Chapter Text
“Hey, are you in a band?” he asked.
Spider knew she wasn’t, because he’d already seen her out in the crowd, looking harassed and stressed. No Vacancy had already come off stage, feeling good, feeling strong – and then he’d seen her from across the wings.
“Oh no. No,” she responded with a smile, pride lighting up her face as she adjusted her wire-rimmed spectacles. “I am the principal of this school!”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
“Wow, that's cool…” was his reply.
He wanted so badly to think of something smarter than that. But his honest feeling was that it was cool. He didn’t get to meet people like her all that much. Mostly groupies, bartenders… Nobody who had her look of sophistication. She looked like she felt like soft wool and lace, but not the fishnet type you saw in Guns ‘n’ Roses videos - the type of lace that’s been made by hand and bought in a shop that smells like fancy flowers.
“Yes, yes, it is,” she agreed. “It’s very, very cool.”
He was pretty sure he was leaning towards her a little bit. He wanted her to do it too – he deliberately had his arms cantilevered out to either side, hands on hips. Basic body language to invite her in. And if that failed, he could always try to draw her attention to the tattoo just above his navel that read SEX in Gothic writing - something she might like because the letters looked fancy. He’d picked them because they looked badass, but he bet she could tell him which German monk invented the font style in which year, and the name of the super-important historical manuscript where it first appeared.
“Yeah…” he said, his brain almost blacking out from trying to think of other words. God, she was so sexy… “Yeah, it is cool.”
He could maybe think of five other words to use that meant the same thing as “cool”. Badass... Rockin’... Far out (though that was two and not one)... Awesome... Tubular, maybe?
No, “tubular” was too 1980s. But then, she looked a little older than him. She had to be an eighties chick, and she might dig a word like that. She might see him as a fellow respecter of the vintage age.
“Yes. It is very cool,” she repeated.
He wondered why she wasn’t using her huge brain to think of another word except for "cool", because she must know about a million other ways to say it. She probably even knew what that word was - the one that actually meant what you meant when you said you were trying to think of another word for something.
“I like that,” he said, even though his voice kind of sounded like he was fast asleep and he didn’t really know why…?
But, fuck yeah, he’d thought of something else to say! He fist-bumped himself on the inside, even though on the outside he was staring so hard into her eyes that he kind of forgot to breathe.
And then she said, “Do you?” in response to his statement about liking her being a school principal, and he pretty much lost his mind right about there.
Was this… was this Game On?
“God, you're hot. You're so hot…”
He only realized he’d said that part out loud when a flush crossed her face, pinking up the tip of her nose. “What?”
“What?” was all he could think to say in return.
She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her still-pink nose, her cheeks even pinker still. “I'm sorry, what? Are you warm?”
He had nothing. No words. And she'd pressed her hand to her chest, to her black rollneck sweater that made her look like she was some kind of Elizabeth Taylor fashion starlet from those movies on TCM. So, so hot…
Are you warm? she'd asked him.
And Jesus fucking Christ, he wanted to answer her so bad. But then the call went up to say that the judges’ verdict was in. The Battle of the Bands was over and the winners were about to be announced.
“Spider!” Theo called from across the backstage area. “C’mon, man, we got this!”
He glanced over at his bandmate, tearing his eyes away from the principal lady even though he didn’t want to. He had wanted to win this contest so bad – they all did – but right now he just wanted to carry on this conversation with—
By the power of Grayskull, he didn’t even know her name.
“Well, it was lovely to meet you, um…”
Her voice trailed off as her pale hand moved from her chest and out towards him to shake his hand. That’s what a big brain like hers did – it remembered the manners and the rules of good behaviour and all the words from the dictionary even when the body was as flustered as fuck.
But then, she had repeated the word “cool” several times, just like he had…
“Spider, dude, get over here!”
He could hear the guys calling him to the stage for the announcement, but he ignored them. He just kept staring down at her hand. She wasn’t wearing any rings, her wrist was bare of any jewellery and her nails weren’t painted. Just neatly trimmed and shaped. Again, these were all things that made her unlike any of the women who usually floated around in his orbit.
So. Fucking. Hot.
If this wasn’t real life and if it was one of those Guns ‘n’ Roses videos he'd already thought about, then he’d wrap his hand around hers and press her palm to the bare skin of his naked chest. He’d lean close, the fingers of his other hand slipping smoothly through her shiny hair, and she’d sigh against him while he sang something about lightning firing through his body just by the grace of her eyes and how he'd choose to die that way if only it meant he could feel the touch of her skin against his.
But this was real life - and he wasn’t Axl Rose, that was for goddamn sure. For starters, his hair wasn’t anywhere near long enough. Yet.
“Spider,” he blurted out.
Her eyebrows rose from behind her wire-rimmed glasses. “Hmm?”
“My name. It’s Spider.”
