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As the crowds begin to thin, North finally breaks from the bar long enough to chase down her girl - nothing more than a bit of shine on the edge of the room.
Chloe’s wearing a dress like spun moonlight tonight, and there’s more than a few admirers’ tips peeking from her neckline. North settles her hip against the booth, offering a gin fizz her way. “A nightcap? Josh fell off his stool before he got to it.”
“Markus needs it more,” Chloe says, waving towards her table companion.
North hadn’t realized he was still here; he’s been brooding in the corner so long, she’d simply mistaken him for the furniture.
“Where’s Simon?” North risks.
“We’re not talking about it,” Chloe says. Markus merely continues to study the woodgrain across the way.
North raises her eyebrows and sets the drink down. She waits a polite pause - long enough for Markus to take a sip and swallow, at least - before she says, “So, is it official this time, or—?”
“Dear, behave,” Chloe warns lovingly, tugging her by a suspender strap down into a proper seat.
“It’s official,” Markus says. He takes another sip.
He has a business card trapped between the fingers of his left hand. He taps it absently against the table.
“But—” Chloe says.
“But nothing,” Markus mumbles, and finishes the drink in one go.
North takes the opportunity to lean forward and snatch the business card up. Markus makes a choked noise of complaint, but he’s far too slow.
She tilts it in the dim light and reads aloud: “’Fowler’s Goods & Sundries.’ Corktown? What’s this about?”
“Line on a young gentleman Markus has been looking for,” Chloe says.
“A gentleman,” North enthuses.
“It’s not anything,” Markus says, snatching the card back and pocketing it. “An acquaintance.”
“From the war,” Chloe adds.
North slouches back into her seat. “That’s a long time to be looking.”
“Hard man to find,” Markus replies. His smile is enigmatic at best. Worried, almost. She doesn't think she's ever seen Markus try on worried.
North waves away the bills he begins to unfold from his pocket. “Drinks are on the house for the sufficiently desperate.”
“Thanks,” Markus answers dryly. He offers them a polite tip of the hat as he follows the last wayward stragglers out the door.
There’s glasses to be washed, floors to be mopped; but for now, North kicks her legs out in front of her and drops her head against Chloe’s shoulder, satisfied with a moment of closing her eyes and tasting the hint of sandalwood in her perfume.
“I look forward to meeting him,” Chloe murmurs into her hair.
“Who?”
“The one that’s always been standing between Markus and Simon.”
“Ah. Do you think Simon knew—?”
“Oh, yes. He was the one to call an end to it, finally. We’ll have to do something about that.”
“That’s more your expertise, darling dear,” North says.
“Well, an excellent drink to ease introductions can’t hurt,” Chloe answers demurely, and tips North’s chin back for a kiss. She tastes like juniper and starlight, as always.
North is absolutely not one for rumors and hearsay. That would be uncouth.
No, she’s thorough in her gossip-mongering. She believes in cross-references. So she gathers sources from at least three well-known busybodies, and finds that while there are some salacious rumors around just what kind of sundries Fowler’s running through Corktown, and that he’s got a couple cops willing to look the other way - interesting, of course, and she makes a note to Chloe about it - his only son is decidedly too young to have been in the war.
Disappointing, to say the least.
She strikes gold a week later with a friend of a friend of Josh’s who says yes, an exceptionally good-looking fella did turn up in Fowler’s shop a few days ago. Jeffrey turned the counter over to his daughter and spoke with the man privately. The newcomer left looking a little less dour than when he’d walked in, so it must have gone alright.
More than alright, North figures. Markus is in full form that Saturday, chatting up half the bar on everything from baseball to that Teapot Dome nonsense. He gets into a full-throated argument with Josh about the state of the automotive economy before North sends Chloe in to settle him on a barstool and get the both of them to focus on a more venue-appropriate (read: less pedantic) topic.
Markus waits for the night’s entertainment to start packing up before he leans across the bartop towards Chloe. “I have a favor to ask.”
“And what would that be?”
“I want to learn sign language,” he says.
“Praise be,” Josh announces in full stage voice, “Markus Manfred finally wants to learn how to shut his mouth.”
But Chloe’s holding up a hand to Josh and leaning in, a mischievous smile on her face. “And why would that be?”
