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It's raining. Lilith watches from the window of the small apartment building as drops collect and slide down the glass. They gather, gain more mass, move faster, and splash on the windowsill, again, and again, and again. Some go faster than the others, and the ones near the top almost never seem to move.
It reminds her of the casino in the way everything does in its absence. The betting, the slow pace, the people who eventually spend so long trying to win big that they forget why they ever came in the first place. The pattern that repeats endlessly, again and again, ad nauseam. And yet, there are so many things that are different. Weather like this is still almost foreign to her. The casino's only windows were in the rooms of its operators: herself, Eve, and all the others that worked there, and the view was only ever of the city lights in the distance and the eternally dark night sky. There was never a need for anything else, after all.
Thunder booms, and the sound reverberates in Lilith's chest. Almost automatically, a hand goes to it, resting over where the sound had echoed from within. Two years of this, and it's still almost a new sensation every time. Two years, and it still feels like they've passed in the blink of an eye. Two years since she dared to let herself indulge as she'd insisted all the patrons of her casino do, and in something far less predictable than any sin.
It still scares her, sometimes. Lilith has never had any stakes in the games she'd play in the casino. Losing was simply never an option, and she's had more than a few patrons who'd tried to call her out on it. It had never mattered, though. In the end, as everyone does, they gave in, and simply became part of the background, simply because Lilith always held every card.
People become easy to study after a while. You find what sets them off by observing, and you appeal to whatever it is that they're weak to. Everyone has a vice; each person eventually falls victim to some sin, and her casino offered ample opportunities for any single one of them to take hold: the prideful become deluded, the greedy addicted, the envious tormented, the turbulent defeated, the lecherous obsessive, the wasteful weakened, and the lazy complacent.
Two years, and she still cannot fathom how Samael, somehow immune to each of the casino's throes, had managed to care so honestly for her. She doesn't know what she could possibly have done to draw him in. She wishes she did, because then it would be easier to know what it all means.
It still scares her: that one day, whatever it is that Samael saw in her and not the casino will fizzle and die, and she'll be left alone with nowhere to return, having bared her heart and left it to be ripped to shreds. It scares her that whatever it means to love Sammy, in whatever way she does, it comes as naturally as breathing, and having to stop will suffocate her.
Lilith glances over at the bedroom door. He'd gone to bed hours ago, needing to be ready to get back to work in the morning. Here, Lilith has no such obligations, so she sits, watching the rain against the window as the hour hand moves over the three on the clock in the living room.
"Miss Lilith?"
She looks up. The door's open, and Samael, tired and still so painfully cute, looks at her curiously as he rubs an eye.
"Sammy," she says, feeling the tides of emotion slowly ebb away with the softness of his voice. "You're awake?"
"I needed some water," he just says, filling a glass in the kitchen, then another, which he offers to her as though habituated to it.
She nods as she accepts it, her hands curling around the cold glass as she takes a sip.
"I don't know how you can have cold water in this weather," Sammy says, chuckling softly. "It's already so chilly."
Lilith hums, shoulder lifting. "It's nice," she just says, resting her head on his shoulder as he sits next to her. "But you're nicer."
A little smile makes its way onto his face. "Aw, really? I think you're nicer, though."
"Absolutely not. You are."
"No, you! Really."
"Nuh uh."
"Yuh huh."
"Nuh— we're going to be here all night," she says, watching Sammy's smile widen as she relents. She really does love his smile.
"You've made me stay up much longer playing cards, you know."
"Cards are fun," Lilith objects.
"They are," Sammy agrees. "I'm surprised you're not tired of them."
Lilith shrugs. "It's a lot more fun when you're the one playing with me. You're always more competitive than I expect you to be."
"Awwwwh. You love me."
"I do." So much that it still scares her. So much that she can't believe just how vulnerable she allows herself to be in front of him. So much that despite all that, she continues to choose to love him.
"I love you, too."
Lilith stares at her glass, trying to pretend the words don't make her heart feel like thunder rang out again with the way it skips a beat. "Promise?"
"Of course! I super duper promise. Foreeever."
Lilith isn't quite sure what forever means anymore, but she hopes it means a lot to Samael. "I promise, too." She leans over to kiss him on the cheek. "Forever and always." When he blushes a little, her lips curl upwards. "You're so cute."
"Nooooo. You're cuter."
"Nuh uh."
"Yuh huh."
"Nuh uh."
"Yuh huh."
"We can't keep doing this."
"So I win?"
Lilith grins. "Nuh uh," she says, and kisses him.
Samael is definitely cuter.