Getting Charlie back to the chantry was easy enough. He sat in the back seat, holding his bonsai and his cactus, and occasionally he'd start shaking, overwhelmed by what he was doing. Once he started begging Dane to turn around, go back, he changed his mind, but Eileen talked him down, calmed him, asked him questions about his tiny tree, of all things. She sat in the passenger seat this time, rather drunk, twisting around and soothing the wracked Verbena as Dane drove. She's an odd one. Finding the remainder of Dane's fries still in their bag and getting cold, she started eating on the way back without so much as a by-your-leave. She even offered Charlie some, but warned him that as upset as he's been, it might just make his belly upset.
That's the word she uses. 'Belly'.
They get back, though, and some members of the Council are up and around and present, particularly Cynthia and a few of those from more militant Traditions. Eileen goes with Charlie inside. She helps him carry his plant. She even stays a bit there, helping transition him from her and Dane's hands to theirs, because if he feels abandoned right now who knows what will happen. She hugs him before he leaves, sniffing him and saying he should take a hot bath here and maybe eat some of Yvette's leek soup, because it's so good, I know it sounds totally weird but it's way good, Charlie, you don't even know.
And Dane isn't there for all of that. Not all of it. He parks at the chantry, instead of just pulling past the entry and letting them out. He walks inside with them, and if he's looking for indicators on Eileen's part if she has a preference on whether he's there or gone, he doesn't find many. But when he gets out, walking with them to the door, she does give him a bright, broad smile, pleased. There isn't much for them to do. Dane is able to answer a few questions for the Council in the short, direct way that some of them are looking for and Eileen isn't going to indulge them and they know it. She mostly focuses on Charlie. She made him certain assurances. She would be remiss, would be sinning, if she did not make sure they were met.
But she doesn't stay forever. And neither does Dane.
Outside, awhile later, after Charlie is being helped to settle in, Eileen stands on the porch and sniffs herself. She makes gagging faces, shaking her head, and when Dane passes by her, asking if she wants a ride, she laughs. "Yes! Sure! Leather seats, vroom vroom. Also, I don't have a car. I bet you thought I did, I drive like the Transporter." She pauses a beat, shaking her head with a look of distaste. "References like that are so over, aren't they? I apologize. If you can think of a better one, let me know."
And she's hopping down the steps, heading towards the Audi, hands jammed into her denim jacket's pockets. "Did they tell you they want us to work together more? Because the ones that talked to me alluded to that. Also, I live in this amazing apartment in the Loop. You can come up if you want."
DaneDane doesn't particularly want to walk Charlie in. More to the point: he doesn't particularly want to walk into the Chantry. That place with its hallowed halls, with its masters and adepts, their Traditions and their traditions, where he now always feels out of place. Apart, both by his own choice and the decision of others. As much as their society hinges on individuality and freedom, it is also unmistakably governed. There are certain things that are simply not done, all of which Dane has either done or been rumored to have done.
Still. He is still - or perhaps is once again - a part of this society. For ten years the mages have skulked in the shadows, licking their wounds. Now there's talk of alliance again. Uprising. War over reality itself. And Dane has not drifted so far from the path, has not become so jaded or embittered or simply fed up with it all, that he does not see the importance of that.
So he's here. And they give him jobs sometimes, and he does them to the best of his ability. Tonight, it means bringing Charlie back in one piece. Tonight, it means walking Charlie into the Chantry, where he will be safe,
and useful.
Neither Dane nor Eileen stay long. He would have likely left if she'd stayed a moment longer, but their timing coincides; they walk out together. He offers her a ride out of some vestigial politeness. She agrees readily, perhaps surprising him a little. They get back into his car, and she invites him to her place.
He casts her a wry look, starting the engine. "An intoxicated Cultist inviting me back to her apartment. I'm not sure that's a rumor I want to start."
eileenEileen climbs into the car, bouncing onto the front seat and buckling herself in. She's been told that Thomas can't do even the most basic of magics outside of his real specialties, which means there's no way he could ever be as good a driver as she is. It would be the sort of thing that would make her sad, if that sort of thing were the sort of thing to make Eileen sad. This thought process weaves through her mind as she's clicking the buckle snap-closed, no fumbling -- if you can't keep yourself basically safe while using this or that or the other, you really should find other paths to ecstasy.
He gives her a wry look; she lifts her eyebrows at him, way up, her expression almost challenging and yet veiled by a mockery of coy prudishness. "So don't start any rumors, Thomas. Do you like chai?"
DaneDane hesitates for a moment. Then: "No. But I take my coffee black." And he smiles a little, a lopsided and faint sort of expression. "What's your address?"
eileenFor what it's worth, or whatever it means, Eileen doesn't read long or much -- or, really, at all -- into his hesitation. He is driving her home. She is offering to let him come up and have a cuppa. It is easy enough to simply accept it as courtesy and leave it at that, except
she is a Cultist. And the things you hear about them, the things people say about them, the things they even say about themselves...
"I also have coffee," she confirms, "and this very neat press -- not a French press -- that I use, and the coffee is so good. You're really going to like it. Black is the best way when it's a good cup, you know? You don't need anything else. Cream becomes superfluous." Mid-stream, she rattles off her address, a spot smack dab in the middle of the Loop, but despite the fact that she called her apartment 'amazing', it's not one of the new residential properties that people read about when its doors open, nothing like that.
Dane"I agree," Dane says, sounding just a little surprised by ... all this. Her opinions on coffee. His agreement. The fact that he was driving to her place with the intention of having coffee.
Regardless, soon enough they're there. At this hour, the Loop is rather empty; he actually finds street parking just under the building. The lights of the Audi flash as he locks the doors, and then he comes alongside her as they walk into her lobby,
smelling faintly of filth and decay. There is a doorman who likely greets Eileen warmly. Dane nods to him as well, wondering in the back of his mind if the doorman was making assumptions, about him or Eileen or both. Then they're in the inner lobby, waiting for the elevators. "Have you lived here a while?" he asks.
eileenEileen doesn't look surprised by anything, though it isn't the forceful, cloistered refusal to be surprised that does it. In fact, she has a sense of wonder about her that isn't childlike at all, as fascinated and welcoming by the coolness of the windowglass as she is by the pleasant warm buzz underneath her skin, fuzzying her thoughts, softening her. They drive for awhile, seeing as the chantry is just too big to fit in the middle of Chicago proper, and the lake is to Dane's left and Eileen is to his right, watching the stars from her window. She's remarkably quiet, considering how easily words tend to spill out of her.
