My name is Scott and I'm just a man. I like to read and to write — but to write most especially. I embrace the scent of cheap tobacco smoke with the same affection I hold for the taste of fine champagne and the burn of good bourbon. I am given to fits...
I can never decide whether Paris is more beautiful by day or by night. No, you can’t, you couldn’t pick one. I mean I can give you a checkmate argument for each side. You know, I sometimes think, how is anyone ever gonna come up with a book, or a painting, or a symphony, or a sculpture that can compete with a great city. You can’t. Because you look around and every street, every boulevard, is its own special art form and when you think that in the cold, violent, meaningless universe that Paris exists, these lights, I mean come on, there’s nothing happening on Jupiter or Neptune, but from way out in space you can see these lights, the cafés, people drinking and singing. For all we know, Paris is the hottest spot in the universe.
"Do I know you," the dark-haired man says, but it doesn't sound like question to Scott—not the way the words fit themselves in the gentleman's mouth and around the rim of his drink; Scott can just see the warmth of his breath mist against the chilled surface of the glass and something like the ghost of a memory tugs at the marrow of his bones.
He answers without thinking, laughs a bit and says, "Not in this life," and then pauses as everything in him goes abruptly still, stunned by a haunting sense of with recognition, of understanding. It's there for just a second, a glimpse of something broad and awing, of some wonder on the horizon, just within his grasp if only he'd reach for it and—
—it slips from him just as quickly, skitters out of sight like some forbidden thing afraid of the light. He chases it but it turns to smoke between his fingertips, evanescent.
He ducks his head a fraction to hide his disappointment, but rubs absently at the rolled paper of his cigarette in quiet frustration. When he looks up again, the other man is watching him strangely—a level, undeniable stare but with a glimmer there that should scare Scott away. ( But doesn't. )
Finally though, after a long moment, the stranger offers a smile of his own and drains his glass with an air of decision. Scott watches, oddly bemused, as he lays the glass aside and then turns slightly in his seat to better face his way.
"Can I buy you a drink, old sport?" The stranger asks, even as he flags down the bartender.
"Old sport?" Scott breathes the phrase over an incredulous laugh. "Are we in a speakeasy suddenly?" He arches an eyebrow at the other guy and tries not to grin too broadly when the darker-haired man smiles back at him ruefully.
"I thought I might give it a try. It seemed fitting," the enigmatic visitor murmurs, turning his attention to the bartender a moment later. "Two whiskey sours."
"Whiskey sour," Scott echoes, tasting the word on his tongue. "I don't think I've ever had one."
"No?" The stranger smiles and it's winsome, but he turns to lean against the countertop, tipping his head toward Scott in a way that conveys an intimacy that Scott feels he should be shocked by—and still isn't.
"I don't think so," he concedes, more because this man gives him the impression that he must somehow be mistaken than because he's actually unsure. He focuses on the bartender moving behind his station, and completely misses the slow, crooked smile the stranger gives him.
"Don't worry, Scott. I would never lead you astray."
Scott's attention shifts, and he blinks owlishly at the man before smiling a little wider himself, enchanted.
"No, somehow I don't think you would."
His newly acquired drinking companion has the most interesting laugh — a low, soft, infinitely amused sound that lingers between them like the warmth of a fire — and Scott is charmed by it, and by him, for a just second too long, his gaze roving over the curve of the man's throat, and the tilt of his head, and the warm familiarity in the curve of his smiling mouth.
He looks so long that he forgets, by the time their drinks arrive, that he never gave the stranger his name.
areudirty
andulkaphoto
origamiaround
janainaart
turnnoffyourmind
snowghoul
