2020-01-15 - Intentions

It's a cold, blustery evening, leaving even Oak Avenue's usual loveliness muted and dull, the road still lined with piles of dirty snow and slush that hasn't had a chance yet to melt. 7 Oak provides a pop of color against that bleak backdrop, each and every one of the porch posts painted from top to bottom in rainbow colors that haven't yet been dulled by age or weather. There's a red Kia sedan in the driveway, a bit roadworn, with a whole slew of kitschy bumper stickers from across the country plastered to its rear. If there's anyone else home--really, it's a big house, there's no way this girl lives here alone--their vehicles must be in the garage. There are enough lights on to suggest there might be more than one person home, but it's certainly difficult to tell.

From the porch, muted music can be heard through the door, becoming clearer once it's answered and open. Sparrow's barefoot, no intention of going out into the cold, but otherwise dressed reasonably appropriately in a rainbow-and-black striped sweater not quite long enough to pass as a sweater dress over a pair of black leggings. Despite staying in, there's some make-up, eyes darkly lined, lips bearing a matte red shade as they flash a wide, pleased smile before she steps aside in invitation. "C'mon in."

The vehicle that pulls up to the curb is, mercifully, not the unmarked black cruiser issued to him by the GHPD. Instead, a recent model truck, ignition killed with a sputter. The driver rifles about for a moment in the glovebox before climbing out and slamming his door. Might be healthy paranoia that has him shoving something distinctly gun-shaped under his jacket, or it might be the fact that most cops worth their salt carry while off duty as a matter of course.

His keys are jangled into his jacket pocket as he heads up the walk, gaze flicking over those rainbow porch posts with mingled appreciation and amusement. And then he's greeted by the neon redhead herself, and her equally luminescent smile. Since it's decided to stop snowing for five minutes, he's zipped himself into a dark hoodie pulled over worn jeans, with a ratty baseball cap's brim tugged low over his eyes. Certainly doesn't help the cop-who-might-be-an-ex-con vibe he gives off. "Hey. Thanks." Not quite a smile as he shoulders his way inside, hands still shoved into his pockets.

Sparrow peeks outside as she closes the door behind her guest, giving him a once over only after that's done. Should she lock up? Probably. Does she? Nah. Inside, there's no immediate evidence that anyone else is home, no movement heard in any of the rooms downstairs, no footfalls upstairs, no curious eyes peeking around any corners. There's a light on in a room off to the right, past the dining room, and more lights on at the back of the house, from whence the music seems to come. "So." She slips past Ruiz with a decidedly intentional catch of her fingers against his elbow, just briefly, as she starts down the hall leading to the back, toward the living which looks out over both the back yard and the open kitchen. "You make a habit of accepting invitations you probably shouldn't?"

Well, on the bright side, she's probably safer with him in the house than not. Maybe. Probably. "Not as often as I'd like," comes after a protracted pause, and his dark eyes cast about the place like he's taking stock of exits, points of ingress. Sight lines. You know, the important stuff. Then Sparrow's brushing past him with that touch. And brief or not, it draws his attention; intent, those eyes. Ferocious, like a storm contained behind them.

He flickers a smile, sniffs some of the cold out of his nose, and eases off to follow her at a slouch-shouldered prowl. He might even refrain from glancing at her ass in the- nope, so much for that.

Sparrow's all sunshine in answer, not one little cloud in the bright-skied look with which she answers the one her contact earns her. Clarity which could be mistaken for innocence if the leftward skew of her lips or uneven arch of her dark brows were missed. Its brevity might let those nuances slip past. There's no particular switch to her hips to suggest she's trying to draw attention to her ass, but what's the point in taking the lead if not to encourage that consideration. Not that the length of her sweater really permits a good look.

"If there's anything else you don't get to do as often as you'd like," she offers with a look back over her shoulder, the invitation implied, unfinished. She points toward a couch along the back wall, winders overlooking a deck, a nice yard currently buried beneath snow. How does she afford this place? Oh god. Let's hope she's not living here with her parents. "Get comfy. I'mma see what I can pilfer for us." Beat. "Short notice and all that." She's bound for the kitchen, the open layout back here assuring she's never out of sight to open a cabinet and consider her options as the background music moves on.

