Sullivan

Sullivan Whelan

Along the nicer section of Santa Fe, a small pack of artsy-looking 20-somethings filed out of a brightly lit gallery and onto the sidewalk. Many of them were already tipsy from the free champagne they'd been sampling all evening, but despite the fact that it was a weekday and most responsible adults had to be awake in the morning, the group made a lazy beeline toward the upscale bar across the street, laughing and chatting amiably among themselves as they broke into a jog to escape the oncoming traffic. Once they arrived at their destination, they made their way inside and claimed a booth, packing themselves in until there was no more room and the few remaining stragglers had to pull up a couple of chairs at the end.

One of these stragglers was Sully, who was on his first night out with actual human beings since he'd met Sam last Friday. He pulled off his coat and draped it over the back of his chair, fixing the tousled mess the wind had made of his hair with a lazy swipe of his hand. When the waiter arrived, the group took turns ordering their first round of drinks. Sully asked for a Rye Whiskey, and the girl next to him made a crack about his ancestry, to which he responded by lofting a knowing eyebrow and flicking a folded-up piece of paper in her direction.

Eva Illeshazy

Thursday night. The bar's pretty crowded. Some of the patrons have extended happy hour by three or four hours, and are well past tipsy, sunk in the warm glow of a feeling they will keep chasing all night with drink after drink. Others are just arriving: ducking in after a late meeting, an early movie, a fine dinner. Continuing dates, blind or otherwise. Starting the weekend early and shouldering in around the counter-height tables, the low-slung booths.

Sully's group is the largest now, the most expansive and voluble. Their chatter, their laughter opens up and fills the space around them, drowns out the CD of this week's "featured songwriter" playing over the soundsystem. Those extra chairs bulge out into the already maze of tables and patrons, and Sully has ordered a drink, is leaning back in the slightly off-center chair to flick a piece of paper at his gleaming-eyed companion, who is laughing back at him and readying herself to duck, because she's bright with the pleasures of the night when the collision happens.

Her hip with his elbow, her elbow with his head. Something like that. Blame it on Éva, who is thumbing through her iPhone with one hand, carrying a martini in the other, paying very little attention to the rest of the bar, and essentially none to the chattering group that materialized between here and there when she retreated to some darker, quieter corner to take a call.

The drink was half-gone, but what remains spills on Sully; hits his shoulder and the coat he's just draped over the back of his chair. She's quick enough to catch the glass before it goes flying and shattered on the ground, so there are no glass shards to harry them.

"I am so sorry." From behind him, a woman's voice. The briefest impression of dark hair and dark eyes. A certain (augmented) height. The professional armor of a well-tailored woman's suit. The precision of the apology, and the warmth of a hand not on his shoulder, but on the back of his chair, her knuckles brushing against his spine as she glances down at the damage. Which was mostly absorbed by his coat.

Sullivan Whelan

It was his nice coat, too. A black wool peacoat that, while hardly approaching the level of quality that someone like Eva could afford, was nonetheless in the upper tier for a starving artist. Luckily, at least, it was washable.

When Eva - and her drink - collided into him, Sully gave a small jump of surprise, his spine going tense as a small jolt of adrenaline shot through his veins. (This was a common occurrence among those who'd grown up with werewolves - they tended to have hair-trigger reflexes.) He ducked his head away from her elbow and managed not to get any of her drink spilled into his hair, but a cold slosh of alcohol landed on his shoulder and trickled unpleasantly down the back of his neck as it seeped into the fabric of his white button-down. His expression wasn't so much one of anger as bemused surprise, verging slightly on annoyance. Of course the crowd around him thought it was the most entertaining thing they'd seen all night, and they broke into a chorus of amused laughter and playful taunts. Someone shouted for him to take off his shirt. Sully ignored them, his cheeks flushing slightly at the unwanted attention. (He wasn't exactly shy, but no one liked to look silly in front of a large group of people.)

But then he glanced up at the woman who'd caused the accident, and whatever he'd been about to say got stuck somewhere in his throat. He blinked, wide eyes bright and dilated from drinking, and stared at her for a few silent moments before his expression broke into smile. "It's alright. Don't worry about it."

Eva Illeshazy

Give her this, she has already slipped the phone away, into the dark leather bag tucked over her shoulder, tucked neatly between her ribs and upper arm. Her expression is steady, the slow dark crawl of her gaze over the array of artsy students is cursory, assessing, withheld. There's no flush to her cheeks when his friends begin to taunt him.

