garrickc

[garrickc]

@frnoialles & Garrick —New York City, Brooklyn, 1954.

Sometimes it's better to be feared, than to ever be loved.

The air reeks of carcinogens and diesel. Burnt rubber bleeds black on the tarmac, shadowing the ground in tread-printed streaks. Purnell-Hooley did good in making the streets last a little longer. Ain't bad to run a track now that there's no cobblestones and dirt to contend with. God rest his soul.

It's all about the streets in this city. And if anyone went wandering between Copacobana on 51st and El Morocco on Broadway, there's undoubtedly something there to lure. Patiently waiting for the snatch.

Garrick waves exhaust smoke out of his face, then inhales from the dying end of a bone. Manhatten's come by to blow a little gas up Brooklyn's ass. They want Third Avenue wearing their badge, and it's currently in Sanguinous territory. For the commoners, better known as the Stingray's turf.

Third Avenue has Jackals spilling everywhere. They're wearing embroidered leather jackets and packing lumps in their pants. Manhattan aren't a subtle bunch of racketeers; they'd like to know who's wearing their colours. Jackal's stand out. But it's both Ray's and Jack's forming blockades at each end of the Avenue with Kaisers and Siatas.

"Hey, boss."

Garrick's head tilts towards the mechanic who'd been setting up the line. He can already tell from the tone that one of his own doesn't have good news. Nemo's scrubbing at oiled hands with a dirty rag, and shifting his gaze between Garrick and Frankie, like they might sting at any moment.

"We gotta problem." Nemo's a clown. They already know that. All cugine and nothing else. He takes his sweet time getting to the damn point. "Your broad is gonna botta de sango, if she keeps at it down there."

'Course she is. "Says she's looking for Ray, and I done told her that she don't wanna be lookin' for that kind of trouble—"

Garrick's hand is across Nemos's mouth like a strike, silencing him. He can feel Frankie's eyes in the side of his head. But she can comment about his broad later. Nemo's got a mouth that runs, and he better be careful with it if he wants to keep a tongue.

"Who else knows?"

"About your hoowah?" The derogatory has eyes black like a shark. It comes with all teeth and a sudden desire to feed.

"What did you call her?" It's rhetorical. Because Nemo can't answer when all his teeth crack on the sidewalk. It's a blunted kindness when Garrick's tone loses its playfulness. "Scram, Nemo." If he knows what's best for him, he knows to zip it.

Lara shouldn't be chasing a man in this street or giving an earful at the blockade, but he doesn't want her on any other. Leered at by the unsavoury who've all come out to see who might dominate Third Ave. He pushes off the flip-top he and Francoise are resting against and whirls on his sister in crime before she might get a word in edgeways; she talks more than he does.

"Don't look at me like that, Frankie." It's not her name, in these parts. But he's not all about calling her Scylla. The Rays can call her that all they like. "Ain't nothing bad about Lara."

Which is why she isn't perched with the greasers and the mob as it is. She's all fine-tuned and nice. A real mama's girl, and he's not a man mama's like to let their daughters dance with.

Brooklyns always got a small to it — asphalts got more blood in it, than the hospitals. With time, you got used to the hum of something wrong beneath your feet. It was no open ocean — there was no breeze in her hair and no tales of sirens and other evil sea creatures laced tired mouths and ears in the middle of the night. Stars looked better from the boat, too. Scattered across the dark sky, like prayers someone actually heard. Brooklyns never gonna know the beauty of a star laced sky. There was lipstick on her neck, a smudge of dark velvet she didn't bother to wipe away. Let it linger, let it stain like a bruise — no, better: a kiss from a woman who knew how to take what she wanted and didn't ask. Bold and beautiful, a wildfire in human skin. The kind of woman who didn't flinch when she looked into Frankie's eyes. Who didn't run when the teeth came out. Flames were still there flickering in dark hues — where all words ans thoughts turned into smoke. These days nothing stayed long on her mind. Nothing stuck. Except her. They didn't say it out loud. Not if they liked their tongues. But they all knew. The Rays, Garrick, stupid Nemo. Even The Jackals if they stared too long. They were thinking it — that she's gone soft. That that stupid smile on her face wasn't a threat. It was worse. The kind of smile you wear when you're in love. A cigarette hung loosely between full lips, while she watched Garrick pretend he's got patience. He didn't. Not really. Then Nemo opened his dumbass mouth. And Garrick's hand snapped across his face like a guillotine. He got what was coming for him. Frankie couldn't stop the vampire. She knew that look — he was about thirty seconds from painting the sidewalk with Nemo's face. Pretty sure that was a tooth that flew past and smacked her on the strappy heel. She glanced down at it, pearl-white and wet, and laughter tore from her, bright and bubbly and so out of place it almost sounded sweet. "Impulse control, peach." she cooed, smoke lacing every syllable. "Come on—we can’t start pulling out tongues every time someone’s being a little shit." But her grin said she wanted to.Hell, she might even help. How much has she really seen of Lara, anyway? Pretty face. Skirt a little too tight, like she wanted someone to notice. Frankie didn't mind the view, or the style. That human girl was a soft thing. A curious thing. The kind that didn't know what the world could do to her. She was waiting to be devoured, wasn't she? Dark side always did look sexy and mysterious but death wasn't all that. "You really like her, then, mm? She's a real firecracker." And then, with a little sugarcoat of mockery: "You told her yet? That your heart’s got no thump-thump, lovebug?"

Of course he hasn't. Because if he had, Lara would be standing beside him and she'd be speaking her own damn defenses. She is a firecracker, and she's all spark in the few months they've been gunpowder and matches. Frankie knows that the same way she understands Garrick's temprament when challenging the disrespect of his own. Ray or not, there isn't room for talking smack about those he wants to associate with. Lara Rivkin has a nice townhouse, with a nice family and even nicer prospects. She might not be like them, but they're no better or worse for it. Garrick knows the difference between equality and taking stands on other sides of the fence.

It's a grumble, "Did it look like I pulled out his tongue?" Nemo needs it for when he talks to the right people. He knows an engine like he knows himself in the mirror, knows just where to put his hand to get something ticking just right. His sister's seen him do worse than a shattered jaw on a sidewalk. There's bigger fish to fry out in Brooklyn than Nemo and his loose lips.

Garrick braces on the flip top, hands squeezing the edge of the door, nails digging into the soft interior: "And she doesn't need know squat. But that doesn't make her a hoowah, she's better than that."

And if she's at the blockade, he should probably go see her.

But he can hear the engines roaring behind him, readying on their marks. Third Avenue is at stake and the Rays need a driver. He can't skip because Garrick trusts two people; himself, and the woman next to him.

It's a trade-off of responsibilites. Frankie can have this one. She'll have them keep Third Ave. He knows she doesn't like to lose (and there's always hell to pay, when she does), but he's got a girl to go pluck off the sidelines.

"Get behind the wheel, hot shot." They've got time, but he needs her taking something a little seriously. Impulse control, doll. Yet Garrick can't help but know: "Isn't yours watching out here somewhere? How'd she take it?"

No thump-thump, and teeth sunken into pale flesh.

Garrick's imagined it a dozen times. The way he'd tell her. What she'd taste like, spread out beneath him. Would she scream, when she saw his fangs? Would she notice, if allowed too close the cold of his skin, and ask about the absence of breath? There's envy there, in amongst his wondering — Frankie's got her girl, whether she's compelled to her side or not, she knows. But even before the mob, or the turf war, there's a curse in his blood that's more ancient that the city. Perhaps even older than the sea. How can he tell a woman, with a life, that she enjoys time with the dead? How can he tell her that by doing so, she'll only end up the same. Buried, drowned, lifeless, in the fray of bloodshed.

He can't run The Stingrays, if his mind's on her. That's the bottom line.

And they need Third Avenue, to do business with Queens, and Manhattan.

Lara didn't belong in his world. There was no shiny throne for her to sit on. No fancy closet where she could leave her things, in the small two bedroom apartment of his life. Not even a drawer. She remembered saying it to Nemo, one night at the bar —half drunk, half honest: He was going to break her. A pretty, little thing like that? She'd crack like porcelain. Or she'd break him instead. Either way, it was going to be beautiful. Frankie, herself, had shoved beautiful gowns under the bed, to make room for leather pants and t-shirts twice her size. She couldn't wear satin to a street war. If Lara was going to be a part of Garrick's world, she better pick something she wouldn't cry about if it got stained. He had to make a decision. If he had not made one, yet. She liked to believe she'd be the first to know, if he did. Let her in, or lock her out — Frankie had made her choice, but her girl was a scoundrel. A liar, and a thief, and the kind of beautiful Frankie couldn't leave untouched. Especially at night, when the moon hung low in the sky and those blue eyes lit up like fireworks, at the blood on Frankie's lips. The keys felt hot in her palm. She flipped them once, twice— some kind of ritual. Her thumb brushed over the keychain: a rusted tag from that one night in Queens, when the cops were too slow and the getaway was clean. First time they ever figured they could build an empire from the wreckage. Brown gaze dropped on the car, and that seat — her kind of throne. Not solid gold, not velvet-lined. It didn’t glitter, didn’t gleam. It burned. Hot like coal. Not many could withstand the heat. She slid inside, one leg in, then the other — "Mine's waiting for me at home, when I'm out here, or gone late at night, getting bloody. You think Lara can do that?" Frankie didn't wait for an answer. One wasn't needed. "'Cause let me tell you something, peach— mine doesn't flinch at how still my heart is, when she lays down on my chest. She doesn't ask to know, more than I've told her. Just helps me undress and lights me a smoke. Now that's love." One hand draped over the wheel, the other tapping ash out the cracked window, as she leaned her back into the seat. "You trust me with the streets. Maybe you should trust her with the rest of you." a beat, "Go get your pretty girl, G." The engine revved, letting her feel the growl in her bones. She got a real hard-on proving people right.

