Re: [Club: Hannah and Caspar]
She was afraid. Caspar was gin-soaked and hazy-eyed enough that he might not have noticed it in passing, but standing here, and talking to her, it was suddenly so, so fucking evident. The truth was neon bright to the point that even he could see it with the way that she looked over her shoulder, the way she seemed skittish and electric, ready to bolt like some gazelle who suddenly scented danger in the tall grass.
Caspar had almost no familiarity with frightened women. The women that he surrounded himself with could mostly be fitted into two categories. The first were those delicate and expensive figurines with hollow bones and trust funds of their own. Those were what his father decreed to be acceptable for public flaunting, like a well-manicured dog of such fine pedigree that one showed it to the world in pageantry. The second category were those women of no breeding but higher thresholds for fun. These were the ones who would drink until the sun came up, or maybe fuck you in the questionably public hot tub at the hotel. Despite their differences, neither class of woman was prone to shrinking like a violet when the stakes were high.
He'd been shaking off his father's shadow for all of his life. His father, who was just twisted enough to find her fretful display practically an aphrodisiac. Unfortunately, Caspar wasn't so opposed to his own genetics that he was willing to play the hero for her here and now. For all that he knew, she could have taken some bad pill and was now stricken with pharmaceutical-grade paranoia.
The way that she suddenly smiled and diverted to polite conversation, it felt like it made his brain snag on something sharp. The actual memories that he had of his brother's wedding, those that weren't cotton swabbed in champagne and celebratory cigar smoke, they'd still been weakened by time. It had been just one more place that he'd shown up to the gracious, teeth-bared grimaces of his family who could only hope that he wouldn't embarrass them in the public eye. You see, he'd been smiled at like that before. More than once. He knew what it meant, it was a very carefully placed please. Please behave, please don't, just please.
She asked about whether or not he was there with anyone, and the words might as well have been barely discernible radio static while Caspar navigated his memories to try and discover where he'd seen such a smile once before, one so tense and hoping for the best when he drew near. "Not really..."
It didn't take him very much longer, give the man some credit. Recognition bloomed in his pupils, widening his eyes. And he didn't say her name, it was a shocker that he remembered it at all really, but with the throbbing club music all around them, he only mouthed the word. Amy.