Fake Dating/“They’re coming- kiss me!”
As she approached, the throbbing pulse of music reached her ears. Somewhat inauspiciously, a heavily synthesised remix of Chuck Berry’s ‘You Never Can Tell’.
Her brother Oberyn’s nightclub was located in a basement down a poorly lit side street popular with prostitutes and junkies. It was a dingy, shabby hole, sweaty and cramped, painted an unfortunate shade of yellow that always put her in mind of over-ripe bananas and stinking of sour cigarettes and stale booze, or was it the other way around? That it was able to survive was testament to the combined pulling power of Oberyn’s top-shelf alcohol, legendary for it’s potency among bohemian alcoholics, and the still more legendary floorshows that unfolded on the mirrored stage behind the tiny dance floor, that truly defied description. In fact, together these proved such a draw that the club was sold out every night, and - given the cheapness of the rent for obvious reasons - should therefore have been wildly in profit, but so much cash went into bribing the police and, when that was unsuccessful, fighting court orders and reapplying for licenses that it barely covered costs. Oberyn claimed to keep it open for the art - and it might be true, he certainly didn’t need the money, but his sister privately suspected it was either an extremely clever way of laundering money, or it’s main purpose was in acquiring blackmail material. Perhaps both.
It was early when she got there, not even fully dark yet, but the queue was already beginning to tail back along the street. Elia considered herself to be a worldly sort of girl, but she didn’t know anyone who wouldn’t have felt out of place there - women dressed like Warhol-era New York prostitutes, sharp-suited, sharper-coiffured men in eyeliner waiting in multi-sexual combinations of pairs and threesomes, but she did her best not to pay it any mind. She knew that the line you saw out the door was rarely an indication of how many people were inside. An empty club could have a line of people waiting to get in, to give the right image. Ignoring them all, she walked straight to the front of the queue, where two cold, bored, actual eunuchs, sinewy rough-and-tumble motherfuckers that her brother had acquired from God-Knows-Where (that must have been a hell of a job interview) stood, wearing actual leopard-skins in lieu of clothing to show off their wiry physiques. They were holding clipboards, and were sorting through the crowd and turning away the insufficiently hip.
The larger of the two, shaved entirely hairless even to the eyebrows and dark skinned in an ambiguous way that could suggest all a manner of ethnicities moved to intercept her with a bored swagger. Elia had never seen him before in her life, at least she was fairly certain, but he obviously recognised her, since he smiled warmly instead, leaning over to undo the chain fence to let her through. “Oberyn said you’d be around. He’s waiting for you.“
“What the hell?” one of the girls near the front of the line complained, “We’ve been waiting for forty five minutes and you let that slut through like that?”
“Out of the line,” the doorman said, his voice bored.
“She’s a VIP. Out of the line. You and your friends are banned indefinitely.” Having said all he intended to, at least to her, he stepped aside to give Elia space to enter.
The girl was obviously too young to know to cut her losses. Elia could hear her still protesting as she walked through the doors.
The music was a great deal louder inside. It was too early in the night for much in the way of character, the people inside were mostly relaxing, drinking, and sneering at people not as cool as them.
“Welcome back to the country. ” Oberyn grinned, emerging from the VIP rooms and ambling over with a long, rolling step. Her brother was always making something of a spectacle himself, he couldn’t help it, and here, where there was nobody to rein him in or exert control over him he was playing it up more than ever. He was wearing leather pants that probably stood in violation of public decency laws, and no shirt. Some of the tattoos looked new. She was almost certain the nipple piercing was. He’d grown his hair out, so that it was just brushing his shoulders, and he’d regrown his beard. “Taking a break from fighting the good fight?”
“I’m only here for a week. I don’t know if that counts as a break. And I don’t know that what I do counts as the Good Fight.”
“Well, it’s making the world better for the common man - even if there is no medals in it. And even if you work too hard anyway, and it keeps you out of the country.” Oberyn said. “When exactly did you get here?”
