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Amber Sweet is not accustomed to being the initiator in a relationship. Far from it; she constantly has to chase off people she isn't interested in, and it seems to her that everyone is always much more serious about her than she is about them. Perhaps it is karmetic, then, this not-thing with Graverobber. Strictly business, she tells herself, equivalent exchange, but she starts going down there when she isn't planning a procedure, and then she has sex with him when she doesn't need anything at all. He tosses her a vial, and she takes it, because she won't explain herself, not to him, and she is Amber Sweet, for fuck's sake, daughter of Rotti Largo, and it just wouldn't do to be falling in love with a man who sleeps in a Dumpster.
Not that she is.
Not that she believes in love, anyway.
But she's still there, in the tiny apartment she pays a pittance for in the worst part of town, sprawled across the mattress on the floor, with him, arching up into him, riding the glow and pretending it doesn't matter. There is something about him, not quite safety or comfort or any of those words she hardly knows the meaning of anyway, but maybe a completeness when he fills her or even just touches her, and she shies hard away from the very concept of love, because he's nothing more than her dealer, and he's surrounded by rabid whores who'd give him anything he asked for, and she's not like that.
Sometimes, afterwards, they talk, snatches of meaningless syllables. Small talk in the wee hours, just because she loves the sound, the feel of his voice, rumbling under her cheek. What he says isn't meant to be important, but she listens anyway, piecing random statements together into a patchwork quilt of his nameless history on the streets. He asks her questions, and seems surprised when her answers suggest an intellect and an interest beyond surgery and fashion. "There's no such thing as 'mere appearance,'" she says, not explaining but elaborating, "but it isn't the only thing that matters."
"You never struck me as the kind of girl who thought," he admits, stroking her hair.
"I think too much," she says. "Sometimes Z is the only thing that will make it stop."
Lately, just being with him is enough to still the constant cascade of thoughts. His heartbeat is like meditation, a practice that had never made sense before. It isn't love, isn't, can't be love, but it's something that she doesn't understand and can't explain, that there is no room for in her shallow designer life. She's never been one to dwell in fantasy - what need has Rotti Largo's daughter for dreaming, after all? -- but sometimes she pretends that she doesn't have to get up and go back. She pretends that this is home, this place with the two of them alone, and he is the only home she's ever felt and ever needed.
It bothers her; infuriates her, sometimes, these unacceptable feelings and this need to be there with him. Sometimes she takes it out on him, pushing him because she can. He always pushes back. He's not afraid of her, or her bodyguards; her power, position, and influence have no place in his world. In the alley, he is king, and she is just another scalpel slut who wants what he has to offer. She has never in her life been "just another" anything, and she hates herself, and him, for it.
She isn't even sure that he likes her, for all that he fucks her. Who wouldn't want what she has to offer? Even her brothers stare at her tits, her ass, Pavi with another woman's lower lip between his teeth and she's not sure if he wants to fuck her or just to be her. Luigi's rage at her is wrapped up in his desire; when she hits him in the balls, he always has an erection.
With Graverobber, every public encounter they have is a battle, a skirmish in the war where he's just another dealer and he doesn't matter, only the gun pressed against her thigh, her hip, her throat. She is afraid she is losing.
And then her father dies, and everything changes. The war is suddenly irrelevant; her priorities shift like they've been dropped off a mountain, and she suddenly doesn't have time for alleys or Zydrate or surgery or him. And while she thinks about him sometimes, on nights when she's feeling trapped by power and prestige, she tells herself that it's his feral freedom she's fantasizing about, and not the man himself. Because she is Amber Largo - the old name reclaimed with her father's legacy, with Luigi's death - and she doesn't need him, doesn't even want him.
She hopes one day she'll believe it.