(Log) Regina Kirk & Derek Liu || Caught
January 24th, Morning.
Regina
Derek
It was around 11A.M. when Regina found herself near the engineering buildings. She glanced around only to find the students staring back at her, some muttering among themselves. Why was she here again...?
Oh, right. She was here to talk some sense into that one guy whose name started with a D. She didn't really want to think about it. Did she even have the right to say anything in the first place? It wasn't as if she had had a horrible dinner with Ky. The meal had been quite pleasant, actually. But really, who kissed a girl twice and then set her up with your friend? Apparently, Derek--
Regina made a face, pushing the thoughts into the back of her mind. Just as she suspected, he appeared around the corner, chatting nonchalantly with other engineers. She glanced at the ground, sighing. What now?
His ingenious plan a few days ago had, by all appearances, gone well. At least, he hadn't heard any loud complaints from either of the involved parties. Sure, Ky had given him Pointed Looks but when wasn't Ky giving someone Pointed Looks. He'd made it through the encounter alive, at least, and with all his belongings in one bag so that little event had definitely been classified as a Success.
Regina, on the other hand, he hadn't heard any complaints from, at least. He was pretty sure she'd have hunt him down for answers if she had problems, and well, it'd been a few days and he hadn't been hunted down and maybe, just maybe, things between Ky and Regina had gone off so well that she was currently busy on Cloud Nine or wherever girls in love went.
He pretended that the idea didn't bother him. He was getting pretty good at that.
What he wasn't very good was sensing when danger was coming his way. Danger in the form of one Regina Kirk. The chattering around him stopped as he was nudged in the side, casting his friend a brief grin before moving forward.
Just as his friends moved back towards the engineering building. Thanks guys.
"Hey," he started, for lack of anything better to say.
She jerked a little and looked up in surprise when he greeted her first. She raised an eyebrow and gazed off to the side, pouting and wondering what she was supposed to say first.
"Hi," she said finally, her voice coming out in a slightly more irritated tone than she intended. "I think," pause, "I think I need to talk to you."
Derek suspected that if they'd been dating, this is what the 'We Need To Talk' voice would have sounded like. We Need To Talk talks never ended well, at least, from what he'd heard. He didn't know women were even allowed to use that voice when there wasn't even a relationship to Talk about.
... There wasn't a relationship here, right?
"Yeah?" he responded simply once more, trying to keep his voice and his posture casual. It wasn't terribly hard to do if he just kept pretending that Regina was just another girl who was giving him the 'exclusive or bust' talk.
Too bad Regina wasn't just another girl.
She bit her lip. Somehow, her small irritation was growing. Just a little. She had to close her eyes and give a big sigh before looking at him again--without twitching, anyway, though she did tilt her head this way and that a few times.
"Why did you do that?" She managed to ask, after some seconds of silence.
... Well shit.
Play dumb. No wait she'll hate that. She'll hate it if you play smart too. How do you play smart without actually being smart anyway. Wait you're internal monologue-ing too much Derek, back to reality.
"'That' as in a few nights ago?" he ventured along the semi-straight and narrow road, shifting his weight onto one leg as he kept his eyes on her. Glancing away, fidgeting, anything of the like would give away how suddenly uncomfortable he felt.
"Yeah," she replied, her eyes not leaving his. He almost looked like he had nothing to do with it. Perhaps it hadn't been a good idea to visit, maybe she should have let it slide by.
Then again, remembering how considerate he had been to her just a few weeks ago made her curious. She wanted to know the reason behind it--if there even was one.
"I'm talking about exactly that."
"Sorry I never showed up," he started, keeping his voice honest as possible as he read over an internal speech he'd prepared just for this. He didn't think he'd have to actually use it, but the intellectual side of him, the one he was pretty sure never existed when it came to relationships, had thought it a good idea to have something prepared. So he went with it.
"I got caught up with something. Was dinner that bad or something?" he continued on with a light joke, already mentally scrambling for the next part of his prepared list. Damn why'd he forget most of it already.
She shook her head at his apology. She was about to say that it was okay, since she eventually ended up returning his jacket to him anyway, but what he said next made her close her mouth and stare.
