Who: Seven & Marta What: Drinking for questionable reasons (part 1 of 3) Where: A dive in Vegas When: Backdated like whoa, post-holiday childhood plot, after this. Warnings/Rating: Language, and lots of it
Even as he pulled up to the curb outside the bar that his mystery chick had named, Seven Morgan had no fucking idea what he was doing there. Part of it could have been some twisted form of self-flagellation, facing his accuser so that she could tell him what a monster he was. Like he didn’t know the severity of his own goddamned darkness. The other part - who knows, maybe a brazen curiosity to meet the girl who knew what he’d done to her, who had heard his nonchalant admission that it wasn’t the first time he’d killed someone, and still demanded that he come buy her a drink? She had to be nuts, and maybe that made him curious. Most likely was the fact that he’d never been able to actually face one of the people he’d hurt at these things, though his ideas of what to say and how to act were fleeting, replaced on the breath of something harsh and self-serving. Whatever the reason, he was frozen in place on his newest bike for the better part of five minutes after he’d pulled into a spot behind the cab stand outside the bar.
In some part of his mind he was there, toying with a frayed seam that ran along the thumb of his leather riding glove as if it held some answers. He was fogging up his helmet while he conducted the inward debate regarding the merits of heading into the bar versus driving off into the growing twilight of a warm winter evening, knowing in the part of his gut that felt icy cold that this was another poor decision that he’d swallowed too quickly. He tugged off the helmet with its tinted visor, having just about reached the point where he remembered he hadn’t actually promised anything -- and the doorman recognized him, jerking a curt nod in his direction. Big guy, shaved blonde head with a pleasant face. Familiar; Seven noted that he’d hired the man through the contracting business a few times last year, and pulled him over into doing security when he needed more meat standing behind him.
As he dismounted from the bike, he was maybe a little surprised that he’d been made so easily when he’d only met the guy a couple times; he’d grown out his hair and beard over the heat of the summer months and kept it the same going into winter, and he’d swapped out the suit for jeans and a leather jacket. But he supposed that it wasn’t enough of a difference. Nah, Seven only felt like a stranger in his own body. He ran a hand through the sandy blonde locks that were swept back off his forehead, sticking to his temples where he’d worked up a light sheen of sweat under the heat of his headgear.
“Mike,” he nodded in acknowledgement, slapping an open-palmed greeting against the man’s broad shoulder as he slipped through the front door. It was mostly empty, save for the darkest corners, so he made his way up to the bar and took a seat on a tall stool while he waited for the pint of stout he ordered to land in front of him. He made a point of not looking around for his ghost-girl.
Marta had already begun drinking before leaving the apartment. As soon as she'd returned from the hotel, wrapped her head around what had happened, and found her roommate's "hidden" stash of alcohol, she'd helped herself. She didn't usually lean toward losing herself in shit (too many echoes of her mother keeping her from giving in to that temptation), but the night called for it. Merry fucking Christmas from the hotel.
She hadn't actually expected to ever find out who the boy had been. She hadn't been around for a bunch of the hotel's shit, not like some people she'd read about in the book, but it still didn't seem like introducing yourself was a common post-killing thing. And she got that, she did. But the drinking made it easier to deal with, and she knew that she didn't really want someone else to be fucked up over something that had gotten taken away again when morning hit. Insisting on meeting was maybe going a little too far, especially after the dude admitted to actually killing people. But at that point, she was being stubborn with herself, forcing herself to face the shit that had left her so fucked up. She didn't want to be scared, not the way she had been when she was younger. It was why she fucked who she wanted to now (instead of who forced her to), and why she was making herself go to the bar.
By the time she'd pulled her real clothes back on (after having switched into her pajamas after the hotel, having lost her jeans in the apartment but switching to a short skirt), flagged a cab and rode to the bar, the drinks she'd had at the apartment were starting to wear thin. Which she supposed was good, because she probably didn't need to go into this sort of thing even a little bit tipsy.
She'd chosen the place because it was close to the Bella, and sometimes some of the dancers went there after their shifts. She knew she was fooling no one with an ID that said she was 21, but she was still let inside, still served when she asked for a drink, and it seemed like a better place to meet than a McDonalds or some shit like that. Even though it wasn't a normal night, wasn't a normal time for her to arrive, she still knew the bouncer at the front door (by face, if not by name), and gave him a smile as he rolled his eyes and let her in.
She realized that she didn't know who she was looking for, other than a guy. She looked around for someone close to her own age, someone that could've been a kid that carried a knife in his pocket, but no one jumped out at her. Doing one loop around the bar on heeled booties (not quite as tall as the shoes she danced in, but still tall enough), she finally sighed and worked her way to the bar itself, sliding onto a stool. Noticing a guy a few stools down (leather, beard, nice eyes, older than her), she smiled in his direction even though he seemed to be paying more attention to the bartender than her. With a shrug to herself, she leaned her elbows on the bartop and stood on the rung of the stool, making herself taller to grab some attention from the bartender. The wide neck of the knit shirt she was wearing slipped off one shoulder, exposing her bra and her arm nearly down to her elbow, and along with the way she'd pulled her hair up, the shadow of dark ink on the back of her neck was readily visible. When the bartender came over, she gave him a smile and ordered herself a coke that was heavy on the rum.
After too many years of his life spent in bars with girls who were too young and too pretty for their own good, Seven found himself simultaneously unsurprised and unimpressed by the black-haired little wisp of a thing who seemed to be intent on spilling herself all over the bar and making warm eyes at him, even as he was forced to note a distant appreciation of his own. No thank you, he was not looking for any new babysitting jobs and he certainly wouldn’t go looking for this one if he was, with her pouty mouth and the soft, dark eyes that screamed ten sorts of trouble he could do without. Nope, she was a cute face and a tight bod just waiting for trouble and wasn’t he past that shit by now? Was he not yet considered off limits by the hot pieces with questionable sanity that called this town home? It was all he could do to keep from rolling his eyes when she spun him that gleaming, dangerous smile; he turned his full attention back to the bartender and lifted the corner of his generous mouth in a grimace.