“Oh, well…” Her smile was adorable. It gave her little dimples around the side of her mouth. “I’m very pleased to have met you, Spider. I can tell you’re extremely passionate about—”
“Smart women.”
“What?”
“What?”
He took her hand in his, shaking it up and down very slowly and carefully, like he was some kind of cyborg. He wasn’t – he just wanted to make this last a little longer than it needed to.
“Oh, I was going to say music,” she said. “You’re obviously passionate about music.”
“Yeah. I am.” He nodded, holding her gaze like his life depended on it. “Among other things.”
Her fingers seemed to shake a little in his grasp. They were slim, long, a little cool to the touch. Maybe she was one of those people who ran cold: like a diamond, like ice crystals, like fresh mountain springwater. And that was fine by him, because he ran hot: like rubies, like flames leaping in a campfire, and heat rising off the asphalt. What could they make together, fire vs. ice?
“Spider, Jesus! Come on, man!” Theo appeared by his side – not that he'd noticed. He only saw his bandmate because Principal Lady was a little more switched-on to the world around her and turned to smile at him.
“I’m coming,” Spider said, though he didn’t say it to Theo’s face – he said it to hers.
Her blush rose again as she looked back at him, and he wondered if him being the fire in this dynamic was warming her up from the inside. God, he wanted to find out…
He could only guess that Theo rolled his eyes before leaving, but he wasn’t really looking.
“I didn’t get your name,” Spider said, his thumb running over the back of her hand.
“It’s Rosalie,” she said. “Rosalie Mullins. Principal Rosalie Mullins.”
“Rosalie…” he repeated, rolling the sound of her around on his tongue. He knew he’d be writing a song about her before the night was out.
“Ms Mullins, we gotta go!” a voice boomed in.
It was the dude in the jacket and shorts who’d led the school band – Dewey. Without him, Spider realized, this meeting never would’ve happened. He never would have met the magnetic Ms Mullins, the ravishingly refined Rosalie.
Dewey pressed his face between theirs, causing them both to move back a little. Spider let go of Rosalie’s hand, though his fingers travelled all the way along to the very tips of hers before they broke contact.
“Um, hello? Potential fireworks much?” Dewey said, his eyes wild with excitement as they darted between the principal and the guitarist.
Rosalie pushed her glasses up her nose again. “Mr Schneebly, I—” Then she shook her head as if trying to get rid of something. “Mr Finn, I mean. Are the children ready to--”
“No time to chat, Rosie Roo. Verdict’s in! And these kids are about to—” he whacked the back of his right hand into the palm of his left, “smack down! No offence to you, man, you rocked also. Just not quite as hard as my little dudes over there.”
Spider nodded when Dewey rested his hand on his shoulder. “None taken. All’s fair on the battleground of the stage, am I right?”
“I think you mean all’s fair in love and war, right, Ms Mullins?” Dewey said, his eyes darting between them again. “Ya hear that? The word ‘love’? I don’t know who said it. Sounds like Joan Baez to me, but I’m sure the principal here knows, and maybe she can tell you one day, Spider, my dude! Maybe over some hot coffee? A li’l doughnut? Couple of candles?”
“Well, I…” Rosalie flustered, as Dewey’s other hand landed on her shoulder and his eyebrows bounced up and down like springs.
“Competitors, final call for the announcement!” a stagehand called, looking very officious with clipboard in hand.
“Come onnnnn!” Dewey wailed, before turning to herd the kids to the very edge of the wings.
“I guess I should, like... go,” Spider said, gesturing across the backstage area even as his eyes stayed on hers.
“Oh yes, me too. Me too.”
“So maybe we’ll, uh…”
She was nodding, but he didn’t really know what for.
“Yes, yes… Maybe we will.”
He still didn’t really know what she was saying. But he liked the sound of it.
“Spider!" Theo yelled from across the backstage area. "Would you please get the fu--”
“Hey!” Ms Mullins fired out, immediately cutting off Theo's call. Her head had whipped towards him; he and the rest of No Vacancy were standing close to where the kids were congregated in an excited group.
“Language, if you don’t mind, around my students!" she ordered. "Have some respect!”
A shiver ran all the way over Spider, from the ends of his hair to the tips of his booted toes.
He wanted her to yell at him like that one day.
Finally, agonizingly, he took one step away from her to join the rest of No Vacancy. He kind of didn’t care if they won now. The kids probably deserved it, considering how young they were – but more to the point, he just wanted to talk to Rosalie some more.
“Can I find you after the show… Ms Mullins?”
She returned her gaze to him. “Oh please, you can call me Rosalie if you want to.”
“I think I just want to call you Ms Mullins right now. Is that OK… Ms Mullins?” he asked, his voice dropping an octave.
Her blush rose again. “S-sure. If you’d like to then that’s fine by me… Spider.”
He grinned as he began to back away, his hands stuck in his back pockets. “Tubular.”
Thank you for reading!