For ashyperfume

[trainwrecked]

It took a while, before he dialed the phone on the card. Weeks, he thought, he wasn't very good at keeping up with the dates. Or, rather, he didn't care that much.

But time had passed since the party. He'd memorized the information, then burned the card - in his experience already, anything after the last wipe wasn't going away, so he was using what part of his memory he could. Extensively.

In the end, though, he just picked a street phone and punched the number.

"Ms. Fukuyama?" Yes, she'd told him to call her Fuu. He couldn't be sure she'd pick up the phone herself. "This is James Banes."

That was how normal conversations went, wasn't it?

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[ashyperfume]

Honestly, she hadn't been sure that he would call. He'd said he would, but Fuu had long ago come to expect that people said a lot of things, few of them meant. She had work to do, and the days fell away. She paid them little attention, paid the entire matter little attention and little more thought.

Except for a single, niggling murmur in the back of her mind: She shouldn't have wanted him to. He was a stranger, a chance encounter. There had been no true reason for her to give her number in the first place.

And yet the decision had been the right one. Of that she had never been more sure. That certainty bothered her, wiggled in the background, and did not quite let the matter die.

She almost didn't answer the phone. She was working late that evening, focusing in on a problematic line of code, staring at the screen so long her eyes were nearly dry. Only absently did she reach for the device as it buzzed, glancing at the number.

Overseas. Generally telemarketers weren't that desperate.

"Ms. Fukuyama?" The voice was low, familiar in her ear.

She was silent a moment in its wake. Her eyes flicked up to her closed door and back again to her desk.

"James." The return of the name was quiet, like an exhaled breath.

[ashyperfume]

Aaron's was most definitely a dive bar -- the kind that had been around for years, where smoke and alcohol and the oil of fingers had worn deep into the wood, leaving its own aroma and patina that never quite scrubbed out. It was a small place, and close, with stools clustered under the long bar and a scattering of tables and booths lit by dim pools of yellow light. In the back, men grunted and jibed each other over a game of pool; in the front were a few straggling regulars, unkempt and drowning in their drinks, listening vaguely to the battered jukebox in the front.

Aaron's had long since stopped catering to anyone new, content with its menu and its regulars, never destined to be anything more than it was. It feigned to be frozen in time, quietly decaying with its clientele.

For her turn, Fuu looked to be at home, tucked back in a corner booth. Her eyes were mostly closed, fingertips sliding absently over the rim of the glass in front of her that still contained at least an ounce of amber fluid. She wore what she had worn to the office, bare legs crossed at the knee. One shoe was half off, balanced on her toes and swinging gently.

"Buy you a drink?" The voice came from a man having separated himself from the pool table, grinning as he leaned over the table.

Pale eyes opened slowly, studied him. The corners of Fuu's mouth turned up in a smile; the tiny chorus of dangling droplets at her ears glittering against her neck. The man could see a whole, glorious evening spanning out in that smile; his eyes traced the bared line of her shoulder. He leaned forward, waiting for the answer to fall from her lips.

"No." She still smiled, but it wasn't at all polite. It was a smile that knew exactly what he wanted, and was all too pleased to take it away. It took him several moments to absorb it. He turned slowly red.

[trainwrecked]

Nine-thirty sharp, he was at her door, knocking quietly. He got there over the rooftops, that was easier when it came to avoiding cameras and attention both, if he was quiet and careful.

And he was.

He was carrying a few pages from the stuff she'd brought to him the night before, and, well, cash, since he had no idea what kind of food he wanted, let alone what she might.