Chapter Text
The flight had been hell.
Angela wasn’t a particularly bad flyer, and the flight was only ninety minutes long. The flying itself wasn’t the problem.
Her (now ex) boyfriend had insisted on driving her to the airport, even though they’d earlier had to have the conversation that long distance wasn’t going to work for them once Angela left for grad school. The blonde had carefully left out the fact that their relationship was barely working for even outside of her impending departure. She felt a little guilty - Genji was sweet, and he really did care for her. The fact remained, though, that their lives were taking different paths, certainly vocationally and likely personally. Genji had made his way halfway across the world through his passion for travel and backpacking, while Angela could count on one hand the amount of times she’d left Switzerland. She was born there, grew up there, lost her parents there. She was tenacious, but she had a tendency to turn in on herself under pressure. Ultimately, though, that tendency is what she’d harnessed to graduate at the top of her high school class, continuing the immaculate run through her undergraduate degree and Honours research. That work had been good enough for her to apply for postgraduate study in a wide variety of places – and she wasn’t sure what had changed, but the prospect of her doctoral research had her metaphorical wings aching to spread.
Her success in her Honours work had one man in particular to thank – Dr. Winston Simian, a biotechnologist who had guest tutored one of Angela’s undergraduate classes, had taken an interest in her passion and drive. When she finished up her initial studies, she reached back out to him, asking if he might be willing to supervise her through her Honours research as his work on biotechnology aligned well with what she had wanted to pursue. The good doctor agreed without hesitation.
Angela’s Honours dissertation mapped out the potentials for what could be an entirely new field of nanobiotics, a field she often had to clarify was quite distinct from the far more robotic and deeply engineered technologies that Winston worked with. But that distinction was what made him such an important supervisor – he kept Angela on the straight and narrow, able to keep her focused on the potential innovation of nanobiotics without falling into nanotechnology’s existing pitfalls. He learnt alongside her, allowing her to start feeling more like a colleague and less like a mere student. It was this relationship that had Winston suggesting London’s Petras College to her when it came time to put in her doctoral applications.
Petras College was a newer institution that simply hadn’t had the time to make its mark in the wider university standings yet, but anyone who knew anyone, particularly those in the business of daring STEM innovation, had heard of Petras. Winston was taking up an assistant professor position there, and he had been quite transparent about that being a factor in encouraging Angela to apply. Simultaneously, he always made sure to emphasise that she shouldn’t feel obligated to him or his soon-to-be institution in any way. Angela knew that there were many well established universities that would probably happily take her and her fledgling research on – a number of them were in Switzerland, even.
Petras was the only place she applied.
It had been something of a risk, but the fact was that her record was impeccable, her research was fascinating, and Winston had given her a glowing reference. When she received word that she had gotten in, she sobbed for hours. The initial tears had been tears of joy, and as much as the relatively reserved Angela could muster, tears of pride. Quickly, they turned to tears of understanding – she had to break up with Genji. She had to leave the place she’d last seen her parents, the only place she’d really ever known. She felt suffocated by the idea of leaving, but perhaps more so by the idea of staying. She had to go, and so she’d packed up her life into suitcases and hopped the pond.
Upon landing, Angela switched her phone off of airplane mode to a litany of notifications – the first was a text from Winston, querying if today was the day she arrived in London, and telling her to relax and give herself time and space to settle in. He was finishing up a research project he’d been working on but would be making his way up to Petras in the next week or so, and he said that he would organise for them to meet for coffee once he was on deck. There was also an arguably needy let me know when you’re there safe text from Genji which, judging by the timestamp, he’d sent while she was still sitting on the runway in Zurich. Even if she had intended on texting him back with any promptness, the other text she had in her inbox was slightly more alarming.
Petras College Admin
14:04Dear ANGELA ZIEGLER, there have been some unexpected works which regrettably mean that your Petras College accommodation is not yet ready for move-in. Please refer to your provided email address for information on interim accommodation and compensation.
Angela pinched the bridge of her nose, rubbing at the small red marks her glasses had left. Great. This is just what she’d needed – a change of plans on top of everything else. She grumbled as she swung her backpack onto her shoulders, readying herself for the trek to customs. Her phone chirped quietly with another text, one more for the didn’t really need to think about this right now pile.
