April Yang and Dick Grayson share deep-rooted connections to Gotham, even if they prefer not to give them much thought and keep their emotions to themselves. When Dick turns up in Devon City, where April works towards becoming a surgeon, she inevita...
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The rational thing to do, obviously, was to call Dick. Rational, however, was not what April aimed for when she ran back to her apartment and locked her door with the use of three additional locks.
She had just been threatened by a complete stranger. Someone who looked decent and dressed appropriately. He waved at the nurses and smiled back as they passed. April couldn't get a hang of the fact that she, out of all people, made him sound so vile. It wasn't even how he had said it, because his tone could've as well been mistaken for a pleasant one, but rather what.
Threats, no less, and also no more. No specifics. No demands. No clear instructions. No "Don't go to the cops or I'll dismember you". He wanted her to be smart about this, though. Was not calling Dick the right move? How much could April trust him at this point, when they've only just reconciled after years of nothing? Ironically, the fact he was new to Devon was also the reason she believed he might be worth trusting, not yet rotten by excesses of this particular city. Not mentioning Gotham, of course.
She picked up her phone, careful as if it was to bite her hand off any second, and dialled the number.
The line went flat without ringing once.
And again. Again. She tried five times before giving up on that. She could've gone to the station; maybe he was in the field or whatnot. Her keys and shoes were right by her side on the bed, where she was curled in a protective fetal position, and all she had to do was just act on the impulse.
Dick, I don't know what you'd have to do with this information, but a psycho just threatened me. Oh, you want a name? You want to know specifics? Well, I don't have them, so deal with what I gave you.
April let out a loud groan and fell back on her bed, hopeless.
Days went by. It was easy not to notice the passing of time when her residency had been put to suspension for two weeks. Minutes melted into the days too easily for April not to be disturbed by her ambivalence. She noticed the cracks in her thinking; her habits; and everyday forced her body to get up, if only once, to eat something and drink water. How difficult it was, in her paranoid and still quite shocked state, she truly had no idea until one day she woke up at three A.M. to hear the city sirens blaring. First time in a week, she was quick on her feet and ready to discover what was happening.
Riots. The main crowd was just passing below her balcony, but taking that she resided on the seventh floor, the violent men didn't worry her. The wise thing to do was, without a doubt, staying put and minding her own business.
In her socially-deprived and not thinking straight mind, though, April yearned for an outing right there and as soon as possible. Zola's wasn't too far away, and she'd make sure to choose the less obvious paths. She'd be fine. Not only that, but she figured her sudden surge of energy meant that maybe they'd let her go back to the hospital early.
Determined, she was on her way to get mildly shit-faced. Or to do anything to get her head far away from the threats always on her mind.
Luce Agran owned Zola's bar, but he'd always say it belonged to the people rather than to him. Born in Cape Town, his family later settled for a Brooklyn condo, from which his father had been secretly operating half the drug deals going on on the east coast. Luce had five brothers, although he always wished for a sister. Being the youngest out of the bunch, he soon came to terms with the fact that east coast wasn't working out for him. That and, unfortunately, the truth that no one besides him seemed to have any issue with his father's businesses.
Luce was, in a sense, a lighthouse in Devon. Yes, he had a temper, and yes, he sometimes took his attractiveness privilege too far and ended up with a bloodied nose given by a boyfriend or a husband, but he was a good person. The type of person to let April in to the bar despite it closing an hour prior.
"Jesus, woman, you gave me a heart attack," he scoffed after rushing her inside, wary as to who was lurking out in the alley.
"You're lucky. If you'd get one of these, I could actually help you." She threw her coat onto one of the tables and rushed behind the bar. "You have the mushroom chips? I'd literally kill for them right now..."
"Hey, it's like... three in the morning, maybe chill on that tequila, hm?"
"No way, no. I squeezed through the riot crowd, I have to get something out of it, right?" It was a rhetorical question, and luckily Luce didn't try to to argue with that. He knew April long enough to know when the situation was worth the fight. "And you are going to match my drinking. That's me asking politely. It's an eastern european thing, you can't deny people their culture."
Although the situation was far from typical, Luce took the shot glass into his hand and smiled at April's blabbering. "And who is people, April?"
"Me. You. The Zola People. Let's drink to that."
Luce matched April's three more shots, but refused to let her drink more than that. "If we're planning on playing the forgetting game the rest of the night, the tequila goes out the window," he said, sternly. They were both sitting cross-legged on the bar, and once in a while April would move an inch closer and tangle their legs a bit more. "And you have to talk to me."
"Talking, Luce," she said with contempt. "Is so... unnecessary. It's so against our animalistic instincts, it's... wrong."
He shook his head, turning it sideways, and half-smiled for the thousandth time in his life. "And what is your instinct, April?"
She looked at him long. She looked at him as more than human; she looked as if he was the promise of not existing for just a moment.
"This," she mumbled whilst kissing his cheek and placing her fingers on his jaw. "And this." Faster, she was motivated to soon cover every inch of his face in little red stains of her lipstick.
"All of it?" he asked, teasing her with his unusual stillness. His hands twitched, but until he was entirely sure, he wouldn't move. "April?"
"All of it, sure," she said in a rush and put her legs on both sides of his knee.
Like with a help of a magic wand, Luce's hands found its way around April's shirt and lacey bra, while his lips traced sloppy paths all around her neck. He moved her closer as she pushed her body down to level with him. Their kisses were full of empty promises; ones of pleasure, ones of forgetting. April's eyes closed when he flipped her on her back and himself stood on the floor, now in a position to unbutton her jeans and slide them off with ease. Almost nude, with only beige underpants and a half-off bra sliding off her torso, April urged to sit up and move Luce's lips back to hers again. She kissed him violently, distracting him as she desperately tugged by his navy t-shirt and threw it sideways. Her legs wrapped around his hips and, as his fingers caressed the delicate layers of her skin, those which were most potent to his touch, she hugged him closer. Her nails, she thought, definitely managed to leave their mark on his back after she moaned into his throat for the first time that night.
