Who: Luke and Wren What: Meeting in the casino. (1/2) Where: Caesar's Palace. When: After this exchange. Warnings/Rating: Nothing serious. Luke is his usual emotionally unstable self, and Wren is not entirely sober.
Luke and Bruce had a rather heated conversation before he managed to step one foot out of his apartment. Much like Roger, the man believed no good could come from continued contact with Wren, though Luke thought he might have detected the faintest hint of empathy for his situation. Normally he would have simply ignored Bruce’s protests, as he usually attempted to do, which would have been much easier than fighting the man’s influence in order to physically leave. Some days Bruce’s will was stronger than his own, but at this particular moment the opposite was true. Despite all the reasons why this was a terrible idea, he wanted to see Wren, and that desire overrode all else. When he finally did leave the apartment, it was with a silently disapproving Bruce who had no choice but to accept the inevitable.
It might seem like a sudden turnaround, to be so angry at Wren one minute and then agree to meet her the next, but for Luke his feelings towards her were so closely entwined that it was difficult to separate them. He was angry, and he was hurt, but five years hadn’t been enough to eradicate his love for her and the problem with anger was that it could be very exhausting to maintain. Combined with her confession of what life had been like for her after she’d left, it was near impossible for him to say no. He pretended to be strong, to possess an iron will that could not be broken, but in truth Luke was painfully weak when it came to her. Meeting her in public might be less risky in certain ways than meeting somewhere private, but he knew she wasn’t sober, and even though he was, it didn’t make as much of a difference as it once would have. He worked there, and she lived there; it could potentially be very bad, yet still he went.
He knew the casino like the back of his hand, though it felt strange to be inside without his uniform on. Luke didn’t often visit casinos for the sheer pleasure of it. The penny slots were easy to find, and he stood by them with his arms folded over his chest, a slight slope to his posture, looking fairly normal in dark slacks and a matching shirt while he kept an eye out for Wren.
Wren was sober enough to realize seeing Luke was a bad idea, but she was drunk enough not to care. She had promised Roger she would stay away from him, and she understood where he was coming from, she did, but that didn’t mean she was strong enough to actually keep that promise. Luke had been her weakness for years, and time and distance hadn’t changed that, not for her. In her heart, she knew getting close to him without telling him the truth was a terrible idea. And, in all honestly, if Roger hadn’t been so adamant about her not telling, she probably would have caved by now. But she wasn’t getting close to him, she told herself, even though she knew it was a lie.
Selina, unknown to Wren, thought this was a wonderful idea. Selina always took risks, took chances, felt too much and wanted everything without caring about repercussions. Wren didn’t know these things, but it wouldn’t have changed her mind, even if she did know. All she knew, drunk as she was, that she wanted to see him. Really see him, somewhere bright, where he couldn’t hide from her in shadows. Just this once, she promised herself. Just this once. She could lie and tell him she wanted to talk about Selina’s desire to throw Lois Lane off a roof. She could lie and say she wanted to talk about MK, about how close he’d gotten to the gorgeous redhead. She could lie and say she wanted to talk about the fence, how things had gone. She could lie and lie and lie, but none of it would be true. And, anyway, she hadn’t bothered to lie about wanting to see him when she had talked to him on the journals. There wasn’t any point in coming up with a pretense now.
Wren never left her suite without considering her appearance. The facade she put on for the public was very specific, very carefully crafted, as was the fake name that came with it. But she didn’t want to draw attention as Minette that night, and if she wandered through the casino and met with someone who wasn’t dressed in Versace, well, it would draw a lot of attention. The alternative was to dress down, because no one would expect that of her, but she didn’t want Luke thinking she did it because he couldn’t afford to dress up. In the end, vanity won out. Even drunk, she was jealous, and part of her (no, all of her) wanted him to want her. She hadn’t gained confidence in that until the end of their relationship, that he found her attractive, and there was enough of that lurking that it kept her from dragging jeans and a t-shirt out of her closet. She dressed in a sheer gray sheath dress and sandals. Her hair was loose, and her makeup was light, and she hoped it would be different enough from her normal attire that none of her clients would come say hello. None of them spent time near the penny slots, anyway, and she was counting on that. Well, as much as she could focus on anything with the amount she’d had to drink. She tipped back another glass of whiskey for courage, and she made her way down to the casino.
She knew the casino as well as he did, and she wandered up behind the penny slots, instead of approaching them straight on. She recognized his shoulders, thought the slight slope was new, and she could have stayed there all night, just managing to catch his profile in the glowing lights of the machines. But it was crowded, as the penny slots always were, and the people wandering between them meant her view of him came and went, ebbed and flowed, and she finally walked up behind him, until she was close enough that no one would use the small amount of space between them as a walkway. “Hi,” she slurred from over his shoulder, quiet enough to barely be audible over the clink and clank of the machines.
Luke didn’t necessarily enjoy observing people, but he did it so often that it had almost become instinct at this point in his life. As usual, the casino was bustling with activity, and he watched it all with a steady gaze, certain that he’d spot Wren immediately once she appeared. He wasn’t expecting her to approach from behind, though perhaps he should have, and thanks to Bruce he sensed a presence just before she spoke. In the midst of machines and other voices hers was barely audible, and the fact that he heard had more to do with his anticipation than it did her volume. While every instinct in him wanted to move quickly, he forced himself to turn around slowly, almost leisurely, as though the nervousness that simmered just beneath the surface didn’t exist.
