Who: Cass and Wren What: Going home from the ball Where: The ball, the road, and Hamartia 203 When: After the ball EDIT: Now with the morning after. Warnings: Sexual content minus the sex.
By the time Cass had found Wren at the dance, the sky was already going light outside the huge ballroom windows.
She slipped out of his arms, the fairytale coming to an end, and she gave him a very graceful, very trained curtsy, the pale blue and gold of her skirt swirling about her with an elegance that looked effortless. “I’ll let you drive me home,” she told him as she rose, and her expression didn’t look like she was making him a sexual proposal. It was precisely what she had said, permission to see her to her door - if he wanted it.
Sunrise came faster than he expected, and the ball went by far faster than he had thought it might. By the time Wren was asking him for a ride home, however, he was more than happy to provide it. Good company or no, he was ready to go home to the quiet and the isolation and get away from the crowd.
He walked out with her, hailing a valet and waiting for the car. “Have you ever been to a ball like that before?” he asked. He expected the answer would be yes, no doubt she’d had clients drag her to events just to have a beautiful girl on their arm to be envied.
“Never that formal,” she admitted in English, the cool morning air blowing her hair loose of its style, brown tendrils wispy free around the circlet she wore. “But I’ve had training for it,” she admitted openly, with a candor that did not reach being prideful. “To fit in, I mean,” she added. And it was true, she could passably speak the languages, and she knew the formal dances and the etiquette. She even knew how to greet royalty and in what order, though she doubted she’d ever need it. She tipped her head, and she touched the front of the designer suit jacket he wore, her fingers soft on the fabric, a smile on her lips at the feel of it under skin. “Soft.”
“Where do you get training for that sort of thing?” he asked, genuinely curious and hoping the answer wasn’t his first assumption. The lessons for him had never been quite so formal, nor so detailed - he didn’t know anything about greeting royalty, though he had known once how to maneuver a room full of people you didn’t want to talk to like nothing pleased you more than being around them. When she remarked on the softness of the fabric, he smiled faintly. “I bought it for that very reason.”
The car pulled up, and he tipped the valet, closing the door behind her after she climbed inside. It was a lexus, an LS 10 in black. It was appropriately luxurious inside, but he hadn’t put much thought into the purchase and he had no particular feelings for the car. It wasn’t as if he left the apartment all that much. He’d bought it assuming he might actually have use for it after following Bonnie to this world. Aside from occasions like this one, where you were expected to come in an appropriately expensive car, he doubted he’d be driving it hardly at all.
He glanced in the rear view mirror at the hotel and the people pouring out of it to wait for their cars, then pulled out onto the street.
The car was beautiful in an elegant way that spoke of standing and prestige. It didn’t purr like Hal’s did, it hadn’t been modified and enhanced. It was just a car, and she didn’t think it mattered to him any more than the suit did. She slipped off the heels, and she curled her feet up beside her on the seat. “I have a dance instructor that comes, and I paid for classes in etiquette and behavior and modeling,” she told him. “I went to language tutors, and I used computer programs, and I read books in other languages.” She pressed her cheek to the black leather, and she noted that his blue eyes looked darker in the early morning light. “Why did you buy the car?” she asked, wondering if there was a practical reason as there was with the suit.
He kept his eyes on the road, and shook his head a little in disbelief. “Modeling.” He glanced over at her. “You really needed all of that?” He could see how some of them worked into it, but not all of them. Modeling, for instance, made no sense to him. She was beautiful and sure of herself. She likely had no trouble at all getting...clients. And the behavior, and the etiquette - there were enough boorish rich for that to hardly be necessary, he thought.
He shrugged. “I thought I might have use for one,” he said. “It drives smoothly, it’s comfortable.” That was the end of that, really. Ostentatious expressions of wealth had never really been his style. He much preferred people to not know how much money he had. He used it to live comfortably, and that was all, no suits for every day of the week, no gold-leaf encrusted chinaware. When he spent extra money it went toward things like privacy and comfort, practicalities. What did you say your last name was again? He had wondered more than once whether things would have been the same between him and Clara if she had known he had money from the beginning, but every time he came to the same conclusion. Clara had been unique in all ways, and he knew her. She would have treated him exactly the same way.
