2019-06-08 - Bad Dates & Good Ubers

It’s late on a Saturday night when the texts start. Is it possible to read Harper as more than a little tipsy? Is it endearing that she uses full words and punctuation in her texts? Nick's phone buzzes or dings a little notification. Then another. Then another. They come in three to ten minute intervals. Harper doesn’t drink much. And there are Reasons Why.

Text from Harper: Alcohol. Too much. Do you like to dance? Think my date thinks he’s taking me home. Handsy. Too handsy. Won’t stop. Wish you.
Text from Harper: were here would take me away. Can’t drive home. High
Text from Harper: mainte-nancy. Not very soft. Just regular eyes.
Text from Harper: Too many hands. Jumbly kisses. Don’t like. Can’t remember how to get Uber. Can’t get away unless order more drinks.

Wish you.
Those words occupy his stare for at least a long, full minute as he swings on the porch, Harper's latest literary delivery lying open-faced on his chest. That second text, however, elicits a sigh and an 'Oh'. Of course. Frienduber, why would he think anything otherwise? But the third text swings that pendulum back. Sort of.

"God damn it," he growls as he rolls out of the swing, catching the book in his hand and putting his feet into the boots before pulling them on. She's teasing him. Using his words against her. See, this is why guys do not confide in these things with mere friends. They get used as weapons. With a few thumbstrokes, she gets:

Text from Nicholas: On my way.

Funny. She never told him where she was. He just knows that she's at the dance club.

Once he’s thought about the club – Nick realizes it’s in the next town over. Farther away. There’s a spinning sensation to his connection to Harper. There are flashes of strobe lights. Crowds of people dancing, laughing, grinding, playing. Nicholas gets a good look at a man dressed in jeans, a black T and a dark jacket smiling down at Harper. “You have the most kissable mouth, Harper,” he slurs, reaching around to pull her up against his chest as the speed of the music slows, growls through the club, the thump still reverberating, just more slowly. “Is it true what they say about librarians? I wanna know.” He’s not unkempt. His hair is short-short, just this side of military. Harper’s hands jump up against his chest between them, not quite shoving him back, but keeping distance, even those scant inches.

These lights make the room feel like it’s spinning,” Harper observes in what could be, to Nick, either an off-putting or endearing slur of her words. Weakness. Prey. Vulnerability. Yet still that smile in her voice, the one he’s come to know the tenor of in so many manifestations. Can she ever /not/ be friendly and welcoming? This would be the time as he senses her desire to break free, to get out into the crisp, cool air outside. (Harper’s attire: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/493073859203731905/ )

Uber app. Uber app. She needs to remember how that works. Why can’t she remember? The man isn’t quite as tall as Nicholas, and, though he is fit, he doesn’t have the strength Nicholas has either. But it doesn’t take much strength to – he thinks – teasingly seduce the more-than-tipsy librarian whose silky-dark hair fell out of its up-do over an hour ago during some fast dancing, laughter and delight more prevalent in her eyes then. Fred (we’ll call him) holds her gaze and leans down for (another) kiss, and Harper last-moment turns her cheek into the path of that open mouth. She laughs a little, pleased with her success and the fact that the music has spun up again. “Let’s dance!” she announces. And she somehow extricates herself from Fred’s arms and begins tearing up the dance floor with moves that just make the span of skin visible at her midriff that much more intriguing. Hips wiggling. Arms waving. She makes herself too fast of a moving target for him to do anything but dance along with her. She’s out of breath and truly does feel as though the room is going to tip her over any moment.

So much inward imagery for Nick's mind while he drives. There can be no doubt that he's in her brain now. Or she's in his. Or both.

Such is the concentration in Nicholas as he drives the road like he has a thousand times before, flying down through the curves in the dark, no care to the threat of deer or other large animals in his path. /Stay with me, Harper/ he growls, somehow feeling her half-panic, her whole-confusion, overlaid to his own growing anger. Someone is going to get laid out tonight, and this is the moment where a pissed-off Nicholas suddenly questions his sanity.

Going off half-cocked seems to take on a whole meaning, and as his foot comes off of the accelerator just a bit, he takes a slow, deep breath. A breath that seems to also convey across the connection. Calm. Strength. Surety. Nicholas is coming.

