Chapter Text
Theoretically, anyone could patronize a campus bar. Faculty, staff, students, visitors…it wasn't like they turned people away, they just needed some kind of ID if they wanted alcohol. In practice, students definitely made up the vast majority The Green Dragon's customers...but since Nori was meeting a student here, he didn't really think it was that big of a deal. His too-serious little brother deserved a chance to let loose, and Nori intended for him to do so in a controlled environment; namely, with Nori watching to make sure he didn't get alcohol poisoning, pass out, and/or choke on his own vomit.
Their oldest brother would be appalled...and that was part of the draw, Nori could admit that to himself even if he wouldn't do it aloud. So he locked his bike out front and went to find his brother. Little Ori had squirreled away into a corner booth with a pair of textbooks bigger than he was laid out in front of him. Nori sighed. The kid really was hopeless.
The bar generally got busy on Friday nights, but since this particular night was one right before a long weekend, a good chunk of the student body had already gone home to enjoy the holiday with their families or whoever students spent time with. Still, there were enough patrons to keep Dwalin busy enough, but it was slow enough for him to tend the bar by himself and keep the place clean and he knew he would be able to clock out right at closing time instead of having to stay back and clean up. He had watched two minors get escorted out of the bar after having of-age kids give them drinks, but other than that there hadn't been any tussles that night.
Unfortunately while slow shifts were nice for a change, it made the night go by slower and during a lull in drink orders he found himself with nothing to do. This shift was going to crawl by at a snail's pace at this rate.
Nori swaggered up to the bar, looking more like an art student than a professor, with colorful stains on his shirt and stray bits of clay and god only knew what else in various hard-to-reach or hard-to-notice places like the back of his biceps, under his ear, and on his elbow. His hair, naturally a reddish brown, was chemically lightened to a more coppery color, and it reached to the bottom of his shoulder-blades, on those rare days he didn't have it back in a French braid.
Since he considered himself an artist first and foremost, it was hardly surprising that the first thing he noticed about the bartender was his tattoos. A lot of geometric shapes, some patterns much more intricate than others, but all quality work. He finished his inspection quickly and moved on to the rest of the man. Tall - a good six inches taller than Nori, who had to admit he was a bit short for a man, at only 5'8" - and very broad-shouldered, the type who looked made for heavily physical sports like rugby...Nori looked up at the barkeep's face and picked out facial scars, the sort that really only came from fistfights, and changed his opinion. Probably a bartender and bouncer, maybe something else on the side, now or previously, that meant getting pounded and giving a pounding.
"Two...rums and cokes," he decided on a whim. Well, not a total whim. Rum was high on his list of favorite liquor types.
Dwalin looked up from where he was scrubbing some sticky syrupy spilled cooler off the bar to the lad who had spoken to him. He eyed the redhead a moment, making note of his stained shirt, long hair, and generally unkempt look. His hair was thick and long and such a gorgeous colour, and Dwalin briefly imagined running his fingers through it, tugging on it. He banished that thought quickly though, since this was no doubt an art student by the look of him and it wouldn't do to be thinking thoughts like those when he needed to remain professional. He cast a last look over the kid, then rumbled; "ID, please."
Nori sighed - really, it was a compliment to say someone looks young, but did he look that young? Still, he started digging in his pockets for a photo ID (he had so many little bits and bobs on his person these days, he's sure he started each morning with just a billfold...). "Come on handsome, is this really necessary?" It rarely hurt to flirt, especially when he was being sincere about the admiration, if not the motivation. He muttered a few choice oaths in Yiddish (thank you, Opa, I don't know what it means but if you're calling me that it's probably awful) and finally fished out his uni ID. He frowned at it. Was that the student one he got after he took a few physics classes a few years back? Oh well, it had his photo and it lacked the warnings that the school and the state liked to put on underage IDs.
He ignored the kid's flirtatious comment for what it was: an attempt to be friendly and maybe get favours or free drinks. He was old enough to be past that stage. He looked between the picture on the card and the guy's face, making note of the age printed on the card. 24. Sounded about right. A little over half his age and way too young to be flirting with him. He handed the card back and went about getting the drinks poured.
"Who's the second for?" He asked as he slid the first drink across the counter. He paused to fiddle with the spout of the rum bottle, waiting to pour the second drink until he got an answer and maybe another ID. If this lad wanted to buy drinks for his underage friend, he would need to go somewhere other than a school-run pub to do it.
