Who: Michael and Connor What: Rowdy meet and greet in a bakery. Where: A Vietnamese bakery in town. When: Recently. Warnings/Rating: None.
The man in the cheap green shirt was easily the biggest person in the bakery. He was probably the biggest person in the mini-mall, maybe even on the block. It wasn’t just height or weight, it was manner. There wasn’t any hunching down in an attempt to get to a more manageable six and a half feet, and nobody who had that much visible muscle got there without effort. Besides the green shirt, which came straight off a chain store shelf (and in turn straight off a boat from someplace where labor was cheap) he was dressed in slim running shoes that had seen better days, and indeed, this man had done a great deal of running.
The exaggerated difference in size was aggravated by the fact that this bakery was run by Vietnamese transplants who still spoke their native tongue and hated the Communists that had taken over their island. This man, with his European sparseness, beaky nose and bleak dark eyes, could not have been farther from Vietnam, ancestor to ancestor. Yet he was there, squatting down so he could reach the stacks of thickly-carved milk bread in cellophane, putting out a long, long arm to reach a custard filled croissant. Nobody who worked there was staring, indicating that his presence had earlier established absurd precedent, and when he rose up onto the soles of his feet, nobody seemed especially annoyed that they practically had to look up his nose unless he made an effort to back up.
He was standing in front of the many shelves, holding the plastic tray that they used instead of baskets here, balancing a set of plastic tongs on it while he examined the signs in two languages, trying to decide between a creamy confection dusted with mocha powder and a little bag full of cookies made of dough so light somebody had squeezed it out of a tube to make tiny baked poofs. It looked to be a herculean task.
The bakery was on Connor's way home from the office. His route there still felt new, though it was over a month old now. He'd only just started to feel as if it was a real thing, working for the CIA. It had been two weeks of driving back and forth before he noticed the little bakery, and another week before he stopped for the first time. This was only his third visit, so he hadn't yet had the pleasure of running into a gallic giant while he picked up bread and the odd pastry.
Connor didn't stare as he slipped inside, the bell above the door merrily tinkling with his arrival, but he didn't do the usual immediate averting of eyes from an unexpected human sight. He was aware that most people on the street looked at the sidewalk five feet ahead when passing someone taller or shorter or less able to walk or more homeless than the norm, but while he could feign many things, disinterest was harder than most. He liked anomalies because he liked to study people. What had started as a habit of necessity had become something of a real interest, so he did not immediately look down. Instead, his gaze lingered a moment, and then he picked up a tray.
He was dressed in a dark suit, costly enough to make clear he was comfortable but not flashy, not attention-getting. That would defeat the purpose of his daily work, professional and private, in all kinds of ways. Light eyes, dark hair, and a thin mouth that was a little too wide, giving the impression of having a few too many teeth. He was over six feet but nowhere even close to the man at the pastry case, and if he didn't make eye contact for too long, if he struck the chords he had learned how to over time, he seemed utterly bland. He practically oozed respectable, businesslike white male, and there was a reason most people swore to news crews their next door neighbor was so nice when they found someone chained in his basement. Not that he had ever been that man. Not that he would ever permit himself to be.
They were the only two people in the bakery, and the tall man swiftly had a neighbor, waiting for him to make a decision so he might move down the line. He was on his way home, and hardly in a rush, so he looked from the man to the pastry case, following his eyeline to the objects of indecision. "That one," Connor said, nodding to the mocha treat. "It's better." A well-informed suggestion, since he'd already tried both. He wasn't the world's biggest fan of sweets, but he had a rule about trying new things. It was hard to be caught off guard if you'd tried practically everything.
Michael noticed the suit coming in before he had even taken a second step through the door. Men in suits like that didn’t often come into Michael’s orbit; he rode buses, worked in a greasy diner, and moved big things from here and there to make money. He did not dine in nice restaurants, he did not employ lawyers, and he never went inside a bank. His shoulders oriented in the direction of the door as if the man was a threat, and they stayed that way for about ten seconds until the new entry moved completely into the shop. Michael looked him over, took in the respectable and the business, and grew even less comfortable.
