Blake Thorne can't be undone by (beausang) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-08-02 14:24:00 |
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Entry tags: | ravenna, rose red |
Who: Oliver and Leon
What: A brief reunion.
Where: Chandelier Bar
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: None!
Oliver knew what Leon liked. That was why, as penance for being a bit of a bitch, he picked a bar he thought would strike his fancy, even if it wasn’t really the sort of place he himself usually visited. Leon liked the big, the brash in Americana, so Oliver went as intensely Vegas glittery as he could think of: Chandelier Bar. With crystals draped in every visible direction and three bars, it didn’t get much more ridiculously over the top. He did compromise a little with himself a little, though, sitting inside the massive chandelier, but on the first floor, where the drinks were still ridiculous, but not turned into foam or blown out of a bubble machine or whatever the hell the molecular mixologists were doing up on the second floor. The third, with floral themed drinks, was a little gay even for a man who would go to a bar covered in crystals and called ‘Chandelier’.
Oliver had come dressed artfully down. It wouldn’t do to look like he was trying too hard, now would it? He wore a tight tissue fabric white tee with a wide boat neck and dark denim worn in at the knees. The short sleeves showed off the tattoos that curled up his right arm. He’d lost his lip piercing since Leon had last seen him, but there were still small, flat black piercings in both his ears, traded out for businesslike clear plugs during the day.
Oliver ordered a cocktail and looked out over the floor below through the curtain of glitter, leaning back in an armchair. It was early enough yet that the place was busy but not insane, and he propped his legs up on the chair opposite to save it. He took a long swallow of his drink, and pretended not to be nervous, which was a stupid thing to feel anyway. He was much too old for butterflies in the stomach, especially around someone who dropped him like a box of rocks, and he pushed the feeling down. Silly. Leon was hardly a terror, anyway, aside from being completely impossible. He set down the drink and glanced to the doors. Maybe he’d get stood up. Now that would be just hilarious.
Leon was hipster academic. It was entirely ridiculous, and he loved it. He was skinny jeans and black converse, a polo shirt in white and a tweed-meets-animal print suit jacket that belonged in some trendy shop on the strip. His black curls were a mess, as they were wont to be, and he had his iPod buds loose around his neck and the iPod cord leading into his front pocket. He'd no piercings or tattoos picked up along the way, though he always considered them. He was too thin, thick eyebrows and ruddy skin that would never look American. He smelled of patchouli and sandalwood, some oil purchased at a health food store that he rather had a fondness for. His backpack was swung over his shoulder, papers that needed grading tucked inside along with As I Lay Dying and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. He was youth, and whirlwind, and he looked quite pleased with himself as he pushed open the doors to the gaudy bar.
Oliver was quite right; Leon loved it.
It didn't take Leon long to find Oliver. Even the passing of time hadn't diminished those cheekbones or that inky hair that actually minded, unlike Leon's own. He came up behind Oliver, only the oil announcing his arrival, and he leaned over Oliver's shoulder. He pressed a sloppy kiss to Oliver's cheek, and he grinned. "Those cheekbones would still cut glass, dove," he said, all smile and smugness as he dropped down into the chair opposite Oliver's. He gave Oliver a look over, a long one that looked for changes and differences, even as he settled quite comfortably beside Oliver's feet on the seat. "Good thing I've a skinny arse," he added, leaning his curly head back and grabbing the attention of a waitress who passed behind him. "A shirley temple, beautiful," he told her, and he straightened and let his bag drop on the floor. "I've lecture this afternoon," he explained.
The quick, sloppy kiss caught Oliver unawares, and he half turned into it, warming slightly under his lips before he pulled back. He leaned back in his chair, picking up his cocktail again. “Like diamonds,” he agreed, and did not move his feet. “Good thing for some, shame for others. Are you seriously going to order a shirley temple in a bar covered in crystals?” He cocked a brow. “Be careful. Someone might think you’re gay.”
This was the move, it seemed, as it often was with him - when Oliver didn’t know what to say, rather than not talk, he let his mouth run on and on. Leon looked as he remembered him, unfortunately, as irrepressible, as gorgeous, as bright-eyed and bushy tailed. He hadn’t even had the good grace to get fat. “That jacket is hideous,” he informed him. “Where did you get it? I hate you. If I tried to wear it, I’d look like a lost big game hunter. You, you’re somehow the peak of fashion.”
