Chapter 5 #2
I land next to her. Her pinched expression melts away into a wide-eyed stare as I stand up to my full height next to her. The top of her head could just graze my chin.
She blinks, stares, her kiss-shaped lips parted.
Standing this close to her makes heat creep up the back of my neck. I look away, trying not to let the smell of her hair fluster me, and run a hand through mine.
“Look . . . I’m really not here for me,” I say, hoping to steer the conversation away from anything my boss would get mad at me for revealing.
“I just wanted to check up on you, make sure you’re alright.
I’d hate to, uh, have traumatized you or something.
Or bruised, I mean, physically. Or psychologically. Either would be bad.”
Lacey nods but doesn’t say anything. I’m a little too caught up in the way that those little wisps of hair frame her heart-shaped face perfectly.
I slowly walk around her. For what her dress doesn’t cover, she seems fine. Nothing obviously broken. “Y’know, when people are in car accidents, they get checked out after. Whiplash is a killer.”
She swallows.
“Wasn’t my first rodeo,” she says, her voice a little breathier than before.
I bite back asking her if I’m her first rodeo clown, because that might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever said. The moment feels too fragile, too delicate for my bullshit.
It feels like I’m taking a liberty, as I trace a touch down her arm, picking up her wrist to better see, but she lets me.
She has a scattering of freckles up and down her arms, too small to see from a distance.
She doesn’t pull or shy away at all, even as her eyes track my hands, how different they must be from hers, all fuzzy, blue and clawed.
My heart is beating so hard I can feel it in my throat.
This night may well and truly haunt me. The fabric shimmers as she moves, snagging my attention to the round of her hips.
God, they’re perfect. I already know when I go back to the hideout, in the privacy of my own bunk, I’m going to see if the online Goethal City Tribune has pictures of Lacey from tonight.
Out of the heat of the moment, I think I might be a coward. I’m terrified to breathe, and break whatever fairy tale wonder we’re standing in.
She shivers as I trace the tip of my finger up and across the length of her shoulders, gathering the fabric of her shawl aside. My breath catches in my throat as it reveals a blobby shape just under her shoulder blade, purple and a little swollen.
“This is either from me or that terrible couch,” I murmur, gingerly touching next to the bruise on her back.
She makes a little noise; I can’t quite place what it is. It’s softer than a squeak, a little hum that catches in her throat. I watch, maybe a little too intently as the hollow of her collarbone deepens with her breath, my other hand sliding down her arm.
Her fingers entangle ever so lightly with mine, and I swear I feel goddamn sparks. Like my heart is a lightbulb that flickers on when the tips of her fingers brush against my skin, and my pulse is alive with her electric current.
Her eyes widen the slightest bit, like I’ve startled her, and she tugs her hand out of mine. I watch as she wraps her shawl around herself again, running her hands up her arms to warm herself or maybe chase my touch away.
Lacey glances over her shoulder at me. “Did you . . . I don’t know, fall into the ooze? How did you become like this?”
I shrug, my wings flexing a little with the motion. “I’ve just kind of always been like this.”
Vin probably has more insight in the process of how we were made, seeing as he’s the older of us two, and was immediately parentified and Igor-ified.
He’s not that much easier to talk to than Maestro, though.
I don’t think I’d get very far asking if he remembers if either of us more closely resembled humans at one point.
“It’s not from the ooze?”
I shake my head, but now it’s my turn to frown at her. “Didn’t you nearly fall into a rain gutter full of the stuff just yesterday?”
“I—no, I didn’t,” she stammers, cheeks flushing.
“But you were getting awfully close to it.”
“I just want to know, like, why it’s literally everywhere, where it’s coming from.”
“The waterways.”
Lacey scoffs and rolls her eyes. “I mean, like, where it’s being produced. This stuff clearly isn’t naturally occurring, right?”
I do my best not to roll my eyes. We’re getting awfully close to one of those things Maestro wouldn’t want me saying too much about, so I pivot. “Is that your hobby? You’re investigating the ooze?”
“Obviously.”
“Uh, not obviously, I thought you were just like a professional damsel in distress,” I return, tail flicking behind me.
She crosses her arms at that. Maybe the professional damsel thing was a little too much. She has to know that’s what people say about her.
“It’s not—I’m not getting kidnapped on purpose.
Usually there’s some field expert that Clayton has a connection with, and like three times now when I’ve gone to interview them, I’ve found them either dissolving into a weird gelatinous goo, or instantly petrifying, or whatever,” she rambles, clearly exasperated by her run of bad luck.
She lets my imagination fill in the gap between her opening some scientist’s office door and the TV footage I’ve seen of her flailing in the grip of a raging mutant, before she offers quietly, “I think that’s a big part of why people aren’t investigating it, everyone who has ended up over-exposed to it and mutated. ”
“Yeah, adjacent fields probably don’t have quite the same mortality rate,” I nod sympathetically. She nods too, as a moment of quiet falls over the pair of us.
It’s nice to actually get to talk to her, get to know her a little. I had no idea she was so concerned with the ooze problem. By now it’s become a weird new normal that people just try to ignore and pretend isn’t there when it isn’t actively blocking traffic.
