Work Text
"Okay, no," Colleen said, sitting back in her chair in their corner of the darkened bar and reaching for her beer through the clutter of bottles littering the table. "I'm not going to arm-wrestle you.""C'mon." Misty leaned forward, elbow on table and metal fingers curled. "Iron fist against iron fist.""You don't have the Iron Fist, Misty," Colleen laughed."What are you talking about? It's a literal iron fist. The best kind.""Oh my God, how drunk are you right now?""Just a little," Misty said, and the smile fell away from her face, though a hint of it lingered around her eyes -- eyes that were soft and bright, now, watching Colleen's face. "A little." Her lips were parted, her lipstick a bright purple-red, turned to deep plum and blue by the bar's neon sign. And ... well. Colleen had always been just a little bit of a sucker for a sweet-talker with pretty lips.It was after last call; there was no one else here, and Colleen glanced over to see the bartender busy cleaning up glasses and turning over chairs. "Okay," she said, and held up her hand. Misty's metal fingers closed over hers. "You're on."She would regret this, Colleen thought. She would regret this when Misty pulled her arm out of the socket. Or vice versa.The dragon tattoo twining down her forearm began to glow, dimly lighting up her jacket. "Shit, girl," Misty murmured, as metal fingers tightened on Colleen's hand, imprisoning her in a steel cage. "That never gets old."Colleen smiled back and threw her effort into controlling the flow of chi. It was control, not brute strength, that mattered here. She could have punched Misty through the wall. But there was a deep, satisfying tension in trying to channel just enough chi to augment her natural muscle and sinew, but not enough to unleash the Fist. It was the quivering, razor-edge depth of control that she got from some of the exercises Bakuto had taught her. It was ...
It's like riding the edge of orgasm, let's be honest with yourself here.
She'd screwed up her eyes in concentration, but now she opened them, and Misty was watching her across the table with that dark intense stare, lips parted in something that was halfway between a grin and a grimace of concentration. Misty had a similar problem, Colleen realized suddenly. The new arm from Rand Corp's labs was capable of breaking a car's axle or bending a steel girder; it was like carrying around her very own hydraulic press. But it was attached to a shoulder joint made of flesh and bone. The risk of using her arm wasn't breaking the arm; it was breaking the woman it was attached to.The two of them sweated and strained until finally -- noticing out of the corner of her eye the pointedly curious looks they were getting from the bartender -- Colleen said between her teeth, "Tie?"She had to unkink her stiff fingers from Misty's, one at a time. At least with the metal hand, Misty didn't have that problem, but Colleen could see that she was moving her shoulder with a certain amount of painful care."Damn," Misty said. She drained the dregs of her beer and shook her head. "You are strong.""And that is one hell of an arm you've got on you.""You should see what else it can do." Misty set her bottle on the table with a click, and smiled as she dug out her wallet. "Bet you got a few tricks with that thing I ain't seen yet, either."And there was the second (third, fourth, fifth?) blatant come-on in the last couple of hours. Colleen felt herself breaking into a grin. She wasn't drunk, but she was pleasantly buzzed, enough to really just not give a damn if this was a bad idea, if giving herself a reason to tangle up the one truly uncomplicated relationship in her life was something she'd regret later or not. "Got any plans after this?""Dunno." Misty dropped a wad of crumpled bills on the table, and leaned forward, amid the clutter of beer bottles. Her lipstick was mesmerizing. "You?"Colleen met her halfway and finally captured those bright plum lips with her own. Misty didn't taste like plums; she tasted like beer and the salt of the bag of chips they'd shared earlier. Her mouth was warm and hot and wanting, and she kissed like she did everything else, hard and firm and take-charge, with her whole heart in it.When they broke apart, Colleen said through a helpless smile, "I do now." And Misty grinned.