A/N: And as promised, the next chapter is up! Including a heinously ugly couch, AND the first kiss! Hope you guys like it!
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, I don't own it.
It really wasn't as though he figured her visit to be something very serious. He did have a paper due, and he didn't even know Raye that well. It was simple courtesy to toss the three pairs of shoes kicked off at various places in the living room into the closet, and take out the overflowing kitchen trash. It wasn't like he had time to completely refurbish the apartment, or really, like he was the type to project a particular image to impress a girl.
Still, it felt like the right thing to do to make the apartment semi-neat, particularly if she was going to help him on his paper. A girl like Raye Harcourt was used to plush surroundings, and though she certainly wasn't as pretentious as she could have been, would likely have at least raised an eyebrow at the sight of the flotsam of Twinkie wrappers and potato chip crumbs - the remnants of his roommate's lunch- scattered about the coffee table.
After ascertaining that the apartment was, if not spotless, at least acceptable, he thought that he might as well take a quick shower and change into a shirt more presentable than the old soccer jersey he slept in. It was only after he was clean, toweled off his hair and stowed away the stray, slightly waterlogged issues of Maxim into the bathroom cabinet that he was aware of several alarming sounds coming from outside.
Firstly, the crashes and garbled shouts from the living room was an unmistakable indication that Bruce was home, and a video game marathon was in full swing. Jake strode out of the bathroom in a little bit of consternation, and his eyes widened at the sight that greeted him. The recently-tidied space now featured his roommate, clad in pajama pants and nothing else, playing a furious game of Mortal Kombat amidst technicolor bottles of Mountain Dew Game Fuel. Next to Bruce was a disordered pile of laundry, unfolded and clearly recently brought in from the machines in the basement, t-shirts with smart-ass phrases and boxers in every shade of the rainbow predominating. And before Jake could so much as berate Bruce for trashing the living room again, the buzzer for the door sounds.
"Dude, who's visiting us this late? It better not be Mark and his fucking computer with its pathetic dinosaur-era so-called firewall and his ridiculous long-winded papers." Bruce sent his on-screen opponent reeling back from a roundhouse kick and paused the game to pick up a half-full bottle of blue Mountain Dew, then noticed Jake's expression. "What? What's the matter?"
With the sigh of someone succumbing to the inevitable, Jake hit the intercom button and deigned only the briefest of glances at his roommate. "You'll see what's the matter in... about two minutes."
There was the muffled, staccato click of heeled shoes on the uncarpeted stairs of the building, then a soft, polite knock on the door. Jake sighed again, then got up and walked over to open the door. Raye stood on the other side, slim and elegant and lovely in the same scarlet trench coat she'd worn the other day, her hair long and unbound almost to her waist. The smile she offered him was faint, but it reached her eyes. "Hello. Are you going to let me in?"
Jake scratched the back of his neck and stepped back, almost hearing Bruce's jaw drop to the floor when the latter got a good look at her. "Right. Raye, this is Bruce Roberts, a computer science major and a slob par excellence. Bruce, you jackass, thanks for trashing the place after I just cleaned it... this is Raye Harcourt."
"Aww shit, I didn't know you had a babe coming over!" Bruce interjected, before clearing his throat and giving Raye a self-deprecating smile. "Er, pardon the French. Jake doesn't usually have girls up here. Then again most of the girls majoring in psych in this fine institution of higher learning are who- easy. And, uh, yeah, I didn't know you were coming over. Want me to go?"
"It's not like that, exactly," Raye, if she had any opinions about the laundry on the couch or the brightly coloured bottles of Mountain Dew, tactfully didn't say anything and simply held out a hand. "It's nice to meet you, Bruce. So you're the one who scored the VIP passes to Etoile Rouge, hmm?"
"Yep, that would be me," Bruce stared at her, then bounced up like a bespectacled Jack-In-The-Box. "OH! You're the girl who sat two tables away with the bleach-blonde! You danced with Jake, and he got home kind of late and he said that he wanted to make sure you got home all right! I didn't know you guys kept in touch!"
