Chapter Text
“Oh my god!”
Tav grinned as she angled her hand mirror to give her client, a bubbly pink-haired girl who’d come in with her girlfriend, a better look at the vine of climbing roses freshly tattooed up her spine.
“You like it?” she asked. “Any changes I can make?”
Alfira covered her mouth with both hands and shook her head. “No, are you kidding? I love it. It’s even prettier than I imagined. Lakrissa, are you seeing this?”
Her girlfriend, who had spent the appointment looking increasingly green after the first sign of blood, did her best to straighten up and give her an approving gesture. “Beautiful, babe. Great job.”
“Well I didn’t do it,” she laughed, shooting Tav a wink. “Thank you. I can’t wait to show this off, like, forever.”
“You sat like a champ! I can’t believe that was your first tattoo.” Alfira tossed her hair theatrically at the praise. “Careful, though—they’re addictive.”
She stood straight and held her arms out for emphasis. From neck to feet, her skin was an eclectic collage of flowers and pinup girls and random bits she’d picked up along the way. Her most recent addition was a flaming double-bladed battleaxe she’d let Karlach practice on her, which now shone merrily from her bicep. Objectively, it fucked.
Alfira’s eyes lit with intrigue. Lakrissa looked a shade greener.
One photo shoot, stern lecture on tattoo aftercare, and unexpected hug later, Tav waved Alfira and her still-nauseous beau out of the shop. As soon as they were out of sight of the front windows, she collapsed back into her chair with a deep sigh of exhaustion. She scrubbed a hand over her buzz-cut hair.
“Four hours, huh?” Karlach remarked from across the studio. The blond man whose sleeve she was working on appeared to have fallen asleep. “Your back’s gotta be killing you.”
She snorted. A quick glance in her hand mirror made her realize her eyeliner had smudged as she’d started to sweat. She swiped it back into place with a fingertip, then wiped the excess on the hem of the ancient t-shirt she’d found at Value Village and chopped into a crop top. Whatever; all her clothes had eyeliner on them at this point anyway. “It never stopped hurting after the back piece I did last year. Remember? The big fuck-off dragon?”
Karlach shuddered as she re-inked her machine. “How could I forget? Five sessions of scales.”
“Six.”
“Jesus.”
Tav reached for her steel tumbler of iced coffee and took a deep pull from the straw—empty. Fuck. Then again, it was well past lunch; she should probably have actual food.
“I’m running to the bodega really fast, in case anyone comes for a walk-in,” she said over her shoulder. “Want anything?”
“Nah, I’m cool.”
As she stuffed her phone and wallet into the back pockets of her cutoffs, she thought about asking if Karlach’s lightly snoring client needed a coffee or something. She thought better of it. He looked comfy.
She elbowed the front door open and stepped out onto the sidewalk, nearly running into a mother towing a rambunctious young boy by the hand. Apologizing profusely, she stepped back to let them pass. The boy, a sandy haired little thing, paused his babbling and froze in his tracks as he stared up at her.
“Are you a pirate?” he asked, with the volume and sincerity only accessible to four year olds.
The mother’s eyes widened to the whites as she took Tav in, very unsubtly looking her up and down with a curled lip. Her gaze obviously pinballed between some of her greatest hits—first the black and grey snake curled around the base of her neck, then the axe, then the pinup girl holding an EAT BERTHA’S MUSSELS banner that she’d picked up at a long-ago convention in Baltimore. A younger, angrier Tav would have absolutely jumped at the chance to have a confrontation, but she just rolled her eyes. This bitch was exactly the kind of person she was trying to repel, honestly. The disgust meant her system was working as intended.
Kids, though. Kids loved her, because they hadn’t been flattened by the world yet. She smiled, kneeling down to the little guy’s level.
“Don’t tell anyone,” she stage whispered. “I’m actually a pirate captain.”
He gasped. “Woah.”
“Excuse us,” his mother said in a strained voice. She gave his arm an almighty tug, and in a moment, they were barreling down the sidewalk.
“Mom, that was a captain!” she could hear him protesting as they neared the end of the block. She stood and brushed the grit off her knee. Good luck with that one, kid, she thought to herself as they rounded the corner and disappeared.
