Participants:
| Scene Title | Think, Breathe, Consider |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Ace has to convince Odessa that murder isn't the solution to her problem, proposing an alternative plan to track down Pete Varlane before Silas Redd can. |
| Date | May 26, 2021 |
Williamsburg: Ace and Odessa's Brownstone
The lights are on in the street-facing windows of the brownstone Ace Callahan shares with Odessa Price, a sure sign she’s still at home when he arrives there. When he slides past the door, he can hear music drifting from the kitchen, rather than her study. It isn’t the jazz she tends to listen to for inspiration, or the light piano while she’s working on her Raytech projects from home. This is deep and brooding orchestrals. That tends to be for when she’s, well… Brooding.
He finds the blonde sitting at the island, dressed in a slouchy, lightweight, grey sweater that hangs entirely off one shoulder, along with a pair of grey and yellow plaid lounge pants. It says she’s no intention of going anywhere else this evening.
Which is probably a good message to be telegraphing, given that she has her collection of knives sat out along the counter to be cleaned and sharpened.
“Hey,” Odessa greets Ace impassively, not lifting her head from the work of polishing some perceived imperfection from the surface of a blade that’s just going to sit in a sheath in a boot until it needs to be used. It would appear to just about anybody — by lack of the front door’s yawning announcement — that he arrived seemingly from nowhere. Ace’s muse isn’t just anybody, however, and she is entirely unruffled by his sudden appearance in her periphery. While she isn’t giving him much more insight as to her emotional state, it at least alerts him to the fact that she’s got her ability active, fingers to the pulse of his. That alone tells him something.
"I was wondering if what the other girl said got under your skin," Ace observes as he comes closer, raincoat folded over his arm rather than put away as he decides she comes first in the order of affairs this evening. "And either… it really did, or perhaps there's something else going on."
He settles in behind her with the ghost of a touch to the small of her back preceding a kiss to the side of her head. "If Redd added to what she said in a way that has you like this, I'll gut him myself, my muse," Ace promises as though he were discussing dinner options.
Normally, this is where Odessa would relax and melt back against her artist with a small smile to slip into a pleasant reverie. While she tilts her head obligingly to accept the kiss he bestows upon her, she merely turns the knife over in her palm and examines the other side in the light before giving it the same treatment with the cloth wadded up in the pinch of her fingers and thumb.
“Redd knows,” she says succinctly, voice pitched low. That too sheds more light on the shade of her mood.
Ace stills, blinking once and slow. His eyes go down to the knives as well.
What's on his mind is a mystery. All he asks in the moment is, "And?" followed a beat later by, "For how long?"
“I don’t know,” she admits, "But I damn near killed him in my dressing room." Though she tries to keep it off her face and out of her posture, her mouth forms a line small and hard, tension makes her spine rigid, and her shoulders rise just a little close toward her ears.
It would be so easy here to lie. To let him think that perhaps Redd had eavesdropped on one of their conversations. Followed them home. Followed her somewhere. That he’d generally been his slimy self.
For once, Odessa doesn’t take the easy way out. “Varlane’s missing and he thinks I’m good for it. Says Pete told him who I was as some kind of insurance policy.”
Ace's touch slides up Odessa's back, settling between her shoulderblades. He exhales a short breath that is longer, more steadying in his soul than aloud. "Well, it would have been more trouble than it currently is, had you killed him," he offers up blithely while he thinks the matter through. His tongue smirches off the back of his canine as he turns his eyes down toward her.
"Varlane missing isn't good for any of us," Ace points out with a calm stillness. "That fucking rat would sell all of us upriver in a heartbeat. The real question is… do we think he still has any friends out there," and oh does he doubt it, "or did someone grab him?"
A grounding brush of fingertips along her spine later, he wonders mutedly, "Now do we know any bloodhounds who could help discreetly with verifying as much…"
“He threatened me,” the blonde responds evenly, just on the edge of a pout. “Said some things about you, too.” There’s a great deal of verbal abuse Odessa will endure, but she has little tolerance for it being directed at someone she loves. He feels the rigidity in her, it tells him how badly insulting him gets under her skin. “I’d have had a difficult time getting the blood out of my rug, but it’d have been worth it.” The corners of her mouth turn downward in distaste. “Wouldn’t ever catch him again closer to me than you are now.”