"Mmm? My brother, the nerd over in the corner," Nori gestured in Ori's direction. "I'll bring you his in a mo' if you insist on being exacting." He took a sip from the drink with a sigh of pleasure. Not the best rum he'd had, but decent enough. "Poor tyke turned legal a month ago and is only just now letting me take him out. Paranoid bugger," he said fondly. "Nothing wrong with getting hammered on exam week if you do it sensibly." Plus there had been winter break...with Dori hovering, and Nori making himself scarce whenever possible. He still wasn't used to being invited home for Christmas. Ori called it home, anyway.
Dwalin let his eyes drift over to the 'nerd' in the corner, and he nodded. "Bring me his," He said, once the redhead had finished yammering about exams and getting hammered and turning legal. The kid in the corner, this guy's brother, one could see the resemblance. The brother didn't have the coppery hair of his elder, but chances are that was chemically-enhanced. He was the picture of a little nerd though, small and lanky, with thick glasses and a nose too big for his face. If he was legal, this guy was telling the truth, because he was barely.
Nori knocked back the rest of his drink smoothly and set the glass down. "Pour me another for when I come back, would y' luv? Won't be but a sec." He sauntered back to Ori and wondered if he could wear the bartender down by the time his shift ended. Hmmm, or maybe before one of his breaks. He wouldn't mind taking to his knees if the bartender was just rough enough. He hadn't had a good fuck in far too long.
Dwalin pointedly ignored the endearment the redhead tacked on to his request as he went about pouring the second drink. He found himself gnawing on his lip as he watched the confident swagger the man walked with, a natural sway to his hips and really those jeans couldn't be comfortable, with how tight they were... a more primal part of his mind imagined him peeling them down and off and he nearly dropped the glass he was holding when he came back to his senses. He didn't need to be thinking about things like this. The kid was definitely off-limits and he was at work, for fuck's sake!
In an effort to cool himself down Dwalin tugged a bottle of water out of the cooler, relishing the chilled wet exterior of the bottle before he cracked it open and took a long draught.
Nori slid into the booth next to Ori, slinging an arm around his younger brother's shoulder. "Remember, don't ever let anyone fetch your drinks for you. I need your ID to get your drink for you."
Ori rolled his eyes.
"Well why would I bother to roofie you? I'd just have to carry you home."
"I can't believe you of all people are giving me alcohol safety lessons. Somehow it's less surprising that you immediately contradict yourself." He pushed his large, round-frame spectacles up his hooked nose. "You're going to get me blind drunk tonight, aren't you?"
"That's the plan. You should probably put those textbooks away once you start drinking, wouldn't want to spill on 'em." He snagged Ori's wallet out of his brother's pocket, ignoring the ineffectual assault that followed and plucking out the kid's ID. "I'm not stealing your lunch money, brat, tonight's on me."
"You can't just go stealing people's stuff," Ori pouted once he got the wallet back.
"Not stealing. Borrowing. You should have given it over faster." Nori ruffled Ori's hair and left the booth, slinking back to the bar with a very definite goal in mind. The bartender had a nametag, so that wasn't it, but he had every intention of getting a number out of the man if he couldn't get him alone tonight.
"Miss me?" he asked, smirking at Dwalin. "One kid brother identification card, as promised." There were certainly similarities in their unmistakably Jewish features, but the different last names alone made his story questionable. He no longer volunteered an explanation for that, on the few occasions that he felt the need to be introduced as a brother to either Dori or Ori. Nori didn't like his last name and what it represented, the legacy of a father who abandoned him, but he wasn't keen on sharing one with Dori, of a man who died before he was born, or Ori, borne of the marriage that effectively ended Nori's childhood. Taking his mother's name was right out; he refused to acknowledge the woman in that way. Which...didn't leave much. He'd decided at some point in college that if he ever married, he'd take his spouse's name.
The bar wasn't particularly dark so Dwalin could see the kid perfectly well from across the room and he matched up perfectly with the photo on the card, which listed his age at 19 and his birthday as only a month ago, so he had no reason to doubt the guy's story. He had his doubts about the brother drinking much anyways, if those massive texts of his were anything to go by. He slid the two glasses over to where the redhead leaned against the counter.
