Graham Ross is a (hauntedsoul) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-12-12 23:41:00 |
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Entry tags: | cassandra cain, dean winchester |
Who: Deacon and Thea
What: Paths cross during a wild night out~
Where: A club in Vegas, then an ice cream shop.
When: Reeeeeeeecently.
Warnings/Rating: Uh some swearing?
A night in was rare for Deacon. Sometimes he’d get in the kind of mood where he just felt like hanging around the Palms or spending some quality time with PayPerView and room service, but not often, because truth be told he hated being alone. It was one of those things he’d never tell anyone, a secret he kept buried deep, deep inside himself. And, anyway, he had the money and connections to make sure there was always a warm body or two by his side so what did it matter? But when he did go out, he changed it up every now and then. Sometimes he went for classy and exclusive, where there was a strict dress code and there was no way you were getting in unless you had cash to slip the bouncer. And then there were the nights when he slummed it, prowling clubs that either had little or no security, where drug deals happened in corners and nobody had to turn a blind eye because everybody was already blind. There was less subtlety in places like that, where knowledge was known but unspoken as opposed to blatantly ignored, as though the rich and famous didn’t have dirty little secrets or vices that weren’t so harmless.
And tonight, that was where he was. Some seedy club off the Strip, neon signs and grime-streaked brick. The only ones outside weren’t guarding the door at all, no, just clubgoers out for a cigarette or eyeing new arrivals like they were slabs of meat. Inside the air was smoke and sweat, bright lights and loud music and a lot of dark corners in between. Here, Deacon was in his element. Ripped jeans and boots, a sleeveless tank and enough metal to make him shine under the lights; that was his guise for the night. He commandeered a table in the back, past the dance floor, with a couple of his daddy’s men who’d followed him like the good dogs that they were flanking the little prince as he sat. He kept a steady stream of drinks coming and if somebody wanted a little extra, some powder or pretty rocks or even colorful pills, well, he was happy to provide. The product was good, nothing he wouldn’t take himself, and he cut the owner in on his profits; everybody was happy.
He hopped off the table he’d been perched on, crossing the dance floor to make his way to the bar. Everything was bright and vivid, colors and sounds, the combination of booze and powder leaving him hyped up, dilated pupils and adrenaline pumping through his veins. He ordered a row of shots for everyone at the bar, eliciting a rousing wave of drunken cheers, and he basked in their attention. He’d probably crash and burn in the morning but for now, he was on top of the world.
Thea didn’t do nights in anymore. Nights in meant her roommate, who wasn’t even quiet and interesting and studious. Her roommate was a cheerleader, which meant dumb pom-poms on the floor by her bed, and the smack of chewing gum that she twisted around her finger when she studied and being woken early as her dumb roommate (who had a dumb name that sounded like it had been made up, and when Thea had introduced herself, had raised her perfectly plucked eyebrows like ‘Thea’ wasn’t even a name) got up to work out. Thea didn’t think anyone should wear spandex at seven am, especially not when you were in college. There was a pile of books stacked on the scarred wooden desk at the end of her extra-long twin and her sheets (perfectly bland and boring; Thea thought maybe when Lin had been at college, he would have had something hip and ironic, but hip and ironic took thinking and she was tired so often that it took too much to even try for more than plain white) were rucked around her pillow.
Thea didn’t do nights in, and she took absolute pleasure in coming in late and closing the door so that her roommate woke in the same semi-startled, still-asleep way that Thea herself woke every seven am on the dot. Thea didn’t set loud alarms and walk around in hot pink pyjamas, so she thought four am was a perfectly acceptable time to come home. She wasn’t in now, she was sat at the end of the bar in a crowd of people who looked as if they knew the girl with the long, long dark hair and the kohl-smeared eyes, who smiled like she could keep a secret. She was long, pale legs dangling from the bar-stool beneath a short denim skirt that peeped beneath the long, silver shirt, and she had a glass in front of her that smelled sweet and bitter at the same time.
A boy stumbled over and she knew without looking, a boy like that who was smiling like he had fireworks inside his head, his pupils would be pinwheeling black. He ordered shots for the entire bar and the bartender didn’t look at Thea once as he poured a long, long line of shots, a sloppy glass set in front of every single person. Thea took hers and she didn’t look at what was in it, and she flung it back like it was nothing, like the burn at the back of her throat felt familiar, and warm and safe. Maybe pinwheeling was as good as it looked, maybe it wasn’t, but the boy who passed her, damp sweat and alcohol and wide, wide eyes looked like he was having more fun. Thea leaned her cheek into her palm, set her elbow on the bar and she watched him without bothering to keep it hidden, without knowing that she should.
The lure of his makeshift throne was heady, and it didn’t matter that it was just a table in a club surrounded by people who weren’t loyal or adoring but merely drunk and/or high and willing to attach themselves to whoever could give them what they wanted; it was his, and Deacon reveled in the sensation of ownership. Yet he lingered at the bar, grinning broadly at the reactions to his generosity and letting his gaze travel over those present as though looking for another to draw into his web, another pretty face alongside the others.
It came in the form of a girl, denim skirt and silver and no attempt to hide the fact that she was watching him. He liked that, so he caught her eye with a smile before approaching with a casual sort of swagger. “Hey,” he greeted, and his words were only a little slurred, a hint of topsy turvy that didn’t fucking matter because he felt too good to care.
