A Date with Confession [for Daaharu]

She couldn't do this. Not now.

Realizing that she couldn't look Fallon in the face unless she reveal how much the mere mention of Fallon's sitting on her turned her into a deer in heat in the headlights and hoping the heat part could be curtailed, Mikayla quickly shifted her attention to the TV screen and sang a little pointless song in her head while focusing on all the cheery and child-entertaining lights and colors on the screen. All tactics meant to get her to think about anything but getting her face sat on by the sexiest ass she had ever set her eyes on once more and avoid feeling like she was going to throw up in the floor from nervousness -  something else that was never supposed to happen to her.

Biting down on her lower lip until it surely had a crease and jutting out her chin to avoid looking so completely flustered, the blonde nearly got the out-of-control flutter in her heart to come to an end and maybe, possibly, stopped things from happening down in her lower half before Fallon spoke up. And asked her a question she needed to answer. Doing a great job of clearing her mind by staring at the effects on screen and focusing really hard on older Mario Karts played with her brothers, Mikayla shifted her eyes to her just briefly and gave a much more genuine smirk...then swiftly returned to the screen.

Fallon sounded a little anxious too. Probably because Mikayla had gone into error mode. Great. But... she couldn't worry about that either. Just try to bring things back to normal. And never mention smothering again the whole night...

She shifted her selection over Yoshi. "Is there anyone else?", she asked, the teasing tone in her voice restored. "Nooo, you know - with the contract money, maybe I should buy a Switch and set it up so we can play at my place sometime too."

That would set things straight again, right?

Okay, things were running smoothly. Just take it a second at a time. Don't get too greedy. Every ten seconds you go without completely humiliating yourself and terrifying Mikki is a victory... Fallon had to keep assuring herself in her head that she could stay the course, and everything would be okay. The conversation was on the topic of the game now. She even caught a glimpse, out of the corner of her eye, of Mikki's adorable smirk, though she dared not look directly at the gorgeous blonde's perfect face right now. It would be like looking at the sun.

But things really were going well, and Fallon was actually able to relax a bit as Mikki chose Yoshi as her character. Fallon scoffed at the blonde's suggestion that Yoshi was the only true choice! "I think you're forgetting the greatest kart racer of all time, the fast, the sexy..." Fallon moved her cursor over to Birdo, selecting the pink...character and grinning as she did, puffing out her chest a bit with pride as she looked at her chosen racer, a hundred percent satisfied with the decision. She also really liked the sound of Mikki getting a Switch so that the two of them could play the newest edition of the Mario Kart series, too. Just going over to Mikki's place would be...really, really cool.

"You should do it! I mean, like, as long as there aren't any other important things to buy with the money..." Fallon would say. "And, like, I'd kinda like to see where you live. That'd be totally awesome!" Not creepy. Just friendly stuff! Thongs were going well. Things! Not thongs!

Boy, Fallon was lucky she didn't say that out loud. Still, she blushed a little again, just slightly.

Okay, the Yoshi thing worked. Then again, the Yoshi thing always worked. Who could deny the unifying, innocent cuteness and charm of Yoshi? Certainly managed to get Mikayla's mind off of anything that shouldn't have been there in the first place when two friends were trying to have a fun time playing Mario Kart and doing nothing that would make people totally uncomfortable... The idle musical humming to the music on the screen resumed at the hint of returning ass-thoughts, and she continued to avoid a square look into the Californian's face.

Right up until she clicked on the giant living pink living horn-thing that was Birdo. Mikayla broke into snickers that warmed the cold anxiousness clinging to her shoulders, shaking her head. "Whoa whoa. First off, how in the world do you think Birdo is fast? That mouth can't be aerodynamic," she questioned, pointing at the screen. "Plus, no way is Birdo as sexy as a glorious war steed like Yoshi." Of course, these were arguments that she didn't actually care about aside from her amusment, so she merely shook her head again and leaned back into the couch as if in disappointment as she started clicking through karts to put together the stats she liked - all speed and handling.

Her stare at the screen had just started to go blank as she focused on remembering what she wanted when Fallon mentoned her Switch idea. The Minnesotan nodded along. "Nooo, I brought everything I needed, and I want to splurge on something to celebrate getting here. A Switch sounds like a pretty perfect idea for that." Finishing up her kart selection, Mikayla's hands dropped to her legs to idly rub at a calf as she let Fallon finish, and the blonde gave her new friend a pleasant-but-pained look when she mentioned seeing where she lived.

"I dunno if I'd say I live there... live out of boxes maybe," she told her, more self-depreciation than complaint. "But I think all the setup with the company is over, so maybe I get the chance to live now and finish that up."

