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kellan ziegmann/dean winchester (crossroaded) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-04-30 22:56:00

Who: Maren and Kellan
What: Original plan: go drinking, complain about life, part ways amicably. Actual result: winding up in bed together. (Part 1!)
Where: Diablo's Cantina and then Kellan's motel room.
When: Recently, after this.
Warnings/Rating: None really - some implications for part 2.



Diablo’s Cantina wasn’t really the sort of place Kellan went to on a regular basis. He was more a dive bar kind of guy. The shitty atmosphere and cheap drinks suited him and his wallet, and more than once he’d made a business connection just by starting up a little conversation. Police were a little more likely to come in and check things out, but not more likely enough to ruin business - and half the time they just wanted a drink themselves. But there were times when a higher class of bar was called for, and the garish lights, the ‘Wheel of Sin’, and the giant neon devil girl above the entrance was all just interesting enough to amuse him rather than irritate him. Then again, it had been an okay week, and he still had some cash on hand from the last job; why not take a little time to relax somewhere nobody would expect him?

Despite the place getting busier as Kellan arrived, there were still a few tables free, and he managed to land one close to the windows to wait for Maren. Jeans, work boots, a grayish long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up (old scars spanning his arms like he didn’t care if someone asked questions), and a windbreaker, the last one hooked over the back of the chair and mostly unnecessary, made him look entirely unremarkable among the otherwise party-going clientele. People didn’t pay attention to him, which was ideal - except the waitress, who stopped by to ask if he wanted to order a drink while he waited.

Kellan glanced over the drinks menu again with brows raised. He didn’t mind trying new things - food, drink, or flammable material - but some of these had some odd ingredients, or ridiculous prices. $75 for one drink?

“I’ll try … the Chupacabra,” he said, pointing it out on the menu in case the word got mangled by his never having learned a word of Spanish in his life. Fresh jalapeno, huh? That’d either be really interesting or really painful. It was a damn shame the place was non-smoking, but more and more were these days; at this point, it was just easier not to argue.

Maren wore a dress, as promised. It was blood red, with a high waist and a loose skirt that barely covered pale thighs. It had tiny cap sleeves, and it was paired with thigh-highs of the same color and shiny black shoes. She’d never been to the bar he’d selected, but she didn’t research it in advance. She liked opening a book fresh, without reading anything on the dust jacket, and she spent most of the ride over trying to predict what type of establishment Kellan would choose. First, she was surprised to find it was in a hotel. Second, she was surprised to find it was so bright. Perhaps Kellan rose a few rungs on the ladder of interest just then, because Maren liked chapters with unexpected twists, and this certainly was one.

She found him easily, because few men looked as good in a pair of jeans as he did, and slid up on the circular red chair across from him with only a kiss to his cheek to announce her arrival behind him. The view of Vegas’ neon decadence was beautiful, and she let herself concentrate on it for a moment, wondering if she could find the words to describe it if she wished to. She turned to him then, a smile on lips lined as red as the dress, and she smiled. “Describe it,” she commanded, dark eyes alight with the notion of making him try. It wasn’t a conventional good evening, but Maren was strange, and Kellan had certainly noticed by now.

The waitress came with his drink, and Maren ordered a Sinful Vixen, because the drink matched the genre she evoked that evening, all reds and trouble on a platter. She didn’t quite pull off slutty, because she just didn’t have that kind of demeanor, but she looked like danger in a soft red dress, and the drink seemed appropriate.

Her arrival - a kiss and a flash of bright red - caught Kellan by surprise, but it was a good kind of surprise. He raised his eyebrows briefly at her dress, which matched the color of the devils on the walls, and smirked at her as he set down the menu.

“You look good,” he said, because she really did, and then picked up his drink with a wary look. “Pricey drinks aren’t really my thing, so let’s hope this doesn’t kill me.” The first sip was … unusual, but not bad; then again, his taste buds had been on the down and out for years now, so it was possible the kick just wasn’t going to be as intense for him as for someone else. The jalapeno left a burn that reminded him of smoking too far down a filter but with a better aftertaste - even for someone as used to wretched tar and smoke as he was.

It almost certainly wasn’t worth the money, but it wasn’t bad, and he held it toward Maren with a half-grin.

“Spicy as advertised, and the salt’s something different. You give it a try - tell me if I can’t taste anymore.”

His compliment earned him a smile, one she’d been working on since reading A Song of Ice and Fire, Melisandre’s smile. It matched the red, the smile, all dark terrors on the night and promises that shouldn’t be spoken aloud. And then she laughed, a young woman’s laugh, shattering the effect with dark eyes that smiled instead of cursed.

