Re: Second Class; Theater - Smoking Room
He could have told her there was no thrill in banking up a fire, striking a match and watching it burn if you didn’t know how far the gasoline had spread and didn’t want to set yourself alight in the process, but he didn’t. These parties held plenty of surprises, he had a mind he’d been here sometime before or maybe he’d heard stories. The kind of thing you told when the night was dark and there were a couple of you sat close to a fire in the middle of nothing and the horses hitched up close. He looked at the glass as it rolled within her palm, and then when it came down and was set. He could have told her that was a stupid idea too, if it fell she’d have no drink at all and who knew when they’d shut up shop at the bar?
“You can keep a cat plenty,” he said comfortably, settling his shoulders against the cushions. The back of the brocade couch nudged at the edge of his hat and it tipped forward, the shadow cast long over his face and he swallowed hard at the glass in his hand, slow and appreciative. It was good and solid, the kind of glass you could throw if you had a mind. The gunslinger was used to people throwing things. He eyed Kitty, “You just feed them and they keep coming back.” Another grin, broad this time and easy as the first. It was covered up by the worn cotton of the scarf but it pulled at the muscles in his jaw, and tugged at his eyes and was somehow as present as the rest of him. He knew how to smile at a woman like he was planning on something but those smiles were folded up and put away.
Those claws were in when she tapped the slope of his jaw, bristles of an evening shadow sharp beneath the cotton. “Outlaw, ma’am,” and he pulled at the hat again and this time that smile beneath the hat brim. “Or do I call you Kitty?”