Roxie (Wren) Maheu (ex_theredlig387) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2010-10-10 19:50:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | beast, roxanne |
Who: Cass and Wren
What: Waking up and finding out about the vigilante fracas
Where: Aubade
When: The morning after everything
Warnings: Some prostitute thoughts?
At some point during the evening, Cass and Wren had moved back into the apartment. The night was growing colder by then, and when they finally made it inside Cass drew the curtains behind them.
He woke the next morning in the cavernous bedroom, light edging in between the spaces at the edges of the curtains. It was just enough light to see by, just enough light that when he turned his head, he could look at Wren sleeping. He didn’t think she’d ever looked so beautiful as she did right then, a rumpled mess curled under the comforter. He smiled a little, watching her. He had always had a preference for natural women against those painted and perfectly coiffed. There was something about clean beauty that appealed to him, and so he liked this version of Wren, no lipstick, just those bee stung lips and a little flush to her cheeks.
Wren had slept better than she could ever remember sleeping.
The bed was as soft as silk, plush and decadent. The room was cool and dark, and the sheets slipped against her bare skin like water over smooth curves. She generally didn’t spend the night with clients, opting to leave before the sun rose. It kept arrangements clear, and it didn’t muddy the waters.
The night before had muddied the waters without any assistance from the sun peeking through the windows.
She opened her eyes in a series of slow blinks, and she stretched as she found his striking blue gaze with her own gray-blue one. “Buongiorno,” she said with a soft smile and a yawn.
“Buongiorno,” he said, smile widening. “How did you sleep?” It was a unique pleasure watching her blink herself awake, and he reached over to touch her cheek, shifting toward her in the bed.
She let him touch her cheek, and she turned onto her side and looked at him. “I slept wonderfully,” she said truthfully, the sheets sliding down over her hip. The evening before, she’d reached out for him on the balcony as a friend. He needed something, needed comfort, and Wren didn’t even consider not giving it to him. This morning, he was a client, and she reminded herself of that; if she couldn’t remember before she climbed out of the bed, she’d have to quit.
She didn’t want to quit.
She’d had only a handful of permanent clients in her life. She hadn’t been working in the profession even four years yet, and her first string of employers had been middle-class men, men who didn’t pay much and who weren’t anywhere near as soft with her as Cassidy was. There was something about knowing the person paying for you wasn’t going to hurt you, wasn’t going to lend you to his friends or have you serve as the entertainment at his affairs that was amazingly peaceful, something new. She didn’t want to lose that, and it was a selfish desire.
She’d convinced herself, before coming over the night before, that if she couldn’t do something for him, she would quit. Now she had done something for him, and she was considering the same eventuality.
She shook her head a little, her gaze clearing slightly. “Did I please you?” she asked, words carefully enunciated, every bit the trained companion.
It felt silly, in that moment, all of it. His fragile assumptions about her crumbled and left him feeling foolish - what had he been thinking, really? He knew that he was paying for her - it wasn’t as if he’d forgotten that was the whole reason he’d gone to the damned bank in the first place - and yet he’d let himself forget that, let the illusion take over, and let himself think that it was about something else. It made him feel naive, young and stupid and innocent, and he was none of those things. He’d believed what she put forward because he’d wanted to believe it, and that was no one’s fault but his own.
“Very much,” he said, without anger or sadness or regret. He could keep those emotions out if he chose to, he simply didn’t bother very often anymore. It was rare for him to not react exactly the way he was feeling, these days, but it wasn’t as if he lacked the skill for it. It wasn’t a lie - she had pleased him, more than she probably knew. “It’s been a long time,” he admitted, letting his gaze linger on the long, smooth curve of her revealed when the sheets had slipped down.
She didn’t realize she’d hurt him, because she didn’t automatically associate a desire to please with her profession. Wren differentiated sex for pleasure and sex for work, yes, but the intended goal for both was pleasure - hers or someone else’s. She rolled onto her stomach, the sheet resting low on the small of her back, her elbows propping her up as she looked over at him. It was the first time she’d had a client she could actually say she liked, that she cared about and wanted to help, and the smile she gave him then was an honest one. “It shouldn’t have been so long,” she told him with honest softness. “You’re a good man, Cassidy,” she said truthfully. He was difficult, yes, cranky, yes, but he would make someone a wonderful husband one day, and she was glad to help him get to that point. She reached over, leaned over his body, and she kissed him softly. “Good morning,” she repeated, this time in English.
He smiled a little and kissed her back. How could he not? He liked to see her smile, no matter what the circumstance. He didn’t know what she was thinking, but if he had, he would have laughed. Him, a husband? That was more than a little overly optimistic, even for her. “Glad to hear that I pass muster,” he said, looking up at her, wrapping his arm around her. “How soon do you need to be home?” Even after sublimating his reaction of her treatment of him as the client he was, he still seemed about a hundred times more sure of himself this morning than he had the night before.
The new-found confidence fit him well, and she suspected he had been quite the force to be reckoned with once upon a time. She wanted to tell him she liked him, but she didn’t want to have to explain it in the context of not liking previous clients quite so well, so she held her tongue and just sat back, letting him have his fill of pale and dusky skin, the sheet still down around her hips. “I should have been home before sunup,” she told him honestly, “but it felt too nice in your bed.” Candor, as always. She slipped out of the bed, taking the sheet with her as she went, the white, silken fabric trailing behind her like a princess’ train. “Will you drive me?” she asked with a soft look. She wouldn’t mind the company on the way to Hamartia, and she wanted him to know as much.
