Another Place, Another Time AU or Canon: AU Location: Florida Date: October 2018 Notes: Considered AU because it makes vague mention of characters whose permissions we don't own. No liberties were intended to be taken.
Every so often, business travel became a necessity of Grace's existence. Not often, especially once she'd settled in somewhere, but every now and then she had to go elsewhere, usually to put out a fire someone else had started. This time it was Florida, dealing with some of the mafia connections from out of town. Grace hated Florida. Too many tourists, too much Disney crap, too much *sun*. Even in October. The vampire glowered out into the darkness outside her hotel room, decided to take a walk. Just to clear her head.
She'd gotten a room down near the beach, and the tide had already come in. Grace stared out across the flat expanse of water, wondered if she could taste the salt if she drank some of it. In the years since the reveal of the existence of the undead, things had become slightly more difficult, but only slightly, and she'd never been one to whine. Kill, yes, but not whine. The waves slapped against the already wet sand, retreated to join the millions of gallons of water beyond the shore. The hugeness of it had her wanting a drink, and she turned her back on the dark ocean to head back inside.
Better entertainment could be found than wandering down the beach by herself.
The universe was smaller than it seemed. Over the centuries, Darian had learned that forces drew the same creatures together, over and over again, provided they lived long enough. It no longer surprised him that it happened. However, he was often taken off guard by when. On an insignificant business trip to Florida, for instance, he could lodge in a hotel of no particular notoriety and order a drink in an ordinary bar. The elevator bell could sound, and he could look over his shoulder, anticipating nothing, and find a familiar face he hadn't seen in four years.
Grace had character, easily identifiable bone structure, wardrobe, posture, and walk. He gulped his drink and set out after her. From the wide boardwalk that lined the oceanfront, he spotted her standing just shy of the surf. Darian, in his white shirt, gray trousers, and leather shoes, stayed at the railing. He didn't like sand. When she turned around, he straightened his posture.
"I thought about leaving you alone for the, uh," he gestured at the ocean, "Serenity prayer or whatever you were doing. Then I decided to stay, on the off chance you might go for a swim." He held the metal railing again. Four years had not changed much in his appearance, but there were faint lines around his eyes. Giving up immortality to age alongside a lover had been an impulsive decision. Not even a decision so much as a subconscious whim.
"Hard not to stare, it's so fuckin' huge. Like you could fall off the edge of the world. There's a reason I don't hang out near the ocean."
Grace turned to face Darian, trying to pinpoint when she'd seen him last. The years were starting to bleed together here in her fourth decade of unlife, and she'd forgotten what season it had been when they'd parted ways. Like all immortals, she and the Dealmaker came together and pulled apart again at random intervals, but the conversation always seemed to pick up where it had left off somehow. As if their minds remembered what was significant as opposed to what didn't matter, like what year it was.
"Don't tell me." She was going through her pockets, a customary search for her smokes. "You've retired and moved down here to live with the blue-hairs."
"Are you kidding?" Darian pushed off the rail and went down the steps. Not all the way into the sand, but close enough to lose the height differential. "This may surprise you, but I am not in love with tropical climates." He watched her dig in her pockets. With Grace, it was difficult to say whether she'd come up with cigarettes or a pocket knife. "Don't tell me. You've come for a honeymoon. You and," he rubbed his chin, working on a name, "Loving man or the Watcher have tied the knot." Or were those two men one and the same?
"Please." The single word was spoken around a cigarette as Grace lit up, and once she had it going she added, "Ruben's in Guadalajara spending five or six weeks being drunk. We spent about a month together, and then we had a fight and so I left. And for all I know, Matthew's tucked away in England somewhere still. I can never get both of my boys together in the same spot, as much as all that family shit is nice sometimes."
She eyed the new lines on Darian's face with something like amusement, then craned her neck in an exaggerated fashion to look beyond him. "Speaking of family shit, where's your ball and chain and the new addition?"
He clamped his mouth shut and exhaled through his nostrils, an exercise in patience and concealed amusement. "Bethany's taken Elizabeth to an estate in England for a few months. By the way, I'm sure she'd love to hear herself referred to that way." He scratched his neck. He shared a loose living arrangement with the Slayer. They were together for over half of the year, apart for rest, an agreeable situation for their lifestyles, business obligations, and their desire for independence. Elizabeth spent equivalent time with each of them. Their daughter, a solemn little girl with blonde hair and green eyes, was quite accustomed to her parents' liberal take on parenting.