“Light,” she told him, and she reached for the radio and turned it on. She pressed the button to pick the type of music she wanted on the XM radio, and she settled on a classical station, smiling as a minuet began. “I didn’t want to walk the streets, Cass,” she told him with utter openness, “and the more refined you are, the less of a chance there is you’ll have to risk dying there.” It was the truth, and she didn’t hide it for his benefit. Too many girls did die on those streets, and there was word of a serial killer in the area recently, two deaths of working girls having been reported in a span of days. “Rich men, they want someone dirty and refined. They want the perfect curtsy, and the wanton whore.”
His expression darkened, eyes fixed on the road again. “I don’t understand why you would do it at all,” he said. “Involving yourself in a profession that could get you killed and sends you to be regularly degraded by men who want to treat you like an object. You’re intelligent. You could have done something different.”
“I’m intelligent because of everything I studied to do what I do,” she said simply. She didn’t argue whether she was or wasn’t intelligent; everything she knew now she had learned to get off the street, which made his argument invalid. “Do you like me, Cassidy?” she asked bluntly.
There was no world in which he was going to believe that studying at skills to make her career in prostitution easier was what made her intelligent, but he didn’t voice that particular sentiment. He glanced over at her again, trying to gauge her expression, why she was asking. “I do,” he said. He’d told her that before - it was the truth.
“Then you like the whore, whether you want to admit it or not. Being what I am has defined me, Cassidy, just like being wealthy has defined you,” she said softly, as if neither were bad things. “I would be an entirely different person without it.”
His frown deepened slightly, and he watched the yellow line, stopping for a red light at a deserted intersection. That shouldn’t have to happen. She shouldn’t feel that the only reason her life had turned out this way was because of that aspect of it. And what if that different person she might be would be happier? Better off? He didn’t argue that being wealthy had defined his life, but who knew? Without it, maybe he would have been happier as well. There would have been no money to pay for a trip by ship, for instance.
“No reply?”
He sighed. “Nothing that matters,” he said. “I know by now that nothing I say is going to change anything.”
“But I like talking about it with you,” she admitted. “Even if I don’t change my mind.”
He looked over at her, long enough that the light turned green. “Why?” He was incredulous. He imagined she had to be sick of it by now.
“Because it’s the only thing you’re passionate about,” she told him simply. She reached a hand to the steering wheel, her fingers sliding along the smooth black of it in a caress. “If you cared about this, I’d like hearing you talk about this. You don’t. You care about that.”
He scowled. “I care about you,” he said, and it rolled off the tongue more easily than he expected it to. “There’s a difference.” He chose not to argue with her about the small breadth of things he felt anything at all for. He loved books, but even that was difficult to argue as a passion.It was something to pass the time with, something he enjoyed, but not something that he lived for.
She moved her hand from the steering wheel to his cheek, even as they turned onto the main road to Hamartia. In the alleys, can fires burned and women who had seen better days stood on the corners, their pimps hanging out in doorways and smoking with one another. She looked over her shoulder and out the window, her gaze a little too intense on catching what was happening after the night she’d missed out. Unthinkingly, she caressed his cheek while she looked out, her touch silken soft and so removed from everything happening outside the elegant car.
He saw her look out and followed her gaze for a moment, turning his head as she touched his cheek. He didn’t shy away from the touch, though he didn’t react to it right away. A few moments later, he reached up and touched the back of her hand. Her skin was lily white, pale and soft. “What are you looking for?” he asked, slipping his hand over hers.
She looked back at him, and she smiled at his touch to her hand, the smile a soft-fond thing. “Looking.” She went quiet for a moment, looked a moment longer still. “What do you see?” she asked.
He looked out again. “Pimps, prostitutes, homeless people. People whose lives haven’t been as lucky as mine.” Somewhere in there was a touch of black humor, but it was true, for the most part. He expected any one of them would gladly trade places with him, not knowing what they were actually in for.