She took the glass when he handed it over, and she took a small sip, leaving the stain of red lipstick on the glass as she handed it back. She rubbed her lips together, thinking about the taste before speaking, and she proclaimed it, “contradictory,” which sounded like high praises indeed the way she said it, and she swiped a delicate finger along the chili-salt rim after he had it back in his possession.

Her own drink came a moment later, and it was all sweet and tart, and she pushed it across for him to taste. She expected him to hate it, but he might surprise her again, and she turned her attention to the neon lights with a wistful glance. “From here, it looks like a neon fairytale land, doesn’t it? As if it would be better than pages in a book if you actually made it down to stand beneath the glow?” Temptress red dress or not, her voice sounded dreamy with the admission.

The smile was older and more mature than the laugh, more mature than Maren, and unfamiliar on her, but Kellan’s grin never faded, even for an instant. If someone wanted to change their image, in little ways or big ones, who the fuck was he to judge? He was on his third name and persona, even if the big things stayed the same. Besides, it was a hell of a smile - especially given that it was directed at him. He took back his drink and set it down, tasting Maren’s when she pushed it toward him (too much sweetness and tart strength even for his cigarette-ruined taste buds) and coughing when the overpowering taste made the drink go down the wrong way.

“Not really my thing,” he choked out, and then followed her gaze out the window. Kellan wasn’t much of one for fairy tales or fantasy - Dean’s world of mystic and supernatural monstrosities was more than enough for him. Vegas’ glitz and glamor was impressive but very real in the way of filthy streets and filthier people all illuminated by those sparkling lights. Maybe the dirt was hidden at night, and from this high up, you couldn’t make out any details anyway. “A little, but I’ve been down in those lights. They’re nicer from a good vantage point than right in the middle of them all. This way, you can’t see all the shit that piles up.”

Kellan took another sip of his own drink, eyes drifting back down to the list of tequilas and specialties available. She sounded like she really wanted to live in some fantasy world. Probably not unusual for someone her age, but she was a criminal, too. She had to know that kind of thing wasn’t possi - well, probably wasn’t possible. He couldn’t discount these alternate selves and their respective worlds anymore. There were bound to be a few in some magic world somewhere. Still, time there was limited, and it wasn’t as if they were really the ones there.

She smiled when he coughed, and she pulled the drink back to her with both hands, fingers chasing the rim as he proclaimed it not his thing. She watched his face as he turned to look at the Vegas lights, enjoying the way the cast shadows and highlights on his features, and she dipped her finger into her own drink and sucked it clean without thinking; it was evidently not a gesture meant to entice, but rather a leftover of the little girl who dipped her fingers in the icing before daddy died and mommy went crazy. “They’re much nicer from this viewpoint,” she admitted, because she’d learned that books and dreams and high vantage points were all the same thing - a perfect view of imperfection. This view of the strip was no different.

She reached across the table, and she tugged down on the list of drinks, so that she could see his face. “Did you set them?” she asked of the fires. They’d been all over the news and she knew, for a fact, that he hadn’t set the second; he was too good for that. Unless he’d been intentionally attempting to make it look like an amateur. But the first, the first was professional, and she wondered what Michael Delano’s agenda was, and if it conflicted with Andrew Mumford’s. She really didn’t want to make a choice there, not when work was so spaced apart, making it hard to subsist on one of the two alone.

“One of them,” Kellan said with a wry tone and an irritated expression. He leaned back, setting down the drinks menu, and sighed, aggrieved. “The one at the Studio 8 was a contract hit - I charged them a hell of a lot for it, too. But the Willows? That was some other asshole trying to show me up, and now the cops are actually on the lookout for a serial arsonist.” Kellan looked, for the moment, more angry than annoyed, the light in his eyes hard and dangerous. “I made sure your work looked like an accident, and the Studio like legitimate mob work, and one jackass makes it all fucking irrelevant.”

Sure, there would be a cooldown period, one in which the police would scratch their heads and go back to wondering if it was just some vandal teen who went too far rather than a real serial arsonist, but having to put any potential work on hold was bad for business. He shrugged then, and the murderous look dropped from his face.

“But I guess that’s what working outside the city is for. Still, could they have been any sloppier? Probably someone trying to renege on their damage deposit … ” Another long drink, the spice burning and the alcohol cooling, and Kellan looked mostly back to normal.

