dutch & d'av [ modern au ]

[killswitcher]

On the list of places D'avin Jaqobis wants to be today - or any day, for that matter - court-ordered support group is somewhere really close to the bottom, narrowly beating the DMV but not quite having a root canal. Of course, he hasn't wanted to be here the last four weeks either, but that's what it takes to stay out of jail for his involvement in that bar fight last month. He's just lucky no one died.

So he attends. Dutifully. Drinks bad coffee and listens to other survivors (not all vets; apparently PTSD comes in a variety of nasty flavors) share, avoids doing the same himself. Eventually someone is going to make him pony up, but he's managed to fly mostly under the radar so far, an aspect of these meetings which is about to crash and burn in rather spectacular fashion. He gets there early one week (Thursday nights, 6-8 PM in the local VFW), gets half distracted from his shitty coffee by the equally shitty vending machine, and by the time he's paying attention to it again (armed with Snickers), said shitty coffee is even worse by virtue of how it's gone cold.

This is, naturally, where The Event happens. Inasmuch as he's going to throw it out when he manages to narrowly avoid crashing headlong into a much smaller person--who, he registers dimly, he's seen in group before; she doesn't share either, meaning D'avin would like her even if she weren't so pretty it seems like a genuine affront to science. Near collision aside, his half full coffee cup doesn't manage quite the same feat, meaning they both end up splashed with it.

"Shit," will be the first word D'av ever says to Dutch, "my bad, sorry, let me uh--" napkins, right, there are some on the dinky little snack table; he ......manages somehow to stop himself before he dries daubing like, at her chest. So. You know, hi.

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[periastera]

"No, I think I'll pass on letting you, uh," says the matchstick high fireball who puts her hand up to take the napkins from him before he embarssess her, himself, and everyone watching them (which is currently roughly four people or so). Her accent is British, clipped, and she's sighing even as she pads at her sweater with thin fingers and his napkins, sighing just a little.

The fifth person has noticed and the room is hushed and she wants to run or scream or do something ridiculous but she isn't supposed to, at the very least not here, so instead her lips press into this thin line as she plucks a wallet from the bag at her side and opens it up.

There's money, and cards, and several condoms, but also those little spot cleaning fabric wipes that are very useful. She pulls out two, and hands him one. "We might as well sit."

[killswitcher]

D'avin manages not to "uh," again, but it's a near thing. He has no particular opinion on the contents of her wallet, other than to also find the little spot cleaning fabric wipes useful, because it's the Year of Our Trees Whatever Year It Is, everyone can have whatever sex they want to be having.

So. He sits, eyes downcast as he sponges coffee off of his t-shirt; it's black, so it barely matters, but at least this way it won't dry sticky and gross. "Sorry, again," he manages, then laughs a little at himself. At least he makes self-deprecation look good. Hopefully. "This really wasn't how I wanted to introduce myself."

[periastera]

"We'll call it a recalibration, then. Like a mulligan but with less impromptu weaponry." Two of the people watching them have started their own conversations elsewhere as everyone starts in towards the chairs and Dutch gives D'avin a once over with a slow grin.

"I'd make a joke about trees growing strong on those Telen farmlands, but we don't have enough time. You'll have to use your imagination." She leaves him with that and turns towards the rest of the group just as the moderator asks them to drag everything into a loose circle.

The woman makes eye contact and Dutch squares her shoulders, sticking her chin up just a little bit. "And I'd introduce myself, but I'd hate to say the same thing twice."

[killswitcher]

"Your name is 'impromptu weaponry?'" .....D'avin somehow summons up from the depths of really, really stupid jokes. He still managed a joke! Under pressure! There's a time crunch and he just spilled coffee on her!

Also, in a manner somehow complimentary, he thinks as a name, unwieldy though it might be, it would sort of suit her. And he knows a thing or two about fighting with whatever is at hand. Anyway, because he did actually realize the moderator's closing in means Dutch is going to introduce herself, he leans in, like they're co-conspirators in some attempt to hide as much of themselves from this enterprise as possible. Which is not at all the way it's supposed to be used, but baby steps.

