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Ceath encased her hands in his warm ones and pulled her along with him as he locked up the bar one handedly. He began to list places, anywhere but the apartment above them, she noticed with slight confusion. There was something off, she could tell, there was something almost desperate in his actions. She wanted to question it, but something said that maybe it would be a bad idea, so she kept quiet and thought about the options he had given her.

At first, Aneira’s mind flitted to upstairs, despite Ceath’s suggestions. It was close and in the moment, that was tempting. However, she didn’t necessarily feel like going to her room and potentially dealing with Skye or Stan, and, well, as eager as she was, her mind wandered to the idea of the hotel room, a nice one of course. She mulled it over for a quick second, but for what she had in mind, it was really the best course of action. Plus hotel rooms had their own kind of lure, the near anonymity of them. There was something appealing about staying in a bedroom that didn’t belong to any one person, where no one knew it was you. Maybe it was that she didn’t have to clean it. She smiled, “Let’s go to a hotel,” she said finally. "Is there one near a park? We could do both." The beach wasn't appealing to her now, it was too far, but the park would be silver at night.
Julian spent a moment or two remembering how to breathe. Two weeks spent in cold silence, glances that cut like daggers, and this reversal. Despite himself he drank in her appearance, feeling something far more pleasant than his former tangle of emotions settling deep into his chest. Her skin was porcelain, was glass.

He shoved away his thoughts with a heavy breath, and took another to force them the rest of the way out of his thoughts. "You're drunk," Julian told her firmly, but he walked over to help her up anyway. "I wish you–" He stopped himself from completing that sentence, having thought already of three different ways he wanted to end it.
I wish you wouldn't hurt yourself like this.
I wish you would tell me what's wrong.
I wish you would look at me like that again.
Ceath didn’t mull over the thought of the hotel for long, or whether or not it was near a park. The ginger was sure enough that there would be one hotel with a park somewhere close. He had no real want to go anywhere too far—driving could be a pain in the a** at this time at night. Especially when there was no motorcycle readily available. He simply shrugged in response and gave her an aloof, “I don’t know.” His copper eyes looked back at her, watching the way her face moved under the weight of his tone and he quickly added, “I’m sure we can find one that has both.” His tone had been hopeful, perhaps too hopeful, but he was sure she would just brush it off as she always did with his apparent odd moods.

The walk to the car from the bar wasn’t very far. Instead, it was dark, very dark and perhaps scary if this side of town had been known for gangs—to Ceath’s luck, it wasn’t. It wasn’t the high roller’s gig or the land of the stiff white collar one percent. It was a simple, relatively good part of town and yet he felt on edge from the moment they had entered the lot. Something about it made his grip on Aneira’s hand tighten and his strides a bit longer, faster. When they reached the car he opened the door for her and ushered her to get in—locking it the moment he closed her side. He quickly jogged around the front and slipped inside of the smooth red El Camino. The black leather seats gave him odd comfort and he pulled out of his parking seat a bit too fast.

He glanced at Aneira as he speed from the lot, “Could you look something up on your phone?” The ginger wasn’t a fan of texting and driving and talking into his phone wasn’t very effective (it usually told him he didn’t have proper speech which was an obvious mood killer).

xx

Amelia took his hand, grabbing his tender wrist as firm as she could manage but her hand suddenly seemed very small, child like, even to her own eyes. She wondered if that was the case, if she was just a child pretending to be an adult, pretending to be okay. She pushed off the floor with more vigorous force then she had meant too. Her arm-twisted awkwardly as she bumped into Julian’s chest—leaving barely room to breathe in between them. His feeting must have been on point for hers were anywhere but and the force should have caused them to crash into the floor. But they hadn’t been that lucky, instead they were stuck standing together.

She couldn’t deny that the moment was nice, but she wasn’t sure if it was a moment at all or if it was just the liquor making her far more forward then she would have ever been, ever dared to even think. She looked up at Julian with the same dazed and unintentionally sensual look as she had before—he always looked so scared when he was near her. Perhaps she was a dragon lady after all.