Leon grinned, dimples and teeth. "I like being different, love," he said of the shirley temple, and the comment about some thinking he might be gay just earned Oliver a wink and trace of fingers beneath the hem of the pant leg closest to him. "That would be a disaster, wouldn't it? I'm clearly the straightest bloke to come out of Ireland," he assured, all Irish accent in that moment, even though he had no true accent from his home that wasn't affected, learned from cinema and novels.
The comment about the jacket made Leon's brown eyes light up with an old mischief, something born of countless attempts to get the corpse-loving Oliver to loosen up. Leon stood, and he shed the ridiculous jacket like a snake shedding its skin. He tossed the thing onto Oliver's head, and then he tugged the 80s polo shirt down over the tan expanse of belly that had been exposed with the movement. "Come on then. Try it on and let's us have a look. I'll be the judge of how you wear it," he insisted, flopping back down in his chair with all the comfort of a person at home, on their couch, unconcerned with the entire world's bloody opinion of them.
"I see that," Oliver said, and felt the trace of fingers with a flicker of warmth, smile widening in a silly way for a second before he checked it. He was not a schoolgirl, and he would not behave like one. "I weep for all the babies you won't be having because of the shameful assumptions people make."
Oliver almost didn't catch the jacket, but grabbed it just before it hit him in the face. Not his most graceful move, but he managed not to spill his cocktail or become a coat rack. He took a look at the insane thing, then shrugged and began pulling it on. Arm halfway into one sleeve, he slowed for a millisecond, watching Leon's shirt ride up and then come crashing back down over that smooth swathe of skin again. All it did was remind him how much it had stung when Leon got away from him, all that teasing and hinting that led to nothing but an anticlimactic dream sequence years later where he got to see his rival fuck him through his own eyes. And, as it always did, the thought stung, even though he knew it had no right to. He didn't do well with slights.
Oliver was almost the same height as Leon, with perhaps a hint more build on his frame, but the jacket went on easily enough. He straightened it out, pulled at the shoulders to make sure they were properly in place, and picked up his cocktail again. "There," he said. "Now I look the way I imagine most of your conquests do, ready to be skinned and stuffed and placed in a place of pride as a trophy. Ah, your extremely effeminate drink has arrived." The waitress had come by again with the shirley temple, served in a glass with a swirl of red through the clear and the cherry split and speared against the top. "So. Who’s in your head? I’m dying to know. No pathologist puns, please.”
"You think I can't produce babies? Clearly you don't know the Irish," Leon quipped, though his family had been on the opposite side of that battlefield. But he felt removed from it, distant enough that it was not real and it was not him, and he could joke without it hurting in his bones. Or, perhaps, he joked in defiance of that ache.
Leon knew when he was being stared at, admired, and he quite liked it. He almost considered standing up and doing it all over again, the stretch, but the arrival of the drink stopped him. He took said drink, and he sipped at the thin, black straw as he looked over the man wearing his coat. "You've a look of misery about you that simply doesn't suit the fabric, dove," he teased. The jacket fit Oliver quite well, and yet it didn't fit him at all; Leon supposed he would be quite bored if it did. "I like my trophies wearing quite a bit less clothing than you're wearing at present," he assured Oliver instead, leaning forward and holding out the skewered cherry for the other man to suck off the plastic sword that held it fast; challenge.
"My head? Perhaps I'll only tell if I'm allowed copious pathological puns," Leon said, sitting back, but relenting almost immediately. "Some silly bint with red hair. You, love?"
"I never said you couldn't. I simply meant most women would assume you were disinterested with what was between their legs and cut you off at the pass." Oliver drained what remained of his cocktail, and gestured to the waitress for another before she swept away.
The cherry, offered as a challenge, and, he supposed, a joke, Oliver accepted. He leaned forward, seized the fruit between his teeth, and pulled it from the tiny plastic scimitar before Leon had an opportunity to make any other sort of move. He rolled it back into his mouth with his tongue, flashing a small silver piercing in the middle. "You would get something with neon colored cherries in it," he observed, as he popped through the firm skin with his teeth and swallowed the fruit. "Very American."
