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The step Rupert took towards Riley should have made her look up, but it didn’t. Riley’s heart wasn’t fluttering, there were no butterflies in her stomach. What was the point of all that anticipation? One thing would lead to another. They both knew where this was going, they had since she’d asked for and he’d consequently offered the ride. Maybe before.

How had they gotten to this point so quickly and so dirtily? It was a testament to both their current situations that neither had stopped to wonder. It was enough for Riley that Rupert had wanted her in a sweater and jeans.

A hand tipped up her chin and Riley’s eyes were already shut. Rupert kissed her and Riley kissed back, lips doing what they were supposed to and hands following suit. There was no more talking, but that was fine with Riley, talk was cheap. This was like the music, comfy old sweats, and it felt just as good, too.

Fade to Glorious Black…with a soundtrack by Kansas



Light filtered through the window of Rupert’s room and that meant that it was time, past time, for Riley to go. She had slept a little, but that was difficult in a strange place no matter how…hospitable the host had been. Riley sighed, casting a look to the other occupant of the bed. He wasn’t having any trouble sleeping. Yes, Riley decided, it was better to slip away now and avoid any possibly awkward conversations. The previous night had proven that their collective talents laid in areas far removed from talking.

Riley slipped quietly from the bed, no pretense of modestly clutched sheets to cover her. That was one thing that Riley had always found ludicrous in her romance novels. What was the point in covering up skin that had been well explored in the preceding hours? She took a second to look at the man in the bed, modestly covered for the most part by the tangled sheets. She’d seen, and felt the scar near his ribs and remembered the limp from when they’d walked. There was probably a story there…this was not the time though.

Quickly the dark haired woman tip-toed around, gathering articles of clothing from the various places they’d arranged themselves the night before. Once dressed, it was time to go. At the doorway of the room, Rliey stopped, sighing in frustration at herself before digging in her purse and producing a small notepad and pen. They’d had a good time, he deserved more than nothing.

The note was simple. “See. Sleeping like a baby.” and her cellphone number. It found its way to the empty side of the bed and Riley turned and left the room. As she passed through the doorway she caught a distinct the distinct sounds and smells of a cooking breakfast, she winced. The walls weren’t that thin, were they? Riley shrugged, if they were, at least Rupert’s neighbors had gotten a show. That thought shifted to another, several in fact, as Riley re-entered the living-area and got a full view of the kitchen…and the teenager cooking breakfast there.

”What the hell?!” she exclaimed, forgetting to keep her voice quiet and feeling torn between frozen shock and running to the door. “You weren’t here last night….were you?”

Apparently the lack of pretense was forgiven, as was her lack of drinking capabilities. Asshole or no, the man across the table from her had done pretty well this particular day. Riley actually hanging a bit on the anticipation of what would come next. He tipped an imaginary hat and she smiled another slow smile at his words, ”You have no idea.” she responded. Chances were, he probably didn’t. Especially if he was talking about a car ride.

Where they were going wasn’t even a question. Riley didn’t take people back to her place, and he never even offered. Apparently they were at least kind of on the same page. That helped matters, misunderstandings at this point probably would have ended up messy. Then again, neither of them had really been talking in euphemisms. Riley followed Rupert and little was said until they were standing outside the door to what she assumed was the man’s apartment.

The door opened and a little...thing bustled out. Riley smiled as she realized it was a dog and knelt down catcher style, holding her hands out to be smelled. The dog opted for the full-on palm nuzzles and Riley obliged with a scratch behind the ears. She’d always liked dogs, this one seemed a humorous selection for the man entering the apartment, though. He invited her in, holding the door, and Riley rose to walk past Rupert into the small, but well put together, space.

It really was well put together, and much tidier than she’d expected. There were CD’s stacked here, things out of place there, but overall it looked comfortable, lived in. The dog was pawing at Riley’s legs again and she reached down to pet it, letting the strap of her purse slip off her shoulder. She was planning to stay for at least a while, after all.

”Nice place.” she said, glancing around again, then raising an eyebrow as she gestured to the little dog, ”Isn’t this a little damming to the asshole image? She's cute though.”

