kellan ziegmann/dean winchester (crossroaded) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-06-06 19:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | captain america, dean winchester |
Who: Maren and Kellan
What: Drinking, discussion, dissing their Alters.
Where: Money Plays
When: Not long after the Altersplosion.
Warnings/Rating: Relatively tame. Some implications of offscreen activity.
A week of no control and wrecked shit and lost money had left Kellan at the fringes of his self-control. Dean, in his infinite idiocy and wisdom, had decided to try and play hero the entire time he was the one free in Vegas - except for the time he was a little busy getting locked inside the casinos and trying to hit on nervous cocktail waitresses. There were a lot of things Kellan would put up with, and the bastard was lucky that hadn’t been Kellan’s body he was using, but watching his cash dwindle to nothing in the hands of a jackass twenty-something really pissed him off.
And the thing was, it shouldn’t have made him as mad as it did. All this bullshit business here was starting to wear on him. He had to reassert himself and get control back. No more of this hesitation and waiting to see what happened next. No, he was in Las Vegas, and there were so many things here he could be doing. People to see, places to burn, meddling kids to harass and traumatize. Drinks to enjoy, and that in particular was about to come around again thanks to Maren. How many times had he gone out drinking with her, now? To think that before this they’d only barely known each other. Not everything to come out of this situation was completely bad.
It was a biker bar, but one with enough advertising to keep it from being a place he’d get curbstomped in just for showing up. Kellan was fairly nondescript as a rule, so he didn’t so much blend in as fade, pausing just a few feet in the door to try and find an empty and mildly isolated table or a spot at the bar where people wouldn’t give him more than a glance.
Biker bars weren’t Maren’s normal fare, but it had been the kind of week that spun into golden yarn and gave life to words on pages, and she hadn’t experienced it at all. Oh, she’d been there, in the mind of a virgin who wouldn’t know to enjoy something if his life depended on it. And, in the end, he’d given her name to some man in the darkness, a man Maren was counting on never coming calling. She wasn’t a message in a bottle, one that needed to be cast off to sea for someone to find and read and theorize about. She enjoyed the romance of the idea, of the concept, but not when it involved someone she’d never met, and she was getting exceptionally tired of Captain America’s constant battle to make her a better person. She knew she was on a slippery slope. She’d never intended to end up there, but it was where she was, and she would finish this chapter on her own terms, not in some woman’s prison because a fictional character deemed that it should be so.
But the choice of the biker bar had nothing to do with her fiction. It had everything to do with Raegan, and her stepsister’s insistence on finding out everything Maren was hiding. Callum and Hunter, true to their character types, didn’t care. They pretended they were sorry about her sad existence, but it was like a synopsis, a short sentiment that didn’t begin to express the nature of the story within. Raegan was different. She was the good kind of different, but Maren didn’t require a heroine. She would be the heroine of her own story, even if the world deemed her a villain for it. But Raegan didn’t frequent biker bars. Her stepsister was too young to get in, and that was why Maren had selected the location.
Finding appropriate clothing had been the mission of the day, and she beat Kellan to the bar by mere minutes. A denim micro-mini, boots and an indecently snug black-tshirt later, she was letting some man show her how to throw darts at the board on the wall. It was an excuse for his hand to rest on her bare hip, and Maren knew it, and she was busy writing his character sketch in her mind as she waited on Kellan. Kellan, who she wasn’t sure would contact her again. And Maren read enough to know playing hard to get was probably the best way to keep a man of Kellan’s age coming back, but she wasn’t patient enough to play that game. She listened for the creak and jingle of the door, only half paying attention to the man with the darts. “I wouldn’t read past chapter two,” she told the man, once her character sketch was complete, but he didn’t understand, and she looked up as Kellan hesitated near the door. “Now him? I would read the entire book,” she explained, already stepping away and toward the older man winding his way around the tables.
It took him a moment to see Maren coming toward him, with her looking like she came to this kind of place regularly, looking so much younger even than usual. She looked normal - no longer traumatized, not injured by the chaos (even if it had been good old Captain America running around, rather than her): back to the woman who could turn into anyone she wanted at a thought. Kellan gave her a slight grin as she approached, ignoring the forlorn glower of the man she’d left behind at the dartboard.
