Commissioned Story: Danger Close, Ch. 1 (Patreon)

*A commission for Schnno*

Time: 10:15 P.M.

"Are the display cases all locked?"

"Yes."

"Are the bathrooms swept and mopped?"

"Yes."

"Have you restocked the shelves?"

"Yes I have.  We are running low on cases of that one energy drink, Trigger or something."

"They discontinued that."

"Shit, really?  Damn, I liked those."

"That's the way things work.  Good stuff gets canceled, mediocre stuff gets prolonged."

"Kinda like TV shows."

The voice on the other end of the line shared a small laugh with him.  "You sound ready as ever.  Oh and management wanted me to pass along a message."

Heaving a groan, he reached for a notepad, extricating it from underneath his drawing pad.  "What is it?"

"Make sure you keep the doors locked."

Green eyes behind rayban-style glasses widened in slight surprise.  "Uhhh...they are aware this is a gas station right?" he queried.  "We get a lot of late night customers wanting shit."

"Just use the drive through security panel for it."  Normally joking tones were all too serious now.  "If they want to pay for gas or snacks, have them go there and handle everything through the slot.  There's been a local string of break in's along the main drag, all gas stations and convenience stores.  Once 11 hits, lock the doors and stay behind the desk.  Check the security cameras when you can but if anything happens, call the police.  And make sure the back door stays locked."

Taking a deep breath, he nodded.  His nerves never were the calmest even at the best of times, and hearing this kind of advice from a senior manager was not all that comforting.  "Will do."

"And if the worst comes, just run.  Nothing in that store is worth your life."

"Will it really come to that?" he asked, stomach tightening.  The news had said that local crime rates were slowly climbing but nothing about violent ones.  A lot of breaking and entering, vandalism, and trespassing as of late, that was about it.

"Probably not," sniffed the voice on the other end of the line.  "Just want you to be careful, Rookie."

Glancing up, he saw a customer approaching the counter.  "Will do.  Gotta go for now."

"See you in the A.M."  The phone disconnected.

Jakob Ericson turned his gaze fully forward, tucking his cell phone into his khaki pants pocket and he stared across the counter, through the plexiglass divider, up at the late-night shopper.  "Welcome to Fuller's Fuel," he rattled off mechanically but with an earnest smile on his face.  "Good to see you again, Marv."

The burly Gallus male gave him a grunt, heavy caterpillar brows overshadowing his deep-set eyes.  Tusked snout quivering, he deposited the items in his large-knuckled grasp onto the counter where the automatic scanner read each one.

"Anything else?" Jakob asked.

"Two of Dromus," Marv rumbled.  "And..."  He pondered the nearby stand's items while Jakob fetched the cigarette cartons, and plopped a Emergency-Energy bottle down alongside them.  "This."

"Those aren't really that good for you," the cashier warned him.  "The safety warning on those can mess with you after a few hours in."

The trucker's small, beady eyes widened a fraction.  "Really?  Damn."  He returned the item to its slot politely.  "Any advice on what's better for a long drive at night?"  Considering the small pile of items he had acquired, Jakob pointed to a small stand beside the fountain drink dispensers.  Marv followed his finger, arching an eyebrow.  His nose snuffled more.  "Pickles?"

"The vinegar helps jolt you awake," he explained.  "Sour reacts on your tongue differently, gives it the kick.  And drinking the juice will help too."

"Sold," the Anthro grunted and gathered three large bags of refrigerated Dill pickle slices.  Even as Jakob continued to ring him up, he tore open one and downed half the contents, chewing loudly.  His eyes brightened more and he gave a small quiver, ears flopping and snout swirling.  "Well damn," he coughed.  "That did the trick!"

Jakob beamed up at the trucker and took his payment card, rang it, and handed it back alongside the receipt.  Marv consulted it, still chewing, and he glanced down at the Human cashier confused to see that he had only been charged for 1 bag rather than three.  Jakob took a plastic bag from the neaby dispenser, using it to mime shushing the larger man and giving a subtle wink from behind his glasses.

The Boar grinned, flashing more of his tusks and teeth, took the bagged items, and raised a knuckle to the brim of his faded hat.  "Y'all have a good night," he grunted amicably before he checked the nametag on Jakob's faded green shirt.  "Ericson."  He touched a big finger to his throat respectfully then turned and lumbered out.