Their first meeting had been unexpected, the circumstances less than ideal, and he’d been too angry to think straight. The second time had been planned, but they’d primarily been in a darkened car, and even then his anger had burned relentlessly. Now, Luke was more apprehensive than angry, and he felt like he had an advantage considering the fact that he was sober while she was not. “Hi,” he responded, voice calm and even in comparison to her quiet slur, but the way he looked at her betrayed his carefully controlled tone of voice. He would have thought her beautiful even in jeans and an old t-shirt, and even though it went against his better judgment, he took in her appearance without making any attempt to hide what he was doing. After their conversation over the journals, it would be a waste of time to feign disinterest. He unfolded his arms and made an aborted half-move forward, which might have been the start of an ill-advised hug, but caught himself with practised swiftness and instead hooked his thumbs through his belt loops as he looked down at her. “How are you?” The politeness almost made him cringe, but he wasn’t sure what to say.
She didn’t expect the slow perusal and, had she been sober, she probably would have hidden her surprise better than she did just then. The chill of the controlled voice was melted by the way he looked at her, and she leaned a little against the slot machine to her right, returning the look with heavy lidded eyes and pupils blown wide from too much liquor. He was close enough to touch, and she watched his aborted move forward and the unfolding of his arms with held breath. It was loud around them, and she had to shift slightly to accommodate people slipping by to get from this machine to that machine. Even still, it felt like there was no one else in the room, the world, the universe. She waited for his polite question, her gaze dropping to his thumbs when they safely disappeared from sight though his belt loops. She recognized the almost-hug for what it was and, if she had been sober, she would have let him get away with it. But she wasn’t sober, and she wasn’t thinking clearly, and she pushed away from the slot machine and closed that last bit of space between them.
She smelled of honey and vanilla and rich, good whiskey, sweet on her skin and breath, and she had to tip her head back to look at him once the distance was no longer between them. She didn’t say anything at all right away, not even in response to his polite question. Instead, she reached out one hand and dropped it to his hand. Fingers closed lightly around his wrist, and she tugged gently, just encouraging him to let got of the security blanket that was his belt. It was all done without thinking, and her gaze slipped right back up to his face. She stared, slow and unhurried, unabashed interest in her blue-gray eyes. Five years was a long time, especially from teenage boy to grown man, and she catalogued the changes. It was a testament to how drunk she was that she didn’t hesitate before letting go of his wrist and running the back of her fingers along his jawline, which was stronger now, all of the baby fat of youth long since gone. “I’m well,” she finally said, mirroring his politeness. “How are you?”
Those who said anger was blinding were right. Without it, Luke had nothing to distract himself with. His attention focused on her and only her, and he couldn’t ignore the way she looked at him, or how badly he wanted to touch her, and he couldn’t seem to remember why that would be a bad idea either. Being in public should have been a sort of safety net, but no one was paying them any real attention. When she closed the distance between them he should have stepped back, in order to establish boundaries, but aside from a brief tenseness in his posture he made no attempt to reinstate the distance. She was close enough that he could smell the whiskey on her, mixed in with other scents, and when he felt her fingers curl around his wrist he knew she never would have touched him if she’d been sober. Strangely enough, he found himself feeling grateful that she wasn’t. He looked down at her and forced himself to meet her gaze instead of breaking it, recalling a time when he would have turned red at the interest in her eyes. Now he was no longer the shy boy who blushed at every little thing. His breathing, which had been fairly steady and even until that point, hitched when her fingers brushed against his jawline, and he reached up to catch hold of her hand with his out of pure reflex. Instead of pushing her hand away, however, he kept it there, as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to end the contact. “I’m... good,” he said, after a brief pause. His other hand, still looped tightly around his belt, relaxed bit by bit until it loosened and settled uncertainly at his side. “You wanted to see me.” It was an abrupt change of subject, spoken somewhere between a statement of fact and a question.
Her fingers stilled when he caught her hand, and even drunk she could see the skill in that instinctive move. It was easy to forget how capable he was under all that new-found normalcy, but she knew better, knew what he could do if pushed. When he didn’t push her hand away, she let her fingers trail the rest of the way up his jaw, fingertips slipping along his neck and back to tangle in hair that was longer than she remembered. She sensed the movement of his other hand, but she didn’t actually see it, and she glanced down belatedly to find it back at his side. The question made her look back up, cheeks flushed and fingers idly moving against the nape of his neck. There was still enough space between them that she couldn’t feel any of his sold warmth against her, and she had to stretch to manage the unthinking caress without brushing against him. No, she wouldn’t have touched him if she was sober. But she wasn’t sober, and it became all the more evident in the pronounced soft slur when she spoke. “I wanted to see how much you’ve changed,” she said, the honesty borne of whiskey and more whiskey. She swayed a little, slightly uneven, and she caught herself with a hand against his chest, the other hand clutching his shoulder. “How much you haven’t changed,” she added, because there was a fair amount of that too. “I didn’t take anything when I left,” she reminded him. No pictures, no memories, nothing except her mother’s drawstring bag and the cat, which had spent too much time in a carrier tucked away in the rooms of working girls during that first year. Her fingers, the ones she was using to keep her balance, spread against his shirt, at the center of his chest, and her gaze dropped to watch them. “You’re all grown up,” she said simply, husky appreciation in the compliment.