Raye's laugh was low and satiny. "Guilty. Your roommate has a paper he's working on tonight, and we were talking about it, and he invited me over so we could talk some more, I guess."
"Oh, that's nice of you," Bruce effused. "Really nice to help him and stuff. And unlike the loser I was dealing with before he met you at the club, Jake has Antivirus, Antispyware, AND a functional firewall on his computer."
"That's good to know," Raye laughed, before shooting Jake a sidelong glance. "You look a bit baffled."
He was, and though he wouldn't have admitted it aloud, it truly was due to the fact that the former Manhattan socialite, red star-shaped earrings that he'd bet were real rubies glinting on her earlobes, stood there talking to his geeky, potty-mouthed roommate as though they were old friends and Bruce was even close to being a part of the world she grew up in. There wasn't even a hint of derision in her voice. She kept on surprising him, and it wasn't often that anyone could do that.
"I guess we should get to that paper. Umm, do you want anything to eat? Drink?"
"This blue Mountain Dew's the shi- bomb," Bruce remarked before Raye could answer, and held out one of the twenty-ounce bottles genially as though it was a typical thing for a computer programmer to hand over his caffeine source.
Perhaps Raye sensed the enormity of it, because she smiled graciously and accepted the bottle. "Thanks. And I just had dinner, so I don't need anything to eat. All right, Jake. Where is this paper you're working on?"
"Umm. My room," he answered, gesturing her towards the narrow hallway that led towards the bedrooms. He pushed open the door to his, glad that it, at least, was reasonably neat. "Come on in."
Raye looked around, her eyes taking in the Magritte print on one wall, the utilitarian gray carpet, the blond pine wood desk with a laptop and printer and a scattering of books on top of it. There was a chest of drawers and a multi-level bookshelf, and a screamingly ugly couch with faded paisley-patterned upholstery in shades of maroon, turquoise and chartreuse. And then she turned slightly, and stared up at him with a look of genuine confusion.
"Hey, just out of curiosity, why do you have a couch in here and no bed?"
Raye was learning to read him, and the way he scratched the back of his neck with one hand was a definite sign that he was either nervous or embarrassed. He chuckled lightly, and she opted for the latter.
"Well, it's dead comfortable, and it did used to pull out when I first, uh, got it. The handle thing is broken though, so it doesn't pull out any more, but I still sleep on it."
This explanation had her blinking. "You... sleep on that couch? Don't you get a crick in your neck for that?"
"It's actually a really comfortable couch," he told her slowly. Some of her astonishment must have shown on her face, because he shrugged almost defensively. "And, yeah, the upholstery came that way. I can't see it with my eyes closed, though. So it's all right. Umm, would you like to take a seat somewhere?"
She nodded, and plopped down on the couch, her bottom sinking right into the cushions. It WAS comfortable, but that didn't negate the fact that the upholstery was the ugliest pattern that she had ever seen. She opened the bottle of blue Mountain Dew and took a dainty sip. It was slightly too sweet, but didn't taste as bad as she thought it might. "You had a paper, I believe?"
"Right, yeah, that I did," Jake mumbled, taking his laptop off the computer desk and bringing it with him towards the ugly couch. "I did get a bit more done on it."
She nodded, and skimmed over the words and the research. His writing style was slightly blunt and more to-the-point than most academic papers, but it was effective all the same. One sentence had her chuckling. "Nice of you to call Clytemnestra an 'accursed bitch'."
"It's phrased that way in this translation," he said, tongue-in-cheek. "I'm simply quoting the book."
"If you get a thrill out of that, you'll probably really get a thrill when your professor gets to Aristophanes' Lysistrata," she mused with a laugh. "It's still a mystery, to this day, what exactly the 'lion on the cheese grater' sex position mentioned therein entails."
"WHAT?" That had his eyebrows shooting up to his hairline, and she laughed louder.
"Oh, it's this play about a woman who gets all the other women in Athens to withhold sex from their husbands so that their husbands would stop going to war constantly," Raye told him. "Part of the vow the women take involves swearing they will not assume the 'lion on the cheese grater' position. It's actually pretty good reading."