Harper’s legs tangle at Nick’s growled connection, the tiniest taste of that anger, then his confusion, his pulling back. She ends up on the sticky dance floor, her head hanging for a moment, hair falling forward, her palms both pressed flat to the seemingly-spinning floor. He, all of the sudden, knows how much she HATES being drunk. How the loss of control makes her angrier than any feeling he’s ever felt from her before. Anger isn’t /in/ Harper’s usual repertoire.

Nicholas is coming. For a moment he knows with abject certainty that she’s briefly believing that the hand on her shoulder that slides to her elbow, then lifts her hand – that said hand is Nick’s. Wishes that another slow song returns. Wonders about how it would feel different to be in /his/ arms.

Then she’s on her feet again, swaying a little. “Can I have something to drink? Maybe iced tea?” she asks Fred. Fred who is delighted to make her happy enough to come back to his place, smug that he’s the one with the car. Maybe even a little action /in/ the car. Can Nick sense Fred the way Harper can, through that link? “Sure, baby girl,” he answers and disappears into the crowd toward the hopping bar counter. Harper edges her way to the periphery of those standing and sitting outside the dance space. She lifts her phone.

Text from Harper: don’t want to be here anymore. Send ambulance.

He slams the palm of his hand into the steering wheel, "NO!" and tromps the gas pedal. 95 in a 45 is a dangerous way to live life, but sometimes, it is more about the getting there. Lights ahead, then overhead, then the colors of the club. Careening to a sliding stop at a curb across the street, attracting looks as he slams the truck door.

Uhoh. Another jealous husband or boyfriend or stalker, the club bouncer decides, based entirely off the way that Nicholas is not dressed for the place and his facial expression. "Hey..." comes the calm voice of the big man. "NOT NOW, Jimmy!" snarls Nicholas as he storms right past him and up the four steps into the old building converted into the bright rave club hangout.

Fred is just returning to Harper carrying a beer and a Long Island Iced Tea for Harper whose request was for something to help take the drunk edge off. She accepts the glass unwittingly, then downs half of it in an effort to clear her mind. Fred chuckles darkly, his plans more visible in his eyes now as he wraps an arm around her shoulders and starts whispering beside her ear what he’d like to do. How he thinks they could get a good start in his car. With her mouth on him. How he could make it /real good/ for her, honey. Is she ready to go, he inquires, because damn he’s been ready awhile now. Harper chokes a little on the drink as, halfway gone, she realizes it is laden with alcohol and because the mental image of what’s in the man’s pants is abruptly such a turn-off she feels nauseous. Not one text back from Nicholas that she can remember in this state.

She tips her head up and back, straightening her held shoulders. She’s going to have to take care of herself. And isn’t that what it always comes down to? In this world? In /her/ life? “I need to use the ladies’ room,” Harper tells Fred in a slight slur. This only makes Fred certain she’s just about ready to leave. “Sure, honey.” He reaches for her drink and Harper heads off in a roundabout way around the room to finally find the bathroom marked ‘Women’. Fred lingers where they stood, watching other women dancing on the dance floor and mentally rating them in his mind. He’s about to get lucky. Real lucky. A hot librarian. That ticks of several items off his to-do list.

It is under this barrage of mixed images, so confused and wrong-feeling, that Nicholas is under when he finds Harper in the back hallway with the line of women half-gossiping and half-waiting for the ladies room. His hand on her arm, turning her, a hard sigh as he finds her okay. "Harps," he says, maybe a touch too harshly for the adrenaline in his system, the pounding in his bloodstream. Right behind him is big Jimmy, the bouncer.

"Come on, man!" Jimmy says in a not-nice tone, grabbing for Nicholas' arm, which of course spins the latter man in a fury. Up comes Nick's finger to jab into Jim's sternum, "STOP." That shout in the bouncer's face is enough to shock him silent for a moment, allowing Nicholas to finish, "I am getting my friend out of here because you can't tell when girls are being preyed on. So I'm here to do YOUR fucking job, Jimmy! FUCK, you were always worthless!"

