callum marshall ⚔️ cullen rutherford (fereldan) wrote in dunhavenic, @ 2017-12-09 21:57:00 |
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Things had smoothed over since their very public fight at Wilkerson’s. Cal had been blamed by most of the town, if the gossip was to be trusted. They assumed it was his PTSD at fault, or his leg, and Elle was just a saint for taking him in and living with it. These assumptions irritated Cal, but more because they were true than anything else. However, because they'd fallen back into more of their normal behavior, he didn't feel uncomfortable with the idea of drinking at the Pourhouse that Thursday evening. Elle wasn't working until a little later, but everyone else was familiar with him and he got several words of getting as he took up his usual spot at his favorite stool, his usual arriving before he was even asked what he wanted. It was after usual number three that he decided to stretch his legs and answer the call of nature. Coming back, he tripped himself a little avoiding a pool stick and ended up instead colliding with a pretty, blonde woman, younger than him by a decent amount, but with curves to suggest she was more than welcome in a bar. He managed to keep himself upright without a problem and loosely put an arm around her waist to catch her, looking apologetic. “I'm so sorry,” he said immediately, letting her go but staying close, his attraction clear in his eyes as he looked her over although he remained respectful. She looked familiar, but he couldn't place it, however that was no surprise here. Nearly everyone in Dunhaven looked familiar to him. “My leg must be drunk. Let me buy you a drink as an apology.” After years of living in New York City and dealing with drunk men’s attempts at come-ons, Brynn was well-versed in swatting hands away, in scowling until they called her names, in side-stepping their advances if she wasn’t interested. She would have done the same here, except she hadn’t seen him coming. It was nice of him, she supposed, to make sure she stayed upright, but it also seemed like an obvious ploy. It was also nice of him to let go right away, because she was halfway out of his grasp as soon as she regained her balance and anything more would have been a problem. As it was, she just squinted up at him skeptically, trying to gauge whether or not the whole thing had been a set-up. She hadn’t caught him staring at her all night, at least… Her eyes widened slightly when she finally saw his face, though. She was pretty sure she knew that face. It’d been years, but he looked about the same, just older. “Cal?” Cal was rather used to people recognizing him since his return. He'd become a bit of a local hero, all because he'd gotten his leg blown off. At times, he didn't mind, but it could be irritating. This was one of the former, though. “Reporting for duty,” he confirmed with a smile. He hadn't yet caught on that her recognition went beyond the town gossip and his face in the local paper. “Can I get you that drink?” he asked again, gesturing to his stool at the bar and the empty seat beside it. Brynn laughed, sharp and not entirely amused. “That was cheesy,” she told him, but she shrugged and hopped up onto the chair anyway, relaxed now that she knew who he was and knew he wasn’t just a random creep. She’d be fine with her older brother’s friend. “Is that your usual move?” she asked, leaning against the bar and looking at him. “It’s not bad.” Grinning as he sat back down, he answered honestly, “No, I'm more used to flirting in Arabic and that was before I had a peg leg. If it worked, though, I may have to keep it in mind.” The bartender came by with another of Cal's drinks and then looked to Brynn. “What’ll you have?” he asked with an amicable smile. “I’m not saying it worked,” she said quickly, though that wasn’t entirely true: she was sitting on a bar stool next to him. Brynn might have done that without the ‘trip into someone as an ice breaker’ thing, however. He was someone she knew from years ago, and someone she’d liked once upon a time, so it wouldn’t have been difficult to convince her to have a drink even without a ploy. She turned to the bartender to order her drink -- her usual off the cocktail menu, a mixture of rye whisky, campari, dry vermouth, peach and bitters -- and then looked back at Cal. She wondered if he’d figured out who she was yet, and how long it’d take him. And if it was wrong of her to test him. “So what would you have said in Arabic?” That made him grin before he took a sip of his drink, turning the stool so his knees were angled toward hers. “Hmm… Putting me on the spot here…” he teased. “Hal yulamuk al'amr hin taqae min alsama'a?” It was kind of too bad Arabic hadn’t been one of the languages she’d picked up at school. She knew some Greek and was learning more all the time, but that wasn’t useful here. “Let me guess,” she started, “you won’t tell me what you said?” Brynn wasn’t even sure how much that mattered; he could have said practically anything, and it still would’ve been impressive. That was probably why he used it, she thought. He could get away with saying gibberish