Calculated Risk(F,C)

At Luna’s suggestion, Aubrey and Felicia left lunch early. Felicia had never really liked the other blonde, though it was more than rivalry over a man. Most of what she knew about Aubrey was from either Luna’s complaints about incidents that had needed to be fixed or Dick talking about her like she was a permanent damsel in distress. There was nothing wrong with needing help, after all Stella could be pretty sensitive too. But Stella was honest about it, and wanted to hide more than anything else. From the stories she’d heard Aubrey shrank herself down not to avoid making waves like Stella, but to guilt other people into liking her.

But somehow Luna had decided to give her a second chance. Stella and Ava had accepted her, just after playing through the Dalien Tomb one-shot with her. Between the two of them putting in a good word and the favor she owed Luna, she needed to go along with the group for now.

Luna hadn’t tried to use the favor, but I still owe her. She’d noticed when she was giving her version of events to her friends that there were times that Luna hadn’t reacted the way she would’ve if she believed her story. She’d laid it on thick at times. His best friend should’ve called bullshit when they got to the part about Dick sulking. Everyone should’ve called bullshit on that. Dick didn’t sulk when he lost, he was too masculine for that. He raised the ante and tried again until he won. If he really got angry he would shout and dominate the room. He could get so loud…

She snapped out of the fantasizing she’d started to meander down as Aubrey opened the conversation. “So your friend Luna said that I should try showing you some of the things I’m good at?”

They were standing outside Murphy’s, where Dick had taken her for dinner. A wooden bench sat outside, next to a set of cornhole boards. “We're at a bar, were you planning a drinking contest?”

The teacher looked nervous. “No? I was just planning to show you some of the games I’ve gotten good at. We could have a drinking contest if you’d prefer…”

“No, stick to your guns. You wanted to show me some games you could beat me at?”

“It sounds bad when you say it like that, but yes.”

“No it doesn’t. There's nothing wrong with being good at things." Felicia took a breath. "Which ones did you have in mind?”

“If we did all of them, then that’d be cornhole, pool, and darts. We can skip one if you want though.”

She was doing it again, shrinking herself. “Why did you want to do this with me?” Felicia kept pushing, trying to see if Aubrey was capable of showing any backbone.

“I was hoping to earn your trust. I know you didn’t like me with Richard back when we were together…”

Because you made him feel guilty all the time. “One ground rule for today: You don’t go easy on me, and you say something when you disagree with me.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s two rules.” Aubrey pointed out.

“Perfect.” Felicia hadn’t even meant to leave that opening, but she was glad that it’d been taken. “So you’ve got those games, that allows for a best of three. What’re the stakes?”

“I was hoping that you could tell the others that you had a good time if I won.” Aubrey offered.

“I hope I will, but is that it? No penalty for one of us losing?”

“What if one of us needs to drink if we lose?” It was the smallest punishment she could think of.

“Deal.” The two of them were next to the cornhole boards, so Felicia pointed towards them and asked: “Should we start with this?”

Aubrey swept through the lawn, collecting both sets of beanbags and offering the gold ones to Felicia. “Have you ever played this before?”

“I’ve seen my dad play this against my uncles before, I think I remember enough.”

“Alright. Let me know if you need any refreshers. Just to give an example, I’ll go first.” Aubrey flicked her wrist and the beanbag went flying, dropping into the fifteen slot without touching either corner.

That was a hell of a shot. Maybe this’ll be harder than I expected. Felicia realized as she tried to psych herself up for her throw. She did say she was good at this. She went for her toss and it landed on the board before slowly sliding up and dropping into the ten slot. Not bad. If she misses one of these I still have a chance.

They both took their second throw. Aubrey made it into the fifteen again, and Felicia did too after trying to copy the taller woman’s technique. I still have a chance. I just need her to miss.

But Aubrey didn’t. She threw the exact same shot three times. She’d practiced thousands of times, but Felicia had no way of knowing that. All she saw was the same shot repeated with robotic precision. She knew she couldn’t win, and so she just lobbed it at the board and let it thump.

“Good job, you won. Time for my punishment.” Felicia swept into the bar inside Murphy’s, with Aubrey following behind.