“Jesus - seriously, Rob? Am I going to have to have a word with Mike when he’s working weekdays, or what?” His voice was practically dripping with derision as he flicked his green eyes in the younger girl’s direction, yanking a slightly flattened pack of Pall Malls (the same brand he’d smoked all those years - or was it hours? - ago when he’d tried to save a girl, smelling like the men that his mother insisted on bringing home every night) from the breast pocket of his leather jacket and tapping one out against the heel of his hand, into the corner of his mouth. The bartender made a face in his general direction but didn’t protest when he sparked his plastic Bic and lit the cigarette -- apparently state laws didn’t apply to the kinds of men that spent good enough money to be able to conduct their business in the back rooms of certain establishments. Even if they made it a point to act like complete assholes these days.
“You know you’re not fooling anyone, right?” He’d turned his attention to the girl at this point, jutting the cigarette’s glowing tip in her direction and arching a pair of dark brows. The red glow of ember lit a punctuation point around his features. “I mean, the ghetto bitches on Halloween are wearing better disguises than you. Sorry, but those tits are only going to get you so far in life before the wrong bartender gets pissed off about the fact that you pick and choose when to put out, you know?”
(And no, he didn’t sound remotely sorry.)
His voice wasn't familiar - it had dropped too much from the scared 14 year-old in her mother's boyfriend's apartment. In fact, there was too much different about him for her to recognize him right off, although she was only 6 years out from that unreal meeting. No, he only seemed like a bitchy guy in a Vegas dive that couldn't keep his opinions to himself. Cute or not, that shit got on her nerves real fast. She grabbed her drink and stepped off the stool's rungs, crossing the space between them without any sort of sway to her walk other than what the heels automatically gave her. It was a harder look on her face, still a smile but with no hint of sweetness or seduction to it. Her eye makeup was maybe a little more smudged than usual, but still neat enough to be considered "smoky" instead of "fucked up". Lips pale as the rest of her skin, save for those bits covered with ink, she slid onto the stool directly next to him and crossed her legs - one pale limb over the other (skirt not quite short enough to expose the ink high up on her thigh). The shirt gapped again, but it was artless and unplanned when she tugged it back up over one shoulder.
"I don't think you know a fucking thing about when I do or don't put out, asshole. Not that it's any of your fucking business, either, but I've never even been close to - Rob?" She cut a glance over at the bartender for confirmation, only continuing once she got a nod from him. "Rob's dick." She didn't back down, planting her elbow on the bar and her foot on the rung of his stool as she leaned in. If he had set down the cigarette she would've even picked it up for a drag. "My tits pay the rent, and they apparently got your attention." She'd spent the night dying and coming back again, and beyond that had been reminded of every fucked up moment from that apartment and the man in it. It left her itching for something, even if she couldn't define what it was. Even if it tried to come out as pissing off a guy that she probably shouldn't. "And who says I'm trying to fool anyone? What're you thinking I'm trying to fool about, anyway?"
Seven couldn’t help the smirk that wound its way around the corner of his mouth, slanting his lips up in bare-bones amusement at the girl’s attempt to be - intimidating? Scary? Whatever her goal was, he thought it was sort of like being stared down by a puppy. Cute, hard to observe without laughter, and ultimately nonthreatening. Still he managed to limit his reaction to an arched eyebrow as she stalked over and settled herself into his personal space. He took a long haul off the cigarette and picked up the pack, flipping it open in a not-quite-peace offering to his assailant at the same time that he shot Rob a look like, see this shit I have to deal with? Maybe a cigarette between those pretty lips would shut her up for half a second and he could start to comprehend the deliberate, throbbing headache that was working itself into place between his temples.
“I’ll keep thanking the good Lord everyday for my blessed ignorance,” he said with a slow, mocking sincerity, tapping the filtered end of his cigarette against the swell of his bottom lip just like he’d done in front of the girl from last night. It was a habit, maybe something he’d unconsciously picked up from his older brother - who had managed to make smoking look like the coolest pastime in the world to a preteen Seven, on the rare occasions that they actually got to spend time together. He raised the pint glass to his lips and downed nearly half the contents in a swallow or two, knuckles white against the glass as he held on maybe a little tighter than was strictly necessary. Like it was an anchor to his sinking ship, before he turned back to the girl with his upper lip curled into a lazy sneer that he knew did little to detract from his good looks - and what was it hurting if it wasn’t entirely accidental?
“And the only thing of yours that got my attention was the fact that my favourite doorman slash employee isn’t above thinking with his cock when it comes to teenaged girls with some bullshit ID.”
That smirk of his should've made her want to punch it right off his face, but she just sighed and rolled her eyes. And then she reached over with her left hand, black painted nails and a tattoo on the inside of her wrist, and accepted the offer of the cigarette. She'd never made smoking a full-on habit, it being too expensive for her to maintain for any true length of time, but she wasn't going to turn it down when someone offered. She lifted her eyebrows toward the lighter, gesturing with the cigarette between her fingers, but didn't wait for him, reaching across to snag it from him and light it herself.
And then, once it was lit and she'd taken that first drag, she looked at him with a smirk of her own. "It'd be easier to believe you if you hadn't been looking." She watched him just as closely, though, noting the slight habit-based gesture, and her eyes narrowed for just a second, something seeming too familiar about it. She shook her head to herself and lifted her glass' straw to her lips for a drink as she tried to place it and failed. Figuring she must have seen him somewhere before - the club or here, and never thinking he might be the one she was meant to be meeting - she shook her head again.
"He's yours? You've claimed him, then?" She leaned to the side, ribs against the bar and shirt doing its own thing of slipping and exposing as she looked at him. "If he's thinking with his cock, it's another one I haven't gotten close to. He lets me in because he knows me, not because he wants to fuck me." Her smile twisted into a smirk again. "Or if he does, he hasn't told me yet."
Seven decided that he liked playing observer to her mannerisms, even as she was annoying the ever-loving piss out of him. Everything she did was like some monumental effort, incomplete without a glare or an eye roll or a dramatic sigh to accompany it on its journey out into the dangerous world. She made him want to roll his eyes right back at her.
