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 Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 2:50 pm
The doors unlocked.Pale eyes stared blankly down at the message, unsure if she should, unsure if she had any reason not to. It had been a surprisingly civil conversation, comforting and cathartic, and she hadn't seen the direction it was leading until it had arrived there. An offer, unexpected but not entirely unwelcome if she were being honest with herself. And lately, Peyton was trying to be very honest with herself. Warrick stirred restlessly in her head, and a low continuous growl rumbled through her conscious until she hushed him gently. < Are you sure?> Her thumb hovered above the send button. Lips pursed, pressing into a thin line, and after a long moment she hit the screen to send the message, setting her phone on the arm of the futon after as she rolled up onto her feet and crossed the room towards the kitchenette. There was still a quarter bottle of whiskey left. She rose up on tiptoes, grabbing the bottle from the back of the cupboard and bringing it down to eye level. Considering.
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Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2015 11:29 pm
He took his sweet time.
There was a satisfaction of dressing up for this he couldn't put to words. Nothing particularly above dressy casual--almost like he was preparing himself for a date. It didn't matter that this was all coming off soon enough--one did not simply offer a present without wrapping paper. And wasn't that exactly what he was: a perfect, well-timed gift? His generosity required a level of professionalism that would be thrown out the second his coat was unbuttoned, but that was just part of the fun, the ceremony of enjoying one's meal to the fullest rather than simply tearing into the meat without appreciation of it.
Somewhere in the realm of twenty minutes after Peyton's final message, he knocked.
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Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2015 3:39 am
She was sitting on the counter when the knock came, and her attention rose from the tumbler in her hand and her own thoughts, shifting towards the door with the last thin stands of hesitation snapping and falling away as she set the glass down and slid down from her perch. Had it been anyone else she have called through the door, assured them it was unlocked, but this needed a slightly more personal touch. Jack was expected, but a pale brow twitched as she took in his clothing. There was a certain obvious amount of effort here that was honestly surprising, but she smiled, a subtle up tilt of glossed lips, and stepped out of the way so he could walk passed her. She wasn't actually sure what to make of the attire, but one couldn't deny he looked good, though it was nevermthtr case of a lack of attraction. "You clean up nice." Something she'd already been well aware of, but it filled the silence, broke the ice with a compliment. She leaned against the door to close it, hands against the wood behind her back.
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Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2015 7:01 pm
He ducked in with a simple smirk and pocketed one of his hands in his coat, double-checking. "I was never dirty in the first place, Creedy," Jack retorted, sounding mildly affronted. "Dirty insinuates this isn't my natural state."
He scanned the room idly. The last time he had been there, he had been tossed over a table and nearly rebroken his arm, raving and drugged out of his mind and shrieking in pain. Not a shred of evidence was left of that time. That was the beauty of the inanimate: they had the capacity to be wiped clean that people simply didn't have.
He took several steps in and then turned to Peyton expectantly. "For me?" He gestured to the bottle. "You shouldn't have. Unless that's part of your foreplay, getting just enough of the edge off to accept how incredibly pitiful you are for saying yes."
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Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2015 7:34 pm
"I don't usually have the chance to see so put together. Usually there's considerably more blood, or dirt, or both." That, too, seemed to be a natural state. Or at least a frequent one when they shared company. She sounded mildly amused, pale eyes on him as he looked out through the room. It'd look nearly identical to when he'd seen it last; neat and tidy, with personal touches here and there. A few more recent additions, and a few small subtractions. The evidence of a young man replaced by the odds and ends of a teen girl. Astrid might have her own room, but she spent a considerable amount of time here. The gesture directed her attention to the bottle still sitting on the counter, and thin shoulders came up in a small, dismissive shrug. "Seemed appropriate." She pushed away from the door, walking across the kitchenette to the counter so she could pull a second glass down to set beside the first. "It's the same game we always play, isn't it? The rules are just a little different this time." She poured a measure of two fingers of the amber liquid into the glass before capping the bottle and turning, offering the drink out to the Life. "So why pitiful?" It would have been a lie to say she didn't enjoy the game. Awful as they were to each other, they just could leave well enough alone.
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Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2015 9:14 pm
He made a motion to decline the offer. "You're using your new personal freedom to decide having hate sex with me is a good idea," Jack pointed out, turning smug. "Smacks of poor choices to me, don't you think?"
