Swipe Right For Guns & Amour

Lee, 31 29
Location: East London
Height: 6'1"
Weight: 185 lbs
Job: warehouse night shift / part-time mechanic
Looking for: someone chill. no drama.
About Me: I cook pretty good. Risottos my thing. Hate small talk. Brunch is a scam. Crypto is a scam. Cops can jog the f on 🖕
Likes: football, top gear the old one with Clarkson, anything with Jason Statham.
Message me if: you like the vibes
I'm not for you if: you judge drunk tattoos or like Tailor Swift

Tia, 25
Location: Hackney
Height: 5'4"
Weight: 135 lbs
Job: freelance barista / DJ
Looking for: Chaos with boundaries.
About Me: I talk fast, sleep weird n love a good exit. ACAB!!!!
Likes: sons of anarchy, true crime podcasts, tequila, fast bikes, slow mornings.
Message me if: you’ve been banned from at least one pub
I'm not for you if: body count is an issue

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Lee: U drink coffee or just pretend lol

Tia: double expresso for me haha

Lee: Fair. You sleep normal hrs?

Tia: Define normal 🤪

Lee: idk like 2am to 10am.

Tia: Close enough ;) what was your job sry I forget

Lee: Warehouse. Nights.

Tia: look hot in overalls? 😈

Lee: mabye lol. You free Thursday? Could judge for yourself

Tia: yeah I got some time on thirsday. What r u thinkin

Lee: Coffee near the station? After I get off work? cant wait to finaly meet you

Tia: sure. what time?

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Tia arrived late. Lee was leaning against the window, scrolling through something on his phone. For all the world as if he didn't care that she was late, or might not even show. Like, whatever, bitch.

She squinted at him through the glass. He had bags under his eyes, and his face looked a bit grey, like old porridge. Well, that's nights for you, isn't it? He was a bit heavyset, like he'd been enjoying pasta and not going to the gym. There was at least a night's worth of stubble on his chin, too, but she didn't mind that. (Rawrr.)

She tapped the glass, as if he were a Betta, and he turned, the scowl around his eyes not so deeply entrenched after all. When he lightened up a little, he looked almost boyish under the face fuzz. Kind of sweet.

Tia scuttled in, as much as one can scuttle wearing big clunky boots like that. She was wearing the kind of expression that would have matched some kind of zany headwear. The only concession to "unorthodox things in the head region" was old acid-green dye at the ends of her dirty blonde hair. On the list of things she was not wearing: a bra.

And if you are wondering whether that's "dirty-blonde" or "dirty, blonde", let me clarify: it was both.

The café was half full. It was late enough in the morning that the blue collar workers had long since finished their fry-ups and bacon rolls, and, as they might have put it, "scarpered". Not so late that they'd come back for buckets of teak-coloured tea, either. Instead the place was littered with the kind of clientele to match Lee and Tia exactly: people with casual work, or unsociable hours. Or, in some cases, no work at all.

She scrunched up her nose, and he noticed that her eyeliner was smudged. A girlfriend might have wondered if it was yesterday's, but Lee wasn't well versed in the proper application of cosmetics. If anything, he vaguely assumed it was tricky, and if this was a girl who hadn't devoted a lot of time to figuring it out, well, then maybe she was more interesting than some he could mention. She wasn't wearing any other make-up.

"What's up?" he said.

"Hey," she said, sliding into her seat and shaking loose the disgusted expression.

"You're not a vegetarian are you?" he asked, with a sinking feeling in his paunch.

"What? No? Oh, God no, I just-" She laughed a little, to show him it was no big thing, not really, and added, "...the music in here is always shit."

"Sorry," he arched an eyebrow, "I'll take you to a club next time."

She laughed again, the sound lubricated and loosened her, and unlatched her tongue.

"I'll dust off my mesh top and fuzzy boots, then. And my lucky skirt."

She waited for him to ask why it was lucky, but he didn't think he had to. He enjoyed the mental image she had painted. A smile lurked among the stubble, like a lioness in long grass. Some might call it a leer, but let's not be unkind.

She scuttled (I know: again, it was, like, her only setting) up to the counter to order her espresso, which they didn't have, and another builder's tea for her swanky date, currently up to his balls in BBC News. Very sophisticated.

Once seated again, this time with her off-brand instant coffee (the granules floated on top, and she wished she'd asked for sugar) she seemed a little unbalanced. It would take her a while to find her footing, her comfort zone. In the meantime, she asked questions quickfire, as if this were Mastermind (special subject: himself). Have you ever been in a fight? What was the last concert you went to? Have you ever got kicked out of a pub? Do you believe in fate?

