Re: Capital: Jamie & Seven Friday night
The car wasn’t completely silent as it sliced through the city traffic, but it was damn near close. Seven wasn’t sure if that made them more the river or the rolling stone in this metaphor, but it still rang true as he drove with the weight of purpose, an actual direction, hanging overhead. Waiting, sort of just tumbling aimlessly through a dozen different possibilities. Jamie had settled into the front seat like all of his bones had liquefied and he could sleep for a year against the leather, and Seven didn’t get it-get it, the dance aspect, but he knew what it was to feel like a dead man walking around with an outside force moving your feet because your brain had been emptied out. In the receding tide of adrenaline and cortisol and whatever the fuck else, feeling hollowed. He got that.
Seven felt the guy’s gaze brush over him and glanced sideways from the road for just a second, registering the catch of that smile and the way it gleamed, in the car’s darkened interior, in a way that Seven couldn’t register as easily as Jamie’s other smiles. The slant of Seven’s grin hadn’t ever really faded entirely, but it slackened now into something a little more mellow. He acknowledged Jamie’s sidestep with a tilt of his head that was halfway to nod. And he waited. He didn’t feel the need to point out that no one ever made Seven do anything, because there was a nick of uncertainty along that particular beam that he was steadfastly trying to ignore.
He didn’t know about the wavering current between them, or the questions that didn’t get put into actual syllables. He could feel the difference but he didn’t know what it meant, if Jamie was just that exhausted and it was only unfamiliar because Seven had only ever seen the guy fucked-out, not danced-out. Didn’t know if it didn’t mean anything at all, if he was overthinking. So he drove.
“Sounds good,” he nodded, a little absently, a lot relieved, switching lanes smoothly and turning them in the direction of the hotel. It was only a few minutes’ drive away. He laughed a little, low gravel, and glanced over at the guy again with an eyebrow quirked. “A whole hour? Must’ve been some class,” he said, ribbing without any weight behind it. “You know you can just say you’re tired, right?”
There were several valets waiting as Seven pulled the car up the hotel’s half-circle driveway, two of them moving in sync to open the driver’s and passenger doors for them as soon as he shifted into park. Seven climbed out and the guy on his side got handed his keys and a “How’s it going, Jason?” along with a familiar clap to the guy’s shoulder. Seven made his way around the front of the Jag and met Jamie at the other side, then led the way into the hotel’s lobby with a look over to see if he was coming with.