Smiling to himself, Jakob filed the sale away and then accounted for the two cars outside using the automated pumps, due to shut off, as Gayle the manager had said, at 11.  A weird choice but maybe it was for the best.  He watched the two or so more customers roam the aisles, glancing periodically up at them in the security camera footage above his desk while he doodled more on his sketchpad.

His dream of one day making it as a conceptual artist was a slow one but he was making some progress lately, posting what drawings he allowed to pass his personal standards to be posted online on a 'mostly' protected art forum.  He was no master, mostly sticking to drawing horror movie monster concepts or suits of armor for various franchises, not having quite mastered all the tools of the trade.  Balancing this job for income alongside his community college art classes was a strain at times but he tried to make up for it with a positive attitude.

The door jingled as someone else left and he didn't glance up, although he did call after them, "Have a good night!" absently but no less meaning it.  There was no reply and he resumed sketching and then erasing a section of another blocky body shape for the given assignment.  These proportions were always off to him.

A rustling came then and a shadow fell across his desk, jerking his attention away from his doodles and back towards the obvious customer.  "Welcome to Fuller's Fuel," he again rattled off.  "How can..."  He stopped short, words dying on his tongue.  Standing before him, wearing a faded hoodie and athletic sweatpants, a tall Serpent Anthro girl loomed.  She was easily taller than him by a foot or more, almost seven feet to the top of her dusky-scaled hood.  The Cape Cobra woman's orange eyes were lazy and distant, and all she had plopped onto the register was a stick of gum, along with several cans of, to his surprise, Trigger.  Large hands were shoved into the belly pocket of her hoody, causing the garment to pull tighter and thus stretch over an athletic and busty build that made his ears redden a little bit before he jerked his gaze away and rang her up.

"Slow tonight," she hissed softly in a playful tone of voice.  He didn't know many Ophiod Anthros but the stereotype that they slurred their s's slightly apparently wasn't just hearsay.  Even so it was nowhere near as dramatic as they were often made to sound.  If anything, her cool, dry tones were almost soothing in a way.

He nodded, continuing to bag up her purchases.  "Can I get you anything else?" he asked, glancing up her lithe and powerful frame.  Her sweatpants hung low on her hips, displaying a sightly amount of scaly skin and a bit of her abdominals below the hem of her hoodie.  A long tail waved behind her almost hypnotically, careful not to brush anything and knock it over with the muscular limb.  As his eyes traveled back up to meet hers, such an alluring shade of orange with speckles of dark flecks throughout them, he saw her expression had lifted somewhat.  Scaly lips curled up into a grin down at his slender form and he saw the barest flash of pale fangs behind them.

"Sure..." she hissed softly, arching her back just a bit more.  "Number?"

"Number?" he repeated, confused.  He glanced behind him at the lottery ticket dispensers.  "You mean like...lottery numbers?"

The Cobra chuckled and it sounded almost lyrical.  Her hood flared and he saw tribal black tattoos inked into the pale scales, leading down her long throat and disappearing into the hem of the sweatshirt.  "Not unless they come in ten digit format."  She arched a scaled brow expectantly.

Realizing what she was asking, Jakob flushed hard and looked down and away from her.  "S-sorry I'm...not allowed to give that stuff away during work hours," he explained.

There came a soft tittering from her and then her paw was leaning against the plexiglass shielding between them.  Her eyes drew his like magnets, trapping him underneath her sultry gaze.  "Well...ain't that a shame," she slurred in a voice barely above a murmur.  "When aren't working hours for you?"

"I'm...not allowed to give out my schedule to customers," he explained, beginning to shrink beneath her.  "Safety and...all that."

She nodded sagely, never once blinking or breaking eye contact with him.  "Nah, I get it, Smooth-skin," she drawled.  "Shame but I guess I can just linger around till I catch you."  She leaned more heavily against the glass divider, the screws creaking alongside some kind of heavy, plastic or metallic sounding click.  "If you want me to, that is."

"I'd..." he stammered before finally jerking his eyes away from her.  His face was hot and his chest tight.  Why did he suddenly have that feeling like when you would be startled out a dream, feeling as if you were falling?  His heart hammered and his shaking hands extricated a plastic bag, fumbling to open it.  "Will that be all?" he asked, not daring to look up at her.

"I suppose..." she sighed deeply, and he felt more than heard the glass relax as she leaned back and away from him.  "Can I at least ask you your name, cutie?"

"Jakob..." he let out before he could stop himself, handing her back the bag.