Markus feigns perfect innocence as he tips back the last of his drink.
“Jesus Christ,” North announces. “You’re in love.”
North suffers through four private sign language lessons in their apartment before she explodes: slams her hand of solitaire down and glares across the table at Chloe and Markus, both of them fully engrossed in another rustling-and-hand-thumping rendition of the alphabet. “I demand a name, at the very least.”
“Connor,” Markus answers, easy as that.
“When are you bringing him by the bar?”
Markus stalls, his hand freezing up somewhere around ‘g’. “I’m not sure.” He resumes the alphabet smoothly, adds, “He’s very reserved.”
“Bring him on a weeknight,” Chloe says. “Early evening. It’ll be quiet. Does he work?”
“He’s a bookseller.”
“Oh, delightful. Here, this is how you say ‘book’—” Chloe brings her hands together, and Markus mimics.
It’s all perfectly nauseating.
In the end, Markus opts for a Tuesday in February: snowy and frigid and miserable. North’s surprised the trolley’s even running, let alone out to Ferndale. They have the woodstove going full-bore and the Jericho is still a drafty, damp hellhole, and an empty one at that.
She’s halfway to answering the metered knock with a Get out, we’re closed, but Chloe answers the door with an admonishing look thrown North’s way. North bundles her scarf higher and glares wordlessly.
Markus comes through the door first, dusted in snow and stomping his boots free on the stone with a muffled apology.
North perks up from her perch when he steps aside to accommodate the narrower man waiting behind him.
Chloe’s hands are already moving in a blur. Connor’s eyes widen for a moment before he’s motioning to answer; then his cheeks brighten with a little more than frostnip as he remembers to pry off his mittens.
He is and isn't what North was expecting for their well-to-do Markus Manfred. Young and handsome, yes. A suit that looks factory-made - too tight in the shoulders, too short on the cuff - a little less so.
North sees some introductions somewhere in the gesturing, but Markus goes the traditional route with her; lines Connor up and says, “Connor, this is North. North, this is Connor.” Connor nods and shakes her hand, mouthing a ‘Hello.’
So he can hear, seems like; he hadn’t been watching Markus’s lips, as Chloe’s sister does.
That’s kind of interesting. The faint shine of a thin scar on his cheek is interesting, too. A little interruption in a very pretty face.
North amuses herself watching Markus try and fail to keep up with Connor and Chloe’s flurry of conversation. As soon as there’s a break, she negotiates a migration up to their apartment; the night’s a bust and it’s a tighter space up there, easier to warm up to something approaching livable temperatures.
She snags a bottle of Canadian Club on the way up. Has to make the journey over worth it for their customers-turned-guests.
Connor must feel some kind of way about her being on the outside of the conversation. When she returns to the sitting room with the drinks, he passes a notebook her way that reads, ‘Thank you for your hospitality.’
“’course,” North says, and passes him a glass. “Hope you like whiskey.”
He nods somberly.
The conversation’s good, passing between spoken and gestured in easy turns; Markus needs more help than anyone, and Connor’s first laugh - a surprised huff - arises when North steps in to say, “No, he’s saying your sense of humor is shit.”
'Questionable,' Connor corrects.
She cuts Connor’s curious stare short with a quick gesture of what she thinks means ‘I know enough to get by.’ He nods, so she must be close.
He leans into Markus, listening with rapt attention as they talk; and when he drifts to the edge of the conversation, he allows Markus or Chloe or North to reel him back in with a certain grace.
Quite alright, North thinks. Cute - she can see what caught Markus’s eye there. And sharply attentive, watching and listening with care. The motion of his hands is as neatly composed as his handwriting.
She inevitably wonders if he could speak, before. How he might have sounded.
She thinks it best not to ask. She has some tact.
Connor expresses some worry about the trolley and returning home before it shuts down; above North and Chloe’s protests, Markus provides a gracious exit and offers to escort him home. Connor thanks them again for their time, and his composure only stutters for a moment when Chloe rises onto her toes to give him a hug goodbye. Surprise, North wonders, or discomfort.
Either way, she offers a handshake, and Connor seems grateful for it.
Later - once everything's warm and muted, ensconced beneath the quilts - she tangles Chloe in her arms and murmurs, “Would you learn a language for me?”
