Zee (fall_of_rain) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-03-13 20:46:00 |
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Entry tags: | dorian gray, eponine, fantine, plot: switch |
Who: Max, Zee, and Hunter
What: Passing the night in Paris
Where: 12 rue Chabanais
When: Early on in the switch plot
Warnings/Rating: I don't think so? Some borderline sexiness. Some language.
12 rue Chabanais was oil lamps and a dark doorway that led up six stories into the cold Parisian night. The entire street was questionable, but within the confines of the law. Nothing tawdry happened out of doors, and anything indoors was appropriately hidden by curtains and shutters. Carriages came and went, rich black barouches and deep brown horse and traps, and men of quality stepped from them as if they were visiting a gentleman's club, and not a whorehouse. Oh, they didn't call this place a whorehouse, but it was a whorehouse. One among many along the rue Chabanais.
And Max loved it.
It had nothing to do with the sex, though Max had never been the type to be shy about that kind of thing. No, it was about the freedom to move. No chair, no pain radiating from her hip to every single inch of her body, no pain killers numbing her mind. Nothing numbing her mind, actually. She hadn't changed at all when she'd ended up 18-something France, and she really didn't feel like focusing on why the only thing that seemed to change in her was the mobility. She'd tried walking out, and it had taken Fantine less than a minute to walk her back in. Max and the other woman shared an almost perfect understanding of everything the other thought and experienced, and she knew the pain and the chair had been transferred to the Frenchwoman.
It had only taken a few minutes for them to decide that, for as long as this went on, Max would stay through the door. And Max wasn't going to argue.
So she found herself at an ornate dressing table on the sixth floor of the brothel. Below, girls were getting ready for the night, and laughter carried. Occasionally, a fight broke out, but it was quickly calmed by a maid. Tears were silenced in much the same manner. And Max didn't worry too much about anything. She'd looked this place up, and she knew it would eventually become a smutty star in Paris' bohemian revolution, and she liked the thought of it. Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart and Marlene Dietrich would all come find pleasure behind these doors, and why shouldn't she have a little fun while she was there too? After all, it wasn't like she'd be any good to anyone once she made it back to Las Vegas.
The maid that was brushing out her long, dark hair helped her slip a rich, sage dressing robe on her shoulders, and Max thanked her in French that came easy, without thought. She knew the anonymous from the journals would show up soon, and she wanted to make sure he didn't send everyone screaming. Once that was done, she'd dress for company; she definitely intended to have some.
The rooms that dotted the staircases were themed affairs, gold and lace, caves and schoolrooms, bridal chambers and asian themes. Max thought it was funny, the fact that scenery apparently mattered; it had never mattered to her. She didn't need accessories during her sex. She hopped off the bottom landing with more skip in her step than she'd had in years, and she rounded her way into the open, hectic kitchen, where the cook and kitchen maid were working on dinner for the girls, something light before they opened up for the night.
Zee had been holed up in a vacant doorway, a hat pulled down over his face as much as possible and (thankfully) a coat that was large enough for him covering his back. There had been a few people that had seemed to recognize him, but he wasn’t going to question that and end up in a worse place than a cold, admittedly stench-filled doorway. The invitation to the brothel... house... place... was welcome even if he was a little concerned with how he’d be received. Modern things he could handle, but it was only too easy to remember how different attitudes had been in the past, and he was pretty certain that he still wore his own face and not the one of a little French thing.
After the invitation was issued, Zee hurried his steps across the city’s streets, keeping his steps purposefully quick and his coat hiked high around his ears. The shadow of his hat magnified the gloom of the fading light and allowed him at least a bit more anonymity. The soft voice in his mind (there all the time now, and at least talkative when prodded) guided him with directions, but he found at least some of the turns and streets familiar, and it wasn’t that long before he was slipping around the building, finding an entrance that seemed less suited to “visitors” and more to someone that had (indirectly) been given a place to sleep in exchange for errand-running. When he found that door, he gave it a sharp knock and then slouched against the doorjamb waiting for it to open. It did, with a spill of light across his face, and he tried to give the girl that had opened it as friendly a look as he could. “Hey. Lady of the house invited me over? Said something about dinner?” He wasn’t even certain if he was speaking English or French, but she didn’t look confused enough for there to be a language barrier, at least.
Dorian Gray’s Paris home was three floors high, with high windows and narrow doors. It was crammed with bizarre things from his brief stint as a world-traveler, and even if it was familiar, even if it was supposed to be his, the place gave Hunter the creeps. It made him feel lonely and separate from the world, a time capsule, and he hated it. Just because everyone seemed to accept that he belonged there didn’t mean he could get used to servile people popping up and fetching everything as if he couldn’t get it himself. He wanted a very hot shower--a relative standard even in a cheap apartment like he and Zee had in Vegas--and he also wanted everyone to just leave him the hell alone. He left it like a thief to avoid someone calling the carriage or fetching his hat before he could get two steps out the door.
