notfaking_it | (no subject)

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delta

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She wasn't nervous, necessarily, but it had been a long time since Lily had been on a date. She went out and she danced, she had dinner with people she loved, spent time with people she slept with, but all the while -- even with Sawyer, she realized -- she'd never allowed anything to be called a date. It was easier that way. If she never called it a date, no one ever thought they were dating and while Lily definitely wasn't adverse to spending time with the same person over weeks or months or even years, she hadn't had a boyfriend or a girlfriend in a very long time and she mostly preferred it that way.

It made things easier.

But something about Delta was different. She doubted he'd ever assume they were dating without first making sure and although he still seemed to be finding his footing, Lily was sure if she explained things to him, he'd follow them easily.

So she wasn't nervous, but she also wasn't entirely sure what she was doing.

Given that it was her first date in a long time -- and his first date ever, according to him -- she'd made sure to keep things simple. She was dressed in jeans, a pair of black boots and a dark sweater under her jacket when she arrived at his place to pick him up. Pressing the buzzer at the front door, she waited, hands in her pockets, for him to answer.

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He followed her inside, inhaling deeply the moment she spoke- and she was right. Broiling meat, rich and fragrant, edged with spices. It felt casual inside but not loud, not really like a bar, and he liked it instantly.

"Strange I was never here before now."

"I'm glad you haven't been," she said, moving through the tables toward one near the window. "I'm glad I could bring you somewhere new."

She'd only been here once herself, late one night after a long day at the studio, and she'd brought him here on purpose, avoiding anywhere too familiar. As she slid into one of the chairs, a waiter brought over menus and set them down on the table.

He glanced up at the waiter and gave him a brief smile as he sat down across from Lily. At the question of drinks he frowned for a moment and then simply ordered water; soda was usually too sweet, and alcohol...

No. Just no.

"Do you have any recommendations?" he asked her. "Is there anything I should consider?"

Lily ordered a beer for herself, then looked down at the menu, considering the options. "It depends on what you're looking for," she said, then leaned out of her seat a little to point at his menu. "If you want traditional, you can't really go wrong with their bacon cheeseburger. Simple, but based on what I had last time, I'm willing to bet it's amazing."

She turned the menu over and pointed to another option. "But if you want something a little more exciting, this is what I had last time. Pineapple, an egg, beets, bacon, cheese and some kind of amazing mayo. It's kind of huge and really messy, but it was so good."

"Exciting sounds good." Tonight was apparently already a night for new things, slightly strange things, so why not? And it did sound good. If deeply weird.

The server drifted back over with the beer and the water, and Delta ordered the exciting burger, feeling rather brave.

Lily grinned, fingertips brushing the back of his hand briefly before she looked at her own menu once more. After a few seconds of consideration, she ordered a blueberry barbeque burger, then handed both menus back to the waiter, who disappeared into the kitchen with their orders.

"So if exciting sounds good tonight, maybe I should have made bigger plans," she said, smiling at him over the lip of her glass before she took a sip of her beer.

The touch didn't exactly alarm him - none of hers had so far - but again it didn't feel like a normal touch, edged with layers of meaning, and...

He paused, taking an internal breath. Yes, he knew what this was. But there was a difference between knowing and actually being in the middle of it.

He didn't exactly want to get out of it.

"I think this might be exciting enough." He returned her smile, a little smaller. "Though, I suppose we don't have to stay here the whole evening."

"We can see how we feel after dinner," she said, leaving it at that. It was simpler and she knew this couldn't all be easy, dealing with new experiences constantly. It had to be overwhelming in a way.

"You know, this is the first date I've been on in a long time," she told him. "Years, probably." She didn't have to go into all the reasons why that was the case, but she didn't feel strange about sharing that. Anyone who spent much time with her knew she wasn't exactly the dating type.

"Really." He leaned forward slightly, cocking his head. "That seems strange." She was kind, approachable, had been friendly to him. She was... beautiful. From what he knew of the rationale that usually lay behind dates... "Seems strange to me, anyway."

"Work kept me busy a lot before I came here," she says. "It's hard to date when the only people you meet are other dancers and... well, there's usually a lot of competition there. It doesn't always make for the healthiest of relationships."

It hasn't always stopped her, of course, but it's been an obstacle now and then.

"Yes, well." He gave her another smile, this one faintly sardonic. "It's hard to date when you're grafted into a huge metal suit and you can't talk."

