Tess is midway through pouring herself a shot when she hears the door up the stairs, the faint but unmistakable sound of footfall on stone. The stream of liqueur wavers just slightly, threatening to cross over the glass's edge, and Tess cuts it off short, listening. She is not, at least in her own image of herself, jumpy. Just prepared.
For a half second, that's all it is. Preparedness, maybe some mild fear that it's Kovacs here for round two when she hadn't even been prepared for round one. Then her name on William's voice has her setting the bottle down on the bar, her fist wrapped tight around its neck. That's how he finds her, eyes on the foot of the stairs, waiting tersely. She isn't sure what her face is doing but she's sure it's not half as calm as she wants it to be.
The urge to be defensively flippant feels overwhelming, and beating that impulse down makes her feel strangled. She's used up every shred of good will she ever could have been offered, and there's none left to ask for.
"Well," she says. She opens her mouth to say about a hundred different things, but she just settles on a defeated: "Fuck."
He keeps coming. It's just an empty room. Just her, alone at the bar. He doesn't stop to sort through his impressions: the stone floor and what it could do to a body, her death grip on the bottle, how different she looks without her knuckles skinned or hair gnarled—as though she's received a fresh coat of paint as well.
He thinks of kicking the stool out from under her. Imagines the lonely sound of glass breaking. He doesn't know what it is—whether it's her or the atmosphere he wants to shatter. Instead he pauses at her elbow, looks her up and down. Long and pitiless. “How many have you had?”
Drinking from a glass. Who are they trying to fool?
“Two,” she shoots back, twisting on the stool, the least amount of her back exposed to him, one foot going to the floor. She hasn’t really looked at him since he was hauled back up the stairs to Cassandra’s crew, bleeding and dripping piss on the deck, and though she meets his eyes for an instant, she drops them just as fast, settling somewhere around his ribs.
A sharp excuse:
“I thought you’d want time to cool off. I needed it too.”
He's in his old clothes—no vest or jacket but the loose grey shirt, black trousers—and when her gaze drifts from his face he's gripped with an urge to pull the shirt up and bare his body to her. Let her map every wound she'd inflicted onto his now-unblemished skin.
Take her head in his hands. Force her to look at him.
He tips his head toward the bottle, raises an eyebrow. The rest of his face still. “Go ahead.”
He watches her hands, almost diffident in his attention. Watches her throat. His anger predictable, indistinguishable from the crushing weight of knowing what's next. He waits until she looks him in the eye.
“Give me the line,” he says, voice barely above a murmur. “Tell me it wasn't you.”
If nagging her about drinking is the knife, then the accusation that she's the same as everyone else in this place feels like the twist, and it puts a frog the size of her fist in her throat.
She turns from him, moving to her feet just so she can reach over the bar and grab a second shotglass, which she puts down on the bar a little harder than necessary. She pours him a shot, too, the neck of the bottle clinking against the glass twice.
"It was me," she says. "You know that. I know that."
She slides the second shot to him. Cream liqueur, too sweet.
He touches a hand to the edge of the bar—there's a sense of the temporary to the gesture, as though he's tapping someone on the shoulder. His fingernails are trimmed and whole, the sight incongruous still; his gaze brushes over them.
“You were.” He doesn't sit, doesn't reach for the shot—the liquid milky as a blind eye. The thought of drinking it turns his stomach, the thought of telling her—it's just a preference, too warm and too cloying—feels impossibly personal.
His hand drops and he looks at her long and hard. “You were real fucking pleased with yourself.”
Tess sets the bottle down in favour of her shot, but it takes her a second to knock it back. She has to brace herself. It's not going to go down right, but here she is anyway, feeling watched. No right moves.
"I know," she replies, finally. "Because I was mad and felt fucked over, and fucking you up was the fastest way to make you regret it."
She leans over the bar and drops the empty shot glass into the sink. Fuck any more of that.
He observes it all from a remove, like looking down and watching the waves throw themselves against the sides of the ship. Untouched but for the spray in the air. I was mad. It's more than he'd get out of a warden.
