Calla frowned at the dilapidated facade of the karaoke bar, its grimy windows decorated with flickering red and blue and green neon lights. A disjointed cacophony of voices drifted through the main entryway, belting out the lyrics of some vaguely familiar pop song.

"I despise karaoke," she muttered darkly, glancing doubtfully down at her fake ID.

"It'll be fun," Cooper assured her. He stood beside her with an easy confidence she was unaccustomed to, his eyes alight as he took in the sights and sounds and rather deplorable smells of the karaoke bar. "We'll take a couple shots to loosen you up."

She scowled. "I don't need to loosen up." He glanced sideways at her, clearly amused. "What?"

"That look on your face."

"What look?"

"Like you're disgusted by everyone and everything."

"Well, maybe I am. People are generally disgusting."

Cooper just shook his head and laughed, presenting his ID to the bouncer. "Then do what you do best. Lie."

The bouncer, utterly uninterested in their conversation, barely glanced at his ID before waving him through, Calla following closely behind.

The inside of the karaoke bar looked exactly as she'd been anticipating, with its low, dingy lights and mismatched barstools that perfectly complemented the eclectic karaokers both on stage and in the queue lined up against the far wall, waiting eagerly to play their favorite chart-topper.

Calla eyed the low bar to their left hopefully.

"Come on." Cooper sounded suspiciously close to laughter. Scowling, she gripped the back of his pullover and let him lead her through the overzealous crowd, all vying for a drink to drown out the off-key voices booming from the stage.

He glanced over his shoulder at her. "What do you—"

"Tequila," she said immediately. He pretended to gag. "Oh, don't be such a wuss. If you want me to sing—"

"Fine." But his attempts to flag down the bartender failed spectacularly, and Calla, impatient, elbowed him aside. "What are you doing?"

"Doing what I do best," she said innocently as she caught the bartender's eye and flashed him a winning smile. Within seconds, a round of tequila shots had materialized at her elbow.

Cooper shook his head as he passed over his credit card in defeat. "Incredible."

"Of course I am." She handed him one of the glasses. "To me."

The tequila burned a line of fire down her throat. She licked her lips, eager to order another round. Cooper just stared at the ceiling, fighting to keep his liquor down with a pained grimace.

He refused to take another and so, in a rare show of compromise, they ordered a round of Vegas bombs, which Cooper seemed to enjoy more than the tequila, at least. And then, at his insistence—and much to Calla's dismay—they left their spot at the bar to sign up for karaoke.

One group was called and then another, and finally it was their turn.

Calla remembered little of the song itself; she had the vague impression of blinding lights and poor acoustics and a smattering of polite applause, a backdrop to the pleasant buzzing in her head. Apathetic as she was, Calla was content to let Cooper take center stage for their performance, a role he played with gusto.

He likes this, she realized, and was even more surprised to discover he had a rather nice voice. A group of girls in the corner, hemmed between the stage and the bar, were particularly avid fans of his, whistling appreciatively—Calla had no illusions the whistles were for her sake, anyway. Cooper's face was flushed when they returned to the bar for a second round of drinks, but whether it was from the attention or the lack of air circulation, she couldn't say.

"You have groupies," she informed him, glancing over her shoulder to eye the girls who were eyeing him.

Cooper nudged her side. "Don't look," he hissed.

"The one on the left is pretty cute." Calla swiveled around to face him. "You should get her number."

"Ha-ha."

"I'm serious." She slipped her card across the bartop. Before Cooper could protest, she said, "Second round's on me."

He frowned but didn't object, and instead pulled out a pair of empty barstools. They both sat, and with a quick glance at the girl Calla had referred to, he said, "I'm not interested."

"You didn't even get a good look."

"She's not my type."

Calla picked up her shot glass. "Alright, then. I'm sure I can find someone to your liking."

He snorted and, following her lead, pressed their glasses together. "Challenge accepted. Loser buys hangover brunch tomorrow."

"Deal."

