Author Daecrist
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Villains Don't Date Heroes! 88: Tipsy
🕑 Added 2025-06-13 02:47:24 +0000 UTCI glared up at the good garcon, and suddenly I regretted that I’d never gotten around to perfecting contact lenses that would allow me to shoot high-powered lasers from my eyes.
“Good evening madames,” he said.
He launched into a litany of the specials. Fialux made weird faces at me while he was talking, and it was only his snout pointed firmly in the air that kept him from realizing what she was doing.
Probably a good thing. This was the kind of classy joint where they looked down their nose on that sort of thing. And everything else.
When I ruled the world I was going to make them tone it down just a little bit, but I didn’t rule the world yet and they had no idea I was the infamous Night Terror.
All Jeeves knew was I could always get a reservation. Which meant I was somebody in Starlight City and not that I was hacking their reservation computer on the regular. The fact that I tipped pretty good was enough to keep anyone from asking too many questions. The fact that this place catered to the rich hoi polloi of Starlight City also meant they were accustomed to tastefully ignoring eccentricity in their clientele.
The waiter finished his spiel and I breathed a sigh of relief which earned me a sharp look. Whatever. I’d leave him a generous tip. I was always generous with the tips considering I was spending other people’s money.
“We’ll have the steak and whatever your most expensive wine is,” I said, tossing my menu down.
My eyes kept drifting down to the dance floor. To all those people having a grand old time. I was in a mood to have that kind of fun, and the waiter was cramping my style.
“Is that okay with madame?” he asked, turning to Selena.
“Steak sounds good,” she said.
“And are you sure about your wine selection? They can get very expensive here,” he said.
I turned and eyed this asshole who was keeping me from my hot dancing date. Did he really just dare to insinuate I couldn’t afford the swill they pushed on rich people with more money than sense? Drunk was drunk no matter how you got there as far as I was concerned, but if he thought he was going to get away with that attitude…
I smiled. Turned up the sweetness. If this guy knew who I really was he would’ve known now would be a good time to get the hell away from me, but of course he didn’t know I was the terrifying Night Terror who’d ruled this city with an iron fist before Fialux came along and ruined all the fun.
First by stopping me from doing that sort of thing. Then by distracting me so thoroughly that I didn’t have time for world domination when I was having more fun discovering all the other various meanings that word could have in the bedroom.
Ahem. Excuse me. That might’ve been TMI. This isn’t that kind of story. Sorry folks. If you want a story with all the steamy details you’ll have to get on writing that one yourself.
Anyway. Back to the story. More particularly back to this asshole of a waiter.
“Look…”
I glanced at his name tag. Steve. I rolled my eyes. Of course he was a Steve. That was about the most Tallahassee redneck name you could come up with, and here he was acting like he was some big fancy French waiter or something, though his accent was more continental, which told me he’d probably coached himself by watching old episodes of Frasier when he got this job so he could sound more fancy.
Maybe that worked on the other rich folks. The ones who couldn’t be bothered with the help. It wasn’t going to work on me though.
“Steve. Do you mind if I call you Steve?”
The glare he hit me with said I couldn’t, but he didn’t say anything because he wanted a nice tip.
“Look, Steve. Maybe we could cut the fancy routine. I’m pretty sure you didn’t pick up that name waiting tables in Paris, and I’m pretty sure I have the money to cover whatever the hell is the most expensive wine you have in this place. And your tip is going down with every judgmental look you give me that makes me think you don’t think I’m capable of paying for whatever the hell is the most expensive wine you have in this place.”
His face grew darker with my every word, and it turned from annoyance to panic when I started to threaten his tip.
“Fine,” he said, his vaguely continental accent slipping into something that had more of a Southern twang to it.
Like not the genuine South, either. More like the sort of twang you’d hear from someone up north who put Confederate flag bumper stickers on the back of their car even though their ancestors had probably fought on the side of the Union, assuming their “heritage” could even be tracked back that far and they weren’t the product of migrants who’d shown up on these shores since the Civil War.
Steve wheeled around and disappeared. I figured we might have a chance to talk, but he reappeared moments later with a bottle of wine that looked like it could be expensive. I’d never spent the time to learn all that much about fine wines considering all the far more important things I had to focus on.
