— Aya/Q ♡ innocent for @bsd-rarepair-valentines-week day five
“What do you mean you’ve never been on a date before?” Aya says, scandalized. “You’re twenty-three.”
“Well,” Q answers testily. “I was in the fucking Port Mafia for twenty of those years, and even afterwards...people aren’t really eager to date someone like me.” They grin, shark-like and sweet, gesturing at themselves with four fingers.
Aya can begrudgingly see their point. Q has distressingly odd eyes, hair like a Disney villain, and enough thumbtacks hidden in their jacket pockets to make anyone uncomfortable.
“Do you want to go on one?” she asks anyway, just for the way they blink.
“Are you offering,” they reply blandly, like she’s going to pull out of it at any moment.
She gives them her sweetest smile. “I am, actually.”
They snort disbelievingly. It makes her heart ache, a little, how much they still think people wanting them and being kind to them is a sign of ill intent. Like there’s poison in every sweet thing, and she knows they’d say they knew from ‘personal experience’ but she doesn’t live like that and has no interest in furthering that worldview.
“I’m free right now,” she adds.
They glance at her clothes first and then their own. They’re both dressed casually, too casual for a proper date. In her kitten heels she’s a solid two inches taller than them. But she rolls her eyes. “It doesn’t have to be anything fancy,” she says. “I know a lot of nice little places.”
This particular nice little place sells sushi. She nudges them carefully into a seat and sits down opposite them.
“What now?” they ask warily.
“What do you want to eat?” she asks in return. “I can order for both of us.” She knows Q prefers not to make more eye contact in public than strictly necessary.
They shrug, so she calls for the single waitress by name and orders crab cakes for herself. “No crab for me,” they say quickly.
“I was going to get you sashimi,” she replies mildly.
They duck their head. She wraps up their orders and kicks them gently under the table. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I don’t know why you bother,” Q says, sharp and shallow. It comes out like they don’t want it to.
She gives them a steady look. “Why do I bother what.”
“Doing this,” they snap, frustrated. “It’s not like it’s going to go anywhere.”
“Does it have to?” she asks, giving up on measuring every word. “You’re not innocent in a lot of ways. But there are still places where you don’t have much experience and—I’d like to make sure your first times are good.” It’s nakedly honest, perhaps a bit too revealing of the kind of desperate protectiveness she feels for Q despite knowing they have no need of it.
They swallow, staring at the wall. “It’s not necessary,” they grit out.
“It is to me,” she says quietly. “Q. Yumeno.”
“What.”
“You’re overthinking this.” She kicks them gently under the table again. “I just want us to have a good time, that’s all.”
“That’s all,” they repeat. They look back, meeting her eyes with the entire force of their own. They do it to throw people off-balance and most of the times it works, but not on her and not like this. She grins. “Okay.”