Fareeha Amari
15:21Hope your move to the land of tea and crumpets is going well, angel ;) I’ll hit you up if I ever do security for the royals
Angela huffed a quick breath out of her nose and decided that now wasn’t the time to work out how to compose a response to her old friend. She just strode towards the looming customs queue, checking her emails to find out the details of her off-campus accommodation. She got the same tepid apology in the email as she had in the text, and the admin staff had let her know that she had been booked in to a hotel near campus for three nights, though they hoped it would only take two before the vague problems had been resolved. They also let Angela know that she could send through her transport receipt and they would reimburse her, and they provided a voucher for one of the local food delivery services. She supposed it could be worse, but also, she knew that the only way to stop feeling like she was in limbo was to actually get on campus, unpack, and force her brain to recalibrate what it meant to be home. A hotel and a randomly-picked takeaway was not going to make much progress there. Still, a hotel meant a bed, and a shower, and a place where she didn’t have to breathe the poorly recirculated air of hundreds, if not thousands, of tourists.
She’d take it – not that she had much choice.
In fairness to the university, the hotel wasn’t bad. Angela was sure that the tenured professors were staying in nicer digs than this, but she couldn’t really complain. She’d even been lucky enough to have a kind rideshare driver who had helped her load and unload the three suitcases she’d had with her, and the hotel staff had helped her with the trek to her room. She had grand plans to shower and change and perhaps even go for a walk, but once she was left alone in the room she was overcome with that churning sense of upheaval again. She was all alone in an unfamiliar place, without any loved ones to speak of, and she felt overwhelmed.
Angela gave the bed a cursory glance, and upon assessing it as looking clean, she reached up to take off her glasses and placed them onto the bedside table. Once her glasses were down, she flopped herself face-first into the bedspread. She could feel the lump growing in her throat and her eyes felt hot – she didn’t even know why she wanted to cry. She’d long been independent, and this was an exciting opportunity for her.
She turned onto her back and pulled her phone out of her pocket, looking at the text from Genji that she really didn’t find herself wanting to respond to. There was also the text from Fareeha. She was trying to ignore the fact that she wanted desperately to respond to that one.
Angela settled on texting Winston back instead.
Angela Ziegler
17:42Thank you for the well-wishes, Winston! I have arrived safely but my on-campus accommodation isn’t ready yet :( Petras have put me up in a hotel nearby. Hopefully I’ll be on campus by the time you get here and we can meet. Keep well!
Angela clicked her phone off and let it tumble out of her hand before rubbing her face. The little complications felt huge, and the huge complications… well, they also felt huge. She gave herself a few minutes to try and relax. She tried to square breathe – in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. When she kept losing count and making herself light-headed, she tried another technique. She tensed all of the muscles in her body before subsequently letting them all relax. All that did was remind her of an old sports injury to her shoulder and make her aware of how sore the plane seats had made her tailbone. Briefly, she considered just calling the day a wash entirely, lying there unmoving and forcing her brain to eventually go to sleep. Maybe she could sleep for a couple of days and once she awoke, her Petras accommodation would be ready and she would be able to start proper.
Get a grip, Angela.
At her internal chiding, she decided to sit herself up, scooting herself to the edge of the bed and staring at her reflection in the wall mirror. She looked more haggard than her twenty-three years. She looked like she’d lived in a cave for some manner of months. She looked like she’d never had fun in her life.
Fun.
Maybe she could try fun.
Angela knew she couldn’t be one of those people that left the Old Angela back in Switzerland. Even if that had been her plan, the accompaniment of the supervisor who knew her very well and had a protective streak would have killed that in the water.
Then again… Winston wasn’t here yet.
Angela took another deep breath, reaching back for her phone once more. She flicked it on and, with a sudden burst of faux-confidence, shot off two texts.
Angela Ziegler
18:02Hi Genji, here safe. Sorry for the delay in replying.
She paused, took a breath, and continued.
I think maybe let’s take some time out of contact. I’ll keep you updated on anything big, but I want you to focus on yourself. Thank you for dropping me off this morning. Keep well.
