Author's Note: I noticed there's a severe lack of Marian fanfics on this site (or at least, I haven't been able to find them) but they're one of my favorite Smosh Games ships. They have such chemistry and such a similar sense of humor that I think they'd be an adorable couple. Not to worry, friends, I'm still a Marhinki and Ianthony shipper at heart, but I wanted to expand the ships I've written about (maybe someday I'll brave Iancorn?). Anyway, hope you enjoy this fic- I think it turned out pretty damn cute, but I'd love to know if anyone agrees with me!
"No, goddamn it!" Sohinki shouted. "That's fucking bullshit! How the hell did that not hit the goddamn pin?!"
Mari, Anthony, and Joven all laughed. "Because you suck at bowling, Sohinki!" Mari yelled back at him.
"Yeah, shut up with the Sohinkisms and just accept the fact that you don't know how to handle balls!"
Mari and Joven howled at Anthony's choice of wording, the trace amounts of alcohol in their systems making the joke a dozen times funnier. Sohinki scowled and stepped back to join them, muttering, "Yeah, you guys are hilarious."
Mari smirked and stepped up to the lane, purple bowling ball in hand. She lined up the shot and sent the ball spinning down the lane, where it smacked down eight of the pins. As Mari waited for her ball to return, she realized how much she was enjoying spending a casual night out with her seven Smosh Games coworkers. They were celebrating reaching 6 million subscribers on the channel and for once they were all in one place without a camera to be seen. They'd been chilling at the alley for the last forty-five minutes, indulging themselves at the bar in the back and getting partially deafened by the unreasonably loud music playing on the speakers. Though the night was still young, Mari could already tell that Flitz had been right to suggest bowling as the activity of choice for the evening; even Lasercorn had stopped trying to claim that the sport was something only old people did.
She finished her turn—hitting one of the two remaining pins but missing the other—and glanced up at the scores. To her surprise, she was actually in the lead so far, with Sohinki a mere six points behind her. Anthony, who had been kind enough to take the last turn, grabbed his ball and threw it down the lane.
"Shit!" Joven yelled as Anthony's ball smacked into six of the pins.
"You knew he'd beat you, Joven," Sohinki pointed out in his most reasonable voice. "Unless Anthony threw gutter balls on both his shots, you couldn't possibly have beaten him."
"Yeah, I know, but I'm in last place now, goddamn it! Why do I lose at everything?"
Mari laughed. "At least there's no punishment this time, Jovie!" she pointed out.
Joven continued to glower, muttering about how he couldn't see.
Meanwhile, Anthony had managed to clean up the rest of the pins in an impressive spare.
"Take that, bitches!" he shouted triumphantly as he turned away from the lane with a grin lighting up his face.
"Sohinki, if he gets more than seven of these, you're going to be in third place!" Mari told him, grinning.
"Well, shit," was Sohinki's response. "I'm screwed."
Anthony's next shot hit nine pins.
"And Anthony ends the game with an impressive comeback as he moves from last place to second in the final turn!" Joven called, mocking Sohinki's announcer voice. "The score is now Mari in first place with a score of 162, Anthony in second place with a score of 158, Sohinki with 156, and the Jovenshire—the ultimate winner—with 140 points!"
"Good game, guys!" Mari said, but she only got a couple nods and smiles before Sohinki was back to complaining about Anthony's last frame and Joven continued grumbling about his loss.
Judging by the sudden outburst of shouting and laughter from the neighboring lane, the other four members of the Smosh Games crew had just finished their own round of bowling. Mari turned to face them and called, "Hey Lasercorn, who won?"
The orange-haired man turned toward her and said, "Wes. By a landslide." He shook his head in disapproval.
"Damn Wes," Mari said with a grin.
He nodded. "I'll beat him next game, though. I was close this time."
Mari laughed and turned back to the members of her group, who were still bickering good-naturedly.
"Hey guys, I'm going to go grab another drink real quick, okay?" Mari told her friends. "Be back in a few minutes; you don't have to wait for me if it takes a long time at the bar, though."
They nodded and Mari made her way over to the bar, settling into line beside a familiar bowl-haired man. He greeted her with a smile, which Mari returned before turning her attention away and forcing herself not to steal too many glances in his direction. Mari was fond of all her coworkers, but she liked Ian in an entirely different way. He might not have been as good-looking as Anthony or Wes—at least not in the typical sense—but he made up for it with his humor and personality. Not wanting him to realize how often she glanced at him, Mari directed her attention to the other features of the alley before her eyes caught on a collection of tables off in one corner.
"Oh my god, do they have pool in here?"
"Yeah," Ian said, following her gaze. "I guess they do."
"I've always wanted to play pool," Mari said, starting to feel excited. "It just seems like such a classy, old-fashioned game, doesn't it?"
Ian frowned. "You've never played before?"