Hunter’s arrival at 12 Rue Chabanais made a few more ripples in the pond than Zee’s. He came by way of the main door off the street, quite openly and without warning, because it didn’t occur to him to seek any other kind of entrance except the main one, and he was only present on the instructions of Dorian, who told him that someone on the journals had founded a fine establishment and he had procured the address. Hunter wanted to talk to someone about this mess, but most of all he didn’t want to be alone in that mausoleum of Dorian’s.
People would not shut up about the fact he didn’t have a hat, and he’d gotten into a serious brawl with three hideously ugly men who took him for a dandy sheep gone astray from his herd. Hunter might have had Dorian’s soft body, but he healed from thumps, scrapes and cuts so quickly that Hunter’s innate rage put him on top of that fight and fended off anything more threatening than stares in the intervening distance. The valet who treated Hunter like a doll had insisted on the brocade vest, the fine silk thing on his throat, the shiny boots, but all of that was in serious disarray by the time Hunter showed up at the stout door.
Lady of the house was laughable, really, as a phrase. There weren't any ladies in this house, and at least Max felt at home in that. Anywhere else, leaving her room in her dressing gown would be shocking, but here there were a few girls in the kitchens already, pantalets and shifts as they plucked at the crusty bread the cook was setting out at the large, old wooden table. The table was marked, scratched, scrubbed over and dull dark wood, but it seated a dozen easily, and it felt warmer than the rest of the establishment did. It was into this space that Max entered, where the kitchen cook was yelling like a doxy whore (which she had been just weeks earlier) at the open door, and where the scullery maid was sassing her back, pockmarked face and all.
Zee arrived in the middle of this, and Max waved him in with a gesture that was completely modern. "There aren't any ladies in this house," she told him in plain English, years of military training making her voice completely devoid of accent. With her long, dark hair brushed out, the appropriate dressing gown, and a face absent of makeup, she fit the part much better than he did. But it was comforting to see someone who was so completely 2013 American, and she nodded toward the table. "Sit," she said, noticing that the girls just scooted over, as if a pierced, tattooed black man hadn't just walked into their presence. Interesting.
There were whispers over Max's shoulder, something about someone without a hat, and she left the kitchen to see what all the fuss was about. In a place where women didn't cover their rouged nipples, a lack of hat hardly seemed worth whispering over. But the sight that greeted her in the doorway explained it slightly.
It was too early for clients, firstly. And the man at the door looked dirty and rumpled, which wasn't the case with the normal patrons of this place. Max had (originally) assumed that only scum and filth would visit a place like this, but she'd been wrong; those people didn't have the money for this house. And the man at the door (young, almost a boy in a strange way) looked wealthy, but ill suited to it. "Lui permets d'entrer," she said imperiously, her command voiced to the Moor answering the door (and serving as security, even though they didn't phrase it that way). She nodded toward the sitting room, because there was something about the man that looked modern, and she took him for a misplaced Las Vegas inhabitant on sight, even if the servants only saw an oddly rumpled member of the upper class.
When the girls didn't kick up a fuss about Zee being there in the kitchen (like he belonged there somehow), he threw a smile at Max that bordered on a grin and slid into a seat at the table. Still too concerned for a wide, carefree thing, but it was easy enough to see how that grin could come. He was about to say something to her, but the whispers started and stole her from the kitchen before he could, so he turned his attention instead to the humble meal laid out on the table, helping himself without even a sideways look from anyone else. He kept to himself at first, but with that same easy smile eventually silently charmed the hardened cook into nudging another plate of food his way. He worked his way through that plate, waiting for Max to return from wherever it was she had disappeared. He'd heard the whispers, understood them, and wondered if the man who dared go out without a hat was a normal occurrence, or if it had anything to do with whatever found him in Paris.
Hunter could be Dorian Gray in this world and yet still be exceptionally Hunter. His gaze was level, even low at times, rather than airy and without concern. He moved like he was ready to fight, knees kinked and heels down, weight shifted keenly forward and chin out. The man at the door got more attention not because he was dark but because he was big, and with a widened stance and a wild dog air to his eyes, Hunter looked fully ready to brawl with such a man without hesitation. The fact he would almost certainly lose did not seem to occur to him, and when Max interfered with her sharp order, he gave her his attention instead. He didn’t change his stance even the slightest bit, the wash of soft brown hair taking some of the edge out of his gaze, but that was all.
Hunter moved cautiously around the doorman, refusing to give the man his back, and moved down the hallway with purpose. He stopped under the warm flickering light of a copper-shielded lamp to survey the inside of the house, and the beauty of Dorian Gray presented itself to the world without fanfare. The spare, precise structure of Hunter’s face remained the same, only enhanced: the line of cheek rising under the faintly exotic shape of eyes the color of new gold, the flush of health undiminished even with the blood and dirt left behind by his mishap on the street. His skin, usually raw in the sun and hammered by work, was soft and beguiling, the color and lines inviting touch the way the gentle curves of nectarine beckoned on hot days.
The man without a hat was without poise, without trust, but with such a face and such fine clothes (specks of emerald green thread, buttons carved of imported pearl) the world could be his oyster if he had but stretched out his hand. He glanced to one side at the subtle hallway that provided a servant stair to the kitchen, then let his eyes linger fully on Max’s face. “Dorian said you’re from the book,” he said belligerently, in a beautiful upper range voice that would have done credit to the colored glass of magnificent churches.