He loves her for this. Her quiet fire and sharp edges. Now isn't the time for smiling, though, so Ace represses one. The topic is still quite grave, after all.
Her case stated for the hypothetical, Odessa turns to the actual matter at hand, focusing on the sensation of his hand on her back, where two of his fingers make contact with her skin, and the feel of two through her thin sweater. “As I told Redd, there’s no better game in town for him.” Her bare shoulder comes up in a half shrug. “We’d love to get our hands on him over at Raytech.” One corner of her mouth kicks up. Regardless of which faction has a hold on the man, she’d have eyes on him. Surely that would count for something with d’Sarthe. “I can’t think of anyone else who would protect him on his terms.”
Blue gaze casts off to one side, troubled as she works through her thoughts. “I’m certain he didn’t just get bored and wander off, but he may have made an attempt to find greener fields.” The slope of her shoulders changes; he knows when she’s getting uneasy. “Fuck.” She sets the knife down carelessly enough that it clatters on the countertop. “What if he does convince d’Sarthe that I had something to do with it?” Finally, she turns to look in Ace’s direction, with worry in her eyes. “Redd said you can’t protect me.” And we both know he’s right doesn’t need to be said.
"We find him first," Ace cuts off her rising anxiety with quiet, firm calm. "And soon. You're right– there's few places he could have gone, and even fewer to ferry him. We leverage your ability, if no one else's, to assist us with vetting this out. All right?"
He steps more to her side, eyes down nose with a dip of chin as he seeks her gaze. "Furthermore, to convince d'Sarthe of any presumed guilt, he'd need to present evidence. Motive. Gideon is many things, but an easily-moved man is not one of them."
Odessa meets Ace’s gaze, jaw setting tight. Partly, she’s annoyed at the way he doesn’t validate her worry, partly she’s annoyed at herself for worrying at all. More than any of that, however, she’s grateful for the way he works to calm her by feeding her his own. She just needs to be willing to use it.
Instead, her mouth flattens out briefly while she works past her self-directed frustration. “After Jacelyn had that stroke in January, I went and saw Pete. I was desperate,” she says in her own defense. “I had to know what was happening to her. Since the feds took my research, I resorted to him.” At that point, she’s unable to watch him continue to watch her, so she dips her chin and starts to busy herself with sliding each of her knives back into its place in the pad she rolls up around them to keep in a locked chest upstairs in the back of her closet.
As she's not looking, she doesn't see whatever it is that flashes over his face. Her ability still active, though, she can feel the oil seeping into the previously calm waters of his emotional state.
Her brow twitches with that knowing, and she breathes out hard, pushing it away so she can continue. “He knew exactly who I was, like my name had been tattooed onto my genetic code, and I guess he told Redd that if he disappeared, I should be suspect number one.” Her brow creases at that; being recognized in a way so simple and beyond her control as that had never entered the realm of possibility. “He said some incredibly vulgar, misogynist things to me. I honestly don’t remember if I actually threatened him or if I just said I should have let him die back at PISEC.”
Tying the cord around her bundle of weapons, she angles a plaintive look back up at Ace. She expects him to realize how I wish I’d killed you sounds like a threat, given the impact similar words from his own mouth have had on her.
He doesn't, exactly. He draws his own conclusions from her not remembering if she'd actually threatened him and comes to the same conclusion regardless: she likely did.
The breath pressed out in a long exhale from his nose is like a methane release from a toxic landfill. "What we have working for us in this moment is that months have passed since then. Were it some kind of crime of passion, you'd likely have acted sooner." He rests his hands against the edge of the countertop. "I'm not saying perhaps I spoke too soon, but Redd does have more leverage than previously thought if he maligns you in a particular way. Insists, finds some evidence that you perhaps calculated your payback in silencing him.
"But that's not helpful to us in this moment," Ace balks noncommittally. "What we need to determine is where he was seen last…"
He turns to her again and restresses, green-grey eyes keen on her, "And then you're going to read that room and see if you can find any clues. You are equipped with investigative skills I cannot dream to touch, in this instance."
She doesn’t hold her gaze on him long, instead cursing herself for having made too quick work of her project and now having nothing with which to occupy herself. There’s challenges she considers leveling at him, but sometimes she can exercise the wisdom not to try and justify herself to him on matters that can’t be changed.