Spinning back to Harper, he reaches carefully to take her hand, "Harper, come on, I'll get you home, okay?"

Poor Jimmy, just trying to do his job in a teeming club rife with mixed messages and hook-ups where women play hard to get all the time. Harper cringes in the most heart-breaking way when her arm is taken and is about to twist away when she simultaneously /hears/ Nick's soothing voice and tips her warm-brown (and, tonight, lost) gaze up to find his steady, reassuring blue eyes. Is he really here? Now? Has she jumped into his mind somehow and lost track of which version of The Real she is actually in? But then a smile of relief superimposes itself over the growl deep within that awakens her the way Fred was never going to. "Granholm," she whispers thickly, interrupted by Jimmy's good-intentioned attempt to stop what this looks like, but isn’t. She looks, dazedly, to Jimmy, her brows furrowing as she watches Nick's finger poke into the burly bouncer's chest. Too tangled up. Too confusing. So she just holds onto the last.

"It's okay," she placates to Jimmy and Nicholas both, words faintly slurred. "He's my friend and I ... think I texted him." Her fingers slide through Nick’s as if they were made to be there and nowhere else in the god-damned, dark and horror filled world. "You came," she announces on the edge of a breath, staring up at Nicholas now with a very complicated, tangled expression. Depending on Nick’s head-space and his divided attention, he may or may not register the startlingly atypical and suggestive attire she’s wearing - suggestive at least given what Harper usually wears (the so-called queen of cardigans).

She's momentarily confused. Can she dance with /him/ now? But the spinning. "Thank you." Then Harper asks, "Do you drive for Uber, too?" Because in her mind texting him and trying to figure out a way to get an Uber are now all tangled with her fantasies of dancing with, being alone in a car with, being pulled close by: Nicholas. It's a dangerous mental link. He gets it all, but it will have the effect of making him feel momentarily as drunk as she does. Pulling back into his own mind, even partially, and he'll be sober again.

It's a mental assault, a staggering one that rocks him back on his heels, clinging to her arm for balance. Jimmy is imposing, Harper is so fucking alluring, and Nicholas has to get out of there. His mind is not his own right now. Tugging her, he brushes hard past big Jimmy and heads for the door. Whether or not Fred catches sight of his date being guided out the door by a stranger, really doesn't register with Nicholas. He just needs to get her the fuck out of there, now. The lights and music were blinding him, swimming his brain until they were out into the night air again. Toward his truck he helps her, glancing over his shoulder to watch Jimmy see them off.

Fred is entirely unaware that his date is being secreted to the door and out of the club while he waits with half a hard-on for the drunk librarian. Harper only stumbles once or twice as she is both firmly and gently led outside into the blissful night air and then toward Nicholas' truck. "I'm -- sorry to be such a bother. I usuallallally don't have problem--atic dates." She dates maybe two or three times a year. And never has one gone like this one. She accepted the date after the strange, tangled conversation slash not-date with Nicholas on the beach, with perception and misperception fighting like dogs in her mind. Not her most lucid decision. She turns toward Nicholas on the bench seat, oblivious to such things as putting on a seat-belt. "I just ..." she throws her hands up in the air in drunken exasperation. "... really messed things up." Isn't that the truth? In the much larger sense.

He stares out the window for a moment, unable to think... but as she gets upset, he can only think of one way. Turning, he pulls her face around toward him and mutters a dark, dismissive, "Shut up." Planting his mouth against hers, works her lips against his own until her brain registers the kiss and reacts. Before she is allowed to, he jerks his mouth away, panting from the adrenaline, touching the back of his hand to his mouth as if to trap the sensation of her there.... and he starts the truck. Pulling out onto the street in a U-turn, he points the truck back toward Gray Harbor. Back into the dark.