“Nice to see your siblings didn’t try to keep you away,” he said, mostly a joke but partly concerned. After all, two brothers and a sister could be problematic at least. “Let’s sit down. Beer’s probably the only thing that’s gonna keep me going right now.” That, and the half-comfort of knowing that someone would be keeping a close watch on a stash of money and … other, rather more sensitive items. Dean wasn’t going to get to this shit and turn him in. But right now he doubted Dean would be doing anything at all. All it took was one glance at the newspaper and the guy had panicked. Since then, there hadn’t been a word.
“My brothers don’t care,” she said as she approached him, hands familiar on his stomach in greeting and a kiss to the corner of his mouth that trailed to a knowing whisper at his ear. “I saw the night light up,” she told him, a curious nose against against his jaw as she pulled back, looking for the residual scent of fire and ash on his skin. She moved away entirely, and she crooked her head toward a booth in the corner, where a beer was already popped open and a cigarette was smouldering in the ashtray.
Tonight,she was confidence and bikes, and the scared girl from the RV wasn’t present. She was doused, wherever she was, not invited, and there wasn’t a bruise on her from the previous week. She slid into the booth and retrieved the cigarette in the ashtray, taking a long pull off it and blowing smoke overhead as she waited for him to join her. She handed over her beer, still cold and only a fourth missing, and she waved over the waitress and asked for a bucket with the kind of confidence of someone who ordered buckets of beer on a regular basis. The waitress raised a brow at the age difference between the pair at the table, but she fetched the bucket of beers without comment, and Maren pushed dark hair away from her face and grabbed a fresh beer for herself. “So?” she asked him, because eloquence and comparisons to novels didn’t fit with the theme of the evening. She slipped into the ineloquence like she slipped on any other persona. “Was that a job, or was it a threat, or was it a lightshow?”
The half-grin turned into a smirk when her hands pressed against his stomach and her mouth brushed across his jaw. Kellan let one hand of his own graze her bared arm, but it was only that much at the moment. Of course she recognized his work when she saw it even without him mentioning it. Then again, it wasn’t really work so much as pleasure, but either way, he did it … and she knew it. Some people might find that concerning, but he just let his ego grow.
In silence he followed Maren to the booth, sat down, and took the beer she handed him, watching her smoke as easily as if she’d been doing it for years. To his knowledge, she hadn’t smoked before meeting up again in Vegas. Was it his influence that lead her to pick up a habit that was known for slow deaths, or was he just the tipping point of stress and criminal intent. Could be both. Could be neither. But he didn’t mind. At this point, cigarettes were just a part of his life. Other people smoking barely registered on the radar.
“None of the above,” he said once the waitress had departed, leaving behind the drinks and taking a long, slow sip of his own. “I just felt like it.” Kellan wasn’t all that keen on admitting feeling like he’d lost control of so much lately, even to Maren (maybe especially to Maren). Taking out construction sites wasn’t exactly prime criminal material, but it was more than enough to make him feel like himself again. Taking down whatever he wanted and making sure people knew he was choosing what got to go on being whole and hale … it was petty and probably stupid, but it made him feel better, and in the end that was all that mattered. “I needed some cheering up after that mess. Still do, honestly. Dean’s more of a drag than I thought he’d be.”
It wasn’t the answer she was expecting, that I just felt like it, but there was something in it that was thrilling, that she approved of in her youth and inexperience. She didn’t stop to think that it might be dangerous, that he might be escalating. She only thought that he sounded powerful, in control, and she was drawn to that like a bee to honey. She sucked on the cigarette again, and she watched him with dark, dark eyes that belied her dark, dark thoughts. “What can we do to cheer you up?” she asked, stubbing the cigarette out and taking a long sip of her beer after. She tugged her lighter out of the pocket of the impossibly short skirt, and she flipped it open, closed, open, closed as she watched him, waiting to see what he seemed inclined to do.