Maybe she’d be able to keep this job after all.
He watched her sit up, admiring her as she climbed off the bed with the sheet falling along the length of her body. “I will,” he said. When it came down to it, he wanted Wren around. She made him feel like he wasn’t dead, like he wasn’t just counting the moments until the age brought on by this world killed him, and that was a rare thing that he wasn’t keen on losing. Whatever he had to do to keep it, he would - even if it meant swallowing his pride and taking her on her terms, no matter how that made him feel.
He got out of bed, holding her from behind, wrapping his arms around her. “I don’t remember where our clothes are,” he admitted with a small smile.
She leaned back into him easily, without hesitation, and she kissed just beneath his jaw with soft lips against dark stubble. “I think people would notice if you didn’t have any clothes,” she said with a smile, voice quiet in the morning light of the room. She imagined living like this, imagined this soft-still luxury, imagined not getting dirty or dropping to her knees in alleyways every night, imagined calm and peace. She wished, for just a moment, that she could give it all up. She knew that for the present, at least, Cassidy would give her a better life than she’d ever had. She had no doubts that eventually he’d have a wife and family of his own, but for now, he would give her this luxury if she wanted it. In return, she’d help him heal enough to find something better, something worthy of all of this. It was, she thought, a fair trade. Or it would have been, if she didn’t do what she did at night.
"You think?" he asked, kissing her on the forehead while her head was still tipped back. He was trying not to think about what this would be like if it kept going on, whether or not he could take having her but not having her at once. He did his best to just enjoy her, soft and warm in his arms. When she was gone, undoubtedly, that would chase him around in circles, but he banished it from the room while she was in it.
He released her, finally, with a hint of reluctance, so that she could pick her clothes up from where ever they'd fallen. "Just let me find some clothes, and have a shave, and I'll take you."
“I like the scruff,” she admitted, turning and kissing the center of his chin gently as proof. She slipped away a moment later, picking her clothes up from one of the plush chairs in the room and wandering into the bathroom with the sheet trailing after her.
She took her time. She locked the door, and she took a bath in the sunken tub, the heat of the water and the jets relaxing her so much that she almost fell asleep. And by the time she came out of the bedroom, fully dressed in last night’s rumpled clothing, she looked sleepy again, hair damp around the ends and curling messily past her shoulders. “Now you can have a shave,” she said, dropping into the chair she’d retrieved her clothing from a moment earlier.
By the time she came back out he’d managed to get dressed and comb his hair into looking a little more reasonable. He looked at her in her rumpled clothes and wondered if he ought to buy her something new, for the next time she was over, and he stepped into the still-steamy bathroom to shave.
That done, he came back out in search of his shoes down by the front door. “Do you want breakfast?” he asked. He had no idea what time it was, exactly. He hadn’t bothered to check, and it didn’t really seem all that important.
By the time he came out, she had her discarded cellphone in her hand, and she was watching a youtube clip on repeat. She held out the phone to him, and she slipped her shoes on. “We have to go,” she said, already walking toward the door, sounding worried.
He took the phone from her, momentarily thrown, and walked toward the door as he watched it, eyebrows slowly creeping up as it played. “Jesus,” he said quietly. The youngest boy in the shot was obviously bloody, possibly bleeding, and so was the woman beside him, the masks notwithstanding. He pulled his shoes on. “Do you know where this is?”
“No, but it was posted last night,” she told him, even as she started down the stairs, two by two by two. “So they wouldn’t be there now. I know him, the boy. He’s a friend,” she said truthfully, which she probably would not have done if she wasn’t worried. It was definitely blood on the suit, and the fact that there were so many vigilantes present did nothing but worry her more. She didn’t think they would come out en masse for a flesh wound.
He just remembered to grab his keys on his way out the door, since it wasn’t intuitive, he hardly ever drove the damn thing. He stayed a step or two behind her. “A friend?” he echoed, unthinking. What had she gotten herself into? What had any of these supposedly responsible adults gotten these young would-be masks into? “Do you have a way to find out his condition?” he asked, rounding the corner of yet another flight of stairs.
“Once I get home,” she told him. She had already decided to call Oracle, but she wasn’t going to give anything away until she was alone. “Call me a cab?” she asked, spur of the moment. She could call in the car then. She was nervous, and it was obvious. Robin was so brave, but braveness wasn’t enough in this city; she knew that. She took the final stretch of carpet out into the hall and then down to the elevator, where she pushed the button impatiently.
He was going to ask if she was sure, but she looked so frightened. This was not going very far to give him a better opinion of the way the masks were supposedly keeping one another safe in this city. His phone was in his pocket, an older model that he hadn’t updated for lack of any real need, and he called information to ask for a taxi service, whichever company could be there quickest.
She realized, somewhere between the elevator and the first floor, that this was all too real, too her, too important for her to be discussing here, with this man. Too dangerous. When the elevator doors opened, she stretched up on tiptoes and kissed his lips quickly, fastasthat, and she stepped outside just as quickly. “I’ll walk,” she insisted. “Forget I said anything.” She bit her lip, added a “please?” and took off in run.