🎵 𝄞 🎸 𝄫 🎷🎶 🎻 (jukejoint) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-07-23 14:01:00 |
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Entry tags: | !wonderland, *log, daniel webster, sam alexander |
Wonderland: Sam & Daniel
Who: Sam and Daniel
What: Visiting the recluse
Where: Wonderland
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: Daniel has some addiction problems. Just a few. A token, really, a trifle. Sam curses. We're all shocked, I know.
The widow's weeds she'd worn when she'd come to visit Daniel before so didn't fit, yeah? They were too small, because she'd been elbows and bones and rough corners before going to Miss Peregrine's, and now she was back to health and twenty-one, before drugs had done a fucking thing to her a body, when she'd just come to Vegas and didn't even drink. She was plush and plump, and the only thing that really proved she'd actually grown up at all was the missing gap between her front teeth. That, and the fact that she remembered absolutely fucking everything. But, yeah, nothing fit, and she snuck back in at night, pissing off the butler when she knocked wrapped in a cloak that so didn't have the right shit beneath it. She looked different, and he didn't associate her with the dead-eyed widow that had come and gone, a quiet shadow that melted into the walls and corners of the dark old house.
She'd been quiet during her visit, sitting and reading and not doing anything that was weird or out of time. Her shitty French was passable, and she'd spent her time like a ghost wandering down halls, distant and dead, and she was so glad that fucking shit was over.
So, the butler let her in, and he probably thought he was some weird hooker, but whatever. She said she was a distant relation, Samantha, and whatever, the door opened.
She had options, people she could visit while Lin did his shit with Lou, but she came back here after a few weeks. Neil was still lost in his blackout door with the pirates, and she kind of wanted to see Daniel now that she wasn't a skeleton. Because, yeah, food in the 1940s time loop was awesome, and she'd shed off her fear like damaged brain tissue. It didn't make a lot of fucking sense, but it was a magical hotel; she just went with it. Sure, there were shadows in her inky blue eyes, but they weren't clouding the surface anymore, and she didn't dream in nightmares. Like the scars that had disappeared from her body, those nightmares weren't on the skin, and she felt ok for the first time in years. The hotel had finally given her two good things, and she wasn't about to question it, not after all the shit it had dumped on her over the years.
She slept, and she washed up in the basin the next morning, and she stomped down the stairs in a mess of unkempt blonde and underthings, because she was too impatient to see Daniel to worry about the rest of the shit the housemaid tried to squeeze her into.
Daniel let the house absorb him into its being. It was a good place, chosen in desperation and luck but somehow serving him well for all that it was his merely through chance. Daniel, with his deep thoughts, old guilt, and hapless body, was perfect for the old house, which wore a prim white front in the early classicism style to hide its creaking, shadowed depths. Sash windows were kept sheathed in heavy red and blue curtains, and the staff, who had come to Daniel (“Mr. Vetere”) in their own strange paths much the way the house had, did their best to fight off the natural gloom that came from renting a house fully furnished by passing years.
Naturally, the library was where the master of the house spent most of his time. It was in the back, and cool in the summer and warm in the winter. As was the custom, the library was small and masculine, appointed in a lot of leather and cushions the color of cow’s blood, and guarded by one of the house’s big creaking doors. A carved lion, the remnants of some long ago resident’s coat of arms, snarled out at intruders from knotted eyes and wooden fangs, but no key nor bolt barred the way.
Within, Daniel was slumped in a chair in front of the dead fire, reading a book with his curly head on one fist. His clothing, the many layers and angles of wealthy gentleman from that era, was rumpled, and his hair was tangled. There was only one empty glass on the sideboard, and though the sweet tang of smoke remained, there was nothing burning in the cool tray on the mantlepiece. A cold pot of tea was sitting on the small table assembled in delicate style, and in one hand Daniel used a china cup to weigh down the pages of the first volume of a book rare even then.
She was quiet enough that he didn’t hear her come in, and he yawned as he read, coltish and unhurried.
She looked around, blue eyes slowly taking in the space that she hadn't gotten to look at when she came the last time. It reminded her of the apartment in Vegas kinda, with that same old masculine thing going for it. She tried to think of some big word it, something she'd learned during her years away or whatever, but nothing came to mind.