“Definitely a teenager,” he said aloud, directing the comment into his beer and adopting a more neutral expression. “With that wonderful cocktail of arrogance and naïvety. You really have yourself convinced that it’s your bubbly personality that’s greasing your path into places like this?” He went on, shooting her a look that implied he was questioning her grip on reality.
“Every man with a dick and a few chromosomes that you encounter in your little world, they want to fuck you. That’s why they ignore the laughably fake IDs and the teenager-y drinks you order without calling you out on it. It’s not because you’re as hot as you think you are, and it’s not because of those - “ he pointed his cigarette at each of her tits in turn. “Any more than it’s because of your IQ. It’s about that warm, wet place you’ve got for their cock.”
Now it was his turn to lean back on his bar stool, stretching out his long legs at an angle that avoided her invasion of his space and propped the heels of his excessively-expensive combat boots up on the foot rail. The self-satisfied expression on his face was tempered only by Mike’s delivery of a second pint, coming in at the tail end of his little speech. “Give Marta a break, man,” the bartender chided. “She don’t need to get on the bad end of your temper, so stop trying to scare off the eye candy.”
Seven’s hand froze around the curve of the glass, his fingers slick with condensation. The blood in his veins seemed to drop about ten degrees, and he swallowed thickly without pulling his gaze off the beer.
“Marta? You’re her?”
Her eyebrows went up, along with another quirked smile. She didn't lash out, and she didn't try to catch his eye or his favor. For once, she was just talking, even if it was about things that most people wouldn't consider a discussion topic in public. "I think what gets me into this place and what gets me served is the fact that I usually show up with a bunch of girls after work, and they let us all in at once. If I just wanted to drink, I'd stay at home and steal my roommate's shit." She made no other comment about her tits or how hot she was or wasn't. She knew she wasn't the prettiest girl at the club by far, and hadn't been even at her old job. She was short even in heels, and skinny, and had more ink than a lot of guys liked on the younger girls. But she was good enough to get her job, and she never forgot that much, at least. "And it takes more than just a drink to get me wet for cock." It was said in the same tone as the rest of the conversation, just before she took another sip of her drink.
The comment from the bartender earned him a sweet little smile and a 'thank you!' before she turned her attention back to the man next to her, and the way he'd suddenly gone still. Any trace of smile faded from her face quickly as she watched him. She knew enough to know that stillness wasn't always a good thing from men with sharp glances and wide shoulders. She shifted slowly, uncrossing her legs and keeping just her toes perched on the rung of his stool, ready to push it away and run if she needed to. The words, her name from his mouth, stopped her in shock, and something twisted in her stomach as her brain tried to catch up.
"I'm me, whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean." The words were all out before the pieces clicked together, and she looked at him again, really looked at him - the color of his eyes, the span of his hands, the way his shoulders tensed. "Ah." The sound was soft, thoughtful. "Well, you're not quite what I was expecting." Though her tone revealed nothing about whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, it was gentler, without any of the brashness it'd had a second ago. It could make an instant comeback if it needed to, but for just a second, she was softer, like there was still a younger girl hidden behind the tattoos and dark eye makeup.
Even as Seven continued to stare into the depths of his glass, there was a sliver of something that resembled hope (or prayer, or straight up bargaining with forces unknown) that held out against his certainty. This something, it tried to wonder if he hadn’t misheard the bartender. That her name was something else and this girl, this small fragile thing with her acid mouth and oil-slick eyes, she wasn’t the one that he had hurt so bad in that hallway with the haze of smoke clinging to his skin. And then the worst happened and he saw from the corner of his eye the way that she stilled in turn, all traces of that caustic smile vanished from her face. She’d figured it out. And that meant he was right.
Not what you were expecting? The words tripped on his tongue and he almost barked out a humourless laugh, except that he was too busy memorizing the wood grain pattern on the bar as he rubbed one hand over the back of his neck. Christ, she was a fucking child. Couldn’t be more than - he did turn then, giving her an appraising look that was bare of his previous judgements and superiority, with his mouth gone soft and sad - well, he couldn’t be sure of her age, but he was willing to bet all the money in his wallet that she wasn’t more than a few years out from the memory they’d shared.
And he could see it, now that he really looked at her. He saw the face she put on for the public, for all the assholes like him who probably just reminded her of terrible things in their anger and ferocity. But the mask wasn’t a perfect cover, and he could spot the brief glimpses of that girl who had been scared and alone. Could spot them because he knew where to look. Because he knew what it was to wear a mask, and he’d had a lot longer to perfect the disguise. “What were you expecting?” He asked in a flat voice, turning back to his drink as he raised it to his lips, eyes unfocused and turned to the ring of condensation he’d left on the bar.
Marta wasn't sure if he was actually going to look at her again, what with the way he kept hunched over his glass, staring at the bar top like it held some great fucking mystery of the universe. Or like he was attempting to wish himself anywhere else than the stool he was perched on. She was about to make another comment, but then he was suddenly looking again, right at her, and yeah she'd been right about him having nice eyes. There was a difference in the way he stared at her now, and she wasn't sure that she liked it. Her eyebrows inched up a fraction, a questioning of what exactly he was seeing as he stared.
"Someone younger," she admitted, when he asked. A smile and a loose shrug followed, and then an unthinking shift as she hooked slim fingers in the too-wide collar of her shirt and settled it back on her shoulder. "You weren't this much older than me before." A statement, not a judgement. "You gotta be, what, in your thirties?"
And then he was looking away again, and she sighed, leaning back just slightly as she hooked one foot under the rung of his stool for balance and used the other to nudge at his calf. "I wasn't what you were expecting either, was I? Otherwise you wouldn't've been all sass before and Mister Clam-up now." She nudged him again, voice gentle but words needling. "Want me to go back to annoying the shit out of you? You can pretend I'm just some fucked-up, underaged T&A hitting on you at a bar." She paused, then tried smiling again, this one with a twist of self-awareness. "Not that far from the truth."
