Vine Square then Apt. 12221, Midnightish, Jazz and Tom
Tonight was the last night. By the time the sun peeked over the horizon the circo would be all all but gone, the rides and tents dismantled, the people retreating to their trucks and trailers. They would be back, but when? Or where? No one could say for sure. For Jazz, it was truly an end. All the confusion, the uncertainty, the things she couldn't explain - it had somehow led her to this moment. They wouldn't notice her missing, not until it was too late. They'd be miles away, setting up in some new place, and she'd be here. Right here.
In the dark she hurried. Luck had helped her in finding that women's shelter, she hoped luck now would help her getting back to it without trouble. In one pocket she fingered the slick cellphone. A talisman...and a promise. A promise that she'd make this work somehow. Idly she wondered if out there, somewhere, right now her sister - sister! - was thinking of her.
I'll find her, she told herself. On the tail of that, came the image of him in her mind. Thomas Avery. He was, really, the reason for all this. His insistence, the way he'd looked at her before they'd parted....
She paused at a crosswalk, checking for traffic even as she smirked lightly. She rather hoped he'd think of her, even if he'd never admit it. He was far too proud, too...superior to admit to something like that about likes of her.
The clock atop a nearby church began to chime the hour, the bell breaking the night with it's deep, lonely tones. She found herself shivering, as she listened. She'd never liked that noise, so dark and sad. It made her want to go home and find people to keep her company, remind her she was alive.
She turned, deciding to do just that and....stopped. Right there in the middle of the street. A car screeched to a halt, almost clipping her, but she didn't seem to see it. She didn't seem to see anything, she was lost...lost....The cab laid on the horn and Jazz jerked, suddenly back.
Back - from where? She darted out of the way and hopped up onto the curb, leaning against the lamppost there. Where was she? Why...how?
She looked around, hands patting at her pockets, looking for her keys...her cell phone. Anything. Anything that could help her, tell her what she was doing in the middle of Vine Square in the middle of the night with no memory of how she'd gotten there.
~.~
Thomas closed the door of the apartment 12221 behind him. He had been having a few drinks with a stock broker friend of his, and it was almost midnight now that he came back home. He dropped the keys to the table by the door, under the mirror, and took off his jacket.
He didn't know it, but in the kitchen the time in the microwave oven changed from 23:59 to 00:00. Thomas continued to walk to his bedroom to put his jacket away to the wardrobe, and then he walked back towards the bathroom to brush his teeth before retiring to bed. He passed the mirror again, and this time he stopped abruptly in front of it to take another look.The moustache. He leaned closer to the mirror and traced his fingers along his lip where the moustache had previously been for over a month. Now it wasn't there. Maybe he had shaved it off in the morning before going to work in La Fee Verte, still sleepy and not realizing what he was doing. But he would have noticed it during the day, wouldn't he? Thomas stood there, completely puzzled and wondering if he was going crazy, when he suddenly heard a door open somewhere in the apartment and steps coming towards him.
"Who's there?" he called out cautiously. Lucas, in a t-shirt and boxers and fuzzy hair stopped on his way to the kitchen, and looked at his uncle like he was crazy.
"Man, it's just me, who else? Are you drunk?"
Thomas blinked and realized he did feel like he had been drinking. Strange - he had come straight from work, hadn't he, driving in his own car too. Of course he usually did taste wines every day at work, but not enough to get alcohol breath and feel a little dizzy. And why hadn't he remembered right away that it was just Lucas? Somehow he had expected no one to be around in his apartment.
"Luke? When did I shave off my moustache?" he asked the boy, following him to the kitchen."What, you don't remember it yourself? You're getting old. And I wouldn't know, I don't care about your bloody moustache. D'you want some tea?"
"No..." Thomas shook his head, frowning. "No, I'm good."
~.~
With no money, no car, and no cell phone, Jazz had been forced to walk back to the Manor. Along the way bits came back to her - sensations, glimpses of what could only be a dream. It was upsetting, both the dream itself and the fact that it came back more readily to her than anything else - even things she aught to have remembered first. Like what she'd done with her day, what she'd had for dinner, how the hell she'd ended up in Vine Square without a cent to her name?