By the time she looks back over her shoulder, Javier's attention has been singularly stolen by a lamp they pass by enroute to the couch. A lamp designed to appropriate some guy with long hair and a beard and technicolour.. oh, fuck, that's Jesus. And like any good Mexican man who's grown up in a staunchly Catholic family, he has to stop himself from making the sign of the cross. Jaw tight, he blows right past that monstrosity, and sinks into the couch while Sparrow goes to fuss about in the kitchen. Hands still shoved into his pockets, gaze furtive, he couldn't possibly look more like he doesn't belong here. Comfy is probably not the right word for what he's doing there.

"You got roommates or something?" he asks over his shoulder into the kitchen, as the thump of music in the background shifts again.

"Independently wealthy!" Sparrow blatantly lies, though if he steals a peek at that cabinet she's got open with all its bottles? It looks like there might be some truth to it. Nevermind that half of those might be cooking wines and brandies. From a distance, it looks impressive. What she plucks from that collection is decidedly not Patron, lacking the signature bottle shape. The color of the liquor within, bottle still about two-thirds full, suggests an anejo, well-aged. Not the sort of stuff college kids slam to get shit-faced quick. A couple of tumblers maybe better-suited for bourbon, and she's on her way over to join him. And maybe looking a little amused for how very Not Comfortable he looks.

"I'm not gonna bite," she promises as she sinks down sideways next to him, one knee up on the cushion with her ankle tucked beneath the other. "Yet." The bottle's easier to see as she sets everything down. Casamigos Anejo. "And neither will my roommates." Hand held up, she signals that there are three of them. When she adds that, "This is shared space," there's a weight to it, like that comes with rules that she doesn't bother to explicitly lay out while she pours. One for him. One for her.

An arm's slung across the back of the couch so he can watch her putter about in the kitchen. Which gives him an eyeful of her liquor cabinet, impressively stocked for what's ostensibly a quartet of college-aged students. His fingers scruff through his hair absently while he watches her pour, listens to that haunting melody carried on a hazy strain of electric guitar. "Gracias," is murmured in Spanish, but likely not too difficult to translate, as he accepts his glass. Ink slid up the back of his hand, right up to the first knuckles. It's not pretty, but he doesn't look like the sort of man who has much use for that, anyway.

"Crees que eso me molestaría. Piensas mal." His smile is slow, a little wolfish. Then disappears entirely as he breathes in the scent of the drink, then tastes it. Lets it percolate on his tongue before swallowing. As to the shared space, "I figured as much." Another slow sip. "I won't bite, either." Not don't. But won't. "What would you like to talk about?"

Sparrow delights in that smile, rare as those seem, and makes absolutely no effort to hide it, the way her lashes dip, how her own smile widens. Her shoulder juts up against the cushion as she sinks in sideways, all of her attention on her guest as he takes that first taste of the tequila. It's a sipping sort, to be sure, the subtle sweetness of the agave backed by notes of caramel and vanilla, oak and spice. She issues a pleased little, "Good," for his promised restraint from biting before she takes a taste of her own, the upward pitch of her eyebrows implying this might be her first time tasting it. Somebody else's bottle perhaps? Tch.

"I'd like an answer to my questions," comes with a crooked grin. She doesn't bother to restate it. "But I've got a whole big pile of other questions I can start with. Play nice. Gentle." Yeah, it's a taunt. "Like, mm." Her gaze flicks briefly to his fingers before finding his eyes again. "Tell me about your ink. Any of it. Better if it's currently hidden and requires a little bit of stripping."

He's patient, undeniably. Steady hands and hungry eyes, dark and hooded and intense; he seems like a man who does nothing by half measures. "It's good," he chooses to remark first, a long while after she's finished speaking. "And it's not yours. Casamigos Anejo, si?" Lucky guess? That, or he really knows his tequila. The glass's rim is hovered at his lower lip a moment, and he traces her smile with his eyes, watches as it crooks into a grin.

Eventually, "Yāōmītl. The aztec war arrow. I'm not going to tell you where it is." He sips again, then lets his arm drape from the couch cushion, unzips his hoodie with a soft clack of teeth. And eventually tugs off the ball cap he stubbornly refuses to leave home without, most days. "You got any, yourself?"

