not_every_mage | Holiday Inn, Limbo City, Friday Evening

Holiday Inn, Limbo City, Friday Evening

Anders had booked and paid for the room, ignoring the clerk's dirty look at the blood and muck on their clothes. They wouldn't be the only people caught in the day's devastation looking for someplace to sleep tonight

He'd silently followed Dante through the hotel halls to their room, and placed a quick order for pizza before he took off his boots and crashed out on the bed. The thousand bruises and scrapes of the battle stung his skin.

He should shower. He didn't want to move.

He turned to Dante, still registering faint surprise at the newly white hair. (He supposed they were lucky if that was the worst permanent change Dante saw.) Words failed him when it came to addressing the true horror of the day, but he should at least say something

"They said the pizza should be here in about half an hour," he said. "I'm actually impressed it's not longer, considering."

[OOC: For one, NFB.]

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Anders shuddered. "To go by the kids of mine I've seen, the place might not be standing by the end of the day. Especially if somehow I got four of them."

All right, Leo had been more-or-less well behaved, but Carys? Carys was a force of nature.

"So we go to Disneyland and get drunk on frazzled parent booze," Dante said. "Then... New Orleans? I hear that place is fucked up."

One way of putting it, yeah.

"Fucked up how?" Anders asked, suspicious. "Fucked up like we'd get in trouble?"

"Fucked up like they have weird booze and great food and half of them are French or something," Dante supplied. (There were some things he hadn't gotten around to learning by age seven at home.) "And they got hit bad by a hurricane a while back."

"Fake Orlesians, but not the stuffy kind," Anders summarized. "Sounds like a good party. Maybe a bad place to live, but a good party."

He nudged Dante with his foot again, thoughtful. "Maybe we could stop at the beach along the way," he suggested. "Just spend a day eating ice cream and trying to swim."

"Hey, that'd be the next stop," Dante said, poking Anders back with his own foot.

He felt both less and more tired, but in a good way. "California. Beaches and babes."

"I have this weird feeling you'd be at home there," Anders said easily. He was tired, too, but not in a bad way at all.

After a battle like today's, going to bed full of pizza and all talked out was possibly the best ending the day could have.

Dante grinned at him. "Does seem like my kinda place," he said. "Lazy and fun. But we can hit up Portland after and let you chill with the hipsters."

"With the bikes and the fancy coffee?" Anders wondered. "You're so good to me."

Dreamily, he added, "We should go to the Grand Canyon, too. It looks amazing on TV and I want to see it for real."

"That place looks fucking huge," Dante said, grinning. "Think it's on the way to California."

Anders nodded. "I don't know why I want to see a big hole in the ground, but I do," he said, and started to pry himself off the bed. "I think I'm going to have a shower before we fall asleep talking."

Dante smiled at him. He was starting to come around on this 'planning for the future' thing. "Want company or are you tired of my bullshit?"

"I like your bullshit," Anders said firmly, tugging at Dante's hand. "Come on. We can save water, all of that."

Dante let Anders tug him along, smiling slightly to himself.

He hoped Anders wasn't looking back; he was pretty sure his expression was nauseatingly fond.

Anders didn't look back, in part because he had his own nauseatingly fond grin to hide. He busied himself unwrapping tiny bars of soap and getting the water temperature just so instead.

"I'm glad we did this," he said, as he tested the water one last time. "It's good to get a little space from everybody else."

"Yeah," Dante said, pulling his shirt over his head. He tossed it aside to the bathroom floor, getting to work on his pants. "It's... I dunno."

He looked up at Anders. "I can get stuck in my head," he said. "It's good to just kinda be and still get it all out there."

"I don't feel like there's much I could say that would make you like me less, or the other way round," Anders said slowly. He sat on the toilet to tug off his socks. "Never had that with anybody before."

Dante's pants joined his shirt on the floor. "...Same here," he admitted. "It's..."

After a moment, he picked up his clothes and tossed them out of the bathroom, just to have something to do. "Probably the first time I realized I like you," he said slowly. "Kathy'd been egging you on to fuck me and you did and you looked at me like-- I don't know."

He didn't even know why the memory came to him now.

"I thought you were so beautiful," Anders reminisced as he kicked his clothes out of the way to join Dante's. "I thought we were just having fun, but then the way you moved and looked at me -- there was too much there for a fling. The amazing part was realizing you felt the same way."

He hadn't expected feelings to come out of sex with Dante; he knew Dante's record, and they'd gone too long as casual friends on their good days. He supposed the thing it had turned into was, in part, another thing to thank Kathy for.

Dante checked the water for a second, too, and then stepped into the shower. It felt nice to have the water pounding down his aching muscles; made 'em less sore.

"I still got no clue how you can talk like that," he said. Maybe it was a character flaw, or something, not being able to be as open about this stuff as Anders was.

Actually, he was grateful for the water for another reason. He was pretty sure he'd developed a flush.

"It's just words," Anders shrugged. He'd tilted his head back to let the water sluice through his hair. "Once I know how I feel, the words part has never been hard for me."

"Funny, words are always how I get all tripped up." Dante touched Anders' side, sliding his hand down until it settled on Anders' hip. "But you manage all this shit that should sound corny but doesn't."

"Thanks, I think," Anders said. He found the shampoo bottle, squirted some into his hands. "I don't know. I just don't worry about it sounding corny. I figure you'll roll your eyes at me if I get too mushy."

Dante laughed, reaching past Anders to snag some soap. "That's what you keep me around for," he said. "Keepin' you from floating off in a dreamy pile of mush."

"That and the sex," Anders confirmed as he worked shampoo through his hair, swaying slightly in a way that brushed his body against Dante's. "I'm surprised you haven't figured out I'm using you by now."

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