http://x_wither.livejournal.com/ (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
x-wither.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
xp_logs2010-01-30 08:59 pm
x-wither.livejournal.com) wrote in xp_logs2010-01-30 08:59 pm
Entry tags:
Angel & Kevin | Saturday Night
Kevin is a sucker. (i.e. Angel gets Kevin to take her to Silver on the threat that she'll go alone otherwise. read: Kevin is a sucker).
Like any slightly obsessed young woman when confronted by something she didn't know, Angel had gone and talked to a number of other young women to get a consensus on what to wear to a club. More importantly, she'd then gone through that advice and tossed half of it on account of being "silly", "absurd" and bordering on "what are you smoking?". Several talks and one emergency shopping trip later left Angel feeling a bizarre mix of confidence and nerves as she shrugged off the jacket she wore so people wouldn't wonder.
"Well?" she asked Kevin at the coat check place at Silver, arms akimbo to show off the green shimmering, tight top, black jeans and heels. Some of the other girls had been more than happy to pin up her hair in a number of curls and she grinned at her friend. "Am I working it? Tell me I'm working it."
Kevin was jumpy because there were people. In fact there were a lot of people and while he had understood this intellectually when he'd agreed to take Angel to the club it was an entirely different beast when confronted head on. He could have dressed slightly nicer for the place, but this many people in this small a place meant a hood was sort of mandatory. The hooded long sleeved shirt he wore really didn't go well with a collared, button down shirt so Kevin looked like he did every day. And Angel looked...like she was thoroughly planing on getting into trouble not that she was legal. His jaw dropped just a little "Ah, um..." He had to clear his throat. "You look nice." It was so entirely obvious that nice correlated to something much closer to dear God you're hot that it was almost painful.
Angel's grin widened and she cheerfully grabbed him by the arm, conscious of where his layers stopped and started. She was a lot of things but she was also keenly observant after a life time of growing up with a camera in her hand. She pressed Kevin's boundaries only because he let her and while she wouldn't step beyond, oh, she did enjoy pressing her luck. "I've wanted to come to Silver for ages!" she said, voice raising as they headed towards the beat and pulse of the music. "Makes me want to jump on a table and, you know, announce I'm legal or something!"
Kevin blinked at her while Angel dragged him off. Why did he agree to this? Oh, right, because she said she'd come hang out with the leering older men all alone otherwise. "Uh, you do that and Ah'm tying you up, throwing you over my shoulder and sticking you in the trunk on the way home." He ignored the fact that she could just burn through rope anyway just like he was ignoring that she was legal because, yeah, bad thing to fixate on. Bad, bad thing...
"Oh you know I'd totally end up having a rave in your trunk and you'd end up with like burn marks and rope every which way," she admonished, scanning the crowd with awe. Despite the glee that she'd dragged him into the room, Angel clung just a little more tightly to his arm as the crowd swayed and moved to the music like a living creature. It was a little daunting, especially with no clear place to sit or lean. "Okay, so many thanks, a thousand thanks for coming with me because this? Is a little intense." She looked up at him, eyes wide, before breaking out into another grin.
"But oh so awesome."
The clinging didn't go unnoticed. He pulled his arm out of her grasp and Kevin instead wrapped it around her waist. The movement accomplished two things: it kept her close so no one could get hands where she might not want them and it sent a clear message to the guy who was clearly eye raping her. And he was probably forty. That was a little disgusting. "Like Ah was gonna let you come alone?" He had to yell to be heard over the music. That was going to get annoying.
Kevin pulled his hood up over his head, eyes raking over the press of bodies in the crowd. Then he looked down and caught that grin. "You owe me, y'know."
Her fingers had dropped down to grip the arm resting on her waist, mostly out of shock that Kevin would have even done that. Though as people jostled around them she could see why he had. Angel took a deep breath and smirked up at him. "Aw, because I dragged you out here when you were going to be sitting quietly at home - oh, wait, I can see why I owe you. Any terms so far or is this a vague threat to hang over my head as I try to dance the night away?"
She gave a vague shimmy to demonstrate her dancing moves.
"Ah'm plannin' to hang it over your head. For a while. Until Ah find something good enough to equal me comin' here." He looked around again at the crowd of people. Kevin had gotten a lot better with crowds. A lot better. Still, he thought the odds of avoiding a panic attack tonight were next to nonexistent. Hopefully he'd manage to just retreat, deal with it, calm down and manage the rest of the night. He didn't want to ruin Angel's night even if he was well aware she could get home on her own easily. That little shimmy totally derailed his thoughts, though.
"I really do appreciate it, if that helps," Angel said, as she steered them towards the bar. She really didn't have much interest in stuff she wasn't supposed to drink - her parents had let her have wine and beer from time to time as she grew up so there wasn't much "mystery" surrounding it - but she'd kill for a Coke. She looked impish for a moment. "But consider a favor to be owed in the future - I'm not the kind of girl to forget, though I reserve the right to make faces at you depending on what you make me do."
