Author's Notes: Chapter 1 has undergone countless minor tweaks—paragraph organization and phrasing alike. If you read the chapter within the first two days of posting, you may notice some slight differences if you reread.

Warnings: If you survived Chapter 1, I imagine you know exactly what you are in for. Un-beta'd.

Pairing(s): IkeMarth.

Disclaimer: I don't own Super Smash Brothers.

Summary: It was easy to ignore the long legs, soft curves, and scraps of lost clothing when he was so in love with the club owner. [Modern AU] -Yaoi, slash: Ike/Marth-

Love Story

Chapter 2: Straddle

By SSBBSwords

Every time he stopped to contemplate the odd picture made by his sitting in a greasy diner at four in the morning with one of the most beautiful people he had ever met in his life, his chest tightened as if his lungs wanted to spontaneously asphyxiate him. Even stranger was the fact that the club owner remained impressively tranquil, sitting across from him with a mug of decaffeinated tea and a plate of French fries. French fries. He couldn't get over it. What a combination.

He hadn't planned on such a precipitous date and subsequently, he had zero material prepped. As evinced by the overwhelming silence, he had doomed this excursion due to his sheer lack of patience and inability to say no to anything Marth asked of him. Ever. Unloading alcohol shipments? Done. Moving tables? Okay. Post-work date? Absolutely.

Damn. They weren't even in an established relationship, and he was already whipped.

Of course, that wasn't what actually bothered him. What bothered him was the horrible job he was doing on this date. He really should have postponed the outing until he assembled a list of conversation topics.

"You're staring at me," Marth pointed out with a hint of a smile and head tilt.

Fuck. "Sorry," he mechanically offered, redirecting his line of sight to the half-finished side of fried potatoes. Really, what a bizarre thing to order alone. He had opted for a full breakfast entree, justified by his need for both the calories and the distraction. Even with his stomach tied in knots, he devoured the meal on autopilot, as opposed to his meal companion who was working at the fries at a slower pace.

Eyes narrowing appraisingly, Marth traced the handle of the ceramic cup absently. "I need you to relax."

He swallowed instinctively, and like a trained dog, he willed himself to release whatever tension he had accumulated since the beginning of time. Taking a deep breath, he let out a measured exhale. "Okay, yeah."

He was in deep trouble. Trouble, because something about the other's body language almost always caused inappropriate blooms of heat and ideas that he had a hard time reining in. So yeah, he had a legitimate reason to be wound up so tight.

Even worse, he was fairly certain that Marth didn't intentionally move that way. Experience had taught him how to read the engineered sway and slink of the female dancers for security purposes, so he had every right to be confused as to why his mind kept interpreting something in Marth's general movement, despite the club owner having never swayed, slunk, crawled, or rolled in his presence.

His limbic system must be out of whack. He was construing something that wasn't there, because Marth's gaze normally had a discomfiting aura of assessment and those fingers ordinarily brushed across surfaces indiscriminately. Right.

A momentary purse of lips, and then the other man asked, "Are you always this nervous?"

For a split second, he thought Marth was asking him about his day-to-day disposition, which made little sense considering he was hired for his constitution of both steely nerves and frame. However, in regards to the current context, he responded, "Yes," because he didn't make a habit of lying. Having found his voice again, he followed up with, "How are you so calm all the time?"

Just hearing those words out loud made him cringe with embarrassment. Someone just kill him now.

He froze while the other's eyes deliberately slid down to his mouth, his throat, his chest, before returning to his face, like pins through the tips of his soul. "I'm not sure what you mean," Marth finally said, taking a sip of, by now, lukewarm tea.

Ignoring the vague disconcertion that ensued, he further clarified, "Nothing seems to faze you."

A corner of the other's lips upturned. "Perhaps I'm simply better at hiding things, Ike."

His heart flopped to one side like the dramatic, easily affected thing that it was. He was probably sweating through his shirt right now. "What do you have to hide?" That seemed like a valid question. Maybe not the best get-a-second-date question, but valid nonetheless.

