Bullet // Choni One-Shots

Cherry Wine (Part One)

The smoke is the first thing that Toni smells.

Which, admittedly, isn't out of the ordinary for the Whyte Wyrm. Cigarettes are commonplace, and the patrons are well-known for smoking a plethora of other things under the roof of this decidedly trashy establishment. But it's wafting in from behind the building, where her boss FP says absolutely nobody is to hang out ever because shit gets broken, so Toni is forced to step out from where she's wiping down the counter and go deal with it.

(God, she hates being an adult sometimes).

The cold air is her first greeting when she opens the screen door, followed by the sight of a slender girl with red hair smoking a cigarette on the rickety lawn chairs FP keeps out there for poker nights.

"Hey, Red, you're not allowed to smoke out here." Toni says, loud at first and then quieting down after she sees the redhead flinch.

"Sorry," She hears a shaky voice answer before the girl reaches down to put out her cigarette on the sidewalk.

Something propels Toni forward until she's standing beside the girl. "Smoking kills, you know."

Then the girl looks up. Her lip is split. She has a black eye and a bruise on her cheek that looks suspiciously like it came from a slap.

She chuckles dryly, "I think I can handle it, Cha-Cha."

"Holy shit," escapes Toni's lips before she can stop it. She sits down on the chair beside the redhead, trying to asses how much damage there is. The worst of it seems to be on her face, but Toni has an inkling that there are more bruises hiding behind the girl's red peacoat and dark jeans.

"What happened?"

The girl looks away, refusing to meet Toni's eyes. "Why do you care?"

Toni shrugs, "I just do. And clearly, you're in a lot of pain, Red."

"It's Cheryl."

"I'm Toni." She says, meeting Cheryl's eyes with a soft smile. "And you don't have to tell me, but let me take you into the basement. We have plenty of first aid stuff there, and I've gotten pretty good at patching people up through working here."

Cheryl freezes up a little, and Toni worries that she's said the wrong thing. "I - no, I can't."

"Cheryl, it's really not a big deal. And I couldn't possibly leave a pretty girl injured out here in the cold, could I?"

"No, that's not it." Cheryl says. "My brother, he was - Jason Blossom was my twin brother."

This makes Toni's chest fill with a sudden ache. Of course she had heard about what happened to Jason Blossom in the basement of the Whyte Wyrm almost eight years ago. It was a tragedy that had turned into quite the legend for the Serpents - a cautionary tale about what it meant to go too far.

"I'm so sorry."

"It's fine. I'm the one who came over here."

Toni looks around, debating the consequences of leaving work early tonight. It was a slow night, as Tuesdays usually were, and Sweet Pea would be more than capable of picking up where she left off.

"I live about a minute that way," Toni says, pointing to the trailer park, "Why don't you come with me so we can get you cleaned up?"

Cheryl's eyes shone with something that Toni couldn't quite put her finger on (but it felt suspiciously like disbelief). "Don't you have work?"

Her shoulders arch in a shrug, "For a pretty girl like you? I can miss."

"I - Okay, then. Thanks."