She twists away, sets down the stemmed martini glass on a nearby (occupied) table within arm's reach, exchanging it for a handful of napkins she appropriates from the other patrons. There's no reaction from her as his friends insist that he take off his shirt. Merely a wry curl to her mouth as she peels off a handful of napkins for him, applying those she kept to the yoke of his peacoat. Assessing the damage with a thoughtful flick of her dark eyes.

"You're very forgiving," back up, her face, to his face, meeting his eyes as his turns around and glances up. Her fine brows lilt into distinctly hooked arches as he stares up at her for those few silent moments, the faintest edge of challenge in her expression, which eases when he breaks into a smile. Eases, but just minutely. "This will need to be dry cleaned, though." She taps a bare, manicured nail against the collar of his damp coat. The napkins are already soaked through. "I insist that you let me pay for it. Let me get you my card."

Sullivan Whelan

He twisted in his chair to get a good look at the damage that had been done to his coat, peeling his eyes away from Eva long enough to arrive at his own assessment (which was that his coat would, indeed, need to be dry-cleaned.) To his credit, he seemed to accept the discovery gracefully, with only a soft (barely-noticeable) sigh to indicate any amount of displeasure. He accepted the napkins she offered gratefully, unbuttoning the top couple buttons on his shirt so that he could mop up some of the wetness on his skin (and ignoring any comments tossed his way by the nearby peanut gallery.)

When Eva offered to pay for the dry-cleaning, he opened his mouth to refuse, but seemed to think better of whatever it was he was going to say. Instead he let her fish her card out of her purse, the faintest twitch of a smile still lingering at the corner of his mouth as his eyes drifted from her face to the deft motions of her hands and back again. "If you really wanted to make it up to me, you could buy me a drink?"

He had to try, of course. Not least of which because he could use an excuse to duck away from the attention of his new-found friends for a few minutes.

Eva Illeshazy

Her half-smile is crisp as a well-oaked Chardonnay, and just as wry. The stillness lingers and frames her whenever deliberate movement stops. There is a moment's silence. Two or three beats of his heart, the peanut gallery lofting questions and private jokes and jibes between themselves, which she watches with a sense of detached bemusement. The truth is, even in her college days, Éva was never part of a crowd like this one.

Then, a moment's unbending. "Of course." The faintest widening of her private smile. "It's the least I could do. Come on." A tip of her head toward the bar as she steps to the side, giving him room to scoot away from his friends' table, a hand to the back of his chair, perfectly chivalrous as she scoots it out behind him, then turns to lead the way back to the bar.

Only then does the wedding ring on her left ring finger register on Sullivan's conscious mind. The gleam of the ambient lighting running in striations over white metal as she handed over her business card.

Sullivan Whelan

To the credit of those seated around the booth, their playful teasing never took on a belligerent tone. More than likely they would have been a pretty friendly bunch if taken one-on-one and without the addition of alcohol. Sullivan himself had a particular distaste for mean-spirited personalities, and never tolerated them for long.

Sully's demeanor seemed to brighten with Eva's acceptance of his proposal, and that smile which had been lurking at the edge of his lips blossomed into a thing of disarming warmth. He paused a moment to turn back to the drink he'd already acquired, finishing off the whiskey that remained in the glass. As it slid down his throat, the lights in the bar grew a little more shiny.

Eva stepped back, and he pushed out of his chair, lifting his coat off the back. A few of his friends waved at him in a manner that suggested they didn't expect his return, and the girl beside him said, "have fun," with a knowing smile.

On the way to the bar, Eva handed over her business card, and yes - there was the ring. Gleaming and pretty and impossible to miss. Sully's eyes landed on it, but if there was any particular disappointment at this discovery, he didn't show it. Instead he took a moment to read the information printed on Eva's business card. "Eva," he said out loud. "I like your name. It suits you." After a beat, he added, "I'm Sully."

Eva Illeshazy

(le pause!)

Eva Illeshazy

"Does it?" There is a bemused thread to her rejoinder, but the question is level enough that it does not seem to rise to the level of banter. The steadiness hovers in the air about her; mouth quirked into the most minute suggestion of a smile. Only at the corners. "It is a family name. I believe it was my grandmother's."

Éva Illésházy, Esquire
Baranski & Greer, PLLC

The card reads. Numbers and addresses are printed in the heavy cardstock, a discrete, well-researched logo fills the top-right corner.

Then he introduces himself as Sully, and they are near the bar by now, searching for a place to squeeze in. Or better yet, a pair of barstools tucked together. She half-turns and extends her right hand to shake his as he tucks away her business card. "It's a pleasure, Sully."