He fumbled with the receipt and small handful of bills she had handed him, hearing a small odd scratching sound.  Then he handed the papers back.  While he had been preoccupied, she had  reached into the plastic bag, extricated one of the bright-green cans and popped the top, not with the attached, resealable tab, but with one long, black-clawed finger.  He watched beads of fizzling liquid collect on the dark tip, lifting his eyes along with it back up to her mouth.  A forked tongue flicked out of her jaws, lapping up the droplets of the drink.  Then she pushed the now open can across the counter towards him.

"You stay awake tonight, Jakob," she hissed, drawing his eyes into hers once again.  Her smile was all too pleased with herself.  She began to draw back, gaze pulling him along with her without ever once breaking contact until her tail pushed the door open behind her and she left the gas station.

Shuddering from the intensity and confusion he felt, Jakob shakily checked the time.  11:05.  He unlocked the cashier's counter and hurriedly crossed to the doors to lock them.  Glancing out across the empty, blackened parking lot of the station, the lights of the pumps the only source of illumination in all that Autumn darkness, he could have sworn he saw the gleam of orange, lantern like eyes still watching the store.  He hurriedly looked away and resumed doing the lockup.

Only once he had double checked all the locks, cameras, and bathrooms just to be sure, he returned to his station with a heavy, exhausted sigh.  He looked down at his sketchpad, absently flicking it to a new page.  Entirely without thinking, he began to scribble furiously, face slightly heated, and eyes glazed.  He added darker, more defined lines, sharp contrasting shades, and filled in portions more extensively than he usually did.  While he drew, he reached absently for the open can she had left for him and lifted it to take a sip.

The acidic sour rush of the half-soda, half-energy drink was bright upon his tongue and he sighed slightly in relief.  His thumb ran over the smooth, cool exterior of the aluminum and then detected a slight texture difference.  He turned the can over mutely as he kept absentmindedly adding more and more details to the drawing before finally looking away from the paper at what he had felt; small grooves in the metal like dents or scratches.

A name was etched into the can along one of the sides, rough but still legible.  His eyes went wide as he read the four letters of it.  Niki.  Almost without thinking about it, he looked back to the drawing.  Heavy shadows and scribbled contours greeted his sight, all drawing in like a whirlpool to the glowing eyes of the figure who bore the same name as on the can of Trigger.

Niki.

The drawing didn't do her full credit and, blushing hard, he sipped again at the can.  Dangerous feelings aside that he had felt from her, she really was beautiful.  And she had asked for his number?  His hours?  Women like her didn't traditionally ever go after guys like him: not scrawny but also no bodybuilder or movie star.  He wasn't tall, maybe even a touch on the short side at 5'6", had short unkempt brown hair that got rather crazy when he didn't keep it trimmed, and while he wasn't unattractive, in a world of stark contrasting mediums where you had to be dropdead gorgeous to get attention, he was most assuredly on the low-end of it.  Couple that with a late-night socially-undesirable job and he was almost a trifecta for 'doomed to be alone'.

Smiling softly, he indulged in adding more details to the doodle, sketching in a figure that the pseudo-Niki was pinning against her chest, tail wrapping around his waist and keeping her hooded gaze fixed solely forward.  The faceless Anon-style male character also faced forward, exaggerated sweat-drops going down his temple from the pressure and tightness of the hold.  Maybe they were looking at a reflective surface?  More details came from that thought until the faceless Human being held by the Cobra stood before a sliding glass door to an assortment of drinks.

His eyes panned over towards the shelves where the last few precious cans of Trigger would be before they returned to his strange, exotic, rather unfriendly looking, but enthralling creation.  A couple more lines to the eyes and it was perfect, scarily perfect.  Niki looked all too pleased in her pen and paper form, holding the Human in her grasp tauntingly tight, as if aware in her immortalization here that he was the one specifically drawing her this way.  As if fully knowing that her presence earlier would leave such a lingering effect.

Shaking himself hard, Jakob finally tore himself from the drawing and shoved the pad away from himself.  It was just some idle, if intense flirtation and a similar drawing to pass the late-night shift.  That was all.  He busied himself with cleaning up the bathrooms and restocking/organizing the shelves.  It took him only a few minutes to do as he'd already accomplished said goals to near completion before anyway, but the momentary distracted at least helped assuage his confused and frazzled mind.  All he had to do now was take out the trash through the back door and he would be free to 'relax' for the evening.  Maybe watch some DND horror stories on the store's wifi.  Anything to not think about the encounter earlier.