"Wouldn't say I missed ya, after all you'd have to actually go somewhere for that to happen." Dwalin replied, accidentally a little too playfully. He tried to slide back into being professional without being too suddenly cold and distant. "They're $4 each so that's $12, lad."
"I'd much rather go somewhere with you than deprive you of my wit and charm," Nori grinned.
"Here, just open a tab," he said, handing over a credit card. A professor's salary wasn't much, but it would provide more than enough liquor to bowl Ori over. "And trust me, no 'lad' has the kind of thoughts I'm having about those hands of yours, luv," he purred, not quite fluttering his eyelashes, but definitely giving Dwalin bedroom eyes.
Dwalin was almost surprised at how forward this one was. He had been hit on before by students but they were usually much more subtle about it and a lot less... alluring, now that he thought about it. He wondered where there was to go with flirting when one was so direct while sober? Would he climb over the counter and shove his hand in Dwalin's pants? The image made him chuckle and he shook his head. "If this is how you are sober, I can't even imagine how the night'll progress as you get drinking'."
He took the card and slid it into the notepad where he usually kept tabs. Taped it to the back of the page and wrote the drinks down on the front to keep track. It saved him on nights when it got busy and he ran a lot of tabs. When he was done that he noticed the randy redhead was still there at the bar, so he asked; "Waiting' for something?"
Nori laughed. He would drink with Ori, of course, but he'd learned a long time ago how to hold his liquor. If he wanted to get snookered, he'd need more than rum and coke to do it. "Sure. Waitin' for your number, gorgeous. Unless you borrowed that nametag, courtesy's usual first question is answered pretty easily, Dwalin." It was a nice name, though he couldn't place the origin. Perhaps, like his, it was simply made up.
"My phone number?" Dwalin asked and when the redhead looked not even remotely phased, he continued. "My phone number. You really are a tenacious little bugger, aren't ya?"
He nudged the drinks closer to Nori and gestured with his hand towards the booth where his brother sat. "You might as well take that back to your brother n' drink your own. I'm not playing' your game."
"I'm told it's one of my best qualities. Or worst. Can't remember," he shrugged at the probably rhetorical question. "What, you don't like redheads?" Nori pouted. "I thought everyone liked redheads."
The worst part was that redheads were entirely his type. He tried not to think about it. “That’s not what’s bothering’ me, lad. I’ve got rules and you break pretty much all of them.”
"What sort of rules? Because I'm a big believer in loopholes," he smirked. "And you should really stop calling me 'lad', you're making me feel like a schoolkid in shortpants."
"Either prove to me that you're not a lad or give me something else to call you, then," Dwalin said and regretted it instantly because 'proving you're not a lad' was terribly challenging and provocative. "Rules. As to who I'll date. You can't have my number, because you break most of my rules."
"I'm going to be the better man that I rarely am and not make any of the obvious jokes you just set up for me. As to what to call me...well, there's 'Nori,'" he shrugged. "It was on my ID, after all, and my credit card. I thought perhaps you might notice. Not the best name, I agree, but I don't have any better ones really. Now back to these rules...purely for educational purposes, why don't you go ahead and tell me what they are, gorgeous, because you haven't convinced me yet."
Dwalin rolled his eyes and huffed out a sigh. He didn't have anything better to be doing, and this was kind of entertaining, but he still wanted to put up a fuss to ensure that this kid didn't get his hopes up. "Well, Nori, there's three big ones that you break, unless you're an ax murderer, of course, then there's four." He showed Nori one finger. "You're more than ten years younger'n me." He raised a second. "You're a customer." And a third. "And, the most important one of all, you're a bloody student."
Nori barks out a laugh at the comment about ax murderers - Dwalin looks far more murderous than he ever could, anyway. He shrugs the comment of years off, though that would make Dwalin rather well preserved for being - what, 45? 50? Surely not 50. Being a customer is a temporary state he can easily remedy. The last...he blinks, and then laughed again.
"Oh, gorgeous, you are a flatterer. Here, let me help. I'm not an ax murderer, promise. I can stop buying drinks from you as soon as you promise to go get drinks with me instead." He sifts through his various cards again. "As for the last - here. I gave you a pretty old ID last time, but that's me, absent-minded professor, forget my own head next." He put down his faculty ID next to his driver's license, which clearly declares him as 32, nearly 33. "If you really are more than ten years older, I hope you have a secret other than good genes, because I sure as hell hope I age that gracefully."