Aubrey was a bit confused at this point. Felicia was clearly frustrated by the loss, but she still seemed happier than when Aubrey had actually been trying to be nice to her. Does she need everything to be a struggle?

Once they were at the bar, Felicia asked: “So did you have a preference for what I need to drink? The cider is a bit weaker.”

Aubrey almost retched thinking about how vile that cider was. “Your choice.”

Without saying anything else, Felicia summoned a bottle of the cider and chugged, downing it without taking a breath.

“Yikes.” Aubrey couldn’t stop it from slipping out. “Do you have any issues with it if I get something too?”

“Aubrey, do what you want.” She watched as Aubrey summoned a strawberry daiquiri and started drinking. After the first cocktail was finished another was called, this one sipped slower. The two of them sitting in silence for a few minutes **** her to think. She kept thinking of Aubrey as someone acting like Stella to manipulate people, but what if she wasn’t doing it on purpose? If she really was like Stella, then it wasn’t necessarily her fault and I’m just being an ass for no reason. But she’d need to be careful checking, just in case she was right. “Am I making you nervous?”

Her rival was quick to deny it. “No, you’re fine. I’m fine.” But it was obviously a lie.

“You’re sure?” Felicia pushed.

“Well…” Aubrey squirmed. “You’re very direct. It feels like you’re mad at me.”

Felicia tried to speak gently. “Is there anything I should be careful about, anything I should know to veer away from when talking to you?”

“No!” Aubrey raised her voice, then pulled back. “Maybe don’t test my math skills? And I’d prefer if you didn’t tell me anything you didn’t like about me unless it was something I could fix.”

“Ok.” Maybe she can’t control it. “I know I’m not as easy to talk to as… literally anyone. But just approach me directly. I know that I can be a bit over competitive sometimes, but I’ll try to scale it back if you remind me. That alright?”

“Sure.” Aubrey said, slightly calmer now that she had some direction on how to get Felicia to like her.

“One more thing if we’re going to be spending more time together. Do you have any allergies or health conditions that could pop up?” The group’s doctor asked.

“No?”

“Good. Now, which of the other two did you want to do first? Pool?”

Aubrey nodded.

“Ok, you can go first again.”

That ended up being Felicia’s biggest mistake of the second game. It also happened to be her only mistake of the second game. Not because she played well against Aubrey, she didn’t have much experience at a billiards table. No, she didn’t make any other mistakes because she didn’t play at all. She just watched Aubrey play, and then had to chug another bottle of hard cider when they went back to the bar.

“How are you so good at those?” She asked Aubrey. She felt her head starting to swim. It’d only been two bottles, but she always had a tendency to overestimate her ability to hold her booze. She only remembered about four minutes after dinner on night one before waking up on stage. I really shouldn’t have agreed to drinking as the punishment, but it’s too late now.

“You said you want me to be direct?”

“As much as you can.”

“I’m not really comfortable doing something where I don’t know what’s happening. People wanted me to try these games, so I practiced until I could be as good as the situation needed.”

“Not the best?” Felicia asked.

“If you’re better than what’s appropriate, then you can embarrass people and they’ll find someone they like more.”

“No, that’s wrong.” The drunken doctor disagreed. “If you’re the best, then people have to respect you. If you sandbag, then people just think you’re a pansy that needs help.”

“Are you drunk already? You only had two of those,”Aubrey said. The impossibility of Felicia’s statement made her realize how quickly the **** was taking effect.

“I think I’m drunk, but I’m still right about that. You can trust me, I’ve only been wrong about like three things in my life.”

Right. “Do you want to cut this short? It may not be fair for you to try throwing darts while you’re like this.”

“Nope.” Felicia waved a shaky finger in Aubrey’s face. “We’re doing this. I need to accept the consequences.”

So despite the fact that one of them was clearly ****, They went to the far end of the room to attempt their last match. As with the first two games, Aubrey went first. She put all three into the bullseye as usual. It technically wasn’t the highest score possible, in a more competitive match she probably would have gone into the triple-twenty stripe. But that required effort, effort which she didn’t feel was necessary right now.

For a moment she got nervous when Felicia said “Watch this!” and actually made it into that triple-twenty stripe. Was she just pretending to be drunk to hustle me? But that fear was quickly disproven when the second dart went wild.