They cross the river and enter the Loop, and Eileen gives him a few extra directions til they arrive at her building. It's a blocky brick one, not enormously tall, not on a corner, and with all the buildings around it, the view can't be that great even from the very top. On the ground floor there's a bakery with multicolored pastel macaroons in the darkened window, a Walgreens, and a hole-in-the-wall that's been hipsterified called Swishy Sushi. Scrunched between one retail entryway and another, however, there is an entrance to the apartments (and possibly even offices) that take up the rest of the interior of the brick box.
When they park along the street and he locks his gorgeous little Audi, Eileen leads him to that paint-chipped green door with the name and number for leasing information painted in equally chipped gold on the glass. She takes her keys out of her pocket, attached to her mace, and wiggles one large one into the lock, holding it open behind her for Dane.
There's no one here to make assumptions about Dane, or about Eileen, or about the both of them. No one out and about and awake or guarding them, at least. The floor they stand on is tile; there are wooden stairs leading downward, presumably to laundry rooms or storage or trash or what-have-you, and wooden stairs leading upward. Presumably there's an elevator somewhere, maybe a utility elevator, since no one in their right mind would try to get a couch or mattress of any size up stairways this narrow.
Eileen starts bounding upward rather quickly, and yes, they are smelling of filth and decay a bit. She takes him up one floor, then another. "About a year and a half now," she tells him. "A little over. What about you? I mean... not here obviously, if you live in my building I'll eat my hat, but Chicago, the area, what-have-you." They come to the fourth floor after awhile and head out into the hall. The building, despite being small and squished and obviously cheap, is rather well-kept. Her apartment is called 4-J.
Dane"I just moved here," Dane answers, following her at a more sedate pace. It's a wonder she doesn't trip over her own feet, he thinks. Then again, remembering the car ride: maybe not. "About a month ago. Because I heard the Chantry here was actually trying to get something done.
"Tonight was my first job," he admits. "And yes, the Hermetic councilor did in fact suggest that we work together again. Something about 'high complementary skillsets'."
Her building is small, and older, and quiet, and without all the amenities one associates with Loop living. It is not quite what Dane expected, nor what he lives in; not that ultimately it makes much difference. He puts his hand on the banister as he climbs. The wood feels cool under his palm. He catches up to her on the third floor or so.
"Why are you asking me up for coffee?" he asks. Not suspiciously, no, but as though he suspects there may be a secret answer he doesn't know yet.
eileenShe waits for him on the landing of the fourth floor, her cheeks a bit pink, until he's there too. That's when he asks his question, or sometime around then, and she shrugs. "Well, you gave me a ride home, and I thought it would be courteous to invite you in," she explains, and then starts to head down the narrow hall toward her door, which is labeled 4-J. It is not terribly far from the next closest door, 4-H.
Eileen looks over at him and smiles. "And I didn't get to know you very much while we were taking care of Charlie, and we kind of got off to a rocky start at the diner, but if we're going to keep doing stuff together then it's just going to be easier and work better if we have more of a rapport and all that."
One of the other keys on her ring is produced, and she wiggles it into the door, giving it a twist. "Generally a warm drink and some time to settle is a good place to start, you know? Come on in," she's also saying, pushing open the door into
the smallest apartment he has ever seen. There are people in the Loop for whom this would be considered a small walk-in closet. The floors are wood, and rather firm and shiny and nice. Across the way there is a single window with a roll-down shade and what looks like a small fire escape outside. Very close to the front door is her bed, neatly made and thick and white and raised. There's a curtain, currently pulled back, between that and the couch, which faces the kitchenette. As far as he can tell, there's no bathroom, until they walk in a bit more and the front door closes. Oh. There it is, and a tiny closet as well. It gives a broad impression of white and yellow, more than other colors, but the books on the shelves near her bed and the ones above the kitchenette are arranged by color.
Eileen looks absolutely thrilled to be home. She's shedding her jacket and her sneakers then, hanging one on a hook behind the door and offering to take Dane's as well to hang up, putting her shoes over by the bed. She moves much like she drives, with an awareness of the space around her that is almost impossible to believe. Every few moments she looks like she's going to crash into something, run into a door, trip over this, but always her steps carry her right past it, around it. She can't even seem to bump into Dane, despite the size of the place. And as she's walking around, hanging up jackets and taking off her shoes and sweeping toward the kitchenette, she's saying:
"I love this place. The grand tour takes the space between one blink and another, though I guess I could show you my bathroom. That's an even shorter tour." Eileen is filling a kettle with water. "I want to have plants, like some nice green thing on the fire escape, but I'm not so good at taking care of them. I'm just used to the living things around me being able to take care of themselves, but potted plants usually can't. Maybe I'll be like Charlie and get a cactus, they're pretty independent."
Like people talk about cats. "You can sit anywhere," she says. "Floor, couch, bed, whatever. That yellow box-thing looks like cardboard but it's actually a chair-stool-sometimes table, it's totally sturdy."
She sets the kettle on the stove and turns on the burner and undoes her belt, undoes her pants, pushes them downward, wiggles and steps out of them. Her shirt is still mostly transparent. Her bra is still black. Her panties are apparently powder-blue, and her socks are knee-high, white, with black stars all over them.
DaneThe door opens on Eileen's miniscule little apartment, and Dane looks -- charmed. Which is not, one must understand, a thing he appears to be or even is very often. It's not quite a smile on his face, but his lips curve a little. He looks around with those brilliant-dark eyes of his; notes the sunny colors, the couch and bed somehow squeezed in opposite the kitchen area. Note the window and the fire escape, which might possibly double as a balcony sometimes. She loves this place, she says, bustling about, heating water and hanging up their coats.
"I can see why," he says. "It's small but it feels free."
Which is perhaps as much deep insight as he's capable of, straight-arrow mind and all. He looks around, offered seating, and chooses the odd box-thing. It's sturdy. It's not terribly comfortable, but it works. Truth be told Dane doesn't really fit here. Even under that jacket he's in a dark long-sleeved pullover, and he looks dark, solemn. He watches her,
until she starts to undress. Then he looks away, his eyebrows flicking a bit before settling. He does not leap up and demand that she dress herself, now, foul temptress! He doesn't exactly make assumptions either. Dane simply gives Eileen her privacy, looking instead at her low, comfortable-looking couch.
eileenWhen he speaks, calling it small but free, she whips her head around to look at him -- and note that with hair as long as hers, that whip cuts a wide swath -- and beams. She looks so pleased. Not flattered, not complimented, but pleased that he gets it. He chooses the yellow box thing, which is midway between the 'kitchen' and the 'living room', so in reality he's perhaps 8 inches away from her when she drops her pants.
Eileen has no expectations, let's get that much straight. She doesn't expect that he'll be charmed, no, but she doesn't expect him to judge every inch of her living space either. She doesn't expect that he will be offended when she starts to undress, she doesn't expect that he will leap to conclusions about why she really invited him up, but none of that is to say she doesn't think, at all, about the effect her actions may or may not have on him. She just takes them as they come, quietly or loudly as they come.