She carried on into the quiet side street between Infernal Iron Tattoo and Henk’s Deli and Grocery, an establishment best described as “completely adequate.” You’d think the pressures of making rent in the East Village would compel a little extra effort in a place’s food offerings. You’d be mistaken.
One of the only redeeming qualities of Henk’s, aside from its proximity, was its next door neighbor: Waterdeep Floristry. It shone as a green oasis in a sea of hot asphalt, coaxing her into its leafy shade and out of the scorching July sun. She let herself waver from her path to linger under its awning, where crates overflowing with tulips and lavender and tightly-budded peonies spilled onto the sidewalk. Scanning the display, her eye was drawn to a bouquet of orchids in a riot of mismatched colors, alone and a little sad in a box near the entrance.
Eager, she bent to bury her face in them and inhale. A disharmony of different scents bombarded her all at once, from light and citrusy to deep and earthy. Each flower with its own full-bodied, uncompromising personality. She hummed contentedly.
“Typical,” a familiar, accented voice mused.
She lifted her head to find a lean figure with dark hair swept back into a low bun peering at her from the door of the shop. The same figure who featured in a frankly humiliating number of her dreams; the real reason she was caught in the shop’s gravitational pull. Her heart slammed into its highest gear.
“Of course it is,” she replied, firmly ignoring the way he made her insides flip. “Hi, Gale.”
He gave her a small, polite smile of greeting. The perfect lines of his strong cheekbones and surprisingly soft mouth made incredibly tempting places for her eye to linger, as they always did, but she determinedly kept her eyes fixed on his. She’d hoped that after nearly a year of them being neighbors, her absurd instant crush would have abated enough for her to have a normal conversation with him, but every new thing she learned about him only drove her crazier.
It just didn’t make sense, she thought as he ambled into the dappled sunlight on his front step. Her last ex had been a bassist in a mostly-listenable punk band, and the one before that was a fellow tattoo artist over the bridge in Brooklyn. But then Gale, in his tie and button-up and neat little apron, had set up shop across the street last summer. And he’d come over to introduce himself to her and Karlach with a little vase of flowers and a dazzling smile, and before she knew what was happening, she was fucking gone.
And, crucially, she remembered with a melancholy pang: there was absolutely nothing she could do about it, because there was no way in hell someone as soft and darling as he was could look at her—defiant and hard, with eyeliner on her shirt and her life barely together—and see someone lovable.
Her stupid heart nevertheless went on fluttering.
Crinkles appeared on his strong nose as his eyes shone with amusement. She realized she’d literally forgotten to breathe. God, this was hopeless.
“Hello,” he replied, warm and wry. “You are terribly easy to predict in your affinity for my most pungent flowers.”
“Why is everyone but me a fucking philistine about orchids?” She straightened, gesturing animatedly. “Just because something is distinctive—”
“—overpowering, more like,” he teased.
“—does not mean it’s not worth having. You never know what you’re going to get with an orchid. That’s a good thing. Imagine if you always knew, every single time, exactly what your food would taste like, huh? You’d be so bored without the promise of a surprise.”
Gale leaned against the doorframe, studying her in that singular way of his. She felt like a specimen in his greenhouse sometimes. His dark eyes, warm and kind as they were, belied an exacting sharpness that she still didn’t fully understand.
“Well, seeing as those have been out since Tuesday and haven’t sold,” he said, inclining his head toward the bouquet in front of her, “and as you’ve defended their honor so ardently, why don’t you take them off my philistine hands?”
She chewed the inside of her cheek as she sized him up. Her gaze darted from his wry face to the flowers, then back again, making a big show of being reluctant.
“All right, you don’t have to beg.” He broke into a relieved smile as she hefted the bouquet into her arm. He must have really been struggling to get rid of these. “How are things over here, other than your orchid problems?”
He sighed wearily, running a broad hand (stop staring at his hands) over his casually arranged hair. “Still wedding season.”
She winced in sympathy. “Oof. I bet you’re slammed.”
“Putting it mildly,” he agreed. “And yourself?”
She shrugged, shifting the flowers higher up her arm. “Same old. Summer’s good because more people have time to get tattoos, but it’s also mostly college kids, so the work gets kind of same-y. The trends this year are moths, birthdates, and cowboy boots, in case you were wondering.”
