Re: Log: The Cat - Cat/Matt
Let me guess. Formal dress. [He glanced at her from under his brow as he worked on the top of the bottle. It was hard to imagine him out of denim jackets and long hair if you hadn't known him long, but he cleaned up better than most. Still, he hadn't had both arms inside a tuxedo jacket in a very long time. It would take a precisely measured jacket, to start.
He could imagine her place, just looking at the bottle, scarlet boots at the corner of his eye. He grasped the top of the bottle below the eagle and yanked it out with the satisfying, resonant kiss of cork squeaking out of crystal. He sniffed the top of the bottle, made a small, approving expression, and poured it into the pair of glasses. He didn't spill. He listened to her talk about her man with chess and nesting dolls.] I would have punched him. [Injected agreeably. It wasn't necessarily true, though. Punching would probably have been the least of the man's problems if he chose to walk Matt into a room with that much Russia from floor to ceiling.]
No. [He picked up his glass between the thumb and forefinger of his metal hand. He wasn't wearing a glove. It was capable of fine motor control and a surprisingly careful grasp.] Na Zdorovie. [A sardonic smile - the toast, as stereotypically Russian as the man and his matroyshka dolls, felt like an inside joke.
He downed the vodka, swallowed the short, sharp burn, and eyed the glass.] Good. [As if she would ever settle for less. He filled their glasses again.]
One day. [He nodded, once.] When I'm not. Worried about what would happen. Don't know if it would help, but. Would make it real. Less like a nightmare. [The starkness of real boards, real doors and real shelves, they could take the sting out of a place distorted by half-memory into a house of pain.] Then burn it down. [A feral grin, perhaps the first she'd seen from him lately. If she wanted a reaction, she had it, a flame-bright burst of feeling, how good it would feel to watch it razed into nothing, to watch it reduced to nothing, to send that place and all the things it represented back where they belonged. He didn't take pleasure in the act of reducing things, destroying them. Not even in hurting people - not even when they deserved it. But he could find joy in the prospect of making a smoldering wreck out of that place.
When she actually asked him to try to remember something, however, it faded. He shook his head.] No names. [He pointed to his own face before picking up his glass again.] Almost never. Describe him. [Even if he'd heard the name, it was long gone, wiped with another string of memories off the edge of the chalkboard, possibly never to return.]