by Mia Archer
I was more of a wine cooler kind of girl, a cheap date if there ever was one, but whatever. I might not be in on the con, but if the pricetag made it taste better for my lady love then that was a price I was willing to pay. Again, with other people’s money which was the best kind of money to spend if you ask me.
He opened the wine and held it under my nose, surprising me until I remembered that’s how they did it at these fancy restaurants. Or at least that’s how they did it here at Skyhigh.
I waved him off.
“Just leave the bottle here Steve. And bring us a couple of bigger glasses than this. I don’t want to refill my wine constantly.”
He stared down at me as though I’d just asked him to murder his mother or his favorite dog when it was a puppy, but he complied and a moment later we had two slightly larger wine glasses. Slightly being the operative word here. I glared at the glasses and then up to Steve.
“I’m looking to get me and my date good and tipsy on the expensive hooch steve, so you’re gonna have to do better than that,” I said. “You serve soda here, right?”
Steve blinked. “Well yes?”
“Right. Go and get me whatever glass you put your soda in, and bring two of them.”
Did we get looks from all the other snooty fine diners as they realized I was pouring a generous portion of one of the most expensive wines in the city, which probably made it one of the most expensive wines in the world by extension, into giant glasses that were usually reserved for soda? Maybe, but I’d long ago stopped giving a fuck about what other people thought about me.
They could stare all they wanted, but I wasn’t going to change what I was doing. On of the joys of being a villain was living outside of society and not giving a fuck even as I tried to dominate that society and mold it in my nefarious image.
Selena giggled and her eyes went wide as she looked at what I poured.
“Damn,” she said.
Then she leaned in closer over the table. “You know I’m actually a few months shy of being able to legally drink?”
I blinked a couple of times. She’d actually revealed something to me that she’d never revealed before. Sure I had a vague idea of how old she was because she was a junior in college which meant she was probably at least nineteen, but she’d been cagey about her age before losing and regaining her memory.
That she was admitting things to me now seemed like a good sign. Maybe a sign that things were looking up. Or maybe I was reading way too much into something simple as she took a sip of her wine and then took another drink.
I held up my own glass. “Well I won’t say anything if you don’t. Besides, it’s not like excise can enforce anything on you when you’re with me.”
That was one of the joys of having a teleporter that could get you out of a sticky situation. A teleporter meant never having to say you were sorry to the cops and the justice system.
“Right,” she said.
We both did something that was very college in that moment. Something that I was sure scandalized all the older stuffed shirts all around us. We tipped our cups back and straight up chugged that expensive wine.
Forget enjoying the oaky undercurrent or whatever the fuck some wine snob would have to say about that shit. I was looking to get a little drunk and have a good time with my girl thank you very much!
I sat my cup back down on the table and let out a deep breath. Looked at Selena and grinned.
“Damn,” I said as she finished as well.
I looked around the room. Yup. Sure enough there were a lot of people who were giving us disapproving looks. Whether those looks were because we were chugging wine at this fancy pants restaurant or if it was because they were scandalized that I’d just chugged something that I’m sure a few of them recognized as an expensive vintage was anyone’s guess, but I didn’t care.
I grinned and waved at everyone giving me the stink eye. That only irritated them more, and suddenly everyone was pretending they couldn’t see us.
That was just fine with me. I turned back to Selena, and realized all the scandalized old people in the room staring at us were hardly the most interesting thing happening.
No, she was swaying. As though she was having some trouble holding her liquor. Which was a little odd considering the way I’d seen her pack it away in the lab and at a couple of house parties we’d ventured out to on campus. In disguise, of course.
Parties, especially the type you found on campus, usually weren’t my cup of tea being a misanthrope through and through who was more comfortable with dominating humanity than interacting with it, but she liked them so I’d gone along and had the whole college experience even if I was more grad student age.
Only now she was reacting like she never had before. Seriously. I’d seen this girl do a keg stand and then a beer funnel and not be any worse for the wear. And now one glass of wine was enough to have her swaying in her seat and looking like she was on the verge of either being sick or having a hell of a good time?
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I’ve never felt like this before,” she said. “Like my head is spinning or something. It feels like when I’m flying over the city and the whole world is moving, but flying was never this disorienting…”
I grinned as I realized exactly what was going on here. Just as she’d never truly felt pain before, her super powered metabolism or whatever the hell it was that gave her those powers had kept her from ever truly being able to get drunk.
Only now she didn’t have those powers holding down the fort in her liver.
“My dear,” I said, trying not to relish this moment too much and having a difficult time of it. “It would appear that you are suffering the effects of alcohol for the first time in your life.”
40
Bottle Therapy
Selena regarded me for a long moment. Her eyes looked a little glazed over and she was still wobbling back and forth. It was amazing that a little bit of alcohol was enough to get her to look that sloshed that quickly.