As he hauled the heavy bags of garbage from both bathrooms, he realized that he'd left his key back at the desk.  Not one to want to waste effort and timing, even with all the time in the world available to him, he instead just nudged the heavy backdoor open and propped it there with a brick they used during the daytime for the same effect.

A flash of movement at the side momentarily startled him but when he looked around in alarm, hand ready to slam the backdoor closed again, he instead just chuckled to see a late-night bird scrounging for tidbits.  He shooed it away, hauling the bags after him and leaving the door just barely cracked.  Nerves aside, it was thirty feet from the back of the building to the dumpsters and he knew if he hurried, he would barely be outside in the dark for a few seconds.

Those few seconds, however, were all that the watching pair of eyes needed.

***Minutes earlier***

Niki Tarrot had just finished draining the last of her cans of Trigger as she sat in the all-black shitbox car she drove.  Giving out a hissing burp and smacking her scaly lips together as the acidic sour taste lingered on her forked tongue, she tossed the can into the backseat with a neat flip, making it land perfectly in a prepared trashbin she kept there in the floorboards.  She stretched over the steering wheel, careful not to nudge the horn with her buxom chest, and watched the gas station's distant lights from her well-hidden position.

The cute Human cashier stuck out to her as she waited, idly playing with the switch-blade tactical knife given to her by her grandfather years ago from his time serving overseas.  She used the black-colored blade to clean her claws and scratch at an itch at her scaly throat, feeling bored.  She had staked this place out over the last few days, using today, the last day, to case the inside.  She had memorized camera placements, doors, and watched the clientele late into the evening to keep track of their schedules.  Perhaps her flirting with the so-said Jakob had been a bit off her usual MO but what was a heist if you couldn't have fun with it?

A flicker of movement inside caught her luminous , orange eyes and the Cape Cobra Anthro tightened her fingerless gloves' grip on the wheel in anticipation.  A second later, she saw the distant shape of Jakob emerging from the counter, shuffling among the displays and stands before temporarily disappearing into what had to be the bathroom.  Trash run.  Had to be.  The store did much the same every night around this time, although Jakob here was new to the late-shift.

Silently, the Ophiod woman stole from her car, clicking the door closed after her with trained expertise before she slunk across the darkened parking lot towards the back of the building.  She could see the dumpsters in plain sight as she rounded the corner, but nearly jumped out of her scales when Jakob picked exactly that moment to open the door.  She dove back into cover, her dark hoodie and track pants helping in the gloom to hide the flash of her long, pale colored tail.  To her utter relief, a bird took that moment to flap its wings loudly and drawing his attention as the source of her scuffling feet.

He walked towards the dumpsters and there she saw her opening.  The backdoor was just barely ajar.  In the scant few seconds it took for him to cross the thirty foot divide between store and bin, she bolted silently across the pavement, cracked the door open and squeezed her way in.  Her tail had just cleared the crack when she heard the dumpsters outside clanging closed again.  She hurried into the nearby bathroom and hid in a stall, waiting with baited breath for him to come back inside.

The pressure of her gun dug into the base of her tail as she crouched there inside the stall and her knife was tucked firmly into its holster at her right ankle.  With luck she wouldn't have to actually use either of them.  Her keen eyes spotted the flash of Jakob's dark green shirt pass the bathroom door.  She settled in to wait for a little while longer, knowing she ran little risk of being found now.  Even being alone at the office, she knew that the different gender bathrooms were still a social stigma and he wouldn't have a reason to enter the female one after having cleaned it.

Niki pondered the situation leading up to her breaking and entering into Jakob's workplace as she gave herself the slow count towards the thirty minute mark.  That would be when his nerves should be fully resettled from having to brave the outside darkness and now resuming his solitary position inside the store.  He seemed such a jumpy little guy, so maybe an extra few minutes wouldn't hurt.  A shame really, she didn't want to be doing this, but enjoying something and being good at it were two different arenas.

In truth, Niki Tarrot did not approach the life of a standard criminal with much excitement; robbing gas stations, convenience stores, and the occasional pickpocketing were honorless moments in her life and she was accumulating quite a few of them.  Her Ancestors would have been ashamed for her, stooping so low, but she also would have challenged their Spirits to do better in her situation.  Niki had tried to do everything right by the way of the law and honoring ancient traditions, although approaching a lot of it as a joke maybe hadn't helped but she thought herself still as a decent person, coming from rough means in the lower districts and escaping a life in the streets to work her way up by her own merits and hard work.  But life didn't always work out that way.