Had she been drinking? And then while she was unawares someone had picked her pockets? Embarrassing, upsetting...but better than the only alternative she could come up. An idea that she desperately wanted to write off and ignore, but that once had haunted around in the corners of her mind. Had...she been sleep walking? It would explain why she remembered some nightmare before all else. And it would explain why she didn't have any of her belongings - if not why she was still dressed and not buck naked as she often was when sleeping. Not that she was complaining about that particular detail.
When she finally got back to the Manor there was a moment where she feared security wouldn't let her in. Stupid, but for the several heart-pounding minutes it took her to cross the Lobby to the elevator, very real. But no one moved to stop her and unmolested she stepped into the elevator and finally released the breath she didn't know she'd been holding when the doors closed behind her.
It was late, she should have hit the button for her floor and gone home - but she didn't. Confused, uncertain, and yes, frightened, there was only one place she really wanted to go. Needed to go.
The elevator carried her up to twelve and she hurried down the hall when it opened to release her, coming quickly to the door to 12221. She bit her lip, frustrated again by her lack of keys, and knocked. While she waited another strange, unexplainable fear cropped up. She could imagine, too easily, Tom coming to the door and telling her to leave. That he didn't know her, didn't want her...She told herself she was being silly, that of all things likely he was probably sleeping and would chastise her for waking him.
But - there it was, growing inside her with each passing second, as frighteningly real as her fear of security.
Panic rising, she knocked again.
The door opened soon after the second knocking, and it was Thomas who opened it. There he stood, in black dress pants and shoes on but the dark purple dress shirt already open and the tie gone. He looked like he had come from work a while ago, with his hair done and a shadow of a stubble on his chin, but indeed, no moustache.
"Estrella?" he asked looking puzzled but opened the door further for her.
Jazz looked up, face lighting up with relief -- that disappeared as quickly as it come when her eyes landed on his face. Specifically on the missing facial hair. There was a flash of another time, another place and horribly she wondered if she was dreaming. If she was caught in some terrible nightmare. Without thinking her hand snapped out and gave him a good, hard pinch on the arm.
"Ow, ow!" Thomas jerked back and held his arm where she had pinched him. There actually was a red, nasty mark from her nails. "What the hell, bonita? Are you drunk? You don't look alright! Come inside, you crazy woman, if you want to make a scene about something, let's not have the neighbors hear about it."
She murmured, "Oh thank God," and in a sudden, complete reversal jumped forward to wrap her arms around him. She nuzzled her cheek against his skin, heard his heart beating beneath and decided there and then that was easily one of the most wonderful sounds she'd ever heard. "For a second there I thought-"
She didn't finish telling him what she thought, leaning back suddenly instead to look up at him. "What happened to your moustache?"
Thomas pulled her further in with him and closed the door behind them. Then he looked down at the woman in his arms frowning. She looked different now, like she hadn't been tending to her hair or hygiene as well as she usually did, and her skin was cold like she had been outside for a long time. "I'm.. not exactly sure. This night keeps getting stranger and stranger, and you're worrying me now quite a bit. What's wrong, bonita?" he asked, one arm wrapped around her waist, and brushing her hair with the other.
Jazz frowned and reached up to gently touch his lip with her fingertip. Had she done it? If she'd been sleep walking after all, could she have - shaved him for some reason? Why would she do that? It didn't make any sense...but then, a lot of things weren't making sense right now.
"I don't know," she admitted. "I just - I just walked back from the Square. And I have no idea why."
Thomas frowned and shook his head, obviously not understanding. "What do you mean? It's the middle of the night, it's no time for a woman to walk alone in the City! Why were you there anyway? I could have picked you up on my way home from work. I think."
He looked in the distance for a while. He must have been at work, he knew he had had a shift that day, but he still didn't understand why he could taste the sting of strong alcohol in his throat, or why he had been at work this late anyway on a Saturday when La Fee Verte closes early.
