Mari had never been big on sex. She was small and quiet and tended to keep to herself. Most boys paid no attention to her throughout high school or college, unless they had a "little girl" fetish, then they were just weirdos. Sex, when she had it, was a fairly machine process. One plus one plus one equals three, orgasm, done. Her few boyfriends came and went, and she didn't really mind it happening that way. She was more concerned with finishing college than dating.
She shared an apartment with another girl, but kept her half of the place sparsely furnished and clean, except for the books everywhere, stacks and stacks of them. Her closet had nothing but jeans, looser-rather-than-tighter, t-shirts, and sweaters. All basic colors, mostly dark, nothing stand-out-ish. A friend of hers actually commented on this once, noting that there was not one dress or pair of special shoes. Her room mate, Tess, even jokingly pointed out the lack of sex toys. Mari blushed and shrugged her off, not caring for the perversions that others had.
Henry was much the same way. He had a girlfriend or two, never really concerned himself with girls. Most were either too shallow for him, in which he out talked and out thought them too easily, or too uptight and feminist-y, in which they would curse him for his perverted male mind. Well, his main problem was that he was a step or two away from being a real otaku. Which is to say, he was a nerd in the extreme. His collection and knowledge regarding the Nerd Arts had very few rivals. He had posters of sci-fi movies, comics books, and cartoon for wallpaper, he made MST3K comments in real life, and he had huge collections of things: toy lines, dvds, comics, manga, and a staggeringly huge amount of porn.
The porn was mostly on his computer, but he had a few magazines and dvds laying around. A psychologist would take one look at his computer and question whether or not he was sane. If he were a suspect in a crime, the police would probably use it as evidence against him. Henry had so much he actually categorized it, and had almost every category you could think of (legally think of, he's a nerd, not a freak). His last girlfriend actually left him after discovering the collection on his computer. She was so disgusted by it, she actually said she was going to tell as many girls as possible, tainting the "Date Well" for him. He shrugged her off, too close minded for him.
Henry and Mari met at, of all places, a party. It was at the huge flat of some rich friend Henry had. This friend had a girlfriend, who was a friend-of-a-friend of Mari's (a one Tess). Henry's friend was moving out of the country, some job in Japan, and everyone had come to show him off. Henry was there almost completely by accident, only coming over to pick up a box-of-crap from his friend, but he decided to stay. Mari was there after being dragged away from her books. Tess forced Mari to be the +1, in an attempt to get Mari away from the drab and boring room.
Henry had spotted Tess from across the room and found her quite fetching. He was also struck by the short girl standing next to her. Though Tess was attractive, but she reminded him too much of his old girlfriend. He decided to attempt to possibly approach the little girl within about two arm lengths. Tess had noticed this, working quickly to maneuver Mari around towards this guy coming near them. Eventually, the two strangers were near each-other and Tess pretended to drop something, bending over and pushing Mari into the guy, causing the cup of water (or what Tess assumed was water, as it was clear and he seemed quite stable) in the guy's hand to spill. The water hit Mari, lucky shot Tess said to herself.
"I'm so sorry," Mari began, her voice slightly rasped from not being used that much tonight, she turned toward Tess gave her a look, then turned back, "guess my friend is tipsy and not paying attention."
"It's okay," Henry stammered, "entirely my fault, I was off somewhere else."
As he said this he had grabbed a napkin off of a nearby table and was padding her chest. Pressing her breast through the thick dark fiber of the sweater she had on. He stopped, his eyes went wide, and his hand took a second to follow the orders his brain was screaming. Mari smirked, actually finding it funny.
"Erhm-um," he croaked, quickly pulling his hands away, then handing her the napkin, "...sorry."
She started to pat the wet spot on her shirt, which was actually a small spill and probably didn't need it. She gave him an aggravated look (because it was a perfunctory thing to do) but widen her smirk to a smile (telling him it was alright and she wasn't really offended).
They talked for a time. That is, Henry talked, Mari more-or-less responded. She found his random and stammering talk kind of cute, in a way, and was glad he seemed intelligent. He was attracted by the fact she had a shell, which he felt was something to be broken. Well, broken may seem too heavy. Cracked, he felt would suffice.
