francisco javier es una (pesadilla) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-03-20 20:17:00 |
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Entry tags: | beast, hoban washburne |
Who: Daniel Webster & Lin Alesi
What: Back to reality. (Part III of III.)
Where: Daniel’s apartment, Turnberry Towers
When: After Part II
Warnings/Rating: ST, swearing, hurt feels.
Daniel enjoyed being mindless. This kind was years and miles better than the total, empty, utter lack of self that was the result of walking through the door of Passages. It was warm, sticky, and there was someone with him. Since he’d cut himself off from everything that actually made him happy, Daniel hadn’t done too much to attract partners. Usually the money could get him laid in some anonymous hotel room with some woman who couldn’t find her heels or her wedding ring, but it happened less and less often as the months went by until finally it was just poor Sam and her fucking issues breaking into the cool little cage he had set up for himself on the top of a high rise. She’d been warm too, and he’d let her stay, or pretended to let her instead of needing her--or maybe not her, maybe just that warm feeling. Whatever it was. Maybe just sex. Daniel didn’t care, and shied away from even attempting to identify it. Things came back slowly. The thick vegetable smell of the tomato soup. The sound of the opera coming from the living room, very faint, in the last act. Someone was dying in high C, and Daniel’s arm went to sleep and started to tingle underneath him. His bad shoulder ached. He felt good, just-fucked good, and his stomach was sticky as it pulled away from Lin’s in a long gentle line. Daniel fell back against the sheets, his head falling loose against the top corner of the bed until he twisted over a couple inches and steadied his bare ass on the cotton. The sense of disorientation got stronger. Clear blue eyes gazed down the length of the bed at the long brown line of Lin’s thigh where it creased into the mattress. It was a short moment, and then Daniel turned his head. He reached out for the bottle Lin had left on the side table. Well. That was fun. Lin kept his eyes closed, lids only just together, and laid there like a cat sunning itself, even as Daniel peeled away. He didn’t move or react. He listened to the opera, he felt the bed beneath him, but he didn’t move. He was stretched out, languid and warm, feeling rather content, his body a-tingle, and his skin glistened faintly in the light from the bathroom. But, he barely breathed. The boy knew exactly what was going to happen - or he thought he did. And now that his blood wasn't just focused on his dick, his brain decided to remind him of the consequences. This was the part where he made a smart-ass comment and Daniel remembered that he was supposed to be a straight bastard drowning in drink and loneliness, and then Lin would either a) get hip-checked to the floor and be expected to run for it or b) get kicked out the front door before he could even clean himself off. Of course, lying there was only going to put it off for so long. Destiny was destiny. Ugh. Lin made a sound of frustration and rolled onto his stomach smoothly. He had much more finesse and agility in bed than he ever did out in the real world, where he walked around tripping and hitting his nose on the wall like a dumbass. He heard glass lifting off wood - the drink on the side table, of course - and his eyes opened. "You ruined my shirt." Lin shifted his chin to look at Daniel, a pale crescent propped against the headboard, with curiously blank eyes, glassy in the dark. His voice was low, toneless, and half muffled by the still-damp sheets as he laid there, arms crossed under his chin. Smart-ass comment: check. Cue forceful ejection. Daniel was in the process of recovering one of the cut glass crystal tumblers from the floor next to the bed when Lin said that, and he sat up again with glass and bottle in one hand and stared at him for a solid two seconds, struggling to say something. His expression wasn’t immediately readable because Daniel didn’t have a clue what he was trying to say even when he was trying to say it. The blue eyes were exceptionally clear even through the red streaks of fatigue. The expression grew uncertain as if he wasn’t sure if Lin was trying to mock him in some obscure way. Daniel wasn’t sure he could handle obscure mocking with a naked boy in his bed. Not for at least a quarter of the bottle. "You want me to apologize?" he asked gruffly, dumping the bottle sideways and going way past inches and into apple juice level of alcohol. The pungent, mossy aroma of well-aged alcohol left without a fucking cap in a cold room circulated over the cooling musk of recent sex. Daniel pulled up one corner of the wrinkled sheet and draped it over his lap. One knee came up under the slide of white and he propped his elbow up to take a swig from the glass. After a pause, he decided to look at Lin again. He tipped the bottom of the bottle in Lin’s direction with a slight question in his eyebrows, a faint twist to his mouth. Lin didn't respond to the question. What did he care about his shirt? Not much. No. What the fuck ever. Other