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Tweak says, "HAPPY NEW YEAR"

t randall is NOT maid marian (

notamaid) wrote in

musingslogs,
@ 2010-10-05 06:34:00

Who: Toby Randall and Quentin Kovacks (Maid Marian and Destruction)
What: A first meeting.
When: Ten years ago, in Musings Boston
Where: A house-party.
Warnings: Language. Some fairly blatant flirting. Nothing too outrageous.

A long, long time ago

Quentin didn’t know why he said yes.

Actually he did know. He had been in Boston for... Six? Seven months now? By now the guys he occasionally bought beers with weren't going to take the usual excuses. He had to show up for something. Something not right after work. Something that didn’t completely involve bitching about bosses, customers, or both. Something that didn’t just involve the guys from the garage and their friends. Something that involved women.

He took another swig of his beer.

He didn’t mind being around women but these weren’t the type he was used to. He liked them, yeah, but he wasn’t used to them. The one throwing this thing was still in college and invited what felt like the entire student body to this tiny house. All sorts of people were milling about and the conversation flowed even faster than the beer kegs. Art, politics, philosophy, a million different conversations with a million different lovely faces, all interesting, all intriguing, all completely out of his league.

The guys were easier to talk with, easier to toss around makes and models of all the cars they all wanted to drive and own and take the girls out in. They stood out on the front lawn and talked and drank and talked some more. Occasionally one would be urged back into the house, and then another, until it was just Quentin outside in the cool night air, drinking his beer and watching his breath turn to white smoke with every exhale. The sounds of the house, the laughter, the chatter, the music, were all behind him, a dull sound to his ears. It didn’t really have his attention anymore. He only had eyes for the sky.

The door to the house opened and a soft wave of noise spilled into the night’s still -- it seemed even louder as it belled out, grabbed up space and calm and stole it, and banished all the quiet outside. All that talking, laughing, music, was suddenly where the peace used to be -- and then the door swung shut and sealed it all in once again. On that wave of noise, she’d spilled out, as though the noise and energy and life were an utterly natural place to habit, as if it were utterly natural to love it. The night was as quiet as before -- and then a clatter. She’d fallen over the porch-swing. There was a curse: pretty creative for so late in the night and no doubt more emphatic than most. It was certainly heartfelt.

“They put that there in the night,” she began as she made careful progress down the porch-steps and toward the lawn, as if on the verge of conversation -- as if, in fact, they’d spoken before (they hadn’t). She was a tiny and very messy-haired blond, holding a beer bottle and wearing a skirt the length of which probably wasn’t legal and the kind of smile that was like she was barely keeping a secret, or holding back a laugh, or both.

“I’m Toby,” Toby said, and she stood next to him on the lawn, companionably, all skirt and hair and smile and followed where he’d been looking upward. He was tall and he was good looking and he was the kind of quiet that was either being an asshole or being broody or both, and he’d disappeared from the kitchen, where the booze was living for the duration, too early on to be anything more than a mystery of which the broody vs asshole debate was only a part. Mysteries got solved, especially when they looked like that. Toby turned that smile back on him, and swigged her beer.

The noise cut through the air like a knife but the girl who appeared was all soft, not a hard edge in sight. As she stumbled and ambled toward him his expression never changed, the twitch at the corner of his mouth barely noticeable even up close, completely non existent from afar. When she came to stop beside him he towered over her, not meaning to but that was how it was. Even with him slouching already he was a good foot above her, and he leaned back to try and ease the distance. He could be intimidating without meaning to, and even if she didn’t look taken aback, he wasn’t going to risk it.

She looked young. Cute, but young, and no matter how many adjectives and descriptions that came to mind as he tried to not bask in that smile, it was always followed by but young. “Don’t meet many females named Toby.” His own name was noticeably absent from the sentence but his tone was curious, albeit gruff. A strangely soft attempt at conversation from a somewhat awkward conversationalist.

It was like an awkward two-step; he stepped back and she stepped forward and the warm bright light of the windows that sloped down toward the grass, back-lit her and made that blond hair a butter-gold, that smile even brighter and showed something in those eyes that was soft and laughing and interested. Toby took another small but determined step, and there was almost no gap at all between them. The light did its best for him, too -- from here, with a studied view of the underside of his jaw, she could see the haze of stubble, the slope of his neck, broad shoulders -- even if his opening gambit sucked, he was still pretty. A look tilted up at him that was shameless in its flirtation, she told him helpfully, “I’m a one of a kind. Unique. Get me while you can, I’ll be a collector’s item one day.”

