SYDNEY CLARKE + JESSE MCCREE
DATE NIGHT/"HEY WE SHOULD BANG" TALK
PG | COMPLETE
Jesse McCree did not know how to use chopsticks. Maybe future Jesse McCree was a master of them. Future Jesse McCree was apparently up to a lot of shit, after all. Abandoning Blackwatch and going all vigilante. Maybe the mechanical arm helped hold the little goddamn sticks where they were supposed to be.
“Alright, I give up. Where’s the plastic forks?” Jesse reached between their takeout containers for one of the forks and saluted Sydney with it. This date business was started to feel normal. He’d shoot her a message or she’d come by on her own. He had a movie night planned for after they left, which was why he’d had them put all their food in to-go containers. But sitting at a tiny table in the back of Simp Hop was nice too. Cozy.
“Sometimes ya just gotta surrender, yeah? Don’t tell on me.”
Syd reached out to “snap” lightly at him with her own chopsticks, which she’d mastered early on in her teenage years. They ate a lot of Asian cuisines living out of hotels, and she’d made it a point to learn pretty quickly. These days it was old hat, but it did make her laugh when Jesse swapped over to a fork.
“Shameful. I’d offer to show you, but it’s kind of just something you get.” She exaggerated the words for effect, but flashed him a grin as she reached across with her chopsticks to steal a shrimp from the container in front of him. “Oooh-” Syd closed her eyes to savor the shrimp, blue hair floating around her shoulders as her head bobbed happily. “That is some good shrimp.”
Jesse rolled his eyes, smirking around a mouth full of food. And though he had all kinds of manners, they tended to go a little lax around people he was comfortable with, so he teased her back even while he still chewed.
“Mighty superior for a thief.” He reached over and stabbed one of her pieces of barbecue pork, carting it back to his mouth. “Hey, I’ve been meanin’ to ask. How are things going at home? Anythin’ new to report?”
Syd beamed, wearing the title of thief proudly as she snagged another shrimp before turning back to her own food. She wasn’t quite sure when they got to the point of food sharing, but probably somewhere around the first or second movie night, with snacks shared between them. Now snacks tended to get shoved aside as they got distracted from the movie. This was more of a date, cozy and tucked away in a corner.
“It’s-” She cut off and shrugged, lamely. “Better, I guess. Victor confronted me about my attitude, I told him he needs to do better, otherwise I’m out.” She ended it with a little smirk into her food. “He surprised me with the talk right after our late night-ah, training session. Ruined the whole mood.”
Her proud face made Jesse’s skin feel too warm and the mention of their late night training-turned-makeout session didn’t help matters. He huffed a laugh and dropped his gaze, picking at the contents of his container with his fork.
“Hell, so, what was he just waitin’ up all late for you there?” He squinted. He wasn’t an overly protective person but he did feel little waves of it from time to time. Like now. It made him hook a booted foot around her ankle, thankful he’d left the spurs off today. “But it went alright? And things are better?”
“It was super creepy,” Syd confirmed with a little laugh, letting her foot stretch into his. She kept looking at him across the table, smiling a little as she dug through her takeout container with chopsticks. He wasn’t normally one to blush or let his face show a lot of his emotions, unlike Syd, so taking inventory of his expressions was kind of a joy in itself.
“Better, I think. Less tense.” For now, at least. Sydney speaking her mind was something Victor was used to, at least. “Said he’s glad to see me making friends,” the emphasis was hers, with a smile, “and he trusts me to know what’s best for me.”
“Friends,” Jesse echoed, leaning over the table with his mouth twisting in a smirk. He was glad she was getting some progress with her hard-ass of a dad-figure. God knew he had some experience in that arena. Well, the hard-ass dad-figure part. Progress was debatable.
“Did ya tell him you and your friend were just making out on the training mats?” He abandoned his fork in favor of toying with the edge of her sleeve and giving her a smoky-eyed stare. “Or am I gonna be one of those open secrets everybody pretends they don’t know about?”
“That would’ve been awkward for both of us,” Syd pointed her chopsticks at Jesse with a whelp expression plainly showing on her face. Victor wasn’t interested in relationships. Especially potentially-romantic ones involving his teenage ward.
Syd’s eyes went a little squinty as she looked at him across the table, not leaning away in favor of just liking when he touched her, but still digging into her food. Now she just kind of moved it around with her chopsticks, glancing down to break the gaze. “I dunno. I haven’t considered you a secret. Should I?” She didn’t let him answer before barreling ahead. “I kind of figured you’d want to keep things casual.”