“Would you let me interview you? You seem . . . stable,” she asks after a few moments, and it’s not the best compliment I’ve ever received, but I’ll take it. Most chill guy to have kidnapped her so far is a weird bar to clear.
“This could be the kind of breakthrough that the mutant crisis has needed.”
Oh, you dingbat. She just wanted answers.
I glance back at the museum, the door propped open by her clutch, the hundreds of influential people who could make things happen just behind that door. I grimace, crossing my arms over my chest as I lean back against one of the decorative columns along the museum’s veranda. “No.”
Of course she would ask that, I try to reason with myself, instead of letting the disappointment sit with me.
There’s an uneasy mix of feelings. As much as it stings, one of the things I liked about her was how visibly passionate she was about her job, the energy she brought every time she was live on Channel 6.
I can’t just tell her whatever she wants to know. Maestro will probably relegate me to cleaning duty for the rest of my life.
I dare a look at her after the flat-out rejection. Her eyes are on the ground between us, as she’s chewing the inside of her cheek, clearly thinking hard on how to follow that.
I take a step closer to her, the movement catching her attention. Lacey’s gaze meets mine as I offer hesitantly, “But . . . maybe I can show you where the ooze has been coming from.”
Her eyes light up with interest. “Tonight?”
Oh my God. I can’t with her, she’s too fucking cute.
“No, you’re . . . gonna wanna wear rubber boots. Tall ones,” I say, daring to brush the side of my hand against her thigh to emphasize. The way her lips part makes me dare a little further, raising a brow at her. “But I’ve got one condition.”
Her long eyelashes flutter as she looks at me earnestly. “What is it?”
“Let’s get dinner first.”
She holds my stare and blinks, slowly.
“. . . You know my ex is Steel Heel, right?” she asks in a hushed voice, like there’s any possible way I could have somehow missed that. “He’s the guy who throws people through windows once a month.”
“Yeah, I know,” I shrug, and give her a wink. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.
Maybe she thought I was joking before when I said I wanted her to call me ‘sweetheart,’ because it seems like it’s just now occurring to her that I am trying my best to genuinely flirt with her. It’s a little gratifying that it seems to fluster her, her cheeks and ears reddening.
“We—no, we couldn’t. I mean, no, I mean, like, my whole thing with Steel now is complicated, or it complicates things,” she says, practically a whisper, and why are we whispering? I don’t know, I’m doing it too now.
“Oh, you and Steel are still . . . ?”
“No, I mean, it’s just hard to like, date anyone else after him,” she says, eyes flicking to the museum doors, like he might just come outside now that we’ve invoked his name three times.
“Absolutely. Those are some big robotic boots to fill.”
“No, I mean people find him intimidating,” she insists, like I’m just not understanding. It’s adorable that she’s concerned for my safety. Oh, I’m in love. I want to scoop her up into my arms and tell her, “Babydoll, your ex has more to worry about from me.”
“Some people, sure.”
“I don’t date bad guys,” she says bluntly, and ok, I do see that she was trying to hint at that earlier now.
I pull back, nodding slowly.
She worries her teeth into her lower lip, waiting for my response. I don’t know that I have one. It doesn’t sting quite as much as it does feel like turning a corner and running full tilt into a brick wall.
Bad guy, I mean, come on. I’ve never even double-parked in my life. But I do pirate movies, so maybe she’s right.
I shift my weight from one foot to another and take half a step back from her. I let out a breath and thumb my chin. “Ah, you know what, you’re right. We’re on different sides.”
“Sides?”
“I mean, yeah. There’s Steel Heel, everyone who supports his megalomania, and then there’s all the guys he kicks through windows,” I say with a grimace, gesturing to show how these two things don’t exactly overlap. “Dinner would be out of the question.”
“Lunch too.”
“Don’t take breakfast off the table just yet. Or coffee.”
“I think even coffee might be pushing it.”
She sighs, her brows crinkling apologetically. It sucks that she’s pretty, even when she’s rejecting me.
“Well, when you put it that way, I probably shouldn’t show you anything about the ooze. My boss might consider that corporate espionage.”
“Oh. Yeah, you’re right.”
“Sorry.”
“No, don’t be. It was kind of you to offer.” She gives a little shake of her head, making her earrings and her hair move hypnotically again.
We lapse into a quiet awkwardness, the both of us trying to figure out how we want to extract ourselves from this moment. My watch beeps, and I realize half an hour has passed out here with her.
“I gotta get going, before someone notices that I’m gone.”
“Me too.” She nods, and I take that as my cue to begin climbing up the side of the museum to the roof. As I pull myself up onto the slanted surface, she calls out, “But, um, I really enjoyed getting to talk to you. I guess I’ll see you around?”
“Probably not. I work the night shift. Oh, but I might see you at work,” I suggest, settling into a crouch on the roof again.
I spread my wings and let the wind fill them, getting a feel for the direction it’s blowing in.
“This isn’t going to make it awkward the next time I have to kidnap you, right? ”
“I won’t make it weird if you don’t,” she laughs as she scoops up her purse from propping open the door and slips back inside. The sound of the crowd inside fades as the door swings shut behind her.
I sigh, only once I’m sure she’s gone. “See you on the news.”