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savetheearth2015-01-28 01:31 am
dead_black_eyes) wrote in savetheearth2015-01-28 01:31 am
I Guess That I Just Thought Maybe We Could Find New Ways to Fall Apart [Friday, January 23]
Who: Lazarus Lawliet and Cesar Sanchez-Ortiz
What: Lazarus and Cesar go out drinking and then back to Cesar's place to watch Star Battles, which Lazarus has never seen.
Where: Cesar's place
When: Backdated to January 23, Friday
Warnings: Slightly drunk people, highly suggestive content
The last time they'd been out drinking, it had gone surprisingly well, even despite the strange and stressful lead-up. It wasn't every night that detective work required breaking into a house just to confirm what a cursory glance at the extermination van in the driveway would have revealed, and there were few strains of embarrassment that could quite compare... but Lazarus had suggested drinking at a dive bar, Cesar hadn't turned him down, and the evening had taken a better turn, considering.
They both liked science, and had found way too many things to say about it over shots and copper mugs of vodka and ginger beer. Though they'd seemed an odd pair, when they let their guards down around each other, it turned out that Lazarus and Cesar actually had a fair deal in common, to the point where Cesar had been open to doing it again at a later point... minus breaking into his coulrodendrobibliophiliac neighbor's house, of course.
Lazarus had found himself looking forward to the event, even regretting that he'd suggested two weeks instead of one. In that time, he found himself sending Cesar a few links to articles in science journals that had piqued his interest, realizing that it ultimately gave them more things to talk about, and by the time Friday the 23rd did come around, he arrived at the same dive bar slightly early, ordered the first round of drinks, and from there, got happy-drunk while discussing topics they'd apparently only grazed while drinking a couple of weeks prior. They even managed to get to those articles; a few drinks in, Cesar had brought up "Star Battles" again, a film that he recommended to Lazarus weeks ago. What started as a joke turned into a serious (if tipsy) suggestion for the remainder of the evening, and they'd settled up their tab, grabbed their coats, and gotten a cab back to Cesar's apartment.
Now, Lazarus leans against the wall as Cesar fishes for his keys outside his apartment. "Admit it, Robert Bakker was onto something in The Dinosaur Heresies. I favor T-Rex as a predator, not a scavenger."
What: Lazarus and Cesar go out drinking and then back to Cesar's place to watch Star Battles, which Lazarus has never seen.
Where: Cesar's place
When: Backdated to January 23, Friday
Warnings: Slightly drunk people, highly suggestive content
The last time they'd been out drinking, it had gone surprisingly well, even despite the strange and stressful lead-up. It wasn't every night that detective work required breaking into a house just to confirm what a cursory glance at the extermination van in the driveway would have revealed, and there were few strains of embarrassment that could quite compare... but Lazarus had suggested drinking at a dive bar, Cesar hadn't turned him down, and the evening had taken a better turn, considering.
They both liked science, and had found way too many things to say about it over shots and copper mugs of vodka and ginger beer. Though they'd seemed an odd pair, when they let their guards down around each other, it turned out that Lazarus and Cesar actually had a fair deal in common, to the point where Cesar had been open to doing it again at a later point... minus breaking into his coulrodendrobibliophiliac neighbor's house, of course.
Lazarus had found himself looking forward to the event, even regretting that he'd suggested two weeks instead of one. In that time, he found himself sending Cesar a few links to articles in science journals that had piqued his interest, realizing that it ultimately gave them more things to talk about, and by the time Friday the 23rd did come around, he arrived at the same dive bar slightly early, ordered the first round of drinks, and from there, got happy-drunk while discussing topics they'd apparently only grazed while drinking a couple of weeks prior. They even managed to get to those articles; a few drinks in, Cesar had brought up "Star Battles" again, a film that he recommended to Lazarus weeks ago. What started as a joke turned into a serious (if tipsy) suggestion for the remainder of the evening, and they'd settled up their tab, grabbed their coats, and gotten a cab back to Cesar's apartment.
Now, Lazarus leans against the wall as Cesar fishes for his keys outside his apartment. "Admit it, Robert Bakker was onto something in The Dinosaur Heresies. I favor T-Rex as a predator, not a scavenger."
