francisco javier es una (pesadilla) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-04-25 00:38:00 |
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Entry tags: | beast, cheshire cat |
Who: Daniel Webster & Lin Alesi
What: Lin practices Morse code, Daniel drinks, QP is deaf. [Part II of III.]
Where: Daniel’s Dom's kitchen
When: After this.
Warnings/Rating: Still long, still swears, a bit of kissing.
"But, it was a joke -" A crease formed like a black comma between his eyebrows, but Lin didn't get to finish his explanation. It was a joke, mostly. He hadn't meant anything especially deep by it. He saw the realization in Daniel's dimming eyes, however, and that was even worse. Fuck. His defiance waned. What few atoms rubbed together in the room to create heat (and, you know, solids, but let’s not extend the metaphor there), Lin felt, like a breath sucked in, fled, leaving him alone with the man and the cat, and a floe of ice in his veins and a snowy confusion obscuring his mind. There was a beat. Daniel left then, happy QP in hand, abandoning Lin in the cavernous crypt of a room. "What the fuck? You don't even know where I live." The dismissal hurt. Of course it fucking hurt. A lot. Because, surprise, he wasn’t a fucking soulless dementor who slept on a black hole every night and drank away whatever few ethereal tendrils were left come morning light. Lin was just as squishy as everydamnbody. After scuffing the floor with the bottom of his shoe out of mingled indecision and irritation, Lin followed Daniel out of the room, some ways behind him. For once, he wasn't on the verge of tears, but he still felt like shit. He picked his eyes up off the floor with effort to watch the washed out sea blue of the old college sweater as the man crossed the apartment. He stopped his own trek nearer the door and he tried hard not to fidget. On one hand, running away to the nearest pair of welcoming arms (elevator operator?) to be hugged until either he died or was warm again, whichever came first, sounded perf; but on the other hand, he knew he would just be falling into line exactly where scary sober Daniel wanted him, and that was stupid too. Plus, Sam. Fucking Sam would just tell him, 'you let him run you off again? Man up, baby, even though he always makes me cry. Somehow this is your fault. Womp womp, baby.' "So I guess you don't want to go on that cat litter date then." His words were measured, overly careful, but light, as he tried to keep the heat of anger out of them. Lin swiped his hat and sunglasses off the floor and donned them both before turning to look at Daniel, appearing only as two dark eyebrows peaked above black frames. They helped—the hat too. As flimsy as they were, they created something of a wall between himself and the man, and anything was better than nothing. Daniel made himself considerably less intimidating by apparently focusing on the cat. The small fuzzy thing was the perfect excuse and occupation of hands and supposed attention since before Daniel had quit smoking. (Well, one says ‘quit smoking,’ when really one means, ‘no longer attempts to find cigarettes.’) Curling up his knees so he was sitting on the tile floor in the entrance to the kitchen, Daniel placed the awkward tiny animal on the white floor so it could gambol about and do distinctly youthful things like bat around a shred of newspaper the length of a credit card. Daniel dropped one knee so it lay flat against the tile and lifted the other one up to support the opposite knee. He looked up with the disconcertingly clear blue eyes again. The kitchen had a small window with no curtain, the only natural daylight Daniel had not managed to block out, and the pale lines around Daniel’s eyes were defined even from the entryway, where light seemed to pinpoint as if in some long tunnel. He tipped his head a little and was glad he could not see his own reflection in the dark lenses. One glance back at the kitten. “I can figure out the litter thing.” His tone was not exactly encouraging, even less so when he said, “I’ll Google it.” Or, more likely, buy a book on kittens. By phone. Then, after a split second’s absolutely agonizing resistance, Daniel asked, “Where do you live?” The emphasis was on the second word, the curiosity implied by the last. Sometimes Daniel had this insane picture of Lin living in a McDonald’s ball pit and sneaking out at night to cook himself cheeseburgers. “Okay, you totally made that joke not funny.” The boy’s deep voice still sounded too loud as it snapped in the cold air of the kitchen as he came closer. Lin never could remember to keep his volume down. He’d gotten more checks next to his name on the board and detention slips than anyone else in his class for that very problem. In Daniel’s Dom, he didn’t get a check, but he did frown a little bit as if surprised to hear himself still talking. His tone had turned to disbelief, and there was no more deliberation. “Um. You sound like you’ve never even said ‘Google’ aloud before, let alone typed it into a browser.