This, Michael thought, was what people who worked for the government looked like. He had a lot of experience with such people, had seen them often. Police detectives had more character in their clothing, wore their suits with less ease. Government men wore suits constantly, but they were never very nice suits. Just plain ones. In Michael’s mind government men were both taller and more solid than this man was, but that was because he had been much younger when they had dealt with him closely. Every now and then one liked to show up, however, and that was usually the last they saw of him for at least six months. It just took them less time to track him down than the fucking reporters if they really wanted to find him. The PIs were faster.
Michael stared at the man in the suit as he came up next to him. The discomfort was rapidly becoming tension, and his eye rapidly became a glare. He aborted the decision between treats and took a step back to put his tray between them. This one looked younger than what he was used to expecting, but he wasn’t in the mood to fuck around. The combined effect of the shaved head and the black glare caused most people to take a step back. His question was baldly expectant of other business besides pastries. “What do you want?” Michael had a low voice that generally came out in a vague hiss, as if he had the ability to shout and was constantly trying to suppress it with the back of his teeth.
Connor was accustomed to a certain level of discomfort in other people. Many were completely oblivious to his idiosyncrasies, but those that weren't tended only to get the general sensation that something was wrong, become standoffish, and remove themselves quickly from his presence. He wasn't precisely sure what the other man was reacting to - his suggestion? His tone? Whatever it was, he seemed to have spooked him, which was interesting in and of itself.
"Bread," Connor said, staring up. He paused a moment, as if searching his own motivations, then nodded. "Mostly just bread." It was apparently meant as a joke, but the delivery was so bone dry that it was difficult to tell. He didn't seem intimidated, nor did he seem overly worried or cowed by the abrupt confrontation from the other man. He met his gaze, brow just barely raised. His eyes were a little odd, flat somehow, but deep and cold below the surface, like a well.
Connor glanced left and right, as if someone might have come up behind him, but no one else had entered the store. He met Michael’s gaze again. “Were you expecting someone?” he asked, with the lightest and barest of curiosity.
Michael blinked. Whatever he was expecting, it wasn’t “bread.” To a one, all of the people who came to talk to the son of the Kaczmarek Couple stepped back when he stepped forward. They reacted when he glared, they cowered when he ranted. Everyone that knew who he was expected the blood that ran through him to win out, and Michael, he wasn’t even sure they were wrong. Not one of them kept up an act, or pretended to carry on the conversation they had started to have. They all began cajoling, retreated, or threatened blackmail. In the ensuing silence after the comment about bread, Michael simply stared, waiting for the man’s true colors to show out of the straight threads of the dull suit.
When that didn’t happen, he lifted his head and blinked again. The tongs began to rattle on the plastic tray, and automatically Michael brought up a second hand to steady it where it hovered in front of his chest. Michael was far from embarrassed, but his expression seemed to accept that his assumption had been incorrect. He rotated his head on his shoulders and looked deliberately back at the cookies secure in their cellophane. “No.”
Connor's true colors did not peep out from behind the patient expression with the small smile, and perhaps that said something in and of itself. As things were, he watched as Michael pulled back, and he wondered what he was surprised at, wondered if he was caught off guard by not physically intimidating someone. He had no way of knowing about the private detectives and the journalists. Serial killers had only gravitated into his area of interest when they found themselves in the employ of the crime families. He knew about them, and he knew about the Kaczmarek Couple, but he could not have recognized their son on sight, nor would he have sought him out in this bakery today, even if he had known he would be there. Chances were he would have picked up his bread and recommended a pastry in precisely the same way.
Of course, he might have had questions. He might have watched for signs of the same affliction of the parents in the son, but not for the reasons some would have.
Connor gestured to the cookies. "If they look better, take them," he said. This was almost unfair, at this point, and mostly for his own amusement. But really, if he wanted the cookies more, he ought to grab them, caught off guard or no. It was only sensible.