And in that moment she decides to allow herself to be charmed by him. For the moment, at least. Less a reading of his intentions than a check of her own instincts. A decision of how precisely she wishes to hold the ground between them, and how much she is willing to unbend in this precise moment.

"That must be short for something."

Sullivan Whelan

"Sullivan," he replied in response to her inquiry. "Generally only my dad uses it though. He's a lawyer too." There was a wry smirk that played along the edges of his smile as he took her hand. His own was marked with scattered patches of fading color - ink stains that couldn't be entirely cleansed by washing alone, and a couple of partially healed scratches. (The hazards of working with one's hands.)

At the bar, Sully pulled out one of the stools and arranged himself atop it, hooking one foot behind a metal rung as he leaned an elbow on the smooth counter. His damp shirt was still unbuttoned at the top, and it hung open at the neck, leaving bare the smooth lines and hollow of his collar-bone. The hand on the bar bore a burgundy ribbon tied about the wrist that peeked out from beneath the cuff of his shirt. And if Eva was the observant sort, she might notice the thin line of a scar beneath it as well, tracing up the vein along the underside of his arm.

"Thanks for humoring me, by the way. I'm sure your evening plans didn't include chatting up a 22-year-old starving artist."

Eva Illeshazy

(Is she the observant sort tonight?)

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

Eva Illeshazy

There's a quick calculation made, in just that moment. Sully has taken a seat at the bar. Éva, standing, gestures to the barkeep with an expectant lift of her index and middle fingers, accompanied by a very direct look. He's over to them a second later. She orders a second martini, and cuts that wry look to Sully. The tip of her head to the 'tender says, wordlessly, and whatever he wants.

Only when the bartender has left does she take the second seat, slipping neatly into it, smoothing the hem of her skirt across her thighs, tucking her handbag onto one of the hooks mounted beneath the bar for just that purpose.

This is the calculation: Sully is closer in age to her daughter than he is to her own.

The wry look deepens. A reflective flash of her dark eyes. He's sure her evening plans didn't include chatting up a 22-year-old starving artist. "Not generally, no," she rejoinds, the rich curve of her mouth lifting her cheeks, warming her dark eyes. "Tonight they included a martini followed by a date with a long deposition transcript. I did," a tip of her dark head, the fine strands of wavy brown-black hair pulled back into a chignon, sleek at the base of her skull. "spill a drink on your coat, though.

A beat, before she continues,

"Sully seems terribly old fashioned to me. It makes me think of a teamster. Someone pumping gas. Did you decide on it? Or did it just stick."

Sullivan Whelan

[man+sub, +1 diff for being a little bit drunk]

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (3, 6, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

Sullivan Whelan

At the bartender's pause and Eva's indication, Sully ordered another rye whiskey, keeping to a mid-range brand since he wasn't paying. (For a so-called "starving" artist he did have rather expensive taste in liquor.)

And then Eva asked about his name. Usually when people asked him this question he just shrugged and gave some easy excuse or another, and tonight was no exception. Sullivan rolled his shoulders lightly and gave a faint smile (perhaps less warm - less playful - than it had been a moment ago,) skirting his eyes toward the neatly arranged bottles against the wall. "It just stuck, I guess. Don't really remember where it started." When his eyes met hers again, he rolled his head to the side and let his ever-present smile broaden appealingly, catching the tip of his tongue between his lips. He did have a certain charm about him, despite his somewhat inebriated state - that sweet, sensitive-boy-next-door charisma (the sort that Eva's daughter might very well find crush-worthy some day.)

(The eyes went a long way to help with that, admittedly. Ocean blue with lashes that went on for days.)

"And in that case, I will endeavor..." (big word for a 22 year old) "to be more interesting than a deposition." After a beat, he added. "Is your husband waiting up for you?"

Sullivan Whelan

[Edit: "catching the tip of his tongue between his teeth."]

Eva Illeshazy

(Perception + subterfuge)

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 8 ) Re-rolls: 4

Sullivan Whelan

[We can all go home now. Eva knows everything. About everything.]

Sullivan Whelan

It wasn't a bad lie, really. A couple of subtle tells, but nothing that would have tipped off the average person. Unfortunately for Sully, Eva was very much not your average person. She was a lawyer, and kin to Shadow Lords, and she had more than a few years of experience on him. So she watched him as he spoke, and this is what she saw:

The light in his eyes dimmed when she asked where the nickname had come from, his focus pulled inward as if recalling a memory. There was something there that he didn't want to discuss, and so he hadn't. He'd danced over it the way that people often did with certain details of their lives when speaking with a relative stranger. Some topics could derail a conversation entirely, and this was likely one of those. He'd lied when he said he couldn't remember where the name had come from. Lied and looked away, ever-so-briefly, unable to meet her eyes as he said it. Not because he couldn't lie while looking at someone, but because whatever it was he'd remembered had made him feel a flash of guilt.

