Gambit has to (playforkeeps) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-04-24 15:59:00 |
|
|||
Upscale clubs? Not a freaking chance, not with an ID that was a sorry piece of paper folded over and laminated in the backroom of a school’s HR office. The piece of almost-plastic in her back-pocket barely qualified for the gravity of ‘fake’. This place, wafting it under the guy at the door’s nose and aiming a judicious amount of exposed leg at him at the same time and he waved it on by with the bored, jaded look of someone who let in the underage every day as some sort of amuse-bouche for the kinds that came to a place that called itself Hogs & Heifers without some obvious nod to sketchy irony. No, Thea eschewed upscale; had tried out ‘moneyed’ in cities a little less inclined toward keeping an eye on the age-range therein, all bored-young-thing and notably absent gravitas with her fingers squeaking along marble bar-top and her feet dangling from some designer’s idea of a place to sit and found that usually, the guys were the same, the drinks were the same, the only real difference was the prepossession of the upscale toward expecting a great deal more for a vodka and coke than a smile. The problem was, however, the downscale sometimes expected exactly the same thing for the five bucks and change it took to buy a drink around here. Seven’s voice - authoritative, clear and obviously still sober - drew mild interest from the rest of the room, notably because at least half of it were several pints in and the prickling sensation of trouble had, like static, picked up upon his arrival. There was movement; from a table in the very very back, where the half-light didn’t reach and the shadows fell together in a way convenient for those that retreated there. Movement, and a vague noise, and the shadows re-grouped with one figure notably outside of them. From a distance, she was tall; she was mostly long, milk-white legs, bared up to a denim skirt that was more threat of skirt than it was much else at all. She walked very deliberately in a single direction, she did not turn her head toward the bar nor the bartenders; perhaps because any bar in which women served in bikinis had little tolerance for backlash or complaints. She was skinny, too thin, really in the half-glow of the light and she came to a stop just in front of the pool-table as though it were an accident of occurrence rather than intentional. Apart from the skirt, she didn’t look like she was trying very much to be a part of the bar and the women in it; a loose, soft dark sweater that came down to the heels of her palms (she’d twined her hands into it, pulled the sleeves down over her fingers) that slid halfway off one shoulder was not the kind of clubwear worn to places like this. She tipped her head to one side and she looked at him, very steadily, and looped a mass of very pale blond hair behind one ear. “Hi,” Thea said, seriously. Between the insufficient orange-yellow light cast from above and his own fixation on the first pint that poured down his throat, Seven did not notice or care about the dames and their derelicts where they were scattered around the edges of the room. Hell, the world was reduced to his pool table and his pitchers, to picking out the right cue and his own sense of awareness that stretched to the alcove where his man Tommy was positioned by the front door. Of course, his barked instructions to watch for family had nothing to do with biological relatives and everything to do with fine-suited Italian men with their shiny foreheads and slick, Dapper Dan hair. And for a few lingering moments, Seven’s world was just green felt and Guinness on his lips and the sweet spot where chalk and wood would hit the number three. He had neither eye nor interest for blonde, skinny things, and there was a chance that the girl might also have escaped his notice - had she not slid into one of the orange-yellow beams and cast her shadow over the table. With little more than a cursory glance up at the girl’s backlit form, Seven called out to her in cold, clipped tones. “You’re in my light. Move.” Okay, so he was pissed. That was all right; it made him kind of perfect - her skin prickled, like maybe it was too cold or maybe he’d got enough venom in that little bit of a sentence that frankly made her want to turn tail and run. Thea looked across her shoulder, at the pool of dark where the light didn’t quite stretch to, and she looked back, contemplative. Thea’s face was sharp lines and angles; was quiet composure. She tapped her fingers along the scarred beam of the table’s edge, and she studied the balls on the table rather than looking at the