Over the ancient, crackling speakers mounted like relics above the bar, a voice wheezed to life with the enthusiasm of a DMV loudspeaker:
"Ladies, gentlemen, and other war crimes in heels... up next is a local curse. You know him. You loathe him. But he paid good money to commit this crime. Jorge Gonzalez… performing Kiss from a Rose by Seal."
The table erupted in groans, a chorus of betrayal.
"Oh God, why?!" Ashley slapped the table like someone had cursed her crops. "Is this because we mocked the vestal virgin?! Is this divine retribution?!"
"Not Seal!" Emily gasped, clutching her chest. "I'm too young to die of cringe!"
Tiny crossed himself, murmuring, "Lord forgive him, he knows exactly what he's doing."
Roxie, still pink from her soul-baring moment, blinked. "Wait… Jorge sings?"
"No," Dianna muttered, already slumping low in Roxie's lap. "He performs."
Elizabeth groaned. "He couldn't carry a tune in a wheelbarrow. Full of auto-tune. Pulled by angels."
"I heard a seagull cry better in key," Ashley said, shoving her drink away like it was cursed.
"I once heard a possum scream during mating season," Emily added. "It had more control."
And then, the music began.
The slow, unmistakable windup of Seal's dramatic 90s masterpiece filled the bar like a fog machine of nostalgia and dread.
And then Jorge—bless him—took the stage.
One could almost see into his head. He imagined himself as the hero in white pants, fake rose petals, and the misplaced confidence of a man who had watched Moulin Rouge three times in a row and thought, "I could do that."
He struck a pose.
The music had barely begun when Jorge raised a hand like a man about to deliver a soliloquy at his own execution.
"This piece of art you are about to witness," he declared, "goes out to Elizabeth Morris, the most amazing señorita in the lower forty-eight."
He was resplendent—if your definition of "resplendent" included JNCO jeans wide enough to smuggle contraband, a button-down patterned with wolves howling at a digital moon, and light-up sneakers that blinked like a glitch in God's matrix.
And then… he began.
Oh, Saints preserve them, he began.
From the very first note, it was bad.
Not "off-key at karaoke" bad.
Not "high school musical with a broken speaker" bad.
No.
This was dog-barkingly, ice-cream-machine-at-a-haunted-church-fair bad.
Megatron files a noise complaint bad.
Jesus weeps into his hands and calls Seal personally to apologize bad.
He didn't just miss notes—he committed crimes against them.
He warbled on syllables that didn't need to be warbled.
He didn't just miss the key—he missed the house, the neighborhood, the continent.
And yet.
He sang with the earnest passion of a doomed shōnen protagonist.
Chest out. Eyes closed.
Pouring his entire goofy anime soul into it.
It hit Roxie like a thunderclap to the morals.
She stared, wide-eyed, mouth slightly parted, as if bearing witness to a sacred ritual and a minor boat crash simultaneously.
Her soul was being serenaded and mugged at the same time.
And Elizabeth?
Elizabeth Morris did not flinch.
She sat there with the serenity of a queen on the guillotine, back straight, hands folded, watching her beloved lunatic warble himself into romantic martyrdom.
Ashley leaned in, solemn as death. "You know he's gonna propose like this someday."
Elizabeth exhaled slowly, her voice steady as steel. "I know."
Emily whispered, reverent, "And you'll say yes."
"I will."
From the stage, Jorge hit a note so violent the booth visibly winced.
The speakers crackled like they were trying to flee the building.
Tiny covered his ears. "Y'all. I think he just peeled paint off the walls."
Roxie whimpered, clutching her drink like a rosary. "He's doing it… he's doing it on purpose. He means every word."
"He always does," Dianna whispered, eyes full of equal parts pain and respect. "He's weaponizing cringe. He's become too powerful."
As the audible assault rolled on with all the grace of a drone strike, Roxie had intended to listen and suffer like a saint.
She hadn't meant to get distracted. Not truly.
But Jorge's caterwauling had become ambient noise, like a dying whale echoing from the next room, and there was something far more fascinating just beneath her fingers.
Dianna's thigh.
Not in a prurient way.
Not in the way most would mean.
