Chapter Text
-- April, 1995 --
"Roxy, girl, you know it's been real, but I gotta go. I have to be hangover-free for my exam tomorrow at noon."
Your name is Roxy Lalonde, it's your birthday, and you are deeeee-runk. "That's cool," you say loudly in Aisha's ear, so she can hear you over the crowd. "You just do what you gotta do."
"You promise me you'll get a cab?" she asks. “And call me when you get home?"
"I praaaahmise, god."
It's cute when she gets all worried and motherly like that, but you can take care of yourself. Just to prove it, you stand up straighter and put on your most sober expression. If you sway a little, it's only because these heels are killing you.
Aisha purses her lips like you're not fooling her in the slightest. "If you say so."
"I do!"
“Well then," she shrugs. "Happy birthday, Rox. I'll see you Monday."
You exchange air kisses, and then with one last backward glance, Aisha leaves you behind. All the rest of your birthday entourage left ages ago, citing jobs or kids or classes, and with Aisha gone, you're on your own. At least, as 'on your own' as you can be in a club full of strangers. Maybe you should find someone else to keep you company.
You meander over to the bar, where a couple of guys check you out or give you flirty looks, but most of them are already engaged in conversation with other women. Or dudes; you don't judge.
Someone brushes by you to lean over the bar. It's a guy, a head taller than you even though you're wearing six-inch heels. You catch a view of him in profile: strong nose, bizarre, triangular shades, a few tattoos, and holy hell, those arms. He orders a gin and tonic (he can't be more than twenty; is he even old enough to drink?), and receives it in short order. He doesn’t give a name for his tab, which mystifies you until you watch him eel his way through the crowd to the DJ stand and climb the stairs. Aha.
You wander closer to the stand yourself, watching the young guy work. His hands flick over the turntables faster than your beer goggles can keep up with. One track fades out into the next, augmented and scratched and glitched until it sounds like a beatboxing robot. The kid's damn good, better than plenty of DJ's twice his age. You always did have a thing for talented pretty boys.
You wonder if you could have him as a birthday present. Well. No harm in trying, right?
You move as close to the stand as you dare, loitering until he notices your presence and lifts a headphone, and then you lay down your suavest pick-up line: "Nice shoes. Wanna fuck?"
He rocks back on his heels and his expression flickers for a split second before smoothing back out into casual indifference.
"Okay," he says, only just audible over the music. "Let's assume for a moment that we've already gone through the basic pleasantries. Nice to meet you, pleasure's all mine, et cetera. Still, least you can do is buy a lady a drink before you ask to ravish her."
It takes a second for his meaning to sink in, and when it does, you scoff. "I saw you at the bar getting free drinks earlier, you know. Why should I have to put it on my tab?"
"'Cause it's the only way I'll get another drink," he shrugs. "I'm under twenty one. Bartender doesn't really give a fuck, but he'll only serve me three a night."
Aw, hell, he is young. You usually don't go for guys his age; any more than a couple years' age difference starts to feel skeezy. But he's just so pretty, and you find it's not that hard to shake away your misgivings. "Ooh, naughty," you grin.
"I try."
He turns back to his decks like that's the end of the conversation. Damn. But now that you've made up your mind, you don't intend to let this go. You wend your way back to the bar and buy a tray of four rail tequila shots. The grumbly bartender clearly knows who you intend to share them with, but seems mollified by the tip you leave in his jar. You return to the DJ stand and slide the tray (less two shots for you) onto the railing, where it's quickly snatched and hidden from view. You bump your hip against a nearby column and lean, just waiting, because, hey, who said you were done hitting on the guy? You watch him with saintly patience for a whole three songs, draining your shots and winking every time he glances your way, until finally:
“Look. Do you always make it a point to hit on vulnerable, inebriated DJ's?”
"Not usually, though I'm sure you're used to getting hit on all the time. But you should know that I don’t do this…" you flail hand at him, "type of thing very often."
"Special occasion?”
You rake your eyes up and down his body, undressing him in your head. "More like... exceptional circumstances." And then, because you're drunk and you can't help yourself, "Whaddimean is... you're hawt."
He stares at you for a moment, then reaches for a shot and knocks it back. "You don't give up easy, do you."