“I’m thirty-six,” Seven murmured in acknowledgement, unintentionally mirroring the girl’s shrug when he lifted one shoulder beneath the weight of his leather jacket. As if to say, fucking duh. As if he didn’t still feel the weight of a young girl’s limp and lifeless body cradled in his arms, even now that he was more than strong enough to hold her off the filthy ground while she bled out all over his boots. He tapped the tips of his fingers against the side of the glass with an absent solemnity and shook his head just slightly, a gesture that wasn’t meant for her. Not really. “That’s not how it works, this place. That place, I mean.”
His head canted to the side and he glanced in her direction for half a moment, almost like he was trying to make sure she was still there. Or maybe hoping that she wasn’t. He cleared his throat like it was a reflex rather than something designed to buy him that extra half-second. “That hotel. It doesn’t give a fuck about… time. It just wants to hurt people. I think it feeds on that shit, I don’t know.”
He actually did manage a laugh when her booted foot reached out to nudge against his leg, but it was a hollow and disingenuous sound that came from somewhere in the pit of his heavy stomach and made his mouth taste bitter. “I don’t know what the hell I was expecting. Not you,” he breathed out, weary and worn, shoving his free hand through his mess of dirty blonde hair in a move that was reminiscent of the kid who had tried to play at being this girl’s hero. He swallowed hard, again, and wished he could block out the pressure of her words that managed to sound considerate and intrusive and pitying, all at the same time. Woe be to the poor old sap with the blue-black shadows of exhaustion under his eyes and the bruises on his knuckles from one too many picked fights. He couldn’t stand her gentle, flirtatious words. He couldn’t stand the thought that she could see him, that she could think she knew him because of what he’d done.
And when he looked at her straight-on, he thought that he felt something cold take up shelter beneath his ribcage. “But I should have, because you look like her. You look… I don’t know, sad. And too proud to admit it.”
"You think the hotel wants to make us all fucking miserable all the time?" It wasn't a bitter sort of question, or mocking, or anything else it could have been. It was thoughtful, the sort of tone that meant she was actually considering it. The sort of tone that so few people actually heard from her. "Then wouldn't the best fuck you be to try not to let it?" She looked at him with actual curiosity and then shook her head. "And before you go talking about stabbing and killing or whatever, I know it was shitty. I was there. It wasn't peaches and sunshine. But I'm here now and all in one piece." She nudged his leg again. "Which you'd realize if you actually looked at me."
The longer she sat next to him, the more she could see that yes, he was the boy that she'd met. And maybe she had a soft spot for people that actually tried to do something nice for her. And maybe she had a soft spot (ha! more than just soft) for guys that had at least a decade on her. And… "Shit, you look rough," she murmured under her breath, shaking her head. Not the right thing to say, but her tongue was still loose with rum and she didn't think too hard on it.
She stilled when he looked at her, but in anticipation of his words, not in fear or apprehension. And she sighed and rolled her eyes. Just a bit. "I look like me. I always look like me." Which, if she was honest, was why she collected ink under her skin and used makeup that was far too dark for her skin and features. But she knew how she looked when she took it all off (the too-young face that looked back from the mirror in the mornings), and she looked too much like the girl he'd met. Six or seven years out hadn't been enough to change that girl. But it was enough to teach her how to try to make herself sharp on the outside to hide the softness that was just past that top layer. It was why she leaned in, eyes caught somewhere between sad and flat, and whispered. "Takes one to know one, baby."
“I don’t fucking know,” he muttered, exasperated and infuriated all in one as he considered the supposed motives of a mysterious hotel. He tried very hard not to slam his half-empty pint glass down against the bar, and only succeeded because he was so busy reliving the look on that young girl’s face when the sharpened blade had slipped between her ribs and pierced those precious organs and sent thick, pink-stained fluid rushing into her lungs. He saw it all again: the glazed-over milk of her eyes and the way that her slender hands fumbled with the weapon that shone in the light, and it was almost too much. He felt dizzy and worse, like he was doomed to lose a bit of ground on his sanity with every day that passed.
“Maybe not everyone. Maybe it just likes to punish the ones who deserve it. Because yeah, that was some heavy shit. Some awful fucking shit, but you know that because you were there. Thing is, it’s not the first awful shit. Not for me,” he said bitterly, his voice a vicious sound that he hissed through gritted teeth even as he fought against the urge to squeeze his glass until it broke. “That hotel likes to fuck things up, but maybe just for fucked-up people.”
And Seven Morgan, he was a mess, ten kinds of wrong all wrapped up in a self-loathing package. He felt the heat of her gaze that darkened and swam around him and he could feel that fucking pity; he was forced to let the weight of her words wash over his ears and his eyes and his nose until he suffocated and he couldn’t help but wonder just how much he might be made to fear this little girl with her smudged eyes and the whitedark contrast of ink against her skin. Fear her because she wouldn’t let him forget what he felt.
“I’m sorry,” he exhaled, his lips flushed and parting as his hand dropped from the pint glass and slid into the virgin expanse of space between them, palm-up, his hand bone-dry and proffering no more than a sour sort of oblation to this girl. “That I couldn’t save you.”
She hadn't been in Vegas and with the hotel for long enough to know if it specifically targeted fucked-up people. But she knew Ella was there on the journals, and she knew that the woman was one of the nicer people she'd met since… well, since ever. Definitely not someone that "deserved it". So she shook her head and frowned. "I don't know if it picks. I think there's people it fucks with that are nice as you could want. I think it's what's fucked up."
She just looked at him for a long moment when his hand slid across the small space between them. She looked and she saw things that she should have been too young to see. But then she lifted her own hand and slipped it into his, her thumb sliding along the side of his palm and over his fingertips before settling. For a bit, it seemed as if she wouldn't have any other response than that, but then she shook her head as her mouth crumpled into a wry, sour sort of expression. "I'm still here, Seven." His name felt strange in her mouth, but it didn't stop her from using it. "I'm sorry no one saved you." Pity? Maybe. But maybe it was offered as a survivor's solidarity.