The difference here, between their girls is that Garrick doesn't want Lara to be waiting up for him. He wants her beside him. She ain't a housewife, but she could be his missus. What he's not sure Frankie sees, is that he's seen what a woman in power can do, from pirates, sailors, queens, diplomats and what they're capable of when the door is closed to them. They'll kick the hinges off and bleed more than any man ever would. The distinction is that they'll fight for a cause with all their might, a man will expect to be given a reason to. Garrick will always even the playing field; Lara could belong beside him, as much as Frankie or Nemo.

Can Lara do bloody? He wants nothing more for her to have an ear to his chest, and find peace in the quiet. That's the cost, because it'll never beat. She'll have to meet him in the solace, or they'll never thrum in tandem.

And what does Frankie know about love?

(What does Garrick?)

They haven't got time to beat around the bush. She needs to go line up, and he has to make sure Lara isn't making trouble. (Though, undeniably, he'd like to see it)

It's not about trusting her. Garrick trusts she can keep her head on, when it gets fast. Thinks she knows a little more than she lets on about the type she brushes shoulders with. But to trust her with the truth?

"What if she ain't like you and me?"

What if she runs? Once he gives her a branch to cling onto. Maybe it's too soon, he's still learning what she's about. And she's learning Ray, like he hasn't got a history beyond the city. He can't let her go if she knows. She'll blow the entire operation. "Maybe the only street she's meant for is Wall Street, and I ain't touchin' those suits unless it's with my teeth."

Yet the idea gives him agita. Garrick steps back from the car, when Frankie gets it heated, and he takes it as his cue, backing up to let her have room to manuever round to the starting line.

He does have a girl to see.

"Skedaddle." a beat, "Knock 'em dead."

With Frankie, that's got a whole different meaning.

"Ain't nobody like you and me, sugar. That's the point." she laughed. And why the hell would he want someone like them anyway? That was the thing about her and Garrick — they were carved from the same crooked branch. No Lara, no Mary, no Sunday school sweetheart could wedge their way in between that. "But if she ain't built for this world, that don't meant she can't make a new one. Maybe she don't got fangs yet, but maybe she's got fire somewhere else. And you—" Frankie shot him a look over her shoulder, sharp enough to nick an artery, "—you ain't scared of fire, are you, G?" With a wink, she was gone. Tires kissing that asphalt hard, leaving dark trails of bruises behind.

END.

[garrickc]

He hasn't decided if there's mockery laced in her tone, or a tease. Her lingo clashes with his and he's plenty used to the modern century. Doesn't mean he realises the dying dialect of drunks is so widely interpreted by lone woman at gimmick-houses. His head dips when her foot knocks his softly under the table. Footsie? It's been a while, but it has a slowly sobering man laughing. He'll never know the warmth of moments like this, everything in his history is cold, from the poverty-stricken nights of frostbite, to the ocean and its icy depths and to the dead of his flesh. Hope is warm, and so is Romy III. Maybe, eventually, he might know that rumoured sunlight too.

Beneath that tricorne that casts shadow across her face, if he lets his eyes get heavier, she looks like a piece of the past.

Garrick thinks he could keep it up, actually. Because she makes it easy. Doesn't look at him like he's washed up fresh on the shore. Not entirely, anyway. He doesn't expect she knows his track record of things he likes, and how those are notorious for exploding in his face. Abandonment — more criminal than the slew of violent, nasty atrocities he has commited.

The food settles in the space between them, pausing them mid conversation, and Romy makes it her business to keep true to her word. A fry swordswoman, waving it around purposefully. Sobriety weans into him, and he props elbows on the table, leans forward two notches.

"You t'ink the parking meter will understand my language?" He teases, because she's getting along alright with his side of the chatter. Even if he doesn't think much of how out of touch his modernisms can be, sometimes. New York is a ghost he cannot shake, and before that, there are phantoms even older. "Maybe you'll 'ave to be the mediator." It'd be a sight, that's for sure.

You couldn't rattle me if you tried. Now that's a challenge an' a half if he did ever hear one. Garrick's laugh is soft, much like her tone, but there's a real truth behind how wrong she is. It shows in the gruff undertone of his amusement. It's not forced, or displaced. But he's either incredibly well versed at being inconspicuous, or she's invited by the danger.

"Now don't be sayin' things that provoke a challenge. Gets people in trouble."

That's the kindest warning he could issue. Garrick holds her gaze, searching the bright of hers. Bad news hadn't meant to dredge up dead things. But he supposes he invited that in; like how he can imagine getting to her door later tonight, and letting her invite him past her threshold. How fast that door would close, and she'd see that rough hands can be a variety of things.

"Them boring folk never put themselves outta their little boxes," Contained, restricted and every kind of restrained. It ain't something he can ever be. "That mean you got some stories? Nowt boring about you." a beat, where he allows a tongue to wag too long: "You're a knock out, doll." Maybe he's still a little loaded, so he drinks the water, as though it might bridge the gap between her seeing how fast liquor burns through a dead man's system.

"And on my honour, no duels." It's a promise he going to have to remember to keep. But, she peels away some of that fun, and jibe in favour of the rare glimmer of honesty. He can tell. Her face shifts, less pulled at the edges, not too many teeth in a smile that nearly reaches her eyes. A spark in them that's something troubling. Garrick's not a man who says it all the time. But he knows. And he's not subtle at hiding that. No need for those kind of secrets. "Canny believe you're asking me that when I'm drinking brine," he gestures to the water, as though it need transform into rum. It doesn't. But he doesn't shirk he query entirely, "Ever thought it ain't the place and your carrying it wit' you? Whatever it knows, maybe it'd be because you're wearing it. Though, ghosts do 'ave their ways of following us. They're talkers — you know tha', you're the angel convening with 'em." Garrick's lip ticks up in the corner, as he steals one of her fries and tosses it into his mouth.

It's ash, and dust. But he doesn't mind if that's the cost of her company.

Romy gave a soft, amused snort — the kind that came with a sideways smile and just a hint of disbelief. “You ‘gots no idea what that means,’ huh?” she echoed, like she was rolling his words between her teeth to test their texture. “Don’t worry, Garrick, I speak fluent cryptic drunk. Pretty sure it’s a dying dialect, but I’m a sucker for endangered languages.”

Her boot tapped gently against his again under the table — not a kick, more like a nudge, or maybe a reminder; still here, still listening, still watching him with that half-lidded look that said she noticed everything even when she pretended not to.

The compliment? The one about the light looking good on her? That earned him a pause — not long, but long enough. Her lips parted like she had a comeback queued up and then decided to let it hang in the air a second instead. Like maybe she wanted to hear how it sounded sitting between them. “…You know,” she said slowly, voice low but curling at the corners with something sly, “you keep that up and I might just start thinking you like me for more than my impeccable ability to sass ghosts and order fries without crying on them.”

And then—he had to go and say it.

Tears. Fries. Rattling her cage.

Romy blinked once, very deliberately, and looked down at the basket that had just landed in front of them like it might explode. “First of all,” she said, picking up a fry like she was issuing a challenge, “these fries are innocent and I’d never subject them to my emotional baggage. Second, if anyone’s crying tonight, it’s gonna be the parking meter after you insult its honor.”

She leaned forward on her elbows, face propped in her hands like she was halfway to teasing and halfway to reading him like tea leaves at the bottom of a whiskey glass. “And third,” she added, quieter now, “you couldn’t rattle me if you tried.”

A lie, probably. But she said it smooth, easy, like it was true. Like if she just spoke it with enough conviction, her bones might start believing it too.

Because she could feel it — in the way he leaned, in the look that passed through him like a storm still a few miles out. Something was brewing under the surface. Something old and sharp and sea-salted, full of ghosts and salt spray and things said under breath to keep them from becoming real. And Romy, well. She wasn’t a stranger to that kind of silence. So when he brushed it off —spot of bad news, like that didn’t mean he was carrying an entire graveyard in his chest — she didn’t push. Not really. She just tilted her head and smiled like she’d heard that before, from herself, in a mirror.

“Bad news has a way of chasing the interesting ones,” she said lightly, eyes flicking to his and then away, like she didn’t want to hold the truth too long. “You ever notice that? Real boring people never get haunted. It’s always the ones with stories that bleed at the edges.”

“Don’t worry, sailor, I’ll still get in the cab with you. Somebody’s gotta make sure you don’t end up challenging the city’s infrastructure to a duel.” Her grin was bright this time — full of sharp little teeth, but not the kind that bite. “Though if you do fight a parking meter, I’m filming it. For posterity. And blackmail.”

She picked up a fry, pointed it at him like a cigarette, and added, “But yeah. We got our own kind of fun. Salt and starch and existential dread. Real gourmet.”

Then she looked at him for a beat longer — really looked, past the jokes and the slouch and the slur that was fading with every breath — and her voice dipped, soft and unrushed. “You ever feel like this place knows too much about you, even when you’ve barely told it anything?” A beat. “Or maybe it’s just the fries talking.”