Max was perfectly willing to accept that the man in the sitting room was beautiful. She liked her men more scarred, less physically perfect, but she had eyes in her head, and she could appreciate an attractive man as much as any other woman, even if he wore rumpled clothes and didn't have a hat. There was something dangerous about him that she didn't trust, like he could reel someone without them even realizing they'd been hooked on his line. Maybe Fantine was too jaded. Maybe Max was too jaded. For whatever reason, that siren song made her step back instead of forward.
But then the hatless stranger spoke, and Max bellowed a laugh that was completely inappropriate for any woman at the time. But then she wasn't just any woman, and as a woman in possession of property and money (in a time when such things only came at the hands of a dead husband), she was forgiven many things, even inappropriate laughter. "Dorian? The asshole that refused to help me because of his precious reputation. Nice," she said, and there was something to her tone that said she might legitimately like assholes that were just that bold. "And now he sends you here for help." She laughed again, under her breath this time, the smile still on her features. For Max, everything was entertaining with the new advent of mobility. "Alright, so I have someone hiding in the kitchen. I would invite you in there, but the kitchen staff would drop everything to look at you and wonder about your hat, so maybe we should bring the party in here."
Zee would have been happy to stay in the kitchen with the warmth and the girls, the simple, filling food. He was prepared to settle in for the long haul, but then the voices filtered in from the other room, and one was more familiar than it had any right to be. He found himself pushing away from the table without a word, the eyes of the cook and the girls on him as he headed for the door. One of them said something about maybe not wanting to head out of the kitchen, but he ignored the soft words and aimed himself for the door that led farther into the house.
Max's laughter echoed before he reached the door, and Dorian's name was easily audible. Zee pushed the door open and the smile that had simply been warm before spread into that threatening grin when he saw who else was in the room. "Party's already here," he said as he leaned against the door, looking at Hunter. He didn't lose his smile, but there was a question of something in his expression as he looked. He could tell that some things weren't quite the way they should be, but his fingers curled loosely with the desire to touch. "You doin' okay, H?"
Dorian was so full of himself that very little actually made it through his conviction that he was of course perfect and the problem was not everyone troubled themselves to notice. Some subtleties like gangrene guilt and bloody secrets were deep down underneath, but Dorian did a better job of burying those than anyone else Hunter knew. He didn’t bother to defend the man, or to suggest that he wasn’t here for help. “He’s an asshole all the time. You’re not special.”
Hunter looked down at his clothing, which was in disarray. There was what should have been a gut wound low on his right hip, but it didn’t hurt him at all, no mark and just a dark stain in the dirt. Hunter assumed it had been just a scratch because he didn’t think Dorian’s curse through, standing there in the unfamiliar house, and while Dorian was always at his ease, Dorian always sure he could be touched by nothing, Hunter’s aggression bristled into something feral at the world that dared try it.
At the new voice from the staircase, Hunter whirled, and the anger drained out of him immediately, leaving behind only confusion and youth, like the sweet statues left behind by the old Italian masters. “Zee!” he said, surprised. Dorian hissed in his mind, a low cautionary tone that was unlike anything else the man had yet said, not forbidden but only a warning. Hunter barely noticed, turning entirely from the kind wash of the warm lamp and stepping forward in Zee’s direction. “You’re here?”
Max looked from one man to the other, her expression perking for a moment. She nodded toward the stairs a second later. “Grab the second floor sitting room for your reunion. I'll make sure it doesn't get used," she offered, because even in a brothel there were some things that wouldn't escape notice. With that offer, she turned and went to tell the servants to give the room wide berth that evening, since the gentleman had business to discuss with the new kitchen boy.
Zee blinked in surprise at Max’s words, angling a raised eyebrow at her once her meaning sunk in. He was about to argue, to insist that they didn’t need a separate room, but then she was gone and he was left with Hunter under the strange, dim glow of the lamps. He took a moment to just look again, the shadows hiding some of the strangeness, the not-quite-right of something about Hunter, and then he stepped closer to completely close the distance that had shrunk part way with Hunter’s own steps. “Yeah, I’m here. Got a new one in my head after I told that old one to take a hike. Ended up with someone French again.” He paused, his voice quiet in the closeness between them. “Was gonna tell you first chance I got. Didn’t think first chance would be here. Or like this.”
His hand rose to brush fingertips over the silk at Hunter’s throat, expression a mixture of amusement and confusion at seeing him in Dorian’s finery. “Messed up seein’ you in his things.” He paused, fingers moving to press the fine fabric at his shoulder. “You look good. But... I’m not used to all this. It’s different.”
Hunter looked after Max when she went and said a rough, “Thanks,” that was meant to take some of the sting out of his behavior before, like an apology without admitting apology. She was gone quickly, however, and he didn’t have to linger on the problem, turning his attention fully to Zee where the man stood. Hunter had taken Dorian’s place in this world and knew some things intuitively without the man’s prodding. He could tell Zee was significantly worse off than he was, just judging from his attire and Dorian’s virtually bored reaction to his presence coming up from the kitchen.
