Title: When You Were Young, Part 1: “Give me the Groove Baby”
Characters: Marian, Veronika
Rating: M
Summary: 18yr old Marian Ozturk, in gold chains and a tracksuit, tries to pick up Veronika in a bar.
Warnings: gold chains, tracksuits, macho Turk, bad pick-up lines.
Author's Notes: I can't even begin to explain what gave me this idea.
Word count: 519 words
Disclaimer: RTL owns AWZ, the characters, and the title.



Marian gingerly re-adjusted the heavy gold chain around his neck for the hundredth time, and shifted from one foot to another. He checked his heavy gold watch again.

“Man, don’t worry, she’ll turn up,” his best friend Werner assured. “I saw her friend at the coffee shop this morning, she said they’d definitely be coming here tonight.”

“Yeah?” Marian raised a thick, furry eyebrow. There was something pitiful about the hope in his voice, way he watched the entrance of the club, his hands buried in his tracksuit pockets.

“Just relax,” Werner urged.

“I am relaxed,” he snapped back, running his hand through his heavily gelled hair again.

Suddenly the door opened and Veronika and her friends walked in, laughing, Veronika looking fantastic in a form-hugging black dress and vertiginous heels, her bottle-blonde hair framing her face.

“Well??” Werner nudged Marian in the ribs. “Am I not one hell of a wingman?”

“Yeah,” Marian said distractedly gravitating towards Veronika, before turning back towards Werner in terror.

“You’ve been working up the nerve to speak to her for weeks. Just get over there and buy her a drink.”

Marian drained his beer, adjusted the crotch of his tracksuits pants and slowly, casually, wandered over to the bar where Veronika stood with her friends, martini in hand.

Reaching her, he cleared his throat and tapped her arm. “Apart from being sexy, what do you do for a living?” He blurted, addressing a point just above her right ear.

“Excuse me?” Veronika stared at him, taken aback, her head tilted to one side,

Marian flushed under the close scrutiny. He could feel her friends’ eyes on him, all of them eyeing his clothing, his hair, appraising him and no doubt finding him unfit. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I must be in heaven, because I've seen an angel.”

Veronika’s pale skin turned a lovely shade of pink and she raised her eyebrows, scoffing a little.

Marian was sure he could feels his balls shrivelling. He could hear her friends tittering in the background, and his eyes flicked to the side before coming back to rest on her again. He drew a deep breath. “Do you believe in love at first sight, or should I walk by again?” He churned out in desperation, and watched as she laughed, her eyes crinkling in amusement.

Utterly mortified, he was preparing to beat a hasty retreat when she at last spoke to him. “Buy me a drink?”

He stared at her in disbelief, his mouth falling open, and she jerked her head at the bar, still smiling at him, the colour high in her cheeks.

The silence from her friends was deafening, but somehow he managed to stumble towards the bar, Veronika by his side.

*

Months later, with a baby growing bigger inside her, Veronika had explained that she hadn’t just taken pity on him; the last pick-up line had been so bad it had made her laugh, and because it was a rare find, a man that could make her laugh, she had agreed to the drink and everything that came thereafter.