Melina returned to the bar about ten the next night. The air seemed to get instantly sucked out of the room leaving behind a soundless nothingness. All eyes were immediately on her. Since she liked attention, she didn't mind. There was a certain pair of eyes she wanted to see. Glancing around the hazy dimness, she found those gorgeous teal eyes gazing at her from the back booth in the corner.
The man who reminded her of Frankenstein's monster, pieced together in a patchwork of differing skin tones like a quilt, studied her with bored curiosity. A young blond girl sat at the same table facing him. The girl, dressed in a school uniform which furthered her young appearance, sat up on her knees in the booth seat and turned to see what had garnered his attention. For a moment, she glared at the interloper who she clearly felt did not belong there.
"Dabi, who's that?" the girl asked, scowling with contempt. Although not speaking loudly, her voice carried through the silent room as if she were shouting.
Dabi. So that's his name. Melina committed his name to her memory. She smiled at him yet his face remained impassive, his expression frozen in apathy. His eyes shifted away from hers.
"No one, Toga," he responded, raising his glass to his lips.
"Hmph," the girl snorted in disapproval before turning around and dropping back onto her behind in the padded seat.
You don't know me now, but you will, Dabi, she promised him.
"Good evening, my Queen," Kurogiri greeted her.
When he spoke, it was like breaking a spell; all of the people in the place returned to their drinks and conversation as if they had been taken off of pause.
My Queen. She liked that.
"Hello, again," she rejoined, walking to the bar.
If she did not know better, she would swear he had not moved since their conversation the previous day. The man with the hands was perched on the same bar stool as well giving her a weird sense of déjà vu.
"So the Queen has arrived," Shigaraki stated blandly for no apparent reason.
"Did you think I wasn't coming back?"
"I didn't know. I didn't really care either."
He sure seemed to care yesterday. He had been more polite and compliant as well. Possibly because Kurogiri provided him with a steady stream of strong alcohol to keep him calm.
"Miss Melina," Kurogiri interrupted setting a small bundle of clothing on the bar.
"Call me, Melina, please," she requested. "My Queen would do nicely as well."
"I have a favor to ask you." He pushed the clothes toward her. "Would you put this on and assist me tonight?"
Melina picked up the golden yellow top that looked like a vest with a collar. The bottom was a black pleated chiffon skirt. A barmaid's uniform? Her eyes skimmed the full to capacity bar. Well, it was a packed house tonight.
"This will be a good opportunity for you acquaint yourself with everyone," Kurogiri further explained.
She could see Shigaraki side eyeing her skeptically with one of his red eyes peeking through the fingers splaying across his face. This was also a test to see if she could take orders as well as giving them. Fine. Whatever it takes. It would be fun to be a part of something again. Amusing at least for a time. She draped the outfit over her arm.
"Where do I go get changed?"
"In the back. In my office," Shigaraki piped up. He indicated with a jerk of his chin the door at the end of the row of booths beside the door marked restrooms.
Once again, all eyes were on her as she sashayed down the aisle created by the booths against the wall and the tables lined up down the length of the room. She kept her eyes straight ahead, not looking at anyone. Not even her precious monster Dabi who had grabbed her attention from the moment she first saw him. To say it was love at first sight would be taking a leap into a place she didn't want to go. But there was definitely some kind of magnetism that drew her to him.
Melina opened the door expecting to find a messy office with file folders covering the desk and papers strewn all over the floor. Instead she found a clean office with neatly arranged sparse furnishings. A desk with a computer on top of a green blotter and two brownish red leather chairs sat side by side in front of the desk were the only things in the room.
Apparently the man was only a mess on the inside of his head as evidenced by the weird attachment issues and his hand fetish. She glanced down at her own hands not wanting to become part of his collection. She put her purse on the desk to begin disrobing. Carefully she lay her present outfit of a black straight knee length skirt and simple yellow silk top over the back of one of the chairs to keep them from getting wrinkled. Thankfully, she had worn her wedge heeled sandals instead of her usual spike heeled shoes. They would make being on her feet a little easier.
Melina appreciated Kurogiri's attention to detail in that he stayed true to her color scheme of yellow and black. She did love her bees right down to their little yellow and black stripes. They had gifted her with her abilities after all. A quirk given to her by nature apart from her DNA. Born quirkless, Mother Nature had taken pity on her later and blessed her with a quiet but powerful quirk.