Thea used to think people who got wasted at parties and clubs were dumb. Life lost all its shades of gray if you dialed up the volume to ten. You lost nuance, you lost the acutely lovely sense of everything being precise enough for your heart to ache - but Thea didn’t want nuance any more. Nuance was packing up your shit, all three boxes of books and your clothes bundled in the bottom of a bag and shipping out to a dormitory, one person surrounded by a wave of adults, agitated and excited for new starts, new lives. Thea wasn’t done with the old life. She turned on her seat and she looked at him from beneath mascaraed eyelashes, gray-blue eyes smeared thick with kohl. He looked like he didn’t know what nuance was, anymore. Maybe that helped.
“Hi,” she said, and she picked up the sticky glass, empty now, because maybe that was his thing; buy a round of drinks at the bar and expectation came after. “Are you in the habit of being generous to a host of strangers, or did he,” he was a lean of her head against her shoulder, chin jerked toward the bartender, “Just pick the cheapest drink he could find?” Thea smiled; up close he was younger than she thought he would be, young enough that he was a kite without a string and she sat with her knees primly together, so much bare leg beneath the denim and her thumb picking at the chipped nail varnish - purple - on her left hand, idly. She wasn’t high - she hadn’t taken anything and the pale irises of her eyes were wide, the pupil still pin-pricked curiosity. But she was buzzed and warm, and maybe he wasn’t trouble and maybe he was but he’d come over, hadn’t he?
Deacon laughed, and it was the laughter of someone who didn’t care, who went through life getting what he wanted because he took it. He never stepped aside and he didn’t back down. “I’m in a good mood,” he said, by way of explanation. “And he knows better than to hand out cheap shit when I’m the one paying.” He was cocky, of that there was no doubt, but at least he wore it well. On some it was forced, an act that was sloppy and ended up being a trainwreck but with him it was natural, and somehow it worked. He gave her a once-over that was slow enough to indicate interest yet swift enough that it didn’t linger in the sleazy sort of way that other men seemed to have mastered. “You here alone?” A travesty if she was.
He was definitely trouble. Thea decided that after the laugh and she settled her chin into her palm, and swung one of her legs loose against the stool. He was bright, lit up from the inside like a candle flame trapped in glass but maybe that was more than the drugs he was probably on. Probably. His pupils were starbursts, they were galaxies, a whole Milky Way. He was strung out, and Thea leaned her cheek against her fingers, watched his eyes slide up her body like he knew what he was doing, like he could see how much the skirt cost (cheap) and the shirt (expensive) and how much she was worth. Thea didn’t know how much that was, probably less than the glass of whatever it had been in front of her.
“Are you going to say something incredibly sleazy if I say yes?” She swung around to face him, the quirk of her mouth amused, all bored little girl playing adult. The kohl-smeared eyes were trained on his; she tossed her hair back over her shoulder, freckled young skin and tawdry silver. “Or are you going to tell me I shouldn’t be here?” The heel of her shoe - high, and cheap and her toes were painted chipped purple - drummed against the stool leg. Maybe he’d come out with something original. She doubted it.
His ability to lead others down the wrong path was something Deacon prided himself on, and so the very last thing he intended to do was tell her that she shouldn’t be here. He was the devil on their shoulder, silver-tongued, lawbreaker and troublemaker extraordinaire. “Why shouldn’t you be here?” He spread his arms in a wide, dramatic arc, gesturing to all those around them, before dropping them and looking at her again. “You have as much a right as anyone else. Besides, I’m no buzzkill.” As for saying something sleazy, he tipped his head to the side and regarded her with a smirk. “That’s what you’re expecting, huh?” Oh, he could imagine the boys (or men) who might try to pick her up, using every line in the book to get her off her stool and on their arm. “If you say yes, I’ll tell you that you should join me and my friends,” he said, pointing through the crowd to his table-throne in the back and dutiful subjects sprawled out in chairs and on each other. “And if you say no, I’ll tell you that you and whoever you’re with should join me.” He grinned broadly. “See? Win-win situation.”
He was young enough, whoever he was, this boy with the grin like bright, sticky-shiny mirror and the gloss of too much money to know what to do with, that it sounded like he meant it, like he was proud of himself. Cocky, like youth and experience twisted up in one another. Thea laughed, and she dug her chin more firmly into the palm of her hand and smiled against her fingers where he couldn’t see, even if her eyes pulled at the corners, all that blue-gray filled with amusement and her heel swung three times once again, against the stool leg. Maybe he was a diplobrat, maybe he was a kid who’d recently grown into his trust-fund. He looked like he was old enough to cause hell legally, Thea thought the age on his ID was probably true. Or he had a really good fake.
“If you’re buying drinks for an entire bar,” she’d twisted on the stool, she’d angled herself a little more toward him to talk and maybe she hadn’t meant to do that at all, to give anything at all back. The silver pooled a little at her front; Thea was too thin for it, but she sat with her free hand twisted in the hem of it, in her lap, and she looked at him, all bold challenge behind the make-up and the freckles peeking beneath the powder. “Then you can afford to be at a non-sleezy bar. Why are you trying to pick up people, if you’ve got so many already awaiting your scintillating company?” People, not girls. Thea didn’t look around for a friend and she didn’t clutch at her bag, she looked past him, at the people spread out like a red carpet for a king. She tilted her head, watched him for his answer like it meant something.
