Who: Arthur (R2-D2) and Cheryl What: One of the more mind-melting hook ups of all time... When: A recent Saturday night Where: A bar. McAlister’s. Rating: PG-13, but just shy of R. (Warnings of naughty talk.) Status: Complete
McAlister's was the kind of pub one went to drink when that was one’s primary aim. It wasn’t exactly a dive, but it was decidedly not a pick-up spot. A patron could spend the evening without speaking to another human being, if they so chose, and many selected McAlister’s for that very purpose. Arthur sure did. It was slightly better than drinking alone, and Sunday was his only day off -- he liked to begin unwinding the night before.
Of course, Saturday was the closest the pub had to a busy night, which basically amounted to a lot of people drinking alone. There weren’t many empty stools at the bar, and none of them had buffer seats to separate him from another customer. (Picking a bar stool wasn’t so unlike picking a urinal, was it?)
Cheryl was having a drink after what seemed like the longest day ever at work. Her job was so boring! At least in her dreams, there had been attractive-ish guys that she could hook up with. Man, those dreams were so hot. Well, the dinosaur one was still awkward, but.. Her stupid boss still hadn’t hired any cute guys.
For no reason other than a short walking distance, Arthur selected and then lifted himself onto the stool to the woman’s right. He gave her a brief glance. With her retro style of dress and red hair pinned up, he wasn’t repulsed, and that was enough to keep him in the seat. The only words he said, were “Johnny Walker. Neat.” And that was to the bartender.
She turned to the guy that sat down, shrugging. She didn’t mind company. At least he wasn’t asking her to do paperwork, or whatever her boss was always yammering about.
It might be worth adding that it was a rare thing to see Arthur picking up a woman in any setting. He didn’t make a habit of dating. There were too many other things worth doing. Women themselves, however, routinely claimed that they found him “adorable”. Arthur didn’t like that too much. Adorable was a word used to describe fuzzy, baby animals.
He accepted his drink and ran his finger around the rim, looking sideways at the woman. He narrowed his large eyes. At last, he turned to her. “That dress... the color doesn’t work for you.”
Cheryl raised an eyebrow as she turned to the man who seemed to think a bar was the place for fashion advice. “Who are you, Suzanne Caygill?” she asked, more confused than huffy. She’d been expecting a pickup line, or an offer to buy her a drink.
“I don’t know who that is, but... just my opinion,” Arthur returned. ‘’Don’t worry, you still pull it off.”
Cheryl didn’t need a guy to put her on a pedestal or shower her with compliments. At least half the guys she’d slept with had been total jerks. Still, it seemed like an odd opening line. She crossed her arms over her chest. “With all your attention to detail, you might have noticed my drink is empty.” Hint, hint.
Arthur signaled for a drink without missing a beat. For his own part, he pulled out his Android phone and began flipping through pages. “You see,” he said, “I’m a postal worker, and I see a lot of catalogues. On my route, there’s a woman who gets a lot of magazines on vintage style. And... I saw this little number this morning.”
Here, he turned the face of the phone toward her. On the screen was the dress. He hadn’t been bluffing. “It stuck in my head, I guess. Again, just my opinion. But this dress, on you, that would be... not bad at all.”
Arthur had definitely captured her attention. Cheryl leaned in a little further than necessary to look at the phone. The dress was definitely up her alley. It was still a little weird to be getting fashion advice at a bar, but the postman angle.. She’d hooked up with a UPS guy a few weeks back. They were used to lifting all those heavy boxes..
“Bet you’d rather see it off me, huh?” she purred suggestively. It was almost over-the-top, the way her voice shifted.
For the first time in the conversation, a grin appeared on his face, and quite a wicked one. “We’ll see about that...”
“So you’re a mailman, huh?” she asked, leaning against the bar. “That must get pretty monotonous, huh? You’ve gotta be tired of all the stiff-necked ‘Rain or shine’ business, right?” She slid forward on her stool, leaning closer to him. “When a guy like you lets loose...” If he’d been wearing a tie, she would’ve been pulling it loose about now. She just smirked instead. “I bet you go wild.”
“Oh, yes. Wild. Absolutely. Um... grrrr.” He clawed the air a bit.
Cheryl grinned wickedly. Tightly wound guys could be so much fun. And she imagined he would take direction well.
He sipped at his drink. “Arthur, by the way,” he said, lifting his glass as if to say cheers.
“Cheryl,” she said, picking up the drink he’d bought for her and taking a sip. “Nice to meet you.” She hoped it would be even nicer, later on.
Arthur nodded. So far, meeting her hadn’t ruined his evening. “So, we’ve established that I’m a mailman. What do you do?”
Cheryl sighed when he asked about her job. “I’m a secretary, or something.” She wasn’t terribly familiar with her job description, since she didn’t do most of it. “My totally-lame brother made me get a job before I can access my trust fund.” Completely unfair.