irritated man across from them and she side-stepped obligingly, out of the light. “Look. I’m not hitting on you. All I kind of want is to stand here for a little bit until the douchebag in back who thought a five buck vodka and coke was an invite to shove his hand up my skirt and try to remove my underwear, thinks it’s a bad idea to come on over and explain why I was totally irrational in kneeing him in the balls,” her voice was steady, calm - she might have been explaining an algebra equation to a teacher in class, but it went rocky, juddered just a little on ‘underwear’ as she took one of those breaths that half-hitched (okay, so maybe this bar wasn’t exactly the right kind, but it was better than nothing) before she went right back to smooth, “And you look like someone who most people aren’t going to walk up and interrupt, so if that’s okay, I’m just going to pretend like I know you or something until he gets bored, because let’s face it, it’s not like there aren’t a ton of people around who are totally down with giving it up for a drink and he’s going to realize that but I’d kind of prefer to be over here when that happens.” Her face tipped up into the light, Thea gave him a smile sanguine but flickering at its edges, something uncertain about it. He could always say no. They did that. Thea swallowed on acid; she’d deal. She could totally deal. But the orange glow of the light - just a little light - was better than nothing and the solidity of the wood beneath her palms was helping them to stop shaking. “I’ll try and stay out of your light.” Seven gave no sign that he was paying attention as the girl hovered at the end of the table, hesitant and just barely fluttering like a pale moth with her translucent, vulnerable wings. Instead he circled like a shark, occasionally frowning as he considered the layout on the table and leaned down to sink a ball or two in quick succession. The truth was that he heard every uncertain word that came out of her mouth and how she played at sounding tough, and it was more than a little familiar. Green eyes flicked up and gave her another cursory glance as she mentioned kneeing some poor bastard in the balls, but what he saw only served to deepen the furrow in his brow. For fuck’s sake, she even looked like Sam. Young and blonde and bold as anything, and in dire need of a sandwich. Was he wearing some neon fucking sign that attracted all the wayward youth, or what? Christ, and she was still talking. Seven stood upright from his position over the felt plane and circled back around to his waiting beer, pouring himself another pint. He turned back to face the girl as she vowed to stay out of his light, leaning one hip against the edge of the table and watching her over the edge of his glass for a long, silent minute. Maybe it was the goddamn stout softening him up from the inside, or maybe it was the glance at the corner from which the girl had come, where Seven could see more than a few sketchballs making eyes in their direction - but he silently gestured for her to move to the other end of the table. This put Seven between the girl and that shadowy corner, even as he cursed himself for getting involved. “Hang out, then. But I’m not gonna pretend to be your fucking boyfriend, so don’t even ask.” She was teeth buried in lower lip and arms wrapped tight around herself; he was absorbed in the baize of the table and the glass on the edge of it and Thea’s eyes flickered to it, no interest at all in either - if he said no, if he was friends with the guy in back -- blue eyes made a short, worried assessment of Seven’s back, of the calm that had wrapped itself right around him like the bar and its occupants didn’t affect him -- then she would, she didn’t know, she would call maybe her aunt’s cell half a dozen times (like that would work) and be that girl at the bar with the phone call that went on and on until he got bored and he left, and she could go get her bag and her jacket. That was a plan, it would work, maybe, if this guy (Thea flinched as he looked up, green eyes steady like he got propositioned all the time, maybe he did) refused. She held herself very still, clamped one set of cold fingers around her own wrist; a jumpy little glance behind her back to the corner when Seven shot a look over there, because maybe the guy with her bag and the cold hands had decided to make a move, but he hadn’t. Her pulse flittered in her throat, was steel-drums in her ears. Her legs were shaking, but she leaned against the edge of the table and that was better, that felt less like she’d gotten in over her own head when all she’d wanted was something other than an empty apartment and