Even if he’d recognized her amusement, the way her eyes crinkled up indicating a smile behind her fingers, it wouldn’t have bothered him. He felt too good for anything to bother him. Here he ruled, and he could walk away from her and find another girl as soon as he turned around. It didn’t matter and that was glorious. He smiled back, leaning on the bar like he owned it and like he was giving her his full, undivided attention. She looked like she thought she was a challenge; maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t. He’d find out.
“Yeah, I can. I was at one last night.” His response was flippant, careless, and Deacon didn’t feel like being here lowered his status. He could come out of places like this unscathed even if some couldn’t. “Haven’t you ever heard of the more, the merrier?” He shrugged. “You ask why. I say why not? Unless you wanna sit here for the rest of the night,” he said, nudging her stool with his foot. “Doesn’t look like much fun, but maybe it is.”
He was trouble wrapped up with a ribbon and a big fat bow, Thea tilted her chin against the heel of her palm and she looked at him long and slow and carefully, all clear eyes and mascara-black lashes lowered over them and the hitch of one leg over the other, knees crossed like a debutante who’d forgotten the rules and the denim slid just an inch higher on the leg, but there wasn’t much denim to begin with. “I know how to have fun,” and maybe he was just trying to mess with her, but Thea’s chin came up, the haughty look slid itself over above all that silver and denim, her eyebrows drew together, delicate as lines sketched onto porcelain. “Some kinds of fun you invite people, and some kinds you don’t.”
His pupils were blown, she could see up close as his foot slid the stool just a little. His pupils were blown and he was flippant like maybe he could buy out the bar instead of just a row of drinks behind it, and Thea believed him, he had the easy air of someone who didn’t need to show what kind of cards were in his wallet to prove he had money. She’d straightened, back like a finishing-school girl on the stool and Thea looked at him like he was a bad decision not yet truly made. “Are you going to give me your name, or just insult my ability to have fun?” But she was smiling, like half-a-step closer.
He gave her a look that said oh, do you? without any words at all, like he was the expert on fun and he’d need proof that she actually knew how to have it. Right then he wasn’t quite the master of subtle, and Deacon’s gaze dropped when the denim slid up, not that there was much coverage to begin with but less was always better, and he grinned at her like he was impressed when he managed to look back up. “Sure, doll, but in a place like this there’s more fun in numbers. Unless you’re lookin’ for a specific kind, you know, one-on-one--” A sly wink like yeah, he got it, “but the night’s still young.”
Progress, he thought, one step closer in coaxing her back with him and maybe sharing the goods. “Deacon.” He said it like it meant something and like he was used to giving it; there were no secrets, no need to keep it hidden. “You gonna give me yours?” He leaned a little closer and pulled a pout. “Pretty please?”
Yeah, he looked and her eyes fell as his did, to the slippery line of white skin bared by the denim skating higher. Thea blushed, spots of color high on cheekbones and her hand moved to tug it down and then didn’t. No, why the hell should she? She didn’t mind. It didn’t matter, even if he winked like she was making an invitation when there had been nothing but a drink. Her hand stilled, her fingers curled into her palm and Thea’s chin tilted back up, all jaunty lack of care; what, my thigh on display? Totally cool. Totally normal.
Deacon. Of course he was named like a priest. He leaned forward and there was the cling of fresh sweat and the lingering smell of booze, the expensive kind and cheap, like he didn’t mind either. Thea figured rich people were more discerning, but maybe he didn’t care, it was the same when you were buzzed like that. “Thea,” she said, looking down her nose and she hooked her heels back onto the rung of the stool, like she was pristine and debutante rather than silver and denim and smudged eye-make-up in a bar - and then she smiled, sharp-shy shard of a smile and she looked at him directly. Trouble came and found you, if you waited long enough.
“I’m just looking for fun,” she said, and she shrugged one shoulder. That’s all. No agenda. Just fun.
Wide-blown pupils watched her aborted attempt to tug down her skirt with no indication of whether or not Deacon understood what he saw, or if he was just looking, not caring, because there was so much to look at and why not? Right then he was looking at her, like there was no one else in the bar, no one he cared about, and he grinned when she relinquished her name. Just a word, but to him it was a prize; the first to be won. “Thea,” he repeated, tasting the word and liking how it sounded on his tongue. Her smile was encouragement, the cue to continue as opposed to back off. She could’ve thrown a drink in his face, she could’ve told him no, and really, he’d just be giving her what she wanted. Fun, right? He could provide fun. He was all about fun.
“So am I,” he told her. “Well, I was. Then I found it. C’mon.” He held out a hand, as though he was a gallant gentleman and not trouble incarnate at all.
She wasn’t a center-of-the-universe kind of girl. The kind who thought she wanted the world tied up in ribbon, etched with her initials for her birthday. Girls like that had perfect make-up instead of smeared eyeliner and they came to bars with friends, expecting to be picked out from the line-up, chosen like they were extra-special. She wasn’t center of the universe. She was back of the shelf, bargain basement but Deacon - name of a priest but who looked like he didn’t shop anywhere but the top of the line - smiled at her like she was anything but. He was high, and he was drunk and maybe he was just really good at this but she dipped her head behind the flutter of curls wilting from a club’s worth of warm night, and she idled with her drink a second too long.
The thin hand had bitten nails painted silver-blue. The wrist was bared, no one cared to look at damaged goods to see where it had broken, Thea figured, every girl was the same in the dark. His hand was warm, her palm slid over his and she unhooked one heel from the stool and slid without grace down to stand eye to eye. The skirt was short and the silver was cheap. She looked uncertain, the varnish of jaded boredom and trouble-seeking peeling briefly. Her fingers clasped his, ringed them loosely with her forefinger and thumb.