Since there's no yelling or hollering or even questioning, Eileen simply goes about undressing, the pants followed by the shirt followed by the bra followed by the panties, the socks. And Dane angles his eyes so that the large mirror leaning against the wall does not inadvertently send his gaze right back where it was before. Eileen doesn't seem overly concerned with privacy. She gathers up her clothes and notes that it has gotten extremely quiet, but that doesn't bother her.
The clothing gets dumped in a basket that is hidden cleverly beneath the bed, sliding right out. She glances at the kitchen, then Dane, who is really interested in her couch. She has long enough, thick enough hair that she could play at Godiva, pull a mermaid thing and cover her breasts with her hair, but she doesn't. "I'm going to take a really quick shower, okay? Charlie's the sweetest, but I was curled up right in his armpit and I honestly don't think he's had a shower in about six years. And fear smells rank, did you know that? If it wouldn't be weird for you you can come, too, or take one after I'm done."
She's half inside the bathroom as she's saying this, then pops back out. "Not that I'm saying you smell bad. I haven't really smelled you, so I don't know. It was just pretty disgusting in there, that's all I mean. I feel gross so I thought maybe you might, and I didn't want to be rude and not even offer. I mean you'd have to put your dirty clothes back on afterward, I don't think I have anything that would even come close to fitting you, except maybe a sarong." She peers at him. "Have you ever worn a sarong? It can be insanely hot to see a built guy in a sarong. I don't think it's your style, I'm just saying."
And back in. The water turns on. She calls out, but not loudly, because it's such a small place one never needs to raise one's voice: "If you're not going to shower, could you take the kettle off when it whistles? I swear I'll just be like five minutes."
DaneDane flicks a glance at Eileen as she mentions sarongs. She pops back into her tiny bathroom. He looks away again. "I have actually worn a sarong," he says, raising his voice a little over the blasting water. "And you're quite correct. It's not my thing.
"And yes. I'll get the kettle."
She showers. He waits. The kettle eventually hisses, then whistles. It makes that noise for no more than a second before Dane has it off the fire and set aside to cool. There are no cups in sight, nor coffee, nor chai, so he leaves everything where it is and waits. He's just beginning to grow impatient and wonder what could be taking her so long when the shower stops. A moment later Eileen, along with a cloud of steam, emerges.
"Do you always strip naked in front of near-strangers?" he asks, rather bluntly. "Because you know, that could lead to mistaken impressions."
eileenShe pops back out when he says he's worn a sarong. That same look: surprised, delighted, pleased. It's not his thing; she purses her lips in amusement, rolls her eyes in the same, and the next thing he knows there's a gentle slam of a shower door shutting, clicking, steam roiling out from the bathroom while not that far away, the kettle begins to boil.
Eileen showers. Dane waits. The kettle begins to whistle, and he doesn't know where the cups or coffee or chai are, so he sets the kettle on a cool burner and waits. It really is, all told, only about five minutes, and quite a lot of that is the kettle boiling. Between taking it off the burner and sitting down to wait again, there's not very long for him to grow impatient. But he does. And the water in the open, tiny bathroom turns off. He can hear the door open and close again. He can hear rustling.
When Eileen does emerge, she has a beach towel -- stripped in sherbet colors of white, orange, lemon, raspberry -- wrapped around herself, so there's that. Her long hair has been scuffed dry but is still quite saturated, hanging down behind her, smoothed back from her forehead, draped over her shoulders. She has a white sparkle nailpolish on her toes. Seeing the kettle on a different burner and the heat off on the other one, she heads to the kitchenette and starts opening cupboards, getting things out. Like a weird set of clear plastic tubes, like a bag of coffee grounds held closed with a jeweled clip that doubles as a scoop, like a tiny filter that is just a disc of white paper, like two mugs. The mugs are just as colorful as everything else, one with various writing implements circling it, one with a bright yellow square holding the number 45.
She's starting this intriguing, mad-science-esque process of making coffee in her very cool little press when Dane asks her, bluntly, if she always strips naked in front of near strangers. Benignly, as though she's heard this question or a variation of it just often enough to amuse her but not often enough to annoy her, Eileen smiles and gives a small shake of her head to herself.
"I'm not sure I 'always' do anything," she answers, like it's a valid and fair question and not a rather blunt, semi-disgruntled one. "But I'm home and I felt gross. I hope you know that if I do things that bother you, you can speak up and tell me so." She is pouring hot water into grounds in the connected tubes after some screwing, some fidgeting, some construction and coffee-scooping. Now she stirs, looking over her shoulder at him again.
"And if by 'mistaken impressions' you mean the impression that I'm throwing myself at you or trying to get you to make some kind of First Move to screw around, I think you absolutely would be mistaken in thinking that, but that's really more about your perceptions than my actions. Some people think nudity and sex are inextricably tied together, and I think that's silly. You don't even know if I'm into men or not. I mean, I did say that built guys in sarongs can be hot, but some lesbians want to have sex with John Stamos, so you really can't conclude anything from stray comments."
There's a flip, and she begins to press down with her palm on the inner plunger, dripping coffee into the bottom of one mug, then quickly switching it to the other to finish it off. A few drops of coffee get on the counter. That's okay. There's only a few tablespoons of liquid in each mug right now. Eileen uses the corner of the towel she's wearing to mop up the droplets that spilled, and pours the hot water from the kettle into the un-filled mugs.
"However," she's also saying, as matter of fact and thoughtful as she says everything, even the most rambling things, even the things that would sound flightly and mindless coming from so many other mouths, "I'm not saying I don't want to have sex with you."
Eileen turns, handing him the mug that says 45 on it. "It's still about a hundred and seventy degrees -- Fahrenheit, I mean, of course -- so be careful. Though I guess you could cool it off if you wanted. But if you were going to do that, you could have heated the water up faster than the kettle anyway." She crosses the two feet or so to her couch and plops down in her towel, knees and legs and shoulders and arms exposed still, blowing across the surface of her coffee gently, hands wrapped around it for warmth. Her eyes aren't shying from his. "But I haven't gotten the vibe from you that you want to have sex with me. And you're not a Cultist. I'm really not sure you'd be cool, or even get it."
The way she says 'be cool' sounds almost sacred, like she's reciting something from Sanskrit, from Latin, from the mouthings of dervishes. She smiles at him more gently there, compassionate, patient. "Which is okay," she assures him, as though he might read disdain where there is none, "there are other ways, other things, good things. Like just having some coffee. Do you like it? The beans are from Brazil. I think the roasting style -- the roasters are local, so they're from Chicago via Brazil -- gives it a honeyish flavor."