It was an old memory. Something he could pass by and drift away from as he chose. But deep and hauntingly sad. There was a good chance that he might not react well to being probed about it. Not now, anyway. Now wasn't the time for old, sad things.

Eva Illeshazy

He will endeavor to be more interesting than a deposition.

That draws a genuine laugh out of her, teeth flashing white behind her lips. The sound is brief, a distinctive exclamation, a contraction of diaphragm and just enough air to power the note of laughter behind she pulls the rest inside, swallows it, holds it back behind the curve of her mouth. Her chin rises, and her dark eyes cut away from him, to their reflection in the patterned mirrors framed behind the bar - and the reflections of the rest of the patrons, the way they open out like wings on either side of them. A dozen or more shifting knots of people, the din of conversation a livid, living hum around them.

The bartender returns with the drinks, the martini for Éva, the rye whiskey for Sully. She uncurls a hand, settles her thumb and index finger around the base of the long-stemmed glass, and pulls it closer to her across the bar, trading the bartender a pair of drinks for her credit card.

When she turns back to the young man, there's no flash of that moment of insight - the half-dozen tells beneath the easy, offhand lie he told about his name. [i]I don't remember. It just stuck.[/i] The subject slides by - absolutley unimpeded.

He asks if her husband is waiting up for her, then. Her mouth quirks again, and she glances down at her left hand, assessing his question, remembering the ring in the self-same moment. "Oh - " her mouth rounds with the interjection. A rather more quiet huff accompanies the word before her mouth skews aslant. " - no. I'm not married."

About that, she is quite matter-of-fact, though her dark eyes remain on the abstract play of the bar lights over the convex curve of the platinum band. She exhales. Thinks about how long it's been, and cannot quite remember. There's no attempt to hide that moment of reflection - the catch and release of her mouth, the inward focus. But the rest is almost wholly internal, lending the faintest gradation of color to her eyes and voice when she does glance back up at him, the twist of her mouth self-aware and mildly sardonic.

"Sometimes I find it convenient to appear to be."

Sullivan Whelan

[Per+Empathy +1 diff]

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (2, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1

Eva Illeshazy

Manipulation + subterfuge

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7) ( fail )

Eva Illeshazy

There is loss in that moment of reflection. More than one loss, some of which barely belonged to her. It is not new and it is not raw. Though it once was new, perhaps it was never raw. She lives with it. She has lived with it. She's strong enough to live with it.

It doesn't gut her (she does not ever allow it to gut her) but it aches sometimes, at the oddest times. This sense of the known world and the unknown world, and the interstitial places between.

Eva Illeshazy

There is something remarkable stoic about her in the face of his boyish who me and not-precisely-bashful why yes. She stares him down through the lilting impressions of first one and then the other, with no more than a wry twist of her mouth and a dry humor reflected in the surface of her dark eyes.

Her dark head is canted ever-so-slightly, in a corrective sort of pose - a wordless really now embedded in the frame of her shoulders and curve of her cheek.

There's no blush for the compliment. He wouldn't expect one, in a woman like her. She does not shy from his gaze, nor does she look down, ever-so-coy, slip a hand to her hair, wave his words away. She accepts them with a certain equanimity, a steadiness that seems to be embedded in the core of her being. The stuff her spine is made of.

"So are you." Nothing arch, now. Her features are still, not exactly solemn, but reserved, the faintest curl to her mouth, a certain bruising awareness in her eyes, of his vulnerability, of the directness of that look. There's a quiet, gleaming darkness to her voice that dovetails with that familiar touch of mild(ly sardonic) humor with the next sentence. "You're also closer in age to my daughter than you are to me."

A wry huff of a laugh, then, does little to undermine the gentle directness of the words themselves.

In the interests of full disclosure.

Sullivan Whelan

No, he had not expected her to blush. If she had, it would have surprised him.

She humored him. Accepted the compliment for what it was, and returned one in kind. There was both an honesty and a guardedness to her in that moment. Accepting of his attention while still weighing him with her gaze. Perhaps that was a thing that attorneys could never really turn off. His father often favored him with such measured looks, though the nature and subtext of their conversations were markedly less pleasant. Somehow Sullivan found it easier to bear from Eva. Perhaps that was thanks to the alcohol in his system, but more likely it was because the power dynamic between them was different.