leftovers and calculus and she could still stand up straight. It had been easy, back in Amsterdam, to find a place where they didn’t care how old you were so long as you knew the right things to say; Thea didn’t think this bar was like the ones in Amsterdam. She licked her lips, nervously, the traces of the Coke were sticky-sweet. She was steel-wire tense and taut, the nonchalance clutched in fingers had begun to fray and then Seven spoke and the blue gaze trained on him with the keenness of obvious underwritten worry, relaxed. Thea’s shoulders unknit themselves, just a little and she sagged against the wooden frame, hands slipping free and resting bare white fingers against the very edge of the baize. “I didn’t ask,” Thea retorted, with the half-beat too late rattle-pace of confidence, of hauling together her shit and knotting it back together. “I’m really good with just standing here and borrowing the vague aura of menace you’ve got going, thanks, I have no intentions of playing let’s pretend and there is no quid pro quo happening here.” The smile that came with the last was almost-sweet, almost-sharp - she was watching the baize now, and not Seven at all, “I just want to y’know, wait for the douchebag to leave. Not replace him.” As the girl rearranged herself so that there were at least a few more feet and a big, heavy billiards table between herself and the menace that lurked in the depths of a darkened corner, Seven shifted his feet infinitesimally so that his body was angled just-so with his back to the wall, able to see her and anyone approaching at the same time without looking like he was looking around. Of course, he knew that the girl was right in thinking his own presence might just give the creepy bastard pause. Seven tended to have that effect on people when he wasn’t making an effort to lay on the charm - and right now, he was about as charming as a pitbull. That was the luxury afforded him by a hair-trigger temper and the custom SIG Sauer he wore in a shoulder holster beneath his leather motorcycle jacket. He wanted to turn back to his solitary game, but some voice of reason told him that he better at least pretend to know the chick. He poured her a pint of Guinness into one of the empty glasses and passed it over with quirked eyebrow, giving her a slightly more critical once-over. “You’ve gotta know you can’t pass for twenty-one. Probably be smarter to get out of here before your new best friend decides to raise trouble with the staff,” he said with a careless shrug of his shoulders, making it clear that he didn’t really give two shits about this little girl getting in trouble just because she wanted to feel like a grown-up. “Could probably slip out through the kitchen.” The weight of the glass was unfamiliar; Thea took it steadily, and she leaned with the backs of her legs up against that table, tilted at just enough angle to look on into that corner herself, all skinny wariness and blond suspicion for movement. Guinness was not the sweet-bitter taste of alcohol shrouded in something innocuous, it was not drinking for the cloudiness presented in a glass. It was, she thought, with some skepticism for the viscous, tarry-colored liquid, a choice. One finger, half-bitten silver nail polish and all, skimmed the edge of the glass, like she was trying to coax it to produce a note, like maybe she was trying not to drink it at all -- until Thea gamely lifted it to her lips and swallowed. It was revolting. It was thick on her tongue and dark, and her stomach rolled a little until it decided that maybe the Guinness wasn’t the worst part of the evening, and when she set the glass down, it was with the steadiness of having passed some kind of internal test and the faint air of cockiness that came with that. “Please,” Thea said, with the inherent flippancy of being beneath thirty, and thus skeptical of all and any bartenders’ ability to make a judgment call on age. “They’ve seen my ID. If he causes shit, then it’s the bartender’s issue, not mine and he totally bought the drink on my behalf so technically, it’s his deal not mine.” She shrugged, a motion that managed to convey how little she cared that he cared or maybe that she hadn’t ever thought that he would, temporary roadblock that he was serving, to trouble, and she looped some of that long blond curtain behind her ear, a guarded little look shot at the corner. “I totally would. If y’know. I could get into the apartment if I did that.” She didn’t care that she didn’t pass for twenty-one and she didn’t care if the bar gave her shit. She cared that maybe she was going to leave behind her phone, and her wallet and that she didn’t know when her aunt