DaneFeeling slightly cross - which seems to be Dane's natural state of being, really - doesn't keep him from taking the offered coffee. She plops down on her couch. He blows carefully across the liquid, then sips. She's right. It tastes good. It tastes great. He supposes he shouldn't be surprised, though, that a Cultist knows how to make coffee taste great.
"It's not merely the question of sex," Dane replies. Evidently Eileen's manythreaded answers are too much for him; he simply picks one and sticks doggedly to it. "There's also the matter of societal norms. And yes, I understand that the Traditions are all about bucking norms - or so they say, anyway, despite locking themselves into a rather rigid set of behavioral codes - but who actually bucks every norm they encounter? Only the Marauders, as far as I know. And forgive me for stating the obvious, but stripping naked before serving coffee is hardly normal behavior."
He sips again. Frowns at his mug, then at her.
"I'm not trying to instigate an argument," he explains. "I was just ... surprised and a little discomfited by that. But I suppose no real harm was done," he's talked himself all around the circle and into his own conclusion, "so perhaps I should simply leave the matter be now."
eileenTrust a Cultist to make something simple like after-mission coffee into a multi-sensory experience. And yet: still simple. It's ground beans and hot water taken in a small apartment that, while clean, is lived in and cozy. But it seems like everything is like that with Eileen so far: color and texture. Sound and taste. She smells the coffee when she inhales, exhales to cool it.
Meanwhile, Dane argues with himself until he arrives at his equally disgruntled conclusion. Eileen doesn't seem to take his disgruntledness personally, doesn't feel like his crankiness is necessarily even directed at her. Even if it is, it doesn't appear to upset her or make her self-conscious. She just listens while he comes around full circle to figuring out, out loud, what he thinks and how he feels about it.
And quietly, without mentioning it, she takes note of the fact that he said he was discomfited. She notices that he sees the quandary between being of a class of human being that by nature destroys boundaries and yet self-creates them in order to survive, in order to make things work, because that is what being a living creature among other living creatures means. She understands the stories of archmages and oracles who disappeared into the ether, creating pocket universes that could accept them, places where they could find full freedom.
It says something that Eileen doesn't always envy them.
It also means something that he's not trying to start an argument. That at no point does he chastise her for doing it at all. He works out his own reaction to it, that's all. And she likes that. She understands that, even if he does it unconsciously.
She sips. Smiles at him, but it's not pleased or delighted or amused or patient. Mostly it's just a gentle, regular old smile, small and warm on her face. "I get that," she answers, which is pretty simple, particularly for her. "And...no, I don't always do things that are 'normal'. I won't pretend that it's 'just who I am' or anything. A lot of times it's very conscious and deliberate. I won't even pretend that undressing just now was me being thoughtless, or that I assumed you'd be fine with it."
A beat. "Not that I was testing you. But anyway, it is something you should know, and likely already do: I'll probably act not-normal a lot. I still want you to know you can tell me if something bothers you. I want you to. And...even if it's just like you did right now, where you aren't even really bothered but just... kinda talking. And reacting. I like that, too."
She smiles. She does like that. The smile is more evocative of that than the words.
DaneDane shifts the warm mug in his hands, turning it a few degrees. There's a 45 on that mug. He could shift the paint on that mug, transpose the numbers. He could erase them into dye dust. He could pull the apart in his hands like taffy. Unweave it down to its basest particles. Split the atom, untangle the quark. He can see into the very heart of matter, of energy,
and yet not at all into the heart of another living being. He doesn't even believe souls exist. There is no afterlife for him, but there is an inexorable return: everything, eventually, cycles back. They are all born from dead stars.
He drinks; then he lowers the mug, cupped between his hands. "So why?" he asks. "If it wasn't thoughtless, and it wasn't presumption, and it wasn't a test. What was it?"
eileen"Curiosity," she answers, because this doesn't take thought or consideration. She knew why she was doing it when she did it. There are steps to ecstasy, there are rungs on the ladder to help those who cannot fly yet. Knowing your intention, focusing on it, is the second one.
The Cult is more structured than some would believe. The greatest thing about it is how well-hidden that structure is, how effervescent it is.
"I invited you up to thank you, and also to get to know you a little better. And it wasn't like there was a right thing to do or a wrong thing to do, but it was bound to be informative no matter what."
She shrug, watching him. "Asking 'what are you thinking' a lot doesn't ever get you the right answer anyway. You can learn more about people just by watching what they do."
DaneThis time there's something a little more bitter in the twist of Dane's mouth. "Learn more about people," he echoes softly, "by watching what they do."
He takes a gulp of coffee like it's something much stronger. Temperature doesn't seem to burn him. Perhaps that part of him has been scorched out long ago; those nerves cauterized. He puts the cup down, then, on the tiny coffee table if he can reach it; the floor if he can't.
"I won't even address the sheer arrogance of such clinical observation," Dane says. "Let's just consider the method. What about what they've done? What was done to them? What they learned or didn't learn; where they've been, who they've lost, the sum total of a life. All that, and you think if you watch how I react to you undressing, you'll understand who I am?"
And now Dane is angry.
eileenInfuriatingly, but not surprisingly, Eileen takes his anger in stride. She doesn't drop her eyes from him or look away in shame or simple discomfort. And that isn't to say she doesn't feel the discomfort. She just doesn't shy from it.
"No," she says quietly, giving a shake of her head, and this perhaps is the surprise: that is where it ends.
DaneThere is a hard silence in return, the sharp square lines of Dane's jaw positively stone-carved. Eventually:
"Then what?"
eileenEileen shrugs. "I think you're overreacting to a comment that you obviously misunderstood," she says, which isn't an answer, "and I don't take kindly to being insulted and jumped on in my own home because you've got some kind of a bug up your ass, Thomas. Be cool or take a hike."
She leans back, still cupping her mug, and looks relatively unconcerned which option he chooses. The truth is, she has a feeling it's going to be either the latter or neither, and the other truth is: she's not sure what she can do about it if he decides to stay and not be cool. She blows across her coffee; takes another drink, watching him.
DaneThis time the silence is simply long; not so sharp. Dane looks down, the floor clean between his feet, his brow dark and drawn low over his eyes. He thinks a while, or perhaps simply works to reassert control over his temper.
"I don't quite know what you want from me," he admits at last. "It's not sex. I doubt it's conversation. I don't think you want to learn from me. I have no idea why you would want to know who I am. It's hard for me to believe you would want the pleasure of my company.
