Re: B&B: Cat & Jack
She hadn't grown up drenched in occasion, to dread it coming around every so often. Drinks parties were either steeped in dull conversation he didn't know how to engage in (pleasantries meant nothing, conversations about the sodding weather meant nothing when his head was full of the days prior in Marakesh or Camp Bastion) or tipped over into fear when he was young enough for his father to host. But hell, if you didn't wait on tenterhooks for the drunk of the occasion to pick a fight with nearest and dearest, perhaps they were occasions worth attending.
"Your familiarity with living fairy-tales needs work if a cocktail party is the closest approximation. Versailles. Take a visit, it looks like something out of a Gothic tale. No people, but after all, people disappoint." He rubbed the flat of his thumb along his jawline, the prickle of glinted silver springing in its wake. Cat didn't ask why he was willing to hand over the truth now, but it came down to the fundamental distinction drawn starkly between them in an argument over what the dark meant. And he was always bloody stubborn. If he was going to tell the truth now and again, sober or as close to it as could be approximated then he would do so without hiding it or him. But she didn't ask, so Jack didn't say.
And christ above, it was depressing. Love to write poetry about was obsessed with death. Perhaps no one worth loving could be loved for so long that you grew old, wizened, your skin grew slack and your hair coarsened and liver-spots reamed your hands and the poetry still ran through your life like ribbons. Perhaps the poets only bothered with the short-term, the mayfly breed of love. Jack wasn't bloody sure words summoned from other languages made up for it, certainly not for him and not for the woman sitting opposite tasting the word for its validity.
He didn't choke when she threw the punch. Hell, he was expecting it. Cat with her claws, prying up the carpet and looking at the rot. "Do you want to know, or are you asking because you want me to know you know?" The pale blue of his eyes had silvered with grief momentarily, but his pupils sharpened now. But they were picking over th bones, slivers and morsels of flesh that were left to them for dignity.
"Jen." He left it there, but Jack leaned in to the conversation about the little now-grown girl, whether she belonged to the man who had buried himself rather than return, or not. "What is it you'd change if you could for her?" He would have asked what made the risk harder to put away now, if it had been put away once, but god above he knew that to do something once didn't make it habit. He'd sat in those shabby little rooms in basements with the smell of instant coffee and sugared donuts and listened long enough to all those people who'd thought once meant done.
But she interrupted all full flow thought of habits made and unmade with deliberate stretch to full length and Jack watched because Jack was both human and unapologetic. It was an excellent reminder of the steel under that silk, and when he drew breath it was heavy on spice and less on the smell of cold air and dust and smoke that clung to his own shirt. It was a bravura act and one Jack enjoyed for the moment and he laughed, soft and amused and admiring if only for how completely she'd knocked out the game.
"Bravo." He looked at the board, considering the options. There were enough, because the strategy hadn't been all-encompassing. She was good, but chess was not her bloody forte.
"Cat, when I want to get you into bed, I'll ask you. Although I note your bed-linen requirements. Today," he smiled as she withdrew the Rilke from the chair with enough purpose he thought it was headed out of the room shortly, "Today was making up for the dark."