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[anythingbutblue]

Faye hates losing.

She hates it when the stakes are high, she hates it when the stakes are low, and she hates it even when there really aren't much in the way of stakes at all.

Some of the things she misses most about life out there are the toys she had at her disposal to make sure she didn't lose.

But she knew what she was getting into when she made Gren the proposition, and she knew what she was getting into when he -- almost to her surprise -- gave her a catlike smile and agreed to play with her so long as it wasn't for money.

Gren isn't totally without guile. And it's nothing that shocks her. It's not like he's a different person now than the Gren she knew before. She's seen this side of him -- seductive and playful -- in glimpses before now. In the idle flirtation between reminders that women aren't his style, mostly, and in retrospect, she thinks even on his face for a fleeting moment when she burst in on his shower with her gun drawn back on Callisto, right before he backed her up against the wall and disarmed her more easily than anyone ever had before.

Or has since, for that matter.

She still hates losing.

Even when clothes are the stakes and she's already discovered she likes being naked with her opponent. More than likes it -- not that she's close to admitting that to anyone but herself and sometimes not even going that far -- but kind of craves it like a new addiction.

She was a little unhappy with Gren's refusal to consider her boots two separate articles of clothing and she was miffed when he wouldn't count the headband as one at all, but he was right that she already had more to take off than he did.

Leveling the playing field is just something she's never been too concerned about.

This game, so far, has been pretty good to her even though she had no cards hidden on her, no toys to help her. It's mostly been a test of skill. Mostly, and she's still wearing more than Gren is. Even without cheating, she's still good at what she does. Cheating well requires really knowing your way around a game, after all, and she's a pro.

Losing a few unfortunate hands to Gren doesn't kill her, especially not with the way his big blue eyes seem to try to soak up as much of her as they can, and she wonders when his attention became so important to her but is smart enough not to think out loud about things like that because nothing good could come of it.

He doesn't have much left to lose when she wins the shirt off his back, but when he catches her wrist and suggests she takes it off of him herself, she can feel something a little surprised and a little breathless on her face for a moment before it's taken over by a flirty self-satisfied smile.

And she thinks when she crosses toward him and busies her hands with his shirt that she doesn't mind at all that he seems to have lost interest in the game.

Her headband is the last thing to go.

---

When he'd told her about her about his friend Charlie who'd died, she hadn't known what to make of it and had hated the sad look in his eyes so much she could hardly sit still.

She wasn't very good at being comforting -- that's not her thing -- but Gren hadn't seemed to mind much.

Two nights ago she stopped by the bar for a scotch and was presented with a note from Spike and had felt so frustrated when she read it that she'd downed her scotch, plunked the glass back down on the bar, and stalked back upstairs to her room without so much as a glance at her tab, nearly running over some guy on her way up.

She'd left the note, folded, on her desk and then went to see if Gren was in his room, but she never brought it up to him. And even though she skillfully evaded any questioning about her mood that night, she didn't evade his arms at all.

If it's becoming habit, she thinks she has worse ones.

---

One of the things she likes about Gren is that he knows just how attractive he is. He's not cocky about it and it's never a big deal, but he's aware and he's confident. And that makes him even more attractive to her.

She's spent more time with him in private than in public, as if he's a secret just for her and what they're doing together is something she wants to keep to herself, but it's not through purposeful effort.

It's just happened that way.

It doesn't mean she's not happy to see him when she's smoking outside and notices him coming out of the bar. She doesn't know whether he'd known she was out here or not, but she finds herself liking the way the sight of him has her forgetting -- just for a second -- to breathe.

And she makes a point of coaxing it out of her system by the time he's gotten close to her.

No matter what happens, she doesn't think she'll ever be able to look at him quite the same way again.

Comments

[bothbutneither.livejournal.com]

One thing he's never been very good at is talking himself out of things. Especially when it comes to affairs of the heart: he's pitiful at self-control. He's always been attracted to the blush of affection and attention. All performing musicians crave the spotlight and that means they crave the resulting adulation, but this... this is different. This is his heart and he's got a sneaking suspicion that his soul's also wrapped up in things in a big, big way.

Faye isn't the reason he's still here instead of dead and buried. He knows that and he would never, ever suggest otherwise: it's too big a responsibility to put on any other person. As sleek and strong and catlike as she is, there's still a measure of fragility to her. Every now and again he catches it in her eyes or the corner of her mouth when she doesn't think he's looking, and he finds himself wanting to smooth it away like so much static electricity.

The part that amazes him the most about this whole thing with Faye isn't that she's a woman and women aren't supposed to be his style. He's been with women before, even if it hasn't been for a long, long time, but he suspects these things have a tendency to go in waves. It's all good. Men and women are both so attractive to him for different reasons. What really surprises and delights him is that in Faye, he sees the best of everything: there's a tough side to her and at the same time she's incredibly feminine in a tiger-like musky way. When he wakes up in the morning with her at his side, he's flooded -- absolutely flooded -- with a contentment he doesn't remember ever knowing before.

There have been times in his life when he fell hard for someone, and he knows that rush of falling. But with Faye, he hasn't had the falling sensation, that whole so-out-of-control thing that's dizzying and breathtaking and heartbreaking. Surprisingly, this affair with Faye -- and it is a pretty torrid affair -- has been a slow burn from the very beginning. It took them a year and a half to get to where they are, maybe even longer. That whole time has been a constant upward nudging of their relationship's fuel gauge and now...

...now it's on full burn. When he sees her, he has this hugely proprietary moment encompassed in the single word mine.

He doesn't even fight it as he moves to her side, tucks a hand beneath her chin, tilts her face up to his, and delivers what just might be the perfect kiss.