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Don’t ask Ryoshu how this ended up being her Friday night activity, because she honestly doesn’t know how.
Blame Emil Sinclair for that.
He’d said it lightly, over coffee gone cold and papers half-done, as if it was the most innocuous proposal in the world. Let’s pretend we’ve never met. Let’s meet again. Somewhere loud. Somewhere dim. Somewhere with enough shadows to misbehave in. He’d said it with that tan, infuriatingly handsome face tilted toward her, longer blonde hair brushing the collar of his coat, eyes warm and wicked all at once.
Ryoshu had stared at him for a long, measured second and thought, distantly, that this was what hubris must look like when it grows legs and decides to fuck with you.
Whichever type of fucking.
Now she’s seated at the bar of a place she would never have entered alone, wearing a red dress that had been collecting dust in the back of her wardrobe like a relic, something she had to wear from an era of her life that she abandoned. The hem skims her thighs when she crosses her legs. The fabric is soft and traitorous. It clings when she shifts. She blames the dress too, faintly.
The room, she could feel it all around her. The low bass trembling through the soles of her heels, the amber glint of liquor bottles, laughter from a group of friends she could care less about. She does not pay mind to them. She is too aware of the empty stool beside her.
He is late by exactly eleven minutes. She counts.
Then the stool is no longer empty.
Sinclair—could she call him that during this roleplay?—slides into it with the confidence of someone who knows how to make a room for himself. He smells faintly of cedar and something citrus. His sleeves are rolled to his forearms. He doesn’t look at her immediately. He signals the bartender first. Polite and all smiles. The bartender—young, pierced, undeniably checking him out—laughs a little too brightly at whatever he says.
Ryoshu feels something dark and proprietary flicker low in her stomach. She ignores it.
Sinclair turns to her at last as though noticing her for the first time. His gaze is unhurried. It starts at her shoulder, traces the line of her collarbone, pauses—blatantly—at the dip of her neckline before climbing back up to her face.
Fuck.
“Well,” he says mildly, voice honeyed and deepened by the music. “I was going to offer you a drink, but I think I need a moment to recover first.”
She does not smile. “Recover from what.”
She might not be good at this.
“From being blindsided.” Sinclair's eyes glint. “Didn’t expect to find art at the bar tonight.”
She stares at him. There are at least five retorts queued in her mind yet one of them deploy properly because her pulse— and other parts of herself— has begun behaving treacherously.
He gestures to the bartender. “Whatever she’s having.”
“I didn’t order yet,” Ryoshu responds flatly.
“Then surprise us,” he replies easily, not breaking eye contact with her.
The bartender nods, still watching him, and Ryoshu has the deeply unreasonable urge to set the whole damn place on fire. She folds her hands on her lap instead.
He leans slightly closer. Not touching, he keeps his distance at first. Sinclair has learned the art of proximity like a scholar.
Mastered the art of touching too, which is for later.
“Do you come here often?” he asks, and the line is so deliberately awful she almost snorts.
“N.”
“Good. I’d hate to think I’ve been missing you.”
The drink arrives. Something dark, bitter, edged with orange. She takes a sip just to have something to do with her mouth other than admit she is enjoying this far more than she should.
He watches the swallow. He watches her throat move. His gaze lingers half a second too long at her lips.
And that’s when the memory ambushes her.
High school corridors. A shorter, paler boy with champagne hair that refused to behave and eyes too wet for his own composure. Sinclair at fifteen had been a creature of tears and apologies. He used to trip over his own words when she looked at him too directly. He would flush red down to his collar. Once, he’d cried over a presentation gone wrong and she’d stood beside him afterward, silent but present, while he wiped his face with the sleeve of a uniform little too big for him.
He had been soft. Round at the edges. Trembling.
She had liked him anyway. Perhaps because of it.
It was the day she first kissed him too.
Now they're pushing 30's after nurturing the bud of what they have now. His shoulders have broadened. His jaw has sharpened. There’s a tan along his skin that speaks of afternoons spent walking campus lawns, sleeves rolled, sunlight catching in his hair. He studies literature—of course he does, the pretentious menace.
If she had met him like this first, she thinks with a flare of irritation, she would have dismissed him instantly. Too smooth. Too aware. Too capable of undoing her. What a whore.
She thanks whatever absent deity exists that she met him when he still pissed his pants about ghosts.
"Don't leave me hanging, miss...?"
“What do you need my name for?”
He doesn’t answer immediately.
“Because,” he says eventually, turning his glass slowly between his fingers, “I’d like to know what I’ll be saying later.”
Her pulse stutters. The drink in her hand suddenly tastes stronger.