Clearly she didn’t think she could get that sloshed that quickly though. Not from the way she drunkenly scoffed at me.
Finally she waved a dismissive hand. It was the sort of gesture that showed off the supreme confidence of the sort of person who thought they could hold their liquor while at the same time revealing to the world that she was the exact opposite of the kind of person who could hold her liquor.
In short, she was getting really drunk right in front of me and she clearly had no idea that it was happening. I’d seen it happen often enough at the parties we’d gone to, though she’d never been the person getting drunk before tonight.
She always had a good time baiting lightweights into drinking competitions. The problem there was anyone was a lightweight compared to her. Until now. It looked like the universe was enacting a bit of karma by removing her powers. I bet she wouldn’t be able to win many games of flippy cup in her current condition.
“That’sh impossible,” she said, her words slurring. She inspected the wine glass in her hand like it was some ancient artifact or something, and then up to me. “I’ve never been drunk in my life.”
She put the wine glass down and it actually made a thump against the table. If she’d had her old strength and she’d been able to get drunk when she had that old strength then that was the kind of move that would’ve shattered the glass and destroyed the table right along with it.
Another small silver lining in the whole her not having her powers thing, though it wasn’t much of a silver lining, all things considered.
“Think about it,” I said. “You never got drunk before, but you also had your powers before. Those powers were the reason you could hold your liquor.”
I couldn’t help but smile. There was just something deliciously funny about watching her dealing with the effects of alcohol for the first time. It was way better than, say, watching her dealing with feeling pain for the first time ever.
She hit me with an ir
ritated glare. There was a flash of something there. Something that went beyond irritation. Something that said she still very much blamed me for everything that happened and was going to continue blaming me for everything that had happened.
Which was fair enough, I suppose, even if it was a low blow.
I chalked it up to the alcohol that she would even look at me like that in the first place. It seemed like it was all water under the bridge when she’d regained her memories, but maybe there was still some resentment lingering there under the surface.
In vino veritas, as they said in the olden times. Really olden times.
“What are you talking about?” she asked. “I can hold my liquor and it doesn’t have anything to do with powers thank you very much!”
I wondered what kind of drunk she was going to be. A weepy drunk? That could put an end to the night’s fun pretty damn quick if the booze only served to amplify all the bad feelings she was already dealing with about her current lot in life.
Or she could be an angry drunk. That anger that flashed behind her eyes had been very real. That would also pretty much bring an end to the evening’s fun before it even got started.
Oh well. Time to see what there was to see. Time to find out exactly what kind of drunk she was.
“Think about it,” I said. “And try to think through the fog that’s hitting your brain right about now.”
I had to remember that this was her first time getting drunk. That she was the same as a college kid going out on their twenty-first birthday and getting drunk for the first time.
Or, if I was being more realistic about what was going on here, that she was like a college kid who’d just finished moving into the dorms, their parents had finally gone home, and they were going out to the house parties to see what the big deal was.
Either way she was virgin territory when it came to being drunk, and while that was a very interesting idea it was also mildly terrifying considering the delicate emotional state she’d been in lately.
Basically I’d just taken a nice incendiary device, put it on top of a powder keg, and lit the fuse without realizing what the hell I was doing. Now it was time for me to deal with the consequences even though I had no idea where the hell this was going.
“Before you had a high metabolism,” I said. “Think about the way you packed away food all the time and you’d never gain any weight?”
I tried not to think about that too much. It was still a point of jealousy for me that she could eat whatever she wanted and still have that amazing figure. Not that I was complaining since I got to enjoy that amazing figure on the regular.
I was also very much looking forward to enjoying that figure on the regular again considering she’d gotten her memories back. We had a lot of lost time to make up for if you catch my meaning. Wink and a nudge and all that.
Also? I totally didn’t want her to put too much thought into that particular logic train. Thinking about how she used to be able to pack away the calories like a football star training for the new season might make her realize that her ability to eat whatever she wanted and not gain weight was gone right along with her powers. The last thing I needed was for her to be more depressed than she’d already been.
“Huh,” she said. “I never thought of it like that.”
A look of panic crossed her face. A look that would’ve been funny if this hadn’t gotten so very serious. Again, I was worried that any part of this conversation might push her over the edge again, and I desperately didn’t want that to happen considering all the work I did put into getting her back among the living.
“What if you’re right. That means…”
“That means that you, Selena, are getting drunk for the first time in your life. Well and truly drunk. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe you should enjoy it.”
She looked up at me. Grinned. Okay then. Not the reaction I was expecting considering the panic that had been gripping her, but it was better than her turning into a weepy drunk or a surly drunk.
