InsaneJournal

put your money where your mouth is tonight
Who: Fiona and Nicolas
What: Second meeting... this time, no masks. Well, sort of. :D
Where: CASKET
When: November 12th, 2011, c. 11pm
Warnings: Filth flarn flarn filth!
Notes: Completed Gdoc!



Fiona was looking for trouble.

One of her coworkers had needed someone to cover past of his shift. She’d agreed to pick it up weeks ago, and even though she probably wouldn’t have held her to it, Fiona’d had no desire to miss any more work. After the hours she’d missed already, she didn’t have the luxury of skipping shifts, even “extra” ones. Rent was still due, bills still had to get paid, and the world kept relentlessly turning, indifferent to its losses or hers.

So fuck it.

It was eleven, though, and he’d shown up, grateful, and she’d shrugged, impassive. It’d been another excuse to stay out all night. Normally, she wouldn’t party at the place where she worked, but she’d just have enough free drinks to get a good start, then head somewhere else, somewhere more anonymous, where some dude would offer her blow if she’d suck his dick in the bathroom or his car -- where she’d do his coke and tell him to go fuck himself, especially if he was a guy whose dick she would have sucked anyway. Maybe if she was lucky, he’d try to force her, and she’d kick the shit out of him.

But that was getting ahead of herself. She was still at CASKET, where she’d shown up faithfully every night she’d been scheduled for after those first few days, except for the ones she’d missed for the funeral.

It’d been a relief to get out of Chicago, because fuck Chicago, and fuck her parents, and fuck the whole thing in general. Besides, they didn’t let you smoke in bars there either, and it was fucking cold there.

Tonight it was black jeans that looked like they’d been painted on riding low on her hips, a white Black Flag t-shirt with the collar torn off, hanging low off one shoulder, revealing a bright red bra strap and hinting at her midriff. Her hair was down, a little wild, bangs nearly to her eyes, and her ankle boots had thick, tapering heels that made her feel like she could still curbstomp someone. She’d done her make-up to hide the dark circles, the pallor of her cheeks, some of the weight she’d lost, the ever-present hangover.

She was starting the cycle all over again with a double of bourbon, neat. As soon as she tossed it back, she set the glass down, pushing it toward her coworker for a refill.

The bar stool beside hers creaked with the weight of a stranger, his lanky form casting an equally slinky shadow across her hastily returned drink.

“Well, Baroness,” the shadow’s owner purred. “I have to admit, I kind of prefer the PVC.”

Nicolas leaned across the bar, plucking a cocktail napkin from a short stack just out of most patron’s reach. He settled it before him, splayed out across the bar’s slightly damp surface, and tapped atop it to attract her fellow bartender’s attention. “Vodka martini,” he said, when at last the young woman’s attention turned to him. Nicolas’ own attention waned quite quickly, refocused as it was on the now plainclothes bartender of whom he had such fond memories - none, oddly, past nine on Halloween night, but enough to have brought him back. He shifted on the barstool, black Cuban heels clicking against the chair’s lowest rung. His long legs looked all the longer dressed entirely in black, his hard, narrow chest all the more so for the fitted black tee he wore. Only the black tuxedo coat hung more loosely off him, its sharp lapels shining in the dim light.

Fiona’s head did not turn, though something in his voice rang familiar; something in his presence, did, too. She could feel him next to her, the space that he filled, before she knew his shape.

“Do you always dip your pen in company ink?” he asked. “An’ if so, you think I could get this on the house?” He pointed toward his glass, already en route. “I did tip generously last time around, and I suspect that didn’t go to use as I asked.”

His voice, his order. But more, that sense, that undeniable sense that emanated from him that she couldn’t identify but was as familiar as song. She turned and for a moment could only look at him with haunted eyes, seeing his face for the first time, but recognizing his lower lip. She didn’t know what to say to him. Two weeks ago, she’d have said the right thing, given him a smile, flirted back, played little games all night until they exchanged numbers and they played some more. But now, it occurred to her that he’d met her before everything that had happened. Before Karin, After Karin. That’s all there was.

“Is this you flirting with me?” she asked, the vulnerability having fled her expression, leaving only deadpan behind. “Because you shouldn’t. I’m kind of a cunt.”

