[FE] Champagne and Guns II
Title: Champagne and Guns II
Character/Pairing: Sothe, Micaiah (Sothe/Micaiah)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: 1920s AU.
Notes: Written for 31_days. Still not very spoilery. Rushed like a crazy rushed thing, so it could definitely do with concrit. Also peppered with 20s slang.
There is a first part here.
By the time they arrive in front of the police station, Sothe hasn't ceased seething yet.
“This is your big idea?”
He jabs towards the building. Except for the bold letters on top of the pediment, you could mistake it for a club or a cinema or a newspaper. The lights are certainly bright enough that the confusion might be understandable. Except you're chancing a lot worse than getting your pocket picked in there. But no, it's not just any club, it's the clubhouse.
“This?”
“Yes,” Micaiah calmly answers before taking the dainty steps that separate her from the entrance of the fucking police station, god Micaiah what are you thinking.
Sothe fumes silently for a moment, wonders sarcastically if he should think himself lucky that at least they - and most especially she - haven't been drinking, contemplates either making a scene or putting his foot down, and ends up holding the door open to her.
Inside it's worse than his worst nightmares, it's full of cops and guys who got nailed and lawyers, all kinds of people Sothe wants as far from him as possible. The smoke and the noise, he's accustomed to. He lingers on the doorstep for a moment anyway, to take a much-needed gasp of fresh air before letting go of the door. He's not discounting the possibility that it might be his last free breath before a while.
Meanwhile, Micaiah navigates her way to the desk of a cop who looks like he's trying to complete some paperwork, but is being kept from it by an hypnotic cup of coffee. At first he doesn't look up at Micaiah when she bends forward and starts talking to him; at one point he seems surprised enough that he glances up, only for a second. Then he mechanically looks down, only to whip his gaze up again when the girl's appearance catches up with him. He stays slack-jawed for a moment, gawking at Micaiah.
Meters away, Sothe grits his teeth. The habitual anger he feels when men are ogling Micaiah like that - like she's some piece of meat - competes with the unease twisting in his stomach. It's not just a man, it's a cop, for all that he's paunchy and beady-eyed, and Micaiah's not just another looker. Digging into his knuckles, he can feel the cold metal of his gun. It doesn't do as much to reassure him as is usually the case. Trapped inside of a clubhouse there's only so much he could do.
He doesn't even know if Micaiah is armed.
The copper behind the desk isn't the only one checking her out. Calling every spotlight to her isn't something Micaiah means to do. It's just a whim of nature that society is uncannily fit to accommodate. The veils of smoke draping themselves dramatically around her, the heavy glimmer of her dark coat, the contrast of her white hair under the glittering black beads of her cap, the convenient arrangement of lights, it all conspires to make her the center of the scene.
Half the gangsters and more than half the cops are casting frequent glances her way. In the case of a couple men, the desk they're sitting at is close enough that they can probably see a hint of thigh under her frock, and their eyes are glued to her legs. One is behind the desk with a pen in his hands, the other's in front of the desk and in handcuffs.
Chances that none of the lot will recognize her description are quickly approaching absolute freezing zilch.
Sothe snorts, out of disgust with the world. Way to make his job easier, innit.
The cop Micaiah is talking to nods, stands, and replies something with an embarrassed smile directed at her. Once he's gone, Sothe joins Micaiah in waiting at the desk. With reluctance, his outfit being what it is - he's got the felt hat and the shiny pointy shoes, he's only missing the striped suit to complete the set - but he does. He'll feel less out of place by her side anyway.
“He's gone to find Chief Jarod,” she mutters. Her hands are clenched in front of her, the satin of her gloves taut.
“Jarod?” Sothe repeats blankly, as though he hasn't heard the name well.
He can't have. The din all around them, and the buzzing in his ears, it's distorted Micaiah's words.
That's the only way for what she said to make sense.
“Micaiah, Jarod?”
He forces his lips to move as little as possible. They're surrounded by cops - cops that are Jarod's men.
She stares straight in front of her. The beads dangling from her hat cast a glint into Sothe's eyes every time he tries to catch hers.
“The person you're gonna ask for help is Jarod? Micaiah, are you completely nuts?”
He could've gone on, after the first reaction. That was more disbelief than outrage. He had more than enough bad memories associated with that fucker to just keep 'em rolling. Oh, he could've kept on throwing them at Micaiah all night long. He's not sure why he'd do that, because that'd do nothing to get her mind off her crazy scheme once she coined it, she's like a thief that way, even if Sothe's convinced she hasn't stolen anything in her life that she didn't have to. He'd only work himself even more into an ing-bing. They don't need that.
They don't need a scene in Jarod's police station.
But damn, Sothe is so very tempted to throw one anyway.
“I'm doing this for Laura. To save her.” She whisks the wind out of his sails, and once she's unsettled him, she turns to appraise him. When he sees her eyes, Sothe remembers the first taste he had of liquor. “You'd rather I didn't?”