"I don't know why I'm here," he finishes, "and the more my uncertainty increases, the more unpleasant this situation grows. For both of us. If you were being honest - if you really want to know who I am - then know this: I despise being scrutinized, measured, judged and filed. I don't want to be known. I ... enjoyed working with you. But I'm hardly looking for a friend. So perhaps it's best if we kept this relationship professional, and you could indulge your social activities with other, more personable members of the Chantry."
eileenThe interior of the apartment is cool but not chilly. Dane seems to warm it up, and it isn't the comingled fascination and terror of fire, despite the rumors about him and his House. It's just normal anger, the way angry people feel. There's also the fact that the two of them are taking up 210 square feet of space along with all her furniture. The place is cozy, the place feels bright and sunny and ...secret, in a way. All the same, Eileen is growing chilled. Her long hair is wet, her body wrapped in a damp towel, and the coffee is keeping her warm but the tension in the room is making her shiver a little. She wishes it didn't.
Aloud, and perhaps more for himself than her sake, he lists the things she doesn't want from him, which may just be the things he doesn't want from her or the things he can't imagine anyone wanting from him but have nothing to do with what Eileen actually does or doesn't want. She has the wisdom not to open her mouth and point it out, but she thinks it. She thinks it so loud that she half-expects him to hear it, but she probably just knows too many mind-readers.
Her head tips to one side as he talks, and her brows are slightly tugged together. It looks more like worry than anything else. Discomfort, most certainly. But she leans into that, too. Lean into the discomfort. Lean into the fear. Lean into the pain. Lean into the confusion.
And when he's done, Eileen is quiet a moment, then takes a breath. "Thomas, when I said that I undressed with intention and that part of that intention was curiosity, I meant... just that. It wasn't clinical. I wasn't judging you. I don't... judge people. I try not to, at least." She pauses, thinking as she goes. "I was just stating a fact: actions speak louder than words. I learn a lot from little things. It doesn't mean I scrutinizing you -- or anyone, weighing and measuring and scribbling little notes in my ledger. Everyone learns things like that, even when they aren't trying to. I don't even know where you got the idea that I thought I could figure out your entire life history and personality by taking my pants off."
At that, and perhaps for the first time, she looks openly bewildered, completely at a loss as to where that thought of his came from, the comment that came with it. And definitely for the first time: she looks a little offended. Maybe that's why she exhales, and takes a sip of coffee, and glances down at it for a moment before looking back at him.
"I would have taken my pants off then even if I wasn't curious about you or interested in knowing you more. But in this case, because I am, that action and that intention are connected." She's getting into fuzzy territory. She knows it, and can hear it in herself, and she's already figuring out that this seems to make him as bitter as a lemon, but, well: he's a grown up. He can deal.
"Thomas, I wasn't trying to fit you into any kind of file. If you don't want to be known, then I won't pry or push, but... I didn't think I was prying or pushing anyway. I can't help but learn things about you just by being around you," she says, and shakes her head twice. Then she shrugs. "I don't know if 'enjoyed' is the right word for me, but I do think we worked well together tonight. I know that we weren't the only ones who noticed that we worked well together. I think it's good for the chantry and good for the so-called double-u-ay-ar for us to work together. We don't have to be 'friends' to do that. But if you are adamantly against being known or understood or learned about even by osmosis, then I won't work with you."
That, after all the rather squishy and gentle talk, is not so much a line being drawn in the sand as an iron rod being laid down.
"If you want to be on your own, and have nobody know you and just leave you alone, then I don't begrudge you that," Eileen says, a bit quieter. "And I'm sure there are initiates or apprentices who will get along swimmingly with you in that kind of partnership. But that won't be me."
DaneThomas exhales, leaning down to pick up his coffee again. Perhaps there's something to be read from that; certainly, it means something that he didn't simply stand and walk out. His drink is still hot, and he sips it again.
"It's been a long time since I've worked with anyone who's managed to surprise me," he says. "Or anyone who's taken an approach so radically different from mine both successfully and without denying the validity of my approach.
"That's why I said I enjoyed working with you. We worked together well. I don't work well with many others. Of course," a touch of wryness that doesn't come close to humor, "I suppose you've yet to actually see me work."
Dane raises his eyes to Eileen, then: dark, glittering, intense under his eyebrows.
"I'm not so irrational as to forbid you from making even a passing observation via 'osmosis', as you put it. I simply don't want you ... analyzing me. But I suppose we've already established that you won't. So the deeper issue at hand is: I don't want you to attempt to understand me, because that usually leads to attempting to befriend me. And that, in my experience, has always led to attempts to fix or heal or gentle or change me in some way, usually in the image of whoever feels I need to be changed.
"So: yes. In a sense, I do want you to leave me alone. I don't want you to try to fix me. And I don't ... feel comfortable in a situation like this. 'Hanging out'. 'Getting to know each other'. I don't know how to behave, and I'd rather we simply worked together," and perhaps this is a concession, "and learn about one another that way."
eileenHe doesn't leave. In fact, he picks his coffee up from the table and holds it between his hands. He drinks it, and Eileen smiles. She drinks, too, as though his decision not to get up and walk away was a toast, and they are sealing it now. She thinks about sharing water in that Heinlein book, and that always makes her smile too. If she told Dane right now thou art god he might just get up and walk out, though.
This man across from her is not the first magi to be invited back to her apartment, nor the first man, nor will he be the last, but there still rests a fog of sanctity over it. My home, she calls it, and she sets these rules, she creates this space and defends it even if she is the proverbial David to the giant. It's special, and it is cheerful and bright and calm and warm all at once, and not a single drop of his own feeling seems to be able to impact that. The place reflects the girl who lives in it.
The girl who, as he says, surprises him. And he's not the first adept in Chicago, nor the first pain-wracked one, closed-off one, angry one, to be surprised by her. What he says is the truth: she can work with him, or even simply alongside him, and be wildly different than him, but not tell him you're wrong. this way that you are different: that's wrong. that's bad. She drinks her coffee, curling up on her couch in the wrap of her towel, watching him as he talks.
He doesn't want her to understand him. Her head slowly tips to the side, still watching him. She wonders if he can hear himself when he says that, and what immediately follows it. Also, he tells her not to fix him. He tells her this sort of thing makes him uncomfortable. She wonders, like he does, why he came up here at all then.
"I don't think you need to be fixed, Thomas," Eileen says quietly when he's done. "And the Cult is not a gentle tradition."
She, who seems so gentle, saying that with a depth and an antiquity to her pale eyes that is hard to reconcile for a moment. Especially here, in this apartment. She takes a sip of her coffee. "Grief, hate, and rage are just as valid as joy, lust, and sympathy." Eileen looks down into her nearly-empty cup. The coffee, like the milkshake earlier, isn't gone. It's simply moved, and now it's inside of her. The drug in it is working like any other, filtering into her, changing her chemistry, her brain, her heart, and knowing that makes her ache and makes her soar. She lifts her eyes to Dane again.
