e. (epalmer) wrote in mcdermott_game, @ 2010-03-18 20:20:00 |
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Entry tags: | callas, eric, eric/callas |
Who: Eric and Callas
What: Skipping school like cool kids and going to Boston. Oh, and extensively discussing the state of their relationship.
Where: Downtown Boston.
When: Tuesday, March 16th.
Rating: PG-13, really.
"Only you would think Ben and Jerry's is an acceptable substitute for breakfast," Callas told Eric as they walked into the shop on Tuesday morning. Not that she was complaining, mind. Rather, she'd agreed almost as easily to it as she had to skipping classes altogether and going to Boston for the day. They'd started out walking on Newbury Street, but the lure of a decent mall had been a little too much for Callas. She'd promised them equal time doing what he wanted, and that it wouldn't be all shopping. She wasn't aiming to be that kind of girlfriend.
At the thought, guilt flickered through her. If that was indeed what she was now, then she was one hell of a lousy girlfriend, that was for damn sure. She'd spent a few days moping over someone who wasn't hers, would never be hers. Showing up at Eric's dorm that morning had been her way of doing penitence, of trying to rectify a wound he never knew he should be feeling.
"Yeah, well." He flashed a grin at her, the slightly mischievous one she was sure to know well. "We're already skipping school. May as well have an unhealthy breakfast too and go all out. And then maybe we can go rob an old lady and steal a car or something. You down?"
She had to smile at that. It was almost impossible not to smile at him when he smiled like that; she'd rolled her eyes at it before, but now, no. Now she just smiled. "As long as you don't make me buy spray paint. And hey, I can hotwire a car. You just have to get us out of jail."
"You do not know how to hotwire a car! ... Do you?" As they moved forward in the line, he cocked his head a bit. "Because that'd be pretty hot. And please." He waved his hand dismissively. "My parents would post bail, easy."
"I'm not telling you now." Callas looked at him from under her lashes, a gesture which was unflinchingly feminine, and had nothing to do with the laugh she dissolved into. "Oh, they would, would they? For their reprobate son, maybe, but not me, I'm sure."
Even though the looking at him from under her lashes was just a joke, it was still stunning. "For their what son? Easy, English major," he teased. "And of course they would. I know it may be hard to believe considering .. you know, me, but my parents are pretty nice people. Why else do you think I drive that amazing car we came here with?"
"You can be nice when you want to be," Callas assured him. "And that's reprobate, as in unprincipled, wicked, morally depraved. You wouldn't know anything about that, right?" She pivoted on her heels to face him, letting them tap against the sidewalk. The sound was unfamiliar to someone used to sneakers, but she was trying. Not hard enough to wear a skirt - that'd be an immediate tip off something was wrong - but hard enough to wear tighter jeans with those heels, too.
"Unprincipled? Wicked? Morally depraved? I've never so much as heard of any of those things..." When she turned to face him, he grinned and unconsciously draped an arm loosely against her waist. "Also, don't talk about the nice thing so loudly. People might hear and then I'll be fucked. Don't ruin my reputation now."
She took things from unconscious to conscious when she stepped closer, using the curve of his arm around her to draw herself close. Callas ignored the possessiveness of such an action, its intimacy, and simply opted to enjoy it. "Don't worry, we'll get you right back on the proper track. I wouldn't have people thinking you were nice or sweet or any of the words that you so ardently abhor."
Eric really hadn't even noticed his gesture into Callas stepped into it and for a second, he was tempted to retract his arm because the whole thing was so very ... intimate. The second passed. "Thank God. 'Nice' and 'sweet' are the kiss of death."
She wouldn't stay very long; she promised herself that. Just long enough to kiss him, brush her lips against his in what he might take as a tease, little more than skin to skin. She didn't know who she was teasing, truth be told. Herself, or him. "So is predictable," Callas reminded him, and stepped away, contemplating the list of choices in front of her as the line drew them forward.
She broke contact with him, which started to tug his lips down but he pressed them together neutrally. "That better not be you calling me predictable. Otherwise I'm not buying your ice cream."
"Would you buy me two scoops if I was a good girl?" Callas fluttered her eyelashes at him mockingly when she turned to face him. "Cause, personally, I thought me subtly insinuating your predictability might indicate that you shouldn't buy me ice cream."
