- (sonrisa) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-05-02 02:27:00 |
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Entry tags: | *log, daniel webster, lin alesi |
log: Daniel W & Lin A
Who: Daniel Webster & Lin Alesi
What: some singing, a tiny sword, & references to T.H. White, part I of II
Where: Daniel's Dom
When: before the turn.
Warnings/Rating: swears & man-feels
He came this close—this close—to scrambling back into the cab and telling the driver to, fuck it, turn the yellow shit around and go back to Viviani on Russell Drive, but, also could he wait, like, five minutes by the curb, just to make sure the hot dad with the beard let Lin in? He would pay whatever the fare was! Just maybe make sure he got with the hot dad first. Because not only would that be easier than what waited for him several floors up, it'd probably be more fun.—Like I said, this close, but, yeah, no cigar, because, by the time the thought scrimshawed through his mind, sideways through an internal monologue that revolved, evolved, and devolved around Angels in the Outfield and how kinda suspect the whole premise was, the cabbie was tearing away from the curb, one wheel going up over the ritzy Turnberry cement, the chassis singing in rust. That pretty much solved that, and Lin decided to forget the hot dad. He decided to forget the hot dad's super quality beard. He probably had a wife anyway, and Lin had done that ethically-ambiguous horizontal tango enough to know he'd have to be extra quiet throughout, which always sucked, and that he'd probably leave something he liked behind in the morning's rush to get out without getting caught. Like his hat.—It was probably for the best that the cabbie was a rude-ass and pealed off, right? Right. Probably. Whatever. Up he went. Lin found, the more he walked, his feet became more difficult to pilot. (Think SpaceShipOne landing patterns. Wacky!) They were doing that annoying thing where they don't quite go down where you want them to, and then when you lift, your toes drag and catch on the foot you just planted—you know what mess I'm talking about, the telltale stagger, the tipsy tip-toe, as someone with a boner for alliteration might tell you. Purple-dusted oxfords, now with a fresh new look!—lots of dirt and grime congealed over the toes—snagged on the metal lip that distinguished elevator from hallway, and the boy, as he attempted to disembark, tripped forward a little bit, over himself, and onto the griotte flooring that splashed outward from his feet like an ugly, if expensive ocean of limestone and marble. He got back up gracefully and not at all swearing, and finished his harrowing journey, hand on the knob to the Dom, with as much dignity as a mildly drunk boy in a silly hat could. (For once, at least, it was only the hat that was silly. Lin was otherwise dressed up, as far as things went for him—a fitted, button-up shirt, some nice, not blindingly-colored (in fact, gray) slacks. Fresh Prince-era Will Smith would've been disappointed, but surely everyone else was relieved.) Whatever myriad thoughts, worries, anxieties, and/or embarrassing and specific memories were jostling in the messy decoupage of his head, outside of Angels in the Outfield, he turned off with the satisfactory pop of a cathode ray. The boy, as if oblivious to everything else, as if he hadn't been curious as to what Daniel had been up to, as if the Beast's admonishments hadn't hurt his feelings, as if the whole letter thing was one big joke he was totally in on, walked right into the sustained darkness of Daniel's apartment, kicking the door shut behind him, and floundered to the kitchen to find some water. Yeah, everything was going to be fine! In Daniel’s dream, contained at one end of the living room couch amid dark stripes and discarded books, everyone he knew was moving around on a stage. The white hot Broadway lights and overdone stage makeup worked perfectly in ironic pantomime, all the players speaking a language he didn’t know, moving with exaggerated care and talking over his head as he tried to divide their conversation. Whenever he tried to interrupt with voice or hands, they kept switching places and tongues, and the syllables meant nothing no matter how he tried to understand them. Lin was there, speaking a liquid tongue that went too fast, nothing like the stout German words Daniel was used to, and the boy was telling Sam something that made her wrinkle her nose in disgust. Something rattled and squelched off-stage, and Daniel turned