“It isn’t a competition,” Chloe says, her fingers shaping adorations into the small of North’s back.
“I would be willing to learn French,” North decides. “Or Italian.”
Purely tactical. She’d taken three years of French before she gave up on school entirely, and she’s heard Italian is quite similar.
“You’ve already learned my language,” Chloe murmurs.
She falls asleep before North can craft a suitable reply.
She comes to anticipate the nights Connor and Markus might turn up; lulling hours where their little cellar of iniquity is half-full at most, the air stirring with silk curves of smoke. Markus and Connor find a corner booth and companionable silence. Chloe ferries them the occasional drink and lingers to talk when the going is slow enough.
The first night, North catches Connor signing only once: a quick, furtive ‘Aren’t you bored?’, half-hidden beneath the table.
She reads Markus’s response well enough: “Not with you,” he says, and presses a quick kiss to the curl of hair over Connor’s brow, leaving him blushing.
North discovers Connor can speak, a little - a barely-there whisper he doesn't often attempt. She's never heard it herself, but she's seen the way he leans close, and how Markus tilts his head to listen. The way he smiles like a fool, whatever Connor says. At just the sound of his voice, more often than not, a small and secret thing in and of itself.
She catches a familiar look on their faces, occasionally: a fond sideways glance, the quiet astonishment that they’ve been found without ever realizing they were lost.
Chloe has found a suitable occupation for Simon, in the meantime. She signals as much with a pointed look at North and a triple tap of her finger one Wednesday night. North bitches loudly about their two far-flung bar patrons: “Josh, get over here, have you met Simon Brent? He doesn’t bite.”
Josh has long been in need of some tempering distraction, and it only takes three attempts and some of North’s best conversation-starters to convince Josh that Simon is, indeed, interested in more than his extensive knowledge of current events.
North has opened a promising line of communication with one Jeffrey Fowler of Corktown, Michigan, in regards to some less than legal Canadian imports. Markus’s romantic endeavors are proving surprisingly fruitful.
As for Mr. Markus Manfred himself, well--
Lost entirely, North’s decided. An utterly hopeless case.
“I know it when I see it,” she announces gravely, watching the two of them canoodling in their corner. They’ve arrived early; the band is still setting up.
“You’re an expert, love,” Chloe declares, as she puts the finishing flourish on whatever sparkly thing she’s been working through North’s up-do for the past twenty minutes. “There.”
“If it starts jangling, it all comes down,” North warns.
“You doubt these hands?” Chloe asks, batting her baby blues.
“That only works on me in the daylight hours.”
Chloe leans up to leave her mark on North’s cheek. “I’ve much evidence to the contrary.”
North thinks very little of the boys being here on a jazz night, truth be told. Markus knows how the place can get, of course, and will have warned him appropriately. Certainly the noise won’t be an issue - they’ll be the only ones in the joint able to hold a coherent conversation.
The crowds roll in and she’s lost in the bustle, doesn’t give them much thought at all.
Not until her eye catches on a sudden pause. Connor, out of place - down to his shirt and suspenders on the dance floor, Markus’s hand a warm anchor against the small of his back, but he’s frozen still, a point of stagnancy in the ruckus. North can’t put a finger on what’s changed - until she catches sight of the pocked scar above his collar, usually carefully covered. It’s a narrow pockmark, dark against the pale skin of his throat. A voice not lost but taken, some way or another.
She realizes she’s not the only one staring. And that Connor’s quite aware - falling still and shrinking back, eyes shuttered dark.
Nothing more than a millisecond, before Markus is in motion again: cupping a hand to his cheek with a confidence he’s built in slow, careful gestures.
Tilting his chin back just so, a barely there motion, and yet--
And yet.
It’s the span of a breath, the smallest suggestion; it’s I don’t see anything here to hide.
It’s, All I see is you.
A flickering hesitation before Connor leans forward into the kiss.
When Connor buries his blush against his shoulder, Markus catches his hand and takes him for a gentle turn, sinking back into the motion of the crowd.
An unspoken thing, there and gone. Languages all their own.
North doesn’t turn at the gentle touch at the nape of her neck; she inclines her head and leans back, folding Chloe beneath her arm as the music sways on.
Hopeless.