Sam knew he hadn't noticed her. He would have looked up at least. She didn't think he would pull a Lin and ignore her or anything like that. It was weird, yeah? But he was the one person she knew wouldn't tell her to fuck off, regardless of if she was young or old. Not that Lou would or anything, but Daniel wouldn't do it the same way. Something like that, and it didn't make even a little fucking sense, but she was tired of chasing down reasons for the shit in her life. She knew she'd pissed Lin off by crashing here, and she knew Lin had left because she was there, and she knew she'd promised Lou she'd find somewhere else. But fuck that, Daniel was her friend, and she wasn't going to avoid him because people worried she would climb on his cock. She got being jealous or whatever, even if she'd left that whole 'relationship is ownership' thing behind a few years after she'd lost Neil, but this was bullshit. She and Lin were friends once, and she thought they'd fixed that shit now, but she was wrong, and she wasn't actually willing to go chase down the problem. Yeah, no, Lin could talk to her if he wanted to. In the meantime, she was staying.
She only stood there a few seconds, and then she moved forward on bare feet and climbed onto the arm of his chair, scandal aside, because fuck that. She smiled, and she sniffed the sweet air as she settled her bare feet on his book. "Where are the smokes?" she asked. She was dying for a cig. The kids smoked them without filters back in the 1940s, and they burned and were absolutely fantastical.
Daniel looked up as her pace quickened over the bar floor, and his smile turned from suspicion to surprise to welcome in a blink, the same expression melting like candle wax from shape to shape. “You look different,” he observed with surprise, letting his attention slide easily off the book and settling his thumb into the spine before pushing it off his lap and letting the weight drag his arm toward the floor. He tipped his head sideways and up to look her fully in the face, the blue eyes dimmed somewhat by streaks of red and parchment yellow. “A lot different. Which spa and how can I make an appointment.”
Comfortable with her presence and frankly lonely, Daniel put one arm about Sam’s comfortable waist and pulled her into his lap, settling her there with some awkwardness at first and then remembering the ease of practice he used to have. There was no immediate sexual implication to the motion, though there was plenty of intimacy, and Daniel’s lack of strength was made up somewhat by the settle of both arms around her middle and the long, pleased breath he exhaled as he leaned back in his armchair.
“Never mind,” he said, sounding a little British when he said it, since it was the cook’s favorite phrase. “Don’t ruin the fountain of youth already.”
She didn't like the kaleidoscope of colors in his eyes. That was romanticizing it, yeah? But red and yellow and blue, and she remembered what it was like to look at herself in the mirror when she was all fucked and pinpoint black in the center of her eyes. She could still see the handsome beneath all that shit, though. If she looked hard, she could remember what he'd looked like the night she met him at that party, when he'd still gone out and danced and hooked up with random chicks in hotel rooms. She couldn't imagine him doing that now, no way, and, like Lin, he'd totally locked himself away from the fucking world. She worried, and maybe she worried more now, young again, than she had when she was older and accepting. Maybe she just had less of her own shit to worry over. She wasn't hungry for a needle, and she didn't feel the weariness that came with thinking of Ian and Micah. Yeah, she remembered and it scared the fuck out of her, but it didn't eat her, and maybe that was just the resiliency of youth, or maybe it was just some twisted magic in her new door. Either way, it took her a second to follow his comment, and she grinned gold and bold. "Yeah? You like?" she asked, confident smile that said she thought he did. She'd been starving before, yeah? How could this not be better?
She let him pull her onto his lap without protest, white underskirts and petticoats up around her knees and the strap of her camisole down off one shoulder. She walked her fingers through his hair, taming curls, and she gave him a hug that was making up for all the hugs she hadn't given him when she was emaciated and reserved. "That's for letting me stay the first time around. I was kinda frigid, yeah? And not good at saying thank you." She left one arm around his shoulders, and she looked at the book he'd set aside. "Read to me? You sound hot when you read," she suggested. He always had a nice voice, and she could actually dig books now. "Is it English?" She reached for it, leaving the topic of the cig behind.