[garrickc]

First is indicative of a long spiel. Garrick isn't about the long speeches. It's very politician and usually laced with lies and regurgitated bull. Truth comes in short, crass remarks. Ain't nobody lying about that when the tongue moves faster than the mind. No forward thinking, just existing. She's aristocracy if he's ever known. It's bemusement, at best, glazed across his features. Tetanus, what does he have to worry about that? He's sure she's got all her shots, and expensive meds.

Garrick's had some of the best nights, soaked to the bone, beneath the stars.

"Ain't nobody out here but us," He's found that's been the case in this city. Bustling, but so many quiet evenings where the fields are shy of company. It hadn't been a threat either, despite the knowledge between them. She knows there's danger prowling beneath mud, and flesh reanimated. He pushes down that he's itchin' for something though, because he can contain the scoundrel a few moments longer. "I'm talkin' about the garlic. Go easy." It isn't going to save her, from another. She should know that, if she isn't smart enough to figure it by now.

He thinks she's going to be a snake, and rattle with him when she approaches. Cuts a path in the mud, in the dark. Fearless, and earning Garrick's raised brow and tip of his head. Sly, but restrained. Clawing for a name like it may save her. Well alright then.

"Yer mistake is thinking I belong in polite circles," a wink, because she's close enough to see the shift in his eyes in the abyss of the night. Absolved of colour, painted red for just a fraction. "But, I did dirty that nightdress of yours — di'nt I? Whad'it cost? A boat of —" Don't, Garrick. He snaps his tongue on his teeth, before he shades the rich and entitled any further.

I once fox-hunted with an Earl —

Garrick has met plenty of these cowgirls. And her assessment of him lighting a fire in his chest that's yet to have a real source. She's fuel, to an unknown ignition. There's plenty he could do here, with a lone individual, with her only ally in a stallion beside them. It needs a rider as its guide, like a rod or a rocket needs a driver.

He erases all distance completely, wet mud quiet beneath his boots as he leans in. She wants a secret; she wants him singing like Nat King Cole in '46 at the Paramount Theatre. Vocalising all the forgotten parts of worlds obliterated under discriminatory rule. There should be no rulers. But, whilst she is the perfect audience, she is not of his kind. A playful jab then, in her ear:

"— Which name you want? I got a lotta them."

It's not that she's making an unreasonable request. And he might enjoy showing the lady some apple picking tricks. Get the woman familiar with a bit of mud. He's presuming those delicate hands don't know danger, or a hard graft.

She doesn't even make the word vampire sound foul.

Plague-boy. "Ay, you drive a real good chili." Except she gets all the plunder. What's there for the rest of them? The little guys an' all that.

The real name, then.

"Garrick." Does that make him an Earl? He feckin' hopes not. "Tha's the name. Now if you get your panties shakin', we might make a timely ride the orchard before sunup."

There's a secret. The sun works, cowgirl.

He smiles, and gives her half an arms room again, tongue skirting along lips that form better strung out words. "Gentleman enough for you, doll?" He gestures his head towards the horse, "Or does Mikey boy gotta get his ten cents in?"

Andi tests the weight of Michelangelo’s head against her shoulder—steady, breathing, gloriously equine—and only then eyes the man still shaking mud out of his ears like a mongrel just discovering baths exist. “First,” she says, tone as crisp as shattered glass, “you give the worst country-dance invitations I’ve ever heard. ‘Cut a rug beneath the stars, covered in mud’? Darling, that’s not a waltz, that’s a tetanus advertisement.”

She rises all the way, nightdress now a mournful slip, dusts a smear of silt from the W-shaped crest stitched into the hem. “Second: treacle. Whatever vat of sweetness you’re muttering about, it isn’t on my inventory. Unless you’ve been raiding the cellar in your sleep?” Michelangelo snorts, as if equally intrigued—and offended at being left out of the sticky details.

A pivot of her boot grinds wet earth; Andi steps forward until the space between them is charged as a live wire. “Third—and do pay attention, Mr. Garlic Connoisseur—names. See, in polite circles, we trade them before bodily hurling one another into topsoil. You’ve already enjoyed the thriller ride. Now you owe me the courtesy.” She extends her hand, not to shake but to take, palm up, like a dealer demanding ante.

“And before you think to dodge: I once fox-hunted with an earl who swore he’d never surrender a secret. By dusk he was confessing nursery rhymes to the hounds. I’m very persuasive.” The threat unfurls sweetly; Michelangelo flicks an ear, ready.

She studies Garrick in moonlight—mud-striped cheekbones, grin too sharp for comfort, a stray clove seed caught on his lower lip. Not marble, not the pallid chill of Russian covens. Alive, or close enough to fake it well. Her pulse eases one notch. “Vampire hypothesis downgraded to ‘questionable rogue,’ ” she mutters, mostly to herself. “Garlic immunity remains unexplained; file for later.”

Then, softer: “Look, I’m not unsporting. Your name, six apples for the horse—and we call the ledger even. After that, you can try your luck at dancing, if your boots don’t leak swamp by the third step.”

She tilts her head, copper hair plastered like damp silk across one temple. “Your move, plague-boy. Give me a name, promise me those apples, and—who knows?—I might even let you saddle up for a moonlit ride beside Michelangelo. But if you spit clove on my land again, Michelangelo will demonstrate how ‘five more of those’ feels with both hind hooves.”

A beat, then a wicked crescent of a smile. “Trust me, he’s a better dancer than either of us.” She flips her hand over and shakes.

[garrickc]

She gets further away, backing up like he is just a ghost she'd long made peace with and despite that, no part of him — no good part of him, says he should leave. She can't exorcise him from her doorway, he's too deeply woven into her blood, into her memory. This can't be how they begin again. Straight to the ending. Garrick only wants to reach for her, drag her to him so she doesn't have to steady herself alone. But that's not for him to do anymore, she's had decades without his comfort; to learn to live an immortal life of her own volition.

Lara looks right at him and his world stops. He's never forgotten his infatuation turned something else, knows that her power, even mortal, had wrapped gentle chains around him. He'd allowed it. Balancing Brooklyn and Lara in each hand like he could shape a world two ways. Garrick knows why he loved — loves her, as violently as an unbeating heart can. It unfurls something dark, and possessive in his chest to hear her say it with such finality.

You were my everything. Time does not stop, even on account of them.

A soft smile offered back, crooked on his mouth: "Hope is a dangerous leverage," Garrick might have merely heard what he wished to hear in rumours. Followed the trail, because maybe it would lead to something. But he didn't know what he'd fine. Whoever Lara Rivkin is now, even if not his, he'd like to be some piece of her world. He doesn't even deserve that. Not after how everything went down.

And then her arms are around him, and Garrick doesn't need to think. He merely slides his arms underneath hers and around her chest, allows her perfume to rewrite his nostalgia. He can't help but chuckle. She can be pissed if it feels like this.

"I missed ya, too, Lara." It's as clear cut as he can make it, slithers of a gentleman gone. Garrick's hand lifts on her back, and strokes over her hair, softly. Treasuring the moments she'll let him have. She's given him more than he's ever given her. It's quieter, in the fragility of the moment: "I should'a been there." It'd been messy, and he still doesn't know where to start unravelling the lies. He's not perfect, and even if she were drawn to aa scoundrel then. He still is one, a greaser who does his hair a little less slick now. How can he let her go again? Garrick can hear voices, and noises of others outside the door, in the corridor. Imagines how volatile he'd be for a single peep outta them interrupting this. He'd always tried to keep Lara from seeing the unsavoury parts of the man, but that hadn't done squat in the end.

Garrick holds her, as close as she's comfortable, calloused hands working softly on a shoulder, and her hair. Memorising the details he tells himself he'd never have forgotten. "You still got room for me? Even if it ain't what we were..."

He didn't know she looked - and that's shocking to her. She'd made waves, but he had to have been running from something. All those sweet nothings, the ring on her finger -- He was always going to make her into this, and maybe she'd have loved to rule the underworld with him. She steps back and leans against her desk, taking breaths they both know she doesn't need in an attempt to center herself.

The movement of her face has made the scars ache, and she gently scratches at the perpetual healing itch from them, rubbing deft fingers over the patchwork of her neck. With a swallow, she looks at him - really allows herself to look.

Her eyes burn, but they don't water over - she'd cried too many tears over this man years and years ago. It's just latent memories and latent affection for someone she's tried to hate in the after of it all. She sniffs, follows his gaze around.

"Must have been a hell of a tip. Fuck's sake, of course I looked for you - I loved you. You were my everything." Someone else had taken that label of 'everything' now, despite the hardships of the last few months.

She allows herself more time in the space away from him, heartbeats that don't exist count the time. It's minutes before she steps away from the desk and closes the distance - this time to wrap her arms around his neck in a tight hug. "I'm so fucking pissed at you."

It feels nice to be here, to touch him again - even if the love she had for him has long since gone. He's a comfort, a reminder of a life that she could have had. "But I do miss you."

[garrickc]

A hand on his arm draws his attention left. An instinct not entirely dampened by rum. It stops him from rattling with the lad on the adjacent table, whose giving him a stink eye. Oh boy you've no idea. Garrick's friendly, til he ain't.

You've sunk so deep, darling.