would even be back, let alone that night. She tipped up a look at him, pallid eyelashes and pale blue skepticism. “If you get sick of just standing here, I’m totally fine. I just thought maybe I could save myself a little trouble. That’s all.” And if he said no, if he said ‘I’m done’, then she’d be fine, she totally would, she’d been fine before. It was just Vegas; she’d thumb a cab or something. For a minute, Thea wished she knew where anyone, Breeze, Lin, lived, and the ticking whirr of worry was a flicker of her mouth, the back of the ‘I don’t care’ look in her eyes. There was a sort of smugness that worked its way right into Seven’s bones, apparent in the way he leaned on the table with nary a care in the world; he was certainly not deterred by all the guarded words and guarded looks she could muster. It had been something between boldness and boredom with which he’d looked the girl up and down as he offered her the beer, but the fact that she assumed he’d want to leave - that made him interested. He buried the words that he had on his lips, something harsh about the way she tried not to tremble, buried them with a mouthful of dark, sour beer. Buried them for now, as he side-eyed her from across the table. “And you can’t get into your apartment because you left your shit over there,” he filled in the blanks, dark brows arched in an unquestioning, unimpressed sort of way. The fact that she hadn’t come right out and asked him to help get her stuff - her keys, purse, whatever it was that lingered in the corner with the douchebag - meant that she didn’t want his help, or maybe that she thought she wouldn’t need it. That either made her brave or naïve, or most likely a bit of both. And that particular combination in a town like this could only spell trouble for a girl who looked like that. “So what’s your plan, you just gonna wait him out? Hope he gets bored and leaves before I do?” He knew what the answer would be before she gave it to him. This chick was bad news - but only for that other guy, the creep in the shadows with the wandering hands. Because Seven had come into the joint looking for trouble, and hell if this girl wasn’t trying her damndest to lead him straight to it. He just barely managed to suppress a smile, squaring his shoulders and picking up his cue to move around the table in search of that elusive shot. That was his night, after all - just one shot, and on to the next one. Her head tilted forward as if she were studying the table intently, like there was a lesson there amongst green baize and the balls that could be learned given due attention; her hair fell like water around her face until Thea was awkward angles and a soft black sweater, pale fingers and quiet focus; she said thoughtfully, “You’re clever.” She tilted up her chin, she looked at him blue eyes in a thin face that somehow was more than a nose with a decided jump and a too-wide mouth. He was, he was looking at her like he could see her inside out, maybe see through her -- Thea mostly didn’t like people like that, who thought they knew more than you did, maybe because they were older or they studied you. But he didn’t look as though he was trying to pick her apart, undo her seams and find the faults inside. He looked like he was laughing at her and she didn’t mind that. He was big; no one had tried to approach since she’d stood near him. She wouldn’t mind the laughter if it meant she wasn’t scared. And he wasn’t unpleasant. That was in his favor. Thea sipped at the creamy-thick liquid in the glass and she licked her teeth; it wasn’t awful but it wasn’t sweet and it wasn’t familiar. It didn’t go down like Jack in Coke, like it would make things easy - it tasted like the kind of thing you learned to like, caviar and coffee and the smoked fish in Germany she’d eaten nothing but for a week. Maybe he liked that kind of thing. “That’s the plan,” she said, candid and calm, and she leaned her elbows up against the scarred polished wood of the table’s edge, observed his shot and shuffled round in his wake. “Either that or someone will come in who does think one drink is payment for third base, and he’ll move off.” She sounded matter of fact, the kind of statement made by girls who climbed through bathroom windows to escape, or who lied blithely without question. She grinned; it was brief but true. “Or I’ll just cancel the cards and stay out until my roommate’s home. Do you see a lot of creepers in this place?” She’d not moved quick enough; she could hear the squeak of his shoes on sticky-bar-floor and the faint scent of cigarettes - not clove-sweet - dragged in the air. Seven didn’t need this chick to tell him that he was