Work Text:
Archer’s Ace-ly Appetizing Just Desserts
Archer
The waitress came back over and placed a heavy plate on the table between us.
Before, when she brought us our meals, she had come from the direction of the kitchen. This time, she came from where the front of the restaurant led out into the courtyard where we sat. I didn’t have Steve between me and her on this side. She must have come a bit close, because I heard Estrella say ‘stop’ in her 'big-tough-federal-agent-imma-bossa-you voice' (as she calls it).
“Please don’t brush against Archer, ma’am. My psychic is a psychometric, he reads things through touch.”
There was a squeak of rubber shoe soles and a rustle of clothes as the waitress drew back sharply.
“I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize I was so close, I didn’t mean to-”
“It’s fine,” I said, turning in her direction. I was fully sighted up until my early thirties, so I was in the habit of facing whoever I spoke to, especially after my peripheral vision went to shit. Where a person’s voice emanated from gave me a rough guide as to where they were. Sometimes I could sense their aura emanating from them, if their emotions were strong enough.
Thankfully, not everyone’s aura radiated off them like Jonathan Bane’s did. Life was already an obstacle course for me. I didn’t need to start dodging people because they gave off psychic heat like open bonfires everywhere I turned.
“Just make sure you keep your distance if you want to keep your deepest darkest secrets as secrets,” I told the waitress with a wry smile.
It irritated me when people gushed apologetically at me over my disability, almost as much as it irked me when people were ignorant and ableist. Humour was my way of dealing with awkward or enflamed situations. Admittedly my humour was pretty dark, but that suited me just fine. I’d never exactly been a jovial person.
There were some things I just had to laugh at, or they would mercilessly break me up on the inside.
“Thank you for warning me instead of just reading me like my diary and throwing all my faults back at me,” the waitress quipped back. Huh, that was unexpected, but nice. Usually I got another effusion of apologies, or creeped-out silence and a hasty retreat. “I just wanted to bring you out this. Er, this cake.”
I was confused, and so was Estrella, if the hesitation I heard across the table meant anything.
“Uh, we didn’t order…”
“This is complimentary. It’s a tradition now that any psychic who comes in here with their partner gets complimentary cake.” From the slight modulation in the pitch of her voice, she was turning to look at both me and Estrella in turn as she spoke. That was nice too. I hated people ignoring me while they spoke in my presence, as if just because I couldn’t see them, I wasn’t worth addressing and Estrella was my interpreter. “I took a guess that if you’re here, you know the people at Psy?”
Estrella chuckled. “Are you sure you’re not the psychic one? Jon and Donovan recommended this place. As did everyone else at Psy. We got told repeatedly that we absolutely had to stop here for dinner before we left town.”
“That’s a lovely compliment to us! They’re a wonderful bunch. Jon has been coming here for ages with his family. Lately he mostly comes in here with his fiancé. I'm pretty sure the first time they came here together was actually one of their first dates. They are the cutest couple - though I reckon you two could challenge them for that title.”
Wait. Partner. Couple. Did she think we were…?
“Now that’s a lovely compliment,” Estrella squealed across from me. Wait, what? “People tend to regard us as a bit of an unlikely couple, but we’ve always gotten along well, and as time goes on, our bond has only gotten stronger.”
Technically she wasn’t lying - Estrella and I had been close friends long before she had become my anchor, a development that had only ‘bonded’ us literally as well as figuratively - but she was giving the impression that we were a romantic couple, which wasn’t the case at all. What was she up to?
Oh well, I knew by now that it was usually in my best interest to play along, so I did.
“You know you are the most significant person in my life,” I told her, hoping I had a suitably love-struck expression upon my face. I had never worn one before, so I hoped I managed a decent approximation. Though I couldn’t help adding: “Other than Steve, of course, if he counts as a ‘person’.” Since we were sticking close to honesty and all that.
I felt Steve, who was leaning against my leg, perk up as I said his name.
Estrella chuckled, no doubt recognizing my dig at her falsehood for what it was. “Can’t compete with the cute dog, can I?”
