a little bit of black with a little bit of pink

Muddle my heart (then add a dash of lime)

Lisa sticks out more than a little in a bar filled with leather, and piercings, and a bar fight every five minutes (but she also has more than a little bit of a crush on the bartender there so she'll power through).

-----

If anyone ever asked Lisa how she ended up there in the first place she would tell them it was a long story. A long story involving the blind date from hell which ended in her refusing a ride home and instead deciding to brave a near torrential rainstorm in a light jacket - she gave up after five minutes and ducked into the first available bar. A bar filled with leather, and beards, and piercings and clientele which were arguably the exact opposite of everything that Lisa was in her yellow sundress.

If anyone ever asked why Lisa stayed in that bar? Well that was a far shorter story. The kind of story Lisa had yet to admit to anyone but herself and the same story that was behind Lisa returning to that very bar a further three times that week (that story being that the bartender was the prettiest woman she'd ever seen in her entire life).

Lisa knew she fancied girls ever since the second grade when Nancy McDonie asked to borrow her favourite pencil and she'd handed it over without question simply because she smelled like apples. Unfortunately it was also in the second grade, during that exact same pencil exchange, that Lisa realised the moment she became aware of her crush on someone, she became a blubbering mess.

Now, Lisa had always considered herself a people person. She got Jackson to come out of his shell and then trust her enough to actually come out to her in freshman year when he realised he liked the sight of Mark Tuan in his football gear way more than he actually enjoyed the game of football. She got Rosé to forget her original distaste of a new girl infiltrating her home to the point that she began to consider home wherever Lisa was. Hell, she even got Teddy Park to like enough to keep her on as an assistant years longer than anyone else lasted and then let her pick whatever job she wanted at Black Inc.

People loved Lisa.

Lisa loved people.

But, when a pretty girl smiled her way, she got all kinds of confused and her tongue tied itself in knots to prevent her from saying something stupid, which inevitably just made her look even more stupid. That unavoidable tongue tie was also the reason that, despite returning to that same bar every other day of the week, all Lisa had done was stare silently at the pretty bartender.

The prettiest bartender.

Black flowing hair that never seemed to be in the same style twice, the underside of it shaved in a way that had Lisa zoning out thinking about what it would feel like to run her fingertips along it. Daring eyes that Lisa had yet to figure out the exact shade of and a smirk that had made her spill her drink on herself a grand total of four times (okay, five... six).

More piercings than Lisa had ever seen on a single person, let alone spent any amount of time thinking about how attractive she suddenly found them, especially the tongue piercing (and also, if she's being honest, the one she discovered on a day she let her eyes wander a little too far and realised the woman was not wearing a bra - on that note, seven).

So Lisa was a little bit in love with her, in spite of the fact that she had been avoiding any genuine human interaction with her at all. It had been going quite well, until it suddenly wasn't, which really means that as Lisa sipped on her water - the water that made her look even more out of place - she suddenly found a bright drink placed in front of her and an even brighter smile sent her way.

"You look tense, Pastels." This woman had no flaws. She was somehow more attractive up close where Lisa could see the perfect flick of her eyeliner, the sight mismatch of colours in her eyes and the almost not even there scar on her forehead.