wildly to squint through the spotlight to see the source of the sound, and total silence fell in the split second before he woke up. Daniel sat up on the couch, working through the hundred aches that had built up in his arms and back after that last drink spread him out sideways, and he felt his spine creak out of the ridiculous curve that was probably more self-punishment than the drink itself. The apartment was even darker than usual, sunset having come and gone while Daniel was distracted in his nightmare theatrical. The laptop’s sullen glow had long since burned out, and now it was cold as it slid off him onto the cushion. Blinking grit out of his eyes and coming reluctantly out of one hangover into another, Daniel stared over the edge of the couch into the kitchen. He watched Lin stumble around for a little while first, not really understanding what he was seeing until after at least thirty seconds, interrupted with a short break to marvel at the horrendous atrocity sitting on the boy’s head. Watching the neon float several feet above the floor made Daniel think of ghosts and acid. Without speaking or otherwise making a sound, Daniel rolled off the couch and into the frigid air, aware of his soft and unresponsive muscles as the sandpaper in his throat ground against the back of his tongue. He padded on unclothed feet to the edge of the tile and stared across the expanse at the boy. Daniel put his nose in the air and sniffed as Henry would sniff, trying to surmise where the boy had been to find his buzz. There was certainly enough liquor in the apartment, but no color, and Daniel knew Lin was all about color. He began to be wary of the situation, staying silent to contemplate it. He hadn’t seen Lin for any extended length of time since Valentine’s Day, his usual demons replaced with unexpected struggles with Henry for control of his own limbs in a battle he had never aroused his sympathy, until the moment when it came for him. Daniel wasn’t sure if Lin was avoiding him or if he was avoiding Lin. Either way, it couldn’t last. Daniel leaned against the door and waited to be noticed, watching. Lin wasn't aware of the decidedly hungover ghost that lurked at the black edges of his periphery. He didn't know he was being watched. His mind was busy bathing in ebullient bubbles and the lingering mental froth of pink fizziness. He was humming to himself, unintentionally, subconsciously, working hard to assert his presence, to assert something, in the space devoid of sound, color, and life. Leaving an indelible mark on a place was sort of his trademark, wasn't it? Yeah, sort of! His body was warm with drink, the Dom's usual clamminess shucked away from his skin in waves, once he found his footing and managed to weave through the stratified forest of books. Leaving the kitchen lights off, the boy picked up the nearest glass, this one one of the plain ones Lin himself had bought to make up for all those Daniel had shattered in one fit or another. Its throat was sticky from drink, but it was whatever. He rinsed it in a jet of cold water from the faucet, and sang to himself as he filled the thing. His voice was low in an attempt at quiet—he hadn't yet seen QP and figured because of this, boozily, that the cat and drunken author had to be sleeping in the bedroom, so maybe he wasn't as quiet as he should have been. It started off slow. Lin was no fucking professional Celine Dion, but he could sing just fine. He probably would have chosen something more irritating and less misconstruably intimate if he'd known he had a shadow, but, as it was, he just went for it. The shit had been stuck in his head all day. That and Kelis. "At last… the skies above are blue. My heart was wrapped up in clover, the night I looked at you… I found a dream… " The water trickled. The tune changed mid-note with a quick accelerando. Introducing Kelis. "I ain't one to spark shit, but this is dedicated to them bitches who talk shit." There was a snatch of humming. It unraveled a little at the end. Etta James clucked her tongue up in heaven/her grave/whatever you believe, okay, not here to push anything, but Lin was oblivious to that too. He took a drink. "Fuck them bitches. Fuck them bitches. That's right I said it." Dancing and drinking had a palliative effect on Lin, at least to an extent. He never got to 100%, and he wasn't even fucking close to it now. He was still anxious, but alcohol silenced the shit for a bit, and dancing was a good social-but-not-too-social thing to do and to feel good while doing it. Like Captain Falcon said when you hit the taunt button in Super Smash Bros. (for N64), show me your moves.