"You make me sound so nefarious." Kevin wasn't actually sure if he was capable of being nefarious. He was hardly a criminal mastermind or a sadist bent on the destruction of innocent people or something like that. "How big that favor is inflates if Ah end up out there." He nodded to the dance floor. Somehow Kevin had no doubt that's precisely where he'd end up at some point. Even if Angel didn't drag him along when she went to dance there were men with wandering hands and that just wasn't right.
Kevin flagged down a bartender when all Angel's steering got them up to the bar, grateful that Jay apparently wasn't working tonight. "What do you want?" Kevin was keeping her tucked in close to his side and maybe even partially using her as a barrier between him and the people moving past them.
"Just a coke!" she told him, petting the part of the arm that was sort of resting on her hip. Angel could guess some of the reasons he was keeping her close because they'd been friends for ages - she knew it really was a big deal for him to come out in the crowds for her. So she really didn't mind him using her as a bit of a shield or keeping her close. Besides, it was simply not in her nature to tell a hot guy she was friends with to stop touching her.
"And you're totally nefarious!" Angel continued, gesturing a little bit. "Where do you think I picked it up from?"
"So it's my fault? That's like slander or somethin'." He was, of course, smiling at her when he said it. A little bit of the tension that had built up in him eased away and Kevin turned his attention to the bartender so he could order her a coke and him a bottle of water. He used his free hand to pay for both drinks rather than dislodging the arm comfortably wrapped around Angel.
After handing her coke over to her, Kevin grabbed up his bottle of water and nudged them a little away from the bar so someone else could sidle up to order drinks. "Ah dunno how you can go and accuse me of being nefarious. Ah'm like a saint!"
"Yeah, you totally take after Saint Nefarious. I tried to get that as my confirmation name but nooo, I had to pick a 'real' saint." Actually, she was quite fond of Saint Veronica. Angel took a deep drink of her coke, coughing a bit when she took too much of a mouthful and the bubbles fizzed a bit too much. Blinking, Angel suddenly spotted one of those tall tables being abandoned and literally dove for it, dragging Kevin with her.
That dragging was fairly literal and Kevin nearly went stumbling into Angel in the process. Alright, maybe the stumbling wasn't entirely avoided, but he did manage to not crash into her. The table was worth it, though. It got them out of the line of fire, so to speak, and it kept other people safe from him. Kevin had to pull his fallen hood back up once he was seated. More of that tension slipped away from him but given the surroundings it wasn't going away entirely. Still, it was something and he picked up the thread of conversation where it had been abandoned a moment before to be sure there were no accidents as he'd gotten pulled through the crowd. "Saint Nefarious? Is that a Catholic saint? Catholics are kind funny that way, got rules and saints the rest of us never really heard of."
Angel set down her drink and leaned over a little more to try and explain when an arm from the other side of her dropped heavily over her shoulders. She blinked in surprise as she was jostled against the table and looked up to a see a cute but drunk frat boy looking guy grinning down at her. He smelled like onion rings and beer, a combination that was unappealing, especially so close to her.
"We ..." He pointed back and forth frantically between himself and Angel. "Have so got to dance. I like red hair."
Kevin's eyes narrowed into a glare so fast once that arm was around his friend. Angel didn't even get a chance to respond before Kevin was raising out of his chair and stepping up to the guy. "How 'bout you go dance with yourself and get your arm off my girlfriend?" The word girlfriend had more impact than friend. He figured Angel would forgive him for it later. She didn't exactly look enthused by the guy's proposition anyway.
"Yeah, not interested, buddy," Angel responded, grateful for the dark interior as she felt her face flush both from the grabbing from the stranger and the 'girlfriend' thing from Kevin. It had the desired result, though, as the guy quickly scrambled back to his group of now snickering friends. Angel threw in another glare in their direction, one that had been perfected on the hoard of male cousins she'd grown up with and the guys scattered a bit.
"Now I hope I don't smell like that guy because ew!" she muttered, pulling at her shirt a little bit.
Just barely Kevin refrained from suggesting she either take her shirt off or do something to smell like him instead. Thank God for being raised with manners, right? He did, however, without warning wrap a hand around one leg of her tall stool and pulled it considerably closer to his own before he sat back down. The snickering friends were still watching so Kevin gave them a pointed look and let his arm casually fall around the redhead as if it was used to being there.
"Don't worry, someone might spill their drink on you and then you can smell like alcohol," he told her as if this were favorable. He forced himself to not think of the shirtless possibilities of that scenario. You are a bad, bad man, Kevin chastised mentally.
That comment and the chair scootching got him a nose wrinkle but Angel didn't comment about the arm. "I think that's a goal I can live without meeting," she replied, taking a long drink of her soda to wash away the nerves that the guy had caused. "I mean, it all smells gross even if it doesn't taste that bad sometimes, so I would like to avoid going home smelling like I played beer bong all night."