After her compulsory time after barely managing to graduate high-school, she had chosen to spend the standard six years in the public service ward as opposed to the two-year minimum in the military.  Some work-place drama later and she had been fired, leaving her out to dry.  So instead of entering into some low-paying service job, athletic and fierce-eyed Niki had gone out looking to break into the world of Anthro Cage-fighting.  She had run track and done wrestling in school, and after her seeing cousin's growing acclaim in the similar world of mixed martial arts, she had decided this was her best option.

After trusting a few sleazy managers, bad bets placed on herself, and perhaps not taking it as seriously as she should, Niki had wound up in quite a lot of debt to some of the wrong kinds of people.  After paying them off by stealing a few cars, she'd been let go, but reduced to ground zero once again, forced to start everything all over again.

She wasn't even a bad fighter, but being restricted to the underground fighting rings came with serious risks, such as not having an actual agent to endorse and produce you.  All of the costs of affording her place in the fights had to be paid up front, by her; the same could be said for medical costs, insurances, equipment rented.  Everything had a price tag and everyone was eager to collect but not so much to pay up.

At her absolute lowest point, she had a few weeks ago stumbled upon the concept of her latest source of extra income.  Which was what led her to be crouching in a bathroom stall in the middle of the night, waiting to hold up a sweet Human cashier for the money in the till.  She knew what she was doing, and also that it was wrong.  But wrong and right didn't pay your bills.  Granted, she was doing better lately, but a little more cash never hurt.

Checking to see if the coast was clear, avoiding the distant bulb of a security camera that wouldn't spot her here, Niki slithered on all fours out of the bathroom.  A glance through a stand full of potato chips revealed to her bright eyes that Jakob was once again bent over his desk, a pencil in hand and idly swirling it across a notepad of some kind.  She kept herself low, hood pulled up, and scaly paw pads silent on the tiled floor.  With the tip of her tail, she reached up and flicked off the light switch of the main room.

The reaction was immediate.  Jakob jumped and looked around the suddenly darkened room in alarm.  She could see easily in the dark, much better than he could, and so she watched him standing stock still and frozen, eyes wide, and handsome face pale as he scanned the shadowed interior of his store.

"Hello?!" he called out, voice ringing shrilly.  She kept herself low and silent.  He eventually slid out from behind the desk, hand shakily clutching a box-knife, and made his way blindly around the side of the wall towards the lightswitch.  She took the chance, slipping around the border of the room and behind the desk he had just been at.  Used to the set up of these places, she found and disabled the security camera feeds so that she wouldn't be recognizable on camera.

Her keen eyes scanned the underside of counter, easily spotting the cash box she had come for.  Locked.  No keys nearby either.  So that meant it needed a passcode.  And the only person who would probably know that was Jakob.  Looks like it would have to get physical after all.  Carefully, she crept back out from behind the counter and began stalking silently towards him again.

Jakob was halfway to the lights, back to the wall and fumbling inch by inch towards the switch.  With a careful flick of her tail, she extricated the last, singular thick block of jerky from a shelf.  Holding it easily in the prehensile limb before she reached up to topple the cup it had been inside of to land on the floor.  He jumped again, looking in its direction frantically.

"Hello?!" he called again.  "If someone is there, this isn't funny!  We are closed!  You have no business being in here!"

Restraining herself from making a snide comment back, Niki waited.  Just like she suspected, the gullible Human abandoned the endeavor to turn the lights back on and instead approached the fallen, dark shape of the jerky bag.  He reached down to pick it up, as it had landed in the glow of one of the freezer doors.

Just as he moved, so did she.  She slid around behind him as he looked up at that split second to see his reflection cast in the brightly glowing glass.  His face, nervous and terribly frightened, met her glowing eyes just behind him.  His mouth fell open, his throat constricted, and he made ready to scream.

Fast as lightning, her scaly hand clamped over his mouth and the stick of jerky bumped gently into his back, just firm enough to sell it as the real thing.  He writhed and wriggled in her grasp but she had him locked in, using years of wrestling and natural Ophiod flexibility to wrap herself around him like a constrictor.  She quickly fastened down his arms, pinning them to his side with her tail and squeezing just enough for him to feel the immense strength in it.  He gave out a muffled scream through her thick, scaly paw and she tittered softly.

"Shhh...."  She almost was trying to be soothing as she breathed the soft hiss into his ear, forked tongue tickling the lobe.  He shuddered at the touch, his entire little body completely rigid.  "Told you I'd catch you now, didn't I?" she teased.  "Just do what I say and no one gets hurt, okay?  I'd hate to actually cause any bruising on that soft skin of yours.  And boy was I right in how soft it actually is..."