"No, it wasn't bad at all," she answered some moments later. She kept feeling like someone had hit her with a hammer on the back of her head every time he spoke. It took time before his words registered, so to speak. "But that's not the point."
She put a hand to her temple before shoving it in her coat pocket again. Why were they still beating around the bush?
"I'm not dumb. I know you set us up. I'm asking you why you did it."
... They weren't dating, right? So why'd he feel like he just got caught cheating on her, or at least something equally guilty.
"I didn't-" he started quickly before catching himself, allowing a brief exhale before allowing himself to look mildly embarrassed. So long as he could keep control of his outward expressions, he could keep control of this conversation. At least, he was pretty sure he could.
"It wasn't anything like that. I wanted to repay you guys for stuff and meant to join you guys eventually, but I got held up." There. That was a solid excuse, right?
"And if that was the case, why are you only explaining yourself now that I'm here to talk to you about it?"
She felt childish, poking at his words, but it was no excuse not explaining what had happened, how he got held up...
Not that she believed that story anyway, so she quickly moved on. "You don't--" She tried again. "You shouldn't--" ...Okay, here it goes again. "It's probably not... a good idea to set someone up with a friend after you've kissed her twice."
She exhaled and left it at that. Wherever this conversation would go, it would go.
Well damn he should have thought this through better. He let things slipped when it came to this kind of emotional thing, he probably should have left them both a casual message asking if they'd enjoyed the free dinner, but no he was-
... He was being asked about kissing her well crap.
The flush that flashed through his face briefly before settling in his ears was definitely not something he wanted to happen. Neither was breaking their gaze, glancing off to the side as he suddenly felt thrown.
Did she know? Crap she knows doesn't she, she knows.
"That-..." he started, trailing off immediately because, really how do you explain that.
"It makes someone feel stupid, okay?" She continued, unconsciously naming it off as 'someone' when that 'someone' was clearly her. It looked like she might get an answer or two out of him, at least, at the rate she had thrown him off.
...She didn't mean to throw him off that much, though. Well, it was more like she didn't know she would take him aback at all.
"After all that," she flailed a hand out in the air, "what is she supposed to think?" Referring to herself as third person was strange, all right. But it was a bit too embarrassing to talk in first person.
It took him a bit of mental yelling, in his mother's loud and heavily accented voice no less, to get himself back in control of his own emotions, already feeling the burn fade away from his ears. He was still left with that entire feeling of uncomfortable though, which caused him to shift his weight once more between his legs, like a young boy eager to run away during a scolding.
"... What did she want to think before?" Answering questions with questions was usually a good way to go to get the spotlight off yourself.
"I--" Oh, she was talking in first person again, but what was the big deal now? She had gotten over talking about the most embarrassing part.
"I thought you... maybe liked me." Never mind. This was the most embarrassing part of all. Her voice when she said so was a barely audible mumble. She didn't expect to spill this much when she had first stepped into the engineering building grounds. "I probably took things out of context." She guessed she did, anyhow. It was just an inkling after the mistletoe kiss, that was all. She scrunched her nose briefly.
Looked like it was his turn to say something along the lines of embarrassing.
"You weren't-" A pause and fumble for the right tense. "Aren't. Wrong."
"Per say."
... Wait, he'd just used the phrase per say, didn't he? Things could only go downhill for him.
......
...Wait, what?
Regina reached out and flicked his forehead, as if by instinct. "And what does that mean?" She asked, a confused expression still on her face. So she was right? But that meant he liked her? Since when? ...Why?
He nearly flinched, thinking she was going to sock him, but instead winced a little, brows crinkling as he looked up almost guiltily at her. Those shows on TV weren't kidding when they made this kind of thing out to be rough and dramatic. He though he deserved his own background music by this point.
"I like you," he shrugged awkwardly, horribly out of his element now, "That's... what it means."
So the silence that poured over them for a while after that was because this time, she was the one thrown off. She wasn't expecting to talk about this type of stuff at all. Maybe advise him in a sharp way not to do this setup kind of thing to another girl, but not anything like this. She blinked multiple times, not knowing what to say, until her mind automatically landed on the next question she had asked herself just a moment before.
"...Since when?"
He gave a weak laugh at that, using it to hide the fluster he felt rising. It was like high school all over again.