“There isn’t any evidence,” she does feel compelled to state flatly, fingers splaying out over the countertop for lack of something to crush in her hand while she does it. “The last I knew, he was still working out of the basement of Nuojin He Jia.” Odessa shakes her head. “When he said he knew who I was, I never pursued it again. He gave me enough to confirm what I couldn’t see for myself. I haven’t wanted to know where he is since then. I figured his sense of self-preservation is too high to try and make any unprovoked play against me and get himself in trouble with Gideon.”
Her head cants to one side slowly. “I can… try to use my ability that way. It’s not— I don’t know how good I am with it yet.” Which is why the only people who know she can use it that way at all are the two people in this room. “I hope it’ll work the way I need it to.”
Only then does Odessa show her face to her partner again, a deathly seriousness to her. “We need to kill Redd.”
Ace only sighs, his patience thin. "No," he answers aridly. "The difficulty in arranging that aside, what better way to look guilty, Odessa."
"Think," he pleads with her, his hand gripping the side of the countertop to center himself, keep his movements slight. "Use what other tools you have to get this baleful eye off of you." He tilts his head as he tries to use his words rather than anything else to drive this point home to her. "You are not backed into a corner. You have options."
"Breathe," he encourages her, scales rippling. "And consider what it is you want to do next that gets you closer to having the upper hand."
Odessa’s jaw trembles, some combination of anger and fear, both barely restrained. Her eyes only show to him a burning defiance. When she swallows, her throat feels almost too tense to allow it. “I can’t sense him, Ace.” This tips her hand to him in a way she doesn’t necessarily want, but feels safe enough doing, should he decide to peek at those cards of hers. “For all I know, he’s upstairs right now rooting around through our fucking closets.”
While there’s plenty of vitriol in those words, and the tremor that runs through her could be her distaste for the entire concept of that, the corners of her mouth twitch just a little too much, her chest rises and falls a little too quickly.
The biggest tell of all is her lack of playfulness. No joking about how when she’s finally willing to turn her mind to murder, he snatches her leash and drags her back. “He’s a threat. To us.”
"At what point has he not been?" Ace asks without pause, eyes fixed on her.
The challenge sees her gaze shifting off to the left of him, jaw setting to one side. “All the more reason to be rid of him.”
"Not every problem in the world can be solved with murder. Not every situation is it possible to hold the most power."
There's more disappointment in the tone of those words than there is in the heart of them. It's a lesson one learns, and one he thought she was well-aware of. But maybe complacence has grown. Maybe the illusion of safety had set in. He breathes a breath out and lets go of the countertop, slipping a hand into his pocket to retrieve his phones, to set them on the chargers. He turns the edge of one up so he can connect it, places them both down side-by-side before he speaks again, over his shoulder.
"Conveniently, I ordered monitoring equipment after our break-in last week," he relays flatly, and she flinches. "I'll see there are additional sensors that go with it, things that will provide peace of mind. Things that will alarm appropriately, should someone try to open the door without you knowing. Things he can't trick."
"It's up to us to react in the split second of warning before he cuts our senses off to him," he states plainly. "Should it get to that point."
Turning around, he wonders, "What do you do?"
She takes the moment finally and breathes, deeply enough that her shoulders lift, then sag lower than where they started from. “You’re right,” she concedes. “The only reason I didn’t kill him back at the club is because you’re right.” That concession sees her deflate. The weight of his disappointment crushes her nearly as much as her fear of regressing to the person she’s tried so hard to escape.
Seated at the island, she already looks and feels smaller than Ace, and she seems to grow only smaller still when she wraps her arms around herself in an unconscious defensive posture. “He makes me feel like the person I used to be,” Odessa admits in a quiet voice. “The person who kills her problems.” Blue eyes seek out his face, only to dart the other way again when she’s only gotten so far as his chin.
Her brow creases, shame causing her cheeks to color unbidden. “What do you mean, what do I do?”
Ace turns to consider her with a quizzical furrow of his brow. He takes a beat to compose his answer, a short and surprised chortle leaving him. "Okay," he admits candidly, holding up one hand. "You clearly aren't that woman, because I don't think I'd have to explain if you still were in that mindset."
His hand turns over then and he asks with better plainness, "What do you do if he breaks in, or you realize he's nearby and you have no choice but to assume he means to kill you?"