With a nod of understanding, they knocked back their drinks. Cooper sucked on the edge of his lime with a grimace, looking so absurdly miserable, Calla had to laugh.

"I'm not doing anymore of those," he warned her, shuddering. "Fuck, that's nasty."

Still chuckling, Calla peered over his shoulder as a boisterous laugh floated over the general clamor, belonging to a petite brunette with flashy pink eyeshadow. "What about that one?" she asked, indicating the other girl with a speculative tilt of her head.

Cooper motioned for the bartender to grab a pair of beers from the cooler. He barely spared the girl a glance before shrugging. "Meh."

"Meh?" Calla looked at him, affronted. "She's pretty."

"I mean, yeah."

"So why not go for it?" Her eyes narrowed in contemplation. "I can be your wingman. If I go over there—"

Cooper grabbed her wrist, horrified. "I can literally think of nothing worse than you being my wingman. Wingwoman?" He frowned. "If someone isn't up to your standards, you'll, like...stab them, or something."

"I would never stab someone," she argued, and then reconsidered. "In public." She lifted a finger at his deeply skeptical look. "Unprovoked."

The bartender slid a pair of beers across the bar. Cooper nodded in thanks and released Calla's wrist. "Let's not tempt fate."

"It would be a lot easier," she continued, ignoring him, "if you had a type."

"You wanna talk types?" He swiveled his stool so that their knees were touching. "Let's start with your type, then." He brought the beer bottle to his lips, avoiding her eye. "Peter, for instance. What's he like?"

"Annoying." Cooper loosed an exasperated sigh at her one-word answer. "Athletic," she amended quickly. "He's on the baseball team."

"Good for him." Cooper took another long pull of beer. "So. That's your type. Athletes." He pasted on a false smile. "Like Vincent."

Calla realized her leg was bouncing rather erratically and immediately forced herself to stop. "No. Not like Vincent." She wasn't sure why she felt the need to explain herself—to explain this, specifically. But she did. "Vincent was a mistake. I was naive to think a relationship like that, with him, could work."

Cooper still wouldn't look at her. Not directly. "Okay. But you do have a type—"

"It's not that simple," she argued, unreasonably agitated. Maybe he was right. Maybe she did have a type. Loathe as she was to admit it, she'd admired Cory for his physique, despite how vehemently she'd despised the boy himself. And it was to Vincent she'd first given her body to, if not her heart. Vincent with his broad shoulders and effortless grace...

Calla drained her beer, agitated. Vincent was her past. Just like Peter and the other inconsequential boys who had come and gone and who meant nothing to her and never would, because their ineptitude disgusted her, outweighing whatever initial attraction she might have felt in the brief, fleeting moments of their first conversation.

They were like bleating lambs, all of them—drawn unawares to the slaughterhouse, too stupid to know that they shared a bed with the butcher. But how to explain that?

"The athletes I go after," she said, raising her voice to be heard over the latest karaoke number, "are egotistical, empty-headed assholes with busy schedules and a list of admirers that can stroke their wounded pride when I inevitably cut things off." She pushed aside her empty beer. "It's less a type and more a lifestyle match. No attachments. No complications."

Cooper shrugged, feigning indifference, but Calla noted the smile he was trying and failing to hide when he said, "Empty-headed assholes, huh?"

She slipped his beer out of his hand and finished it off. "The dumber, the better. And you can tell Vincent I said so."

"Good to know." He gazed sullenly at his empty bottle. "I wasn't done with that."

"Put another one on my tab." She slid off the barstool. "And get one for me, too. I've gotta go to the bathroom."

As Calla joined the line snaking along the wall by the restrooms, the girl just ahead of her twisted around, no doubt scanning the crowd for her friends. Calla recognized her as one of the girls who'd whistled at Cooper as they'd left the karaoke stage, and for a moment she wondered how she could drown her in one of the toilets without drawing suspicion when, seemingly out of nowhere, she poked Calla's shoulder with a sparkly, pointed fingernail.