—But, he was done with both of those things for the time being, with the vaulting cathedral ceiling of the apartment back over his head and the smell of old books heavy in the cold air. Lin was back at the Dom, the place where no memories ever died. They were simply drowned in expensive whiskey until all that was left was a bubble here or there on the green glassy surface. He was back. And Daniel was sleeping (the real question was—was Daniel like a biblio-vampire? Did he turn into a book at night? Suck the ink from the many tomes riddling his apartment? Were they his sustenance literally (literature-ly*)? The time for answers was now!). So maybe he should go wake the dude up. The alcohol in his veins said, hell yes, that was a great idea, even if the sober parts of his brain warned him against such action after the flop of a conversation post-letter and after the Cat's own lily-accented admonishments regarding Daniel. Lin chose to listen to his veins. Which sounds weird, but it is what it is. He turned on a heel, leaving the glass behind with its whiskey-tainted water, and started visibly at the sight of Daniel the Shadow. With a jangle of nerves, Lin put his hand on his heart and tugged the brim of his cap down further. If drinking made introverts more extroverted, it made Lin shyer. As a solution, and with alcohol-soluble defenses, drink after drink dissolved some of the tough layers the boy had erected (haha) over time, some of the nonchalance, idgaf-fuck-you attitude, and easygoingness he'd grown into as an adult, and turned him into a kid nervous around the cool people and his crush alike. It was like some third grade shit, if third graders got shwasty on schnapps. Thank God the lights were out, because with listened-to-veins already dilated and roaring to go, to circulate more blood, blushing was like, one fucking step away. "Jesus Christ, you are so fucking creepy. That is some Ursula shit." Lin tried to sound annoyed, but he smiled anyway, bubbles buoying the corners of his mouth. His eyes slid to the floor and he waved, looking every bit like an eight year old talking to his Valentine. "Hi." Daniel was Lin’s valentine, and he knew it. The definition was a joke, because even Daniel knew he was darker on the inside than anything Lin could come up with in his pop culture metaphors. He smiled because no insult really touched him that way, and being called ‘creepy’ was a lot like the wave: charming. Something about the joyful singing and the bubbles floating up in Lin’s recently pickled speech made Daniel feel particularly predatory, and he didn’t feel that way all too often. Daniel was used to being indolent and unmoving, accustomed to using the whiskey to put a warm, burning wall up between his mind and reality. He still didn’t understand why Lin kept coming back, having dismissed all his various theories one by one: he was a challenge (but then no, he was too drunk and stupid to be a challenge), he was attractive (he had looked in the bronze mirrored edge of the elevator the other day, saw the softened angles and hunched shoulders, and that illusion vanished so fast it left him breathless), he was amusing (please, Lin could amuse himself with anyone he wanted)... the list went on and on, and still no answer. The letter forced Daniel to acknowledge the reality of the situation though. Nothing could compel Lin to stay unless Lin wanted to stay, and he was convinced, through the veracity of Lin’s long-winded, back-handededly childish insult of a letter, that Lin did want to stay. And Daniel was never so drunk as not to realize that he wanted Lin to stay. He’d tried everything to manage it, even if the seduction part had gone up like a lead balloon. Daniel’s blue eyes gleamed as he took his lashes up wide in a very bad approximation of innocence. “Hi.” Daniel stood up from his lean, for once not even swaying, in fact prowling on silent feet as he moved in a circuitous path toward the entrance to the kitchen, and then around a spare chair until he stopped a few feet away from Lin. He turned his body slightly away, perpendicular to the fridge and the side of the room, and found the back of one of the kitchen chairs with both hands, using it to prop him up as if the idle conversation was all he had in mind, and pure chance brought them into the same room at the same time. “That is a fucking ridiculous hat. Where have you been?” Daniel