things were happening. First, Daniel tugged the sheet up, but, though that indicated something, Lin wasn't even paying attention to that. His eyes were on the glass in Daniel's hand, unmoving save for following the arc, swill, and splash of whiskey spilling into the tumbler. He was waiting for the bottle to return to its upright position or for the cup to overflow. The golden-amber rippled, but ultimately came to a stop just shy of the rim of the glass. That told Lin more than he cared to know. His gaze flicked to meet Daniel's and then he closed his eyes. Okay. Well, his ass wasn't on the curb yet. That was both good (he was naked, after all) and extremely worrisome. He didn't know what happened now. This script he hadn't gotten. And that, to someone like Lin, who was used to being able to read the answer, whatever came next, in the environment and the people around him, was mildly terrifying. He was prepared to be kicked out. He wasn't prepared to - Drink with Daniel. Lin's eyes blinked open and took a moment to surmise the shape of the bottle, bottom first, that was being offered. The reptilian, suspicious part of his brain warned him against it. It told him that this was just another stepping stone, one more story, just that much further he was going to fall when Daniel "dropped him harder." But, the pleasant ache that had settled in his muscles and the post-coital tiredness that dulled his eyes thought it seemed like a great idea. Cheers! Sinew and muscle moved in complex tandem under brown skin as Lin stalked up to the head of the bed, either oblivious or uncaring that he was without a stitch of clothing and that there was still-drying semen itching on his stomach. He just smiled a curious sort of smile and situated himself, on the outside of the white sheets, just next to Daniel, upper notches of his spine pressing into the cool wood of the headboard. Almost unthinkingly, but not quite, he leaned into the man's shoulder with his own. - He stopped, appeared to consider something, and then, without a word, plucked Daniel's arm up by the wrist and placed it around his own shoulders. Because if he was going to go out, he might as well do it with a bang, right? He took the whiskey then. (Why did it have to smell so strongly and sting the air? It was burning his fucking corneas.) He looked over to Daniel, brow furrowed. "I'm no heathen," said the boy with no clothes. "Can I get a glass?" Daniel was more disturbed by the rise and fall of his arm over Lin’s shoulders than he was by the rest of the entire visit combined. His knuckles went white as his hand tightened on the glass, reflex when the rest of his attention went elsewhere, an old habit even more depressing than the bottle sitting without a cap. Daniel smelled of clean sweat and whiskey, but so close it was Lin he smelled, the strong sticky musk of very male sex and whatever the hell the boy put in his hair. Daniel was disturbed that he could call him ‘the boy’ in his mind, and a dark cloud of uncertainty shuttered his otherwise keen blue eyes. He had a quick spasm of guilt, as if unsure whether sitting here was some more violent trespass than just a quick fuck. Daniel stretched his fingers behind Lin’s right ear and then took his arm back, lifting at the wrist and then at the elbow. He snaked his arm between boy and headboard, awkward with the bad shoulder, and tried not to spill the glass as he did it. The square ends of Daniel’s pale fingers twisted in the dusky, sticky curls at the back of Lin’s neck. The longest finger drew a circle, winding a lock together, and then pulled free. Drawing his elbow in close to his ribs and gaining perhaps a centimeter of space that joined again with sticky skin at shoulder and wrist, Daniel turned his gaze back into the empty middle distance. His chest rose and fell under the new scar, a smudge of faded dark curls, and an old heartbeat. Wordlessly, he shifted the glass across his weight and held it out to Lin. It was still two thirds full, and the gold liquid turned and stuttered in the geometric lines at the bottom of the glass. The other glasses were in the kitchen, and Daniel didn’t keep whiskey company. Well, it had been worth a shot. And at least he hadn't gotten slapped upside the head. Small victories were still victories, accompanied by disappointment or not. Lin straightened himself without complaint when he felt the long, white arm twitching behind him, muscles pulling, desperate to retract it back to safety, back to Daniel's side. He wasn't surprised, honestly, and the lack of expression on his face told that well enough. Everything was smoothed out. It was too much - the arm. They were using a new script perhaps, but they were playing the same old characters. The boy continued to clutch the bottle by the neck. It was only the blunt fingers that dipped themselves in the hair that curled at the nape of his neck that actually caught Lin flatfooted. And even then, he just let it happen, the only sign of the touch registering being the slight rounding of his eyes. He thought about shooting Daniel a glare and declaring that he sucked, because he did, - but Lin had a glass in hand now (he passed the bottle over in exchange), and it was very