clever, but for some reason he displayed a modicum of restraint and bit back the caustic sarcasm that lived on the tip of his tongue. Yes, he was clever. He was also dangerous, but that danger would be a whole different tune if he was lacking in wits. The deadliest men were those with the least intelligence and the most power, or at least the delusion thereof. And the girl’s new friend was no doubt a very dim-witted peg who fit nicely into just that sort of that arrogant mold. “‘Creepers’?” He echoed the word with a flash of bemused incredulity, giving her a sharp look over his shoulder. She stood closer now, having trailed after him around the table as if they were performing a dance in which he had no interest. Seven snorted, shaking his head and grabbing his beer off the table in front of her. “It’s called ‘Hogs and Heifers’. What kind of people did you expect to find?” As he tipped his head back and finished off his second pint, his attention was pulled to the front of the bar by a low, short whistle. His guy at the door had time to aim a pointed look in Seven’s direction (good thing he’d made him take off the stupid fucking shades) before a pair of young men sauntered into the joint and made their way up to the bar. They wore motorcycle leathers and cowboy boots, and they hadn’t seen Seven - probably wouldn’t have recognized him, and while not exactly a threat, they were definitely of interest. Seven decided to take a break from his pool game and set his cue back on the rack, sliding into a seat against the wall. All this within a few short seconds and then he was back giving the girl another look, brows raised expectantly as if something else hadn’t drawn his attention. She was following him agreeably around the table, the soundtrack was the raw squeak of his leather jacket as he bent over the table and the slosh of the beer in the glass she held - still not even of a quarter of the way in - and Thea was about to explain, that Hogs and Heifers was exactly the kind of place you came to if you didn’t want anyone taking a closer look at your ID and seeing the smudge where the laminator had a hiccup, when the door swung wide and the buzz of the street came into the bar and with it two guys. Thea tilted her head and she watched, curious, as they progressed forward on to the bar and the security guard slash watchdog slash temporary bodyguard who had until now, shown no interest in anyone at all beyond the baize and the balls, followed them with the keen interest of something in particular. Maybe he was gay. Big, leather clad; Thea’s eyes flicked over him, calmly assessing and she took another sip of the Guinness, mealy and rich. It was growing on her. “Is one of them your ex-boyfriend or something?” She’d followed him on over, an obedient duckling but mainly because as he slipped into the dim of the seat, so had movement from the far corner, and Thea carried the near-full glass carefully and she side-stepped, all thin shimmy of pale hair and pointed face, looking at him as expectantly. Because fuck him, if he wanted to know exactly why. Thea thought it was obvious why anyone female turned up in the bar, and she thought he knew it too. “There’s a distinction,” Thea’s voice was flippant; she shrugged herself down into the chair next to him and she curled her feet underneath, hooking them on the bar beneath. “Between creepers and non-creepers. Skeevy guys are creepers. No one here is exactly wholesome. But there’s an entire spectrum between.” If looks could cut flesh and bone, the girl would have been reduced to little more than a pile of steaming meat on the floor almost as soon as the word ‘ex-boyfriend’ left her lips. Seven expression was the definition of withering, not even bothering with the eyeroll that would generally be demanded by such an insinuation. And with another beat, he flashed her a broad smile that made no attempt to hide its own insincerity, all white teeth and narrowed eyes. “Or something,” he agreed dryly, picking up the first pitcher and swirling the last of the contents around before topping off his glass. God, that felt good. He needed this. The Guinness was starting to work its way through his body, spreading warmth from his stomach and into his arms and his hands and the tips of his fingers. He felt alive and alert, bright-eyed and ready for anything, in that familiar state that always came before he was well and truly drunk. Ready for a fight, or just a good fuck - and of course, that made his thoughts wander to that of a certain man. A certain man that he’d sworn not to think about, not tonight and not for a long time after that. Seven’s fingers tightened momentarily around the