Her gaze said she’d be game for nearly everything, her own brand of cabin fever at being stuck inside Captain Good Boy for a week. She knew better than to think Kellan was going to offer castles and princess dresses and tiaras. Maybe she’d wanted that before, right up until the moment where she’d ended up in his bed wearing a red dress and a smile. Maybe she’d been lying to herself about all that, about her desires to be a heroine. Maybe she just wanted to see him covered in ashes and soot, fire dancing on his fingers. She didn’t think about it too hard, because tonight she wasn’t the introspective heroine from chapter five.
No, tonight she was devil-may-care and clothes that showed off more than was decent. She was the prologue, before anything bad had happened, before there was any baggage, and she waved over the waitress and asked for a line of shots, finishing her beer as she watched the woman pour whiskey in the perfect row of shot glasses.
There was almost a little too much alcohol here, Kellan thought as he watched the waitress finish off the shots and set them down closer to him than Maren. Was she really planning to drink all this? Or was she thinking he’d take his share? He avoided getting drunk on the grounds that it might get him caught someday, generally, but whatever Maren wanted to drink was up to her discretion. Maybe she was lashing out after being locked away, like he had. Getting smashed and hanging out with a man almost thirty years her senior with a criminal record ten miles long would be one guaranteed way to piss off a wholesome fifties boy.
“I’m sure we’ll figure something out,” he said, though there were no implications in his voice. For a few seconds he almost sounded distracted. Then Kellan reached into his pocket, pulling a pack of cigarettes - and as soon as the waitress turned her back, he slid a tarnished silver key out of it instead of a smoke. “For now, just keep this somewhere safe.” He passed it across the table to her, fingers briefly brushing hers when she reached for it. There was a risk in giving her access to what he had locked away, but she didn’t know what bank or box, nor did she think there was anything else but money in there.
Hopefully.
She downed a shot and chased it with the beer, and she dipped her fingers in a second shot as she tried to figure out if there was anything in his voice she should be picking up on. She licked the golden liquid from her fingertips, her thoughts unwillingly dragged away from the interpretation of the text when he slid the key toward her.
That key, she knew, was why she was there, and its presence made her glance up at his face with blatantly young curiosity. Out of her league, and uncertain about the game being played, but that faded a second later when his fingers brushed hers. She slid the key toward herself and off the edge of the table, where she caught it with her other hand, and she fisted it in her palm for a moment before unwinding the chain she wore from around her throat and slipping the key onto it. The chain was long, thick, and it had another key on it (small and polished bright), and she tucked them both back into the shirt she wore.
She had no idea what he was hiding, and that thrilled her. Like a secret in a novel. Like Catherine at Northanger, and she leaned her elbows on the table and downed another shot. She stole the pack of cigarettes he had pulled out, and she tapped one out and lit it as she watched him curiously. “I should be able to figure you out by now,” she admitted, “but I can’t.” It sounded like a good thing when she said it.
Kellan watched Maren put the key on the chain and slip it back around her neck, pulling out a cigarette and lighting up before she took the pack for herself. His eyes lingered a moment where the chain rested on her collarbones, but her words were enough to draw his eyes up to her face and make him almost-smirk again.
“I try to keep an air of mystery around myself,” he said wryly, taking a drag on his cigarette. Truth be told, it wasn’t so much that he didn’t want to be figured out - what he really didn’t want to be was found out. People understood pyromaniacs and arsonists and criminals. They wrote books on the damn subject (some of which he’d read). Maren probably didn’t have him down fully because of her youth and inexperience more than his own real mysteriousness.
But hell - she liked him and admired him and even she couldn’t see what he was going to do next. What chance did someone who actively disliked him have?
“The only way I’m really gonna feel back up to scratch is after I get paid for something,” Kellan continued with a shrug, his smirk fading as the realities of the world trickled back in. “I’m hoping a job comes up before the shithead in here snaps out of his funk.”
“You don’t try to keep an air of mystery around yourself. If you were trying, then you wouldn’t be nearly as successful,” she explained, watching him take a drag from the cigarette with rapt attention, the burning tip almost drawing her attention enough to make her want to touch it. “Men in novels, the ones that try too hard, they always fail,” she said, the statement all her own and nothing of the evening’s pretense. Strangely, she didn’t think of him as a pyromaniac. She didn’t label him as anything more than something that fascinated her, and that did speak of youth, of inexperience, of a lifetime where everything had always been dangerous and men like him walked off the pages and still weren’t feared like they maybe should be.