"Not when I know what I want." And not after you'd spent so much on tequila, either.
"Christ." The DJ chews his labret piercing for a second or two as he thinks, his hands running over his turntables on autopilot. "Alright," he says, exasperated yet amused, "but I'm not supposed to fuck around with the clientele, so if I want to keep my job, we can't be seen leaving together. So here's how it goes. My shift ends and I bust this joint at 12:30 on the dot. You wait ten minutes. Not eight, not twelve, ten. You follow me out, casually, and I'll be waitin' for you in the alley behind the dumpster. Got it?"
Fucking score. You're about to respond with an obscene description of what you plan to do to him, but wow, that couple is dancing awfully close to you. Instead, you wink and say, "Yeah, I'll be sure to check them out! Thanks for the rec, Mr. DJ!" You are the sneakiest. It's you.
He leans down to hand you a business card that looks like it was printed with a cheap inkjet printer on perforated cardstock, and you make your retreat.
DJ Strider, eh? Hopefully he's just as good with his hands in bed.
Half-past-twelve is simultaneously a blip and an eternity away. You meander back to the bar for a while, have another martini or three, but you get yourself so worked up just thinking about your new boy toy that you can't stand it anymore and you leave the club to go around and wait for him in the alley.
At 12:30 exactly, the back door opens. There he is. He's swaying minutely, like you are, sweat sheening on his skin under the yellow-orange street lamps. His lips are quirked in the faintest ghost of a smirk. You're gonna ride this dude like a mechanical bull.
You've already got a cab waiting at the curb, as you'd promised Aisha. Now you just need a place to go, because no way are you taking a stranger back to your apartment, or following him to his home. A neutral hookup spot is best. Luckily, you know just the place. You slur a name to the cab driver, who is familiar enough with the seedy motel that he doesn't need the address. Strider runs his hands over you all the way there, his breath hot on your pulse against your neck, and ohhhh.
You practically fall out of the cab when you arrive, only remembering to pay the driver when he verbally reminds you along with a pointed eye roll. Whatever; you threw in an extra five bucks, so it's not like he can complain.
The guy at the motel front desk doesn't question what you and Strider are doing here. He takes one look at you and says, "Ten bucks an hour, and an extra five if we've gotta wash the sheets when you're done. You unwad and hand him twenty-five. "Room 104. Here's your key."
"Thankee, sir."
The motel rooms are all exterior, facing the parking lot, and yet Strider has no compunctions about shoving you against the stucco and grinding on you in plain sight. You ricochet down the wall, too drunk to care about room numbers; you just try the key in every lock till it fits.
Room 104 is a total shithole, but hey, you won't be here for long. Strider closes the door behind you. You take that as your cue to start stripping clumsily out of your minidress and the chic lab coat you're still wearing from class. He raises an eyebrow, but quickly gets to work himself. He's got a beautifully toned torso under his skinny black tank top, and when he peels off his jeans...
"Rainbow Brite panties?"
Okay, so it's a little weird that he's wearing girls' underwear, but at the same time, you can see the outline of his half-hard dick through them, and that's totally hot. They're not doing much to corral his balls, either. "They're ironic," he shrugs. You wonder if he knows what ironic really means. It becomes a moot point a second later when he hooks his thumbs in the waistband and shucks the panties off, leaving them in a pile with the rest of his clothes.
Seems like whiskey dick's not a problem for him.
"Nice," you say appreciatively. He's cut, the high end of average in length but very thick. You move closer and wrap your hand around him. He lets out a huff in your ear and his hips judder forward. "Kinda eager, ain't cha?"
"Shhhhhut up," he says lowly. "I'm not even barely legal. How many opportunities d'you think I've had to do this?"
Your drunken mind grinds to a halt. Not even barely legal? Does that mean what you think it means? You're not exactly the Lawful Good type, and it's not illegal here in Texas, but if he's seventeen that's still morally way too young. Right? But then Strider takes you by the shoulders and walks you backwards until the backs of your knees hit the edge of the mattress. The alarms in your head go quiet. You topple over, and the world is spinning dizzyingly around you, and that’s fine. Everything is fine. What's the problem? You've already forgotten. He clambers over you, his body heavy and warm despite the rattling window unit trying its level best to freeze you out, and presses a searing kiss to your mouth. When he pulls away, it's with your lip caught in his teeth. Your hips buck up automatically to meet his, grinding your pubic bone into his cock. You've always been a fan of kissing. He's fierce and hungry as he gets into it, all tongue and teeth, traveling down the column of your neck to nip at your collarbone.