Familiar uncertainty and distrust flickered in Hunter’s eyes. More things about Zee he didn’t know. Wouldn’t he have told Zee if Dorian had gone, without pause? Hunter knew it wasn’t a secret, but it felt like one. He felt guilty being Dorian, taking the comment in the wrong way. Hunter wasn’t aware that his appearance had undergone any change, and he gave Zee a faint smile that might be worn by ethereal angels on high archways. “Doesn’t feel good. You think it’s gonna be over soon?” Dorian hissed quietly again in his ear, and Hunter slid a hand into Zee’s and pulled him in the direction of the room Max had indicated.
Without even realizing it, Zee was cataloging Hunter’s appearance even more. The weave of brocade, the shine of silk, even the individual buttons - there were long-deep memories that pushed themselves automatically into his mind of parents that would give anything to pick Hunter over, take every last thread of wealth off of him. The thoughts were filled with flat disgust, the opinion of a child grown past his family, and that, at least, was something that Zee recognized as familiar. Those thoughts were chased away by a small shake of his head and the soft French apology from where Emile was otherwise quiet in his mind.
Zee caught the uncertainty, the distrust from Hunter, and it made him frown in confusion. Hadn’t they started to get to a better place? There were the Valentines, and Zee had taken that as a good sign, but the old familiar expressions were back, and he wasn’t quite sure how to deal with that. It didn’t stop him from curling his fingers around Hunter’s, though, long and warm now that he had been inside found enough time that they’d had a chance to lose the chill that had set in out on the streets. “I dunno,” he said as the two of them climbed the stairs, looking up as Hunter led a step or two ahead of and above him. “It’s usually only a day, yeah?” There was a little hope in his voice, but it was dampened by still wondering over that flicker of expression.
The room they eventually found themselves in didn’t make much of an impression on Zee, his attention still focused on Hunter. He had a general impression of age and wood and comfort (relative as it was), lamps turned up to spread their admittedly dim light through the room, leaving some shadowed corners. “You okay, H?” The question was delivered with that same half-confused frown, worry thick behind the words. Something wasn’t right, and he wanted to help. To push away that uncertainty, to find the words he needed to say, to... die on the barricade? He frowned at himself and shook his head, blinking.
There was nothing of Hunter that was blind trust. He could cherish the valentines and hope for good things, but there was always cold dark snow sunk now in his heart, wet rocks echoing doubts and uncertainties into his mind. He could feel Dorian paying more attention to the room than Zee did, weighing its finery in a general way that took in no great detail but brought his estimation of the house on Rue Chabanais up a little higher. The privacy, the doorman, the furnishings, these were all to his standard. They were to Hunter’s too; he could not help it. He caught himself wondering if anyone would be sent up with tea. He reminded himself that no, that was not what this room was for.
“A day, but then we reverse. Dorian and I tried it.” Hunter had complained until Dorian gave in, and then Dorian became worried when he realized how little in the way of earthly possessions were available to him out there in the desert. Hunter let go of Zee’s hand to make sure the door was shut. “I hate this city. People make Paris out to be some kind of love nest, a bunch of thieves tried to kill me on the way here. Some romance.” Hunter moved around a hanging drape, checked to make sure the room was empty, and then turned back toward Zee. He was perfection in the small space, a pale, perfect ghost in the darkness.
Zee watched as Hunter looked around the room, and his hand felt cold and vacant the instant that Hunter dropped it to move away to close the door. When he turned back, something in Zee’s stomach went hot and wanting and tight. He wasn’t listening to what Hunter was saying any more, instead just watching as he moved and spoke, though the realization that Hunter had been attacked did register. “Are you okay?” The frown etched itself across Zee’s face, worried and unaware of how much of their alters they had taken on with the hotel’s switch. He had been about to tell of his own encounters in Paris, the hiding off to the side in a cold doorway, the gratefulness about being offered a plate of dinner in a warm kitchen, but that was chased away from his mind as he focused more on Hunter.
Hunter stepped back instead of forward, assessing Zee’s expression and experiencing a small twist of satisfaction that tasted sweet at the back of his tongue. Attention. Having it felt nice. Undivided attention, even better. “I’m fine. They just messed up my clothes.” Hunter stepped across the room, his tailored shoes and straight lines soft on the thick rug. He bent his knees and sat down on a brocade pouf made to match an armchair, and the color made the snakescale green in his vest stand out. It was intentional and yet without calculation. Hunter didn’t even notice he was doing it. He looked down, moved the vest, and smoothed at the fabric of his shirt, which was snowy except where the dirt had reached it over the lines of the vest, and where rust stains had dried out. “What kind of person are you here? You don’t look good.”
The question hung between them before Zee cleared his throat to answer it, distracted still by the image that Hunter presented. “I’m fine.” It was a repeat of Hunter’s own words, though for a different reason, misunderstanding what exactly was being said and asked. “I got a little dude that doesn’t got a lot. Lady that owns this place normally gave him a job, so I hope he’ll be good. Figured I could handle this side better than he could be in Vegas though.” Even if Zee did think that there were maybe some things on the Vegas side of the door that might help Emile, he wasn’t going to force him through. Zee smoothed one hand down over the front of the oversized coat he wore and gave Hunter a smile. “Think I’ll do okay here until we all get switched back.”