With that, she took the glass of bourbon and took a long drink.

He arched a brow, his smile quirking with equal sharpness. “I don’t do well with people telling me what I should and shouldn’t do.” He nodded to the waitress as she sat his drink down, slipping a ten-dollar bill over toward her. It was hardly the tip he had afforded other staff before - present company included - but then, he wanted far less from the girl in question. She moved away in short order - all he had wanted from her, truth be told - and he turned in his seat, the better to focus on his chosen prey. Lifting the glass to his lips, he spoke against the thin, delicate rim.

“An’ as it happens, I’m pretty fond of cunts. If you’re trying to put me off, you’ll have to work harder than that.”

Shaking her head with a dark, sardonic smile, she took another swallow, then set her glass down.

“See, this is the part where that line was supposed to have made me laugh, and normally it would have, if I’d decided not to be offended by you using the word ‘cunt,’ even though I just did.”

She turned her head to look at him, and was struck again by the resonance, by the feel of him that made her ache somehow, and also prevented her from telling him to fuck off and die, which was as likely to happen to a man who approached her in a bar these days as her using them for their money or drugs then telling them the same. It didn’t make sense. She should just get up and walk away; stop talking to him. But she couldn’t. Or didn’t want to. She couldn’t tell which, and it didn’t matter, for practical purposes.

“I’m not in the mood to be clever or cute, or to play the little mating ritual games. I just want to drink bourbon until I’m fucking tanked, maybe do some blow, then drink some more.”

If he in any way felt abashed, he did not show it. His posture remained the same: lax, shoulders languidly sloped, only his eyes belying the apathy he seemed to exude. His smile was slow, self assured, as if he inwardly, secretly enjoyed a joke he had no intention of sharing.

“Your nose is too pretty for coke,” he said, clicking out a tut-tut with the tip of his tongue. “Why destroy such a well-shaped bridge for a shitty, retro little sin like that?” He shifted closer, his tousled head canting as he watched her carefully. His eyes moved over her, taking in once more her inexplicable familiarity, the darkness that drew him impossibly in. He slipped thin fingers along the base of his glass, toying idly, airily, with its hard curve. “I do have an alternative to offer, though. No game playing required.”

“I appreciate your concern for how pretty I am,” she said, then tossed back the remainder of her bourbon, then pushed the glass toward her coworker again with a nod.

“Hon...” the pretty bartender began. Fiona just gave her a dark look and pushed her glass further forward. Shaking her head, her colleague just got the bottle and poured Fee two fingers.

“Just leave it,” she said. “Take it out of my cut for the night.”

As the other bartender left, she cast a sidelong glance at the stranger, resentful of the relentless interruption of her self-medication, and her inability to tell him to go. It wasn’t his looks -- though obviously he had them, and obviously he knew it. And sure, the way he moved had its appeal. The swagger. But it was more than those things; he was pushing her, challenging her. And pulling her at the same time.

“Let me guess. You’ve seen me have my two drinks, and now you’re trying to get me to prove your theory about my costume.”

Her lips pressed together, remembering the PVC, and the last time she’d worn it. The blood on her hands.

She turned back to her glass and took another drink.

“That,” he allowed, “and you look like you could use a distraction that’ll give you something better than a nosebleed.”

The comment had come quickly, easily; this was an old game whose rules Nicolas already knew well. What was less familiar was the pang that followed after. Had he not known better he might have said it felt like missing her, though given their one brief meeting he knew that to be impossible. He chalked it up instead to a more carnal kind of longing, its subtleties merely blurred by the alcohol and the headiness of a new potential conquest.

“What do you say, Baroness,” he said, watching her eyes though she refused to look at him. “I’ll be more entertaining than that bottle or your blow. Legal satisfaction guaranteed.”

For a moment, her jaw tensed, working almost imperceptibly as she listened to his proposal, as she bristled at the interruption of her numbing rituals. At the same time, there was something about his voice, something about him, that compelled her, and she might have resented that even more. Even so, Fiona had never been good at impulse control, and so she turned on her stool and looked at him, meeting his eyes with an impassive expression, only her eyes sparking with a challenge.

“I say,” she said, tossing back the rest of her bourbon and crossing her legs, “convince me.”