—Bing it, bro. Shit, use Lycos. Google will be a sensory overload for you. Also you’ll probs get litter porn.” Lin blinked behind black shades as he fought with himself, before finishing with: “Or I can help you.” It was true though; QP did help make Daniel appear more humane, despite the creepy ass Prince Eric eyes that continued to bore into Lin’s soul. That—the humanity, not the boring—made the boy feel better. It was hard to look scary and ruthless next to a romping kitten, and with—oh, praise Jesus—a ray of real, live fucking sunlight dissipating some of the gloom of the cathedral. (So they hadn’t fallen into an early ice age. Huzzah.) Lin folded his arms, tucking his hands between bicep and side to try to stave off frostbite, keeping himself as contained as he could without rolling up into a ball and peacing out. He sniffed, shifting on his feet, and the sunglasses slid half an inch. Silently, he wondered what he was doing and made a mental note to avoid Dry!Daniel from here on out. “Geocities. Shit is always under construction.” Lin’s response was quick enough to masquerade as truth to the ignorant and he smiled at his own wit. That was probably a giveaway, but oh well. Daniel wouldn’t get it anyway. The boy tipped his chin back in a vain attempt to readjust the sunglasses without using his hands. Finally, after a moment’s frustration, and after his hat fell to the floor, his left hand darted out and pushed the sunglasses back up his nose with a finger. He then sighed and said, truthfully, “Meridian. You want me to write this shit down? You know, if my primary motor cortex manages to get through to my fingers.” Lin mimed writing in the air with a pen. It didn’t matter who came into the apartment, they always seemed loud to Daniel. It jarred him, but it wasn’t exactly disturbing, either. Daniel didn’t like silence. When he’d endured it too long, he filled the apartment with voices, big voices, soaring sopranos and restless baritones, shouting trumpets, crying pianos. Lin’s voice did not quite match the one Daniel’s mind had created for him after watching him on the journals for so long; it was a little lower. Better. Lin also brought with him an aura of unmistakable intelligence, even hungover, and Daniel liked that even better than the voice. He tried not to think about it. Daniel let Lin amuse himself a while longer with his antiquated internet vocabulary, only half-listening to what the boy was actually saying. Daniel was not actually incompetent with computers; he was just no expert. There was little about a computer that troubled him enough to bother to learn how to use it, but search engines, those he knew how to use, and use well. You didn’t get to be a journalist by frolicking around with movie stars holding a notebook and tossing your hair. Daniel dropped his chin as far down as it would go and watched the cat instead. “You wanted to leave, remember? Or was it just too cold for you in the sheets?” Daniel stripped the double entendre away from its silk wrapping and just left it there to see what would happen to it. Four fingers at the end of his right hand did a little dance, tapping out some silent tune. The kitten managed to get a tiny fang around the end of the newspaper bit and yanked. It was curious, wasn’t it? How every time Lin drew himself closer on his asymptotic curve to the x-axis of politeness (that he never quite managed to reach), Daniel became that much more of an asshole? Like, seriously. The boy was beginning to think that maybe—just maybe—he was being fucked with. It was a subtler thing than say, the shit Daniel pulled on the comms, but it was the same in essence. The intent was the same. Lin’s hand went back to hiding where it was warm when he, you know, wasn’t answered about the address-writing. Idly, he displaced his weight onto one foot, canting his hip out an inch or two to support the change. He sucked on his bottom lip thoughtfully. QP was skittering here and there, chasing a torn bit of paper, apparently much happier for having eaten. And Daniel was playing with him. Lin watched the man wriggling his fingers. When Daniel questioned him not half a minute later, his attention sharpened quickly, hastening from the hazy cloud of hungover observer to his more usual astuteness. Once again, the boy was thankful for the sunglasses, even though Daniel wasn’t looking at him. He set his mouth firmly by way of immediate response, but whatever was clues might have been in his eyes went unseen. To be perfectly honest, Lin hadn’t expected the man to even mention his last visit. There had been the jab earlier—‘you done rolling around?’—and all the implications those heavy words held, but nothing so outright as this. Lin’s eyes narrowed behind tinted lenses. He was being baited. He got that. ‘Too cold in the sheets?’ Rude as hell. “No,” answered the boy simply. It only took that brief pause for him to forget everything he’d told himself earlier about avoiding Dry!Daniel. Lin moved a few feet farther into the kitchen. But his eyes were no longer on his host playing adorably with a kitten. Thank the lord for the sunglasses, because they saved his head a lot of aching. He floated to where the sunbeams were falling through the window and stretched his fanned fingers through the golden air. Apricity. The warmth of the sun in winter. Lin smiled, momentarily engrossed. He was apricating, basking in the warmth of the sun in winter (even if said winter was entirely man-made). The honey wash of light felt good on his cool skin. Dust motes scattered. Lin bit his lip then, suddenly aware of where he was. He was going to be kicked out anyway, right? He smiled his cat’s grin, glancing sideways at Daniel as he let the light play over him. “I didn’t want to accidentally slip into Greek and get you going again. I mean, what if I’d gone and said, oh, I don’t know, wooden defensive walls?” Daniel had enough time to sit there and let his eyes wander up the wall in front of him, letting his gaze settle at just