who Cimmerian & Ruler unveiling to Viv & Noah what unforgettably unfortunate stuff all around where Desert Moon Motel when Recently. warnings boobs & stuff.
Maybe it was the Jameson talking, but Viv didn't have secrets or shadows in mind when she'd given Ian her address. She'd started out irritated, but was now getting rather pissed about the whole thing the longer she thought about it. What the hell was wrong with him? Why was he doing this to her? Viv did not get backed into corners, she did not get in cages.. and that's what this felt like. All of his compliments and daydream longing shot through her heart in a spastic paranoia beat that felt like a trap.
The motel was quiet tonight, which was unusual but appreciated. The rooms of either side of her were recently(and abruptly) vacated after some police influence. It seemed that criminal types flocked to the Desert Moon's gaudy decor like moths to a crackpipe flame. She couldn't blame them, it was just seedy enough to be charming. The lights were off in room 7, but the television blazed with a fleshy pink glow as some skinemax cinema played on mute. Viv prowled around the wine colored carpet with a cigarette stapled to her mouth. The bottle of whiskey in her hand sloshed with every step of her glitter wedge sandals, but she eventually left it on the dresser. She stopped before that dresser for a moment, staring at the attached vanity mirror even if she never cast a glance upon her own reflection. A couple of pictures were tacked to the mirror's edge. Her in a hospital bed, young and beaming despite the sweat that creased her brow and the exhausted that waged in her eyes. There was a pink blanket bundled in her arms. The other pictures were of young men, each one with sandy hair and a open mouth laugh. There was a suitcase of cash and dope on the bed, but it was safely closed. Most of her clothes seemed to be scattered across the floor in varying heaps of tacky crochet and thrift store t-shirts. She exhaled some smoke and dropped her cigarette into a lukewarm can of pepsi. Viv already forgot that somebody was on their way.
Perhaps it was his nervous eagerness that caused him not to recognize the name of the motel he’d met Vivienne at or, possibly, he just hadn’t noted it on the day. He did, however, notice it as the cab pulled up in front of the unimpressive structure, and despite Mycroft informing him to Return to the cab, immediately, he ignored the older man. It was a coincidence, surely, and he paid the fare and pushed his hands deep into the gray slacks he wore with a slate blue shirt.
Noah was nervous, that was true, but he had the idealistic belief that it would all work out. Not that many things in his life had, that is, worked out. But this girl, “Cheyenne,” she knew everything about him, everything that mattered. He felt, too, that he knew everything about her, everything that mattered, and surely that counted for something. Unlike Elias, he didn’t believe she was hiding some grand secret that would shatter the world. No, he thought that, perhaps, she was insecure. He wasn’t insecure, not in his appearance at least, and he didn’t care what she looked like. He only wished to spend time with her and, he felt, he could make her understand that.
It would all turn at well, surely.
He lit a cigarette - something he was doing more and more these days - and he rounded the corner of the motel and stopped in front of Number 7. A deep inhale and, luckily, he didn’t see the familiar Datsun at his back. He knocked.
The knock sounded like it came from years away. It might as well have, because Viv was lost in the memories that photographs brought. The gentle knock tugged her away from all that reminiscence(some good, some bad), it was a hook dragging her off of a vaudeville stage.. and Viv couldn't decide if she was grateful for the interruption or not. She didn't go for the door immediately, but rather eyed her reflection for the first time tonight. Las Vegas was giving her pale skin a lick of bronze, and her golden hair was growing lighter. Dandelion petals drying up, giving way to starlit fluff. She wasn't dressed for company, but Viv didn't imagine this would take long anyway. The worn cotton of her t-shirt was red, depicting a vibrant image of the communist party. In place of pants, there were little boy superman underoos that fit far too well on her narrow hips. Her gold glitter platforms really set the whole tragic ensemble off.
When Viv finally opened the door, it was with an unlit cigarette cutting into the corner of her mouth. She wedged her scant hip against the jamb and gave him the same expectant what the hell do you want look that she tended to give the police. That car ride of humiliation was so long ago, and so insignificant to her, that Viv did not even recognize him. Not immediately, but there was something faint knocking desperately in the back of her mind.
