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Vax had broken into multiple houses, been to juvenile court, and walked out of his neglectful father’s house with nothing but his sister and the clothes on his back.
Somehow, none of that was as nerve wracking as sitting in the restaurant waiting for Keyleth to show up.
The fact that he had even managed to ask her out was, in and of itself, a miracle. He was still not entirely sure what exactly he had said (the sentence “the way you work with animals and stuff is really cool” might have been uttered at one particularly incoherent point), but it had apparently been charismatic enough that she had said yes. She had blushed, and ducked her head, but she had said yes. And now, he sat in a restaurant that was, if he was being truthful, expensive enough to throw off his budget for a month, palms sweating all over the napkin twisting in his hands, trying to remember how to breathe.
This was made harder by the appearance of Keyleth at the door to the restaurant. She was, of course, lovely, although Vax would be the first to admit that his was not an unbiased opinion. Vex said once that Keyleth dressed like the worst cross-breed of hippie and hipster, and it wasn’t exactly untrue, but somehow, at least to Vax, it worked for her. This evening’s outfit was no exception, long flowing skirt paired with an overlarge t-shirt with the logo for Ashari Animal Clinic emblazoned on it hanging off one shoulder. Her hands clutched the strap of her purse tight enough to whiten her knuckles, and when she spotted him at the table, her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.
Vax stood, almost knocking his chair over in his nervousness, and offered what he hoped was a warm and charming smile. “Hello,” he said.
Keyleth nodded, a little jerkily. “Hello.” She bit her lip, hands still clinging to her purse.
After a beat of slightly awkward silence, Vax shook himself. “Please, sit?” He pulled Keyleth’s chair out from the table.
Keyleth’s eyes widened, but she sat, allowing Vax to push her chair in for her. “I didn’t know you knew about manners,” she said, a hint of teasing creeping into her voice.
Vax took his own seat and shrugged. “A little,” he said, keeping his tone light. “One of many lessons my father chose to impart on me. Back when he still held out hope for making me respectable.” He glanced back up at Keyleth and found her looking at him, eyes, if possible, wider. He snorted. “I’m sorry, you don’t want to hear about that.” He ran a hand through his hair, trying to center himself. “I don’t even know what I’m saying.”
A hand reached out to cover his on the table. Keyleth was still looking at him, but her gaze was softer now. “You’re nervous, too, huh?” she said, a small smile spreading across her face.
Vax turned his hand over in hers so he could twine their fingers. “That obvious?”
Keyleth shrugged. “Only to me.” She squeezed his hand once and let go, reaching for one of the menus on the table in front of her. “So. What’s good here?”
Vax shook his head slightly, trying to clear his thoughts and focus on something other than how soft Keyleth’s hand had felt in his. “Uh. I’m not sure.” Keyleth raised her eyebrows in question and he shrugged sheepishly. “I’ve never actually been here before.”
Keyleth stared at him for a moment, then burst into giggles. Unable to help himself, Vax joined in, warmth flooding him as the nervous tension drained from his body. “Oh, Jesus,” Keyleth gasped out finally, “neither of us has any idea what we’re doing, do we?”
Vax shook his head. “Not a clue.” He hesitated, not sure if he had the nerve, before he spoke again. “What say we figure it out together?”
Keyleth smiled, a real smile this time. “I’d like that.”
And it was easy after that. The conversation flowed over dinner, Keyleth sharing stories of animal antics from the clinic, Vax telling her the lighter parts of growing up with his sister. It wasn’t until the waiter started dropping thinly veiled hints that they realized they’d been sitting at the table for almost two and a half hours. Still laughing from Vax’s last story, they made their way out onto the street. Vax turned to face Keyleth and smiled. She smiled back, hair glinting, shot through with gold and copper, illuminated by streetlamps and light spilling out from various shop fronts. She tucked a piece of it behind her ear. “Well,” she said, voice warm, “I should probably…” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “I’m that way.”
Vax nodded and jerked a thumb over his shoulder, the opposite direction. “I’m that way, so.”
Keyleth nodded. “So.”
They stood there for a moment under the streetlamp, silence hanging between them. Almost without noticing he was doing it, Vax stepped forward, reaching out to brush his fingers against Keyleth’s wrist. He heard her breath catch as he moved towards her, saw tilt her head just a bit down to meet him before his eyes fluttered closed, as he leaned in for the kiss…
“I’m not gonna sleep with you! ”
The words were a little loud, a little anxious, and spoken in very rapid succession. Vax blinked.
Keyleth stood before him, her face very red, but her mouth set in the way he knew meant she had an idea in her head that she wouldn’t back down on.
“O...kay?” he said after a moment. “Not really where I was going with that particular maneuver, but.” He shrugged, deliberately casual. “Good to know, I suppose.” He leant in again.