(Though perhaps not so different as might have been the case with any number of girls his own age, as she'd just now pointed out.)

Ironically, he was the one to blush. Though not quite so obviously as all that. It was a simple, human response. She said so are you, and perhaps this made the moment more real for him somehow - gave his nerves time to catch up with his tipsy, fascinated boldness. His eyes lowered just for a moment, and a pale flush crept into his skin when he smiled. Not precisely self-conscious but... pleased, in spite of himself. He met her gaze again in time to note the lightly sardonic humor in her eyes when she compared his age to her daughter.

Of course, this did little (if anything) to phase him. He merely rolled his shoulders and said, "Does it matter?"

Eva Illeshazy

"Mmm," the noise she makes when he blushes. "you're incorrigible."

When that pale flush creeps up beneath his cheeks, spreads beneath his skin. Alcohol humming in his veins, bravado dovetailing neatly - somehow - into reality. There is a half-smile expressed more in the curve of her cheeks than in the curve of her mouth. She lifts her chin and looks away, then. The shadow of the bartender intercutting the space between them, the steady line-up of gleaming bottles behind the bar, their fractured reflections intermingled with all the rest of the patrons crowded into the bar this evening.

With a wordless gesture, she directs the bartender to refill his drink. She herself has had no more than a few sips of her martini. The pleasant flush of alcohol has yet to spread itself in her veins.

"Of course it does," she replies, her dark eyes sweeping back to him then. Her spine is straight, her clothing fine, polished, unremarkable except for its quality. The uniform of corporate lawyers everywhere.

That directness again, her dark eyes fixed on his, swimming blue. The look is still gentle somehow, though there is a sort of inexorable strength behind the her own. "She's nine."

When Sullivan was her age, Éva was graduating from law school. The world looked very different then.

"I don't think that we will come to an accord on that point," an upward lilt of her arched brows. " - so why don't we change the subject. Tell me what brought you to Denver."

Sullivan Whelan

It was a fact of life that the young never understood precisely how young they seemed to those who exceeded them in years. Naturally Sullivan didn't think of himself in relation to his age. All he had was his own perspective, and certainly the short 22 (almost 23) years he'd been alive had provided enough experience to scar and temper him. To create the illusion of age and experience, when in reality these things were always relative.

Sully couldn't entirely fathom Eva's perspective on the matter, because it was a perspective he was incapable of inhabiting. All he saw was a woman that intrigued and attracted him. It was a luxury for him that nothing else needed to matter - one that she didn't necessarily share.

Naturally, the bubble had to burst at some point. Eva gestured for the bartender to refill his glass, and Sully turned his head to watch the man go about his work. Then Eva said: Of course it does. And finally: so why don't we change the subject?

And because Sully wasn't the pushy sort (not even when drunk,) he did as she asked. But there was a note of exasperation in the way he held his jaw.

He couldn't help it, really. She'd just compared him to a nine year old.

And then she asked him what had brought him to Denver, which wasn't quite the easy conversation turn she'd probably been hoping for, and he gave a deflated sigh, turning the tumbler slowly between his fingers. It was a long moment before he replied - a hesitance that might be mistaken for sullenness on his part but was actually just the closest he could come in his current state to objective reflection. "I moved here after graduation with my ex. He got a job offer with a publishing company, and I can really do my work anywhere so..." he shrugged. There was no attempt made to qualify the statement of he. Whatever conclusions Eva wanted to draw from that would be her own.

He took a long drink. "We broke up last month, though."

Éva Illésházy

"I suppose that was rather unfair of me," Éva concedes, with a bracing little twist of her mouth and that sure, rather removed steadiness of manner that keeps her so very well contained in the confines of her body. There is a dark gleam to her eyes, though - which is not so much cruel as it is animal in nature. Some instinctual response to challenge - or perhaps, some challenge thrown back to Sullivan from the always unfair world. All subsumed beneath her skin; contained in an alert lilt of her head as the bartender returns with his refill, and slips her the check.

She pays the bill during that long moment that follows. Slips the bartender a slim black credit card, signs the slip with a classic Mont Blanc pen, scrawling in a generous tip. Sully sighs; turns his tumbler, watches the reflection of honeyed light skimming the surface of the whiskey.

Her eyes skim to his profile, tic upward from the cant of his jaw to frame of lashes around his blue blue eyes. Here the kindness returns, the most subtle softening of the curve of her mouth, the flare of her nostrils, some dampening of the living darkness of her eyes. It is a choice she makes, one she embraces, as deliberately as all the others.

