Work Text:
It starts with a simple question.
He’s leaning against the bar in a purple Norfolk jacket and trilby, sipping at his wine with calculated indifference. Of all the patrons, he’s the only one that makes an impression, long-haired and dressed like he walked out of a twenties movie not five minutes prior, and he looks to her and quirks an eyebrow. She doesn’t think he walks over to her, nor does she remember going to him, but in a swirl of smoke and smooth jazz, the two of them stand together at the bar, set off from the others.
“Now, are you military or police?” he asks, thin lips set in a fox’s grin. “I’ll bet law enforcement—your hair’s a bit long for the military, isn’t it?”
Her hand rests on her hip, the familiar feel of a gun holster under her fingers. She doesn’t know if he’s dangerous or just trying to get a rise out of her; his grin gives nothing away.
“Relax,” he says, eyes following the movement in a flicker of amused gray. “It looks good on you.”
“Is this how you usually attempt to pick up women?” she asks, cheeks flushed.
“I can’t say this is the norm, no,” he replies with a casual shrug. “I could try the usual trite lines or I could offer to pay for alcohol, but you seem a bit too sharp to be taken in by such frivolities.”
He doffs his hat with just the right mix of sincerity and mockery that she cannot tell if she’s the butt of a joke or not. She smiles despite herself.
He’s charismatic and unpredictable and keeps her guessing. His interests span the streets and skies, and there isn’t a topic she touches on that he cannot offer a quip about. She doesn’t know where he lives even after a month crawls by; he’s seen her house more than she’ll admit, knows what the liquor cabinet is stocked with and knows her CD collection.
“Corvus Kilvas?” he asks, serious, teasing, and she cannot tell any more than she could the first day she met him, but it’s all right since he’s the perfect gentleman and the quintessential bad boy without any legal problems.
He knows all of the quaint spots in the city, pubs that hide in back roads and little sandwich shops owned by a single family for three generations, all nestled between tattoo parlors and crooked convenience stores and liquor shops with burnt-out neon signs. She’s only seen the high life when she’s off the job, the steakhouses and designer stores, the places her father would have taken her, and she’s wide-eyed and surprised as the surly bartenders and dowdy waitresses alike know him by name. It’s a fascinating underground world and it’s enough that she forgets to ask how he knows where anything is in the first place.
It’s slightly less fascinating that she doesn’t know quite where he works, that he shrugs and smiles and says it’s just a family business that she wouldn’t know of. He’s a cleaner, he says with a conspiratorial wink, and when she asks whether he means clothes or houses, he only laughs.
“I like that,” he says, and although he hasn’t answered her question, she cannot imagine that a man as charming as he is really up to trouble.
She’s less convinced of that as she notices the hours he comes home. It never came to her attention when he stayed every night at his place, but with her clock striking one in the morning and him only just coming in, smelling of smoke and alcohol and blue-collar life, she isn’t sure what to think. He’s honest enough, and always so apologetic—just a game of cards that ran long, he says, a friend that needed help, work running late. The words come without the slightest bit of hesitance, and he kisses her so tenderly and pulls her to him and they sleep tangled up like animals in winter.
He’s the life of the party whenever she brings him around her friends, able to entertain anyone. She’s proud at first as he dances like a professional, as he sings and plays the guitar and can do all manner of street magic. He steals the spotlight no matter where he goes with an effortless grace, and the only things that beat his myriad skills are his stories.
“Did that really happen?” she asks as he discusses his stint as a circus performer, a panhandler, a pilot, a cat burglar, a member of the army reserves.
“Does it really matter?” he replies in the same fashion that he answers everything else, breezy and carefree and cagey. It’s as if he stepped through a curtain of myth and gunpowder that her hands are too heavy to push aside.
She’s proud until it’s been months and she realizes she has no idea who he is. They’re sitting in her living room as he sips at her coffee and thumbs through a classic novel, and she’s at the computer and overcome with a long-standing curiosity.
“Dear,” she says, failing to mimic his way of polite mockery. “I was thinking I could pick you up with some of your work friends and go out for drinks tomorrow, if that would be all right? Or would it be better to get you from your apartment?”
He looks up over the pages that he isn’t really reading and his expression doesn’t change.
“I wouldn’t wish to inconvenience you,” he says, guessing the game she’s playing and playing it back just as hard. “I’ll meet you here, as usual.”
“Oh, no, it’s no trouble at all. Just give me a time and I’ll be over, okay?”
“I really would prefer to drive over. I like to go home and get changed, you see.”
“I can pick you up from there, then,” she says with a tight smile, ready to reveal her hand, four of a kind. “Don’t you trust me?”
“Of course,” he agrees, dropping his royal flush, “but Mother’s in town and she’s quite the negative opinion of anyone who isn’t Ilian, you must understand. Give me some time to broach this idea to her, and then you two can be introduced, all right?”
He sleeps on her couch that night, but it’s still a victory for him.
She doggedly tries to make him keep true to his promise, but he’s evasive, caught up in something that he insists is unavoidable and important. He’s just as sorry as he always is, and she can hear his frown through the phone, but she can’t shake the suspicion that he isn’t being honest.
She wonders if he has ever been.
He comes by nearly two weeks later, all sweet words and reasonable excuses. He’s dressed in a new tailored shirt, as he is more often than she can count, buying clothing on a salary that’s always seemed too high for a working-class man. Something in her suddenly snaps, and she pushes him back as he tries to kiss her.
“You said I would meet your mother,” she says, cheeks flushed. “You said I would see your place and meet your friends. Is that really going to happen?”
“Of course.”
“Forgive me if I do not believe you,” and there it is, laid out plain and simple.
“Don’t you trust me?” he asks, mocking her, asking for reassurance, and six months still isn’t enough for her to know which it is.
“I’m not sure,” she answers, and he nods like he expects it. He doesn’t try to touch her and doesn’t offer any condolences, face angular and serious.
“It appears we’ve reached an impasse, then,” he replies, and it doesn’t sound like a cliché coming from his lips.
“No,” she says, bold blue eyes and policewoman’s muscle. “It’s only an impasse if neither side will cede ground.”
“…I know,” he murmurs. “It’s a shame to end something as good as we’ve got going, but if those are the conditions, I’ll get my things,” he says simply, unfazed and untouched. “Are you sure you’re committed to this course of action?”
He’s standing in her doorway with his familiar purple Norfolk jacket, hands in his pockets. He looks like a man about to embark on an adventure, and he smiles sadly at her and quirks an eyebrow. She doesn’t budge from her position, nor he from his, and for a long moment they stand together in the foyer.
It ends with a simple question.