A/N: Thank you to blindspot-jeller who sent me with prompt [Jeller: The girls are having a drink at the bar and a guy starts to flirt with Jane. Kurt walks in (jealous and watches? or Walks up and wraps his arm around Jane?)]on tumblr. I love super original/somewhat out-there prompts like this one, and I was really happy to receive it. It was so much fun to write, so thank you! I kind of went both ways that you suggested; hope you don't mind. Enjoy! :)
. . .
Wally's is already packed full when Kurt arrives, and for once he even has to wait in line—behind four women of what might be of questionable drinking age—before he's allowed in. Over the mass of people, he scans the room, searching for familiar faces. His eyes linger on all the groups of people seated at tables—every single one in the bar is occupied—but he doesn't see who he's looking for. Usually Patterson, Jane, and Tasha get here early enough that they always manage to snag a table, but perhaps they came late this time and missed out on all the good real estate.
Or maybe they're not here at all. The longer he stares around searching for them, the more he's convinced that they've all moved onto the next place. Sometimes Jane is fine with crowds, and other times she can't stand them. Maybe they took one look in from the street, saw the mess of people in here, and decided to head to their second-best place.
Kurt feels a sharp twinge of disappointment after he realizes this and checks his phone, finding no messages of any kind; if they already took off, why didn't they let him know? It isn't like he came out to drink alone; the only reason he's here is because they invited him. He's just about to start texting one of them—probably Patterson, she's usually the ringleader in these forcibly-insert-Jane-into-society endeavors—when he spots a familiar face on the far side of the room.
It's Jane.
And she's—with a guy.
The sight is so unexpected that for a second, Kurt can't help but just stand there and stare. The man's tall, taller than Kurt himself, which makes him a good foot taller than Jane; he has to bend down a little to speak to her, but neither of them seem to mind. Kurt catches Jane smiling a little, even laughing once, and he tries not to be bothered by it, tries to be happy for her as she interacts with actual people in the real world. But all he ends up feeling is jealousy, hot and angry, stirring in the pit of his stomach, and he turns his head away, no longer wanting to watch her—or run the risk of her seeing him watching.
He looks for Patterson and Tasha, who are supposed to be with her, and finally spots them, on the far edge of the bar—too busy taking shots to pay any attention to anything around them. Pulling himself together with a quick breath, he's resigned himself to a night of hanging out with Tasha and Patterson, with him doing his best not to watch Jane out of the corner of his eye. Yes, that's exactly what this night will be like, he thinks sourly. He wishes he could say it's the first time he's ended a day of work with a drink in his hand and nothing but thoughts of her in his head, but that wouldn't be true. It wouldn't be anywhere close to the truth.
And so he can't help himself: just before stepping away to join Tasha and Patterson, he chances one last look at Jane. The tall guy is standing a little closer to her now, leaning a little further down towards her each time he speaks, and Kurt's about to turn right back around, because he could swear that if he gives them twenty more seconds, they'll be making out in the middle of the bar—
That's when she sees him. Her eyes widen in recognition at once, and when her companion's distracted for a second, taking a swig of his beer, she mouths the words Save me across the room at him. Kurt frowns, both worried and confused, but before she can say anything else, the tall man has pulled her back into conversation with a touch on the arm, and she has no choice but to tear her eyes away from Kurt.
Quickly, he glances over his shoulder at Tasha and Patterson, but they seem to be on round two—at least since he's gotten here—of their shots, and they aren't even looking in his direction, let alone Jane's. Frowning, Kurt bites back a heavy sigh, and pushes his way through the crowd towards Jane. He is not supposed to be on babysitting or rescue duty, he thinks. This is not his job. But, he has to admit to himself, it'll feel good to get this guy off Jane's back.
Kurt barely has to get within ten feet of the guy before he hears him, the guy's voice overly loud, somehow, even amongst the din in the bar.
"—and what was absolutely hilarious about the whole thing was that the lady didn't even realize what charge she was being brought up on. I mean, we'd been in court for over two hours! I seriously wanted to just stop my line of questioning and be like, 'Do you even have a brain?' But I managed to hold my tongue. You know, wouldn't be very professional of a newly promoted junior partner to—"
"Hey," Kurt calls out to Jane, still a few feet away but unable to listen to this asinine story drift towards him any longer. When he sees the blatant relief in her eyes, he wonders how long she's been trapped here, with apparently the most arrogant thirty-something lawyer in New York City (which is saying something, considering that class of people). "How long have you been here? I've been looking all over—"
Both Jane and the guy she's with jump a little as he shouts over the noise in the noise in the bar, cutting through the story.