Instead of pulling back as her fingers slipped around to tangle in his hair, Luke allowed his hand to slide down the length of her arm, the touch surprisingly firm and deliberate, until he reached her shoulder, which was when he dropped his hand back down to his side. More than anything, he didn’t want her to stop touching him. “We’ve both changed,” he said, almost moving to catch her when she swayed unevenly, but then she caught herself against his chest, and he dropped his hands again. “You’re different. I’m different. But some things, they stay the same.” He was paying more attention to the feel of her hands against his chest and shoulder than he was to what he was saying, which wasn’t nearly as subtle as he would have liked. When she reminded him that she hadn’t taken anything with her when she’d left, he shook his head with deliberate slowness, raising a hand to absently brush back a lock of her hair. “Yes, you did,” he told her, something heavy in his tone even though he offered no elaboration. Maybe this was a mistake, and he shouldn’t have come, but he told himself they weren’t actually doing anything. It was just a few harmless touches. He knew it was a lie, and this would only serve to make staying away from each other that much more difficult; it would be like torture, actually, but he couldn’t convince himself to stop. Bruce couldn’t either, despite his concern for how this might turn out. He almost smiled at her compliment, and at that moment the anger directed towards her was completely dormant. “So are you.”
The slide of his hand along her arm made her shudder, the physical reaction something she was helpless to hide as close to him as she was. She sensed the tensing of his muscles when he almost moved to catch her, and she smiled at the involuntary response on his part. If there was something she’d never, ever doubted, it was that Luke would always save her if she needed it. Even now, angry and bitter, he wouldn’t let her fall. “What stays the same?” she asked, her gaze capturing and holding his as she posed the very loaded question. Luckily, she was too drunk to realize the water she was treading in this conversation. Leaving him once had been impossible. Walking away now would be even worse, because she already knew what was on the other side of it. Her expression turned to drunken confusion when he said she’d taken something with her. “What?” she asked, and she would have understood what he was alluding to if she’d been sober but, drunk as she was, her mind went other places when he made the statement, and she looked momentarily worried, something of a caught deer in headlights in her wide-eyed gaze. She teetered slightly as someone edged by them in haste, someone who smelled drunker than she did, and her fingers bunched the fabric of his shirt as she held onto him, as if he would leave if she lost her balance. Maybe it was all a dream; she was drunk enough for that, but she didn’t want to wake if it was. “I’m not that different, not beneath all the pretending,” she said, because she didn’t think she was, not like him. Her hand finally let go of his shirt, and it slid, slid, slid up to his shoulder. She watched its progress, lips slightly parted and expression intimately unfocused. “And you’re still pretty,” she added, turning her attention back to his face. She stared for a few long moments. Then, losing track of the conversations (as drunks tended to do), and tipped her head. “Are you and MK seeing one another?” she asked with more than just curiosity, which she definitely wouldn’t have asked if she was sober.
That was a potentially dangerous question, and Luke was hesitant to answer. This, he knew, wasn’t going to last. She was drunk, and she wasn’t thinking clearly, but once she was everything would be as it was before. Wren had left him once, and he wasn’t going to make the mistake of admitting how he still had feelings for her just so she could do the same again. He shook his head, a hint of something like regret in his expression as he looked down at her. “We never truly lose who we are, no matter how much we change,” he said cryptically, realizing that she might not fully comprehend in her inebriated state, but he was still too wary to give her the full truth. Her next question was similarly answered. Even though it might have been unfair, responding in riddles when she was in no state to grasp his hidden meaning, it was a way to give her an answer without outright lying. “The same thing I would’ve taken if I was the one who left you.” His arms went around her when she swayed again, fingers bunching in his shirt; another reflexive action. He nudged her to the side, away from most of the traffic of patrons going back and forth, not always in a straight, steady line. “I’m still trying to figure out how different you really are,” he told her. It was honesty, but nothing too risky, and the fact that she was drunk made him a little more willing to admit certain things. He didn’t watch the path of her hand up to his shoulder like she did, but he could feel it, and he cast a quick glance around to ensure that no one was paying them an unusual amount of attention out of instinct. “Not pretty, remember?” He didn’t smile, but there was something fond in his tone, and he met her gaze unflinchingly until she changed the topic abruptly. Part of him thought that Wren had no right to be jealous if he and MK had been an item, but then again he would have liked it even less if she’d been with someone else, and considering the fact that it had been five years, well, he didn’t have much of a right either. “No,” he said, all seriousness. “We’re just friends. Did you think we were more?”
His response was, as he suspected, too much a riddle to sort out while inebriated. “I know,” she finally said, after making sense of it as best she could. “I’m still me. You’re still you.” It was a very simplistic way to explain it, and she took it a step further. “We’re still us.” It was a riddle in its own right, that statement, one which she clarified with her next drunken musing. “I thought feelings went away after awhile. They don’t.” It was much more honest than his answer, but the whiskey made her candid. “How do people do it? Break up?” she asked, because he was the only person she’d ever actually dated, and she didn’t understand how people got over the ones they loved, how they moved on to other people without them being mere replicas, substitutes. His response about what he would have taken made her expression go even more confused, and she shook her head, as if clearing it would make it easier to understand what he meant. “No, but you couldn’t have-” she began, but then his arms wound around her, and the entire world stopped.