But in the way a stained-glass window is beautiful because of its lead. Because of the division. The framework. Roxie's mind was already sketching. Already dissecting.
Fishnets.
What a strange name for something so intricate.
The texture wasn't smooth—it was interruption incarnate. Nylon cords crisscrossing soft flesh, forming little diamonds like a pattern woven to keep something sacred from spilling. There was tension in each knot. Not tight enough to bruise. But enough to suggest structure. Deliberate restraint.
She traced a single junction with her fingertip.
Like lattice on cathedral windows.
Like caged light.
Each tiny diamond of exposed skin was its own confession—nothing overt, but each opening a suggestion, an admission. Not of sin, exactly. Of intention. Fishnets weren't shy. They were armor made from implication. And Dianna wore them not as flirtation, but as declaration. As her birthright.
It wasn't just sexy.
It was symbolic.
The flesh and the framework.
Chaos and the grid.
She could see it so clearly now—the metaphor of Dianna. This woman who dressed in combat boots and snark, who laughed at danger and cried at dumb movies. Whose soul was sharp and vulnerable all at once.
Roxie's thumb barely shifted. Tracing one more diamond. A new shape. A new stanza.
She wasn't thinking about skin.
She was thinking about ink.
About how hard it would be to capture this in charcoal. How easy it would be to smudge the lines. How you'd have to draw the negative space, not the fishnet itself—that was the trick. You had to define it by what it wasn't.
God, but that was Dianna, wasn't it?
Defined by absence. By near-misses and almosts. By all the things she didn't say, didn't ask for, didn't let herself want.
Her thigh was warm beneath the mesh. Living. Breathing. Impossibly still.
And Roxie—Roxie didn't pull away.
She didn't even realize she was breathing slower.
Because this wasn't seduction. This wasn't a touch.
This was study.
This was a holy moment, carved from grid and grit and grace.
And as Jorge hit a note so off-key it sounded like jazz for demons, Roxie just kept tracing those little diamonds of nylon and silence.
Trying—hopelessly, reverently—to understand how something could be so crude, so cheap, so manufactured—
—and yet feel divine.
----
Dianna meanwhile was caught somewhere in a bear trap made of Roxie's tender fingers.
Dianna couldn't breathe.
Not in the dramatic, flirty, look-at-me kind of way—but in the genuinely-forgot-how-lungs-work sort of way. Because somewhere between Jorge screaming his undying love to Seal's ghost and Roxie going all Michelangelo-under-the-table, something had gone terribly, gloriously wrong.
Or right.
Depending on whether she survived.
Because Roxie's fingers were on her thigh.
Still on her thigh.
Not moving fast, not groping, not anything that would have justified a slap or a smirk. Just… tracing. Slow. Thoughtful. Like she was reading Braille written on mesh and soft skin. Like she was learning her.
And Dianna—
Dianna was losing her goddamn mind.
She didn't dare move.
What if Roxie thought she was uncomfortable and stopped?
What if she thought she wasn't uncomfortable and didn't stop?
What if she thought Dianna wanted her to go higher?
God, she did.
No she didn't.
She couldn't.
Because higher meant under the skirt.
And under the skirt meant a thong.
A ridiculous one.
A thong that was less of a garment and more of a suggestion.
And if Roxie's fingers—if those long, delicate, art-girl fingers with little half-moons of charcoal still under the nails—kept going…
No the fuck she wouldn't! Dianna screamed internally. That would be insane! That would ruin everything! That would—
That would make her combust.
Jesus, Mary, and the saints with trauma kits, she wanted it.
But not because she was horny.
Okay, she was. A little.
A lot.
But it was more than that.
It was the way Roxie touched her like she was fragile. Not in the pitying way. In the precious way. Like she wasn't just a girl in a bar booth. Like she was something worth slowing down for.
And it was killing her.
Because she couldn't see Roxie's face. Not from this angle.
She was in her lap, for fucks sake! Her head cradled in the plush velvet curve of that halter top, and Roxie's body was warm and soft and smelled like vanilla and something she couldn't name, and those tits were a hate crime.
Dianna clenched her jaw.
Roxie's fingers shifted—barely.
Just a centimeter.
