Decision
Title: DecisionFandom: Kuroshitsuji AU: Mafia.
Author:
write_rewrite
Rating: PG-13.
Pairings: William/Ronald.
Warnings: None.
Notes: For hanakotoba_fic because I wanted to write things for people, and I finished hers first.
Summary: William has a decision to make.
William wasn't a pub-going man, and everyone knew this about him. When all the agents sidled off to home, or the pub, William stayed in his office and wrote out reports - requisition forms, special banking requests, expensed travel to other places. Grell had tried to get him to go, once, but two shots in and William was ready to leave.
Even he wasn't sure why he'd asked Ronald to a bar.
Sighing, William rubbed his hand over his jaw, and then over his eyes, tired and sticky from a hasty nap in the back of the taxi. The taxi-driver was crooning along to the radio - they were playing songs from the forties. Billie Holiday, it sounded like. It could've been Nina Simone, with the cheap radio's crackling, the warbling flat notes of the taxi driver's own voice; William didn't know. His music knowledged topped out during the 1830s.
The bar was just across the street. Blocky, angled into a corner, he saw the light come from it in a glow, like an outline. Men were drawn into those flames with such ease - he'd seen three or four go in already in the few minutes he'd been sitting here. Snow melted on the road, on the steps, on the lopsided sign with half the engraved title hidden.
A man stopped by the door and flicked up the brim of his hat out of his eyes. He wore a gray suit, at least a size too big for him, with the hem of his trousers soaked to the sides of his black shoes. From a pocket, he withdrew a packet of rolled cigarettes, stuck one between his teeth, lit it. The match fell into the snow and was buried. Ronald leaned against the wall, tucking his hands into his jacket-pockets.
To William's endless amusement, the first puff had him coughing disceetly into his hand, and putting out the cigarette. William struggled to hide his smile, leaning forwards a little on the torn leather seat.
"You leavin', buddy?" the taxi driver asked, and the momentary warmth that had seeped into his veins vanished again. His stomach started to flutter.
"Yes, thank you." Pulling out his wallet, he peeled off two or three bills from the worn leather, and leaned in to stuff them into the driver's hand. Then, dawdling as much as he could, he opened the taxi door and stepped out onto the street. Snow tided up over the tops of his shoes as the taxi sped down the road, took a corner on two wheels and disappeared.
Ronald saw him, standing alone there beneath a lamp-post, but he didn't approach, just waved. The cigarette vanished from his hand; the only smoke that left his mouth was breath, turned wispy and visible in the cold.
He was adorable - too-big suit and sagging jacket and messy blond hair crammed beneath his hat, those blue eyes a little sleepy and a little innocent; his mouth smiling widely. The first smiling criminal he'd met. The first criminal he'd met, William amended, he wanted to protect and listen to and understand - all big, romantic words, but the truth was that he didn't really know how to do any of it. Understanding, especially.
William crossed the road, now that it seemed abandoned and empty, trying not to slip on the icy tarmac. Ronald's eyes lingered on him like cigarette smoke in fabric, like a stain; twice, he considered turning around and leaving - it was too soon, it was too risky - but for some reason, he kept walking until he was standing beneath that lopsided sign, his shoes soaked through with slush, watching the way the light flickered on Ronald's ice-chafed cheeks and lips (both were red, so red), in those deeply blue eyes.
"... Didn't think you were going to make it. Uh..."
He heard his voice as though someone else was speaking, couldn't feel his lips move, "... No. I wanted to see you."
"I'm glad," Ronald said, and he believed him. The kid never lied.
For a few minutes, neither of them spoke. Ronald tapped out another cigarette, but he twisted it in his hands instead. Tobacco dribbled from the ends, staining his fingers with the scent. William couldn't think of a single word to say, either for or against that.
"... Will, I don't know what you want," the Mafioso had to speak first - William was staring at his own shoes like he'd never seen them before, ".. an' I ain't going to push. I just know I like you, you know? I like lotsa things about you, an' if you, you know. If you like me back, you come on in when you please. I dunno why you asked me here, but, uh... I figure we might as well figure this out."