"Are you serious? A lion on a cheese grater? That... that actually sounds really painful. What the...?"
Somehow, once again despite her ingrained habit of mistrust and the fact that she was out in a strange neighbourhood, visiting the bachelor pad of a college student she'd known for less than a month, she found herself relaxing and enjoying herself. They went over his paper and the conversation segued somehow from Greek classics to movies to pop culture as she sat on that screamingly ugly couch and drank blue Mountain Dew. A random glance at her watch had her staring.
"It can't be midnight!"
"It's midnight?" He seemed as surprised as she was, but a glance at the clock at the corner of his computer screen confirmed it. "Holy hell. Umm, time flies when you're having fun I guess? I didn't mean to keep you here this long."
"My grandfather's probably a bit worried, I should call him and let him know I'm on my way back," Raye murmured, pulling out her cell phone. "You should probably get some rest, too. It's late. Time to turn back into a pumpkin and all that, for all of us."
He nodded and she dialed the house, telling her grandfather that she'd be home soon, before rising slowly from the couch. "I'm going to call for a car to come pick me up, so you don't have to waste a subway trip."
"All right," he agreed. "I'll still wait with you until it arrives."
They left his room together and found Bruce still in the living room, now with a massive bag of Cheetos open in his lap as he worked the video game controller. Raye cleared her throat and the boy looked up, his mouth stained blue and orange from Mountain Dew and Cheetos, and she had to laugh again.
"It was nice meeting you, and thanks for the soda," she told him.
"Oh, for sure," Bruce paused his game and grinned. "You should come by more often. Jake's a cool guy. He doesn't bullsh-crap around or do drugs or go to strip clubs or anything."
"Good to know," Raye chuckled. "I guess I'll see you later."
She didn't have to glance back to know that Bruce was giving Jake the thumbs-up behind her back, and found it oddly sweet. Side by side, she and Jake descended the stairs of the apartment building together, and stood at the door as they waited for the cab to arrive.
"I'm sorry I kept you here so late," Jake said quietly.
"Don't be sorry," she answered automatically, and that had him scratching the back of his neck again.
"I lied, I guess. I'm not really sorry. You were lots of fun, and I was happy to have you over. But I don't want you to get in trouble or anything on my account."
"I won't," she reassured him. "My grandfather didn't really sound mad when I called him. And I had already told him where I would be." Violet eyes met blue ones with an uncharacteristic hint of diffidence. "I had fun."
"Sorry Bruce came in and made that mess, I really did clean the place up before you got here."
"It's all right. Though you really do need a bed. I still don't understand how you can sleep on that couch!"
"It's comfortable, and maybe someday I'll get around to getting a bed," Jake muttered. "It did pull out, before."
She made a mental note to get him a bed for his birthday, whenever that was, and saw a black towncar pulling around the street corner. "Well, my ride's just about here. Thanks for having me over."
"You be safe getting home, all right?" His hands, warm and capable, reached for hers in an automatic gesture. Their fingers linked and squeezed. His eyes were brilliantly blue and solemn, his hair glinting in the glow of the streetlights. "I really hope to see you again soon."
There was a gracious farewell statement on the tip of her tongue, ready to be uttered, as the car pulled up to the curb and they walked over still holding hands. Raye pulled the door open and glanced back at him, and at that moment, he smiled down at her, and what happened next was pure impulse.
Leaning up, she cupped his cheek with the hand not clasped in his and pressed her lips to his. One... two... three seconds, and then she pulled away and ducked into the car before he could have a chance to respond. Through the glass, she could make out the shock on his face, and she felt herself blushing even as she waved a hand.
"Evening, miss," the driver cracked his gum and grinned at her through the rearview window. "Where to?"
Raye gave her address by rote and watched Jake through the window as the driver pulled his car into drive. Jake kept his eyes on hers, through the increasing distance and the window, until the car pulled around the corner and he disappeared out of sight.
Her heartbeat had leveled by the time she arrived home, but she could do nothing about the smile on her face.