"I didn't know you were here," Jane calls back, her face breaking in a wide smile that Kurt can't help but take full and personal credit for. "You said you'd be late!"
"Got out early," he replies, latching onto her story easily as he comes up beside her and wraps a somewhat loose but very present arm around her waist. She starts at the touch for just a second before relaxing, and he doesn't bother to hide a smile when he feels her lean into him a little bit. She smiles brightly back, looking up to catch his eye, and for a moment as he stares down at her, he doesn't care if it's gratitude at being saved from a boring date that's lighting up her face; she's still smiling like this at him, still looking at him, still leaning into him…
It's only after the tall guy-lawyer clears his throat that Kurt remembers why he's here in the first place, holding her so close against him.
"Oh, sorry," he says, making a show of tearing his eyes from Jane's (it isn't hard) in order to address the man across from her. He holds out a free hand. "Kurt Weller."
"Matthew Evers."
Kurt takes a particular pleasure in crushing the man's hand in his, and watching his face as he tries not to wince.
"Matthew was, you know, telling me all about his work at his, um…" Jane falters for a second, her cheeks pinking as her mind blanks.
"Law firm," the guy—Matthew—supplies flatly.
"Right! Law firm. He's very, um, very dedicated to his job. Very enthusiastic."
Kurt glances at her with a smile, unsure if she's playing this bimbo angle on purpose. Doesn't she know by now that plenty of guys are into pretty airheads that they can impress?
"Sounds very fascinating," Kurt offers dryly.
Matthew's eyes narrow at his for a second, and Kurt has to bite his cheek so he won't grin. "It is," Matthew replies. He lets his eyes linger on Kurt a moment longer—a pretty-boy's idea of a challenge—before he turns pointedly back to Jane. "You didn't mention you were here with anyone, Jane."
It is disgustingly primal, but Kurt can't help it: he doesn't like hearing this other man say her name.
"Oh, well, I wasn't," she covers quickly, smiling brightly. Smiling always helps. "I didn't know my boyfriend was coming, you know, he's always late to these things—" She takes a second to smile dotingly at Kurt, as if he really is her boyfriend, and he is always late, and he can't do anything but stare at her in reply, because that word is still reverberating in his thick head: boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend. "But hey, for once you were almost on time!"
"For once," he repeats blankly, still not able to get that ringing word out of his ears, because he's just realized that she brought it up, out of nowhere, he hadn't even suggested…
"Hm," is all Matthew has to say to that. Kurt imagines he's sketching out a pages-long rebuttal in his head, and he wants to be away from this guy before he starts in on it or else he might punch him in the face.
"If you'll excuse us…" Kurt says meaningfully, leaning a little closer to Jane as tightens his arm around her waist and starts to pull her away.
Matthew doesn't even bother saying goodbye, he turns on his heel in search of easier prey without a word. Kurt can swear he sees the guy roll his eyes as he departs, and he grins.
"Oh, thank you," Jane sighs in relief once Matthew is out of earshot, and Kurt tries not to notice how much she leans into him, tries not to relish in how tight she grips his side in gratitude. He starts to open his mouth to tell her it was no problem, it was his pleasure—Well, maybe don't go that far, Weller, he thinks—but before he can say a word, she's already pulling away from him.
"I've had to pee for the last fifteen minutes! He never once stopped talking; I couldn't get a word in edgewise! Really, Kurt—thank you!"
And then she all but sprints to the bathroom, slipping through the crowd like she's little more than air, leaving him standing there looking as stupid as that idiot lawyer. A few seconds pass before he remembers to rouse himself—and then he remembers Patterson and Tasha and he feels his stomach do a little drop. There's no way in hell those two weren't sitting over there watching the whole thing, laughing to themselves like it was a goddamn comedy routine for their own personal pleasure.
It takes nearly all of his willpower to turn and face them, and not head straight to the door.
As he expected, they're grinning when he looks around, and Patterson is laughing so hard that she's all but fallen off her seat and into Tasha. Each step he takes towards them through the crowded bar gets heavier and heavier. And Patterson is still laughing when he finally arrives, squeezing himself into a bit of open space on Tasha's left.
"You know that you guys are the ones who are supposed to help her out with this stuff, right? If you insist on taking her out, you're supposed to keep an eye on her and ward off the creeps."
Patterson just grins, leaning across Tasha, eyes as bright as her pink cheeks. "Yeah, but if we did that, we wouldn't have gotten to watch you act the boyfriend part now, would we have?"
Between them, Tasha snorts softly into her drink. "Don't think there was much acting involved, Patterson. Did you see the way he didn't even hesitate in putting his arm around her—"
"All right, all right." He waves a hand, turning away with the pretense of finding the bartender, but really just so they can't see the look on his face after they've caught him out.