He wants to say yes; the affirmation is burning his lips. He wants to be forceful and confident and tell her that yes, he'd rather she gave up on Laura if the alternative is negotiating with Jarod, but he can't wring it out. He can never bring himself to lie to her.
He wishes he was enough of a bastard to be able to tell her to drop it and mean it. But he's just not.
“And she knows who I am and where to find me,” Micaiah finishes, but it's obvious already that he's given in to her. She adds the cold little fact merely to play along with his persona of a hardened mobster.
He capitulates. Even if he didn't want to he'd have no other choice than dropping the issue; the cop is coming back. Behind him a tank of a man, his pace slow and controlled, that Sothe recognizes as Jarod's second-in-command. A-something.
A-something's eyes fall on Micaiah; Sothe can't decipher his expression.
Shit, he thinks. Shit.
“Chief Jarod's expecting you in his office,” he says.
Micaiah nods; the man turns and starts trudging back toward the back of the police station where presumably Jarod has his office. Micaiah follows him and behind her, there he goes. He's nervous, highly aware of the spying glances the rest are sending their way. He can count three guns laying in plain view on their owners' desk, less than four inches away from their fingers, and the belt of a number of them are weighted down on the right.
Must be how rabbits feel when they're stupid enough to enter the predator's den and they only realize when the tunnel entrance's is blocked by shiny pointy teeth.
Only thing lacking here are the pointy teeth, and as A-thing knocks on “Chief Jarod”'s door - letters shining beautifully on the glass pane, someone's proud alright - Sothe can't shake the feeling that they're about to meet those very quickly indeed.
He tags along into the office, damn if he's gonna let her face that man alone.
Chief Jarod is lounging behind his desk, his hands crossed behind his head, swiveling languidly on his chair. The languid spinning of his chair comes to an halt when Micaiah and Sothe enter the office. His lips stretch into a grin. Teeth. Jarod's like a shark, hungry and happy and calculating. Sothe hates him.
His eyes zoom on Micaiah and he starts pretending there's no one else in the room and certainly no one worth his acknowledgment. But Sothe knows he's seen him, in the casual look he swept over before focusing on her. It's what Sothe would do.
“Ah, Micaiah.” Jarod's voice even sounds like a smirk. He's purring in his chair. Sothe's practically expecting him to lick his lips in delight.
“Chief Jarod.” She meets his gaze without flinching.
In that moment there is nothing Sothe wants more than going to stand between the two of them and better yet, take his heater out and empty it into Jarod's smug conk.
“Alder, you can leave us alone now,” Jarod says without breaking eye contact with Micaiah. She's stronger than he is, but the game's stacked in his favor.
Sothe doesn't bristle - he's been expecting it since he's known it's Jarod she's come to see - but more importantly, he doesn't move. He's not dusting out of this room until Micaiah tells him to.
“Care to tell your little doggie to scram out?”
Sothe's heels plant themselves into the ground. He doesn't glare at Jarod, he doesn't, even if Jarod's unconcerned tone makes him itch for something to stab him with - so much more satisfying than a quick pop, and then he'd twist. God, even the fucking letter opener on Jarod's desk would do the trick.
“Sothe.”
For a moment everyone in the office can smell the blood in the air, because who's fooling themselves that he's not packing heat and that Jarod isn't presently at the top of his bumping-off list?
He pivots on his heels, gets out the door again, and doesn't fucking slam his fist against the wall. The only noise breaking through the pulsations of his blood in his ears is the click when the door shuts.
Last thing Micaiah knows is looking weak in front of Jarod. And that's how Jarod would take arguing with an underling. He has no illusion as to how Jarod views him and frankly he couldn't care less. If he's gotta play the henchman to protect her, it's just fine.
Alder has gone back to his own desk. It's the one closest to Jarod's office, of course. Sothe's feet drag him in the direction of the mountain of a man.
Jarod's right-hand man looks briefly up from whatever he's pretending to be working on, and looks down again, without a word. His superiority to Sothe here is that it's Jarod's turf. Sothe's superiority to him is that he's free not to pretend he's doing something else than kick his heels.
Insolently, he pulls the empty chair in front of Alder's desk and proceeds to sprawl. His legs extended in front of him and crossed at the ankles, insolently, he lets his gaze drift along the room. Bizarrely the fact that Micaiah's ensconced in Jarod's office instills him with the subtle confidence that nothing bad will happen to him. Or else it irks him so much that he can't be bothered to give a fuck about the rest.
In the perfect loudness of the police station, they're waiting. Both maintaining the same silence. Companionable, practically. The right-hand men, neither liking what the boss is doing, both of them making it go as smooth as they can anyway. Sothe wonders if Alder, like him, is counting the seconds that it'd take him to draw his gun.
His attitude of bored nonchalance unchanged - heh, he tries - he forces himself back to the material world. He doesn't have anything better to do. Literally.
Except fantasying about killing Jarod messily, and that's not happening when Micaiah's counting on him to rescue Laura. Sothe feels his upper lip curling. Fucking cops.