If she was smiling that meant maybe she was willing to still have a good time. Maybe she’d be a fun drunk. Maybe she would decide to embrace this and enjoy it.
“Well if that’s the case let’s have some fun!” she said. “I always thought I just couldn’t get drunk for some reason, but if it was my powers doing the heavy lifting for my liver…”
Before I knew what was happening she’d grabbed the expensive bottle of wine and refilled her glass. I decided “when in Rome” and went ahead and refilled mine as well. We clinked glasses and chugged our second glasses of the night, much to the chagrin of the rich old wine snobs all around us.
I figured that would be all the fun we had, but then she got up so fast that I’d almost think she had some of her super speed back and pulled me towards the stairs.
Well then. Normally I wasn’t a fan of people drowning their sorrows in alcohol, but if booze was going to give me a little bit of an assist pulling her out of her funk tonight I wasn’t going to knock it.
Especially if it meant holding her close like this and spending some time out on the dance floor. Yeah, that was some out of the bottle therapy I could endorse!
41
Imminent Danger
The first thing I noticed when we stepped out onto the dance floor was how damn good she felt pressing against me. Oh yeah. It’d been way too long since I’d felt her up against me like this.
It was something I’d really come to miss. Something I was hoping to get reacquainted with in a big way now that I didn’t have to worry about that pesky memory loss thing.
I was going to have to put all sorts of safety systems into whatever suit I eventually put together for her, because I didn’t want to toss her into the med bay and risk something like this happening ever again.
Also? It totally looked like Selena was in the mood to make up for some lost time. Which was just fine with me. I wouldn’t mind feeling her against me all night long, if you catch my drift.
Even if I wasn’t going to do anything like that. Even if she did offer to bed me right about now I’d have to say no. She was getting drunk for the first time in her life, and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I took advantage of that. Even if we were sort of dating again. At least I assumed we were dating now that she had her memories back.
Informed consent around alcohol was a dicey enough proposition without adding the whole super science induced recent amnesia into the equation which I was not going to do. I might be a villain, but I’m not totally reprehensible.
The second thing I noticed? This girl was damn light on her feet, even if she was three sheets to the wind.
Scratch that. As she pulled me out onto the dance floor and led like an expert I figured maybe she was only one sheet to the wind. One and a half sheets, tops. Maybe there really was something to the alcohol tolerance she was boasting about.
The point is the number of sheets she was throwing into the wind wasn’t nearly as great as I’d been led to believe when we were up there downing wine like we were a couple of Klingon warriors getting high on prune juice before going into glorious battle with some tribbles or something.
“You’re good at this,” I said.
“I ought to be,” she said. “I was in the swing club before…”
She trailed away. I figured she was getting a little too close to a subject that was more than a little uncomfortable for her. Better to not press that too much. I didn’t want her closing down and ignoring the world.
Again.
So I let myself fall into the dance. I let myself be carried away by how good it felt having her press against me. By how good it felt having her twirling me around the dance floor and leading in a dance that was so very different from the deadly dance we’d usually enjoyed with each other back when we were at each other’s throats fighting for domination of the city.
Yeah, this was much nicer, thank you very much.
“Wait. So you were in the swing club and you’ve n
ever heard of Glenn Miller?” I asked.
She blushed. “Should I?”
“Well duh,” I said. “Like I said, that was the kind of music the boys could dance to with their best gal before they shipped off to give the business to Hitler and Tojo.”
“I guess they just always played more modern stuff. Ska, things like that,” she said. “Not a lot of old stuff, but I can see why people like dancing to this music.”
“Of course you can,” I said. “This stuff is pure dancing music. Not like anything made in the last few decades.”
I knew I was falling into the fallacy of old stuff being better, but this was one area where I was willing to defend that fallacy to the death. I loved this kind of music, and it was the kind of music you could really dance to. Not like the spastic waving around that passed for dancing at the aforementioned college parties I allowed myself to be dragged to.
If I’d known Selena had this in her I would’ve taken her out dancing the last time we were here. We twirled. We dipped. She moved in close and the eyes she was giving me made me think she was thinking some of the same thoughts that had to be going through those old timers’ heads when they were youngsters about to head overseas to give the business to…
Well you know where I’m going with this. I’ve thought it a few times at this point. The point is she was looking at me with the kind of eyes I hadn’t seen since before she had that unfortunate memory wipe, and those were the kind of eyes that were making me think it might be interesting to ditch the dinner and head back to the lab.
Then she totally distracted me from everything by leaning in and kissing me.
I briefly worried about whether or not that kiss was a result of her having a little too much to drink. I was still sort of operating on the instinct I’d developed to stay away from her when she didn’t have her recent memories, but then she kept right on kissing me and I fell back into the old groove we’d enjoyed when we first got together and I didn’t care.