turned his curly head, vaguely aware that he was not the catch he once had been, but still unable to stop his eyebrows from going up and his mouth from curving as if he could still play the game he used to play so well. “You look like you’re trying to catch someone’s eye.” It was a tease, light, not intended to harm. Daniel’s lashes went heavy as he inspected the multicolored monstrosity perched on Lin’s head, and he thought again of the splashes of color that Lin brought to his door. He wondered if he should explain why he didn’t deserve color, one of these days, but he shied from the thought every time it surfaced in a sober moment. Daniel didn’t want to think about his bloody fall from grace and he really didn’t want to see the look on Lin’s face if he said anything, since Daniel had imagined it so many times and put himself through all the different levels of disgust and scorn and annoyance that might come from such a confession. Perhaps one day he could make the fall pretty, William Blake’s angels, and Lin would stay because he thought Daniel wasn’t serious. Or not. Lin's smile went electric—piezoelectricity circuiting through wattage-bright enamel, mechanical stress, pressure, resulting in something wide and bright, if not altogether certain. It blinkered off after a second or two, like a ratty neon sign under the duress of desert wind, and the boy in the kitchen, a few feet away from the predatory blue-and-white of Daniel's eyes, didn't seem to know what to do with himself. He rocked back on his heels and breathed through his nose, blowing up a puff of air at his bangs. He was prey. His fingers curled back into his palm. He forgot about the rest of the water in the twice-used glass as it condensed and puddled on the counter, and tugged the brim of his cap down when Daniel called the thing ridiculous. He smiled shyly underneath it, this grin smaller and softer than the one before. "I don't have to try," he retorted as airily as he could, though the sentence was punctuated with a boozy giggle and an unsure scuff of shoes on the floor. Lin lifted his shoulders in a shrug and looked up at Daniel, tipping his own head to the side, ear to shoulder loosely. If he had sleeves at his wrists, he would have been twisting them into deranged origami from sloshed nerves. For a split second, his face registered guilt. "I meant to come back sooner." Lin sighed, entirely world weary under the chiclets hat. He dropped his gaze. "But, there were good songs playing. Songs you wouldn't like, because you can actually dance to them." The carbonated smile returned, a little playful, but Lin's dark eyes, glittering with high-spirited spirits, remained firmly affixed to the floor, just off to the side of Daniel's feet.—Or somewhat firmly. They floated upward a time or two, only to be pushed back down just as quickly. "But you're allowed to think I look eye-catching," he said before pulling the cap down even more. Daniel slid both hands around either edge of the chair, working his knuckles into the back of it as if idle movement was all he had on his mind. Gently he rocked his weight forward and back, putting on a show of not thinking by tipping his chin theatrically into the air, dark lashes lying low over pallid skin and old sleepless circles. Deliberately he looked at Lin only periodically, and even then, he caught him in a sideways glance that was pure consideration. He kept suppressing the appearance of a dimple at one edge of his mouth, as if displaying amusement would ruin the game. Every time Lin pulled on his hat, Daniel’s left hand twitched out, but caught itself on the leash of his fingers where they gripped the chair, white knuckled. “You do try. Eyecatching. Eye-watering,” he replied calmly, showing the edge of his teeth, white in the shadows. Finally he forced himself to let go of the chair, choosing the wrong moment and wincing slightly as it rocked back down onto all four legs. He rotated fully to face Lin, like a tiger giving up the stalk, and his eyes whipped down Lin’s body as if he could strip his clothes from his body without moving a whisker. Daniel’s eyebrows came down slightly toward the line above the bridge of his nose as he watched Lin’s fingers and then his shifting toes. “I hate your dance music,” he agreed, coming once more out of stillness and moving forward. He put a hand out, and if by chance, his fingertips lapped on the edge of Lin’s elbow, questing. Daniel wanted to slide his fingers up the back of Lin’s arm, but he didn’t do it just yet. “It’s… good