"That's what I just said, isn't it? I'm a spiteful person. I've never denied this." He had never denied any of his faults. Justified them, sure, but always completely owned up to them. "You'll have to do some quick damage control if you want two scoops. As in within the next thirty seconds, because we're up next."
"Spiteful, yes, but I like you, so I'm going to suck that up. How am I doing with the whole damage control thing?" Callas wanted to know, and came back to him, deliberately sashaying a little as she tugged on the lapel of his jacket. "And I can always offer to let you experience me on that whole wicked, unprincipled, morally depraved thing."
"Eh. You're doing okay," he said with a shrug. "Could be better ... experience you, you say?" His eyebrows went up, and then all of a sudden they had to order so they did. And once they had their ice cream, he reverted right back to that topic after a couple hearty licks. "I don't know how well you'd do with wicked, unprincipled and morally depraved."
"I'm a little offended by the gleam of challenge in your eyes," Callas retorted. She licked at her cone more daintily than Eric, but that was also because she was taking smaller bites. "I can define all of those words, Eric. If I can define them, I can do them."
"As much as I would love to believe that... I can think of a hundred, thousand things that I can define but not do." He smirked as they took off down the street again, glancing lazily around at all the cool shit surrounding them. "But if you're so desperate to prove me wrong, the back seat of my car is pretty roomy."
"Ooh, see, you almost had me. Except for the part where you called me desperate," Callas replied, arching an eyebrow. She reached for his ice cream and deliberately bit off a portion of the ice cream. "Mmm. I should have gotten that flavor." She licked her lips slowly once she'd swallowed, and stared at him, daring him to reply.
He hadn't almost had her, but he'd smile along like he had. When she bit off his ice cream, his eyebrows went up. As he watched her lips, her tongue dart out and smooth over them and then back in, his own lips settled into his ever present smirk. "Sorry, Callie. No trading. Unless, I mean, you make a really, really persuasive offer."
It was different when he called her Callie. When Michael called her Callie, it was a tease, based on their in jokes. Eric had no jokes attached to it; it was simply him shortening her name in familiarity. "What kind of persuasive offer?" she asked with an arched brow.
He took his own bite from his ice cream, deliberately drawing it out as much as possible. After he swallowed, he shrugged. "I'm definitely not the brains here. That would be you, English major."
She tried not to watch his mouth, that clever, mobile mouth, catching her breath and averting her gaze. "You're a film major," Callas replied. "If you can write a thesis on technique and directing styles, then you're not stupid."
"I'm just really good at rephrasing shit I find on Google," he said with a shrug. "Don't go giving me credit now." He wasn't being serious, obviously. Eric did a lot of stupid shit and broke the rules in a lot of different ways, but he didn't plagiarize. Well, not since that risky encounter in junior year.
"I'm sure that's how you've gotten this far," Callas replied dryly. "Cheating and soccer." She concentrated on the cone because the ice cream was starting to drip onto her hand. "So, where are we going? Shit." She licked the v of her thumb and index finger.
Soccer. Huh, he hadn't given thought to that in a while but he felt a small spark of excitement light up within. It'd be nice to be doing something physical again. Yeah, McDermott didn't exactly have an all star soccer team but he'd suck it up and consider it a minor miracle they had one at all.
"Actually, my good looks did most of the work. Cheating and soccer just came in second." He shifted his position a bit, so he was in front of her but walking backwards so they could still see each other. "It's how I roped you in, isn't it?" He chuckled a bit as she lapped up the dripping ice cream and took another bite from his. "So, we've officially ruled out the back seat of my car then?"
"Do you really think the backseat of your car in broad daylight is really an appropriate place for me to be taught certain things about you?" she inquired, and then grinned. She couldn't help it, even if a small part of her was just playing the expected role.
"Of course not," Eric replied dismissively. "But do you really think I've ever cared about what was appropriate?"
She didn't have to consider the answer to that question. She knew he didn't, not really. That lack of concern had formed the outer layers of who and what he was. "We'd have to go back outside," she said practically. "And also, I really resent being cast in the student role. You know, all wide-eyed innocence and naiveté. It's just not me."
"It's not," he agreed, and he bit into his cone when he had managed to suck up the remainder of the ice cream. "But playing pretend can be fun too, you know." He raised his eyebrows suggestively at that, the gesture so overtly obvious it was more mocking than anything.