The thought made her suddenly uncomfortable and her heart hurt, if only for a moment she remembered what it was that had caused her to drink in the first place.

But then his comment on her drunkenness registered in her brain, even though it had been said before he had managed to peel her half naked form off of the floor and she looked at him, eyes a bit wider and her unnaturally white teeth nipping at her bottom pale pink lip.

“But your not.” Her voice was soft like velvet and her arm moved from its awkward position and she took a step back—allowing him to breathe. She tugged on his wrist, pulling him towards the dark unknown of the living room. She looked back at him, the woman who couldn’t be denied suddenly emerging once again. “Take a shot with me.”
Aneira nodded when he said he was sure they could find a hotel near a park. His tone was off, and she didn’t think it was something she had done. She didn’t want to upset him further, so she kept quiet as they walked out of the bar.

Ceath’s hand on hers tightened as they entered the dark lot. She frowned a little at the pressure and looked up at his face, tight and clearly on edge. She jogged to keep up with his quick, long strides, wanting to protest to the pace, but too busy trying not to trip over her own feet in the attempt to keep up. Not for the first time, she wished her legs were longer. Finally they reached the car and he opened the door for her, closing it almost as soon as she was seated. She heard the click of the lock and sat back, confused by the rush and the sense of danger that had come from seemingly nowhere. She watched Ceath as he slid into the car beside her and pulled from the parking spot, speeding onto the road.

“What is it?” she asked, pulling her phone (with some difficulty) from the back pocket of her black pants. Her voice sounded somewhat apprehensive, and she bit her lip. The screen on the phone was bright, the light stinging tears into her eyes. She quickly dimmed it down, blinking away spots in her vision. The night, so far, had not exactly been going as she wished, but she hoped there was some sort of explanation for it. At least one that made sense.
Ceath looked over at Aneira with a small frown. “I actually don’t know the name of the hotel.” He confessed, as if that had been what she was asking. He knew it wasn’t, he knew exactly what she had wanted to know and had pointedly ignored it, leaving the pair of gingers in unnatural silence. His attention turned back to the road the blaring street signs—the lights stained his eyes and he thought for a moment he would go blind if he continued to keep consistently following the bright flashing lights and pretending that the darkness around them wasn’t even dark at all.

“******** me.” He spit with venom as he realized he hadn’t thought to bring any alcohol. He had a full stock, a variety of anything he could have wanted right in the bar and not a single bottle had left with them. The idea of ordering from the hotel bar was mutinous to his own policy about keeping to his own. But he wanted to drink, more then anything he wanted a hard brandy and a blacked out night, and turning back wasn’t an option.

Before Aneira could ask (as she surely would) about what was wrong he huffed at her, “I forgot alcohol.” As if that would be enough to explain his bizarre behavior for the night. He knew it wouldn’t be enough, that it couldn’t be enough, but he had to at least pretend it would be. Pretending was the only way he could survive.
Aneira went to work looking up hotels, the light illuminating her face and making everything around her dim, indistinct. As she mindlessly accessed the internet and did the search, the question still nagged at her mind. He hadn’t answered her, not the way she’d wanted him to, not really. She sighed softly as she turned her focus toward finding the hotel.

The words flew from his lips like darts into the air and she jumped, whole body tensing when his voice broke the silence that had filled the car. Her unanswered question was still hanging in the air. She could feel it between them. Her lips parted to ask what had caused the violent outburst, but he beat her to it, explaining before she could even get a word out.

She frowned. “Oh.” Her voice was quiet in the silence that was threatening to return. “Did you want to go back and get some?” she wanted to ask, “We aren’t far. I could go in?” She knew what the answer would be though, she just didn’t know why. She pressed her lips together, pink skin turning white under the pressure.

Instead, she let her questions die on her lips, and she said, “I think I found the hotel you were looking for?” she asked more than stated. “The Croithe?”

