For the OQ Prompt Party, Day 3. #151 Regina owns a bar and Robin is a regular who has a secret crush on her.
Roni knows what all her regulars drink. She prides herself on it – after all, it's good business, and she may have fucked up plenty of other things in her life, but she's a good businesswoman. At least she has that left.
So she knows that Sophie always orders an amaretto sour, no less than two, no more than four – unless that absolute loser Jaxon has gone and gotten his dick wet somewhere else again. Then she might hit five, even six or seven, and Roni discreetly calls her a cab.
Jasper always orders a gin fizz, because he thinks it's retro and he's a terrible hipster in entirely the wrong bar. Maria bolsters her courage with Long Island Iced Teas, and then finds a friend to take home for the night. Aaron drinks Patrón Cafe all night long, as he sits at the corner table and scribbles stories on napkins (he says it helps him stay awake, Roni very much doubts that). Henry always orders hard cider, and she feels a ridiculous urge to cut him off after three.
Finn drinks whiskey. Neat – with a glass of ice on the side, and a water back. Except on Tuesdays, because Tuesdays are dollar wing nights – and Finn never misses out on dollar wings. On Tuesdays, Finn arrives promptly at seven, orders a dozen flaming buffalo wings, and washes them down with two Sierra Nevadas. And then he orders whiskey, neat, with a glass of ice on the side and a water back.
And tonight is a Tuesday, so she's watching the door, keeping an eye out for those deep dimples and cobalt blues.
Finn is nice to look at. Easy on the eyes, and a great tipper, and that accent of his… well, it does things to a lady, that's all she's going to say about that.
And she likes his taste in liquor.
She also likes his predictability, his timeliness. She could set her watch to Finn Archer on a Tuesday night. Or she could most Tuesdays, anyway, but it seems tonight is not one of those nights.
It's 7:17 on a Tuesday night and the third stool from the left is empty.
She tells herself not to be disappointed. Tells herself not to be worried. He's probably just gotten himself a life (good for him), or a date (fuck her, whoever she is), or he's stuck working late at the shelter.
And she wouldn't care normally (she wouldn't, really, she wouldn't), but that bitch Victoria had come by again this afternoon, with her pencil skirts and her too-skinny heels, and her offer of a whole lot of money to buy out everything Roni has worked so fucking hard for. That whole lot of money, and just a little bit of not-so-veiled threats of what could happen to said business if she doesn't just agree already and let this silly tug-of-war go.
(Victoria drinks Chablis. Victoria is a cunt.)
The whole thing left a sour taste in her mouth, and she could really use a joke, and a dimpled smile, and a bit of overzealous yelling at one of the soccer matches she's started to play on the TV with the best sightlines to the third stool from the left.
So he's late, and it's annoying, and she cares, a little.
She has her back to the bar at 7:23, when she hears his voice rasping familiar over the Stones on the sound system (she can't get no satisfaction either, Mick). He says her name, "Roni," and she smirks, and pushes the register closed.
"You're late, Phineas," she clips as she turns, and then all the blood in her body runs straight down to her shoes.
His lip is split, and his nose is bleeding, and there's a rough red spot below his eye that's already starting to swell.
"Oh my god, honey, what the hell happened to you?" she asks, and if she could hear the tenderness in her voice, she'd feel like an idiot, but she's too busy crossing the space between them and pouring ice into a glass as he presses a shitty bar napkin to his lip to stanch the bleeding.
"What does it look like?" he mutters, wincing slightly as she presses the cool glass of ice gingerly to that rough redness around his eye. "Got jumped two blocks over on my way to get my bloody Tuesday night wings."
She thinks of Victoria, of We're trying to improve the area, Roni, to keep it safe for customers of fine establishments like this one, and grits her teeth. If this is at all her fault… (Guilt worms deep into her gut, churning and hot, and she doesn't like the sight of blood on him, doesn't like it, hates it, it makes her sweat, makes the edges of her vision pulse blue for reasons she can't quite fathom.)
"Did you get a good look at the guy?" she asks.
"Guys," he grunts, pressing another napkin to the thin stream of blood trickling from his nostril to the quickly saturating square held against his lip, and this is just ridiculous. Napkins aren't going to do the trick. "And no, not really. I mostly got a good look at their fists."
"You need to vary your routine," she mutters – first rule of safety, never walk the same paths every night, take a different route, a different time. Whatever. Things men never have to learn, until they get pummeled on dollar wing night.
Finn scoffs a little, clearly not amused with her, and gripes, "Right, I'm sure it was my routine they were after and not my wallet."
She rolls her eyes, and gives a holler to her waitress to keep an eye on the bar, then walks Finn around to the other side and leads him back to her office.
"Sit," she orders, pointing him toward her desk chair. That anxious guilt eases just a little when she catches the way he smirks (and then winces) at the order.
"Yes, Your Majesty," he murmurs, sinking into the chair as she fishes out her first aid kit and plunks it onto the desk, flipping it open and pulling out an ice pack. She gives it a good crack, then hands it over, and roots around in the damn thing for some gauze and alcohol wipes.
"You wanna call the cops?" she asks, turning back to him as she rips open a wipe. She mutters, "This is gonna sting," and then she dabs the blood away from his nose, swipes down over the stubble on his upper lip, then folds it and wipes it gently over the split.
Finn hisses sharply (and his nose oozes a bit more, so she tips his chin up, back), and says, "I'm not sure there's much of a point. They're long gone now."
"Maybe," she admits. "Doesn't mean you can't file a report. And everyone around here has security cameras."
