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“Another drink?”
“Mm.” Barba looked down at his empty glass, held loosely in one hand and resting on the leg he had bent up onto the sofa between himself and Benson. “I should probably go.” He ran a finger around the rim of his glass, glancing up at her. “Feels almost like old times.”
She shifted, her knee brushing his on the cushion. “Except this,” she said, lifting her hand from the back of the couch to finger lightly at his scruffy jaw. He smiled, turning his chin a little closer. “I know your beard grows fast but are you just never shaving unless you have court, now?”
“You don’t like it?”
She raised her brows. “I didn’t say that.”
He laughed quietly and looked at his glass, pretending not to notice her fingers brushing over the gray patch in his hair before she resettled her hand onto the back of the sofa. “Maybe I’m getting lazy in my old age,” he suggested.
“More relaxed,” she countered.
He cleared his throat. “Liv.” He lifted his head to meet her eyes. “I know I—”
She looked up behind him, her eyes widening in alarm, and he started to duck automatically. Before he could even begin to turn or ask what was wrong, she shrieked and scrambled away from him, knocking his empty glass onto the rug where it bounced with a muffled thud.
“Did you just squeal?” he asked as he threw an arm over his head. He had no idea what was happening, but the sound was so unexpected, so unlike her that it momentarily distracted him from anything else. “What—” he started, lurching off the couch toward her, following her in reaction to her fear, but movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention and he whirled in time to see a dark object swoop through the middle of the room.
“Bat, bat!” she screamed, once more sounding so unlike herself that Barba was unsure how to react. His heart was slamming and his stomach was clenched in a cold fist before he'd even recognized the animal—bat!—flying noiselessly from one side of the room to the other.
“Okay,” he said stupidly, flinching as the bat once more swooped down and back up to the opposite corner, “what the hell do we—”
“Rafaellll,” she shrieked, ducking behind him and clutching a handful of the back of his shirt.
“Okay. Okay. Okay.”
“Stop saying okay!”
“Okay!” He had no idea what he was supposed to do or why she’d suddenly decided she needed his protection when he was pretty sure she’d never screamed like a horror movie damsel in her entire life. “Where’s your gun?”
“I can’t shoot it! Do something!”
“Like what?” He let out a breathless little shout of his own when she screeched again and pulled at his shirt. “Stop panicking!”
“They get in your hair!” she said, turning and snatching the throw pillow from the corner of the sofa.
“Fantastic,” he said, ducking with a groan as the bat swooped again. Benson swung the pillow, catching the animal in midair and sending it tumbling toward Barba.
“Fuck!” Barba said, scrambling out of the way.
“I’m sorry!”
The bat touched the floor for only an instant before soaring back up toward the ceiling. Barba, with an arm looped over his head, darted past Benson and ran toward the kitchen.
“You’re leaving me?” she shouted after him, holding the pillow over her head as a shield.
“Shut up, I’m not!” he yelled back, opening a cupboard door and grabbing a green plastic colander, wincing as several pans clattered out onto the kitchen floor.
“Barba!”
“Now I’m back to Barba,” he muttered under his breath, hurrying toward the living room and watching the bat arc down through the room. “Move,” he told Benson, and she scrambled around the end of the sofa to get out of his way.
“Don’t let it get you!”
“It’s the size of a lemon!” he shot back. She didn’t need to know that his balls had drawn up in fear, and she was probably too panicked to hear the tremor in his voice. “God damn it,” he said, swinging the colander in the air and letting out another breathless shout when he caught the bat in the curve of the bowl. He brought it down toward the ground, uttering a string of curses, and dropped the colander onto the wooden floor beside the edge of the rug.
Sudden silence descended on the apartment, and Barba could hear nothing but the blood in his ears and his own heavy breathing. He stood, staring down at the colander on the floor.
“Did you get it?” she asked, peeking around the pillow she was holding up.
“Um.” He glanced around the ceiling. “I think so.” They both bent cautiously toward the colander, and he grimaced at the slight scratching sound.
“Ew, its toes,” she said, shivering, and Barba saw the bat’s little claws hooked through the holes in the side of the strainer. “It’s gonna get out.”
