Disclaimer: I own none of these folks. I make no profit from them. I am not now, nor have I ever been.

Story Notes: Set during Victoria's Secret; done for the LiveJournal community ds_snippets prompt of "hearing."

"I hope it's not too noisy for you to sleep," he says.

"Hmm?" she says. She's almost drifted off already, satisfied and tired and warm, for once.

"It's so loud here," he says. "Traffic and sirens and people yelling on the street--it was hard for me, at first."

And now she's awake. Fully awake because she's shivering with rage, looking at his pretty smiling face. He thinks he's being considerate. He thinks this might be LOUD. She bites the inside of her cheek until she can taste the blood, because that's the only way to keep from saying: the guards walked up and down the cellblock all night, Ben. Heavy tread and heavy nightsticks. And the other women in there with me, they had nightmares and fistfights and complete fucking breakdowns, and one night the woman in the next cell hung herself with her torn-up shirt, would you like to know what that sounded like? And on the other side of me was this teenager, Ben, she was the best, she said, "Where's my baby? Who got my baby?" over and over, all night long. For the last two years I was there.

"What's wrong?" he says, reaches out to stroke her cheek with a finger. She manages not to shudder. "Nothing," she says. "I'll sleep fine," and smiles at him.

Later on she tells herself that up until he said that stupid, stupid thing, she'd been thinking about--not going through with it. About just leaving all her careful plans undone, calling it even, letting him off the hook. Maybe even seeing if there was something there, with him.

She's never sure whether she's lying.