She hadn’t expected him to touch her, not like this, and for an unfocused second there was nothing but his arms and how much sturdier he was than the boy he’d been. Finally, she remembered his comment about figuring out how different she was, and she shook her head, pale blonde hair clinging to her cheek with the movement. “I’m good at pretending,” she admitted about how she’d changed, but that was nothing new. She’d never pretended with him, but it had been a constant in her life with every other man that had touched her. “I don’t think I believe in happy endings anymore,” she added, because that was a change. The girl she had been had always hoped for that ending, believed it could happen; now she wasn’t so sure. “Still pretty,” she added as an after thought. “Handsome.” She ducked her head when she said it, and she bit her lip, that old habit still showing up on occasion. His question about MK earned a nod, and she didn’t look up to meet his gaze. “She kept it secret. She doesn’t like me very much anymore. She’s more your friend than mine.” It hurt, that, and it was evident in the way her voice wavered unsteadily. “I assumed. The way she was talking,” she finished, sentences disjointed.
It was a deceptively simple way to narrow down what he meant, though she wasn’t necessarily wrong. Luke nodded his agreement, because in the end he was still him and she was still her, but he stopped when she went a step further to refer to the two of them together. He hadn’t thought there was still an us where they were concerned. “Sometimes they do,” he said carefully. There were instances when the problem was that whatever feelings had once been were gone. In their case, however, the opposite was true. “But with us, they didn’t.” There it was, the truth he tried so hard to deny, though it was subtle enough to avoid becoming a direct confession. He didn’t have any particular desire to explain how relationships ended and people moved on, and he wished she hadn’t asked. “People grow apart. Feelings change. They might break up mutually, or it might be one person ending it while the other still has feelings for them. I don’t know how people do it, Wren. They just do. Most don’t break up while they both still have feelings for each other,” he explained, his voice becoming closed-off and guarded. “In no situation would that ever be easy, not that break-ups are the majority of the time.” He knew she didn’t understand what she’d taken when she left him, and she wouldn’t while she was still like this, so he let that particular issue go when she cut off her train of thought abruptly rather than make any further attempts at clarification.
He realized he should have let her go, but the simple truth of it was that he didn’t want to. Luke had spent most of his life putting everyone else before himself, and just this once he wanted to be selfish, to have what he wanted, and so he kept his arms around her. For all the knew, this might be his last real opportunity to touch her. That thought cut through him like a knife, but he was used to pain, whether it was the agonizing heartache of losing someone he loved or a bullet ripping through muscle and flesh. All he had to do was let everything go numb. “Maybe you are, and maybe I am too, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t changed,” he said. Neither of them were exactly the same. She might think his pretense was that of normalcy, but the real act was hiding just how far off the path he’d wandered. He was angrier than he used to be, more jaded, but he knew Wren didn’t suspect for a second that he’d actually killed anyone after what happened in Seattle. Luke didn’t believe in happy endings either, not anymore, but he still lamented the loss of the girl who’d once tried to convince him otherwise. “Handsome is better,” he told her, all false humor, and his tone softened a moment later. “You’re still beautiful.” He knew, whatever Wren might think, that MK had never felt anything more than friendship for him. Her vigilante may have been dead for years, but Luke suspected that feelings didn’t go away so easily for her either. “I was angry after you left,” he admitted. “Maybe that was why she never mentioned me, because she thought I wouldn’t want her to, or that it wasn’t her place to talk about me when I had no idea she was in contact with you.” His hands slid from her shoulders up, settling on either side of her face, just below her jawline, and he tipped her head up to look at him. “She’s your best friend. She was never mine. I don’t know what she said, but we never felt that way about each other. We both had... other people,” he said.
“I can’t imagine my feelings about you changing,” she said, and it was a candor she would regret in the morning, if she remembered this conversation at all. “When I was a teenager, I thought the sun rose and set with you,” she said wistfully. “I thought if you were just there, if you didn’t get tired of me or decide I wasn’t enough for you, that everything would be okay.” It was a hefty confession, and it hinted at the severity of whatever had made her run. “Roger says that being around me doesn’t make you better, that it didn’t then. I don’t want to believe that,” she admitted, because it was one of the things she still clung to. That they made each other better somehow, understood each other in a way other people didn’t. Maybe it was silly to still cling to that, especially given what her life was now. “Seeing you in that hotel hallway, it was like coming home.” She shook her head, the movement causing her to sway and hold on tighter to his shoulder. “I know it’s different for me. I’m not angry. I’m the one that’s bad for you, not the other way around.” She knew the blame in this was all hers, no matter her reasons for running, it had been her doing.
