Who: Jules and Loren What: Conversation, confusion, confessions and closeness Where: Caesars When:Damn I feel like I need a C word Currently? Warnings/Rating: Nothing but UST, baby
Loren had been in a bad mood long before walking into the Palace. It was all deep breaths and eyes low to the ground when he made his way into the security detail locker room, trading out the busted blue of his tee shirt for the formal button-up of Caesar's attire. Vest, jacket, he polished the lacquer black of his shoes with some kleenex doused in lemon oil. Every move was robotic as his mind remained pinned to the incidents that transpired shortly before he'd left for work. Part of him could understand that Meredith was only trying to help, that she was trying to clean up things and scraps that she thought to be junk.. but those bits of paper and those musty books were not junk, they were Hannah's. He closed his eyes tight, tossing the oiled tissue in the trash before making his way out onto the casino floor. And now this shit with Jules, meeting up with scumbags with bad fucking intentions, because Loren could tell.. he could just visualize the kind of -- whatever, he'd deal with that when Jules showed up tonight. If Jules showed up, something inside him said. Loren's expression betrayed nothing as he moved through the floor and navigated the slot machines like a shark through shallow tides. Don't stop moving, you'll only drown. Well, if Jules didn't show up, he had the guy's name, and Loren would deal with it in whatever way he felt necessary. These days, he was finding that what felt necessary was becoming extremely expansive. But he didn't mind that either, it felt comfortable, it felt old, it felt like home.
Jules didn’t stop home before going to Caesars. Maybe he should have done, but he was in a fine snit, and he didn’t rightly care who saw him looking like so much trash. There was something new wound around him since coming to this Las Vegas, something that made him appealing to all manner of men that hadn’t paid him heed before, and he was wondering if it was him changing, or if it was something to do with the haint burrowing up inside him. No matter, because it was the devil dancing on his bones tonight, and his momma had always said it was best to steer clear when he was in that sort of temper. But she wasn’t here to make him tea and put on something soft and sung by Elvis, and even the church organ wasn’t someplace he could go taking solace these days. So he stormed into Caesars, a maelstrom in a gray dress, boots on his feet and jacket lost earlier in the evening. He looked like every willow-waif model running herself around the casino, and he’d found a drink and downed it before he asked another security guard where Loren Chapel was doing his prowling that night. It didn’t help that Violet was in a mood either, and Jules rounded the dollar slots and clapped eyes on his prize. “Well,” he said, walking up behind the man he was hunting. “Here I am. All in one piece,” he said, blond hair loose and clinging to his cheeks and Mississippi sugar in his voice.
"So I see," Loren said with the barest glance past his shoulder from where Jules appeared. The dress was regarded for a fraction of a second, but only so much as the rest of Jules' appearance was. The boy's blond hair a little mussed, but maybe that was the style. Loren's voice was gravel and bloodhungry spit, it scarcely managed to navigate beyond the clang and bang of the slot machines where he was stationed. After that cursory glance, he returned to watching the floor, something guarded in the strong line of his jaw, all the emptiness of a freshly dug grave in his pale eyes. The floor was quiet tonight, as far as casinos went. No ruckus to divest himself into, no chaos to plunge headfirst within, no hell to entertain him. Just bachelorette parties giggling wildly at the roulette wheels, wearing tacky tiaras of pink boa feathers. Newlyweds leaning close and affectionate at one of the nearest bars. Then there were the usuals, the gamblers that made their circuit day and night. Endless circles of winning and losing and losing again, Loren recognized their faces. No matter what kinds of things he had a tendency to forget, he always remembered faces. All of them bloodshot and eager, junkies tossing down more chips. More, more. He didn't look at Jules, but when he spoke again, the words were obviously intended for the young man. "Dinner was nice, then?" Some classy Italian joint with white linen tablecloths and candlelit no doubt, violins in the background, veal for days.