The short few weeks away from the Hotel's healing effects had wrought as much of a change in Daniel as Sam's recent Door had on her. He was softer in body as he curled her knee and elbow closer to him, the combination of vices giving his skin a flush and pallor by turns. His mouth was bluer, his nose more red, the brown curls flat and without luster. He closed his eyes like a cat as she sifted her fingers through his hair, and his arms around her warm stomach tightened a little compulsively, as if she was a soft toy and he a boy seeking comfort. He tipped his head so it rested on her chest as she cradled him in one arm and again gave a pleased, starved sigh.
"I like," he murmured, keeping his voice low in case of passing ears. "You are better looking, and if you're going to be lounging around in your underthings you might as well play the part of the spoiled mistress." His voice was slower, faintly rougher with a hint of cigarettes and London fog. Daniel's voice was a little higher than most people expected given his appearance and the gravity that he gave his novels, and that had not changed.
He let her have the book without protest. "It's English," he said, watching her as she turned the pages and letting a waxen hand fall aside out of her way. "But I don't want to read. Tell me what you have been doing." He inhaled the scent of her skin where it stretched over her shoulder.
She wasn't blind, yeah? He looked worse than even a few weeks earlier, when she'd seen him last. But screaming wasn't going to do a fucking thing, and she knew he'd just stubbornly insisting on staying there with his blue lips and red nose and lacklustre curls. She let him pull her tight, and she still liked the way his fingers felt in her hair. "If you looked like you could get it up, I'd totes fuck you," she told him, the candor of youth bubbling off her tongue without any effort. Fuck all those insecurities that had come with scars and being older, and she could bury them way out of sight again. She'd grown-up tough, scraped knees and never taking anyone's shit, and it was nice to feel that strength inside herself again.
"Spoiled mistress," she said with a smile that said she liked pretending. Sure, yeah, ok, and she pressed a kiss to his cheek that was exaggerated and scandalous, like there was something risque in lips against skin. She didn't buy into any of that. She hadn't bought into any of it when she moved to Vegas, freedom at her back and all the cares of the world left behind with her husband and the pile of laundry.
She paged through the book, and she found a passage, and she read aloud. "I think Pandeism was system; — and that when I say the country or kingdom of Pandæa, I express myself in a manner similar to what I should do, if I said the Popish kingdom or the kingdoms of Popery; or again, the Greeks have many idle ceremonies in their church, meaning the Greeks of all nations: or, the countries of the Pope are superstitions, &c. At the same time, I beg to be understood as not denying that there was such a kingdom as that of Pandae, the daughter of Cristna, any more than I would deny that there was a kingdom of France ruled by the eldest son of the church, or the eldest son of the Pope."
She looked up at him. "He's saying worshipping the family, yeah? Instead of pantheism. That's kinda cool," she said, putting the book aside, the simple observation making it clear she hadn't forgotten a fucking thing when she aged down. But she humored him, curling herself around him in linen and loose corset. "I ended up in this awesome door in the 1940s. You should come." Because becoming young again, even for five fucking minutes, might be good for him. Her fingers toyed with his curls easily.
She hurt him with her casual comment, mostly because it was true, and his blue eyes grew brittle as aged parchment. The soft mouth, gone slack and cracked with misuse, hardened. He did not give up the embrace, but his grip on her hips loosened, and he thought of Lin and new distance. Daniel regretted allowing the weakness of the flesh (so Dickensian, so dramatic!) to overcome his better sense. These two, Sam and Lin, had managed to wheedle their way into his life by the simple virtue of being attractive, he believed, and he had allowed it. Now he was going to have to watch them watch him, and the tarnished mirror depressed him more than his own existence. That was saying something.
Daniel turned a sallow cheek away from the thoughtless kiss, unappreciative of her theatricality, not wanting her childish pity. (He assumed the presence of the latter, being both conceited and not particularly perceptive at the moment.) "Just spoiled, then."
Daniel looked down at the book instead of at her. "Something like that. He's theorizing based upon what he perceives as the stories of various cultures. He is typically pretentious about it, but I find it entertaining." Daniel calling someone else pretentious was quite ridiculous, even in that gloomy room. "What in God's name would I want to be in the 1940's for?" He looked up now, eying her mouth, which was in a suspicious curve.