Wherever his normal, college-aged self, the one with a smart lip and cool persona had gone, he really wished it would come back.
"Hey..." he half-mumbled, glancing off again, "Don't ask a guy that kind of thing. It's pretty embarrassing to have to say."
She found herself blinking some extra times again. She decided, eventually, to look at the farthest engineering building she could find in the distance and fixed her gaze there. This wasn't exactly the Derek she usually knew. It felt strange to see him fumbling like this, but that wasn't a bad thing, she thought.
"You still haven't told me why you set us up."
This wasn't the Derek he was used to being either. Wasn't he supposed to have grown out of this whole awkward thing?
He shrugged again, this one a lot more resigned than the first.
"I don't... know. I thought you two would get along."
We would 'get along'? thought Regina.
"So you did that even though you..." It was really weird to voice this out, wasn't it? "...liked me?"
It was even weirder hearing it.
"Aah... yeah," he near mumbled, looking awkward once more. In the back of his mind, he was glad that there was no one around to watch, and that there wouldn't be anyone coming to watch either. His friends knew not to linger around when he talked with a girl, any girl. But by now, most of the engineering department would know he was talking with a girl period. Equally trade sort of thing.
"Do you remember when I said I don't really get you sometimes?" She was still staring at the engineering building far ahead. She had seen Derek around the bar with plenty of girls hanging off his arm. She knew how he partied, and his so-called 'reputation.'
But she also knew that the awkward, almost shy Derek in front of her right now was also him, too. She didn't know what to make of it. What was going to happen now?
"Yeah... you're not the only one," he added as a half-thought, sweeping a hand through his hair to scratch idly at the back of his neck, one of those nervous, natural habits of his that he knew girls found attractive about him.
Except right now he was more focused on the nervousness in him than showing off.
If they kept on like this, Derek was fairly sure that all future conversations they had would still have that awkward air to it, the one thing he'd been trying to avoid the most. The only way he could 'fix' things, as well as he could fix them, was to. Well.
"You don't have to make anything of it, y'know," he started in, eyes finally back on her, "It doesn't really... matter."
Smooth one, Derek. Smooth.
She gave another sigh. She was sighing an awful lot, wasn't she? ...And she was asking herself a lot of questions in her mind today, too.
"It can't really not matter," she replied. "Not after talking about it." She wasn't even sure what she was suggesting. It wasn't like she'd treat him any differently because of this talk, but at the same time, she didn't think they could dismiss all of it as 'nothing.'
He gave her an odd look at that, his head cocked just slightly to the side.
"Then what?" He honestly had no idea where this was supposed to go, if not back to their old 'just friends' path. Did she- did she actually want to remember it or something?
"I... don't know." It was a lame answer. But she looked confused (and probably stupid) all around.
She briefly put her face in her hands, saying something along the lines of "nnngh." Something about just being friends bothered her, but she didn't know why. Had she expected him to ask her out? Not really. Did she want him to?
...That wasn't something she could answer right away.
... Well this was really getting them nowhere.
"We really don't have to do anything about it," he tried again after a long pause, hoping that it would work this time so they could get past this awkward mess they'd become.
"We can just... go on with things. With you knowing and all."
That could work, right? ...For now, at least? She wasn't offering them any solutions, she had to admit.
"I guess."
Another light scratch at his neck before abruptly dropping his arm, watching her from the corner of his eye. 'I guess' was probably the best he could hope for in this whole situation, he still wasn't sure what to make of the situation period, so he'd take it.
"Ah, yeah. I'll catch you around then... right?"
She nodded, attempting a small smile and succeeding... somewhat.
"I'll head back and... yeah, I'll see you later." She gave him an awkward wave with her hand. She needed a nap, maybe, to sort this surprising incident out in her mind. Yes, going back to sleep until some time in the afternoon sounded like a solution.
He managed a wave of his own in return, watching her walk away before turning around and heading back to the engineering building.
He'd. Gotten out of that alive, right? She knew, that was a strike against him, but she hadn't beaten him and, technically, she hadn't rejected him. But the sheer fact that she knew was embarrassment enough on its own. They'd at least come to some sort of an agreement that went something along the lines of 'everything's back to normal'.