"I'm D'avin," he tells her, the stupid, stupid apostrophe silent, "I don't usually talk at these things."

As she will know, from how he like, never has.

[periastera]

"I've noticed." Oh. Oh no. He's cute and the jokes keep coming and so Dutch find herself smiling even after she'd meant to. Of course the group leader takes this to mean that Dutch is ready and interested in going first, so when everyone has settled she gives D'avin a tilt of hear head and gets started.

"I'm Dutch." She gives a thin lipped smile. "I have complex PTSD which I suppose means that I am a special sort of fucked up. No, I'm not from here. No, Dutch is not short for Dutchess. Only some of my PTSD is combat related. And that's all I'm going to say."

That's it. She sits, she smirks, she says nothing else.

She does, on occasion, glace in D'avin's direction.

[killswitcher]

D'avin does his best to be encouraging without seeming like he's giving advice--they don't know each other at all, making that premature at best and preposterously presumptuous at worst. When the meeting finally wraps up, D'avin having heard just about none of it (which is a little out of character; usually he tries to be supportive by listening even if he has to have speech pried out of him with a crowbar), he lingers for a little while until almost everyone has cleared out, then kind of ...sidles into Dutch's vicinity again, fortunately without any dangerous liquids this time.

"So." Which. For a second seems like all he might actually get out, one hand rubbing the short cropped hair at the back of his neck. "Still D'avin. All my PTSD is combat related, making me just your average garden variety fucked up, I'm not from here either, and I was wondering if you'd like to have something uh, definitely non-coffee. Sometime."

....help.

[periastera]

"Well it takes all fucked-up kinds, doesn't it? Lucky us." She's got a hand on her hip and her head tilted just so, smirking only a little but feeling very pleased with herself. Tonight is not the first night she's noticed D'avin, and while she appreciates that he is apparently the silent in groups type she also appreciates that he doesn't appear to be an asshole.

He hasn't, for instance, make any derisive noises at the others when they talk (unlike a few choice pieces of work she could point out) and has waited until it's nearly empty and maybe it's a low fucking bar but Dutch has had A Life.

Low bars unmet and all.

She's tempted, real tempted, to drag this man by the collar of his shirt into the nearest bathroom stall and see what happens but...her therapist made her promise that she'd work on decisions like that. Sex in public places with people she barely knows and don't always know her name.

He knows her name, and they both know why they're here, and that's better than most.

"What are you doing now? Like, right now? Because it could be me and ice cream after, if you're interested."

[killswitcher]

Under other circumstances, this is where D'avin would throw out a stupid, stupid joke about possibly being lactose intolerant, but what actually comes out is, the ellipses standing in for a big-eyed pause here, is "............. I love ice cream."

That's. Not actually true, as a rule he's fairly indifferent to it, but as of now it just shot to his absolute favorite thing in the world. Despite that - or because of that - this is really where he should put them on pause and suggest maybe ice cream first? See where the night goes? Or see if they can stand each other at all, beyond what feels like magnetic attraction so inevitable the tide is inconstant by comparison.

His bar hasn't actually been set that low, except--that he keeps breaking things, or losing them, and this feels like a chance to maybe do neither. "I, uh. Nothing I can't cancel."

Holding his hand out like he's going to escort her to a fucking ball or something is just instinct. Romantic, unbelievably dorky instinct.

[periastera]

"Okay then." Dutch takes his hand because it's downright charming, to be perfectly honest and it's been a long while since she's felt charmed. Intrigued, certainly, and aroused for sure, but charmed is something new and would be unsettling in it's newness if she wasn't busy curling her fingers around his offered hand and following him out of the room and towards the door the building.

Dutch walks to these meetings because her head is usually such a mess after that she doesn't trust herself to focus on the road - to leave the VFW not feeling like her brain is a scrambled omelette of military and parental trauma is so refreshing that she has to tip her face towards the sky and laugh a little.

Of course, she doesn't let go of D'avin's hand; she does, however, twirl herself with it over her head once they've reached the attached parking lot. "We're going to have fun."