She watched his face change, and if she was truly the age she looked, it might have gotten to her, yeah? But she had more knowledge than she should, more life in the depths of her inky blue eyes, and she understood why he was tight lipped and hands that didn't hold on so tight. So, she didn't get the pity thing, but she assumed it was ego, and men got touchy when it came to criticism about their cocks. But lying to him wasn't going to change shit either, and she thought he'd gotten away with killing himself for way too fucking long.
"Shut up and let me kiss you. I'm just worried about your ass, yeah? I've been hooked on shit. I know what it looks like, and I know what ODing feels like. I love your stupid face, baby, and I'm allowed to be worried about you." The concern on her features was plain, and she wasn't good at hiding shit. She'd learned along the line, because it was kinda a requirement with Neil, but that was affectation. She wasn't normally that way, and she didn't actually intend to put that particular coat back on now that it was off. It hadn't actually protected her from shit; she'd only thought it had.
She did give him a smile when he said he found the pretentiousness of the writer entertaining. "You like pretentious little shits. It's why you're into Lin," she said, because that shit was obvious. "You're into brains or whatever." She settled her cheek against his collarbone, arm over his shoulders, and fuck any attempt at distance. No way, not happening, and she was counting on being too tiny for him to throw onto the floor. That, and him being too fucking opium-tired. "Oh, shut the fuck up. It's not a trap. The door makes people young and fucking healthy. It's like your old Beast, yeah? Wasn't that what you used him for?"
"I am not 'hooked on shit,'" Daniel said, repeating the words with his own dry flavor, which reeked of old ashes and thoughtless blades. "I am not going to overdose on anything. I am not you. I am not here because I need affection, or because I deserve it. That word is not a good one to be using around someone like me." There was not much of a question which word he was referring to. He met her eyes, dull lashes and yellow age. "You should know better."
Yet he sighed, and did not push her off his lap. He turned his head again and settled it on the crown of her head, his breath periodically turning the gold threads of her hair, his heart slow and steady under her ear. "If you're going to show up here, then it's on you." It was a soft mutter, mostly convincing himself, but the blade edge of his tone suggested that he never quite made himself believe it. There wasn't a hole deep enough to dig these days.
Daniel shifted uncertainly. "It's funny. I was never into brains before."
The topic of the Beast was, at least, a safe one. "Henry stays young and healthy, yes," Daniel admitted. "It's his curse, he's not thrilled about it. I wouldn't mention it if I were you. Sometimes he has teeth." She knew that, and the faint trill of his tone suggested a bad attempt at humor. "But he's probably lonely. He isn't speaking to me at the moment because I told him to stop feeling sorry for himself." Daniel telling someone to can the self pity was, again, extremely ironic.
"You're hooked on shit," she insisted, fingers soft in his hair and her voice even softer. "You don't have to be doing shit you can OD on to be hooked, yeah? People get hooked on food and the internet and the Home Shopping Network." So she could pretend, whatever, but she wasn't Linny. She wasn't going to sit there and play he wasn't fucking dying before her eyes, like some yellow paper that was curling in on itself as flames licked at the edges. "Someone like you? Yeah, ok, whatever. Neil's an alcoholic. I get non-functioning cocks, Daniel, and I'm not going to use kid gloves with you or whatever." Nope "Anyway, your cock is fine. You just need to lay off the tar. And why should I know better?" She made sound that was dismissal, even as she curled closer, cuddled him and swathed him in petticoats and bare toes.
She was sure he was lonely. Whatever the fuck else was going on here, Linny leaving had just made shit worse. She didn't think it was Lin's job to be a miserable recluse forever, but she had a problem with not helping. Sure, ok, so maybe helping was starting to feel like making Shane and Russ drag Daniel out of the door against his will. But Gotham was a fucked up place, and they could totally pay off a facility to dry him out. There was no way he could do it on his own anymore. No fucking way, and Lin couldn't do it either, even if he did come home.
She gave him a look when he said he'd never been into brains. "Because you like dismissing peeps or whatever. You don't want people to stay around, yeah? So boring people are easy. You get tired of them and you want them to fuck off. They're safe or whatever. It's harder with smart people, because you don't actually want them gone. They entertain you." Too observant for the twenty-one year old on his lap, but whatever.