He laughed, and she couldn’t help but smile in return. “You know? I was.”
There was a lull of silence. Gale shifted, suddenly interested in a loose thread on the pocket of his apron. “If you’re not terribly busy,” he began haltingly, “perhaps you wouldn’t mind—”
“Hey, Tav!” Karlach’s voice carried from across the street. She spun around to see her waving like she was shipwrecked.
“Whaddya want?” she yelled back.
“A protein bar!” She stuck her head back into the shop for a moment, as though she was listening for something. “And a black coffee!”
“Got it!” She flashed Karlach a thumbs-up before turning back to Gale. “Sorry. What do you need?”
“Oh, nothing of import,” he said, taking a half-step back from the stoop. “I shan’t keep you. Enjoy the flowers, Tav; I’m delighted to know they’re going to a good home.” With a little bow, he disappeared back into his shop.
“Bye Gale,” she called after him, already missing him in spite of herself. “Thank you!”
“You’re welcome!” his muffled voice replied from within. Laden with her bounty, she wandered into the bodega next door and made surly, disagreeable Henk let her trade money for goods and services.
On her way back to Infernal Iron, she spared a glance back at the florist shop. Gale’s silhouette moved across the open doorway, sweeping his black-and-white tile floor. He didn’t look up.
Leave it, she admonished herself. With a sharp exhale, she put her head down and hustled to deliver Karlach and her drowsy client their provisions.
The rest of the day passed in a busy blur, culminating with a gaggle of five girls who’d booked her to give them coordinating Disney princess tattoos. Not her usual style, but they were paying cash, so whatever—until two of them demanded dibs on Jasmine. The ensuing conflict nearly ended all five friendships in the middle of the appointment, and was only salvaged by Karlach’s swift and plainspoken involvement.
“Jesus Christ,” Tav groaned after the gaggle of tenuously-still-friends finally shuffled out of sight. She flipped the sign on the door from Come on in! to Catch us later! with a decisive smack. “Thanks for getting involved. I was in the middle of Cinderella when they fucking kicked off, and I swear the girl on the table was about to just walk out with approximately two-thirds of a princess.”
Karlach laughed in her hearty, bone-warming way. “No worries. The trick is to give neither of them what they want. That way, everyone’s equally disappointed.”
After she had imposed herself on the bickering pair, biceps conspicuously displayed, she’d declared that either they could leave or one could get Rapunzel and one could get Aurora, because “those are the two I can think of and they’re all the same anyway.” Begrudgingly, they’d agreed.
“Fucking college kids, man,” she continued, shaking her head with a lingering smile. “Their brains aren’t done cooking, that’s the issue. Good money, though.”
“Hell yeah it is.” Tav scooped the wad of bills off of the counter and leafed through them again. “Three hundred times five is fifteen hundred, right?”
“Lemme think—yeah! Phew, I’m jealous. Don’t blow it all on hookers and beer.”
Tav waggled her eyebrows at her across the shop. She snorted.
“Don’t blow most of it on hookers and beer,” she amended.
She stomped one combat boot and rolled her eyes theatrically. “Ugh, you’re no fun.”
After closing up and watching Karlach roar recklessly into the sunset on her motorcycle (and yet again politely refusing her offer of a ride), she set off into the sultry summer evening on her walk home. The day’s cash was a palpable weight in the locked pouch at the bottom of her backpack. All told, she’d brought in almost three grand. Enough to easily cover her part of the rent and have a little left over for fun, all in one day. She tried to keep her usual don’t-fuck-with-me scowl on as she clomped down the sidewalk, but the corners of her mouth kept raising of their own accord. This month was already shaping up to be one of her best yet.
Her thoughts briefly returned to Gale with a half-formed notion of what would really make this her best month yet, but she shot it down immediately. No moping allowed. Not tonight.
As she was arguing with herself, she passed the extravagantly decorated exterior of Blood Pact, her favorite almost-a-dive bar in the neighborhood. She stopped mid-stride. Turning, she caught her reflection in its heavily curtained windows.
It was only Thursday, but… didn’t she deserve a little treat?
Just one?