I'm definitely going to drown her in a toilet, Calla thought, even as the other girl leaned in to whisper conspiratorially, "Hey. That guy you're with. Is he your boyfriend?"

"We're—" We're just friends. The words lodged in Calla's throat.

Do what you do best. Lie.

She decided then to take Cooper's advice to heart. "Yes. We're together," she said sweetly, delighting in the other girl's visible disappointment.

"Oh," she said, smiling weakly. "Nevermind. My friend was wondering..."

Sure she was. But Calla just smiled and the other girl shuffled forward, eager to put some distance between them.

Calla had told Cooper she could be his wingman. Why, then, had she lied just now? He said he wasn't interested in her, anyway, she reasoned and, mollified, she disappeared into one of the grungy stalls, sighing when she found the door's lock busted.

Disgusted by the entire ordeal, Calla returned from the bathroom and—aware that the girl from before had returned to her spot at the end of the bar and was sneaking glances in their direction—grabbed Cooper's hand.

"Come on," she ordered. Clearly dazed, he slid his fingers through hers and followed her through the growing crowd, where a bold few had made for themselves a dance floor, forming a knot of sweat-slicked skin and writhing hips. There she twirled, dipping under Cooper's arm once, twice—until, with a wild grin, he began to spin her around in earnest, the neon lights on the wall a dizzying blur.

She preferred the dancing to the singing, and so they huddled close and closer still as the swell of bodies pressed in tighter around them, one song bleeding into the next until only a sliver of space separated them, and the smell of his cologne and his nearness somehow became all she could concentrate on. If Cooper felt the same, he hid it well, his face flushed from dancing and the heat of so many people crammed in such tight quarters. Calla caught herself staring at the high spots of color on his cheeks and looked away quickly, chagrined.

Wandering hands reached for her, brushing the small of her back. Calla batted them away, agitated; Cooper, sensing danger—not for her, she thought, but for Mr. Grabby Hands—hooked a finger through her belt loop and pulled her closer to his side.

At her questioning look, Cooper's flush deepened. He angled his mouth near her ear. "I'm trying to keep the weirdos off you," he explained, the words nearly lost to the thrum of music beneath their heels.

She nodded in understanding and wrapped her arms around his neck. "Good call," she shouted back, her chin brushing the collar of his pullover.

Cooper settled his palms against her hips, and it was like nothing had changed and everything had changed, because her fingers were dangerously close to the sweat-soft hair at his nape and his hands were somewhere they'd never been before, setting her on edge. 

She couldn't remember ever being this close to him. Not like this, anyway.

Are you scared of me now, Cooper Daniels? She'd asked him the question once before, and desperately wanted to ask him now. But she couldn't, not in this crowded bar. He didn't look or feel or seem afraid of her. If anything, he felt—

Calla turned her face away from his, ignoring the heat that crawled across her skin. Cooper pressed his lips to her ear. "What's wrong?"

I don't know. And that frightens me.

She would never admit such a thing aloud, so instead she mumbled, "It's hot in here."

To her surprise, when she snuck a glance at him, she found him smiling in what looked like relief. "Agreed."

They left then, Cooper's hand finding hers once more as he led them through the crowd. Calla sighed with relief when they finally broke free of the bar and the noise and the people, a bitter, wintry breeze soothing her overheated skin.

She lifted her face to the night air. "This feels amazing."

"Come on." He tugged her forward, their fingers still intertwined. "That guy over there is definitely about to yak, and I don't want to be anywhere near him when he does."

She made a face and followed him around a line leading into what looked like a sandwich shop. "I told you. People are generally disgusting."

He sidestepped a puddle of vomit with a grimace. "No arguments here."

The walk to his apartment further reinforced her opinion on the matter, with a number of strange sights and smells: a drunk girl crying on a set of broken concrete steps, her friend digging into a slice of pizza beside her; a garbage bin crawling with more cockroaches than she cared to count, and which Cooper danced around with a nervous little shudder that made her laugh; and there, across the street, a group of boys that catcalled her relentlessly, Cooper's face set in a firm scowl as he tugged her along, never loosening his grip on her hand.

