Work Text:
Spy glances at his watch. It's eleven in the morning. Barely forty seconds since he last checked.
It's eleven, and Spy is in town. In Boston, a city he hasn't frequented for quite a long while, and hadn't truly banked on coming back to. To meet someone at noon. He's early, and he knows it; is uncomfortably aware of it, to some extent, though it doesn't quite show on his face. He simply stands, idling, checking and rechecking his watch as he waits for the hands to turn.
He peers into the stores along the city centre's plaza, each front window adorned with some elaborate display. Bakers, florists, jewellers; even opticians splurge on ornate glass stands and cases, it seems. And every couple of doors the shops are broken up with a restaurant. These all used to be family-run establishments, until one by one chain restaurants began to buy up the space. Draining the character from an otherwise historic location, drop by drop.
He remembers, many years ago (when the district had a modicum more class), he had been in Boston for work. Wandering down a street not unlike this one. Music poured from a set of open doors he passed: a ritzy Italian place, tastefully rustic in décor. Just enough to make you feel welcome before the prices on the menu didn't. Heavy rain ran down the awning over the door, overflowed from the gutters, and pooled in Spy's shoes. The squelch with every step became unbearable, but he had been in no position to stop walking. Out in the open, on a Friday night; he would be spotted. Caught. So he shuffled by the front window of the restaurant with his head held down, grimacing at the idea of being in the diners' purview for any moment longer than necessary. At least, even fleetingly, the warm glow from the restaurant's lamplight eased the chill in his bones. It illuminated the shine - and scuffs - on his usually pristine shoes, and the pale charcoal of his gloves. The red soaking through his shirt beneath.
He was bleeding. How badly, he hadn't gotten the chance to fully examine. He was able to walk, for the minute. So he couldn't be doing too poorly. He hadn't been in the business of assassination for long - not that those who hired him had to know that, or would learn of it, because he never slipped up. Except tonight, when in his last dying moments his target had the nerve to drive a steak knife right into Spy's two thousand euro dress shirt. The tenacity Spy could respect, but really, things would be running much more smoothly right now had the mark accepted his death with elegance.
With another step Spy was back in the darkness of the city night, ambling his way towards an alley. There, he would catch his breath. Gather the strength he needed until the pain subsided.
Silver linings, he grunted: he had seen worse wounds. His target hadn't found the chance to twist the knife while it was in Spy; and his limited options during the scuffle meant the blade didn't so much plunge into his flesh as much as open a gash along the skin of his stomach. It hurt - it was cold, and wet, and stung - but he steadied his frantic mind. It was fair to bet the mark hadn't managed to knick his intestines, and the knife itself was rather clean, so an infection didn't reach the top of Spy's worries. He just had to find somewhere dry.
Though, as he walked further into the alley (and nearly tripped on the cobbles), he couldn't help but feel that the curve of the gutter looked remarkably comfortable. Hah. That's how Spy could tell he'd lost blood.
The sky, as of then, was navy. Not quite ready for the dead of night, but the shadows in the alley were already pitch black. A party was spilling from the doors of that Italian restaurant, altogether none the wiser to his presence. For just a moment he let his shoulder, then its pair, then his back slump against the slick brick of the building behind him. Slime from the moss on the wall surely soaking into his jacket. It wouldn't sink deep, he assured himself; he didn't need long. He'd be off before any of those diners even fancied the chance to turn down this lane. He merely needed another second to catch his breath.
Under his shirt, under his glove, where it sat over his abdomen, his blood was slick. Like the slime. His hand glided along the skin like skates on a rail - and though he fully expected the touch to hurt, the sharpness he knew from each step in the walk was instead replaced with an omnipresent dull ache. It felt like he could probably stick his fingers in the wound and feel nothing. Nothing but the chill already sat in his bones.
He wouldn't do that. He shook the thought from his mind. Just another few moments and he'd be on his way, he thought; he breathed. A shallow, raspy thing. As his clean hand slapped some vigour back into his face. As he put the weight of his palm more strongly over the knife wound. The bleeding would stop. Just as the rain would stop. He'd regain his energy and return back to his hotel room unseen, where he could stitch himself up and sleep. Just a few more minutes. Just... just one moment more, at least. Just had to find his breath.
"You alright there, handsome?"