"I'll hit him up," she said of Henry. "He was cute."
Daniel was absolutely lonely. He couldn't even heckle the servants paid to be there in his native language, and he was surprised to find that after several months, he actually missed bitching at people in English for no good reason. Daniel would never have stood for this topic of conversation if he had any other choice, and his displeasure was obvious in the abrupt cessation of movement, the loss of his fingers from her hair and the weight of his chin from her head. The sound she made, a little movement of breath and voice from her throat that made it sound as if the removal of sex as an option was no matter, cut him a little deeper.
Daniel was aware of his major failings in a deeply intimate way. He pursued his vices (which she liked to call 'addictions') with single-minded determination. He knew those vices could hardly make him more attractive in the eyes of the world, but having arrived at the inevitable time when (as he measured it) his time was coming to its pathetic end, facing it grew ever more terrifying. Daniel mourned the lack of intimacy that came with sex, and without that power he felt there wasn't much left of him.
But he clung selfishly to whatever Lin would give him, and Sam too, so he didn't want her to know she'd hurt him. He just stopped all the small petting movements and fell silent for a moment, grateful that his face was not visible.
"Well there isn't anyone else these days," he said, as if from a distance. "Just you and Lin. You entertain me." He smiled a shallow smile and brushed his fingers down the scalloped edge of her petticoat, thoughtlessly inspecting the lace once more. "I still sometimes want you gone." He gave this particular truth a winsome, lazy charm, in a rather blatant attempt to hurt her in some shallow way.
Shit had started out as sex between them. She still remembered standing in line for that stupid hotel party, but she didn't actually remember what had gone wrong to get her there. Something with Neil probably, yeah? But she didn't remember the details. She just remembered wearing a stupid skirt for the first time since New Jersey, and feeling hella fucking vulnerable about it. Then she remembered him, and that hotel room, and he'd been so much more fucking lucid then. Drunk, sure, but like functional in a way he wasn't anymore. So, sure, it started with sex, but it didn't stay that way, and not fucking him didn't mean she was going anywhere. She was a loyal fucker, even when she didn't want to be. She couldn't even hate Iris right anymore.
Truth was, she'd given up on anything that mattered physically or intimately with him once Lin walked into his apartment. Maybe he didn't realize it or whatever, but Lin was the only one that really mattered for him.
Which explained why she was so dragging Lin back here by his fucking hair once she left. Because however much she wanted to fix this shit for Daniel, she knew she wasn't going to be able to. He wouldn't let her, because it wasn't her that he was scared to fucking death of losing. She was a nice distraction, someone who would hug him and talk to him and make him less alone. If his cock worked, he might fuck her, but that wasn't enough to get a man like this to get some fucking help. She knew, because help had been fucking terrifying for her. Detox had hurt worse than being shot in the fucking head, man. There had to be a reason for it, and Daniel needed a fucking crutch. That was just the fucking truth.
With all that, she still made a pleasured sound when his fingers brushed along the edge of the petticoat. Hey, she was alive, and she wasn't scared of being touched anymore. So, what the fuck ever; why be ashamed? "You want us here more than you want us gone, baby," she countered.
"You're probably right," he admitted, on the edge of a sigh. It was a considerable accomplishment on her part.
Daniel was too smart not to be systematic about his self-banishment from the world. He'd let the guilt eat at him with a certain vindictive satisfaction, as if the thorough destruction of himself was the most he could expect from the situation. He thought often about what a fool he had to be to go about it this way, slow inches and hazy crawling hours, but he'd come to expect he wasn't capable of better courage. When he'd first met Sam, the early stages of isolation had set in, and he had pursued old avenues of slow death by expensive poison in multicolored bottles accompanied by horrific music and anonymous sweat.
Now he had managed to resign himself to ordinary isolation by alienation. The red curtains and gray skies of England, the necessity of concealing his own speech, all of it had put him into a vague, nearly comatose eternity, colored only by the occasional clear bell tone of Sam's presence, or the warm abrasive interruption of Lin's long fingers and dark eyes. Daniel shifted her weight on his lap to reach into a front pocket, dislodging the teacup that had been balancing near his elbow. The cold dregs of the tea remaining splashed over the carpet, and Daniel's soft curse accompanied the appearance of a sweet-smelling cigarette out of a parchment box.