“I see people who are vulnerable,” she admitted, because she did. It was as close to a confession of what she did as he was going to get, but it was a confession just the same. She looked back at him, and then she pointed to the sidewalk about a block from Hamartia, in front of a very secure 24-hour video store. “Park there and walk me the last block?” she asked very intentionally.
“True enough,” he said. He could agree with that - it was part of why he had such issues with her profession. Even though she wasn’t a streetwalker, it still left her vulnerable, put her at risk.
He glanced over at her. He wasn’t exactly immensely keen on the idea of getting his car stolen, but he’d only be a block away. He pulled up in front of the store, getting out and opening the door on her side for her before locking the car up.
She walked far enough away from him that he could get a good feeling for the sidewalk and the people on it. Dressed as he was, having gotten out of that car like he did, the women and men that walked the street all tried to get his attention. They looked much like you’d expect workers in this area of town (where no one with money ever ventured) to look - worn, tired, dirty and desperate. The desperation was the worst. It was something that was almost taste-thick in the air, the fact that they wanted to be saved. She didn’t say anything as they walked, she just kept her eyes down and didn’t get in the way of anyone trying to proposition him.
He didn’t have any cash, and he told a few of the people trying to get his attention as much, walking with one eye on them and one eye on Wren. The women who propositioned him he either walked by or turned down, and he got not a few curses in response. It felt like running a gauntlet, and the doors to the Hamartia could not come up soon enough.
As they neared Hamartia, the crowds thinned, and she moved closer to his side. She stayed quiet silent until the front doors, and then she opened the door and held it open for him. The lobby was dirty and dingy, as it always was, and there was at least one person drinking from a paper bag in the corner for warmth (someone would kick him out eventually). She waited for him to follow her, and she bypassed the elevator that didn’t work and began up the rickety, uneven stairs.
He didn’t say anything as he followed her up the stairs, just grateful to be inside and away from the crowd of people. The night had been bad enough up until now, spent in the ballroom with people packed in on all sides, but that had been much, much worse. At least the people at the ball could be convinced, either by cruelty or lack of attention, to leave him alone. These people were going to follow him all the way back to his car when he left, and he felt drained just having come that far.
She had no intention of letting him walk back to his car alone, but she had wanted him to experience this. It was easy to judge the life she led from safe in a tower at Aubade. Here, it was different. The landing smelled like piss, and she opened the door to the apartment quickly, wanting to get inside where the air was clean.
He wasn’t sure what, exactly, he was meant to learn from this, but he knew what he thought - that she ought not to be here. It was dirty and dark, in a dangerous part of town, and while he wasn’t so naive as to think her defenseless, she was still just a girl, when it came down to it. Resourceful, yes, but a girl. He’d never asked her age, since for Creations ones’ appearance didn’t matter so much in relation to it, but he did wonder.
She shouldn’t have to work as a prostitute, and she shouldn’t be living in a building like this. Her room both contradicted and reinforced this assumption. The furnishings were rich, but the space itself was tiny - without a kitchen, he noticed. He looked around, trying to take in the furnishings and figure out how they applied to her. He’d already figured out that she liked luxurious things, and the apartment matched up. It was soft and feminine with some unexpectedly masculine touches to keep things from going too far. He glanced over at the screen. He assumed a bed must be behind it, since there was no where else for it to be, and he wondered why the screen was closed. Was it a private place, or a place she entertained clients?
She slipped off the heels, and she walked to the plush blue couch and pushed the skirt of her dress past her knees and began unrolling the stockings she wore, undoing the cream colored garter and rolling down the sheer fabric. “Did you understand?” she asked softly, watching him as he looked around the space. She followed his gaze to the screen, and she smiled. “It gives the illusion of a bedroom,” she told him, assuming he wanted to know why she bothered to have it there at all.
He watched the stocking roll down her leg with a precise focus on the place where the stocking met her skin. “You wanted me to see what it’s like to be them, precisely how bad their situation is. I don’t disagree with you. They make my problems seem petty by comparison.”
“No, I wanted you to understand that this,” she said, motioning to her space, to herself. “Is so much better than what they have, what they do.” It was her explanation for all the lessons he had asked about, about why she learned what she had.