“My flight touched down an hour ago. I got an Uber here.”
“And you came to visit me first? You’ll break our dearest brothers heart with this blatant display of your preference.” He paused. “Where are your bags?”
Oberyn’s grin widened. “And Doran complains I am too spontaneous.” He shook his head. “Well, that simply won’t do. Not at all. You and I will have to purchase a new wardrobe for you while you are here.”
Elia had been expecting that, so she only shrugged. “This is why I didn’t pack, you know. You’d make me do this anyway.”
“Of course! Sister dearest, I count it as a gift, the trust and faith in me you display by trusting me to take care of you.” Oberyn replied, giving her his most charming smile. “When I’m done, you’ll turn every head in New York. Where are you staying?”
“One of Doran’s spare rooms. And you’re taking me there - I’ll rent a car tomorrow.”
“Not so fast. We’ve got to catch up a bit first.”
“Well, of course. Why bother showing up to a wedding, except to catch up with all the people you’re to busy to see? I want to hear everything.”
The VIP rooms were actually very comfortable, despite the fact that every smooth surface seemed to be dedicated to a smorgasbord of substances to snort, swallow or inject. And the highly conspicuous biohazard bins by the door and couches to dispose of syringes. By Oberyn’s standards, that was very responsible.
Her brother mixed her a drink that she didn’t try to identify, she just poured into her for the sake of being a good sport, then sent him off to get something more her speed. He returned with a glass and the entire bottle, obviously feeling it would save time in the long run. She glanced at the label and nodded approvingly, then poured herself a glass. She took only a small sip - she was hesitant to disrespect such a great bottle of wine by using it to get trashed. “You spoil me.”
“When I can get away with it. So, what’s happening in your life?”
“More of the same. I’m fighting against international corporate hegemonies, which you are not only not interested in talking about, if I try to you will change the subject. Rhaenys is studying international law in Scandinavia, and Aegon is somewhere in South America. And you’re doing…”
“Oh, a little here, a little there.” He replied, evasive as he always was. “Some of it’s legal, but those bits are so dreadfully dull that hearing about it would bore you terribly. Filing, mostly.” He crossed his legs. “But surely there is more to life in Brussels than work.”
“Well, there is a positively decadent expenses account, and plenty of exquisite champagne and truffles to use it on.” She winked. “I’ve put on, what, twenty pounds there? Two kids and I never gained an ounce, but all that food… I’ll be starting to waddle soon, can you imagine?”
Oberyn swallowed. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Liar.” She replied with a wink. “I’m up a whole size. And lighten up. Someone as throughly debauched as yourself shouldn’t be so easy to embarrass.”
“Have you found a man, between champagne dinners?”
“I anticipated you were working your way to that. I even held off asking about my old friends to give you the chance. Still, I expected more candor.”
“The answer is no, Oberyn. No, I haven’t met anyone who excites me - not that I need any excitement, and so I am entirely free. My kids have grown up, they have their own lives, and I’m not afraid to be alone.”
“I never said I was alone. Just that I am not afraid of it, and that anyway, I haven’t found anyone new.“ Sex had been sporadic at best, and more often than not she found herself entirely doing without. Which was a shame, because she loved the idea of sex, but hardly dedicated any effort to actively pursuing it. "I haven’t been in more than the occasional date in nearly two decades. I was pretty hot property back then, as I recall, but we’d only just discovered texting in those days.”
“It’s not actually all that different, now.”
"Oh now? What about all of the sexting and the snapping and the swiping right Rhaenys seems so taken with. Or is it left? I admit I don’t have any idea.”
“There’s no great mystery to online dating, sweet sister. It’s just like chatting someone up in a bar, only over email and with the guarantee that they’re on the prowl as well.”
“Where does the swiping come in?”
“Are you trying to take all the fun out of this? That’s not like you at all, brother. Is your nerve failing as you get older?”