He resisted more, eyes screwed shut tight and trying in vain to free himself of her binding of him.  It was cute, in a way, and she let him believe he was gaining some ground before retightening her coils and grasp just a hair more upon him, forcing him to give a soft grunt through her fingers.  He didn't relax but he stopped moving regardless, so that was a plus so far.

"You don't have to be scared," she informed him, still keeping her voice soft and gentle, if a bit playful at the level of control she had over him.  He grunted, obviously disbelieving that.  "I just want one little thing and then I'll go."

"Wutizzit?" came his muffled reply, glaring at her reflection in the glass now as she loomed over him.

Niki took that moment to admire their position for a moment, seeing how powerless he was, before she refocused.  "The cameras are off, I'm a lot stronger than you, and that little box knife isn't going to help you here.  Just let it go for now."  He shook his head as much as he could in her grasp, his soft hair tickling her scaly chin.  "Sweetheart, even with it, you don't stand a chance.  Just let go of it and I'll even return the favor and let go of your mouth, provided you don't scream."

He made a mumbled retort that sounded close to "Don't have much choice do I?"

"No, you really don't, but I'm not into the forceful stuff.  I ain't here for your wallet, don't even want the register opened."  His eyes went wide at her intimate knowledge of the store as well as her demands.  "But I do know that there is a cash box in a safe there behind your little desk.  That's what I'm after.  Your bosses wouldn't want you hurt over something this simple."

His face fell and he reluctantly nodded as much as he was able.  The box knife clattered onto the floor a second later and in return she dutifully slid her paw off his face.  He took in a deep breath, shivering still in her embrace.  His back rubbed against her chest and belly through her thin sweater and she admitted that it felt rather nice.

"Good!" she giggled in his ear and even relaxed her grip on him some more.  "You're an obedient little guy; I like that in a man."

He glared up at her reflection again.  "The police will catch you," he muttered shakily, looking somewhere between angry and humiliated, which she supposed she could understand.  Most of the people she held up like this mostly cried or panicked or would barely be able to respond.  Jakob however had fire to him.

"Doll, the police ain't caught me any of the other times I pulled this same job off," she shot back with teasingly.  "I'm careful, clever, and I don't stick around in the same area for longer than I need to.  All I need is that cash box and I'm out of your hair.  Soft and nice as it is."

"I'll...get fired..." he muttered, casting his eyes at her as if trying to win sympathy.

"Over a situation you couldn't possibly get out of minus some intense martial arts stuff?" she shot back.  "Look, babe, it's really simple and you can explain that to your bosses or whatever."

He scoffed, voice still shaky as were his hands as he clenched them at his side, unable to move much.  "I'm not b-babe to you," he tried to growl but it just ended up sounding adorably forced.  "And you can say that, all well and good, but you're screwing over my life here."

"No, I'm screwing over, hell not even that, mildly inconveniencing the corporate chain this station belongs to."  Niki met his eyes again.  "I know that cash box won't have more than a couple hundred in it for change and such.  The register won't have more than $40, standard practice since your manager took the surplus when he left earlier today."  His shocked expression made her shrug.  "I know gas stations, babe.  Sorry," she amended a moment later, giving him a small tongue-flick kiss to the ear in repayment which made him give a startled squeak.  "You prefer I call you Jakob?"

"I'd...prefer...you just leave..." the little cashier muttered weakly.

"I already walked away from you once," she simpered.  "That was hard enough.  Now I got you in my arms and believe me, it's even nicer than I thought it'd be."  She then bobbed her head side to side.  "Admittedly even I'd prefer we had met up like this in other circumstances.  Even so, I came here to do a job and no matter how cute you are, I need to get it done."

His face went bright red and he ducked his chin hard.  "s-stop it..." he whispered.  "The f-fake flirting isn't...it isn't..."

"Who said it was fake?" she inquired.  "Just because I'm some lowlife street thug holding you up doesn't mean I don't wish it was for better reasons."

"Th-then just leave!" he implored her once again.  "I won't say a thing about you being here!"

Her eyes hardened then and she tapped the jerky stick against his back a bit more insistently.  He trembled harder.  "Look," she snapped, losing a bit of her coquettish voice.  "I don't have the luxury of waiting for a paycheck.  This is my paycheck and it's time for me to collect.  Just because I'd rather have a pretty guy like you wrapped up in my coils on a hot date doesn't mean I'm gonna let you talk me out of being able to afford to pay my bills."