It wasn’t like Seven was anything special or particularly brilliant, to know the truth of the hotel’s machinations, deliberate or otherwise. He just knew that it was getting harder and harder to believe that he wasn’t getting exactly what he deserved with every ounce of blood that spilled through his fingertips and stained the soles of his boots. “Maybe,” he shrugged in response to her suggestion, glancing at her sideways as if it hurt him somewhere inside to look at her directly, like it was too much to acknowledge her as this real and tangible thing that he had ruined and stained. “The nice ones are bound to get caught up in it. They don’t deserve it, but maybe some of us do. The ones like me.”
And then she went and did something truly unexpected when she reached out and slid her fragile hand into his own, a small thing with bones fragile like a sparrow’s. He didn’t pull away, but he stared down at their joined hands in unmistakable confusion, eyes widening slightly even as the creased line of a frown made itself known on his brow. And still, he did not pull away. A master of building up cold, monolithic walls with those who might try to make him feel kept safely on the other side, and here he was, knocked on his ass by the small gesture of this girl - this child, for all intents and purposes, even with her tattooed skin and her smudged eyes and her knowing smile - favouring his hand with her own. “No one saved me,” he echoed mildly, at last remembering his cigarette and bringing it up to pull in a lungful of smoke. He dropped his hand to rest on his knee and he did not hold hers captive, but he made no move to release it either. And then he did meet her gaze once more, his eyes narrowed slightly, questioning. Wondering. “I had to save myself.”
She noticed his sideways glances, and turned herself so that she could look at him easier, her toes still tucked onto the rung of his stool, and her knees pressed to the seat near his hip. Almost challenging him to look at her directly with her own posture. She wasn't used to in-person philosophical discussions, but she read enough about different religions that she had a slightly skewed viewpoint from other people her own age. Her head tipped just slightly as she thought about it for a moment and sighed. "Or maybe the hotel just fucks us all over, no matter what we're like, and some people think 'why me' and other people think 'yeah, I deserve it'." Her eyebrow (delicate, tweezed into shape) lifted in his direction.
The expression on his face when she slid her hand into his made her smile. It was like he'd put the offer out there without any real expectation of her reciprocating. But she wasn't going to deny that physical contact (of any kind) helped to ground her in the moment, remind her that though she still carried the memory, she hadn't died choking on the blood in her lungs. His hand was warm and dry and his fingers were thick enough to be strong under hers, and she smiled again for a different reason. And then (finally) he was looking up again (yeah, those were nice eyes - her first impression was still right) and her smile settled with a hint of a smirk to it. "Yeah? Me too." Her fingers tightened around his for just a heartbeat of a moment before resting there again as they had been. "It kinda fucking sucks some days. How's it working for you?"
He wasn’t one to fall victim to challenges, least of all from slight little things like her. It just wasn’t part of his pattern. And still, with all of her body language shouting for him to look at her in some sort of acknowledgement, with her strategically-angled hips and long legs wound through the legs of his barstool, it was all Seven could manage to level an even gaze in her direction. He wasn’t made of stone himself, but any effect she may had held over him should have been negated by the endless loop that played behind his eyes: fervent whispers, panic, wide eyes, ribs and knife and blood and breath and the burn of vomit in the back of his throat. “Maybe, maybe, fucking maybe,” he muttered, waving his cigarette dismissively through the air so that tendrils of smoke curled up around them, between them, through the stale warm air that held them so far apart.
But despite all of it, there was still her hand. It was small but her skin felt softer than he figured he deserved to feel, and the warm ends of her fingers rubbing against the scars and calluses on his palms and his knuckles - god, it was some next level of shit he hadn’t earned, cool and slicked over his fears and his sickness so that he felt just a little bit less despicable. A bright young thing’s approval that dug into the part of him that hated even his own existence these days. And with the back of his hand pressed against the weave of his jeans and her fingers gathered in his palm, Seven couldn’t help but marvel at the fact that he still hadn’t pulled away, and she hadn’t either. He didn’t quite squeeze against her grip, but there was a half-second where he curled his thumb into the girl’s - Marta’s -, into her palm, and at last he lifted his chin so that his eyes could meet the calamitous expression on her face.
“I wish I could have done it. You deserved to be saved,” he breathed out, weary and hoarse as those green eyes bored a path into her skull. And then he did the unthinkable, and they weren’t just holding hands. No, then his fingers threaded their way through hers and they were linked together and he was violently aware of every part of their skin that touched. A dry, hollow laugh escaped his lips. “Working? You’ve got the wrong shithead. I’m a mess and I don’t know how to stop hurting the people that I love. I don’t even know how to fucking love them.”
Marta smiled at the press of his thumb to her palm, curling her fingers around it for the moment it was there. But she shook her head at his gravel wish and sighed. "Life's got shit for people. Deserving or not." She tried to play it off as something unimportant, like it wasn't a big deal. When the truth was, she wished he could've saved her too. But not in the memory. No, she wished (as she always did when she thought about the past) that someone could have been there when it happened for real. Aware that something was going on and able to pull her out of it. She hadn't been able to tell anyone at the time, not certain of what, if anything, she could have said. She pushed that thought away though, and smiled again.
The threading of his fingers between hers earned a pleased-soft murmur of sound, and she spread and then relaxed her hand so that they could settle together. When she did, the weight and press of her fingers was tighter and heavier, a true contact point that couldn't be ignored. "Baby," she said, voice soft and threading through the cigarette smoke that still hung around them. "I haven't even tried to fucking love anyone in years. So you got yourself a few steps ahead of me."
He saw the anaesthesia behind her smiles. Recognized it, even, as the numb sort of unfeeling that radiated off her skin in waves and made him ache for her. When Seven was a kid and he was being hurt, he’d had his older brother there to stick up for him and to get in the way of the fists that flew in his direction more often than not. And when he didn’t have David, he’d learned how to save himself. But it was easy for some scrawny punk kid who’d learned to fight from the middle aged drunks who always wanted to start shit after they fucked his mom. It was easy because he figured out early that his own life had no value. That total lack of self-preservation, yeah, it tended to scare off more opponents than not. No one wanted to fight some little shit who didn’t care how badly his face got screwed up, just so long as he took the other guy’s teeth out with him.