He touched her jaw with one finger and set the cigarette at one corner of his mouth. "You don't mind, do you?" A moment later he was touching her again, petting the lace against her thigh. "What are you going to do now that you're young and pretty? More art? Better men?" Slight devil's smile.
She knew she was right. He wasn't that hard to read, yeah? Or maybe she'd just known him long enough in this roller coaster existence that was her life, because, yeah, it was easier for him here, and she could tell that; it worried her. His old place had been dust and gloom, but there has been the illusion of life outside the windows, and Lin could bring life in, yeah? Music and movies, unwanted, but there on the electronic devices Lin carried in on his palm. Daniel couldn't keep those out. Life intruded in Las Vegas, even when he didn't want it to. Here nothing intruded, and he could be in this fucking velveteen stasis forever. Lin, when she'd last seen him here, had been rocking on the floor in the middle of the room, unable to have even a basic conversation. Whatever this place had going for it, she was pretty sure it sucked for both of them. But Lin was alive, dancing it up in Gotham and probably crashing on Lou's cock, and Daniel was her main concern right now.
She rubbed her cheek against the touch of his fingers there, and she inhaled the sweet smoke from the cig he tucked into the corner of his mouth. "It's kind of like a clove, yeah? I don't mind." She knew what was in that cigarette, and she should probably fucking mind, but she wasn't going to do anything by fighting him right now. No, yeah, that shit was for later, and she did like the smell. She probably liked it more than she should, and so she concentrated on his hand on the lace at her thigh. She hooked said thigh outside the arm of his chair, pale expanse of bared skin, because she liked being fucking petted. Daniel had always been a petter, and he was the only man she knew who was. "I should get a nose job first," she teased. She should, but she wouldn't. Her head lolled against his shoulder comfortably, and she breathed against the crook of his neck. "IDK. I have to figure my shit out. I don't know what I want. Like, I don't even know where to start, yeah? It's like, life was all about not getting fucked up, not fucking up. Now, I have time to think about other shit, and I'm not sure I really remember how." She grinned at him. "But I'm getting my nipples pierced." Totes.
Daniel had started smoking five minutes after someone told him that his mother would disapprove and it was bad for him, but he perfected the art in France and Italy, where people smoked like chimneys and barely noticed they were doing it. He held the cigarette nearly cradled in his palm, his fingers over the top of it, his eyes straying elsewhere around the room. This cigarette tasted better than most, sans filter and probably more unhealthy than the ones he started on when he was thirteen, and the smoke was the pale color of London fog. There was no visible difference in speech or behavior as he smoked, the dose of opium a little too light on the tobacco for that, but his dark lashes grew heavier, and he leaned closer to her at every point of contact, as if for additional warmth. The hand wandered freely up and down her leg.
"Don't you dare," he said, of nose job and piercing both. "I will never understand this obsession with mutilation. Leave your face and your nipples alone." He gently tweaked one of the latter with a wolf's fang grin, then tipped his head back on the chair. His eyes strayed to the spreading stain of old tea where it seeped into the carpet under the tilted teacup left abandoned on the edge of his chair. "And for God's sake, stop talking in acronyms. You get it from Lin, and it's a horrible habit he only has because it annoys me."
The sweet smoke and the touch made her lazy, heavy boned, and she curled against him like a cat stuck indoors on a rainy afternoon. She didn't purr, but she almost fucking did. "Hey, when I aged down, my broken Arkham nose stayed. Or are you going to try giving me a bullshit line about it giving me character?" She smiled about the piercing, though, dimples and bright eyes of inky blue. "The chick I was in at that mall thing had one pierced, and it was hot, and it felt nice. I should do it while my tits are still young, yeah?" But she whimpered for him when he tweaked one of her nipples, whimper, whine, and a playful shove of hand as her nipple hardened. Then she settled against him again, comfortable, and following his gaze to the tea stain. "You're not moving for that stain. I'm fucking comfortable," she argued back in her curled-cat position against him. She smiled such a smile, youth and trouble and a peck to his cheek. "Is2g," she added.