He was older, she could see that now: not college-age-older, with a dictionary’s load of new long-ass words -- one of those who probably couldn’t piss straight without a helping hand. That type bubbled at the seams in this party, and they were fun, in their own way -- when you could out-drink them easily and play another round of beer-pong afterward to disbelieving stares, when you could whoop them at pool and collect up the dollar bills around the table on bets they’d not had a hope of winning and when kissing one was all teeth and tongue and eager inexperience, when a kiss could become a laugh and nothing was serious, the way she liked it. Kissing him, Toby decided, with her head turned to give it due consideration, would be something savored, like the kind of Scotch her dad kept in a locked cabinet. She didn’t ask for a name. She didn’t need it.

Oh, Quentin had game, just not for this one. There was no need for lines or plays or gambits, there wasn’t anything happening here. Nothing that he was going to allow. She was sizing him up, he had seen that look before. Men tried to find out if he was as strong as he seemed, women the same too, for completely different reasons, and he wasn’t going to let this girl try. Even if she kept looking at him like that.

He took a long pull on his beer, ending with a sound that was more gruff exhale than sigh. “Items like that get put under glass. Set on a shelf. Never looked on again. You want that to be you?” It was nothing more than conversation. No jibe, no attempt at philosophizing. He just wanted to talk or distract her. He’d have sent her away abruptly if she hadn’t drunk so much she stumbled off the porch. Causing scenes weren’t his deal, and he wasn’t about to test if they were hers.

“Not all of ‘em,” Toby didn’t look drunk in this light, not with that clear, unhidden assessment in her eyes, not with the smile that was all shine and warm and happy and her, rather than the foolishness of too much alcohol. “But I don’t just want to be looked at. I don’t break if you touch me.” He didn’t seem to want to even look -- and they all looked, even when they didn’t think it was obvious, and when they thought she didn’t like it. He’d have to get over that: maybe he was just shy? Shy she could work with.

“You haven’t told me your name,” encouragement was the way of the game, and she stood with her hip comfortably bumped against his (or a foot lower, if you were going to get specific and who did that?) and gave him a look that slid itself under her eyelashes and up, the one that worked when she wanted to get served in bars and when she wanted other things, too. It was followed by a smile that spoilt the calculation and made it all too obvious that this was fun, that life was fun to Toby and getting to know men like him was what seemed most fun of all at that moment. “You know what to call me but I don’t know what to call you.”

No. She didn’t look like she would break. Appearances were deceptive and hers was no exception, but the way his jaw tightened as did the fingers around the neck of his bottle said he wasn’t about to see how unbreakable she really was. The way his eyes roamed over her again said it was a pity that he wouldn’t.

He knew what she was playing at, snaking closer to him, trying to slip through his defenses. With half lidded stare of hers, he was sure many had fallen for it easily. He almost could. He gestured back to the house, first with his chin, then with a half hearted point of a half drunk beer bottle. The noise from it was muted, the lights from it dim. But suddenly him pointing it out brought it back into a focus, and all the differences between him and the people inside with it. “You go to the college with the rest of them?” Still no name, but still carrying on conversation.

Them, a line drawn between those inside the house’s brightness and laughter and the self-absorbed ongoing whirl of a party and him, standing out on the grass with his breath white and visible between them. Most of them asked questions like that to find common ground, a connection, a ‘are you in Philosophy with...?’ and Toby lied blithely and she lied sweetly, agreed that this professor was an asshole who graded unfairly, or that that professor was a ‘fucking genius, man,’ and parroted back exactly what was necessary to get them comfortable, get ‘em to loosen up. But he didn’t look like he wanted to know for common ground and he didn’t look like he’d loosen up all that easily; Toby’s tongue steadied itself against her bottom lip. He didn’t look like he was real familiar with loosening up at all but it would be fun to make him.

She shook her head, and hair like sunshine in darkness spilled back and forth against her shoulders, tumbling from a haphazardly constructed knot: she didn’t looked bothered by this at all, just dug her free hand deeper into the pocket of that tiny miniskirt, and took a swallow of her beer. “Nope. But the parties are good. You got a cigarette on you? I would, but I can’t fit a pack in this skirt,” a shimmy to show off that the skirt was in fact, impossible to fit a pack of cigarettes into -- it barely fit a Toby. She turned herself obligingly, so he could see.