The tip of her tongue plays off her left canine as she tries to decide if she should feel insulted or not. It only takes two seconds to decide it’s irrelevant and shrug the notion away. Consideration is given to the hypothetical, her tongue running over the front of her teeth now behind her lips. “Go for a knife, I guess.” Any knife will do, where she’s concerned.
Her eyes find his briefly, not seeking confirmation that her answer is the right one. It slides to one side just enough for her to stare off past him, rather than through him while she replays the encounter with Redd’s kinder and at least slightly less murderous double, and how he was no slouch in a fight where he wasn’t trying to kill her. It stands to reason that Redd would at least match if not surpass that.
When Odessa shifts back to her partner, she’s in a more calculating place than a reactionary one. “If he’s of use to us, I disable him. If he isn’t, I go for the most convenient artery.” Escape isn’t presented as an option on the table.
"Say his ability's yet active," Ace proposes softly, but not kindly. "You know he's somewhere, but you don't know where. How do you defend yourself against his attack on your senses? How do you try to get the upper hand?" He rests his hands back on the countertop behind him, looking over at her where she sits.
He offers no help, offers no aid. His proposals don't matter in this hypothetical, or in the reality. Just hers, only hers. If it's her he's got his sights on … Redd's smart enough to not go after her while Ace is near.
"I'm not home to help," he clarifies, a flicker of the wine-dark emotion he never gives further power by naming coming alive in the depths of him.
The slow breath she takes in through her nose burns inside of her. She doesn’t need Ace to defend her. She never did before he came along and she hasn’t since.
Yet, here she sits, a creeping feeling of dread at the prospect of having to face this without him. Or maybe it’s just because she doesn’t know how she’d protect herself in this situation. She imagines swiping ineffectually at the air where she thinks her invisible assailant might be. There’s terror in that, in feeling powerless. In the acknowledgement of that powerlessness.
“I don’t know,” she’s forced to admit, her voice a low near-mumble. Again, her jaw gets tight and she feels like she might not be able to open it again. “Listen for him. Watch for signs in… I don’t know, the way the curtains move, footsteps on my carpet. Maybe he casts a shadow. He’s not like you. The light doesn’t just ignore him.”
But everything that she can do, every innate defense that she has, is nothing in a situation like that. “What am I missing, love? What do I do?”
Ace only nods slowly, but doesn't provide a magic answer. "You're doing the right things– looking for signs of him when he's hiding himself from you, trying to get an edge, if there's one to get. It's good instinct, O." He lets out a long breath. "If you can, find smaller, controlled quarters to face him in. Lock yourself in a bathroom, orient yourself in a defensible position. Make him work to close the distance to get personal– do your best to prevent line of sight for a gunshot."
"Escape, if you can," he adds as an afterthought. "If you're in the upstairs bath, go out the window." They both know there would be nothing to break her fall below in the garden patio, but it's a risk better than death. "Think similarly, should it happen not at home. Consider every exit when you enter a room, every escape route outdoors." There's no pleasure in this, no pride.
He hates that they've a need to discuss this at all.
"Ultimately… I can't tell you what to do, Odessa. Which thing might be right, which thing might be wrong." He closes his eyes, shoulders settling. "We're in uncharted waters. I've only ever thought this contingency through from my perspective, after all." Ace doesn't follow that up with any comfort, physical or emotional. "And as killing him isn't an option without upending both our lives permanently, it's a frightening possibility we are going to have to live with."
Eyes opening, he finds her again instantly. "Which is why skimming where Varlane was last for signs that could lead us to him is triply important. I need you to try to do what I've seen you do before. And I need you to believe that you can do it."
There seems to be another option he's on the verge of saying, but he doesn't. He wants to place all his hopes on this.
She feels the worry in his soul and it feels almost like permission to embrace that in her own. “I hate this,” she whispers emphatically, mouth pressing into a line while her brows come together. “I thought I’d gotten away from this. This is our home. This is where I should be safe. Where we should be safe.” Now she wears her fear plainly. “If Redd means to kill me,” Odessa’s eyes widen as she pauses for a breath, “then I don’t know if I can stop him. I think I only have a chance if he makes a mistake.” She does trust, however, in the probability that he will do so.