Hunter knew what it was like to be small without a lot. He’d grown up that way. (Or at least... he knew he had. He didn’t feel it in his bones the way he had before. Now he felt... somehow secure, in that way, like before had been a tightrope and now it was a nice walkway with a fat net below.) He let his fingertips linger on the hem of his shirt and the careful lace clustered against the seams. “I guess that makes sense,” Hunter admitted. “I never really worry about Dorian. He doesn’t worry about anything either.” Hunter leveled a pair of soft amber eyes in Zee’s direction. Dorian had an alabaster beauty, a perfect impression of god-like youth, but Hunter’s beauty was different and here, it enhanced who he was in an entirely different way. His lips went soft and pink and his eyes were searching. Here Hunter’s beauty was vulnerability, health and heart. Dorian could be beguiling, but Hunter was alluring. “Hey. Come here.”
There were more things that Zee wanted to say. There had been more, at least, but with the lifting of Hunter’s eyes, the catch of lamplight glow along his skin, the words dissolved and all Zee could do was stare. Thoughts of Las Vegas, of Emile, of the low-grade worry that had been in his mind since he ended up in Paris, it all melted away and Zee answered the summons, crossing the space between the two of them. He got close, smelling slightly of the Paris streets and with an intense expression in his dark eyes. Picking up a thought from earlier, he murmured: “Really are looking good tonight, H...”
Hunter snorted unkindly. “I’ve been rolling around the mud with thieves, Zee.” Yet he smiled at the compliment, taking it in the proper way. Hunter was still sitting on his footrest in front of a hearth banked to protect its low coals, and he curled an arm around the back of Zee’s knee, leaning the crown of his skull against the other man’s hip with a low sigh. “I hate Paris. I bet Dorian would hate it too, if he were here.” That was probably stretching it, but Dorian said nothing. At his age one place was much like another.
Zee’s fingers found Hunter’s hair, and he threaded through it with a smile. “Don’t care what you’ve been doing. Still look good.” He huffed a soft breath of a laugh and shook his head at himself. “Always think you do, though. But there’s something about tonight...” He didn’t follow that thought, laughing more at the talk of Paris. “It’s not that bad. Better now that I found you, but even before. Just a city.” His voice dropped into something warm and quiet, and his fingers found the edge of Hunter’s ear, tracing along the shell of it with a touch meant for delicate things like fine porcelain cups or budding leaves. It was a touch of awe, and nothing like the way Zee had touched Hunter in the past, both recent or far.
Hunter let out a breath that traveled through his chest and throat, soft and high. Here his hair was just as long, loose, but held with carefully applied shine that smelled like citrus and violets. Where Dorian was dark, Hunter was fair, and his hair and eyes held a quiet glow, banked coals. Hunter’s movements spoke of patience, of calm. Such things came with age, and in the places where he really belonged, Hunter didn’t have those things. “What about tonight? You’re looking at me more. You like Dorian’s pretty clothes?” Again Hunter lifted fingertips newly pale and traced the circle of a button carved soft and round. “Hard not to.”
“Don’t get a chance to look at you much. Always on different sides of the clock.” He twisted a piece of the gleaming hair around one finger, careful to be delicate and not to pull too hard. His thumb smoothed it flat and he smiled at the band it made over one tattooed segment of finger. He never quite felt a distance between himself and Hunter, not usually. Not when they shared the same apartment and wore the same sort of well-lived-in clothing. But now, with the way the fine material sat on Hunter’s shoulders, the easy sort of way he bore it, the way the light seemed to gravitate to every feature and bit of rich gilding, Zee felt a gulf begin to open. One that began to hint that the two of them were worlds apart. Zee frowned, trying to chase the thought away, the feel of it foreign and strange and laced through with an insidious ache. The frown was still there when he continued. “They’re your clothes, yeah? D’s built different than you, an’ there’s no way he’d fit those the way you do.” He paused, eyes tracking the arc and curve of Hunter’s fingers on the button. “It’s not just the clothes, either. You just... look good tonight, Hunter.”
“There are not many good clocks here,” Hunter commented. “And what there are of them, I don’t like.” Being Dorian Gray was a quiet, insidious thing. All his words were jewels of paste, dropped to glimmer for a moment and then cast aside without any particular care. Hunter took absolutely no notice of what he was saying, only what he wanted, and he clung to any shred of attention and adoration available to him, as he had nothing to hold himself up otherwise. He waited for a little while, relishing the silence in a most urbane and unnatural way. Hunter’s usual uncertainty and impatience was not in evidence. “They are mine,” he confirmed, dropping his fingers now to run his thumb over the neatly embroidered hem of the waistcoat. It fit him absolutely perfectly, and when he breathed it seemed to breathe for him. Hunter cast a look up at Zee full of promise, and then took his hand in uncalloused fingers. He tugged downward toward the floor. “Do I? Tell me about... about how I look.” He smiled a seraphic smile.