Even when she's sitting still, Sparrow's got a frenetic energy just lurking beneath the surface, like she's primed to pounce, like she could flutter away at any moment. Still, as she waits for that answer, it doesn't read as impatience, nothing in her demeanor implying any desire to hurry Ruiz up while he takes his time. "Not mine," she confirms without one little lick of shame. The little lift of one shoulder already says she doesn't know whose it is before she says it. "Might be my brother's. Might be Monica's. Though, mm. Don't know that I've ever seen her drink anything that's not water or coffee." She really doesn't care enough to put any more thought into it than that.

One song gives way to another while she sips, while she waits. When she smirks wryly for that refusal. Which she almost certainly reads as challenge for the way her gaze follows that unzipping, considering the body below like she's evaluating possible angles of approach. But there's a question, tugging her eyes up. "Not yet." Her smile mutes to something more thoughtful, weighing before she offers, "Seventeen. That's what it'll be." No elaboration. Sip. "What would you like to talk about, Javier?"

Not mine. That amuses him, regardless of whom it actually belongs to. It's irrelevant. But it tells him something about her.

His glass is swirled, sipped from again. "Seventeen?" She didn't elaborate, which just begs for him to press. His eyes haven't budged from hers, even as his glass is set aside so he can shrug out of the hoodie. More ink's revealed; choppy waves, a fishing trawler, a darkling sugar skull with roses blooming from its eye sockets. But no feathered war arrow in sight. "First, I'd like you to answer my question." There's a weight to his low murmur that belies its mild tone; he fully expects her to do as he asks. "And then you can tell me more about yourself, if you like." As if he's doing her a favour.

Sparrow breathes the barest curl of laughter at that insistence, though there's no immediate answer as her brown-eyeed attention slips over the unveiled ink, pieces of a puzzle she's only barely begun to glimpse. By the time she looks back up, her head's bobbing to the Herizen playing in the background, shoulders shifting a little with that drip drip sound. "Neruda," comes first with a cock of one black eyebrow in unvoiced curiosity. Is he familiar? "And tarot," has a touch more finality. Not a question. "The Star. Seventeenth card of the major arcana. Hope. Light in the darkness. Stardust and possibility." And more. There's a lift at the end of her words that promises more without ever following through. Bright as the words sound, something weighs down her expression, draws her attention back to her tequila for another sip.

"I'd rather be drinking rye," she starts when the glass comes down. "Though I like this." More than she'd expected. "I take my coffee with cream and sugar. Prefer my eggs over easy. Though I'm not too picky if I'm being served in bed." Beat. "And I do like to be served." Her grin skews sideways for a second. Given how easily she's fallen into talking about herself, he may well actually be doing her a favor. "Prefer a bit of a chase, though. Can't be too easy. Where's the fun in that?" Her expression flattens into wry amusement. "Mm. I study chemistry, play drums, paint, read tarot, keep a running list of best kissers in my head, smell fucking fantastic and run a very courteous personalized abduction service in my free time." That'll do. "You?"

He may not be much of a talker (and he isn't), but Sparrow's houseguest is, at least, a decently good listener. His glass tips toward his mouth a couple more times while the redhead speaks; a gleam in his eye at one thing or another that she tells him. Hard to say which it is that prompts that reaction. "It's an acquired taste, I've heard," he informs her quietly, of the tequila. Not much remaining in his glass by the time she's done, and turned the floor over to him.

"Chemistry?" he queries first, interest passingly piqued. The drums, by the way his dark gaze rakes her body from tip to toes, don't surprise him. He starts to say one thing, then seems to change his mind entirely. You? she says. And his tongue drags across his lips to wet them, before he provides an answer that may or may not explain a single damned thing. Though at least it satisfies her initial curiosity:

"Anhelo tu boca, tu voz, tu cabello.
Silencioso y hambriento, merodeo por las calles.
El pan no me nutre, el amanecer me perturba, todos los días
Busco la medida líquida de tus pasos."