He might be able to silence her with a kiss quite deftly. But just because her reaction time is way-low doesn't mean she'll just settle into her seat and shut up after that. In fact, ah, that kiss. She tastes like liquor and Harper: the faintest bit of cinnamon and oh-so-much-more woman than her breath was ever indicative of. Her lips are full, soft, and slightly parted as he steals that kiss, shushes her with it, and stops her spinning world only to careen it in a different direction. Instead of kissing him back, she slowly shifts her body so that she is on her knees on that bench seat, her kneecaps nudging against the outside of his nearer thigh as a small, world-shattering moan exhales with the sudden absence of his mouth. And bloody hell, that moan transcribes into his name, on the same breath, in the same wanton tone, around, between and through drunken thoughts and words. Is she dreaming this again? But his taste. She barely can taste him on her lips as she darts her tongue out to lick them. If he drives in silence, she'll perch there, watching his profile from much too close, her thoughts amplified and ricocheting between them. <<Do that again.>>

He pulls over abruptly in some remote driveway, sliding to a crunchy stop in the gravel and slams the truck into Park. Grabbing Harper by the shoulders, he twists her, turns her, throwing her across his lap and bumping her head on the hard steering wheel. Those delicious lips are claimed again, the shudders of his body crushing her close unmistakable. His kiss quivers against her lips, his tongue sliding to taste hers, a moan from his lips that turns into a low growl. An internal fight. Part surrender and part self-punishment, "Harper," he whispers against those pillowy tiers, "gods..."

Drunk, her body is easier to maneuver than ever, and remarkably light. But soft. And warm. And /dressed/ the way she's dressed. And drunk more now on Nicholas than the alcohol - which is significantly so. (For Harper.). Momentum slides her from her sideways kneel toward the dash as the truck stops so quickly in the gravel. Then it seems like the space of a blink, the tiniest thought of his action translating to the belief that he is going to literally throw her out his driver-side window before he has jostled her to bump her head against the steering wheel, settled her across his lap, her behind perched on his thighs, her bare knees (since she's wearing those black shorts) nudged against the outer side of his denim-clad hips, the steering wheel pushing firmly against her back. But this time it's different. This time by the time he's leaning in, drawing her toward him with strong hands, her breathing has hitched and she melts into his kiss, her lips moving ever so slightly beneath his.

She moans again - moans so softly in her throat - as his tongue finds hers and she receives a /real/ taste of the man who has haunted her dreams recently. It's only when he wrestles conflict that she remembers she has hands and lifts them to his stomach to slide palms very slowly up to and over his chest. In her mind the thoughts are delayed like the actions, but no less moan-worthy. Nicholas is kissing her. Why is he kissing her? How does he taste so good? Is he stopping? Does this mean something else other than what it feels? And ... again and again, how it feels. Low in her stomach muscles clench that she doesn't often use. A shiver rolls over what feels like the entirety of her body, leaving no part unwashed in sheer, drunken pleasure. She holds her lips close to his as he speaks, drawing his breath into her lungs as if it were keeping her alive. Time passes and her sensations and tumble of questions assault Nick's psyche. "You taste -- like music and chocolate and Neruda's words." Oh the maddening way her lips move so close to his when she speaks, what a tease her breath is against his mouth.

He stumbles without moving, "Who the fuck is Neruda?" he blurts against those lips before licking his own, refueling for more. Finding those eyes with his own, he studies her drunk. Uninhibited. "You called me, Harper," he explains needlessly as those strong hands grip her hips. Like she would slide away if he didn't hold her down.

"Harper," he pulls her eyes off of his mouth, "Are you okay?" Of course she's okay, she's with him now, and they're outside Gray Harbor, which ...changes things... but not by much. Those tiny movementts have his attention, all of it, even as her knees squeeze at his hips on the seat.

Who is Pablo Neruda? That question is almost absurd to her as him asking if she is okay. Especially while the weight of those strong hands holds down her slim hips. Her brown eyes glitter in the darkness of the cab, lit only by dashboard gauges and dim driving lights. Her answer is very ... Harper. But there is a thrum to it. A cadence. As if she were speaking from memory while her eyes hold his in the tight confines of the driver's seat of his truck.

"Come with me, I said, and no one knew -- where, or how my pain throbbed, -- no carnations or bacaroles for me, -- only a wound that love had opened. -- " Harper pauses, breathes in, continues, her voice flowing through the words like honey. "I said it again: Come with me, as if I were dying, -- and no one saw the moon that bled in my mouth -- or the blood that rose into the silence. -- O Love, now we can forget the star that has such thorns!" And still she is clearly not finished.