“I don’t disagree,” he said, moving further into the room, stopping a few feet from her and looking around again. “You’ve...done well, for yourself. It doesn’t change my opinion that there are other ways, better ways, less dangerous ways. Ways where you won’t be hurt, or mistreated.” He looked down at her. His eyes were fixed on her, the blue of them made more intense by how much he wanted to know the answer to his next question.
“Why won’t you let me pay for you?”
She slipped off the second stocking, and she tossed them both onto the coffee table in a whisper of nothing fabric. She folded her hands on her lap serenely, and she looked up at him, at those blue, blue eyes. “Because you’ll convince yourself I’m only with you for the money,” she explained with utter candor.
He sat down on the edge of the coffee table, hands wrapped around the edge. “And you won’t let me just give you the money.”
“I won’t let you give me money,” she verified in Italian. She stood, and she caressed his cheek as she walked past him, her wrist smelling of berries and cream and something sweet and musky. She slipped behind that screen, and the sound of the dress zipper being pulled carried clearly in the small space, the sound of fabric sliding to the floor.
For whatever reason, he hadn’t really expected that. He thought that she’d given up trying with him, and for a moment, he debated whether or not that was an invitation at all. He followed after her a moment later, sliding behind the screen.
She hadn’t intended it as an invitation, mainly because she didn't think he would take any invitation she offered at this point. She'd given up on trying to get him as a client, and she'd given up on seduction. Which is why his footsteps over her shoulder surprised him. She was wearing a soft cream corset to match the cream garters, and she looked at him quietly for a moment as he stood there. Then, she looked back over her shoulder, and her now-loosened hair fell over the back of the corset’s laces. “Unlace me?”
He paused a moment. She looked unreal, peering at him over her shoulder with her hair tumbling down her back. It looked like something out of a book, a little too perfect to be real. He nodded, stepping towards her and carefully taking the laces and loosening them before pulling them out. He pushed her hair aside with one hand so that he could see the laces, and left it there for a moment. It was soft under his fingertips, and he rubbed a thumb over the end of a lock before turning his attention back to pulling the laces out. His fingertips, when they brushed her skin, were calloused in all the right places for someone who did a great deal of writing by hand.
She was quiet and still, and she let him take his time with the laces. Once he had the last one free, however, she reached over her shoulder for his hand, and her fingers examined the callouses on his fingertips, the touch slow and careful and thorough. She didn’t tug the corset away from her skin; she left that for him to do. Her tattoo was covered for the evening, and the only thing marring soft flesh was the red lines left by the corset ties and boning.
He let her take his hand, using the other to pull the corset away, letting it drop to the floor. The expanse of her back was long and smooth, with only the ghost lines left behind by the corset pressed into her skin. He ran a finger down one of those lines, then slipped his hand over her waist and around her, flat against her stomach. Her skin was warm, and he could smell that berries and cream scent somewhere along the line of her neck. He pressed a kiss to the back of her neck, just at her hairline, and rested his forehead against the back of her head, just breathing for a moment. He could remember the last time he’d been this close to anyone. He could remember exactly.
She had no idea what he was remembering, but she was willing to let him remember it. She leaned back against him, all warm, soft generous curves. “Lie in bed with me?” she asked, because she wasn’t certain when he’d last been with a woman, if he ever had, and she didn’t want him bolting like a scared thing. She wasn’t standing there with him, leaning against him for profit or even for herself. She liked him, she cared about him, and she sensed this was somehow important, somehow significant.
He nodded against the back of her head, moving towards the bed. He lost his coat, and his shoes, those went on the floor along with her corset, and his tie joined them soon after. He let her climb in first, then followed, staying close enough to her to keep a hand on her as he did so.
She slipped off the garter belt and garters as she went, and she softened the dimmer that controlled the hanging lights by the bed. The bed was high and plush, and she climbed up on it with no concern for her own nudity. She rested on her side, facing him, the curve of her hip exaggerated in the shadowed light as she pillowed her arm on the white pillowcase and looked at him.