“Is there any work?” she asked, and it was something she needed to start thinking about too. Her stay in Andrew’s apartment was temporary, and she would need some good, paying work to move out. “Anything we can do to get some? Anyone to impress? Anything to light?” she asked the last word like she wanted it, like she wanted to see something burn, and maybe that was in retaliation for Steve handing her name around like it was his right to do so.
She downed a third shot, and it would be hard to walk without a drunken sway once she stood, but she just sucked on her cigarette and blew smoke against his fingers after. She wasn’t standing yet. Enough time to worry about that when she needed to.
Another reference to books above all else. Kellan snorted, taking a long drink - longer than a drag on a cigarette - and mentally brushing away the hint of annoyance he felt at her bringing up those word-bound pages again. After all, she wasn’t doing it on purpose, he was fairly sure of that much. She wasn’t trying to be insulting. It was a compliment - that he didn’t have to try and be mysterious, he just was. Still … for a girl in her line of work, with her kind of acquaintances, being so lost in fiction and fantasy wasn’t really a good thing.
“There’s always something. Whether or not it’s worth the time and money is another question.” Always someone looking for the easy way out with no concept of the consequences. Kellan pulled on his cigarette again and stared at the far wall, his chin in his hand. “Nobody to impress, no. Something to light, maybe. But not right now. Just finished using up a little luck on the last three.” There was that flicker of dark intent on his face as he reflected on the actions of barely twelve hours ago. “I’ve got you in mind, though, and if I can get Delano on the line, we’ll see if he’s still got that something lined up. Otherwise … ” He shrugged.
Otherwise what? Otherwise someone would call him up and he might find Maren an in. Otherwise he’d get nothing. Otherwise the cops would track him down and tear him apart, because he didn’t plan on getting into jail, not yet. Kellan’s eyes drifted back to Maren, and he raised an eyebrow.
“Wonder Boy was really willing to go to prison just to teach you a lesson?”
She might have realized where his thoughts were going, if it wasn’t for the three shots and the beer, but she had no idea, and she just listened to his response about work and burning things. The dark intent in his expression caught and held her gaze for a few moments, until he was talking about Delano and potential jobs. She knew work would come, because it always did. Sometimes it took too long, though, and that worried her. Sometimes it was beyond her, as was the case lately, and that worried her too. “Do you worry about that otherwise?” she asked, fingers rubbing along the white casing of the cigarette as she tugged it away from her harlot-red lips. She didn’t worry about it as much as she should, perhaps, a result of living too long in her head, in pages, in words. She didn’t worry about things the way normal people did, but it hadn’t become a problem yet.
“Wonder Boy is,” she clarified, pressing one booted foot to his knee and taking another drag off her smoke. “He gave someone my name in that hotel. Someone in the dark. Someone whose story we don’t know. He hasn’t contacted me yet, but he might, and I’ll have to worry about another person watching me.” It was honest, plain annoyance in her tone, and she wondered about the key dangling beneath her shirt now. “What has Dean threatened?” she asked, looking up from it and meeting his gaze.
She smiled then, all trouble and remembering who she was supposed to be that night. “We could cause trouble and piss them off.” She never talked like that, never said things like piss them off, but it felt good, and she smiled, all mischief and dark eyes. “Fuck them, right?”
“Sometimes,” he said, and then, with a snort, “I hope he’s willing to deal with the fallout, then. Ask him if he’s willing to put up with the knowledge that it’ll be his fault I break you out of prison and probably let half the other inmates out in the process.” And kill guards, or seriously injure them, and endanger the entire population of the town closest to the jail. Kellan knew that, technically, legally, and in actuality, it would be his fault, but guilt wasn’t high on his list of priorities and never had been. Meanwhile, a hero dedicated to saving people’s lives and protecting the ‘innocent’ was likely to get some guilt by association. If only you’d let her stay free …
Kellan wasn’t overly concerned about someone in the hotel having Maren’s name. One stranger probably wouldn’t be the thing that took her down. In the grand scheme of things, she was barely a blip on the radar - or had been, until that fun little explosion at her RV.