After a moment of dithering, she stepped up and through the heavy wooden door into the bar’s dimly lit interior. Cool, still air carrying a whiff of bourbon engulfed her like a wave, trickling across her scalp and winding around her bare legs. A sigh of relief escaped her as she let the chill sink into her summer-baked skin.
A scan of the darkened room yielded precious little in the way of seating. Her favorite spot by the window was occupied, and the rest of the low tables scattered around the place were packed full of students nursing beers and office workers on their second or third happy hour drink. At the bar at the back, though, she spied a lone seat waiting for her at the very end.
She hustled over there with a nod at the bartender (it looked like Wyll, the owner, today—which meant his terrifying husband was somewhere afoot as well) and slid onto the leather cushion, slipping her heavy bag off her shoulders with a thankful groan. As she fumbled to hang her bag on a hook under the bar, however, it swung and crashed into the trousered shin of the patron next to her. Fuck.
“Oh, god, sorry,” she yelped as she finally got the backpack seated on the hook.
“Quite all right,” the well-dressed stranger replied. “I—”
She sat up to look at him and found him already staring at her, lips parted in surprise. Heat instantly rushed to her cheeks, the tips of her ears, up her neck.
Gale. She’d plonked herself next to Gale and summarily hit him with her fucking backpack.
He’d removed his apron but kept his shirt and tie firmly in place for the bar, which was more endearing than it had any right to be. His hair was still pulled back into its low-slung knot at the nape of this neck, too, although tendrils had escaped over the course of the day’s labor to frame his face with dark wisps. Her heartbeat roared in her ears.
“You’re here!” she blurted before immediately clicking her jaw shut. Great. Astute fucking observation, Tav.
He chuckled softly. “As are you, it would seem. Hello again.”
“I mean,” she began again, collecting herself, “I’ve just never seen you out before. Or without the apron, honestly. But it’s, uh—I’m glad.”
He wrinkled his nose at her, amused. “Let me assure you, I am frequently out of my work clothes.”
Tav could feel her eyes go wide of their own accord. As he seemed to realize what he’d said, a pink flush to mirror her own gathered on the high points of his face. She turned away to wave at Wyll, who brought her a glass of ice water and a coaster.
“Gin and tonic?” he smiled. The only thing she ever ordered. She nodded gratefully, and he set about digging ice into a lowball glass for her.
“I, ah,” Gale continued as she snapped her head to him in surprise, “I’m glad as well. To see you out.”
She subtly gripped the counter for support. “You are?”
“Of course.” He nodded towards Wyll. “And to discover we’re both gin drinkers, apparently. It does soothe a weary head in a way other spirits just can’t touch.”
A half-drunk glass of what looked like gin and tonic sat sweating near his hand on the bar. She did her best to temper her smile into something casual. They were already approaching the record for the most words they’d ever exchanged at once. The heady thrill of unexpected time with him was finally beginning to take hold, despite her best efforts to tamp it down.
“For sure,” she replied. “And goddamn, could my head use some soothing. I had a hell of an afternoon.”
Right on time, Wyll reappeared and slid her drink across the bar to her, and she thanked him profusely.
A deep furrow appeared between Gale’s eyebrows as he considered her. “Heavens, are you all right? What happened?”
She waved her hand dismissively, trying hard not to grin at his antiquated little turns of phrase. Heavens. “I’m fine, I’m being dramatic. I had five girls come in together and start fighting halfway through their appointment. It was really fucking stupid.”
“Fighting?”
“Mm hm.” She took a long sip of her drink. The blast of gin, ice, and lemon cooled her from the inside out and melted away a knot of tension at the base of her neck. She nearly sobbed with relief. “My co-owner took care of it before it got out of hand, but it was still just kind of disrespectful of my time and my shop. You know? I’m trying really hard not to be a grumpy old bitch about it, anyway.”
He nodded sympathetically. “I don’t think you’re a… I think that’s a perfectly valid way to feel,” he stammered. “Were these the youths you were telling me about? Did they request cowboy boots?”
She coughed into her drink. “Not this time. Can’t believe you remembered,” she grinned. His dark eyes snapped to hers.
“Of course I remember,” he said, suddenly serious.