“I think they were sloppy on purpose. Young, perhaps, or trying to get caught, or something more romantic than that. Revenge, possibly, since that’s always a good choice for romantic anti-heroes,” she said, but there was a smile on her lips as she lifted the drinks to take a sip. She knew he didn’t agree with her ideas about what was romantic and what wasn’t, and that was one of the things she liked about him. Reading the same book, it got boring after a time, and he was always like an intermission, a break, something different tucked between the pages, always unexpected.

His anger was heady, when it peeked out through his words, and she leaned forward and ran two fingers along his forearm. “They won’t get you, Kel. You’re too good,” she said, and it was stated with the kind of hero-worship that little girls saved for princes on white steeds. Worrisome, perhaps, that she replaced knights with arsonists, but she liked the flame too much to pretend; and anyway, there was nothing to be gained by pretending to be the sweet girl, not when it wasn’t the requirement of the job.

“Or sloppy because they don’t know anything,” he grumbled. But Maren’s words mollified him - Kellan was a man of incredible egotism, and being told something he’d taken as an inherent truth for most of his life was always a soothing balm. Especially when it came from someone who also seemed to believe it as much as he did. The anger and irritation faded in place of a grin; the back of his hand brushed Maren’s arm as her own hand traced along his. Kellan lifted his drink (with his other hand) and tilted it toward her. “Damn straight. I’ll toast to that.”

With the clink of the glasses, he finished off what was left in his glass and decided that while it wasn’t bad on the whole, he’d go with something a little more familiar for the next drink. The place had an impressive list of tequilas. He probably couldn’t go wrong with that.

“What have you been doing lately? What with the fires and family and so on.” It was an honestly curious question. “I’m guessing you’re not getting much work lately.”

Maren finished her own drink, but she liked it enough to order a second when the waitress came around, enjoying the fizzy combination of ginger and sugar. “No work since the job you helped me with,” she admitted, which wasn’t particularly promising. She’d thought that with the little mafia heirs in town, she would have twice the work, but it wasn’t turning out that way; she was going to have to go back to contract work soon, out of the agency in Georgia, which she didn’t like very much. She was sure that in spy novels this kind of thing never happened. Good cons moved up the ladder to become good spies, and she was pretty sure she would look stunning in black, but it just wasn’t working out that way. She was young yet, at 21, and she’d been working for under a year, but she’d always been top of her class, the ultimate overachiever, and now it felt like she was doing something wrong.

But she toasted him anyway, and she liked the rough feel of his hand on hers. The view outside was too nice to ruin the evening ruminating on her own failures, and family? Family was another problem entirely. “My brother ran away from home when I was young, and he just showed up here, acting as if he hadn’t left us all in Dante’s seventh circle of Hell without even a second glance,” she explained, but there was a lack of ire there; she was jealous of his escape, and she wished she’d had enough strength to do it herself, to flee and run, like Rapunzel allowed out of her tower. She took another sip of her drink, and she shook her head. “But I don’t want to think about that tonight,” she confessed, and she ran her foot along the inside of his leg.

“Nothing?” If she didn’t want to talk about her family, he was okay with that - it wasn’t as if Kellan was ever going to answer any similar questions about himself. It wasn’t a dearly-kept secret, but there just wasn’t much point, especially given the two name changes he’d gone through since then. So he focused on the jobs instead, because one job - even one very lucrative job, if she’d given him a hundred grand - in a city like Vegas was ridiculous. “They wanted you to get rid of one guy and that’s it? Sucks.”

Probably an understatement. He ran through various scenarios in his head - there were a few other jobs on the table for him, ones with no real deadline - and tried to find a place that Maren might be able to fit in. Arson was generally a one-man job when it came to what he did. There wasn’t a lot he could use her help in - though that didn’t mean there wasn’t anything at all.

“Delano’s still got that job in mind for us.” Though he hadn’t heard much on that front lately. “Next time I hear from him, I’ll ask him about it. And you know I’ll give you a call if I need a witness.” The feeling of her foot running along the inside of his leg under the table pinged off his brain but didn’t change much otherwise. At his age, and with his line of work, and his general personality, he didn’t often get much attention from women, and assumed that most of what he did get was either casual and almost subconscious or for some other, less savory reason. With Maren, Kellan assumed admiration - she liked what he did with a flame, after all.

“He hasn’t contacted me again, and my contact was the heir to the family, so it’s not like I can just call him up and make demands,” she said of Andrew. She leaned in closer, lowered her voice to a whisper, because sharing mafia secrets was a sure way to get a girl in trouble - in or out of books - but Kellan was Kellan, and she’d been working with him long enough to trust he wouldn’t get her murdered, not unless someone paid him to do. Which, in truth, wasn’t out of the question. It would be an interesting literary twist, really. “He has someone in his head, like we do, and I don’t think it’s someone who will take kindly to being inside a mafia heir.” Which was an understatement, but having Harry Potter inside your mind would always been too huge to adequately express with words - written or otherwise.