Mikayla obviously appreciated the fact that Fallon had chosen the game's number one top bombshell as her character, though the blonde had a few...questions and comments about the choice which made Fallon snicker, the two of them both giggling about the character selection, and largely forgetting about the awkwardness that had preceded it! Mikki seemed at ease, and Fallon was so glad that she was not freaking her friend out so much at the present moment. "You know, like, what that mouth looks like? Like a jet engine!" Fallon insisted, bumping Mikayla with her elbow! "And you know, like, Yoshi has a crush on Birdo, right? Yoshi and Birdo are always paired up and stuff like Mario and Peach or Luigi and Daisy...'cause Birdo is hot."

Fallon chuckled as she went to work trying to find the right balance of stats that she liked. She tended to go with the same sort of stats that Mikayla seemed to be going for—Speed and Handling, going as fast as she could go without just, like, flying off-course, making sure she had enough control. She wasn't the best at drifting, but every now and then she did like to bust it out, so she tried to make sure her kart could handle a little bit of that, too...Fallon hadn't played for a while, so she was kind of rusty and had a tough time making the decision. Luckily, there was plenty to talk about otherwise.

"I mean, it was, like, the same thing for me, at first! Been a few years now, but I usually just unpacked a box when I needed something out of it," Fallon would explain. Some of her stuff had sat in a box in the closet for over a year before she finished settling in! "We could, like, kill two birds with one stone. You buy a Switch, I can come over and help you unpack for a few hours, then relax and play some games, y'know. Get some cheap take-out food...maybe!"

She didn't want to invite herself over, so she made sure not to sound insistent. She didn't want to impose on Mikayla unduly. She finished choosing her kart and glanced over at Mikki, making quick eye contact which almost made Fallon shiver with nerves. "You ready to lose?" Fallon asked with a sly smirk.

"Oh God," Mikayla responded, in forced drama, at Fallon's mention that Birdo's mouth looked like a jet engine. "I'm never getting on any jets again in that case. If the engine's coming out the front of it..." With a sly smirk at her own logic that briefly passed over the Californian, Mikayla jabbed a finger at the screen again. "Though I guess that is a pretty good excuse when I beat you... the engine was propelling you backwards." Mostly recovered from her earlier... reaction, Mikayla leveled her full, charming grin on the Californian, glad things had... gotten back here. She ignored the twinge of worry that told her she needed to solve that earlier reaction before she left, and she still didn't know how she would do it after all these hours of debate.

She ignored the slightly sick feeling that gave her, focusing on keeping up with Fallon's banter. Her blonde hair bounced as she shook her head vehemently and scrunched her nose at the prospect of Yoshi and Birdo. "Hey now, the only thing Yoshi crushes are all the evil koopas he jumps on. Yoshi's too busy being the greatest war steed for this whole romance business, alright." Mikayla held up a correcting finger that dropped back onto her controller as Fallon finished picking a cart, prompting them to pick from among the tracks.

Mikayla just clicked on random, not caring much anyway and more intent on listening to Fallon about a trip to the Minnesotan's own apartment. Twisting her lightly-painted lips, the blonde mulled whether her none-too-bothered complaining had sounded as if she tried to coerce Fallon into helping her and that was why she brought it up... but from less than a month knowing Fallon, she figured that wasn't the case. Fallon was just that knd of a person... at least with Mikayla. Strangely, that warmed the Minnesotan as much as anything they had done together.

She shrugged a shoulder and nodded a few too many times, occupied and pleased by the thought, and her violet eyes flitted over Fallon's all-too-appealing silhouette splashed by the bright lights of the screen, with that dark hair framing her face too well, before she decided it was too appealing of an image to dwell on. "Well, if you don't mind the unpacking... I like that idea." She peeped back to gauge the Californian's reaction, in time for their gazes to meet.

Mikayla tensed, and she hid that tenseness between a swig of her glass of water and a clear of her throat. God, she had it bad, didn't she?

A smile formed at Fallon's words before she dropped the glass back down beside her, and she gave the Californian her best challenging look. "No, but you better be."

"No, no, no, jet engines have, like...that rotating thing on the front that takes air in! Whatever it's called!" Fallon would insist, raising her voice a little, sounding almost frantic as she insisted on Birdo's aerodynamic, jet-like qualities! "Birdo takes in air and then, uh...I guess I dunno about what happens next. She farts it out or something." Fallon's face turned red as her train of thought derailed pretty hard just there. "Whatevs, Birdo's totes gonna beat Yoshi, just wait...and Yoshi's gonna love it no matter what because of his huuuuge crush on Birdo."

The ridiculous banter fell by the wayside, then, at least temporarily, as they focused on a different conversational point: the possibility of getting together again, at Mikayla's place, to tag-team the unpacking project the Minnesotan would need to undertake. Of course, the aggressively stupid part of her brain had one thing to say: Wouldn't it be better if she just unpacked here and you lived together?