The waitress laughed. “You easily hold your own against him, gorgeous as he is! Does he need anything, a water bowl refill?”
Estrella didn’t move to look round the table at Steve’s bowl, just waited expectantly.
I placed my ungloved hand on Steve’s head, feeling him adjust slightly so my palm squarely cradled the back of his furry canine skull, like he was trained to do. I sensed contentment, happiness to be out with his people, interest in the lingering food smells though his appetite was sated - for now - but no thirst.
“No, he’s fine thanks,” I gave my professional psychic assessment. I heard Estrella laugh, probably at the look on the waitress’ face. She got a kick out of watching people’s reactions when I used my ability to ‘speak dog’. “He very much enjoyed the chicken he ate for dinner. Thank you so much for accommodating him. Not every restaurant is so willing to allow a dog into their dining room.”
“He’s always welcome,” the waitress crooned, thankfully not petting Steve. He was cute and very friendly, so people often wanted to maul him with affection, despite the fact he was clearly a working dog. I didn’t need to pick up latent impressions from all the people who had touched him every time I grasped his harness. “As are his owners. I hope your dining experience with us lived up to the recommendation.”
“It certainly did - this is just the icing on the cake.” They both laughed, so I guessed Estrella must have gestured at the cake on the table as she spoke. So it had icing, good to know. I wondered what flavour it was, and how big my slice would be. “If it’s not too much trouble, though, could we get an extra plate?”
There was a beat while the waitress took in the request, then the complications of me sharing a single portion of cake with Estrella from across the table must have occurred to her. “Oh, of course! Just let me-”
She bustled away, then came back with the sound of a second plate landing on the table. There was a further scrape of crockery and clatter of cutlery as she cleared the empty plates from our mains away. With a few more words and a friendly demur in reply to our thanks, she left us to our ‘complimentary’ dessert.
Though she had been nice enough, it was a relief to be left alone with my anchor (and Steve).
My mischievous no-good anchor who had just let an innocent woman be duped into thinking we were a couple.
“Okay Ms. Do-Gooder Federal Agent Flores,” I said, smirking across the table at my partner. “Why didn’t you tell me we were undercover, and shouldn’t we have got our stories straight before we went into character? Should I have called you snookums and made lovey-dovey eyes at you over the cannelloni to really sell the part?”
Estrella gave that unrestrained hoot of laughter that was characteristic of her. We really were an odd couple - she was effusive and demonstrative, where I was decidedly not - but we had always just meshed somehow. Enough that people regularly thought we were dating each other.
Which we were not. Contrary to certain impressions that a certain someone had done nothing to discourage. Estrella usually corrected people, so I was confused as to why she hadn’t done so this time. Though it might have something to do with…
“If she had known we aren’t really a couple, she might not have given us free cake,” Estrella confessed impishly.
I had thought that must be it. Wow, this cake must look spectacular. I could smell it - a heady scent of sugar with a hint of citrus wafting under my nostrils - and chagrined as I was by the falsehood that had gifted it to us, I was very much looking forward to eating it.
“Besides,” Estrella went on, “I think it is a Nashville tradition we are partaking in. I’m pretty sure this is the restaurant Jon and Donovan told us about.”
The Reader and his anchor had recommended several local restaurants that both had excellent food, and were set up so that Steve and I could navigate them with relative ease (given Jon’s own necessary accommodations, he was an expert when it came to these particular requirements). This place had been at the very top of their list, which was why we had come here for dinner after the case we consulted on had been successfully closed. Jon and Donovan were sadly unable to join us because they’d had lose ends to tie up - the perk of being the out-of-town visitors was that we had far less paperwork to fill in than the lead investigators - but they had promised to take us out for a meal together before we left, returning the favour since we had taken them out in Vegas.
It took me a moment to connect this place to the story they had told us, about being mistaken for a couple before they had actually gotten together and scoring free cake from the hopeless-romantic waitress who had served them.
Knowing the sweet tooth Jon had after having worked two cases with him and seen his partner make multiple raids on vending machines, it didn’t surprise me that he would commit a minor misdemeanour for the sake of scoring cake; and Donovan certainly liked to eat, so he had could conceivably be just as dishonest. How shameful - or shameless - of two licensed investigators. Though I guess now Estrella and I were also offenders, or perhaps accomplices.