Jules watched for that long spell, all quiet and wondering at the storm brewing in Loren’s eyes. Oh, Jules knew the man had a temper fiery as Hell, but Loren’s hackles were up tonight, and damn if Jules had any idea why. He didn’t know Meredith had gone and fussed with things in the mausoleum shrine of Loren’s apartment, and so he was drawing a blank for all that pent up anger that almost sang off Loren’s skin. Now, it was maybe convenient that Jules could pass for a woman that night, and that nobody he knew from the kitchens was anywhere nearby, because he leaned against Loren’s side, all long lines and intimacy, head against the other man’s shoulder. “Didn’t manage to get fed. Impossible man went throwing me over the shoulder five seconds in,” he said, no ire at Basilio in the telling, but something like confusion at his own actions in the statement. “You gonna tell me what has you acting like you got enough tension in you to snap?” he asked.
"He what?!" There was a snap of Loren's shorn head, quick enough that it should have broken his neck when he turned to look at Jules. Ghost blue eyes hard with incredulity at what was just said. He didn't even seem to notice the way Jules leaned in close and soft, that just seemed to be Jules' way, and Loren was still learning the ways of people. The habits and mannerisms, what was polite and not. Some people were touchers, some were guarders, and Jules was definitely a toucher. But it didn't bother Loren the way it might have in the beginning, when they first met. It wouldn't have even bothered him if Jules was dressed up in boys clothes with cropped hair and black lipstick. Loren wasn't that kind of man, he didn't know enough about society to know he could be judged.. and even if he did, he also wasn't the kind of man to care. "He tossed you over his shoulder.. I.." Grit teeth. "I fucking told him.. I.." There was a harsh exhale that signaled he wasn't ready to start in on his own irritations, ridiculous as they were. He wanted to know why Jules was mistreated. "What happened? Why?"
Jules knew full well that Loren equated him with Hannah on some level, and he knew that made the other man protective some, but he didn’t expect outrage and stammering over something that was just rude, rather than being actually hurting. He looked over at Loren a second and then, calm as could be, he took Loren’s hand and pulled him into the quiet recesses of the unused, backup high-rollers room. There, Jules let go the other man’s hand, and he gave him a look that was something more than fond. His hand found Loren’s cheek, and he smiled. “You listen here,” he said, “I’m not like you, and I ain’t like the girls walking ‘round this place neither. I’m gonna meet folks that don’t like me, on account of who I am. And I’m gonna meet folks that think me looking like I do means I’m up for all kinds of kink. I had more beatings from queerbeaters than you can imagine, and one man tearing my panties off in a car ain’t gonna break me. You can’t go getting all angry whenever someone treats me wrong. I don’t think the man meant nothing by it; he’s just that kind of man, honey. Ain’t everyone respects me like you do,” he finished, pulling his hand away from Loren’s cheek. “How ‘bout you tell me what else has your panties in a bunch.”
Loren allowed himself to be pulled because he told himself that this wouldn't take long. Again, it was a quiet night and there was enough security on the floor at any given moment that he wouldn't be missed. There was that radio piece in his ear that buzzed with chatter when things got hot or people needed direction, but even that had been silent for some time. They'd contact him if they needed him. Examining the dark, unlit high roller poker room, he knew there were cameras.. but with the room unlit and currently out of service, he doubted they were on. Even if they were, Jules' next words had Loren blinking hard in static confusion. "Queerbeaters?" Like he'd never heard the term before in his life, then a stubborn shake of his head. "Here? In Vegas? In Caesar's? Where?! Why didn't you--" A second and longer examination of Jules' state of dress didn't offer signs of any bruising or battle wounds, and it was beginning to dawn on him that these things Jules spoke of were old, but that didn't make them any less painful. "That's.." Lost for words, as he usually was, Loren sighed. He was the man with the broken brain, and he knew he had issues with spelling and synonyms and words looked like one thing but meant another. Speaking was easier for him than writing, but.. that wasn't saying much. Disbelief had him glancing up next, a dawning horror. "He ripped off your--" Fucking murder lit up his eyes like Christmas, and Loren turned to leave the room like he had the executioner's axe already in hand. Sleazy son of a bitch, Loren knew it.