His brows lift and fall, half-hidden on one side by that ice pack he's dutifully holding to his face. She dabs at his lip gingerly with a clean square of gauze – it's still bleeding, but she doesn't think it needs stitches, so she presses the gauze firmly in place and watches the way the smile lines around his eyes deepen as he winces.
Those eyes really are so blue…
She's never seen them quite this close; she and Finn have never been quite this close. Close enough for her to smell him, a mix of sweat and something woodsy. Close enough to see the silver streaks infiltrating his temples, his beard.
Close enough to become suddenly very aware of the warmth of his hand cupping her thigh, just above the back of her knee.
They realize it at the same time, they must, because those too-blue eyes widen ever so slightly just as she stiffens and blinks.
Well, this is… new. She should back off, should step away, should probably give him a hard sock in the shoulder for putting his hands on her uninvited. But he's already injured, and truth be told, she doesn't exactly… mind the warm weight of his hand where it is. It's very low, not anywhere really… out of bounds. Except that all of her is out of bounds, because he's a patron and she's not a hooker.
She should really make him move.
Any time now.
Right now.
His thumb moves, strokes ever so slightly up and then down, and she forces herself into action, clears her throat and mutters a warning, "Phineas."
"I'm beginning to regret ever telling you my full name," he tells her, hand falling away before he gives her a proper, "And...Sorry. Instinct."
One dark brow rises up, up. "It's your instinct to caress my thigh?" she questions doubtfully, and the uninjured side of his mouth curves up.
"Alright, 'wildest dream' might be a more appropriate term," he teases, his voice lower than it's ever been before (they've never been this close, close enough for soft utterances and for his thumb to still be pressed against the outside of her knee, even with his hand back in neutral territory on his own leg).
She realizes she's practically standing between his legs – is literally standing between his legs, and her skin flushes hot, her heart knocks twice.
She scoffs, "Right," and shifts to take a step back, but she's still holding that gauze to his lip, so she's... sort of stuck here.
Not that here is a bad place to be.
"You doubt me?"
"Little bit," she clips. "I don't think I'm anyone's wildest dreams, sweetie."
He looks at her then, really looks at her. Eyes she could drown in, pulling her down deep, and there's something he wants to say. She can see it in his eyes, in the way they flit over her face, the way his mouth twitches slightly under the gauze pad she's holding.
And then he swallows and grimaces, tilts his head forward and says, "I'm swallowing blood; you're not supposed to put your head back with a bloody nose."
Right. She should have known that. She does know that. How she gets so rattled by a pair of blue eyes, she'll never know.
Her "Oh," sounds incredibly lame, but he either doesn't notice, or doesn't care, too busy holding out that ice pack to her and asking if she can take it for him for a bit. She nods, and they swap, and now she has two hands busy trying to ease his pain, as he uses one of his newly freed hands to gently pinch his nose shut.
It looks like it hurts; he should probably ice that, too.
"It shouldn't take too long," she assures him. "You're not gushing."
Finn lets out a little grunt of acknowledgement, and then he's glancing at her again. No, looking at her again. Staring.
After a minute, he asks her a very stuffy, "You really dob't tink you're anyone's wildest dreabs?"
Roni snorts – she tries not to, really she does, but, "Okay, please don't try to flirt with me right now; you sound ridiculous."
"Not flirting. Honest questiob."
It is, she thinks. His sincerity has her focusing suddenly on his lip, easing the gauze away to check if it's still oozing.
"I think…" she murmurs, because he's going to wait for an answer. She knows him well enough to know that. She wants to tell him that she thinks wildest dreams are useless, and that the last time she was somebody's, he ended up dead and they don't want that, now do they? But that's… personal. Too personal for a guy who comes in three nights a week to drink her whiskey and watch soccer and eat wings.
So she doesn't say any of that, she just says, "...that we could butterfly this and you'll be alright."
Finn rolls his eyes as she tosses the bloody gauze to an empty patch of desk and nicks a steri-strip from the first aid kit. She needs two hands to trim and apply it properly, so she drops the ice pack on the desk for a second, too, and tilts his chin up just a little for better light.
She's squinting at the little gash as he lets go of his nose (thank God) and says, "You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."
Roni freezes. Blinks. Watches crimson leak slowly from his lip as he moves it again to add, "Stunning, in every way."
She swallows heavily, and he continues, says, "And you're funny. Smart. And you don't take anyone's shit, which I like." That thumb brushes her knee again, up, down. "And you've a very kind touch, as it turns out."
Roni licks her lips and stares even harder at his, finally placing the steri-strip over the cut, holding it together as best she can.
When she finishes, she reaches for the used gauze, the steri-strip wrapper, avoiding his gaze as she tidies up. She's not sure why, she just… didn't expect this. From him. Tonight. Or ever.
He's a nice guy, a good tipper, who drinks good whiskey and makes her laugh, but she never realized that he looked at her and felt all of that. And it's not a bad thing, she just… she's just surprised, that's all. Caught off-guard.
His head dips down, tilting into her peripheral vision as he says, "I'm sorry if that was too forward. And maybe I should have saved it for when we weren't alone in your office for the first time, and me all beat to shit. You don't have to… say anything. I just thought you should know you're brilliant, and I don't come here just for the wings. Although they're brilliant, too."
She cracks a smile at that, risking a glance back in his direction to find him looking apprehensive and hopeful, and God, so fucking handsome. He really is, isn't he?
Roni takes a deep breath and reaches for the ice pack again, lifting it gingerly to the nose that's still bleeding just a little.
Then she meets those blue eyes, takes a leap and tells him, "I like you, too. Phineas."
He grins, as best he can, anyway, and when that warm hand finds its way to that same spot just above the back of her knee, well, this time Roni doesn't do a thing about it.