“It didn't do that at all,” he says stiffly. His gaze falls from her and he finds himself studying the dirty glass, the sink. His shoulders taut. He could slit himself open, tell her about the rest of that life—making wigs for a man who taunted him in front of his sniggering clients, beat him. Stuck him with a needle a few times.
Confessing to having been humiliated feels like another humiliation.
That stings and maybe it should but it being deserved doesn't make it sting any less, doesn't make it any easier to swallow. The fuck was she thinking? The fuck was she ever thinking, breaking kneecaps, strolling around while some thug manhandled whoever fucked her over into position for a bone-snapping? Smiling? Laughing, sitting over someone so they'd have to look at her?
What the fuck is wrong with her?
"I never let someone live long enough to get a review on how shitty I am at torture," she replies, when she's done trying to wrestle it out of her head. Or how good feels like a fruitless little correction and she lets it sink into her belly with the cream liqueur. If it comes back up later, at least it'll feel like a purge. She adds, faster: "It was all for me, and if you hate me now..."
He smiles at her little joke—it doesn't feel pleasant, likely doesn't look it. His eyes hard. He nudges the shot glass away, considering. He's known plenty of people like her, who couldn't feel like they were anything without reducing someone else to nothing. He'd known how many drinks it took before Logan's smile widened and got mean, and William—with his hangups, his desperation to please—became fodder.
He'd come out of that first breach loving her, for whatever the fuck it was worth—her idealism as the world died around her, the way she'd flung herself bodily into her lost cause. And the way she'd been with him, the way they'd held each other together.
He doesn't know if it's a choice, one or the other, or what he'd choose.
“Who else have you done it to here?” He catches himself. “No. Who else.” A glance—borderline frantic, like a moth trapped in a jar—around the confines of the room, a sorry gesture toward that half-theoretical place, the world beyond the Barge.
It's an odd relief to rake her mind over the initial question and turn up almost nothing; another fall to go over who else was collateral before that.
"I pistol-whipped Rags once when he broke into my cabin," she says. No one gave a shit, and that bothered her about as much as the needlessness of the whole thing –– Annie's flightiness, Kiryu's dismissal of it, her own overextended defence of her space.
"And before that, the day before I got here. Joel and I killed an old business partner. A few people before that, over the years."
His mouth twists at that first admission and then his expression smooths over. He scans her face, gaze keen and impassive. He doesn't think of Rags as a kid—where they'd just come from there hadn't been time for childhood, and on the Barge he can't allow himself to. Can't think of what it would mean for the sum of some dead boy's life to have already been deemed unworthy.
But still. “Pathetic,” he says quietly, meaning her. Picturing Rags' bloody face and feeling pathetic himself, whether through kinship or complicity. Briefly he lowers his eyes. “Did you get something out of it?”
Tess nods, slowly. It is pathetic. It has occasionally felt that way, at least in the transparent seconds before something bolstered her up: sighs or snaps at the slightest show of regret, a drink in her hand, a slap across the face. Reality checks she'd taken on smoothly, buried them under the righteous anger of her choices.
Her teeth graze the inside of her cheek.
"Nothing that matters now," she replies. She reaches reflexively to thumb at her eyes; they feel hot, they feel like a betrayal, they feel like a misdirection she doesn't want to veer into. There is no deserved woe is me here. She stumbles on: "With Robert I was just thinking about the assholes he sent to kill me, and how he'd stolen from us, how he'd fucked us over... we had to get our shit back. We never did it for the hell of it."
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no subject
For a half second, that's all it is. Preparedness, maybe some mild fear that it's Kovacs here for round two when she hadn't even been prepared for round one. Then her name on William's voice has her setting the bottle down on the bar, her fist wrapped tight around its neck. That's how he finds her, eyes on the foot of the stairs, waiting tersely. She isn't sure what her face is doing but she's sure it's not half as calm as she wants it to be.
The urge to be defensively flippant feels overwhelming, and beating that impulse down makes her feel strangled. She's used up every shred of good will she ever could have been offered, and there's none left to ask for.