Sparrow, shameless creature that she is, draws her glass-holding hand out and away from her body when his gaze traces her form, both acknowledgement of that attention and invitation for it to continue. If she had any intention of answering his curiosity about her major, it's swiftly shelved when that swipe of tongue over lips tugs her attention from eyes to mouth, from conversation to contemplation. Probably for the best that she doesn't get much time to let her imagination run too far in that direction.

She only needs a few words to recognize the poem. Sure, she doesn't know Spanish, but she knows that particular assortment of syllables. The way her smile goes all amused, how her cheeks adopt a faint touch of color, that little dip of her head. It's not quite bashful, but it edges in that direction. "Eleven," she tells him, a correction, her voice quieter even as she continues. "I love you as certain dark things are to be loved. In secret. Between the shadow and the soul." With a lift of her glass, she tells him, "That's seventeen," then takes a sip, just shy of keeping pace.

Maybe she'll get around to answering his question about chemistry at some point. It's not going to be right now.

He's not had enough to drink, apparently, to turn that slow flick of his eyes into anything more unseemly. Though speaking of which, the tequila's finished off with a quick swallow that tugs at his adam's apple, and he pushes off the back of the couch to go fetch the bottle. His own glass is refilled, and then he settles back in, and holds it up in offer to refresh her own. "Eleven," he agrees, with that slight smile that barely teases out a dimple under his beardscruff.

The soft chuckle of liquor skimming into glass, and the tick of his eyes to meet hers for a second when she speaks those first words of seventeen. "Entre la sombra y el alma," he murmurs, voice rough like sandpaper. Too much smoking, too much drinking, too many drugs in his nearly five decades of life. He hasn't been kind to his body. The bottle's set down on the nearest surface, and then with a rumbled noise in his throat, he eases into the couch cushions again, and sips. "It's not often that I find someone else who knows, and likes Neruda," he confides, smile still in place. Dark eyes on dark.

Again, the music shifts, almost certainly unobserved while they exchange poetry in two different tongues. Sparrow watches him move without further word, her usual smile muted beneath a heavier attentiveness as she accepts his offer without bothering to empty her glass first. "Likes poetry," comes her quiet reply, one corner of her lips ticking upward to suggest a grin that doesn't form in full. "Part of my list, wasn't it?" It wasn't. All her loquaciousness seems to have drained away, dispelled by a few lines from a familiar sonnet or two, a few seconds slipping past while she weighs what she wants to say next. "It's the straightforwardly part that matters." Sort of, says her shallow headwobble. "I'm all for hunger. I mean. Who isn't, but. When it comes down to it? I like directness. Plainly stated." Her free hand comes up, index finger pressed vertically to her lips to suggest this might somehow be a secret, the gesture surrendered as she takes another taste of the stolen tequila.

"Mm." His acknowledgement of her little fib, part of my list, wasn't it, is muted. The tequila's softened some of his rougher edges, but he's nowhere near tipsy territory yet. All of his faculties intact, composure a thin veneer, as always, over the violence that seems to simmer just beneath. "Directness?" he repeats, with a lilt at the end to suggest a question. Then he watches raptly as the finger lifts to her lips. You're the honey whiskey, I'm getting kinda tipsy, you know all the things I like. "Please. Be direct with me, then." The glass touches his mouth, a little of its contents drained. He holds it from the bottom, and he watches her eyes as he waits for her answer.

Sparrow laughs. Quietly. Just a single syllable. It comes with a smirk, with a roll of her eyes that ends with her attention diverting to the window behind the couch for a moment, to the play of dim evening light across the snow. "Pretty sure I have been, but." She draws a deep breath through and returns her attention to Ruiz, her off-center amusement still curling her lips. "There's a part of me that knows I should leave well enough alone, but I don't like that part. It's boring. The rest of me sees a challenge. I like getting what I shouldn't have, what I shouldn't want. What I should leave well enough alone." Her head tips to the side a little as she adds, "And that dimple's fucking adorable." Black brows arch high, damned near disappearing beneath bright red bangs. "And I meant what I said. I want to know your intentions. If hooking up's gonna fuck something up with someone else, I am flat out not into it. I'm not that girl. I want what I want without avoidable wreckage."