Jules grinned real wide, because if he didn’t know Loren, he’d think him exactly the kind of man that wouldn’t go tolerating boys like him. Now, Jules, he liked himself some straight men more than nuns liked Jesus, but Loren was the kind he usually steered real clear of. All that anger in Loren’s gaze was the kind of thing Jules associated with a black eye and a broken nose, and he didn’t like either of those things. “Honey, folks like that exist all over, and I ain’t going to stop being on account of them,” he assured the outraged man in front of him, and he smiled as that slow examination went on, understanding that Loren was looking for fresh battle scars. The dawning horror, though, that wasn’t something Jules hadn't been expecting, and he grabbed onto Loren’s sleeve and held him firm. “You ain’t storming out of here on account of some man being himself. He didn’t hurt me none, and we’re having a talk about the gay scene, you and me.” That said, Jules tugged Loren further into the room, and he pointed at one of the empty chairs beside a slumbering blackjack table. “You sit, and you let me say what I gotta before you go breaking bones that don’t need breaking. Go on,” he insisted, hand moving to Loren’s stomach, nudging at fabric and vest, crowding Loren back with long, slim limbs and the soft fabric-slide of the gray dress that, obviously now, had nothing underneath it.
For a man that recalled nothing of sex before his accident, and had certainly not pursued anything like that since, the idea of ripped panties equalled something violent in his mind. Before Hannah had died, Loren was a man consumed by work. The monotony and ease with which he took to his job, and while there were plenty of waitresses and showgirls in the casino, Loren wasn't one to mix business with problems. In his off time, he'd spend his days relearning how to read and write, getting frustrated with computers while he searched for some clues to his shooting. At nights, he watched the news and ate stale pizza. Sex was not a factor in Loren's life. Maybe he found himself damaged or inept somehow, or maybe the dreams got to him. Dreams of strange and flinching things that brought on cold sweats and shouts in the night, things he'd never be able to explain to some woman at his side. Somehow, Loren found that he was pushed into a chair, and he didn't understand how Jules had a way of doing that. Drawing the lion back into his cage without a scrap of meat or a crack of a whip, just a cool hand and a hushed honey voice that hypnotized the rage out of him long enough to have him sitting. He frowned at the nudging of his jacket and vest, and icestorm eyes rose slowly to regard Jules. Waiting to hear what he had to say. His expression wasn't eager, but it wasn't deadly either.. it was just a little confused, hesitant.. this was probably something he didn't want to know if he had to be sitting down to hear it.
Jules tugged the chair opposite Loren closer, and he slid on up and edged forward until he was trapping Loren with knees spread wide, the gray fabric pulled tight over the fabric of Loren’s work pants. Satisfied the man wasn’t going nowhere, Jules tugged Loren’s fingers with his own. “Gay men, things are different some,” Jules explained, and there was something heartsore there in the saying, something that said he wished it weren’t so. “There’s not a whole lot of courting, or flowers, or dinners in real nice spots. It’s all more immediate, and not a damn one of ‘em’s faithful at the end of the day. This man, he was rougher than most, but he didn’t go hurting me. Didn’t make me feel real great about myself, but it’s that way sometimes,” he explained, pulling on Loren’s fingers. “Now you planning on telling me what has you all wound tight? Cause I know it’s more than me going on a date with someone who wasn’t worth writing home to momma about, if momma was still living,” he said knowingly. And that didn’t come from Hannah or Violet, that knowing. It came from all the watching he’d done with this man himself. Hannah had thought Loren a saint, Jules knew, and there wasn’t nothing saintly about this man in front of him. He was all real, flesh and anger and something without the memories of things that maybe made him soft once. “Don’t you go telling me it’s nothing, neither,” he said, freeing one of his hands and brushing kitchen-burnt fingertips along Loren’s jaw.