Oberyn was much to irrepressible to let something like that take the wind out of his sails. “Maybe we’ll work up to that. But the problem is not how you go about it. The problem is that you’ve got no taste in men.”
“Well no. Of course, neither do you.”
“Granted, but for entirely different reasons. Your problem is that, on some unconscious level, you feel the need to be with a partner who is utterly destructive. To themselves, and to your life.”
“I’ll admit that has happened a time or two” She briefly thought about Simon Toyne, who for most people would be the boyfriend they most regretted. They’d met in college, and she had been taken by surprise when he was injured in a shoot-out with the National Guard and was now serving simultaneous life sentences for domestic terrorism, then considered Rhaegar Targaryen, who’d seemed perfect right up until he left her for a teenager one night without a word, and then skipped out on his bail and fled the country ahead of prosecution. Apparently he was now living somewhere alongside the french riviera, toying with collecting art and trading mistresses with the other ageing bon vivants. “Are you working up to something? Because if so, I’m afraid I don’t follow. Just have at it, will you?”
Oberyn smiled. “Well, you can’t show up at your niece’s wedding unescorted. That simply will not do.”
“Fortunately I anticipated this, and as it happens I have already alighted on a solution.”
She looked at him, her expression set in some strange expression caught somewhere between disappointment or amusement. “Are you trying to set me up with one of your exes?”
Oberyn looked offended. “As if I want any of my exes anywhere near my family. Particularly you, sweet sister. If they couldn’t handle me, you’d eat them alive. No, I have the perfect man for you. Handsome, reliable, just dangerous enough to be interesting…”
Her eyebrows went up, but he knew his sister well enough to know he’d intrigued her. “Really?”
“And that’s the best bit. I know you’ll like him, since you already do!”
These days, the crossword was the only part of the paper that Arthur Dayne devoted more than a few minutes to. In the past, he would read the front part of the New York Times from top to bottom and form an opinion - almost always negative - about every last item, including the opinion pieces, the sponsored content and the letters. He’d stopped doing that a few years back when filling his empty hours had stopped seeming so important, and what a load-off it had turned out to be! It had happened one Sunday Morning, shortly after the paper had arrived on his doorstep. The local and International News, Business, Sports, Art & Leisure, Review, Agenda, five sections of classifieds, and he’d put it aside.
So it made a change to be reading a paper again - if more out of a desire to occupy himself while he waited to discover the favor Oberyn was asking for him. It didn’t occupy him the way it had used to - he didn’t know if that meant he was changing, or the way that the News was reported was changing, but given the world didn’t seem to change as much as everyone thought it did he assumed it was the former. General opinion, judging by the microcosm of it deemed newsworthy, didn’t seem too important, anyway.
He’d ordered himself lunch while he waited, but it had yet to arrive. The coffee had, but he’d drunk it by now, and was beginning to regret that he’d not ordered a second cup. Looking up from the paper, which he was mostly only holding as a prop anyway, he blinked when he realized that she’d arrived. He recognized her, of course, even though they hadn’t seen each other in years. But it still took him by momentary surprise when he noticed just who was wearing the red orchid in her dark hair - the agreed identification (obviously Oberyn had watched too many spy-movies) enough that he’s already folded the paper and placed it aside when she sits across from him.
"Well. Now I’m wondering if Ashara put Oberyn up to this, or the conspiracy goes deeper yet.” She said, with her bright smile, her dimples and her sparkling eyes. Arthur Dayne thought a man would have to be made of stone not to smile back. There was something about Elia, something that kept you thinking of her to the expense of conventional beauty.
“Honestly, I was halfway ready to ask you the same. Before that, I wondered if this was some sort of elaborate set-up.”
"Well, I never doubted that you were innocent - at least in regards to scheming up this. It’s lovely to see you Arthur.”
“You too.” He replied automatically, but scrupulously honestly. “I had no idea you were back in the country.”
“I’m not, really. Not for another six months. Maybe longer. Honestly, these days I always seem to be busy.”
