Re: gotham russian tea room; loren & jules
Legs uncrossed and a jaw tightened. Both shoes met the floor in the first step of rising to leave, and those thrumming fingers still against the table's edge in a tense curl. He was doing this wrong. He didn't know what he was doing, but this certainly wasn't how one had tea in the afternoon, Gotham or not.
"Don't," he muttered. Almost emotive, almost asking. Not begging, but asking. No matter, the way Loren said the word certainly wasn't instructive. There wasn't demand in him, despite the tight hand on the table and the jawline that ticked. His eyes danced across the cups of tea and the food, and somewhere in the back of his head he mindlessly noted the number of people he'd seen walking out of the kitchen doors, the potential for back exits and bodies to be dropped in doing so -- and why? It was just where his head went automatically, and it wasn't where he wanted his mind to be right now, it wasn't peace. He'd never known peace, but Loren suspected that it existed somewhere.
And if it couldn't be nourished at tea time on a simple afternoon, then what was the point in connecting with anyone? Ever?
He glanced over toward Jules, blue tilting just a bit up in expectation of the other moving to stand regardless of requests made. "I made the wrong call that night, and it wasn't the first time." He didn't say it was the last either, but Loren thought it was. Killing was something that he'd become a lot more discretionary about since Las Vegas. After all, he couldn't just keep dropping bodies across the countryside because he felt vindicated in doing so -- yes, he could -- but he hadn't. Not in the manner he'd done in those days, anyway.
"I don't want to talk about the past," he settled and the line of his jaw squared, contemplative in whether or not Jules would stay or go.