There's one of them, not too far, who looks like he'd be a decent human being if not for the badge pinned to his garb. Must be the haggard, nonplussed air. It's a young one. He's easy to imagine working white-shirt in a department store, or blue overalls in a garage.
Sothe feels like shaking his head in pity, refrains out of common sense, and settles for wondering once more why anyone would choose to become a cop. It's a game Micaiah and he play sometimes. Why would anyone be someone else than Micaiah and Sothe? They often do the cop question. It's almost more like reciting than thinking about it, by now.
“Can't be the pay.” “Can't be the engaging work hours.” “Maybe the chicks? Dolls are supposed to dig uniforms, right?”
Right, Sothe thinks brusquely. He's not in a mood to play that game.
The hand of the clock over Alder's desk marks every minute that passes with a small jump. Sothe counts the seconds between the jumps. The first time, he counts too fast and the jump happens when he's at “seventy-three” already. The second time is better; only sixty-five. The third and fourth times are used to polish off the last imperfections, one at sixty-one, the other at fifty-eight. After that the jump falls precisely on the 'ecks' of his sixty.
He observes seventeen such jumps before the door lets out and Micaiah appears.
He's on his feet before her eyelids finished batting. Jarod is holding the door open, mockingly eyeing them. Lean, tall, dangerous and relaxed. His necktie is undone, each end wrinkled against his shirt.
Sothe catches a whiff of cigarette smoke when Micaiah goes past him and he falls in behind her. The corners of Jarod's lips are mocking mocking mocking him, Sothe ignores it and the probable look of complicity he exchanges with Alder.
It's only when they're in the street and Micaiah's steps are echoing steadily away that, in his pockets, his fingers uncurl.
In the end he's the one breaking the silence.
The cold is getting to be more than a simple inconvenience; it's gaining its own presence now, closing long fingers around his wrists, and then letting go to skip a few steps forward and exhale ice at him.
Micaiah's shoulders are hunched up and her chin pressed against her chest. Sothe is regretting he doesn't have a scarf to lend her. He's regretting even more not having the guts or the presence of mind to call Leo from the police station and tell him to give them a lift.
“So what happened?” He's trying to come off as distant and mellow. He has no illusions about his chances of pulling it off, but acting makes him feel better. Gives him something to do.
“He's going to take me to dinner tomorrow,” Micaiah says.
Sothe freezes.
“You what?” His mouth is very dry.
“I agreed to let him take me on a date,” she says. Different words, similar meaning.
“You agreed?”
Micaiah sends him a look. Her eyelashes are coated in frost, a second, gleaming mascara.
“If I go he'll release her, Sothe.”
The calm, reasonable tone leaves him gaping.
“I can't believe you!” he finally articulates once he can speak again. “Do you-- have you any idea of how easy it'd be for him to have you arrested if you go? And trying to bribe a cop, too? That's crazy! Do you remember how much you're worth?”
“He didn't get me arrested when we were inside,” she reminds him.
Sothe's lips feel like all the blood has deserted them.
“He's playing with you,” he snarls.
She turns away and starts walking again.
It infuriates him that she won't see such a glaring truth.
“He won't have me arrested, Sothe. First because it's not part of the negotiations, and second because if he does, you'll shoot him down.”
It's a tempting offer. It also reassures him of Micaiah's awareness of the situation. There are holes in her logic, though.
“I won't be able to be quick enough to do you any good,” he points out.
“He didn't tell me where he's taking me.” Micaiah pauses. “And I don't want you to follow us.”
Oh, us? Sothe's mind jumps to the pronoun. She and Jarod are an 'us', now? He refrains from commenting on the actual content of what she's saying. Like hell he's letting that happen.
“Sothe?”
She knows him too well.
“Yeah?” he grouches out.
She doesn't touch him when she answers, not even with the soft caress of her eyes.
“I don't want you there.”
That's not the end of it, of course. Micaiah and Sothe are as stubborn as one another. Over the course of the following day, the atmosphere only gets tenser. The others swap glances when they think Sothe can't see them. Eddie and Nolan have pulled out their entire weaponry, or so it seems, and are comfortably cleaning them up. Leo has taken the Flivver to the garage.
Micaiah spends the day poring over papers and scribbles, frowning deeply, and doesn't even abandon her office to have lunch.
Sothe brings her sandwiches and a buckload of coffee. He pretends to be looking through various titles on her shelves, but a few minutes drip by and she hasn't acknowledged his presence yet, so he leaves, slamming the door behind him. Then he spends thirty minutes listening for the moment she'll realize he has forgotten her sugar for her coffee and calls for it - or maybe gets out of her office to find it herself, and then forty-five waiting for when she realizes the coffee has grown cold. She doesn't.
Leo comes back from the garage car-less. To Eddie's bursting questions, he replies that it seems the problem is more severe than they'd thought. Sothe could've told you that. That car has just about reached the stage where the most sensible option is to put a horse in front of it.