Silence fell between them, tense and crackling. He tipped the rest of his drink back and drained the glass.
The airless feeling that she should say something, ask him what the hell he meant by that clawed in her chest and up her throat, but the words wouldn’t come. She slammed the rest of her drink, just as he had. Gale signaled the bartender for more.
As she continued to spiral, he nervously fussed with the cuff of his shirt, unbuttoning it and letting it gape open to past his wrist as he arranged it back into place. A flash of black ink came into view as he—
Tav froze. She waited a moment, blinked several times, maybe it was a trick of the light. No. That was the edge of a tattoo. Right on his arm.
Her thoughts flew apart. Were there more? There had to be more. How many? Of what? In the span of a moment, her image of Gale as a timid florist nearly alien in his mundanity dissolved like mist. In its place was the man in front of her now. Disheveled, effortlessly devastating, passing her their second round of cocktails in the back of a darkened bar.
She had to know more about him.
“Hey Gale?” she finally said as she accepted her drink. He cocked his head at her anxiously. “Do me a favor.”
“Of course,” he replied. She grinned at him over the rim of her glass.
“Roll your sleeves up for me.”
His eyebrows furrowed for a moment before he comprehended exactly what she wanted. She could practically see it click into place. He hastily stowed his arm in his lap.
“I—oh.” He swallowed. She leaned on the bar, trying very hard to project casual ease and not the chaos of emotions currently burning through all of her remaining working neurons. “I don’t… do that. Generally.”
Her hand clapped over her mouth to hide her grin. “Oh my god, is it embarrassing? Oh my god, is it your Hogwarts house? Let me guess, you picked—”
“For the love of—no!” he spluttered. A few heads turned to look at them and he awkwardly waved in apology. Leaning close to her, he lowered his voice to a whisper. “Nothing of the sort, I can assure you. Although it is, nonetheless, embarrassing.”
She shrugged. “You know I’ve seen everything. I won’t judge.”
He sighed, looking as though he were about to argue, but finally relented. “I suppose that’s true.”
“It’s totally true,” she nodded, encouraging. “I’m sure it’s so fine, I promise. Look, I once had a client who’d had his dick tattooed to look like a pickle—it can’t get worse than that.”
He abruptly set his drink down as he coughed, gasping for air around aspirated gin and tonic. “He’d had his—did he show it to you?”
“Oh yeah! And Karlach, and the guy in the other chair,” she reminisced. “Sweet guy, really, just a little fucked in the head.”
Gale groaned and swiped a hand down his face, taking a steadying breath. “All right. Here.”
Anticipation nearly made her levitate off the bar stool as he undid the button on one neatly starched cuff, then rolled it upwards. A row of text appeared, followed by another, from the middle of his forearm up to his elbow. She gasped into her hands, delighted beyond coherency.
Before he could undo the other cuff, she seized his wrist and pulled it toward her on the bar top, squinting to analyze his forearm in the low light. It was text, certainly, done in a plain and classic font, but she couldn’t quite make out the words.
“It’s a poem,” he said, melancholy, so close she could feel the warmth of his breath. “William Carlos Williams.”
“What does it say?”
He took another deep breath. In, then out. “It says,
unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
a splash quite unnoticed
this
was
Icarus drowning.”
Oh.
“And…” he sighed, easing out of her grip to roll up his other sleeve. He offered his bared arms to her side by side, and she reached out to cradle them without thinking. More text.
“...so is this one.” She didn’t have to ask this time before he began reciting.
“Not in this grave
will I lie
more than a summer
holiday!
Dig it deep, no
matter, I
will break that sleep
and run away.”
She gingerly ran her thumbs over the ink, feeling the nearly imperceptible scars on his soft skin. The lines looked clean; the kerning was consistent. Whoever had done this, they’d done a solid job.
“I don’t know why you’re embarrassed of them,” she said. “It’s good work.”
He huffed a humorless laugh. “It’s not the work, it’s the man I was when I got the work. It’s a sad story that I won’t burden you with, but suffice it to say I married far too young and divorced far too late. The period afterward was… turbulent. I was someone I’m not proud of. Pretentious, too, as you can see.”