He remembered every moment of that car ride, and he stared at her as it all came back, a slam of remembering, like thorns against the inside of his skull. He looked around her, as if he expected to find someone else there, a girl with dark hair, one that liked to twirl, but there was no one else in the motel room that he could see, and he looked back at the woman that had put him out on the sidewalk like a dog. He almost managed to convince himself that it was all an error, but Mycroft wouldn’t allow it, and so there was nothing for it but to look her in the face.
He was all blue eyes gone dark, skin gone paler, refinement and memory, and he didn’t look her up and down, did not give her a once over. He looked at her face, and only at her face, and when he spoke it was with the same low voice from the darkened pool, from the mail slot, from the party. “I knew there was more to you than just that bitch you pretended to be in the car,” he said, surprising even himself with the words.
He didn’t stay where he was; he pushed past her, and into the room. “Vivienne.”
It registered before he said her name, it registered before he even pushed past her like she was just another gargoyle guarding the demon he was here to slay. Or the dragon, whatever it was that princes slayed. Viv quickly reminded herself that this was no prince. This was a boy playing games of hide and seek.. and oh, she remembered him now. Irene was seething about how she bloody well knew it, but Viv was drunk enough to tune her out almost completely. She turned to watch him stroll in, and she kicked the door shut behind her with that gauche heel, chipping loose pieces of glitter into the burgundy carpet. "Who the fuck was pretending?"
“I didn’t pretend,” he said as he turned to face her. “I am exactly as I said.” Something in his tone said he felt she wasn’t exactly as she said, but there was something else there too, something that had learned the woman he’d been interested in and the women he’d kissed were one in the same. “Putting me out on the street, was it a defense mechanism?” he asked, and Mycroft groaned in his mind, thinking this was not the time to develop the urge to be intelligent. “I knew there was more to you then, and I was right. Whatever you say, you are the woman from the dance, and the abandoned house, and the pool. Pretend whatever else you like, but that was you.” Drunk or not. He took a very long drag of his cigarette, a nervous one, and he turned his face slightly away on the exhale.
"Wrong, prince." She doubted that he was comfortable in this poorly lit room. When Viv strolled past the television, with whatever in God's name was playing, she nudged the power button off. Immediately, the motel room was plunged into their familiar dark. "I get it, I do." In all those shadows, with just her voice, it was easy to imagine that things were once again how they'd been in the pool. "But that girl never existed. It was all make believe.. you know that." Viv flicked the switch on the wall, and electric halogen flooded them from above. The room was moderately trashed, she'd taken her rage out on it for the past afternoon. Viv scooted back onto the dresser and kicked off her heels, leaning against the cheap mirror and clutching the whiskey between her thighs so that she could unscrew the lid. "I thought we were playing a game," she explained. Impressively steady eyes watching him from over the bottle's rim as she lifted it to her mouth for another bitter taste. Something to revive her nerve.
“No you didn’t,” he said, doing what he could to hide the wince when the bright lights came flaring on. He squinted, but he moved toward her, and there was a definite hint of the man he would be someday in his posture. He’d never wanted anything like he wanted that girl in the dark, the one who had listened to his secrets without recoiling in terror, and he was willing to fight for it, even if it was her. “I told my friends I didn’t care who you were, or what you looked like, and it was all true. I don’t care and no, you didn’t think we were playing a game.” His gaze, guided by Mycroft, turned to the picture of the pink bundle on the mirror. He pointed. “You wouldn’t have told me about her, if it was a game,” he said, closing the remaining distance, emboldened by that statement. He took the whiskey from her, and he tipped back a swig and just managed to hide the grimace at the cheap-bitter taste. There was more America in him than Britain just then, and he put the bottle down on the dresser, beside her knee.