"Ah make no promises to be able to protect you from people who can't keep their liquor in their cups. Ah mean, unless you want me to try for human blanket here but Ah don't think it'd really work out." There was enough of a size difference between them that he could probably mostly pull it off, but there was only so much body another body could cover with their own. And yeah, didn't need those mental images either. By the end of the night Kevin was going to shoot his brain if it didn't start to cooperate with him. He read that article about the people who shot themselves in the head and it cured their depression. Maybe it could cure his inappropriately timed mental images. Probably a bad plan, though, all things considered. "On the bright side no one else would try to steal you? Or maybe that's not a bright side since you might wanna be stolen. Hm..."
She waved a hand at him even as she giggled into her other one, carefully balancing herself on her chair. "Nah, I don't really need to be stolen away tonight," Angel said cheerfully. "I mean, maybe another night, but after Grabby McGrabbing Hands over there, I'd rather stick close to you." Angel tossed back the rest of her soda and put down the already drying cup onto the table. Nerves made her exude a little more heat than normal and she concentrated on pulling it in, certain no one really wanted a heated girl dancing in what she assumed was an already warm room. "But you'd be the scowliest human blanket ever!"
Kevin, of course, scowled at that. Or at least he tried for the best scowl he could manage, which meant it probably fell about four yards flat of a scowl for the moment. "Ah don't always scowl! Sometimes Ah glare. Once in a while Ah get really confused and end up smilin' and who knows how that ends up happenin' but then I just end up even more confused."
Angel pointed at his face and giggled hard enough to make her chair rock. "It's great when you smile and you didn't realize you were going to because then you do this scowl smile and it's FANTASTIC."
Eyes narrowing and fixing on the tip of her pointing finger, Kevin glared a bit. It turned more into a scowl and he tried really hard to not start to smile because the last thing he needed was to illustrate the point she'd just made. And that he planned to refute. "Ah do not do a scowl-smile thing. How's that even possible? You. You talk crazy talk."
"Of course I do," Angel replied simply. "I'm eighteen, of course I'm crazier than a mad hatter. And you totally do this scowl-smile thing and there are pictures back at home to prove it, even." At that, she sat back and smirked, looking quite pleased with herself.
Resolvedly obstinate, that was Kevin. A gloved finger pointed at Angel's nose near enough to almost touch the tip of it. "You're lyin'. Didn't your momma ever teach you lyin's no good. Oughta work on that."
Angel batted at the finger, making sure to check for any exposed skin as she did so. "My momma, as you say, is a top notch lawyer," she laughed. "For all good causes, you know? But she totally taught me how to fib when I needed to. Not that I am!"
"And lookit you using your 'fibbin' power for evil." He even made little finger quotes around the word fibbin'. He shook his head, made a tsking sort of noise and tried for disappointed parent in his facial expression. Kevin didn't actually have much experience with that one so it probably failed spectacularly.
"So I'm a fibbing evil mastermind?" she asked, looking intrigued by the prospect. "Dude, I totally need my own costume and name for that!" Angel shook her head and visually took herself away from that line of thought. "No matter if you think I'm fibbing or not, I'm cute enough to get away with it. That much I do know."
That made Kevin's eyes narrow again. He muttered, "Ah plead the fifth." Unfortunately he was pretty sure he was still speaking loud enough to be heard by her.
Angel's eyes narrowed in speculation for a moment. The music had dropped for a moment right as he'd muttered and she'd barely managed to catch it. But catch it she did. Not subtle at all, she scooted her chair over and blinked her eyes at him a few times, chin on her hands. "Aww, you pleading the fifth because I'm cute or because I can totally get away with it because I'm cute?" she teased.
He totally set himself up for that, didn't he? Kevin had assumed she wouldn't be able to hear him. He might have been discounting that Angel had known him long enough to know how quietly he spoke in general. She was probably paying more attention already just to make sure she heard him. Really, he should have kept that comment in his head and away from his mouth. "You totally miss the point of the fifth amendment don't ya?"
"Hah, what kind of friend would I be if I let things like that slide? I mean, you said it, so you must have wanted me to hear it or you wouldn't have said it, right?" Angel spread her hands and shrugged. "Simple logic, Kev. But I promise to not use this knowledge for evil -" Pretending to think and look shocked, she trailed off and looked around.
"Oh wait, I think already do that."
"Please don't call me Kev." Jay used to call him Kev and it always irritated the hell out of him when Jay would do that. It made him twitch less now with Angel doing it, possibly because he'd acclimated a bit and possibly because she made him twitch less in general. Somehow that didn't stop the look like he would shudder any moment now from crossing his face.
"Note to self: not something the pretty face will let me get away with." Still, she patted his arm and apologized. And then gently squeezed his arm. "But seriously, thanks for taking me. I've wanted to come here for ages and didn't know who else to ask - I thought Julian was, ah, a bad choice for the first night out," she said, a bit wryly. The winter ball had gone really well but it was still a bucket of confusion where that boy was concerned.