She emerged from the office, returning to the bar. Kurogiri's golden lit eyes widened then narrowed. She did a little turn for him. The skirt was a bit short for her tastes barely reaching her mid thigh and the shirt bared far too much of her shoulders and back in her opinion, but she wouldn't complain.
"What do you think?" she asked.
"It looks lovely," he responded approvingly.
He poured the contents of the metal shaker in his hand over two olives skewered on a tiny plastic sword in a tall stemmed martini glass. After setting it on a tray with a frosty mug of beer and a shot glass full of what she assumed to be tequila, he requested she take it to table three. Before he proceeded to show her which table, she stopped him.
"I'm guessing that's table one," she said, pointing to the first one in the row of booths along the wall. Then counting up to three, stopping her finger at the booth in the middle of the row where two men sat.
"That's right," Kurogiri answered.
"Oh, very good, you can count to three," Shigaraki snidely remarked, finishing his drink. "You're right, Kurogiri. She's a veritable genius."
"Can I serve him his drink next?" she asked, glowering at the snarky man.
Kurogiri chuckled then quickly cleared his throat. "I'll take care of him. It would be wasteful to needlessly spill alcohol."
"I'd gladly pay for the drink. It would be worth it to dump it over his head," she responded, picking up the tray.
Upon approaching the table, she examined the two occupants. One was a blond man with a terrible looking scar on his forehead as if someone had attempted to split his skull in two. The other had longish dark red hair, extremely large lips, and wore sunglasses despite the subdued lighting.
"Who has the martini?" she inquired, carefully lifting the glass to keep the tray balanced in her hand.
"I do," the man with the sunglasses answered.
"Here you go, sir," she said, setting the martini down in front of him.
"I am not a sir!" he snapped indignantly.
Really?, she thought to herself, giving the individual a careful second look. Square jaw complete with a light dash of facial hair. Broad shoulders, muscular chest and arms. There didn't appear to be any breasts. She had not purposely been offensive. How was she supposed to know? She was not narrow minded in the least.
"I apologize, ma'am. I didn't mean to offend you." She bowed deeply in sincere apology, although the act of apologetic submission killed her inside.
"Just don't let it happen again or I'll give you a painful, possibly deadly, reminder," she threatened, gingerly picking up the glass by the stem to take a drink.
"So this would be yours," Melina announced, moving on to the other customer. She set the beer mug and shot glass down in front of him.
"Thank you," he said politely in a low voice without looking at her.
Suddenly his face changed, his dark eyes turning on her and giving her a once over that made her feel like he wanted to eat her in a sexual and not cannibalistic way. His big hand reached out and slapped her on the ass. Despite her yelp of surprise, he allowed his hand to rest there on her throbbing butt cheek.
"Hey, sweetheart. I'd like to stick my stinger in that sweet little honey pot of yours." His voice was completely different this time; deep, gravelly, purposely sensual.
Melina swung the empty tray, hitting him across the face. His head jerked painfully to the side, leaving him stunned and wide eyed, gobsmacked after being smacked with the round piece of thick plastic and cork.
"Ow, motherfucker! What the hell was that for?" he bellowed angrily, switching back to his first persona.
How many people had this man splintered into? This guy was going to be a fuck ton of fun to deal with. Obviously he suffered from dissociative identity disorder, or to put it in simplest terms, good old-fashioned multiple personalities.
"You better get that second personality of yours under control, asshole," she warned him.
"Yeah, yeah, I've tried," he muttered, massaging his undoubtedly throbbing jaw.
Mortified and furious, but keeping her cool on the outside, Melina returned to the bar for another round of drinks for patrons. Once again, Shigaraki studied her from his peripheral vision. This test of his was going to be more difficult than she imagined. However, she would have to suck up her anger, push away her hostility, and deal with whatever harassment they threw at her. Besides, it wasn't like this was the first time she had endured death threats, salacious comments, and unwanted pawing.
"Are you all right?" Kurogiri asked her.
"I'm fine," she returned sweetly, giving him her brightest smile.
She looked at the soda with cherries skewered on the straw and the short tumbler full of dark liquid. Kurogiri used a small blowtorch to set the surface of the brown black liquor aflame. A blue flame danced across the top of the alcohol.
"Table six."
"Table six," Melina repeated, heading that way.