"Well, darl." That's all he's got for that string of thought, actually. He's busy steadying his feet on the ground. He hasn't been a pirate in so long, it's a phrase he'd never use outside of his mind, either. Garrick thinks she's referring to the restaurant, with it's gimmick's and little monsters scrambling up fake rigging, and tugging on skull and crossbone flags. "You didn't mind giving a hand, did you?"

It's still lingering, equally cold fingers looped around his elbow. Alcohol stained lips curve into an amused smile. More dead. They're truly infection parasites. The smiles stretches into a thing half wry, half a little too honest. Garrick decides he might need to sit back down for another quarter of an hour, before he's able to fully surrender his table. He plants himself back on the picnic-like bench. "Thankin' you."

His ship? Is she pulling his leg?

"You work here or somethin'?"

Even though it has been years -- centuries -- since she'd seen him, Nisha would recognized Garrick anywhere. He'd been one of the men that she had tried to manipulate all of those years ago. Someone that she thought she'd be able to latch onto. Who would give her a new life, away from her sire. She hadn't given herself the greatest chance, though, having stowed away on his ship.

It turned out that Pirates really did not like strangers being on their ship. Especially ones that carried baggage. While Garrick hadn't known who she was at the time, his Captain did.

She could tell that he was drunk before he even tried to stand. She's seen him drunk before. Although, it seems as though his balance is off now that he's on land. "A Pirate who can't even stand on his own two feet." Nisha smirked as she took a step forward, grabbing ahold of his upper arm to steady him. "You've sunk so deep, darling."

Whether he recognized her or not didn't matter. It would be best if he didn't, honestly. Mehrzād was around. If he had a reason to believe that Nisha had stepped out on their marriage, even though it had been centuries ago, he'd go after the man that she'd done it with. Then she'd suffer more consequences than the ones he'd already put her through. As if on cue, the burning sensation on her forearm flared and she grimaced.

"Where's your ship?" Because even in the modern world, Nisha assumed that he was still living on one. Once a Pirate, always a Pirate. At least, that's what she believed.

[garrickc]

Garrick's intrigue rises. It'd been a shot in the dark to think she's seen iron bars. Imagines that she knows rotted bread, too. Probably a real bad time, in Loddersville, in fact. Closest he's been to the grime like that is the bilge, with shit and seawater. A vortex of utter despair. Maybe an NYPD station way back (oddly, cleaner), when he's wanting to make a roscoe squeal a little. He ain't saying it with the heavyweight tone that she is, though.

He can't decide if he can tell she's a little rough around the edges, or if she's having him on because he's buried in his cups.

Nightingale's got some tale, after all.

Not lobsters.

Lovers. Oh, he knows this story. Garrick leans back, listens to her woe spoken as a vendetta. He don't know much about the beef between witchfolk. It ain't his business, really. But he should make it a little, considering he's looking for the right one to give him some answers to a dying hope of knowing the sun again. He thinks back to what he's lost, timelessly, in life, in death, as recent as yesterday.

He considers what the world is, now. A place where the dead come back, shambling limbs and burning fires of things they can't get back.

"Seems like a fair trade," he supposes, an eye for an eye. There's an equality there that tickles Garrick's compass. He'll remember Ironwood, and make efforts to stay on this side of the table with this woman. It's only when he reaches for his cup that he remembers it's empty. Drat. Eyes fly back to her: "Many left?"

Though, talks of blood magic have his blurred vision narrowing.

"Tha's your shtick, ain't mine. But if you'd like to give some illuminations, I ain't shy," Garrick shuffles on the bench, because it's an ancient woe of all creatures like them, isn't it? He thinks so. "Can't give no firstborn for it though," a hand lazily gestures to himself, around his stomach as a joke. "Don't work," then a low chuckle, like something's suddenly funny, He rolls his eyes, stifling the laugh: "Well some of it do work but nuttin' like that." Ha.

His head tips back, to see the stars, hidden by the Rascal Jack's bright lights, and novelty glare. Now she's touching on wounds he ain't sure he wants poked.

"If it were summin' you could run from, that'd be easy as cake. This, you gotta hide from, don't 'cha?" He gives it a thought, maybe it is a bit of chase. Orbiting around and around. Hide and seek on a life and death level. "Long enough I ain't remember what shade it is after th' purple. Big. White flash? Hurts, like a heater up the pipes."

"I've my time there," she says, vaguely. In earthly means as a runaway piece of property and in metaphysical means as a killer of her fellow witches; it's four words dripping with the sauce of meaning, rich and thick and so biting with spice it might bore a hole in the tongue just to speak it.

"Well," she answers his question of mollusks. "I ate well."

A witch with knowledge of the earth and its bounty need never starve, and with abundance, need never be left wont either.

"Not so much lobsters as lovers," she speaks it with an ounce of poetry. "Simple as. They took from me more than one ought ever take from another and so here I am to do the same - they think me long dead, or long vanished; a myth, see you or a bedtime nasty meant to scare children out of ill humours. It's that latter thing I aim most to emulate. Ironwood coven, out of the Boston Colony, or thereabouts. I intend to kill them each and all - or... well, I suppose most. It all depends, doesn't it?"

She lets that rhetoric lie between them; Like as not it means nothing to a vampire, though Ironwood does have its holdings back east, or so she's been told.

Talk of her own woes ebbs, and she adjusts her position, drumming acrylic nails across the glaze and patina on the table. "I too've heard this, though I've no knowledge of it myself I do know some who might ought could teach it, though, I've simply not had the reason; I'd assume blood magic, though."

She narrows her eyes. "Is that why you're here? Running from the sun? How long's it been then, since you've seen that big hot thing above the clouds?"

[garrickc]

"Well, ghosts ain't bad company all the time," Garrick has enough of them, that on nights where the rum weighs him down into the gutter, he holds a solid conversation. He doesn't miss as many phantoms, as much they miss his sorry ass. Or at least, desire to cut off a piece of him.

He removes his hand from the man's wares, loosely folding his arms across his chest, and holds the cowboy's gaze.

"A character?" He blows out an unneeded breath, "Don't mind. I t'ink I'd just call you a gunslinger," a crooked smile, then a poke: "Don't worry lad, I'm waiting for the tumbleweed," The old west isn't his style, nor stomping ground. But he thinks they're playing because no longer is the attention on the old, beaten junk on the table. Just a low laugh, and a lotta confusion over this fella's intentions.

Rancher's kept the talkers. And it keeps Garrick chuckling.

"You know what." New plan. Fuck this business shit. "If you ain't making dough on it. Leave it 'ere. Someone'll 'ave it." A nod towards the array once again, "I'll hear a story over a firewater," he's sure he's seen a port liquor house nearby. Garrick points a finger at the man, from where they're folded. "You look'a lot like a sneaky pete kinda boy."

Wine. Cheap. A joke. "I'll getcha a brew"

Looked like the man was hunting for entertainment on a cloudy, nothing much Friday. Just another stranger picking through his old trinkets. Like Buck did, sometimes, though that ornery bastard wasn’t just anyone. Buck was family now, stuck through thick and thin, stubborn as hell. Colt’s face pulled somewhere between a smirk and a frown — the kind of look a man wore when he couldn’t tell if he was amused or halfway to annoyed. "Not worth it," a beat. "My workers needed the space, and I’d rather have a working farm than a barn full of ghosts."

The man had a nosy streak. Not in a bad way. Reminded Colt of the kids from earlier, just without the Irish chatter. And there was something off timeline about the way he talked. Not in a bad way either, like he’d stepped out of a grainy film reel. "You sound like the kinda fella my old man would’ve called a character," Smart mouth and a twinkle in the eye.

He let that hang in the dusty air, eyes drifting over the table of rusted iron and worn leather.

"Anyway, kept the ones that still talk back," he added. "Rest of it — just weight with a story." Gaze slid back, measuring the man now. "You lookin’ to carry some of that weight, or just killin’ time?"

[garrickc]

"I ain't ashamed to say I gots no idea what that means." It's a slurred, deep admittance but he can feel how quickly the rum and whiskey is wearing off. Abilities really do kill a buzz at the best of times. But he's not sure if blending into the bench is a good thing, and if this broad is getting her funs out of him. Garrick wouldn't mind if she is. Somebody has to. "I jus' know you canny be about the shadows, bet the light looks stellar on you, doll." He can't know that, nor will he get to know that without procuring what he's in the city for. He's made less progress on finding that, more efforts in drinking himself in a hole, hearing about lost loves and old friends.

Garrick isn't exactly on a clock, he knows. But, he's both fine to wait, and waited long enough. Nothing wrong with a bit of sightseeing in a new place, even if it's looking at a woman who's saving him from his face hitting the concrete floor. That'd be a real killer. She likes the dark? That's a dangerous thing to say to a man who exists in it.

Not best to tell him a strategy for coping is crying into the fries, either. Not when he's just ordered her some.

"You gonna break tears into these ones? I ain't meanin' to rattle yer cage." he attempts to straighten out his words, so she doesn't misinterpret them. He's worse with a brown-stained tongue, slightly better with sobriety. Always, a gangster with a violence in the heart for those oppressed.

He leans an elbow on the table, and sits sideways when he stares at her endless bouts of energy, and jokes. She's got a pain there, he realises. That beneath all the teasing, some of it is real. Garrick's lived too long, known too many people, bottling a realm that they believe will never see the light of day. He supposes, she's doing quite well with that, but instead she's airing it to unsavoury folk in the night.

