Author's note: In this fic, I settled on Michigan - on the coast of Lake Michigan, opposite of Chicago - for the location of Star City. I know that since the eighties, the accepted location for the city has been in California, but I don't like the idea of the Arrows being so close to where Wally and Artemis are (Stanford), and, being a bigoted romantic, I am of the firm mind that autumn should entail coloring leaves and early frosts and biting winds. So Michigan it is. To the hard-core comics fans, don't take it so hard.
Saturday Off
"When I said we could do anything you want, I was kind of thinking that we'd have to, you know, leave the bed at some point."
It was well past noon, and Roy and Jade had yet to throw off the covers. They had passed the time more than suitably occupied, sometimes pausing for naps or breathers, like the one they were taking now.
She rolled over onto her stomach with a teasing smirk, dark eyes twinkling in a way Roy had rarely seen before. Thin fingers trailed lightly up his bicep. "Am I wearing you out, Red?"
With a grin, he snatched up her fingers roughly, but pressed her palm to his lips. The grin only widened against soft of her hand as she made a face and pretended to gag.
"Besides, what could you possibly want to get out of bed for?"
Roy thought about this. "Well," he began, "I'll probably starve to death if we have anymore fun without eating something."
He had told her that this day was hers to do with as she wished, so he followed gamely along beside her when she glided past his unusually full kitchen and out the front door. He even left his collapsible crossbow behind at her request (demand) without dispute. He was fairly certain that should she lead him into any kind of brawl, he would be able to hold his own long enough to send a distress signal to the Leauge.
It was their first time out in the world together as anything more than enemies, and it was fair to say that he was... apprehensive.
But Jade, dressed in a tight stylish black sweater dress and accented with more bangles and necklaces than he thought was wise for an assassin to own - where, by the way, had she procured that outfit from? She'd never left his apartment and had arrived in Cheshire garb - only laughed at the trepidation on his face. It was a new sound; not the low, taunting chuckle he was used to. It wasn't free, exactly, but it was a more mirthful exhalation than he had yet heard come from her lips.
She pulled him down several crowded streets - Star City on a Saturday was filled with shoppers, park hoppers, diners, movie-goers, street performers, and more vendors than Roy cared to count, especially in the International District that wasn't far from his building - until stopping outside some kind of Asian restaurant. Pho Quyen was printed proudly in both English and kanji above the door.
She fought their way inside through the bustling crowd of various nationalities - Pho Quyen must be a local favorite - and into a booth in a corner. After they sat and were handed menus by a tiny old Asian woman who smiled and said something to Jade in an unfamiliar language, Roy looked at her questioningly.
Jade rolled her eyes at him. She knew that look. "You can ask, but I probably won't give you a straight answer."
He frowned, and decided to go with the simplest query first. "What kind of restaurant is this?"
"Vietnamese." She took her paper napkin from its place on the table and began fiddling with it, folding it into different shapes.
"You come here often?"
This time, she gave him a lazy wink. "I have to get something to eat all the nights I come through your window."
Once, her undisguised flirting would've made him wince, but now the corners of Roy's mouth twitched upwards. "All those nights? No wonder that old lady knew you so well."
A shrug. "She's opened late a few times for me. Loyal customer."
He watched for a moment as her napkin became a creased and even crane. "What language was she speaking?"
Jade rolled her eyes again. "Hmm. Vietnamese restaurant. Old Asian lady. Maybe she was speaking Vietnamese?"
"And you understood her?"
"I'm fluent."
"Bilingual?"
She leaned towards him across the table, and he felt her run her black-booted foot up and down along the length of his calf. "Red, there isn't even a word for how many languages I speak."
Ignoring his sudden arousal - he couldn't very well drag her back to his apartment before they'd even ordered their food - he was impressed. And even more curious. "How many?"
"Eleven."
Roy's eyebrows shot up. "Eleven? And you're fluent in all of them?"