She dismissed his self-deprecation with a shake of her head. Divorced. Huh. He’d lived a lot more life than she’d given him credit for. She hummed in sympathy, in recognition. How many of her pieces had she picked up in the low points of her life? Nearly half, if not more than.
“That’s seriously nothing to be ashamed of. Tattoos are proof that you survived, ultimately, right? You were this person, and you healed and grew beyond him. That’s worth remembering.” Her thumbs swept over the text again. “If you’re ever bothered enough to want them covered, I’m happy to do it, but I would keep them if it were me. They’re objectively really cool, Gale. Don’t feel like you have to hide them. Fuck anyone who tells you different.”
He fidgeted in her grasp, but didn’t pull away. “I… will take it under consideration. I’d never thought of it that way before, to be honest. You’re extremely kind to say so.”
“I’m really not,” she scoffed.
“Yes, you are.”
She glanced up to look at him and realized how close he was. The barely-there warmth of his breath on her skin made her dizzy. He met her gaze with dark, wide eyes, his pupils enormous as they roamed her face.
“Tav,” he half-whispered. “I have to confess, I was shocked to see you here because I intended to invite you here. Tonight. When you came by my shop, I mean.”
The noise and chatter of the busy bar around them faded away completely. What. What.
“Invite me here?” she repeated dumbly.
The pink in his cheeks was a full rosy flush now, spreading to the tips of his ears. “Yes.”
Her brow furrowed. “Like, to hang out?”
He swallowed. She continued to watch, uncomprehending, as he squeezed his eyes shut and took a steadying breath. “For a date. I was going to ask you on a date.”
Her ears rang. His arms were still cradled in both of her hands, she realized, but she couldn’t summon the will or motor skills to release him. If anything, her fingers tightened slightly. Just to make sure he was really there.
“But as usual, I lost my nerve,” he continued, pained, “and now here I am telling you this in perhaps the least thoughtful way I could have chosen, but I couldn’t bear it for a moment longer. I’m sorry, Tav. You deserve to know, you must know already—I adore you. You are kind, and funny, and brilliant, and you should be told so every day of your life.”
She sat completely paralyzed as Gale looked into her eyes, so deeply and searchingly that he had to know, too. He had to be reading her like a paperback; it had to be so mortifyingly obvious that she was fucking obsessed with him.
He gave her his sad little half-smile, one of her favorites. “I don’t expect you to reciprocate, not to worry. We can go back to our usual friendship with no hard feelings whatsoever. Truly, I only thought you deserved to know—”
She lunged off of her barstool and slotted her mouth over his, muffling the rest of his sentence into a shocked mmph. She pulled his arms to wrap around her waist as she stood between his knees, desperate to finally be close to him, and he fisted his hands in the back of her billowy t-shirt like he was trying to keep her anchored to earth. He tasted of gin and ice and lemon and him. The lights in the long corridors of her brain shorted out one by one as he returned the kiss with clumsy enthusiasm.
“What?” he gasped when they finally surfaced for air. “Tav, what—not that this is unwelcome, not at all, but it is a surprise—”
“I’ve had a crush on you since we met,” she finally, finally confessed. “I fucking adore you, too. So much, Gale. So much, you have no idea.”
With the admission, a knot that had long made its home in her stomach unraveled. His face split into a heartbreakingly sincere grin. “That is astonishing news, because I’ve been hopelessly pining for you since the moment I introduced myself. I never dreamed… oh, Tav.”
“Why?” she asked, genuinely baffled. He spluttered a laugh and held onto her even tighter.
“Why was I hopelessly pining for you?” He shook his head, and tendrils of his thick hair fluttered across his cheekbones. “Would you like a list? Perhaps a tautological proof of my affection?”
“Don’t know what that is, but yeah, kind of?” she answered. He laughed again. “Gale, come on, look at me. I’m scary. Nice men with flower shops don’t pine for me, in my experience.”
He worried his lip between his teeth as he leaned back and considered her. Even in the dark, she could feel the heat of his gaze as it traced her face, down her neck, along the winding maze of artwork on her arms.
“You are scary. Terrifying, on occasion. And perfect,” he rasped. He pulled her in to press a brief, hungry kiss to her lips, and her knees nearly buckled. “I will insist on remaining a nice man, but if the flower shop is truly an obstacle to my devotion—by all means, please intimidate me into selling it.”
