Modern OQ AU
Big thanks to lillie-grey on tumblr for the beta!
He's still watching her, the broody Brit who'd strolled into Keegan's Pub and Brewery ten minutes ago and sat at the opposite end of the bar. He'd been casting a casual eye across the room as he nursed a club soda, looking for someone, perhaps, when their gazes bumped into each other, and he's been sneaking looks at her ever since. There. She's caught him glancing up at her from his drink again, though he covers it by sweeping his eyes outward toward the television showing the eleven o'clock news behind her. His attention isn't unnerving, just thoughtful, as if he's trying to decide if he's met her before and is debating the merits of letting the moment pass or acting upon the chance they be auld acquaintances long forgot.
She's two glasses of merlot into erasing a week rife with bureaucratic nonsense when he moseys over to the empty bar stool beside her, asks if she's expecting anyone and would she mind terribly if he were to occupy this seat for a while. Her shitty week combined with the pleasant hum of merlot singing in her veins is the only reason she allows the blue-eyed Brit with the scruffy chin to sit next to her at first. Soon, though, his lilting repartee and easy laugh are a breath of fresh air washing over her skin, and she's been suffocating far too long to resist when he offers to buy shots of whiskey. As shot number one slithers down her throat it burns through the wall of resistance she's built against exactly this type of situation, this terrible and wonderful potential for a night where she doesn't have to be Deputy Chief Executive Mills, ball buster extraordinaire. She could be just Regina, for a night. Just herself, with this stranger who's gazing at her with such a quiet intensity he must already know her secrets. How convenient.
Yes, she'll have another.
Shot number two keeps her leg steady when his knee brushes the outside of her bare thigh below the hem of her dress, and shot number three has her moaning into his mouth as he presses her against the brick wall on the fire escape, his knee now on the inside of her thigh nudging gently to allow his leg to slip between hers. She tips her head back as his lips feather kisses from her mouth down the slope of her neck, and when he nips behind the hinge of her jaw and sucks, her back arches, sending the hand not pressed to her chest sliding down her side and coasting around her waist. He pulls her flush against him, and though the air is nippy for a Friday night in March, all she can feel is the alcohol burning in her belly and the radiating heat of his body pressed against her in all the right places.
She worms her hands below the hem of his shirt, grinning as her chilled fingers against his heated skin push a hiss through his teeth, and then she's gasping as his attention moves to her earlobe, sucking the sensitive flesh into his mouth and grazing her lobe with his teeth, gentle at first, and then harder as she slips a hand from under his shirt to scrape against the back of his neck.
They need to get off this fire escape.
"You are so lovely," he says, pulling back from her and stroking his fingers along the line of her neck, up her jaw until his fingers are threading in her hair, cradling her head.
She smiles, tries to calm the fluttery feelings his voice sparks in her belly and rush of heat gathering lower. "You're not so bad yourself."
"What would you say," he asks, nuzzling her nose with his own, "If I told you my name was Robin Hood?"
Regina snorts, pulls him in for another kiss and rolls her hips against his. "I'd ask where your Maid Marian is, because I'm certainly not her." She's not one for roleplay, usually, but tonight she'll indulge, live a little.
"I'm searching for a queen, not a maiden."
"In that case, her majesty's court is open for petitioners."
He grins at her then, front teeth capturing his bottom lip for a moment before he leans into her again, and then she's back against the wall as he sinks down, kneeling before his queen, and she's never been one for public displays, even if there's no one out here but a hazy green security bulb flickering above the emergency exit door, but oh she's making an exception for this night, and tomorrow she'll blame the lapse in judgement on shot number four.
An unfamiliar ringtone invades her sleep. Regina rolls away from the warmth of the other body in her bed and gropes for her cell phone on the nightstand, fingers bumping a glass tumbler she doesn't remember filling and sloshing water over her hand.
"It's mine," a sleep gravelled voice says. "Go back to sleep."
Regina flicks water from her hand and looks over her shoulder, watching the Brit swipe his thumb across the phone screen under the name "LJ". She rolls back over and throws her arm over her eyes. Forget her personal ban on tequila. After last night she's staying far away from whiskey. And hot British men with dimples. And that bar, too, because a foggy memory of tripping over her own feet and knocking a waitress into a wall on her graceless walk to the fire escape to have her way with Hot British Man has resurfaced along with a pulsing headache.
"It's barely morning. What do you want?" the Brit asks. The bed dips as he stands, and Regina lifts her arm up a fraction to sneak a peek at him as he pads to the bathroom, biting back a groan as her gaze lingers on the two dimples pressed into each cheek of his bare backside before he closes the door.
What's his name? Did she ever ask him?
She flops her arm off the side of the bed and scrabbles for the knob on her nightstand, nudging the drawer open with her fingers and then rolling to her stomach to rummage for the aspirin bottle. Two pills knocked into her palm and a swig of water from the tumbler later, she sits up and rolls her head from side to side. Her head pounds with the movement, but the tightness in her shoulders is lessened somewhat, and that's enough for now.
She'll make coffee, maybe scramble some eggs, and when Hot British Man emerges, she'll ask him his name (just for her own edification) and then send him on his merry way. Right?