“Dean’s not threatening anything. He’s sulking.” A pause. “More like freaking out, actually. Some girl died after the bullshit parade and he must have known either her or whoever she had in her head, because he hasn’t said a damn thing since he found out.” And then her insinuation that they cause trouble, just to piss people off. Kellan laughed. “I’d be all for it but like I said, I’m on the downswing right now. So unless you’ve got a bank to rob, I dunno what else we could try that’d make Captain in there get his tighty whities in an even bigger twist.” To be honest, he had a few ideas, but Maren seemed eager to make suggestions at the moment. Maybe she really did have something in mind.
Maren, stupid girl that she was, thought being broken out of jail sounded romantic. The logistics didn’t trip her up and, as always, the danger to others never factored in. People that weren’t personal to her were like accessories in a book, flat and two-dimensional, and she only felt a thrill of pleasure at the fact that Kellan would even consider rescuing her. Rescuing, which sounded like the set-up for a novel in and of itself.
Steve, in Maren’s mind, managed to dislike Kellan even more in that moment, which he didn’t think was possible, but he said nothing, and Maren just grinned at Kellan and circled a finger around a still-full shot glass. “He doesn’t like you,” she said of Steve, and she wondered if Kellan’s Dean felt the same way about her. Possibly, maybe. But maybe not, because Kellan was right. Until Andrew started sending her on jobs she simply wasn’t qualified to do, she wasn’t anyone’s target. A good actress, a good liar, a good decoy, but no killer and unimportant.
Maren had heard about the dead girl in the alley, but she hadn’t realized she was related to the hotel, and that did give her a moment’s pause. “Did someone at the hotel kill her?” she asked, but there wasn’t any true concern in her voice. She didn’t think her fiction could be killed, and as long as she was stuck being bored in his mind during events, then it shouldn’t be dangerous at all for her. It was, perhaps, the one good thing about Steve Rogers, in her estimation.
She had no suggestions that wouldn’t end up with them cooling off in a prison cell for the evening, and she gave him a look that was all bored-biker girl. “I’ve spent a week not being me. I want to feel something.” And, admittedly, she was drunk enough not to care about scenes or repercussions as she stood on her seat and crawled onto the sticky wood table. Crawling over to him was nothing, though it earned her some catcalls and whistles in that short skirt, and the remaining booze sloshed along her hands on the wood.
“Of course he doesn’t,” said Kellan, and smirked - a threat and a challenge in it, his eyes meeting Maren’s but looking through her to the goody two-shoes he knew was sulking back there. Go ahead and try something, he insinuated, taking a drag on his cigarette without looking away. Just ‘cause you’re a superhero doesn’t mean you’ll ever win. And then it was gone, and he was glancing out over the bar again, as casual and unassuming as ever, with a shrug. “Couldn’t say. I’m gonna assume so, given everything that happened. And he can’t even blame me for it, so he’s especially upset.”
Then Maren said she wanted to feel, and suddenly she was moving across the table to his side. He automatically pulled back, pressing into the old fake-leather of the seat behind him, more startled by her actions than anything else. Would he be opposed to something like what he was pretty sure she was planning? Not in the slightest. And the adrenaline from the arsons was still thrumming in his bones, making everything seem like a better idea. But she was pretty obviously well on her way to drunk, and it was going to take more than the half or so of a beer he’d gotten through for him to let her fall into bed after him again.
“We-ell,” he started, moving to hold her by the shoulders (and shooting a glower at the catcallers across the room), “I can’t say that doesn’t sound nice, but you’re a little smashed, I think.”
Maren’s eyes were trusting brown as she looked at the man at the table with her. She never doubted what he was saying about the girl in the alley, and she never even considered him as a possible cause of her death, which meant she was surprised when he mentioned Dean being angry that Kellan couldn’t be blamed for it. “Why would he feel better if you could be blamed?” she asked, dark hair fanning her cheek and confusion in her dark eyes.
