Re: Near the ring of fire, later...: Cat C & Reece E
She'd spent a lifetime trying to get into places where the utensils were silver, and where the plates were bone china. She'd moved through charity balls in designer gowns, and all like she'd been born to wealth. She could be anything she wanted to be, remake herself in any image. And what she liked about this place? Was that the image she'd remade herself in? It was one she actually liked. She hadn't been expecting it, and it had come as a pleasant surprise. Alright, so it wasn't her particular aesthetic, but these denim boots? They suited her more than she, or anyone else, had expected.
He said he was casual, and she chuckled. Her mouth was wide, and the lines at the edges of her mouth said that she'd smiled often in a life lived hard and lived well. Oh, sure, things had been terrible in New Jersey, in Russia, but she was the ultimate hedonist. She wasn't trying to bandage any wounds, and she wasn't trying to soften any old scar tissue. She laughed because she felt mirth, and she wore those horrible boots because she liked them, and he wasn't casual at all. "Maybe, if you play your cards right, I'll teach you what casual actually looks like. Hmmm?"
She quirked a brow when he called her a tease. "Me? I'm on my best behavior." And she was. It was deliberate, this hands off, she counted the till, glancing up occasionally to make sure that old man snoozing on the bar hadn't turned into someone with a gun, a knife, or, worse, a Russian accent. It had been that kind of night, and she wasn't sure what the scope of Reece's strange vision was, but if he could see latent tension, residue of stress on taut muscle beneath skin? Well, it was there.
He bent himself on the stool, and she glanced over at him and smiled warmer, before turning her attention back to the evening's take. "Don't bother trying to make yourself smaller. It doesn't work." Her mouth moved as she counted, and she listened as he talked about the man with the curls. She could almost picture him a labcoat, and she knew the type. Well. She knew the type well.
She closed the till, money bagged and set aside beside it, and then she called the police station, asking for someone to see the old man back to his trailer home. That done, she pulled out a bottle of whiskey, and she set it on the counter with two shot glasses. "Where was he for the past month?" The scientist. For Cat, that was the important question, and she poured out two shots as he smiled sweetly. Someone else? Might've been more surprised by his little story, but to her? It was tame.
And it was casual, after kicking back that shot, the way her gaze drew down to the metal of his hand. "Do you know anyone else with one of those?" Her gaze lifted slow, past dark lashes, and it was an important question. She didn't even bother hiding that fact, that it was an important question.