“Well, thrive might be too strong a word. How about yourself? I hear they have you training special forces recruits somewhere classified?”
“They don’t know what else to do with me. In all honesty, I’m bored out of my mind, but I haven’t dared tell anyone.”
“Afraid you’ll embarrass them?”
“Aware that complaining about boredom isn’t something anybody can do in my position - anyone gets a whisper of dissatisfaction from you, and the superiors will worry about cracking up or an addiction to risk and force you to undertake psychiatric evaluation. Or worse.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I’ll put up with it a bit longer. Who knows, maybe get a discharge, try and give civilian life a try.”
“You might be surprised. I’m almost laid back these days.”
She snorted. “How is Ashara?”
“You’d know better than me, I’d think. We don’t talk much any more.”
For a moment there was a comfortable silence.
“You’re not here under any sort of false pretenses, are you?”
“Not unless I’ve tragically misread this situation, and you’ve something sinister in mind.”
“I never plan anything sinister, it just happens.”
“Like anybody could believe that.”
She laughed. “You’re growing so suspicious. No, it’s only that I’m a little at a loss - all I’ve been told to do is show up.”
“Well, apparently it’s a date. And I’m a little out of practice, but I believe I’m supposed to charm you, sweep you off your feet as much as you’ll let me, and otherwise show you a good time. It’s all pre-planned, your brother even texted me an itinerary, a list of bookings…”
“Let me see that.” She said eagerly, then snatched away his phone before he could offer it to her. “Hmmm. He’s certainly gone to a lot of trouble, hasn’t he? He always did know what I like. Unfortunately, he seems to have stolen most of his ideas from watching montages in romantic comedies. Well, I won’t protest - I’ll go through with it. It’ll be fun, if nothing else, and the two of us do need the chance to catch up. At least if you are game?”
“It’s not really a chore, escorting you around all day.”
“Oh, you say that now, but up until now you’ve only known me as a friend. Apparently I’m high maintenance. Also, intimidating.” She gave him a smoky look. “Though I’m sure you can keep up with me for a few days. There’s a wedding to attend, afterall. Arianne’s, if you can believe it.” She smiled fondly. “And there is something so magical about weddings, I’ve always found.”
“You must be very proud.”
“Of course I am. What an odd thing to say.”
“People who date me tend to know. Let’s do this as friends, and if we start to enjoy ourselves we can change our minds. Less pressure that way.”
It was sunset when they left the theatre. If Arthur Dayne had been asked if he considered himself the demographic likely to enjoy a play written by an up-and-coming young talent satirizing capitalism, Arthur would have had to say no. The theatre wasn’t something he had any involvement with, it was something he wouldn’t have expected to see, much less form an opinion on.
“Well, that was fun.” Elia said at last. Truth be told, he’d spent more time watching her then the play, waiting for her to explain the meta-narrative and complex farcical twists into something he could understand. After a while, he’d stopped trying. There was no sense in listening to the words, instead he listened to it like he would music. Just let it flow in and out.
“I had fun. Lots, actually.“ Arthur Dayne agreed. He sounded almost surprised. "What now?”
“Well, I hope you’ll escort me to the wedding. It’s a magical time, anything can happen. After that, I’m going to be on a flight back to Europe, where they know how to take care of royalty.” She winked. “Look me up. Might be nice to give this another try. You know. For real.” She winked. "We missed out on old-times sake, but if you ever feel like new-times sake, get a hold of me.”
Arthur Dayne was not a man given to spontaneity. He planned everything, he always had. Which is why he took himself by surprise as much as he took her by surprise when he stepped up close, leaned down, cupped her chin and drew her toward him until their mouths all but touched. He could feel her breath, warm and shallow, on his neck, and when he kissed her, she responded with slow but genuine passion.
Already the kiss was beginning to change; it was hotter now, more demanding. Her body pressed against him. His breathing had quickened considerably; hers came swift and shallow.
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