He wasn’t slick about his glancing down her skirt. She offered, he took, at least in this instance. He met her eyes though when she finished modeling, giving her a long look, a long swig of his beer. And then he finally set his beer down on the ground, reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, flipping open the top and letting her grab one. His free hand reached into his other pocket and pulled out the lighter, since she clearly didn’t have room anywhere to fit one of those either. “These’ll kill you, you know,” he intoned as the small light flickered in the dark.

Toby’s grin was all self-satisfaction, too obvious and gleeful to be anything more practiced. Check, he wasn’t gay. He looked at her though, as if he knew exactly what she was doing and with the kind of inscrutable expression that made her grin even wider and more shameless. She had a nice ass, he’d checked it out, all points that led along to where she wanted to get them to. He made her wait though, the kind of guy who liked to be in control, which wasn’t a problem but it made her think of other things and what he’d look like without any control at all and Toby’s smile was all laughter then. She plucked out the cigarette, chipped nail-polish showing and bright hair and insouciance and he’d produced the lighter before she could ask.

“How does it go, die young, stay pretty?” She inhaled a breath of smoke, all pert and cheer in the face of his solemnity and blew a cloud into the dark. “They’ll kill you too -- Mr ‘I am brooding too hard to have a name’.”

He let out something like a gruff chuckle before lighting a cigarette of his own. “That only applies to you.” A compliment, and a sincere one. He wasn’t going to fawn over her, or anyone for that matter, but he could give a compliment when need be. Besides, Quentin was smoking as well, though he was probably going to do all of the former as he was none of the latter.

He did laugh again, a little more heartily, as she continued to press for a name. “I’m brooding?”

“Stood outside, under the stars, dark and dramatic, and yada-yada,” Toby’s hand twirled carelessly, dismissing a genre of anti-hero with a sweep of a gesture, but she beamed at the compliment. Toby knew she was pretty, but getting guys to put things into words, especially when they acted as though words were a new and strange phenomena to them... “Could be considered romantic.” Dancing eyes and all tongue in cheek, but he still hadn’t given her a goddamn name. He wasn’t college, that much was obvious, and he wasn’t deep pocketed and the kind to bring the keg because he was stood outside not drinking it. He was a puzzle, and Toby liked those. Difficult, perhaps -- but it was in all those old school reports, ‘Toby Randall likes a challenge’.

The typical male huff was her response when she said the word romantic. No, Quentin wasn’t that. “Brooding usually requires something to brood about.” Not that he didn’t have something to be unhappy over. He had that shit in spades. But trying to leave that behind him was the name of the game. That was different.

“Not really one for crowds.” He took a drag of his cigarette and gave her an apology as well. “Not good with conversation either.”

Yeah, that she could tell. Toby’s conversation meandered around points when it suited her, cut quick and to the point otherwise. Now she blew smoke into the air in a quick puff of dismissal of such things like apologies and another assessing look went his way. If he wasn’t brooding, she would banish the skirt to the back of the wardrobe and she liked the skirt. Most people did.

“We don’t have to converse.” All bold and brash and Toby angled herself to face him squarely, the veneer only barely there over innuendo bright as brass. It was an invitation as obvious as the skirt had been, without apology and extended with casual interest but clear intent. “Are you telling me you’re not brooding?” Her mouth twitched; she was trying not to laugh.

That managed to make him laugh, although it was rueful, complete with a shaking of his head. Her invitation didn’t make him give her a second look, but it didn’t make him turn away. The stalemate remained. “There’s a difference between brooding quietly and just being quiet.” He took another drag and flicked the ashes onto the concrete ahead of him. “What makes you think I’ve got something to brood about?”

A neat skip of ashes followed his, her aim true but Toby stayed stubbornly square to him: he wasn’t playing, refused to be drawn into the game which only meant playing harder to make him. Her face was all disbelief amongst the laughter, warm and merry and utterly without malice.

“Do you?” she challenged, folding one arm across the skimpy top: the skin exposed by the low round cut neckline was almost blue-tinged now and she was obviously cold but Toby was more intent on her pursuit than on such arbitrary things as the cold. “Only brooding anti-heroes refuse to give out their names. It’s undeniable fact, you can’t get away from it.” Mock solemnity, another breath of smoke and young-person’s mirth. “So clearly, you have to either fess up to what you’re brooding over or give me your name.” She sidled closer: both for the ability to tip her head back up and smile encouragingly and because there was some warmth coming off him that was just as appealing as the rest of him.