It's no secret that he and Jane have been getting…close, recently, and the last thing he needs is these two piling on. At least Reade has the sense to keep his taunting in his eyes; these idiots can't keep their damn mouths shut.
And this is just what they say to you, he thinks, finally succeeding in flagging down the beleaguered bartender, who motions that she'll be there in a minute. He doesn't even want to imagine what they've been saying to Jane.
"Now, which of you two is going to buy me a drink to make up for that stunt you pulled?"
"Buy your own drink, boss," Tasha replies. "Patterson and I are paying for Jane already." She gestures to the array of half-drunk drinks in front of them. "Girl isn't cheap."
He peers at the selection, at all the bright colors, and frowns. Clearly they've been doing a taste-test, but they veered far into the wrong direction. "These are all too sweet. Get her something deeper, with more of a kick to it. Less fruit."
"See!" Tasha calls, glaring at Patterson. "That's what I said! But nooo, you had to force all these girly drinks down her throat—"
"All those drinks taste good!" Patterson protests. "She'll see; she just has to keep drinking them!"
"Yeah, anything tastes good if you drink it long enough," Kurt laughs. He thinks for a second. "Get her something darker, a stout or an IPA or something. Has she tried any hard liquor yet?"
Tasha smiles, lifting her shot glass to empty the last couple drops into her mouth. "We might've had her break in the tequila for us a little bit."
Kurt makes a face; he hates tequila. "Try something else. Bourbon or whiskey or vodka… Something with an aftertaste that doesn't acutely resemble urine."
Tasha scowls, taking that as a personal insult—she lover her tequila—but she nods in agreement of the plan anyway.
At her side, Patterson grins, giggling behind her hand. "Let's see if they have absinthe. That'll knock her back for a day or two."
Kurt sighs, shaking his head. "The goal is not to get her wasted, Patterson. It's to find something she likes." He directs his next instructions to Tasha; at least she seems somewhat sober. "Ask the bartender if she can do tastes," he says, not liking the look of their tab already. "Just tell her that Jane's—"
"—what, newly twenty-one?" Tasha raise her eyebrows skeptically. "Please. Come on, how are we supposed to play this? She's thirty and she looks it. There's no plausible reason why a thirty-year-old woman's never had a drink in her life."
Kurt pauses at that, unable to disagree. "Just tell her…" He laughs, lost for ideas. His head is cloudy with Jane already and he hasn't even had a drink yet. Tonight must be some sort of record. "I don't know. Tell her Jane's just abandoned her Mormon faith, and this is her first taste of the forbidden beverage. That's somewhat believable, right?"
"Barely," Patterson scoffs. She thinks for a second. "But there's enough fundamentalist freak shows out there, we can probably find a way to make it work. We'll just say she ran away from home. Helps that she already looks lost in the modern world."
"All right, we're decided then," Kurt says. Eyeing his less-than-energetic colleagues, he grabs their shot glasses and puts them behind the bar. "And no more tequila for either of you. I've already had to babysit one of my team tonight; I don't want to babysit the rest of it."
"Party-poo-pooper," Patterson groans, blindly reaching across the bar after her glass. Kurt's about to snatch her hand away when Tasha calls out to him, her voice so serious and her eyes clearer than he's seen them all night that she stops him in his tracks for a moment.
"Weller?" she calls.
"Yeah?"
She waits a second, taking in a breath, and he braces himself. What's happened? he wonders. Is something wrong with Tasha? Her family? Did something happen to Jane before he got here? Was that guy—
"I swear to you on my grandmother's grave—the one that I actually liked, mind you—that I will do all the team's paperwork for a month if you keep up the boyfriend shtick once she gets back."
"Oooh, yeah," Patterson grins, cackling, leaning across the counter to get in on the action, as Kurt closes his eyes in both relief and frustration—glad nothing serious was going on, but pissed that Tasha decided to play on his penchant for worrying. She should know better.
"Do it, do it, do it!" Patterson chants, banging her fists on the counter. "I want to see her face this time! God, can you imagine—?" The rest of her words are lost in a fit of drunken giggles, and despite himself, Kurt can't help but smile a bit at her reaction.
And Tasha's offer is tempting—certainly in more ways than one; if there's one thing he hates about the job, it's doing the paperwork after cases—but before he can make up his mind, he feels a light hand on his shoulder, and when he turns, there's Jane.
"Hey. So what'd I miss?"
. . .
A/N: Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed the story and would love to hear your thoughts on it below! Thanks again to blindspot-jeller for such a fun prompt!