Expression shifting, the side of Odessa’s fist hits the countertop in tandem with a ragged sound of frustration. “I didn’t do anything wrong!” Again, her fist comes down. “I’ve been playing by the rules! I’m not supposed to have to live like this!” Her head turns this way and that, searching for something. Not finding it, she bolts up from her seat and closes the distance between herself and him, staring up at him from her barefoot stance, determined and defiant. “I can do it. If you can find my starting point, I’ll find him.” Lip curling, her look becomes a glare. “Then we kill Redd.” It may not be an option now, but it will be once they’ve secured themselves as the solvers of this problem. She’s certain of it.
But she relents, leaning back and tilting her head to one side without losing the intensity of her gaze, although it shifts in emotional hue. She’s still resolute, but also receptive. Odessa sweeps her gaze down his form, then back up, assessing visually what she senses with her ability. “What aren’t you saying?”
Ace can't repress a smile when Odessa shows her claws, doesn't try to dissuade her in the slightest. If this is what it takes her to move on in this moment, to direct her out of her fear now, he'll take it.
It's much better than the alternative of wallowing. He loves her like this, he wants her like this. He'll redirect that energy when it becomes … pressing to.
Her question to him is one that receives her a light brush of his hand across her brow, pushing her hair back from her face. "Either we upstage Redd in his little petty game, or… we have the opportunity to take the situation to Gideon before it gets escalated to him first," he relates with a slow exhale that doesn't deflate the proud holding of his shoulders in the slightest.
Despite the unfavorable topic.
Odessa draws in a deep breath and holds it in her chest, letting the coals in the chambers of her heart burn, anger like smoke coils inside her, let out slowly after a long moment. “No one upstages us.” For as much as the pair of them prefer not to be seen doing the things that they do, being overlooked is out of the question. “We have plans.” The corner of her mouth tics up faintly as his silent pride sinks into her, but only for a moment before her gaze cools again and lowers to the knot around Ace’s throat.
Reaching up, she loosens the tie bit by bit. “You are going to have everything you fight for.” The quiet of her voice does nothing to lessen the intensity of her. “No one is going to stand in your way.” The fine fabric whispers as she works the tail through the loop. “Least of all me. We’ll find him, and advance your standing.” Unsurprisingly, it’s easier to focus on what Ace has to gain by her success than what they both stand to lose in her failure.
How he adores her for thinking of him, for acting in a way that seeks to elevate him, too. His heart burns in his chest, a stubborn coal that's not under the right condition to catch flame again, but it smolders dangerously all the same. "Our star will rise," he whispers his agreement, velvet and pleased.
"We'll rise early and see to unpacking all of this then– we'll unleash your ability on where we last knew him to be." Ace's hand comes to rest on Odessa's shoulder. "Yes?"
Her understanding is signified with three small nods of her head. “Yes, sir.” Blue eyes lift from where she pulls the wide end of the tie slowly toward her, wrapping it around her hand bit by bit and causing the narrow end to slither around the back of his neck as she pulls it free from his shirt collar.
Having a plan, however unstructured, goes no small way toward putting her at ease again. “Maybe this will put us in a position to renegotiate my contract,” she posits idly, without real hope. “Or for you to buy it out.” Odessa unwinds Ace’s tie again so she can fold it over just once and offer it out to him. “Although a favor to be named later would admittedly be more advantageous.” Shoulders come up in a shrug. She’s filling silence now, a sign that the fraying of her nerves has not quite mended.
"Hm," is the only note of acknowledgement of either of those paths presently, Ace taking hold of the tie offered back to him while he turns several thoughts over in his mind like stones. "Let's get a late-night snack in us before turning in, then. End things on a good note to set the tone for tomorrow. Thoughts?"
On food, not his plan.
“I could toss a salad together,” she supposes. Whether she likes his plan or not, there’s very little point in arguing with Ace once his mind’s made up. Her lips thin just the faintest bit. There’s a disappointment in her. As is usual for her, it’s an unfair one. Not taking bait she’s set out for him, to say the things she would like him to say without an explicit prompt or ask. Odessa chides herself silently. “Leftover take-out, but noodles might be too heavy.”