Her hands slid from his shoulders to his elbows, as far as she could manage while he was holding her. It was a slow movement, a slow slip of palm against skin, simple, chaste, but it was also something she’d never expected she would be able to do again. She knew he was angrier, and she knew he was more jaded, but he’d been on that road before she left. It had been steadily getting worse since Seattle, and she wasn’t surprised by how guarded he was, especially around her. In her mind, he opened up to everyone else. In her mind, there weren’t any secrets about what he did at night; there was only his anger at her. No, she didn’t think he was killing people; the thought never even crossed her mind. She thought of him as inherently good, stronger than her in that regard. She recognized his false humor for what it was, but the softening of his tone made her smile just a little. “I wasn’t sure you ever meant that,” she said with raw honesty when he said she was still beautiful. “I was pretty messed up,” she admitted, because she had been, and she knew she’d made his life difficult because of it. Strangely, this, how angry he was at her, how upset, it chased away all those old doubts. If he hadn’t cared, then he wouldn’t have taken it so badly when she’d left. It was one of the main reasons she’d thought he would be fine. “You’re still angry now,” she said softly. His hands on her face surprised her, and she closed her eyes unintentionally when he tipped her head up. A second later, she opened her eyes, blinking twice to focus on him through the haze of drink. She heard his words, but all she could focus on was his hands on her skin, how close he was. Her gaze traversed his features, and she lifted a hand and brushed her thumb against his lower lip. “I don’t have any right to be jealous,” she admitted, but her voice said that she was anyway. “I still think of you as mine.”
Luke marveled at the fact that something he wanted to hear could hurt so much, and he was torn between wanting her to stop saying things that just made the complicated mess that was them harder and hoping that she’d keep going regardless. Yet for all her declarations of love, it still hadn’t been enough to keep her from running off. Something had driven her away, this mysterious factor he might never discover, and as long as it stood between them things could never truly be repaired. They could try, and they could pretend, but the cracks would always be there until one day everything shattered all over again. “Everything wasn’t okay,” he said abruptly. “I never got tired of you. I never decided you weren’t enough for me. I was there. Whatever made you leave meant that what we had wasn’t enough.” He didn’t want these hints at what had driven her away. In his mind nothing could have been so terrible that it would convince her running away and leaving him behind was a good idea. He could feel the anger rising again, as it usually did when he thought about what it had been like, realizing she was gone, and he didn’t want to ruin this by turning on her with all his bitterness and hurt. He looked away then, and kept his gaze averted when she mentioned Roger. “It was different then. Now, he’s just worried. He thinks we should both move on, and he thinks I’m obsessed,” he said with blunt honesty. “Roger would think us seeing each other like this is only going to make things worse.” As much as he’d missed her, he wouldn’t describe their meeting in the hotel hallway as ‘coming home’ but Luke kept that to himself. “You’re not bad for me,” he said firmly. “Just because Roger says something doesn’t mean he’s right.” Luke ignored the fact that he could have a valid point in trying to keep them apart. He’d warned him not to let her get him back in her good graces, because he’d just get hurt again, and he wondered what Roger knew to make him say that.
Admittedly, her touches went a long way towards soothing his temper even if that hadn’t been her intention. For all his talk of secrets and lies, Luke had no intention of telling her about the things he’d done, but that was different. He didn’t owe her that much truth, and it didn’t directly concern her either. “I always meant it,” he sighed, and he refrained from comment when she said she was pretty messed up. He hadn’t been much better, but at least he’d never constantly questioned her feelings for him, not before she’d left. She didn’t need confirmation when she was already aware of the answer. He looked at her when she said he was still angry for a few long moments before responding. “Yes,” he said, voice low. “I am.” There was no use in lying. Her reaction to his hands made him forget that anger, however, and when her thumb brushed against his lower lip almost made him forget to pay attention to what was saying. “You don’t have any right,” he agreed. “You shouldn’t think of me as yours, just like I shouldn’t be here, and we shouldn’t be doing this.” He paused, and Bruce told him to stop, to remove himself from the situation as soon as possible, but he neglected to follow the advice. “I still think of you as mine too,” he admitted, and he knew he’d regret that confession later, just like he’d hate himself for saying it. Right now, though, he could pretend it wasn’t like stabbing himself through the heart to admit it, especially when she was drunk.
It took her a second longer than it normally would have to realize his mood had changed. The abrupt declaration that everything wasn’t okay didn’t register like it normally would have, and she shook her head too quickly when he said she’d left because what they had wasn’t enough. “No,” she insisted, repeating the word over his own statement. It was dangerous territory, this topic, because she was drunk enough to say too much if he pushed her. “I did something cowardly. That doesn’t mean what we had wasn’t enough.” The hurt when he said those words showed on the raw canvas of her face. It was like he was taking the one thing that mattered, the one important thing in her life, and saying it wasn’t worth anything, and she could only shake her head as he looked away. “He thinks you won’t be able to handle it,” she said with a bluntness that was entirely due to the intoxication. “He says he can barely handle it.” She looked down. “He messaged me and asked if I had any friends left. That was an easy question to answer,” she admitted, and there was a world of loneliness in the statement. It was harder than she’d ever imagined, living with a best friend who didn’t talk to her, living near someone she loved who was so angry that it showed in every gesture and movement. It was lonelier than actually being alone, because it was a constant reminder of what she’d lost.