She looked up at him helplessly, unable to give him any better answer the one she already had. "I...don't know. I don't remember why I was there, or even how I got there." She kept her tone light enough but there was clearly an undercurrent of fear there. Confusion.
She brushed her fingers over his cheek because she needed to and hooked one finger on the hand at his waist into one of his belt loops. "The only thing I do remember - doesn't make a whole lot of sense."
"Come on, let's go to the bedroom, Luke doesn't need to overhear any of this," Thomas said before she could continue. With his arm around her he walked her to his rooms, closed the door behind him and turned on the soft light on the night stand.
"What is it?" he asked, urging her to continue now as he sat her down on the bed, and settled to sit beside her and holding her against his side.
Jazz looked hesitant. It was one thing to think she was possibly crazy herself and another to have someone else call her crazy. Especially someone as, well, important as Tom. But finally she steadied herself with a little lift of her chin and said, "I've been having this dream. I think I've been having it a lot, and had it again tonight - it's very vivid. And really the only thing I seem to be able to recall with any real clarity." She chewed her lip and her voice was quieter when she spoke again. A little breathless. "It's...unpleasant."
Thomas tightened his hold around her, pulling her closer so he could plant a soft, lingering kiss on her forehead. He did not say anything, but waited for her to tell him in her own pace without pressing on. His hand stroke her arm as he held her, and his free hand took hers in a reassuring gesture, with his thumb running over the back of her hand.
Her eyes closed under his ministrations, her embarrassment growing as she carried on. "I was back in the circo, or, I'd never left and...my father was there and he was so much worse-" she tensed as a phantom jolt of pain hit her, another bit of the dream coming back to her. "He was angry with me, he hit me." She opened her eyes, blinked, and pulled back so she could look up at him, watching him as she expected him to up and disappear in a puff of smoke. "I was all alone."
"Bonita..." he sighed and wrapped now both of his arms around her to press her against his bare chest with his shirt open. One arm held her firmly, the other slid up into her hair. "You're not alone, I'm right here. It was just a dream, a long, continuous, vivid dream. None of that happened. You're right here with me now, and you've been here for a long time already, not at that circus." His tone was quiet, but reassuring, and he managed to speak sounding like he had no doubt about his words, even though what she said did ring a distant bell in his mind, somehow. His memory of the last week or so was all a blur, after all, but he couldn't have his bonita so upset.
Her arms found him again, wrapping around him and holding on as she shifted in his arms to tuck her head into the curve of his shoulder. “I know I’m being dumb,” she murmured, lips brushing his skin lightly. “I know. I just – I was in the Square and I couldn’t remember…and I just wanted to be here. Right here.” Her breath hushed over his skin, stirring his hair as her voice broke into a sigh and she swallowed reflexively.
"You're not dumb," he said right away, and stroke her hair with his hand gently. "If it makes you feel any better, I feel almost as confused. I have a new cellphone, and a new watch, but I don't know where they came from or what happened to the old ones. Isn't that dumb? Besides, you won our bet. The moustache is gone, and I'm so dumb I don't even know how," he tried to turn it all into a joke, just to make her feel better and smile.
Jazz lifted her head and tilted it back to look at his face again. Slowly, her mouth turned up. “True. And that means I can do this again.” And she leaned forward to dot a pair of small kisses on his top lip.
He smiled, and then chuckled, closing his eyes to receive the kisses. When she was right about done, he didn't let her back away without kissing her properly. His hand in her hair held her head in place as his mouth covered hers to suckle at her lips. At the same time he used his other arm to scoop her up properly, and shifted a little in order to move her from beside him to sit on his lap.
"There," he said when the kiss broke. "Did we ever agree on what the winner of the bet would get?"
“Hmm…” Her eyes dreamy, she didn’t immediately respond other than to offer him a blissful, lazy smile. Finally she seemed to realize he was waiting for something and she blinked, grin widening. “What? - Oh, right, the bet – hmm, I don’t think we did and let me tell you, Senor,” she shifted her arms, looping them around his neck as she leaned forward to brush the tip of her nose against his. “I am a sore winner. I’ll accept only the finest in payment.” His hands lowered to hold her hips, and he couldn't help but tilt his head briefly to steal a small kiss from her.