The lack of callouses on those otherwise familiar fingers caught Zee’s attention for a fleeting moment. That wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. Hunter was meant to be hard work and the scent of horses and the outdoors, the grit of dust caught in worn fabric. But the smooth fingers were tugging, pulling, and Zee willingly sank to the floor next to the footstool where Hunter was holding court. His trousers were still dusty with mud (and other unpleasant street-grime) at the hems, but he ignored it as he folded up long legs to ease into as comfortable a position on the floor as he could find. A position as close as possible to Hunter’s footstool. His jacket pooled around his hips, overlarge and dingy, and creating a cave of material for the rest of his body. He seemed to shrink inside of it somehow, smaller than he was when he was standing and had his height to work for him. His hat was still on, flattening hair that threatened to escape at any moment, but he simply turned it around backwards so that it wouldn’t impede his looking up at Hunter. He caught a passing thought just long enough to murmur “something’s not right”, but then he blinked and his attention shifted again back to the warm honey eyes that were watching him.
“Bel homme,” he whispered, the words coming natural and seeming the best way to describe the vision in front of him. His voice stayed low and warm as the banked coals in the fireplace. “You’re different than usual. Not just the clothes. You don’t smell the same. An’ there’s just...” Zee trailed off as he stared. He was searching for words, but it was hard to push past the desire to simply stare and smile. “Fuck, but you’re beautiful.” It was a comment meant more for himself than for Hunter, but the small distance between them carried the words easily.
The hat amused Hunter, and he ran his blunt-ended fingers over the stained hem where it pressed against Zee’s head. He wasn’t bothered by the smell of the streets, too caught up in the sensation of being admired, of being certain of his power. It was a heady feeling and sweeter than any drink. He sat there and savored it for a little while, tracing the line of the hat, and then the curve of ear and the long, engaging neck. “I feel better than I did earlier,” he said, vaguely. “I didn’t like being in that house all by myself. It wasn’t really my place. It was dark. Depressing.” Hunter’s fingers found pressure and eased indentations into the cool skin where it curved into Zee’s shoulder, gentle but exploring. “Then people tried to jump me. Me. Like you could do anything to me, right?” He hummed to himself, singing a song only he could hear, and his eyes glowed like tarnished gold as he gazed down into Zee’s face. “Nobody can hurt me here. It’s filthy but... I like that part.” Hunter’s perfect carved lips spread into a silk smile. “And I’m pretty, you said.” The smile widened.
Zee gladly allowed himself to be touched, smile lingering on his face as his eyes, half-lidded, followed the motion of Hunter’s hands as best as they could without moving too much. His shoulder dropped, lengthening his neck for any extra touch of fingertips, and sighing when he received it. A stormy frown crossed his face at the thought of anyone trying to hurt Hunter, and tension instantly hardened the muscles of his neck and shoulders. “Who was it?” Memories of fights flooded his mind, the reasons why his own knuckles were scarred beneath and around the tattoos, and if Hunter only pointed out a target, he would take his anger out on them. The reassurances that no one could hurt Hunter didn’t do much to ease the anger or the tension. “Don’t matter that no one can hurt you. It still ain’t right.” His voice slipped into something between privileged and poor, between modern and the antiquated streets outside. His anger was still obvious, and his next words were still sharp with it, even if the tone didn’t match their meaning. “You’re always fucking pretty, Hunter. Just because you don’t realize it don’t make it any less true.” He finally dared to reach out, fingers finding that perfect curve of Hunter’s smile and touching the fullness of his lower lip. “Always,” he whispered, “always so fucking pretty...”
Hunter waved an elegantly groomed hand in the air to one side, the ghostlike flickering of his fingers suitable to the heavy curtains and hushed privacy despite the distinguishable activity creeping through the walls. He put on a flippant voice just for the occasion. “It doesn’t really matter. I don’t care. Some jerks after my clothes, I guess. They ruined my shirt.” He smoothed down the vest that hid the dark stain in the low light, and then in one fluid movement slid down off the stool and settled on the floor next to Zee, weight on one hip and eyes coming ever closer. He boldly pressed forward into the admiring touch, gold-dusted lashes keen. “Dorian says you’re different,” he said, in a hushed voice that seemed not to have much care as he tilted the generous set of his lips against Zee’s chin. The suggestion of kiss seemed to be a challenge.
Zee was moving his hands as soon as Hunter started sliding down off the footstool, ready to catch him if he was falling. But then the movement stopped, and Hunter was even closer than he had been. Thoughts of ruined clothing and thugs on the streets were pushed swiftly from his mind, replaced by the underlying buzz of thoughts of all the little details that he could see this close up. “Different how,” he managed to ask before his eyes were locked on lips, skin, eyes. The suggestion, the challenge of Hunter’s mouth so close caused Zee’s fingers to tremble and then rest lightly on that rich vest. He wanted to push forward, to claim the mouth that was right there, but with a sigh, he knew that it would be too improper, too forward.
But.