"Your nose is fine," Daniel growled, annoyed that his taste was questioned and irritated at her for daring to suggest that some surgeon could alter her appearance for the better. Daniel liked unaltered people, and while it was true that he had not exactly been discerning in the past, you could not fault him for his unquestioning acceptance of the human form. "And you are not 'that chick at the mall.'" He hissed annoyed smoke through his front teeth, but turned his chin so she could kiss him with a begrudging sound of generalized acceptance. He liked her responsive sounds because they made him feel powerful, though nothing made his blood heat these days. He smiled back at her, lazy, and lifted his hand to stroke her hair back away from her face. "I will throw you out in your petticoats," he warned her, tracing her mouth with his thumb.
"The chick in the mall was hot. She was a stripper or something, yeah? She was covered in fucking tats, like religious ones in black ink, and she was pierced. The guy I fucked was totally into her." She didn't sound envious or anything; it was just true or whatever. Even now, young again, she didn't look like Ink. She didn't think she would ever have the tits or ass for that. She was soft, cute, whatever, bold, yeah? But not like stripper-hot. She was happy with who she was, though, and it showed in the way she draped all over him, not caring what rolls showed where or what the fuck her best angle was. She smiled happily when he let her kiss him, and she closed her eyes for a second when he pushed her hair back, and she gave him a smug look when he said he'd toss her out on his petticoats. "Bullshit. You like me and my fucking petticoats," she said, no broken uncertainty, and she pressed a kiss to the thumb that traced her mouth. "You love me, and I love you. We're copacetic."
Daniel's face twisted in distaste. He didn't particularly like tattoos, especially religious tattoos, and he was not particularly entranced by the idea of someone who punched a bunch of holes into their skin. It smacked of a certain masochism that did not appeal to him. "Maybe the guy was interested in you, since you were the one doing the fucking." Annoyance continued to suffuse Daniel's features, blue eyes heavy-lidded, mouth flexing as if he might be able to contain his annoyance in her judgment by determining the shape of it. "Who is this guy, anyway. No one important." Because he couldn't be. Daniel was torn between pleasure at the idea Sam had found someone besides that bastard Neil (Daniel hated Neil), and irritation that the anonymous guy continued to remain anonymous. Daniel had a hypocritical distaste for people that hid in the shadows.
He should have denied the existence of love, but he did not. He was fairly sure their definitions were not the same, in this case, yet correcting her was beyond his capability. He wouldn't be around much longer, and he was afraid of being alone. He wanted a drink.
The touch of her lips to his thumb caused a brief widening of lashes, a little mutter that, in days previous, probably could have easily become a moan and from a moan a growl. Just now, though, he made his soft murmur of appreciation and leaned forward to kiss her with a relatively chaste touch of lips. Then he set the cigarette in a tray to one side and dipped his head so it touched hers, tired. "Will you stay until Lin comes home?"
She laughed when his face twisted, a cacophony of youth amid the drab Victoriana. "Yeah, ok, no ink. Just little barbells through my nipples." But he wasn't talking about that, yeah? He was talking about the guy from the mall, and she gave him a look that was older than her years before answering. "He's someone I know or whatever. A friend. We were going to meet up, yeah? But I saw him, and I'm not his thing, he's not into me, so I bailed. He'd say I'm too young, like his sister or whatever. It's not a big deal. I'm meeting Neil somewhere eventually. He was trapped on some pirate ship, yeah? But he found a door." Because, in her mind, eventually Daniel would realize Neil was cool, and they could have like Thanksgiving buffets together and shit, once everything turned perfect; she was newly-young enough to believe that kind of shit could happen, while being wise enough to understand that it never did.
If he denied love, she would argue. She loved her brothers and sister too much to deny love existed. Ok, yeah, so she maybe wasn't into the whole 'til death do us part,' thing, but love was real, and that shit lingered. Caring about peeps, that lingered.
She kissed him back, too eager still, but nothing that tried to turn the kiss into something more than chaste. So, he was touchy about the cock problem; she got that now. She wouldn't make it worse by mocking him with her tongue past his lips or something. "Yeah, baby. As long as you want," she said of staying. She understood how Lin ended up where he was, feeling how he did. She got it. Daniel was easy to care about, even when he was a motherfucker. She'd stay as long as he needed her to.