Callas gave up on what was left of her ice cream, tossing it in the nearest trash can, fighting to keep from grinning at that. Her mouth twitched. "Oh, yes," she said when she turned back to him. Her voice lowered, going breathy and soft. "I'd love to play with you sometime."
Even though she was just playing along, his breath still hitched slightly at her low, seductive voice and he blinked slowly for a second as he breathed in. He wondered if she knew exactly how devastating she could be in moments like that, wondered if she knew exactly how much self restraint it took him to not jump her right there. "Only say that," he began, voice a bit more gravelly than usual. He cleared it before continuing, "If you mean it."
She meant it in some part. What, exactly, she meant, she wasn't sure. Callas felt the first fluttering stirs of something she couldn't identify as she listened to him; it pricked at her skin and made her bite her lower lip, looking at him more intensely. "Maybe I mean it," she said. "Not...in every way, but ....maybe I do."
Cone suddenly not important. He tossed it, using one of his now free hands (the least sticky one) to hold the side of her face, along the jaw line, before retracting it. "Is this the part where you clarify, or the part where I'm left in suspense?" He said this somewhat lightly because as usual, he could never fully succumb to the seriousness of a moment. He always had to make sure his head was above water.
She didn't know how to look at him then, and so she averted her eyes; that was partly also because she wanted to close them, wanted--oh God, she didn't know what she wanted. Aside from the fact that he was warm and close, and she'd forgotten how Eric felt teasing her like this. "Are you asking me to lay down terms?"
She wasn't meeting his eyes. That wasn't gonna work for him. "Hey," he said, lightly propping a finger under her chin so she'd look up. When he did succeed in getting her to look, he backed up a step. He didn't really know what he'd been asking, never could predict what their conversations would consist of (besides the end result of a fight and/or kiss, back in the day) but he nodded anyway. "Yeah, I am. Lay it on me, Callie."
Having this discussion here was awkward, but she couldn't ask that they leave. Callas was afraid, suddenly, of what would happen if they were alone. Afraid of how close they'd come, how much closer they could still go now that they were...
But she'd wanted that, didn't she? She'd been toying with the idea ever since they met, knowing he wanted her and knowing that she'd wanted to know something about sex for herself. Michael had robbed the intimacy of a first time from her, taken all the ideas she'd had and twisted them so that they'd hurt. In being around Eric, in vocalizing the attraction she'd felt, she had felt she was taking it back, taking control and making it her own. Albany had been her failed attempt to use him as her shield, and in realizing that it wouldn't work, she thought she'd stopped herself from wanting it.
She'd been so utterly fucked where sex was concerned. It wasn't just about the act itself. It was about the intimacy she'd have to achieve with someone first, a trust of more than just body to body. She knew Eric's body, what it was capable of. She had been with an athlete before. Callas trusted, in some way, that all that innate strength could be put positively into the act. She was cognizant of the fact that Eric wouldn't hurt her physically simply because however much of an asshole he could be, he wasn't inclined to push. He was too honest to deceive that way, and what Michael had done was about as much of a lie as anything else. Rape was a power trip, and a lie. It made a liar of him, of all the trust they'd put into their friendship. Eric wasn't a liar by body alone, by the words that he'd coupled with those actions.
But there was Auden to consider, too. Unlike the easy sparring that occupied her time with Eric, their time together was affectionate, warm. Physically, they'd sought one another out to fulfill a mutual hunger for something less than passion but more than friendship. When it had begun, they were both trapped by other people, the feelings they'd inspired and the hurts they'd borne after KJ was gone and Eric...had gotten too close too be comfortable. He'd revealed the lie behind her reasons for shutting herself away from the world. He'd touched her, and she'd been terrified by that. Auden had been retreat; she'd trusted him as a friend before they'd touched, before that first kiss. Unlike with Michael, though, a kiss hadn't spoiled everything.
That remembrance made her swallow hard. They blended, Auden and Eric, the touch of one's lips against hers soft, coaxing her to want more with her whole heart, the other's hands uncomplicated by higher thoughts of love, and yet... part of her couldn't deny Eric that. Couldn't deny she wanted him to love her, care about her as deeply as he wouldn't let himself feel. It struck her as ironic: Auden wanted to, couldn't because it hurt, because he wasn't ready, and Eric didn't want to because it went against everything he was to allow himself to feel it.