The Mafioso stopped. He slipped off his jacket, and draped it over William's shoulders - it hung limply over him, like a cape, the sleeves stirring in the wind.
"When you've figured it out? I'm gonna be waitin' in there, okay?" Ronald smiled, one of those soft and impractically emotional smiles, and pushed open the door of the bar. There was a reaching out of warmth, of music, of smells (bar, salt, gin, wood, leather) and then it was gone; the door closed, and he stayed out in the cold.
To go after Ronald would be to throw away a career, his career. He couldn't keep his position as 'upholder of the law' if he went around carousing with criminals. He'd have to tender his resignation to the higher-ups; train another man to take his place. Maybe he'd get called in for questioning or interrogation; a man who caroused with criminals couldn't be trusted. Men had sold their country for less.
And he could end up like Mister Hamilton. That thought gripped him most. Sitting in his flat, he'd heard a click of the key. The last thing he'd hear would be the click of the key. The Clean-Up Crew they'd send wouldn't speak.
His head was spinning. Dizzily, William leaned back against the diamond-patterned window pane, and let his head drop back. The wind dashed snowflakes over his face - they broke wetly on his skin, chilling him to the bone, pushing dizziness back. The air stung when he breathed it in, cold as it was; it slipped like a flame down his throat.
The higher-ups wouldn't kill agents for no damn reason, he told himself, but Mister Hamilton...
Something crackled in the pockets when he curled his hands into fists, and he dug out the cigarette packet, Ronald's keys, a half-eaten roll of mints. There was a grubby receit from a gas-station in the right one, a handful of change in the other, a single, blunt-nosed bullet.
Calmly, he deposited everything back into one pocket, unwrapped the next sweet in line in the roll of mints, and popped it into his mouth. Grell swore by sugar, and he never worried - it was hopeless to try and imitate him, but maybe...
Ronald would tell him to do what he wanted.
What he wanted was to walk into that bar with him.
His feet wouldn't move on command.
If he walked into that bar, he'd be making a statement - that statement could get him killed. So, the choice slowed down to a simpler one: either he could walk into the bar and risk his life for a man who would either die, or get taken away from him, a criminal with a sugar coating (as all criminals had, as far as he knew) or he could keep his lonely apartment in London and the strange rituals Alan and Grell had, and he could live without fear that the higher-ups would execute him for not following orders.
The sweet was god-awfully sticky. William pushed it into his cheek, sucking sugar from it, watching the snowflacks slick up the grey sidewalk.
He could hear Ronald's voice in his head, glass clear - you've never seen me doin' anything wrong. As far as you know, I'm a tax collector.
That was true. He hadn't seen him doing anything wrong. He could play the idiot, if it came to it; cover up his tracks, not file reports. Just the thought of it made a dull pounding start up in William's head as he tried to imagine all the paperwork that would have to be avoided, all the things he'd have to do. The higher-ups weren't idiots, though. They'd see through too much missing work.
William bit down on the sweet, crunching it to gravel in his mouth, swallowing it down with a wince. It tasted like medicine, the thick and sickly-sweet kind they gave to children.
A man came out from the bar, swaying a little on his feet. William turned his head to look at him, caught a tilted grin, a wave, before he stumbled away unconcerned.
Maybe that was what broke the camel's back. Maybe it was the thought of his apartment - brown-panelled, dull and dark, empty - that made him turn towards the door and push it inwards, or the biting cold, the silence outside, the risk of staying alone and unprotected there. Whatever made him walk in, William couldn't tell. He didn't know what compelled him to keep walking to the bar, and settle on a leather stool much too high for him, so that he towered over all the other men.
He didn't know why he answered 'whiskey' when the bartender asked what he'd wanted.
Then Ronald settled against him, and that broad, gentle hand squeezed his knee below the table, and the 'why' no longer mattered.