That couldn't be too hard to keep up.
Right?
Regina
Derek
It was around 11A.M. when Regina found herself near the engineering buildings. She glanced around only to find the students staring back at her, some muttering among themselves. Why was she here again...?
Oh, right. She was here to talk some sense into that one guy whose name started with a D. She didn't really want to think about it. Did she even have the right to say anything in the first place? It wasn't as if she had had a horrible dinner with Ky. The meal had been quite pleasant, actually. But really, who kissed a girl twice and then set her up with your friend? Apparently, Derek--
Regina made a face, pushing the thoughts into the back of her mind. Just as she suspected, he appeared around the corner, chatting nonchalantly with other engineers. She glanced at the ground, sighing. What now?
His ingenious plan a few days ago had, by all appearances, gone well. At least, he hadn't heard any loud complaints from either of the involved parties. Sure, Ky had given him Pointed Looks but when wasn't Ky giving someone Pointed Looks. He'd made it through the encounter alive, at least, and with all his belongings in one bag so that little event had definitely been classified as a Success.
Regina, on the other hand, he hadn't heard any complaints from, at least. He was pretty sure she'd have hunt him down for answers if she had problems, and well, it'd been a few days and he hadn't been hunted down and maybe, just maybe, things between Ky and Regina had gone off so well that she was currently busy on Cloud Nine or wherever girls in love went.
He pretended that the idea didn't bother him. He was getting pretty good at that.
What he wasn't very good was sensing when danger was coming his way. Danger in the form of one Regina Kirk. The chattering around him stopped as he was nudged in the side, casting his friend a brief grin before moving forward.
Just as his friends moved back towards the engineering building. Thanks guys.
"Hey," he started, for lack of anything better to say.
She jerked a little and looked up in surprise when he greeted her first. She raised an eyebrow and gazed off to the side, pouting and wondering what she was supposed to say first.
"Hi," she said finally, her voice coming out in a slightly more irritated tone than she intended. "I think," pause, "I think I need to talk to you."
Derek suspected that if they'd been dating, this is what the 'We Need To Talk' voice would have sounded like. We Need To Talk talks never ended well, at least, from what he'd heard. He didn't know women were even allowed to use that voice when there wasn't even a relationship to Talk about.
... There wasn't a relationship here, right?
"Yeah?" he responded simply once more, trying to keep his voice and his posture casual. It wasn't terribly hard to do if he just kept pretending that Regina was just another girl who was giving him the 'exclusive or bust' talk.
Too bad Regina wasn't just another girl.
She bit her lip. Somehow, her small irritation was growing. Just a little. She had to close her eyes and give a big sigh before looking at him again--without twitching, anyway, though she did tilt her head this way and that a few times.
"Why did you do that?" She managed to ask, after some seconds of silence.
... Well shit.
Play dumb. No wait she'll hate that. She'll hate it if you play smart too. How do you play smart without actually being smart anyway. Wait you're internal monologue-ing too much Derek, back to reality.
"'That' as in a few nights ago?" he ventured along the semi-straight and narrow road, shifting his weight onto one leg as he kept his eyes on her. Glancing away, fidgeting, anything of the like would give away how suddenly uncomfortable he felt.
"Yeah," she replied, her eyes not leaving his. He almost looked like he had nothing to do with it. Perhaps it hadn't been a good idea to visit, maybe she should have let it slide by.
Then again, remembering how considerate he had been to her just a few weeks ago made her curious. She wanted to know the reason behind it--if there even was one.
"I'm talking about exactly that."
"Sorry I never showed up," he started, keeping his voice honest as possible as he read over an internal speech he'd prepared just for this. He didn't think he'd have to actually use it, but the intellectual side of him, the one he was pretty sure never existed when it came to relationships, had thought it a good idea to have something prepared. So he went with it.
"I got caught up with something. Was dinner that bad or something?" he continued on with a light joke, already mentally scrambling for the next part of his prepared list. Damn why'd he forget most of it already.
She shook her head at his apology. She was about to say that it was okay, since she eventually ended up returning his jacket to him anyway, but what he said next made her close her mouth and stare.
"No, it wasn't bad at all," she answered some moments later. She kept feeling like someone had hit her with a hammer on the back of her head every time he spoke. It took time before his words registered, so to speak. "But that's not the point."