And now she was here, looking into blue eyes as clear as the summer sky, and she didn't know what to choose. What to say, even. "I want things," she said slowly. "I just...I'm not ready to have sex, Eric. At least not..." Callas waved a hand to try and express penetrative sex without actually saying the words. "Just...I mean, I like being touched by you, and touching you, I just...can't...can't do everything." Apprehensively, she looked at him, biting her lower lip to see what he'd say.
Eric wasn't able to deny the surge of disappointment that ran through him. It probably made him an asshole, but hey ... what was new? Callas had wanted the sense that he actually cared for her, right? That's why she wouldn't sleep with him before? Had he not proved that? He had turned her down when she wanted to sleep with him because it wasn't for the right reasons (okay, that, and he was pissed off it was over some other guy ... and God help him if that other guy was still in the picture ... he hadn't thought about it til now). He had asked her to take a chance on him and here they were, dating.
And still, she couldn't do it.
Sex was important to him and honestly, he didn't know how long he'd be able to hold out. It wasn't something he had done ... oh, ever. There had always been girls available to him. After a while, it was just something he started to take for granted. If one didn't want to, another one would. The only time he'd actually stopped in place was with Amy and now, with Callas. And it certainly wasn't easy.
It's not that he didn't understand. What she had gone through ... what that motherfucker had done to her ... he understood. She had been raped. That wasn't something you just bounce back from. And generally, it was the sort of thing that would make him quietly retreat because he wouldn't be able to fucking handle it. He wouldn't have the slightest clue how to try and really, it'd be too draining to try so sorry, that sucks, but some white knight will swoop in, don't worry...
No white knight. Just him. And he wanted to try, because he did like her. More than he had ever wanted to, ever intended her. So here he was... trying. Which meant taking a cold shower and dealing with it.
He breathed out. "Yeah," he said finally, after taking a second to process everything. "I get it. I wish it was different but..." he smiled wryly. "We can blame Michael for that, can't we?"
She wished, for a second, he'd have phrased that differently. That it wouldn't have been just Michael standing in their way, but the fact that this was new, terrifyingly so. That they needed to take things more slowly. Still, she couldn't have expected that. "Yes," she said instead, and came toward him. "Or you could just take me outside, Eric, and we could not talk about blame for a while."
Translation: or we could just not talk. Which shouldn't have bothered him because his entire fucking life he had tried to avoid serious conversation, so what made this so different? He sensed that he'd said the wrong thing but nodded anyway. "Outside? You mean where there's people and fresh air and other places besides this ice cream shop? What could you possibly want with outside?" He grinned and got up, leading the way toward the door. "But if you insist..."
Callas smiled back at him, following him outside. Not talking about it would be a good thing, in her book, because it wouldn't hurt if she didn't talk about it. "I do," she agreed easily enough. "I think a walk might be a good thing, especially if I don't want that ice cream going straight to my thighs." Oh, there was an innuendo there.
Eric, who generally lived for innuendo, completely didn't catch that one. "Whatever, Callie. It's gonna take more than a cone or two for that to start going in effect. But you know..." He was about to end that off with 'there are other ways to burn calories' which meant, well, duh, but then that put him into asshole boyfriend territory who was constantly begging his girlfriend to screw him. Well, fuck. "Maybe we won't take that chance," he finished, not quite smoothly but well enough.
Callas didn’t want Eric to avoid the innuendos which made his conversation, well, his. She didn’t want their relationship to have to tiptoe around subjects, and yet…given his response to the issue, blaming Michael when it wasn’t just that holding her back, and given the Auden issue which she hadn’t explained or even tried to talk about since that night she’d come to Eric and told him she was ready…perhaps it was best that they did, for now, anyway. She wanted this to work, and if they were going to work, then she needed to get over Auden.
Maybe she should have said she was ready to have sex. There was the old adage that the best way to get over a man was to get under another one, and it wasn’t as if she and Eric would stop seeing one another once they had. If she could trust him to stay, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. It hadn’t been when he was the one touching her; he made no lie of it. He hadn’t wanted what she herself hadn’t wanted, and yes, Michael had been part of her reasoning, but so had Eric himself.