The movement of caught his attention and his gaze flickered from the dark street back to her. The smile was first, then that challenge that shone in her eyes, and then the pale skin. “It’s fucking freezing out. Aren’t you cold?” He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead he muttered a curse under his breath and pressed his lips tightly around his cigarette, leaving his hands free to peel off his leather jacket. The blue shirt was tight over his shoulders and arms - they always were - and the bottom caught the breeze and billowed slightly but he paid no attention to the cool air. He handed it over to her, only letting go and grabbing his cigarette when he was convinced she’d put it.

“Why do you want my name so bad?”

Wrapped in beaten-soft leather, Toby was surrounded by too-big warmth and the smell of motor-oil, soap, cologne and something else: her smile as she shrugged into the jacket, sleeves so long they dangled over her hands, said he’d just been played and played hard. She’d been cold, but not cold enough to give up -- she’d have stood there, chattering teeth and bare legged if she’d had to. Gentlemanly, in the old-fashioned kind of sense, and if the smell that enveloped her, wove itself over the soft vanilla of her own perfume, was anything to go by, he smelled damn good. With her cigarette in her fingertips, jacket sleeve sagging concertina-like at her wrist so her fingers could actually appear, she used her free hand to tug her hair free of the collar, and it lay across the back of that leather, bright-soft and silky. It gave her a moment or two to look at him, and it was out and out appreciation, an open assessment by a girl who had more than made up her mind that this was what she wanted and it could take as long as it liked to get to being hers.

“Because I want to know what to call you. You’re going to be seeing a lot of me,” she said, breezy confidence, “And when you say, ‘hey Toby,’ I want to be able to say ‘hey,’” a gesture that was obviously, ‘supply name here’, “Back. Besides, I kind of like to know the names of the guys I kiss. Call me old-fashioned that way,” said the scrap of a girl with her beer bottle in one hand, cigarette in the other and the kind of smile that was not girl, but all woman on her lips.

Oh he was aware of what she was doing. Mildly so, the realization not really occurring to him until he saw her pale fingers curl over the dark leather. But he wasn’t about to let some poor girl freeze because of it. He let her have this round.

Her smile might be all woman but he wasn’t fooled, only rubbing the back of his neck as she made her declarations. It was her age that made him hesitant, and it was her age that made him gentle. Other women, older women, he wouldn’t have hesitated to put his foot down with. With this one, he was awkward, fumbling like he was holding glass. “You shouldn’t be trying to kiss guys like me.” Now that his hands were free he flicked ash off with one, and bent to pick up his almost forgotten beer bottle with the other. “Go back to the party, Toby. Find out names there. Kiss whoever you like over there.”

She shook her head, and she let go of the beer bottle long enough to wind fingers with their chipped nail polish into the lapel of the too-big jacket, the cigarette stubbed out beneath her foot, as careless as anything -- because the trappings of playing adult didn’t matter so much as the game. She wasn’t going to be dismissed, and she liked the warm jacket and the smell of him and the way he spoke as if he didn’t know what to say.

“Oh please, college guys?” she was as dismissive of them as he was of her. “You’re interesting.” And that smile came back again, the one that was honest and bright and curious and she canted her head to look at him, tiny in black leather the way she would always be. “If you won’t kiss me, give me a name.”

“I’m nobody,” he said simply, seriously, in regards to her insistence on having his name and about him being interesting. He downed the rest of his beer and crushed the end of his cigarette on the bottom of it. He looked around for a trash can and thankfully the neighborhood had all of theirs set out for the next morning. He glanced over Toby’s shoulder, back at the party with its loud music and conversation and people and found that he had absolutely no desire to go back in. He did his face time, he made his rounds. The host wouldn’t have a leg to stand on if he left.

“I’m gonna take off.” He gave her a long look, surveying his jacket and wondering if he should even bother to ask for it back. The sigh half escaped him before he could even stop it and he gestured back to the party. “Keep it. And go back inside where it’s warm.”

She shrugged her shoulders under the too-big jacket, and she let him go, waiting and watching from a porch that was closer to the noise of the party than it was the quiet of the front lawn. Toby dug her hands deep into jacket pockets, and she pushed through and into the frenetic busyness of a party in full flow, and she took another beer pressed into her hands and laughed and smiled and drank the rest of the night. But a man without a name was what she’d decided to find, and it might have been the first night, but it was not the last.

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