"Don't," and the word was a pitbull bite of an order when Jules tried to soothe the cactus edge of his jaw, tried to pull him back from the ledge of murderous lunacy. "You fucking listen to me." Those frostbite blue eyes, like worthless sapphires cast in ice, regarded Jules with the kind of seriousness that one could expect from a man about to pull the trigger. "You want flowers, you get your damn flowers. You want to a man to.." Words, he grimaced, fighting for words because sometimes they were hard to remember. ".. scale building sides for you and write you love letters and.." His throat was tight, and for some reason his eyes felt like watering, so he turned his head to blink it away because no matter what, he thought of Hannah. Her innocence, every ounce of life she'd never know. He'd never imagined himself to be the man for her, that wasn't who he was or even what he wanted, but he'd of made damn sure that the boy who came knocking on his apartment door would respect her, and that boy would hold her hand, and that boy would tell her how beautiful she was, how unworthy he was to even pay for her dinner. Loren turned to face Jules again slowly, and that flinch of emotion was gone, replaced by a hard knit of brow and stern grit of teeth. "You're not something to be fucked and ripped apart and kicked out with a cab fare," and if he was graphic, it was the voice of that older him. "You're a chef, and a damn good one. You're more than what they see in you.. you're what I see in you, and whether you want to accept it or not, that motherfucker doesn't deserve you if he didn't make you feel good about yourself. You hearin' me?" Still no mention of Loren's own problems, he was becoming a master of ignoring self-related topics.
The only thing that kept Jules from flinching back at that growled don’t was the fact that he knew Loren would just as soon die as hurt him. A smile was dawning on his pale features when Loren started going on about flowers and scaling buildings and writing love letters, but that smile went dim went Loren looked off. Jules could tell there was watering in those blue eyes, but he didn’t say nothing of it. He just rested his hands on Loren’s knees, and he waited for the other man to look back on him. He bypassed the bit about cooking first, and he settled on that whole bit about being fucked. “You sound like my momma, honey,” he said, “not knowing what the life’s like. I like straight boys for a reason, ya know. They do all those things, and they don’t expect putting out right off. But I knew what I was getting with this one. Man thought I was a woman on the journals, and the first thing he did was go on and send me a picture of his pecker, Loren. He was real upfront, and it had nothing to do with my being a boy. It’s just who he is.” He sat back, fingers of one hand drawing a pattern of swirls on Loren’s knee. “It ain’t been easy since that hotel. I been out of sorts, and wondering why I did what I did, and I wanted something to make me forget, is all.” It was as close to admitting to loneliness as Jules got, but there it was. “Don’t you miss having your arms around somebody sometimes?” he tipped up impossibly blue eyes and looked at Loren in the darkness of the abandoned room. “Waking up with someone warm breathing against you?”
The mention of the hotel had Loren betraying nothing, he didn't really recall what Tate had done, and he didn't ask what Jules had done. From what he'd seen on the journals, nobody had been entirely themselves, and he just didn't see Jules as the kind of person to hurt somebody, not for real. "I don't miss it," he admitted with fresh honesty. "I've never had it as far as I remember, so no.. I don't miss it. Maybe the man I was before would have missed it, but I don't remember him, and maybe that's for a good reason." The nightmares gave him too many clues. "I don't think I was ever the type of man to wrap my arms around somebody or wake up next to a woman with a smile and an offer of breakfast in bed." Loren didn't flinch, maybe he didn't even notice the swirl of pale fingers against the knee of his slacks. People made idle gestures out of a need of self-comfort, he realized that in these years of rediscovery. "Meredith moved in.." Finally, the admission. "She moved all Hannah's things, put them in stacks like things to go to the Goodwill, and I lost it Jules.. I fuckin' lost it."