"My guess," Marth mused in a drawl before finishing in proper enigmatic fashion, "all the things that make you so nervous in the first place."

They drove separately, paid separately, and very likely existed on two separate planes. And yet, the club owner remained comfortably compatible in his presence. There was no hint of irritation, impatience, or suspended disbelief that he had so little to say and what did get said wasn't all that awe-inspiring around that foot in his mouth.

As the horizon brightened to a nascent gray with the arrival of the sun, he stood by their cars, tongue-tied and unsure of what to do next that wouldn't exacerbate the underlying awkwardness that best described this entire evening. I had a nice time? Did he? He honestly did, but the catch-all platitude was too often a euphemism for unpleasant time, so he floundered, speechless.

Breaking through his reverie of self-grief with that patented decorum, Marth seemed unaware and therefore undeterred by the stifling wordlessness between them. "Thank you," the club owner said, "for the invite."

"I," think you probably never want to see me again? Shit, he needed to get a grip on himself. "I," he tried again, "thanks for," your time? Oh god, this was not an interview, "saying yes." Fuck. Was that worse?

"I'm glad you asked," Marth stated effortlessly, the sentiment either extremely genuine or practiced. He hoped for the former, but common sense favored the latter.

"Uhm," he began, but his feet felt like lead, which explained why he then nearly tripped onto the other man in a bid to close the distance and reduce the clumsiness of his next decision. He managed to land a kiss on the other's cheek—no harm, no foul—and he was damn grateful that Marth hadn't moved a muscle or else he would have kissed air. Should he—"Can I ask again?"

He caught something in his lower periphery, just an elevating arm from the shorter man, who must have either decided against the motion or forestalled the reflex (was he about to be smacked? maybe socked in the face?). Doubt swamped his vision and he desperately wanted to erase the past two minutes and try again.

Instead, as a decidedly smoother mimic, Marth took advantage of his immobile condition and their lessened proximity to lean up and press a lingering, precision-laced kiss on his warm face. "Absolutely," Marth answered, faint exhale brushing against the contour of his jaw. "I'll be waiting." There was a glimmer in the other's eyes that could only be a reflection of the illuminating sky.

Compelled to make a better impression sooner rather than later, he blurted out, "Sunday? Dinner." He paused to recall when regular people frequented suitable restaurants. "Seven P.M.?"

Marth's smile left him warm and happy to have said something that seemed to please the other man so much. Mulling over the proposal, the club owner suggested in turn, "How about six?"

There was no way he would forget this, even if bludgeoned in the head in the upcoming days. He nodded. "I'll pick you up."

"Oh?" There was something addicting in the way the other's expression softened when amused. "Security detail and chauffeur service? You'll spoil me."

Unable to help it, he burst out laughing and without thinking, announced, "Fuck, you're cute."

Before his brain kicked in with its constant clamor of insecurities, Marth smirked, voice dropping to a low purr. "You're not too bad yourself."

His stomach bottomed out, and he suddenly needed to adjust himself in his pants. Oh, real fuck. He could barely keep it together, and now Marth had to do that? Life wasn't fair.

He didn't know if his expression disclosed his distress of his forever-inopportune onset of an erection, but either way, the club owner gave a muted laugh and stepped away. "See you later," Marth extended with all the politeness of a seasoned professional, except this professional operated best among silhouettes and curtained booths and rumpled fabric.

Shit. Giving a perfunctory wave as the other backed out of the parking lot, he prayed he wasn't showing through his pants. Of all the times to... he grimaced, climbing into his own vehicle. It wasn't as if he couldn't function through this sort of reaction, but right at the end of a first date? A nightmare of utmost proportions.

He was going to keep it together. He was. Crossed his heart and hoped to die, he was going to keep such an expert level of professionalism that even the crazy perceptive lawyer would presume he had unexpectedly lost all love for their boss.