“Where are we going?”
Drunk and high and he still hadn’t lost his charm. Oh, this tune was one he knew well, but Deacon was still proud of himself as she fell for his honeyed words and complied, hand sliding into his in wordless acquiesce. Her skin was warm or maybe it was his warmth and he was just passing it along to her; he didn’t know, and he didn’t care. He liked her well enough, as much as he could like anybody he’d known for about five minutes in a too-loud club, and he smiled reassuringly as she slid off her stool and looked at him. He knew her type, looking for trouble not not quite knowing what to do with it once she had it. Well, he could teach her a thing or do. He didn’t mind.
“Not far,” he told her. “Just back there, to my table. I’ve got some good shit and then we can really get this party started.” He tugged on her hand, not demanding in the slightest, but with the expectation that she’d follow.
She came out to find trouble every night and she found it on her knees and her throat burned or she found it with her elbows secure on a sticky bar-top with the vodka bite on the back of her tongue or she found it waking up in before Vegas was truly hungover. She knew trouble and she knew it by name, and Thea’s hand twisted in his grasp, curled her fingers into his palm and she let herself be led because to be led meant not having to think a single thing. He was cute and he smiled like he was pleased with himself (she could see it, spilling over, the corners of his mouth pulled just a little too much to be nonchalant) and he was high and maybe high was the next thing, maybe just letting go of thinking would help.
She let herself be tugged and she didn’t look around for a way out because the bar was full of people and no one cared so why should she? The boy with a name like a priest was happy, and Thea didn’t know what that felt like anymore, warm inside-out instead of cold, and maybe his table back there would show her how. “Okay,” she said, “As long as you never call me doll again.” A slip-stitch of a smile, quick, sharp. She pushed ahead, she left him looking at the silver and the flicker of legs beneath the denim. She sighted out the one table in the room that looked like they were lost, a party without a captain, and she headed towards it because Priest Boy wouldn’t come without an entourage, they never did.
Sometimes, just sometimes, Deacon snapped. There was no telling when or even why, could be something big or could be a tiny, insignificant little comment that set him off. Sometimes being drunk and/or high made his temper worse, but sometimes it mellowed him out and he was cool with every little thing, and fortunately tonight was an example of the latter. When she told him not to call her doll he just laughed, ha-fucking-ha, and gave her a winning grin. “Sure, whatever you want. You got something else you’d prefer to be called?” He liked coming up with pet names, nicknames, the works, but he wasn’t adverse to suggestions every now and then. Her pushing ahead was unexpected, and his gaze dropped appreciatively to to the view offered as he followed behind. His table wasn’t hard to pick out, and his scattered subjects stirred and looked up as they approached, languid smiles and murmurs at the return of their king. He played the part well.
“This is Thea.” He slung an arm around her shoulder, and it was a sign to the other men gathered that she was hands-off, lest they felt the desire for the jagged end of a vodka bottle to end up somewhere it shouldn’t. There was powder, there were pills, and there was booze, passed between fingers and half-spilled on the dimly lit table.
His arm was cool slack across her collarbones, heavy over silvered sequins. It felt like an anchor, like a string tied around a bobbing balloon, caught in a weird drift. Thea put his smile away, tore it up and folded the pieces into inner pocket, she looked across the flotsam Lost Boys crowded around a too-small table with an opus of exits sprinkled across a sticky surface. It looked like a PSA, after a teen drama; we interrupt your show with this message, don’t do drugs, kids. A nervous laugh bubbled in the back of her throat, she swallowed on it, ignored it. The trouble she’d found with people glassy-eyed by life or pills or powders, they’d been on things. She’d just never gone through the trapdoor.
“Hi.” She picked her path delicately out from under the aegis of his arm, past spread knees and akimbo arms, the dulled responses of the Merry Men who passed a bottle of high-label booze back and forth as if it weren’t a bar you could buy a drink of your own in. There wasn’t a spare chair; Thea picked a knee, snagged the bottle as it passed. “It’s just Thea.” She looked directly at Deacon, smiled the kind of sunshine that was a dare and a dagger at once and took a swig. “What are we doing?” It burned on the way down in the good, just getting started kind of way.
That nervous laugh didn’t phase him, or at least it wouldn’t have had he been paying enough attention to notice. Deacon wasn’t. He liked to have a good time and he surrounded himself with people who felt the same, but he wasn’t going to sit there and hold somebody’s hand to make them feel better. She didn’t seem the type, though, and her greeting was met by a wave of similar words, low and careless. They didn’t ask questions; they accepted whoever their boy king brought into the fold and that was that. He let her go when she moved out from under his arm, watching as she made her way through various limbs to perch atop a knee and take the bottle like it was her right.
“What are we doing?” He hopped onto the table with a broad grin, whereupon a blonde with a pixie haircut handed him a liquid-filled glass, which he took a deep gulp from before continuing. “Whatever the hell we want.” A murmur of agreement rose up around them. “We’ll stick around here for a while, then move on. You know, the usual.” He brightened suddenly. “You got any ideas, Just Thea?” Give the new girl a chance to share.
There was probably backwash in the bottle from too many mouths to count how gross it was but she swigged down warm beer and other people’s spit and felt her skirt ride up against the denim of a stranger’s knee. Thea let her legs dangle until her feet could anchor herself to the floor, re-settle her weight so that it looked careless, casual but no one could stand up quickly enough to leave her sprawling on the sticky floor. He didn’t put a hand up to balance her, the lost boy with the tangled mop of blond hair but she caught the way his head turned toward Deacon, like the boy with pinwheeled pupils was king and his command was word.