"How come?" It was a bit of a surprise to Kevin that he was, somehow, a better choice for something than Julian. That wasn't low self-esteem talking, it was the awareness that Julian was far more extroverted than Kevin was. He heard girls liked that in a guy. "Just 'cause you know Ah'm not gonna abandon you to go flirt with someone else?" Except that sort of implied he'd be flirting with her, didn't it? His foot, it lived to take up residence in his mouth.
Oh boy - Angel had to think furiously for a moment because as much as Kevin liked to tease her, if he didn't know what the stuff that had happened between her and Julian ... "Basically," she said quickly, trying to get it over with without saying too much, "after we broke up, it got pretty bad. He was nasty to me, I threw water in his face, stormed off, the whole thing. We made up and while he wanted to get back with me..."
She shrugged, unconsciously fiddling with the empty cup before her. "I told him we had to become friends again because the things that were said were hurtful. So, we're working on it. But. Yeah. You're a much better choice for this."
Eyebrows darted up a little. It all sounded very...teenage drama. Of course, considering half the things that had happened between himself and his ex-boyfriend it all seemed tame. Really tame, actually. Kevin wasn't going to say it. And he wasn't going to say that she would've overlooked it all if she was crazy about him. Nothing worth crazy over someone was worth getting back with them after things hadn't worked out in Kevin's opinion. Once in a while he had enough tact to not shove his foot all the way down his throat. Good on him!
"Ah can pretty much promise Ah'm not gonna say anything hurtful. Or that if Ah ever did that Ah'd probably do like eight things to apologize for it." Because that's just what you did when you hurt people. You made them get that wounded look on their face and it was never worth the fleeting satisfaction of that momentary spite. Kevin always felt guilty for hurting people's feelings. He was going to blame it on being Southern because that was an excellent excuse.
Her hand patted the crook of his elbow in response, resting there for a moment before she reached out to hand the empty cup to a roving employee picking up beer bottles, empty cups and the like. "Oh, I've no doubt you'd apologize until your head came out," she commented cheerfully, relaxing once more as they moved away from the more hurtful topic. "Julian did eventually, just ... you know, hard to go back to someone you were dating after that, right? So, if he'd been here, it would have just been weird. You - it's nice. And before you go acting weird because you're a guy and guys do that, it's also awesome."
Nice? It was nice? It was written all over Kevin's face that he was trying to figure out what that meant. Girls spoke in code, he was certain of that much. Was that it's nice because he's a friend and going to growl at other people when she doesn't want them near her or it's nice because she got to be with him specifically? Long standing and long repressed crush was hoping it was the latter.
Kevin was pointedly trying to ignore that and forget about figuring out which way she'd meant the harmless little words. He might need to thwack his head against a wall when he got home just to get the damn thought out of it, though. That and the hand that had lingered on him for a moment. Yes, there was definitely thwacking needed later. "Ah'm pretty sure you didn't wanna come to Silver to hang out on the sidelines with me, though," he finally said, changing the topic entirely because it was easier. He nodded toward the dancefloor. "Ah won't hold it 'gainst ya. Promise."
Immediately, Angel was torn. To go out on the dance floor was something she'd really wanted to do but she hated leaving Kevin at the table. Not only because it was a little rude since she knew he'd never get out on there with her - not that she could blame him, all things considered - but because, well. She sighed mentally as she reached up to shift back a couple of stray bits of hair. Because it was Kevin, that was all there was to it. And she was Angel and she knew she was a bit of a flirt and crushed easily, but still.
Kevin.
But the shifting, shimmering cloud drew her attention. It was part the music shaking through the group but also part her photographers eye. She watched the lights change, the weird movements turn oddly graceful, and she wanted to take so many pictures. After, of course, she danced.
"All right but I'll totally be back real soon!" she promised, slipping off the stool and pausing to adjust her top.
He blamed the fact that he was male for the fact that his eyes immediately followed her adjusting her shirt. It was green and shined under the lights of the club. That was his other excuse. He couldn't not look. If only he was old enough to drink. If only he could trust himself to drink near this many people. Something to dull his senses would've been awesome right now.
"You don't have to be," he assured her, trying to screw his head back on. Or maybe he was trying to pick his jaw back up. Either way, Kevin knew Angel well enough to understand the girl had energy to burn. He didn't think anything but the lights coming up and the announcement that they were closing would get her off the dance floor. Maybe a need for water. At least he could enjoy the view while she was out there potentially.
"Nah, course I don't. But I want to." On pure impulse, Angel threw her arms around Kevin's shoulders and gave him a hug. She was careful, again, to avoid any potential skin-on-skin contact but the clothes he wore prevented a lot of that. And it was an awkward angle anyway but it didn't last long before she bounced off, wriggling her fingers at him before she dove into the crowd.