But her... He guessed he could see it, but it struck him as unfortunate. She should be able to. Like him, it should be a thing she could have if she wanted.

"But you have other friends? Other people you care about who are not dancers?"

"Okay, you've got me there," she answered with a laugh, because his reasons were a lot better than hers. It was more than just being busy, though, she'd always known that. Getting that close to someone was fine, but relying on them, promising them forever, promising they were the only one, those were the things she'd always balked at.

"I do," she said, nodding. "A few very good friends who live here now. I'm lucky."

"Then we're both lucky." That much was good to hear, at least. "Having friends is... For a long time, it was so new. I didn't even know what it meant. Although..." He tilted his head on one side, considering. "It was like I did. Like I remembered something I had forgotten."

She wondered what kind of man he'd been like before, if he was anything like this or if he'd been someone else entirely. The idea of having two very different types of men reside in one body at one point or another wasn't even that strange to her anymore and she studied him, smiling very faintly.

"It's a good thing to have remembered, isn't it?" she asked. "I mean, there are definitely worse memories you could find, I'm sure."

"I know there are." He didn't say it with any special gravity, or any real pain. But he knew that, behind that wall in his mind, there were awful things. What he did remember was bad enough. He knew enough about Rapture, about what had happened there, to know that there was worse that he didn't.

"But so far... Yes. It's all good things." He paused, a smile pulling at one corner of his mouth. "And now I have new good memories too."

"For all the bad things people say about Darrow, there are worse places to be," she agreed as the waiter returned with their burgers, setting them down on their table. With a grin, she gestured down at their food before she plucked a napkin from the dispenser and laid it across her lap. "For example, the last place I was stuck? There was only one restaurant and Neil did a damn good job with it, but there's just something wonderful about being able to get a different kind of food every night."

He surveyed the burger. It did indeed look... He wasn't sure that exciting truly captured it. Formidable might be more apt.

"Eleanor loves that. Trying all kinds of things she never did before." He picked up the burger, shedding bits of it as he did, and took a huge bite.

"A girl after my own heart," Lily said with a laugh, because she loved food almost as much as she loved dancing. Picking up her own burger, she took a big bite before making a sound of satisfaction in her throat, wiping sauce from the corner of her mouth.

It was an amazing burger and she grinned across at Delta, swallowing her mouthful before she asked, "How is it?"

"It's... I don't even know," he managed, when he could speak around the bite. "It's good, it's just..." He caught a drip of sauce just as it trickled down the back of one knuckle. "I haven't had anything like it before.

An insane combination of tastes, all working together into a kind of harmonious whole.

There were a lot of things he still had to learn.

"Well, this is special," she said with a laugh, watching for a moment as he caught the sauce on the back of his hand. Then she met his gaze again and smiled. "I haven't been to a lot of places that have a burger like this on their menu, so you're definitely not the only one who hasn't had anything like it before."

After another bite of her own burger, she said, "I kind of want to come back here every week until I've tried everything on their menu."

"I would come here again with you," he said, and it came without thinking. He paused a moment, still smiling, turning the thought over in his mind. It wasn't just coming here. He could do that on his own.

It was coming with her.

"I wonder what else you know about that I don't."

"Then we'll do that," Lily said easily, because she liked Delta. Being around him was both interesting and easy, something she was drawn to.

Pausing to take a sip of her beer, she grinned a little and lifted her shoulders in a shrug. "I guess we'll just have to wait and see what else I know," she teased. "It'll be a surprise."

"I'm not sure how I feel about surprises." But he was at least partially kidding. The truth was that surprises were welcome, if they were more of what tonight had been.

"So I am wondering," he said, after another bite of burger. "Why did you start dancing? What do you like about it?"

"At first it was just the class I took as a kid," she answered. "I begged my parents to put me in ballet because a girl at my school was in ballet classes and I was jealous."

She took another bite of her burger, considering when that had changed. "I knew I was having fun, but I don't remember really loving it until I was twelve and we started going en pointe."

For a moment he had to fight down jealousy, sudden and unexpected. A childhood, one that she remembered. He had no such thing, hadn't even really thought about it until recently. Hadn't assumed it mattered. But now he had Eleanor, and her childhood had been stolen from her, and he didn't know if he could ever do anything to make any of that right.

But there wasn't anything to be done about it.

"What is en pointe?" He had heard her use the term, thought he actually knew what it meant somewhere, but the meaning wasn't coming to him.