Calla didn't mind the contact. It wasn't for her sake that he held her, she knew—but for the sake of those boys. She had half a mind to tell him that he needn't bother; she would, of course, be on her best behavior. But she found she liked the way his fingers fit around hers, and so she kept her silence, content.

He did release her eventually, fumbling with his keys to unlock the door to his apartment. Once inside, he glanced around cautiously. Calla eyed him and then mouthed, Vincent? He nodded, pressing a finger to his lips, and quickly ushered her into his bedroom.

Cooper closed the door behind them with a sigh of relief, plunging the room into semidarkness. Calla blinked and waited for her eyes to adjust. A single window backlit by the distant glow of a streetlamp offered some light to see by, but not much.

She stepped out of her shoes and asked, whisper-soft, "What exactly is the plan here?"

Cooper kicked his sneakers across the room. "I need to brush my teeth—"

"No, you idiot." She scooped up her shoe and threw it at his head. He caught it against his chest, stupefied. "The plan. With Vincent. Are you going to hide me away from him forever, or what?"

"Calla..." She caught the gleam of his eyes as he looked at her, his face dark with shadows. "It's not like that."

"It's exactly like that." The words sounded bitter, even to her own ears.

"You know how he is."

She did know, and it wasn't an argument worth having, not when he was so hellbent on keeping her out of sight and out of mind. With a sigh, she scanned the floor, looking for a shirt she could sleep in. She'd left hers around here somewhere, but she couldn't see in this blasted dark—

"What're you looking for?" When she explained, Cooper scooped a dark t-shirt from the edge of his desk and tossed it at her. "There. It's clean." She sniffed it experimentally. "I said it's clean."

"Thanks." She started to unbutton her pants.

Across the room, Cooper froze. "Uh. What are you doing?"

She glanced up at him, perplexed. "What? I'm not sleeping in my jeans."

"I didn't say—" Shadows flashed against the wall as he reached up to drag a hand through his hair. "We have a bathroom, you know."

"And what if Vincent comes bumbling in there while I'm trying to change? You want me to run into him naked?" She rolled her eyes. "I'm sure that'd be a great way to let him know I'm here—"

"Oh, fuck's sake," Cooper muttered, turning his back to her. "Just...hurry up."

She stifled a laugh. "You're such a prude." Still, as she stripped off her jeans and her sweater, she felt overly aware of him—and not just the fact that he was standing there, close enough to touch, almost. It was his shadow against the wall, the smell of him lingering in the air, in the floor, in everything she touched.

I've gone completely mad.

She tossed her clothes in the corner and pulled on the t-shirt—Cooper's t-shirt—and sat on the edge of the bed—Cooper's bed—her hands clenched into fists against her thighs. "There. I'm decent."

Cooper faced her, bare-footed, having stripped to sweatpants and a plain white t-shirt while her back was turned. "You're on my bed," he pointed out.

She leaned back against her hands. "Astute of you."

"And where am I supposed to sleep, exactly?" He raised an eyebrow, waiting for her answer.

She pretended to consider his options. "There's the couch—"

"This is my room," he blurted. "I'm not sleeping on the couch again."

"Alright. You can sleep on the floor."

"I guess," he conceded grudgingly. Calla picked at her cuticles, satisfied that the matter had been resolved. Until— "You know what? No. That's my bed." He planted his hands on his hips. "I'm not sleeping on the floor."

Calla patted the mattress. "Plenty of room for two." She meant it jokingly. Of course she did. So why did the thought of him curled beside her make her squirm?

"You—" He fidgeted, but whether from discomfort or embarrassment or something else—ach, this was insanity. "That's my bed," he muttered again.

She pushed herself to her feet and crossed the room in two easy strides. "If you think I'm sleeping on the floor, you're out of your mind." Now that she was closer, she could see it—not just the hesitation in his eyes, but the fear. She paused, wondering if she'd misread the situation, if perhaps she'd missed the signs and he was still afraid of her—

But when he looked at her, he didn't shy away, and she knew. He was afraid, yes. But he wasn't afraid of her. She relaxed, more certain than she had been moments before. But then what...