So he plays, because that's the easy conversation: "If I ever get caught being responsible, shoot me dead. Ain't worth it no longer." She won't talk to a drunk, not beyond this level. But, her company is pleasant and he makes that obvious in the provocative shift in his tone, just a tad. Both boyish and ancient, too aware that there's a thousand or more ways these things go. "You gettin' in this cab with me, Romy the Third? Ay, I ain't that bad," a beat, to hold up his fingers, "Scouts honor, the parking meter would'a started it."

But when she gets digging at the real questions. Garrick only smiles, glances up at that tricorne on her head again, and lets the watery depths of his soul make rougher waves. His eyes awash with the dark of the underbelly of a stormy night, on the ocean, with nothing but the wind, and the shouts of crew going overboard.

He's close to lighting up the tilt sign, but he doesn't.

"Spot of bad news." Plays it off, despite the honesty. "Ain't nowt to worry about," he wavers it off. She can call him sailor, or cap'n, or whatever tickles her berries. He knows. There's more history in this town chasing him. It's wild for a place he's never made roots in before. He hadn't planned for ghosts to come and gut him raw.

Garrick winks at her, feeling oncoming sobriety, a wave at a time: "Got an angel ain't I? Slinging out water 'nd fries. We gots our own kind of fun."

Romy’s mouth curved, not quite a smirk, not quite a smile — something in between that said she heard that and was deciding how much trouble to make with it. “Too pretty for the dark?” she repeated, the words playful on her tongue but not dismissive. “Now that’s a bold claim for someone who’s actively blending into the bench like it owes him child support.” She stretched her legs out further under the table, boots nudging against his without apology. “Besides, I like the dark,” she added, rolling the plastic straw between her fingers. “Good lighting. Great acoustics for dramatic one-liners. And no one can see you cry into your fries, which I’m told is a very niche but valid coping strategy.”

When the server came and Garrick actually ordered, she blinked. Once. Twice. “Wow. He hydrates. Look at you go. Next thing you know you’ll be making responsible decisions and paying your taxes.”

She leaned back slightly, head tilting just enough to make the gold of her earrings catch the low light. “And yeah, angel of death. Tough gig, but someone’s gotta sass the damned on their way out. Management says I’m doing numbers.” A pause. “Though they did dock points last week for throwing a shoe at a ghost. Bit rude, apparently.”

But then — his question. You sure that’s all you want? The flirt behind it, the edge, the way he wasn’t just talking about fries anymore. Romy’s brows lifted, expression shifting like she’d caught the thread he was tugging at — but wasn’t quite ready to unravel the whole thing. Her shoulder hitched in a shrug, casual as anything, but her gaze stayed steady on him.

“Well,” she said, voice easy, “I figure someone’s gotta be sober enough to get you into a cab later, or at least stop you from challenging a parking meter to a duel.”

A beat, and then the grin came — not sharp, but not soft either. Somewhere in the middle. The place where concern could hide without making things too heavy.

She shifted, folding one leg under the other like she was settling in. “What got you drinking like that, hm?” The question was simple. Unadorned. But her tone left space for the answer — or not. “You don’t strike me as the just for fun type.”

[garrickc]

She's new to town, too. He's not always one for signs, or none of that woo-woo shit but he does get an ache in his knees when he thinks the bad weather's trying to tell them something. Maybe it's telling them both to put eggs in their shoes and beat it to another port. Garrick's still splashing off remnants of water from his jacket, and his cargos, shaking a hand through the strands of wet hair.

"Ain't kidding on that," It seemed like if they'd had storms like this before, they're bad at being prepped. Port cities usually have better responses, he'd know. He's rousted enough of them. He'd seen the city turn up crazy in a matter of hours. Maybe he had been too (crazy), considering that he's agreed to ol' Frank's request to kick it with the fats in their castle.

He glances back towards the door, both to check his exit and to remind himself that the clouds overhead had been as thick as firesmoke, blocking out the light. Garrick hadn't imagined that'd been the rumour when he'd come to Port Leiry, thought there would be a different version of the solution for daywalking.

"Yeah, how 'bout that?"

She doesn't appear like she cares that the dead have invaded the wolf camp. But she's got a funny way of talking about it. Garrick puffs out of a breath, as though offput by the idea of a small wooden box. "Coffins are fer' the Ivy Leaguer's," the fancy, the fuckin' rich. Ain't nobody lying in coffins, but he knows she's talking about the being-dead thing. But that's not the point he's making. He'd nail a coffin shut and drop it to the bottom of the ocean, dare he caught anybody snoozin'. "Unmarked graves, doll. That's all we gets."

Then, to settle the bite, "Nah, I'm screwin'. Ain't no coffin, or coffin-boats. Jus' wet." a beat, for him to nod his head towards her. "Don't you lot like the rain? These clouds confuse the moon or anything, you get bitey in the day now?" He hopes the fuck not.

Some guy happens in - he's not the first; they've left this little squat open to people who might need a port in the storm, as it were. It might be a little volatile, because werewolves is volatile, right, but past a few initial side-eyes when a few of the more diligent among them get that subtle subtext of death tugged out from under the wet asphalt and petrichor, most people don't take much notice. Millie passes it off and smacks her hands against her thighs to chase away any lingering chill and let the firepit's warmth creep in. It's probably a bad idea, burning shit inside, but its cold with the rain and its just a handful of tiny burn barrels; they can put them out if it gets weird.

"Not like this I don't think," she says shaking her head, curling up to watch the stone-age television, its flickering show glinting in her eyes. "Sure its been bad before though. I just moved here so I don't know."

She scrunches her nose up while she looks him over. "Sky so dark it's got everybody out to see, huh." She smiles under the question. She looks about, its really only other wolves around the fire. "Or'd your coffin turn into a boat. You got a coffin? Is that real?"

Is that an okay question? She doesn't know! He can ask her about wolf stuff if he's figured it out, she don't care.

[garrickc]

No regret. That's a loaded statement full of beans. She does have clarity in amongst her hindsight. She admits that to him, by way of confessing that there's things to be done differently. Garrick laughs quietly at the end of it. Not to insult, or disprove. Merely because she's a better person than he'll ever be. Garrick is the man who regrets sparing a single roscoe, or a Jackal. Mercy that had not served the bigger picture. There ain't nothing good about his thoughts on the matter, so he buries them, much like the sand that holds their secrets. Sinking them to the centre of the earth, where they'll burn.

If I had crossed a line, nothing meaningful would have changed.

Is that right? He can't put his finger on her. A tortured witch with a burden, or a naïve one learning life lessons too late. He stows away the knowledge of a compliment; she might not like him if she'd met him on another night. If he had not had his histories laid bare in his mind at seeing an old friend again, earlier. If he did not have the visions of the ocean, or the sand under his nails. If there were not just the two of them, and the stars to store their humilities. Maybe he'd let the rum speak for him, or the hunger. But that isn't a contrition.

He hadn't been aware he'd been lying to her. But her offended, yet sarcastic tone implies she's towing lines of a betrayal. It's not real, as much as he understands that she might not stop to make friendly conversation with the dark very often.

Garrick almost steps away prematurely at the rise in her pulse. But she stays, bravely, foolishly. So he does. Calloused hands that had no business on unblemished skin, humming with life.

"I like tha'. A snap," he'd never thought of it so crassly. A snap, against a flick of his wrist. It's more sudden, filled with a power to skirt the surface of the sea. And then he watches her make attempts, his arms fold across his chest, smiling. "You'll get it." He assures her, despite her lack of belief in practice. Maybe Juniper doesn't have all the time, but she has at least a lifetime. She should cherish that. So, he gives her something, subtle, but assuring: "I've had a lotta time to practice." Garrick isn't a quick study, at the best of times.

His penmanship, even now, is still a crass scrawl. He speaks more languages than he can read or write. And even those he can, the ones he learned later in death, are illegible for the most part. He knows his strengths, like he knows his weaknesses.

He doesn't like sir, even if it's playful. But he notes the horizon with a turn of his head, and the threat for the star to come peeking over the edge of the world. She's right, he should find himself somewhere dark. And this cove is not his ally. He imagines upon Juniper's absence, it will no longer tolerate his presence.

Garrick's head lifts when she makes her backpedal off the sand, and towards solid ground. She wants him to think about his answer; her question provokes a short snippet of a life he's almost forgotten. He nods, a wry smile and dark eyes pointed at her as she leaves.

Doesn't she know that they often crave the sun?

END.

Questions of regret brought a laugh bubbling up from somewhere deep in her throat. Regret was a funny thing. A feeling she hadn’t really considered in the context being presented. Did she regret not killing him? She had to think, gnawing on the inside of her lip within her own smile as if the shot of pain would make her mind reach a conclusion faster. 

“No- I don’t. Not to say I wouldn’t do it differently if a second chance presented itself. But there’s no going back in time. Besides, there is something about this place that just feels right. I like this city. I like the way it makes me feel. I like the people- haven’t met a one that I haven’t enjoyed the company of.” It was a small number, but it still mattered to her. “ If I had crossed that line- nothing meaningful would have changed.” 

Talking shouldn’t be this easy. Not only is he a stranger, he’s a danger, at least he should be. She was very aware of the risks of approaching. All too aware. She knew what hungry fangs could do to a witch unsuspecting. But if Garrick had any intention of harming her- he probably would have done it by now. He didn’t strike her as the type to senselessly play with his food. 