“How ‘bout wanting it, honey?” Jules asked. because missing and wanting, those were two separate things, and you didn’t need one to have the other. “And just because you weren’t that type before, it don’t mean you ain’t that type now. Folks change, Loren, and falling for someone changes things quicker than anything else.” Course Loren might be the type to lock whoever he’d fallen for inside for the rest of their damn lives, but that was something that could get worked on. Jules’ fingers traveled higher some, those swirls along Loren’s thigh now, and some shifting forward on the chair, knees coming closed and resting between Loren’s spread thighs. Ah, Meredith. Jules held his tongue a minute, knowing how bad Loren reacted to most things involving Hannah. “She didn’t mean nothing by it, the fool girl,” he said, because he liked Meredith just fine, despite her being dumb as bricks. “But you don’t need those things to remember Hannah by.” He slid his hand off Loren’s thigh, and he pressed his palm to Loren’s chest, just over his heart. “You got her right here, Loren. She ain’t going nowhere.”
There was a frown, as if Loren didn't completely understand the question. It was natural to want physical contact, the warmth of a body in the dark. It was something that he barely remembered, but not enough to really gather what he was missing. Besides, "I don't have time for that kind of stuff, Jules." There were murderers to lure out of hiding, and while Loren gathered that sex could be a quick and effortless thing, his mind was too wrapped up in death to even fathom the warm skin of a woman. He probably wouldn't be able to perform anyway, closed eyes giving him static glimpses of the last time he'd seen Hannah, decaying and.. his stomach lurched in an agonizing roll that had nothing to do with the way Jules' fingers were traveling up and up. But Loren did notice the movement, and the way those knees rested between the spread of dark slacked thighs. "What are you doing?" The question came slow, and was matched by a half shake to dislodge Jules' palm from his heart. He didn't need to hear this Hallmark stuff, not now. Not while he still had the rage bubbling like a cauldron inside of him, it didn't want to be turned down. It did not want to simmer or steep, it wanted to overflow onto anything he could find.
“You ain’t got time?” Jules asked, and the smile on his lips said he didn’t believe that for even a minute. “Honey, you work, go home, and worry,” he said, keeping it simple and not going into the fact that what Loren was worrying over was a murderer. “You got plenty of time for that. In fact, you’re the kind of folk that was made for,” he said surely, wondering what this man had been like before his life started turning around a dead girl. The question about what he was doing made Jules slide on down to his feet, off the chair, and he didn’t go answering until Loren shook to dislodge the hand Jules had resting over his chest. “You’re a fool thing. Pretty as the day is long, but a fool thing,” he said, looking on the man a few moments longer without saying a thing, the sound of machines in the distance something like music. Even in the dark Jules could see the confusion on Loren’s face, the storm brewing there that was always waiting to break loose and take a whole mess of living along with it. He wasn’t real sure how Hannah could have ever thought this man all kinds of good, without dark corners deep as the sea, because that was all right there for the seeing. He stepped closer, all birdcage thin against Loren’s chest and delicate feeling enough to be a waif of a girl, if Loren didn’t know better. Jules pressed his lips against Loren’s quick, nothing lingering, and then he kissed Loren’s cheek. “Fool man.”
The kiss had him reeling back with a lurch, although it was the words more than anything that had him spiraling. "Fool?" Oh, the fury was quick, and Loren was on his feet and out of that chair like a strike of lightning hitting a key. He nudged Jules back, although not as rough as he would anyone else.. maybe not even as rough as he would have shoved Meredith. "You've got the fucking answers, don't you, Jules?" His teeth were gravel and grit and Loren had to force both of his hands back against the gambling table in order to restrain himself from advancing on the slim blond thing. "You get fucked by people that couldn't tell you Tuesday from Wednesday, why? Because it makes you not remember? Because I know you remember what happened to her, and if that's your answer then you have no fucking right to judge mine." Deep breathe, hard seethe. "I'm going to find him and I'm going to kill him and I don't care who stands in my way. You think sex can make me forget what I saw that day in the desert?" The absurdity had him half choking.