The thoughts inside Spy's mind had a few seconds of delay behind the world going on outside of it, which meant by the time he realised those words were meant for him he had already left their speaker waiting for a few beats too long. The voice was female: young, full of mirth, though distinctly coarse; she could've well been a nurse looking to help or a gangster looking to beat him blue. Ah, the unmistakable nuance of the Boston accent.
He tilted his head in... something not quite alive enough to be a nod. "I'm fine," he muttered. "Merely a vagrant."
In other words, 'move on'. She had a perfectly adequate party back there waiting for her to regroup. All she needed to do was take the hint and walk away. She didn't, of course.
"Vagrants don't tend to wear three piece suits," she remarked, a playful curiosity lacing her words. Crossing her arms, "You must be king of the tramps."
On his better days, Spy would've volleyed something witty right back at that, but all he could muster now was another whistle of sharp breath through his nose. He still couldn't come up with something as she sauntered a few paces closer, her hair bobbing with every step. In the darkness he blinked and she came into vision. Nice fur coat; charmingly trashy makeup. Eyeshadow the sort of pastel blue you'd tile a men's public bathroom with. Likely not the angle she was going for, he amused himself with, but - and perhaps this was the wooziness making him soft - she pulled the color off well.
With a bit of a grin, the woman raised her chin to him. "Congrats on the new baby, by the way."
His eyebrow, with all the energy his body could spare, raised.
"Your stomach," she nodded. "Now that's a C-section if I've ever seen one. And trust me when I say I've seen plenty."
Ah. That. The blood had fully drenched his shirt now. It couldn't be good if she could make out the wound even in this poor lighting. He offered her a limp shrug. "I wandered out before the doctors could staple it shut," he mustered, doing his best not to slur his words. "Sue me."
She broke out laughing: cackling like a freight train down a track. A warm sound. Down near the mouth of the alley, her entourage briefly stopped to look up at whatever set her off, but to his luck they went right back to their conversation just as quickly. Maybe this sort of thing happened often with her. Chatting up a storm with bloodied strangers, laughing until she snorted. He wouldn't mind it happening often to him, a little voice in the back of his mind pinged, as she coaxed him into a chuckle of his own.
Until the movement of his chest sent barbs of pain through his stomach and he doubled over, just as winded as before. He couldn't help it; he groaned in pain, his hand still clenching his gut. She paused.
With the back of her hand swiping her bangs away, she leaned in. "You are lookin' awful pale, handsome." Her brows bowed. "You need a ride to the -"
"No. No hospital," he said, before she could even utter the word. Not a chance.
And thank god, she nodded. Didn't need to be told twice. Discontent still painted her face nonetheless, a color not at home with the pretty rouge on her cheeks. If he wasn't going to see a doctor, she must have figured, she wouldn't just stand there looking dumb. She swiped a hand into the fur of her coat to root around a pocket for the second best thing.
"You want a light?"
Before him, she offered an open box of cigarettes. The light was too dim to make out the brand. They were guaranteed to be lower quality than his personal choice, but right now, even taking a draw from a roll of lit newspaper would give his body a reprieve.
So, he nodded. She slid a cigarette out of the pack, passed it to him, and flicked the lighter to spark all in one movement. Like she had lived this night a thousand times. In the small flame, she would get to see him clearly now. The curve of his jaw; the color of his skin. He wore his mask, of course, and with it clung to his anonymity. But he felt all too known when, before she brought the lighter to the end of his cigarette, she wiped the blood off his mouth with her thumb.
"So," she asked, lighter over her own cigarette, "if you're not going to the doctor, where are you going?"
Spy struggled to stay in the moment. He took a slow, shallow drag of his smoke and did everything in his power to suppress a cough. Again, his mind flashed to his warm hotel room. He knew better than to tell her its address. Even if he shook her now, she'd see the way he was headed, and he was in no condition to take the necessary precautions to avoid being tailed.
So, "Away," was all he said.
She snorted. "Not anywhere fast, you're not."
He averted his eyes, simply concentrating on the light in his hand. He would get out of here, one way or another. He wouldn't sleep in the gutter. He just... had to find the strength.
"You wanna ride?" She offered. "I've got a car, and a blanket in the back to put between you and the leather so you don't get your blood all over. Gotta be better than walking home."