"Did you notice that you said that when people start trying to understand you, they usually start trying to befriend you?" she asks, as though switching a topic. "I think that's interesting." She leans over, putting her mug down. "I also think it's interesting that you came up here even though situations like this make you uncomfortable. But I suppose if I keep talking about the things I notice about you or things I think are interesting, I'm going to be breaking your rules, so, hmm." She smiles and curls back up, squeezing herself delightedly for a moment, all but beaming as she thumps back into her throw pillows. "I'll stop."
Dane"I wanted to see where you lived," he replies, without hesitation or shame. "I wanted to see who you were. I suppose that makes me a voyeur, wanting to know without being known."
eileenHer eyebrows hop up in the slightest of waggles, and she gives him a slow nod, but her smile doesn't flicker or fade. "It does. But you're not a student of correspondence, so I suppose you had to come up all the way to scratch that itch. I don't blame you for being curious. I am very fascinating."
DaneThis time Dane does smile a little, the muscles of his face moving as though unaccustomed to this, atrophied away by lack of this peculiar form of exercise.
"You're very happy," he says, either a correction or an addition. "It's a rare thing, even amongst Sleepers. Genuine happiness."
eileen"How do you know it's genuine?" Eileen asks, and she takes this away, too: she said fascinating, he said happy, and his tone drew a connection between the two, and whether it was a correction or an addition, it still is connected.
Dane"I suppose I don't. Is it?"
eileenShe nods.
Dane"I'm glad," he replies. Then, deadpan, "Though I suppose it's too bad for your Hollywood career."
eileenI'm glad, he says, and Eileen doesn't put much stock in that. Maybe he is -- glad that her happiness is genuine, just as he's surprised to meet someone who is happy at all, and moreover: happy even if he's not.
And then he makes a joke, and her eyebrows flick again, moderately amused by this. She doesn't quite get him, or how rapidly he contradicts himself, how what he says he wants and what he's doing don't seem to match up, how sensitive his trigger is before he's angry, before he's defensive, before he's pushing back, pushing away, snarling and snapping like a beaten dog. And he doesn't want her to ask these questions, figure him out, pick him apart. She's curious, but not so driven by it that she can't bear to wait, and hold her tongue. She thinks of what a punishment wheel with him would feel like, or any other kind of wheel.
Eileen takes a breath, and she is cold and her coffee is gone, so she talks as she gets up, walking across the apartment -- the room, really -- to the drawers along the wall, the drawers under the bed. "I come from San Francisco," she tells him, perhaps because he mentioned Hollywood, perhaps because he said he doesn't want her to know him but he's still here, perhaps because he said he wants to know without being known. "I went to this neat little day school there. And my parents taught me to give thoughtful Bar Mitzvah gifts, to walk or jog every day, to respect Kwanzaa." The curtain between the bed and the rest of the apartment is half-pulled, but it barely conceals anything anyway, made of a lace of bird-figures and flowers. She skips over a lot, as her towel unwinds and drapes over the end of the bed, and as she starts rooting around for underwear, fresh clothes, warmth: "I went to Georgetown. I keep thinking about grad school but I haven't decided yet. I mean, I have a good job, and I'm busy, you know, fighting a war for the soul of the world or what-have-you. But I liked school. I don't know."
She shrugs, drawing underwear up, not bothering with a bra, putting on a pair of stretchy black pants with silver stars down the outside of each leg. An enormous gray sweater with the neck and sleeves and bottom cut off, very 80s, draping off her shoulder, exposing a small, flat, oblong mole on her right clavicle as she walks back over to the 'living room' portion of the apartment.
"I wanted to tell you that you're wrong," she goes on, and for a moment her steps seem to be carrying her toward him, but they hitch and she goes, instead, back to her couch, hair drying in twists around her. "About all the things I don't want from you. Like sex and conversation, which I think were really just you saying you don't want those things from me, probably because you've got weird hangups and because you're a big crank. And I actually do think I could learn a lot from you. I can't quite explain why I'd want to know you, or that company doesn't have to be about pleasure but experience and experience can, sometimes, be a pleasure even if it's not... pleasant." She shrugs that bare shoulder, lounging now, one leg bent and the other languid, her temple resting on her fist which connects to the wrist-bone, arm-bone, elbow, which rests on the couch.
"Are you still here because you want to see more of who I am?" she asks, and again, it's a jump from what she was just talking about,
but not really.
DaneAs before, Dane looks away when Eileen strips bare. He sips his coffee and, to pass the time, he looks at the books piled over the kitchen cabinets. They look like they might be cookbooks. Or maybe just those coffee table books: big, with beautiful photography, too large to fit on a normal shelf. There are more books behind her bed; he knows that, but looking at those would defeat the entire purpose.
She comes back around. Her sweater bares a shoulder. There's a small mole there. Dane's eyes touch on it for a moment; there's an image in his mind and he looks away, frowning at himself, drinking his coffee that's beginning to turn cool.
He wants to tell her he really has nothing to teach her. The Hermetics are a very orderly lot. They keep files with evaluations and judgments. Dane's seen his file once. Words like although extremely talented in the Spheres of Matter and Forces, T. Dane is hampered by a lack of vision. Words like tragically impaired in the Spheres of Prime, Mind and Spirit. Cannot seem to grasp non-concrete concepts. Words like,
narrow
limited
quite useful if his limitations are kept in mind
and, later:
possibly unstable.
But she's not asking about teaching anymore. He tries to forget what she said about sex and conversation, company, pleasure, experience. He finishes his coffee and sets it down, leans forward and rubs his thumbs against the bridge of his nose for a moment. Then he sits up.
"I should go," he says, and stands. "Thank you for the coffee."
eileenThe Cult and the Order are extraordinarily different traditions. The Hermetics tend to view the Ecstatics as mere children. Undedicated, unfocused, undisciplined. If one looks solely at the amount of time Eileen has been exposed to magic and how far she has (not) gotten, then sets her up against someone like Dane and what he's accomplished, it seems like the Hermetics are right. What good is it to dabble your toes in everything but excel at nothing?
If you ask the Ecstatics what they think of the Hermetics, some of them merely murmur: soon. Others expound, some rant, many will roll their eyes, some will laugh. There is no one answer. But only a very few of them have given up hope entirely for the Order. They are, by and large, an optimistic lot, which says something for a group of willworkers whose greater members can do things like
see through time.
or roll it backwards.
or stop it entirely.
Soon, they say, with little smiles on their faces.