you find it elsewhere,” he suggested, watching Lin’s face. As Daniel's fingers spangled outward, just coincidentally, you know, bc happenstance, and dusted at Lin's elbow like pallid hummingbirds at a sugar feeder, the boy blinked and smiled something slow, obviously more than a bit confused by the contradiction of action and word. He missed a lot of what was going on by the brined filter of alcohol that tuned in only to overtures—nuance slipped his notice, but he caught the dragging way Daniel's eyes moved, the slow push and pull of his gaze that came before the long look. Drunk!Lin was very aware of that kind of thing, he could almost feel it happening, and he pulled at the brim of his cap again in a vain effort to hide the mild coloring of his cheeks, blood under sand. Again, he shuffed a sneaker against the kitchen tile as a distraction from his own --- whatever! "Find dance music elsewhere?" Lin's smile curled at one corner, peeping out from underneath the umbrella of the hat's brim. If there was more suggestion to the man's statement, it flew over the boy's decorated, eye-catching head. He inched closer to Daniel, lacking any semblance of suavity, insinuating himself as close as was allowable in non-sex situations. There was a lesson here, he was sure of it. The boy rubbed at his left cheek with a palm, as if if he did it hard enough, and he could shine the blush from his veins, and he twisted the hat off his head. He tossed it onto the counter and switched to fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. His eyelashes met and parted heavily. "You can dance to any music. Even classical." It was a very informative bit of ...information. Lin leveled his housemate with a very serious look, to let him know how informative the information was, but it didn't last. The smile surfaced again, stupid and simple. He hugged himself. They were closer now and Lin thought that was important to remember. He glanced up at Daniel, so very carefully under the veil of black lashes. "I got rid of the eye-catching. Now I'm all natural," he belatedly informed the man, referring to the discarded hat, a dutiful student reporting to the teacher. He smiled and kissed Daniel's foot (lightly) with his shoe. Boop. Like a true gambler, Daniel had been looking for a tell in Lin’s reaction to his question, maybe a twitch or a guilty shrug, like the strange blinking microcosm of expression he thought he saw only a moment before. He didn’t find what he wanted, and was surprised to discover it, as if Lin had just turned over his hand and revealed the full house he’d been hiding the whole time. The blue eyes widened ever so slightly and then fell back into their hypnotic, unwavering level once more, uncompromising, becoming ever darker as the pupils flexed out toward a general but willful oblivion. Daniel’s fingers flexed and caught, catching Lin’s elbow more firmly just where it met his upper arm. Daniel was putting effort into holding back, not because Lin was fragile, but because he imagined that there was some structured path that he should be treading. A misstep was to chase success back into the dark. Daniel came out of that dream feeling desperate, and now Lin was standing still in the center of his kitchen, looking bizarrely bashful and deliciously present in Daniel’s closed universe. Daniel licked his lips and then pulled, not toward him but across his chest, turning Lin without taking his balance into account at all. “Natural.” He turned Lin around, dropping his chin to look the boy over, making a production out of it. “I don’t see it.” Daniel put his palm flat against Lin’s lower back, wrist inverted, fingers down. He offered no explanation for the contact, and abruptly took his hands back entirely, bringing them up only to take Lin’s shoulders and twist him around to face him once more, completing the 360° turn. “Where was the dancing? Someplace fun?” Daniel asked, innocently. Lin was turned about like a mannequin on a pedestal. Thank Jesus he didn't lose his balance. He was unworried and a little wobbly, uncharacteristically docile and obedient in the mean. He didn't appear to care as to the direction he was facing, if a touch disconcerted by the swish and blur of the unchanging landscape of the Dom, white streaking over black and marbled grays. He blinked once, twice at the sink he was facing once again, before looking over his shoulder at Daniel, listening to the understated hiss of the man's voice, the echo of the word 'natural' in his ear. It sounded