Re: Bar: Cat & Steve
That cabbage thing? Was disgusting. Not that Cat's childhood had featured much better. Hunger? Hunger was a very good way to make small children do as they were told. Violence, hunger, those were surefire ways to make children into puppets, and Cat's childhood had prominently featured a rumbling belly, bruises and dirty cheeks. But she'd had her own Teddy in Holly, who was long dead and bones, and who it still hurt to think of.
"Massaged on the inside? Sounds entirely disgusting," she informed him, making a face to go along with his smile.
Cat? Cat wasn't candid, not normally. But tonight? Tonight she was feeling like words. It reminded her of a loft in Jersey, a couch, sticky heat and books spread open everywhere. Oh, the setting? Was completely different, and so was the man sharing the space with her. But her desire to talk? It was the same, and she didn't question it. Why bother, and what would it accomplish? Nothing. And she listened when he said his friend had fallen from a train car, and that sounded like a terrible way to go. "Well, if we're sticking to people from our childhood? My best friend was named Holly. She was killed when we were both 13." She looked down at her glass, and she ran her fingertips along the rim. "She was killed by her pimp. I can still smell the gunfire, and I can still feel how warm her brains were when they splattered." Oh, she hadn't meant to get gruesome or graphic, but for a moment? For a moment mossy green was dazed, and she was back in another place entirely. She blinked her eyes, and she gave him that cheshire smile again. "To happy memories." She lifted her glass.
"It only gets easier if you learn to minimize it," she said of loss. "If you aren't attached to anyone? Then you can't lose anything." There was resolve in her voice. Oh, she wanted to be unattached. It would've made life so much easier, but she'd never perfected it. "If only it was that easy," she added, giving him credit where it was due. "But hope is dangerous. I won't agree with you there." It didn't, in Cat's estimation, make anything better, and it didn't make anything easier. She had yet to see a happy ending, after all.
And she wasn't feeling vulnerable by the time that dance began, not really. Not more than she'd been feeling for months, and her hand in his was a strong grip. Her hip against his, that was inborn grace, something no one had taught her, and something that no one could take from her. It was as much a part of her as the whip she wore in the place of a belt. One of her hands rested on his shoulder, and she moved with that same grace. All hip, and she was lean muscle beneath her clothes, curves close to his warmth.
"Oh, he was one of those coincidences," she said, and her smile was warm enough to indicate fondness. A chuckle followed, one just as warm. "He works here now. We were in Russia at the same time. Old comrades, you could say."