Re: Gotham: Sam & Russ
Right after the hotel bullshit, after figuring out the shit with the kid who'd screamed herself blue, he'd checked out the strip-joint. He figured maybe it just came down to pocket-protectors and jeans tight in the ass, the reason why the woman stuck around in his head long after the cigarettes smoked in a fucked-up excuse for a mall had long been ash. He'd recognized the ass on stage, watched the ink spirals undulate in a spotlight but he'd shoved his hands in his pockets and he'd walked the fuck out without finishing his beer because it wasn't the same even if the spirals were in the exact same place.
He'd been the same even with a pocket protector except he hadn't: a difference face meant space to stretch the fuck out and be someone else for a little while, someone who didn't look like someone good for something quick in the john of a club and maybe he'd made the accountant that way or maybe the accountant had lingered but it wasn't the same.
It wasn't the same and the girl on-stage wasn't the same, even if she shook her ass on stage like it belonged in a spotlight instead of under strip-lights and that was meant to be better. Maybe sometime along the line he'd tricked himself into thinking it meant shit because he'd liked the idea of being seen even without the shit that came before. He'd written himself bare because he hadn't been a fuck-up for a while and because expectation had ridden itself out to nothing. Real questions and real fucking answers and maybe he'd been habit for so long he'd forgotten what that felt like, if he'd even tried it out. Sam didn't see him that way but he had thought the woman who'd written back had and maybe that was what was fucked up most. He looked, that way back from the bathroom when no one gave a shit if he did or not and it didn't fucking matter what he saw or how he saw it because they weren't pretending all the shit from before didn't matter and it did, didn't it?
He ordered his own burger and he dried his hands on the clean parts of his knees. And he looked at her as she set all that shit out on the table like it was the way it was and he leaned back, creaking plastic under flannel shirt."Sweet," he laughed, amused and he palmed his cheek, rough stubble sandpaper-sharp over his skin. "I ain't ever been accused of that shit before." He hadn't and he wasn't going to start and he leaned back deliberate as fuck in that assessment of what was on the table, "We don't have to work out shit, we're OK. Louis doesn't have to pass the fuck out. I don't small talk. I wanted to know about the art. You don't have anything to tell me now, tell me when there's shit to tell."