the level where he could see Lin’s face without looking right at him. His comment about the sheets was designed to injure, or perhaps to see if such a comment could injure. Daniel didn’t know if Lin cared about him as more than a curiosity, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but such questions were meant to elicit a reaction so Daniel could learn something--anything. Nothing happened. Daniel suspected the sunglasses were acting against him, but when there wasn’t even an accompanying flinch, Daniel was again stuck. Lin’s return and subsequent comments, however flippant, made Daniel think that he was hurting Lin in some way, in some way that was not related to the intentional remarks and cold insults. It was better to get the hurting done and make him go away now than wait for it to happen later when Daniel was too drunk to notice he was doing it. That kind of thing was inevitable, Daniel was sure. He thought about it while he watched the cat slip and slide on his floor. It noticed his twitching fingers, and he watched it think about coming in for the kill. Daniel turned his head and blinked into the sunlight. He didn’t go out in daylight much, and out in the dark even the glittering Vegas lights didn’t sink in very far. Daniel blinked a lot more these days, and the blue eyes were shallow in the broad kitchen. He watched Lin bask in the skimpy sunlight for a few seconds and flinched visibly when the boy turned and spoke. The kitten chose that moment to pounce, and was rewarded by clamping its fangs around a mouthful of finger. “Ow, fuck!” Daniel said, lifting his hand automatically and trying to shake the kitten off. It went sprawling, and looked pleased with itself. Discomposed, Daniel blinked at Lin. “What did you say?” QP was a cat after Lin’s own heart. When the kitten appeared proud at having injured the blinking Daniel, the boy’s smile grew broader and he may have laughed, despite the irksome pounding in his head. It served the man right. You play with fire, you get burned. You play with kittens, and you get pieces of flesh torn off your body in red ribbons. It was the way the world worked, and even Lin couldn’t argue with that. He turned to look down his nose at a dark-tinted Daniel. There was a flicker of confusion (and a flinch?) on the man’s monocolored face that was probably just as satisfying as getting those dancing fingers had been for QP. He and Daniel were playing a sort of game too, it seemed to Lin. Continually knocking each other off balance or trying to catch the other by surprise, if only to find some bit of truth revealed in the instinctive reactions they both were too (or, in Lin’s case, ‘somewhat’) good at covering up otherwise. What Daniel was looking for, the boy wasn’t 100% certain, but he could hazard a guess. (Either ‘how do I get this thing to leave and how do I hurt its feelings’ or ‘what does this thing want from me, a sad drunk bestselling author with a penchant for being an asshole?’) As to himself and his own intentions, fuck you, it’s none of your business. The boy ended his aprication abruptly and sat himself on the tiles of the kitchen floor—as squarely next to Daniel as he had the first time on that ugly-ass sofa however many months ago, all intent and deliberation and shoulder to shoulder. He smiled. “I said, wooden defensive walls,” repeated Lin easily then, casually, enunciating carefully, letting the vowels form on his lips slowly just to be cruel. The boy tapped his own fingers against the flooring. The sounds from his colored nails did nothing to attract the kitten, which was def another mark toward deaf. Lin shrugged, butting against Daniel. He looked at the man without moving his head, just a half-smirk and eyes to the side. Then, he did turn and raised his eyebrows, taking in the smooth white of Daniel’s face and the unreal paleness of his eyes. The man’s dark hair curled on his forehead, just so, and that was almost too much. “Why? Did it work?” Daniel was staring at Lin, the blue eyes old winter ice as they narrowed, unblinking. The sparse brown lashes seemed absurdly dark against the pale curve of his eyes, and Daniel’s focus had turned entirely to Lin some time between the boy’s relocation and his innocent springtime smile. A whole twenty minutes had gone by without a glass in Daniel’s hand, and he felt raw and prickly with the movement of sharp thoughts. Lin wasn’t leaving. He was coming closer, and now sitting, and Daniel couldn’t fathom why. What more was there to learn, if it was just curiosity at stake? Hiding his puzzlement in a string of theories, Daniel slowly let his lashes close, pressed both tiers together in a rapid blink, and then let his head tip back to lean on the door frame just above his temple. The blue-eyed concentration didn’t waver. The kitten had wandered back to his bowl, sniffed at it, and then gone back to his ultimate enemy, the bit of newspaper. Daniel let it be even as it barreled into his knee pursuing the newspaper into his bare foot where it sat akilter on the white tile. After a pause of some abnormal time, not short and yet unpredictably brief, Daniel said, “You never said where you live, but I guess I wouldn’t want to tell me if I was you, either.” It was as if he had not heard the Greek at all, as if Lin’s twist of conversation had never spread out in front of him. Daniel kept his fascination with the foreign phrase to himself, unwilling to admit that he had thought perhaps it a memorized phrase, some self-important streak from Homer (sing, o muse), but the cadence of Lin’s voice had altered just enough in the second repetition to disprove that theory. Daniel had to bide his time until Lin spoke again. Without warning, he switched to German. “You’re staying. But not for the shoe. Why are you staying if... you have other places to go?” It was a bizarrely serious question. Daniel’s weight seemed to lean into Lin’s shoulder of its own accord, the old cotton sweatshirt soft and nappy at the same time. Daniel let his head roll on the top of his spine to get a better look at Lin’s face as he waited for a response. He sat next to Daniel, grateful for the modicum of warmth the man provided. The brush of soft material on the bare skin of his arms made him want to curl up like a much larger, duskier version of QP, but he resisted the urge, and just sat. He was aware of the sharpened edge of Daniel’s attention that now rested on him, heavy as the blade of a guillotine on the neck of Louis XVI. The boy tried not to think about it. If he was surprised by the fact that the man seemed to be leaning into him too, it didn’t show. The German was sudden. Lin's eyes widened behind the sunglasses as he attempted to follow the three or four threads of conversation. He had told Daniel where he lived—broadly, so that was confusing, as was the comment that followed it. The boy had no reason, he didn't think, not to tell the man where he lived. Daniel wasn't him. He wasn't going to bust in out of the blue, Lin was pretty sure. But, he was given no chance to reply to tell all this to his host, because then he was removing the sunglasses to see if he was really hearing this question correctly. Because this was not part of the game. Thank Jesus it was dark in the kitchen. The boy blinked unhappily, wiping at his eyes with the tips of his fingers for a moment. It gave him time to think. Because what the fuck was he supposed to say to that? Why was Daniel even asking him? After a pause, Lin's dark eyes, the whites of which appeared overly bright in the shadows, found Daniel's blue ones, with nothing between them to soften anything he might find in their shallows. He played with the plastic arms of the sunglasses and bit his lip. It was a good thing he couldn't bring his knees to his chest at present, because he had no doubt he would just go full on fetal position right here, right now. "I don't know." It was true. Kind of. It wasn't as if he had anywhere else to go anyway, but he didn't want to say that. He could say he was being contrarian, but that clearly wasn't the case. Damn. Why couldn't Daniel have just stuck with the fucking Greek? Lin's earlier headache pulsed behind his eyes forebodingly. He considered not answering at all. He could make a move or something... But, he was too tired to try. Shit. His heart was beating quickly. This was going to end so poorly. "Because despite the fact that I'm pretty sure you're Ötzi the Iceman come back to life, and that you're probably trying to recreate your 5,000ish years of preservation by turning your apartment into a single, solid chunk of ice, which, by the way, will never work—and although you are grouchy as fuck and probably use Alta Vista to search for internet things, and are an elitist asshole when it comes to consumption of culture, and you have some serious antisocial tendencies -" God save him. Lin blinked. "I guess I think you're okay." Close enough. Daniel could tell that Lin was uncomfortable, and at the moment he felt no guilt about that. The man with a byline needed the people coming up with answers to be uncomfortable, and how he felt had no bearing on the situation. He could feel later, when he wanted to write. A few seconds into that thought he reminded himself that he didn’t want to write, and that Lin wasn’t a story. Nothing was, these days; nothing that deserved to be published. Daniel moved a dry tongue against the roof of his mouth, thoughts shifting to a growing headache, a queasy feeling that just meant he needed a drink and maybe a nap. He put it off a little while longer. Lin’s answer pinged off Daniel’s expectations like a coin on a copper plate. It was obvious he had not conceived a response shaped like I think you’re okay whether in German or English. He dropped his uplifted knee so all of his weight fell flat on the floor and then he rolled over onto his hip so he could face Lin a little more securely. “Okay?” He said that in English; the German version was either ‘good’ or something more close to ‘in order’ and Daniel didn’t fucking feel like either applied. What the fuck were they talking about? Disbelieving, confused, Daniel tipped his head down in a sharp, sideways movement, cutting through the air with a rough chin and causing the curls to tangle in his lashes. “You don’t really think that.” Then, blinking repeatedly. “The fuck kind of people you hang out with to think I’m... okay? Five minutes ago you couldn’t stand being here!” The tiles were still like ice under his palms, but as Daniel shifted and they were suddenly repositioning themselves, Lin found he didn’t much care to sit up any longer. He let himself stream down lower and lower until he was more or less just lying there on the kitchen floor, on his back next to Daniel. His head was propped up by the wall and the sunglasses were forgotten on his stomach. He actually felt pretty okay now that several of his appendages had gone numb. The coolness that stung him from the floor was soothing in a way. (Wait. Was this like, stage one of hypothermia?) From his new place on the ground, Lin studied at the hair that dusted the Daniel’s eyelashes briefly, disheveled as it was, much longer than his own and curly in that off-handed way it so often was for the pretty straight boys who would’ve been fine with having thin, flat hair. (God was cruel. Giving his gifts to those who cared for them least.) He chewed on his bottom lip, curious as to the English echo of ‘okay.’ The assertion that he didn’t mean the words he said had Lin simply raising his eyebrows and then letting them sink back down. See, that was just rude. Lin picked at the Easter green on his right pinky, holding it close to his chest. Bright shavings of polish rained down on him. He tapped the tips of his shoes against one another in some kind of bizarre, entirely nonmusical, but strangely consistent rhythm. (He was spelling out his name in Morse code, if you really want to know. He’d taught it to himself in high school as a way to pass time in class and to call people names without them knowing.) “Well,” the word was clipped and immediate, riding on the tails of Daniel’s exclamation, and the boy didn’t look up from his hand. He answered only the last question. “I didn’t want to be here because I have a headache the size of General Sherman—you know, the tree -, it’s like, fucking absolute zero in here and I don’t feel like being hypothermic, and I had been about to go bed at home before I came over.” A pause and a glance. “And you’re a lot fucking faster when you’re sober. I thought I could get that goddamn shoe before you caught up to me.” That was as close to saying Daniel was scarier sober as Lin was going to get. He finally stopped fucking with his nail polish. .- .-.. . ... .. went his shoes. “Don’t worry, Ötzchen. I still think you’re a fucking jackass. Not even being cutesy with QP can change my opinion about that.” Lin smiled. ... ..- -.-. -.- / -- -.-- / -.. .. -.-. -.- Daniel didn’t know what to say. He had gone out of his way to be cruel to anybody who came anywhere near him, figurative or literal, and he was aware he’d been especially cruel to Lin. The intent had always been to drive him off, even from the beginning, operating on the general assumption that something Daniel did without thinking would do the job eventually anyway. That had not yet happened, and if he was to take Lin seriously--and everything from the thoughtless nail polish fidgeting to the blatant sprawl on his kitchen floor suggested he would need to do that--absolutely nothing that had happened so far was going to drive Lin any farther than out the door, and even then only for a short time. Daniel was left with the truly disturbing idea that Lin might be here to stay longer than twenty minutes at a time, and that was a scary thought. Especially with the world pulsing at him through a sharp sober lens, when Daniel had to confront the idea that Lin was both extremely young and undeniably male, and yet fascinating just the same. Daniel wasn’t really up to dealing with a ride along the Kinsey scale at this point in his life. Locking himself up in the fucking apartment was supposed to block out any change or influence of any kind. It was supposed to be fucking imprisonment, not a goddamned soap opera. A furious series of tapping rudely interrupted this desperate spiral of Daniel’s thoughts and he looked down to see Lin’s toes banging together. Morse Code was not one of the languages Daniel had studied, but he assumed the annoying rhythm had a pattern, because almost everything Lin did came from somewhere. Sliding one heel under his ass, Daniel hoisted himself into standing in a quick slide of movement that didn’t much resemble the slovenly pace of his drunken doppelganger. When he spoke he spoke quickly, with volume. “There’s something wrong with you. You can’t come here expecting to feel good when you leave.” He looked down into Lin’s face, skirting aside as if the boy suddenly began to emanate tangible heat. Daniel jerked his gaze away to look at the cat, who was attempting to open a cabinet with a paw the size of a quarter with little success. In another burst of movement he started dragging the bag of litter into the kitchen to dump it in the plastic container. Lin needed to leave before something else happened. “Christ, I need a drink,” Daniel said, not appearing to notice he’d said it out loud. The tenuous spindle of silence after Lin spoke was punctuated only by the sound of his shoes tapping together, rubber sole ticking on rubber sole. The boy's eyes were on Daniel, on his face, honed and waiting for some sign of comprehension, a furrow of the brow, the tension of a frown, anything at all—but, no such luck. For about two seconds, he was almost worried the drunk had actually managed to freeze to death right next to him without him noticing, which would be pretty fucking rude for a host to do. And worse, they'd've missed their chance to reenact the scene from Titanic. Then Daniel stood quickly and the tapping out of Morse code ceased immediately. Lin's thoughts braked too, veering into one another and piling up in an incoherent mess. Lin peered up at the man with the blue eyes, feeling very small just then. There is something wrong with you. No fucking shit, Sherlock. He blinked. Not for the first time, the boy on the floor, alone now that the man had bustled away inexplicably like his ass was on fire, wondered what had happened to Daniel and when to make him into the defensive, alcoholic, rude-ass recluse he was now. Certainly he hadn't been born that way. (Had he?) It wasn't that Lin didn't like him as a defensive, alcoholic, rude-ass recluse—he did and he didn't, but, he was sure that knowing would shed a lot of light on a situation he felt blind in. He had some sense that Daniel liked him—or endured him. One or the other. It didn't matter.