glass, but his grip was steady. “Thank Christ you’re here to enlighten me,” he intoned, grateful for the distraction. A smirk played at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes roamed along the edges of the room in a bored sort of way. “In that case, yeah - this place? Crawling with creepers. See, the girls like to get up and dance on the bar for tips. They don’t wear much, and it’s cheaper than a strip joint. Guys like your buddy over in the corner? They get to perv as much as they want, without paying for a fifteen-dollar beer.” Thea didn’t cringe beneath the weight of his withering; clearly, okay, he either wasn’t gay or the guy across the room wasn’t his ex. And that was fine, but it made it even more interesting as to why he was paying so much attention to him. He was drinking like there was a reason; she eyed the oily-colored beer in the glass and she sent a bright grin skittering back at him, all bold-brash confidence and an utter lack of interest in timidity. She’d shifted, one long leg folded up beneath herself like a flamingo (the skirt took adjustment, she nudged at it with bitten fingernails until she wasn’t flashing half the room) and she sat back in the chair, comfortable and languid. He seemed to enjoy the beer, glass near but empty and Thea took another long swallow of her own glass; it was mealy and thick and pleasant across her tongue now - she licked the back of her teeth, experimentally. “You’re weighing them all together,” and he probably didn’t care, all sprawled sense of him in his leather jacket and indolence, but it was better than the empty apartment and it was better than doing math when Lin and his friend were out dancing together. It wasn’t picking someone up (he was, Thea decided, with a tip of her head, look slanted across that was neither surreptitious nor interested, not her type) but that came with its own little shiver; the man’s hand, strange and strong and fumbling past the button of her skirt - no, it wasn’t that, and maybe that wasn’t tonight anymore, but it was more than running home alone. “There is creeper, hey let me buy a drink so I can leer at you some more, and then there is, I think a fifteen dollar beer is totally the bargain basement price of shoving my fingers into your crotch.” Matter-of-fact, she mimicked the same bored drawl and if Thea peeped at him for reaction, she was very deliberately looking around the room when he caught the movement. And oh, how amused he would have been had he been privy to her thoughts; remarkable was the manner in which she was close and yet so far from hitting the proverbial nail anywhere near the head. Yes, he poured the thick, syrupy stout past his teeth and tongue with no hesitation, steadily emptying the pitchers as if his gut was just an empty, bottomless thing that begged to be filled forever and ever. The Guinness warmed him and strengthened him, and yes - there was a reason. That reason had blue eyes and soft, dark hair and slender hands that contrasted against Seven’s tanned skin. That reason was off doing God-only-knew-what in some darkened corner of the world, poisons coursing through his bloodstream as he slipped further and further away from Seven’s desperate, tenuous grasp. No, that wouldn’t do. The acknowledgement of his thoughts only threatened to make them real, and he couldn’t have that. Not tonight, with his heart and his fury so close to the surface. Seven cleared his mind with an imperceptible shake of his head, pulling his gaze away from the low-level thugs who weren’t worth the energy it would take to break their arms. Yet even in his own distraction, he did not miss the deliberate nonchalance with which the girl surveyed the room. And she was good; she almost had him convinced. Almost. “Creep is creep, darling,” he advised her, all crooked smirk and green eyes blazing. He leaned his elbows on the table and leaned forward now, as if imparting some conspiratorial wisdom when really he just wanted to see her react to his invasion of the neutral space between them. He had a sneaking suspicion that she wasn’t one to back down from such a challenge. “You fool yourself into believing that one sort is better than the rest, and pretty soon you’ll start excusing anything. Not that it’d be your fault, of course. Society demands it of pretty little things like you.” He leaned in, the leather jacket cracked and easing at the elbows, at the creases of the forearms and Thea could smell cigarettes and the beer and the vague, musty smell of the leather itself. He’d noticed the looking and she didn’t mind, she didn’t care - he was, she determined with the tip of her head that was particularly decided - used to being given attention. Perhaps was even the type to start something if he didn’t get it. And that didn’t bother her either, it put him in a neat box and tied him up with string, it gave him a label. Thea looked at his elbows on the table scornfully, and she put her own on the very edge. They were nobbly, and the overlong sleeves sagged and made a puddle of material where elbows met table. Thea leaned her chin in her hands, and she looked at him, unblinking blue curiosity and stubborn, pure stubborn in skinny girl-form. “Oh really. So because society,” the word was pregnant with disdain, because seriously, the man had been reading too much Jezebel online or something, “Tells me that I’m supposed to excuse what, idiocy dressed up as manly-man behavior I say, good golly gosh, that sounds like an awesome idea and just do it? I think you’re demonstrating your utter lack of a vagina right now.” She said the word with the same cadence of the sentence’s flow, vagina was neither especially loud or especially quiet. “I think you’ll find, sub-level creepers totally pathetic, will squeak if you look at them funny. Right on, upper level, full blown bordering on criminal creepers? Totally going to try and remove your underwear before you say ‘hi, my name is Thea’.” And she wasn’t nonchalant when she said it, but it was the pointedness of a good argument, a debate rather than anything more serious. “And I’d like to know when society plans on excavating the part of my brain that is not okay with that.” He almost burst out laughing at the expression on her face, at the scorn and acidity with which she appraised his elbows on the table - at the unspoken suggestion that a rule of etiquette even existed in a dive like this one, never mind that it might actually be obeyed. Instead, he stifled that laughter down to a wolfish grin and leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers together behind his head and stretching out his legs beneath the table. “The fuck are you even talking about?” He snickered good-naturedly, propping his heels against the lower rung of the empty chair that sat next to her. “You’re a terrible listener, you know that? Too wrapped up in being oh-so-stubborn and precocious to pay attention to anyone but yourself. Talk about irritating. But sure - “ he broke off for a moment, unlacing his hands from behind his head and gathering up his pint once more. “Go ahead. Have your one-sided debate and pretend that I’m arguing, or even interested enough to give a shit.” Seven tipped his head back and drained the glass, savouring the sour froth against his tongue before he pushed himself up out of his chair. “Alright, Thea - ” he said, flashing sharp canines and casting his gaze towards that darkened corner of the bar. “You ready to get your shit back, or do you need to spend a few more minutes making yourself feel superior with your straw man fallacies?” “No thank you.” It was a quiet, pleasant way of speaking - the kind of quiet that insisted you got quiet too, to listen rather than raised voice to make you hear. Thea wasn’t shouting. She let him stand and she looked at him from the solid wood of the chair and if the Guinness on top of the Jack and Coke was making her head feel slightly woozy, it wasn’t new and it wasn’t so objectionable it couldn’t be managed. He was tall, very tall; Thea’s eyes were deliberate and her gaze didn’t waver, all that blue observation from behind pale eyelashes and he was broad, the kind that was fighting or working somewhere as something that required power, she knew that even if she’d not often been in the kinds of clubs or bars where she got up close. He was very tall and he was calling her all kinds of things, and Thea sat, very neatly, knees together with that tiny skirt and the black knit jumper that swallowed her whole, and she blinked at him, calm as anything. “Who said I wanted to start to argue with you? You started talking about society, that’s always the way to start arguments,” Thea said, and it was the same way you asked the time, the same way she’d asked for his help to begin with. The slow, careful calm of someone who has learned how or else there might be trouble. “You can sit down, you know. I’d rather you didn’t go over there.” That sounded reasonable too - not that it was a sound argument (it wasn’t, it wasn’t an argument at all) but it was said the way one says something that is inarguable fact, and Thea was very good at it. It worked well at high school, and it worked with people who felt things. Thea didn’t; she tucked them away until they turned to grey or dust or both, and then she could think without them. Feeling things, in Thea’s view, got