She knew the text could have been kinder, and it could have been less abrupt. But this was her attempt at forging something of a New Angela. So came text two.
Angela Ziegler
18:04Made it safely. And please do – I’d pay to see you in one of those silly tall hats. Miss you.
Well, maybe not everything about her had to be brand new.
To get the grip her brain had implored her to, Angela had a three-pronged approach. The first was to utilise that food delivery voucher that Petras had provided her with. She scrolled the food delivery app for a little while and eventually settled on pizza, ordering a basic margherita and some garlic bread – something to line the stomach. The second task was to shower – that one was pretty basic, but sorely needed. The free toiletries that the hotel had provided were adequate, and the shower was nice enough for her to linger under the hot water for a while. Upon exiting the shower and drying herself, she pulled on the hotel robe and returned to her suitcases, each with a different colour-coded ribbon knotted onto the handle at the top. The blue ribbon was her everyday wardrobe, staples that formed the basis of all of her outfits that she could manage with for an untold amount of time, assuming she had access to a washer and dryer. The pink ribbon was mostly her research materials – books, papers and stationery, padded out with her casual loungewear and pyjamas in order to ensure that the suitcase was actually able to be lifted. The purple ribbon represented the rest of her life’s miscellany – and she had, for a long time, considered her more risqué outfits, makeup and jewellery as part of that random, oft-ignored jumble.
She’d been so focused on her schoolwork for so long, and her relationship with Genji had long been so humdrum that she could barely remember the last time she’d gotten dressed up – hell, she could barely remember the last time she’d even gone out. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate that her ex hadn’t demanded primping and preening from her – she had actually appreciated it quite a lot. But it meant that many of the clothes she’d adorned more often in her earlier university days had gone long unworn – she almost didn’t bring any of them with her. A few pieces did get donated back home, but as she unzipped the purple-ribboned suitcase, she was met with some of the pieces that endured. And she was going to need them for that night’s plan.
Before her shower, she’d first simply searched bar on her phone. The results weren’t exactly what she was looking for – she was sure they were perfectly fine establishments, but not for her. Not that night. She sat and hesitated once, before trying the term club, which veered closer to her desired location, but still didn’t feel quite right.
She knew what she wanted to search, but her thumbs hesitated, poised over the keypad anxiously as if her search was being monitored by some sort of omniscient power. It took her a few more seconds of her eyes flicking over unappealing listing after unappealing listing before finally typing in the term she knew she was after.
Queer bar.
The offerings were far sparser than the generic terms Angela had entered earlier, but her eyes flickered to the most nearby listing with a sharply piqued interest. The bar, slightly ominously called Underworld, seemed to be within walking distance of the hotel, and touted itself on social media as an inclusive and, in their own words, “queer-as-hell” space for the community to meet, drink and be merry.
She thought of Genji and her hesitance in getting back to him, the relative ease with which she’d ultimately broke it off. She knew that being queer didn’t mean that she couldn’t – or didn’t – like men. But she thought about the way her heart had leapt into her throat when Fareeha had texted her. She thought about the semester they had roomed together when Fareeha was on exchange. She had long been so unsure about who she was, who she liked, who she wanted to go to bed with. But maybe the specifics didn’t matter. Maybe they didn’t have to matter tonight.
Angela suddenly felt surer about this than she had about anything else since touching down in London.
She was here, she was queer, and she was going to Underworld. She was going to drink and be merry, and who knows who she might meet.
And, pardoning the Underworld pun, she would look hot as hell doing it all.