But Seven knew that it would have been harder for her. A hell of a lot harder. He’d seen the dingy little apartment that she’d been forced to call home, and knew there wasn’t enough room for some big brother to protect her. And that particular flavour of fear that he’d smelled on her teenaged skin had been the sick, resolved sort of terror that only happened when someone knew they didn’t stand a chance. She hadn’t ever stood a chance.
“Don’t call me that,” he said, the words coming sharp and all of a sudden as she entrusted her hand to his grasp. It was what she had called him. The girl he loved, all those years ago. Sam used the pet name too, but that was different. They were a million miles apart these days, and anyway, she’d never said it with the lilting sort of tenderness that this girl had employed. “And don’t… say that, like it’s a joke. Or like some good thing. Okay?” His eyebrows lifted and still he stared fixedly at her, flicking the smoldering remains of his cigarette into the dregs that were left in the bottom of his pint glass. The bartender - Mike - came over to offer him another, and he countered with a different order without tearing his eyes away from Marta’s. “Scotch. Glenfiddich twelve. And whatever she wants next.”
Marta hadn't had anyone other than herself growing up, never counting on her mother or anyone else she brought into their lives. Even friends had come and gone as her mom had picked them up and moved them around, following whoever was willing to give a place to an addict and her young daughter. She didn't know the sort of (temporary) reprieve of having a sibling, or what sort of support would have come from having one. She had learned early that her mother couldn't be counted on, and there was a sort of bitter anger there that replaced the warmth where love for her mother should have been. It was one of the things that had made it so easy to leave.
She nearly pulled her hand back at the sudden sharpness of his reply, a startle that she wouldn't have normally had. Her eyes were wide for just a second, but then narrowed back down again. And, for all that her entire arm had jerked back, her fingers hadn't loosened from his, still holding on as steadily as they had been. She didn't nod, didn't reply to the bark, and only looked at him through his next command. There was an uncertain moment when it wasn't clear if she was going to get up and walk away or not, but she finally blinked and did nod slowly. "Okay." The word was slow, almost a question, almost wary. But not of him, and not of his fingers still laced with hers.
The drink order was delivered like a challenge. Like it was there to taunt the too-young girl with too-cheap tastes. When she drank, it was to get drunk (and never mind those thoughts that slipped in with their insidious whispers of how much like her mother she could end up being), and she didn't know what it was like to drink for the pleasure of the alcohol itself. But she knew that every type of alcohol came with its own scale - like the girls that danced at her old club, through where she was now, up to the women that took the stage at the Vega. And for all that the man in front of her had been a ratty teenager with shitty skin and a too-quick knife, she had a feeling he'd left some of that behind. She had a feeling that "Glenfiddich twelve" was like having a woman from the Vega. And maybe her own mind still had her back at her old club, being the sort of alcohol that you had to mix with soda to even get down past the gasoline burn. But she'd danced on the Vega's stage, even if it was just an audition (and even if it scared her shitless to do it), so without looking away from those hard green eyes, she set her shoulders into something stupidly stubborn and ordered from the bartender. "...Same as him."
Seven understood that at a certain point, there must be no going back. It was true in his everyday life when forced to bark orders at the men who trudged back and forth from the trucks to the construction sites with stacks of lumber slung over their shoulders, some of the same guys who wore gun belts round their waists at night, and it was true now that he was facing off with this sly young thing with her narrow shoulders and her demanding thirst for a good scotch and some fucking respect. He’d actually held his breath when first she moved to jerk away from the hold he had on her slender limb, sinking his canines into the meaty inside of his cheek so that the pain might draw him out and hold steady. Calm, collected, he didn’t try to hold her back - no sense fooling the slight one with her hard-set mouth and no small share of bitterness.
He’d really only wanted to know what she would have to drink. But if his wondering was going to be delivered with the barbed tips of a porcupine and the searing burn of her disapproval in her own eyes - so be it, he supposed. He managed a lopsided grin as Mike set down two glasses of expensive scotch, neat, in front of them. He simply responded with raised eyebrows and a bemused light in his eyes as he picked up his own drink and tipped it back and forth beneath his nose, putting on the airs of some connoisseur with a palate trained for something hard like scotch. “What,” he started, sounding deliberately put-out as she had nothing harsh to say in favour of the liquor that she held in her clever little hands. He’d at least expected to be named as pretentious for his troubles. “No comment?”
And then he took a sip, savouring the smoky flavour of the scotch on his tongue, holding tight to the burn that filled him up in his chest and made his eyes water just ever so slightly - but it wasn’t the taste that saw his fingertips go white as he clung tightly to the glass in his hand. It was the sudden question of just what the fuck he was doing here, with her, with this night and the hollow place inside of his chest.
She felt like the two of them kept ping-ponging between two extremes of something that she couldn't define. And that made her nervous. A second before, she'd been comfortable enough, her smile real and a little soft, but now her shoulders felt as if they'd inched up closer to her ears, steel tension shot through the muscles along her spine. And she couldn't define what had changed it. But there was the itch at the base of her skull of having done something wrong, somehow, and she hated it. It made her feel, more than anything, young.
She let her own glass rest on the bartop as he picked his up, and watched as he tipped it back and forth in front of his face. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she watched him drink. When she wrapped the fingers of her free hand around the glass, it was cool and too-slick, and she had to make the effort to keep a hold of it. When she finally lifted it to her lips for a drink (so different than sucking Coke and something cheap through a straw), the warmth didn't hit her until her drink had almost hit bottom in her stomach. That hit made her pull the glass away and set it down again quickly, eyes tearing as she did her best not to cough, though her fingers clenched tight around his hand, giving her away. She tried to ignore the embarrassment (young, too young) that was suddenly overtaking her, and shook her head. "That shit is fucking vile," she managed, voice gone to low gravel with the burn and desire to cough. It was a voice meant less for 'the night of' and more for 'the morning after'.
Even knowing that it was probably expected of him, and despite his propensities for being an asshole at the expense of others, Seven didn’t laugh at her reaction to the drink’s potency. Instead he just watched her, pressing the edge of his own glass against his bottom lip. He understood that her persistence wasn’t the result of any real desire to explore the great wide world of fine liquor, but he actually liked the fact that she was just fucking stubborn. (Wonder why, Remy muttered wryly in the back of his head. Couldn’t be ‘cause you de most stubborn son’bitch dis side ah de Mississippi, nah.) The only ground he gave in to his amusement was the smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth as she hurried to set the glass back down like it was going to bite her, even while she gripped his hand that much tighter.