He lay on his side, looking at her. She looked beautiful, as expected, and he wondered if her clients knew exactly how lucky they were that a girl like this was willing to cater to their desires. He reached out and cupped her cheek with his hand, studying her face. She was very real, so tangible and present, and he almost needed to reassure himself as much. He shifted forward and kissed her, carefully, like a test.
She parted her lips a little, but otherwise she left the kiss for him to control, her eyelids drifting shut as his lips touched hers. She reached for one of his hands, and she placed it on her hip slowly, the touch soft, there and gone, and then his hand was on her and she waited for him.
He slid the hand over her hip, using it to pull her a little closer to him. She was naked and beautiful and sort of perfect, and kissing her still felt something like climbing a wall. He felt about fifteen again, unsure of himself or what he ought to do, just sure it was something he wanted. He thought about creamy skin dusted with freckles, and left his eyes open, forcing himself to be sure that was not the case.
When he pulled she went, the movement entirely controlled by him. She could tell her was unsure, that he was nervous, and she pressed her cheek to his. “You can just touch if you want,” she offered. No pressure coming from her, her voice soft and sweetly sure.
He rested there for a moment, looking at the wall, feeling her curves pressed up against him. Just the amount of contact felt a little strange and overwhelming, particularly considering the way in which he usually flinched away from touch of any kind.
“It’s been a long time,” he said quietly, lips close enough to her ear for his breath to ghost across it.
She traced her fingers over his cheek, the touch soothing soft and intended to calm. “We can just sleep if you’d like. Just pull the screen and douse the lights and sleep.”
He did nothing for a moment, then nodded again. He felt ashamed, cowardly, like less than a man. What he ought to have done was just gone through with it if he wanted her. Instead he got up, pulling the screen closed. He didn’t take his shirt off, just climbed back into the bed, pulling close to her again.
When he pulled her close, she molded her body against his, bare soft skin melting against the silk of his shirt and the expensive fabric of his pants. She never actually slept around clients, no matter how much she trusted them, but he wasn’t a client. He was a scared man with a past she couldn’t fathom, and so she closed her eyes and she sighed softly.
He felt like he’d disappointed her, like he shouldn’t have taken her up on her offer to just sleep, but then again, maybe all he’d done was embarrass himself - approach her and then be totally unable to follow through. He shut his eyes, expecting sleep to be a long time in coming. It wasn’t. He’d been up most of the last few nights, and the warmth of her body next to him combined with his exhaustion sent him to sleep within the space of a few breaths.
Wren woke before Cass did the afternoon after his stay, and she padded quietly into the bathroom (which was only feet away from the bed.) She started the bath, filling it with warm water, and she added a drop of oil scented with peppermint, and then she lit a candle and turned off the lights before sliding into the water with a soft, pleasured sound. Wren did, as Cassidy had noticed, like the luxurious things in life, and there was little she liked more than starting the day with a decadent bath and following it up with a rich cup of imported tea. The tea would come next.
A few minutes after the sound of running water began, Cass woke to the faint scent of peppermint and an unfamiliar bed, strange novelties both. He lay on his back for a long moment before sitting up. No Wren in the bed, but the door to the bathroom was now open, and he slid out of bed and walked over to the doorway.
She had her eyes closed as she leaned against the back lip of the small tub, and she was humming softly, a dance from the ball. She heard him at the door, even still, and she smiled. “Coming in?” she asked, once she’d finished humming.
He took a step into the bathroom, sitting down on the edge of the bath. “You sleep well?” he asked, looking at her under the water. There was a faint smile on his lips from hearing her hum that tune from the ball the night before. He wasn’t sure exactly what to expect from her this morning - whether she’d want to turn him out right away for being a disappointment was high on the list.
“I did. Did you?” she asked, her foot stretching out to turn off the running water. She watched his face, tried to gauge what he was thinking. He seemed no more traumatized than he’d been the day before, and she closed her eyes again trustingly. This man, she decided yet again, had no interest in her body. “Are you gay, Cassidy?” she asked, no judgement in the question.