I leaned back in my chair - hands carefully resting on my thighs so my bare skin didn’t accidently touch the seat - and allowed myself an amused huff. “I guess it’s Jon and Donovan’s cover we should try not to blow. Not that it can be blown, since they are actually a couple now. I just hope this cake is worth committing fraud over.”
Estrella laughed raucously again. This woman regularly laughed more in a single day than I did in an entire year. It was one of the things that had drawn me to her. She emoted for me when most of the time I couldn’t be bothered doing it myself. “My preliminary assessment is that it is very worth having a criminal record for. Give me a sec, I’ll plate it up.”
We sat in companionable silence, me listening to Estrella slice the cake in two - I trusted her to cut me an equal sized portion, probably, surely the cake wasn’t so spectacular that she’d short-change me - put half on the extra plate, and place it in front of me. The citrus scent grew stronger with the freshly-cut cake right under my nose. I thought I was full from dinner, but I was apparently capable of finding extra room for dessert.
Steve must have likewise detected the appetizing scent and decided the same, as I felt him twitch against my leg, though his training meant he stayed obediently in place. I bet he was starting to drool though. I knew I almost was.
“I’ll give him a bit of the inside crumb,” Estrella said, as if she read my mind. “I don’t think there’s anything that would be harmful for him in it, though the icing is probably too sugary for him. Wouldn’t be good for his teeth.”
I was inspired to tease a bit. “Does this mean after you polish off your slice, I’ll have to put up with the sight of your gap-tooth smile?”
Estrella was used to me making ‘sight’ jokes, and chuckled right along. “You’ll be having trouble hearing me over the sound of the wind whistling through your own gap-toothed grin - or would, if you ever grinned. I might end up with less lipstick on them if I had fewer teeth.”
I had no idea whether Estrella was currently wearing lipstick, let alone how much of it was on her teeth.
She had initially struggled a bit, figuring out how to apply makeup when she began openly presenting as trans. She had first gotten into make-up when she was twelve. Her abuela, who had moved into Estrella's house when health problems made living alone too risky, had by that point lost most of her sight due to diabetes. On mornings when her sister had to get to school early for meetings with her debate team, Estrella had helped her abuela get ready in the morning, including applying her make-up for her.
That had planted the idea - so Estrella had told me - that she might like to wear make-up herself, though she had been aware that it was something a ‘boy’ wasn’t supposed to do. It had been the first step towards realizing she wanted to also wear femme clothes and grow her hair out.
She used to ask teenaged me, when I picked her up for outings to the cinema complex or the local diner along with my siblings and some other mutual friends, whether her latest attempt to paint her face was ‘alright’. Not that I’d had any idea what ‘alright’ makeup looked like, and we didn’t really know anyone else who could give us a regular evaluation. Her abuela’s eyesight was too poor for her to help. Her sister did what she could, up until she went away to college. Her parents had divorced, so her mother wasn’t around much. I certainly had no experience with makeup, had never dated a woman, and my sister went to college around the same time Estrella’s did. Most of our friends’ group were guys, and back then it was pretty unusual for men to wear make-up, especially in Texas. Kyle had been anti-makeup long before he transitioned. My mom and Aunt Jess both worked as veterinarians, and avoided wearing make-up so that all the dog hair that inevitably floated in the air at their clinic didn’t stick to their faces. The only makeup I ever remembered Jess’ partner Wanda ever wearing was full face-paint for a KISS concert they had attended. My mâdarbozorg lived in San Diego, and the only make-up she ever wore was a ring of dark kohl around her eyes. Hunter didn’t introduce us to many of his romantic partners until he met Thea, the woman he would eventually marry and move from Houston to Austin with so they could be near her folks.
In the end, Kyle’s girlfriend - who would later become his wife - had helped Estrella, shown her how to use the different brushes and which shade of foundation would suit her, recommended eye shadow palettes in certain colors, found her video tutorials of other women doing up their faces.