He could want Cheyenne until the end of time, but Viv was here to let him know that such things were a pipedream. She stiffened when he drew closer, honeycomb eyes betraying a flicker of apprehension that rose from whiskey depths. When he pointed at the picture on the mirror, that was unexpected. As unexpected as a knife to the heart, and Viv went Valkyrie straight with a wildcat shove to his chest. "Don't! Don't you dare fucking mention her!" Her daughter was a hands off, words off, never to be mentioned again subject. He didn't deserve that, they would never be close enough for him to deserve that. That was Viv's pain, and she'd keep it forever. She nudged him back a gentle step with her bare foot against his hip, just for room to think. Oh, she remembered him so well now, the horny young man in her car who blushed at the prospect of getting his hands on her tits. All this time, it'd been him. Without explanation, Viv ducked sunkissed arms into her t-shirt and hauled it off her head. There was no bra beneath its discarded cherry fabric, just her. Pale breasts with triangle tanlines. "Come on, then." Her tone was almost bitter, proving this point.
Noah wasn’t truly expecting the vitriol when he pointed at the photograph, all those shared secrets lulling him into believing she would come around. He wasn’t what she expected, he knew, and he wasn’t what she wanted. But they had still shared what they’d shared, and he still wanted her, wanted to know her. “It wasn’t a game,” he repeated, as if that would calm her, because that had been his intention in pointing to the image; calming her. He ignored Mycroft, who said now was the time to turn and run. No, he wouldn’t; he cared about her too much. “I’ve never told anything the things I told you. This changes nothing,” he said, motioning to the hotel room, even as she nudged him away with her foot.
When she pulled the shirt off, he wasn’t expecting it. And he stared a moment, because he was still young enough not to be able to hide his reaction to unexpected breasts (quite nice, really). But he didn’t come on. He wasn’t that stupid, and he’d not make the same mistake twice, even without Mycroft’s suggestion that he refrain. “No. If that’s all I wanted from you, I’d have said as much. I only want to know you, to spend time with you.” He shook his head. “Yes, I want intimacy, but that’s not what this is about for me. I want to know you,” he insisted. And if she remained over there, on the dresser, he could keep his hands off her. Yes, surely.
He wanted intimacy? The look in her eyes bordered on betrayal with that very word. What did that even mean? Candlelight dinner and pillow talk secrets? What a fucking joke. Viv had never in her life been more pleased that she was drunk, it made her damn near numb throughout this entire showdown. She reached for the whiskey again, taking a long sip. So long that a stream of amber acid dripped down her chin, between her bare breasts, and along her abdomen with the ancient C-section scar. Just her, her bottle, and those adorable boyshorts. "Well, I don't want to know you." Point blank. She set the bottle aside and slid off of the dresser toward him. "So skip the bullshit, we both know what this is really about."
He watched the drip of liquid against skin, even though he knew he shouldn’t, but he was too young and interested to effectively hide that interest. It was a skill Noah had not yet learned in life, feigning disinterest. And she was so close, that amber trail disappearing somewhere beneath the unconventional underwear. He was staring, but he only realized it as she slid off the dresser and approached him. He should step back (Mycroft was practically yelling that command), but he didn’t. He watched her approach, and he stubbornly tilted his chin. “Wanting you, desiring you, that doesn’t change the fact that I want more than that, that I think you’re more than that. That I think we’re more than that together.” But when she came close enough, he couldn’t help but reach for her, a hand closing about her bare hip, a tug toward him with that grip.
Viv moved with that tug like this was some familiar choreography. Effortless, and as willing as any dream he'd ever had. The booze made it easier to stomach, it made her braver and - if this was even imaginable - meaner. She was a snake charmed by reed flutes of malice, and if he wanted to wrap his arms up in so much venom, that was his problem. There was no antidote for this, when she pressed the front of her body against him. Spilled whiskey-slick and more bare skin than he deserved. It felt like Irene's influence, because Viv was not sex. She wasn't scandal or come hither anything. "We are not anything. Wake the fuck up." Where was that Jameson bottle? She must have forgotten it on the dresser. Oh well, free hands dropped to the button and fly of his pants, fumbling with the fastenings. "This is what you want, right?" The words bristled, almost angry. But she was angry at him. For coming here, for the pool, for the fucking dance, for any smile he'd ever given her in the dark. Then, the barb, "I know you've got a thing for older women n' all."