She wanted to hear him say that getting her out from d’Sarthe’s thumb, however light the touch of it now, would be wise, preferable, desirable. She doesn’t let on. Odessa smiles. “But if you really only need a snack.” She's not always sure he eats a full meal on the nights where he joins her at the club after working all day, “I can make up some popcorn. There’s chips in the cupboard, salsa…” Her brows lift, asking him the same question he asked. Thoughts?
"Options galore," Ace drawls, pressing a kiss to her crown before moving around her. "And none of them ice cream?" There's a small, teasing smile for that, and he lays his coat at last on the counter rather than find somewhere else for it at this point.
He runs a hand back through his hair as he comes around the other side of the island, his eyes going down momentarily to the knives on the counter. "Though there's nothing to cut, where that delicacy is concerned. Nothing satisfying, anyway," he dithers with that same teasing lightness, then straightens his phones where he's set them on the counter for the evening. "How about some of the leftovers for me? Make the most use of them. And for you, whatever sounds most appealing."
Odessa blushes in an instant, embarrassed. Glancing away, she's forced to admit, "I finished it off before you got home." She turns to the fridge so as not to see him react, even though she'll feel it regardless. There was a not insignificant amount left. She opens the fridge and pulls out a folding brown takeout box, setting it out on the counter before grabbing a pair of beers.
Rather than tossing it in the microwave, she reaches up to a hanging rack above the sink to take down the wok. She sets it down and flips on the stove, letting the flame start to warm it. She'll do better than offering lukewarm noodles and wilted veg.
Plucking up the bottle opener from the utensils drawer, she sets it and the bottles in front of Ace, letting him decide if they begin the process of winding down this way.
Idle surprise– trailed by disappointment skips its way down Ace's arms until it motivates him to take up the bottle-opener. His plans to guide their experience gone awry, he has the grace to not pout. And besides, the answer has its own insights.
"It'll be all right, O," he promises seriously and solemnly. He looks at her to impress it, rather than carry on with the motions of feigning relaxation for the night. "Between you and I… we'll solve this, my phoenix."
"I promise."
We had better, or I’m fucked properly, does not leave Odessa’s lips, for all that she’s screaming it in her brain. Instead, she smiles tiredly with a sigh. “What did I do wrong this time?” she asks, feeling his disappointment wash against her shores. “I’m getting up earlier tomorrow so I can double my jog.” Not that she expects he’s worried about whether all that ice cream is going to have a chance to settle on her. It’s easier to shift her focus to those smaller, everyday and interpersonal worries as a means of distracting herself from the larger fear threatening to consume her the longer she stares at it.
"You had it all without me, though," Ace humors her in a deadpan balk before he sets his hands on the countertop surface.
He flattens them there, flattens his emotional kilter with it. He shapes it, balling it down into marbled resolve meant to be offered to her.
Odessa’s emotions are too heavy to manage more sheepishness. “I’m sorry.”
"I'm serious," he states aloud as he segues back to the greater topic at hand, and then tells her once more in an untempered calm, "You will have everything you're willing to fight for. And I know you will, with this."
"It will be all right," he assures again, the darker strain in that marbled optimism overpowered by pale, blinding certainty in this moment. Then he leans back from the counter, his offering, not willing to fight to have her accept it.
Tomorrow would be what tomorrow would be.
His seriousness is met with the same, Odessa giving this moment between them the gravity it deserves without trying to be dismissive in the name of getting to a place with less tension. She tastes the flavor of his confidence on the back of her tongue.
The feel of it is like the wind sweeping through her hair. Smells like smoke curling from the end of cigarettes and toward a sky full of blue cheer over bleak circumstance. The subtle discomfort of the strings wrapped around her fingers. It’s the anticipation and the shiver up her spine that comes just before the curtains go up and the show begins. The electric thrill of seeing that the red threads that he’s severed aren’t the ones she intended, but the ones she’d hoped for. It’s like lifting their masks to give the other just a peek of what they each hide beneath.
Odessa comes up on her toes out of some unnecessary and mostly forgotten habit to press a kiss to Ace’s cheek. “Thank you.” Her smile curves against his jaw.
“For reminding me just who we are.”
Ace smiles, and with it, his posture begins to relax. He reaches for her with his left hand, ignoring the other things needing tended to in favor of taking her hand in his and bringing it to rest over his heart. "I'm always here for you," he promises.
“And I you.” She fits herself to his side, precisely where she belongs.