Maybe she couldn’t do everything just yet, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t do things. Shouldn’t be doing things, she thought, and tried to avoid thinking of anything else to focus on them.
They walked out of the Center and she glanced at him, biting her lower lip before she brought it back up, because this was her and contradiction was her middle name. “Eric,” Callas said, and paused, ignoring the passersby who had to step around them. “Maybe I do want to talk about it. I’m just…I don’t think this is all Michael’s fault, and I’m not sure how to approach you about it. Can we give that another try?”
How could it not be all Michael's fault? But maybe that was just Eric trying to take the easy way out. Make sense of things in his head without it getting all complicated. Like, there was a problem and there was a reason. Easy. But it wasn't like that, was it?
"Okay," he said after a second, scratching behind his ear. "So ... wait. What are you saying?"
“I’m saying that…” Callas exhaled, shifting her stance as she looked at him. “That some part of me wants to. I’ve wanted to with you before.” She flushed a little as she said it, because it was true, even if the circumstances of Albany had been awkward at best. It certainly wasn’t for a lack of physical attraction between them that she was hesitant. “And…and Michael did make me hesitant. It’s not that I don’t trust that you’d be different. I do. I just…the whole idea sort of makes me…”
She looked away from him, watching the flow of traffic. Her skittishness wasn’t the only reason for it, and it shouldn’t be the excuse. “There’s one more reason that I…sort of…”
Eric nodded along to the first bit. It was frustrating and just sucked all around but he got it. He wasn't that big of a jack ass that he had no grasp on emotion and all that. Yes, he had definitely spent the better part of his life avoiding and/or ignoring emotion or even trying to manipulate it, but he understood it. The idea of sex made her uncomfortable. Okay. She had been raped. It made sense. It did. It just ... when had his life gotten so fucking complicated?
When she trailed off, he cocked his head a bit. "Yeah?" he prompted, somewhat distractedly. He was still mulling over the Michael thing. Over the time she had come to him, practically offering him sex. Over Albany. All those those times they had come so close.
Callas hesitated further still. She didn't want to tell him about Auden, not then. "Look. We've barely even been together for more than a month. Don't you think that we should be taking this a little more slowly than jumping into full sex? I mean...I'm not saying there aren't things we can't be doing. I'm for that. I just...I don't feel ready for everything, and I want to know that you're on the same page. Is that really hard?"
Eric did a pretty good job of keeping the disappointment off his face, he was pretty sure. Yes, it was hard. It was really fucking hard. But what choice did he have, right? He liked Callas a lot. Hadn't felt for someone like he felt for her since Amy. So. He'd wait. Nothing else he could do. "It's not easy," he said honestly. "But ... okay." He briefly wondered what 'things' they could be doing before quirking his mouth down a bit. "I have to ask though ... what changed? Because before Christmas, you were... seemed like you had your mind made up." Although that had been propelled by a fight she had. With that Auden kid. Or about that Auden kid. He had practically forgotten about that, because it seemed so irrelevant and now it didn't really matter at all. Right?
Before Christmas she had had her mind made up. She hadn't been ready, but she'd been determined to do it anyway. She had needed to do it, and then Eric had talked her out of it. She looked down at the pavement and then back at him, because he deserved to be faced when she was admitting this. "Before Christmas, I wanted to do it because I was upset at someone else. My motives weren't about us, Eric. They were about him. And that isn't fair, not to you, not to me, not to us. I...I want it to be about us, if we're having sex. And it wouldn't be."
"All right. Really. I'll stop asking." He held up his hands for a brief moment, as if in surrender, and then slid an arm around her waist and began walking again. Being so still was frustrating. He needed to be in motion again. As they dodged another couple, a thought quickly occurred to him. "Do you still talk to him?"
She didn't flinch from him, even if she probably should have. "We did, for a while after that." Callas chewed her lower lip, remembering. For what it's worth, I wish it were different. What the hell that meant, she didn't know. She couldn't pretend to know, when Auden was already gone and it didn't matter. Her feelings on the matter didn't matter. Couldn't matter, because Eric was here and Auden wasn't. "We stopped talking a couple of weeks ago."
Eric's eyebrows went up at that slightly, and he turned his head a bit so he was facing her. "Should I ask why?"