you into trouble. Honestly, it wasn’t that Seven was an inattentive listener - truth be told, he played well at the role of a rough-hewn playboy, one that deigned to spare you a smile or a glower as he saw fit. It was more like his hearing was painstakingly selective, and the words that bored him found no traction. Water off a duck’s back, and all that. He heard her soft ‘no, thank you’, uncharacteristically quiet and polite (not that he knew her nearly well enough to determine what was or wasn’t characteristic of her personality - as if that had ever halted his entitled assumptions); it just didn’t interest him. ‘No’ meant ‘no fun’. The calm, doe-like expression in her eyes hinted at refusal and deliberate nonchalance. How boring. “You didn’t have to say it, love,” he positively purred, all soft, deadly mouth and wicked eyes that bored holes through the darkness in the far corner where Thea’s new friend lingered. “It was written all over your face. ‘I’ve read my Nietzsche, therefore I am infallible.’ Predictable and dull, and about as far from intimidating as it’s possible to get.” And it was without ceremony that Seven shrugged out of his leather jacket, tossing it over the seat of his abandoned chair. He could only spare a glance in Thea’s direction, neither reassuring nor particularly serious. His face was a picture of lit-up amusement, with a twisted smile that somehow still managed to be handsome. An all-too-familiar pat of his broad hand against her arm, and he had set off for the aforementioned corner. Yes, he wore a gun in the holster that sat at the small of his back, hidden under his t-shirt - but he made no move to retrieve it. Instead he leaned in to the large man’s ear, murmuring something in a deadly tone, meant for him and only him. There was a flash of outrage across the brute’s face, but his drunken attempt at a left hook was thwarted as Seven deflected the blow. God, but this was just too easy. Thick, tanned fingers wrapped around a pale throat - and that was all it took, nevermind the man’s ‘friends’ who suddenly found themselves otherwise occupied. The man was pleading, then - grasping at Seven’s wrist and struggling to pry his fingers off the soft column of an all-too-vulnerable windpipe. And at last, at last, the man groped around behind his chair and flung the combination of purse and rumpled jacket at Seven’s chest. There they were, the girl’ belongings, and still he did not loosen his grip. No, he rather liked the way that the poor sap’s eyes bulged out of his head, illuminated with a sense of panic. “Get out,” he growled, low and practically seductive with his breath hot against the shell of the stranger’s ear. “Don’t come back.” As if he needed further encouragement. Seven was practically knocked back in the furious wake of the man’s exit through a back door, left to gather up Thea’s belongings from the sticky floor. She was furious, the kind of furious that wasn’t lit up from the inside, no bright-bulbed incandescence but the low-burn, slow and dull-bladed fury of quiet resignation. She didn’t know him, the man she’d stood in the shadow of for an hour, stood behind because it was a way of choosing her battles, picking her fights. There was confronting a man when he was all sin and swagger, when he took instead of asked and was hard fingers on the soft skin of her inner thigh, heavy-handed enough to bruise and there was walking over there when he was drunk enough to be soft at the edges, saggy like a sponge that had soaked up too much alcohol to be a threat. Thea wasn’t new to clubs and bars, sticky floors and bartenders who eyed her ID and then looked at her, like they couldn’t be bothered to make something of it. She wasn’t unused to men who picked fights either; she watched him stroll on over there, and she watched him lean back and forth, the fist that flew easy like a choreographed dance. She stood and she watched, arms wrapped around herself and her palms curled into her sleeves, and she watched something that wasn’t about her and her things and her fight at all, take it over. It was like paint water spilled over a watercolor, everything murky and gray and she turned her back, and she picked her way out, pale hair like a banner against her back. Screw him and screw lack of autonomy. Thea let the door slam, and she walked head high, with her hands shoved into the pockets of the tiny skirt, and she didn’t look back at the bar and toward her phone and her keys. Her aunt would be home or she wouldn’t be, and if she wasn’t, she’d sit on the fire escape until she was, and it would be like all the other times she’d gotten locked out or left where she wasn’t meant to be. |