"That is why, when I heard your voice repeat -- Come with me, it was as if you had let loose -- the grief, the love, the fury of a cork-trapped wine --" Harper's lips curve to an almost-smile now. "--that geysers flooding from deep in its vault: -- in my mouth I felt the taste of fire again, -- of blood and carnations, of rock and scald." Harper's words trail and the sonnet seems to echo with that honeyed thrum in the cab. The words, her own words that follow are far more slurred than the recitation's. "Am I okay? I am beyond words." Her own at least. Then a strange post-kiss realization and statement. "And /you/ kissed me."

The truck sits there, waiting for them, keeping them safe as lights drive by behind them sporadically on the main road. At first, he is confused, a tumult of crashing emotions and thoughts, all evening out with the Harper tone. That voice. A subdued melody of notes that stilled the mind and calmed his pounding heart.

Here she sat, in his lap, crushed between him and the steering wheel, and Harper is gushing poetry at him. His mind could barely focus on anything but the movement of her lips, the sound of her voice mesmerizing him, but somewhere deep down he was listening to the words. Nicholas sees the rapture in her eyes, the passion that swims and brims at the limits for her, barely even visible.

Silence. Heartbeats trying to time themselves together along with the breathing cadence. "I did," he admits, a bit shocked himself.

"Did I --" She tips her head in a pretty damn adorable fashion. "-- text you asking you to come kiss me?" Because if he said yes right now, she'd believe him. Her hands slip upward from the top of his chest to rest on his shoulders, only a few heartbeats later sifting downward over muscular arms, eventually to elbows, then further over forearms -- can a touch to a forearm be that intense? Apparently it can. "Maybe I /am/ in an Uber and I've fallen asleep." That. That right there? That's an admission about her dreams. Whether he catches it or not.

"You texted me," he admits, but doesn't take it further into any detail that would dispel her illusions as she touches him, feels him in an all-encompassing trip across his chest and down his arms. "You're not in an Uber, Harper, you're with me," he says, confused on whether she /wanted/ to just be dreaming this...

Star-crossed lovers. Ships passing in the night. Innuendo one-eightied to a possible negative instead of the definitely positive. "You are..." but his words trail off. Beautiful? Gorgeous? Strange? Why should a person be one word that they will fixate and obsess over for days, weeks? Harper is so many things, so many emotions, so many reactions. She is inexplicably entangled with him at the quantum level, he decides. Joined, for better or for worse.

She is .... waiting with baited breath for the completion of that statement. "And you came," she adds simply, finally when it looks as if Nick won't finish his thought. "To help me. When I was stupid and drunk and probably look like I've been dancing in a dumpster." And has that jerk's saliva all over her skin. Fred the jerk. Then she says again, "And you kissed me."

Still. Harper is in Nicholas' lap. They are parked in someone's long driveway, headlights shining into their dark windows at this late/early hour... and soon enough a porch light comes on. Nicholas takes Harper by the hips and gently, slowly dislodges her body from his and onto the seat beside him. "We gotta go," he whispers, nodding as he puts the truck into reverse and backs out onto the highway, righting the truck and focusing on the road.

She would feel elation rushing through him, shyness, confusion. A montage of colors and heats that reach like little tendrils for her. His arm pulls her back into the seat, tucked at his hip, pulled into his side. Just silent comfort of smiles and body heat (and the alcohol).

Harper is blissfully unaware of the house, its owner or anything other than the man whose lap she currently occupies, Hell, she's just blissful. Her fingers finally slip down to tangle with his on each hand just as he goes to move her /off/ of his lap. There a shudder of pain to the chest, an ache that echoes when she is moved, confusion. Did she do something wrong? What did she do wrong? But then he whispers and she nods as if she understands, dizzily looking back at the view out the front window. The pain in her chest eases with the taste of elation she drags in to clutch in her mind like a treasure. While drunk she is all Glimmer, all open. And he gets to get glimpses of her thoughts. ...not good enough for him. ...will kill him. ... if I took my shirt off? This all calms a bit when that strong arm reaches for her and pulls her close and Harper sighs, slides her farther hand around the front of Nick's waist and rests her cheek against his collarbone, breathing deeply the warm scent of him.