Maren liked danger, that was true, and she leaned forward and crossed her arm on the table, her foot coming to rest against the seat of his chair, between his thighs. It was the red dress, you see, the part. Melisandre would take what she wanted, and this night was the shadowbringer, for the next few hours at least. She’d become so very good at pretending as a child, and she had an almost frightening facility for it as an adult. It was why she was good at her job, even if she was having trouble taking it to the next level. “Thank you,” she said of his offer to speak to Delano, to keep her in mind. “Do you like it?” she finally asked, and she let the question hang between them a moment, the subject questionable until she filled it in a few seconds later. “Flame. Do you like it, or did you choose it for another reason?” She realized that she had no idea if he was a pyromaniac, or if he was simply skilled; she’d never considered it before.

Kellan snorted. Oh, he knew what it was like to have someone in your head that didn’t like you and didn’t agree with a damn thing you did. Right now Dean was at least being polite enough to keep quiet - or maybe he was just sulking because Kellan was out drinking with a pretty young woman less than half his age - but with every job came a new scathing insult, a new headache, and a new moral objection he just couldn’t shake. It was ridiculous. Then again, Maren had the same problem - and with someone who didn’t already have some degree of moral ambiguity.

Her question made him blink, and the following specification caught him a little off-guard. It was a sudden change in subject, but not a bad one, even if it was a little harder to answer. Did he tell her that he was born bad and only turned to fire because it engulfed what little childhood he had and cut him off from people he ostensibly loved? Did he lie, because Kellan wasn’t Miles? Or did he just not overcomplicate things and give her the honest answer, which was probably the easiest path? He could feel the pressure where her foot was on his seat, and for the first time that night, it made a few thoughts drift into place like a smoke cloud pressing up against the sky.

“I’ve always liked it. I think these days they’d classify me as a pyromaniac.” A love of the flame so powerful he used it to destroy and kill without so much as batting an eye. “And it doesn’t leave much in the way of evidence, so that’s pretty handy. Still, it was more just wanting to set things on fire that got me into it.” No real details, no hints to the past. It was the vague-but-honest sort of answer he was getting better at with age.

She knew there had to be more to it than that, because it was the kind of answer an antihero in a book gave, the kind that happened in an early chapter, with an unnamed girl in a backroom somewhere, the kind of answer that was explained and explored throughout the novel, until it was confided in the main romantic interest before the epilogue.

She pushed her chair back, and she slid her feet to the floor and walked around to his side of the table. “Show me,” she said, hand on his sleeve. “The flames. Show me,” she said, and there was a true hunger for it in her eyes right then, more than for the drink, or the job, or even the sexual teasing from a moment earlier. She’d worked with him for nearly a year, but she’d never actually seen him set anything on fire. Seen the fires he’d set, yes. But seen him when he did it, no. She wanted, suddenly, to remedy that, even if it was a small and inconsequential blaze.

Kellan looked at Maren, surprised - and not a little intrigued. She looked like she seriously wanted to see him set a fire, and for a moment he thought: but haven’t you already? Because they’d worked together and she’d seen all those burning buildings, pretended to be a hysterical or frightened or numbed witness staring unseeing at the flames and smoke pouring out the windows. She wasn’t a pyromaniac, either - he would know if she was, she would know if she was - so why the sudden urge? Why so intense?

And in a public restaurant, too. But he’d done stupider things in stupider locations, and if anyone got angry, he had a whole slew of excuses ready to hand over.

With only one quick glance around to make sure there weren’t any obvious cops or restaurant staff around to keep an eye on them, Kellan poured just a little of the tequila on a napkin. It was going to be a piss-poor demonstration, but there was only so much he could do here.

“If you want seriously impressive, you’ll have to tag along on a job sometime,” he said as he set the glass aside, pulled out his lighter, and grazed the lit flame along the underside of the liquor-damp paper. It caught in an instant and flared, drawing attention from other nearby patrons, but Kellan knew how to handle living flame. He had enough scars on his hands alone to prove it. He kept the napkin away from the rest of the liquor and away from the floor, letting it smoke and burn.

And he never looked away from it, not even for a second - not so long as it gleamed in his eyes and cast an unusual light on his face. There was an intensity there, and an almost relaxed look, as if he could be seeing the napkin or an entire building burning in front of him and not care so long as it was on fire.