“Rob a bank,” she drawled from her perch, and she watched a joint pass around the chairs until it hit her point in the circle. The smoke was sweet, not sickly but heavy like burned straw and she reached for it with stubby fingernails and cracked nail polish, and offered up, “Break someone out of jail,” with equal aplomb, neither idea suited to an evening’s entertainment but riding hard on the edge of no rules left.
For all his bravado and swagger, there were a few things Deacon hadn’t done. Rob a bank, for example. He would’ve done it for the thrill, not the money, but heists took planning and people he trusted, which were few and far between, and besides, he had no desire to be a) shot by the cops or b) thrown in jail. Money could only stretch so far. Nor had he broken anyone out of jail, but only because he hadn’t cared about anyone enough to try; usually when someone he knew landed themselves behind bars he distanced himself from them pretty fast. Oops. Of course, chances were Thea wasn’t throwing out actually options and, had he agreed to either, probably wouldn’t have come along, but in the spirit of the game he showed enthusiasm, a wide grin and bright eyes which roused the others to mimicked excitement. “Bank’d be for thrills, not for money,” he declared, and he turned to one of the boys, a brown-haired kid, with a thoughtful expression. “We know anyone who’s in jail, Al?” The boy stirred in his seat, shrugged, and settled back down again.
He rolled his eyes and took another swig from a random bottle. “We could pick someone at random, unless you’ve got someone you wanna spring, Thea.”
There was no one Thea knew locked up in a jail cell. There was no bank she really wanted to rob, there was a black Amex in her wallet hooked up to an account stuffed by two neglectful parents who had more money than they’d ever had sense and that was like robbing a bank but utterly legit. But the boy called by a priest’s name didn’t back off like she’d offered up something that stank at a dinner party, even if his lost boys were too stoned to follow along, too stoned or too intimidated, Thea didn’t know which. She dangled her foot to the floor and scrubbed the toe of her shoe along the tacky, dubious stickiness that was there, and she looked up from beneath the pallid curtain of her hair, all innocence.
“No,” she said, swaying on the boy’s lap, skinny denim knees digging in to her thighs. “I don’t know anyone in jail. You have a large enough sample size I thought you would.” She looked at the blank stare back from the boy she was seated on, and patted his cheek with stubby nails. “It’s probability,” she told him and looked at Deacon.
“So what do you do for fun?”
The boy’s blank look, which was mirrored in most of those seated and lingering around the table, made Deacon laugh aloud. Not that he was some fucking intellectual but he could, at least, pretend better than the rest of his clique could. Probability was part of that treasure chest of knowledge collected over the years which gathered dust in the back of his mind; having an education didn’t count for much, not when you didn’t use it, and he definitely hadn’t used it yet. Maybe he would, someday. If he actually ended up owning a club he’d probably need business skills, no? But this was here and now, in a club, and he was drunk and high and not in a very business-y state of mind.
“They don’t know probability,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “For fun? Sometimes I throw parties, sometimes I bring the party with me. They’re usually more alive than this,” he added, rolling his eyes. Suddenly he brightened, as though he’d just been struck by the most wonderful idea. “Hey, you wanna see how fast we can get ourselves kicked out?” He didn’t sound like he minded much; there was always somewhere else to go, always somewhere else he could hold court.
She wasn’t trying to make him laugh. Trying to make anyone laugh was basically an invitation to get fucked up over someone else, the first teeny-tiny step on a road less traveled, tyvm, but it was a loose, easy sound and it was kind of pleasant, a little like a club. Thea hadn’t been a member of a club beyond one since Matilda skipped town. Probability wasn’t hard. It was a basic concept, an eight year old grasped in middle school but she didn’t say that just then, she just patted the tips of her fingers to the cheek of the boy who looked confused and also unhappy, and a little bit pissed off, and who nudged her off his knee with an abrupt movement of his hips. Thea stumbled, one foot skidded on sticky floor and her fingers grasped at the table’s edge just as Deacon elaborated his plan to make it a little less homework-party boring in the club.
“You’re the boy-king here,” she said, standing with her head cresting his knee, “Make me believe you can do it.”
He was the boy king, and he liked that she recognized it. Submission was easy when it came on the heels of drugs and booze but she wasn’t near as inebriated as his other followers, and regardless, Deacon never turned down a challenge. He spared a frown for the boy who’d nudged his new friend off his knee and to her feet but he didn’t dwell on the negative, and tonight he wasn’t in the mood for a fight, fortunately for him; his own injuries often paled in comparison to those suffered by whoever opposed him. He winked and swaggered away from the table, back into the throng of bodies and music, making his way swiftly to the bar on the other side. Deacon waited and waited until the bartender, lone and overworked, was drawn to the far end by a rousing cry of drunken demand and cash, and then he hauled himself up onto the bar with a flourish-- surprisingly even-footed considering what was currently in his system.
“Free booze for everyone!” He crowed, sliding down onto the other side where an array of bottles awaited. And then he started tossing them like baseballs, beer and vodka and whiskey and bright-colored things, some were caught and some smashed, booze and glass scattering to a mixture of cheers and cries of those sober enough to be pissed. The bartender came charging like a bull but Deacon just laughed, dodging, slipping and sliding as he scrambled back over the bar in triumph. He ducked into the crowd and that was enough; one guy took a swing at him but missed, hit another, and from there it was like a domino effect; okay, so maybe he’d claimed to be kicked out, but a scuffle was just as fun.