It was a large hotel, centered in front of a small park, only fifteen blocks from the bar, and the closest hotel to them. The rooms were high class, and expensive. Her green eyes read the number carefully, and then read it again to make sure. Her green eyes found his face, illuminated from the bright signs outside as they blurred by. Her thoughts jumped back to what Ceath said before in the bar about money and swallowed, hoping maybe she’d gotten it wrong. She held her fingers poised over the screen of the phone, ready to start the search again.
Julian felt himself rocked backward by the force of her, and was half-surprised the set of his feet was enough to keep them both upright. So suddenly there was no space between them, none at all, and he could feel the color rising to his skin. He swallowed, feeling the lump in his throat as he looked down at her. His heart pounded as if it had stopped beating for a moment, and it might have without his noticing. Oh it would have been so easy to kiss her just then. Would she kiss him back?

He glanced away, unwilling to move but unable to look at her without burning. "That sounds…" Julian felt himself shed the doubt that had tried to swallow him, and he took a step after her, letting himself be pulled along. "Okay."
Ceath gave Aneira a sideways look as she talked about the liquor. Of course he didn’t want her to turn around, they had made it so far and turning back would just end up ruining the whole night. In his desperate search for comfort he would be met with an empty wall that was Amelia’s feelings.

He did his best to keep his tone even but failed miserably. His voice was hoarse, ragged, “No. No. We can just—“ It broke his heart to suggest it, to say the words outloud was more of a betrayal then thinking it, but it was clear she needed some kind of response from him. “We’ll just get alcohol there.” It was ruff, but he had managed to force the words without too much resentment attached to it.

The ginger prince imagined that whatever they got at the Croithe it would be more expensive and too fancy to get truly drunk off of. It would most likely be wine and Ceath rarely found any need for wine or enjoyment in the eloquent beverage.

The Croithe wasn’t his ideal hotel, not by any means. Especially when it wasn’t like he was taking her out to be romantic, something that was itching his skin something fierce. He hated the idea of not giving her what she deserved always; he hated the idea of focusing on himself and the implication that he might be using her—using her was nothing he ever actively thought about it. In fact the mere idea made him sick and yet he couldn’t deny how the situation felt in his bones.

It was a long drive and he wasn’t sure he could keep silent without causing too much suspicion. So he looked over at her, with a bright smile, and said, “Yeah, that sounds great.” Continuing he asked, “Are you excited?”

xx

Amelia didn’t question Julian’s submission into her request—if anything she had expected it. She was, after all, quite scary and probably scary still when she was drunk. But this time the thought did not ruin her mood; in fact, it made her feel an odd burning sense of power. It also made her quite curious on how he would react to her when he found himself with a pounding head and an even more so pounding heart.

It wasn’t a long walk, but it felt too slow for the situation. Her fingers crept to the switch and fiddled with it, making the light dim with the simple turn of the knob. She hadn’t used the hanging light in the living room often, especially not for dim light—the lamp had been used for that and she didn’t get drunk enough to be sensitive to the brightness that usually encompassed the intricate baby chandelier. It was a bit too fancy for an apartment filled with college-aged individuals.

With the light on it was plain to see that underneath the coffee table, in one of its many hiding places, a series of crystal shot glasses were kept. Ceatherine probably decided it was easier to make such an arrangement and she silently thanked her stupid ginger roommate. Walking was beginning to weigh on her.

She fell onto the couch softly, bringing Julian with her but this time giving him a small amount of personal space. The dark haired girl hadn’t lost every thought and inch of self-control—though perhaps it would have been simpler if she did. It wasn’t as if she was becoming sober so fast as it was, the liquor’s demanding hit was fading into a softer more coherent lull of drunkenness that could only be corrected by another injection of the bittersweet taste of whisky.