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{He said lots of things. Predator, scavenger--it's obvious that it's both. The T-Rex was too big. Too slow. Tiny arms...} Ah, there's the key. He holds it up triumphantly, then opens the door, letting the two of them in.
The apartment is small, and tells more about Cesar than entire conversations with him might. The furniture is nice, and looks like it may have come with the apartment. Here and there are decorations that might've been useful for parties, once--a big chips bowl, a full napkin holder--but they're abandoned now, left off to one side. Instead, the used objects in the room are towers of boxes with computer and mechanical parts piled up in corners, and the dining-room table has been loaded high with a storm of papers and half-finished models. The air smells of coffee, and dust, and the faintest of hints of something stale.
It's the home of someone who's changed over the past year. He used to be social, but now this is a 24/7 workspace for research, personal or otherwise.
{Make yourself at home.} He drops his keys by the door, and shrugs off his jacket. There's a hook by the door for it, and Caesar gestures at the one next to it.
{Want something to drink?}
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"Obvious? I don't know about that. With a jaw that powerful, do you really need big arms? Call me overly dazzled by pop culture, but I just can't see a beast like that leaning over and picking over carrion with crows."
It's gleeful hyperbole, creating an image that lights up his dark eyes in amusement as Cesar pushes open the door, leading the way into an apartment he never would have thought he'd be permitted to see the inside of, a few months ago. He glances at their surroundings; he's never lived in an apartment this nice, or, admittedly, this messy. It's not that everything isn't being used, it's not clutter indicative of hoarding or general sloppiness, so much... but
...obsession?
L wasn't lying when he mentioned that his sense of smell was practically nonexistent. Years of cocaine abuse had taken care of that for him, and when he thinks he does smell something, it's usually an indication that his meds are off. The air feels stagnant and heavy, but he doesn't notice any staleness or dust, let alone comment on it.
He leaves his jacket draped across the back of a chair, seeming slightly wary about instructions as permissive as "make yourself at home." He thinks about asking whether or not Cesar is in the middle of something big, a project for work, and remembers something about it being mentioned... and then protected pretty secretively. Probably best not to broach it immediately.
"Yeah, I... thank you. Gin and tonic, if you can, and if you can't... rum and coke?"
Both simple drinks, with two ingredients each; anyone with even the most basic of bars would probably have the supplies to make one. Lazarus should be asking for water, or at the very least something non-alcoholic, but a healthy and moderate approach to potentially addictive and damaging behaviors was not what landed him in rehab.
"If neither of those are possible, I'll have what you're having."
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By the time he's done, Cesar has two squat glasses, chips, and spicy salsa set out on the coffee table in front of the couch. He does another one of his 'help yourself' gestures, moving straight on to a set of DVD laden shelves. They're dusty. He takes out a boxed set, popping the first DVD in.
{Episode IV. This is the better order.}
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He is surprised by how asking for a drink seems to have turned into what might as well be a nacho bar, by his meager standards. L is not an entertainer, and probably wouldn't think to go above and beyond like that. When someone asks for a drink, they get one, and not really anything else.
He accepts the short, cool glass, then stiffens as though remembering something. He shuffles back toward the door, slips out of his steel-toed boots, and returns a second later to curl rather than sit on the couch with his feet tucked under him. He reaches for a single chip, foregoing the salsa, watching as Cesar prepares the first DVD.
"The better order? Does that mean there's a worse order?"
He decides the chip will be gone in five bites, and takes his first.
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The DVD is starting. Cesar turns off the kitchen light while they runs through obligatory announcements, and, also the livingroom lights while he's at it. The room is cast into shadows, lit only by the screen. L won't need anything more if he's already situated, and Cesar makes his way over by memory. He doesn't take his shoes off.
He's reaching for chips even before finishing sitting down, moving his to the salsa.
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Very difficult for a kid as obsessive-compulsive as Lazarus to hear, admittedly.
"Seems like a strange way to do things."
The lights go down, and the title crawl starts, and L takes another small bite of his chip. Watching him eat can be frustrating, if only because he's so biding and delicate about it. The chip is still not gone by the end of the title crawl, and by the time the mile-long starship destroyer appears onscreen, he's actually got two bites left, by his count.