Fallon immediately shoved that notion to the back of her head, hoping she wasn't making any sort of funny face and freaking Mikki out some more. The blonde seemed to like the idea of Fallon coming over and helping her unpack. Focus on that. Build on that. "I like the idea, too. We need to have a regular, like, hangout time. Every week, at least." That wasn't too forward or creepy, right? They made eye contact just now, and Fallon blushed a little bit more, but forced herself not to turn away too quickly. She would just casually, slowly turn her head toward the screen again, smiling as her foe returned the trash talk.

"C'mon, you big green dino, let's go, then. Prepare to eat my dust."

With amusement and a desire to relax winning the battle against her nerves, Mikayla broke into a fit of giggles at Fallon's continued attempts to convince that Birdo was definitely everything like a jet engine - and those giggles immediately changed into outright musical laughter when she went right to the fart joke the moment Mikayla realized that she would have done the same exact thing. The anticipation made it funnier, and she choked on the sassy retort that she was formulating. "Oh my gosh... you went there." From delirium that was probably brought on by how mentally exhausted she was about the whole situation with her feelings as she realized, the blonde started laughing again. It wasn't that funny, but Mikayla couldn't help herself. People could enjoy fart humor when they were nearly twenty, right?

She finally got her breathing and composure back under control and took a glance at Fallon to see how strangely the Californian must have been looking at her over the flash of her immature humor. Clearing her throat, but clearly still more amused than ashamed, the Minnesotan casually leaned over to her glass of water again and took a drink, calming the overt silliness that had finally struck her.

She got it together in time for Fallon to present... a very good point. One that was doubly good, if Mikayla could ever get her words out and they could discuss maybe seeing a whole lot of each other. But, at the very least, the blonde could agree that they should make time for each other. "Oh yeah, absofruitly." Her lips hung open an extra moment, with the blonde trying to form some way to say how much she already valued Fallon as a friend even though it had only been such a short time they had known each other. Her mind wouldn't... get her to that point, though, and every variation sounded too awkward or seemed to exclude many of her thoughts and confusion about Fallon's... aggression.

So she left them alone and instantly felt internal annoyance that she gave up so easily.

Fortunately, she convinced it to pass and wore her daring all over her soft features as she took in the screen for the beginning of the first race. "Yeah, I may see some of your dust when I'm about to lap you," the blonde quietly said and smirked, as one last retort, before the countdown to their first race started, and she retucked her powerful legs into a more comfortable position.

Fallon blushed a little bit redder, a little more obviously, when Mikki mentioned that she had gone there and started cackling like a hyena. Fallon hadn't meant it to be funny in that way, not really! "H-hey, no no no, I didn't go anywhere! I mean, like, not in that way...y'know...you're so weird, Mikki!" That laughter was infectious. Fallon couldn't help but grin and giggle like an idiot as she watched the blonde laughing. She was just so...so earnest. And, okay, super duper cute. Fallon couldn't help it. Her eyes were on Mikayla the whole time, but she tried not to make it too obvious how much she was staring at the girl's beautiful face!

They both managed to calm down after a while, and Fallon followed Mikayla's lead getting a sip of water. She took a couple of deep breaths and focused on continuing with a normal conversation. Though Mikayla's word choice gave Fallon another case of the giggles. "Eheheheh...I really like 'absofruitly.' That's super cute. I gotta steal that one..." she would muse. "I guess I'll pick up a lout of Minnesota slang when we hang out, huh? But for right now...let's see if you can teach me the Minnesotan word for 'Ohhh, Fallon, I can't believe how much faster you are than me...!'"

Fallon set everything up. Grand Prix, 150cc, Flower Cup, which was one of Fallon's personal favorites. Start off with Mario Circuit, which was simple, yeah, but Fallon had this one. She watched Mikki hide those amazing gams under her body, and Fallon would just take a deep breath. Focus on the game, not the bod. Kick that butt, don't think about that butt. Fallon leaned forward as the countdown started. And then, as soon as she possibly could, Fallon let out a yell and almost leapt to her feet as her kart surged forward!

The first two races of this relatively simple Cup went pretty quickly, and Fallon didn't remember a lot of individual moments. She did remember totally owning Mikki's ass on the first one, though! "Ha! Eat it, butthead!" Fallon yelled, jumping up and pumping a fist in celebration as she took the early lead over her friend, adrenaline surging as she was ready to take the second and pretty much put this whole thing to bed already!

The second didn't go exactly according to plan, and when it was over, Fallon was trying to figure out how Mikki had managed to sneak ahead of her right at the end. "Uh huh...yeah..." Fallon would grumble. "I think I've got some kinda hacker sitting next to me right now here..."