Her milky hand outstretched and idly skimmed the top of two taller—real shot glasses. She hooked her dainty fingers in them and pulled the glasses to her soft palm, placing them on the coffee table. She thanked Ceath again for the fact that they were actually clean. She didn’t look at Julian once while she poured the liquor to the very top of the glasses, keeping all of her attention on the act of not spilling. It had been surprisingly successful until she tried to hand him the shot and her usually tremors were much more violent then she had noticed, causing the shot to spill slightly on his pants.

“I’m so sorry.” She felt horrible suddenly and her hands went up to her flushing face to hide her. She couldn’t do anything right ever.
Logically, this was perhaps the worst idea Julian'd ever had. She was hurting, and drinking wasn't going to help that. Him being here wasn't going to help that. He didn't know a thing about whiskey, or at least he hadn't until he started working in a bar. He still wasn't sure what proof was measured against, but he knew the silver label when he saw it. He even had time to wonder what the hell Ceath'd been thinking while Amelia focused her entire self into the amber-filled glasses.

He'd even reached out to take the precarious shot glass, saw her hand shake, and flinched forward instinctively to catch the falling liquid. Ridiculous, of course, but he rescued the glass just a bit emptier than before, barely shrugging at the splatter-spots on his dark jeans. "It's not a big deal," he muttered, holding the shot glass close to his chest and knowing his blush would be harder to see in the dark. "You can hardly tell it spilled." His entire posture was more pulled in, shoulders hunched a little and head down. He looked more defensive than anything, as if expecting his common sense to appear and knock him about the head.

Amelia was forced into a sullen silence of her own making. What had she been thinking? Nothing. She hadn’t been thinking a thing when she had attempted to give him a shot and the lack of concentration allowed her tremors to be more violent then they should have ever been allowed. Her palms kept to her face, acting as a fleshy security blanket. There wasn’t a single thing she could do to rectify the situation and to drunken Amelia that seemed like the worst thing that could have ever happened in the small universe that was the room.

Her sleepy blue eyes peeked through her ivory hands and she felt worse still. He didn’t look like he wanted to be near her in the slightest, like she was annoying or awful and the beat of the alcohol in her flowery blue veins was making her anxiety spike rather than making her unconscious to the idea of anxiety. “Are you mad?” Her voice was small—she was suddenly so small when she had felt so nice moments before. So in control and empowered and it had been stolen from her all by a few drops of amber liquid.

Her hands fell from her face into her lap and she felt the heat all the way down her neck. For a moment she thought of putting her hair up, for a moment she thought about leaning into him and allowing her hair to hide her against his shoulder and before she could convince herself that it was a bad idea she had done just that. She rested her cheek on his shoulder and let her hair fall into her face as she murmured apologizes into forever.
"Hey, it's okay, you're fine," Julian found himself turning towards her without consciously deciding to, managing to transfer the almost-full shot glass to the table and putting one arm around her. "I'm not mad, I'm really not." He whispered, barely hesitating before putting his cheek on her head, breathing in her scent of mint and dusty books. He sighed out a quiet breath and felt a little bit of his nerves disappear.
Amelia’s drabbles of sorry finally came to a halt as he told her he wasn’t mad, that he really wasn’t mad. The arm that he had tucked around her was so secure, so nice and safe. Julian was safe—she didn’t feel threatened around him, she didn’t feel like she needed to assert her physical dominance (though her mental dominance was a different story entirely and not one drunken Amelia dared to let herself think of).

Her tender voice said all it could possibly manage in that moment, “Thank you.” She nuzzled her face closer into his collar bone and let it lay there until she could find herself in the haze that was her mind, to straighten herself properly and not make any suggestions that she would perhaps regret in the morning. But she wasn’t found, real time Amelia had taken a trip and had finally allowed drunken Amelia to have full reign, as if to confirm such a thing the porcelain skinned girl reached out and grabbed her shot glasses, tilting her head to take the poison without any protest.

It was now heavy on her tongue. She looked over at Julian and then back at the shot glass she had previously spilled, as if too signal him to pour. Without much warning she leaned back against him.
Aneira wanted so badly to ask why he didn’t want to go back to the apartment, because if he was willing to buy alcohol from the hotel, there was definitely something very, very wrong. No words left her mouth, his ragged voice had rendered her silent and taken the air from her lungs.