Jade sat back with a sigh. He was so intent on ruining all her fun. "It depends. I know four of them as well as I know how to use a sai. The others come and go, depending on how much I use them." One angled eyebrow quirked upwards. "Any other questions you'd like to ask, Red?"
He barely had to think about it. "You're Asian, or at least partly. What nationality?"
Her dark eyes flashed, and for a second he thought she would strike him, or get up and disappear into the crowded streets of the International District. He was tensed for either scenario before the hardness was smoothed from her face, replaced by drawling apathy.
"My mother was Vietnamese."
She didn't say any more, and Roy felt it safest not to press further.
They passed their meal in companionable silence, puncuated every few minutes by Jade leaning in to whisper overheard snatches of the owner's conversations with the chef and waiters, or commenting on the different people they saw come in and out. He was surprised by how many times he chortled into his beef-and-basil stir fry at her ruthless but often insightful quips - she managed to wittily offend over a dozen assorted races, nationalities, and religions, attacking each with a fierce humor that would probably have made her more than a few bucks in free drinks at any comedy club's open mike night. He felt guilty over the first few chuckles - he was supposed to be a hero, justice and equality personified - but figured that it was pointless to try to fight it. There wasn't any real malice behind her jokes, anyway; that much was evident.
When they'd finished and paid the bill - his treat - and allowed themselves to be swept out the doorway and down the street by the flowing hordes of pedestrians, the autumn sky was beginning to turn pink and golden at the edges. The towering skyline of Star City blotted out the sun every few sidewalk slabs, and a crisp September breeze whistled down the streets from the lake. People were tugging jacket collars up against the oncoming Michigan chill and quickening their pace towards home.
Jade, however, seemed to have no designs on returning to Roy's apartment. She directed them deeper into the International District, eyes trained straight ahead, looking for something.
It only took Roy a minute or so after leaving the restaurant to notice that Jade's bare arms - her sweater dress had short sleeves - were covered in goose bumps. He glanced down at himself. Double layers - black sweater and green sweatshirt. Without another thought, he tugged his arms out of the sweatshirt and tapped Jade on the shoulder.
She turned and raised an eyebrow at the proffered sweatshirt, but took it without a word.
They had left the Asian sector of the district and were now surrounded by carpet-covered shop windows and mannequins modeling saris and turbans. Before Roy could ask about their destination, Jade pulled them into a smoky salon, snapping out a greeting to the dark man behind the ornately carved counter in a tongue that sounded - by the throaty and gutteral tones of the brief conversation - like Arabic. The man nodded and disappeared after a moment, returning with a round cloth sack, bulging and tied with a green ribbon. He handed it to Jade, who tucked it inside Roy's sweatshirt and tossed a wad of cash - twenties? - onto the counter before sweeping Roy back onto the street.
"Jade," he began, and faltered, wondering if he really wanted to know.
She looked at him challengingly, with a hint of amusement.
He needed to know.
"Did you just - did I just witness a drug trade?"
Definite amusement. "Sort of. But don't worry, Red - it's nothing illegal."
He didn't believe her.
She laughed - that lighthearted tinkle again. "I wouldn't get you in trouble on your one day off. Don't you trust me?"
From the glint in her dark eyes, he didn't know if he should.
"You bought - coffee?"
They were back in his apartment now, and Jade was pouring boiling water into a French press - not Roy's; where was she getting this stuff from? - over the dark grounds she'd dumped from the cloth pouch. Still wearing his sweatshirt, he didn't fail to notice, despite the ten minutes they'd been inside and the comfortable room temperature he maintained in his apartment.
She flashed the feline grin for which she'd earned her name. "Did you think I bought coke off Mahmoud? With this body?" She gestured down at herself, and though the sweatshirt covered up her tantalizingly lithe form, there was still enough bare leg to send Roy off into reminisces of earlier that day. "I don't think so. Caffeine is the only drug I allow into this temple. And you have not lived until you've tried Al-Qahwa."