Nico comes to see them after school, but Eddie's gobbled all the sweets without thinking about it and Nico says his grandma is still ticked off about his last report card, so she won't let him do his schoolwork with them, so the visit doesn't last long. Maybe Nico caught something was wrong, as well. Leo is annoyed at Eddie not keeping track of how many sweets he'd gulfed down and thus being unable to give some to Nico. Eddie is repeatedly apologetic.
Sothe doesn't wait to learn how the scene turns out; he just takes it on the heel and toe. The three fall silent behind him until the door's closed, and then Sothe can hear someone scolding in a low voice, but he doesn't care to listen.
He takes a few steps in the street, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. The cold is a breath of fresh air after being cooped up in there. After a while he gets back inside.
He doesn't know what Micaiah's working on, but he has a good guess. There's been no news on the Laura front. He doesn't know if he should be happy or not that she's planning for the eventuality that the thing with Jarod blows up in her face. Given that she's going to go through with it anyway, it mostly frustrates him.
Of all people, Jarod. Even that lip Naesala wouldn't be worse.
At half past five Micaiah gets out of the office. Wordlessly Sothe does the same. She says goodbye to everyone, calling each of their names; Sothe bids his goodbye with a nod.
“Bye Micaiah, bye Sothe,” the others chorus.
Micaiah's smile freezes slightly, Sothe glowers. She dispels the awkwardness with a soft laugh, says bye again, and leaves.
They walk side by side to the flat. It's four blocks away, so they generally leave the cars alone.
When they get home, Micaiah starts picking clothes. Sothe watches her from their room's door. She's thrown her coat on the bed and flung open the door to the wardrobe and he can see her flitting through the dresses, flashes of material they would only have been able to imagine when they were kids. She whips from one side of the wardrobe to another, crouches suddenly to spring upright a second later, her fingers flying from one garment to another.
She hasn't even started looking at shoes or hats yet, Sothe muses. Between the two of them, they've acquired a startling quantity of clothes over the past few years.
His gaze falls on the dressing table - not that it gets much use as a dressing-table, Micaiah got the thing because she liked the mirror. The tabletop is covered in the ten thousand or so bottles of perfumes and the phonograph they put on top.
Micaiah's always been the type to apply her make-up at the last possible minute, a flap of wings away from rushing through the door and down the stairs. Long sessions in front of her decorative dressing table are out of the question. Sothe is conflicted; on the one hand he really wouldn't like having to wait, but on the other hand it'd provide endlessly hot visions. He decides he likes better when she doesn't take her make-up off in the end, and in the morning she still wears the trails, blurred around her eyes and down her cheeks. That's hot, too.
Today she left her gun amidst the fanciful clutter of small glass bottles. Sothe wants to demand why, but that's not what comes out of his mouth.
“So you're going to do it.”
Her hands still; the rustling of fabric dies out.
She stands very straight, but doesn't sigh or tense - not that Sothe can see. It's the first time he's spoken to her since yesterday night.
“Yes,” she says simply.
She starts ruffling through the clothes again, as if the discussion was over. It probably is, at that. There's not much Sothe can add to that.
When she starts changing into the frock she's selected for her date, Sothe brusquely leaves the room. He seizes an old newspaper in the living room, slumps on the sofa, and tries to fool himself that he's going to read.
Except for the lamp next to him, it's all dark in the apartment. Night falls fast in winter, and neither Micaiah nor Sothe believes in turning on every light. Except for the muffled sounds of Micaiah getting ready in the room, it's all silent.
The night outside can't get any darker. He doesn't know what time it is. He has no idea how long he waits. He has no idea at what time Jarod is supposed to pick her up.
The closest weapon, Sothe thinks, is right under the coffee table. He toys with the idea of removing it and burying at as deep as he can in the kitchen's cupboards to avoid being tempted to shoot at Jarod. He doesn't. The image of Laura in jail shoots straight through his fantasies and, well, always better to have a gun on hand.
He won't stop her.
He doesn't go to answer the door when Jarod rings, he doesn't look up to see what Micaiah looks like when she leaves and she doesn't look back at him, and most of all, he forces himself to ignore Jarod.
After she's gone, he keeps waiting.
She comes home late.
Sothe is sitting in the same seat he was at the beginning of the evening, but the newspaper has slipped on the floor and he hasn't picked it up again.
She stills when she sees him, and for what seems like an eternity they look at one another without a word.
Her dress is rumpled under her coat. Her hair is disheveled under her cap. Her lipstick is gone.
She doesn't try to hide herself.
“I did what I had to do,” she says in the clearest, softest voice.
“I'm sorry,” she says in an even softer voice.
Slowly, she walks to him, and leans, and slips her fingers behind his neck. Her lips are cold against his. She tastes like alcohol and smells like cigarettes and other things.
“I'm sorry,” she whispers again.
Her breath is moist and hot, fanning against his skin, an irregular, brittle thing.
He kisses her back.
When she's closer to melting than breaking, he comforts her with his arms around her, and blindly she lets him guide her, climbing into his lap and clutching to him as if to a lifeline.
Dawn finds them that way, kissing each other as if they were only now remembering how to breathe.