“Then I guess it was smart of you to get a job,” he said, though it bummed him out to hear she was wasting her time doing something she clearly hated. “Why did you pick secretary?”
She shrugged. “I like talking on the phone.” Of course, she didn’t care for half of the people that called her at work. But at least she could waste time on the internet. “It’s not bad. There’s worse stuff I could be doing.”
“Such as?” he asked, a little too innocently to be completely innocent. Oh yes, the drink was officially kicking in now. And if he was being completely honest, he had partially selected his own job for the the sheer pleasure of walking for a living.
“Hm. I dunno. Like. Working in a sewer, or at a zoo or something. Though it kind of feels like a zoo at my house, with all the ocelot crap everywhere.” Seriously, how did that even happen? She shrugged.
Arthur tilted his head. For the first time in the conversation, he was genuinely interested in her. “An ocelot?
“Yeah. Babou. He just showed up at my house one day.” She shrugged. “I have one in my dreams, but I don’t remember getting one, and there probably aren’t just stray ocelots wandering around Southern California.”
“So you named it and are keeping it as a pet?” He wasn’t sure if he was impressed. Maybe concerned was a better word, but he didn’t really do concerned. And why did that name sound so familiar? Babou... “Wait, didn’t Dali have an ocelot named Babou?”
There were all kinds of random things like that in his memory banks.
“Well, it already had the name. In my dreams, I mean.” She shrugged. “Some creepy guy suggested selling into the sex trade, but that’s gross.” She didn’t know what to do with it.
Arthur hummed and ordered himself a second drink. She was beginning to creep him out a bit, but that wasn’t the same thing as being turned off. “So you’re one of those, then? Those dreamers?” He himself never dreamed. Never. That probably meant there was something wrong with the wiring of his brain, but -- Bottoms up! -- oh well!
Cheryl shrugged. “I guess. None of them seemed that weird until Babou showed up.” Cheryl had a different definition of ‘weird’ than most people, though. Either way, the dreams didn’t bother her that much. If anything, she wished they were more exciting. You’d think a spy agency would be more exciting than a paper company, but it was the same-old same-old.
“Well, at least you got a new friend out of it. Or whatever.” He all but slammed the glass down on the bartop. He was feeling quite warm now, and he unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. “People keep trying to unload their problems to me on my route, but there is nothing more boring than listening about another person’s dream, and that’s a scientific fact.”
Her eyes followed his hands as he began unbuttoning his shirt. “Don’t have to worry about that with me,” she said, shrugging. “Mine bore even me. There are much more interesting things I’d like to talk about.”
“Oh yeah? How do you top a pet ocelot?”
“Like this,” Cheryl said, reaching for his collar and going in for a kiss.
Arthur fell forward a bit, fell into the kiss itself, really. His eyes remained slightly bugged throughout the whole thing, and he had buggish eyes already. It wasn’t a bad kiss, but he wasn’t sure it topped a pet ocelot. It did get his heart pumping, though. “Not... terrible,” he shrugged. “Close.”
Cheryl raised an eyebrow. “Close to terrible?” First he insulted her clothes, then he complained about the kiss? Damnit, why was she still turned on?
“No, I meant...” What he’d meant was that it was close to topping a pet ocelot, but since she hadn’t smacked him, he wondered if he why bother to correct her. Maybe it was working for her, being rude and blunt. “Try again.”
Cheryl smiled, sliding off her stool and moving to climb onto Arthur’s lap, leaning in to kiss him again. With any luck, they would decide to move this party somewhere a little more private.
If his eyes went slightly buggy before, they all but popped out of his skull this time around. It didn’t occur to Arthur to do anything but go with it, though. There was a reasonably attractive woman in his lap, and he really couldn’t remember that last time that had happened. Regardless of how far from his mind such a turn of events had been when he entered, he had... “No complaints, this time,” he said.
Cheryl was quite pleased, too. She’d started playing with the next button on his shirt. “What do you say we get out of here?” she asked, shifting her hips just so on his lap. It was probably obvious to everyone in the bar where this was going.
He pulled in a cold breath through his teeth. “Yes. I say yes.”
She grinned, hopping off him and throwing a few more dollars onto the bar before pulling him out the door. There was a cheap hotel nearby--one of the benefits of this particular hookup bar. Cheryl’s brother might have had control of her trust fund, but she still had enough walking around cash to snag a motel room whenever she wanted.
Once in the room, Cheryl started undoing the belt on her dress. “Hey,” she said, starting to work the zipper. “Could you choke me a little bit?”
As he was being pulled down the street, it occurred to Arthur that there were more than a few inherent risks involved in following women who responded positively to offensive comments to nearby motels. If he decided to change his mind and turn back, no one could have blamed him. But he wasn’t a man who cancelled. On anything. Nor was he one to judge. If this ended up with him in a body bag tomorrow morning, then it was probably his time to go. He found philosophies like that more freeing than anything else.
So when she asked to be choked, he just shrugged. And then he complied.