Thea laughed. It wasn’t submission and it wasn’t sliding into the role of courtier, she gave a look at all those faces, marionette strings tweaked by the boy loaded down with the most expensive substances in his system possible, and she didn’t want to sit down, pick up the bottle and pass it round waiting to see what it was he’d do. She watched him go, and she wove her way through the crowd to stand there in slippery silver and the boots and she shrieked as the first bottle smashed, delighted surprise and shock as the glass shattered apart on the bar floor.
The knot of people closed around Deacon, and the fight began in earnest, twisting as the crowd went from pleasure at the nonsense to starkly ugly, Deacon only visible over shoulders, at the very center of a swell of men trying to hit each other for no point at all. Thea ducked, beneath the arms and twisting bodies, right into the center of all of it, skinny limbs twisting as someone tried to clamp a hand on her shoulder and shove her out. She reached, fingers closing over his wrist and tugging, “This way,” she was laughing, it felt like living, it felt like being very brightly alive and she didn’t care about the court of lost boys waiting for their king, lost boys who had waded into the fight the minute fists had started to swing. “Or you’re going to get yourself killed.”
He’d expected Thea to hang back just like the others; they were his audience, at least until things got interesting. Then they’d charge in like brave knights coming to the rescue of their king and he’d lose track of them after tonight, but Deacon wasn’t concerned with permanence. He told himself he didn’t need it and he’d actually managed to convince himself of it over the years. So to catch sight of her there, in the midst of the chaos, was surprising. His mind worked slowly, gears squeaking in protest as they turned. He thought, maybe, he’d misjudged her and she wanted to get in on the action; maybe she was a fighter. But then her fingers closed over her wrist and she tugged, and he was too bogged down by booze and drugs to do anything other than acquiesce and go where he was led.
Leaving his court behind didn’t bother him. He did it often. It was an adventure in itself, fighting through the crowd to get out, and he laughed along with her. “Don’t you know? I’m goddamn immortal.”
Thea didn’t fight. She was too skinny for it, she knew, fighting took not just guts, it took breadth and she didn’t think she had enough of the guts, let alone the breadth. No, she ducked into the fray knowing exactly that men, even ones half-way to drunk, would try and avoid hitting her, the slip of silver sliding in and out of bodies and she didn’t want to start them thinking it was okay. Deacon was a twist at the very heart of it and he fought like he didn’t care if he stood upright afterwards, like fighting was easier than breathing. He followed though, when she tugged on his wrist, and she pulled again, to the back-door of the club and the alley that lay beyond, and she shoved it open with her shoulder.
“Sure you are. Immortal,” Thea’s voice projected withering disbelief. He was Icarus, soaring too high and the wax sticky down his arms, but he was still flying and Thea’s smile was small but there. “They can still take you with one of those bottles.” The air was cool on the back of her sweaty-warm neck and it slid up her bare arms and made her shiver. “What makes you think they won’t?”
Nobody had ever taught Deacon how to fight. Not properly, at least. His lessons were on the streets, they were dirty and bloody and learned through bruises and broken bones. He had no professional training, no technical knowledge, just a thirst for violence and a reckless carelessness for his own well-being. And he was vicious when he wanted to be, brutal; most learned that the hard way. Tonight, though, he was almost playful, like each blow thrown was just one big game and he was loving every second of it. But he was equally willing to be pulled outside, away from the chaos; the drugs and alcohol had made him more agreeable than usual.
“They can try.” He took a deep breath of the outside air and exhaled through his nose, grinning afterward. “I guess I’m just not scared,” he shrugged.
She was scared too often to be anything else. When you were scared it was easier to just exist within it, allow it to sit between you and the world like a thin and cold layer of jelly that meant nothing could touch you. Thea could pretend, but she wasn’t not-scared enough to wade into a bar-fight and she wasn’t not-scared enough to start one. Maybe he was dumb, the guy with the pinwheel pupils lit up like stars and maybe he was out of his head on something but he sounded like the world wasn’t something all teeth and snap, like it could be fun, if you knew the way.
“It’s not about trying,” Thea said loftily, and she wrapped one hand over each opposite arm and rubbed. The silver shirt was meant for the sweat-warmth of the club, when the air-conditioning competed with bodies and the dry of the desert heat all day against the walls. Night in Vegas wasn’t cold exactly but it was a temperature drop, out here where the brick dripped condensation. “It’s about being human.” He had been caught, by one of the broken glass shards, she could see now her eyes had adjusted to the dimmer light. Something darker was streaked across his neck, dripped stickly. Thea put out her fingers, all glitter nailpolish half scratched off, and she touched it. Her fingers came away dark with blood.
“See? You’re human.” She showed him.
Fear had no place in his life. It was a puzzle piece that didn’t fit in the bigger picture, jagged edges and wonky shape that had it discarded instead. First he’d been too spoiled to be scared of anything, and then he’d met a father who demanded it from others and Deacon learned to pretend, he learned to act, but in spite he vowed never to be afraid of the man. It hadn’t been easy at first, but he taught himself. And now, now he feared nothing, because he’d shoved it so far down that he didn’t even have to acknowledge it anymore. “Being human doesn’t have to mean being weak,” he said carelessly. Sure, they could come at him with broken bottles, but they’d only take him down if he let them. The thing about the cocktail in his veins was that he didn’t feel things like pain, and he watched her quizzically until she pulled her fingers back and showed him the dark red staining her skin.