Character/Pairing: Sothe, Micaiah (Sothe/Micaiah)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: 1920s AU.
Notes: Written for 31_days. Still not very spoilery. Rushed like a crazy rushed thing, so it could definitely do with concrit. Also peppered with 20s slang.
There is a first part here.
By the time they arrive in front of the police station, Sothe hasn't ceased seething yet.
“This is your big idea?”
He jabs towards the building. Except for the bold letters on top of the pediment, you could mistake it for a club or a cinema or a newspaper. The lights are certainly bright enough that the confusion might be understandable. Except you're chancing a lot worse than getting your pocket picked in there. But no, it's not just any club, it's the clubhouse.
“This?”
“Yes,” Micaiah calmly answers before taking the dainty steps that separate her from the entrance of the fucking police station, god Micaiah what are you thinking.
Sothe fumes silently for a moment, wonders sarcastically if he should think himself lucky that at least they - and most especially she - haven't been drinking, contemplates either making a scene or putting his foot down, and ends up holding the door open to her.
Inside it's worse than his worst nightmares, it's full of cops and guys who got nailed and lawyers, all kinds of people Sothe wants as far from him as possible. The smoke and the noise, he's accustomed to. He lingers on the doorstep for a moment anyway, to take a much-needed gasp of fresh air before letting go of the door. He's not discounting the possibility that it might be his last free breath before a while.
Meanwhile, Micaiah navigates her way to the desk of a cop who looks like he's trying to complete some paperwork, but is being kept from it by an hypnotic cup of coffee. At first he doesn't look up at Micaiah when she bends forward and starts talking to him; at one point he seems surprised enough that he glances up, only for a second. Then he mechanically looks down, only to whip his gaze up again when the girl's appearance catches up with him. He stays slack-jawed for a moment, gawking at Micaiah.
Meters away, Sothe grits his teeth. The habitual anger he feels when men are ogling Micaiah like that - like she's some piece of meat - competes with the unease twisting in his stomach. It's not just a man, it's a cop, for all that he's paunchy and beady-eyed, and Micaiah's not just another looker. Digging into his knuckles, he can feel the cold metal of his gun. It doesn't do as much to reassure him as is usually the case. Trapped inside of a clubhouse there's only so much he could do.
He doesn't even know if Micaiah is armed.
The copper behind the desk isn't the only one checking her out. Calling every spotlight to her isn't something Micaiah means to do. It's just a whim of nature that society is uncannily fit to accommodate. The veils of smoke draping themselves dramatically around her, the heavy glimmer of her dark coat, the contrast of her white hair under the glittering black beads of her cap, the convenient arrangement of lights, it all conspires to make her the center of the scene.
Half the gangsters and more than half the cops are casting frequent glances her way. In the case of a couple men, the desk they're sitting at is close enough that they can probably see a hint of thigh under her frock, and their eyes are glued to her legs. One is behind the desk with a pen in his hands, the other's in front of the desk and in handcuffs.
Chances that none of the lot will recognize her description are quickly approaching absolute freezing zilch.
Sothe snorts, out of disgust with the world. Way to make his job easier, innit.
The cop Micaiah is talking to nods, stands, and replies something with an embarrassed smile directed at her. Once he's gone, Sothe joins Micaiah in waiting at the desk. With reluctance, his outfit being what it is - he's got the felt hat and the shiny pointy shoes, he's only missing the striped suit to complete the set - but he does. He'll feel less out of place by her side anyway.
“He's gone to find Chief Jarod,” she mutters. Her hands are clenched in front of her, the satin of her gloves taut.
“Jarod?” Sothe repeats blankly, as though he hasn't heard the name well.
He can't have. The din all around them, and the buzzing in his ears, it's distorted Micaiah's words.
That's the only way for what she said to make sense.
“Micaiah, Jarod?”
He forces his lips to move as little as possible. They're surrounded by cops - cops that are Jarod's men.
She stares straight in front of her. The beads dangling from her hat cast a glint into Sothe's eyes every time he tries to catch hers.
“The person you're gonna ask for help is Jarod? Micaiah, are you completely nuts?”
He could've gone on, after the first reaction. That was more disbelief than outrage. He had more than enough bad memories associated with that fucker to just keep 'em rolling. Oh, he could've kept on throwing them at Micaiah all night long. He's not sure why he'd do that, because that'd do nothing to get her mind off her crazy scheme once she coined it, she's like a thief that way, even if Sothe's convinced she hasn't stolen anything in her life that she didn't have to. He'd only work himself even more into an ing-bing. They don't need that.
They don't need a scene in Jarod's police station.
But damn, Sothe is so very tempted to throw one anyway.
“I'm doing this for Laura. To save her.” She whisks the wind out of his sails, and once she's unsettled him, she turns to appraise him. When he sees her eyes, Sothe remembers the first taste he had of liquor. “You'd rather I didn't?”
