The john that stayed still beneath his fingers may as well not have been. Bonehollow fingers fell slowly -- teased their way down an absent gesture, and that saunter that had found its way crashed against the body of -- ironically -- one of the last few lingering names in a law-beaten, heroin-haze periphery saw its owner staggered close once more.
The cheap perfume had changed -- its acridity laced with an air of street-filth distinction, somehow refined despite an even lower markdown. It sat heavy in the air between them, dredged heady by cardamom and clove, sex and sweat -- the streetslick of Gotham and its ever-present precipitation. And that hand -- that same hand that had no sooner abandoned its previous plaything, that same hand that traced familiarity across their distance -- breached all common sense and postured pretense to rest invasively along a distinguished jaw, fingers cold and everquaking.
"Writer." It was a sneer -- a whispered affair at the prick of a needle's point. He grinned wider, eyes half-lidden and hidden by locks that had, in absence, been dyed a deep red-brown.