Now this? If he was not in the business of letting third parties follow him to a second location, he certainly wouldn't let them escort him. He glanced back to the party she came from, searching for a way to change the subject. "What of your friends over there? Should you be letting them walk home?"
"Them? Please. They're nobodies. Except my sister, but she's a floozy anyway. She'll find her own ride home, one way or another," she grinned. "She's got that charm about her. Like you!"
He stared out from under that cloth mask. Her simper didn't fade. "You wanna come home with me, handsome?"
"Why? So I can bleed out on your couch?"
"I'd fix you up, obviously." She rolled her eyes. "Not gonna be the first time."
He raised the eyebrow again. "You're a nurse then, I take it?"
She shook her head with an exhalation of smoke. "A mother."
He was not convinced by the idea of dragging children into his business, but as his vision increasingly swam with black it dawned on him that he didn't have much of a choice. Moreso, she had to know what she was getting into by housing him. They didn't say it that night, and they didn't say it for many nights after, but with the injury, crossed with his tailored suit... she had to have a damn good idea what business he was in. In the end, all that mattered was that she was willing to accept the risk that came with homing an assassin, if he was willing to brave a house with seven small boys.
He hasn't seen that house in a while now. Its plush couch that faced the bay window. Hasn't seen her much, either. The Italian place is under new management, he recalls. He wonders if she still likes the food. Or if she ever did, for that matter.
Another fidget. He fixes his tie, and with it gets another whiff of the cologne on his wrists. Back when they would spend time together, she used to say it was her favorite of his. It went out of production five years ago, mind, but he stockpiled it for her - just in case this day ever came. He still remembers the easy way in which she said it; clinging to his arm as they took a lazy night stroll by the Seine, as if the scent were the most pleasant thing she could ask for. The men Spy saw around him right now were slobs to their girlfriends, he scoffs. Not bothering to take their lover's hands when they could sling a meaty arm around their shoulders. He paces away from them. Someday, if things had turned out differently, he would have liked to take her to Paris again. The thumps in his chest spike at the idea.
He had been on his way to whisk her away again, once, a long time, when their vacation plans got dashed. It had been a sunny afternoon in early March, where the warmth of the air betrayed the frost on the ground just a few hours ago. He had checked his watch then, too, as he strolled up the paved path to her door - and frowned. It was not in his nature to be running late.
With a polite knock, he let himself into the house. Down the hall and in the kitchen he could hear her chattering away, a tension in her voice, while what he assumed to be kitchenalia clattered a backing track. He paused on the welcome mat. Perhaps now wouldn't be the most ideal time to drop by. But he had told her he'd be coming, and wouldn't escape anything by showing his face any later. So he pressed on down the hallway.
When he popped into view in the kitchen doorway, at first she didn't see him. She was glued to the telephone, its red receiver tucked between her shoulder and her chin as its coiled cord danced around her. The dining table was packed with at least a dozen plastic tupperware tubs and their lids, with baked goods and sandwich amenities squished either inside or amongst them. She was ripping a long sheet of saran wrap off the roll as she chattered down the line, her brow furrowed as her dress swished with every step in her angry little march across the kitchen tile. Animated, he thought upon a double take. Not angry. Full of verve, he decided with a smile, if she were to ask. As she ranted to whoever was calling about which of her sons had a peanut allergy.
And speaking of, down the other end of the dining table sat an occupied high chair. Spy knew the names and faces of all of her children, even if few of them knew of him - he would hate for her to think he did not care for her family - but this child, sat down the end of the table, chewing on the tablecloth, he could recognise in a heartbeat. He gave a little wave for the boy to return; when he did, his mother glanced up.
"Ah, finally." The words came breathlessly. Exasperation dripped from her skin as she hung the phone backed on the hook, making a quick goodbye to whoever she had been talking to. Her hands were still full of saran wrap and sandwiches, but she put them down so her palms were free to cup his face for a short, sharp kiss. "Ain't you a sight for sore eyes."
"Apologies for the delay," he said. The sentiment was sincere, if not distant, his eyes still taking in the state of the dining table. Smoothing a crease in his jacket's lapel, "Work is work."
"Please. You could've been an hour later and I wouldn't have bat an eye, what with everything else going on." She rolled her eyes.
"Oh? Anything fun?"
She zipped a sandwich bag shut and scoffed. "Nothing you'd want to hear, I promise you."