Then again maybe she finds it easy because it shouldn’t be. There was no risk. Telling her inner thoughts to a man she might never see again. The city was big- and they were people that existed in different worlds. Marginal overlaps aside. It was a fluke she was even here tonight. It was entirely possible that after tonight she would never see him again. She might never have to answer for her honesty. He didn’t give a rats ass about her, so there was no reason to give a rats ass about the skeletons in her closet. A conversation with little consequence; comfort in anonymity- even if he did know her name.   

She hummed a tone of skepticism at his deflection. “I’m hurt that you would lie to me, Garrick.” It’s sarcastic. She isn’t serious. But she's a little insulted. He's a vampire and she isn't stupid. By very nature of being beyond human there was innate excitement to be had. So this is an attempt at modest playfulness to express her own lack of ill-intent. She doesn’t mean to pry. She’s just curious, a bad habit. She liked learning. The context didn’t really matter sometimes. 

It’s only when Garrick moves to stand behind her that her pulse quickens. Not because she’s afraid. He doesn’t scare her. No alarm bells are ringing in her head. Her intuition is not telling her to run. That’s more terrifying than anything. She really does just want to finally learn to skip a stone, and end her evening on a somewhat pleasant- albeit introspective note. It’s her own lack of anxiety in the moment that gives her pause.

She tries to focus on the ocean in front of her and the repetitive motion of her arm. It wasn’t uncomfortable. “Practice can only do so much I’m afraid. But I think I understand what you mean. It’s like throwing darts. Just from a different angle, and a smidge more snap.” When he stepped back she did peek over her shoulder, mostly making sure he wasn’t still so close she might hit him if this went disastrously. Then she returned her focus to the ocean, followed the same motion as before, then snapped the stone forward. 

It hit the water parallel, then sank immediately. Not a skip in sight. But she was smiling. The motion felt right. She just needed to adjust her angles. One stone, two, by the third she is pretty sure it almost wanted to skip. “Give me maybe a hundred more stones and we might have a skip or two by the stone 50. Not that anyone has that kinda time.” 

One more attempt at a skip, and then the final rock in her hand she just chucked. Aiming for distance instead of precision and finding herself pleased with the result. “Well as charming as this has been. I think we have a solid 30 minutes till day break and you sir need to get somewhere shady.” She moved away from the shore and back to the log she started on. Collecting her phone and knife. She knew she should leave it at that. But it was a night of little risk. 

So in her retreat she turned to take a few of those steps backwards. Her curiosity gets the better of her. She’s testing her limits. She would accept not getting an answer. “I’m rain checking that question. So think about it until next time. I wanna know if there is anything you really miss.” About being human- is the silent implication. There had to be something. Even if he chose this life. She wished there was time. But she didn’t want to keep him any longer. Not when she had already taken up too much time. 

“Get home safe Garrick.”             

[garrickc]

Well he's wrong about the eye gouging.

It's hard to tell which part of Frank is blitzed in her haste to spider around him, all strong legs and choking arms. It's relief, he thinks. To know that his sister in arms is here, she's still kickin' as he slowly reaches around to hug her back. There's a rumble of a laugh as she squeezes the unlife out of him, tight and cinching. He's missed her voice, her violent palm on his cheek — her wayward mouth of comrades reunited.

She doesn't reek of leather, and oil anymore. Something patchouli-esque, more floral. Fresh, not slathered in grease and fumes. The faintest tinge of cigarette smoke between them, but that could be every part him.

He doesn't even deserve a name on a grave. What would there be to bury? Garrick would suit being tossed into the ocean, and allowing the sea to win for a final time. But it's touching. Even if his eyes are stolen by the glimmer of luxury that drowns them. It's everything he ain't. What else could he expect after all this time — for Frankie not to have found her way home? Brushed the dirt off those expensive dresses, and seen that they still fit. The Rays were long gone.

Along with tempering that burn on his cheek, his smile grows wider, more reminiscent. Their faces remain so close when he teases: "Pourquoi ne l'as-tu pas fait?"

Why did she attempt to deliver letters to him, and make efforts to find his number? To consort with every connection they ever had, after how he'd failed her? It should have been him, under brotherhood torment, not her. She's still a knock-out, a devilish beauty that suited caps and jackets. But glamour allows her to bloom here, he can see the glow on her skin, and catches the aftertaste of blood well enjoyed when she speaks at his so charmingly.

Then, she lets go.

"A little bit of here, little bit of there," Exploring a continent that doesn't know his name. Listening to rumours of witches forging new spells that allow for the sun to kiss their skin. "You ain't worried about lil ol' me, are ya?" They're a long way from Philadelphia, and even further from everything that came before. Garrick flicks her chin with his thumb, playfully: "You did alright, ay?"

She couldn't believe her eyes. Mostly because she was blasted out of her mind, and riding the kind of buzz where the walls looked like velvet and the lights tasted like fruit. Garrick stood soaked in purple, right under those neon lights, like a memory dipped in glitter. God, he looked too good, and too real, which meant he probably wasn't. Was that a silly, little trick? One of those fake out moments where she would go to touch him and whoosh — straight through him, face first into a nightclub floor. Wouldn’t be the first time. And it probably wouldn't be a hot look, either. But she’d laugh about it. Stilettos tapped a hesitant rhythm toward him, slow at first, and then she launched. Full body cannonball. With legs tight around his waist, and arms pulling him in by the neck.

That familiar scent, and warmth. All his. She cackled right in his face, dizzy and wild with it. And then she grabbed his cheeks in both hands, squishing him like a peach. Her nose nearly touched his, where her grin had gone razor wide. "Je devrais coller ton nom sur une tombe, connard." A kiss, and a slap, all at once.

Nothing bitter clung to the image of her old friend. Why waste eternity being mean, when you could turn it into a party? They had forever to argue. To point fingers at each other and dig up ancient hurts. But right now? He was standing in her club, no stake in his sad, old heart— so why not make it a celebration? Frankie didn’t remember last night. She barely remembered this morning. And the last time she'd seen him, half a century ago, felt like a black and white photo someone had taken scissors to. Torn up into confetti she'd thrown into the void.

She’d missed his stupid face. A little crooked, ears still weird and pointy at the end, hair still some kind of an abomination. But it was his.

Hands released him from their gilded prison, where her eyes had stayed on him, "Where ya been, peach?" she asked, her voice a sweet thing, like she hadn’t just threatened to put his name on a tombstone. "Planet B90? Also known as the planet of no phones and no fucking mail?"

[garrickc]

A savage avowel New York City, Brooklyn, 1955.

I prefer a dangerous freedom, over peaceful slavery.

While Crooklyn's name gets carried in the wind, in the mouths of gangs across every borough. Garrick sits behind the wheel of a Mercury Montclair, a boot pressed deep on the accelerator as he burns rubber like there's no going back. Stingrays are on the precipice of a street war with the Manhattan Jackals, and there's an uncertainty in the air about who'll come out on top. He's lost a couple of Rays to Queens, and he's near enough lost Frankie to backseat bingo with a broad off Main who talks like apple butter.

But he ain't pressed, because he'll handle Manhattan and Queens, he'll take on the Bronx if they want to get up in his gasket about it. Brooklyn's his turf, and he'll head the protests as much as he'll put a roscoe up on display in front of The Lever House if it means they'll back up out of Brooklyn and stop cuffing his guys. Third Avenue is theirs, and they'll race up and down the street until dawn comes to snatch it from them. Roscoes, Jackals be damned.

There is something he's damn sure of, whether it's smart, or savvy to say — and he ain't sure if the crew are going to like it. But they don't gotta. It's not about them.

He's going to marry her.

And he's never done that before.

He thinks about it at the speed of 115. It's not the ocean, where his mind is all unsettled waves and monumental depths. It's the city, with the squeal of tyres on tarmac as he tears around the corner, understands the weight of the chassis, to know when he's pushing. He's always pushing. And maybe, he's trying to razz Lara's berries a little, show her the thrill in the way that has her lighting up. But she suits riding shotgun. Whether they're in a flip top or a Chevy. She looks good in the moonlight, as his second, whilst they cross into Manhattan's East side, and make a backpedal towards the Brooklyn Bridge.

There isn't any room for doubt. Garrick's had centuries to know the right way to do this. Watched in the quiet at every kind of gentleman caller as they present their fineries in velvet pouches and are met with astounding bouts of tears and shrieking. Rarely is there a slap and a door slam. But he's seen those too. Yet, what he notices more than anything is how they always drop to a knee.

He supposes that makes sense; a surrendering of one's heart to another.

But it's a foreign notion to a sailor turned gangster. To become an offering, in the weight of a trivial decision. Garrick isn't a man who surrenders anything.

He thinks he could surrender to Lara.

With that comes the eruption of everything he is. She doesn't know that he plans for her to sacrifice the sun, or to know that the Roscoe they've just passed only has to be a little more attentive to know who he is, tearing down the streets, specifically to dirty a rival's turf. He's a scoundrel and a liar, and he's expecting Lara to understand.

It paints a target on her back, loud and clear. A mob boss' girl is a bartering chip in any play. And how would Garrick decide between her and a street? Precariously balancing the wavering loyalty of the Rays, and the cause that Brooklyn shouldn't be a place of aristocracy and less than. If she were like him, a nightcrawler, she wouldn't ever be a pawn on the chessboard — she'd be the Queen; the most powerful piece in the game.