"I...I don't sleep well."

He spoke so suddenly, it took several seconds for her to process the words. She said nothing, thinking back to the first night he'd slept on her couch—the sound of his restless movements, the low murmur of his voice as he fought to find sleep, and the dark circles under his eyes when he inevitably failed.

"It's the nightmares," he whispered. She'd never seen him so still. She searched the shadows that crawled across his face. "I can't..."

His fear became plain then. He thinks he'll hurt me, somehow. The thought was so ludicrous, she almost laughed. 

"Cooper." She folded her arms. "You're not going to hurt me in some...PTSD-induced sleep attack."

"You don't know that."

She considered him carefully. "Fine. Maybe you will." His throat bobbed as she stepped forward and rested her hand against his cheek. "But if you do, try to remember which of the two of us is more dangerous. Yes?"

The words were not a comfort, not exactly, but he loosed a tight breath, the tension in his shoulders ebbing away as he realized the truth of what she'd said. 

"In that case, maybe I should take my chances on the couch," he said weakly. His jaw worked beneath her fingertips as he spoke, the skin there deliciously soft. 

He did not move away from her. She did not dare press closer.

"Thank you," he murmured, voice overloud in the silence that crowded his too-small room. She wondered what he had to thank her for when she'd been the one to stir up the horrors that stalked his dreams—the one who upended his life and forge this perverse, incomprehensible bond between them. 

Did he hate her, she wondered? Deep in his bones, did he loathe what she'd done to him? What she'd done to them both?

Cooper's fingertips grazed the back of her hand, still curled possessively around the sharp curve of his cheek, jolting her from her thoughts. His eyes darkened as he stared at her, wearing the most unusual expression. She wondered if it matched her own.

Curious. Uncertain. Hungry.

Her breath hitched and he froze, the tips of his fingers hovering over her knuckles. There was a question in that gesture. I'll stop if you want me to, that momentary hesitation seemed to say.

She didn't want him to stop.

Reckless and wanting and not fully understanding what it was that she wanted, Calla curled her hand around the back of his neck, the skin there tacky with dried sweat. She heard him swallow, his own breath catching in his throat. Releasing a short, jagged breath, she pulled him closer, his breath fanning across her face, and everything about this, about him was warm and familiar and—

A strangled gasp tore from his throat as he crushed his lips against hers, eliminating the space between them.

This. This was what she wanted.

She tangled her fingers through his hair and folded her body against his, deepening the kiss. Their frantic breaths filled the quiet of the room, his hands against her thighs, her hips. Exploring every inch of her he could reach.

Mine.

She trapped his face between her hands, catching his lower lip between her teeth. He groaned against her mouth, the sound muffled and helpless.

Mine.

"Calla," he murmured, gathering her hair in his fist. Her name a low, desperate plea on his lips. "Calla."

Mine.

She tugged at the hem of his t-shirt, impatient. His lips quirked against her mouth in a smile, and, obliging her, he lifted his arms and helped her pull the t-shirt over his head, exposing his skin to the dark of his bedroom. Her hands roamed greedily over his shoulders as he began to guide her back to the bed, carefully sidestepping discarded clothes.

He found the hem of her t-shirt and slid a hand up the small of her back, tracing the length of her spine even as she slipped a hand down the front of his sweatpants, eliciting a breathy moan from deep in his chest.

Calla's thighs bumped into the edge of the bed and she sat, pulling away from Cooper for a brief moment. He hovered over her, his eyes wild as they roamed over her swollen lips and mussed hair.

She'd been wanted before, by others. But never like this. Never by someone who knew her, down to her bones.

The intensity of her longing surprised her. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to touch him. She wanted to make him hers, as he'd always been and always would be.

"Kiss me," she ordered breathlessly.

Once more, he obliged her.