True to her word, the coffee was delicious - a strong, rounded Arabian flavor that certainly turned the Watchtower's weak espresso to shame.
After they'd both had a cup - small cups, Jade warned, or they wouldn't be able to sleep for a week - she began slipping off her leather boots, letting each drop to the floor of the kitchen. With the rush of metabolizing caffeine in his veins, it barely took Roy half a second to match his mood to hers, and at the sight of her bare feet, the bubbling heat that had been building in his abdomen since Pho Quyen surged through him. It took a conscious effort not to rip the rest of her clothes off for her.
But, clearly, Jade wanted to handle that part. She shrugged the sweatshirt from her shoulders, letting it fall on top of the boots, lifted each dangling necklace from her chest and slipped all the bangles from her wrists, depositing the jewelry on the counter before sliding her fingers down to the hem of her tight dress. All the while, she never broke eye contact with him.
He made it until she'd worked the dress up to just below her breasts before he couldn't take it anymore. Screw control - it didn't matter how many nights she'd crept through his window and into his bed, he was never going to get over how agonizingly tempting she was to him, especially when she tried to play these teasing games. In one swift movement he had the dress up and over her head, and it too joined the pile of clothes and shoes on the black tile of his kitchen floor, leaving Jade standing before him in a bra and underwear in a matching blood red - not what she'd had on the night before, or the one before that. Where was all of this stuff coming from?
At the moment, he didn't care.
She launched herself at him before he had a chance to do anything else, strong but slender legs wrapping themselves around his waist, thin fingers and sharp nails digging through his hair and into his scalp, so hard it hurt, and he cried out as she closed her mouth around his, her tongue driving itself between his lips in the oh-so familiar plunge and twist he had come to know and love in the last few months.
Wait, love - ?
No time. His hands came up to support her back, to press her closer to him, to trace the slight protrusions of her spine, to cup the smooth curve of the fabric at the base of it and, oh, she was grinding against him so sweetly, and, forgetting the hours they'd already devoted to sex that day, he took one or two steps forward until she was planted firmly on the counter. She wouldn't allow him to break their lips apart when he tried to get his sweater off - the harder-than-usual nip on his tongue told him that much - but he didn't put up a fight as her hands dove for the zipper of his jeans. Who was he to protest when she wanted to get straight to the good part?
Later, when they were back in bed and he was cursing the unforgiving numbers of the electronic clock on the nightstand, warning him that he didn't have long until six o'clock, when he would have to don the mask and the suit and begin his nightly prowls of the streets, he would ask her where all the clothes and the coffee press came from. She rolled lazily towards him, nuzzling her forehead into his shoulder like an affectionate cat, and purred that she had left the apartment while he was at work yesterday, to pick up a few things she needed. He wondered if she was saying what he thought she was saying, if he was coming to understand her aloofness better than she perhaps wanted him to, but didn't comment further. His thickly-calloused thumb traced circles above the veins of her small wrist, above the slightly puckered white skin there. He'd found many scars like this one on her before, but had never asked where any of them came from. He figured he either didn't want to know, or that Jade wouldn't give him the real stories.
As the clock ticked closer to six, he rolled off the bed with a groan. He was as fit as could be - archery alone required a strong torso, and crime-fighting demanded even more of the body - but sex with Jade still left him sore. She grinned up at him, curled around her new pillow like she would never let it go, as he attempted to stretch the aches out, and sighed happily to herself. He trudged around the darkening bedroom, gathering up spandex pieces and awkwardly tugging them on. When he had everything in place - shirt, leggings, boots, mask, bow, quiver - he bent over her naked form for the last time that night and pressed a soft, slow, chaste kiss on her waiting lips. This time, she was prepared for him.
"Red?" she said in a low voice as he turned towards the bedroom doorway. She couldn't keep the hum of contentment from her voice. Later on, she might berate herself for the betrayal of emotion, but now, with the warmth still seeping through her, she couldn't care less. "As far as first dates go, that wasn't too shabby."