Yes, she was weird, wasn't she? The word surprisingly stabbed at her ears.

Normally, Mikayla could embrace that she didn't stick to much that other people found fashionable or trendy, but her newly found inability to control herself around another woman or react to anything they did together with anything close to reason sure made her feel the bad kind of weird. As the blonde's snickers wound down, her stomach gnawed and shoulders broke into another cold sweat at the idea, but only a stiff warble to her voice that no one but her could notice anyway came from the wave of anxious nerves. "Absofruitly is one of those words only geniuses use, don't you know," she teased, settling back into conversation - with Fallon still trying to act like she had this in the bag.

Mikayla smirked and rolled her eyes. "No, there's nothing for that one... because that's a line I'll never need!" Straightening her shoulders with pride, Mikayla finally soaked in the dry, air conditioned apartment air as she leaned forward to get her focus and game-face on, perfectly ready to tear Fallon a new exhaust port.

...Except she couldn't get past what felt like a million items hitting her in the face the second she made any progress in the first race, leaving her almost stationary on the last few hundred feet of the first race. The blonde sank back into the chair in disbelief, to the sound of a bunch of pained noises. "Hey, youuuu had nothing to do with that! I got hardcore Karted."

The second one, though - brilliant. Mikayla popped up in her seat and brushed up her hair with her hands in victory to celebrate... just in time for Fallon to accuse her. "Oh, mmmhmmm! I'm not the one who got a Bullet Bill in like, fourth place in the last one!", she rang back, warm in her offense. "Fine, you'll just see on the next one how good I am."

And that next one - the old DK snow track she knew pretty darn well - started off magnificently. Mikayla snickered under her breath as she used a trick to jump some of the curves that she had seen her brother use before and learned herself and had a plentiful lead on the Californian going into the second lap- right up until a shell hit her on the first trick jump to send her careening, and then, when she recovered, lightning hit her on the second one.

Mikayla rang out with a groan of pain while she was brought back onto the track - and sure enough, there went Birdo right past her. She didn't even think Fallon had hit her either time... but with success having been so close and the blonde always feeling naughty when she was gaming, she slid her bare foot out from under her thigh and, with enough force to be distracting but not jar her friend, pushed it at Fallon's forearm.

Mikayla was great, really. From her genius words to her confidence and her decent skills with a Wiimote (and her obviously above average mad haxxor skills), everything about the blonde was just amazing, too good to be true. Fallon was smitten, that was for sure, and she had fallen hard for the girl, but it was obvious her advances just freaked Mikayla out, so she was keeping her hands to herself. Even when the Minnesotan had clearly cheated her way to a victory in the second round of the Grand Prix, she would just grumble to herself, making sure not to touch her friend or do anything that could be misinterpreted (or, well, correctly interpreted)...

...until Mikki did something first. Fallon had been running a great race, and had nailed Bowser and Donkey Kong with numerous shells, but she hadn't gotten a hit in on her fellow human player at all, as Yoshi was having some kind of blessed run, getting lucky time and time again, dodging green and red shells by the skin of her teeth and the most unlikely of interceptions by other racers to protect her. Fallon was behind her the whole time, getting progressively more shocked by her foe's luck...until, abruptly, it ran out, just as Mikayla went into a big jump, getting walloped by a shell-lightning combo that the uber-competitive Fallon couldn't help but snicker at as she hurtled past the reeling Yoshi, pulling off a trick jump sequence of her own—probably something pretty close to what Mikki had been attempting!—and sailing into the lead as the second lap began! Fallon wasn't going to say anything—she didn't want to mock Mikki's misfortune in any way—but the blonde pulled one of those long, strong legs out from underneath her and shoved her foot against Fallon's arm!

All it did was bend Fallon to the side slightly. It didn't detract from her driving at all. But it shook her, that was for sure. She blushed a little brighter, and she threw an elbow, trying to nail that foot and force it away from her! "Hey! Can't take the heat, get outta the kitchen!" she barked, as she shot into the long warp-jump thing and then made her way cleanly through the snow hurdles, extending her lead more and more by the second!

And then, at the bottom of the screen, it appeared. The blue shell. It was coming up on her fast—hadn't it given you a few more seconds back in the day? Wasn't there some button combo to dodge, like something really specific that ducked the inevitable doom it represented as it hovered over her for that agonizing second. Fallon's fingers pressed every button on the Wiimote, firing off an errant banana peel she had been carrying but doing little in terms of actually helping her as her kart was consumed in that big, stupid explosion, blowing her sky-high and bringing her to a complete halt!

"Gaaaaah!" she would yell in frustration, as she watched Yoshi lead several other racers by her. She reflexively swung one arm out, shoving against Mikayla's shoulder, giving her a solid bump as she tried to get back up to speed and catch up to the green dino!