Underworld was small and dark, but it felt even more welcoming to walk physically into than it had felt virtually welcoming when it popped up on Angela’s phone. It was a Sunday night, and so the bar was unsurprisingly not as busy as it had looked in some of the pictures on their social media. However, there were still a decent amount of people in there, likely thanks to an advertised drinks special – it might have been a Sunday, but university students returning from summer break had strange schedules. Angela smoothed down the lightly shimmery purple skirt that she wore, adjusting the waistband slightly so it sat properly below the matching crop top above it. The top had a little flounce that sat under its structured cups, whereas the skirt was form-fitting against Angela’s soft, round hips. She wore a slightly more sensible black heel that had allowed her to walk from the hotel, even though London’s love of cobblestone streets was trying to take out her ankles. She had really pulled it all out with her makeup – she worried briefly that her rusty skills were showing through, but with how dark Underworld was, she’d be lucky for anyone to see much more than a swathe of purple across her lined eyes and a glistening pop of pink on her lips. In fairness, that was just about all that was there, but it read well enough in the dim of the bar. She had found a pair of hoops that she forgot that she owned, and she’d pushed them into piercings that had whined at the fact that they actually had to hold earrings for the first time in a while. She’d managed, though, to pull together a look that had her feeling halfway confident as she scanned the bar, perhaps letting anyone there have a quick look at her too, if they’d wanted.
There was what appeared to be a full group who knew each other filling Underworld’s relatively sizeable dancefloor. There were a couple of booths dotted in the corners of the place – one was occupied by a small group, the other by a couple leant in close, chatting and laughing with one another. The redhead hung on the brunette’s every word, and Angela caught her leaning in to tuck a lock of her companion’s floppy, short hair behind her ear. The brunette grinned for a moment, pushing forward to steal a kiss from the redhead.
Angela turned to give them their privacy, walking towards the bar. There were a couple of spare seats, and she took one which left a seat between her and the next person – she needed to get a drink into her before working out her actual game plan. She ordered a vodka raspberry, her tried and tested staple to get herself buzzed without having to drink something foul or complicated. The drink came promptly enough, and as she sipped slowly at its contents her eyes wandered to the person separated from her by a single barstool.
She was a tall, lanky redhead with blue eyes that were all at once aloof and intense. Her long, spidery fingers were clasped around a glass with a clear drink that Angela guessed was a vodka soda. She was a little impressed – Angela could never manage her own vodka without something fruity to cut through it. The stranger’s nails were short, and she was picking at the already chipped black polish on them with her hand not on the glass. Angela found that her eyes were almost fixated on these small movements, so much so that when the redhead’s hand lifted towards her face, Angela’s eyes followed, trailing up towards those blue eyes that were – shit, staring right at her.
Angela’s lips were still pursed around the tiny straw in her glass, and she thickly swallowed the drink still in her mouth before tonguing the straw free from her slightly sticky glossed lips. Before she even had a chance to apologise, she noticed that the other woman was smiling.
Oh. This couldn’t be the game plan.
Could it?
The redhead stood, cutting a languid path around her former seat, then around the stool beside Angela, going to perch herself up on it. Her legs went uncrossed as she sat down, clad in tight, red tartan trousers. She was wearing a button-down that was relaxed and two sizes too big for her, with only the two middle buttons done up. One half of the shirt was tucked lazily into her trousers, and her unbuttoned neckline was so deep that Angela could have seen her bra if she shifted.
She kind of wished she would.
“… Sorry for staring,” Angela managed.
“Don’t be,” the redhead responded in what Angela clocked as a velvety Irish brogue. She gestured her head towards the drink that Angela was still holding – or rather, to what had been her drink. Had she really drunk it all just staring at this woman’s hands? Good god. “What are you drinking?”
“Oh,” Angela laughed, glancing down at her empty glass. “I – I’m actually alright, I didn’t really mean to drink it that fast.”
“Oh? Well… my apologies,” the redhead smirked. Angela couldn’t take her eyes off of her face. Come on, New Angela.
“No, no need,” she said, turning her body towards the taller woman’s. “I was… pleasantly distracted.” Was that good? I don’t know. I don’t know! The redhead tilted her head, rising an eyebrow. Wordlessly, she plucked the straw from her own drink and locked eyes with Angela’s. Then, all at once, without shifting her gaze, she lifted the glass to her lips and chugged.
Oh.
The redhead put her glass down, wiping her mouth in a way that Angela thought was as close to obscene as that gesture could get. She had to shift a little in her seat. Just as she thought it was getting good, though, the redhead dropped her feet to the floor and stood, angling herself away from Angela.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said, in a tone that Angela couldn’t quite place. Angela’s heart sunk – oh god, she was trying to escape. There was probably a well-known window that all the hot queer people knew they could flee through if they’d accidentally hit on someone who was a complete dud. The redhead was bailing. Angela decided she’d make one quick attempt to salvage the situation.