He did his best to keep up. (I can look after myself, darlin', don't you worry about that. Garage Nation. Yeah, there's a couple of places in Croydon I can't show my face in. I don't know about Fate, but I do believe in luck. And timing.)

They finished their drinks.

"I had a little surprise planned, actually," he said.

Her face lit up.

"I didn't want to say, because I wasn't sure you'd be up for it. Most girls probably aren't. But you're... you're different. It's pretty special. What do you say? Feel like an adventure?"

She reached across the table to grasp his meaty paws in her skinny hands, beaming. Her nails were bitten short with chipped and mismatched polish.

"My car is just round the corner," he said. "You brave enough to get in a car with a guy like me?"

Her heart raced and her eyes shone.

They left the cafe together.

"Do you like surprises?" It was his turn for quickfire questions.

She nodded.

"Crazy ones?"

She squeaked.

"Let's go."

He had suddenly and inexplicably become more handsome.

"You're not going to ask me to marry you, are you?" she said, grabbing at his arm, and already planning out what she would say to either response (neither of which could be wrong at this point).

"Ha ha! No."

"How would you like to be rich, Miss Tia?"

She rolled her eyes, but she was still smiling. "Going to sweep me off me feet, whisk me away to the corner shop, and spoil me with a couple of scratchers?"

Lee laughed again, properly this time.

"Everyone wants to be rich, silly," she said. "Even rich people. They'll do anything for another buck and a half."

Lee leaned in, his breath warm on her earlobe, which was shot through with wonky, home-done holes, and bristling with metal. He leaned in and told her his plan. If you could call it a plan. Plan is, some moght say, quite a strong word.

He, too, had something planned depending on either response. If she recoiled, he'd brush it off as a joke.

She did not recoil. He knew she was different.

They both wore their seatbelts (very law abiding, very proper) he drove sensibly, and managed not to kidnap her. She fidgeted in her seat.

When they pulled up outside, Lee said, "Look in the glove compartment," and Tia did, and let me tell you, there was practically a heavenly chorus when she laid her eyes on them.

"Grab them, then," he said.

"Wow. They aren't as heavy as they look, are they?"

Lee didn't tell her they were replicas. Not yet. He would after, of course he would. But he wanted her to feel what it was like. He wanted her to swagger and wave it around as if it was real. She had to believe it, to sell it.

He took one, and slid it into his jacket. She tucked the other into her waistband.

She'd popped some gum in her mouth to rid it of the taste of the foul coffee. You know. Just in case they did that kiss-at-the-end-of-the-date thing. She was all jaw and bony legs and fizz, and oh, he might be in love.

He hauled a couple of bags off the back seat, and slammed the door. "I'm on the desk, you're on crowd control. OK? Hang back and make sure no one else comes in. There won't be many people in there at this time of day. They'll probably squeal and get on the floor, so just encourage that. Got that?"

Tia nodded, seeming to swell and grow taller before his eyes. That's the magic of it, when you don't know they're replicas.

The key is to walk in like you own the place, so he did just that, and Tia followed his lead. He strode to the counter and started yelling.

Pity the cashier if you like. Picture how she froze, horror in her wide eyeballs and gaping mouth, even in her over-hairsprayed-hair.

Tia was doing plenty of shouting of her own. If he hadn't been rather busy, he might have admired it, or even admitted to himself that she could probably scare people even without the replica. Not knowing what absolutely batshit thing a person might do next could be pretty intimidating all on its own.

In the middle of stuffing notes into bags, someone triggered the alarm.

They ran for it, threw the bags into the car, leaped in and whoosh. Both on a precipice between laughter and screaming.

Was it too much to hope that the siren they could hear was for someone else? Surely it was too quick to be for them. Some little old dear must have had a heart attack or something.

Lee wrenched the steering wheel and they careened down an alley. Two officers blocked the far end.

They were arrested at 12:03. She turned to him, grinning.

"Helluva first date. Wanna do it again?"

Their lips met in a kaleidoscope of mild halitosis, poorly masked by cheap gum. It tasted like near-misses, almosts, and might-have-beens, with a strong flavour of riches and freedom denied.

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I used a recent headline for a prompt for this story. Yes, a couple really did meet on a dating app and then rob a bank on their first date, but it didn't go down the way I described it at all. I heavily fictionalised it. The characters are totally different, the names are different, and in my version, the woman is kooky as all get-out, and willingly goes along with it.