"I hope it was mutual," she murmurs, turning neatly on her barstool, slipping her wallet and pen back into her dark leather handbag. Her voice is quiet, precise as ever, but with a certain delicacy to the phrasing that finds its echo in her level gaze. " - the break-up."

There are no addended platitudes. She does not point out that he is young, that he has time to find whatever it is he will find. She never says - maybe it is for the best. Merely that she hopes he had a choice in it. That he was able to act more than react. That some part of that portion of his life remained within his control.

She's quiet for a moment then. He has time to sample his second free drink, or throw it back if he is so inclined. She sips her martini, glancing up as the bartender returns to retrieve her signed receipt. Then her eyes cut back to him, and she matches him, confession of sorts for confession. Or perhaps, confidence for confidence.

"My - " there are no proper human words to describe what he was. Not husband. Not lover. Not boyfriend. Mate. So she settles for, " - partner," but there are teeth around the term that make it feel like a placeholder, a paper moon. " - died last year. But he wasn't my husband." The curving edge of her half-smile then, a delicate lift of her chin. Whatever he meant to her, she holds it all inside. She's that sort, isn't she?

" - and he never waited up for me."

A direct look, the gleam of humor layered over whatever lies beneath. Then her gaze cuts over his shoulder, back across the bar toward the table he and his friends claimed when they first piled into the bar.

"Your friends have gone. You should let me give you a ride home."

Sullivan Whelan

She said she hoped the split was mutual, and Sully's mouth twisted softly into an expression of tired regret. It showed, too, in his eyes (expressive as they were - sometimes they could look so very sad.) He wouldn't have showed it if he'd been sober. It would have been a thing mentioned and then brushed aside. But he was mid-way through his... 5th? drink of the night and that meant that whatever he was feeling in a given moment, he was going to be feeling more of it. More joyful. More flirtatious. More sorrowful.

"I'm the one who ended it," he offered by way of explanation. "So... no. But it was going to happen one way or the other. Sometimes things just don't work." (For him. Sometimes things just don't work for him. But he didn't say that part.) And he left it at that, because even though he could have gone on to muse over any number of relationship details, this was really the last thing he wanted to talk about right now. So he let it go, and the flicker of regret that had cast itself upon his face drained away with the last of sip of his drink.

The two of them grew quiet then, and in the quiet, Eva let slip a little bit of honesty to match his own. (No, truly the two hardly matched up at all. Loss was not a thing one could compare to... anything else.) At this, Sully pushed his empty glass away and turned to regard her fully, taking in the weight of her words, and the relative calm with which she delivered them.

"I'm sorry," he said softly. And the gravity of it matched her own - neither heavy nor dramatic. Merely an acknowledgment of what she'd told him. But there was a genuine cast to his eyes - as when he'd told her that she was beautiful. Sully wasn't always honest, but it wasn't something that he was afraid of either.

He never waited up for her.

(Sully probably would have.)

When Eva offered to give him a ride home, Sully's eyebrows arched softly (expressively.) There was a little surprise there, perhaps. "Only if you want to. I can take a cab."

It wasn't a no. More of a don't feel obligated. (Mixed perhaps with a flare of hope.)

Éva Illésházy

Éva acknowledges Sully's condolences with a wordless dip of her dark head, the merest flicker of something deeper in her dark and steady gaze. She has heard variations on those words in an ever-diminishing stream over the past thirteen months. Now they are rarely spoken to her. Now she speaks them to others, whose grief is newer, is fresher, is younger.

Briefly, her gaze drops from his expressive blue eyes and skims the surface of her drink. There's a subtle note of tension in her body with that skein of memory, but it eases perceptibly a moment later, with such care, with such deliberation that it is impossible to read that easing as anything other than a choice. One she has made, deliberately, with forethought and care.

"Don't be foolish. If I didn't mean the offer, but still felt some degree of obligation," this is more alert, direct. There's humor banked into the words, but it is a shrewd sort, quiet and wry. "I would have suggested that you get a cab home and that I pay for it.

"I'm not in the habit of making idle promises of any sort." and so saying, she retrieves her bag and slips from the barstool easily, straightening and smoothing the skirt of her sheath dress as she does so. A well-cut, custom made blazer tops the dress. Only someone studying her closely or looking for it would not the faint bulk of a fairly slim shoulder holser tucked beneath the jacket, neatly beneath her left ribs.

"My car's not far from here."

--

She was correct. Two and a half, perhaps three blocks away, a dark, otherwise unremarkable, perfectly conservative Lexus sedan chirrups to life when she presses her keyfob tucked into her handbag. "It's this one, the door should be open," she tells Sully, before looking both ways and dashing out into the street to slip into the driver's side.

