She isn’t ever quite sure what provokes her to the point of smiling at him. He’s been claimed by a mess of ashes and beer bottles already, and she’ll never save him, but that’s no reason not to try.

Her words are usually reassuring, and he believes that she’s exactly who she says she is because she gives him no reason to think otherwise. She’s the only one to have ever called him ‘darling’, but somehow, he doesn’t mind it as much as he might have with someone else. 

“Listen, Clover—” His name isn’t Clover, it’s Clarence Hanover, but she likes the way ‘Clover’ stumbles out of her mouth and he’s not much for arguing. “Listen, darling, I was thinking, about the—”

His hand raises, silencing her. He’s not interested in hearing it, not when he can already feel it coiling through the hazy grime of the air, not when he can taste it and smell it and nearly reach out and grab it, not when she could do so many better things with that pretty little mouth than give him a headache.
“Kitten, we’ve been over it already,” he murmurs, though it’s something of a slur, and she catches the edge in his voice even as she crawls onto his lap. Saccharine and soft, her lips find his; he tastes like alcohol and smoke and his mouth begs ‘fixmefixmefixme’ against hers. 
Of course, he isn’t actually begging. He doesn’t beg. He barely even asks. But she sees what she thinks she ought to see, and he sees a number of character flaws it’s not worth the effort of pointing out.
He squeezes her ass, and she giggles into his mouth. It’s something easy for him, this, them. It’s not as though she’s stupid, she’s just simple, which is more tolerable; besides, the sex is alright, and he’s not about to try and fix something that ain’t broken.

She’s pressing her hips against his, and he wants a cigarette more than he wants her to continue dragging spit and lipgloss across his jaw (is that supposed to be romantic?), so he gives her shoulders a light shove and she (he doesn’t want romance, why is she being like this?) starts trailing down his bare chest (he’s got two shirts to his name, both crumpled on the floor) and he snorts derisively as he gropes around in his bedsheets for the little cardboard box.
“Do you love me, Clover?” she asks, and she’s on her knees and blinking up at him (her eyes are brown; he’s always preferred blue, why does he settle?) and for a second he wants to laugh at her, to say ‘no’ just for the reaction. 
He waits until he’s got a cigarette comfortably settled between his lips. “Yeah, sure. You seen my lighter?”

Wrong thing to say and he knows it— her fingers are frozen, hooked around the elastic of his boxers. He wonders if she’ll cry, but doesn’t care too much either way. “Clo-ver,” comes that stupid little whimper of hers, and he just knows she’s blinking back tears, but he’s found his lighter and is preoccupied for a second. Then—
“Babe, you know how I feel. Now, you gonna be a damn tease, or do I have to g—”
That’s better, he thinks, and almost smiles as the smoke hits his lungs.