He was right there, and so lovely, and how could Zee not? He turned toward the press of Hunter’s lips, searching, and finally finding. With a shaky sigh and eyes closed, he pressed and pushed, wanting just a little more, a kiss from him.
There was not enough light in the room to make out each lash, just the profile against the perfect cheek as Hunter twisted closer. His long body moved together in a corkscrew of knee, hip and shoulder, and his fingers started to trace enticing lines that never stopped into the hollows of Zee’s shoulders and chest. There was a lot of material, and he looked up into Zee’s face, pausing to sink into the kiss.
It was brief. The rough flat of his tongue, the sweetness of his breath punctuated with a harsh mercury edge, and then he was pulling back enough to make a sound meant to illustrate the places this could go. Hunter put his weight against Zee’s chest. “He says you like me because I’m him right now. But I don’t care.” He would later. But not then. He skipped further foreplay and put his hand up the inside of Zee’s trousers.
The kiss was too brief, and Zee found himself leaning in even more to attempt to follow when Hunter pulled away enough to speak. Hunter’s hands were more than enough incentive for Zee to go nowhere other than closer. He matched Hunter’s sound with a needy one of his own, but then he was frowning and shaking his head. “When’re you two gonna get it in your head that I’m into you, not hi--” His words were choked off at the touch of the hand, and Zee’s fingers wrapped tight around the slim forearm, wrinkling the shirt with a palm that had gone damp. He didn’t push it away, didn’t pull, just held the two of them there. “What’re y’ doin’? Y’ sure?” His tongue had gone thick as he tried to stay clear-headed, even though he wanted what Hunter was offering and far more.
In the quiet of the room, Dorian’s influence was paramount. With such malleable warmth in his hands, Hunter did not hesitate. “Don’t pretend it’s not what you came for,” Hunter said, and his smiled a smile that wasn’t quite his own, too beautiful and terrible at the same time. “Hurry up, or I might find someone else. Bet I wouldn’t have to look far.” That was not something Hunter would have said either, but the words were clear in the hardened amber of his eyes as he thought them aloud and delivered them in his own voice and his own way. Hunter’s own wants combined with the expectations of the person he was in that moment, and the result was unnatural and perfect at the same time. Hunter couldn’t move his arm--Dorian was immortal, not godly--and so he abruptly flexed all five fingers into the warm flesh beneath the thin cotton, buying himself a grip on the inside of Zee’s thigh and leaning forward with teeth and intent.
Zee’s words caught on his tongue, stumbling and trying to find what he needed to argue that it wasn’t what he was there for, but then his entire body was caught between hot and horrified cold. “Someone else?” He reeled at the the thought, the threat behind it, panic settling low in his belly as it tried to layer over the desire that was still there. “No,” he insisted, hand now pulling Hunter closer, breath escaping in a messy sigh as he did. “Don’t go lookin’ for others.” Demand and plea in the same voice, cut through by a groan at the press and flex of Hunter’s fingers. His thighs splayed wide as his own fingers gave and relented, letting go of Hunter’s wrist, the fine fabric of his shirt clinging damply to skin with the palmprint Zee had left behind. His hands again found the brocade of Hunter’s vest, fingertips rough enough to snag against the silk weave of it before they moved to the delicate buttons, finer by far than anything on Zee’s body in the moment.
That was exactly the response Hunter had been looking for, and his eyes snapped in triumphant humor. “You know where we are? This is what this place is for. Finding others. But I found you. Aren’t I lucky?” Hunter was never the aggressor in any relationship, but the dark room and a selfish confidence not at all his own took him to strange places. As the wet fingers loosened his arm’s restraint, Hunter gave a pleased fox’s smile. “There you go,” he encouraged, almost cheerful, rolling over his hip and extending his reach.
When his arm was freed entirely, Hunter hummed happily in the hollow of his chest before he rose up on his knees and flattened Zee without fanfare, two palms high under the other man’s collarbones. Zee was considerable length and shoulders bigger than Hunter, and Hunter always looked to him, in search of interest or response, but not this time. This time Hunter pulled off Zee’s clothes without one ounce of wallowing hesitation. He reached out and pressed his fingers and thumb into the set of Zee’s jaw just where the roughness became a soft imprint of cheek, and with the illusion his soft grip could keep Zee from struggling, he used his other hand to pull the hat off and throw it aside. Hunter paused for a very hard kiss, even shorter than the last one, and sat up again to twist Zee’s tunic up and throw that into the pile as well.
Finding actual words was getting more and more difficult, even with the extra French rolling around in the back of his head. “Didn’t come here for that,” Zee managed to argue, but it was quickly chased away when he found himself flat on his back, staring up at Hunter. Something about it was new, different, maybe even strange, but with the way Hunter continued to look down at him, he quickly forgot any concerns he might have had. Nor did he fight the removal of his clothes, only colliding with Hunter’s hands when he tried to help. The removal of his hat and shirt left his hair half pressed to his head and half standing on end. And he didn’t care at all. He stilled, though, at the press of fingers into his jaw, because it felt like a claiming sort of grip, and one he didn’t want to refute.