The car is dark inside as well as out. Very well appointment, and almost perfectly kept. There's some red dust on the floor mats, and a reuseable coffee mug tucked into the console, but otherwise, none of the usual detritus of family cars.

"Where to?"

Sullivan Whelan

When they reached the car, Sully's expression took on an amused cast which he did his best to drop when Eva looked his way. (The last thing she needed to hear was another comparison to his father.) Outside, the wind cut through the fabric of his shirt like frozen needles. He folded his still-damp coat over his arm and reached out quickly to pull open the car's door, dropping down into the passenger seat.

When Eva slid into the driver's side and asked for directions, Sully scrubbed a hand over his face to bring the route back to mind. It was slow coming - he wasn't fully accustomed to the Denver landscape yet and it took a moment for him to recall the address. Finally he directed Eva where to go, and the car pulled away from the curb to join the light traffic in the road.

As they drove, Sullivan seemed content to sit in comfortable silence. If Eva engaged him, he'd respond easily enough, but otherwise he spent his time watching the street lights pass by outside the window. Occasionally he'd glance over to watch Eva as she drove, taking in her posture and the way the lights played along her cheekbones.

When they reached his apartment and the car pulled to a stop at the sidewalk in front of his building, Sully looked over silently. There was a pause (slightly awkward,) before a warm smile touched his lips. "Thanks for the ride. And the drinks."

Eva Illeshazy

Éva seems perfectly content with the silence. Which is broken only by the soft crackle of the radio tuned to the local NPR station, playing whatever programming was slotted for this hour of a Thursday evening. She is a careful driver, conscientious, observing the letter of the traffic laws, signaling ever turn, cutting a glance over her shoulder for every lane change. Driving with a certain care, and no particular flare. The butt of her weapon is uncomfortable against her flank in this position. Normally, she would tuck it into the locked glove box when she climbed into the car for a moderately long drive. Tonight, she waits. No reason to alarm her passenger by pulling out the weapon (and then, perhaps, having to explain it in a way that would make sense to a starving artist).

So they drive, in silence, the city lights running over the dark windshield, the cold spring wind buffeting the low-profile sedan. There is this: the seats are heated, and she shows him how to turn his on.

"You're welcome," she returns, her chin rises, her dark eyes gleaming with the reflected glow of the dash. Her smile is smaller than his, and wry as her smiles so often seem to be, but it twists her fine mouth, curves her cheeks, and finds some clear purchase in her gaze.

"Thank you for the company," A lift of her chin toward his damp, folded coat. "Don't forget to send me the bill for the dry cleaning."

The car is in park. But the engine is still running.

Sullivan Whelan

[this is a cheesy 'trying to gauge if you're interested in me' empathy roll, +1 diff for drinking]

Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) Re-rolls: 1

Eva Illeshazy

[I am a Shadow Lord and therefore unreadable? Manipulation + Subterfuge]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )

Eva Illeshazy

In the dark car, the murmur of the local host on the radio is a low, faint hum. Little more than white noise, right now which competes with the hum of the city around him. A shout of laughter from one of Sully's neighbors, three drunk girls returning home, giddy and warm and flushed from the alcohol, arms wrapped around each other, laughing brightly each to each.

Éva is quiet and still and self-contained. She is looking at him, though her features are cheated aslant, so that he has a view more of her profile, the cut of her jaw, the curve of her ear, the sweep of her dark hair pulled back from her profile, tucked into its neat chignon. Everything about her is controlled and fine and her dark eyes are like mirrors, still and unreadable except for the way they reflect him back to himself.

There's a sort of tension in the air. Surely she's old enough to read that awkward silence for what it is. To understand that tick of scrutiny in his alcohol-warmed eyes, but she gives him nothing, not a scrap of insight to operate on. He will make his choices, without a hint from her.

Sullivan Whelan

To someone like Sully, who primarily navigated the world on the strength of his intuition, running up against someone as coolly controlled as Eva could make him feel a bit rudderless. Drifting across the water with a dark, starless sky and no landmarks with which to orient himself. It was usually easy for him to gauge how other people were feeling - what it was, precisely, they wanted from him. But tonight, the Fianna in him bumped up against the Shadow Lord in her and was met with a wall that he hadn't the skills to penetrate.

They were here, and there was nothing more to say. No further reason for him to remain in her car. It would be easy to leave it at that. Easy and safe and amicable. But since when were the Fianna ever known for taking the safe route? (And he was his mother's son, for better or worse.)