He was undeniably stupid, but he was quite young, and quite unable to resist, even given the warning bells and Mycroft’s insistence. He still thought she’d change her mind, once he kissed her again, once it was like the pool. He couldn’t imagine all those hushed words through the mail slot meant nothing, the fact that he’d been willing to kill for her. “We are something,” he insisted, because at least that remained true in his mind, but his hands were wandering from her hips up along her sides, his palms finding her breasts, his fingers finding her nipples. When her hands dropped to his pants, his breathing rushed, and he could hear his blood in his ears. “I want you. All of you,” he insisted, and he caught the barb, and it stung, but it was not enough to drag him back from this precipice. “I’ve a thing for you,” he insisted, before brazenly attempting to capture her Jameson’s stained lips in a kiss.
She intended for this to hurt, to make him go away, to make him fucking leave her alone in this rotting motel with her memories and her purpose. Viv didn't need people, she didn't need midnight swimming or mail slot confessions, and she certainly didn't need him. He wasn't a little boy, she could feel the promise of strength in those calloused fingers when they coursed over the jut of her hipbones. But he was still clinging to some wet dream fantasy, and that wasn't her. Not by a long shot. Viv wished that his hands wouldn't wander, but they trekked a curious pilgrimage up her sides. The staccato of ribs somewhere under flesh of such amber grain. Her eyes were angry, but when his calloused fingers stumbled upon her nipples, the expression slipped into something new and surprised. But no, reel it in. Come back to reality. Drunken reality, but reality none the less. This was a trap, all of it. The sentiment was a cage. The kiss? An elaborate trick to try and make her feel the same. But Viv wasn't the same as him, she'd evolved past warmth and she'd never turn that boat back around. She jerked his pants lower on his hips, forcing the zipper to split its shiny teeth and comply, whether it liked it or not. Pulling back from the kiss(one she hadn't even returned), her eyes were almost gold in the motel's harsh light. "How do you want me?" The words were a smoke laced whisper; cursive scrawling sex in bold, blinking letters. She pulled back a step, then another so that her back found the edge of the dresser. "Pushed against a counter, right?" Isn't that what he'd said in the car? "Or bent over it?" Isn't this what he'd wanted from day one? For her to be his sex toy distraction from whatever fucked up homelife he had?
He wasn’t thinking by the time she spoke, and he barely noticed the kiss was not returned. There was an innocence to him that said he’d likely not been with many women, and it was mingled with the kind of experience he shouldn’t yet have. “I want you to kiss me back,” he said, realization setting in. He recognized the echo, but she’d pushed him for that, and those words wouldn’t come on their own, not without her coaxing. “I want to touch you, if you’ll allow it,” he said, and there was a low rumbling of want in the words, simple as they were. He chased when she stepped back, and he lifted her and set her on the dresser, but he made no attempt to remove the underwear she wore. His fingers moved up to her breasts, and then they settled down on her hips, where they ducked just beneath the childish fabric. He moved them no further, his fingers, not trying to dip them between her thighs or take more than this. And he kissed her again, coaxing this time, instead of immediately expecting a kiss in return. “Please,” he asked, and he was the boy at the dance then, the one who thought the entire universe revolved around her, him right alongside it.
The dresser was cool against her bare legs, the varnished wood nicked from abuse(some old, but most new). When he slid closer, not even flinching at her deterrent landmines, Viv froze. He had more nerve than she expected. The strange, roughened scrape of his fingers inclined to music - and, apparently, skin - defied the electric blue band of her heroic undies. Her stomach clenched, that scar so white against the fresh beginnings of desert honey. Viv's eyes were swirling pits of amber, the kind that trapped small prehistoric things for centuries.. never to be heard from again. She waited for him to get on with it. The pounce, the fuck, the wordless rebuttoning of jeans. Viv swallowed, she wanted her whiskey, but it was his mouth that sank onto her. Swift as a vampire bite, but so sweet that it drove her into a fit of catatonia. She didn't know what to do with this kind of gentleness.. she was not that laughing young thing from the pool, she was not the twirling maypole at the dance. She was Viv, and she'd sooner set a Valentine on fire than read it. There was the briefest parting of whiskey lips, something too instinctive to prevent, and then she shoved. Not with her hands, but with a rough elbow into his sternum. Viv had grown up with three brothers, she knew how to make it hurt. "Get out!" And because it would hurt more than any shove, "I don't fucking want you, get out."