"I don't like computer animation, as much," he confesses. "In older movies like this, it's definitely more fun to think about how they managed it with models and camera tricks. So..."
He pauses, squinting.
"...the small ship are the good guys, and the big ship, with the downward angle indicating dominance, that's bearing down on it... they're the enemies?"
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{White and Black. Good and bad. Sort of.}
He means the General and the Princess' costumes, but it doesn't hold true with the soldiers. He keeps the hand up to sign more, but there's shooting onscreen, and he's too relaxed with alcohol and nostalgia to hunt that train of thought down where it lived. It must not have mattered very much.
Cesar has none of L's reserve in eating the chips, dipping several at once with Salsa and eating at a normal pace. Then he dips a few more and leans back, expertly guiding them to avoid dripping.
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He enjoys aspects of it, but his eyes keep straying to the piles of equipment and models, the buried kitchen table, the boxes and mechanical parts, all hulking, shadowy shapes in the darkened apartment that are periodically lit by the flickering glow of the TV.
He realizes that his shoulders are tense; he tips back his drink for a generous sip, making a conscious effort to drop and relax them slightly. He reaches for his second chip in almost a half-hour of movie, by this point.
"I hope it's not any trouble that I came over tonight. It doesn't look like you have people over too often, so... thanks. I like the movie so far."
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He looks over and gives L a reassuring smile, clapping a hand to his shoulder easily. Without drinks and bonding and Star Battles, he would feel the stress of an intruder in his living space far more keenly. Now? L is just inside his circle of friendship enough that Cesar wants him to have this experience. Drinks, old movies, chips--friends. L doesn't seem like he ever had that, not in the ways that Cesar did. He can't go back and fix years of solitude for him, but he can give him a late night of too much pop culture and a bang hangover the next morning.
So long as he doesn't start prying at anything painful, there's nothing that can ruin this.
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He wants to know, so badly that it's practically a physical sensation like an itch. It's been a long time since he's been inside a house or apartment that wasn't Tony and Richard's, and Cesar is right, in that he certainly didn't grow up with it or even experience it at all until very recently. He wants to ask... but he wants to enjoy the fact that he's in a residence with someone who welcomes his presence, and he doesn't even need to wear latex gloves.
He finishes his second chip, which was consumed at a pace as agonizingly slow as the first one, glancing at the strong, sturdy hand on his hard, thin shoulder. He brings a hand of his own up to poke at it slightly, realizing that seems odd and instead running a tentative fingertip along the curve of Cesar's thumb, and over a warm brown knuckle. The hand is pulled back with a particularly loud explosion, and L stares wide-eyed at the screen, taking another gulp of his drink.
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A tapered fingertip brushes the back of his hand, tracing its shape, and two things occur to Cesar at nearly the same time. One is that L must not find the movie interesting, or he wouldn't be looking at Cesar's hand instead. The other is the sensation of L examining his hand itself, and the light feel of his touch. L's shoulder is warm, and he can feel practically each bone through the shirt. Cesar wonders if he accidentally squeezed the hand while doing so. Did L notice?
Light flashes from the TV, and L looks back towards it. He takes a drink, and Caesar does too, eyes pinching at the corners. Will L touch his hand again? Should Caesar stay like this while they watch the movie? Possibly. He's comfortable, and it didn't seem like L was objecting to it being there.
Prudence and personal boundaries sluggishly win the battle. He uses the hand to reach for more chips, insisting half-heartedly that this was the ideal result.
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The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else.
He turns the glass in his hands, thinking about all the fingerprints he's leaving without his gloves. The DNA on the rim. The alcohol, making him a little bit more and a little bit less of who he really is.
The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.
He doesn't mean to be distracted from the movie, but the corner of a photo frame is ever-present in his peripheral vision, lit just enough by the flickering lights thrown off by the television to show two young men, both precious, smiling, irreplaceable.
He bites his lip when Cesar's hand squeezes his shoulder, then slips away from it, breaking a connection, going for a chip.
L leans forward too.
I want to believe we're friends and that this is a good night. I want to believe that every night leading up to this one has been good, too, at least in that way. I want some truth in my life to be exquisite.
It's not an accident, but he goes above and beyond making it look that way, grasping Cesar's index finger instead of a chip while the other man's hand is still in the bowl.