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Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2015 8:23 am
A questioning brow rose as he declined the shot, and glossed lips pressed together thoughtfully. It felt like a balancing act, as if she were stuck in the middle of a high wire suspended between two tall buildings. Everything was slow, careful, deliberate. One wrong move and you fall, and there's one more crack to join the countless many that accumulate. It would have been stupid not to be guarded. "There are worse ways to spend my time and energy." So many other poor choices to be made. She set the glass down, pushing it back and away as she leaned against the counter, palms smoothing almost distractedly along her thighs as she considered, gaze circling the room before returning to him. "I remember what it could be. Little flickers of memory." The emotions meant nothing anymore, he'd made sure of that, but the physical? "Are you rescinding your offer, Jack?" All considered, she supposed it shouldn't be surprising. A little more disappointing than she'd thought, but certainly not outside the scoop of cruel possibilities. Features twitched, subtle but betraying, as she stepped away from the counter and moved to walk past him towards the living space.
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Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2015 9:57 am
"My offer," he repeated grandly, turning on the spot to watch her go. "And what an offer it was. I say 'let's make you scream a different way for once,' you pretend at suspicion as though it didn't immediately sound delicious, and then you say, 'there are worse things.'" He put a hand to his chest. "That hurts, Creedy, it really does. I thought we had something beautiful going here. But what I want to know in all honesty is how serious you are about this decision."
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Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2015 11:05 am
"Not suspicion," she corrected, head turning gently as she lifted a hand in gesture. "Clarification. You should always know what you're getting into, if you can." Peyton liked things to be clearly defined, preferring not to operate under assumptions. Saved her grief in the long run. "Especially with you." Now she'd turn, perching on the arm of the futon and crossing her legs. It hadn't been meant as a critisism. Jack was smarter than she was, colder. Dealings with him, as she'd learned, had to be done carefully. "You're calculating, hard to read. You should take it as a compliment." It was always easier when they came to blows. That was easier for the Sun, uncomplicated and instinctual. "I wouldn't have said yes if I wasn't serious." Fingertips brushed a curl away from her cheek, smoothing hair back and away from her neck on one side. "It's not a casual whim." Glancing down briefly, she focused on the scar on her left foot. "Were you serious? You're here, but," she gestured between them with her other hand as she looked up again, indicating the stretch of space. As of yet he'd made no move to close it. Neither had she, but then she was, as she'd said, treading carefully. This wasn't a situation she wanted to be wrong about. Her pride had suffered enough in the last two months.
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Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2015 11:31 am
He grinned at the compliments and made a patronizing laugh. "Are you? Sweetheart, your hesitation betrays you. If you were serious at all, you would have taken over from the start," he said. "Not this social nicety bullshit. Right now I don't see a woman empowered by her freedom at all. I see a weak-willed, lost girl who comes to me for help and still expects me to solve problems for her."
It was a lie: he had never seen a girl or a woman or a human being with needs and emotions therein, but a sentient construct, a toy whose only remote uses were destruction and entertainment.
"I waltz right in here expecting a tiger and have seen only a p***y. You said you embraces your new status, but you haven't changed at all, Creedy, and it's disappointing. More importantly, it kills the mood. You're so ******** pathetic, I bet I could walk out right now and you wouldn't stop me." He took a step back.
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Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2015 12:29 pm
Maybe things would simplify after all.
As close to the surface as it simmered these days, it didn't take much needling to bring her temper to a low boil, and that careful, guarded expression crumbled. Chastised for being suspicious, but there was always that venom lying on his silver tongue. How very human he'd been on Twitter, but how quickly the monster returns. "What I get for being a good hostess."
His backward step had her raising to her feet, and she was crossing the room without know what she would do when she reached him. One thing he was certainly right about, she was thinking too hard. That wasn't what she wanted. A reprieve, a chance to let everything else go for a day, an hour, half an hour.
"I don't want to have to think." For once, she didn't want control. "You know what I want." Fingertips were warm against the skin at his wrists, gliding upward beneath the cuffs of his sleeves.
(Large hands like a vice around her wrists, powerless, her heart beating against her ribs like trapped bird.)
"So if you're serious." Her voice was an angry purr, nails prickling against his skin. "Show me." Heat, more than just anger, in lavender eyes as she tipped her head up to meet his gaze. Letting go of his arms, she hooked a finger around one of his jacket buttons, tugging at it until it popped open.
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Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2015 1:29 pm
He watched with the indolence of a cat. (Waiting.) It didn't take much to spark him when he was in the mood, and scraping away everything that Peyton was revealed a body that was suitable to his tastes. (Waiting.) He could compartmentalize and debase himself if he wanted. (Waiting.)