different coming from Daniel's lips than his own. The acoustics were off, the vibrations altered in the fabric of the air. It was somehow heavier, less a simple proclamation, and perhaps some true measure of -- something. The boy came a full circle, puppeteered by the man, but this time he was smart enough to close his eyes for the duration of the Euclidean turn and it was a much easier transition. He smiled as his eyes blinked open again, taking in Daniel briefly, before he aimed his gaze down at his own outfit. Without the hat, what was there eye-catching about him? He was all natural now. Why didn't Daniel see it? "I see it," he confided in Daniel archly, like he was sharing a good secret he'd carried around for a while. The grin stayed fast, even as thin brown fingers touched the bottom-most button of his shirt as if in ritual, and even as the man withdrew the pleasant pressure of contact without a word. A strange short-breathed frustration caught in the boy's chest. "It was fun. Loud. Lots of at-least-partially nude dudes. Not classy at all. And I'm pretty sure—" Lin reached into his pocket and withdrew, from the mines of clinking change, a miniature plastic sword. It had speared an olive in its past life. He smiled at it. "I stole this from someone's drink. For QP. When he's older." Daniel realized about halfway through his most recent idle game that Lin wasn’t really in any condition to play. It was a strange reversal, and it had the unlikely effect of further softening Daniel’s hard edges. Trusting that Lin wasn’t really working with all his gears fitted properly, Daniel allowed some of the defenses behind his eyes to relax, and his face became calmer, simpler, and easier to read. His expressions smoothed into natural motion, flexing like water shifting back and forth with his surface emotions--the strongest of which being affection, at the moment. It looked odd, his mouth curving, his blue eyes gentler. Daniel’s hands lifted, taking their weight from Lin’s shoulders, but his fingers remained in contact, fingertips brushing light over the seam of Lin’s shirt and up under his neck, as if he was smoothing something down. Daniel pressed his lips together again, suppressing the curve of his mouth and obviously trying to restrain himself. Somehow he had managed to come yet closer, enough that when Lin exhaled he could taste his last drink in the air. Hungry but in control of his appetite thanks to a slew of memories and the hints of caution that near-sobriety offered, Daniel ruffled Lin’s hair where the hat had tamped it down. Daniel brought his hand across his chest and plucked the plastic spear out of Lin’s fingers. He stared at it a second and then took it out of the way, readjusting his gaze so he was looking into Lin’s face again. “You stole that from a partially nude dude’s drink?” he said, enunciating so clearly that his tongue was visibly moving against the roof of his mouth. Lin's gears weren't lacking proper fitting so much as they'd been gutted earlier by a careless, ham-handed, on-his-way-to-drunk-town mechanic and stacked in a particularly shadowy corner of the boy's mind, not to be rediscovered until his brain shrunk a bit more from dehydration and he woke up with a splitting headache and about 80 curse words in his mouth. Which is to say, in silent affirmation, that Lin was in no real condition to play anything that had even a shade of complexity to it. Patty Cake was probably beyond him at this point (though no doubt he could still own at a thumb war (in the game of thumbs, you win or you die)).—He wasn't so drunk, however, to miss the clearing of the ever-present thunderhead from the pale salt flat of Daniel's face, and the strange apparition of like, not totally wry, bitter, mean-spirited, and/or repressed expressions thereupon (cue Aladdin on a carpet, man. 4srs. You want a whole new world, this shit is it). The becalmed blue of the man's eyes blinked down at him and the pads of Daniel's fingers flitted like moth's wings over Lin's still-hot skin and the damp collar of his shirt, and the boy felt himself settle, a little less fidgety, into the boat-bottoms of his shoes. His hair was ruffled, and a piano-key white grin solfreggio'd across his open face, the levity of drink erasing everything but boyishness, coquettishness, and shy mischief from it. "I did. He didn't notice. I have quick fingers. I was very nimble and very clever," Lin said of himself with a hint of that child's pride Daniel had seen displayed before in memories and dreams confused and fuzzed by the hotel. He was trying very hard not to focus on the movement of Daniel's tongue in his mouth, knowing that that was somehow socially unacceptable. "I was like, all up in there, you know? And then like, I saw the sword, because I saw a cherry. I'd been thinking about something else, I think. I think… dip slopes. Do you know about dip slopes? I like them. But, anyway, yeah, and I saw this sword, and took it, and now I'm the rightwise king of all England." It was a great story, start to finish, and Lin was def probs gonna get that published one day. Something about a sword in a thing and removing that thing and being king. Hell yeah.