And it sent a shockwave up her spine like she'd been struck by divine lightning and was too gay to be resuscitated.
Do something, she screamed at herself. Say something. Faint. Sneeze. Kick a drink over.
Instead, her breath hitched—just audibly.
And Roxie?
Roxie didn't stop.
She just traced one more line across Dianna's thigh, patient as a prayer.
And Dianna, hand gripping the booth cushion like a lifeline, stared at the ceiling and thought:
I am going to die.
I am going to die and my gravestone will read:
Here lies Dianna Rodgers.
She got touched by a church girl and perished of lesbianism
---
Elizabeth was halfway through a sip of her drink when she noticed it—something twitchy at the edge of her vision.
Dianna.
Panting.
Not dramatically, not cartoonishly—but with the tight-chested, air-on-standby tension of someone moments from cardiac event or confession. Her hand was white-knuckled around the booth cushion, and her eyes were locked somewhere above reality, like she was watching angels descend from the ceiling tiles.
Elizabeth arched a brow.
Then she followed the line of tension downward.
And saw Roxie's hand.
Nestled gently on Dianna's fishnet-covered thigh.
Ah.
A grin curled at the edge of her mouth.
Oh my. How saucy. Get it, kitten. That's a bit bold for the church girl—but hey, we celebrate growth around here.
She almost turned away.
Almost.
But then—she looked again.
At Roxie.
At the subtle scrunch of her brow. The little tilt of her head. The eyes not glazed with lust or playfulness but fixed in that art major at 3AM expression—like she was trying to uncover the secrets of nylon geometry and metaphysical sensuality all at once.
Elizabeth's lips parted in revelation.
Oh no.
This wasn't flirting.
This wasn't seduction.
This wasn't even a smooth move gone too far.
Roxie was thinking. Roxie was studying. Roxie was halfway through composing a sonnet about light refraction in mesh and had, with God as her witness, turned Dianna's thigh into a sketchbook for the soul.
And Dianna—poor, doomed Dianna—was experiencing full-body crisis in fishnets and three layers of ex-skank guilt.
Elizabeth very nearly choked on her drink.
This is too funny. But Lizzy couldn't leave them to wallow in that moment. She moved to save them.
But mercy, as always, was a crown best worn with discretion.
So she set her glass down, turned to Roxie with the calm of a woman about to throw a lifeline over a minefield, and deployed the most sacred of ancient girl-code phrases:
"Hey, Roxie? Will you come with me to the bathroom?"
Roxie blinked, pulled halfway back from her trance like a diver surfacing too fast. "Huh? Oh. Yeah—of course!"
And then, with zero warning and absolute ease, she simply picked Dianna up—or rather, lifted her like one might rearrange a favored blanket. A quiet moment of impossible tenderness wrapped in raw, unconscious strength. She gently repositioned Dianna into the booth as if she weighed nothing at all.
Dianna didn't move. Couldn't. Though she did release a sound like someone playing a bent steam flute.
Elizabeth, as she passed, patted Dianna once on the shoulder.
"You're welcome," she murmured.
And vanished after Roxie like a smug little Cupid with a wine spritzer and front-row tickets to a train wreck.
Roxie followed Elizabeth into the cramped little bar bathroom, the kind that smelled faintly of citrus cleaner and broken dreams. Elizabeth waited until the door closed behind them. Then, arms folded, one hip cocked, she gave Roxie a small, unreadable smile.
"Okay," she said softly. "Let's do a quick little check-in."
Roxie blinked. "Check-in?"
Elizabeth leaned back against the sink, eyes kind. "Just… a girl-to-girl moment. Nothing scary. You doing alright?"
Roxie looked confused. "Yeah? I think so? I mean… I got a little embarrassed earlier but—" She paused, tilting her head like a golden retriever hearing a new sound. "Is this about the table stuff?"
Elizabeth gave a tiny laugh, then nodded toward the door. "Actually, it's about the lap stuff."
Roxie's face twitched.
Elizabeth held up both hands gently. "No judgment. None. Seriously. It was sweet. And—look, I've seen worse. Much worse. Dianna once tried to flirt with a girl by pretending she didn't know what soup was. So you're already miles ahead."
