Lia Valencia | Aphrodite (philommeides) wrote in paxletalelogs, @ 2010-09-27 13:36:00 |
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Entry tags: | aphrodite, ares |
Who: Lia & Samuel.
What: Samuel gets banged up in the line of duty; Lia does some patching up.
Where: The lobby and elevator, then Samuel's apartment
When: The weekend?
Warnings: Moar Sekshul Tension and Flirtation!
Samuel's day had been a long one. It should have been routine, full of speeding tickets and sobriety checks and a handful of slightly more interesting car searches. Then, two hours into his shift, he had been called onto a team serving a high-risk narcotics warrant, and the day had gone to hell from there. Now, at the end of that impossibly long stretch, he wanted nothing so much as to be home, preferably naked and under a scalding hot shower until the water turned cold, then - perhaps - indulging in at least a small glass of Brighid's timely gift. He unfolded himself from the driver's seat of his truck, holding back a wince at the sharp spike of pain that shot through his knee. He gritted his teeth as he slammed the door shut, straightening his posture as he armed locks and alarm.
As he drew up to the lobby he glanced inside, pleased it appeared to be empty. Lightly he touched a bruise welling at his cheek, and smirked at the sight of he made in one window's reflection: bruised and scratched, his black tactical pants and fitted black tee still mussed with blood and grime from work. It was time indeed to peel the marred cloth off his skin and get settled in for the night. Bypassing his mailbox entirely, Samuel strode toward the elevator, ready for the comforts of his own quiet flat.
For her part, Lia was among the mailboxes, dressed in a casual soft cotton summer dress and flip flops, her hair pulled up into a ponytail. She was distinctly un-made up; she'd only come down for the mail, and had planned on spending her evening enjoying a little takeout, maybe watching a movie. Samuel's arrival teased at the corner of her eye as she shut her mailbox, and from her out-of-the-way spot, she watched him curiously for a moment, favoring one leg slightly as he walked. She followed him to the elevator, coming up alongside him and noting the bruised and slightly bloodied state he was in.
"Hey there," she said with a look of concern she couldn't quite conceal. "Are you all right?"
Samuel turned at the sound of her voice, his eyes heavy-lidded but glinting and alert as he looked at her. It surprised him, how lovely she looked, as attractive to him now in all her effortless beauty as she had been in the club, or on the beach; it was an unexpected turn, and one he found quite pleasing. A small smile quirked at the corner of his lips. "Yeah. Never better." The doors slid open. "Long day." He stepped inside, his thumb on the button to hold the doors for her. He tipped his head to the car, gesturing her in. "Going up?"
"Yeah," she said, not taking her eyes off of him as she followed him on to the elevator, still assessing his condition. "You look like you've been better. I've seen you better," she said, pressing the button to her floor. A light hand went to the bruise on his cheek, to the scratches on his face, his arms. His brow quirked, his eyes faintly widening. With a little furrow in her brow and a bit of a frown on her face, she withdrew, remembering herself a little too late. "What happened?" she asked, her eyes still flickering over each injury.
He glanced down to the illuminated button, noting for the first time her floor number. He smiled softly upon seeing she did in fact reside on the floors the management pretentiously referred to as "Deluxe," but for whatever reason it did not stir in him any desire to revisit their earlier argument. He thumbed the lower 7 shortly after, drawing a deep breath as the doors shut, the car gliding gently into motion. "Most of them are from serving a warrant," he said, smirking as he looked down to the marks lining his tanned arms. "Buddy of mine got shot, so I'll take fingernails - even that tiny pocket knife, really - over a bullet." He pointed to one particularly nasty wound on the inside of his right forearm, cleaned and certainly in no need of stitches, but bad enough to require more attention than it had been given. "This one, though." He pressed the dark bruise at his cheek. "That one looks worse than it is. Re-injured a nearly healed bruise from a bar fight, is all."