She noticed the press of his shoulders back against the old fake-leather, because readers were observant, and because readers noticed things. It was enough to make her not insist when he put his hands on her shoulders, but she merely rocked back onto her heels on the sticky table, and she regarded him with eyes that were too old, too knowing. “Being drunk doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m doing, Kellan. It doesn’t mean I don’t know what I want. I want to burn,” she clarified, pupils blown wide and expression impossibly serious for her age.
She reached for one of the shot glasses, and she held it out to him. “So drink, if me being the only drunk one is a problem.”
Not sure if she was deliberately trying something here or just going with what had worked before - or if she really wanted to burn in a metaphorical sense - Kellan raised an eyebrow at her as she offered him the shot. He took it, but didn’t down it quite yet.
“He doesn’t do well with abstracts,” he said of Dean, who wanted a shotgun and an evil monster and the former filling the latter with whatever the bullet of the day was. “He doesn’t know who or what got her, and I wasn’t anywhere near in control when it happened.” Now Kellan took a drink, slowly sipping at the shot, watching Maren with calculating eyes. It was true that being drunk didn’t stop you from thinking, it just made it more difficult. Or easier to do stupid things, like taking a job that could get you killed or going home with someone twice your age …
Of course you’re a stupid thing to do, snapped Dean suddenly, sarcastic and sharp enough to make Kellan blink.
“ … if you insist,” he said, a little distantly, and finished off the shot. It wasn’t enough to cause a buzz, but another one would be, and he reached past Maren for it and tapped a short, ashy nail against the glass. If you ignored the fact that she was barely 21, Maren’s expression read a decade older. “You’re paying, after all.”
“The Captain doesn’t do well with feeling weak, and he doesn’t do well with people not listening to him, and he feels like an old car that is obsolete,” she explained, information for information, when he said Dean didn’t do well with abstracts. “Do you think he’ll try to find out?” she asked, because Dean finding out might mean Kellan needing to go after whoever killed the girl. Though she’d never known Kellan to be altruistic, and she gave him a long look, a wondering one. “If you found out who it was, would you do anything?” she asked, as if she was trying to figure out the next chapter without enough character information to manage it yet.
She noticed when his gaze turned calculating, and the look she gave him back was all challenge and determination. Drunk, yes, but not a little girl, not by years and years. The blink was unexpected, and she had no idea it was Dean’s doing, and she had no idea why he capitulated and took the drink she held out. She didn’t really care. For Maren, life was something that hardly ever lived up to words on pages. If she could live in a book, she would. But she couldn’t, and she had no choice but to stand very close to the flames in order to feel anything like what a story brought her. It was all that feeling when she was young, small and scared, and nothing could compare to the intense feeling of all that fear that had been her constant companion then.
She crawled the rest of the way to him, emboldened by the two shots he’d just downed. And she scooted forward until she was at the very edge of the sticky table, her feet beside his thighs on his seat. She leaned forward, and she dragged her fingers along his jaw. “What am I paying for?” she asked, bold and brass and as cheap as the skirt that was hiked up her thighs.
Kellan snorted, the only response to Maren’s question that she’d get. It summed up his thoughts on the matter succinctly enough: absolute apathy, a complete disregard for whatever had happened to a woman he didn’t know. Even Dean’s influence couldn’t make him care enough to try and start digging. Dean could do that on his own time - what little time Kellan gave him, anyway - and, with a final dismissive curse, he left Kellan alone in his mind to sulk.
Kellan himself took a third shot when he finished the second, the burn at the back of his throat fading in the wake of the buzz at the base of his skull. When that one was done, he looked Maren in the eyes again, the odd surprised distance from before banished along with the sulking monster hunter.
“Just the drinks,” he said, probably with a little more intensity than he needed to. “I’d hate to think you’d have to pay to spend time with me.” He smirked, and took a drag on his cigarette, and let the smoke curl out the corner of his mouth in lazy spirals.