most of the time. “Where would the fun be in that?” he teased with a laugh. “It's so cliche, you'd definitely tell me to fuck off and I'm actively avoiding that.” He realized he didn't know her name, though she knew his. He found he didn't care. He rarely did, when his aims were shallow. He knew what he was now, and he knew there was no chance any woman of any degree of quality would want him. Something short term, perhaps one night, maybe two, was all he was searching for. It wouldn't be fair to set a woman up for the type of pain he was sure he would inflict. “How about… Было ли больно, когда ты упал с небес?” It was the same cheesy line as before (“Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?”), except in Russian. He followed it up with rough Mandarin, his weakest language, and then Spanish, the last one learned in high school just because they had to pick from a narrow selection. “Nǐ cóng tiānshàng diào xiàlái yǒu shāng ma? ¿Te dolió cuando te caíste del cielo?” The last sentence she recognized as Spanish, and there was enough similiarities between what she knew from other Romance languages (and the bits and pieces of Spanish she’d learned over the years) that she could piece together what he said. She laughed and shook her head. “You were right, that is cliche.” The bartender returned with her drink, so she took a sip. “Are those the only ones you know? What was that … Russian, something… like Chinese? And Spanish?” Cal gave a snort, though he was impressed enough that she had picked it up, even if Spanish was common enough, all things considered. “Only? Five languages ain't enough?” he asked with incredulous amusement. “Yeah, they're the only ones, but I know bits of German, Kurdish, and Tagalog, plus how to say ‘fuck you’ in a couple others.” He gave her a roguish grin as he said the last part. “No, no, five languages is plenty. It’s more than most people can claim. Hell, most people barely have a grasp of one.” It’d been a source of frustration to spend time in Europe and meet people her age who were fluent in 5 or more already, and that was even coming from a place of privilege like hers. Not everyone got to go to a private school where they had the opportunities she had. She leaned her elbow on the bar, cupping her chin with her hand. “If you could learn another one, what would it be?” The direction of this conversation was rather odd for him. Normally he kept things light, flirty, suggestive even. However, he hadn't scoped out the bar for the girls who looked easiest, he'd run into her by accident. But she was more than easy on the eyes. “I don't know, really. I’d probably finish up German. Arabic makes Kurdish less relevant and, honestly, I'm not exactly getting deployed again, so I don't need it or Tagalog.” The darkness in him cast a shadow in his eyes when he said that, but he kept the pleasant expression and tone. “German’s really interesting,” Brynn agreed, though for her purposes, it probably wasn’t as usual as something else would be. “I love how it always sounds angry, no matter what you say.” This wasn’t the most common of topics for Brynn to talk about with a man at a bar either, but a lot of men her age were immature jerks who thought ‘hey baby’ was enough to get them attention. She appreciated something more intellectual than the usual low-brow humor. “I’m going to try to work more on Greek,” she added, “but Arabic would be useful. If I wanna go work over there.” “Hmm…” he mused out loud. “I wonder if I can remember enough of German… Hat es… wehgetan, als du vom… Himmel… gesprengt bist?” he tried, though he'd ended up saying, Did it hurt when you busted from the sky? He shook his head, grinning. It was all in good fun. “I know I fucked that one up somehow. Anyway, what are you thinking of doing that would take you over there?” Brynn shrugged. “Dunno.” That was only partially true, but her ideas were generally far-fetched enough that she was too shy to own up to them yet, just in case someone laughed or shot her down entirely. Instead, she tried to stay ambiguous: “I studied history and anthropology in college, so,” at that point, she looked away, focusing on her drink instead so she wouldn’t really have to face the scrutiny of someone much older and wiser than she was, “who knows. Just don’t know if I want to stay here for the rest of my life.” But Cal wasn't scrutinizing her, not with anything more than curiosity and intrigue. “That is a feeling I can understand,” he told her sincerely, not noticing how little he'd been drinking since she'd sat down with him. “Middle East is a shitstorm right now, so I don't typically recommend it as a hot tourist spot,” he pointed out with his usual smirk, though his time wasn't mocking. “The history there, though… You'd cream your panties over some of the shit I've seen, I'd bet.” “No, I mean - I wouldn’t go for the club life or to sunbathe on their beaches.” Brynn wrinkled her nose and shook her head. Besides the obvious problems with that idea, what she was more interested in ran a lot deeper than that. She waved a hand. “But never mind that. What have you seen?” She didn’t know much about what