Lia's eyes followed his finger to his wound, trying to ignore the fact that she'd noticed him noticing her floor. It was just a floor, she thought, and he didn't seem to react poorly, which put her a bit more at ease - and she pushed down the thought that it shouldn't matter to her at all what he thought of where or how she lived. At the moment, though, her attention was diverted to the wound on his arm. It looked quite ugly and awful to her, and not sufficiently tended to at all. She looked up just in time to see him press at his bruise, and she winced on his behalf; a bruise that dark seemed bad enough, even if it wasn't as bad as it looked. "Do you need help?" she asked, her eyes turning back to the wound on his arm, light fingers taking his hand so she could draw it closer to her and have a better look.
That touch, light as it was, stirred him more than he had expected. The nightclub was all but a distant memory, their only meeting since then the stilted and awkward lunch they'd shared with a gathering of half-familiar neighbors. Her hands should not have gotten to him as they did; he should not have felt so drawn to the softness in her grasp. He cleared his throat, suddenly and inexplicably uncomfortable, looking up to the lights as they marked the passing of each floor. A grin crossed his lips, feeling far more forced than it had any right to be. "If you're offering," he said, "I won't turn you down." His eyes moved from the top of the car, glancing first to her, then back to his nearly ruined clothes. "Gotta get into some clean clothes first, though. I'd have changed at the station if I'd known I'd run into you."
"I'm offering," she said, looking up at him, with a wry little smile. "And that's fine, really. There's no rush. It looks like you might want to shower." She frowned a little at the state of his shirt, and resisted the urge touch it; to touch him. Suddenly, she couldn't think of much beside their kiss at the club, of his hands on her and her lips on his. Even so, she pushed the thoughts forcefully aside; she only wanted to help him, to patch him up. It was what any decent person would do, wasn't it? She tried to ignore the feel of his hand in hers, the strangely familiar comfort of the rough strength of it, the not-memory of his touch on her skin. She cleared her throat.
"Do you have first aid supplies at your apartment? I can go up and get mine..."
"Yeah, I keep a few things." This was something of an understatement; Samuel's first aid kit had been well stocked since his first forays into such violent work. It had become even more so following a few ill advised trysts with co-workers' significant others, co-workers who found retaliation - or the threat of it, at least - a mature and perfectly acceptable response. "You can pilfer through and see if any of it's useful while I'm getting presentable."
The elevator came to a stop at his floor. It was remarkable how reluctant he felt to let go of her hand, to step out into the hall without guiding her alongside him. Still, he managed, tiredly wending his way down to his door, his keys jingling merrily as he let them both in. "Brighid brought over some whiskey," he said, stepping to one side, holding the door open to her. "I was thinking about having a glass. You want one?"
"Aw, that was sweet of her," Lia said, suddenly struck with a bizarre, conflicted sentiment she'd never experienced before. Her first response was calm acceptance and quite a bit of warmth. The very next was the sharp internal question of why another woman was giving him gifts, especially booze. That thought, however, was smothered almost immediately with the intuitive sense that whatever Brighid's motives were, they weren't romantic. Though that did leave one question that made her pause as she entered his apartment, not taking the chance to look around yet, instead turning to him as he closed the door behind them.
"Wait, how did she manage to buy whiskey? If that girl's even in her twenties, I'll buy a hat and eat it."
Samuel grinned, glancing to her over one shoulder as he locked the door. "Sounds like something we could sell tickets for." He straightened up, turning back to her. "Her dad sent it over. She said he wanted to thank me for helping her move in, and looking out for her, I guess." One shoulder lifted in a shrug, his nose softly wrinkling at the answering throb of pain. His ever widening smile, however, said his pleasure at the gift - even the mere discussion of it - far outweighed such menial considerations. "I can overlook the total illegality of that for a Jameson Rarest Vintage Reserve. Judge me all you want."
Lia laughed and shook her head. "No judgment here. I don't think international postal service is your jurisdiction anyway," she grinned.
He slipped past her, tossing his keys to the sofa with a flick of his uninjured arm. "Pour a glass if you want," he said, heading for the bathroom, his hands already plucking at the hem of his shirt. "I'll be right back with that first aid kit." He pulled the shirt over his head, dropping its bloody, dirt-smeared bulk in the hallway.