—He plucked the plastic skewer from Daniel's fingers, spindling the thing between glossy fingernails. He thought about the club and the mostly nude dudes and their swords, and Lin's bashful smile was diverted, just a little, into a mold slyer. His dark eyes glinted and slid up to Daniel's, moving like hot oil. They were so close now, it was hard to keep insinuation and/or simple want reigned in, but Lin did try. He really did. He exhaled a breath, daiquiri sweet, looking up through a sweep of lashes. The boy sucked on his bottom lip. Not knowing what else to do, he took the tiny sword and pressed it back into Daniel's palm with ceremony. “No,” Daniel said slowly, enjoying the conversation enough to let it show in his gaze. “I did not know about dip slopes. I do, however, know something about T.H. White. Or his stone, anyway.” Daniel figured Lin could do a lot with the potential puns there, and he served that sentence up to the boy like a gift. Meanwhile, he let the boy take his plastic toy back while he was absorbed into the spilled crude oil of Lin’s eyes, and Daniel lingered there for a little while, telling himself that he was not in a hurry, that everything, no matter what it was, could wait a few seconds. Then, after some interminable time of the two of them hanging there in space and Daniel watching Lin’s teeth working on his lip like a ravenous dog watching a steak, Daniel gently put one arm out on curled it around Lin’s waist completely, bringing him near until he was pressed close. The hug was way too intimate to be a cool thing of friends, but neither did Daniel’s hands go roving. Daniel reminded himself that he was terrible with the physical stuff anyway. There was a lot of ethical bullshit at work here, too, and Daniel wished he was back to the times when he didn’t care because there was a locked door between him and ethics. Daniel’s tongue slid into easy German, a unique, affectionate language between them, with its pleasantly blunt consonants. “We need to get you to bed. He decided on English as he began to turn, pulling Lin with him but not entirely separating from his body. “Sleep it off, lightweight.” Daniel tucked his nose down into the dark curls at the curve of Lin’s neck behind his ear, and took an audible breath in. Lin liked the feeling of Daniel's arm around him, circling as it did, a planet in orbit, around his waist, a sense of gravitation in a universe of acting, yet contradicting physics. Of course, he wouldn't say that out loud, but he would think it in his head, and that was just fine. The boy flicked the little sword to the floor for QP to find by himself later. It clattered lightly, hardly making a sound in the soundless room. Lin grinned, right on cue and just as predicted, as he considered dip slopes and T.H. White. "Gone to Ground." He didn't even have to say anything else. A sword in a stone, gone to ground, the shit wrote itself. It was like, too easy. Plus, T.H. White was totally sad and probably gay. Lin still laughed at his own comment, because no matter how sober or how not sober he was, that never changed. It wasn't witty or pithy, but he thought it was funny. There was no mention of ethics anywhere, not after that cab pulled away. The world, at present, consisted of Daniel, his shirt which Lin's nose was pressed to for a second there, and the pleasant, buzzing lightness at the back of Lin's head where it met his spine. It tickled a little when Daniel started to steer him toward the room, toward sleep, with a breath on the still sweat-slick skin of Lin's neck. He dug his heels in, just a little. The boy murmured something in response, his head tipped to the side. It could have been bashful, or a complaint, but whatever it was, it was low and German, and once it was out of his mouth, Lin turned on Daniel (like turned toward, not turned on, okay), with his cheeks