Say yes, Lara.

To everything he's left unsaid.

To all the lies he's crafted in the eleven months she's been knocking about his world. To be his shotgun, eternally. For every time he'd made excuses for her daylight jaunts. He can't come to the tar beach, because he'd dust. Those cugine's who came running with half-cocked information, because they knew a civvie was at the dinner table with him. He's got to do this part right, because he's all wrong. And her mama ain't about a man like him. A man about equal rights has been playing her like a fiddle when he should've come clean months ago.

But it's not here, or now.

Garrick drifts the car into park, central to the bridge.

It's a beautiful night, and she's all leg and provocation; a classy chassis, if there ever was one. He's sold himself on being a gentleman, might've convinced her he's a man of God. All respect, and holding out. She's made him someone better, and she doesn't even know.

"Hey, doll." he twists in the driver's seat, leans closer: "You good?" It comes with a quick kiss, a thief of everything bloodied, oiled hands can get hold of.

Then, he's getting out of the car, darting around to grab her door before she can let herself free. Garrick's posted two corner guys on either end of the bridge, but he knows they haven't got long before Jackals come crawling, or Roscoe's get them to scram. It's hard to admit that he's got the zorros. If his heart beat, he thinks it might hammer like when someone's afraid; that gallop of brake horsepower, rumbling like a stampede of hooves.

His girl climbs out easily, brushes up against him as she weaves to to slither of a sidewalk. He chuckles, shaking his head as he shuts the Mercury's door: "Easy, pocket rocket."

Lara's straight to the edge. New York is all glitter at this hour. It's a testament to man. A depiction of time. She's a more beautiful sight than the city lights could ever be. The fall beneath them, if she looked down, is all abyss and waters. He wonders what she'd be like, diving into the depths with him.

Garrick presses up behind her, a left arm slides along her waist, before settling on the rail. She's trapped between him and iron bars of the Brooklyn Bridge. His other hand is slower to snake in front of her; a black satin box snaps open to reveal a thin silver band, encrusted with a blood diamond.

Maybe he doesn't go down to a knee, but he favours the sight overlooking the city, with the brisk cold biting at their skin. She's got nowhere to run, and every reason to. It gleams in the dark, much like the city does; it rarely sleeps.

Neither would she, if she says the right thing.

"Whaddya say, Lara?" he whispers, close to her ear as he brushes his front up against her back, waiting, hoping. "Will you marry me?" Will you be a Ray?

Will you love me when you know what that means? "'Til death, do us part?"

[garrickc]

Garrick enjoys his victory for about a whole three seconds. Clicks his tongue sharply against his teeth as he tries to steady the horse — because he's just bucked its owner off unsolicited. Fuckin' swell. He glances down, piercing eyes meet one another as a loud whistle carries across the field. Garrick winces at the blow to his senses, playfully rubs a palm over his left ear like he's trying to rattle out the noise.

And then he's going down, back into the mud when the horse's legs bow and sling him off to the ground beside the nepo baby with a grunt. He can hear her talking to the horse like a friend. They understand each other in a way that Garrick ain't never going to. He sits himself up with a dramatic groan and brushes off mud, as though it's not just clumps of dirt spattering on the grass. Part of him hopes it speckles onto her ludicrously expensive riding shoes. He has no idea. He assumes they are; the embossing on the calf looks like something leather and Italian. But he's guessing.

He flashes her a wide grin and clambers to his feet, wiping his hands on his jacket carelessly. "You'd never dirty yer hands with apples from a plague, would ya?" He's teasing because that's how he imagines the elite always see men like him. No use crying over some mud and grit. The new wardrobe sounds like a cost he'll never afford. Even if he could, he wouldn't. But— "I do know the best apple spots, though." Because why wouldn't a thief, and a fiend, know where's best to reap chaos?

When Garrick approaches her, nice and easy — like she's a stallion in need of placating, or a new set of wheels yet to be broken in — he extends a hand and nods his head, like a truce.

"We could cut a rug beneath the stars, covered in mud, ay?" There's no music, but he's not expecting her to play ball, either. She's probably thinking she's chrome-plated, turned hunk o' junk if the late-night mess is anything to go by. What's a name to the woman who'll call the roscoes on him before dawn comes? "I ain't never been threatened with a whistle before, tha's a new one." Impressive even. He's inclined to turn it crass, too. But what's a stick up her arse broad gonna know about filth?

Garrick tastes the ashen remains of the clove in his mouth as his tongue pokes at his teeth, outstretched hand turns upwards, to indicate one moment. "Scuse me, doll. " He spits on the ground behind him, because whilst there's no burn, it's grim to taste bonedust on the best of days. He swivels back, licks his lips, "We gonna ever talk about the treacle, by the way? Wha's tha' about?"

She recoils—just a little—at the sound. That awful, wet crunch of garlic between his teeth. It’s not just the audacity of it, but the confidence. Like he’s chewing through a joke only he’s in on. Her stomach tightens.

Shit. She’d hoped that would work. His words though, are all the assurance she needs. Her heart stutters for half a beat. Vampire. He doesn’t look like any of the dead-eyed Russians she’d spent the last five years with, but maybe that’s the new trick of it. Charm instead of cold. Mud instead of marble. Garlic immunity? Her stomach twists.

But she doesn’t even have time to flinch.

One blink, and he’s up. Another, and she’s airborne—mud, linen, and pride all flung into the air like discarded lace. Her breath punches out of her lungs as she hits the ground with a graceless, wet thwack. The nightdress clings instantly, soaked through, more battlefield than bedtime.

"Oh, you absolute plague.”

Andi turns over in the mud, narrows her eyes, unwilling to let the moment slip. Her fingers dart to her mouth, and she lets out a whistle that cracks through the air like a gunshot—sharp, trained, meant to draw attention.

Michelangelo, prince of ponies and traitor to the leisure class, reacts on cue. He drops down like a drama queen with a vendetta, legs folding, rolling his full body weight into the mud. Vampire included.

Andi watches as both man and mare go down in a heap. She crawls closer—not toward him, but toward Michelangelo, who’s whining low and pawing the ground like he deserves a standing ovation. “Good boy,” she coos, pressing her forehead briefly to his. “You’ve got five more of those in you if he doesn’t let go, don’t you, love?” Her hand slips into the halter strap, comforting, promising. “Sorry bud. Treats on a tab tonight.”

She strokes his damp neck, then glances back at the mess of man beside her—grinning, annoyingly alive, and far too close for someone who might be undead.

“You owe me six good apples for his tab,” she mutters, brushing mud from her hem. “And possibly a new wardrobe.”

Then her gaze sharpens. “Who are you?” she asks, rising just enough to look down on him—one arm still around her horse, the other propped against the slick churn of earth. “Because I think if I just knocked you off your high horse, I’m owed a name.” Beat. “Or do I need to whistle again?” God, if she's going to die here tonight at least it's next to her horse.

[garrickc]

"Oh yeah? You been?" Locked up, that is. Tasting lobster on a tongue that'd sooner be cut out than incarcerated. Jail ain't something Garrick knows, because that'd end poorly for anybody who'd try it. But for the most part, he's havin' a laugh with her. "And what'd a girl like you eat if no sea scallions?"

And then she's sat with him, planning her evening delights like it's no bother. Garrick's tongue skirts along his lips, rum, whiskey and every other thing they've served him prickles his lips sticky. What did he really expect from a lady who's speaking like she's from an ancient port town he's just rousted?

"Vengeance." Tale as old as time. How fitting. "What'd they do? Hope it ain't nuttin' to do with lobsters."

He's not subtle, never has been. Liquor only makes it worse.

"Yer gonna find some child, swing 'em your side? What is yer cause then other than enacting old justice?"

A beat. "You lot," witches that is and he gestures absently towards her, like she's spokesperson for the entire specie, "I hear yer did something that had the sun not so nasty in these parts."

"Prison food, lobster," Briar says, following Garrick's stare to prospective meals for the evening course. She makes a sneering, disgusted twist of her features, as if actively repulsed. Nasty little sea bugs. And they clamor for it here! Like it's a big to-do! Strange days, these times."

A click of the tongue and a roll of the eyes at the absurdity of it, settles into a booth, reads the menu printed on the place mat before her with a dawning sense of confusion at why everything's named like that.

"My tale's simple. I'm recently escaped my former coven's revenge and am here to visit my own on them tenfold."

"They don't know I'm here, I'm sure, but they've agents in this city looking for a very important child who I aim to find first, that I might turn them to the cause."

She looks up to him, smiles big. "And you? The world's full of blood, why's this squat so appealing?"

Maybe he just lives here, she doesn't know. S'why she's prying.

[garrickc]

She doesn't make any attempts to convince him otherwise, but he's found that there are a lot of them in the dark in this city. Maybe the most that he's seen in a long while. Perhaps they're gathered, wreaking havoc for the same reason he is. Searching. Yearning. Finding the sliver of light in the night.

Least she ain't trying to pull the wool over a drunk's eyes.

"How long?" he asks, as he stumbles from solid ground to the sandy beachside off the edge of the decking. Never the name first, apparently. Just'a how long yer been dead then? Because she's quiet behind him, feet at a light jog. But still following him, and he only half turns back to acknowledge it. "Few hours is a few hours, ay?"

