Re: B&B: Cat & Jack
If only the dark was bloody safe. Once upon a time he hadn't lost himself in the miasma of regret. Teaspoons, he'd never counted out his life in a single one of them then. But somehow the stasis of frozen shock - horror at precisely what living one moment to the next and surety in risk could do, what he could do and the dark left him in stasis. Make one move without thinking it through and the whole world could turn itself arse over teacup and crash in burning remnants around him. Not that Cat knew it. Not that anyone knew it save himself and the sorry excuse for an animal who occasionally was privy to a conversation when the lights were low.
"I used to." Jack's smile was dug out of memory instead of present at the chessboard. Christ yes, making up decisions on the fly and running into sodding war-zones because of certainty that a story would be at the end. Sunburned, sticky, occasionally scarred and with dust in the hems of his pants and in his socks. "I used to live on it. Adrenaline's one hell of a drug. Better than booze, in fact." The empty glass in mimicry of a toast, he tipped it towards her. "But I fucked up too many times. You break enough bones, you start to think you can't fly, after all."
But he leaned back into his chair and surveyed her. "Love stories aren't always, no. That's my spin on it. But they were my stories to tell and I've never loved anything except a woman. Perhaps my home, before it became an anchor I didn't want. But that wasn't very long and it didn't stick." And the women hadn't either, but they'd lasted longer than bricks and bloody mortar. "Or the job." That had been permanent. She sat there and pronounced her love affair with risk and he knew something similar, the acid tang of it at the back of the throat, the caught-breath flung-off-precipice feeling.
"What are you risking here?"
He eased upward in search of little pancakes and he reached absently for the cat on the bed in passing, a ruffle of fur over ears. Bukowski expressed either displeasure or pleasure in a prolonged sound that was throat of some description and irritable at that and Jack left him alone.
"What if you're running from what you've done? God knows I'm bad at it, but if you leave temptation behind, amends might get made in time," he suggested, putting down the plate beside her. "Poetry might be permitted a little sentiment, now and again. And Rilke's worth it."