Michael took his eyes off the shelf once more. His dark eyes narrowed. “Where are you going in a suit like that?” He looked at Connor anew and tried to readjust his senses from the moment that he had appeared. It was unsuccessful, as the man looked the same as he ever had: the dark suit, the calm eyes, the confident opinion of himself. It still seemed to be “government” and Michael was unable to adjust his assumption in any other way. This was a failing; his father had always said he made bad assumptions, that he was not careful.
Very few people in this country would recognize Michael on sight. The last time he’d been on live television he had been a quiet, dark-eyed child with resentful eyes, and the only people who knew different had no horrible photos to tell their ugly truth. That didn’t mean they weren’t waiting.
In a movement full of barely contained physicality, Michael’s large blunt knuckled hand gave a sharp wave in front of the shelves. Three more inches in either direction and he would have taken the entire shelf over, tipped it, and put it on Connor’s head. He turned fierce black eyes back to the man again, and it was obvious that he was thinking of it, that he was wishing he had done it only a second after he hadn’t. He was seeing the glass chips and the petty avalanche of carbohydrates in shiny plastic, vivid and precise, right in front of him. Then he abruptly decided to leave. He left the cookies and turned away entirely, forsaking any other choices, especially ones that would get him arrested.
"Home," Connor responded, gesturing to the baked goods. "I was on my way from work." It wasn't as if Michael was wrong. All the government flags hovering around Connor's shoulders were all too real. But while his interest had been piqued enough that he might try to figure out who his bakery company was later, right now he hadn't the faintest idea.
How interesting. Michael looked about ready to attack, eyes flashing like a cornered animal, and Connor had yet to even give him proper cause. He turned to watch him move away, and a few eyes darted over from behind the counter as well, apparently more concerned that he'd come this close to flipping the shelf down on a customer's head than anything else. "If you've been trying to give me the impression that you're running from something, you've succeeded," he said. Now he was almost more interested in seeing what Michael did than self-preservation. Who did he see in Connor? What fears did he manifest in flesh?
If Connor was hoping for a reaction, he succeeded. Michael set the tray down on the counter, muffling the tap of plastic on plastic with the edge of his fingers and manipulating the corners so that the tongs didn’t have a chance to slide off. He lifted his head and gave the girl behind the register a long look, and she stared up at him uncomprehendingly until the discomfort caused her to take a step back, then another step back, until she was whipping through a beaded curtain to find someone else to stand with her behind the counter while Michael was towering over it.
Michael turned and stepped back out toward the man in the suit, choosing to put the door at his back so the exit wasn’t immediately available. It was a small shop and Michael had a long reach, but the cameras were only concerned with the money at the counter. The black eyes gave Connor a look that came out of the dark caves man first stood on two legs to escape. He folded his arms, creating a solid mass of bone and muscle that spread out against the cheap green shirt and tested boundaries. “I’m not running now,” he said, plainly, in a tone of unmistakable challenge. He was now withholding judgment on the smaller man’s true intentions, ‘bread’ or otherwise.
Connor looked up at the veritable mountain of angry muscle in front of him. Truthfully, self-preservation had never been a strong suit of his. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been afraid, and it made it difficult to gauge when a situation had become so dangerous as to be untenable. He wasn't stupid, though, and while he was interested to know what it was his giant friend was so frightened of having known, Connor didn't have even the tiniest thing on him. Pretending he did seemed likely to get him knocked around rather than learning anything.
Placid as ever, Connor gestured to the counter behind Michael. "You scared her off," he said. "Now we both have to find another bakery, all because I reminded you of someone."
Michael’s dark eyes were focused and exceptionally still. You could see him thinking, because he didn’t have a mysterious face: despite the blade edges of his bones under the press of his brow and nose, he hid nothing. You could see the thoughts turning clockwork considerations in his mind, and Michael didn’t know that people could watch him thinking about how he would do it all the way out to how he would conceal the body. It was a fascinating thing to watch, perhaps more disturbing because the expression was just the same as the one he’d been wearing when he tried to decide between one pastry and another.