"Sorry...! For a second, I thought you were... food."
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It startles a silent laugh from him, genuine and buoyed by the satisfaction of solving a puzzle, along with the complete absurdity of his excuse. If Cesar had known he could answer all his questions by inviting them out for drinks, then maybe he'd get out more often. He turns to L.
{They need more salt and salsa before they'll taste like it.} His shoulders shake again; he's far more amused by the whole thing than he would be if he were sober. The TV cuts out the clarity of parts of the message when it switches to scenes in space, and he wiggles his his fingers, and then dips a chip in the salsa, holding it up as proof.
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And then there's Cesar's response, which L has to second-guess. Maybe the shifting, uneven shadows in the room are making the signs easy to misread, and he pauses before responding to what he's basically sure Cesar said.
"Oh? I guess we'll see about that."
Fuck. What the fuck, Lazarus. Fuck fuck fuck.
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If he weren't drunker than he looked (it wasn't just rum in his own drink, there'd been two bottles in the kitchen, not just one), he might have the inhibitions to balk. As things are, everything's funny and thrilling, and he bites a corner of the chip, dragging fingers across the part coated in salsa.
Then he closes the gap between him and L, reaching for his mouth.
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He's surprised to see that Cesar's had enough alcohol to have such a good sense of humor about his own odd impulses. He's even more surprised when Cesar raises his suggestive statement by actually moving closer and offering him the chance to taste his fingers.
No, not offering; he's reaching with intent, and L responds automatically, grasping Cesar's wrist and closing his mouth around the ends of two of Cesar's fingers, quietly sucking them clean while the Storm Groupers onscreen shoot at the movie's heroes.
He doesn't make eye contact, because that would just be weird.
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His face feels burning hot, and he tugs at his collar with his free hand, as though wishing it were cooler in the room. Several long seconds pass, and he draws his fingers out, and he looks like he's about to taste them, too--but no, after a moment he wipes them on his pants leg, looking a little dazed. He can't believe that just happened. Did it really? Was that going too far?
He rubs the back of his neck with his dry hand, blushing harder than ever. Just play it off, Sanchez-Ortiz. Embarrassment only sticks if you let it.
{Well?}
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"All evidence points to your fingers tasting just like food, but I don't think the nature of the sample was enough to make a conclusive statement."
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He lifts his hands, wanting to sign something back, but he hesitates, blocked by a lack of signs: he never learned a technical vocabulary. He lapses into fingerspelling, before simply changing to simpler, shorter words.
{More testing?}
Was he aghast at his own daring before? He dips a couple of fingers into the salsa jar again and holds them up, waiting for some signal or gesture that he's not thinking incorrectly.
They're friends. This is just drunken fun, like a dominoed chain reaction, or like a convoluted Rube Goldberg machine, except there's a lot of different forces in play right now, and Cesar's pretty sure that 'platonic' isn't one of them. He can trace how they got here in fumbled mechanical components and meaningless equations, but it does nothing besides form a skeleton for his mind to hold. He doesn't know what he's doing. He doesn't want to interrupt the moment to think it through, either.
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"Same environment, with the same expected results?" he asks, maintaining their close proximity as he takes Cesar's wrist again and glances from his face to the salsa on his fingertips. "I guess the hypothesis is a theory now, which means it has to hold up to really rigorous testing. Otherwise, it's bad science. Second trial commencing."
The "second trial" is decidedly more biding and involved than the first. There is more salsa on Cesar's fingertips this time, which requires some tongue dexterity to lick the the space between them clean, and it's necessary to pull them more deeply past his teeth and lips to get at the juice that slides toward his knuckles. The process is still quiet, delicate, and absurdly focused for what it is, and he continues sucking at Cesar's fingertips for a few seconds after the last traces of salsa are gone.
"The potentially biased findings are that you might be too hot," he confesses slightly breathlessly, "but also that I might be cultivating a taste for spicy things."
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L guides Cesar's fingers back into his mouth, and this time the 'test' takes him right down to the base of his fingers. His fingertips can feel the back of L's tongue, and the backs of his nails where the roof of L's mouth gives way to soft throat. There's tongue, and sucking, and Cesar doesn't think he's ever done anything this unexpectedly erotic in his life.