[killswitcher]

It genuinely takes D'avin an actual, literal second to realize his face kind of hurts because it's smiling broadly without any permission from him involved--she's just so effervescent, and his life doesn't contain much of that. All the shades of gray are by necessity, they're what allows him to wake up and keep breathing in and out; having some color interjected almost hurts, like heat on frostbitten fingers.

But he can't help liking it. "I should probably warn you I'm not great at Fun," he cautions, capital letter audible, as in the attached parking lot they hunt down his car (seriously old, but maintained so lovingly it's in great shape) and he holds the door for her, in a continuing vein of being a dork. "Is there someone you should call?"

Like. Because she's getting in a car with a guy she barely knows, who she met in support group for people whose behavior tends to be kind of erratic.

[periastera]

"Seriously?" She reaches up and squeezes his arm. "You look like you're built for it."

That bit of teasing over she slides into the passenger's seat, keeping her legs out of the car at his question and then fishing around for her phone.

The shutter doesn't make any noise but there's only so many ways to hold a cell phone while taking a photo of someone taller than you when you're standing and MUCH taller when you're not! "You even photograph well."

She sends the photo, along with a text, to her therapist's email. "Done! I live...six blocks east, one block south." Swinging her legs inside the car and grinning up at him.

[killswitcher]

D'avin snorts. "Okay, that, yeah, I do all right."

This in a tone of I am obviously being modest. "I just meant if you decided you wanted to go mini-golfing or something later."

Actual fact, though, if she wanted to go mini-golfing he would do it. He'd stand around looking like an idiot until he actually got into it, and then become horrifically competitive, but he'd do it.

Anyway, his lovingly maintained but really old car that is ...idk, a Mustang, the management decided spontaneously, because look at this guy, he definitely drives a car Like That, is way too really old to have a GPS, so it takes him a second to work out in his head where that means she lives. "Wait, is it over a bar?"

A bar he has actually been to! If that's the case. In fact a bar he has been to after this very support group, because sometimes after a lot of not sharing, a person really needs a beer. Or eight.

[periastera]

"It is, in fact." A bar she was pretty sure she'd seen him in, at least once before, because him driving there to drink is faster than her walking there to...drink in the privacy of her own apartment, but approaching a guy from your group therapy at a bar was just too much like normal for Dutch. Even if it was neighborhood watering hole she lived above.

So she hadn't. Which was probably best.

Still, she's caught up the rest of the ride tracing her finger along his arm while making a short mental list of things the could do after, since apparently 'minigolf' was on the board as was 'ice cream' even though 'curl up and watch a movie until round two' was pretty high up there. Maybe even 'get food' if either of them felt like clothes in the aftermath.

The entrance to the apartments are off to the side of the entrance to the bar, Dutch digging her keys out and holding his hand the entire way up the stairs, leading him down the hallway and pulling him down for a kiss even as she unlocks her front door behind her.

Grabbing fistfuls of his shirt Dutch kisses him openmouthed, pressing her tongue past his teeth as she finagles the door open at the same time, only breaking away and letting go to lock it behind them.

[killswitcher]

This is definitely not how he was expecting his evening to go, but if nothing else D'avin can pride himself on rolling with the punches - so to speak - ergo it's a second for him to regain his equilibrium, but then he's getting one hand all wrapped up in the long ropes of Dutch's hair and the other gripped just above the back of her knee, hitching her up to stand on his toes, basically. There are steel caps in those boots, plus she's (he suspects deceptively) a slender thing, he can take it.

He also suspects ice cream or any other kind of food, after this, let alone minigolf, is highly unlikely, sans what is in her fridge right now. Considering they barely made it past the front door before the dam broke, and he is moved to complain exactly not a single syllable. The edges of his teeth graze her tongue just testingly, more curious than aggressive, broad palm dragging up the back of her thigh and settling with warm locked tight around the slim circumference of her waist; he has, again, the thought that he could pick her up with no effort at all, but--also with hands all over each other he can tell how much muscle is under there, so--

It's probably good they met the way they did. At least he already knows she could absolutely kick his ass. Because that is like, ten thousand gallons of hot, thank you.

"Nice place you got here," he manages, between kisses; it's a joke because he definitely couldn't even say what color the wallpaper is right now.