She moved on from the dog to the CD’s and as she shifted through found a comfortable selection of Rock that she probably wouldn’t have been surprised to find in her own apartment. Out of the pile she pulled a specific CD. Kansas: Dust in the Wind. The whole album was great, but the title song, pure beauty. She opened it, the disk was there. ”This is a great album. I used to listen to Dust In the Wind on repeat. Do you mind?”

He didn’t mind the eating. At least it didn’t seem like he did. Riley was pleased with that development because otherwise they’d have had a major problem. A major problem. Glances up every now and then showed her lunch date as thoroughly centered on his food as Riley was on her own. Leave it to a random DMV pick-up to know how to pick a restaurant.

She commented on how good the food was, and Rupert pointed out that she should taste his. She shrugged her shoulders and struck out with her fork, spearing a couple pieces of penne and snagging them off the fork. Hey, he’d taken her breadstick. Two pieces of penne were fair payment. Riley chewed and almost went slack-jawed. That would have been gross, though, and this pasta was good.

”That’s homemade!” she exclaimed with mild delight at the obvious fact. ”I can’t remember the last time I had real, homemade noodles.” Riley looked down at her plate, there definitely wasn’t any of the breaded eggplant left, just a few noodles and some random crumbs that had fallen off while Riley ate. ”Uh…I’d offer you a taste, but I kind of ate it all.” she said with a smile.

”Sorry. You didn’t miss out. Not considering you‘re eating that. “ She said, leaning back in her seat and folding her hands over her stomach with a satisfied sigh. ”Don’t mind me while you finish. I’m just going to digest.”

There were a few moments of companionable silence and Riley steepled her fingers, tapping them on her stomach as she thought, "Now what?"

Riley listened. She listened, she drank water, she ate the second breadstick, and she listened. A bad break-up? That was a reason to take yourself off the market for what amounted to a long time? Riley thought that the way people dealt with break-ups like that was to go out and do everything they could to remind themselves how great it was to be unattached. Apparently not Rupert.

The more he explained, the more Riley felt a little pang of conscious at what she was doing. This chick that had induced the celibacy that Rupert was taking part in had done it in part because she’d lied. There were things that Riley had definitely not intended to tell Rupert, no matter where this ended up going…. There she’d gone, assuming things again. Riley suddenly realized this was a potentially dangerous situation. She had absolutely none of the power. It had been a long time since she’d allowed herself to be in that position. Somehow, though, it didn’t feel dangerous. A little crazy? Yes. Dangerous? No.

He complimented her again, this time with a smirk and Riley chuckled and shook her head, running a finger around the rim of her water glass and watching the drops of condensation roll down its sides. ”Even if you’re not serious, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you how nice it feels to hear someone say something like that.” she admitted candidly. Again, it was strange how it seemed to mean more when she was dressed like this. Like he was seeing her. ”As to the rest. Sometimes fireworks are nice, right up until the point where they blow up in your face.”

He hadn’t put himself back into the dating scene. That was strange to Riley too, it seemed like there was no way to avoid it in New York. Maybe she was confusing the dating scene with the one night stand scene though. The two were understandably easy to confuse.

Rupert’s last question was a loaded one for Riley, and she found herself trying to phrase it in a way that wouldn’t make her look like any more of a basket case than she probably already did. She ended up shrugging her shoulders, ”I’m no insomniac.” she pointed out with a teasing little grin, ”But I don’t date a whole lot. I got myself into some bad situations in the past as far as the people I surrounded myself with. I’ve gotten better at that though.” she stopped talking and laughed, low and husky, ”Now I just pick guys up at the DMV.”

She paused, frowning down at her glass before taking a drink, and making eye contact again, "Isn't it about time you moved on?"

Hmmm. Maybe she’d pegged him a little wrong. He’d seemed serious in the line when she’d pointed out that most insomniacs simply needed a good lay. If he was as good at the asshole act as he was projecting with the flirting, there’s no way he’d have had that problem. Riley had been serious when she’d pointed out that there were lots of girls who liked that sort of thing, she usually didn’t count herself among them though. This was slightly different. That definitely counted for something, as did the laugh. Nobody laughed like that whey they’d been caught in a clever dating rouse, they also didn’t point out things that had a tendency to make them less desirable. Like the fact that they had more baggage than anyone could fix. Riley didn’t find it less attractive though, she found the candidness refreshing, until he took her breadstick.