Kevin's eyebrows shot upward when she hugged him. He didn't freak out or panic as he once would have, but he hadn't been expecting it either. An arm had managed to get around her waist for all of a split second before she was gone. He really needed to stop hanging out with cute, affectionate girls. Cute, affectionate girls who were definitely not his. Neutered guy friend, Kevin reminded himself and took a deep breath. It was potentially going to be a very long night.
Like any slightly obsessed young woman when confronted by something she didn't know, Angel had gone and talked to a number of other young women to get a consensus on what to wear to a club. More importantly, she'd then gone through that advice and tossed half of it on account of being "silly", "absurd" and bordering on "what are you smoking?". Several talks and one emergency shopping trip later left Angel feeling a bizarre mix of confidence and nerves as she shrugged off the jacket she wore so people wouldn't wonder.
"Well?" she asked Kevin at the coat check place at Silver, arms akimbo to show off the green shimmering, tight top, black jeans and heels. Some of the other girls had been more than happy to pin up her hair in a number of curls and she grinned at her friend. "Am I working it? Tell me I'm working it."
Kevin was jumpy because there were people. In fact there were a lot of people and while he had understood this intellectually when he'd agreed to take Angel to the club it was an entirely different beast when confronted head on. He could have dressed slightly nicer for the place, but this many people in this small a place meant a hood was sort of mandatory. The hooded long sleeved shirt he wore really didn't go well with a collared, button down shirt so Kevin looked like he did every day. And Angel looked...like she was thoroughly planing on getting into trouble not that she was legal. His jaw dropped just a little "Ah, um..." He had to clear his throat. "You look nice." It was so entirely obvious that nice correlated to something much closer to dear God you're hot that it was almost painful.
Angel's grin widened and she cheerfully grabbed him by the arm, conscious of where his layers stopped and started. She was a lot of things but she was also keenly observant after a life time of growing up with a camera in her hand. She pressed Kevin's boundaries only because he let her and while she wouldn't step beyond, oh, she did enjoy pressing her luck. "I've wanted to come to Silver for ages!" she said, voice raising as they headed towards the beat and pulse of the music. "Makes me want to jump on a table and, you know, announce I'm legal or something!"
Kevin blinked at her while Angel dragged him off. Why did he agree to this? Oh, right, because she said she'd come hang out with the leering older men all alone otherwise. "Uh, you do that and Ah'm tying you up, throwing you over my shoulder and sticking you in the trunk on the way home." He ignored the fact that she could just burn through rope anyway just like he was ignoring that she was legal because, yeah, bad thing to fixate on. Bad, bad thing...
"Oh you know I'd totally end up having a rave in your trunk and you'd end up with like burn marks and rope every which way," she admonished, scanning the crowd with awe. Despite the glee that she'd dragged him into the room, Angel clung just a little more tightly to his arm as the crowd swayed and moved to the music like a living creature. It was a little daunting, especially with no clear place to sit or lean. "Okay, so many thanks, a thousand thanks for coming with me because this? Is a little intense." She looked up at him, eyes wide, before breaking out into another grin.
"But oh so awesome."
The clinging didn't go unnoticed. He pulled his arm out of her grasp and Kevin instead wrapped it around her waist. The movement accomplished two things: it kept her close so no one could get hands where she might not want them and it sent a clear message to the guy who was clearly eye raping her. And he was probably forty. That was a little disgusting. "Like Ah was gonna let you come alone?" He had to yell to be heard over the music. That was going to get annoying.
Kevin pulled his hood up over his head, eyes raking over the press of bodies in the crowd. Then he looked down and caught that grin. "You owe me, y'know."
Her fingers had dropped down to grip the arm resting on her waist, mostly out of shock that Kevin would have even done that. Though as people jostled around them she could see why he had. Angel took a deep breath and smirked up at him. "Aw, because I dragged you out here when you were going to be sitting quietly at home - oh, wait, I can see why I owe you. Any terms so far or is this a vague threat to hang over my head as I try to dance the night away?"
She gave a vague shimmy to demonstrate her dancing moves.
"Ah'm plannin' to hang it over your head. For a while. Until Ah find something good enough to equal me comin' here." He looked around again at the crowd of people. Kevin had gotten a lot better with crowds. A lot better. Still, he thought the odds of avoiding a panic attack tonight were next to nonexistent. Hopefully he'd manage to just retreat, deal with it, calm down and manage the rest of the night. He didn't want to ruin Angel's night even if he was well aware she could get home on her own easily. That little shimmy totally derailed his thoughts, though.
"I really do appreciate it, if that helps," Angel said, as she steered them towards the bar. She really didn't have much interest in stuff she wasn't supposed to drink - her parents had let her have wine and beer from time to time as she grew up so there wasn't much "mystery" surrounding it - but she'd kill for a Coke. She looked impish for a moment. "But consider a favor to be owed in the future - I'm not the kind of girl to forget, though I reserve the right to make faces at you depending on what you make me do."