"Not in real life," she said. "I've played on the computer a few times, though."
"Well, we can go play a game if you want," Ian said. "The others can bowl without us."
Mari enthusiastically agreed, and not only because she wanted to play the game. Getting a chance to be alone with Ian was never a bad thing in Mari's book.
Mari sucked at pool. Ian refrained from saying this, even after she knocked the cue ball into one of the pockets for the fourth time, but it was fairly obvious that, for whatever reason, this was not Mari Takahashi's sport.
"Jesus Christ, this is hard," she complained as she pulled the cue ball out of the pocket and handed it to Ian.
"That's what she said," Ian smirked, earning him a swat on the arm from Mari.
"Pool is so much easier on the computer… then it's all a matter of aiming and angles instead of figuring out how to hit the damn ball without making it skip."
"It just takes practice," Ian said absently as he bent over the table to line up his shot. His cue struck the ball with a satisfying clack and knocked one of the solid balls to the very edge of the pocket. "Aw, damn. Apparently you're not the only one who needs more practice, Mari-san."
As Ian stepped back from the pool table to leave Mari enough space for her turn, he could've sworn he saw her blush. Was it because of the nickname or the fact that Ian hadn't been able to keep an abnormal amount of affection out of his voice as he said it? Or maybe, he scolded himself, Mari's face was just flushed because she was too hot wearing a leather jacket in this clubby bowling alley.
Ian watched her bend over the pool table, her long red-brown hair forming curtains along the sides of her face, and start to line up a shot. Her grip on the cue was awkward and ineffective and Ian could already tell she was going to hit the ball at the wrong angle.
He stepped forward and gently guided her right arm into a better position. "Don't squeeze the cue so hard," he told her. "And same with your bridge—relax a little." He reached out and fixed her left hand—which created the bridge upon which the front of the cue rested—slightly, moving her fingers and lifting her wrist. Her hand was warm and touching it made Ian's fingers tingle. "There. Now just make sure you're aiming for the dead-center of the cue ball, and you should be good."
Mari nodded and glanced up at him, her cheeks still tinged pink. "Thanks, Ian."
She'd just pulled the cue back for her shot when a voice interrupted them.
"Having fun over here, you two lovebirds?"
Ian glanced up to see Wes standing on the other side of the pool table, a smirk on his face. Ian suddenly realized how close he was standing to Mari and took a step back.
"Hey, shut up," Mari said as she straightened, ruining the posture Ian had just fixed her into. "Ian was just showing me how to do this the right way since I suck so badly at it."
Wes raised and lowered his eyebrows suggestively. "Really? I bet Ian wants to show you how to handle a different set of balls and rods. And he probably wouldn't mind if you su—"
"Ew, Wes, god," Mari interrupted hurriedly, wrinkling her nose.
Despite his embarrassment, Ian couldn't keep an entirely straight face, especially once Wes dissolved into his high-pitched laughter. "I'm just messing with you guys," Wes said. "You should've seen your faces, though."
"Get out of here, Johnson," Ian told him in good-natured annoyance.
Wes's grin widened and, still giggling, he headed off for the bar.
Mari shook her head as she redirected her attention to the pool game. "Our friends are the worst."
Ian smirked. "They're pretty bad."
Mari lined up her shot and struck the cue ball cleanly, knocking her first striped ball into the pocket.
"Nice!" Ian held out his hand for a high-five, which Mari gave him enthusiastically. "Told you you'd get the hang of it!"
"Only thanks to you, my wonderful sensei," she said, giving him a quick, joking bow. The grin she gave him was so bright it started a fire deep in Ian's soul.
Almost two hours later, Mari and Ian finally abandoned their pool table in favor of a bench in the back of the alley that was close to the bar and out of view of the bowling lanes. They sat on that bench for another hour, talking, laughing, joking, and entirely forgetting about the other six people they could've chosen to spend the night with.
During a lull in their conversation, Mari yawned and turned so she was sitting next to Ian rather than facing him and set her head on his shoulder.
"Too much to drink or are you just tired?" Ian asked her.
"Tired. I had to get up at six this morning to fly down here."
"Ouch. I'm glad that's not me anymore." Mari saw Ian lift his wrist to check his watch. "We've been here for four hours. How much longer are those guys going to want to stay?"
Mari didn't answer. She may have been tired, but she wasn't eager to leave. Not when she was getting the opportunity to spend so much time with her favorite coworker.
Mari only pulled her head off Ian's shoulder when her neck was too sore to tolerate the position for any longer. She twisted her head to the side to relieve some of the tension in her neck and reached for the martini she'd abandoned on the other side of the bench. She realized she was seated so close to Ian that their thighs, hips, and shoulders were touching, but he didn't seem to want to mind and she certainly didn't want to move away.