Riley didn’t know what it was like growing up in New York with food, but in Chicago, a man simply didn’t come between a woman and her bread. Maybe she’d make an exception though. She’d vowed not to reveal much about herself, this was simply going too well to ruin it by telling the complete and total truth. So as Rupert crunched away on her breadstick, Riley thought for a moment. Working out exactly what it was she could say.

A little disclosure couldn’t hurt, at least not to the end that they were somewhat kindred spirits. At least it sounded like they were, ”I learned the very hard way that you can’t fix a person. They have to want fix themselves.” she said, looking across the table and making real eye contact for the first time. She was making a point. ”You either take someone as they are, or you walk away.” She looked away now, his eyes were hazel.

She hadn’t answered his question, per say, and as he offered the bread stick, she took it gratefully. She’d picked that one for a reason. Taking a bite, she nodded a little idly as Rupert explained that he’d never eaten at this particular restaurant before. ”I love eggplant parm.” she allowed, then sighed a little, ”And it takes one to know one. Definitely.”

The conversation was getting a little heavy, but surprisingly, that didn't bother Riley as much as it should have. She took another bite of the bread stick and grinned a little, "We're like two peas in a dysfunctional little pod, aren't we?"

When Rupert reached out to cup her chin, Riley nearly flinched away. A hand to the face was a far more intimate gesture than most people realized, and it hardly ever came without other intentions. Whether they were violent, forcing someone to look at you in the face when they were trying to do anything but that, or simply tipping someone’s face up for a look or kiss, it always meant something. Riley didn’t move though, just kept her eyes carefully focused anywhere but the face of the man who was once again giving her a very thorough once-over. This time it was her face he focused on. To her surprise, Riley found herself flushing slightly at the scrutiny. People looked at her all the time, people looked at her closely all the time, and at places far more flush-inducing than her face. She let Rupert turn her face one way, then the other, and let her eyes flick to his for just a moment when she was facing him again. His eyes were green, or maybe brown, Riley swallowed as he released her and studied her shoes for a moment as he spoke.

Riley wanted to look up in surprise, she was used to compliments on some level, but she was usually pretty unremarkable when dressed like this. At least in the crowd she was used to running with. She looked up again and shook her head, ”Don’t judge a book by its cover.” she said softly, good was the last adjective most people would use to describe her. At least in the sense she’d originally intended.

It was funny how fast a line could move when a person was having fun, and at some point the million people in front of them had shrunk to a half million, then a measly couple thousand, and now it was actually their turn. Rupert spoke again, and it took a moment for the words to register. A Taurus, Riley tilted her head. It was a fitting vehicular match. Nothing too flashy, nothing too new. Ohhhh, and he assumed, posed the question and didn’t even wait for the answer. Riley watched him move to the counter he’d been summoned to and wasn’t even mad that he’d cut her in line. It was the first time she could remember in a long time that she’d been caught this off guard by a man without something being slipped in her drink or injected through a vein.

Riley frowned a little bit, though, as she was summoned forward and set about getting her business taken care of. What kind of game was she playing here? Was it actually a game? All of that flirting, she’d let the man touch her face. At some point she’d even forgotten that she was trying to get a ride. She glanced to where Rupert had been and noticed he was gone. It wouldn’t be hard to slip out of the DMV and walk the other direction down the street. As Riley signed her name on the license form and took the still-warm piece of plastic from the woman behind the desk, she knew that wasn’t what she was going to do.

Out the door she went, pulling the sleeves of her sweater down over her hands against the chill of the New York winter. Across the street she went, eyes searching for the car that Rupert had described. It was there, just as he’d said, and he was waiting next to it, arms crossed and leaning casually. She moved up beside him and laid her hand on the top of the car and patted it, like she’d seen cowboys do to horses on movies, ”I do like a Taurus.” she said, ”As stubborn as a bull can be, there’s something reassuring about all that pigheadedness. They‘re passionate though. I‘m a Taurus.” Rambling about zodiac signs. Smooth.

”So.” she said, not taking her arm from the top of the car, but turning to face Rupert a little more fully, ”What does an insomniac asshole do to wind down after a harrowing experience at the DMV?”