full. The whiskey sloshed prettily in the tumbler, Lin thought, when he lifted it to eye-level. He didn't bother saying thank you. Rather he resumed his roost, allowing himself to slide down a vertebra or two until his head could rest on the headboard, skull to wood. It was a little more difficult to get the whiskey actually down his throat in this position, but whatever. It was already going to be uncomfortable. With a grimace, Lin took his first drink. As the liquid, sweeter than he imagined, but still somehow earthy, seared the back of his tongue and down the length of his throat, he sucked air through his teeth sharply. It felt like he was on fire from the inside out. It actually wasn't half bad, all things considered, and Lin wasn't crying, so he considered that another victory. (He was just racking them up.) He sucked on his bottom lip carefully and considered the fact that that what kissing Daniel had tasted like, at least at the start. Then, as if only then remembering he wasn't alone, he looked over to the man. The whiskey settled warmly in his stomach. "The palate is abrasive and cedar, yet the body is firm. The finish - hm - savory," piped the boy in his best patronizing tone. The obvious subject of his observation was the whiskey and he squinted at it in the tumbler. As to whether or not that was what he was actually talking about, well, he'd let Daniel figure that out on his own. Daniel was watching him. The middle distance was still there, but the blue eyes had turned, and now Daniel’s rough chin was hovering just over the line of his collarbone, as if he was about to drown under the influence of fucking hormones and expensive booze--but he was awake, very awake, the fringe of dark lashes nothing to conceal his obvious rapt attention. Daniel had a lot of practice watching people, but the last few years he hadn’t done much to conceal his attention and he had fallen badly out of practice. It was obvious that he had been thinking about Lin’s mouth on him, because his gaze moved up at the last second and settled on the boy’s face. He licked his lips and did not respond. The quiet was not like Daniel. His pen was always moving on the page, bitter ink always spilling, and he’d never let Lin go so long unchallenged. The babble was declarative and Daniel wasn’t rising to the bait. He was just sitting there, leaning back in thick lines of pale torso and sheets with high threadcount stained in sweat and sex. His own dark hair was a disaster, like he’d recently been caught in a windstorm, but the unblinking movement was like a disturbing still photo in lush color and muted grays. Daniel reached out and took the bottle back. It appeared he didn’t have Lin’s sensibilities, because he took a sloshing drink that reeked of bad habits before he finally spoke. "You get what you wanted?" The blue eyes studied Lin’s face intently, waiting to pick up whatever Lin’s expression gave up. Lin was peripherally aware of Daniel's eyes on his lips, in that strange way you can just feel someone’s gaze on you like a weight, but he did little more than reflexively bite down on the swell of his bottom lip. Really it was the stretch of quiet that he found more curious, because, no, it wasn’t like Daniel, and that was disturbing. In fact, it was almost unnatural. It’d be like him going quiet. It never meant anything good. That and the pale, unmoving eyes - yes, well, that was more than enough, thank you. The man was sitting propped like a puppet against the black headboard, sort of slumped into himself, the outline of his body continuing in grays underneath the white sheets, and Lin peered at him with big dark eyes until the bottle was snatched away. There was no answer from the boy. He knew danger when he saw it, and, boy, did he see it, big and hulking and bearing down on him like a beast in a hallway. There was no way to win this. There came only the sound of skin on sheet as he sat up again. And, after a brief steeling of his nerve, the splash of alcohol as Lin downed the contents of the cut glass tumbler in one go, eyes squeezed shut. A shiver ran the length of his spine, and for half a second, he curled in on himself, knees to his chest, tight, everything close. Then he snapped his eyes open, and turned them on Daniel. He pivoted where he sat, moving as if he was readying to straddle the man next to him, but he stopped short, and pressed the curve of the cold glass to Daniel’s sternum, hard, passing it back to him. He was on his knees facing the man, only inches away. Something snagged - there was a split second of thought. Lin’s eyes dropped to Daniel’s lips and his own quirked into the same grin from earlier, feline and playful. He ducked in an inch or two too, closer - almost --, but then he was gone, pushing himself away and to the edge of the bed. It was his distorted shirt that he found first, and so it was the first thing to go on. With the neckhole stretched as it was, it was easy enough. Lin was confused, and he let it show on his face when he was turned toward the bathroom. There was a grain of dissatisfaction in his proverbial shoe - but, why? His heart was beating fast and hard. And he figured, you know, he should go. He should do it. Jump