“That’s my cue to say something about it being an acquired taste,” he said with a false air of musing, taking another sip that went down much more easily than the first now that his throat and his stomach felt like they were coated in the steady heat. “But even though I like it these days, I haven’t fooled myself into thinking it’s pleasant or delicious. Just easier to swallow.”
He set his jaw and tilted his head back in order to drain the rest of the glass, because he wasn’t in any mood for savouring tonight. Then he let go of Marta’s hand so that he could extract his wallet, pulling out a pair of fifties and dropping them onto the bar. Mike would know to keep the change, and it was miles beyond merely a generous tip, but that would go towards any future favours he needed from the man. “You can send it back, you know,” he assured her as an aside, like that was some generous gesture on his part, biting back a grin because he knew that saying as much would just guarantee that she would finish the glass. If only to spite him. “I won’t hold it against you.”
Marta knew that the smile was there, more a smirk that hid a laugh behind it, even if the laugh never emerged into the smoky air around them. She knew it was there even though there was still the glassiness of tears in her eyes keeping her from focusing on him until she blinked them away. She knew it was there in the tone of his words, and it made it easy to wrinkle her nose and throw a look in his direction. "Tipping it into a glass of Coke would make it easier to swallow, too." And if even the thought would horrify connoisseurs of fine things to drink, she didn't really give a fuck.
She didn't completely hide the fact that she was watching him drain that glass, line of his throat exposed in the way it wasn't when he just sat there. But then her hand went cold without his and the money caught her attention, and maybe she hadn't yet trained it out of herself to not notice when green hit the counter. Especially not when the numbers on it inched well over what she was used to seeing. She got paid in cash, sure, always had, but there was never, ever, anything over a twenty. And in the farther past, there was rarely anything over a five when bills were tucked between her skin and a scrap of fabric that barely hid a damn thing. So maybe it was only a glance, but she saw the bills and catalogued them easily enough in her mind. She didn't know if what was in her glass truly cost enough to require such a hefty payment, but it was that more than her stubbornness (though it was there as well) that made her refuse to send back the alcohol. It's expensive, it's the good stuff, don't waste it. She couldn't remember hearing those words from anyone else, but the lesson was still somehow ingrained.
"Like fuck you wouldn't," she rolled her eyes at him, because she knew that she would, were she in his place. She thought about dumping the rest of it into his now-empty glass, but she thought maybe he wouldn't have the same worry about tossing it, and she couldn't let that happen either. So instead, she took a breath, picked up the glass again, and followed his example, tipping it back to swallow it in one go. She managed, but it made her eyes tear more, and she coughed a little as she set the glass down again. Her words came rough and with a gasp. "Fuck me."
“If you’re going to drown it in soda, you might as well just drink your sugary vodka and girly mixers and get it over with. No need to try and impress the big boys if it’s going to cost them to clean your puke off their shoes, yeah?” Seven shot the girl a pointed look as he slid his empty glass and the pair of bills across the bar’s surface so that Mike would notice the latter and take away the former, along with his silent signal that he was done for the night. He still had to drive his bike home, and he had no particular urge to top off the questionable grasp that he currently held on his own sanity with a DUI or some horrific wreck. Nodding once as the bartender spotted the bills and looked up from the glasses he was polishing, Seven made a gesture with his index and middle finger.
“For mine and all of hers, buddy. I’ll hit you up if I need you for a job this week, yeah?” All he got in return was a perfunctory nod, but that was more than enough. Seven was quite aware that his goon here didn’t like to mix business and badder-business, which was fair enough.
“Now that sounds like projection,” he countered; just a suggestion against her rolling-eyed sarcasm when he leaned back in his barstool, the picture of cool indifference. And there he sat as he watched a girl’s eyes reflect the remaining liquid in her glass like it was some poisonous viper, squaring her shoulders and tossing back the golden-amber liquid in between breaths. Fuck me? “Seeing as we just met, I was going to settle for offering you a ride home. Need some water first?”
"I have never once puked from drinking," she said, pointing one slim finger at him and shaking her head. "I'm not going to start now." And maybe she knew that whatever job was being discussed wasn't mowing someone's fucking lawn, but she ignored it. She didn't care. In that moment, she was very good at not hearing what she didn't want to hear. And when she finished her drink, she only nudged it toward the other empty glass until it was close enough that the bartender could grab both of them at once.
Her throat was still raw when she coughed out a laugh at his stupid comment, and shook her head with a smirk over at him. "Like that's stopped me before." Having just met someone wasn't a deterrent if she was really interested, and she couldn't help keeping that smile on her face as she looked at him and raised an eyebrow. "My home or your home?" It was a tease, and the truth that it could shift into something more than a joke was (almost) hidden under her laugh.
“That’s the first warning sign that you haven’t lived enough,” he supplied with a shrug of one shoulder, as if it were obvious. (Naturally.). And regardless of her act of stubborn severity, Seven knew that the girl was probably struggling with the slow, persistent burn in the pit of her stomach. “Still, I wasn’t much younger than you when my foster siblings first got me drunk on scotch, and I haven’t puked like that since. I’m marginally impressed.”
So maybe he liked her laugh. The way that she faced him after everything that had (or hadn’t?) happened between them, okay - it confused him. Yeah. But it also made him smile as he slid his weight off the barstool and onto the soles of his boots, straightening up to the full extent of his tall frame. “I’m thinking,” he began, crossing his arms over his chest and shifting his weight so that he leaned against the same stool with one hip, angled in her direction all the way through to his shoulders. "Dropping you off at your place, and then taking me home to mine. Or just leaving you here, on the possibility that you’re going to tell me to fuck off. Either way, I get home and you get dropped off outside whatever cave you hang upside-down in all night, and everybody’s happy.”
Seven took a step backwards, aiming in the direction of his bike. “So, you coming?”