The vampire smiled, a fleeting attempt to be winning, then shrugged. "I'm a little disappointed I don't get to meet her, but maybe some other time. So what does bring you to this sweaty hellhole? Somebody tryin' to outrun their debts?"
She pointed up towards the hotel, where the bar inside waited. "Got time for a shot of somethin'?"
"I do." He put his hands in his pockets and pivoted towards the hotel. He waited for Grace to pull even with him and started to walk. "It's related to investment property. Condominiums. And no, before you ask, there couldn't be anything less interesting, but since my signature's required, I couldn't send Phillip in my place." The wind had been at his back on the way out, but now it pushed against his face and shoulders. Darian debated whether or not to do it, but decided in its favor. He cupped a hand and a three-dimensional image of his daughter appeared above it, a tiny hologram. The trick was rarely-used these days. After his business turned towards an arena and properties, it wasn't necessary to dig for secrets or manipulate as often. In gambling and real estate, people hung themselves. He only had to take advantage.
The corners of Grace's mouth turned up a notch, and she said, "Looks like her momma. When she grows up she's probably gonna be able to walk through hell in a gasoline overcoat. Guess the apple don't fall too far from the tree."
She trailed beach sand into the hotel lobby when she walked inside, and she ignored the 'No Smoking' sign on her way to get that drink. Yet another reason why she preferred Chicago, being able to smoke without the morals police interfering. The vampire eased her weight onto a padded stool, rested one pale, muscular forearm on the dark wood of the counter. "Bourbon. Straight, no ice, please and thank you."
Manners? How unusual. Darian's eyebrows raised.
"I'm sure her mother would prefer that Elizabeth inherited her abilities as well as her looks." He took the stool he occupied earlier. The bartender looked from Darian to the woman and his mouth quirked. He asked if he wanted the same drink as before and Darian gave a clipped nod. "She is mine in that department. You should see the loot we find in her pockets after a trip to the park." The glass arrived on a hotel napkin. Darian picked it up. Its hexagonal sides fit poorly in his hand. "Figurines, electronics. I think she swindled a nine-year-old out of his lunch money."
He sipped the drink. "You never said why you're in Florida."
"Work, same as you. There's a guy I need to meet and have a sit-down with. Apparently not all is runnin' smoothly in the world of low-life middle management."
The bartender clunked down an ashtray next to her drink, and Grace studied the logo of the hotel where it had been stamped on the clear glass before tapping ash onto it. "These paisans, everything's a pissing contest, especially the young ones. They're like junkyard dogs in suits. I guess it's my turn to be the kennel keeper." She snickered a little at the notion of it, lifted one shoulder. "Havin' a certain skill set works wonders in places like this."
Darian picked up his napkin. A damp ring made it flimsy in the center. He held his bourbon in his cheek for a moment and then swallowed. "Am I detecting a change in your m.o?" He looked at her. "The Grace of old lacked the patience to sort out petty disagreements. It was always brawn over brains. Though I suppose it still might be." He was of the firm belief that there was a time and place for each. He was more likely to use physical threats with a short-time client, when it wouldn't make much of a dent in his business if he took it too far. One thing he had learned with Phillip Downey, for instance, was that it was easier to demonstrate power and then subtly intimidate a second-in-command than kill a series of disappointing replacements.
"Oh, believe me, I'm the last resort." Grace said it in a tone of finality, a 'what can you expect' voice. "There have been a handful of shootings and arrests are up because everyone's too busy playing king of the hill to concentrate on business. Fuckin' sloppy, is what it is. If roping in these assholes doesn't work at this point, I'll have to focus on the worst offenders and put them out of everyone's misery." A shrug. "It's a form of diplomacy, just a rough one. 'Stop fucking around or else I'll kill you.'"
She studied Darian over the rim of her glass as she had that next sip of bourbon. He looked just a shade older than when she'd seen him last, but it was distinguishing as opposed to unsettling. "You decide against the beard for good?"