“It won’t,” he answered with a lot more confidence than he felt.
“Do we call an exterminator?”
He made a sound that was almost a laugh. “Wait for Noah to get home in the morning and let him deal with it.” He laughed again, more genuine this time, when she managed to give him a dirty look. Now that the bat wasn’t flying around her head, she seemed far less panicky. Barba, on the other hand, was shaking from the rush of adrenaline. “No, okay, I’m a fucking man,” he muttered, snatching two magazines off the coffee table.
“What does that mean?”
“Fuck if I know,” he said, slapping one magazine onto the colander and putting the other on the floor. He drew a deep breath and started trying to ease the edge of the magazine under the lip of the strainer. He paused when Benson made a small mewling sound behind him. “I swear to God if you scream again I will piss in my pants,” he warned her.
“I don’t scream.”
“I wouldn’t’ve thought so.”
“Lemons are bigger than limes, you know!”
Barba bit down hard on the inside of his check to stop the hysterical laugh rising out of his chest. Holding the colander steady with his hand on the top magazine, he quickly managed to slide the other magazine underneath. The bat was making small noises, clearly distressed, and Barba couldn’t blame it; he was feeling decidedly distressed, himself.
“Open the window, please.”
“It is,” she answered. “What’re you—”
“All the way open,” he clarified, and she hurried over with her pillow in one hand to shove the window as wide as it would go. “Okay, you might want to...move.”
She hurried over to the far side of the apartment to stand near the door, and he had a feeling it wouldn’t take much to make her dart out into the hallway.
Barba eased up the edge of the magazine, sliding his hand underneath. He felt a burst of renewed panic when the magazine started to bend, but slapped it against the lip of the bowl and stood quickly with the strainer sandwiched between the two magazines.
“Jesus, shit, Jesus Christ,” he said as he could feel the bat thumping against his palm on the other side of a few sheets of glossy paper, and he forced himself to walk toward the window. If he stumbled or lost his grip, they’d be back to square one, so he measured his steps and made it safely to the window.
“What if it flies back in your—”
“Olivia,” he said, more of a plea than anything else, and she stopped talking. With his heart racing, Barba leaned toward the window and held the colander out. The top magazine slipped in his hand, and the force of his grip made the other magazine bow into the bowl.
Barba shrieked and threw everything out into the night.
He slammed the window closed and stood there in stunned disbelief, staring at his own reflection in the window as his heart beat against the inside of his ribcage.
“Did you just throw my—”
“I’ll buy you a new one.”
“What does ‘I’m a fucking man’ mean?”
He turned to face her. She’d moved closer and was in the middle of the room. “What does ‘ahhhhhh!’ mean?”
She laughed, sounding a tad frantic. “I might’ve overreacted,” she said, and then he was laughing at the understatement. He crossed the room toward her and pulled the pillow from her hands to toss it onto the sofa. “I had one get tangled in my hair when I was a kid,” she started, but it didn’t matter.
His hands were still trembling as he brushed her hair back from her face. “It’s okay, it’s gone.” He grimaced. “Along with your colander and magazines,” he added, grinning in relief when she answered with a genuine laugh. He pulled her into a hug and she wrapped her arms around him, burying her face against his shirt.
“My hero,” she murmured, squeezing him, and he kissed her temple on impulse. “Just so you know, lemons are not a reassuring size, though.”
He laughed breathlessly, closing his eyes and nosing into her hair. “I can’t believe you thought I was abandoning you.”
“I didn’t really—I panicked. Did you tell me to shut up?”
“I would never,” he said, smiling into her hair when she laughed against his shirt. “Does the offer of another drink still stand? I could use another...bottle.”
“Of course.” She drew a deep breath and pulled back to look at him as he lifted his head. “I can’t believe I freaked out like that.”
“I vote we never tell anyone about this.”
“Deal,” she laughed.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t a little more reassuring, I’m just not used to seeing you—”
She kissed him, cutting off his apology, and he hummed in surprise as her lips met his. One hand settled onto her waist, the other automatically rising to slip into her hair. She pulled back a little to look at him, gauging his reaction, and he bent his head to recapture her lips.