The elbow to his sternum did hurt, sharp and winding, and he knew it would bruise by morning. It was the pain of it, his hand instinctively coming up to rub against it, that made him slip his hands free of their fabric cover, that made him release her hips, that made him move back one careful step, refusing to retreat any more than that, even in surprise. But it wasn’t the pain that caused him to jerk his head up, blue eyes wide and tear-rimmed. No, it was her assertion that she didn’t want him. Not that she didn’t want the boy at the dance, the man at the abandoned house, the suitor at the pool. No, him. She didn’t want him, just as she hadn’t wanted him in that car on that stick-heat day when she’d set him off on the side of the road. She didn’t want him. He took a stumbling step back, almost tripping over his feet as he had then, and barely maintaining his distance and his dignity. Leave, was Mycroft’s suggestion, and it was strangely kind. Noah, however, couldn’t take his eyes off her, even as he backed to the door and put his hands on the frame.
"You wanted to hear it in person, didn't you?" She was drunk, but the words didn't slur impressively. She wasn't that far gone. Viv hopped off of the dresser with a gentle stagger, clutching her whiskey bottle and making for the sink counter on the other side of the room. "Say it to you face?" She asked, spinning on bare heels and swigging harsh amber with a grimace. "Well, that's what I'm, tellin' ya. Go home, kid. Before you get hurt." Viv vanished into the bathroom, the sound of running water softer than any goodbye would have been from her lips.
He wanted to stay, wanted to chase her, wanted to follow and tell her that no, this was all wrong, but he didn’t. His earlier certainty was muddied now, clouded with the fact that she didn’t want him upon seeing him. Not that she hadn’t wanted him before, but that she didn’t want him now, when he was him, rather than some promise in the dark of something else, better, stronger, older. His fingers pressed into the wood of the door frame hard enough to leave splinters behind, and he turned to leave. There was only a moment of hesitation, a raised voice above the water. “If you ever need anything, regardless of this evening, regardless of your lack of interest in me, I will be there for you. I will do anything you require.” He meant it, even if Mycroft said he was, quite possibly, the daftest fool in all the world. The door closed a moment later, leaving her alone in the room.
She wanted to scream at him, something horrible to make him leave her alone for good, but the door clicked closed and a second later, she knew she was alone. Well and truly alone, the way she was meant to be. The way she preferred. The way that felt best. She was back behind the wall of defense that nothing could penetrate.. but even with the alcohol, it didn't feel good. Viv sank into the tub with her bottle of whiskey, forgetting to remove her underwear, but not caring either. She took a swig, trying not to think.. but having to. Ian was young, he'd been in a relationship with some headfucked stepmother woman who was supposed to care for him, but simply fucked him.. and maybe Vivienne got the details all wrong, but she couldn't go through with it. She didn't want to play with his head like that. He didn't deserve it.
She'd done the right thing. It wasn't him that she didn't want, but herself. She wasn't the girl at the dance, she wasn't the girl in the pool.. she'd tried to be, but it couldn't converge with the truth. The truth that she didn't deserve to be lighthearted. She'd let her child be killed, she'd let her brother go away to prison, she'd let hate build up inside of her until .. now.. suddenly, it spilled out of her eyes in streams of salt. Vivienne sobbed. Knees drawn up in the bath water, which was still running and overflowing across the puke green linoleum of the floor.. but fuck the water too, she didn't care. She cried until there was nothing left to cry. This is when Irene piped up, You're much too pretty for self-loathing, darling.. so if you're quite done, we do have a detective and his artist to aggravate.
Viv took a swig of whiskey and squinted at the ceiling, "You want to seduce him."