#full disclosure i wrote half a first draft on a moving train and finished it today with a raging fever

[kirayaykimura]

The Art of Deception

The mission - which Shirayuki had chosen to accept after hardly any deliberation - was simple. Find the person attempting to sell a new poison that could kill in seconds, secure the poison and the seller, get the seller to explain how to make the poison, and figure out an antidote. She was currently on step one. 

This step would have been much easier if her informant hadn’t snuck out onto the balcony and then…off the balcony. 

“Well, that was selfish,” Obi said, peering over the ledge to see if the body of their best lead was possibly, in any way, able to get up and walk the forty story fall off. 

Obi was the actual spy on this mission. Shirayuki was decidedly not. She didn’t like it when other people lied to her and she was frankly terrible at lying to others. She was, however, an expert at plants and poisons, an area of expertise Obi did not possess. Thus, she was effectively a spy until she could shut herself away in a lab and get back to her normal life. 

“What should we do now?” Shirayuki asked. She peeked over the ledge as well and immediately regretted it. She’d seen a couple of cadavers in biology classes in college, but none had exploded in quite so gruesome a fashion as the one in front of her now. 

“We go back inside,” Obi said, ushering her away with a hand that never quite made contact with her back. “We move rooms. We let someone else call that in. And we go to the gallery opening tomorrow to start asking around.” 

–

Obi had sincerely meant the we part of that sentence. Almost immediately after entering the gallery a respectable forty-five minutes late-

“That’s not respectable,” Shirayuki said. They were already five minutes late and she was feeling anxious. 

“It absolutely is. You’re thinking of the word respectful, which it is not, but we’ll draw too much attention to ourselves if we’re the first ones there. People will talk if we camp out and watch the door.” 

-he abandoned her to chat up a woman who was slightly unsteady on her feet. Whether the wine in her hand or her heels were to blame was anybody’s guess, but Obi was ready to pounce on the possible opportunity of lowered inhibitions. He left Shirayuki with nothing but a wink and a mouthed, Talk to someone. 

She did. After a while. First, she had to get over the wrongness of striking up a conversation only for information. Then, it was hard to figure out how to steer the conversation away from the art in the gallery to anything useful. Are you trying to poison someone tonight? wasn’t exactly an icebreaker. 

Obi found her an untold amount of time later at a small cocktail table near the edge of the event, exhausted and rethinking her strategy. 

“Where have you been all night?” Obi asked, sidling up next to her from wherever he’d come from.

“Around,” she said after a pause. That felt like a safe answer. 

Ears are everywhere, Miss, Obi had warned her before they’d left their hotel room for the gallery earlier in the evening. His breath ghosted along the back of her neck, closer than necessary to clasp her necklace for her. He’d checked the room for bugs when they’d settled in, but couldn’t be too careful. All talk of the mission had been in hushed whispers and written on paper that Obi had immediately burned and flushed the ashes down the toilet. Be careful what you say out there.

“Around, hmm?” Obi asked. He leaned an elbow on the table, the backs of his fingers just barely brushing against her upper arm. “Meet anyone interesting while you were around?” 

“I did,” she said. “He used to run his own nursery, but he recently downsized to a personal garden after his grandson took over the business. He said he’d give me a cabbage if I stop by his farm sometime.” 

Obi slowly raised an eyebrow, trying not to laugh. 

“Oh, you meant-” Shirayuki started, then said, “No. No one interesting.” 

“You’ve only spoken to an old farmer and dull people.” 

“He wasn’t old. He had life experience.” 

“I’m starting to think I may have some competition. What will I do when you decide to run off with him and leave me here all alone.” 

“I wouldn’t do that to you.” 

“Good, because your boy is flush with cash. I bet your farmer can't provide for you like I can."

"What?"

"Someone mistook me for the valet and gave me five bucks." Obi took a five dollar bill out of his jacket pocket and waved it around like something to be proud of. "People just don’t carry cash like they used to, nor do they tip. Other than that, I’ve met no one nearly as interesting as you, either.” 

She was sure that wasn’t true. Everyone could be interesting if you dug a little. For the sake of playing along with wherever he was going with this conversation, she stayed silent. 

“I did, however, see a couple around the corner that I could use your help meeting. Word has it that they like chatting with younger couples.” 

Shirayuki stared blankly at him. 

“Here, you-” Obi looked down at her neck, then peered behind her. “Your necklace seems to be caught in your hair a little. Let me fix that for you.” 

She couldn’t feel anything caught, and her suspicions were proven to be accurate when Obi stepped behind her and immediately whispered, “Everyone here now thinks we’re engaged. It'll help move things along. Go with it?” 

“How did you manage to tell everyone so quickly?” was Shirayuki’s only question. 

“You’d be surprised how many people want to hear stories of young love.” 

A moment later, a ring was sliding on her finger under the table.

Breaking character for a short moment, she asked as quietly as possible, “Where did you get this?” 

“Don’t worry about it,” Obi said. A gold band on his own finger caught the light as he brought his hand up to cup her cheek in his palm. He held her gaze for a long moment, then said, “I missed you.” 

Shirayuki knew what she would do. Botanist Shirayuki who saw the inside of a lab more than her own apartment would lean as far away as possible. She might even flee the event altogether. Undercover Shirayuki, engaged to a man she’d met two days ago and long enough ago that they were engaged by now, she decided, should do the opposite. She tilted her face into the inside of Obi’s wrist and leaned as if she wanted to settle in, to let him hold her up for the rest of the night just like this. In return, he swept his thumb across her cheekbone in soft half-circles. 

After a moment, Obi let his hand trace along the side of her neck and down her arm, twining their fingers together and leaving goosebumps along her skin his wake. 

“Come on,” he said with a gentle squeeze to her hand. “Let’s go talk to some people about some art.”