His low voice only confirmed what she already knew about his anger, and she tugged her hand back like she’d been burned when he agreed she didn’t have any right, her thumb sliding away from his mouth, her hand slipping away from his chest. She looked down, and she worried her lip. Even drunk, this was hard. Having something she wanted so close, but knowing there was no way to bridge the gap and fix it. When he said he still thought of her as his, she looked up through her lashes, the whiplash of denial and acceptance making her head reel. “I never stopped being yours,” she said, but she was tense when she said the words, as if she was expecting another emotional blow in response to the confession. It didn’t matter, she thought, because as bittersweet and painful as this was, he was here, close, and she could see him, touch him if he let her. Even if her hands were now clasped in front of her, fingers twined through one another. There was nothing of the wealthy professional dominatrix in the stance, and that didn’t escape her drunken notice. Someone jostled her from behind, a man who then apologetically offered to buy her a drink, all while giving her a blatant once over. She shook her head, never even looking at him. “Do you want to not see me again?” she asked, as if the man hadn’t existed at all. She couldn’t leave Las Vegas; that wasn’t an option, but she could try to let him go. Right then, she would agree to almost anything to take that look off his face. She forgot her new determination to keep her hands off him, and she reached out splayed fingers to rest against his stomach. She knew there were other things she had to tell him - about Silver, which would make him angry. About the necklace, which hopefully wouldn’t make him angry. But all she could think about was how close he was, and yet how far away.
In Luke’s mind, she wouldn’t have been so afraid to tell him whatever her reason was if their relationship had been strong enough. He didn’t realize the implication he gave by saying as much, not until he looked up and saw the hurt written so plainly in her expression. “If it was enough, you wouldn’t have been afraid,” he said, and there was no anger just then, only a sort of forlorn resignation that made him sound younger than his years. “You would have been able to tell me what was wrong instead of running away. I’m not saying it’s all your fault,” he added, because he knew she’d think that, but it was as much a personal failure for him as it was anything else. “It’s mine too.” He wasn’t expecting such blunt confirmation that Roger did know this deep, dark secret, and the fact that he didn’t think he could handle it, that Roger himself had difficulty with it, caused him to legitimately worry. Maybe his older brother was right when he said it was better to leave the past alone. Unfortunately, Luke was, to a degree, obsessed, and dropping it wouldn’t be easy. “I’m not a child. I can decide what I can and can’t handle,” he said, stubbornness shining through, but he faltered when she implied that she had no friends left. As much as he wanted to tell her that she’d done this to herself, he hated seeing her hurt in any way, and she didn’t deserve that loneliness. He was the one who’d gone to such lengths to push everyone away; it should be his instead. “You have friends,” he insisted, even though he wasn’t aware of any beyond himself and MK; he didn’t know that much about her life.
It wasn’t easy, but he allowed her to pull back without stopping her. His words had pushed her away, after all, even if that hadn’t been his intention. Luke had a hard time keeping his mouth shut and choosing his words in certain circumstances. His hands went into his pockets, a defensive gesture, and when she said she’d never stopped being his he looked at her with an expression so carefully guarded that it was unreadable. The silence stretched on for a few long moments until some strange man jostled her, which was easily dismissed in itself, but then he gave her such a blatant once-over that Luke felt a spike of irrational jealousy (since she paid the man no attention) and took a step towards the man, all icy glare and male threat. “Leave,” he told him, in the tone of voice usually used when he was working or out at night, before turning his attention back to Wren. Her question was loaded, and he seemed to consider it for a long stretch of time, long enough for her fingers to splay out against his stomach and stay there. Had he been strong, Luke would have told her that he never wanted to see her again, but he wasn’t. He was weak in so many ways. “No,” he said, just when it seemed he might not answer at all. “I want to see you again.” He moved forward to close the distance again so he could look down at her properly, despite all the reasons why answering honestly was the worst thing he could have done. “Do you want to see me?”
She shook her head again, harder, more adamantly. “We were kids, Luke. We pretended we weren’t, but we were. My fear, that was just because I was young, just because you were young. If I was in the same situation today, I would do something entirely different.” It was something she’d thought about every single day. “Back then, running was the only way I knew how to cope with losing things - or the fear of losing them. I’ve been here, in this city, over four years. It’s the longest I’ve stayed anywhere. Running doesn’t do any good, but back then I thought it would. I thought it would spare you, and I thought I could take it all on myself so that you wouldn’t be hurt by it. Roger says that’s self-destructive, that I’m so worried about you that I’m hurting myself. That isn’t a new thing, and maybe he’s right. Maybe I’m doing the same exact thing right now.” If there was any doubt that the alcohol had gone to her head, that babbled confession should have cleared it up. His insistence about having friends made her look away. Socializing was the opposite of what she’d been doing for the past half decade, and living with MK was harder than she’d ever imagined possible. “I don’t have any friends, but that was my choice. The closest I came to a friend was Roger, and that was a long time ago. Until last week, I hadn’t seen him since he helped me make the decision to come out here.” She paused, and she smiled thankfully. “At least you weren’t alone. You had MK and Simon.” She was glad for that; it would be harder to think of him all by himself.