He wants to say yes; the affirmation is burning his lips. He wants to be forceful and confident and tell her that yes, he'd rather she gave up on Laura if the alternative is negotiating with Jarod, but he can't wring it out. He can never bring himself to lie to her.
He wishes he was enough of a bastard to be able to tell her to drop it and mean it. But he's just not.
“And she knows who I am and where to find me,” Micaiah finishes, but it's obvious already that he's given in to her. She adds the cold little fact merely to play along with his persona of a hardened mobster.
He capitulates. Even if he didn't want to he'd have no other choice than dropping the issue; the cop is coming back. Behind him a tank of a man, his pace slow and controlled, that Sothe recognizes as Jarod's second-in-command. A-something.
A-something's eyes fall on Micaiah; Sothe can't decipher his expression.
Shit, he thinks. Shit.
“Chief Jarod's expecting you in his office,” he says.
Micaiah nods; the man turns and starts trudging back toward the back of the police station where presumably Jarod has his office. Micaiah follows him and behind her, there he goes. He's nervous, highly aware of the spying glances the rest are sending their way. He can count three guns laying in plain view on their owners' desk, less than four inches away from their fingers, and the belt of a number of them are weighted down on the right.
Must be how rabbits feel when they're stupid enough to enter the predator's den and they only realize when the tunnel entrance's is blocked by shiny pointy teeth.
Only thing lacking here are the pointy teeth, and as A-thing knocks on “Chief Jarod”'s door - letters shining beautifully on the glass pane, someone's proud alright - Sothe can't shake the feeling that they're about to meet those very quickly indeed.
He tags along into the office, damn if he's gonna let her face that man alone.
Chief Jarod is lounging behind his desk, his hands crossed behind his head, swiveling languidly on his chair. The languid spinning of his chair comes to an halt when Micaiah and Sothe enter the office. His lips stretch into a grin. Teeth. Jarod's like a shark, hungry and happy and calculating. Sothe hates him.
His eyes zoom on Micaiah and he starts pretending there's no one else in the room and certainly no one worth his acknowledgment. But Sothe knows he's seen him, in the casual look he swept over before focusing on her. It's what Sothe would do.
“Ah, Micaiah.” Jarod's voice even sounds like a smirk. He's purring in his chair. Sothe's practically expecting him to lick his lips in delight.
“Chief Jarod.” She meets his gaze without flinching.
In that moment there is nothing Sothe wants more than going to stand between the two of them and better yet, take his heater out and empty it into Jarod's smug conk.
“Alder, you can leave us alone now,” Jarod says without breaking eye contact with Micaiah. She's stronger than he is, but the game's stacked in his favor.
Sothe doesn't bristle - he's been expecting it since he's known it's Jarod she's come to see - but more importantly, he doesn't move. He's not dusting out of this room until Micaiah tells him to.
“Care to tell your little doggie to scram out?”
Sothe's heels plant themselves into the ground. He doesn't glare at Jarod, he doesn't, even if Jarod's unconcerned tone makes him itch for something to stab him with - so much more satisfying than a quick pop, and then he'd twist. God, even the fucking letter opener on Jarod's desk would do the trick.
“Sothe.”
For a moment everyone in the office can smell the blood in the air, because who's fooling themselves that he's not packing heat and that Jarod isn't presently at the top of his bumping-off list?
He pivots on his heels, gets out the door again, and doesn't fucking slam his fist against the wall. The only noise breaking through the pulsations of his blood in his ears is the click when the door shuts.
Last thing Micaiah knows is looking weak in front of Jarod. And that's how Jarod would take arguing with an underling. He has no illusion as to how Jarod views him and frankly he couldn't care less. If he's gotta play the henchman to protect her, it's just fine.
Alder has gone back to his own desk. It's the one closest to Jarod's office, of course. Sothe's feet drag him in the direction of the mountain of a man.
Jarod's right-hand man looks briefly up from whatever he's pretending to be working on, and looks down again, without a word. His superiority to Sothe here is that it's Jarod's turf. Sothe's superiority to him is that he's free not to pretend he's doing something else than kick his heels.
Insolently, he pulls the empty chair in front of Alder's desk and proceeds to sprawl. His legs extended in front of him and crossed at the ankles, insolently, he lets his gaze drift along the room. Bizarrely the fact that Micaiah's ensconced in Jarod's office instills him with the subtle confidence that nothing bad will happen to him. Or else it irks him so much that he can't be bothered to give a fuck about the rest.
In the perfect loudness of the police station, they're waiting. Both maintaining the same silence. Companionable, practically. The right-hand men, neither liking what the boss is doing, both of them making it go as smooth as they can anyway. Sothe wonders if Alder, like him, is counting the seconds that it'd take him to draw his gun.
His attitude of bored nonchalance unchanged - heh, he tries - he forces himself back to the material world. He doesn't have anything better to do. Literally.
Except fantasying about killing Jarod messily, and that's not happening when Micaiah's counting on him to rescue Laura. Sothe feels his upper lip curling. Fucking cops.