L pulls back, breathless and murmuring. Cesar's mouth is dry, and he realizes his own lips are parted, equally airless. He wants more, and at the same time he's pinwheeling, torn by the fact that this is out of nowhere, and that they're realistically not ready for this. They're drunk. What seems like a good idea now probably won't seem like a good idea later.
If Cesar were speaking out loud, he'd have to clear his throat. For now, he swallows reflexively.
{Inconsistent technique. Should repeat consistently.}
One of them should care more, but this is fine, and it isn't a big deal, and really, he wants more. His eyes are bright with alcohol and something else, and they rest on L's lips, transfixed.
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He turns the rest of his body to face Cesar, tucking his feet and legs under him and sitting forward toward the other man, aware that his mouth is being watched. "Consistency isn't one of my strong points, which might make me seem like a bad scientist... but I like to think that I know something about chemistry. I'm all about getting a reaction."
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He finds himself turning to face him also, though it involves more upper body rotation than actually moving onto the couch: even with his added height, L's posture and position brings him level with Cesar's face. Cesar's still watching his lips. Is he as good a kisser as he is--whatever else he'd call that from before? He wants to know.
His left had has been holding a drink off to one side this whole time. It's going to spill if they get much more into this, and he lifts it, planning to set it aside--and then he stops to drink the rest of it before he does, downing it in a single breath. It was at least half a glass, and it burns the whole way down, warming him from the inside.
He puts it on the table and turns back to L, bringing his face closer to his. If L doesn't move back, he'll lift a hand to the other man's jaw, guiding him.
~~TIME SKIP~~ The Next Morning
...oh.
...maybe some things are better processed after a cup of strong, black coffee. He straightens his clothes, tucking and fastening himself where he's hanging out or falling apart. Then, he shuffles toward the chair his jacket is draped over and fishes in the pockets for a stick of gum to ameliorate his stale breath. As he chews, he glances around at the apartment and all the things he's so immensely curious about.
He decides not to risk snooping, at least not while he's here in yesterday's clothes, with the scent of mingled sweat and sex clinging to him. As he puts on a pot of coffee and starts rifling around under the counters in the kitchen for a frying pan, he decides that even if he's not sure what he feels about the things they did, he at least doesn't feel bad, and hopefully, Cesar feels similarly.
As he's pulling the pan out of the cupboard, a notebook falls on its side. L stares at it for a second, curious, but also faint with hunger. He sets it atop a few boxes on the kitchen table; maybe after he's made a few plates of french toast and if Cesar isn't awake by then, he'll be bored and give it a glance. For now, he turns to the refrigerator, where he's happy to see eggs, milk and butter. He sets to work making batter, and he thinks he might have the ratio a little bit off, but cooking isn't an exact science or anything. He notices the rum from the night before, tips some into the egg mixture, and then shrugs and pours himself two fingers' worth. As he fires up the stove and begins the fine art of burning the hell out of breakfast, he mentally rehearses how to approach the night before with Cesar.
We had fun, right? It had been awhile, believe me I could tell.
No, maybe too coarse and suggestive for morning light.
I can be an adult about it if you can.
Too cold, impersonal, implying that it was a mistake to be moved past. Negative.
I really liked the movie last night.
Yes? Yes, it gave Cesar a chance to save face if he didn't want to address anything other than the movie, and an opening to bring it up if he did. L congratulates himself on his foresight and thoughtfulness as the kitchen steadily fills with smoke and the egg mixture peels off and sticks to the pan when he attempts to flip the slice.
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This is, of course, when the smoke detector goes off. The alarm is piercing, and it feels as though someone's driving a twin pair of nails straight into his skull. Cesar comes awake with a silent cry, a groggy flinch, and a brief attempt to smother himself on the nearest cushion. (No success.)
Wait. That's the fire alarm. There's several scents clinging to him right now, but he can smell smoke on top of it all, and he rolls onto his feet with the grace of an extremely hungover crocodile. The kitchen isn't far.
It's too bright in there. His eyes narrow to tired slits, and his hands are over his ears, unsuccessfully trying to blot out the misery. Someone else is in there, and they're already trying to get at the alarm, but Cesar can probably do it faster.
He turns off the stove, leaves the kitchen, and comes back with a chair.
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