Why women put so much time and effort into it, I had no idea. But since it was something important to Estrella, I supported her interest in it.
I turned my attention to the plate of cake which, I assumed, was sitting right in front of me. Before I could ask Estrella to pass me a fork, though, she said with uncharacteristic hesitation: “Arch…”
Uh oh. That was her ‘serious-talk-stop-running-from-your-feelings’ voice. The last time she had used that on me, it was when she had told me it was natural to still be grieving my brother and that I was welcome to cry in front of her if I needed to. I tensed automatically when I heard her use that voice, bracing for what was to come.
“If the waitress comes back to clear the rest of our plates, or when I go inside to settle the bill, I can tell her that we’re not actually a couple. If it makes you uncomfortable for her to think that when it’s not the case.”
Was that all? I relaxed in my seat. Steve, sensing my building tension had released, leaned against me a little harder, reassuring both of us.
Estrella usually corrected people who took us for a couple, so it had surprised me that she didn’t do it this time. I didn’t really mind that she hadn’t - in fact I thought it was kind of funny - but I appreciated her offer to set the record straight.
I did, however, notice that she offered to do so only after the cake was safely devoured.
“It doesn’t bother me,” I answered, truthfully. “I appreciate the offer, though I don’t need you to do that. You know I’m not embarrassed by people assuming you’re my girlfriend, right?”
Estrella hummed noncommittally. I knew she was probably thinking about how some bigots didn’t assume she was my girl-friend at all. Fuck them. Since their opinion was wrong on multiple counts, I had no patience for straightening out their self-imposed ignorance.
Leaving that aside, I went on, “It’s not the thought of me being with you that annoys me. It’s the assumption everyone has that I couldn’t possibly be anything other than allosexual.”
I had known that I was asexual since high school, though it had taken a while before I knew the name for it. Even longer before I found others who identified the same way and who provided stories of similar experiences, assuring me I was not ‘weird’ or ‘broken’. Still, I had spent my whole life as an ace navigating a world that lived by the credo ‘sex sells’, and seemed determined to sell sex to me despite my constant lack of interest in it. References to sex and sexual relationships was just another inconvenience I put up with on a daily basis.
Admittedly, I had to deal with it far more now I had Estrella by my side, compared to when Kyle was my anchor. Funny how few people had never assumed me and Kyle were a gay couple, even though we were adoptive brothers who didn’t look much alike. People had taken it as a given that my brother would be willing to anchor me, but they seemed to struggle with the idea that Estrella might want to be my partner and aid when we were ‘just friends’.
It was not just a friendship, or just anything. How had Jon described what he saw when he looked at us? ‘Platonic soulmates’. That was it perfectly. I hadn’t been lying or joking when I said Estrella was the most significant person in my life - apart from Steve.
Estrella made that little sound through her nose that was half-sniff, half-grumble. “I know. I hate that too. You know full well how people apply different sets of assumptions to me, depending on whether they know I’m 'obviously' trans or think that I ‘pass’.”
Yes, I did know full well. I came from Texas and my brother was a trans masc whom my parents had adopted after his birth-family kicked him out, so I was well-acquainted with what shithead assholes transphobes could be. Estrella had told me that sometimes she couldn’t decide which was worse: transphobic men who found out she was trans and treated her accordingly, or sexist men who took her for a cis-gender woman and treated her accordingly.
Though she mostly looked out for me on the job, I also ‘looked’ out for her, as best I could. There were far too many times when I'd had to cut down a transphobic and/or chauvinist creep with the most scathing edge of my biting wit. One of the few positives of being vision-impaired was that even bigots seemed to realize they would come off looking like the bad guy if they picked a fight with a ‘blind man’. Of course, there were still plenty of terfs who had no compunction about retorting that the only reason I ‘tolerated’ Estrella was because I couldn’t see her, though surely her ‘deep’ voice must have clued me in, and didn’t I realize that she was ‘obviously just a confused man in a skirt’?
Assholes.
For most of the time I had known her, Estrella hadn’t looked anything at all like a man. Gender roles were just based on stereotypes anyway. More to the point, Estrella had never actually been a man. Even I could clearly see that, and I dearly wished more people could.