Roxie opened her mouth. Closed it. Her face was starting to turn a little pink, the realization creeping in like dawn under a curtain.
"I… oh no," she whispered.
Elizabeth stepped closer, tone still warm. "Roxie. It's okay. Honestly. I think she liked it—maybe a little too much, poor thing. Another few moments and she probably would have reached low earth orbit. But I also think you didn't really know what you were doing."
"I wasn't trying to do anything!" Roxie insisted, horror blooming across her face. "I mean—I was, I guess, but not like that! It was just… the fishnets, they were interesting, and I—I thought the texture was—"
She stopped herself. Eyes wide. The pink was now red.
Elizabeth smiled, and touched Roxie's elbow. "Hey. Deep breath."
Roxie did.
"You weren't being gross," Elizabeth said gently. "You were being you. Thoughtful. Curious. Maybe a little too lost in your artist brain to realize where your hand was going."
"I didn't even—" Roxie covered her face with both hands. "I'm so sorry. I wasn't thinking. I'm such an idiot."
"You're not," Elizabeth said, firm but kind. "You're just new to this. And that's not a crime."
Roxie peeked through her fingers, mortified.
Elizabeth chuckled softly. "Look, I know Dianna. And I think I know you. And I think it's kind of lovely how gentle you are with her. How careful. You're doing great. Really."
Roxie dropped her hands a little. Her expression was still crimson, but her shoulders had relaxed.
Elizabeth's voice softened even further. "She really likes you, you know."
Roxie's eyes went wide again, this time not in horror, but in something closer to wonder. Or fear.
"She does," Elizabeth continued. "Maybe more than she understands. She's trying really hard to be good about it. To give you time. To not scare you off. So… let's try not to make it harder for her, yeah?"
Roxie nodded slowly. Then again, with more conviction. "Yeah. Okay. I—I can do that."
Elizabeth smiled. "Good. Then we're all set."
Roxie managed a small, sheepish grin. "Thanks. For… you know. Not making fun of me."
Elizabeth's hand squeezed hers once. "Anytime, Red. That's what the Pack is for."
----
Dianna stared into the middle distance like she'd just been shot in the thigh and was trying not to bleed on the upholstery.
Elizabeth had saved her. Elizabeth had absolutely saved her.
God bless her and damn her in the same breath.
Because now Dianna was all wound up with no release, a piano string stretched too tight and tuned to "celibate rage." Her breath still came shallow, and her thigh tingled with memory. Roxie hadn't just touched her. Roxie had… examined her. Revered her. Like a sacred artifact behind velvet rope.
And then—gone.
Just gone.
Leaving Dianna like a broken wind-up toy, ticking softly in the aftermath.
Ashley, ever predator for tremors in the emotional matrix, blinked.
Her nose twitched. One ear flicked.
She turned her head slowly, tracking Dianna's pupils, her posture, the slight tremble in her left hand.
"Oh my God," Ashley breathed, softly, reverently.
Emily leaned in. "What?"
Ashley didn't break eye contact. "She's short-circuiting. You could cut the sapphic tension with a knife!"
Tiny blinked. "What tension? I was blissfully unaware of any tension."
Ashley patted his massive arm gently, like one might a confused golden retriever. "Sweetie. The gay panic was vibrating. And so is Dianna!" She quipped with a wicked little grin. "Altar girl must've gotten close to home!"
Tiny opened his mouth. Closed it. "Jesus, Ash. I didn't need that visual."
Ashley ignored him. Her grin widened like a cat about to push an antique off a shelf.
"So," she purred, cocking her head at Dianna with the kindness of a scalpel, "you got a set of dry panties, or you just gonna be sticky all night?"
Dianna made a sound like someone had stepped on a duck and given it an existential crisis.
Emily howled.
Tiny choked on his drink. "Ash!"
Dianna didn't move, didn't flinch. Just closed her eyes and hissed between her teeth like steam escaping a radiator.
She would kill Ashley.
Eventually.
Probably with kindness. Or soup. Or a guitar string in the dark.
But later.
Right now, all she could think about was the way Roxie's hand had lingered—and whether it ever would again.
The booth gave a soft creak as Roxie returned, her body language uncertain but her eyes fixed only on one person.
