bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze
if you must drink of me, take of me what you please
He wasn’t what brought him to this particular venue on this particular night. It certainly wasn’t the music, some name that drove the girls wild and yet barely registered for him. It wasn’t the twinkling lights or the veneer of holiday cheer. He’d never been one for pretending that the holidays were anything but hollow. Perhaps it was the feeling of company without having to engage at all, letting the bodies swarm around him, their desperation and need so tangible that he can practically feel it between his teeth.
Instead, he feels the lukewarm liquor as it swirls in his mouth and drips down his throat.
He certainly wasn’t here for the booze, he thinks with a grimace. Nothing but cheap, watered down trash that wasn’t worth the few dollars he had just slammed onto the counter a few minutes ago.
Scowling, Woolf lifts a rough hand and rubs it across his stubbled cheeks. He hadn’t bothered to shave for several days again and the shadows of it show, covering the hollows of his hard-angled cheeks and making his handsome face even more severe with its hollows. It accentuates the green of his eyes, the brightest part of an otherwise tan, swarthy face. They sharpen beneath the severe angles of dark eyebrows, his hair (so black it was nearly purple in the right light) mussed and hanging over his temple.
His attire isn’t much better than the rest of his half-kept appearance. He wears dark jeans and a black T-shirt, the V in the front low enough to show a wicked scar that curves up from his back, across his shoulder, and then slants down his collarbone. The clothes are fitted and quality, hanging off his rugged frame, but they are plain, speaking to a man who had enough money to not care at all about it.
The tension in the room shifts and he lifts an eyebrow, feeling ripples of it around him.
Interested, he shifts, looking toward the stage for the first time since he got there.
It’s just in time for the curtain to rise and the light to switch on, highlighting the woman on the stool. There’s something about her that’s familiar, something that stirs something in his belly, and his scowl deepens, annoyed at the prickly edge of recognition in the corner of his mind. She opens her mouth and the sound is summer honeysuckle and winter snow. Why was she so familiar?
His thoughts turn inward, picking through his own memory, flipping through the pages of it as her song continues to swell around him. She’s pretty, he thinks apathetically, but that wasn’t what bothered him. She was trying too hard, or someone was trying too hard on her behalf, and that had never been something that interested him. But there was an innocence that laced its way through her music, something vulnerable that belied the thick lashes and tight shirt and too small skirt.
Something that kept his attention on her, swirling the last of the booze in his glass before swallowing the rest of it. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he nearly stands but chooses to wait, perched on the bar stool as she walks off the stage and the boy behind the drums takes up the mic instead.
He dismisses the band entirely then, hawk eyes watching her as she moves through the room.
He waits until she’s close enough while passing by to shoot a hand out, wrapping it around her arm with enough force to get her attention but not knock her off balance. His sharp eyes wash over her face, studying it for a second. They drop to her bright red lips before lifting slowly to her own eyes.
“Nice song,” he growls in a voice as calloused as the palm of his hand before making a quick motion to the bartender. “The least I can is buy you a drink.” His eyes light up. “It’s been awhile, Wallace.”
woolf
I am loathed to say it's the devil's taste
