Most of the men, Capes or otherwise, were dressed like Jeremiah, in some variation of button-up shirt and jeans, but I caught a few in shorts, and a handful more in tees like me. I was the only one rocking Academy sweats though. As for the women…
“I’ve been spending way too much time doing homework,” I breathed. One look around the bar told me that not making it to the so-called “beach” was just one of my many sins over the past three months on campus. There were a lot of women in the bar… an awful lot of those women were cute… and the vast majority were dressed to kill.
Not literally dressed to kill. That’s a whole different sort of dress code, one that usually involves body armor, Kevlar or… well, skintight leather, in the case of Her Majesty.
There was no body armor in sight, although one woman had paired combat boots with the smallest and tightest miniskirt I’d ever seen. There was plenty of leather, a variety of skirts, an even more impressive mixture of tops, and—best of all—a fantastic amount of bare skin on display. After so many weeks with the same twelve first-year women, all of them dressed in dull grey sweats that even London and Nadia had to work at making sexy, a roomful of women in party clothes was enough to blow my mind.
If Orca really was wearing a dress, I was going to lose that mind entirely.
Jeremiah nodded to the stairs. “We’re up top.”
The second floor was basically an oversized balcony, wrapping around three walls of the bar and leaving open space in the middle so that you could look down on the dancers below. Two legs of the resulting U were too narrow for anything but stools and high tables, but the last leg was large enough for three long tables and a shitload of chairs. Sitting at one of those tables, the Viking was easy to pick out. I also spotted Winter’s distinctive hair, and Olympia glowing like a fucking Christmas light.
For those of you from the distant, pre-Break past, Christmas is a day where adults get shit-faced, slobber about how much they love each other, and end up passed-out in a puddle of their own vomit. Remembrance Day without the presents, basically. No clue how or why colored lights got mixed into the tradition, but given that I was raised in a fucking orphanage, I’m guessing I missed out on the backstory.
Our arrival didn’t cause as much of a stir as I’d expected. Olympia’s light flickered a bit, but either those Control classes were paying off or the three empty beer bottles sitting in front of the Lightbringer had gone a long way to drowning out her usual terror. Winter had a single glass of white wine in her hand—because of course she fucking did—while the other first-years all had beers like Olympia.
It wasn’t until she looked my way with a scowl that I even recognized Tessa. She’d pulled her curly black hair back and away from her face, and was wearing makeup that almost disguised the bruise she’d gotten from her own roommate, Ishmae, in Thursday’s fight. Black, multi-layered skirts made her look a little bit like a witch—a real one, not a Weather Witch like Winter—but her burgundy halter top was low-cut.
Like… ridiculously low-cut.
Poltergeist had tits.
It’s one thing to know it—I mean, she was technically female, so of course she had to have them—but it was another thing entirely to see them for myself.
“Looking at something, Crow?” At least her voice was the same, just the right combination of sarcasm and disdain to shake me free of my stupor.
“Yeah… I think it’s your belly button.” I was too busy pulling my eyes up and away to take any pleasure in her own hurried glance down and the resulting, equally hurried adjustment of her top.
Jeremiah cleared his throat—which, from a man his size, came out as a cross between a foghorn and an avalanche—and herded me over to a couple of free chairs on the very far side of the table from Poltergeist. I dropped into the suggested seat and took my first real look at who else was sitting around our table.
The Viking was half-naked—an all-too-common event in the guys’ wing of the dorm—showing off an abundance of carefully flexed muscle, tanned skin, and golden hair. At least someone had made him put on pants. They weren’t jeans, but something looser, dyed an incredibly bright Day-Glo yellow.
Erik-fucking-Thorsson had never lacked confidence.
In a little black dress, Olympia would’ve looked good next to anyone. Seated next to the Viking, she looked good and classy. She kept her silver-eyed gaze carefully fixed on something that wasn’t me, and I returned the favor by not checking out her dress. The revelation of Tessa’s tits had been enough of a mindfuck for one night.
London was chatting away with Santiago, the two of them a matched pair—and god I hoped that was purely coincidental—in deep green. Now her I could have stared at all night, but even I knew there was a line between appreciative and offensive. Plus, just because she lacked Ishmae’s potential as a Pyro didn’t mean she couldn’t still light me on fire.
On the other side of Santiago was Paladin. Like the other guys not deluded enough to think themselves real-life Vikings, Matthew was in a button-down and jeans, his blonde hair perfectly parted. Unlike the other guys, he had a glass of something clear.
Anyone else, and I’ve have said it