She put a hand to her temple before shoving it in her coat pocket again. Why were they still beating around the bush?
"I'm not dumb. I know you set us up. I'm asking you why you did it."
... They weren't dating, right? So why'd he feel like he just got caught cheating on her, or at least something equally guilty.
"I didn't-" he started quickly before catching himself, allowing a brief exhale before allowing himself to look mildly embarrassed. So long as he could keep control of his outward expressions, he could keep control of this conversation. At least, he was pretty sure he could.
"It wasn't anything like that. I wanted to repay you guys for stuff and meant to join you guys eventually, but I got held up." There. That was a solid excuse, right?
"And if that was the case, why are you only explaining yourself now that I'm here to talk to you about it?"
She felt childish, poking at his words, but it was no excuse not explaining what had happened, how he got held up...
Not that she believed that story anyway, so she quickly moved on. "You don't--" She tried again. "You shouldn't--" ...Okay, here it goes again. "It's probably not... a good idea to set someone up with a friend after you've kissed her twice."
She exhaled and left it at that. Wherever this conversation would go, it would go.
Well damn he should have thought this through better. He let things slipped when it came to this kind of emotional thing, he probably should have left them both a casual message asking if they'd enjoyed the free dinner, but no he was-
... He was being asked about kissing her well crap.
The flush that flashed through his face briefly before settling in his ears was definitely not something he wanted to happen. Neither was breaking their gaze, glancing off to the side as he suddenly felt thrown.
Did she know? Crap she knows doesn't she, she knows.
"That-..." he started, trailing off immediately because, really how do you explain that.
"It makes someone feel stupid, okay?" She continued, unconsciously naming it off as 'someone' when that 'someone' was clearly her. It looked like she might get an answer or two out of him, at least, at the rate she had thrown him off.
...She didn't mean to throw him off that much, though. Well, it was more like she didn't know she would take him aback at all.
"After all that," she flailed a hand out in the air, "what is she supposed to think?" Referring to herself as third person was strange, all right. But it was a bit too embarrassing to talk in first person.
It took him a bit of mental yelling, in his mother's loud and heavily accented voice no less, to get himself back in control of his own emotions, already feeling the burn fade away from his ears. He was still left with that entire feeling of uncomfortable though, which caused him to shift his weight once more between his legs, like a young boy eager to run away during a scolding.
"... What did she want to think before?" Answering questions with questions was usually a good way to go to get the spotlight off yourself.
"I--" Oh, she was talking in first person again, but what was the big deal now? She had gotten over talking about the most embarrassing part.
"I thought you... maybe liked me." Never mind. This was the most embarrassing part of all. Her voice when she said so was a barely audible mumble. She didn't expect to spill this much when she had first stepped into the engineering building grounds. "I probably took things out of context." She guessed she did, anyhow. It was just an inkling after the mistletoe kiss, that was all. She scrunched her nose briefly.
Looked like it was his turn to say something along the lines of embarrassing.
"You weren't-" A pause and fumble for the right tense. "Aren't. Wrong."
"Per say."
... Wait, he'd just used the phrase per say, didn't he? Things could only go downhill for him.
......
...Wait, what?
Regina reached out and flicked his forehead, as if by instinct. "And what does that mean?" She asked, a confused expression still on her face. So she was right? But that meant he liked her? Since when? ...Why?
He nearly flinched, thinking she was going to sock him, but instead winced a little, brows crinkling as he looked up almost guiltily at her. Those shows on TV weren't kidding when they made this kind of thing out to be rough and dramatic. He though he deserved his own background music by this point.
"I like you," he shrugged awkwardly, horribly out of his element now, "That's... what it means."
So the silence that poured over them for a while after that was because this time, she was the one thrown off. She wasn't expecting to talk about this type of stuff at all. Maybe advise him in a sharp way not to do this setup kind of thing to another girl, but not anything like this. She blinked multiple times, not knowing what to say, until her mind automatically landed on the next question she had asked herself just a moment before.
"...Since when?"
He gave a weak laugh at that, using it to hide the fluster he felt rising. It was like high school all over again.