Whatever was in her eyes, the feeling of biting nails and the beginnings of a shirt undone, was beautiful in its own way, but that was it. He felt no spark, no trigger to act on it. He was engaging with a movie, but ultimately he was aware that it didn't matter. He could get up and walk away and not feel he was missing anything, and that was truly disappointing. It was never fun to play a game and feel it was old news. It was V all over again, he realized, just empty urges to compensate for something else.
Jack's smile evaporated for a moment and was replaced with something more neutral, more distant. He began to remove Peyton's hands from his person, grabbing them at the wrist and lifting them as if for inspection. Nothing. Her face, her clothes, her sultry sound. Nothing. All this effort to look good for his own pleasure, and for nothing.
"I suppose I'm not," he stated, letting her go and looking her dead in the eye without a flicker of emotion. "You've revealed what you truly are, Creedy, and it's worse than I thought: you're just god awful boring. Pointless. You're nothing until you're attacking something, I'm realizing now, nothing at all until you're snarling and chomping at the bit for a cause. But take the fight out of you, and you're just another ******** slut looking for meaning on this godforsaken island. That's why Noah left you: the only meaningful part of you is the violent part."
He took another step back.
"I have better uses of my time than this," he went on dismissively. "Find someone else to have pity sex with you, that shouldn't be hard with standards as low as you've shown them to be. When I'm ready for that fight, you can have it, but this?" Jack shook his head and took his third step to the door. "Stick to what you're good at, Creedy."
He turned his back, pocketed his hand, and made to leave.
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Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2015 2:45 pm
The mocking smile faded and with it's departure a sense of foreboding came crashing in with enough force it was almost deafening. She almost missed those first four words as he stopped her hands, lifting them. Like white noise that sought to draw n it all out, she heard him, but it was distantly, and behind the callous belittling there was a solid, steady baseline, like thunder. It took her a moment to realize it was her own pulse, but when she did she could feel it, in her hands, through her legs, the whole of her body. Hyper acute awareness of the circulation of her own blood.
It wasn't funny, really it wasn't, but a bubble of laughter escaped her lips regardless as he stepped away from her. Ironic, that's what it was, awful, sickeningly, painfully ironic. She grinned as she watched him moving away from her, and she giggled, shaking her head. Forced fingers through her bangs to push them out of her face.
Just what, exactly, had she really expected?
Her attention fell on him again as he turned and headed for the door, and after the months she just had that was just the breaking point. Bare feet were soundless as she strode into the kitchenette and grabbed the glass of whiskey she'd poured him. Hurling it at the door over his shoulder before he got to it. Thoughtless, purely emotional, and deep down just a little bit satisfying as it exploded against the door frame. Stick to what you're good at. Well. She was good at this.
"Do you get off toying with people?" She was laughing again, but there was very little humor to it. Sharp and brittle, and hard on the ears. "I'm not your ******** play thing."
She took a step towards him, pale eyes darkening as they narrowed. "All talk, that's it, that's you." Another step. "On and on, and every once in a while you make a move, but there's no damn follow through Jack." Find the cure. Stake a claim. Make her scream. Empty promises, hollow threats, broken offers.
"I'm not screaming, Jack."
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Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2015 3:12 pm
He froze at the sight of the bottle smashing against the door and remembered the sound of a plate breaking. His eyes closed as fragments of glass bounced off his shield and thought of how nostalgic this felt, how strangely satisfying it always was to push someone to the brink and then beyond. To hear someone scream to be killed, to hear someone beg to die, and now to hear someone laugh in rising anger, trying to call him out. He opened his eyes and considered the soaked door, the fragments he now had to navigate around to leave, the condition of his good shoes, the bubbling laughter and challenges behind him.
And when he turned around, Jack was smiling again. Not a plaything: a hilarious answer from the very naive, a narrow view of the truth. All talk: he hadn't lied about the red eye work, and he certainly hadn't lied about his signature, or the body of literature on her body, the history of violence written with his own two hands. He couldn't help but smile.
"I have a raging semi, now that you've asked," he replied, and the pleasant tone was back; in no way did it match the darkness in his eyes. He beckoned her with a finger. "Perhaps you'd like to take care of that?"
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Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2015 5:35 pm
He didn't own her. The mark meant nothing. Just torn skin, scarred flesh. Nothing.
Now this was familiar. It was even comforting in a way. She watched green eyes fill with an answering darkness, and it made her grin, shoulders shaking in contained laughed. He beckoned, and her head cocked gently to one side, as she moved to the edge of the mess, not quite within reach.
"Why do you always have to complicate things, Jack?" Hands up, she mimicked that curl of fingers to lure him closer, though her's rolled through all eight fingers, through the chest, and down into the soft swell of curved hips. "You wanna play, you come here." It paired with a sharp smirk.
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