Ryoshu tells herself this is ridiculous. It’s a bar. It’s a game. Araya is at Ren’s for the night, probably asleep by now with her stuffed monkey tucked beneath her chin, the apartment quiet in a way Ryoshu isn’t used to anymore. This was supposed to be lighthearted. A little fun. Something to laugh about later when Sinclair finally fucks her raw like she wanted.
Instead, she is sitting here feeling like prey.
She studies him more openly now, because if he gets to stare then so does she. His hair has grown out past what’s practical, golden strands brushing his collarbone when he leans forward. There’s a faint scar near his eyebrow she doesn’t remember him having; he’d gotten it last year tripping over a curb while trying to carry too many books at once, which she will absolutely bring up if he gets any smugger than this. His hands are bigger now too.
Her pulse stutters. The drink in her hand suddenly tastes stronger.
“I give up,” Ryoshu grunted. “This isn’t fair, you—”
Her words die halfway, caught between embarrassment and a tremor that snakes down her spine and pools low in her stomach. Sinclair’s eyes glint at her, warm, predatory, impossibly calm, and her resolve crumbles with the weight of it. Every inch of her is alert, every nerve screaming that she is losing. That she wants. That she needs. And there’s a delicious, infuriating wickedness in the fact that he knows exactly what he’s doing.
He tilts his head, faintly amused, the corners of his lips curling just enough to set fire to her thoughts. “Is that so?” His voice drops lower, like velvet pressing against skin. “Do you surrender so easily nowadays?”
Ryoshu’s hand tightens around her glass, knuckles white. She takes a slow, deliberate sip—long enough to prolong the agony—and when she sets it down, the amber liquid trembles, almost spilling. Sinclair leans slightly closer, just enough that the heat from his body brushes hers, and her breath hitches before she can stop it.
“I—maybe I—” she falters, teeth catching on her lower lip, and realizes she is about to betray herself completely. “Maybe I just… want to.”
He lets out a quiet laugh, soft, low, curling around her like smoke. She needs a smoke.
“Want to what?” he asks, though he already knows the answer.
The music pulses around them, but they are alone, an invisible sphere of tension and heat that shields them from the bar and its curious, oblivious patrons. Ryoshu’s fingers fidget in her lap, then clench, then reach almost unconsciously toward him. Her eyes catch his, wide and unguarded despite the careful mask of charm, and something primal, undeniable surges through her.
Sinclair tilts forward, eyes dark and deliberate, and Ryoshu feels her own restraint snap like a brittle branch. Enough of this—enough of teasing and games and pretending. She leans forward, suddenly bold, and grabs him by the collar of his shirt, pulling him down into her space with more force than she meant to summon. Her lips meet his, and the world contracts into that single, heated point of contact.
His mouth is soft, wet from alcohol, and for a moment she forgets the roleplay entirely. The bartender, the dim lighting, the drink—none of it matters. There is only him, and her, and the delicious promise of what's between them.
Sinclair freezes at first, letting her take the lead, eyes wide for half a heartbeat before he melts, hands rising to cup her face, tilting her head slightly as the kiss deepens, greedy but careful, tasting, claiming. She can feel the strength in his arms, the heat beneath his palms, the pull of his body against hers, and every instinct she had been trying to control collapses like a dam breaking.
The roleplay is over. She doesn’t want it. She wants him, fully and unapologetically. And Sinclair—Sinclair knows it, too, because slowly, impossibly, he drops the act. The cocky stranger façade slips, and the look in his eyes softens, dark intensity yielding to familiar warmth.
Ryoshu smiles into the kiss. Her hands tangle in his hair, fingers brushing the nape of his neck as she presses closer, pressing into him, claiming, daring, losing herself entirely. Sinclair hums low, a sound of acknowledgment and surrender, as if he’s been waiting for her to take the leap all along.
When they finally part, just barely, for breath, her forehead rests against his, heartbeat hammering, pulse wild, and Sinclair’s arms encircle her fully, holding her as if letting her go would risk the universe itself.
“You… always do this,” he murmurs, voice low, playful but heavy with something else.
“I—always what?” she gasps, head tilted up, lips brushing his, still tasting him, still desperate.
“Make me lose it,” he says, smirk threading through the words. “We never get to commit with roleplaying.”
“I.D.G.A.S.F.F.,” she mutters against him, voice rough with need. “I’m done pretending.”
His hands tighten on her hips, pulling her impossibly closer, practically off her stool, a laugh vibrating low in his chest.
“Good,” he breathed out as he presses another kiss to her mouth that steals her breath entirely.
"Let's get the hell out of here."