’s happening, but Tier is smiling like she was before— just a tiny little smile that probably wouldn’t even be noticeable in the dark street outside of the bar if not for how close the two of them are right now.
“Your bouncers said you usually take the bus. Let us drive you home,” she says, before Nel can even manage to gather her thoughts to say anything. “You had a rough night.”
She wants to say that it wasn’t so bad, that she deals with stuff like that all the time— but she would be repeating herself and the last thing she wants is to seem ungrateful, so instead she just nods and says,
“Th-thanks!”
They don’t have a tour bus or anything like that but they do have a van with their band logo on the side, and Tier holds the door for her to get in, where she sits on one side of her with the long-haired bandmate with the facial jewelry on the other side. The other two are sitting in the front seats, the woman with the short hair driving, and they barely pull out from the bar before Nel realizes that this is kind of a stupid thing for her to do.
It’s not like she really knows these women, after all. They’re just performers who happened to be playing at her bar. She should have enough good sense to not get into a car with four random strangers after a long shift at the bar where some guy just shoved money between her boobs, and not let herself get distracted by the crush she’s realized she very much has on the lead singer.
But Tier and her bandmates talk shop about their performance, and Tier pulls her into the conversation asking her about how they sounded from the audience, and soon Nel is so caught up in the conversation that she doesn’t even realize they’re pulling up in front of her apartment building.
“Looks like this is your stop,” Tier says, and Nel jumps in her seat as she scrambles to unbuckle herself.
“Thanks for the ride!” she says as she climbs out of the van, trying not to hold them up any longer than she already has— but before she can say goodnight and make her quick and slightly embarrassed escape, Tier slides over into her vacated spot and leans out of the van to give her something.
It’s a piece of paper with a phone number scribbled on it.
Just looking at it makes her stomach do all kinds of weird flip flops, and she knows her cheeks are heating up and turning a bright reddish pink. All she can hope is that it’s dark enough that Tier doesn’t notice.
“Call me tomorrow,” is what Tier says, rather than calling attention to it, which is nice of her. “I’ll let you know when we’re back in town. We can hang out.”
Nel’s eyes go wide as she hears Tier’s bandmates go ‘oooooooo’ and start to tease her before Tier huffs and turns to give them sharp looks. But Nel ignores the three of them (and the way her stomach is doing some big flip flops) and says,
“Yeah, that sounds like fun! I’ll call you!”
Tier turns and smiles at her and wishes her a goodnight (that Nel is pretty sure she returns but her brain is running at too high a speed for her to remember something like that) before closing the van door and driving off.
Nel manages to make it all the way to her apartment and into her bedroom in a daze before she practically throws herself onto her bed, stares at the number Tier must have scribbled onto whatever piece of paper was at hand (it’s the back of a gas station receipt), and suddenly reverts into a teenager with a crush as she makes an ungodly sort of squealing noise and kicks her legs in the air.
She’s been trying not to get her hopes up since Tier has been nothing but friendly the entire time she’s known her (which is all of like, fifteen minutes of actually talking to her to be perfectly fair), but she’s pretty sure that this means she officially has a first date with a rockstar.
…A future rockstar, and only whenever she’s next in town, but hey! It’s something, right?
And by the time Nel ends up rolling over to go to sleep, she’s forgotten all about the creep and his boob tip.