It seemed my anchor needed some stabilising. Much as I disliked talking about my feelings, I had never, ever asked Estrella to censor hers. I had helped her through more than one bout of dysphoria over the years. This time she was uncomfortable on my behalf - which just re-enforced my long-held, iron-cast belief that she was the sweetest, most considerate, selfless person in existence. She’d had to be, to put up with my bullshit and still agree to anchor me.
“Being mistaken for your date really doesn’t bother me,” I said, in my ‘gentle’ voice (Estrella referred to it as my ‘keeping-the-peace-and-kicking-my-badass-image-to-the-curb’ voice). “I’d be honoured to be taken for your date, if I was ever inclined to date. It’s the closed-mindedness of it that bugs me, not anything else. I genuinely like being seen out with you. And I’m not just saying that because I have no clue as to your actual appearance.”
Estrella chuckled lowly at that. See, there was a reason why dark humour was my coping mechanism of choice, it had proven results. “Are you sure you really want to make that statement, since you can’t verify it visually?”
“Of course I stand by it. However outlandish or unfashionable you might manage to make yourself, you could never look anything other than gorgeous. The beauty of your inner self always shines through, so strongly that even I can see it.”
There was a bashful silence across from me.
I was glad my words had apparently gotten through, and gratified that I had apparently rendered Estrella speechless, which was a very rare occurrence.
She did rally quickly. “I wouldn’t be so certain. For all you know, I might wear crocs.”
I knew she didn’t, though since I also knew she had endless trouble finding ‘cute’ women’s shoes in her size, I didn’t touch that one with a ten-foot white cane. “As long as they’re comfortable and you don’t step on my foot - intentionally - I am fine with that. Just don’t re-lace my Doc Martins in a color that clashes with my ties.”
“Deal.” With another laugh patented Estrella laugh, it seemed that equilibrium had been restored. “Here, we’d better eat this before the waitress decides we look platonic and snatches the cake away.”
Estrella knew how to use dark humour too. I was pretty sure the waitress was far too nice to take away the cake she had given us, even if she did learn that we had accepted it under false pretences and had never been nor would ever be anything other than friends to each other. But I wasn’t about to let a perfectly good excuse to have our cake and eat it too pass us by.
I held out my hand, and Estrella dutifully placed a fork into it - tines facing down ready, as she always did - without me having to say anything.
“Inside cut edge is at your six o’clock, looks like it has some kind of citrus jam or citrus butter filling. White icing on the outside, decorative frosting on two corners, which I would steal off your plate if I thought I could get away with it.”
That made me actually laugh out loud. “Thank you for not underestimating my Daredevil senses.”
Jon, Donovan and I had talked comics a bit during a rest break while working this case. Turned out they were big fans of comics, and even bigger nerds. I thought Gonzales was bad, but they had actually named their cats after comic characters, and Jon had openly referred to Donovan as his ‘Green Lantern’, in front of his mother no less.
Kyle and I used to read whatever comic books we could get our hands on, while Hunter would only deign to flip through them if they were being adapted into movies (seriously, though he was my twin, sometimes I doubted whether the two of us were actually related). After Kyle’s death, reading comics was just another thing I couldn’t do without him. Today when we were swapping favourite series, Donovan had said he seemed to remember an audio read-through version of a Daredevil comic script, and had once seen a website where you could listen to the original Shadow radio serials; he promised to look them up and send me links when he found them.
It really was a shame we didn’t live closer to him and Jon. They were good people. I’d just have to hope that more future cases would throw us together. So long as they didn’t include any more bombs.
I poised my fork over where I estimated the piece of cake to be. It really smelled divine.
It reminded me of a special cake of my mother’s that she regularly made for all of us to enjoy, but mostly for my father, since it was his favourite. They had referred to it as the ‘Persian love cake’, an old family recipe that our mâdarbozorg used to bake for our pedarbozorg, and which Mom then made for Dad to show him how much she cared for him.
I hadn’t had that cake in decades. Mom stopped baking it when Dad passed away. Funny, I hadn’t thought of that cake in ages, despite the fact I had eaten it more times than I could ever count and it was associated with most of my fondest childhood memories.