“Oh, I’ll wait here!” she replied, entirely overeager. The redhead pivoted back towards her, a look on her face that sat somewhere between pity and delight. She reached over to put a hand on Angela’s arm, sliding it down towards her hand. Angela felt the hairs on her arm prickle as the redhead touched her, and the heat of the contact shot right to her groin.
“I said,” the redhead enunciated, fingers curling over Angela’s, “I need to go to the bathroom.”
What a spectacular misunderstanding.
It hadn’t been Angela’s intent to hook up with a shockingly handsome complete stranger within the first half-hour of being in the first queer bar she’d ever been in alone. But the world works in mysterious ways, and said shockingly handsome complete stranger led her across the bar, past the still bustling dance floor, and into one of the sets of bathrooms. The room was tiled and thus chilly, but still had the dim, mood lighting of the wider bar. There wasn’t anyone waiting in the area outside of the stalls, and one of the stall doors was invitingly ajar. At the brief privacy and assurance of more, the redhead pulled Angela towards her. And despite never doing things like this, never even dreaming of doing things like this, Angela’s free hand flew up to grasp the stranger’s face, and she stood on tiptoes to meet the other woman’s lips with her own. The redhead disentangled her hand from Angela’s as she bodied the shorter blonde into the stall, reaching back to turn the lock to engaged.
There was a part of Angela, the put together part of her, the professional part of her, that wanted to ask so many questions. Was this sanitary? Would this not hold up others who might need the bathroom? What was this redhead’s name?
The part of Angela being ground helplessly into a bathroom stall wall by a gorgeous stranger did not care.
Angela unintentionally whined into the redhead’s mouth as she pressed her against the free wall of the cubicle, moving her lips messily to Angela’s neck as she brought a knee up between the blonde’s legs, pressing her thigh right against her groin. Angela’s hands roamed wildly across the redhead’s back, up her neck and finally to her head, her fingers clawing into the short, ruddy mess as she could feel the taller woman leaving a mark somewhere below her jaw. She didn’t care, she had never cared less, she wanted it. No. God, maybe she needed it.
“Do you want me to touch you?” the stranger purred into Angela’s ear, and she gave the most enthusiastic nod she thought she’d ever given in her life. It was enthusiastic enough for the redhead to chuckle, and more importantly, enthusiastic enough for her to grab the hem of Angela’s skirt, quickly rucking it up to her hips and deftly finding the waistband of her underwear. It was a testament to the fact that she had not intended to hook up at all that she was wearing a relatively ordinary pair of underwear, and she absolutely had not shaved. The redhead seemed entirely unfazed.
Angela saw bright white as the redhead found her clit almost immediately, circling it without hesitation. This was someone who knew what she was doing, and this wasn’t someone who was teasing her or aiming to leave her hanging, either. This was someone with the express goal of making her come in the dim light of a London queer bar. She was a fucking dream.
Angela kept one hand tangled in the taller woman’s hair, the other finding her waist and traversing from there and around her hips and ass, touching her absolutely everywhere she could. Angela could feel the coil in her belly tightening, and her thighs were squeezing together around the stranger’s hand despite herself. The redhead, whose lips had continued periodically pressing against Angela’s jaw, neck and lips as she rubbed her, pulled back to murmur in her ear.
“I can’t get inside you like that, baby.”
Angela audibly whimpered at the words, and the redhead pressed her knee back between her legs, slowly easing them back to a more relaxed position. Angela tried to sink even harder against the tiled wall behind her, but once the redhead’s hand started moving again, she started to buckle. She eventually had to stop her hands from exploring the other woman’s body in order to hang onto her for dear life. Angela looped her arms underneath the redhead’s and braced herself, one hand grasping at a shoulder and the other twisting into the back of her loose button-down.