Jules was expecting shoving, but not on account of that. He watched that spitting, that gravel coming off the man, the words all wrapped up in hating, and he shook his head. “No, honey, ain’t nothing gonna make that go away. Don’t matter how many men come and go, don’t matter what else happens. Hurting, loving, any of it. Some things don’t go, Loren, and living with that’s one of ‘em. Nightmares still wake me every night, and I think I’m gonna carry that girl with me to my grave. And if you think I don’t live in terror of her killer realizing I’m out here, walking about with more information about him locked away in my head than’s safe, then you’re not thinking clear. Don’t change the fact that there’s still living, and you know well as me that Hannah wouldn’t want you letting it pass you by. And don’t go getting ornery about that with me, because I know what was in that girl’s head better than you.” He shook his head. “I meant you were a fool man for not seeing what was in front of you, not for wanting that man dead. But I ain’t surprised you went there first, honey,” he said, voice going haunted with hurting.
It shouldn't have been possible for the rigid steel of his eyes to go sky-dyed and soft in a blink. Something about the mention of Hannah not wanting him to live like this had him stilling, and the hoods of his eyelids dropped into an expression of saddened hesitation. It wasn't what he wanted to hear, but he knew Jules wouldn't lie to him about Hannah either. Loren pressed his lips together, taking the time to think rather than rage, and he kept his hands on the felt edge of that gambling table at his back. The knuckles were no longer tense and white, just curled and waiting. He didn't know for what. "And what's in front of me?" This man, with gristle in his teeth and cactus grit on his jaw shouldn't have been able to have looked so young then, but he did. The pale husky ghost color of his eyes turning almost scared as he looked to Jules. John Renown was only a few years old, and while Loren Chapel was apparently an aged entity, Loren still had no idea who that was. Oh he had an idea sometimes, that conversation with Roger had unsettled a lot of old stones from a wall of memories.. and Loren didn't know if he wanted to remember. All of that flickered in his expression in one moment, and he waited.
“You’ll just have to look harder, honey,” was Jules’ reply, his expression softening to something almost feminine in response to all that lost youth in Loren’s eyes. He stretched against the man, soft gray fabric and long limbs against Loren’s work uniform, and he pressed a kiss on Loren’s cheek that could have come from a girl for all the softness in it, not a hint of stubble or sharp jaw in the feel of skin against skin. He pulled back at second later, and he tried to make out more of Loren’s expression in the near-dark, lingering over it, all that looking. A second later, Jules took himself a step back. “I’m gonna send you something, and instructions will come along with it. You do what the instructions say, you hear? And you try and not bully that girl around too much. Ain’t doing anyone a bit of good if she lets you get your way all the time.” He reached out and smoothed Loren’s vest at the belly. “You go on and git back to work.” It was proprietary, that telling, molasses and possessiveness in the cool dark of the smoke-scented room with the whiskey-stick felt.
There was the briefest turn of his chin when Jules planted that gentle kiss to a stubbled cheek, as if for the most blinking moment in frozen time, Loren forgot himself enough to think that kiss might have had another intended direction. But then Jules was pulling back, and Loren watched him with more of those dead eyes. "I don't need instructions, and I don't bully anyone." The second part came with a frown, although it had nothing to do with the way that Jules smoothed the front of his work vest. Rattlesnake quick, Loren caught Jules' wrist and drew the boy back, closer. Because closer meant honesty, and closer meant listen. "Don't see him again, Jules.." If this was the last drop of sincerity left in the world, it was shining in his frostbite eyes. "That's not what you want," and now it was a plead bitten between bloodstarved teeth. "Why? Why would you want that?" Fuck going back to work, he wanted answers.
“How can you know you won’t be needing instructions if you don’t know what I’m sending you?” Jules asked, smile going all fond and caring. Damn stubborn man liked to say no to make a point, even when he didn’t know what he was saying no about. As for bullying, Jules just went on and quirked a carefully tweezed brow, because Loren tried to bully near as often as he breathed. His intentions were good, but it was still bullying. If it was anyone else grabbing for his wrist as he thought on that, Jules would have panicked, but it was Loren, and so he just let the man drag him closer. Now, Jules was real sure that Loren’s reasons for dragging him close weren’t the same reasons Jules had for liking it, but none of that seemed to matter when Loren was all solid and real against him. The plea, which Jules thought was left somewhere real far back in the conversation, had him looking into Loren’s haunted eyes, even as he shifted his hips to get closer to the man without really thinking on it. “I’m only human, honey. I ain’t no angel, and I like waking up in someone’s arms as much as the next girl,” he said truthfully. “You gonna let me wake up in your arms?”