Immediately he felt that welcome surge, the rush of adrenaline that signaled the chase rejoined. He shifted atop his own perch, legs loosely crossing to better hide the burgeoning weight of his own arousal. He leaned into her, the slim, sloping square of his shoulders blocking them from the view of prying strangers; the din of the club seemed to fade away, the two of them cordoned off, separated from that teeming mass by their own solid shapes. He was so close he might have touched her. For a moment it almost seemed that he might. His free hand drifted downward, skimming a hair’s breadth away from her leg before coming to rest atop his own thigh.

“Come with me,” he said, “an’ I’ll make you come before I even peel off those jeans.” His voice was soft, cajoling, a stark contrast to the filth he spoke, but he hardly saw fit to stop there. “The music’s loud enough.” His eyes darted upward, glancing to the speakers pounding out deep and languid bass. Then he looked back to her, a hard grin curving upward the corner of his mouth. “You could scream and no-one would hear.” He chuckled, knowing the dark little sound would do nothing to soften the edge to his words; he meant no respite by it, wanted her to take it in that shadowed, uncertain light. He watched her, then, not shifting away, not leaning back toward his comfortable space.

“Consider that a little... test drive. After that, you decide where you want to go.”

For a moment, she only watched him, listening to the sound of his voice, the words he spoke, not betraying the frisson of awakening need that rolled through her at his words, both the promise and the threat. It had been too long since she’d had a proper fuck, since she’d torn into someone and had them tear into her -- and everything in the way he moved, the way he sat, the way he smiled made her think he’d be more than up to it. Setting down her empty glass, she looked at him, arching a brow.

“OK. Let’s go.”

With that, she slid off her seat and slinked through the crowd, not looking back at him. He’d follow her or he’d find her. She made her way to the two rows of bathroom stalls that faced each other between two hallways, and slipped into one of them, leaving the door slightly ajar for him.

Taking one last sip from his drink, he watched her go, drinking in the sight she made as she wound through the shifting throng. And then he slipped from his chair, leaving his half-finished martini sitting lonely on the bar. Though he knew it was madness he felt as if he could smell her as he strode through the crowd, that lingering sweetness so indefinably her. He paused at the entrance to the restroom, but only for a moment; as soon as his fingertips brushed the door he felt certain this was where she would lead him. He pushed it open, saw the stall door ajar, and again felt that matchless skipping of his pulse.

His eyes were on her the instant the stall door swung wide, his lips parting on a breath. He reached one long arm upward, slamming shut the door behind him, sliding downward to throw the flimsy lock; the other reached out to her, circling her narrow waist, pulling her toward him. There was no need for talking now, no cause to convince. He covered her mouth with his own, staking his claim, writing out his want with a brush of hard fingers on the taut plane of her thigh.

… some time later …

She was still trembling, but she put those feelings under tight control as she pulled her bra and shirt back into place and shifted away from him, disengaging so that she could lower her leg and slide it back into her jeans, slipping her foot back into her boot at the same time. Her breaths were evening out a little, and she pulled her pants up in silence, feeling the raw ache between her legs, the bruises welling under her skin almost everywhere. She felt satisfied -- less tense than she had in who knew how long. She opened the door to the bathroom stall and moved to the sink as she zipped and buttoned her jeans.

“Thanks,” she said as she washed her hands.

“Yeah.”

He slid a hand down his length, sighing a soft exhalation as he pulled the condom free. He dropped it unceremoniously into the toilet, then reached down to retrieve his own clothes. He tended to zipper and buttons as he joined her in the restroom’s main space. His eyes stayed on her as he washed his hands, dried them, and smoothed out a wrinkle in his trousers. What he had wanted from her, he could not have said, though he was certain it had been something more than this. But he bit his tongue, choosing a smirk in place of speech.

Without looking at him, she dried her hands, straightened her bangs, and ruffled her hair and ignored the speed of her heartbeat, acted calm and cool when the only thing she wanted to do was escape that little room, escape the proximity to him that made her feel things she didn’t want to feel, think about things she didn’t want to know. For a moment, she couldn’t help but imagine what Karin would think of all this, and that just made her move all the faster.

Once her clothes were straightened, lipstick reapplied, hair properly tousled, she finally looked at him and said, “Have a good night,” before slipping out the door.