"All right," she said, though she didn't turn away from the sight of him stripping off his shirt or his bare back until he'd disappeared into the bathroom. She fairly easily found two low ball glasses and opened the bottle, pouring two fingers into a glass for him, and one finger into one for her.
The kit itself was easy to find, placed at the very front of the bathroom closet. He drew a deep breath as he looked to his reflection, pleased to see all was normal and in order - aside from the blossoming bruises and angry scratches at his side, of course. "I might order in, too, if you want anything," he called, padding back into the hallway and the living room beyond, kit in hand. "I'm fuckin' starving."
As he came in, she laughed at his bluntness, lifting the glasses from the counter top and turning toward him. She couldn't help pausing for a moment, first taking in the sight of him bare-chested. Her teeth sank into her lower lip, though the obviousness of her appreciation of his form was mitigated by the furrow of her brow at his injuries.
"I could eat," she said absently, walking over to him and handing his glass before taking the kit from him. "What happened?" she asked, looking up at him with barely concealed concern.
He nodded his thanks for the drink, taking a slow, appreciative sip before even beginning to consider his response. That first taste, Samuel decided, was worth everything the day had thrown at him, and he was going to savor it. He made a mental note to thank his neighbor; perhaps even to write a rare note of thanks to her remarkably generous parents. "God damn that is good," he said, his self satisfied chuckle sounding almost like a purr. He breathed a lengthy, sated sigh, opening sleepy eyes to look back at her.
Lia watched him, grateful in those moments for his eyes being closed, for his comfort, but also finding herself strangely affected by the obvious relish with which he tasted the spirit, and then even more so by that laugh. She found herself smiling slightly at him without even realizing it.
"This..." Samuel looked down, studying the marks he seemed to have already forgotten. "We were serving a narcotics search warrant. That's not the normal way of handling it, but SWAT's called in for anything high risk. There were four armed suspects, and one extra we didn't know about." He grinned, pointing down to the ragged knife wound at his arm. "Pretty feisty girlfriend hiding by the door. Me being point, she got to me before her friends opened fire."
Lia shook her head at his grin, leaning toward the coffee table to put her drink down and open the first-aid kit. She tried not to think about the distress his story caused her, or the danger of his daily life, but at the same time tried to push aside a feeling just as strong of excitement - maybe something more than excitement - at the story. She didn't know how to respond to these feelings, or even how she should. The kit itself didn't do much to calm her nerves - the thing was obviously fully stocked and packed to deal with any situation the human body might encounter shy of major surgery. A much less steady laugh escaped her as she prepared to clean that first, most awful wound. Once she was ready, she looked up at him then took his hand, gently pulling his arm closer to her. "I can't believe you're so casual about it," she said, the subtlest tremor of worry in her voice. Somewhere, she acknowledged that she was more invested than was appropriate, that she was going to give herself away, but she kept talking. "Is it like this every day?"
"Not every day. Just the interesting ones," he quipped. His hand briefly tightened over hers. His own attention he quickly deflected from the gesture, languidly sipping at another slight measure of whiskey. He smiled as it slid down his throat, enjoying that welcome burn. That done, he leaned down as she had, setting his glass beside hers. He looked to the couch as he straightened up, ready to sit down and rest, but having thoroughly forgotten to change out of his sullied trousers. But the couch had seen worse, he thought, and he wasted no more time. He lowered himself to sit, gently tugging at her hand to guide her down alongside him. He wondered at that unfamiliar note that softened her voice, but did not dare to guess at its meaning. It was safer to stay playful, to keep behaving as if such nuances did not matter. "Alright, nurse," he said, a teasing lilt still marking his own tone. "Do your worst."
