Re: The Apartment: Jamie/Seven
The funny thing was that in the general field of view that was Seven’s past, all the shit he’d worked through in his life, included a good chunk of time that he’d lived it as a control freak. Comparative to now, especially. That was sort of the nature of growing up wild, a perpetual Lost Boy kicking up dirt in back alley playgrounds and with the spatter of leaky ceilings gone unfixed for years. Basically that instead of conditioning him to a lack of discipline, a childhood entirely unsupervised (other than the occasional CPS worker, whether indifferent or idealistic) had meant that Seven worked to pick up the slack as soon as he had the means. Working odd jobs, unlicensed contracting, controlling street corners, shit that meant he was the only one in charge of how his life played out and didn’t leave room for anyone else to squeeze their way in after he’d had a hollow scraped out of his bones. So he got it, yeah? The discipline, and the need to have a tight grip on how your shit played out instead of feeling like anyone else could stake their influence without your noticing. And he got how fucking scary it could be when you did notice that you’d let that influence start to creep in.
“Right,” he said, bemused skepticism apparent even as he nodded solemnly and tried, even halfhearted, to tamp down the span of his smile. Gaze sliding sideways, he leaned his head further back against the couch and closed his eyes while Jamie’s fingers played idly with his hair. It was soothing, made him think about warmth and weight pressing down on him like a heavy blanket. And then his eyes blinked open again, quick flutter of translucent lashes when he felt the backs of Jamie’s knuckles skim over his throat, pupils narrowing and blotting dark again as they adjusted first to the light and then again to the pulse of quiet arousal that opened under his navel at the intimacy of the touch. Even with the dip in gravity that the conversation took, when Jamie turned it back to Hugh and, by extension, who Seven assumed to be the guy that had hurt Jamie when he was younger.
Luc. The name alone inspired visions of an aureate fucking douchebag, never mind someone who could stand to be on the receiving end of some violence, yeah? Seven felt his throat bob under the touch of Jamie’s fingers as he swallowed hard, arousal and residual anger and a lot of shit swirling together. “Yeah, a little,” he managed to answer, voice low and coarse like sandpaper. “S’not like we talked a lot to begin with, but yeah. She gave me some advice about how to handle shit with Sawyer and Marta wanting to see her.”
He huffed a breath of laughter when Jamie called him an asshole, and it was like the world had sort of righted itself, a little? “That’s fine,” he said, shrugging one shoulder and swallowing again, dialled right the fuck in to the lightest press of Jamie’s thumb against his throat. “I can wait for you to find your balls and ask me. Definitely not anti-date.” His eyes shone with humour despite the casual slant of his mouth, and despite the way that his gaze flicked between Jamie’s eyes and his mouth. He leaned in - of course he fucking leaned in - and softened the teasing edge of his words with the glance of his mouth against Jamie’s.