"Fuck you, 'haven't lived enough'. It's a sign that I know I've got shit for genes and I don't wanna turn into my fucking mother." It came sharp and accompanied by a smile that was more teeth than anything else. Her nose wrinkled into something vaguely disgusted at the thought of puking quite that much. She hated it, throwing up, and tried never to do it - even when it would probably help her feel better. The last time she'd thrown up was when she ate something fucked up a few years ago and spent days feeling like she was going to die. And that was nothing she wanted to think about in the moment.
When he stood up, even though she was still sitting on her own stool, she was surprised to see how much taller he was. In her mind, she'd still been expecting him to have only a few inches on her, but it was obvious that he'd had at least one more growth spurt after she'd seen him. With a smile, she slid off her own stool, glad she at least had her heels on, because she was still far shorter than he was, though she had to admit that she was curious what the difference would be if she was flat-footed on the floor. When she stood, she was close enough to be almost chest to chest, barely inches away from touching him, and she looked up and up to smile. "Dropping me off is no fun. But I'm not telling you to fuck off, either." And she followed with her own steps when he started to move. "I'll take the ride home."
But when they got out in front of the bar, her eyes widened at the bike, and she laughed. Maybe impressed, maybe a little nervous. "Serious? This is you?" It seemed obvious, looking between him and the bike - the attitude, the leather coat. Maybe she hadn't expected it, but it made sense.
"Whoa,” he said with a knowledgeable sort of smile, a quirked eyebrow the only response to her rapid-fire snarl. Almost like lashing out was something that he understood too well. Almost like he knew what it was to thrash against a mother’s legacy, to want to avoid the pinned pupils and the sloppy twist of her sour little mouth, and to yearn for those moments when it turned sweet towards you. “If you’re saying that because it’d be nice to sleep in a place without shitty roommates for one night, I’ve got a couple spare bedrooms. Guess I can’t assume that you’d behave if I landed you in one of those beds out of the goodness of my heart, huh?”
And yeah, so maybe he was taller than he seemed when he was slumping in his barstool and draining glasses of golden-amber scotch, and maybe his shoulders shrugged in a restless sort of anxiety even as the two made their way out of the bar. He was also hurting with every flash of that razor-sharp smile.
“Maybe it is me. Why, you scared?”
Of course she was scared. He was a stranger, and he’d shoved a knife up between her ribs, and her eyes were wide like she was about to tip over on those heels. He’d had to relearn how to save her. And then he reached out and scooped up the high-tech helmet that he’d locked to his bike, balancing it against his palm and reaching out to offer the thing to this girl with her dark eyes and her darker circles. “Coming, love?”
There was an understanding in his eyes for just a moment before he offered her a free bedroom and yeah, maybe that was why she hadn't told him to fuck off yet. Maybe he had another short lifetime worth of years on her, but there was something there buried in his past that matched hers. And then her eyebrows were arching up into surprise that she tried to temper with a smirk. "What are you considering "behaving"? I'm not going to fucking piss on your carpet, if that's what you're worried about." The words were dropped bluntly out in order to buy her more time to think. Because for as often as she shared apartments and beds with other people, she tried to be as smart as she could about going home alone with someone to a place she didn't know. She didn't search out men to take her in, like her mother did. No one back at her place had any idea that she'd gone out to meet up with someone, and she was pretty certain they wouldn't care even if they didn't know. She had money hidden in her shit there (not that they knew that, either), and if she were to suddenly not come back, someone would find it and gladly claim it as theirs.
And maybe it was a bad fucking idea, especially with his challenge about being scared, but she wanted to think that he wasn't going to skin her to make into new lampshades. And she figured that he was good looking enough that he could find someone to put his dick in that wasn't her, in the middle of the night, by surprise and without her okay. With her okay and without being a surprise was a different story…
She was caught between the thought of having herself her own (empty) bed to sleep in for a night (no one climbing in next to her at 4 a.m. just because there were more bodies than beds in the apartment), and still with the worry of what could happen to her. But it was still hard to get past the memory of dying the night before, and maybe he'd understand just a little bit better than any of her roommates would, if it came down to that. So while the pet name made her raise her eyebrow yet again, she nodded and reached out to take the helmet from him. She didn't have a jacket and had never tossed her leg over the back of a bike before, but she wasn't backing down from it. "Yeah," she said, and if her voice was maybe a little softer than it had been, there was going to be no explanation given for it. "Yeah, I'm fucking coming with." And then, with an attempted recovery, smirk slanted in a way that wasn't quite right. "Don't want you knowing where I live anyway, asshole. You might get jealous of the place and start hanging around too much."
Now he was laughing, for real this time. Head tipped back, running one hand through his hair so as to keep it swept back from his face. Eyes lighting up with his amusement. “Oh, sure, that’s good to know. I’d really hate to have to send you the bill for getting them cleaned. It’s not my usual follow-up to buying drinks for girls that I meet when shit goes down at the hotel of insanity.” Through the teasing, Seven’s voice remained level, but he cut her a sideways glance and watched the wheels turn as she processed the invitation. It was a good thing, he’d thrown it out there just to knock her off balance, because that’s what he fucking did and it was easier to figure someone out when they were teetering on the edge like that.
Less than ten seconds, that’s what it took. A couple breaths and she was taking the helmet, looking at it like it was some symbol of something a whole lot bigger. And then came the put-on sarcasm, like yeah I’m still gonna act tough because neither of them had much of a firm grasp on better coping skills, and he let her get away with the wrong kind of smile that just made him hurt for her. Because it was better to sling the bullshit around than listen too carefully to the things he could hear in her voice. Things he recognized because they lived inside him, too.
“Guess I’ll have to figure out some other way to stalk you, huh?” The words were lacking his standard levels of acidity as he climbed onto the bike, choosing to lose himself temporarily in the act of pulling on his gloves. It was an excuse to look away from her, and the fear in her eyes, and the gut-punch of guilt that washed over him when he contemplated the fact that he was the one who’d put it there. And it was fine. He was fine. So he started the bike and waited for her to get on, gesturing that she should wrap her arms around his waist before he pulled out into the evening traffic on the Strip. And then he headed for home.