Prompt by kaguneko on Tumblr.

Side-snippet from my completed fic Hundred-Dollar Rum.

The girl who had just arrived to Non's birthday party was easily the most eye-catching person in the immediate vicinity. A lot of it had to do with the fact that she had come in with a guy—tall, hair dyed a very pale blond, somehow classically handsome despite it, who spoke in a low rumble of a voice, almost shyly. The image wasn't broken even after he started swearing, profusely, in the company of that odd group Non sometimes hung out with. Kadota or whatever and his friends.

But it wasn't jealousy for that man's attention that Mikage felt while looking at the girl, Vorona, long after they'd been introduced to each other. She had kept her eyes level with her face then, which was hardly less distracting, what with the cold blue eyes and soft hair and freckles—but once Vorona had turned away to follow the rest of the tour, Mikage let her eyes fall down the length of her body quickly, taking in the endless stretch of her legs under the hem of her shorts, the width of her shoulders.

She didn't feel warm only from the beer when she took another settling sip.

The problem with student parties, outside of the fact that Mikage wasn't a student herself, was that none of the girls were interested. She had stopped trying to engage conversation and prod the waters after the first time it had gone south on her, years ago now. Finding company for the night or more wasn't worth the risk. Mikage didn't she could have made her intentions clearer if she'd written them sharpie-bright on her forehead, but somehow people still found the energy to be surprised and, on the wrong occasion, offended.

So she stayed in her corner for the following hours, buried deeply into the limp couch of Non's living-room, chatting with Rio when she came by and no one the rest of the time. She kept her eyes on the foreign girl for most of the evening, absently, thoughtlessly; she watched the bend of her nape when she drank, eyed the obvious definition of muscle in her bare arms, lax as they were now. She spied on the side of Vorona's face for any hint of a smile, wondering what she would look like with it.

Then, around midnight, Vorona turned around to look at her with a raised eyebrow, and Mikage choked into her glass and turned aside bodily.

She could feel the blush crawl its way up her neck and cheeks. "Excuse me," she gritted out, heart beating in her throat; the guy sitting next to her—Ryuu-something, she hadn't been able to catch his name right when he said it—made a nervous sound of agreement and dragged his feet toward himself to make room. Mikage extracted herself out of the couch on weak legs, and it took her a while to chase away the rush of standing up after sitting and drinking for so long.

Her mind cleared as she walked to the thankfully empty bathroom. She rested her glass atop a cabinet and drank directly from the faucet, splashing water onto her face until she was drenched. It didn't help much with the warmth.

"Shit," she let out.

She should've known better than to stare like that. The shame was eating at her, acid on her tongue, twisting in her stomach.

The shirt she was wearing was wet at the collar now. She glanced at the fluffy towels hung from the radiator next to her but decided against using them, though she knew Non would be unlikely to notice or mind; she wiped her mouth with her sleeve and, hearing the door open behind her, said, "I'll be done in a sec, sorry."

"Acknowledged," replied a deeply accented voice.

Mikage's eyes lifted to look into the mirror above the sink. She met Vorona's even stare through it, and if she had blushed before now her skin was losing all of its blood, leaving her pale and blue-veined under the lamp's harsh glow.

She swallowed. "Hey," she offered, turning on her heels to face her. "Ah, sorry about… I'll just—I'll let you use the bathroom."

Vorona showed no sign of moving away from the entrance of the room, though, and so Mikage didn't step forth. The porcelain edge of the sink was digging into her lower back.

"You were appraising me," Vorona said.

Mikage sucked in a quick breath. "I… no, I. Um." She looked at the white ceiling, then at the shower curtain, then back at Vorona herself. Her expression was unreadable. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel weird."

"Weird lacks a definite meaning. It does not match how I felt well enough."

Oh, God. That bad, then.

"I'm so sorry—"

"You were appraising me," Vorona repeated, cutting her off. She took a step forward under Mikage's no doubt bewildered staring and asked, "Did I meet your approval?"

Mikage's mouth opened and closed without sound.

"What?" she managed after a second of stupor.

Vorona waved a hand by her side in dismissal of something. "You are interested," she said. She was a lot closer now, barely a meter away, and the dig of the sink into Mikage's back was starting to hurt with how badly she was pressing back. "In me. Sexually."

She was taller than Mikage by a handful of inches, lean and skinny where Mikage stood bulkier. The line of her collar dipped low over her breasts, and Mikage couldn't help but dart a glance there, one which made Vorona's mouth twitch almost in humor. Her lips were cut through diagonally by a faint white line. Her freckles looked almost black on her nose in that sort of unflattering light.

She was gorgeous.

"Yeah," Mikage admitted, heart beating in her throat. "You're hot. But I shouldn't have stared at you like that, and I'm really sorry."

"Apologies are unnecessary."

Mikage's noise of confusion died on her tongue as Vorona grabbed her shoulders, her palms pressed flatly over the thick of them. She stroked them down to arm and back to neck, and her fingers settled there, touching the protruding vertebrae at her nape, thumbing the length of her throat.

"Your name?" Vorona asked softly.

When Mikage swallowed, Vorona's thumbs followed the movement over her skin. "Sharaku Mikage," she replied.

"Sharaku Mikage." Vorona leaned down, until the difference in their heights was gone and her words died over Mikage's lips, wine-sweet, warm. "You have my approval too."

"That's good," Mikage breathed, stepping away from the sink, "yeah, that's really—"

The first smile Vorona ever gave her was pressed onto her mouth, the curve of her scarred lips putting them out of alignment. Mikage grabbed her by the hair as soon as her brain made sense of the fact that this was consent, this was approval; she fit her palm against Vorona's scalp and dragged her top lip in between hers, met her tongue until she tasted nothing but the wine, nothing but the heat. She heard herself moan when Vorona's hands came down from neck to hip, pressing over her chest on their way, and soon enough it was skin-to-skin warmth she felt, Vorona's fingers tugging her shirt out of her jeans and stroking her hips, digging into her.

She gasped out of the kiss when Vorona's thigh rubbed between her legs. For a moment she could do nothing but breathe through it, and Vorona let her, rubbing her thumbs against Mikage's hipbones and staying her thigh as it was, neither pressing up nor drawing back.

She bent down easily when Mikage dragged her again. This kiss was no less sweet and heated, although a lot shorter. Her eyes looked gray now, almost white. The scar stood up starkly against her swollen lips.

"Let's ditch this party," Mikage said, once she was done sucking on it.

Vorona's second smile was a sharp and satisfied thing, and it made pressure unfold at the base of Mikage's spine, made her palms tingle and her lips ache.

"Agreed."