“Huh.” It took him a few seconds to realize it was blood, a few seconds more to realize it was his. “Doesn’t hurt,” he shrugged. “No big deal.” In the far off distance sirens began to wail, and he cocked his head like a dog, listening, before turning back and taking her hand in his and pulling her down the alley. “C’mon. You don’t want to wait around for the boys in blue, trust me.” Any legal troubles always went away, but he didn’t do so well with authorities and nothing good ever came of confrontations between him and cops.
“You’re insane,” Thea told him, like he cared, like he was mad, like he was high on everything, but she knew blood. She knew the way it was supposed to run, hot and red and quick over skin, like a tide swallowing up sand, when you were dying. Deacon wasn’t dying, he wasn’t even close. It was a slow but regular dribble of red running toward his shirt collar and he wouldn’t die from that even if it carried on running. Thea knew blood, when it curled around a plug hole, how water ran it thin and pink.
But the siren wailed warning and no, Thea did not want to be caught. The ID in her purse was a fake, a good one and expensive from the guy on campus who sold them smelling faintly of pot, and while she could buy another, she was attached. She liked the photo. The cops asked questions, and they occasionally made cautions and asked her why she was out late without expecting an answer.
His hand in hers was warm, and wide and she curled her fingers into his and let him pull her along like undertow, the skittering of glass bottles spinning with each step. The alleyway was dark, the light from the street did not penetrate beyond, and Thea followed in his wake past trash cans and dumpsters, sagging sacks of refuse that stank sweetly of alcohol.
“Where are we even going?”
Most people wouldn’t take being called insane as a compliment, but Deacon wasn’t most people and Thea wasn’t the first one to question his sanity. In his mind, it was just a cut. Just a little blood. Real insanity would be shrugging off a knife wound or a bullet lodged in his skin. “I might be insane,” he conceded, “but you like it.” He said it like fact, with a cocky grin to go along with his conviction. The sirens grew louder for a moment but then faded as they made their way down the alley, and he wasn’t concerned with a destination until she brought it up. He paused near the mouth of the alley, where the sidewalk and street beckoned, thoughtful, still holding fast to her hand.
“We can go anywhere. Night’s still young.” He tugged her along out onto the sidewalk, where the lights offered dim illumination. “Where do you want to go?” She’d become his partner-in-crime, and they were in this together now.
Insanity was not smiling in the dark at blood running down his neck. Thea knew insanity and it was shuffling in cheap slippers over hospital linoleum, drugged until the fog swallowed you whole. It was hearing things that weren’t there until you screamed all night long and woke everyone else from it and the nurses had to come check on you, doors slamming in empty hallways and little paper cups of meds. But she meant it the way people said it at college, flippantly in corridors, ‘you’re insane’, like eating ice-cream in winter.
The neon lit up the dark in the street, turned everything the soft and hazy colors of Christmas lights until the shadows morphed and twisted like children’s nightmares. Thea curled her fingers around his and she walked in the spindly high heels as effortlessly as practice made in the dorm room at college, picking herself a path. She could have named another bar like the one they’d just left, where trouble clung to the shadows and she could have listed a party where they’d be one in a crowd. Instead she turned her head and she looked at him, and then Thea pulled him along.
The place she took him to, on a walk that didn’t require talking all that much, was a sticky-floored all night diner with a cheap sign that couldn’t compete with the casinos’ neon. It was open all night and it had bad coffee, but it had the best ice-cream Thea knew. She tugged him inside, where the air conditioning reminded her she was cold all over again, and she stood on the mat just inside the door and looked at him.
“We can get your neck cleaned up,” she said simply, disentangling her fingers, “And they have ice-cream.” She said it, as if it were an answer in itself.
Deacon hadn’t really been leading; that required a destination, a sense of direction, neither of which he currently possessed. And so he went without argument when she pulled on him, letting her take the lead, assuming it was a wordless response to his declaration that they could go anywhere. He was expecting a bar or another club, not a diner, but oh well. Maybe quiet and low key was a good thing.
The air conditioning inside cut through his haze, just a little, but not enough to yank him back into the realm of sobriety. “My neck is fine,” he said dismissively, flexing his newly-free fingers as though puzzled by the lack of contact. “But I like ice cream. My treat.” He turned toward the counter, looking to decide which flavor he wanted.
The lighting was yellowing fluorescence, bright enough to see what exactly was wrong with his neck and Thea didn’t think ‘fine’ was true. It was still dribbling blood but it had darkened, blackened and begun to dry which meant it was not dangerous, not exactly. His shirt had rusted over at the collar though, and she ran her fingertips along this now, flakes of dry blood, red as paint, crisping under her touch. It was fragile, blood, even when it dried.
“I didn’t ask for a treat,” she said now, sliding onto a stool that was cool on her bared thighs. It sounded like the kind of thing an absentee father might say, trying to buy a weekend’s affection with two scoops and a banana split, except her father didn’t bother with that, he was just done. The menu was plastic, and it came wiped clean of the sticky fingers of the previous diners and Thea ran her finger down it like she was at a bar ordering cocktails, all stiffened-neck pretend elegance.