Besides, I’d read all the double blind studies that showed so-called wine “experts” were full of shit. Those same studies had shown that people who weren’t in on the con really did think more expensive bottles of wine were better thanks to a healthy dose of the placebo effect. I figured why not use that to liven up date night with Selena?
He opened the wine and held it under my nose, surprising me until I remembered that’s how they did it at these fancy restaurants. Or at least that’s how they did it here at Skyhigh.
I waved him off.
“Just leave the bottle here Steve. And bring us a couple of bigger glasses than this. I don’t want to refill my wine constantly.”
He stared down at me as though I’d just asked him to murder his mother or his favorite dog, but he complied. A moment later we had two slightly larger wine glasses. Slightly being the operative word here. I glared at the glasses and then up to Steve.
“I’m looking to get me and my date good and tipsy on the expensive hooch, Steve, so you’re gonna have to do better than this,” I said. “You serve soda here, right?”
Steve blinked. “Well, yes?”
“Right. Go and get me whatever glass you put your soda in, and bring two of them.”
Did we get looks from all the other snooty fine diners as they realized I was pouring a generous portion of a very expensive wine into giant glasses? Maybe, but I’d long ago stopped giving a fuck about what other people thought about me.
They could stare all they wanted. One of the joys of being a villain was living outside of society and not giving a fuck even as I tried to dominate that society and mold it in my nefarious image.
Selena giggled, and her eyes went wide as she looked at what I poured.
“Damn,” she said.
Then she leaned in closer. “You know I’m actually a few months shy of being able to legally drink?”
Huh. I had a vague idea of how old she was because she was a junior in college which meant she was at least nineteen and possibly twenty-two, but she’d been cagey about her age before losing and regaining her memory.
That she was admitting things to me now seemed like a good sign. Or maybe I was reading way too much into something simple as she took a sip of her wine.
I held up my own glass. “I won’t say anything if you don’t. Besides, it’s not like excise can enforce anything on you when you’re with me.”
That was one of the joys of having a teleporter that could get you out of a sticky situation. A teleporter meant never having to say you were sorry to the cops and the justice system.
Well, except for the times Fialux beat me to the point I didn’t have any power reserves left and then dropped me off in front of the cop shop. That’d been annoying, for sure.
“Right,” she said.
We both did something that was very college in that moment. Something I was sure scandalized all the older stuffed shirts all around us. We tipped our cups back and straight up chugged that expensive wine.
Forget enjoying the oaky undercurrent or whatever the fuck some wine snob would have to say about that shit. I was looking to get drunk and have a good time with my girl, thank you very much!
I sat my cup back down on the table and let out a deep breath. I looked at Selena and grinned.
“Damn,” I said as she finished.
I looked around the room. Yup. Sure enough there were a lot of people giving us disapproving looks, but I didn’t care.
I grinned and waved. That only irritated them more, and suddenly everyone was pretending they couldn’t see us.
That was just fine with me. I turned back to Selena, and realized all the scandalized old people in the room staring at us were hardly the most interesting thing happening.
No, she was swaying. As though she was having some trouble holding her liquor. Which was a little odd considering the way I’d seen her pack it away in the lab and at a couple of house parties we’d ventured out to on campus.
In disguise, of course.
Parties, especially the type you found on campus, usually weren’t my cup of tea being a misanthrope through and through who was more comfortable with dominating humanity than interacting with it, but she liked them so I’d gone along and had the whole college experience. Even if I was more grad student age.
Only now she was reacting to the high priced hooch like she never had to the cheap beer and liquor at those house parties. Seriously. I’d seen this girl do a keg stand and then a beer funnel and not be any worse for the wear. And now one glass of wine was enough to have her swaying in her seat and looking like she was on the verge of either being sick or having a hell of a good time?
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I’ve never felt like this before,” she said. “Like my head is spinning or something. It feels like when I’m flying over the city and the whole world is moving, but flying was never this disorienting…”
I grinned as I realized exactly what was going on here. Just as she’d never truly felt pain before, her super powered metabolism had kept her from ever truly being able to get drunk. Maybe a good buzz, but apparently never drunk.
Only now she didn’t have those powers holding down the fort in her liver.
“My dear,” I said, trying not to relish this moment too much and having a difficult time of it. “It would appear you are suffering the effects of alcohol for the first time in your life.”