She didn't say a word to the others.
She just slid back into her seat—and, with the same quiet strength as before, reached for Dianna. No fuss. No hesitation. Just a gentle curl of her arm and a little lift.
Dianna was back in her lap before she could process it.
She didn't resist.
Couldn't.
And she didn't want to.
The movement was fluid, familiar, like the second half of a sentence only Roxie could finish.
And then—barely audible over Jorge's sustained vocal crimes—Roxie leaned in, breath warm against the shell of Dianna's ear.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I wasn't trying to be weird."
Just that.
Simple. Soft.
Unadorned.
And it hit Dianna harder than any line, any flirt, any panting fantasy she'd tried to bury under bravado.
Because that was the thing, wasn't it?
For all her bark and swagger—for all the smirks and thigh-hugs and stiletto-edged deflections—this was what she really wanted.
Someone who'd hold her like this.
Someone who'd notice her like this.
Someone who'd come back, after being told they might've messed up, and instead of defensiveness or fear, offered gentleness.
Offered grace and simply accepted that they were in the wrong.
But more than that, cared more about Dianna than they did themselves.
Dianna didn't cry. Not quite.
But her face twisted a little. That tight-lipped, nose-scrunching thing she did when something hurt in the good way. Like stretching a muscle that hadn't been touched in years.
"Don't. Don't apologize." Was all she told her and then she just leaned her head back against Roxie's shoulder, curled her fingers into the soft fabric of her halter top, and let herself breathe for the first time in what felt like 45 fishnet-laced minutes. Though it was probably closer to 2.
Jorge bounded back to the booth like a retriever who'd just dug up something unspeakable and wanted to show it to his friends.
"So?" he grinned, arms wide like he'd just dropped a Grammy performance. "What did you all think?!"
Emily didn't even look up. "What did Seal ever do to you?"
"I have sensitive ears," Ashley whined, massaging her temples like she'd just survived shellshock. "I'm a musician, Jorge. That was violence."
Tiny winced. "Man, I was blissfully unaware of any tension until Ash opened her mouth, and now I've got a war crime in my ears and visuals I cannot unsee."
Jorge plopped into the seat beside Elizabeth, utterly unfazed. "Babe. I dedicated it to you. That was my soul up there."
Elizabeth gave him a long, flat stare. "I know. And that's the only reason I didn't light your sneakers on fire."
"See," Jorge said, beaming. "She gets me."
The pack had descended into familial ribbing...
But Roxie wasn't listening. As the next poor talentless soul climbed onto the stage and began to belt out awful lyrics of some mid 2000's pop piece, Dianna had curled into Roxie's chest and began to drift off.
Roxie couldn't ignore this moment.
Her fingers were burning.
Her fingers itched.
That was the only word for it. Not just a need—but an ache. The moment was slipping away. The light was changing. The spell was breaking. And she had to get it out before it vanished.
Without fanfare, she reached into her little clutch and pulled out a piece of charcoal—half-wrapped in tissue paper, the edges softened with use—and flipped over the back of the bar's drink menu.
The page was sticky, cheap printer paper. Printed on one side. But it would do.
Because Roxie wasn't aiming for perfection.
She was chasing truth.
And truth—tonight—was Dianna Rodgers.
Not the Dianna everyone saw. Not the snarling, cocky, punk-rock gremlin with her fishnets and her eyeliner like warpaint. Not the flirt. Not the showoff. Not the brash, brilliant chaos engine who burned too hot for most people to get close.
But this Dianna.
This strange, impossible Dianna.
Asleep on her shoulder.
Like a child in church pews.
Like a blade set down and forgotten.
There was something sacred in the contrast—streetwalker meets saint, vampire queen meets wayward girl. A black mesh halter that clung like sin, a skirt short enough to weaponize, combat boots still unlaced. But here, now, she slept. Soft. Open. Tucked like a poem into the curve of Roxie's arm.
Roxie sketched quickly. Desperately.
The press of Dianna's cheek against her shoulder. The crook of her arm, barely visible under the dim light. The slight slackness of her jaw. And always, always, the fishnets—those imperfect little diamonds marching across her thighs, like armor made of implication.
