OPEN | prompt one | RAIN

[wrens]

prompt one | R A I N I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain - and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane.

 

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[extortion]

[ Kookaburra looks down at his drink at Felix sets it down onto the table between them and then realizes doing so makes her lashes long and low, makes her looks week or mawkish. And if there was one thing she wasn't supposed to do it was to look feeble in the face of her employer. He was a shark, after all, and he's taught himself how to smell blood in the water. Immediately, she straightens, her frown smoothing to something a little less sulky. (Is it sad that she still wants his approval? She covers up the sentiment with a tic of her eyebrow.) ]

Investment's the result of effort over time. I came to you with one estimate; I'm asking for more time, which means another. I can break him, Felix, I just— [ Kookaburra shakes her head. She wasn't to be pathetic. ] Two more weeks. [ A pause and then: ] Buy me a frock he'll like and I can take it down to one.

[backstreets]

[He's had enough employees sitting across from him like this, straightening up, tense, wary, scared. If Kookaburra was scared, she knew better than to show it, fixing her tells as soon as she made them. But then, it would be better if she didn't make them at all.]

A frock and a week.

[He leans back again, watching her. The fact she's trying for a deal like that all shows some of the guts he knows she's got. Not begging or pleading him, giving him an offer. Thinking like that was what he looked for, as long as she delivered on it. Too many deals stacked on top of one another could bury a man in a deep grave, and maybe that was the way she'd go, but maybe Felix's had some hopes - and he was not a man that hoped - that she didn't.]

I like to keep a habit of never buying anything for a woman. [He sounds like he could laugh. At himself or at her.] And you want a dress.

[extortion]

[ She was a clever girl born to violet-blood parents; making blue on her sixteenth birthday had been written off for years as a given. But as much as Amelia Sahin liked the trappings of money and comfort that came with the upper echelons of the Spectrum, she'd bristled under the weight of expectation, the mandate of you do this and here and how that came with kissing the Magistrate's ass. So fall back into green, she did, much to her parents' chagrin (and her own satisfaction). But Amelia had been born bright and ambitious and so that focus had had to go somewhere.

So she made Kookaburra, made friends, met Felix, slept with some important people. The rest is history, or so the saying goes. History, it turns out, is still be written. She tips her head and leans forward, elbows resting on the table, her look more confident now. Felix would want her undaunted, and maybe that's what she wants for herself too. ]

A green one, [ Kookaburra tells him, her charm re-emerging along with her passing flirtation. ] It'll bring out my eyes.

[ A beat passes and then, more matter-of-factly: ] I'll make sure the return of investment's good. I'd say I won't ask for one again, but I don't like breaking promises.

[ At face value, that's a lie. But given what's unspoken and implied — to you, Felix — sets it back to rights again. ]

[backstreets]

[He tilts his head as she leans forward, a touch of approval in his eyes - that's better, there she is - but he doesn't let it show anywhere else, doesn't give her anything back on her flirting. She gets nothing more for this visit than what she's dealt for, nothing more until she brings him the goods. He picks up his drink.]

You won't ask again.

[A statement, not a threat. She won't ask again because she won't fail, because she'll do what she's meant to on this job and learn from it for the next. He knocks back the last of the vodka in his glass, and abandons the empty on the table, leaning forward, into her personal space. A secret to be shared, a deal to be made.]

One week. [One finger pointed at her in emphasis. She's laid down the terms, she needs to keep to them. He isn't one of her marks to be played. He leans back, languid into the booth's seat again.] You can come find me tomorrow for the dress.

[It's probable she was just expecting the money for it. But if he's going to pay for a dress, it won't be done by proxy.]

[extortion]

[ You won't ask again and maybe he's right, but the fact that he's not asking, not warning, but simply telling does nothing but embolden Kookaburra more. In truth, there's something empowering about Felix Laurens, or at least in how he chooses to interact with her in particular. Having watched some of the others slink out of the booth while waiting her turn, Kookaburra's certain he doesn't have that effect on most people and she wonders for a moment whether or not he does it on purpose, or whether or not it simply is and it's everyone else's job to just deal with.