"What kind of a man do you think I am? Only the best will do, for myself and especially for my bonita!" he reminded her, and would have seemed hurt if he wasn't so eager on the kissing. "Name your prize." The taste of him was on her lips; the feel of him beneath her hands, against her thighs. He made it tough to concentrate.
“Tell me I can stay tonight.” She nuzzled his cheek, then returned for another kiss. “I want to stay.”
He snorted into the kiss, breaking it abruptly. He glared at her under his brow when he said, "That won't do. You'll have to come up with something proper or I will have to assume you did not take our bet - and me! - seriously!" he scolded her. "And since when have you needed my permission to stay here anyway? Our relationship started with you coming here on your own, think about that," he pointed out and gave her buttock a slap.
That little swat seemed to drive away all but the last of her distress as she laughed. She took his response to mean that she could and she would and it pleased her very much. "Ah, but I didn't stay then." Dark eyes dancing at him, she daringly ignored the worst of his stern tones and leaned back in to run her lips along his cheekbone and over to his ear so she could whisper a secret to him. "But I wanted to though. The more often I was here - the more I wondered what you'd do if you came home to find me waiting in your bed..."
Thomas was delighted, and somewhat aroused too, by that naughty thought. He made a low throaty laughter and leaned his head down to nuzzle against the side of her neck. "Maybe I'll show you," he murmured under her ear, and just then she could feel his teeth graze on her skin, but it turned into a long, wet, suckling kiss moving on her neck. Thomas turned slowly with her in his arms, kissing her neck and breathing her scent, and then he finally dipped her down on her back on the bed.
Jazz tilted her head for him and arched a little more when her back met the mattress, more than happy to offer him more of her skin. Her arms unwound and shifted to his waist, underneath his handsome dress shirt so her hands roam over the warm expanse of his back. Nimble fingers investigating the elegant line of his spine and the easy way his shoulder blade rolled and shifted as he moved, she smiled.
"Does this mean I'd be getting my first request anyway?" she asked softly, a hint of amusement in her voice. "Because if so, there is something else I wouldn't say no to...."
Reluctantly his lips parted from her skin and he looked up at her, holding himself above her with his hands on either side of her. "Anything," he said, and meant it.
Jazz laughed again. He was lucky she had restraint – she could so get used that particular demand.
“I think, it has been far to long since you have taken me dancing,” she smiled up at him. “So that’s what I want – next evening you can squeeze me in. Of course, that also means I’ll be needing a pretty new dress for you to pretend to care about until I let you take it off me.”
He smiled at her for finally letting him pamper her into things that she liked. "Some afternoon, as soon as possible, we'll go out, have lunch, and go shopping. I'll endure it if we go to the shops that I choose, you let me see the dresses when you try them on, and you won't look at price tags. And perhaps you will also need shoes and a hand bag?" he pondered. "But the necklace I will get you," he decided, and planted a kiss between her collarbones, right where the necklace would be. "And then we'll go dancing."
She took a breath and opened her mouth, ready to insist that that was way too much. But then…let it go with an amused sigh.
“You’re going to turn me into one of those spoiled, contented types, aren’t you?” she asked, turning her head to nip at his shoulder playfully.
Thomas nodded right away. "Yes I am. But a chihuahua is one step too far, just so you know," he added. In his mind, this had been all too much talking already, so while he got back to suckling her throat, he removed his shirt one sleeve at a time, and threw it away. Then, with his arms free, he wrapped on around and under her, and with the other he stroke down from the side of her breast, over her side, hip and along her thigh, and then back up sliding the hem of her dress up.
“Overgrown rats,” Jazz promised, with enough distaste in her tone to make it clear she meant it. “All shakey and yappy, I would nev-” And then his hand was stroking over the skin of her thigh and she forgot all about Chihuahuas and promises not get one as the world narrowed down to only the most important things: him and her and the way he made her feel.