And then she helps him out with where he could lay low for some time.

"I ain't mind the waves," he calls back, like there's some private joke between them. His foot almost slips into a sandy hole, but he catches himself before he goes chest-first onto the floor. Garrick chuckles, wishes he had a bottle in his hand, still. "You ever been down 'ere? Not tha' gimmickhouse," He's talking about the pirateering restaurant behind them "—but you gotta know the spots if you know the outcropping, yeah, kid?"

Aria blinks at him - belligerent drunks aren't exactly her forte, at least not when she's sober. "Not everyone." It's said with a disbelieving laugh, thinking of the people at the arcade, regular customers who come into the bookstore, Autumn. "But me? Definitely." She loosens her grip on him, which is enough for him to wobble his way down towards the beachfront.

The accent's throwing her, but so is the booze.

Maybe she should have drank a little too much to match. It'd be better for both of them. She looks back to check and make sure he didn't leave anything important, and then.. well, fuck it, she follows after him. There's no ring on his finger, no bloodied necklace or earring like hers, and the sun's not far off.

She's just being a good Samaritan.

"Hey -" She calls for him, jogs up closer before he has a chance to plop down again. "It's only a few hours 'til sunrise. There's a -- there's a rocky outcropping a bit down further that'll save you from dusting. It's nice. Quiet, except the waves."

She'd photographed another couple for their prom a week prior.

[garrickc]

Yeah. He does. Garrick deserves all she'd like to dish out at him. Whatever she does to him, it cannot hurt more than watching the woman he'd known tremble in his presence. Radiating with everything he'd uprooted for both of them. The wrath in her tone, the way her muscles tense with exertion. Garrick can't stand it. None of the versions in his mind have him staring at a fractured beauty, who is everything he'd hoped she'd be — she did all that, without a dime from him.

"You always did know how to raze a little hell, didn't ya?" Whether she realised it back then or not. She was a point of contention amongst the Rays for longer than she'll ever know. A distraction that Garrick knows he'd let derail him, time and time again, if they could ever go back. If he could go and do things differently. He'd have told her, instead of keeping her arm's length from what he was. Even if she had deserved better than a greaser and a gang of hot rodders.

His hand drops a little when she pulls away from him, hovering there, inches from her features. Still a man who'd take, before he'd ask about it. Garrick's brows knit together when she talks about how she searched.

"Yer looked for me?" Garrick hadn't gone back to New York, not after the way he'd left it. Cutting ties seemed better. Lara had been his only reason he'd ever consider returning, but he hadn't heard of Rivkin or a new immortal making waves. He wasn't sure if she perished or — "I ain't never wanted to leave you, doll" But what did that do, now? "Jus' know that." He cannot imagine what she must have thought upon waking up, covered in blood. New hunger, no guidance, just a city to roam at night with plenty of folks desperate to become something in the night.

Garrick steps back when she pokes.

It tears him up that she wants her distance, that there are decades of unknown between them. A life lived without each other. She's right, he can't have expected anything more than a semblance of closure. He's not a saint, and she's never looked at him like he is one. Just the poison that turned her into this.

But he would have liked to show her the world.

Garrick finally lowers his arm. Makes no more attempts to close the space, if she'd like to gather herself away from him. He wants to know so much of what he's missed, he wants to know how she built herself a dark little tower, that ain't to be struck down. He'd like to know how she works, what she'd gone through after they parted. He'd like to hear her stories that she got to have, because of a choice he made seventy years ago. He'd like to know her again, even if that's all she'll let him do now.

He'd like to rip the teeth out of whoever made a canvas of her face, too.

"You like it?" He asks, looking around at her dressing room. Odes of her, in perfumes and make-up. Clothes of the more skimpy variety hanging on rails, lavish chairs with cushions and blankets. Garrick isn't a fool, but he won't think about where he is. What she's made, and how she got herself there. It'll boil his blood in a way that he has no right to. She's not mine. All that he has left of her is memories and a bond of blood.

And then she calls him Ray. And he remembers how deeply woven the lies started. No wonder you'd never found me, peach. Looking for a man who only existed in New York, and nowhere else. His smile is solemn. Garrick doesn't know if he can keep that lie strung along, without having to confess a slew of sins she won't care for. She's made clear, Lara does not want an old greaser back in her world.

Why is he there?

"I heard a rumour. New Madame of this pad. Yer name, I couldn't ignore tha', could I?" But Garrick doesn't imagine she's asking why he's there. As much as she'd like to know why fate brought him to Port Leiry. "And 'ere you are. Beautiful, powerful. I'm seventy years late, doll, I know, but I did pick right back then." She'd have made a hell of a queen of Brooklyn.

There's another life they didn't get to live, and he'll never forgive himself for that.

But he'll settle for trying to earn her amnesty.

She jabs her finger at him, hand shaking with the force of it and the emotion behind it. "Deserve a whole hell of a lot more than that." In an instant, she's transported back to the 50s. Her hair is in the wind, she's laughing about Ray tearing up the asphalt, spinning and screeching to make her laugh. How many years has she loved him, and how many year since has she hated him? And yet, here, confronted by his face for the first time in decades, she can't decide what emotion is plaguing her.

She's frustrated by the fact that she can't just cut and dry be angry.

His fingers brush against her face, gentle and fuck him, loving? Her lip curls, twisting up the scars to pull at her skin and make her visage even more disgusting. Lara decides he's had enough of that, and shakes her head away from the touch. "You do not get to waltz in here, pretend like everything is fine, and that I didn't chase you down for twenty fucking years without a word."

She finally juts her finger into his chest, pushing him back just a half step. The space helps, and she drops her hand, still barely able to stop shaking. But he brings up the Cabaret instead of their history, and she almost fucking splutters at him.

"You -" Huff of a breath, head hanging down in an attempt to gather herself. "Yeah. Yeah, it's mine. Recent." He doesn't deserve to know that she danced and fucked her way around Port Leiry for a buck, saved up the money from that to buy it. She flexes her hand by her side. "Why are you here, Ray? After this long?"

[garrickc]

"Water it is." He's not figured out where Theodore fits into the equation, but it doesn't deter the tipsy smile. Not when she curtsies, or jests and comments on whatever is in his bloodstream. Garrick's attempting to follow her lips as they move at pace, "En vogue? Well, I t'ink a Kraken will win every round."

He laughs because he thinks she's a comical whippet. If every crown claimer were like her, there would be a lot less need for people like him to burn their towers down. She's for the people, he can tell. By the way she sits and leans in like they're sharing covert information, she wears honesty on her sleeve. Hides something behind bright eyes, difficult to discern in the glaze of his. But her voice is velvety in places. "Yer too pretty to hide away in the dark," he says. She's sun-kissed and bright. One of those lights he knows he'll snuff out if left alone to their devices for too long. She's got no business comforting an old pirate turned mobster in the shadows.

Garrick adjusts in his seat, a warmth he can't feel at its entirety settles upon his hands, and clamps down on his ribs. "Angel of death, eh?" Ain't that something? "Rough gig, kid. Gotta deal with some real scallywags."

A server comes by, and Garrick grabs their attention. Catches their gaze politely and asks for two waters and some fries. The dressed-up, thematic server obliges, and he shifts his hazy eyes towards Romy Hedgeworth again.

"You sure tha's all you want?" It's not his appetite he's thinking about. "Even angels of death, who thrive in the dark, 'ave gotta get their funs."

Romy’s eyes flicked sideways at him when he called her Romy William Hedgeworth the Third, a grin tugging at the corner of her mouth like it was trying not to laugh. “Technically it’s Theodore, but I’ll let it slide. Nobility’s very forgiving,” she said, doing a little mock curtsy with exactly zero grace and way too much flair. “And it’s okay, you don’t have to get me anything. Just water’s fine. Maybe you need some, too — balance out whatever’s still doing laps in your bloodstream.”

She plopped onto the edge of the bench beside him, legs stretched like she owned the place, or at least the square foot of floor under her boots. “Hydration is cool now. Very en vogue. All the pirates are doing it,” she added with a deadpan nod, then glanced pointedly at his empty glass. “And not to alarm you or anything, but I think your kraken might’ve already won that round.”

When he teased back with that amused little finger-wave, she clicked her tongue and gave him the most exaggerated, theatrical nod of solemnity. “Absolutely. Article seven, subsection B; any fries brought within boarding distance are subject to immediate, unauthorized consumption by the crown.” A beat. “Which is me. Obviously.”

Then, a beat passed. A quieter one.

He’d offered the fries and water and Romy tilted her head, the smile still lingering, but softer now. “You don’t have to do all that,” she repeated, voice a touch gentler than before. “I’m not trying to turn this into some nachos and life coaching situation. You looked like you needed someone to come sit in the dark with you for a bit. Lucky for you, that’s kind of my whole brand.”

She let that hang a second before shifting tone again, like flipping the channel back to something lighter. “Or,” she added, leaning in like she was sharing a secret, “Maybe I’m actually the angel of death. You know, bench-haunting, sass-delivering, french fry thieving spirit of the void. Very exclusive gig. Only show up for the real messes.” She grinned, wide and full of trouble. “And between you, that bottle, and your public bench showdown… well. Let’s just say I’m keeping busy tonight.”

She nudged him with her elbow again, gentle but insistent. “So. Water, pirate. Let’s not have you sailing into any more stuff without a co-captain.”