Maybe, she thinks, it's just the people who work for him to get it, the ones he demands results from and nothing less. Or more maybe it's just her and her search for his approval again. (It's her biggest secret, the one thing she'd never admit to. It's quite possible he sees it there in her eyes when she stares at him, but Kookaburra will deny it with every breath. She thinks it makes her seem weak and pathetic. And maybe it does and maybe it doesn't, but she's unwilling to budge on this point.)

The lines of her throat sharpen briefly — tense, maybe; no, expectant — when Felix leans forward, her chin tipping up slightly like the proud animal that she is. Her mouth splits a slow smile though she keeps herself from seeming to eager to accept. Unlike so many of their colleagues, Kookaburra does not have a predator's smile. No, it's the smile of a sweet girl, a disarming smile, one that she's perfected over the years. ]

You don't know my size.

[backstreets]

[There are parts of Kookaburra that remind Felix of himself, a long time ago. They had different beginnings, different sides of the scale, and maybe she decided to fall where he decided to climb (violet in everything except colour, the way he lives), but the point was that there was a decision there. He'd had the determination and cunning to make it, but even he had to cut his teeth somewhere, had to look on more powerful criminals with quietly earnest eyes, aching for approval until he was climbing on past them and not looking back at all.

He's not so arrogant to think that won't happen to him one day, and in truth, that's one of the reasons why he's lasted so long. Ambition left unchecked will kill a man as quick as idleness, and Felix has never let his ego get bigger than his strength or his wit. He looks at Kookaburra and sees himself, and he knows the trick isn't to take her out back and cut that bud off before it grows into a weed he can't manage. It's to train it, treat it well, see it flourish - by his hand. Maybe one day she'll be burying him, but if that day ever comes, he'll damn well deserve it.]

I've got eyes. [He looks away from her as he says it, catching the eye of a passing waitress. A flick of his fingers and she's heading to the bar to get him another drink. When his gaze settles back on Kookaburra, it's something else for a moment - the look all her flirting's been fishing for, raking over her chest and shoulders, neck, face. Appraising and appreciative. But it's a moment, that's all she gets.] And you don't have anything I haven't seen before.

[extortion]

[ It's a moment, that's all she gets, but it's all that Kookaburra wants, really. She doesn't need Felix Laurens' eyes to tell her what she (and a handful of carefully chosen higher-ups) already know. And the point isn't to be reminded, the point is the acknowledgment that comes with it. However brief (like a carrot on the end of a stick), it's there and that's more than enough to get her to hum like a cat purring with its mouth around a canary.

Once (just the once) she'd thought to try and trick Felix into bed with her, try to connive something out of him like so many of the others that came and went (mostly went). But then she'd met the man who'd been so long merely a name whispered in back rooms. She'd met him and in meeting him, realized there were some men who were good for more than just a night out and a few laughs. A man, if he wanted to be, could be driven and inspiring.

So that's what Kookaburra is now, with Felix's help; she's inspired. ]

It might not be anything new, [ she says, her fingers reaching to toy with the dangle of one her earrings. ] But you have it admit, it's rather good.

[backstreets]

[The hand at her earring is meant to attract his gaze there, look at the shape of her neck, her hair. Felix knows how it works, and it's not often he lets it work on him. If he likes a woman, he likes her with little preening (or talking, usually), and he likes her gone again as soon as he's done with her. Kookaburra isn't his type, as pretty as she is. Which is just as well, considering how useful she's turned out to be.]

You know what to do with it, I'll give you that.

[The waitress is back, delivering him a new drink, quicker than anyone else in the club is being served. There are perks to being Felix Laurens; there are perks to working for Felix Laurens. He wonders whose money paid for those pretty earrings, but if she earns it, he doesn't question what she'll do with it. The dress is a different matter.]

Don't worry. [He lifts the glass with half a smile, taking a sip.] I'll make sure it suits.