This cake reminded me of it somehow. It had likewise been flavoured with citrus - orange zest instead of lemon, I think - plus pistachios and-
“Wait!”
Estrella’s voice stopped me before I could spear my first mouthful of cake. What, had a bug crawled onto my plate?
Dutifully waiting, I heard her pull something across the table towards her, a faint rustle, and then-
A new scent filled my nostrils. Well, not new since I was pretty sure it had been on the table all along, but now far more pronounced.
“There, now it’s perfect,” Estrella said proudly.
I inhaled and the fragrance wrapped around my senses. Long-buried memories flashed through my mind, as if I had just laid my hand on my very first guitar, or any other of my childhood keepsakes.
The special dinner my mother had cooked the day my parents’ adoption of Kyle had been finalized. The proud, beaming smile on my father’s face as he pulled out the seat beside his for 'his son Kyle' to sit in. My sister Scout fussing around, making sure everyone had forks and napkins. Hunter holding his plate up, trying to prove that his slice of cake was bigger than ours. Kyle shyly taking the plate he was handed, on which practically a third of the cake had been placed. By then he had stopped being as tentative with us, perhaps having realized we would never call him by his deadname or force him to put on a dress. That day, when my mother had made it clear that she had made her special 'love cake' just for him, he had looked truly happy for the first time since he came to live with us.
Damn, I thought we were done being emotional for tonight. Perhaps for the entire year.
One of the many things I had learned to adjust to after losing my sight was how my remaining senses seemed stronger by comparison to the one that now barely functioned, the rest actually sharpening to compensate. My sense of smell was more powerful now - not Daredevil levels, thankfully, I didn’t want to have to submerge my ears underwater in order to block out sounds enough to sleep - but markedly improved.
I also apparently had to get used to how much my memories were attached to olfactory sensation.
The plate in front of me smelled a lot - not a perfect replica, but close enough - like that Persian love cake my mother used to make. Flavoured with orange zest, pistachios and rosewater.
“Is there a rose in a vase on the table?” I asked, amused by Estrella’s actions. She could be whimsical sometimes, and I had learned to just roll with whatever fancy took her next. I had vaguely noticed the rose on the table - its perfume was quite strong - but not really paid any attention to it. “The wait staff really were trying to make this a romantic couple’s dinner, huh.”
Estrella laughed at my bemusement. “To be fair it’s not just for us, there’s a rose on every table. I hope you don’t mind, Arch, but the cake reminded me of that citrus, pistachio and rose ‘love cake’ your mom used to make. I thought this cake could benefit from having a few petals sprinkled over.”
Her chair creaked a little as she shifted closer, her tone quiet and confiding. Her ‘this-is-just-for-us-because-I-care-for-you-and-know-you-care-back-though-you-don’t-have-to-say-it’ voice. “You may be asexual, but I know you’re not aromantic.”
I was pretty sure my face risked breaking from how wide I was smiling - which wasn’t particularly wide, but unusually wide for me.
She really knew me, better than almost anyone else ever had.
I finally forked up some cake and ate a bite. It must have had a bit of rose petal on it, because I felt it tickle the roof of my mouth as the flavour burst on my tongue.
I made sure I fully faced where I knew Estrella to be sitting.
“Thank you,” I said.
Not just for the impromptu cake decoration. For everything she did for me and was to me. Since I wasn’t the demonstrative type, I probably didn’t say it nearly enough, when she more than deserved to be told as often as possible. I hoped she understood what I was really trying to say.
A pause, then…
“You’re welcome. And thank you.”
Looked like I could catalogue these as our ‘grateful-for-everything-you-are-and-trying-to-adequately-express-my-appreciation-without-getting-too-soppy’ voices.
It was the unexpected highlight in a wonderful night spent celebrating the closing of our case: us savouring our dishonestly-acquired cake together, just the two of us.
And Steve. Estrella gave him a large morsel of unfrosted cake, which he enjoyed just as much as we did, if the wagging tail that banged against my leg the whole time he guzzled it down was any indication.