The little face she made at him was something of a scrunched nose and a bit of a squint, but despite that, she drew his arm closer to her, setting the first-aid kit down on the table. From it, she withdrew an antiseptic, antibiotic ointment, and butterfly sutures before she soaked a piece of gauze with peroxide. "I'd warn you that this'll sting," she said with a hidden smile and an arch of her brow, "but you'd probably laugh at me." Even so, with that, the press of the damp gauze to his wound was gentle, and she cleaned it carefully. His skin was warm - warmer than hers - and tan, and smooth on the inside of his arm. She tried to keep her fingers from skimming too slowly over it, from exploring too much once she'd put on the bandages. She shifted slightly, leaning over him a bit to clean the wound at his side. She tried to ignore the scent of his skin, which despite his exertions, wasn't in the least unpleasant. In fact, she could still smell a hint of his soap, and of course, the inimitable hint of him that taunted her with its strange familiarity and allure. Also, his body, even wounded and scarred, was too much to ignore. She tried to focus on her task, but the hard lines of his body, the way his muscles moved under his skin with the slightest shifts - and his scars. The impulse to kiss them was almost too strong to resist, but she stalwartly did. Later, she'd consider this a minor miracle. As it was, her breath feathered across his skin as she attentively cleaned him up.
"So," she said, as a means of distracting herself further from his body, "what made you decide to get into the military?"
A few of the usual answers-that-weren't crossed his mind: half-jokes about the uniform, the women, the travel, the plight of a dead-ender with no hope for or interest in college. But something about the moment, in all its unexpected intimacy and gentleness, made even Samuel discard such shallow responses. He exhaled a faint, contented sigh as her words traced soft over his skin; it was difficult to keep still given such circumstances, but he made an admirable effort.
"Call it the family business," he said. His arm rose farther against the back of the couch, his eyes avoiding hers by turning toward the wounds as his side. She had done quite well with his arm, and was taking far better care of the glancing blows at his ribs than he himself had. He smiled, realizing just how unlikely any of this would have been a mere month before. He resisted the urge to needle her now, to say something stupidly, childishly taunting, and put this back in a place he better understood. Instead he cleared his throat with a rough little sound, shifting to put the cuts at his side more within her view and reach. He found he liked the slide of her fingertips over him as he did, the way it felt to be so close to her. His voice was softer when he spoke again, bearing none of the teasing to which he had nearly given in. "My dad and older brother are Marines, my younger brother is in the Navy."
It was a challenge, trying to concentrate on tending to his wounds with his body shifting under her, the warmth of him so close to her, the quiet familiarity in his tone. Nothing made her hurry, though; she was just as attentive as she had been, nodding and smiling slightly as he spoke and she cleaned the cuts thoroughly. It would probably have been impossible for her fingers not to drift just slightly, for her to lightly trace her fingers across his skin as she reached up for more bandages. Her teeth sank into her lower lip as she covered up his cuts one at a time with care.
She turned to him then, her head canted to one side. "So - aren't the Marines technically Navy, too?" She asked, straightening up as she looked in the kit for something to clean his face. She found a pack of pre-moistened wipes, and took one out. Leaning forward, she gingerly cleaned his face, careful of those harsh bruises while still swabbing them gently. "Wasn't the Army a little bit of a deviation?"
"Yeah." It was a vague answer - and not entirely correct - but broad enough to simultaneously address both questions and buy Samuel more time. It was difficult to formulate anything more thorough given their proximity, particularly now that there was nowhere for his eyes to look but directly into hers. That vivid dream had changed everything, it seemed. This intrusion of personal space no longer felt within his control, as it had been on the beach and in the elevator, and to a lesser extent even in the club; there was something more vulnerable in it now, something that stemmed only in part from his injuries, and that particular brand of weakness. It was a disconcerting realization to say the least. He sought now to address and correct this strange pang of uncertainty, shifting beneath her, sliding closer still.
"Well, to answer your first question, not really. And if my dad or Tim ever come into town, the answer is 'definitely not'." An impish grin curved his lips, his eyes flicking carelessly down to her own Cupid's bow. "They're both under the Department of the Navy, but they're totally separate branches. Different command structure and everything." He laughed, pulling away from the wet cloth in her hand, looking down to its sullied surface. "So how's it looking, doc?"
