A/N: I meant to have this chapter out sooner... Have I explained about my attention span yet?

Chapter 15: Date Night, Part 2

There was a small crowd at Tapper's, like always. People milling about, people at the bar, even a few people on the dance floor. Felix and Calhoun were at the back bar talking quietly, Calhoun was bent low so they could talk close. Ralph would've been surprised to see them, but they had a 'date night' just about every other day so it wasn't that odd. Vanellope dragged Ralph over to the empty seats next to them.

"Hey Ralph, Vanellope. How're you doing tonight?" Felix asked, sounding ever delighted to see them.

"Mmmm..." Ralph said, like he wasn't sure. Vanellope poked him in the side.

"Pretty good." Vanellope replied.

"So, what brings you to Tapper's this fine evening?" Calhoun asked.

"Dancing!" Vanellope answered enthusiastically.

"No." Ralph said quickly afterwords.

"Dancing at Tapper's?" Calhoun asked. "Are you stealing our date night?" She teased.

"Yep." Vanellope said cheerfully. Ralph just slid onto a bar stool with an annoyed sigh and ordered a root beer.

"What? No, don't order drinks yet. Those are for when you're really thirsty after dancing." Vanellope informed as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and clung to him.

"I told you I wasn't going to dance." Ralph said firmly. Vanellope just made a whiny sound.

A peppy sort of song started coming out of the jukebox and Vanellope looked up.

"Well, you're a jerk and I'm gonna go dance without you. Kay?" Vanellope said. Ralph just casually sipped at his drink. Vanellope made a face at him and went off.

After a moment Felix broke the silence.

"Sooo?" Felix asked Ralph.

"So what?" Ralph asked.

"What's up with you and half-pint over there?" Calhoun asked bluntly.

"Nothing more than usual." Ralph answered.

"So what's with her sudden... behavior?" Felix asked. Ralph rolled his eyes and resigned himself to having to tell them.

"She's convinced herself that we're dating now." Ralph said in annoyance.

"Ralph! I told you you had to-!" Felix started.

"I DID. We had a very long talk about all this yesterday. I told her we weren't dating but you know how she is. When she gets an idea in her head..." Ralph explained.

"How did she get the idea you were dating?" Calhoun asked.

"I dunno. It's probably half my fault and half the fault of whoever explained the concept to her. I don't think they explained it all that well." Ralph said. "When she asked what we should do last night I said to just keep going as we were..."

"And she said that that was agreeing to actually date." Calhoun finished, reasoning her way through it. Ralph nodded. Felix got a fit of the giggles.

"It's not funny. This is a real problem." Ralph insisted.

"Ralph, you're so dense." Felix laughed.

"Oh shut up." Ralph grumbled.

All this time, both Calhoun and Felix noticed, Ralph hadn't taken his eyes off of Vanellope. Oh, he was putting up a good front, for him, but the corner of his eyes were clearly locked on.

Vanellope, bless her, was putting on quite a show. It was difficult not to watch her. She'd found a group of girls to dance with and they were burning up the dance floor. With each twirl her long hair flew up into the air like an attention getting flag. Each flick and swing of her hips made her skirt reflect the dim lights.

Everyone watched her with interest, particularly the group of men who'd just entered.

Calhoun, with her military training, picked up on the situation immediately. She had to wonder if Vanellope hadn't planned it.

"Things are about it get interesting..." Calhoun said quietly with a smirk. She took a swig of her drink to muffle a chuckle.

Ralph wasn't paying attention to the men... yet. He wasn't noticing much of anything, if he were honest. All of Vanellope's little attention getting movements were doing their job on him just as much as anyone else.

"Hey... Ryu." Ken nudged. Ryu, who'd been starting to head over to the bar, looked at his cohort.

"What?" Ryu said, annoyed at being interrupted. When Ken just pointed at the dance floor he followed the line of sight. The group of women dancing there caught his eye. Especially the one in the middle doing all the more... exuberant moves. He gave a low whistle.

"Wow."

"Yeah... less thirsty now." Ken said, then headed to the dance floor.

It was about this time that Ralph noticed that something was up. When a handful of men approached the group on the dance floor the little spell broke and he started paying more attention to the situation and less attention to just Vanellope. He recognized the guys as the Street Fighter gang. Ken, Ryu, and a couple of others. While they were just looking he wasn't too wary, but then...

Ken went right into the middle of the group of girls on the floor and grabbed Vanellope's hand. Without hesitating he pulled her arm up and twirled her around. Vanellope stumbled a little and fell against him, causing Ken to smile. Ralph tensed at that.

Calhoun looked away from the dance floor to catch Ralph's reaction to this development. Ralph's hands were clenched and resting on either side of his glass mug as if he didn't trust himself to pick it up. His eyes were narrowed just a little and locked on the dance floor. He was working his jaw a little to prevent it from tensing up.

