Prompt: March 6: - Baccano!, Chane/Claire: reunions - "You didn't give me much to go on"
Chane does not search in earnest for some time.
She is a knife fighter to the bone; her first instinct is to keep her opponent at arm’s length. He might be her opponent or something different, but for the moment the judgment is beyond her divination.
Keep them at a distance, her father’s voice whispers in her ear, distant enough to be a memory.
Still, one day in the street red hair catches her eye, a glimpse of a profile that might be familiar and her heart is in her throat, body tense, a voice she does not possess aching to spring free. Her mouth opens, but all that escapes is a rush of air.
Before she even knows she’s moving, she’s pushing through the crowd after the black coat, darting between people. He’s always a step ahead of her—she turns a corner and finds only a dead end alley.
Chane stands there gasping for breath, tense all over with buzzing anticipation, fists clenched at her sides. She stares at the alley wall and struggles to regain her sorely lost equilibrium before she ventures out into the crowds of people again.
This is at arm’s length? The mocking voice sounds less like her father’s and more like her own.
Heated breath blows over the back of her neck in a teasing gust and Chane whirls; she tends to her weapons far too well for them to truly rasp from the sheath, but she almost thinks she can hear the air split from the well honed edge.
The man from the train knocks the blade away, grin sharp and delighted, and Chane tries to leap reflexively back, finds herself captured by the press of his hand at the back of her neck.
“Following me?” he asks, not quite a mockery, the dark, dark joy that always seems present in his eyes positively dancing.
She gives him no words. But in the blood on his face and her dress and the words gouged into the roof in the aftermath, he knows her. Her language is steel and the flare of her eyes and the knife is no longer poised for a strike.
There is a touch of blood on the corner of his mouth. It is unsubtle and too striking; Chane finds herself inhaling through her nose, eyes on the obtrusive spot.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he says easily, still holding her wrist and neck.
There is no way that this man hadn't seen her in the street. Chane looks up at him calmly, wonders if he'd ignored her simply to see what she would do and if he had, what he intended to do now.
He doesn't offer any insight for a moment, so she tugs slightly at her wrist. When he releases her curiously, she pulls up the length of her skirt to sheath the knife at her thigh, and when she looks up at him again his lips are parted in something that is half a smile and half anticipation.
“Took too long,” he says, brief and amused. “You didn't give me much to go on.” Chane tilts her head back to look at them, hand hanging by the knife at her leg, and gives him a look which is not quite a blatant challenge.
He laughs, low and rich, and yanks her in for a kiss.
He tastes a little like blood, but not as much as she might have expected. He holds her in place with his hand at her neck and she permits it, her body leaning into his as he parts her lips with his tongue, strong fingers against her skin. His hand drops to her thigh, curves against the shape of the knife and the side of her leg. She shivers when he slides his fingers up to caress her hipbone and feels him grin against her mouth.
His thumb is on the pulse high in her thigh, pressing in. She knows he can feel it fluttering frantically against the touch.
“Marry me,” he says into her ear, not a suggestion but not an order. He is serious—she can hear it in his voice, in the inescapable strength of his hands on her skin—but there is laughter there; the bloodthirsty joy of a man who knows he owns the world.