Back corner both. His table. The girl was gone. Good. Here was her chance to at least speak to Dabi. Instead of looking at her as she approached the table, he toyed with the empty glass between his hands.
"Blue usually indicates something cold," she said, setting the glass of fiery liquid down in front of him. "The blue part of a candle flame is where it burns the hottest. It's ironic, don't you think, that the color usually associated with cold can also be the warmest?"
Melina placed her hand over the top of his glass to extinguish the flame. At last his eyes raised to meet hers. His eyes virtually glowed as they bore into hers like a drill, penetrating right down to her core.
"Be careful. If you play with fire, you might get burned," he warned her.
His soft, breathy voice with a raspy edge tickled her spine sending a delicious shiver of excitement down her back.
"I'm not worried," she told him.
She lifted her hand, extending it to him palm up to show him there was no damage, no burn. The royal jelly her body produced promotes healing and skin regeneration, therefore, she did not have to worry about injuries. Besides, the low flame wasn't really that hot and had almost burnt itself out anyway.
"Besides, I've been burned before. Everything heals in time," Melina said, her eyes reconnecting with his after they had examined her uninjured palm thoroughly.
"Maybe so. But there's always scars left behind," he commented, picking up the full glass to take a drink.
"That is true." She retrieved his empty glass to put it on her tray. "But sometimes it's our scars that make us beautiful."
"You think?" he muttered skeptically.
"One day I wouldn't mind getting to see your scars." Her eyes moved along the jagged edges of where his hopelessly marred skin and unscathed flesh met under the shiny silver staples running across his chest like some bizarre masochistic necklace. "All of them."
With those last few words, Melina exchanged the empty soda glass for the new one. She had barely walked away from the table when the little blonde returned from the restroom. She could almost feel the searing eyes of hatred burning into the back of her skull. Thankfully, 'if looks could kill, I would be dead right now' was only an expression to describe the intensity of such a hate filled look. Those honey brown eyes of the one he had called Toga were green with envy. The girl seemed to have an affinity for Dabi. Something akin to a brother complex was how Melina viewed it.
By the end of the night, she had seen many of the villains and served them drinks. However, she knew none of them at all, not even by name. Not a single person had offered their name nor did she ask. By 3AM, the only beings left in the bar were Kurogiri, Shigaraki, Dabi, and herself. Despite not speaking another word to her no matter how many drinks she had brought him, Dabi had stayed and stayed even after his youthful companion left quite a few hours ago.
Melina hauled her exhausted body onto the bar stool next to Shigaraki not caring she was so close to the man. She kicked off her shoes, allowing them to fall to the floor with two hollow thumps.
"Did I pass your test?" she asked.
"Yes. I'm both surprised and disappointed by your success," Shigaraki added with a heavy sigh as if to convey his disappointment in a more discernible manner. "I had wrongly assumed your pride and arrogance would not allow you to lower yourself to menial labor. I had hoped you would tell me to fuck off and leave."
"Hmm," she hummed, giving Kurogiri a smile of gratitude when he placed a drink in front of her. "If you wanted me to fuck off, why didn't you just say so? I excel at doing the unexpected and dashing the hopes others have for me. You could ask my parents if they weren't dead."
"Did you kill you them?" he boldly questioned her.
"No, you asshole, I didn't."
Melina downed half of her drink in one sip. The sugary sweet mixture of cola and whiskey burned all the way down to her belly. She hated herself for divulging any information about her past but detested him more for triggering a bad memory both in thought and feeling.
"Okay. You've learned something else about me yet I know nothing about you. I want you to repay the favor in kind."
"Oh, yeah, how so?" he challenged her, avoiding looking at her.
"Take that hand off your face. I want to see you," she brazenly requested.
"No!" he exclaimed, sliding off his seat.
"Oh, come on! It's only fair. Let me see," Melina argued, reaching for the hand.
Shigaraki squeezed his body into the corner between the glossy dark mahogany bar and the wall.
"No! No! You can't!" he yelled like a petulant child.
"Don't be such a baby," she chastised him when he slapped her hand away.
She grasped the heavy rectangular metal piece attached to the wrist of the hand. The fingers released their grip on his face, and the hand detached itself. Suddenly she found herself in the extremely uncomfortable position of holding the severed hand while seeing his face for the first time.