he’d been doing while he was gone. She could imagine and she could guess, but that wasn’t the same thing. She was genuinely curious -- not about the bad things, like some people might have wanted to hear about, but about everything else. There wasn't that usual edge of morbid curiosity that he'd gotten used to, or the even worse sense that the person thought they could fix him if they just got him to talk and said the right words in return. She wasn't doing that. She was talking to him like he was a human, not the broken war hero everyone else in this tiny town had decided he was. “There's the obvious places, like Erbil Citadel, the Samarra Archaeological City, the Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib Shrine, and of course, Babylon. But I had access to more sites that weren't open to tourists and there's just a…” He searched for the right word for a moment, face screwed up with thought. “An energy, I guess,” he decided, giving up. “There's no other way to describe it. I'm not some religious man, despite my mama's best efforts, but there's something… I don't know, spiritual when you're in places like that.” Brynn’s eyes widened as he began to describe where he’d been. Even though he fumbled over his words, she knew exactly what he meant. Or at least she hoped she knew. She was pretty sure, anyway, because she remembered feeling something special when she wandered around old sites in Italy and Greece, something that made her shiver and every hair feel like it was standing on end. “I get it.” She smiled -- beamed, really. “It sounds amazing. I’d love to see that. All of that.” She didn’t know how happy her brother would be with that idea, but she couldn’t stay under his roof forever. “Maybe one day.” He nodded, his smile an echo of her own. “Normally I advocate for ‘make someday today’ and all those cliches, but if you're attached to your limbs, I'd hold off a couple more years,” he admitted. They continued to talk about world tourism, the other things he'd seen, including his six months in the Philippines and the people he'd met. They were properly facing each other now, Cal only sipping at a drink he might often have thrown back in rapid succession. Their knees were touching casually and occasionally one of them would make casual physical contact, a hand on the arm and so on, so when her drink got low, he signaled for another. As she neared the end of that one and their conversation reached a natural pause, Cal felt comfortable and confident enough to loosely take her hand so he could play with her fingers. He still didn't know her name and he still didn't care, figuring he wouldn't need it in the backseat of whatever she was driving or maybe at that little “no tell motel” just past the edge of town. He'd had sex once since his recovery, but that was in the bathroom of a DC club not too far from his rehab facility. “Hey, let's get out of here,” he suggested quietly, eyes meeting hers with his intentions blazing in them. At that moment, Brynn knew she’d let things go too far. She’d let him take her hand partially because she hadn’t expected it, and she didn’t stop him because she didn’t know how to do that nicely. She hadn’t meant to flirt. Not really. Okay, maybe a little. Who could blame her? He was a good-looking guy. He was interesting, and he’d been places besides this small little town. He listened to her -- even if it was because he wanted to sleep with her. He still listened. Reluctantly, she pulled her hand away. “You don’t even know my name,” she reminded him gently. “Tell you what - give me your phone.” Cal wondered if he should be hurt or offended, but he wasn't, oddly enough. It was always a risk and she wasn't a drunk co-ed who noticed his scars and thought of him as an adventure to look back at when old and past the years of fun. She was intelligent, driven, and interesting. He found himself genuinely wanting to keep taking with her, even as he found himself wanting to tear off her clothes and explore those exceptional curves. Still, it was a disappointment, even if she was letting him down gently and not completely dismissing him. “Fair enough,” he decided, nodding. He pulled his phone from his pocket and unlocked it, navigating to the new contact screen. “So I shouldn't just refer to you as Bar Angel?” “Hmm,” Brynn took the phone when it was offered and began to type her first and last name in, as well as her phone number. “No, I’d rather you didn’t. Not a big fan of nicknames that reduce me to a stereotype.” It was blunt and honest, but that was Brynn’s way -- outside of the way their conversation began, at least. She felt a twinge of guilt, thinking about that. When she passed the phone back, she left her contact page up so he could see it, and then she finished her drink and slid off her chair. “It’s been nice talking to you. Really.” “You too,” he answered, giving her a small but genuine smile. He drained his drink and she was gone before he looked at the contact screen. Then he wished he’d asked her name at the beginning. Brynn Stone. It hit him why she was so familiar. She was the baby sister of one of his best friends. “Shit.” |