She didn’t watch the flame at first, even standing as close to him as she was. The glow of it lit his face, heated the air around them both. She spared one momentary glance at his hands, and the gaze lingered longer than she intended, as she watched him manipulate the napkin with the precision of a musician at their instrument. But no, it was his face she watched.

Maren was seldom impressed with things in the real world, seldom drawn to them with the moth-to-flame pull that she felt for words on pages and the sound of a book’s spine cracking. She could count, on one hand, the number of times expectation had been chased by something better than the expectation itself. She did not appreciate life, not truly. But sometimes even she was surprised; now was one of those sometimes.

She stared as the flame reflected in his eyes, and she couldn’t look away from the intensity in his expression. Combined with the relaxed set of his shoulders and his lack of concern, the expression was heady, and by the time the flame began to bank, she was moving closer, her tainted red lips against his ear as she pressed close to his side. “Impressive,” she said, and there was something like heat in her voice, in her tone, something that mirrored the way the air had lit and warmed around them with the existence of the flame.

The flame held him and enraptured him - but not completely, because it had been a very long time since Kellan had been stupid and reckless enough to narrow down his entire world just to that bright light. His peripheral vision was still at work in case anybody moved suddenly as if to come after him. Still, he was distracted enough that he didn’t realize how close Maren had gotten, and her words so close to his ear surprised him. The ash of the napkin crumbled to the table, the flames dying and leaving only wiped-away scorchmarks to show they had ever been there.

For a moment he wondered if that tone and that closeness meant Maren was interested in him in a way that went beyond working and admiration. It was a flattering thought, and he half-smiled as he looked over at her. But he wasn’t going to assume. Even if she was interested, she was the romantic type - and Kellan was pretty much the exact opposite. Not even his attraction to the flame really held anything resembling romance.

“Like I said, you should tag along on a job sometime. Impressive doesn’t even start to cover it.” Kellan rubbed away the black ash on his fingers, smearing it over skin both scarred and nicotine-stained.

He was right about her being a romantic, but she wasn’t a romantic of the white-knight variety. She was things that jumped off pages, for good or bad, and she knew better than to expect happily ever after off to come off the page for her or anyone else. That didn’t mean she wasn’t interested in pretending, and tonight she was a woman who took what she wanted, she reminded herself.

She watched him rub his fingers together, the black ash disappearing, and she momentarily wondered what that ash would look like on her own pale skin, on his skin, and she moved her lips from his ear to the corner of his mouth. She turned his cheek toward her, hand on his jaw, and her eyes were endless depth and dark, dark things that shouldn’t be there in someone so young.

“I’ll tag along anywhere you like,” she said.

Maren was full of surprises tonight. Kellan let her turn his face, felt the heat of her so close to him, the slightly-rough fingers against his slightly-stubbled jaw, and saw the eerie darkness in her eyes that he’d seen before but never in her. It was unusual, and … well, honestly, appealing. Just because he was completely incapable of knowing what a healthy relationship was like didn’t mean he didn’t know what other relationships were like.

But there was a part of him - a part that, much to the other man’s surprise, wasn’t very much influenced by Dean, having grown out of years of watching and waiting and living - that wasn’t quite prepared to just give in to what he might have wanted and let her words serve as practically an invitation. Kellan was forever skeptical of anything that crossed his path. Was she really interested? Was there something else at stake here, some other influence, whether human or alcohol-related? Was she getting something mixed up? Maren was an adult, and fully capable of adult decisions, and he wasn’t one to question that, but rarely did Kellan find himself on the receiving end of this kind of attention.

He brought up one hand and gently held onto her wrist, his thumb pressed against her pulse.

“You sure about that,” he asked, “or is this just a heat of the moment thing?”

She watched his hand on her wrist with all the patience of a reader, one who was waiting to see what turning the page would bring. She stared at his thumb, at the way it made her skin go in, made the veins at her wrist more noticeable. Her pulse was fast, almost enough to be called racing, but not quite, and she didn’t move back to answer him.

“Both,” was her reply, and it wasn’t something elaborate wound up in words or storylines or pretense. It was the kind of response that she liked in books sometimes, raw and honest, without lies. Was she sure? Just then, yes. Was it the heat of the moment? Maybe. Was it the red dress and the character she’d slipped on when she left the RV? Definitely. But she did like him, and she always had. He was too old for her, maybe. Too rough for her cap sleeves and frilly tastes. But he was strength and fire and she would claim all that if she could. She didn’t expect him to love her, and she didn’t expect the morning to bring anything at all.

She turned her hand, and she stepped back as she pulled on his fingers.