"Well," she says. She opens her mouth to say about a hundred different things, but she just settles on a defeated: "Fuck."
no subject
He thinks of kicking the stool out from under her. Imagines the lonely sound of glass breaking. He doesn't know what it is—whether it's her or the atmosphere he wants to shatter. Instead he pauses at her elbow, looks her up and down. Long and pitiless. “How many have you had?”
Drinking from a glass. Who are they trying to fool?
no subject
A sharp excuse:
“I thought you’d want time to cool off. I needed it too.”
no subject
Take her head in his hands. Force her to look at him.
He tips his head toward the bottle, raises an eyebrow. The rest of his face still. “Go ahead.”
He watches her hands, almost diffident in his attention. Watches her throat. His anger predictable, indistinguishable from the crushing weight of knowing what's next. He waits until she looks him in the eye.
“Give me the line,” he says, voice barely above a murmur. “Tell me it wasn't you.”
no subject
She turns from him, moving to her feet just so she can reach over the bar and grab a second shotglass, which she puts down on the bar a little harder than necessary. She pours him a shot, too, the neck of the bottle clinking against the glass twice.
"It was me," she says. "You know that. I know that."
She slides the second shot to him. Cream liqueur, too sweet.
"Don't think I'm proud of it."
no subject
“You were.” He doesn't sit, doesn't reach for the shot—the liquid milky as a blind eye. The thought of drinking it turns his stomach, the thought of telling her—it's just a preference, too warm and too cloying—feels impossibly personal.
His hand drops and he looks at her long and hard. “You were real fucking pleased with yourself.”
no subject
"I know," she replies, finally. "Because I was mad and felt fucked over, and fucking you up was the fastest way to make you regret it."
She leans over the bar and drops the empty shot glass into the sink. Fuck any more of that.
cw: child abuse
“It didn't do that at all,” he says stiffly. His gaze falls from her and he finds himself studying the dirty glass, the sink. His shoulders taut. He could slit himself open, tell her about the rest of that life—making wigs for a man who taunted him in front of his sniggering clients, beat him. Stuck him with a needle a few times.
Confessing to having been humiliated feels like another humiliation.
“It made me hate you.”
no subject
What the fuck is wrong with her?
"I never let someone live long enough to get a review on how shitty I am at torture," she replies, when she's done trying to wrestle it out of her head. Or how good feels like a fruitless little correction and she lets it sink into her belly with the cream liqueur. If it comes back up later, at least it'll feel like a purge. She adds, faster: "It was all for me, and if you hate me now..."
It's fine? It's not fine?
"I earned it."
no subject
He'd come out of that first breach loving her, for whatever the fuck it was worth—her idealism as the world died around her, the way she'd flung herself bodily into her lost cause. And the way she'd been with him, the way they'd held each other together.
He doesn't know if it's a choice, one or the other, or what he'd choose.
“Who else have you done it to here?” He catches himself. “No. Who else.” A glance—borderline frantic, like a moth trapped in a jar—around the confines of the room, a sorry gesture toward that half-theoretical place, the world beyond the Barge.
no subject
"I pistol-whipped Rags once when he broke into my cabin," she says. No one gave a shit, and that bothered her about as much as the needlessness of the whole thing –– Annie's flightiness, Kiryu's dismissal of it, her own overextended defence of her space.
"And before that, the day before I got here. Joel and I killed an old business partner. A few people before that, over the years."
no subject
But still. “Pathetic,” he says quietly, meaning her. Picturing Rags' bloody face and feeling pathetic himself, whether through kinship or complicity. Briefly he lowers his eyes. “Did you get something out of it?”
no subject
Her teeth graze the inside of her cheek.
"Nothing that matters now," she replies. She reaches reflexively to thumb at her eyes; they feel hot, they feel like a betrayal, they feel like a misdirection she doesn't want to veer into. There is no deserved woe is me here. She stumbles on: "With Robert I was just thinking about the assholes he sent to kill me, and how he'd stolen from us, how he'd fucked us over... we had to get our shit back. We never did it for the hell of it."