She used to be able to read any expression that crossed his face. She could tell if he was lying, holding something back, happy or sad with only a glance, but now he was unreadable, and even more so with her inebriated state. She watched his hands go into his pockets, and she began to think he would leave without saying anything else, without answering her question. The forceful leave that he directed toward the other man made her take notice. She’d never heard him sound like that, even when he’d been angry at her or talking to Fredrick in the car. It made a chill chase along her spine, a combination of attraction and fear, and something else she couldn’t quite focus on, something like worry. She was still thinking about it when he spoke, and she looked up at the unexpected no. The move toward her was equally unexpected, and she slid her hand from his stomach to his chest to accommodate it. She took one last step forward once he stopped, helpless to resist, and now, now she could feel how warm he was, against her. She looked up at him, and she would have kissed him if she wasn’t worried that he would push her away - that concern making it through the haze of alcohol. It showed on her face, though, the fact that she wanted him, and even sober she would have been helpless to do anything about it. She swallowed thickly, and she nodded. She knew he was angry, and she knew it would be like this, anger mixed with something that had never really died, and she knew she would have to come clean eventually if she did this, if she did anything but ignore him. “Even if we have to hide, even if it has to be a secret, even if you’re so angry you can’t stand to look at me half of the time.” She nodded again. “Yes.” The final word was a whisper, and her fingertips slipped beneath the collar of his shirt in search of warm skin, something that proved he was real and not just another dream.
Luke began to protest that he hadn’t been a kid, that he’d lost whatever childish innocence he had soon after coming to Seattle, but he fell silent when he realized that wasn’t entirely true. They’d been through things very few people their age had, but that didn’t change how young they’d been. He’d done his fair share of stupid, impulsive things back then too. The only difference was that he ran from New York to escape his past, rather than using it as a coping method or being spurred into it because he was afraid. “Spare me what?” It frustrated him that she kept referring to the reason she’d left without actually saying it, because he was sick and tired of trying to imagine what the burden she’d took upon herself to carry was. He’d been doing it for nearly five years. “It is self-destructive. I used to do it too, remember? I’d take on the weight of the world as my own without letting anyone share it, and you’d hate it when I did. I don’t want you hurting yourself for me,” he snapped, concern making his tone heatedly insistent. It might have been useless to argue with her when she was like this, but her walls were more difficult to maintain when she wasn’t sober. He thought he could imagine what it must have been like for her, being alone, but she was wrong in assuming that he’d had friends. MK had lasted until he left New York, and Simon, he was a good guy, but there was so much he didn’t know and they’d only known each other for a few months. “After I left New York,” he said, “MK and I lost touch. Simon’s a decent guy, but he doesn’t know anything about me.” He’d had no one to confide in, no one to talk to about the people he missed or the things he’d done. They all saw only what he wanted them to see.
The time when he might have been able to stop himself had passed, and now there was nowhere for Luke to go but forward. He knew they both had their secrets, and they both had their baggage, and he was capable of so much more than he’d been the last time they saw each other. Maybe it was a bad combination, and if Roger found out that he’d agreed to meet Wren after all his warnings to stay away from her, it wouldn’t end well, but Roger didn’t necessarily need to know. Maybe no one did. Bruce could disagree all he wanted, but not even he was strong enough to stop him. Whether he went forward with this or not, he would still be damaged, and he’d still have his issues, but at least he could have her in the midst of the mess that was his life. No matter how angry he’d been at her, he always knew he wouldn’t be able to resist if this moment came. He brought his hands up to cup her face again when she closed the distance between them, her body warm against his, and looked down at her for a long moment after she confirmed that yes, she did want to see him again. He wanted to say something, but every time he tried no words would come, and suddenly he was kissing her without thinking, five years of hurt and all the time he’d spent missing her, wanting her, and being angry at her behind it.
She winced when he snapped, a reaction she would have managed to hide entirely if she was sober, but she didn't back away from him. It was the unexpected sharpness that caused the reaction, not any fear of him. If there was one person in the world she trusted not to ever hurt her, it was him. The frustrated tone managed to make it through the alcohol haze, but she didn't respond immediately. She was afraid he'd pull away from her if she said what she was thinking, and she didn't want that, not now, not when he was so close. His comments about MK and Simon made her heart ache, because he had always been the kind of person to do better with friends than alone, and she she realized she might have completely overestimated the closeness of his relationships with both MK and Simon. "I assumed since she knew you were a mask..." she began, referring to MK, but the words trailed away as unimportant as she imagined how his life might have been in the past few years. She went quiet a second, and when she spoke again her voice was barely a whisper. "I made it worse," she said, as if the reality of that had just fully impacted her. She had left to keep him from falling apart, and she'd caused it instead.
But he was close, and he was looking at her. Really looking. The boy he had been always looked away, always had trouble maintaining eye contact with her. He'd been the shyer one of the two of them, the more uncertain one. But this direct look, the way he didn't waver in it, this was new. It was like the voice he'd used when he commanded the man to leave, and it made that same thrill chase along her spine. His hands, as he cupped her face, felt like heaven and intimacy and strength, and she didn't care that this might be a terrible mistake; she'd never cared about things like that where he was concerned. The kiss was sudden, unexpected, since she was waiting for him to say whatever he was thinking, but her shock only lasted for a second before she was kissing him back. She stretched up onto the tips of her toes, pressing herself against him with years of yearning. Her arms slid over his shoulders, and her fingers tangled greedily into his hair. The kiss was not demurring, and it was nothing chaste as she licked at his lips and demanded in a way that was only fueled by the whiskey in her veins. She molded herself to him, forgetting the curious looks they would surely get, forgetting how bad for business this could be.