There's one of them, not too far, who looks like he'd be a decent human being if not for the badge pinned to his garb. Must be the haggard, nonplussed air. It's a young one. He's easy to imagine working white-shirt in a department store, or blue overalls in a garage.
Sothe feels like shaking his head in pity, refrains out of common sense, and settles for wondering once more why anyone would choose to become a cop. It's a game Micaiah and he play sometimes. Why would anyone be someone else than Micaiah and Sothe? They often do the cop question. It's almost more like reciting than thinking about it, by now.
“Can't be the pay.” “Can't be the engaging work hours.” “Maybe the chicks? Dolls are supposed to dig uniforms, right?”
Right, Sothe thinks brusquely. He's not in a mood to play that game.
The hand of the clock over Alder's desk marks every minute that passes with a small jump. Sothe counts the seconds between the jumps. The first time, he counts too fast and the jump happens when he's at “seventy-three” already. The second time is better; only sixty-five. The third and fourth times are used to polish off the last imperfections, one at sixty-one, the other at fifty-eight. After that the jump falls precisely on the 'ecks' of his sixty.
He observes seventeen such jumps before the door lets out and Micaiah appears.
He's on his feet before her eyelids finished batting. Jarod is holding the door open, mockingly eyeing them. Lean, tall, dangerous and relaxed. His necktie is undone, each end wrinkled against his shirt.
Sothe catches a whiff of cigarette smoke when Micaiah goes past him and he falls in behind her. The corners of Jarod's lips are mocking mocking mocking him, Sothe ignores it and the probable look of complicity he exchanges with Alder.
It's only when they're in the street and Micaiah's steps are echoing steadily away that, in his pockets, his fingers uncurl.
In the end he's the one breaking the silence.
The cold is getting to be more than a simple inconvenience; it's gaining its own presence now, closing long fingers around his wrists, and then letting go to skip a few steps forward and exhale ice at him.
Micaiah's shoulders are hunched up and her chin pressed against her chest. Sothe is regretting he doesn't have a scarf to lend her. He's regretting even more not having the guts or the presence of mind to call Leo from the police station and tell him to give them a lift.
“So what happened?” He's trying to come off as distant and mellow. He has no illusions about his chances of pulling it off, but acting makes him feel better. Gives him something to do.
“He's going to take me to dinner tomorrow,” Micaiah says.
Sothe freezes.
“You what?” His mouth is very dry.
“I agreed to let him take me on a date,” she says. Different words, similar meaning.
“You agreed?”
Micaiah sends him a look. Her eyelashes are coated in frost, a second, gleaming mascara.
“If I go he'll release her, Sothe.”
The calm, reasonable tone leaves him gaping.
“I can't believe you!” he finally articulates once he can speak again. “Do you-- have you any idea of how easy it'd be for him to have you arrested if you go? And trying to bribe a cop, too? That's crazy! Do you remember how much you're worth?”
“He didn't get me arrested when we were inside,” she reminds him.
Sothe's lips feel like all the blood has deserted them.
“He's playing with you,” he snarls.
She turns away and starts walking again.
It infuriates him that she won't see such a glaring truth.
“He won't have me arrested, Sothe. First because it's not part of the negotiations, and second because if he does, you'll shoot him down.”
It's a tempting offer. It also reassures him of Micaiah's awareness of the situation. There are holes in her logic, though.
“I won't be able to be quick enough to do you any good,” he points out.
“He didn't tell me where he's taking me.” Micaiah pauses. “And I don't want you to follow us.”
Oh, us? Sothe's mind jumps to the pronoun. She and Jarod are an 'us', now? He refrains from commenting on the actual content of what she's saying. Like hell he's letting that happen.
“Sothe?”
She knows him too well.
“Yeah?” he grouches out.
She doesn't touch him when she answers, not even with the soft caress of her eyes.
“I don't want you there.”
That's not the end of it, of course. Micaiah and Sothe are as stubborn as one another. Over the course of the following day, the atmosphere only gets tenser. The others swap glances when they think Sothe can't see them. Eddie and Nolan have pulled out their entire weaponry, or so it seems, and are comfortably cleaning them up. Leo has taken the Flivver to the garage.
Micaiah spends the day poring over papers and scribbles, frowning deeply, and doesn't even abandon her office to have lunch.
Sothe brings her sandwiches and a buckload of coffee. He pretends to be looking through various titles on her shelves, but a few minutes drip by and she hasn't acknowledged his presence yet, so he leaves, slamming the door behind him. Then he spends thirty minutes listening for the moment she'll realize he has forgotten her sugar for her coffee and calls for it - or maybe gets out of her office to find it herself, and then forty-five waiting for when she realizes the coffee has grown cold. She doesn't.
Leo comes back from the garage car-less. To Eddie's bursting questions, he replies that it seems the problem is more severe than they'd thought. Sothe could've told you that. That car has just about reached the stage where the most sensible option is to put a horse in front of it.
