Re: [The Mean Eyed Cat: Jack + Cat]
Jack wasn't sure he was an alcoholic. He was, the night held reliving the experience of evolving into one like a promise but the control or lack thereof was history rather than an acquisition. It was all so bloody circular it made his head hurt to think about it overlong, and the point was short: Jack didn't expect to be nannied. Addiction was, after all, in the blood, his inheritance as it were. Cat got bequeathed the seed of the Rex and Jack hadn't made nearly so much rope out of his parental poor choices. But that all meant he didn't look for the woman over the bar to take the liquor away, god no.
"I hadn't thought about it that way. But I rarely do." Which was entirely true. It was an insight that wasn't required to write about anything a paper printed and thus he hadn't devoted considerable time to it. The alcohol was beginning to work, the amiability of the statement was considerably free. "I think we seek out what we want. And what we want might not be what we need. Alternatively, opposite might drive one up the bloody wall, I don't think I could tolerate anyone sweet, entirely pleasant to know and who made friends with half the town. The latter, present company excepted."
Middle-aged. It didn't feel it, the half-way point between birth and death but it probably was. He looked at her with the lazy glitter of the martini, "Darling, if you're going to pluck that particular joke, remember you're older than me, even if you look rather more nubile than I do."
But ah, his own doomed youth. He winced, finger and thumb to the bridge of his nose, "Don't remind me of my inadequacies. I'm making up for lost time, or you make the complimenting easy, which do you prefer?" It wasn't entirely innocent but ah, hiding.
"You're finishing out in style, I'd expect nothing less. Will she return?" But he had at least a suspicion to work on and a thread of conversation to pick back up when he was more sober than drunk and it felt deceitful somehow, presently, for Cat to know and Leena to not. Better the other way around, even with doomed romance in the offing. "Is that an offer or a statement?" Delivered with slant-sharp humor, a thread to slack, comfortable inebriation filtering through what was left of the day's rigidity and ahead of a night that would be as vile as the ones before.
"Good. Don't give a shit about what any of the lot of us think," and he finished the martini glass. "You're not young, Cat. You're not old, you're somewhere in the middle even if you'd like it less complicated. But god knows complication makes everything more interesting."