The aesthetic said riot. The posture said peace.
She wasn't trying to elevate Dianna. She wasn't romanticizing her into something she wasn't.
She was remembering her.
As she was.
In this moment between noise and need, between the stage and the street.
A girl dressed like rebellion.
Sleeping like hope.
The charcoal didn't need to be clean. Roxie wasn't aiming to dazzle. There were smudges, fingerprints, a slight tear in one corner of the menu.
But the sketch was real.
And when Roxie finally looked down at what she was making, she saw it—not just Dianna, but the contradiction of her. The armor and the softness. The girl who cursed like a pirate and cried during Pixar films. The holy profane. The storm and the sanctuary.
A punk princess caught mid-dream.
And Roxie, holding her like a secret worth protecting.
The roast of Jorge Gonzalez was in full swing. Elizabeth was halfway through a sentence about filing a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Seal's ghost, Tiny had his head on the table in mock despair, and Dianna—
Dianna was out.
Not dramatically, not slumped in drunken collapse—just... softly folded against Roxie's chest like a cat gone still. Her eyes shut, breath slowed, all her sharp edges dulled by warmth and the hush of safety. And Roxie, without even glancing up, held her there. One arm loosely draped, the other still moving with purpose.
Ashley's ears flicked.
That sound.
That faint, rhythmic skritch skritch rub.
She turned.
Roxie was hunched forward slightly, the low light catching the curve of her cheek, the edge of her brow. In one hand—a menu, flipped to the blank back. In the other—charcoal. Blackening her fingertips. Ghosting over paper with frantic, reverent energy.
She was drawing.
And Dianna, curled like something sacred in Roxie's lap, had no idea.
Ashley's lips parted.
Across the table, Emily noticed. "Ash?"
Ashley held up a hand. "Shhh. No. She's doing the thing."
Emily blinked. "The thing?"
Ashley's voice dropped to a whisper. "The thing. Look."
Emily turned—and her breath caught.
Tiny was next. Then Elizabeth. Then Jorge, mid-rant, faltered as he followed the thread of their gaze.
Silence swept the booth like a tide pulling out.
And in that hush, Roxie kept sketching.
Her strokes were fast but careful, like each line came from memory she didn't know she had. Dianna's arm, all tension gone. The fishnet catching the bar light. The curve of a jaw softened by sleep. Her hair askew. Her boots still planted like she could kick Sleeping Beauty awake if needed.
Roxie didn't draw like she was trying to impress.
She drew like she was trying to remember.
To hold something down in paper before the moment floated away.
It wasn't clean. It wasn't tidy.
But it was honest.
And no one at that table said a word.
Because some art isn't meant to be praised.
Only witnessed.
Roxie didn't even realize the table had gone quiet until it stayed that way just a beat too long.
Her charcoal paused mid-stroke.
And then she looked up.
Every pair of eyes was on her.
Oh no.
Her fingers stilled, hovering like a kid caught doodling in the margins of a hymnal.
"Oh gosh," she whispered, spine going rigid. "I—I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make it weird—"
Tiny moved like divine judgment.
Faster than anyone his size had a right to, he snatched the menu from Roxie's hands in a blur of brown skin and white ink tattoos.
"Well hot damn, Big Momma!" he whooped, eyes lit like stadium lights.
Dianna startled awake with a snort, blinking blearily at the table. "Whuh—wha'd I miss?"
"Only you being somebody's muse," Ashley cackled, grabbing the sketch before Tiny could bolt. Dianna didn't respond. Only huffed and laid back against Roxie.
One by one, it passed around the table.
From Ashley to Emily, who clutched it to her chest with a reverent little gasp.
From Emily to Jorge, who made a dramatic cathedral gesture over his heart and whispered, "It's giving divine femininity."
Roxie sank lower in her seat with every handoff, face the color of a stop sign, mumbling something about rough work and bad lighting and really it's not finished, it's not even that good—
"Shut up," Elizabeth said gently, taking the sketch last.
She looked at it for a long moment. Just long enough for Roxie to squirm.
Then—without lifting her eyes—she turned it outward. Toward Dianna.
"Di," she said softly, her voice the kind that never argued and never lied. "You need to see this."