Her knees did buckle that time, a heavy wave of shock and arousal suddenly depriving her brain of blood, and he chuckled nervously in her ear as he caught her. She reassured him with a flurry of kisses to his flushed cheek as she regained her footing.
“I bet you’d like it if I did.” He smirked, a playful gleam in his eye, and her heart leaped into her mouth. “Oh, that’s very fucking tempting. But then, where would I get my orchids?”
One of his wonderful hands settled at the nape of her neck as he surveyed her. The pads of his fingers briefly traced circles in her buzzed hair, and she melted into the touch.
“I would grow them,” he said simply. “I’d grow you hundreds of orchids. Thousands. I’d keep you in orchids for years, if you’d let me.”
She dove back in to kiss him senseless, but was soon interrupted by a discreet throat-clearing to her left. Wyll crossed his arms behind the bar, trying and failing to keep the amusement off his face. Next to him, his silver-haired nightmare of a spouse—Adrian? Agamemnon?—was smirking at the two of them like a fucking cartoon villain.
“We usually charge people by the hour to do that, you know,” he drawled. Wyll pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Astarion!” Astarion, that was his name. “We do not. However, we will lovingly and compassionately request that you not do… that, in here. At least not before eight on a weeknight.”
Sheepish, they broke apart like caught teenagers. Gale retrieved a fifty-dollar bill from his pocket and slipped it onto the bar without a word or a direct look at anyone.
“Don’t forget your bag,” he said to her in a hushed voice, reaching down to slip her backpack off its hook and hand it to her. “Many apologies, gentlemen; it won’t happen again. Shall we?”
“Oh, don’t say that,” Astarion pouted. Tav’s face burned bright red as Gale took her by the hand and gently guided her toward the exit. They kept their heads down and tried to scurry away with as little fanfare as possible, but a few wolf whistles and jeers of encouragement still followed them out of the bar.
She pulled the door shut behind them with a hurried slam. They looked at each other for a long, stunned moment.
Both of them dissolved into cackling. She leaned into the solid warmth of his chest for support, and he slipped his arms around her and held her tightly to him on the darkening sidewalk, his rich laugh resonating from his ribcage into hers.
The streetlight above their heads clicked on just as they regained their composure. Even under its pallid glare, he remained absolutely radiant, all olive skin and pink cheeks and happy crinkles at his eyes and mouth. The unreality of the moment made her feel like she was out of her body for a brief second, as though she’d dreamed him, but then he was kissing her again and she was too incandescently happy to care. She looped her arms around his neck and slipped her tongue into his mouth. A desperate moan rumbled deep in his throat.
“Tell me if I’m coming on too strong,” she panted, looking up at him with searching eyes, “but I think we should find somewhere more private than Avenue B.”
His breath shuddered from him. “God above, yes. Yes. We’d have to take the subway to get to mine; do you live close by?”
“Yeah, but,” she wrinkled her nose. “I, uh, have roommates. Three of them. And they’re siblings.”
“Your siblings?”
“No, they’re just siblings. Well, Cal and Lia are brother and sister, and I’m pretty sure Rolan is in there somehow. I’m the odd one out they found on Craigslist.”
“And I take it that bringing a strange man home from a bar on a weeknight would be…”
“Something I hear about for the rest of my life, yes.”
“Damn,” he swore, but his expression remained gentle and amused. Fuck, he was adorable. She had to get him horizontal immediately. “I may have an alternative idea, if you’re willing to be a tad unconventional.”
She raised her eyebrows at him. First the tattoos, now he wanted to get unconventional.
He twisted to look over his shoulder. “There’s a hotel a few blocks that way. Perhaps we could—”
“The Ludlow?” she interjected. “Holy shit, Gale, that place is like four hundred a night!”
“At present, I’d pay much more for much less,” he said, strained. “Please. Let me.”
Speechless, she just nodded. They took off down the sidewalk without another word. He tugged on the strap of her backpack, and she let him slip it off of her shoulders to hang on one of his.
“Such a gentleman,” she teased. “I could get used to this.”
“You absolutely should,” he replied. He switched the bag to his other shoulder so he could take her hand, properly this time.