Sensing she was done playing around, and the serious tone of voice of her delivery, Jakob finally relaxed.  He nodded.  "Fine..." he grumbled.  "B-but can you please stop...squeezing me.  It's hard to breathe.  And...please don't shoot me."

Softening a touch more, Niki relaxed her coils and allowed him to step away from her a pace but still remain in her reach.  The heat and firmness of his body pressing into her scaly muscled physique was a noticeable absence, his head barely coming up to her well-endowed chest.  How she wished things could have been different.  "Wouldn't dream of it," she hissed.  She motioned in their reflection for him to move.

Guided by her, they walked, him still moderately held by her tail, towards the back counter.  She had to squeeze in around him from how cramped it was bending down at the waist as he fumbled with the safety key in unlocking the small safe she had seen earlier.  As she waited, her eyes cast across his desk, spotting a notepad and pencil abandoned nearby.  Just as he was standing up, holding a modest collection of bills, she had just flipped open the book to the latest page.

Her eyes went wide at the same time his did and suddenly he was lunging across the counter at her, trying to block her from seeing the stark black lines on that brilliant white sheet of paper.  "D-don't look at that!" Jakob protested.

In a flash, her tail wrapped around his wrist and jerked it out of the way, pinning it again to his side.  Her paws flashed out as well, gripping him and holding him perfectly still there before her.  Her eyes bored holes into the image on the paper before they slid back down onto his face.

The stick of jerky fell to the ground and he noticed it, although that wasn't her main concern right then.  His eyes went a touch wider and his face went momentarily from mortified shock to simple surprise before returning.  "You...weren't..." he mumbled then returned to gazing at her as she kept glancing from him to the illustrated version of what they had just been doing.  "I..." he let out lamely.

"So..." she hissed very softly, standing over him at her full height.  The cramped condition of the counter had them pressed even more flush against one another than they had been before, his face half-wedged into her collarbone.  He struggled but she kept her grip firm and he relented in utter surrender.  "Seems I left an impression earlier..."

His face went even more red than it had been earlier.  He didn't say anything in retort.

Mulling it all over, Niki pondered something for a long, drawn out moment.  "What's more an egregious breaking of store policy?" she asked then, startling him.  "Allowing a thief to break in and steal the cash box?"

"O-or...?" he implored, obviously wanting to avoid that first option.

"Giving me your number after all?"

Jakob's entire body went slack and he stared up at her in utter shock.  "I...but...but you..." he stammered before finally getting out.  "I thought...What about the whole 'this is a paycheck' shpeal?!" he blurted out, utterly red in the face.  "What about 'I gotta afford to pay my bills and some pretty guy isn't gonna stop me?'"

"That's standard stick-up speak, Jake sweetie," she grinned, flashing her long fangs.  "I wanted you to know I was serious.  I still am, but I was also equally serious earlier when I was trying to ask you out and you kept stonewalling me."  She winked then.  "You act like you ain't ever been flirted with before."

"I...really haven't," he admitted, looking away from her pointedly.  He shifted in her grasp and she pushed herself more fully against him to stop him wriggling away.

"Well that's whoever girl's loss then," Niki giggled.  "So, there's the deal then.  I admit, this store was more for a bit of an extra buffer to my wallet, but I'm not nearly as bad off as I was.  And a cute guy like you is more than worth losing out on one night's worth of cash.  How much was even there?"  She cast a quick glance over what he had pulled out and then grinned more, teasingly, down at him at his actually slightly crestfallen face.  "Oh lighten up."

Then she was releasing him, sliding back and letting him get his composure back somewhat but she refused to let him reach past her to the drawing pad.  She studied the depiction of herself on it inbetween glances at him, nodding admiringly.  He'd really captured her likeness, details almost prophetic for their current circumstance.  Reaching into the notebook, she tore out a fresh sheet of paper and passed it over to him.

"So," she hissed, leaning down to be more on eye level with him, tail curled around him to hem him in.  "What's it gonna be?"

***Jakob***

Jakob stared up at Niki's face, so close that he could taste the acrid sourness of the Trigger on her breath as it tickled his nose.  He gulped hard, glancing between the cash on the counter and the page from his drawing pad that she had pulled out for him, pen laying near enough at hand.  This couldn't be real, could it?  Was he seriously considering this?  Was there a best case scenario where she was really serious?

It was all happening so fast and her mood shifts so eclectic that he was struggling to keep up.  He was forced to categorize the possible futures he was facing.