Eileen does have cookbooks. And picture books and novels and many, many books on architecture, art history, design. They are arranged by color throughout her apartment, following the color wheel. She, however, isn't looking at them when Dane is, so she doesn't have the pleasure of telling him about all of her books, noticing that he notices. Notice what you notice was one of the first, best pieces of advice she ever received from a mage. She doesn't think anyone has ever, ever told Dane something like that, which may explain how defiantly obtuse he is.
She comes back, clothed, but they've both finished their coffee and they both feel the balance of the moment, though Dane wouldn't, she thinks, use words like that to describe it. He either excuses himself to leave, or something else has to happen, and she doesn't know what that is but oh,
too bad,
he's going to climb all the way to the top of the fence and then decide he doesn't really want to know what's on the other side. People trying to make friends with him, probably. Icky, nasty, bog-of-eternal-stench things like that. She smiles gently as he rubs his face, and sits up a bit straighter, and then stands. Her chin lifts, eyes following his face even when it gets so very high up.
Nooo, stay. This time I'll put whiskey in the coffee. I have some of those magic-fruit tablets. We can bite into lemons.
"Okay," she says easily, still smiling. "You're welcome, Thomas."
And, good hostess and all, she swings her legs down and pushes herself up to walk him the seven or eight feet to the door. "Thank you again for the ride," she adds, moving easily even in cramped quarters to open the door for him when they get there, smiling up at him. "Come by anytime; my door is always open." A beat. "Obviously not literally, but what I mean is, I won't turn you away." Another beat. She talks in rhythm, it seems. "Obviously."
DaneDane is at once relieved - as though this stripling of a girl had any chance at all of keeping him from leaving if he really wanted to - and disappointed. His smile is faint and wry and crooked. "I know," he says. See, he's not so impaired. He understands metaphor.
A beat on his end too. Then he holds his hand out.
"It was a privilege, Ms. Cotton. I'm sure we'll work together again soon."
eileenThere is a word for the way they're looking at each other, but it doesn't exist in english, and Eileen knows this word and is thinking of it right now, smiling because of it, absolutely warmed from the depths of her gut outward because of it, and he totally wouldn't get it. Or he'd just get cranky, and that amuses and delights her too, not because she thinks it's cute or adorable but just because it does.
"Ooh, a privilege," she echoes, perhaps teasing his formality. She decides not to take his hand, and it's not likely he concludes that she is 1) being rude or 2) doesn't notice, but it's possible he does. "Be careful out there. Don't take any wooden nickels. Drive safe. Take it easy. Don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy."
DaneDane doesn't understand half of the advice she gives him. He quirks an eyebrow at her, chooses not to comment. It's a very short trip to the door. He takes his coat down, folds it over his arm, and steps outside when she opens the door.
"Goodnight, Eileen," he says. Down the hall he goes, then, not looking back, descending those four flights of stairs the same way he came up. His footsteps fade with distance.
eileen"G'night, Thomas," she says, and the door closes quietly after him. He's down the hall when it opens again.
Dane-- so he turns back. Maybe he forgot something, he thinks. Maybe she forgot something. Maybe she's in trouble. Maybe a Marauder just ported in through her window --
he knows it's none of that. He turns anyway, standing at the other end of the hall now, waiting.
eileenShe thought about just shouting after him: IT'S A SONG BY THE EAGLES. And she was all but bounding in her own skin, because she gets excited by strange, small things sometimes, and then she did the thing where she put her hand on the door and opened it and by the time it was open,
her entire mood has changed. Her breath is caught in her throat a bit, and she's surprised by herself, because the other thought, far sillier, lived only a short moment in her mind before the doorknob turned and
everything changed.
Eileen is leaning against the doorjamb, her head tipped toward it, the door only partially open, watching him. There's no silliness. There's no delighted amusement. There's something else, and it's no less genuine. Her voice is quiet, but it carries.
"Do you want to stay?"
DaneThere's something about this moment that is balanced on a knife's edge. Seen from her vantage point, Dane does not seem at all imposing, or perhaps even remarkable. He does not tower over mere mortals. He does not fill the hall with lightning and flame with his mere presence. He looks like a man: hands in the pockets of the leather jacket he has put on, positioning and the fatigue of the hour giving his shoulders a slight stoop. Along with that prominent nose and those fierce dark eyes, it gives him a faintly avian air. Like a young falcon, a hawk on a lamppost.
His breathing changes imperceptibly as her voice reaches him. It is quiet in this hall. Her neighbors are asleep or minding their own business, and anyway this is a quiet building. Dane takes a breath, his eyes falling for a moment - not to her body but to the floor. And then rising again.
"I should go," he repeats. The words were carefully chosen both times. He takes another breath. "I think you're right. I wouldn't ... understand."
eileenEileen's smile is soft, like it often is. But it's also bright and it can also be wry and it can be eager and it can be a dozen other things. He met her less than twelve hours ago and he's seen a double cupped handful of iterations of her smiling, whereas she's mostly seen just the wry, not very sweet twist his mouth gives sometimes. She has seen him attempt to make a joke that, truthfully, fell pretty flat. But she liked that he did it anyway.
It's as if he didn't speak, or she just isn't taking the time to point out that she knows that, silly, but
she's still asking:
"Do you want to stay, Thomas?"
DaneShe sees it again now, that wry twist to his mouth. "Yes," he admits, but then: surely she knows that already. That's what was between them, that unnamed emotion that twisted and gleamed between them like a silver wire.
It's not that Hermetics don't feel. They do. But what a Cultist will indulge, a Hermetic will resist. Isn't that the stereotype, anyway? Uptight, straitlaced, wouldn't know fun if it bit them on the ass.
Dane, certainly, seems to be proving it right. He admits it: he wants to stay. But that's as far as he goes. Another moment, and then he makes a small gesture, a tilt of his head toward the stairs. "But I should go," he says. "I can't indulge this. It would be too complicated ... for me, at least.
"I'm sorry," he adds. "I didn't mean for things to go this way."
eileenShe does know. Little things, mostly. The defensiveness that cropped up was, in a way, part of it. The slight skirting of the answer when she asked why he came up with her, the way he called himself a voyeur but consistently turned his eyes away when she was naked. The way his eyes looked, ever so briefly, when he looked at her just a little while ago, noticing the mark along her collarbone. And though she's not able to read minds, not able to get more than the barest gist even with magic helping her, she saw the same vision as the man who supposedly lacks it, and
there was his mouth on her skin, kissing that spot, tasting the flesh around it, and she didn't get far enough to think about what their hands were doing. She's reasonably sure that Dane didn't think that far, either. Because he got up to go, which only confirmed everything.
She knows this, too: he's not a stereotypical Hermetic. The discipline is there, the raw power, though not the mysticism, the lingering traces of the old Hellfire clubs and all that. No wands, no pentacles, no Latin. One of the failings, the limitations, of the Hermetics is their typical overreliance on external foci, just as one of the failing of the Cultists is their tendency to overindulge. For a bunch of seers, they sometimes don't think too far ahead.