Melina shamelessly stared, unable to look away. His skin was grayish in color, the ashen hue of death. The skin around his eyes was folded into numerous, crepe like wrinkles. The area was also darker in color, almost bruiselike underneath the crinkled, paper thin surface under his eyes and across his eyelids. His dry, cracked lips were set in a mirthless, Cheshire cat grin that revealed his tightly clenched teeth. A big vertical fissure along his lips had reopened from his overly wide grimace and fresh blood glistened along its length from below his nose to under his bottom lip. His small irises as red as his blood glued themselves to her face.
"There! Are you satisfied?!" Shigaraki bellowed, snatching the hand free from hers. "Did you see what you wanted to see?! Did it make you happy to see the freak?!"
"No," she stated quietly, watching him replace the hand to cover his somewhat frightening visage.
She gulped audibly to swallow the lump in her throat. What was that she had said earlier about scars? Her fingers shook as she extended them toward him to touch the small amount of his cheek visible between the fingers of the hand once again firmly latched onto his face.
"What are you doing?" he rasped in his throaty voice. "Don't touch me."
"It's not as bad as you think," she said.
"Don't touch me, or I'll kill you," he warned her.
There was something about his tone of voice, no longer that of a pouting child but that of a serious man with a lethal quirk, which made her pull her hand away.
"You should leave, Queen Bee. Go home," he ordered her. "Come back if you want, but don't ever touch me again."
"Yes, sir," she responded dutifully, well away she had overstepped her boundaries and humbled in a way that she could not say she did not deserve it.
Melina walked back to his office to change her clothes. Tired, humiliated, desperate to change and leave, she forgot to lock the door. Taking off the shirt, she haphazardly threw it onto the desk by her purse. Reaching behind her, she unzipped the skirt and allowed it to fall to the floor around her feet. She did not hear when the latch was freed from the strike plate to allow entrance for someone.
The warmth of the body behind her alerted her to the man's presence but not before his hand covered her mouth. His other arm encircled her waist, holding her body firmly against his, her back to his chest.
"What you did was very, very stupid," he whispered in her ear.
She knew she should be afraid, but she wasn't. Quite the contrary actually. She leaned against him, feeling the rise and fall of his chest with each of his breaths. When he was speaking, his chest had vibrated against her back causing pulses of heat and cold to rush through her in alternating waves of both sexual arousal and unease from being manhandled. The staples holding his skin together scraped across her bare back, her belly, and her cheek from the way he held her.
"Aren't you going to scream? Struggle? Do something to try to free yourself?" His warm breath brushed across her ear and cheek as if he had physically touched her with his fingertips.
Melina whimpered, wiggling against him in response to the goosebumps that erupted over her entire body. When his hand slowly lifted from her mouth, she inhaled several deep breaths before speaking.
"What if I don't want to be free from you?" she asked.
"What do you mean?" His arm started to gradually unwind from her waist, his fingertips drifting across her hip just above the waist of her silky panties.
Both of her hands caught and held his forearm, keeping his arm securely in place. "I mean, I want you to touch me, hold me."
"Then what?" He loosened his arm, turning her around to face him. His arm coiled around her tightly to draw her to him once again.
"Kiss me," she entreated him, lifting her hands to thrust her fingers into his bushy mane.
His finger pressed to her lips as if shushing her. "I don't think so. I know what you can do with that pretty little deceptive mouth of yours. I won't become your servant. For sex or anything else."
"There's worse fates in life. Don't you think?" she asked, unhinging her fingers from his hair when he released her and stepped back.
"Maybe so," he agreed. "Get dressed. I'll take you home."
"I'm a big girl. I can take care of myself," she assured him, turning her back to him to pull on her other clothes.
"Do you think I'm that chivalrous? What reason could I have for wanting to take you home?"
Melina offered no response, staying quiet and getting her clothes on. She sighed in exasperation when she remembered she had left her shoes at the bar where she had kicked them off. Facing him, she smiled and lay her hand on his chest. Under her fingers she felt the slightly dry, puckered but velvety smooth burned skin while his unharmed delicate porcelain skin met her palm.
"I'm tired. I've had enough of..." Her words trailed off, and she exhaled noisily to convey her weariness. "I've had enough of everything today. I'm going home alone tonight."
"Suit yourself."
As tempting as his offer had been, Melina wanted to go home. She needed a hot bath and a long night's sleep. She wanted to forget this night ever happened. Except for the very last part. Her interaction with Dabi had been somewhat satisfying in that he showed a return interest in her.