Despite the hauling on Jules' wrist like a frightened toddler might snag a rag doll with all the haste of escape, he kept to that gambling table rather than chasing the room after the boy. And it was in his hands, as strong and cliched as they were against the back of Jules' dress that it didn't matter, all Jules had to do was slip away and Loren would let him go. Another magic trick the blond boy seemed to hold. Loren didn't mind the shift of pale python hips that brought Jules even closer in a way that would have made a lesser man.. or maybe more of a man, blush. He just buried his mouth against that skinny shoulder, tasting the fabric of the dress when he spoke, even as he could feel Jules trying to a get a glimpse of his eyes. Nobody could see his eyes now, they were crammed shut, and he preferred it that way. "...I want you to have what you need." There was almost a hesitation on the second part, about waking up in arms, and his suited shoulders convulsed as he gripped Jules' tighter. Don't do this, the touch begged. "I don't think that's what you want, either.." He finally said, voice gone heavy with the gall it took to even process it.
It was all kinds of confusing, the fact that Loren didn’t go shoving him back, and Jules just leaned into the other man, on account of being allowed to. He noted the feel of hands on the dress’ grey fabric, and he tried to settle on whether he was imagining lips against the same fabric at his shoulder. Regardless of intention, it was safer feeling than Jules had felt since coming to Vegas with the memories of a dying girl in his head, even if he did know the man holding onto him was a dangerous thing. He wasn’t like Hannah in that regard; he knew whatever Loren couldn’t remember wasn’t something they wanted to go digging up from where it slumbered in the earth. He smiled some, when Loren said he wanted him to have what he needed, and he sighed something that was all air and softness against Loren’s ear when Loren’s grip tightened. “I ain’t asking you for sex, honey,” he promised, not willing to scare Loren off by asking that, even if he wanted it more than breathing. “I just wanna sleep safe, without nightmares. And I wanna wake up with someone I know ain’t gonna hurt me.” It was a simple confession, a simple request. “You let me send you what I got to send you, and then you tell me if you’re willing to spend a night with me.”
Loren eventually drew back, and the seriousness reigned once more in those gravestone eyes of blue rubbing. "You're going back to him, aren't you?" Because it didn't seem like that question had ever been answered, and Loren's own response seemed to hinge on this. The way a dead man hinged from a tree branch's noose.
“He called and told me to,” was Jules reply, and he wished he could read whatever was going on behind those blue eyes. “I told him I had to come on and see someone, and that I’d call him after,” he said, honest as his expression was just then, the wanting in his own pale blue gaze. “You agree with me, and I won’t go,” he offered, though he really didn’t understand worth a damn why keeping away from this one man was so important to Loren.
Loren didn't say anything for a moment, but assessed Jules' pale features with the sky swirl of his eyes. There was a loosening of those suited shoulders and Loren kind of shrugged his way off from the hard lean against the gambling table. He thought about Meredith's text message and the baking, motherly role she was taking on and for some reason it reminded him of Hannah.. so many things did. And he thought of Jules with those ripped panties, and it wasn't the way a man might usually regard the idea of ripped panties. There was a touch of sadness in his fingers when he brought up a hand to Jules arm for a swift rub. Some masculine gesture of comfort, although who the fuck was he comforting? "You don't drive such a hard bargain, I agree."
Jules looked away from Loren for a spell. He looked down at those fingers, feeling the sadness there and not liking it even some. And the words that followed just nicked something inside him, something that took away all the warmth he felt from being pressed against this man just moments earlier. He looked back at Loren’s face, a storm brewing in the blue paleness of his eyes. “I don’t want you feeling all sorry for me,” he said, quiet bite behind the words. He took a step back, and it was a small nothing kind of step, the kind of thing that was working on being more than it was. “I best get on. You forget I asked, and I’ll forget you looked at me like I come begging for scraps at your table.” And dear Virgin Mary, but he sounded like Hunter - that realization wasn’t something he felt real happy with. “I’ll still send that something,” he said, intending to soften it some, as he took another step back.