—But, little beyond that. Footsteps and the scraping of the litter bag snapped Lin's attention back to the cold kitchen. He rubbed at the skin of his arms for one last moment of distraction, then sat up. The sunglasses clattered off of his stomach and onto the tiles, but he paid them no heed. He'd never seen Daniel this active and it was kinda creeping him out. Like maybe what he'd said had been worse than he thought. Time to change the subject. "So," Lin interrupted Daniel's remark to himself divisively, a knife trimming the fat. He wasn't fond of being ignored, intentionally or not. His voice was firm, like he'd made some kind of decision, and his eyes were wide in the dark. Not round, but wide. He knew he should shut the fuck up and just go, but knowing and doing were two very, very, very, very different things. His head tilted to the side. "What was it like? Getting it on with a bro?" Daniel looked up sharply. The kitten was sniffing at the bag and Daniel put out a palm and scooped the pink nose and furry butt out of the way in one thoughtless movement. The blue eyes returned a perplexed, undeniably cautious gaze across the tiled floor at Lin. The idea of the drink vanished temporarily, receding back into the complex tumult of Daniel’s thoughts, typewritten text spattering like Pollock paint on the outdated parchment of his personality. Suddenly he smiled. It was a Cary Grant kind of smile, homely and exotic at the same time, thoughtless, the kind of thing for Italian sunshine. It was the devastating kind of thing you could imagine him releasing on hapless limousine-chasing models. The Italian sprang to life, coming easy, and Daniel wasn’t ever going to pass up a chance to speak something other than English to someone with the fluency to reply. “Not everything people said it was.” The blue eyes crackled with laughter and he turned his attention down to the plastic pan. “Mais?” Daniel said, sniffing at the corn and looking perplexed. Daniel coughed in some of the organic litter dust and then dropped the bag. He shuffled the pan out, and then made a grab for the kitten, who realized it should make a run for it too slow. He closed ten fingers around the struggling fuzzy body and then gently set it in the center of the box expectantly. The fragile, blue-boned man was gone and it startled Lin, who’d been expecting something completely different. And that fucking smile. It was like taking one’s sunglasses off at noon on like, the day of the northern fucking solstice after wearing the shitty things everywhere for the past ...shit, two years. Overwhelming, kind of blinding, but pretty as fuck, light bleeding everywhere in white. Still, Lin really didn’t like getting these snapshots of a Daniel more dangerous than a man with a tumbler of whiskey and an angry pen. Like this—with the bite in his smile and something darkening his eyes, with all the hard edges of a cut diamond, he was worrisome and kind of creepy, and also confusingly attractive...? And it just—was—no. That, and like, was Lin being insulted or not. He couldn’t tell. You were supposed to be able to tell. Jesus. What. Was. Happening. He remembered the initial caution though, the carefulness in Daniel’s eyes in that first look, and that comforted him. So, Daniel was still a fucking human, underneath that womanizer’s smile and behind those goddamn eyes. Lin vaguely felt his heart beating as he got to his feet, the Italian tickling his ears. He was next to Daniel and QP in a step or two. The air was itchy and heavy with corn dust. There was hardly space between the men for a breath. Because, you know what? Fuck Daniel. He would figure out if he was being insulted all by himself. It was easy. Lin gazed up at the man without coyness. His eyes were warm with low burning embers, the kind that had been there the last time he had come over. If he still felt tired and cold, it didn’t show. There were no lowered lashes to peek through like a pretty black curtain. He was a nerve stripped, barefaced in his desire. He moved in close, eyes dropping half-lidded to Daniel’s lips. Now he could smile, though his wasn’t charming and there was nothing sunny about it. It was a thing meant for the darkness of bedrooms. He came a little closer. Then, the boy turned away. He bent down and took hold of the kitten as he struggled in the box. He held QP’s paws in the corn and dug them into it, sifting and covering in mimicking motions. The little guy didn’t appreciate it, but at least he didn’t peace the fuck out when Lin let him go. Now he knew where the litter was. The boy stood back up and brushed his hands on the front of his shirt. ‘Not everything people said it was.’ Fucking dick. “Alright.” He shrugged. He couldn’t argue with that. With half a bottle in him, Daniel would have been alarmed, aroused, and then angry. Sober, Daniel was just aroused and angry, and he managed to do it both at the same time. He recognized Lin was dangling a carrot just out of reach, and he knew very well (in only a fraction of a second) that it was retaliation for something. Daniel assumed it was for the first kiss on the couch, and his memory stretched that far, hazy and splintered though the vision was. Daniel couldn’t exactly blame Lin for being pissed about that, but was this really necessary? The damn cat hadn’t done anything. “We’re not calling him an acronym,” Daniel said, obviously irritated with the world in a general fashion. The cat was still standing, tiny little paws splayed out and stuck solid in the corn feed. It appeared that he was trying to decide whether to run or yowl. An amused smirk flickered at the corner of Daniel’s mouth, the kind of thing that was without second intent and therefore fast and smooth, like water moving over smooth stones. Stupid kitten. Maybe the look got fond. For five seconds. Just five seconds. “I know you’re doing the acronym, but stop. No acronyms.” Daniel stepped away from the cat in the corn, rounded the table and leaned against his counter, one hip out. He pulled a bottle out of a cupboard without looking to see if it was where it belonged. “Lin. If you’re that fucking cold, get a jacket. Or find the thermostat.” He rolled his hand over and cracked a seal. Daniel’s anger was expected (the lack of astonishment was not, but oh well). It had been stoked, after all, with the express purpose of stirring it to life, by pressing up close and tearing away the moment before the waves crashed and the heat dropped. Because if someone was going to tease Lin with shit like that fucking smile, while simultaneously insinuating some srs bullshit about getting it on with him, they were going to get it back tenfold and they were not going to fucking like it. The annoyance that scratched at Daniel’s voice, and the following smirk and ...fleeting affection(¿¿¿???) he sent in QP’s general direction also acted as a nice balm. “Idek what you’re talking about rn. Who said anything about doing acronyms, you fucking NWAL? I’m calling him ‘kewpie,’ as in the doll popular when you were a kid probably. Like, 1910s,” lied Lin off-handedly, all traces of smoking cinders brushed under the rug. His heart was still beating hard and the room felt several degrees colder now. He smiled, lifting his eyes from the kitten in question to Daniel. They followed him to where he moved against the counter and -- fetched a bottle out of a cupboard. Of course. Lin was surprised it took this long, to be honest. The boy considered using this chance to 'get a jacket' to pretend he was going to rifle through Daniel's things, just to be irritating. He even had an answer ('okay, np') that would be annoying, but he crossed the kitchen toward Daniel instead, skirting the table and drawing up to the low file of counters quietly. There was little heat to be found, even in close proximity to Daniel, but he wasn't thinking about that. Now that his fear of being close sans QP had guttered out, he could see little reason to keep away. His blood hummed along his veins now beneath the cool surface of his skin, and he felt more awake. Everything quickened. Because, dangling a carrot or not, Lin hadn't been faking... well, anything. Shit. "No," uttered the boy distractedly, mind clearly elsewhere. He allowed the base, reptilian part of his brain take over then, though it meant he would be awfully ill-prepared for rejection, should it occur, but again, he wasn't thinking about that. He was hardly aware of anything at all that wasn't self-sabotage and the roar of blood in his ears. Pouring himself like liquid, Lin managed to insinuate himself around Daniel's hand holding the bottle, until he was right there again, in front of the man leaning against the counter. The air here was sharp with alcohol. There was a cut of a smile. And before Daniel could escape again, Lin pressed himself flush against him, saying nothing, and with fingers dipping into the sea soft fabric of the front of the sweater, kissed him. Daniel didn’t like Lin’s bland acceptance of Daniel’s general dismissal of his performance in the bedroom. That wasn’t normal, especially for someone like Lin. There should be at least a hint of embarrassment or irritation, not the easy shrug and casual acceptance of something that was supposed to hit hard where it hurt. For a brief second, a split second, Daniel thought that maybe it was a male thing, that men simply did not hurt; but he knew that was a lie. In a flash. Men hurt, and they were shit at hiding it to the right eye. If Daniel had said something like that to Sam she would have crumpled like tissue paper, and even blindingly wasted with expensive scotch, Daniel knew that. Daniel set his back teeth together and let the top of the bottle skitter over the clean tile of the counter in front of him. Made no sense. Daniel only noticed that Lin was coming closer because he stopped talking. The unexpected cascade of vowels, short and halting in plain English as they were, tended to wrap around Daniel and the sharp gears grinding in his head. It wasn’t cotton, like the liquor, and it wasn’t soft, like sex. It was just... noise. Good noise. (Good, as long as he didn’t actually listen to what the boy was saying.) Daniel glanced up, a round tumbler gleaming in the long rectangle cast by the window, and he had plenty of time to move out of the way when he saw Lin sliding closer. He did not. A hollow sound clinked and growled over the tile as Daniel put his palm over the glass and slid it out of the way to one side of Lin’s elbow. His expression had just enough time to fall from arch into something else, something a long fall down, before it was too close to see. The kiss was slow. Daniel made it slow. It was a distinct, curious savor, an analysis and a caress of rough mouth against the