Yes, this was going to work.

So tonight, as usual, he stopped by to briefly say hello to the club owner, who already was up to elbows in paperwork and gave a cursory nod in return.

Slightly unforeseen in his nebulous plans was the lawyer hunched over Marth's right shoulder, and his inner motivational pep talk skidded to a halt as his first hypothetical test came to pass. Unfortunately, despite his magnificent show of normalcy, it was like the redhead smelt blood in the water, and as he walked away from the office, he heard Roy's declaration behind him: "Be right back. Hey, Ike."

He only pivoted to meet the approaching man when he deemed himself out of earshot of Marth. "What's up?"

"That was pretty convincing," Roy acknowledged with a noncommittal shrug.

Huh? Frowning in confusion, he asked, "What are you talking about?"

The lawyer forced a terse laugh, though not loud enough to carry down the hall. "Are you really not going to—you know what? Never mind." Roy waved the rest of the thought away. For someone shorter than him, the redhead certainly knew how to make him shrink upon himself with that glare. "You're useless." With that, Roy stormed back toward the office with a huff of exasperation.

He would resent that if it didn't just show he really accomplished eradicating the tactless staring. He'd call this a win.

A couple hours later, like clockwork, Marth left the office and joined him by the second-floor railing.

On stage, the performer trailed a generous tipper's hand between her breasts and down her toned stomach before sashaying out of reach with a wink, a few bills richer. He scrutinized the customer for a beat longer to make sure there wouldn't be any brash moves that would entail someone getting tossed out of the establishment.

"How are things?" the other intoned by his shoulder while surveying the main floor.

He risked a glance over and feeling playful, answered, "Nice view."

Any hum of accordance was lost beneath the heavy thrum of music during the performer's set, and the club owner inattentively replied, "So I gather," while studying the dancer's floor sequence.

Unable to infer anything from the other's stoic expression, he lightly nudged Marth, who startled out of preoccupation. "But hey," he flashed what he hoped was the grin the girls called panty-dropping, "view's always better up here."

A blink, and then another, as if the club owner needed some extra time to register the intimation, and then Marth turned to face him, a touch of a knowing smile hinted in the dark shadows of their obscure area. "Balcony seating is expensive," his boss said, all small talk and overt detachment and hidden undertone.

"Company's better too," he quipped, looking away because if they maintained eye contact for any longer, he was liable to grab the other man and do things he threw other people out for.

"I'll take your word for it," Marth murmured, hand coming to rest on his upper arm, a butterfly alighted. With that fleeting brush, the club owner moved away and down the adjacent staircase. As usual.

Only, of course, he was never left this giddy, even when he made a rare, sometimes clever (though most times not) remark to the quotidian query for a status update. Things were looking up, and he didn't mean that in the strip-club sense.

Like a conspicuous homing device, he tracked the club owner's trajectory around the room. One of the bartenders caught his eye from the ground floor and giggled before starting a chat with Marth. As soundless dialogue spilled between them, she gestured in his general direction with the cloth she used to wipe the bar counter.

Even from here, he saw Marth's tongue dart out to wet lips that had no business being damp in surroundings like these.

Fuck. He probably wasn't supposed to see that. Or dwell on it. Or even think about that. What the hell.

Needing to reboot to manufacturer settings after that very effective distraction, he stared hard at the stage's load-bearing scaffolding until he stopped visualizing coaxing Marth's tongue into his own mouth.

His dreams lacked the lucidity of being awake, but in lieu of clarity, they had depth and sensation and freedom from formula.

They were transient clips of moving pictures, of deceptively delicate hands sliding up shirts, down waistbands, behind his neck or shoulders or hipbones. Perhaps he had a mild obsession with Marth's fingers, because even dead asleep, he rendered them artistically in detail, scrabbling to knot into his closer shorn hair, fumbling for a solid hold against sweat-slick skin, staining sheets before interlocking their palms together. It was the phantom brush of lips on his collarbone, the moist trail of tongue alongside his leaping pulse, and graze of teeth against his entrapped earlobe.