“You okay?” the redhead whispered, and Angela managed to breathe a needy yeah as she bucked her hips up towards the hand at her groin. The redhead smirked and chuckled as she took two fingers, sliding them up Angela’s wet slit briefly before pushing them inside of her. Angela’s head rolled back too hard against the tiled wall, but any discomfort was displaced by the redhead being so enamoured with the moan that shuddered from her mouth that she leant in to kiss the hollow of her throat. Angela held onto the other woman and settled some more of her weight back into her hips, which were pressed hard against the cold tile. She shifted but focused on not clamping her thighs together, doing her best to instead spread her legs slightly. The stranger moved back to her ear.
“Good girl,” she almost growled, and if Angela hadn’t already known she was so done for, she knew then and there. The redhead’s hand never stilled, her fingers thrusting relentlessly and expertly inside of Angela right to the hilt, her palm pressing hard against Angela’s groin every time she pushed forward. Despite the thrum of the music still present in the bathroom, almost as loud as it had been in the bar, Angela was trying to keep her noise down a little – if she was going to come all over the hand of a stranger, she could at least try not to draw everyone’s attention to it.
Or so she thought.
The redhead never let up the sharp thrusts of her hand, even as she moved to capture Angela’s lips in an open-mouth kiss again. Angela tried hard to reciprocate, but it was difficult to keep up because she just couldn’t stop moaning, couldn’t stop panting, couldn’t stop absolutely whining as she rushed to her orgasm. The redhead took the cue and pulled back, taking Angela’s bottom lip between her own briefly before she returned to her neck, teeth grazing over the already bruised skin. Angela wasn’t sure what prompted her to take the second to look down, to focus on the woman undoing her, but she did – as the taller woman had to bow slightly in the middle to reach Angela’s neck, her half-undone shirt gaped. She realised quickly that her earlier fleeting horny thought had been wrong. She would not have been able to see the stranger’s bra if she’d shifted at the bar, because she wasn’t wearing one. Angela could have sworn, too, that even in this low light, she saw the barest metallic glint –
As if the taller woman had heard the churning thoughts in Angela’s head, she moved once more, pulling back to lock eyes with Angela, looming over her as her hand kept thrusting inside of Angela’s certainly ruined underwear. Angela had never had a tryst in a bar bathroom before, but between the absolutely voracious gaze the redhead was giving her and the hot, thudding, knotty twist in her lower belly, she knew what was about to happen. The blonde kept her lode-bearing hand securely on the redhead’s shoulder, but brought the other to the side of the other woman’s face, grasping at her perfectly angular jaw as if she was forcing the redhead to watch her and not the other way round. A devilish smirk crossed the redhead’s face as she quickened her hand for the final time, and this time Angela couldn’t stop her thighs from squeezing around the hand between her legs as she came with an almighty moan. She could feel the hot, wet mess that covered her groin and the other woman’s hand – a hand she was courteously keeping clamped there as Angela rode out her orgasm, rocking ever so slightly into said hand as she did. She let herself relax briefly post-climax before her eyes met the taller woman’s again, and she knitted her eyebrows in brief apology before unclenching her thighs, letting her withdraw her hand.
“Are you all good?” the redhead asked, wiping her hand on her trousers, which Angela found perplexingly hot. Angela cleared her throat and righted herself, doing her best to readjust her underwear before hiking her skirt back down.
“Yeah, uh, really… really good,” she managed, her breath still a little uneven. The redhead gave a small smirk and it looked for a second like she was going to lean back in to kiss Angela again. Over the din of the bathroom, however, Angela thought she could hear a light chirp. Her stranger reached down to pull a phone out of her pocket, reading for a second before heaving an almost dramatic sigh.
“I have to run. This was fun,” she offered, and she reached out with her undampened hand to gently grasp Angela’s chin, caressing her face briefly before letting her hand drop. Angela waited for the what’s your name, for the what’s your number, for the let’s have a conversation about the life we’re clearly going to lead together, but it didn’t come. The redhead just unlocked the stall, and without even glancing back at Angela, headed out.
Angela blinked once. Twice. Then she finally reached out to lock the stall again, flipping down the lid of the toilet seat and slumping down onto it.
That hadn’t quite been Angela’s plan, but even she had to admit that maybe, just maybe, it had been even better.