The kiss left Zee breathless and warm, even with his quickly disappearing clothing, and he finally gathered himself enough to push back. His fingers caught rough and almost clumsy (but overall greedily) along the delicately stitched hems and seams of Hunter’s clothing. “You too,” he demanded after the kiss. “If we’re gonna... you too.” He clarified by pulling Hunter’s shirt untucked from the waist of his trousers, bunching it in his fingers until he found soft skin and then pressing an open hand wide and low on Hunter’s side. The feel of it was everything his mind had hoped for, and if wanted maybe a little less hardness to the kiss, a little more lingering, he wasn’t going to complain now, not when Hunter’s attention and affection (and hands) were on him.
Hunter chuckled. “Me too?” It was mostly air, warm air spread through his nose and kept there for short bursts of almost humor. He let Zee do what he wanted with his clothing, though Hunter wanted more and he wanted it faster. Hunter slid his hips back on his haunches without putting distance between them, quite blatantly making full use of the friction that was all cloth and scent. “You never see me anymore. It’s not like before. The apartment isn’t like the old motel rooms.” He moved again, letting Zee bear his weight and literally pressing the other man’s spine flat into the carpet with legs alone. Each sentence is punctuated by a shift of hips, intense and yet... angry. “You don’t come see me. You don’t lie down. You don’t do what you used to.” Hunter leaned close and curled his chest into Zee’s side, a considerable feat of flexibility as it made his hips parallel with Zee’s and his shoulders perpendicular. Enticement. “Don’t you miss me?”
Zee’s fingers lost their hold on Hunter’s clothes during the long, slow, burn of friction from Hunter’s hips. The pressure and weight caused his breath to stutter and his eyes to close for a moment while he tried to absorb the words. When he looked up at Hunter again, there was a hint of desperation in his eyes of more than one type. “Because I don’t know what you want!” Soft, but intense, his own words were strained and on the verge of something injured and on its way to broken. “I want you and I don’t know how you want me to deal with that. Cause I know things ain’t like they used to be.” His hand came up to curve around the back of Hunter’s thigh, absently, as if he couldn’t help it and in fact barely realized what he was doing. Other than the way his heart both calmed and beat hard at the feel of familiar muscle under his fingers. “Don’t stop me from fucking wanting you so bad, but I don’t know what t’do with it any more.”
It was a strange sort of comfort to have Hunter pressed so closely against him, weighing him down and causing all sorts of sharp sparks to race along his spine. The plea, the needy-sounding question from Hunter wrung an injured sound from Zee’s throat. “Course I do. Somethin’ fierce, Hunter. Even when you’re right there...”
Hunter eased his hips, slowing and then stopping. He stretched away from Zee’s chest and put his weight on two elbows, a line that stretched the vest to its limit. Hunter put his chin all the way down onto his chest and surveyed Zee through lashes too long to be real. The girlish gold line of vivid amber eyes surveyed Zee’s agonized face. “I don’t get you. I can’t tell what you’re thinking, you say every time I ask but you don’t do nothin’.” Hunter was starting to realize that perhaps not all words were his own, and a presence that felt like thick warm chocolate was interrupting his thoughts and pushing harder for more movement. Hunter gave in and pushed down again for a very light brush of a kiss on Zee’s lower lip, but his lashes flickered on the surface of Zee’s kiss. “Dorian’s here,” Hunter muttered, unhappily. He kissed a sooty jawline. “I want to be at home with you,” he admitted. His body abruptly became less friction and more a solid, unmoving press for contact.
The easing, the slow fade of the intensity that had bordered on anger, caused Zee to finally drop his head back to the floor with a thump and move his arms to rest both his hands low on Hunter’s back. “I dunno what you want me to say. I’m not doin’ anything cause I don’t wanna push you. Shit, you were barely even talking to me until a little bit ago.” He soaked up the gentle press of lip on lip, wanting more but not knowing how to demand it in the quiet moment. His throat formed around a grumpy sound and then a sigh. “He always is. Want you without him around. …You.” His hands moved up slowly, cupping the wings of of Hunter’s shoulderblades through the fabric of the vest and shirt. “I want that too,” he whispered, hands going heavy to press the two of them closer, inviting Hunter’s weight down on him.
Hunter tried to push away at the thick stickiness of Dorian’s presence where it seemed close to his mind, and he heard the immortal laugh quietly into his thoughts before he pulled away and seemed to be gone entirely in the yellow candlelight. Hunter pressed flat once more, giving in willingly to Zee’s palms, the top of his head rising and the curve of his cheek appearing as he set his chin against Zee’s shoulder. His breath shifted over Zee’s ear, calm, less urgent than before. He felt the room close more securely about them, and Paris seemed less real, comfortingly dreamlike. “So show me.”
Zee followed the whisper, turning his head, searching for those whispering lips, his own glancing along flawless skin and smooth cheek before finding what he was needing. The kiss was slow, as dreamlike as the room around them, and Zee heard a soft, longing sigh in the back of his head as he refused to think about all the troubles waiting outside the small Paris room. As much as Dorian may have faded, his own companion was very present in Zee’s mind, and made him conscious of being very out of their own time and place. “I will,” he whispered into the kiss. “Promise...”