Jesse shrugged. At which part was anyone’s guess. He was going for nonchalant, but he wasn’t especially good at it. Which was why he ended up childishly crunching his face up and pulling away to take another bite before speaking.
“Wouldn’t be the first time I was somebody’s secret,” he mumbled around a mouthful. “Sometimes I don’t mind, but…” Another shrug, this time with a glance up at her from under his eyelashes. He minded with her. He wasn’t gonna put that straight out there, though. After the shit with Ashe yesterday, he was worried how needy he might come across. So he tried to keep his tone light. “I kinda thought maybe we were datin’ for real.”
“You’d be a terrible and very public secret if you were one,” Syd resisted the urge to roll her eyes, and since Jesse backed off, she did the same, leaning back in her chair. She dragged the take out box with her, stabbing at some pork with her chopsticks. She wasn’t about to start a fight, especially after yesterday and having no desire to turn things into an annoyed conversation, but she did chew on her bottom lip for a second.
“Back a few months ago, you said the offer to sleep with me was off the table. I mean, I’d already said it was, but,” She shrugged, attempting something casual and not jealous or needy sounding. “I know we’ve actually been on dates - that’ve been great - and you’ve had my tongue down your throat, but I didn’t really want to tempt fate by pushing too much.”
He looked confused for a second, eyes rolling upwards as he tried to remember what in the sam hell she was talking about. When it came to him, Jesse choked out a laugh and dropped his hands palms up on the table.
“Syd. You’d known me a week and you’d already told me you weren’t all that experienced! That was bare minimum decency, darlin’, not an I don’t ever want to see you naked lifelong pledge.” Feeling a little lighter now that she’d said their dates have been great, Jesse smiled a little slower and reached under the table to rest a warm hand on her knee. “Just so we’re clear, I definitely wanna see you naked. I just ain’t lookin’ to be the fella that rushes you into shit.”
“Oh.” The word rolled off her tongue lamely, and she scrunched up her nose at her own ridiculous thoughts. That had stayed with her from early on, worrying that he really didn't want anything further. But now she felt a little stupid, especially since the signs of the complete opposite had been there a little while now.
“Look,” her hand snaked out to rest on his, “I will not be blamed for thinking I was unwanted, okay? I've been DTF for a while now, just giving you time to realize what a catch I am.”
“Oh, well in that case…” Jesse jokingly started packing up their food containers and looking towards the door. Then he laughed and climbed out of his seat to squeeze in next to her on her side of the booth. He was sure they should talk more about this. That was the grown up shit to do. But he was still just a twenty year old troublemaker who liked her more than he was ready to admit. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and ducked his head to press a kiss right up under her ear.
“Just don’t say DTF again, alright?” he teased. “Makes this sound like an ATM transaction and I ain’t got any machine parts. Yet.”
She was laughing when he slid in next to her, and didn’t bother to scoot over more to give him extra room, forcing them squeezed together to her liking. She leaned in for an actual kiss, but kept it short on account of them being in a public place. She was grinning when her mouth pulled off of his, and blushing more than she usually did.
“Alright, deal. I’ll try to stop myself from making insert-credit-card-into-slot jokes now too.” Whoops, too late. But she looked completely unashamed as her grin got wider. “Did date night just get upgraded? Because it’s hard to beat the other one from last week.”
Jesse laughed, reaching up to brush the backs of his fingers across her flushed cheeks. He was looking forward to seeing how far down her blushes went. The increasingly x-rated direction of his thoughts showed in the curve of his smile and his half-closed eyes.
“I think...you’re damn pretty and I’m real glad this food is already packed.” Dipping forward to claim another kiss was probably a little counter-productive, because he lingered just long enough that someone nearby coughed pointedly, despite how relatively chaste the kiss had been. He squinted at the offender before turning an easy smile back to Sydney. “Alright, the old folks are gettin’ cranky. Wanna take this back to my place?”
“Before some old guy inevitably wants to duel you and ruins the mood, yeah.” Syd’s heart was beating fast, and the blush wasn’t gone, and she probably could’ve let herself get carried away with another kiss if not for the grinding sound of a chair on bare flooring from the direction of the old people.
She elbowed him very gently and went about closing the containers up and pulling out her phone so she could shoot a quick message to Victor and Mitch to not wait up. She tucked it away in her pocket so she could thread her fingers through his with a free hand, takeout container in the other. “I hear barbecue pork and shrimp make for a really good breakfast.”