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Light was sitting at the bar, staring into his drink. He had discovered, upon arriving home from work, that Kiyomi had egged his townhouse—which he supposed he deserved, breaking up with her on the phone like that, but she was never available to meet in person, so what else was he supposed to do?
He didn't even want to think about dealing with that right now, which was why he was thinking about the individual ingredients of his Long Island Iced Tea instead.
Or, at least, he was until he heard someone meticulously clearing their throat.
He looked up, and the throat belonged to a slender white neck, which in turn belonged to a thin, bent-backed man with wild dark hair and huge gray eyes, which were focused on Light's face.
"Excuse my interruption," the man remarked in a voice that was low and soft, tripping its mumbling way from one word to the next. "But may I purchase you another serving of whatever is in your glass?"
Light stared at him. "You want to buy me a drink?" he attempted uncertainly.
The other man's eyes lit up even more somehow—they'd be glowing any second, and Light would have to douse him with the alcohol to put them out—and he nodded emphatically, offering a strange and strangely endearing smile.
Light paused. "Um," he said. He looked the guy up and down again, properly this time, and discovered streamlined black jeans, dirty, untied Converse, and a wrongly-buttoned Oxford shirt. He considered the bags underneath the headlamp eyes and tried to sort out eyebrows from the overwhelming hair, the latter to little success.
"Um," he repeated, "sure. Yeah, sure you can."
The man scuffed one Converse-clad foot against the opposite ankle idly, looking pleased. "Really?" he asked. "If you were concerned, however, my goal is not to get you so inebriated that you're more open to suggestion of questionable activities and carnal interactions—not that I would object to them—but in the hopes of establishing an acquaintance."
Light couldn't help grinning. "You're new to this, aren't you?"
The man nodded again, his hair swaying about his jaw. "I have an extremely secluded lifestyle," he explained, "and tonight some of my friends insisted that I join them in socializing instead. When I commented on how extraordinarily attractive you are, they sent me here with instructions to offer you a drink."
Light struggled not to feel the warmth rising to his cheeks at the compliment. "What friends are these?" he asked.
Smiling, the man turned, looking over his shoulder. Light followed the trajectory of his gaze, which led him to a small table at which three young men were sitting with drinks of their own. The blond and the redhead were giving Light's flatterer massive grins and two enthusiastic thumbs up each, and the white-haired boy sandwiched between them was cradling his head in both hands, shaking it hopelessly.
Light ran a hand through his hair, then flattened it until it fell properly again. "Why don't you sit down?" he suggested.
The man paused. "Should I?" he asked, looking doubtfully at the stool. "Those look neither comfortable nor particularly safes."
Light grinned. "You should," he said. "It's going to take me a little while to finish the drink you're going to buy me in a minute. And then it's going to take you a little while to drink the one I buy you next."
The man climbed onto the stool and drew his knees up to his chest, attempting to fit his heels onto the seat with him. He looked at the floor, then at his shoes, which were sliding towards the edge.
"This is perilous," he decided.
Light set an elbow on the bar, propping his jaw with his fist. "Dating usually is," he noted. "That's what makes it fun."
The man wrinkled his nose—which was bizarrely adorable—and wrapped his arms around his knees. Despite precautions to lean in towards the bar, he started slipping off of the stool again, and he saved himself from falling only by hopping down before it could deposit him on the floor.
He glared at it for a long moment before giving Light a quizzical look.
"How are you managing that?" he inquired of Light's stance on his own barstool, one leg crossed over the other at the knee.
"Practice," Light answered, shifting just slightly in the hopes that the self-proclaimed ingenue was savvy enough to sneak a glance at his moneymaker. "But what do you say we skip the sitting and see if you have better luck on the dance floor?"
He earned himself another brilliant smile—and a slim white hand that caught his and started dragging him out to fulfill his promise.
Perilous indeed, but he'd already forgotten the eggshells on his lawn.