Chapter 27 - In the Heat of the Night...
Alex took a deep breath, the acrid air of the dance club stinging his nostrils. Cigarette smoke and dry ice vapors hung in the air like floating spirits, swirling into strange shapes as the lasers played across the walls. It was crowded, and Alex had a time making his way to the bar where Nicholas Howard sat boozing it up with a stunning red-head. He had come to the club alone, hoping to take advantage of the evening Mason had given everyone off before departure the next morning. He was surprised when he noticed Nicholas from across the room.
"Nick! The hell you doin' here?" Alex nearly screamed above the roar of the blaring techno. Nicholas eased himself around, obviously well on his way to being plastered.
"Hey Alex. Take a seat," Nicholas hollered back, motioning to an empty bar stool next to him. He got the bartender's attention and held up two fingers. The bartender nodded and disappeared into a line of waiting customers.
"So Mr. West... Why is it we keep running into each other whenever we try to get away from everyone?" Nicholas asked, lighting up a cigarette. Alex only smiled.
"I suppose we both have the same ideas when it comes to hiding from the rest of the world. I heard this place was dynamite, and that the drinks weren't too bad, either." Nicholas nodded as the bartender returned with two tall, slender glasses. The liquid inside was blue and translucent, changing colors as the lasers roved around the room in time to the music.
"They've got this special drink. Here... You gotta try it." Nicholas handed him one of the flutes, hoisting his own in salute. "Cheers." Alex watched as he downed the strange-colored liquor, his eyes shut tight. He lifted the glass, taking a quick shot.
"Holy fuck, what is this stuff?" he screeched, the drink nearly burning a hole in his gut. "It tastes like gasoline!"
"Ha!" Nicholas laughed, his face softening as he dragged on the cigarette. "I don't know what the hell is in it, but it gets you drunk fast. And the women love it," he smirked, jerking a thumb towards the red-head he'd been talking to only moments before. Now she was dirty-dancing with an Italian guy in a glittering shirt a few feet from the bar.
Nicholas signaled the bartender, holding up two more fingers. Alex tried to protest, but Nicholas would hear none of it.
"Ahhh, let me buy the drinks. If we're going to continue accidentally hanging out with each other, at least let me pay for the booze!" For a moment, Nicholas caught himself. His fingers tingled slightly as he realized what he had said. Hanging out. He never hung out with anyone. No one ever hung out with him, for that matter. He was always too busy tending to Mason. He looked at Alex as he tried drinking another of the strange House Specials, smiling as he winced at the taste. Alex was one of the first people to have a drink with him for no good reason in a long time.
"I don't know how you can continue to drink this shit, Nick. It's like... radioactive or something," Alex hissed, his tongue feeling two sizes too big.
"You get used to it. And besides, I was so tired of being sober I would have settled for your average light beer," Nicholas replied, feeling the liquor working in his bloodstream. Soon he would be perfectly drunk, and that suited him just fine. You didn't have to face life when you were drunk. Or face your responsibilities.
"Say Nick, how about when all this business with Mason is over, we go and grab a couple of beers sometime," Alex suggested, sensing Nicholas' tentativeness. "We could make a whole night out of it. Booze, fried foods, maybe some women - " Alex stopped dead, and his eyes went large as saucers. Nicholas thought for a moment it might have been the liquor, but noticed him staring towards the right of the building. He turned to see what Alex was staring at, and his own eyes nearly bugged out of his head. There, in the right corner of the dance floor, was Lara Croft, grinding and swaying to an addictive techno song blaring over the speakers. She was surrounded by men, all of them trying their hand at claiming her as partner. But she was dancing with her eyes closed, seemingly oblivious to her surroundings. It was if she was purposefully losing herself in the music and the heat and the smoke.
"I'll be goddamned," gasped Alex, and Nicholas could only nod. She was dressed in a small, tight black dress that somehow managed to hang gracefully over her delicious curves. Her bronzed skin glistened with sweat beneath the artificial lights, and her hair hung down in a dazzling brown waterfall. She wore skin-tight boots that ran up right underneath her knees, zippers running seductively to the base of the shoes. Around her neck was a simple velvet choker adorned with a strange metal cross that had the Roman numeral XII stamped on it. Alex knew it was from her days with Special Forces. She was the twelfth person to be accepted at the academy, and so her brothers in arms had affectionately nicknamed her.
"I was under the impression she didn't do much of this sort of thing," Nicholas spoke up, his eyes turning glassy from the alcohol.
"I was under the same impression, Nick. Looks like she has everyone fooled." With that, he stood up, making his way towards her. Nicholas only looked after him, wondering with drunken sincerity what the two men had been talking about a moment before.
Alex sidled up to where a mass of men had congregated around Lara, easing his way past them. Fortunately, he was a good deal more sober than they, and it proved easy enough in the end. He glided behind Lara, her frame casting shadows as the lasers flickered back and forth across the room. He could only watch her, breathlessly, for a moment as she continued to dance with no one in particular. She was like some dark spectre, moving to the reel of the heart-thumping techno music. She never opened her eyes. She only continued to dance, her skin changing colors with the myriad of lights. He tensed a moment, but steeled himself, and slipped his arms around her waist. He wasn't surprised to feel an ache in the palms of his hands, as though they desperately desired to feel her flesh beneath them. She started as he enclosed her gently, giving her room to shove him away. However, she only continued dancing, and he matched her step for step.
No words were said, and there was no need for them to be said. They continued dancing, slipping against each other like wild animals in a mating ritual. The air grew heavy with the heat of a hundred bodies, and the music continued to pump like an artery in the blackness. The lights roamed like beacons, searching out random faces and bodies and emotions. The smoke continued to swirl, and the dry ice vapors were released once more to cloud the atmosphere like a dream. And the dream inhabitants continued to move with each other, against each other, amongst each other like poetry in motion. The music stopped being music and became something more primal, like the racing of two lovers' hearts in the throes of passion. People stopped being people and took on shadowy forms like ghosts in the night. And all the while all Alex could register was the feel of Lara's skin against his own and the intoxicating mixture of her sweat and his. He moved with her in a rhythm he had not known existed, and he felt for a moment as though he were melded with every living thing on the planet. All of them alive and wild in that one moment of ecstasy.
And then his lips were crushing hers, drinking her in hungrily, as though he would burst. Her eyes shot open in surprise, but he only kissed her harder, feeling her resist beneath his grip. He clutched a hand to the back of her head, grabbing a handful of her hair and feeling it twist between his fingers like tendrils of silk. She grunted as he continued to kiss her forcefully, but it soon turned into a soft moan of pleasure and desire. He felt her hands grasp his sides, practically tearing at his thin shirt. He entertained visions of making deep, passionate love to her somewhere far away from the noise of the club, or the noise of their competition, and afterwards burying his face in that beautiful cascade of hair, and clutching her close as they lay naked.
He felt her lips melded against his, and how divine a feeling it was. Her lips were full and soft and as she snaked her arms around his neck, pulling him in closer so she could bite at his lower lip, he thought he'd die of asphyxiation. He couldn't breathe with her so near. He never could breathe when she was around, when she looked at him, when she said his name, when he caught something other than contempt in those deep brown eyes of hers. She was such a mystery, and yet so perfectly known to him. He felt as though he had never known so much or so little about a person in his life. For a moment, and yet what seemed like an eternity, he forgot all about the search for the Amulet of Immortality, and about his rivalry with Lara, and about the cable bill that was overdue, still sitting on his kitchen counter back home. He felt at once both stronger than ever he had known, and weaker than he ever thought possible.
And he realized then that he was in love with her.