Keyleth pulled back, biting her lip. “I don’t just mean tonight,” she said. “I mean, not ever. Probably.”
Vax paused. Keyleth huffed, ran her free hand through her hair. “I’m asexual,” she said. She hesitated for a moment, clearly expecting some kind of reaction.
Vax blinked some more. “Alright?”
Keyleth continued, voice increasing in both pitch and speed as she went on. “It’s just- I know that’s a thing, sometimes, with people, and I didn’t want- I didn’t want it to be like this thing I was keeping from you or anything, because it’s not like it’s something I’m hiding, it can just be- I don’t know, complicated to explain, but I didn’t want you to think there was something that was going to happen that wasn’t, you know, so I just-” She cut herself off, clapping a hand to her forehead. “So, yeah,” she finished, not meeting his eyes.
Vax opened his mouth. Closed it again. Thought for a moment. It wasn’t that he was unaware of asexuality. He’d been to pride events with his sister, at first because it pissed off their father, later because they actually enjoyed themselves, and he knew what it could be like to have to have the “hey guess what not actually the orientation you may have assumed I was” conversation with someone he was interested in. But his experience’s weren’t Keyleth’s, and he found himself struggling, as he sometimes did, to find the words that would convey to her what was going through his head without sounding dismissive or condescending, or worst of all, like he wasn’t interested.
Keyleth peeked up at him from under her hand. “Vax?”
He kissed her.
One hand cupping her jaw, the other intertwining their fingers. Her hand coming to rest lightly on his hip. The gasp still on her lips as he covered them with his, the barest hesitation before she moved against him, pressing closer. The incalculable moments of silence and stillness when they parted.
Keyleth smiled, cheeks red. “Okay, then.” She stepped back. Reluctantly, holding on for as long as possible, Vax let her pull away her hand from his. She walked backwards for a few more steps, as though she, too, wanted to keep this moment as long as she could. Then she turned and walked off.
Vax stood there like a dumb schmuck for. Well. Longer than he would care to admit. It wasn’t until a cold breeze struck him, lifting his coat and worming its way under his layers, that he remembered that he was standing on the street, in the late evening, by himself, staring at nothing. Shaking his head to clear it, although not clearing the smile from his face, he turned and began the walk back to his apartment.
It was dark when he unlocked the door, Vex not back from… whatever it was Vex was doing. He generally found it better not to ask. Trinket bounded over and slobbered on him in welcome for a bit as Vax poured food into his bowl for the night. As Trinket fell to with his customary enthusiasm, Vax grabbed the book he was currently reading (a battered fantasy paperback by Salvatore somebody-or-other that he found for a quarter at a library sale; Vax has never claimed to have sophisticated taste) and settled on the couch. He usually read for a while before bed, a way for him to settle his thoughts at the end of the day, but tonight he found himself reading whole paragraphs without taking in a word.
After several pages of this, his phone chimed. Vax dug it out of his pocket to find a new text.
forgot 2 ask- 2nd date? maybe l8r this week?
There followed a series of small gray boxes. Vax grinned. Keyleth used an average of five emoji per text. He still didn’t have the heart to tell her that his phone didn’t read most of them. He began to type.
sounds perfect :)
He flipped the phone shut (Vex made fun of him for still having a flip phone; he made fun of her for using the smartphone she’d scrimped and saved for to beat Scanlan’s high scores at Fruit Ninja) and settled back onto the couch. He’d just cracked his book again when Trinket bounded out from Vex’s room to greet the opening door. “Hey, buddy,” he heard his sister say from the hall. “Is your uncle still up?”
“In here.” Vax sat up and tucked his feet under him as Vex entered the living room, a hand propped on her hip.
“How was your date?” she asked.
Vax smiled. “Good,” he said. Unbidden, his mind conjured the image of Keyleth’s face after he’d kissed her, tentative hope bleeding into blushing contentment. “It was… really, really good.”
“Good,” Vex said. “Mine, too.”
She was in her room with Trinket before Vax could pull together a response to that . He grabbed his phone and drafted a mass text.
To: Keyleth; Scanlan; Grog; Percy; Tiberius; Pike (9:46)
did ne1 else kno my sis had a date 2nite????
He paused, added another four question marks for good measure, then hits send. Keyleth responded immediately with another string of emoji, and Grog sent badly spelled encouragement, but it wasn’t until almost an hour later, when he was about to go to sleep, that Vax got a proper response.
From: Percy (10:41)
Ah. Yes.
From: Percy (10:42)
In my defense, neither of us was aware at the beginning that it was a date.
Vax stared at the message for approximately thirty seconds, then chucked his phone onto his bedside table and rolled over. He’d deal with it in the morning. For now, he focused on drifting off, the memory of Keyleth’s kiss still on his lips.