She swirled the alcohol around in her glass and wondered if maybe she was being too hasty with her feelings for him. They'd always had a close friendship, so resting her head on his shoulder wasn't a big deal, but she'd spent almost the whole evening alone with him. Should she back off and go spend some time with the others? She didn't want to leave, but maybe it'd be best. Ian hadn't really shown any interest in dating again after breaking up with Melanie last year; what right did Mari have to think she had a chance with him? And was Mari really interested in him, or was he just the rebound after she'd broken up with Peter two months ago?
She looked up from her glass to find Ian staring at her. She cocked her head slightly, nonverbally asking him to share his thoughts.
"I don't really know how to say this, but…. I kind of want to kiss you right now."
Mari blinked and then exhaled a laugh. "I think you need to lay off the booze, Ian."
"I'm not drunk," he said, frown lines appearing in the middle of his forehead. "Well, okay, maybe a little. But I'm not just saying that because I'm drunk. I mean it."
"Really?" Mari looked between his two blue eyes, searching for a sign that he was intoxicated or messing with her. But his eyes were clear, focused, and honest, so she believed him.
"Yeah…. But I'm probably just being stupid," Ian mumbled and looked away.
"No," Mari said quickly. "No, you're not." She reached out and grabbed his rough, stubble-covered cheek and turned him to face her, meeting his lips with gentle pressure from hers. It was a quick, chaste kiss, barely more than a peck on the lips, but she still got a brief taste of him and a heady breath of his scent. She wanted to make that kiss last, to twist her fingers through his infamous bowl-cut hair, but she'd already started to pull away.
She opened her eyes and realized she had no idea if Ian had kissed her back. Mari, never one for awkward silences (or silences of any kind, really), quickly said, "Wow. We must be wasted right now." She wasn't of course. She knew exactly how many drinks she'd had and she knew it wasn't enough to make her more than a bit tipsy at most.
Ian rubbed his lips together subconsciously, his eyes trained on hers. "Maybe. But I hope I remember it in the morning."
Mari smiled. "You better."
"I probably will after this." Ian closed the distance between their lips and Mari got the kind of slow, meaningful kiss she'd been wanting before. And this time, Ian was definitely kissing her back.
In more ways than one, the next half hour was just like the last: Ian and Mari still laughed and talked and messed with each other, except now they kept their hands locked together and occasionally interrupted their conversation with a kiss. Ian felt right being around Mari, right in a way he hadn't felt since breaking up with Melanie seven months ago. He wasn't sure there could be more for him and Mari beyond this night, but at the moment that didn't matter.
They were interrupted—from talking, not kissing—by the sound of Anthony's and Sohinki's voices calling their names. The others couldn't see Mari and Ian yet, but they'd find them soon.
"I guess they finally decided to call it a night," Ian said.
"Shame," Mari murmured, making Ian's eyes subconsciously dart to her slightly-swollen lips.
"You're not flying back to San Francisco tonight, are you?"
She shook her head. "I think Lasercorn's gonna let me stay at his place."
"Lasercorn?"
"Yeah, you know. He's about your height with bright orange hair and creepy eyes…."
Ian laughed. "I think I've met him once or twice."
Mari grinned. "I figured staying with him would be the least awkward, since he's married and there would be at least one other female in the house."
"Good idea. But how do you feel about staying at my place?"
She raised her eyebrows, still smiling. "That's not a better guy-to-girl ratio, you know."
"There's Daisy," Ian said, which earned him a laugh from Mari.
"You know, you're moving awfully quick, Hecox. Already asking a girl to spend the night with you after the first date? Risky."
Even though he knew she was just teasing, Ian felt a little surge of embarrassment. "I didn't necessarily mean that. I have a spare bedroom in my apartment."
She laughed again and squeezed his hand. "I like that I can make you squirm."
"You're evil," he told her and pecked a kiss on her cheek.
"You better believe it."
Bantering with Mari was so natural, so easy... how had he never before realized how well they suited each other? He was glad she'd agreed to go back to his apartment because he wasn't ready for his time with her to end.
"Come on, Mari-san," he said as he stood and pulled her to her feet. "Duty calls."
Ian took a step forward before Mari slipped her hand out of his. He looked at her questioningly and she shrugged.
"Didn't want the others to think…."
"Let them think what they want," Ian said. "They'll probably be too drunk to notice anyway." He put an arm around her slender shoulders, ignoring the voices in his head that shared Mari's concern about what the others would think.
After a moment, Mari smiled at him and looped her arm around his waist. Ian pulled her a little closer, feeling her proximity fill an emptiness he hadn't even realized was in him. It hadn't been easy to summon up the courage to ask her for a kiss but he was glad he had. Feeling the way her body fit against his made him feel certain, somehow, that things between them wouldn't end once they left this bowling alley.
Mari and Ian leaned into each other for a long moment before heading out to find their friends.