burning, because fuck the world. Again the men were unseparated. He went forward on those purple soles and steadied himself with fingers catching on thin cotton, right over Daniel's sternum, and he kissed the stupid man, because. He wanted to. It was sweet with sugary-rimmed drinks and a cherry or two, only a hint of ashy cigarette smoke on his tongue, and, fuck you, it included (post-steadying) arms looped around Daniel's neck. The man could probably feel the heat Lin's stubborn, drunken blush, but it was whatever, because the last thing Lin wanted to do right now was sleep anything off. All Daniel was feeling was heat, up and down, back and forth, fucking sideways and inter-dimensional. He was all heat, and hungry with it, and he was trying to keep Lin from being burned while the boy was too silly to understand that he was reaching into the flame. Daniel kept Lin in the circle of his arms as he twisted around halfway to the bedroom, looking down at him with blue eyes crackling and his surprise only halfhearted. He smiled the disconcertingly soft smile as Lin threw his arms over his neck, and Daniel’s hands came naturally on either side of Lin’s ribs. He kissed back, immediate open mouth and a sideways stretch to scrape his tongue over Lin’s. That kind of a kiss was rarely just a kiss with Daniel, and he took the opportunity to mimic the plunge of tongue with his hips into Lin’s, holding the boy’s back close and literally moaning into his mouth. He broke it off almost immediately, trying to keep his head, and progressed forward blindly, probably dragging Lin along. “God, you drive me fucking crazy,” he muttered, hoarse again and licking maraschino syrup off the curve of Lin’s mouth. “You went and drank someone else’s drink just so you could come back here and drive me fucking insane with it.” Daniel’s hands went from holding to groping, barely restraining from the borders of hems and sliding up the back of Lin’s shirt. He took a couple more steps toward the bedroom. “I mean it. You need to sleep.” Daniel was still participating in willful illusion here. He pushed Lin toward the bed once they were through the doorway. This was no Bonfire of the Vanities—no medieval immolation of the feared. Fuck that (or, more precisely, to hell with it). Temptations and sin, Lin wanted those. He knew fire when he saw it. Shit, he wanted to be burned, his blood leached and tainted, skin licked and cracked by flames. You could call it citrinitas, transmutation, the alchemical magnum opus! You could call it whatever the fuck you wanted. The drunk, capless boy didn't care. All he knew was, that if this was fire and Daniel was Prometheus, fucking bring it, motherfucker. Burn it to ground. Lin's childlike sheepishness, the mannerisms and coy curl of his hair, bituminous and black, belied the club-sweat that cooled on his skin, belied the seedier things boys like him did in glitzed bathroom stalls and in cold, gaping apartments, where the ceilings cathedral'd and ghosts of paper wisped around sticky sneakers. Lin let himself burn, his lips and teeth on Daniel the wick, with wax dripping white. The tips of his fingers pulled on Daniel's heavy curls, dug (a little aggressively) into the man's skin. His own moan at the jut of hips was left, unbitten, no head to be kept, and he followed along toward the bedroom, willing to go wherever, so long as it was whilst attached at the lips. "I wouldn't do that. I'm very nice," Lin insisted in a voice gone low and breathless. But the ill-hidden smile on his flushed face might have betrayed the truth. (He didn't actually mean to drive Daniel crazy (though Daniel might have meant to drive him crazy because he was a bastard), but he wasn't going to lie and say he didn't kind of like the power.) He had just unwound his arms and dropped his hand between the press of their bodies to do that suggestive bit of palming on Daniel's thigh, fingers aimed elsewhere (dip slopes, heyo), and was thusly unprepared for the push in the bedroom. The slosh of alcohol in his veins meant Lin went where he was shoved, reflexes dulled and pickled in a cocktail of bought drinks. He tripped a bit over his own feet and over a discarded shirt or two, but he landed still on the bed, thank horny, goddamn Jesus. He made a soft sound as his back hit the mattress, but sprung back up onto his elbows, ignoring the wheeling room. "I'll sleep." He looked up at Daniel with black, black eyes. He wet his lips. "After you fuck me." So much for bashful and sweet. Continue to part II. |