Ralph felt himself tense up as he watched Vanellope interacting with Ken. She'd had a shocked expression on her face for half a moment after he'd spun her around but she recovered quickly. She then started chatting with him, smiling cheerfully like always. Apparently they'd agreed on dancing, because they then proceeded to. Ralph had never been so truly... agitated. He supposed it would've been okay if she'd danced with him the same way she'd danced with the girls. Ken was getting really close, and hips were swaying more... there seemed to be an inordinate amount of touching.

"I can hear your teeth grinding Wreck-it." Calhoun said with a smirk. Ralph blinked and willed his eyes away from the dance floor. He glanced at Calhoun and then proceeded to stare at his drink as if it'd offended him in some way.

"You could stop it, y'know..." A voice in his head, that sounded suspiciously like Felix, said in a whisper. Ralph glanced at Felix for a second just to make sure he hadn't spoken. "Just go dance with her." Ralph just sighed and continued to stare into his drink more. Willfully ignoring it.

After a while Vanellope came back.

"Geez, it's hot in here." Vanellope said in a breathless voice. She peeled off her hoodie and placed it over the bar stool next to Ralph. She stood on the wrung of Ralph's bar stool and leaned over one of his shoulders to grab his root beer from between his hands. She raised it to her lips and tilted her head back to take a long swig.

Ralph froze up at the view this afforded him. Her neck was stretched and her shoulders bent back just far enough to stretch her shirt tight over... Ralph coughed and looked away.

"How was the dancing?" Calhoun asked. Ralph narrowed his eyes a little, glaring at her.

"It's fun. Ken's a really good dancer." Vanellope said, breathing heavily after a large gulp. She put the glass down on the bar heavily.

"He offered to buy me a drink, but I knew I could just come over and get some of yours." Vanellope said to Ralph. She hugged him around the shoulders before hopping off of his bar stool and sitting on her own.

"Or all of it?" Ralph asked, examining the empty glass pointedly.

"It was warm anyway, you should thank me." Vanellope dismissed with a wave. "I'm just taking a break cause I got so hot, I'll probably go dance some more in a minute after I cool off."

Ralph carefully didn't growl at this.

He thought on the situation very carefully. There were probably a few ways to deal with this. He could just leave, or he could be upset and probably end up making a scene, or he could wait it out and then try to calmly explain to Vanellope that that was not how someone who claimed to be a girlfriend acted, or...

"Or you could just dance with her!" The voice insisted again, sounding more annoyed this time. Apparently it didn't approve of any of his solutions. He couldn't say he blamed it, he didn't like any of them much either.

Ralph continued to mull over this as Vanellope had a drink to cool off and chatted with Felix and Calhoun. After a moment Vanellope looked over in the direction of the dance floor. Ken was heading this way. Ralph looked at him and then over to Vanellope, who looked awfully eager.

"So, you wanna dance?" Ralph asked Vanellope quickly, before his brain could think better of it and try to trip him up. Vanellope just looked at him, completely stunned. His brain caught up with him and started to panic.

"She doesn't want to." it thought. "She'd rather be dancing with Ken. I mean, he's smaller, and he's bound to be less awkward. You saw him dancing, his stupid martial arts makes him flawless. Even if she says yes you know you're going to make an ass of yourself. Why did you even-"

Vanellope's squeal of delight broke through his panic attack.

"Of course!" Vanellope almost yelled in his ear.

Before any protest could be made she was bounding over to the dance floor, dragging a very reluctant Wreck-It Ralph behind her.

A/N: Heeee, so cute. Next chapter "The Dance". Yes, yes, I think it needs it's own chapter... maybe.
Anyway, my attention span isn't solely to blame for this chapter being a little later than I intended. (I know, I know, you're all going "What? This is a LATE chapter?") Actually, I finished the Vanellope picture. You can find it under the same keywords as before (because I'm too lazy to change the tags) at DeviantArt: "Nekuyo Vanellope adult design sketch". Should pull it up no problem.

Review Response: OMG there are so many of you this time. 21 reviews guys! 21!

The Phantom Soldier- Thank you! And yes, cuteness always prevails over logic.

When can i see you again - I saw that little TV Spot! It's so cute, I wish I knew what she was saying. Also, I promise to keep the manga idea on the back burner. Maybe I'll try drawing Ralph next and see how that goes.

jeh-nee - Deeeeep deep down Ralph isn't even thinking about it. It's practically already a law of the universe. It's only his conscious mind that's having a hard time.

KCRedPanda98 - Yeah, I was trying to find a story like this too. Alas, to quote the first chapter "When you want to do something right..."

BoredParanoia - I'm gonna admit, I didn't see this coming either. This was going to be a drama when I first envisioned it. It makes me sort of glad that I don't plan out my fanfics very far in advance. I'd miss all this good stuff if I did.