Oliver took his fresh cocktail and swirled it, giving it a look. "I am not miserable," he said, almost as an afterthought, and looked back at him. "You can apply the same technique I did to the cherry if you want to get my clothes off." It was a nice thought, honestly, even if there was a tiny bit of bitter expectancy in it. In his darker doubts, he really did think the evening was going to end with him being laughed off. He thought this whole thing was for show, possibly to appease Leon's ego, before he ran off to sample less difficult fare.
"Thank god you chose not to put us both through that." Red hair. It didn't jog any memories, so Oliver went on unconcerned. "A wicked queen. We're very well matched that way." It was a joke, but honestly, he’d been trying not to think about it. The woman in his head was a cruel type, the sort to hold a grudge close to her heart forever, and it struck a little too close to home.
"I am quite disinterested in anything that lives between a woman's legs, Oliver, living or dead, regardless of the scent," Leon assured, lifting his much offended neon drink and taking a long suck through the straw. He watched all that teasing with the cherry, a greedy gaze that was light and hazel and harbouring a smile. "You've something stuck in your tongue," he said, once the show was over, quite intentionally being an arse about it. "Did you know?"
Oliver's statement that he wasn't miserable earned him a point with the plastic scimitar, and a roll of eyes. "Love, you're as miserable as a whore wearing a hair shirt. The only thing you've not done is scootch around to ease the itch, you see." And Leon looked rather entertained at all of it, and Oliver did look quite ill-suited to his jacket in a way that made Leon terribly pleased with himself. "Biting you gets me your naked arse? I'll keep that handy. Perhaps even make a note in my phone." He pulled his phone out then, without warning, and he snapped a picture of Oliver in that loud jacket. He made a show of adding Oliver to the contacts as BITE, and then he set the phone back into the pocket of his jeans with a lift of his hip, and a baring of skin just above the dangerously low waistband.
As for a wicked queen? "Isn't that just the thing?" Leon asked.
"The scent's much worse when they're dead," Oliver pointed out helpfully. He ran his tongue back over his teeth, innocent as anything, and listened to the click as the stud connected with his incisors. "Don't know what you mean."
"You assume quite a bit, dear," he said, picking at the sleeve of the ridiculous coat. Oliver had already resolved not to let such insinuations bother him, so he simply wouldn't. He rolled his eyes when Leon pulled out his phone and made a small performance out of putting him into his phone. His eyes lingered on that strip of skin again before diverting up in a droll slide, one that said yes, he'd noticed how low his waistband was, and how delightedly he kept flaunting that pretty expanse of flesh. "I think you missed the gist of that one, but I'll be happy to teach it to you in private sometime."
"It is." Oliver turned his second cocktail around on the table with his fingers. He wasn't buzzed yet, not anywhere near, but a little warm at least. "So. You're here, I'm here. Are we going to go have sex, or are you still holding out for that magical threesome?"
"You're rather the condescending pillock," Leon commented, after the show with the tongue and the comment about missing the gist of something or another. The question that followed, the one about the sex, was rather unsurprising, really, given the amount of bile in the conversation thus far. Perhaps it said something, that anger equated sex, but who was Leon to argue? He'd not actually been expecting Oliver to put out for him, or vice versa (Leon was flexible), but he wasn't likely to turn it down.
Leon finished his drink in a gulp, foregoing the straw, and he stood. Without the jacket, yes, the waistline of the skinny jeans was exceptionally low, and Leon merely quirked a brow. "Bathroom then? Seems a fitting place to get all that anger out of your system by shoving your dick up my arse." Because that's what this was about, wasn't it? Leon's hazel eyes flashed with that knowledge, and he quirked his curly head toward the back, but he waited for Oliver to take the first step. This was his revenge story, after all. "Hope you've some lube on you. Or I can ask along the way." His expression said he would do just that.
Oliver laughed a little. “Sure. Why not.” He could be condescending - he could play that role. Honestly, he thought he was being fair, straightforward. Maybe he still had a bit of edge, but what was he supposed to do, just forget?