She sensed the shift as soon as it happened, and that brief spell was broken. With a little shake of her head, she smiled sardonically and pulled back, slapping the clean end of the wipe lightly against his chest as he arched a questioning brow. "I think you'll live," she finally pronounced, sliding seamlessly back into the little game of attraction they always seemed to end up playing. That strange moment of openness had drawn her in, had made her forget herself - but this, she understood. That little smirk, his tone, the way he set his body under hers just so. It made things more comfortable. Lia wasn't afraid of her feelings, per se - but it would definitely be a rookie mistake to allow any feelings she might have for one Sergeant Samuel Wolfe to get out of hand, or even too soft. Setting the soiled wipe down lightly down on the coffee table, she took out another one, wiping her own hands with it.
"I'll be sure never to call your father or your brother Tim a sailor, then," she offered him a little smirk of her own as she gathered up the trash from cleaning him up and got up from the couch.
"Where's your garbage can?"
"Kitchen," he said, "under the sink." He rose shortly after her, brushing idly at a stain high at his leg, darkening black cloth deeper still. With one hand he plucked his glass from the coffee table; with the other he flipped the first aid kit closed, scooping it up in his rough grip. Briefly he was content to linger there, taking in the strange domesticity of the moment, losing himself in that long forgotten feeling. He took a long, slow sip of whiskey, breathing in the scent of it, letting it slide soft over his tongue. And then that draught was gone, and with it the instinctive comfort he had felt, leaving only that pleasant tension to which he was far more accustomed. He had wanted this, had instigated that shift in mood; if he felt, now, some twinge of regret, he hastily dismissed it.
He shuffled into the short hall a pace behind her, the fall of his heavy boots a soft whisper on the carpet. "If you are sticking around for dinner, I'll buy, but you have to choose." He grinned, calling back to her as he turned into his bedroom. "Sound fair?"
"Hmm," she replied noncommittally as she moved into the kitchen and found the garbage. Once she'd disposed of the little wipes and had washed her hands, she went back to the living room, considering his offer more carefully as she picked up her own glass, observing the liquid in it as she gently swished it around. It was more tempting than she would admit to accept his offer, to stay for dinner and get more cozy, more comfortable with him. But despite their apparent chemistry, all signs pointed to her being in danger of liking Samuel just a little more than would be good for her, and to him either not being interested in anything related to feelings, or at least to him not wanting to be interested in anything related to feelings.
That was, by definition, a bad combination.
The door to his closet stood open, his clothes neatly in their places, properly hung or neatly folded. He grabbed the first tee shirt within reach, tugging it over his head before shucking boots and mussed trousers, leaving them all piled where they fell. In fresh jeans and relatively unrumpled tee shirt he made a far more presentable picture when he returned to the living room. "So. Any ideas?"
"Well," she said, as she took a sip of that sublime whiskey, "actually, now that you're all patched up, I think it's probably best if I get going." She swished the whiskey around again, then took another, last sip. It was just shy of enough - she would have liked another taste. But that, too, was a dangerous proposition.
"Thank you for the drink," she told him, setting her glass down and already shifting closer to the door.
He nodded, a vague and shadowed smile playing over his lips. "Thank you for the help," he answered, quite sincerely. Left to his own devices, he would have dealt with his wounds with a shower and little else. Scars were no great deterrent, after all, and he had felt well enough before the patching-up that he had assumed no extra care was required. Still, there was no real down side to the care she had taken with him; it was as appreciated as it had likely been necessary, and Samuel found he regretted nothing of the unexpected intimacy that had passed between them.
He stepped near enough to show her out, then, but made no real progress toward the door, leaving that small dismissal entirely up to her. "I'll see you around, then, Lia."
For a second - just a second - the sight of him, his smile, that tone, almost made her stay. But it was too late to change her mind now - now it couldn't be taken for anything but weakness.
She moved definitively for the door.
"I'll see you around, Sam," she said with a little smile of her own as she slipped out.