She looked at the ginger man in the car beside her, whose copper eyes switched from a kind of desperation, to a slightly strained version of their normal brightness. Her brow furrowed as she examined him with anxious green eyes. There was so much desperation as he tried to seem cheerful, excited. She nodded slowly at his question. “Yes,” she lied, her heart sinking as she wondered what the night would turn out to be. "Are you excited?" she asked tentatively.
"How much are you planning on drinking tonight?" He murmured, half to himself. He kept a gentle hold on her, easy to break should she choose, his thumb absently rubbing at the bare skin of her arm, not anxious to move anywhere. "I don't want you hurt." Julian whispered, perhaps hoping she wouldn't hear him.
Ceatherine felt a deep sense of guilt begin to dig away at his insides and couldn’t bother to look at Aneira any further—not while they were in the car at least. He simply nodded again, choosing to keep his mouth shut so he didn’t start sprouting nonsense that would cause her any sort of fright.

The silence of the car wasn’t something he welcomed—silence hadn’t been a thing Ceath had allowed in his presence for most of his life and he didn’t want to start doing so now. His fingers nervously flicked on the radio as they continued to the hotel. He kept his eyes on the dark road.

Once they had arrived and parked at the rather large hotel, Ceath jumped out of his side and opened the passenger door for the princess who had been nice enough to accompany him. His fingers quickly found hers and he pulled the shorter woman into him. “I’m sorry.” He said softly against the top of her hair, his lips brushing her lovely orange locks. He hadn’t meant to make her so nervous; he hadn’t meant to make her think any less of him than he was sure she already had.

He took a step from her, an easy smile on his face. The background noise of whatever new wave band that had managed to sneak in through the radio had settled his wild heart, allowing him to focus on what really mattered.

It was the closet thing he would ever get to a date he imagined. She wasn’t the kind of girl who would ever agree to a dinner with someone like him. He wasn’t an ideal mate after all, he knew that. God, did he know that—he still lived with his ex-girlfriend and partially owned a bar he couldn’t’ even pay for. But man, was he glad to at least get the chance to pretend that she would be interested, even if it was only a night in a high class hotel room. A hotel room he couldn’t afford and would charge on the card Amelia gave him—surely causing another argument between them. But hey, at least maybe it would get her to talk.

“Let’s go.”

xx

Amelia (well, real time Amelia) knew that it wasn’t ideal for Julian to be stuck with her on a Wednesday night but drunken Amelia couldn’t find a single reason to care. She curled into him—perhaps too much. Her head rested softly against his chest, attentively listening to the unsteady beat of his heart through the light fabric of his shirt, a shirt she was sure the cause of the faintness of it’s echo in his skin—a shirt that needed to be ripped from him so that she could be closer to him still.

When Julian made a small comment she tried not to laugh. How much was she planning on drinking? Not much, she had no use for anymore or she would surely be sick. The fog of her mind and the constant desire to run her hands along his shoulders, up his neck and into the comfort of his hair—it had to be the cause of the alcohol. But she wouldn’t bother to tell him she wasn’t going to drink anymore because she knew, that perhaps, it was in fact a lie.

His next comment was barely a whisper, barely a thought released into the world and yet it had left his not yet swollen lips. She shifted carefully to look up at him but not lose his heat, heat she was stealing without any proper cause. Why would he say such a silly thing?

“Julian.” It had been the first time she had said his name out loud, the first time it had grazed her lips. Her voice was careful and dripping with something beyond uninhibited passion and she hadn’t realized her body had betrayed her. She hadn’t realized that her lips had drawn so close to his when she began to ask a question beyond suited for their current engagement. “Did you know…” The words and the inch of air that came with them was the only thing keeping them apart. She let her question die in her throat and turned slightly so that her cheek could rest on his. What had she been doing, she wondered with a sudden wave of grief.

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