"It was inappropriate to talk to someone like that when I have a boyfriend," she said, and it was a glib enough lie.
How the fuck had they been talking? "Don't tell me you sent him dirty texts every night," Eric joked... kind of.
Callas rolled her eyes. "We weren't like that. Just..." She lifted her shoulder in a half shrug. "You know. We talked a lot."
And had hooked up too, apparently. Huh. Well. It didn't really matter anyway. Her and Auden didn't talk anymore either and she was with him. So really ... "Well, whatever works for you, I guess," Eric said with a shrug. He wanted to ask more, but he didn't want to appear too concerned over the dude so he'd leave it be. Because there was nothing to worry about. Yep. Definitely. Well, maybe...
'Whatever works for you?' Callas looked at him somewhat incredulously. "That's it?"
Something snapped in him. Eric breathed out and then let go of her completely, turning his body so he was directly facing her this time. "What do you want me to say, Callas?" he snapped. "Should I be concerned? Should I kick his ass? Should I take your word for it? What?" His frustration colored his words brightly and he knew he was being an asshole but there it was.
His response did cause her to recoil, because there it was, the anger and the frustration she thought he'd been holding back. "I didn't want you to hide the fact that you're obviously upset by this," she said, keeping her tone even. "Look, Auden...was my friend, and we screwed that up when we kissed. Neither one of us really got past it." That was an understatement.
Eric inhaled, exhaled and then rubbed at his temple. He had gone from cold to hot in about 1.2 seconds and now he was back down. He shook his head at Callas's explanation. "Sorry, but that still tells me fuck all. Should I be concerned or not?"
"Concerned about what?" Callas questioned. "About whether or not I'm fucking him behind your back? What are you asking me, Eric?" Was her tone defensive? Absolutely, because it was really ironic that they were having this conversation when the point of her weekend away had been to try and forget Auden had ever crossed her mind as anything more than a friend.
Her tone was slightly dangerous, but he wasn't about to back off. "I don't know, actually," he said with a shake of his head. "But sure. Let's start at that one."
She stared at him, hazel eyes narrow with concentration. "I'm not having sex with anyone," she said, her voice flat. "I'm not touching anyone else, kissing anyone else, doing anything else in that category of all things people do to get one another off. I'm not even flirting with anyone. Is that satisfactory?"
How the fuck had this conversation even gotten here? He had never assumed Callas was doing any of those things until about a minute ago. Not that he still assumed. He accepted what she said. Didn't he? There was no need for some bullshit seed of doubt, especially when she couldn't even have sex with someone she was dating. How would she be having sex with someone else? Or maybe ...
Jesus fuck. This was getting ridiculous. "Let's just go. Anywhere else you want to hit up?"
"What about you?" she blurted out.
The question was justified enough, considering what he had just asked but he stopped anyway. And shook his head with a smile, although the smile held little humor in it. "We really don't trust each other even a little, do we?"
Had they given one another reason or time to develop such trust? Callas looked back at him, folding her arms around herself. "No," she admitted softly.
God. Eric pressed his lips together for a long moment before shaking his head. "No, there's no one else. Ready to go?"
"No, I don't want to go," Callas replied. "I want us to talk, Eric. We never had a reason to trust one another before. But we can try now, can't we? Cause...if we can't, then we might as well just give up right now."
Here? Did they have to have this conversation here? But they had been for the last ever, so it's not like it really mattered anymore. "I can try. I thought I was. Can you?"
"I am trying," Callas said, and let out her breath. "I can try, Eric. This is what I want, okay? You are what I want."
"This is what I want too." He hadn't gotten this far just to peace out barely a month lately. This could work. They could make it work and God, it was fucking scary how much he really did want it to work. "So ... okay. We good then?"
"Yes." Callas looked back at him, offered the first tentative curl of a smile. She slid forward, embraced him just long enough to brush her lips against his cheek. "So. What are we waiting for, again?"
His lips tilted upward half-heartedly and then shrugged. "Nothing. I mean, we can drive around, go find some cool places. Maybe go eat some real food. Whatever you're up for."
She looked at him, really looked, and then nodded, stepping back from him slowly. "Okay. I'd like that."
He held her gaze, an eyebrow arching upward til she spoke again. "Okay," he repeated. He then offered a smile. At least, it was almost a smile. "Let's go."