"Last summer," he said. Matters of personal grooming had always been important. The clipped beard was an outward manifestation of his loosening up, so to speak, once released from a long-tired mystical contract. Occasionally also absent, the tie and the suit jacket, though he would never be a man who wore t-shirts or polos. "I prefer to see my face and watch it change. I was afraid I'd shave it off in ten years and find I'd become old." His hard mouth smiled. "You, of course, look exactly the same."
Aging didn't worry Darian as much as it should have. Part of him thought he could stop it again, if he wanted. There were supernatural avenues. Entities who could benefit from keeping the Dealmaker around another century.
"Tell me something significant that isn't the same," he said.
"Thank you, I think." Hard to tell what was a compliment and what wasn't with Darian, his sarcasm so thinly buried that sometimes it was as if it simply had a faint layer of dust on it. But for the sake of their almost-friendship, she decided to take it at face value. Grace leaned on one elbow and studied the Dealmaker's aristocratic face even more closely.
"You look...I dunno, worldlier or somethin'. A little more off of your pedestal, maybe. I guess kids give you that look, though. Not that it's a bad thing. Not on you, anyway. Like, you could be on 'America's Hottest Dads' if there was such a thing. A new reality show."
At that, Darian raised an eyebrow. "I meant something significant about you." He sipped his drink. He supposed he should be grateful for the compliment. As careful as he was with his appearance, Darian seldom thought about how others saw his features. He cared more how he judged them. If he hadn't realized how convenient it was to have genitals that interlocked with a woman's, he would most likely still hate his human form. "By the way, lately, I am the least worldly I've ever been. Looks are apparently deceiving."
"Well, you should have been more specific, man." Grace leaned over and knuckled Darian's ribs lightly. "You're the one with the mind-reading mojo, not me."
She'd have said more, but a small group of men pushed through the doors of the bar and started lining up to request drinks. The vampire's nose wrinkled at the smell of leftover suntan lotion and sweat, then asked the bartender for the bottle of bourbon he'd poured from earlier. "I think I'm gonna go sit back there," she said, indicating a table near the window, one that offered a view of the white sand of the beach. "Less chance of having to breathe in that funk. Wanna move where the air's fresher?"
"Not a fan of Hawaiian tropic, I take it." Darian picked up his glass and got to his feet. The alternatives to moving with Grace were rubbing elbows with men who looked as if they spent the afternoon playing beach volleyball, or returning to his suite for an evening of staring at wallpaper and the inside of a liquor mini-bar. He chose her.
"If you think about it," he said, taking a seat at the new table, "The scent of sun-baked skin should make an effective vampire repellent. Perhaps it's their lucky day." He raised his eyebrows and, rubbing his palms together lightly, looked out the window. The ocean was black, but a white ruffled edge indicated the surf. Had he ever lived within sight of an ocean? Thinking back, he thought the answer was no. Demons weren't drawn to it the way humans were. Life hadn't begun in water for them.
"Still waiting on an answer," he said.
"Mmm. Something about me. My favorite subject."
Grace arranged the bottle exactly in the center between her chair and Darian's, then put both elbows on the table to rest her chin in her hands. "I'm...more deliberate, I guess, givin' more thought to things. Not all the time, but sometimes. There was a point when I could have told Rhiannon exactly what happened to her Goddamned Watcher, and I didn't." She raised her glass in a toast to herself. "Some things she doesn't deserve to know. Serves her right if she thinks he ran out on her."
"Doesn't deserve to know? Hm." Darian tipped back his drink to drain the glass and took his time swallowing. The flat-sided tumbler hung from his fingertips. "And why is that?" Taking the bottle as an invitation, he poured himself another glass and topped hers off. "I remember Ms. Lee having a few recurrent enemies to contend with, but I never knew you were one of them, beyond the obvious conflict. Vampire, Slayer. Should I assume your dislike of her is more deeply seated than that?" If Grace had become more selective with conflict, it was a good thing, in his opinion. However, this particular topic seemed to strike a chord. Perhaps it was just the connection of Grace to the woman's former Watcher.