She wasn’t surprised at the snort. She would have been surprised with any reaction to her question that was exceptionally different. Maren didn’t know if Kellan would go out of his way to save anyone, really. She considered asking. She considered probing into his backstory to see if there had been some lost love, someone he would have moved the very earth for, lassoed down the moon and snuffed out the sun, but that was her, who she normally was, that reader that believed in happy endings on paper, but not in real life.
Instead, she watched him take that third shot, dark eyes intense, even as the surprised distance was banished. She leaned forward when he spoke, when he smirked, and she stole the cigarette from him and kissed his mouth where that smoke curled out lazily at the corner. More catcalls, and she slid down onto his lap, straddling his thighs and taking the cigarette between her own lips, then letting the smoke slip back out in slow, slow puffs against his chin.
“Maybe I would pay to spend time with you,” she declared.
Even slowly reaching drunk as he was, even with the arrogance and the appeal of Maren dedicating herself entirely to him, Kellan wasn’t a public kind of person. PDAs weren’t his thing. And even though he knew the catcalls were for her, the attention was on her, the eyes were all instinctively drawn to her, there was a tinge of worry that someone was going to keep an eye on him. He didn’t mind having attention when it was due, but on an everyday basis … his face wasn’t exactly anonymous this far west.
So he let Maren kiss him, and returned it, if a little restrained. He reached up and ghosted his fingers along hers as he made to reclaim his cigarette. Maren was young and pretty and drunk and acting so different from the last time they met, from the trauma of a death gone wrong and an attempted assassination, from a week’s worth of being locked away in a hero, and a part of him was mildly concerned that she might just be using him as an escape. But, hell, was he doing anything different?
“I’m not gonna demand,” he said, a little more cheerfully than the lack of distance between them would normally have. He took another breath of smoke and shifted a shoulder toward the door. “Be rude to do that to a friend. I take it your place still isn’t really an option?” Wherever she was staying now probably wouldn’t be willing to bear with his presence.
She climbed off his lap when he shifted a shoulder toward the door, not needing his question about her place to know he wanted out. She knew he didn’t like drawing attention, and she didn’t blame him. He wasn’t the spotlight type. But he was right that the attention was mostly on her. She’d made sure of that with her clothing selection for the evening. She wasn’t vain, and she wasn’t even particularly secure, but she knew a short skirt and a midriff baring shirt that clung just right would always draw attention in a place like this. Most of the clientele was close to Kellan’s age, and she stood out like a little girl out late on a school night.
She paid for the drinks, and then she took his hand and led him through the maze of sticky wood tables and watchful gazes like a woman who had tons of experience leading men out of bars. There was confidence in the sway of her hips, in the dark look she tossed him over her shoulder, in the grin that tipped up the corners of her scarlet-red lips. It was all part of the evening’s act, and the Vegas night air was cool compared to the smoky inside of the bar.
She glanced around the alley, where there was darkness and privacy and the side of a sturdy wall, and she glanced at the cheap, hourly motel across the way, and then she glanced back at him. “I don’t even trust my place not to be bugged,” she explained.
Bugged, huh? Kellan smoked in silence as they stood outside the bar, ignoring any looks he might have gotten on the way out by the jealous or the disbelieving. That meant someone knew where she lived and had access to technology enough to keep tabs on her. For a moment he raised an eyebrow at her, vaguely skeptical, a little suspicious, but for the most part it was just a passing second of curiosity. If she thought it was bugged, they wouldn’t go there. And while normally he’d say his place was a little far, Kellan made it a point to avoid going to by-the-hour motels. His standards were strange and twisted, but they were, nonetheless, standards.
“My place it is, then,” he said, though he didn’t begrudge Maren for a second. There had to be a cab somewhere around here, ideally one that wouldn’t have a driver stupid enough to try anything. Just because he wasn’t armed didn’t mean he couldn’t put someone’s head through a windshield. “I’ve got a couple bucks for cab fare, since you got the drinks.”
Against the buzz of the alcohol slowly rising in his skull, he thought he heard someone grumbling, but brushed it off. Dean could deal with being sulky and jealous on his own so long as he didn’t try to interrupt anything. Ideally, the Captain would do the same. There were just some things you didn’t stick yourself in.