Chapter Text
There’s loud singing from a few tables down and you don’t want to look. You don’t want to look. You’ve been in this bar every night this week and there is always loud singing and it’s always from a few tables down and at some point it just doesn’t matter who’s sitting there – it’s just that table, it’s like there is a spell on that table that whoever sits there at least one if not more if not all of them start singing – loud and louder and loudest until you get up and leave because that drunken singing is louder than the actually very nice band playing up front. You’ve forgotten their name – the band – but they’ve been here every night this week and you might think that one of the lead singers is actually very pretty and you might be here just to watch them because the drummer has a class with you and he is very gay and very not your type (and you are very not his) but that’s been a bit of a friendship between you so of course when he said his band was playing and invited you to the bar to see them of course you said yes. You just didn’t expect one of them to be very, very cute. You don’t even know her name. You couldn’t remember the name of the band, so of course you don’t know the names of everyone in it—
The Shooting, that’s the band—
But it doesn’t matter what the band’s name is if you can’t hear them playing over the very loud, very drunk singing from that one table a few tables down.
At least tonight, there’s only one person singing there. Even when she sings loud, louder, loudest, she isn’t singing louder than the band. You look over after a few songs to see that whoever it is is sitting alone. A normal person might feel bad about this. You don’t. A normal person would look at you sitting alone and come hit on you – this has happened multiple time over the course of the past few nights, and it’s gotten very annoying, so you are very glad that Ms. Drunk Young Thing over there is committed to sitting by herself and is committed to singing alone and is committed to—
Okay, now she’s dancing on the table.
You can see one of the lead singers – the one you think is kind of cute, with her long pink hair and her big wide brown eyes – stare appreciatively at the girl dancing on the table, and you follow her gaze and…well, you didn’t think you would actually be attracted to one of the drunken singers, but low and behold, this one—
There’s something intriguing in the way that she dances, all alone, on a table top, with no one else around her, singing words to a song that she clearly doesn’t know and is making up as she goes along, the waves of her brown hair brushing against her shoulders and down her back and you think her skin must be very soft under the bright, bright yellow of the fluffy tank-top she’s wearing.
You know you don’t really have a chance with the lead singer of the band – well, that’s not true, you are a redhead, you have freckles, you have blue eyes, and you know that you look like the Sistine Chapel itself in human form, so if anyone could get a lead singer of a band, you could – but you’re setting your sights a little lower tonight.
Because there’s something almost beautiful in that woman singing her lungs out and dancing barefoot on the tabletop.
Then she slips.
“Wh-wh-whoah!”
You slip on something of your drink that must have gotten the table wet because you haven’t gotten sick this time, you don’t get sick when you drink anymore, and when you do it’s only after you’ve gotten back to your apartment , and if you’d gotten sick on the table, you certainly wouldn’t be dancing on it because dancing on top of something when you’ve gotten sick on it is a really bad idea and even if you are a little bit drunk (scratch that, you’re a lot a bit drunk, you’re dancing on a table, Luisa, you are definitely a lot a bit drunk) you wouldn’t be dancing on a table that you’d thrown up on. You wouldn’t. You’re not that drunk. You’re never that drunk.
Except for that one time in Philly, and we don’t talk about that, that didn’t really happen, what happened in Philly? Nothing. Absolutely nothing happened in Philly! Certainly not throwing up on a table and then dancing on it. Nope, nope, not at all.
But that’s not the point! The point is that you are currently slipping on something and it must be your drink because there’s nothing else it could be, you must have knocked it over while you were, you know, dancing barefoot on the table like the bartender told you not to do tonight, please, Luisa, please don’t dance on your table, you always fall, and you’d said you wouldn’t, and when you said that what you really meant was that you wouldn’t fall, and, well, at the time you were pretty sure you weren’t going to dance on the table either, because that’s not something that you do when you’re drinking at the bar alone usually, but the band was so good, and you did drink quite a lot (because you found out your girlfriend was cheating on you. again. and you’d broken up with her. again. and there’s nothing to suggest that you’re going to stay broken up with her for very long because you do keep going back to her or letting her come back to you and you think that maybe you should have better self-confidence and all that mojo because you are in medical school and you do have an IQ of 152 but dang it that doesn’t make you suddenly feel amazeballs about yourself) and before you knew it you were on the table dancing and singing and slipping and falling again—
At least you know how to deal with a concussion because that’s definitely what you got when you hit the floor headfirst last time.
But you don’t hit the floor.
You don’t hit the floor at all.
Someone catches you.
Well.
That’s new.
And you open your eyes and find yourself staring into what are probably the most beautiful eyes you have ever seen – and that’s not the alcohol talking and that’s not the overhead lights from the band making them sparkle like she’s a fairy and you’re not that drunk (yes, you are) and you breathe a very big, very deep sigh of relief as you stare into her face and then your stomach heaves – it’s the falling, it’s the falling and the no sudden thud – and you have to lean over—
And then you get sick.
Which is probably not the best way to get the gorgeous redhead with the amazeballs blue eyes to take you back to her place.
But it might get her to go back to yours. To make sure you don’t keep getting sick. To make sure you drink water. To, you know, take care of you.
So maybe not the way you really want, but you think you can spin it in that direction as long as you don’t get sick again—
Well. Well.
It’s three strikes you’re out, not two, so you think you’ll do okay.