Under different circumstances, Luke might have pushed for a response. She would never tell him the truth while she was sober, but the possibility of her letting something slip was higher now that she was drunk, and he should have taken advantage of that. He should have, but he didn’t. “You assumed what, that I told her everything? That I confided in her?” MK was a good friend, and she had been there for him, but he’d never managed to trust her enough to disclose a number of his secrets. They were rhetorical questions, because he knew she realized that no, he hadn’t been as close to MK as she suspected, nor had he been particularly close to Simon. Until that moment he didn’t think she’d realized the full impact her leaving had on him, but now she did, and he simply looked at her when she said she’d made it worse. She had, and he couldn’t deny that, but he didn’t want to come right out and confirm it either.
Any possibility of him coming to his senses and pulling away, however slight, was completely eradicated once she overcame her momentary shock and kissed him back. He was capable of a lot of things, some admirable and some not, but stopping this was beyond anything he could manage now. Luke didn’t care about the curious looks and he wasn’t paying enough attention to notice whether anyone was actually staring or not. Even the possibility of one or both of them being recognized couldn’t manage to reach him on anything other than a vague, distant level. All that mattered was the feel of her body against his as she pressed herself against him, and the way her fingers tangled in his hair, and the taste of her as he slanted his mouth over hers and took what he’d longed for ever since the day she left him. The shy, uncertain boy he’d once been was gone, and now it was clear that he knew what he wanted and he knew how to get it without stumbling along as he attempted to figure it out. His hands slid down, along the slope of her neck, over her shoulders, and down along her sides to press against the small of her back in order to pull her closer. They might have been making a spectacle, but that didn’t stop him from deepening the kiss, and considering the number of drunken customers in the casino on any given day it likely wasn’t anything that hadn’t been seen before.
She was in no state to answer his question about MK, and she had no idea he was warring with the idea of using her drunken state to get answers. Her fingers slid from his hair, to his shoulders, over his chest and stomach. They snaked beneath the shirt he wore, only bunching it at the hip, not enough for anyone to see the scars and bruises hidden by the fabric, but she knew they were there, and she ran her perfectly manicured nails along the line of his ribs, wanting warmth and strength beneath her fingers. She had known, before he even managed to press his lips to hers, that this was not the shy boy of her youth. He’d shown her that in countless ways in their two encounters, and part of her knew that this version of Luke would not let himself be controlled by her. When they were young, before the end when things became dark and different, she could pull him out of his dark thoughts with teasing and touches and whimpers; she was fairly sure that wasn’t the case anymore. She mourned the loss of that boy, but she thrilled in the advent of the man. When his hands traveled down to her sides, she whimpered. When they found the small of her back, she pressed against him in wanton invitation, a moan on her lips against his mouth. She was so close now that the soft fabric of the designer dress she wore bunched at the thigh, revealing a hint of lace at the top of her stockings, but she didn’t notice. His skin was warm beneath her hands, and his mouth was demanding against hers, and she was willing to give him absolutely whatever he wanted. She knew this wasn’t a declaration, that it wasn’t a promise of anything beyond this, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She stretched up and broke the kiss, her lips trailing along his jaw, the hard circle of a ring on a chain pressing hard against his chest. Her voice, when it came, was husky and near his ear. “I missed this. I missed you,” she whispered, husky and raw, before pressing a kiss just below his ear.
He almost pushed her hands away when they slid beneath his shirt, a reflexive action resulting from his borderline paranoia about keeping his scars and bruises hidden. For a brief moment he broke the kiss, glancing down to see what, if anything, was revealed, but what he saw must have satisfied him because his mouth was on hers again seconds later. She still had a certain hold on him, which was starkly telling in the fact that he’d agreed to meet her here, and that he was kissing her like he couldn’t get enough instead of being angry and spiteful, but she was right in thinking that he wasn’t so easily controlled any longer. Maybe the boy he’d once been still lurked somewhere in him, but it was a deep, far away place, and he certainly had no influence any longer. The sounds she made were achingly familiar, whimpers and moans that he recalled he’d once been able to draw out. He’d always felt so satisfied when he did, like it was some great accomplishment; which it was, to a nineteen-year-old boy with limited experience when it came to girls. Not here, he thought when she pressed against him, or maybe that was some of Bruce’s influence slipping through, but he ran a hand along her thigh regardless of their rather public surroundings and it took a great deal of control to refrain from blatantly sliding his fingers beneath the fabric of her dress to find the warm skin beneath. Somehow this was still safe, but he knew going further would be dangerous, because with her it would always be more than just the physical aspect, and that would undoubtedly be allowing himself to get close and subsequently put him at risk for having his heart ripped from his chest (thinking of it as being broken was too tame) all over again. It was the feel of the ring against his chest rather than her lips trailing along his jaw that caught his breath in his throat, and his hands stilled at the small of her back, where they’d returned after roaming over fabric-covered skin. “I missed you too,” he said, his voice a rough whisper. “Every day. Show me,” he added suddenly, and it was the sort of request he never would have made as a boy. “Show me how much you missed me.”