line of Lin’s lower lip. Accustomed now to Lin’s coy advances and retreats, Daniel put his other hand out to box Lin against the counter, but he didn’t press any closer with hip or chest. He just stood there and kissed him. To see what it was like. To forget that he shouldn’t. To avoid wondering whether or not he really wanted to or if it was just the brief, desperate diversion of a man in a cage. Lin had been with men like Daniel before, the ones who preferred to stand apart as cool, wet stone, rather than come in close and blister skin over hot coals. He could appreciate it, to be sure. He liked the press of marble, the slip of it under his fingers. But, even still, it never ceased to seem strange. Personally, Lin tended toward a nice in-between, something nearer the syrupy heat of turkish coffee or the color of firelight flickering on sandstone walls. He could easily be stoked into fire, though he didn’t start red-hot, but rarely did he die down to the ocean blues of men like Daniel. So if he came a little closer and if his fingers dug a little deeper into the man’s navy sweater, it was only in search of some warmth that might be smoldering beneath the surface. It came to Lin’s attention as he bent like beaten copper into the kiss, and as he opened his mouth on Daniel’s with the same lazy bloom and a ghosting of teeth on soft lips, as he pooled like liquid against the man’s chest, that he was ...um, stuck. Like, trapped. His eyes had been closed—were still, but he could feel Daniel’s arm next to him, effectively pinning him to the counter. A flutter of panic stirred in Lin’s chest then, though he didn’t so much as pause. What was he supposed to do now if he needed to backpedal like a motherfucker? There was nowhere to go.—This was a real issue, one that needed solving in case he had to leave in a hurry. And it was forgotten in less than half a second—along with any and all indecipherable or perhaps even worrisome emotions that had so plagued him earlier. The roughness of Daniel’s jaw scratched the smooth curve of Lin’s chin. Besides Daniel, the boy had actually mostly slept with women in last however many weeks, which was... unusual, as he skewed towards men most of the time, and, as lovely as each one of those women was, he’d missed the hardness they simply couldn’t offer. Silky, curved and lithe were all nice, but sometimes a kid just wanted ...this. One of Lin’s hands came up to brush lightly along the line of Daniel’s jaw, fingertips tickled by sandpaper, before sliding backwards and hooking around the back of the man’s neck in a firm grip. Maybe Daniel was content to stand like those statues of Dutch children old people kept in their gardens, asses out and lips touching like scared butterflies, but Lin was not. The hand still caught on the front of the sweater let go and circled to press flat to the shallow concave bow of Daniel’s spine just above his ass. He brought the man in closer and kissed him in a slow burn of lips and tongue. A cold Daniel was not natural. It was all Lin knew, of course, but the high apartment might as well have been a meat locker meant to keep a living corpse in one piece for longer than he had a right to keep living. He had not meant to last thing long when he’d begun. Surely a year was an age, two unthinkable. And while sometimes he was grateful for the Beast -- Henry, as he was starting to think of him now -- sometimes Daniel wished that none of this had existed so that he didn’t have to exist anymore. He understood that it was a common problem, this wish for nothingness, but that didn’t make it more or less real to him. Daniel felt that he was a little justified in that he actually deserved it, not like these poor schmucks that got mired in the mistakes they’d made on the job or with the wife. Daniel knew what he’d done and it wasn’t something you could wave away with I gave it the old college try. For all his guilt, Daniel didn’t feel guilty standing there in the kitchen with the cat and the boy. He hadn’t sought out the cat, nor the boy, and while he was aware he shouldn’t, it wasn’t the same thing as the fear he sometimes felt when he was at the bottom of the glass and he realized he was angry about the card that just turned over. That fear was nameless, so black and so deep that it was too big to have a name, and he always answered it with the same thing: It won’t happen again. Sometimes it was a self-made lie, sometimes it was the truth, and sometimes it was just Daniel reassuring himself, singing a song little children sang when they were afraid of the dark, a song with no tune, over and over. Daniel lingered on the kiss. He was even more accustomed to warmth and curves than Lin was, and between a shift of his weight he sometimes had to hesitate against the unexpected angle of a hip, a shoulder, a chin. He made no resistance when the embrace closed him in, and the inside of each joint halfway down his arm pressed against Lin’s arm and ribs. It stopped being cold quickly. Daniel let out a long, warm breath through his nose an inch from Lin’s ear, neck stretching away from his shoulder and the loose old cotton pulled free down the center of his chest. He tensed, unnatural, not hesitant but stopping. The brakes turned on and everything continued to slide before gravity realized there was something in the way. Daniel felt the cold press in at the center of his back between his shoulderblades. He pulled his mouth free, but did not step back. He wanted to say something but he couldn’t think of it. |