He feels guilt, knowing that her extrication from his lap wasn't the most noble or feelings-sensitive. Finding her knee with his hand, he grips it and holds, finally murmuring, "I kissed you." It is like the start of a conversation, a phrase meant to followed by a retort of "Yeah, but..." and then all the feelings tangle up. It at least breaks the silence that is currently only filled by Savage Garden's Truly Madly Deeply on the radio. Goddamned radio.

Harper slowly, slowly relaxes, her soft body molding to the hard planes of Nick's in all sorts of too good to be real ways. Now and then her head nods and catches and she endearingly starts the middle of a sentence each time she is jarred back to full, drunken consciousness. "-- the cupcakes?" and "-- riding in your ..." and "--on duty?" and " -- tried to stick his tongue down my throat." and " -- think you would again?" Thus passes the trip from one small town back to the other, darker small town.

He squeezes her knee, letting his hand slide slightly upward on that bare flesh. Nicholas can barely focus on the road, feeling these feelings all jumbled from her. Touching her.. just to soothe her. That alone has a profound effect on things. Pulling into Gray Harbor, Nicholas pulls the truck over at the beach and shuts it off.

"Harps," he whispers, turning to her, "You were on a date tonight... with some other guy. I shouldn't have been there, but you needed me, so I came to you." Something isn't right in his voice, in how the words are formed, where they are coming from. Far too logical... and, she might feel, devoid of reinforcing emotions. It's like they are rote words to rebuild the wall between them. But, all the time... he cannot take his eyes off those berry-plump lips.

Is there a way that he might /not/ notice how incredibly smooth the skin of her leg is under his palm and fingers? She stirs more when he stops the truck and peers out the window. If it didn't mean leaving the hold he has on her, she would roll down a window so she could enjoy the scent of Nick mingled with the salty scent of the sea. She pulls her head back as he turns to look at him and gazes up into his eyes with so much trust. As his barriers rise, hers fall away. They fit. They'll always fit. The logic supersedes thought, even drunk. "That was a bad choice, I know," to the first trailing statement. "But I was all -- tangled up and needed to get /out/ and he was nice enough when we met the other day. I thought --" About Nick. About how he shut down on the beach just as something sparked. He can see himself roll to his back and say 'Let's go with that.' "I don't know whether to apologize or thank you for coming. It's not my place to uh-- call you like that." She's pretty sure all of her impure and wistful thoughts brought him speeding to where she was. "And..." she feels into him as though her eyes were covered and her hands reaching out for contact. "You didn't want to kiss me, did you?" Her voice, little does she know, is a husky thrum as she gazes unwaveringly into his self-punishing eyes. Searching. Searching.

Two people who are convinced that everything that they touch dies a rotting death, and here they are, drawn to each other. "It's okay," he says to her apology, and for once, the sincerity is in his voice, it is a real statement from him. No sarcasm, no hidden meaning.

Staring into those eyes, into her, he cannot lie. "I've wanted to kiss you since last week." The truth. The bared-heart truth of it, from him, a rare moment... probably the first time that she's seen it. But, there is a red ring around that bright moment, the sensation that he is scared of it, too. The outcome. The Newton's Law of Gray Harbor Motion that will come slamming back on them like a wrecking ball.

No sarcasm. Honesty. Openness. And Gray Harbor flavored danger. Danger that hunts what they both love and turns it to abominations, or worse. Harper is soothed a bit by his 'it's okay' and her shoulders relax visibly. "Since last week?" she asks, her mind searching for some clue, fuzzy and muddled. "Then what took you so long?" she finally asks on a breath he can imagine buffeting his lips.

"I..." he starts to say, but can't help but blush and smile at that direction question. "I think that we have a lot to figure out," comes a whisper that shouldn't be drowned by a radio playing late-night, ignored, soft rock from a decade or three ago. But, he punctuates that sentence with another brush of his lips against hers, letting the gush of feelings rush at her like a Last Chance gas stop in the desert. A dying man's wish.