The frown was immediate, and this was different from all the others because it was born from the dregs of confusion rather than loss or longing. "I don't feel sorry for you, I--" But the skinny blond was slick and quick and already retreating despite Loren's offer, which he didn't know what to think of either. "Now wait a fuckin' second," he snapped back when Jules' words burned him with some new snakeskin brush of accusation.. begging for scraps? "I didn't say anything about giving you a handout or charity." Even if that's what he'd done for Hannah. "I know that's not what you need, I've seen what you can do, I've tasted it, and you have a better chance of making it in this city than any of those girls out there with their spangles." This ramble came on quick because he could sense Jules vanishing, like if Loren didn't get it all out fast enough, he might not get a chance to before the boy split back into the glow of the casino neverland. "I don't feel sorry for you. When I look at you, I see a warm hearted person, and I'm beginning to realize that I'm not that at all.. I just know you don't deserve to be mistreated the way you're apparently starving for if you're going off to meet that asshole." Fuck Jules' steps of retreat, Loren advanced hard on those eel-shine loafers to replace the gap. "Is that what you want? Is that what you like?" There wasn't pity in his face but a desperation to understand.
Jules gawked as Loren went on, wondering how much of what he was saying Loren grasped. What he wanted didn't have nothing to do with making it, with cooking, with none of that, and his head tipped sideways as he considered what Loren was going on about. "I ain't talking about making money," he managed, as Loren tripped all over his words in a hurry to get them out into the air. "I ain't talking about making it," he added, bringing it back to something real simple, in the hopes it would help with the understanding. But then Loren was saying he wasn't a warm-hearted person himself, and Jules was stepping forward, even as Loren advanced. He didn't realize the other man was moving, and it was Loren's hard belly and shoulders that stopped Jules in his track. "You quit that," he said, a firm command in his voice. "We ain't perfect, neither of us, and you might have things in your past that ain't perfect, but so so does everyone. It's what goes forward that matters," he said, and there was all sorts of don't go arguing with me in the telling. "And I ain't starving for it," he said, anger twisting itself all up in his words. As for what he liked? "If I liked that I woulda gone and sucked Micah off again, after learning about his antics in the hotel, and I've stayed near as far from him as a person could." He shoved away from Loren with a hand on Loren's belly. "Wanting to wake up next to you, it don't make me desperate," he added, and he'd be damned if he stuck around for the reaction to that confession. He turned, a whirl of gray fabric and blond hair, and ducked into the unforgiving lights of the casino floor.
Loren could have stopped him. Under the right circumstances and with the right kind of rage, he could have stopped the Devil's stampede in its tracks, but he didn't grab for Jules again and he didn't chase after him with further demands that the boy gain some fucking dignity and stop getting used. It was a whirlwind of things that Loren couldn't quite process that kept him at a standstill in the end. They way they stopped shoulder to shoulder and eye to eye, the kind of stance that usually ended in a rough shove or a broken bottle, but it was Loren that flinched when Jules made mention of sucking Micah off. It was all stunned grimace like Mr. Murder just wasn't accustomed to that kind of language, and he didn't want to picture it, and maybe Loren was already coming up with reasons to contact this Micah on the forum when the push came next. Jules' means of escape, piano fingers splayed for a quick shove against the taut clench of lower stomach.. and then the door opened to blinding lights and more shrill slot machines. Jules was gone, and Loren exhaled solidly, deciding not to think about why it didn't seem strange for Jules to sleep next to him. He wondered briefly if that even existed in the kind of platonic, comforting way he imagined and.. maybe it didn't, no matter what Jules said, so Loren frowned and focused on his cell phone instead. Meredith had texted him and shopping list, and dead eyes scanned it just to see if he could commit it to memory. He'd be off work in an hour, he'd see.