Eva reminded him about the bill and his smile lingered. "I won't forget." Then he unbuckled his seat-belt and leaned forward into her space. The motion was natural enough, despite his uncertainty. Surely he'd had enough success at these things in his comparatively short life not to let himself be consumed by doubt. But he did pause once, just for a moment, to let his eyes take in her expression and body language - to offer a look that was part interest and part question. (Is this welcome?)

And then - ah... the look she gave him in return. He rolled his lower lip between his teeth and smiled. Not a sweet smile, either - for all that she probably assumed this about him (and she wouldn't be wrong - he could be very sweet. But not tonight.) No, this was the smile of one of Stag's kin saying silently: challenge accepted.

His eyes darted down to her lips, and then he closed the remaining distance between them. The kiss wasn't forceful, but it contained within it a focused intent, and if she allowed it - if she didn't pull back or push him away - he'd slide his thumb up the curve of her exposed neck until his hand cradled her jaw.

Eva Illeshazy

She does not unbuckle her seat belt. She does not lean in to him as he leans in closer to her. One hand is still on the steering wheel, although she set the parking brake and slid the car into park when they pulled up outside the mostly dark apartment building. Even that pause, that moment's hesitation, that question is met with a steady look and a lifted chin, and little more than that.

The kiss isn't forceful. Not at first. Not until she responds to it, opening her mouth against his, over his, shifting her weight in the seat (her own seat belt is still buckled, it pulls taut across her shoulder and torso as she turns into his mouth) to meet him half-way.

More than half-way if she weren't so firmly buckled in.

Beneath that perfectly controlled, exquisitely calculated stoicism, she is hungry. There's something dark and responsive and driving there - she kisses him back, and again and again, pushes him back, catches his lower between her teeth. His hand spreads beneath her jaw and he can feel the taut bands of tends at work beneath her skin, the bunch and pull of the musculature of jaw and throat, the same ones used in mastication, as if she might consume him entire rather than (merely) return his kiss.

Then she pulls just away from his mouth; to breath, shallowly, in an out, her nose alongside his own, brow to brow, eye to eye, cheek to cheek. Close enough that he can feel the sweep of her lashes against his cheek, close enough that his eyes lose almost all definition, and become merely the unfocused blue of a midsummer sky seen through a sunhaze. Close enough that he can feel the warmth of her breath with sharp little breath out.

She's smiling. He can't see that, but he can feel that too, the curve of her cheek against his, the flash of white teeth in her mouth.

She drags her nose up the curve of his face, following the line of his cheekbone, planting a much smaller kiss at the apex of it. Then again at the corner of his eye, and finally at his temple. The last is the gentlest of the three, almost exquisitely tender, soft enough that she can almost taste the rhythm of his pulse beneath his skin.

At last, her mouth slips down from his temple to find his ear. Her breath is warm, is hot against the tender folds. "I'm flattered," she murmurs, low-voiced, and sure. "But I don't think this is a good idea. For either one of us.

"Goodnight, Sullivan."

Sullivan Whelan

Her response was more than he'd expected - more than he'd even hoped for, honestly. And she'd find him remarkably pliant in his reaction to it. There was a sound - pleased, surprised, and very quickly wanting - that hummed against the pressure of her lips, and the hand that touched her jaw rose to slide back into her hair, tangling fingers into the neatly gathered strands as he gripped her there. The scrape and pressure of her teeth on his lip elicited a rough exhale. If she thought to consume him, he might very well let her. (Perhaps this was even what he'd wanted all along.)

She pulled away that small increment, and he held himself still as her breath washed across his skin, as her lips once again found a home at his cheek. When she touched the delicate place at the corner of his eye, he let his lids lower softly, his long eyelashes fluttering against the edge of her lips before she placed that last kiss at his temple.

And then... her presence receded. Just as suddenly as it had approached. For a moment, all Sully could comprehend was the hard drum of his pulse against his ears and the cold absence of her mouth. When he looked at her, his eyes were punch-drunk and glassy-bright. He had to blink a couple of times before her image came into full focus.

I'm flattered, she said.

But I don't think this is a good idea.

And then: Goodnight, Sullivan.

A span of seconds ticked by. Gradually, his comprehension of the present circumstances fell into place. There was a look that drew itself on his face - eyebrows drawn together, furrowing at the center as he wet his lips (now raw and red from her attention) and pressed them together. A complicated play of emotions went to work behind his eyes.

But in the end, all he said was: "You don't know me well enough to make that decision for me." And then, softly, "Goodnight, Eva."

Then he gathered his coat and stepped out of the car.