"In retrospect, maybe what I should have done was try to split her head open." Grace was looking inward now, her expression neither here nor there. "A trip to the hospital might have kept her from turnin' Deanna into vacuum cleaner filler. But we can't look forward and see what will happen, we can only look backward and see what did. And I understand somethin' about her now, somethin' I didn't before." She paused long enough to sample her fresh drink, set the glass down again. "For all her happy horseshit about vampires not meaning anything to her, it's not entirely true. Hurt what she loves, and it matters very much."
She rubbed her right hand over the battle-scarred knuckles of her left, flexed the corresponding bicep. She'd watched the footage from Deanna's abortive book signing with all the grim determination of a woman witnessing a death march, because she realized that Rhiannon could well decide to target her next. Know your enemy, that was her motto. So fuck it, let her come. She hadn't been caught flat-footed yet
"We're a lot alike, and I didn't get that until just recently. It evens out the playin' field, just in case."
"Both of you make decisions from your gut. For her, it's the heart as well. I suspect the same is true of you, though you're probably loathe to admit it." Darian leaned back in his seat. The crook of his arm rested on the next chair. "I've seen the way her mind works. I doubt Rhiannon Lee could tell you why she falls on a given side of a line. She simply does, and she trusts her instincts." He tipped his glass onto one of its flat edges. A grain of salt or sand crunched underneath it.
"On the day she staked Deanna, I bet the decision was crystal clear to her. The decision to bring Deanna back..." His mouth quirked. "Not so much." He took a sip of his drink.
Grace turned her head to look at him, and the right corner of her mouth twitched upwards in the faintest threat of a smile even as the rest of her expression remained unchanged. "Pull the other one," she said, making it sound sound like a vaguely obscene invitation. Darian had about as much obvious sense of humor as she did, but then again sometimes the demon was perfectly serious. The vampire finished off her drink in a couple of gulps, poured herself a fresh one. Checked the level of his glass to see if he wanted another hit.
"It's so hard to tell when you're bullshittin' and when you ain't." A good-natured gripe.
Probably the reason it was difficult to tell, was that Darian rarely did. He raised his eyebrows. "Do you think I would bullshit about an old friend?" He had gotten on rather well with the redhead, though he hadn't expected to. In the end, Deanna had been a vampire with a sense of class, and it was a quality he appreciated. He waited for Grace to settle into her new drink. "She was gone less than a month. I have no doubt it felt longer to her, but there's no way to accurately calculate how many years in hell equal a day in this dimension."
He tapped his fingers on the back of the chair. "You're wondering why she didn't bother to look you up."
Grace's left knee had started to bounce, her foot providing the leverage for the motion where it rested on the floor. She looked down into the clear substance of her drink, then at the Dealmaker before she let out a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a snort. She tapped one knuckle on the tabletop, made the same noise.
"She's like fuckin' Sisyphus," she said, and she wasn't talking about Deanna. "Never happy unless she's tryin' to push that rock to the top of the hill, only to have it get away from her and roll all the way back down. This is one thing we do not have in common. I like it when my enemies stay dead." The vampire rubbed a pale hand over her mouth, took a slug of bourbon. "So where is she? You know so much, where's Herself?"
Darian scratched his earlobe. "The difference between you and that Slayer is that one of you doesn't know what to do with herself, once she finds herself on top of a hill. Since she's a white hat, she has no desire to rule it, so she finds another one to climb." A group of men in suits came into the bar and he watched them for a second, trying to figure out if any of them looked familiar. He decided they were salesmen -- coming from a conference, by the looks of their nametags -- and got back to the point. "Deanna and I are no longer on the best of terms. Do not ask me how, but she has a soul. Chalk one up for the opposing team."
Grace's expression blanked, wiping her face of any reaction for a minute. The tiniest crease eventually appeared between her eyebrows, and the tip of a pink tongue showed between her teeth before vanishing again. "Well, that's fuckin' disturbin'," she said in a mutter, making a note to get in touch with Victoria if she could and find out what in the blue fuck was going on. If the redhead's childe hadn't seen the older vampire, maybe they could put their heads together and work something out. "Is there no way to get it yanked?" she asked Darian, as if she were talking about a simple tooth extraction. "She must be in hell. No pun intended."