He woke up groggy to the noon light streaming around blackout curtains, abdomen tight and uncomfortably hot below the waist. He had been rocking against his mattress if the humid, dissipating heat from friction was any indication. He rolled onto his back and gazed up at the flat white ceiling. He was too tired to deal with this.

Kicking the covers aside in a half-hearted attempt to cool down, he reached for his phone, silenced and charging on the bedside table.

'Where are we going tonight?'

His phone slipped from his grasp and hit him square in the chest. Ow, fuck. With a wince, he fumbled to unlock the screen. This wasn't the first text Marth ever sent since they had to schedule around any intermittent absence from work, but this was the first ever message not related to work and as innocuous as the question was, he didn't anticipate coming face-to-face with reality so early in his day.

He had turned over a dozen different date venues over the past couple of days. Nice restaurants, sure. Quaint cafes, fine. Intimate lounges, okay. But something gnawed at his gut, and if he spent more time thinking about how this was his one and last chance to make a good impression, he felt a little sick to his stomach.

Therefore, he hadn't settled on a final choice, and now he was caught in the dreaded position of admitting he had no plans—not because he didn't care to be proactive, but because nothing seemed good enough. Double fuck. His thumbs hovered over the capacitive keyboard, waiting to be struck by inspiration.

Nothing. Damn it.

Well, if he was going to fuck this up every which way, he might as well be polite about it. He methodically tapped out: Any requests? He examined his neatly typed reply in the text box, certain that despite the brevity, he had made some sort of spelling or grammatical error. He finally sent the text only because his phone was starting to blur at the edges, and he set it aside before he could second-guess himself.

In order to pass time and avoid fixating on his dormant phone, he pledged his concentration toward his gym routines. Running and lifting proved to be decent diversions so long as he kept his hands off his mobile device, which he resisted only in spurts of five minutes. It wasn't until he exited the shower post-workout that he found an unread message from Marth.

'Not in particular, but if you are amenable,' Marth had texted, including a succinct list of three restaurants within a fifteen-minute radius of the other's home.

He gaped at his phone. How was it that Marth managed to both alleviate his prickling anxiety and leave the ball in his court in just one line? How does he do that? If he wasn't already in love with the guy, this wave of relief and gratitude probably clinched it.

'Sounds great,' he replied concisely, hoping the two words conveyed his honest sentiment toward the convenient list. 'See you at six,' he added as an afterthought, because he needed to redress the aggravating disparity between the sparsity of his texts and his inner ramblings.

After Googling the hell out of the restaurants upon arriving home, he stood grimly before his closet with the foregone conclusion of his research: he would have to wear a tie. The assortment of restaurants was one degree above casual, and although they didn't involve tiny candle-lit tables with strolling violinists, it was better to be safe than sorry.

He shrugged on his best white dress shirt and referred to the mirror as he looped the length of black fabric around his popped collar. The last time he wore this tie was to his goddamn job interview, and he hoped Marth wouldn't notice because he didn't own a huge array of formal clothes. He also couldn't remember the last time he wore a sports coat, but he felt akin to a little boy playing dress-up.

As he tucked his shirt into his pants, he had a sinking suspicion that his notion of over-dressed was Marth's under-dressed. He was positive that the other's nightly business casual attire was classier than anything he could construct from his limited wardrobe. Then again, his crush could make pajamas look suavely elegant.

In an effort to polish up his comparatively rough appearance, he fiddled with his typical bedhead worth of spikes, wondering if his sporadically used hair wax would be helpful. Warming the smooth product between his rubbing palms was fine; working it through his hair for even distribution was another thing, and he realized his hands were shaking.

He couldn't describe how much he wanted this to go well. Enough that he wanted to throw up, maybe.

Well, better at home than when he went to pick up Marth.

-tbc-