“I’m going to get the Black Forest,” she said, and her smile was a darting, quick thing more honest than the ones in the low light of the club. “I think this place is amazing. They haven’t been taken over yet.” The Strip was creeping in and a hotel would buy up the lease someday and knock the place down. But until then, it was holding out. Thea thought ice-cream places and second hand junk-stores were good places to go, but perhaps the priest boy didn’t. Perhaps he only lived in bars and clubs, places where you got high enough that it didn’t matter.
The blood didn’t bother him. Not for what it signified, and not for ruining his shirt. Deacon wasn’t the type to cry over spilt milk; if his clothes got ruined he’d just buy more. Money didn’t mean much to him, even if it should, because it wouldn’t last forever. But he wasn’t a future kind of guy, never one to plan or think beyond the day-by-day. He cocked his head to the side quizzically when she said she hadn’t asked for a treat, because she wanted ice cream, didn’t she? While he definitely wasn’t some knight in shining armor, he wasn’t cheap enough to make her buy her own. But he shrugged, too hazy to overthink it, and carefully positioned himself on the stool next to hers.
“Black Forest,” he echoed, nodding. She could’ve said anything and he still would have reacted in the same manner. “Hey!” He slapped his hand down on the counter for added emphasis, which only earned him a tired look from the guy behind the counter, as though he was used to stupid drunk adolescents coming in. “Black Forest and, uh, chocolate,” he ordered, unaware that his words slurred ever so slightly. “Taken over yet? Who’s taking it over?” He looked back over at her, the words sinking in belatedly.
Thea wondered if maybe he’d not just expected the smoky dark of the kind of club they’d come from, but wanted it, if bright lights and ice-cream and the guy behind the counter who looked like his tolerance for teenagers, especially drunken ones was running especially low, was entirely dorky. She had been intermittently dorky and cool for so long she didn’t know where the line was drawn any more and she didn’t know if she cared.
“No one,” she said now, of the encroaching line of big business and the clean, air-conditioned sterility of the casinos that took over all the interesting places. Vegas had a lot of great places to eat -- inside the boxy darkness of a place where the time was never on the wall to see. The campus didn’t seem to care, but she missed holes in the walls, and dives, and the kind of dirt on brick that couldn’t be washed away with the winter’s rain. “Just, they do. You know? All the cool places just get wiped out.” His blood had scraped under her nails, Thea scratched it back out with her thumbnail, looked at him in the white clean light.
“You can go if you want to. It’s not a bar. It’s just ice-cream.” She shrugged a shoulder and the silver shimmered, cheap in proper light. “But it’s good.”
Deacon had never been dorky, only because no one had ever thought him dorky. He might deny it, might claim he could function perfectly well as a lone wolf, but the truth was he craved attention. His followers made him what he was. A god, a king, a cool kid who knew the hot spots and could have what he wanted with the snap of his fingers. He liked it. He needed it, even, though he wasn’t self-aware enough to realize that.
“Oh,” he said, like he understood. “Right.” Were places like this cool? It made him think, but he could make dancers and ice cream go together for his not-yet-in-existence club so he gave up entirely. He blinked at her, uncomprehending. Go? Where would he go? There was home, but he didn’t want to go there yet and it seemed so very far away. “I don’t want to go.” He didn’t really do ice cream, but maybe he should. He dug around in his pocket for money, slapping down some bills and telling the guy to ‘keep the change’. He didn’t look impressed, but Deacon was just too high and too drunk to count out the right about and to care about getting exact change, or any change, back. He missed the guy’s eyeroll because he was too busy handing Thea her ice cream, before happily licking his own.
Thea was too self-aware for her own good. It was what made her feel, when she had been small and inconsequential and toted along on book-tours and to embassies, like she wore her skin too tightly the way rubber stretched too thin will show whatever lies beneath it.
She was self-aware now; she knew she was too thin and she knew she was too tall. She knew her nose was too big for her face and she knew that the kind of books she liked (old) and the kind of music (none at all) were not compatible at all with what was cool. Thea wanted to be cool the way most people wanted it, sorta-kinda but for it to be effortless, for it to be the kind of cool no one had to think about. She licked her ice-cream now as it ran down her fingers, sticky-cold-sweet, and she wasn’t drunk enough or high for Deacon, the buzz from the bar was beginning to wear thin and leave her behind, instead of the girl composed of cigarette ash and cheap vodka.
“You’re sure?” It wasn’t cool to say that either, but Thea didn’t sound it just then, she was hopefulness discordant in her voice, as she licked her ice-cream, cherry-chocolate smeared at the corner of her mouth. Maybe it was one of those things so dorky it came out the other side, like Dolores and comic books and the kinds of TV shows you watched on Saturday morning as a kid. “Okay.” She sat back on her seat, and she swung her legs, and she licked the ice-cream once again.
If asked, Deacon wouldn’t be able to describe what cool was. Maybe it was money, maybe it was drugs and booze, maybe it was having a carefree attitude and doing whatever one pleased. Maybe it was a matter of opinion. But he could mold it into something that fit him, and that was what mattered. If he was cool, then by extension he could decide who else was, and was not, and just then he didn’t look at Thea and see some dorky tall girl licking an ice cream; he saw somebody he liked and somebody who liked him, who’d followed him out of the club and was still present when most would have wandered off. People didn’t often stick around. Even if he didn’t realize it, he liked that she did.
“Yeah.” Unconcerned with her thoughts of cool vs uncool, he licked his ice cream and spun a little in the stool, which made him dizzy, and so that was short lived. He was content enough to eat ice cream and stay upright in silence, and he smiled at her over the two scoops of chocolate melting on the cone. Yeah, cool. This was cool.