“You don’t remind me of anyone special,” Michael said, indifferent. He looked over his shoulder at the counter. “She’ll be back. She’ll bring someone else or someone she thinks might have a chance to intimidate me. That’s what you do, right? Call someone and bring in backup.” His mouth twisted, bitter.
Connor looked at Michael. His curiosity was on the wax, but his interest in getting into a fistfight he was sure to lose was very much on the wane. "No," he said, but he didn't elaborate. He would call for backup, if he had to. He wasn't a prideful man, and knew better than to try to prove himself alone by playing the hero when a team was better suited to the job. But bravura seemed to be the language this man best understood, and truthfully, he didn't imagine this situation was going to require anything like a team of crack experts to deal with. "You make a lot of snap judgements," he observed. Just over the course of the last few minutes, Michael had gone from dealing with him like he was an eccentric stranger, to a threat, to a bug he could crush under his boot. "You should probably stick close to your first instinct," he said. He abandoned his tray on the shelf, turning for the door. There were quieter, simpler ways to acquire bread, ways that didn't involve an altercation with a stranger. "Just a suggestion."
The man’s continuing calm made Michael’s skin itch. He didn’t like it. He wanted to see the suit react to something, wanted to see him display something real. His words seemed to suggest that he didn’t have his own agenda, but Michael knew that wasn’t true. Such men always had an agenda, the question was only if he was part of it or not. Even if it was unlikely, Michael realized that this man in his suit was now on the same board that he was, even if they might be different pieces playing a different game.
Michael moved. Not far, just far enough to block the door, and he made a swipe for the smaller man and the bunch of material where the suit met his shirt collar. Usually there was enough fabric for his basketball-sized hand to get a grip, and he could pull up just long enough for a smaller man to lose his footing. “I want to know where you’re from. That was my first instinct.”
Connor may have been calm, but there were things that revolved and shifted under the surface, swirling and settling over and over. They weren't on his face, and they weren't in his flat eyes, but they existed nonetheless. Anger was one of them.
It didn't flash across his face as rage, however. It looked more like confusion that there had been a ripple in the state of the world against him, and he dodged back as sharply as the confined space would allow. Michael had height and muscle, but Connor had the reflexes of someone who had spent too long in foster care, and he stopped short close to the door.
If Michael wanted him ruffled, he was ruffled. His brows were knitted, but he still looked mostly curious, mostly perturbed. He still didn't look appropriately afraid, and there was, indeed, something eerie about that. "You could ask," he said, voice dropping. "Use your words. Just a thought.” His eyes flicked over Michael, waiting for another lunge. “I came from nowhere. And I didn’t come for you."
Michael disregarded the insult against his intelligence, as these were so common that he barely heard them anymore. There was something about his appearance, perhaps just the sheer big-ness of him, or maybe the width of the bridge of his nose, but people seemed to assume he was stupid and tuned snide remarks accordingly. Michael rarely argued because he did not always disagree. He assumed intelligence was something that allowed people to do things outside his understanding, in which case he wouldn’t understand, and there was no point worrying. If he understood that the man in the suit’s comment about using words was meant to imply he was an infant, then he wasn’t all that stupid, in the end. He only let his eyelids rise and fall slowly, as if he needed to get a better view of the man’s face. This only made the suit look grayer and the face look younger.
Michael resettled his weight on his feet. He moved lighter than anyone was used to expecting, and the muscles were not entirely for show. He watched Connor, ready to stop him if he tried to leave so he had long enough to reconsider for what felt like the tenth time. Michael got a certain satisfaction from the man’s reaction, but he recognized the reflexes as something not born in an office. His chin twitched as this new piece of information filtered down. His estimations changed.