Option A: she stole the money, he would call the police when she left, and he'd probably get fired.  He didn't see a way of explaining this situation away of making one tiny mistake and allowing the store to be robbed, and he didn't want to lie.  He had screwed up.

Option B: give his number to a known criminal and...what?  Go out on a date with her?  How was that even an option?  Then he glanced down at the jerky she had been pretending was a gun.  She could have easily used a real weapon on him, but didn't for the sake of a bluff.  She hadn't wanted to hurt him, could have done so with little effort, but instead decided on an entirely different course of action.

A small, barely heard voice in the back of his head, was shouting at him at the top of its lungs.  "It's not a choice!  Bad ending, good ending!" it hollered.

Numbly, he reached for the pen and scrawled his digits onto it.  She took it with a gleeful hiss.  "So...what now?" he asked as she studied the number, seemingly memorizing it.

"Well," she answered, tucking the carefully folded paper into her pocket at her waist and then grinning back down at him as smugly as anything.  "Assuming you didn't give me a fake number?"  She arched her scaly eyebrow and even hood slightly down at him, to which he shook his head vigorously.  "When can I call you?"

"I'm o-off...in...two days?" he babbled brokenly.  "B-but you can...text me...?"

"Two days..." she pondered, rolling the words around in the Ophiod drawl of s's.  "Just gonna have to be patient till then.  Texts will help I suppose."  She drew out the word dramatically in a drawl before she winked one glowing orange eye down at him again.  "Don't stand me up once we settle on a date, yeah?"

"You...know where I work so..." he returned, almost managing some wit.  "And I'm already worried of losing my job anyway so it's not like I'll be brave enough to quit."

"Good enough of an answer," she giggled, again in that surprisingly girly fashion despite the shredded Amazonian Cobra that she was.  "I know this isn't the way a meet-cute usually goes, but I think I like ours anyway."

"Meet-cute?" he inquired.

"How the guy in a romance meets the girl?  Sure, most of them don't result in her scaring the crap outta her little beau but you're adorable either way."  Niki brightened, eyes crinkling at the edges.  "Here's a parting gift, to make up for it."  Then she was leaning in and brushing her scaly muzzle against his cheek, hissing softly in a purr.  His face went bright red again and he froze in place.  "So?" she asked then, leaning back and sliding across and away from him and out from behind the counter, waggling her fingers in a 'phone' sign.

"I-I'll answer," he mumbled weakly.  She nodded and turned to go, heading towards the backdoor which had to be how she snuck in in the first place.  Without meaning to, he blurted out what the tiny voice in his head was screaming at him to not let go unsaid.  "Be safe, okay?  And stop robbing people.  You're...a good person..."  He blushed hard at that then gazed imploringly after her.

"Keep sounding that cute and I'll think you actually mean it," she teased, hips swaying as she walked.

"I do...You can do so much better."

Hooded head turning to look back at him over her shoulder, back door already pushed open and illuminating her dusky scales, her eyes glowed a touch brighter.  "Sweet request like that from a sweet guy like you, maybe a girl might want to."  She winked one final time.  "Talk to you soon, babe."

Then the door slid closed as her tail just barely cleared it in time and latched itself securely.  Just like that, Niki was gone.  Jakob numbly put the cash back in the safebox, turned the cameras and lights back on, and finished out the rest of his otherwise solitary shift in a haze.  His hands numbly drew her one final time, immortalizing the soft kiss she had left him with to his cheek.  His phone rang as he was heading home.

It was a text, comprising of a single emoji from an unknown number: a snake.  For some reason, his heart skipped a beat and he saved it under "Niki."

***Many years later***

"And that kids is the true story of how I met your mother."

The two Serpent preteens gaped up at him on his armchair, seated crosslegged before him on the carpet with their tails clutched in pale-scaled hands.  "That's it?!" demanded Mariah, hissing indignantly and puffing out her just barely developing hood.

"That's it," he guffawed.

Killian, his son, bared his fangs in a huge grin.  "You're playing us."

"I am not," he told them sternly.

"Then what happened next?!" they implored.

Settling back into his chair, Jakob Tarrot just gave his green-eyed children a loving smile.  "Well we haven't yet gotten into our actual first date..." he admitted after a moment of torturously drawn out dramatism.  Niki had rubbed off on him over the years.  "But you wouldn't wanna hear all that gushy stuff."

"Yeah we do!" they announced in tandem.

His smile widened and he sat forward more.  "Well all right then...one more story."