Wherever his normal, college-aged self, the one with a smart lip and cool persona had gone, he really wished it would come back.
"Hey..." he half-mumbled, glancing off again, "Don't ask a guy that kind of thing. It's pretty embarrassing to have to say."
She found herself blinking some extra times again. She decided, eventually, to look at the farthest engineering building she could find in the distance and fixed her gaze there. This wasn't exactly the Derek she usually knew. It felt strange to see him fumbling like this, but that wasn't a bad thing, she thought.
"You still haven't told me why you set us up."
This wasn't the Derek he was used to being either. Wasn't he supposed to have grown out of this whole awkward thing?
He shrugged again, this one a lot more resigned than the first.
"I don't... know. I thought you two would get along."
We would 'get along'? thought Regina.
"So you did that even though you..." It was really weird to voice this out, wasn't it? "...liked me?"
It was even weirder hearing it.
"Aah... yeah," he near mumbled, looking awkward once more. In the back of his mind, he was glad that there was no one around to watch, and that there wouldn't be anyone coming to watch either. His friends knew not to linger around when he talked with a girl, any girl. But by now, most of the engineering department would know he was talking with a girl period. Equally trade sort of thing.
"Do you remember when I said I don't really get you sometimes?" She was still staring at the engineering building far ahead. She had seen Derek around the bar with plenty of girls hanging off his arm. She knew how he partied, and his so-called 'reputation.'
But she also knew that the awkward, almost shy Derek in front of her right now was also him, too. She didn't know what to make of it. What was going to happen now?
"Yeah... you're not the only one," he added as a half-thought, sweeping a hand through his hair to scratch idly at the back of his neck, one of those nervous, natural habits of his that he knew girls found attractive about him.
Except right now he was more focused on the nervousness in him than showing off.
If they kept on like this, Derek was fairly sure that all future conversations they had would still have that awkward air to it, the one thing he'd been trying to avoid the most. The only way he could 'fix' things, as well as he could fix them, was to. Well.
"You don't have to make anything of it, y'know," he started in, eyes finally back on her, "It doesn't really... matter."
Smooth one, Derek. Smooth.
She gave another sigh. She was sighing an awful lot, wasn't she? ...And she was asking herself a lot of questions in her mind today, too.
"It can't really not matter," she replied. "Not after talking about it." She wasn't even sure what she was suggesting. It wasn't like she'd treat him any differently because of this talk, but at the same time, she didn't think they could dismiss all of it as 'nothing.'
He gave her an odd look at that, his head cocked just slightly to the side.
"Then what?" He honestly had no idea where this was supposed to go, if not back to their old 'just friends' path. Did she- did she actually want to remember it or something?
"I... don't know." It was a lame answer. But she looked confused (and probably stupid) all around.
She briefly put her face in her hands, saying something along the lines of "nnngh." Something about just being friends bothered her, but she didn't know why. Had she expected him to ask her out? Not really. Did she want him to?
...That wasn't something she could answer right away.
... Well this was really getting them nowhere.
"We really don't have to do anything about it," he tried again after a long pause, hoping that it would work this time so they could get past this awkward mess they'd become.
"We can just... go on with things. With you knowing and all."
That could work, right? ...For now, at least? She wasn't offering them any solutions, she had to admit.
"I guess."
Another light scratch at his neck before abruptly dropping his arm, watching her from the corner of his eye. 'I guess' was probably the best he could hope for in this whole situation, he still wasn't sure what to make of the situation period, so he'd take it.
"Ah, yeah. I'll catch you around then... right?"
She nodded, attempting a small smile and succeeding... somewhat.
"I'll head back and... yeah, I'll see you later." She gave him an awkward wave with her hand. She needed a nap, maybe, to sort this surprising incident out in her mind. Yes, going back to sleep until some time in the afternoon sounded like a solution.
He managed a wave of his own in return, watching her walk away before turning around and heading back to the engineering building.
He'd. Gotten out of that alive, right? She knew, that was a strike against him, but she hadn't beaten him and, technically, she hadn't rejected him. But the sheer fact that she knew was embarrassment enough on its own. They'd at least come to some sort of an agreement that went something along the lines of 'everything's back to normal'.
That couldn't be too hard to keep up.
Right?