"You make me sound so nefarious." Kevin wasn't actually sure if he was capable of being nefarious. He was hardly a criminal mastermind or a sadist bent on the destruction of innocent people or something like that. "How big that favor is inflates if Ah end up out there." He nodded to the dance floor. Somehow Kevin had no doubt that's precisely where he'd end up at some point. Even if Angel didn't drag him along when she went to dance there were men with wandering hands and that just wasn't right.
Kevin flagged down a bartender when all Angel's steering got them up to the bar, grateful that Jay apparently wasn't working tonight. "What do you want?" Kevin was keeping her tucked in close to his side and maybe even partially using her as a barrier between him and the people moving past them.
"Just a coke!" she told him, petting the part of the arm that was sort of resting on her hip. Angel could guess some of the reasons he was keeping her close because they'd been friends for ages - she knew it really was a big deal for him to come out in the crowds for her. So she really didn't mind him using her as a bit of a shield or keeping her close. Besides, it was simply not in her nature to tell a hot guy she was friends with to stop touching her.
"And you're totally nefarious!" Angel continued, gesturing a little bit. "Where do you think I picked it up from?"
"So it's my fault? That's like slander or somethin'." He was, of course, smiling at her when he said it. A little bit of the tension that had built up in him eased away and Kevin turned his attention to the bartender so he could order her a coke and him a bottle of water. He used his free hand to pay for both drinks rather than dislodging the arm comfortably wrapped around Angel.
After handing her coke over to her, Kevin grabbed up his bottle of water and nudged them a little away from the bar so someone else could sidle up to order drinks. "Ah dunno how you can go and accuse me of being nefarious. Ah'm like a saint!"
"Yeah, you totally take after Saint Nefarious. I tried to get that as my confirmation name but nooo, I had to pick a 'real' saint." Actually, she was quite fond of Saint Veronica. Angel took a deep drink of her coke, coughing a bit when she took too much of a mouthful and the bubbles fizzed a bit too much. Blinking, Angel suddenly spotted one of those tall tables being abandoned and literally dove for it, dragging Kevin with her.
That dragging was fairly literal and Kevin nearly went stumbling into Angel in the process. Alright, maybe the stumbling wasn't entirely avoided, but he did manage to not crash into her. The table was worth it, though. It got them out of the line of fire, so to speak, and it kept other people safe from him. Kevin had to pull his fallen hood back up once he was seated. More of that tension slipped away from him but given the surroundings it wasn't going away entirely. Still, it was something and he picked up the thread of conversation where it had been abandoned a moment before to be sure there were no accidents as he'd gotten pulled through the crowd. "Saint Nefarious? Is that a Catholic saint? Catholics are kind funny that way, got rules and saints the rest of us never really heard of."
Angel set down her drink and leaned over a little more to try and explain when an arm from the other side of her dropped heavily over her shoulders. She blinked in surprise as she was jostled against the table and looked up to a see a cute but drunk frat boy looking guy grinning down at her. He smelled like onion rings and beer, a combination that was unappealing, especially so close to her.
"We ..." He pointed back and forth frantically between himself and Angel. "Have so got to dance. I like red hair."
Kevin's eyes narrowed into a glare so fast once that arm was around his friend. Angel didn't even get a chance to respond before Kevin was raising out of his chair and stepping up to the guy. "How 'bout you go dance with yourself and get your arm off my girlfriend?" The word girlfriend had more impact than friend. He figured Angel would forgive him for it later. She didn't exactly look enthused by the guy's proposition anyway.
"Yeah, not interested, buddy," Angel responded, grateful for the dark interior as she felt her face flush both from the grabbing from the stranger and the 'girlfriend' thing from Kevin. It had the desired result, though, as the guy quickly scrambled back to his group of now snickering friends. Angel threw in another glare in their direction, one that had been perfected on the hoard of male cousins she'd grown up with and the guys scattered a bit.
"Now I hope I don't smell like that guy because ew!" she muttered, pulling at her shirt a little bit.
Just barely Kevin refrained from suggesting she either take her shirt off or do something to smell like him instead. Thank God for being raised with manners, right? He did, however, without warning wrap a hand around one leg of her tall stool and pulled it considerably closer to his own before he sat back down. The snickering friends were still watching so Kevin gave them a pointed look and let his arm casually fall around the redhead as if it was used to being there.
"Don't worry, someone might spill their drink on you and then you can smell like alcohol," he told her as if this were favorable. He forced himself to not think of the shirtless possibilities of that scenario. You are a bad, bad man, Kevin chastised mentally.
That comment and the chair scootching got him a nose wrinkle but Angel didn't comment about the arm. "I think that's a goal I can live without meeting," she replied, taking a long drink of her soda to wash away the nerves that the guy had caused. "I mean, it all smells gross even if it doesn't taste that bad sometimes, so I would like to avoid going home smelling like I played beer bong all night."