before he was pushed. At least then he had some say. "Thanks for the drink, Joachim," he said over his shoulder as he snatched up his cardigan in his fist. Daniel noticed the pattern of their voices, question and no answer, question and no answer. It was a belated realization, assisted by the burn of whiskey and something angry hurting him where his brain met his spine. There had been no right answer to his question, but there had been a few more wrong than the rest. Daniel didn’t ask questions that had hope. They were dangerous. He settled the bottle against his bare hip, propping it sullenly to one side and leaving his attention where it was. His mind was empty, but not pleasantly empty. It was filling up with dark cotton and old doubts that had no real shape. Everything paused when Lin moved. Daniel’s spine made a small attempt to align, and his chin came up. The abused line of his mouth evened into something level and ready, the sarcastic, bitter curl evening into curiosity and uncertainty swelling along pink lines. He made absolutely no attempt to look away, and his reaction to Lin’s kittenish smile--the one that was all come hither and gunpowder magnets--was a lot like a mouse to a lion in an open field. He stopped moving entirely, not a twitch, and waited to see teeth. The cold pressure of the glass in the center of his chest made him flinch. The bottle at his hip sloshed and he automatically slapped a hand down to steady it while his other hand caught the glass as much to make it get away than to obtain it for his own. He watched Lin slide away and gain his feet again. Black coals banked and covered over with ash at the back of Daniel’s pupils, and he pressed back into the solid headboard hard enough to feel the carved lines down his vertebrae, snap snap snap. Vaguely, he looked around for Lin’s pants, since that had to be the last piece of the puzzle, right? Pack everything into a box and leave it. "Told you to use my fucking name," he said, at diminished volume. Lin’s top half was dressed, anyway. Gray shirt, yellow cardigan. Sweet. It was a start. But he was still cords-less. The purple sneakers and socks were jumbled together just off the edge of the bed, yeah, but where the hell had his pants and underwear gone? The boy focused deliberately on his burgeoning frustration, on the hunt for discarded clothing - anything to not have to think about what it was that was making him confused. He had no fucking right to be fucking confused. He didn’t want his thoughts to turn to the expression his own smile had conjured to Daniel’s face - the bright fear he’d seen there (how the tables had turned). He didn’t want to and he had no right to. He had no right to feel like all he wanted to do was go home and snuggle under his comforter, alone, and read Terry Pratchett (he always knew just what to say) until he passed out, like he’d done all throughout high school to avoid thinking those sliding black thoughts, insidious and oily, that lived in the back of his head, either. And the fact that he felt it all anyway, that his thoughts meandered as they willed regardless, was infuriating. Daniel’s voice was quiet in the cold that seemed to have wrapped back around the room like a creepy ass cloak. But in the resonant crypt of a room, it carried. It wasn’t so much dangerous this time as it was -- almost... sad? God. That was worse. The silvery silhouette Lin cast as he rooted around in the oblong wash of bathroom light paused. It stood. Lin held the cords (they’d been a short ways from the foot of the bed somehow) to his chest as he came back toward the bed, once again swallowed by the shadows. Daniel, he saw, hadn’t moved. He remained a pretty marble ghost, with his glass and his sheets and his eyes and face and shit. The fucking jackass. The boy sat lightly on the edge of the mattress, the plane of his now-clothed back toward the man, and he put on his socks to give himself time to think. The red embers of whiskey still burned his throat. Right. Jump, Lin. Jump, jump, jump. Geronimo! Don’t think about the brush of lips on your throat or the tips of fingers dimpling your chin with that disquieting fondness. Turn it into a fucking joke. Daniel wouldn’t like that and then he’d be a dick and Lin could go, satisfied and not at all confused by anything and feeling nothing but irritation. Everything would be back to normal. It was the perfect plan. God himself would have wept over its flawless machinations. "I thought Joachim was your fucking name." Lin flashed the man a cheeky, white smile as he pushed himself to his feet again, now turning to face the bed. He slid on the boxer briefs, one leg at a time, and snapped the elastic waistband with his thumbs. The cords were next, and it was as he was fitting a foot through the one of the pants legs, hopping to keep his balance, he peeked up to laugh and say, "You can give me one, if you want. Personally, I like the sound of ‘Cesare.’ It seems a good name to call out whilst in the wild throes of lust." A+. It worked, to an extent. Daniel’s gaze darkened and he glowered in a suitably byronic blackness at Lin’s bright-eyed response. Calling out someone’s name, in throes of passion or otherwise, was a vulnerable, fairly emotional thing to do, in Daniel’s opinion. He didn’t go around doing it every day, and he threw around suitable nicknames in various languages to keep from getting around to first names that said I care to know who you are. He hadn’t worried about doing that with Lin, assuming that like other men on the journals, the boy would be no more troubling than any other anonymous heckler, a casual observer of cast-off toys. He couldn’t remember if he’d done that with Sam, but he definitely knew he’d done it about ten minutes ago. Daniel looked down and steadied the glass on his knee. It was cold through the sheet. The sticky lack of clothes or table and the looming presence of Lin and the expectations his presence seemed to imply made Daniel uncomfortable, and when Daniel was uncomfortable he got nasty. It had been intentional years ago but now it was habit. He refilled the glass, watching for spills as the liquid went straight to his head. The last note of the aria died out in triumphant flourish. For some reason the air conditioner kicked on, maintaining an arctic temperature in a refrigerator. "I don’t think I’ll call you anything at all," Daniel said, not quite managing to raise his voice any higher than before, but looking up to deliver the cut and watch the effect. The quiet was doing that creepy, hanging around thing again. It filled the room, floor to ceiling, wall to wall, flooding every nook it could find, every fold in the sheets, in the bell-jar of air in the tumbler, until Lin wanted to put his hands over his ears to stop it. The opera was over. (Now was the literal perfect time for a 'fat lady sings' joke, but the boy didn't have it in him. Goddamn.) He'd looked toward the door as the voices came crashing down, and then there was nothing. The hum of an air conditioner, cold, quiet, and Daniel on the bed, soaked to the bone in whiskey. The gay magic spell was broken. But it wasn't until the other man spoke that Lin let his smile die away, and quickly at that. It had endured the quiet. But it wouldn't endure this. White teeth gave way to a thin black line and his eyes went strangely empty - there was no disappointment to be found in them, but there was nothing else either. This was the hip-check, wasn't it? It was. He ought to have been glad. This was it. God was doing that weeping thing up on Cloud Nine as the plan more perfect than his only begotten son, Jesus, played out. But, still despite that - despite everything, Lin couldn't help but feel hurt, somehow, somewhere deep in his chest. His facade of teasing glee melted, fucking ice sheets in fucking Greenland (post-1990s), and he frowned. After he buttoned the cords and tugged down the hem of his shirt with one rough hand, he bent in half to pick up a shoe. Something occurred to him then. Whether it was influenced by the little bit of whiskey that had rushed in quickly to take the place of feelings or by the fact that he desperately wanted to strangle Daniel, he didn't know. And it didn't matter. - Lin stood there, motionless, for the span of a breath with the shoe in his hand, then, without warning and without his expression changing in the slightest, he snapped it forward, overhand, in a flash of purple, throwing it toward Daniel and his drink and his stupid blue eyes with little care for where it landed or how hard. Yeah, it was immature and stupid, and it effectively betrayed all the emotions he'd tried to keep hidden in one go. But what the fuck ever. All he wanted right now was for the shoe to hit Daniel somewhere, preferably in the face or eye area, or to at least scuff his wall. Because the jackass fucking deserved it. "You sure? Not even 'asshole'?" Lin laughed miserably then, obviously unhappy and young. Still, he was smart enough to know not to wait for the bastard to react. He had broken a laptop and then probably a glass, which meant even more spilled alcohol. Drunks, he knew, got tetchy about that kind of thing. So, it was probably best if he took his leave now, while Daniel was, y'know, otherwise occupied. "Fuck you, Daniel. Go fucking cry yourself to sleep with the other sad silver spoons then, you fucking dickhead." The other PF Flyer was abandoned as Lin made a break for it, his words hardly out of his mouth. Sonic in human form, sans chili dog, that's what he was, straight up. He skidded past towers of books (he might have knocked one over after running into it headlong (sorry, Daniel)) and the ugly sofas, and then he was out the door, and diving into the elevator (thank God for that timing; the last thing he wanted was to be trapped in the fucking hallway with Daniel angry. Again. There was no angel to offer distraction this time.). He only had a second to wonder why, if his plan had gone so well, he still felt so fucking muddled. The operator, the same one from earlier, looked to Lin's socks after the boy burst in, one blue and the other checked with pink and green. Lin, breathing hard, with his black hair a jungle, his breath smelling of whiskey, and his clothes thrown on haphazardly, just shrugged at him and smiled as if about to let the man in on a joke only between the two of them. "Yeah, the sympathy metaphor got a little out of hand." |