But Eileen is no more a typical Cultist than Dane is a typical Hermetic. And she feels no shame, she isn't afraid of what will he think of me or how am I behaving or of rumors or of complications or anything, any of it. She is not easily embarrassed. She is not easily cowed. There are things out there she thinks are worth being afraid of, worth hesitating over, worth thinking through carefully because of what the consequences might be. She is able to think clearly even though she finds herself sinking deeper into this every passing moment, drawn like a chain after an anchor,
heavier and heavier til she's pulled taut.
She licks her lips, presses them together, relaxes her mouth again. "Okay," she says, and smiles. "Don't apologize." And, despite the okay, her apparent acceptance that right now: no, he wants to but he doesn't want to and she understands that and that's okay and everything,
Eileen walks barefoot out of her apartment, closing the door, tucking a little key from the hook inside into her pocket, and walks down the hall to him,
slipping her hand into his. It is small and warm and soft. "I'll walk you out."
DaneThis should be the last thing he wants. Not merely this in the grander sense - Eileen, her tiny warm home, her - but this, specifically. Her hand in his, right now. Her bare feet keeping pace with his, walking him to the door.
He does want it, though. And he's oddly grateful for it, even though now her hand is in his and the bare shoulder with its mole is inches away. He wants to stay and he doesn't want to stay and it's a bit torturous that he's not staying but she's walking with him, but
he would have felt so much more alone, walking out by himself after turning his back on her.
So she walks him out. And he lets her, and is glad for it. She holds his hand without asking permission. He thinks of her snuggling up to Charlie as though they were the closest of friends, right on the border of lovers; as though his getting better meant the world to her. Happy, Dane called her earlier. It's not just that. It's also that she seems to feel so utterly, so deeply, so unapologetically. He envies her and stands a little in awe of her.
They're at the doorway before long. He doesn't want to let go just yet, so he finds a reason to stay a little longer. He turns to her and he says, "When you spoke to Charlie earlier - when you told him it was spring and brought him back ... you made me feel hope. I haven't felt hope for a very long time."
Dane looks down at her small hand in his. Then he smiles at her, small but oddly gentle, and this stands apart from what he wanted when he saw her collar fall to reveal her shoulder.
"Thank you," he says; for more than one thing, one suspects. And, in an uncharacteristic flash of whimsy, he brings her hand to his mouth and kisses her knuckles. "Goodnight, Eileen," he says a second time.
eileenShe wouldn't have liked it, had she said goodnight then, after that okay, and closed the door. It would have felt so much more ...alone. That's right. And Eileen doesn't fear being alone, doesn't dislike it and suspects that Dane doesn't either, but --
well, alone is the wrong word. Lonely, though. Lonely.
So she walks out after him, walks with him, and she holds his hand. He doesn't jerk away, doesn't even look startled by the touch, but goes ahead and holds her hand lightly as well, walking down four flights of stairs with him. Her feet get dirty, but she avoids getting splinters, getting rocks in the soles of her feet, hurting herself. She walks barefoot with as much conscious intention as she made coffee. And yes: it's a bit agonizing. She wants, and it's an intrinsically physical thing, a deep and warm longing in her body that threatens to drive her a little mad, and she wants to take that hand she's holding and guide it, teach it, welcome it, but
she also wants him to feel safe. He would probably think that's strange, her wanting to keep him safe, protect him, make sure he knows that no means no and decisions he makes do matter. Another word could be 'respected', but it's so formal, it's so stiff. She prefers not to use any words at all, and doesn't say a thing as they walk. The stairs are narrow. Usually, she's going down a step or two ahead of him or he's going down a step or two ahead of her, but they're holding hands. All the stupid while.
The last thing on her mind is Charlie. The truth is, she is young and she is aroused and she is a teensy bit lost in it, drunk on it, and quite happy to be so. Indulgent. He said he couldn't indulge in this. She indulges in all of it. He didn't come back to her apartment, shut the door, lift her up, and drink her skin, well, that's okay: she indulges even in this. Hand-holding. It's nicer than people give it credit for.
Too soon, they hit the ground floor, the narrow green door between them and the streets of the Loop. And he doesn't let go her hand and walk out, but turns to her. It's another moment at another door, and she loves all these things happening at passageways, it's awesome, so she's smiling at him when he turns to her. Dane doesn't want to let go yet. She knows that. She's glad, because she doesn't, either.
He mentions Charlie, and her eyes soften with a tenderness that, he has to know now, wasn't feigned. Charlie getting better did mean the world to her. Charlie knowing that it was spring, as though anyone being unaware of this cut straight to the core of her heart, really did matter. Even if he chose to die. Even if they had to drag him in. He had to know that the outside world still existed, and that the seasons were still turning, and that the trees were blossoming and the animals were rutting and that the skirts were getting shorter and the sun was finally, finally back in the sky, searing away the clouds. He had to know. Even if it made no difference at all, there had to be some joy in that. Some wonder at nature.
"I know," she says quietly, when he says he hasn't felt hope in a long time, and that ache is there, that tenderness that is, and very much isn't, like what she showed Charlie. Dane isn't Charlie. Of course it's different.
He thanks her, and he kisses her knuckles, and she is not so serious or self-restrained to refuse to let her heart jump a little. Foolishly, she knows, but she is glad that she is so foolish. She wants to touch him, but he lowers her hand again and her cheeks are flushed. Not with a blush, not with shyness, but a pink glow to her skin that wasn't there before. She exhales. "'Night, Thomas."
She hasn't felt like this in a long time, she realizes, walking back up the four flights of stairs after he's left her building and walked to the curb, to his Audi. There's not really a word for the collection, the cluster, the web of pleasures and aches she feels right now. She doesn't try to find one. It's glorious, though, she thinks, wiping off her dirty feet on her damp towel and crawling onto her bed, face-down, hugging one of her pillows and burying her face in the comforter, trying not to contain it all, but
let it move through her, fill her, melt her, make her shine.
She does end up coming like that, overcome with ecstasy long before she's even close to orgasm. She nearly passes out from it. The orgasm itself makes her see stars, makes her vision go cloudy black at the edges for a moment before she starts getting enough oxygen again, gasping, panting for air as she collapses back into those soft pillows, that warm bed. Eileen falls asleep just like that, still wearing her clothes, lying half-curled atop the covers, her hair askew and her arm draped over her pillow, no amount of caffeine in her bloodstream enough to stand against passion like that.
Good night, she thinks to herself, lulled to sleep by restraint and agony and pleasure and happiness and the cruel sweetness of it. Good.
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