"You have," he offers quietly, as her gaze is diverted to the window. It gives him the opportunity to watch her more closely. And have it really sink in, perhaps, just how goddamned young she is. His eyes tick away finally, back to his drink. Which is set down with a soft thump. About half of the glass's contents remain. "I'm not going to hook up with you." He scratches at his nose absently with his knuckles, then reaches for his abandoned hoodie, and starts tugging it back on. Ink swallowed whole; a glimpse of that gun at his ribs, before it's covered up. "You're hot as hell, but I'm seeing someone. And I'm too old for you." He's said so a few times. Maybe he's trying to convince himself.

A breath, then he pushes to his feet, glances to the window as well. Then back to Sparrow. "Thanks for the drink. And the poetry." Another of those flash rain in August smiles.

Sparrow's posture shifts when the drink goes down and the hoodie comes back up, body turning slightly to let more of her weight fall back against the couch while she watches. Studies. "Yeah," seems a placeholder, acknowledgement without actual agreement. "Cuz bodies stop being compatible after a certain point," is delivered in much the same time, her sarcasm lacking any particular pointedness. Until she scrunches her nose and taunts, "Guess they lose the capacity to keep up," nonchalantly. "But sure. Yeah. Seeing someone. Which still begs the question of why you gave me your number, why you came here tonight." Her brows furrow a bit as she asks, "Was this meant to be friendly?"

"I don't fucking know what it was meant to be." Agitation's slivered through his voice, dark eyes snagging dark. The music's shifted to something with a heavy drumbeat and light, airy vocals, and he still looks out of fucking place; like a fox that's somehow wound up in the henhouse. His hoodie's zipped up, and he leans over to snag his glass on second thoughts, and drain the remainder of its contents. "He was pissing me off." He. "And I was interested in you."

The empty glass is set down again with a thump, and he moves in close, right the hell up into her personal space. Between her knees; if she doesn't move them, he'll move them for her. Then he leans in slow, hands bracketing the couch to either side of her body, his face coming to within inches of her own. Up close, of course, he smells like tequila. Cigarettes and cordite, his eyes are more slate grey than the black they often appear to be from a distance. "Don't." He leans in a little closer, like he might kiss her. But no. "Don't push me."

Sparrow sinks further into a normal sitting position as the zipper goes up, solidifying the likelihood that he's about to leave. While Ruiz downs the rest of his tequila, she takes another patient sip of hers, watching, listening, letting that provocation play out. The promptness with which she moves her glass out to the side, kept low and at a safe distance, implies some expectation that poking the broody beast she invited into her home might make him bite. But there are no teeth. Yet. Just those sharp words, that suddenly intimate proximity.

Here, this close, she smells delicious, all those notes of agave, caramel and oak on her lips supplemented by lush plum and luscious honey, airy opium and smoldering vetiver. Knees shift, parting farther as she settles into the framing of the arms flanking her shoulders, brown-eyed attention so very steadily meeting that near-pitch regard. Well. Excepting that one brief detour down to his lips, pushing very, very much considered before she concedes, "Alright," just like that. "No more pushing." So magnanimous, that promise of restraint in reward for that honesty. She keeps still, no touching, no retreat, letting Ruiz decide where to go from here.

Alright, she says. No more pushing. And he doesn't move, not for the longest time. Just the heat of him, thrust up improprietously close, a slow, deep inhale taken of the scent of her. Like he wants to remember it, squirrel it away into that mental rolodex of his.

Then he pushes off the couch abruptly, and starts prowling off for the door without another word. His eyes cut to her once, then drag away as he ambles off, hands shoved into his pockets again. Fucking Rave Jesus gets a look as he passes it by.

Sparrow doesn't move until he does. If the audible sigh she lets slip when he draws back is any indication, she might not have been breathing much either. Shoulders sink as legs cross, as the couch creaks beneath her with a little squirm. Her drink's already drawn back up by the time he looks back, held high enough that her burgeoning smirk doesn't transmit, not while her lips are hidden, not while her eyes are locked so intently on his departing form, watching him go as the next song sees him out. I know it's bad for me, and you know it tastes so sweet...

Rave Jesus offers no sympathy.