Who: Orin and Audrey What: Delivery of first aid supplies Where: Aubade When: After this Warnings: None
Audrey got a call relatively late in her shift, yet again, for a special delivery to a familiar apartment in Aubade. When she tried to pass it off to one of the guys, her boss just shook his head. The man in Aubade paid very well for their services, and he’d requested her specifically for whatever delivery he called in next. Now he’d called, so she had to go.
Great.
She took the bag begrudgingly. “Way to throw me under the bus,” she congratulated him.
The man just shrugged. “Tough shit, sweetheart. You should be pleased, you know. If he’s taken a shine to you, he’ll tip you better.”
“He hasn’t ‘taken a shine,’” she said, dead dry. “Trust me. He probably wants to talk some more about my hair.” Then she skated out the back, sliding into subspace and shutting the door behind her.
She paused a moment in the blackness to open the bag. If she had to go see the guy again, the least she could do was snoop. What she found wasn’t what she’d expected at all. She’d anticipated something expensive, or tawdry, or both - caviar and condoms. Instead she saw gauze, antiseptic, sutures, medical tape, and enough other medical supplies to patch up a small militia. What the hell was the guy in Aubade up to?
A few minutes later she was sliding into the stairwell of Aubade and making her way up to his apartment. She knocked, listening for any telltale blonde tittering inside.
There wasn’t any twittering, unfortunately, though not for want of trying. When Orin had made the order, he’d been expecting one of the politicians wives from the convention to be there when the blue-haired courier came. But she’d called to say she was running late, and Orin hadn’t canceled the order.
He had spent the day before at the convention, speaking on the needs of the Rainier Valley citizens, pushing for health care for the unemployed. He’d spent the past six hours picketing, smiling every time a camera pointed his way, collecting more women supporters than anything else. They didn’t give a shit about his cause, and he knew it, but he didn’t care. Support was support, and he’d take what he could get.
None of that changed that fact that his shoulder was still stinging like a bitch. He’d cleaned it the night before, but it had been a perfunctory cleaning. Back in Long Beach, he’d had a sweet little doctor that patched him up without asking questions. Here, he hadn’t found anyone yet. He knew basic first aid from the island, though, and it had just been a graze. Nothing he couldn’t handle.
When the knock came at the door, he answered in jeans and an open, white oxford. “Hey, Blue. I figured I’d do you a favor by having you swing by.”
"I was waiting with bated breath for you to call." So it began, yet again. Audrey's hair was, in fact, still blue. She'd kept it that way instead of changing it like she'd been thinking of doing, and when she freshened the color she had thought of the man in front of her, not that she would ever admit it.
She shook the bag lightly. "Where do you want the doctor's office?" She peeked around him. "Did you get a little too rough with someone?"
“Some women like to scratch,” Orin said, motioning toward the stairs. “I think you won’t have any trouble finding my bathroom,” he said, sounding entertained. “I would have called earlier, if I’d known you were waiting on me.” He knew she wasn’t, of course, but he enjoyed baiting her.
Audrey was determined not to let him ruffle her this time around. Hopefully he wouldn't bring up the fact that she'd sacrificed her pride to take his money on her last delivery. She walked around him toward the stairs, maneuvering lightly in her skates, taking the easy strides of someone used to walking with wheels. "Seems like a lot of first aid for a scratch." She looked back at him over her shoulder. "Did she have claws?" There was an even chance of that in the Creations community, actually.
“I’m just stocking up for her next visit,” he said easily, following her with a hand on the railing of the open stairs and a devil-may-care grin on his lips. He glanced down at her skates on his pristine white floor, and he chuckled. “Do you ever wear shoes?” he asked, then, reaching the top of the open, mirrored room that was the top floor. “And who’s paying for the damage your wheels caused?”
Audrey stopped halfway up the stairs, looked back at him for a moment, and then without a word she bent over and untied both skates. She pulled them off and then picked them up by their laces, revealing a pair of mismatched, colorfully striped socks, and then continued up the stairs. The bend was not for his benefit, but she did glance up to see where his eyes went.
"Not when I'm working, no. But I'm the fastest my boss has got, so I must be doing something right." Even without the skates, Audrey carried herself with the sort of grace that seemed to mesh strangely with the way she presented herself, a learned ease of movement that came from being comfortable in perpetual momentum. “So how do you afford a place like this? Mob work, speculating on oil futures, what?"
His gaze went precisely where she expected it to go, down and then up in a long sweep, which he very intentionally let her catch, a cocky grin topping it off. He followed her the rest of the way, stopping at the top of the stairs and watching her perusal. It was late enough so that the view off the sound was impressive, and he glanced that way before catching the movement and turning his attention back to her. “You haven’t seen my smiling face on the news? You wound me.”
It wasn't like Audrey hadn't seen it coming. She had to admit that the view outside was impressive, however, the water stretching off into a vast expanse sparkling under the sun as it dropped. She paused a moment to take in the view, capturing the image for later. "I don't watch the news," she said, after a moment, and walked around the corner to find the bathroom door, opening it to deposit the bag inside. "I don't even know what your name is, Cristal. That bug you?" She set the bag down on the counter. "What would I have seen if I did watch the news?"
“I don’t need you to know my name,” Orin said, walking to the windows and looking out for a second before turning, the bandage on his shoulder just visible at the edge of the open shirt. He motioned expansively to the space. “This tells you everything there is to know,” he said, motioning to himself a moment later, “about me.” He looked like he meant it, too, blond hair a tousled, lazy mess and his grin slightly crooked.
Audrey walked back out, pausing a moment to watch him by the window, her skates dangling at her side. "You like white, the sound, and have a grudge against walls," she said. "That about sum it up?" She sounded like she was waiting for him to say something that contradicted that, because whenever people made blanket statements about themselves she tended not to believe them.
The doorbell rang below them, and he grinned and pushed away from the wall. “You forgot something very important, Blue,” he said, walking towards the stairs in what could only be called a lazy prowl.
"You like to have sex where people can see you?" Audrey offered, traipsing down the stairs, moving past him. She did not want to deal with whoever was at his front door.
He chuckled. “Maybe,” he admitted, walking past her and intentionally crowding her on the stairs for a moment before landing on the first landing with a loud smack of his soles on the floor, which did more damage than her skates ever could. He fished money out of his pocket, and he held it out to her as he waited for her at the bottom, elbow on the railing and no real hurry to answer the door.
Audrey held herself tense when he crowded her on the stair. Men. They thought that just because they were attractive and rich you were going to fall all over them. She took the money and then slid her skates back on, swiftly lacing them up. "You want some platitudes for yourself, Cristal, I'd say you could use something else. But that's just me."
He chuckled, and he put the money, another fifty, in the pocket of her leather jacket as she passed him, and then he pushed away from the railing and went to pull open the door. The politician’s wife was there, a wedding ring on her hand and her perfectly highlighted blonde hair in an updo she’d definitely paid for, and he leaned against the door frame as she walked in. “See you next time, Blue,” he said, waiting for her to come the rest of the way to the door.
Audrey glanced up and her gaze lingered for a moment. Then she smirked, but said nothing. She'd been dead on.
She finished lacing her skates up before stepping out the door, rolling backwards on the firmly packed carpet. "Have fun, kids. Make good choices."