He nodded. “It’s been a while since I slept that well,” he said. It hardly mattered whether he avoided sleep purposefully or sought it out, he rarely ended up finding it.
Both eyebrows went up in an almost comical expression of surprise. “What? No. No, definitely not.” He stared at her for a long moment, unsure of whether or not he should add anything, or whether he would simply dig himself deeper into that hole.
She waited to see if he would add anything, soaking a little longer as she waited in silence, and then she pulled the stopper with her toes and stood, wrapping a towel around herself and then doing the same to her hair. She nodded toward the bedroom, and she walked into it and past it, to the side table beside the couch where an electric tea pot was plugged in. She filled it with water, and she pulled out two cups and some loose leaf tea and a tea strainer, all while wrapped in the plush towel. While the water boiled, she sat on the couch and set to towel drying her hair. “What do you like in a woman then?” she asked, with the air of someone who had decided she did not suit and intending to meddle and find someone who did.
He moved out of the bathroom while she wrapped a towel around herself and sat on the other side of the sofa when she settled in the living room, leaning forward onto his knees, face resting on his folded hands. “Look, I don’t think you understand. When I said it’s been a long time I mean...it’s been long. And I - it’s -” He stopped. “I am...making a fool of myself. What the hell am I doing?”
He shut his eyes and resisted the urge to hit his head against the coffee table. “You. I like women that are like...you. Look, I’m sure you deal with a lot of men who are..” He searched for a word. “Desperate. Or they want you for your body and nothing else. So I’m sure I don’t measure up to those men, or the way they behave, but it’s nothing to do with you not being right.”
“There’s nothing desperate about wanting someone, Cassidy,” she said, the statement honest and not chastising. She poured them both cups of jasmine tea, and she took a long inhale of the fragrance of the tea blend before taking a sip. She returned the cup to the coffee table, and she walked past him to the bedroom, letting her towel fall along the way and taking her time finding jeans and a sweatshirt to wear to escort him to his car. She didn’t hurry it at all. In fact, she came back for a sip of tea during the process, then returned to the room again.
Wonderful. Now he felt like a failure and she wasn’t even really responding to what he was saying. He watched her go back to the bedroom and come back in for her tea, and he said nothing. He took a sip of the tea, which was fine enough, but he was hardly in the mood to appreciate it at the moment.
He got up, and went back into the bedroom to get his shoes and his coat, trying to do so without thinking about why he’d left them there in the first place. He ran a hand through his hair to get it into some semblance of order, and he was ready to go. The sooner he was home, the better.
She watched him out of the corner of her eye, and bit her lip as she slipped on the jeans and sweatshirt, not bothering with anything underneath. She didn’t understand him. She didn’t understand a man who claimed interest, but then didn’t have any reaction to someone walking naked as a jaybird back and and forth in front of him. It made her feel unsure, which was something she never felt, and the emotion was strange and ill-fitting on her shoulders. She didn’t bother with shoes as she walked to the door quietly. “I’ll walk you back to your car.”
“Sure,” he said, buttoning his jacket, mostly for something to do. He had been watching her as she walked back and forth - he had eyes, still. But by that point he’d already been so ashamed that he had simply taken it for granted. It was her apartment, and she hadn’t had any qualms about walking around nude as long as he’d known her, so he didn’t think for a moment that she was doing it for any other reason than not caring what he thought.
He held the door open for her before shutting it behind them. The landing still smelled like piss, a much less pleasant scent to be greeted with in the morning than the peppermint and jasmine of her apartment.
It was still early enough in the afternoon that the night crowd wasn’t on the streets yet, and the walk back to his car was quietly uneventful, since she wasn’t keeping the conversation going as she normally did. She stopped on bare feet beside the Lexus, and she tipped her head to the side. “I don’t understand you, Cassidy,” she admitted openly.
He looked at her, in her sweatshirt and bare feet on the side of the road. Even here, she looked lovely in a perverse sort of way. He walked around the car, toward the driver’s side. “You say that like you think I do,” he said. He’d slept through the day, but he somehow felt more tired than he had before attending the ball the night before. “Sorry if I let you down,” he added, before climbing into the car.