Maeve’s worst throws had harmlessly bounced off the wood below the board. Felicia’s throw instead veered left at high speed, cracking the wood as it embedded itself into the wall.

“Maybe it’s time to stop.” Aubrey tried to gently say, reaching for Felicia’s hand to confiscate the barbed projectile.

“You can’t make me!” The drunken girl declared, launching the dart with reckless abandon before it could be taken away from her. They both watched as it somehow made it into the bullseye. What in the world just happened? She might’ve actually won if she hadn’t thrown one of them at the wall like a lunatic.

Before Aubrey could stop her, Felicia was at the bar accepting the terms of her defeat. The bottle was confiscated from her, half-empty, and returned to the collection void behind the bar counter.

“What was that?” Felicia questioned, clearly a bit miffed.

“I need you to take a break and sober up. Let’s get you over to a booth to rest for a bit.” Hopefully they’d get a chance to slow down before anything they’d regret happened. And Maeve thought *I* had a drinking problem. Aubrey hadn’t needed to be the sober one in years. She barely remembered what being “the sober one” looked like in other people, since Helena had managed to keep her from going too far for months before Aubrey had gotten annoyed with her nagging and gone to Nectar. Even then, that’d really only gone badly because of the everclear Tiffany brought.

She tried to get the smaller woman to her feet and over to the booth, but whether from a lack of cooperation or the booze affecting her coordination Felicia went straight down. Aubrey had to drag her across the floor. She was good at throwing things. She was a decent runner too. Her upper-body strength wasn’t as good, and she found herself wishing Hazel was there to help. But one pull at a time she **** the other girl into an upright position in one of the booths where she’d been with Maeve the day before.

“I’m getting you some water, hopefully that’ll clear your head. I still can’t believe you got drunk this fast, I would’ve suggested something else if I’d known.”

“I’m fine.” The slurring of her words made it clear that she was in fact, not fine.

“Drink.” Aubrey ordered after getting a glass of water. “You know, you’re making me feel like Helena right now. Needing to **** you out a mess”

After emptying the glass, Felicia found another reason to argue. “You’re nothing like that bitch. You’re kind and talented and if you were a bit more confident, I bet you could kick Dick’s ass if you wanted to!”

This is her on less than three bottles of hard cider? She looked disapprovingly at the smaller woman. “Don’t call her a bitch. She’s like the sister I always wanted.”

“I can’t imagine being her sister. She had the most fucked up, controlling tantrum ever when she found out that Dick and I were going to be together. But I’ll show her. Once I hit a hundred VP, she’ll have to acknowledge my place.”

"Stop talking about her like that in front of me." If anyone else had said what she'd just heard, Aubrey probably would’ve panicked. But this girl was clearly delusional. She almost felt silly being afraid of her and **** for approval an hour before. She was still after her boyfriend though, so she needed to stop it if she could. 'Once I hit a hundred VP, she’ll have to acknowledge me.' Felicia had said. And 'If you’re the best, then people have to respect you.' That’s how she thinks. Maybe if I can get to a hundred points, she’ll have to leave him alone for me.

“We should have a rematch.” Felicia said, oblivious to her new friend’s machinations.

“Can you even walk right now?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

It very much does.

The conversation moved suddenly away from their competition. “Is your hair naturally blonde? Do you want me to fight your dad?”

What the fuck? “Yes on the blonde, no on my dad. Please don’t hurt him.” I can’t believe that needs to be said.

“I won’t, but let me know if you change your mind. You’re lucky about your hair.”

“Thanks, I guess? Ava’s your roommate back in the real world, right?” She was getting out her phone as she asked.

“Yeah. She changes the lightbulbs. How are all of you so tall?”

“That’s a good question.” It really wasn’t. “I’m going to see if she can help.” She sent a text to Ava, asking if she could come down to the Bar. She got a reply pretty quickly.

I swear, this happens every time Dick misses game night. Stella and I are going to hit the gym. I can be there in maybe ninety minutes? Let me know if anything bad happens, I’m not going to be far away.

So Aubrey only had to manage the lush for that long.

“You’re sure you don’t want me to fight your dad?” Said lush asked.

“Yes, I’m sure.” Ava can’t get here fast enough. Maybe I can get another drink while I’m waiting.