"Ffffuu-hu-huuuck," you moan. You let your hands wander down to tangle in and tug at his hair, which he seems to like, judging by the way he ruts against you. And then he smirks, just in your line of vision, and sinks down lower.
Happy fuckin' birthday to you.
--
Your name is Roxy Lalonde, and you're starting to think you've seriously fucked up. It's three in the morning and you're in the back of a cab on the way to your apartment, significantly soberer than you were a couple of hours ago. Soberer than you were when you picked up a teenager and brought him back to a motel room for sex.
Your beer goggles had begun to wear off toward the end of the encounter, so you can picture him pretty well. Rangy but muscular, dark blond and sharp-eyed, with cheekbones and a jawline you could cut glass on. Striking. But also far younger than he looked; far too young for you. Technically legal, but you're twenty-three, and he was almost certainly only seventeen, and that math does not add up.
You should have left the moment he told you. Why didn't you leave? What is wrong with you? What the everloving fuck is wrong with you?
It wasn't your first one-night-stand. You're still fresh out of grad school, and you're no stranger to drunken college antics and poor decisions. You've been trashed at loads of parties, written papers while hung over, and done the walk of shame more times than you can count, but this is different. This is worse.
(Fuck, who are you kidding? It was only a matter of time before you crossed some line you couldn’t come back from. At least you didn’t DUI and kill the kid.)
And yet it wasn't as if he was some trembling virgin whose innocence you'd stolen. He'd had skills. Practice. Your face heats up just thinking about the way he'd gone down on you like he couldn't get enough of you, the way he’d snarled like a wounded animal as he pulsed in you–
Wait. Shit. You'd used a condom, right? There's a torn and empty wrapper in your purse, and you vaguely remember the kid wearing one at some point, but he'd come multiple times. If at any point he took it off without replacing it, or if it tore... You break out into a cold sweat. Fuck.
"Ma'am?" the cab driver calls, startling you out of your thoughts. "We're here."
"S-sorry, thanks," you say, and scramble through your purse to put together enough cash to pay him. As soon as the money is in his hand, you bolt. Forget the change. You stumble your way into your building and down the hall till you get to your apartment door. Shit shit shit. The key slips off the lock four times before it goes in.
Once inside, you make a beeline straight for your bathroom and empty the contents of your stomach. You're sick with fear and shame in addition to the alcohol, and it's easier than ever to swear off tequila for the rest of time. As soon as you're able to keep down water, you dig through the medicine cabinet in your bathroom. Several years ago, you'd filched an extra pack of birth control pills from your dorm roommate to serve as 'backup'. Your klepto tendencies have never come in handier.
You punch out all seven of the remaining blisters at once, toss the pills into your mouth, then stick your head under the sink to wash them down. The taste is pretty horrible, but it's worth it. Hell, you'd grind them up and mainline them if you thought it would help. The clock on the wall chimes four, and you slump down against the counter, exhausted but relieved.
Crisis averted. Or so you think.
You're emptying the trash can in your bathroom a couple weeks later when you come across the spent blister pack. In your drunken state, you hadn’t paid much attention to the packaging around the pills. Now, a creeping suspicion nags at the back of your mind, and so you take a closer look. All seven of the ones you’d taken were from row four. The placebo week.
Fuck. Everything.
Your mouth goes dry. Your period was due to start a couple days ago, but it’s been late before, so that doesn't mean anything. The chances that you'd just happen to get pregnant after one encounter are pretty low, right? Odds are, you're safe and freaking out about nothing.
The thing about odds, though, is that even if they're a million to one, that one could still come along and righteously fuck up your day.
It's too early for an accurate pregnancy test reading. All you can do now is wait to see what happens, and you are not a patient person. You do not deal well with being in emotional limbo.
Tick tock.
Whether you're PMSing or whether it's stress or whether—god forbid—you're pregnant and hormonal, you fall back onto your bed, curl into a ball, and cry.