All of this thinking happened very quickly. Michael swiped, the man in the suit dodged, and Michael leaned back. Now he said, “No one comes from nowhere.” He sounded… curious. The sense of impending threat withered.
Connor watched Michael. He was officially baffled by his new acquaintance. He didn't follow any of the rules that Connor was familiar with, erratic in only the way he knew felons and cornered people to behave. First he was suspicious, then curious, then angry and taking a swing at him, now curious again. "I do," Connor said, and it wasn't just a brush off. There was belief in the solidity of that statement. Where ever he had come from, it was nothing to him now. "Want another go?" he offered, gesturing to his cheek. If Michael was going to turn for the worse and take another swing, he was going to be ready for it, this time. He didn’t really think the other man was an idiot. Unpredictable, yes. He’d never gotten far underestimating anyone, though.
“Maybe later,” Michael said, without missing the beat. His voice had never been loud, only harsh, and now at its normal tone it hovered somewhere short of hissing, as if Michael had to find more breath than most to form words. His chest didn’t labor, and his eyes remained on Connor. Nothing about his behavior indicated a sudden attack of maddened violence, and a stirring in the back of the shop meant that soon enough their conversation would be joined by someone at the cash register. Michael was betting on one of the tougher male relatives of the family, but he did not hurry. “Where’d you learn to duck around like that?” Michael asked, nearing conversation as he twitched his hand toward the center of the shop where Connor had dodged out of his grip.
Connor watched Michael, and something briefly cracked. He smiled a little, and it did reach his eyes. "The place I came from," he said. Well, his fellow bakery patron had a good eye. The information was a reward for being sharp enough to notice. "I can never come back here," he said, breaking Michael's gaze, sweeping the shop with a little disappointment. "That's a shame. I've never been banned from a bakery before."
Connor stepped around Michael. He seemed unafraid, now. He'd decided Michael wasn't going to grab for him, again, because it didn't seem logical in line with his curiosity, though he'd proven an unpredictable opponent in this strange little tête-à-tête. He reached into his pocket and produced a simple white business card, emblazoned with his name and phone number in black. "If you'd like to do this again some time," he said, cordial as a tea party.
Sure enough, Michael made no further attempt to catch the elusive squirrel in the boring suit. There was something about the readiness to escape without retaliation that drummed something up in his memory, and it would take some time to fully rebound off the many echoes before it surfaced whole. Confident the memory would eventually manifest itself, Michael relaxed onto the treads of his running shoes and settled his weight down into the floor. The dodge had convinced Michael there was no immediate threat, as anyone who considered himself an immutable part of a larger group would have answered threat for threat.
“Why couldn’t you come back?” Michael said, serious as he glanced around the place. Nothing had been damaged, no blows had been dealt, and Michael was thinking that he’d buy both the puffed cookies and the creamy confection. He was so naturally intimidating that he thought little of frightening the woman behind the cash register into retreat.
Michael looked down at the card. He had an extended think about it before he actually took it, and he did not treat it with any special reverence. He had absolutely no intention of calling anyone. He had no phone and was not the kind to broadcast his location so loudly. Michael read the card in one sweep of his eyes and gave Connor yet another of his impenetrable dark looks. “It looks like you’re part of an escort service without a business name on a business card,” he said.
Connor smiled, with teeth. It was an unusual expression for him, that kind of fleeting, intense amusement. There it was, though, there and dissipating already by the next second. "Flattering," he said. He didn't seem to mind, however. For all Michael knew, maybe he was an escort, from that impenetrable flash of mirth. Who knew why it was funny, he simply thought it was.
Connor couldn't come back because the entire arc of his life was devoted to not attracting attention, not garnering it, holding it, and creating an image of himself that stuck with people. If he was to be a patron somewhere, he needed to be an anonymous one. He liked to be invisible and unknown, because things were easier that way. The sheer strangeness of this encounter was sure to linger with the people in the shop, and honestly, there were other bakeries in Las Vegas. "Good luck picking a pastry," he offered as he left, the shop door tinkling merrily on his way out.