"Ah make no promises to be able to protect you from people who can't keep their liquor in their cups. Ah mean, unless you want me to try for human blanket here but Ah don't think it'd really work out." There was enough of a size difference between them that he could probably mostly pull it off, but there was only so much body another body could cover with their own. And yeah, didn't need those mental images either. By the end of the night Kevin was going to shoot his brain if it didn't start to cooperate with him. He read that article about the people who shot themselves in the head and it cured their depression. Maybe it could cure his inappropriately timed mental images. Probably a bad plan, though, all things considered. "On the bright side no one else would try to steal you? Or maybe that's not a bright side since you might wanna be stolen. Hm..."
She waved a hand at him even as she giggled into her other one, carefully balancing herself on her chair. "Nah, I don't really need to be stolen away tonight," Angel said cheerfully. "I mean, maybe another night, but after Grabby McGrabbing Hands over there, I'd rather stick close to you." Angel tossed back the rest of her soda and put down the already drying cup onto the table. Nerves made her exude a little more heat than normal and she concentrated on pulling it in, certain no one really wanted a heated girl dancing in what she assumed was an already warm room. "But you'd be the scowliest human blanket ever!"
Kevin, of course, scowled at that. Or at least he tried for the best scowl he could manage, which meant it probably fell about four yards flat of a scowl for the moment. "Ah don't always scowl! Sometimes Ah glare. Once in a while Ah get really confused and end up smilin' and who knows how that ends up happenin' but then I just end up even more confused."
Angel pointed at his face and giggled hard enough to make her chair rock. "It's great when you smile and you didn't realize you were going to because then you do this scowl smile and it's FANTASTIC."
Eyes narrowing and fixing on the tip of her pointing finger, Kevin glared a bit. It turned more into a scowl and he tried really hard to not start to smile because the last thing he needed was to illustrate the point she'd just made. And that he planned to refute. "Ah do not do a scowl-smile thing. How's that even possible? You. You talk crazy talk."
"Of course I do," Angel replied simply. "I'm eighteen, of course I'm crazier than a mad hatter. And you totally do this scowl-smile thing and there are pictures back at home to prove it, even." At that, she sat back and smirked, looking quite pleased with herself.
Resolvedly obstinate, that was Kevin. A gloved finger pointed at Angel's nose near enough to almost touch the tip of it. "You're lyin'. Didn't your momma ever teach you lyin's no good. Oughta work on that."
Angel batted at the finger, making sure to check for any exposed skin as she did so. "My momma, as you say, is a top notch lawyer," she laughed. "For all good causes, you know? But she totally taught me how to fib when I needed to. Not that I am!"
"And lookit you using your 'fibbin' power for evil." He even made little finger quotes around the word fibbin'. He shook his head, made a tsking sort of noise and tried for disappointed parent in his facial expression. Kevin didn't actually have much experience with that one so it probably failed spectacularly.
"So I'm a fibbing evil mastermind?" she asked, looking intrigued by the prospect. "Dude, I totally need my own costume and name for that!" Angel shook her head and visually took herself away from that line of thought. "No matter if you think I'm fibbing or not, I'm cute enough to get away with it. That much I do know."
That made Kevin's eyes narrow again. He muttered, "Ah plead the fifth." Unfortunately he was pretty sure he was still speaking loud enough to be heard by her.
Angel's eyes narrowed in speculation for a moment. The music had dropped for a moment right as he'd muttered and she'd barely managed to catch it. But catch it she did. Not subtle at all, she scooted her chair over and blinked her eyes at him a few times, chin on her hands. "Aww, you pleading the fifth because I'm cute or because I can totally get away with it because I'm cute?" she teased.
He totally set himself up for that, didn't he? Kevin had assumed she wouldn't be able to hear him. He might have been discounting that Angel had known him long enough to know how quietly he spoke in general. She was probably paying more attention already just to make sure she heard him. Really, he should have kept that comment in his head and away from his mouth. "You totally miss the point of the fifth amendment don't ya?"
"Hah, what kind of friend would I be if I let things like that slide? I mean, you said it, so you must have wanted me to hear it or you wouldn't have said it, right?" Angel spread her hands and shrugged. "Simple logic, Kev. But I promise to not use this knowledge for evil -" Pretending to think and look shocked, she trailed off and looked around.
"Oh wait, I think already do that."
"Please don't call me Kev." Jay used to call him Kev and it always irritated the hell out of him when Jay would do that. It made him twitch less now with Angel doing it, possibly because he'd acclimated a bit and possibly because she made him twitch less in general. Somehow that didn't stop the look like he would shudder any moment now from crossing his face.
"Note to self: not something the pretty face will let me get away with." Still, she patted his arm and apologized. And then gently squeezed his arm. "But seriously, thanks for taking me. I've wanted to come here for ages and didn't know who else to ask - I thought Julian was, ah, a bad choice for the first night out," she said, a bit wryly. The winter ball had gone really well but it was still a bucket of confusion where that boy was concerned.
"How come?" It was a bit of a surprise to Kevin that he was, somehow, a better choice for something than Julian. That wasn't low self-esteem talking, it was the awareness that Julian was far more extroverted than Kevin was. He heard girls liked that in a guy. "Just 'cause you know Ah'm not gonna abandon you to go flirt with someone else?" Except that sort of implied he'd be flirting with her, didn't it? His foot, it lived to take up residence in his mouth.