"You're a professor? Of what? Die-hard flirting?" He took the card and studied it. It didn't look much different from the ones he had seen other professors using, and stated him as a sculpting professor. He nearly snorted at that. He wasn't far-off thinking he was an art student after all. 32. He definitely didn't look 32, so maybe he was the one who should give graceful aging advice. That put him only 8 years younger than Dwalin - not too ridiculous of a difference, really. "Well, it's a relief to know some 24-year-old isn't chasing me. Flirting with me and complimenting me on how I've aged won't make me magically forget that you're still a customer and I'll still on shift till closing. How are you gonna buy drinks for your brother if you're 'not a customer'?"
Nori sighed wistfully. "I bet that would be a sociology degree. No, I'm better off in the art department. Tenure doesn't require nearly as much research. If I solemnly swear not to patronize this bar after tonight, will you give me your number? Keeping in mind that if you don't go on a date with me within the next two weeks, deal's off and I'm gonna come back and flirt with you again. Oh nooo, so scary," he teased, sipping at his drink. "You're weakening to my charms, I can tell. Just give in, I promise you'll enjoy yourself. I'll make sure of that." The look in his eyes made it clear just how he intended to do it, too.
"I could get a doorman, you know. Tell him you're harassing me." Completely in spite of his words, Dwalin slid down the bar and retrieved the notepad where he was keeping Nori's credit card. He thought about it a moment as he turned to a blank page. He thought about a lot. Specifically, though, he thought about how Nori eyed him up almost constantly, taking in his broad shoulders and thick biceps. He had already decided his answer to Nori's question, this was just teasing, honestly bordering on foreplay at this point. "I do that half the time. Haul people out of here for being minors and being too wasted and harassing employees and other customers." He raked his eyes over Nori's frame, noting the probably-half-a-foot he had on the redhead. "Bet I could throw you over my shoulder and toss you out of here, no problem."
Nori licked his lips. "Yeah, I bet you could, big guy. But I'd prefer you pin me to a wall with those big hands - or if you really feel the need for tossing, I've got a good bed for that. Play your cards right and I might even make you breakfast."
"While that's very tempting," Dwalin said, scribbling his number down on a sheet in the notepad and then ripping it off, "and you're very cute, I'm here till closing and it really won't do to get worked up when I've still got three hours of work. So take this," He held the torn piece of paper out to Nori, conscious to brush those 'big hands' and long fingers against his own more than was really necessary, "and we'll set something up another time."
Nori took the paper with a rather victorious grin, letting his thumb rub against Dwalin's. "When's your next night off?" He didn't particularly want to wait until tomorrow or later to arrange anything, not when he had Dwalin right in front of him.
"The day after tomorrow. Sunday night." He answered, as he mentally went over his schedule for that day. He cast his eyes down to Nori's again, scratching at his scruffy chin and going on. "I've got things to do till about five, but I could be all yours after that."
Nori licked his lips. "I like the sound of that. See you later, gorgeous," he smiled, taking his drinks back to the booth.
Ori gave him a look. "That took forever, what gives?"
"Priming a very promising looking piece," Nori purred. Ori wrinkled his nose.
"Yeah. Text me or call me, we'll work out where to meet and all that," Dwalin half-waved, half-saluted in farewell and watched as Nori went back to the booth where his brother waited. It was only when he checked the time that he was shocked to find just how much time had passed since Nori had started on him. Perhaps he needed to have incredibly tempting redheads in here flirting with him more often, if it would make his shift fly by like this.
Nori waited until Ori finished his drink before getting more, chatting about school and complaining that the hot bartender thought he was a student. Ori rolled his eyes. "You could try dressing your age."
"I was throwing pottery today, Ori! No one does that in a tweed jacket."
Ori stared at him. "Do you even own a tweed jacket?"
"...no, but that's not the point."
"Why don't you wear, I dunno, a cardigan or something?"
"Like you, little brother?" Nori teased, tugging at the knit sleeve. "I thought I was supposed to dress my age. You dress like an 80 year old with a wife who knits compulsively."
Ori blushed. "D-dori doesn't knit compulsively."
"I find it interesting that you didn't start with 'Dori's not my wife,'" Nori laughed. "I'll be back with another round." He headed back to the bar with their empties.