Nico comes to see them after school, but Eddie's gobbled all the sweets without thinking about it and Nico says his grandma is still ticked off about his last report card, so she won't let him do his schoolwork with them, so the visit doesn't last long. Maybe Nico caught something was wrong, as well. Leo is annoyed at Eddie not keeping track of how many sweets he'd gulfed down and thus being unable to give some to Nico. Eddie is repeatedly apologetic.
Sothe doesn't wait to learn how the scene turns out; he just takes it on the heel and toe. The three fall silent behind him until the door's closed, and then Sothe can hear someone scolding in a low voice, but he doesn't care to listen.
He takes a few steps in the street, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. The cold is a breath of fresh air after being cooped up in there. After a while he gets back inside.
He doesn't know what Micaiah's working on, but he has a good guess. There's been no news on the Laura front. He doesn't know if he should be happy or not that she's planning for the eventuality that the thing with Jarod blows up in her face. Given that she's going to go through with it anyway, it mostly frustrates him.
Of all people, Jarod. Even that lip Naesala wouldn't be worse.
At half past five Micaiah gets out of the office. Wordlessly Sothe does the same. She says goodbye to everyone, calling each of their names; Sothe bids his goodbye with a nod.
“Bye Micaiah, bye Sothe,” the others chorus.
Micaiah's smile freezes slightly, Sothe glowers. She dispels the awkwardness with a soft laugh, says bye again, and leaves.
They walk side by side to the flat. It's four blocks away, so they generally leave the cars alone.
When they get home, Micaiah starts picking clothes. Sothe watches her from their room's door. She's thrown her coat on the bed and flung open the door to the wardrobe and he can see her flitting through the dresses, flashes of material they would only have been able to imagine when they were kids. She whips from one side of the wardrobe to another, crouches suddenly to spring upright a second later, her fingers flying from one garment to another.
She hasn't even started looking at shoes or hats yet, Sothe muses. Between the two of them, they've acquired a startling quantity of clothes over the past few years.
His gaze falls on the dressing table - not that it gets much use as a dressing-table, Micaiah got the thing because she liked the mirror. The tabletop is covered in the ten thousand or so bottles of perfumes and the phonograph they put on top.
Micaiah's always been the type to apply her make-up at the last possible minute, a flap of wings away from rushing through the door and down the stairs. Long sessions in front of her decorative dressing table are out of the question. Sothe is conflicted; on the one hand he really wouldn't like having to wait, but on the other hand it'd provide endlessly hot visions. He decides he likes better when she doesn't take her make-up off in the end, and in the morning she still wears the trails, blurred around her eyes and down her cheeks. That's hot, too.
Today she left her gun amidst the fanciful clutter of small glass bottles. Sothe wants to demand why, but that's not what comes out of his mouth.
“So you're going to do it.”
Her hands still; the rustling of fabric dies out.
She stands very straight, but doesn't sigh or tense - not that Sothe can see. It's the first time he's spoken to her since yesterday night.
“Yes,” she says simply.
She starts ruffling through the clothes again, as if the discussion was over. It probably is, at that. There's not much Sothe can add to that.
When she starts changing into the frock she's selected for her date, Sothe brusquely leaves the room. He seizes an old newspaper in the living room, slumps on the sofa, and tries to fool himself that he's going to read.
Except for the lamp next to him, it's all dark in the apartment. Night falls fast in winter, and neither Micaiah nor Sothe believes in turning on every light. Except for the muffled sounds of Micaiah getting ready in the room, it's all silent.
The night outside can't get any darker. He doesn't know what time it is. He has no idea how long he waits. He has no idea at what time Jarod is supposed to pick her up.
The closest weapon, Sothe thinks, is right under the coffee table. He toys with the idea of removing it and burying at as deep as he can in the kitchen's cupboards to avoid being tempted to shoot at Jarod. He doesn't. The image of Laura in jail shoots straight through his fantasies and, well, always better to have a gun on hand.
He won't stop her.
He doesn't go to answer the door when Jarod rings, he doesn't look up to see what Micaiah looks like when she leaves and she doesn't look back at him, and most of all, he forces himself to ignore Jarod.
After she's gone, he keeps waiting.
She comes home late.
Sothe is sitting in the same seat he was at the beginning of the evening, but the newspaper has slipped on the floor and he hasn't picked it up again.
She stills when she sees him, and for what seems like an eternity they look at one another without a word.
Her dress is rumpled under her coat. Her hair is disheveled under her cap. Her lipstick is gone.
She doesn't try to hide herself.
“I did what I had to do,” she says in the clearest, softest voice.
“I'm sorry,” she says in an even softer voice.
Slowly, she walks to him, and leans, and slips her fingers behind his neck. Her lips are cold against his. She tastes like alcohol and smells like cigarettes and other things.
“I'm sorry,” she whispers again.
Her breath is moist and hot, fanning against his skin, an irregular, brittle thing.
He kisses her back.
When she's closer to melting than breaking, he comforts her with his arms around her, and blindly she lets him guide her, climbing into his lap and clutching to him as if to a lifeline.
Dawn finds them that way, kissing each other as if they were only now remembering how to breathe.