Oh boy - Angel had to think furiously for a moment because as much as Kevin liked to tease her, if he didn't know what the stuff that had happened between her and Julian ... "Basically," she said quickly, trying to get it over with without saying too much, "after we broke up, it got pretty bad. He was nasty to me, I threw water in his face, stormed off, the whole thing. We made up and while he wanted to get back with me..."
She shrugged, unconsciously fiddling with the empty cup before her. "I told him we had to become friends again because the things that were said were hurtful. So, we're working on it. But. Yeah. You're a much better choice for this."
Eyebrows darted up a little. It all sounded very...teenage drama. Of course, considering half the things that had happened between himself and his ex-boyfriend it all seemed tame. Really tame, actually. Kevin wasn't going to say it. And he wasn't going to say that she would've overlooked it all if she was crazy about him. Nothing worth crazy over someone was worth getting back with them after things hadn't worked out in Kevin's opinion. Once in a while he had enough tact to not shove his foot all the way down his throat. Good on him!
"Ah can pretty much promise Ah'm not gonna say anything hurtful. Or that if Ah ever did that Ah'd probably do like eight things to apologize for it." Because that's just what you did when you hurt people. You made them get that wounded look on their face and it was never worth the fleeting satisfaction of that momentary spite. Kevin always felt guilty for hurting people's feelings. He was going to blame it on being Southern because that was an excellent excuse.
Her hand patted the crook of his elbow in response, resting there for a moment before she reached out to hand the empty cup to a roving employee picking up beer bottles, empty cups and the like. "Oh, I've no doubt you'd apologize until your head came out," she commented cheerfully, relaxing once more as they moved away from the more hurtful topic. "Julian did eventually, just ... you know, hard to go back to someone you were dating after that, right? So, if he'd been here, it would have just been weird. You - it's nice. And before you go acting weird because you're a guy and guys do that, it's also awesome."
Nice? It was nice? It was written all over Kevin's face that he was trying to figure out what that meant. Girls spoke in code, he was certain of that much. Was that it's nice because he's a friend and going to growl at other people when she doesn't want them near her or it's nice because she got to be with him specifically? Long standing and long repressed crush was hoping it was the latter.
Kevin was pointedly trying to ignore that and forget about figuring out which way she'd meant the harmless little words. He might need to thwack his head against a wall when he got home just to get the damn thought out of it, though. That and the hand that had lingered on him for a moment. Yes, there was definitely thwacking needed later. "Ah'm pretty sure you didn't wanna come to Silver to hang out on the sidelines with me, though," he finally said, changing the topic entirely because it was easier. He nodded toward the dancefloor. "Ah won't hold it 'gainst ya. Promise."
Immediately, Angel was torn. To go out on the dance floor was something she'd really wanted to do but she hated leaving Kevin at the table. Not only because it was a little rude since she knew he'd never get out on there with her - not that she could blame him, all things considered - but because, well. She sighed mentally as she reached up to shift back a couple of stray bits of hair. Because it was Kevin, that was all there was to it. And she was Angel and she knew she was a bit of a flirt and crushed easily, but still.
Kevin.
But the shifting, shimmering cloud drew her attention. It was part the music shaking through the group but also part her photographers eye. She watched the lights change, the weird movements turn oddly graceful, and she wanted to take so many pictures. After, of course, she danced.
"All right but I'll totally be back real soon!" she promised, slipping off the stool and pausing to adjust her top.
He blamed the fact that he was male for the fact that his eyes immediately followed her adjusting her shirt. It was green and shined under the lights of the club. That was his other excuse. He couldn't not look. If only he was old enough to drink. If only he could trust himself to drink near this many people. Something to dull his senses would've been awesome right now.
"You don't have to be," he assured her, trying to screw his head back on. Or maybe he was trying to pick his jaw back up. Either way, Kevin knew Angel well enough to understand the girl had energy to burn. He didn't think anything but the lights coming up and the announcement that they were closing would get her off the dance floor. Maybe a need for water. At least he could enjoy the view while she was out there potentially.
"Nah, course I don't. But I want to." On pure impulse, Angel threw her arms around Kevin's shoulders and gave him a hug. She was careful, again, to avoid any potential skin-on-skin contact but the clothes he wore prevented a lot of that. And it was an awkward angle anyway but it didn't last long before she bounced off, wriggling her fingers at him before she dove into the crowd.
Kevin's eyebrows shot upward when she hugged him. He didn't freak out or panic as he once would have, but he hadn't been expecting it either. An arm had managed to get around her waist for all of a split second before she was gone. He really needed to stop hanging out with cute, affectionate girls. Cute, affectionate girls who were definitely not his. Neutered guy friend, Kevin reminded himself and took a deep breath. It was potentially going to be a very long night.