Chapter 176 Bowling

Chapter 176 Bowling
#MAEVE

"Absolutely not"

"You haven't even seen it yet"

"I can see it from here. It's a building with neon lights advertising cheap beer and a sign missing two letters. I don't need to go inside to form an opinion"

"That's called a dive bar and it's a completely normal human institutiom. And you are coming inside whether you like it or not" I grabbed his sleeve and hauled, which accomplished nothing against four hundred years of solid muscle refusing to move. Except make me look ridiculous straining against him on a public sidewalk.

"I don't need to drink"

"I know you don't need to. Nobody needs to bowl either, technically and yet" I gestured grandly at the building like I was presenting a palace instead of a slightly sticky bar with a bowling alley attached. "Humans have entire evenings built around doing things that serve no actual purpose beyond being fun. It's one of our finest inventions"

"Fun"

"Yes. F-U-N. You've heard of it"

"I've heard the word"

"That's not the same thing and it explains a great deal about you, honestly" I tugged again and this time he let himself be pulled. I suspect because arguing with me on a sidewalk had become less appealing to him than simply getting it over with.

Inside smelled like beer and old carpet and something fried. The jukebox in the corner was playing something loud and nostalgic that immediately made me want to move my hips slightly whether the song deserved it or not. 

Eldon surveyed the whole scene like a man assessing a battlefield he had no interest in fighting on.

"This is beneath me" he informed me, arms crossed, standing at the edge of lane six like it might bite him.

"Everything's beneath you. You told me pizza was beneath you too right before you nearly threw up eating it"

"I didn't nearly throw up"

"Your face said otherwise"

I got us shoes. He inspected with the suspicion of a man being asked to wear a stranger's socks, which, fair. But I didn't have the patience to validate that concern out loud.

"Put them on"

"I don't see the point of this activity"

"The point is that you throw a heavy ball at some pins and knock them down and it feels stupidly satisfying and also I'm going to beat you. Oh you're going to hate that"

That got a flicker of something across his face. 

I went first. I gave a solid, respectable strike that I celebrated far more dramatically than the actual bowling skill warranted, both arms up, a little victory dance that made two teenagers at the next lane laugh.

"Beat that" I told him, breathless and grinning.

He picked up the ball like it had personally wronged him, studied the lane with the same intense focus I imagined he brought to actual warfare. He then threw it with enough force that it nearly jumped the gutter entirely before clipping a single pin at the very edge.

"One pin" I said, delighted. "You knocked down one pin"

"I wasn't trying for one pin"

"Sure you weren't"

"I have four hundred years of combat experience. I cannot solve a plastic ball and ten pieces of wood"

"It's not wood, it's some kind of composite and also that's exactly the kind of thing someone says right before they get worse at something out of pure spite" I bumped his shoulder with mine, delighting entirely too much in his obvious, simmering frustration. "Try again. Less murder, more finesse"

He glared at me. I grinned back, unbothered and something about the whole ridiculous exchange had my pulse doing some warm weird feeling. And interested that had nothing to do with the actual bowling.

His second attempt was better. Three pins. Hhis third knocked down six and by his fourth frame something had shifted in his whole posture, less rigid, more focused. 

The actul competitive intent narrowed his eyes in a way that did unfair things to how attractive he looked doing something this stupid.

"You're getting into it" I observed.

"I am not"

"You absolutely are. Look at your face. You have your war face on. Over bowling"

"I don't have a war face"

"You have several faces, we've discussed this. This is your dedicated bowling war face and it's doing something to me that I probably shouldn't admit out loud in a public bowling alley"

That got his attention off the lane entirely. Those dsrk eyes cutting to mine, something low and interested flickering across his expression that made the air between us go charged. 

"Is it?" he asked, lowly.

"Don't get smug about it"

"I'm not smug. I'm curious what, exactly, my bowling war face does to you"

I felt my face heat. I was unprepared for how quickly the teasing had flipped back on me. I covered it by grabbing my own ball a little too fast, lining up my next throw with more concentration on the pins than the conversation strictly required.

I threw. Gutter ball. Spectacular, humiliating gutter ball. His laugh when it came, was real and unguarded and entirely too satisfied with itself.

"Don't do that" I warned, pointing at him.

"I didn't say anything"

"Your whole face said it"

"My face is simply enjoying itself. You told me that was allowed, several times, at increasing volume"

"I take it back. Rescind the fun. You're banned from enjoying my failure specifically"

He was still grinning when he stepped up for his next throw. There is sometinv loose and easy in his shoulders that I hadn't seen from him before. Not even during the pizza disastet and when the ball connected and knocked down eight pins at once. 

He turned to look at me with an expression so genuinely pleased with himself that I felt something molten settle low in my stomach. 

"Eight" he said, insufferably satisfied.

"Beginner's luck"

"I don't believe in luck"

"You should. It's the only explanation for that throw" I crossed the space between us before I'd fully decided to, close enough to feel the warmth radiating off him. Close that his eyes dropped briefly to my mouth before finding mine again. 

"You're standing very close" he said, voice lower now.

"I'm celebrating your victory"

"Is that what this is?"

"Could be something else"

Neither of us moved for a long moment. The jukebox still playing something loud and forgettable behind us and whole bar carrying on around this one small, charged pocket of stillness between two people who both knew exactly what neither of us was saying.

Then one of the teenagers at the next lane whooped loudly over their own strike. The moment cracked and I stepped back all breathless. My heart working harder than a single gutter ball should have justified.

"Your turn" I said, voice not quite as steady as I wanted it.

"Right" He didn't look away from me for another beat. 

I watched him line up his next throw with entirely too much appreciation for the line of his shoulders while I tried, mostly unsuccessfullu to remember how to breathe normally again.