Darian watched the subtle shifting of her mouth. He thought her enemies must be most intimidated when Grace's gestures became coiled and subtle; it reminded him of a snake. "On the contrary, I think she likes it." He unbuttoned his shirt sleeves and rolled them up past his elbows. The hair on his arms was the golden-brown of someone who spent more hours in the sun than he did. "It's been four years. The sting has probably worn off and made way for the spirit of generosity and selfless dedication." He smirked. Another thought occurred to him and it turned into a smile. "Did you ever settle the score with the other Slayer? The one with the heaving cleavage."
"No, the slut and her cleavage are still walking around." Visibly annoyed now, Grace lit another cigarette and blew smoke into the air. "Fuck, this is just..." She could feel the old urge to just bash somebody's head in creeping in around the edges. The fires burned as hot as ever, she'd just managed to bank them a little. Later, though. She could snag one of those idiots in the cheap suits who were now congregated at the bar. Good thing she'd brought her razors along.
"I'd say I'd go see her, but I wouldn't want to risk that. I'm no martyr, and a newly minted goody-good is dangerous. Jesus fuck."
"I salute your level-headedness." He raised his drink. "Besides. You might barge in on the lot of them drawing up battle schematics. Can you imagine anything more chilling? Other than a slow-motion armament montage." The bourbon burned a path down his throat and settled in his stomach, lighting a fire there that he did not naturally feel, at least so far as purposefully mounting offensives against white hats. He would rather cause dissonance and subtly annoy. "I didn't intend to wreck your night. Well," he reconsidered, "Maybe I did."
The vampire regarded her erstwhile friend, then showed some teeth in a sour smile. "You're a real pain in the ass, y'know that?" Coming from someone who could win prizes for being an annoyance herself - when she wasn't actively causing bloodshed - it was practically a compliment. Grace settled back in her seat, tapped ash off of the end of her smoke.
"So how long are you around?" Because there sure as hell wasn't anyone else around worth talking to, and as annoying as Darian could be she didn't object to his company. "I don't know how long it'll take me to deal with these infants down here, but maybe we could get a drink someplace else."
"Two weeks, at the most." He leaned his elbows on the table and rubbed at his throat, the faint shadow of an oncoming beard. "It's only a matter of tying up loose ends. Real estate really is the most boring of occupations, I think, aside from maybe... drill press operator." He looked around them at the painfully standard motif of a corporate hotel lounge. "And I would be happy to escort you someplace that isn't adjacent to a Hilton lobby. Although..." One of his eyes narrowed. "Thinking back, this may be one of the classier places we've been together."
"Oh, 'escort' me? Well, la-di-da." Grace dropped the Dealmaker a wink, fiddled with her half-empty glass. "Bethany won't mind?"
And he could take the question whichever way he liked. She lived on her own terms the way Darian did, and part of those terms included her own form of respect. She was not aboove prodding at him if the mood struck her, but it required scoping out...certain matters. The vampire's knee had begun to bounce again, but less with agitation and more with anticipation. How well did they still know one another?
Darian gave a good-natured scowl and knocked back the rest of his drink. He kept it in his cheek for a few seconds and then swallowed. "You have an exceptional opinion of yourself, if you think Bethany would feel threatened." It was not meant as a slight to the vampire, or a statement of anything beyond the truth about the blonde Slayer: she suffered no shortage of confidence. "But thank you for still believing I could be a flight risk or a philanderer. It's strangely comforting." He pulled out his wallet and tossed over money for the bottle. He was tight-lipped about any other details, partly just to get on her nerves. He heard her leg shaking under the table.
She scowled back at him playfully, saying, "Just checkin', baby. The world's slidin' out from under me in some places, it looks like. I'm just trying to keep track of what might still be the same." She paused long enough to drink the rest of her bourbon, then added, "And you're right, I do have an exceptional opinion of myself. If presentation is everything, you need somethin' solid behind it to back it up."
She leaned over and kissed Darian on the cheek, then slipped out of her seat. "And I haven't eaten yet, so I'll motor along."
He watched her get up. Then looked at the group of salesmen, the late twenty-somethings wearing too much cologne and fresh haircuts, the keys to rental luxury sedans in their pockets, with nothing to preoccupy themselves until 6 a.m. wake-up calls. They would look at Grace as a story to tell when they got home, never thinking they might not get there. The corners of his mouth tightened into a smile. "It's almost a shame I'm not human. Good night, Grace."