Oliver didn’t genuinely expect Leon to take him up on the offer, and if he did, he thought he’d be dragged back to his apartment. The direct call to his anger prickled him as much as it made him feel caught out. He didn’t really think they were going to discuss this, or address it so directly, and it raised his hackles just enough to get him to agree. Even though he didn’t really want to - even though it was a terrible idea. Now he felt like he had something to prove, like saying no would make him seem like a coward, or make the offer into a humiliating bluff. He downed his cocktail and stood, checking the pockets of Leon’s coat to be sure he hadn’t already secreted anything away in them. “Alright,” he said, appearing as studiously unruffled as possible. “I don’t think stranger lube will work for me, though. I’m a class act.” He pulled out a few bills to cover the two drinks, and stepped toward the back. “Come on.”
Leon didn't buy that studiously unruffled look for even a moment, and he grabbed Oliver's sleeve when Oliver stepped toward the back. It was his sleeve, really, and he had every right to grab it. His grip was firm, just below Oliver's elbow. "You're a tit, Oliver. How's about you tell me what the fuck you're trying to prove here?"
Oliver looked back at him, surprised, then immediately closing off, mouth going back to that sober line Leon was so good at poking fun at him for. “All I did was ask you for a drink, and make a joke about sex,” Oliver said. “You’re the one who proposed fucking in the bathroom.”
"Answer the question, prat," Leon insisted, hazel eyes missing utterly nothing, too aware, too hyperaware even, at least when it came to Oliver. "You didn't make a joke. You asked a bloody serious question. Is this about Ethan? Is it about Knoxville? What, dove, is it about?"
Oliver looked back at him, shoulders tight, hands shoved into his pockets, body drawn into a taut line. "Look, I don't know what you want me to say. Because if I tell you the truth, you're going to call me a drama queen again, and if I lie to you, you won't be satisfied. We were friends for a few months and then you left town, and to you that's all it was, so there's no reason for you to give a flying fuck. Now you're upset, because me being resentful is - I don't even know, getting in the way of you keeping me on as a booty call? Making you feel guilty? Maybe it's just a mystery to you, why it still stings for me when you offer to do shit like, say, have a threesome with me and the cracked out guy you fucked on your way out of town. Whatever it is, fine, that's fine. I'm not going to say it all again, I made enough of a fool of myself already, no need to pour salt on it." His chin tipped up. "I thought maybe if we had sex I'd get it out of my system, and it wouldn’t feel like it mattered anymore so I could care as little as you do, and I'd forget about it, and I could talk to you without feeling like you were laughing at me. There. You happier, hearing me say it out loud?" He shrugged, a short, truncated motion. “I’ve got issues. What’s a boy to do? Now are we having sex, or are we not having sex?”
Leon didn't roll his eyes, which was his most impressive feat that entire day. "Dove, I'm not having sex with someone so they can get me out of their bloody system, and I'm not hard pressed enough to hand my arse to someone who hates me. Alright, so I was a twat. I'll buy that, but I didn't cheat on your overly dramatic arse. We'd nothing, and you never asked me to have anything, so I've no guilt riding around on me shoulders over this." He shoved his hands deep, deep into his pocket, as if the movement alone could get him anywhere at all, anywhere but here, where he was being called to task for things he'd barely any recollection of. "As for me keeping you on as a booty call. I wanted a drink, a chat, some time to prattle on and talk things out after that memory fiasco. If I need a booty call, I can pick up the phone and get one a lot easier than this, you can bet your arse on that."
Leon stepped away, toward the door and most certainly not toward the bathroom. He pointed one finger at Oliver once there was a few feet of space between them. "You're shooting yourself in the foot, you daft twat."
The answer was precisely what Oliver had expected, but it stung, just as he'd said it would, just as he'd known it would. Talk things out? What had he been intending to say that he wasn't already saying? He kept his hands tight in his pockets, fingers creeping halfway into fists. He didn't know what to say. He'd already fucked this up every way he possibly could, but it didn't change the fact that Leon just didn't get it. Every time he called him overdramatic, or pointed out that nothing had happened, it just hurt worse. "Fine," he said, finally, and brushed past him. "I'll limp home, then." Better that than do something else equally stupid. He thought he’d done everything wrong, but he’d be better off not giving himself the opportunity to find out he was wrong on that count too.
Leon tugged his hands from his pockets, and he raised them in the air with great dramatism. "Very well. Off you go then," he insisted, waving his hands toward the door, as if he was waving something on its way. It drew attention, because he was quite loud about it, the gestures quite expansive. It was an indication that he was equally frustrated with the result of this reunion, but Oliver likely didn't know him well enough to see it as anything but further twattish behavior.