They talked for quite a bit longer than either really noticed. So many subjects flew past, the actually lost track of what was talked about. Major, teachers, school, and the waste of money that was a losing set of sports teams. The crowd thinned a little. Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, and how they both disliked the New Galactica. The crowd was much small now, only a few small groups talking amongst themselves, Tess had vanished, apparently finding a date. The types of people they disliked, the goofiness of fashion styles, and tap dancing around the topic of sex. They were one of the last couples to leave, exiting into the darkened wilderness that was the psuedo-suburbia around the campus of the college.
They walked, made small talk as they moved through the night. Each house was the same; same design, same number of windows, same color, same garage, same lawns, same little trees. They were all connected together in one structure per block, the ground level separations were to allow traffic to cross between through building easily, and to access the a small guest parking lot at the centers of some of the apartment complexes. This area around the campus was a buffer zone of a sort, a series of apartments and flats held inside of these cardboard cutout houses. The buffer zone separated the city from the campus, creating a cluster of student housing around the education center. It was attempt to solve the problems of keeping strangers off the campus while housing the student populous that did not commute.
They both lived here in different places, but walked towards Mari's. She was nervous, very nervous. She never took guys home and didn't know what would happen. Her heart raced, but when she saw Henry's face in the glow of a streetlight or reflected by a far off light source, she relaxed slightly. His face was round and kind, sort of pudgy and not well shaven. His eyes were big and blue, a penetrating blue. It was a blue, that when you looked directly in them, you were trapped in them, seeing all of his thought processes, seeing him analyze and think, and she found that quite attractive. His lips were a little on the big side, but not all too goofy, and his nose was fairly normal. He was around 5'8", average-ish height, certainly taller than her, a little on the husky side, could stand to lose a few pounds, but nothing grotesque. All-in-all, she thought, he must spend a lot of time at a computer. She noticed, though, that she was having an effect on him, his pants tenting every now-and-then.
Henry was excited. His last relationship was a trainwreck followed by a plain crash followed by a hurricane, and it almost had a complete set of gawking onlookers. He was slightly worried though, he felt like he was talking too much, but couldn't stop himself. He was sure he'd scare Mari off by spouting too many facts or trivia on any given topic. But, she was smiling. Her smile stretched across her whole face, wide and bright. She had an oval head, her jaw was round but slightly strong, well strong for a small girl. Her hair was long a dark brown, so brown, it looked black, especially now. Her eyes were round, brown, and alert, moving from object-to-object quickly, but focusing things that seemed to matter to her. She was little, so little it triggered the "macho, tough, stupid, frat guy" part of his mind, which questioned, "dude, I wonder what it's like to make it with a small chick."
Luckily, he never listened to that part of his mind, well not-never, but he mostly kept that part quiet, mostly. Although she wore baggy, dark clothing, he could still discern most of her figure. This was a skill, as he considered it, from years-and-years of girl watching. Well, with a girl like Mari, it was actually quite easy. Her breasts were small, noticeable, but small. Her butt was small too, but had enough roundness to tell him that, like her breasts, there was something there. His earlier, accidental grope fed more into his mental figure computer.
They got to Mari's apartment, still chattering and joking. But, as they got to the top of the stairs, Mari slunk. On the doorknob, there was a hair scrunchie, bright and neon green. She went up to and flicked it, "well, looks like this one's taken."
Henry leaned against the door jam, "'tis a shame," he said. Mari's heart jumped. Should she got to this boy's place. Normally, when Tess claimed the room like this, she'd find some place to kill time, library (if it was open) or in the lobby or someplace.
"Well, I don't know where to go," she said, which was, actually, giving him permission to say: "There's always my place. It's only a two blocks that-a-way." He pointed.
She put on a hard, serious thinking face and said, "well, you don't seem like a psycho."
He chortled, "well, I don't eat my victims."
She laughed fairly loudly, and was actually flabbergasted at what to say. They left together, heading down stairs and out into the night. As they left Henry put in, "believe me, once you see my stuff, you'll know I'm perfectly harmless...or you'll run in terror from the huge nerd."
=.=.=.=.=.=.=
"Holy shiii....you weren't kidding," Mari said, in perfect astonishment, looking at the five shelves of his place, filled with figures and models. Jets, classical robots, Gundams (figures AND models), Nintendo characters, trains, Pez dispensers, and even a few girls in their underwear or some type of barbarian get up, muscled, oily, and sword wielding. He lit the room with only a desk lamp, though he had a ceiling lamp/fan. He did this so naturally, it seemed that he wasn't thinking of mood. But it did set the mood, rather nicely considering neither of them really knew how to set a mood.