"Maybe not," he shrugged, as he leaned just a touch towards her, "but is there anything you want to say?"
Her lips pursed. Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly at him, at where he stood against the doorframe nonchalant. That was a dangerous question to ask. Now, she was a proper lady. She didn't go around running her mouth like some fool, not unless she was willing to catch a smack for it - which, Spy knew, did occur sometimes. (He also knew, from the one time he had to bail her out from the local police station, that she was willing to dish a few out hits herself; although his love justified her last offence with, quote, "That hussy Chrissy from the PTA had it coming, and everyone knew it.") The point being: Spy kept the company of a shrewd lady. But at her core never a woman to turn down some gossip.
She popped the lid onto a red plastic container, and popped out whatever mental cork was keeping her thoughts to herself. "So you remember how my mother's got that new apartment, right?" She waved a hand.
Spy nodded. From the sharp breath she inhaled as she began, Spy had no doubts: this was not a story he would have room to interrupt.
Love her or hate her - Spy knew his preference - she could twist through a tale like a master orator. She packed so much detail into every point she regaled - and you'd certainly get to learn her opinion on each little one. She could make a grocery list sound like the best Agatha Christie novel. The woman barely even stopped to breathe. Not when she was yet to tell him about how her day started at the crack of dawn to find a plumber, because apparently the water in her mother's new house was running blue. ("And not pale blue, y'know, not a kinda see-through blue like the sea, but bright blue. Like those earrings you got me, with the sapphires or whatever?" She insisted, snapping her fingers. He nodded; he had put a lot of thought into choosing the pair.) Or how later that morning her favorite mug cracked in the sink so she had to drink hot coffee straight from the pot. A few hours after that she got a call about her second and third boys breaking out in hives at school, just for it to turn out - she flipped a wooden spoon in her hand as she recounted this one - the school got its records all mixed up and forgot which of her sons had the peanut allergy and which of her sons had the shrimp allergy; not to be confused with her fifth boy, in kindergarten, who was allergic to bees and absolutely would not be having his permission slip signed to go on a school trip to a bee farm or wherever it is you grow bees (Spy refrained from smiling) no matter how many times his teacher got his rocks off reminding her. Then her sister decided today would be perfect for making a surprise visit! Just to get all pissy when a welcome party wasn't thrown for her the second she walked in the front door.
So there she was, spending her afternoon putting together lunches for her sons so they could go satiate their aunt with an after-school picnic. While she could stay home with the stubby-legged bundle of joy at the end of the table. "No offense," she smirked at him. The toddler didn't seem to mind.
"And for your evening..." Spy then asked her. He may have arrived late, but they still had plenty of time ahead of them. "Any plans?"
Her lips pursed again, this time in a frown. Bluntly, one he didn't anticipate. "Look, I'm sorry, hon," she threw her arms up with a shake of her head, "but what with my sister flouncing around like she owns this joint -"
He held up a hand. No need to explain herself. He understood. Which was when, as her arms fell back by her sides, she slapped a stack of tupperware right off the table. They bounced off the kitchen floor with an almighty clatter, with the two of them barely having time to flinch; at first at the fall, yes, but then at the wail of the infant at the end of the table. Clearly not a fan of the situation. A terse smile spread across Spy's face as he cast an empathic eye to the boy's mother - but just as quickly, his smile left him. This wasn't the first time she had been thrown into the presence of an upset child. He expected her to pick her accoutrements from the ground, maybe sigh for a second as she did so, then circle the table to soothe the boy in the way she took so much pride in doing. But this time? This time her head went straight in her hands. And she groaned.
"When I woke up this morning, you know what I said to myself?" She announced into her palms. A horrible chuckle came from the grimace growing on her face. "I said, what a nice easy day it'll be, with the boys off at school and the -"
The boy wailed louder, loud enough to cut her off, and her shoulders drooped further. Spy's frame stiffened. This wasn't the woman he knew. Definitely not how she liked to present herself. She took a deep satisfaction in who she was, how she handled her life - how she handled all the events she faced just today, in fact! Spy loved that about her; fell in love with her again every time this world tossed her some new grievance and she met it with that gorgeous, cocky defiance. She was not a woman who wallowed on her knees in her kitchen. Furthermore, if today had robbed her of the strength to remember that fact, then Spy would prove it for her.
So he stepped out of the doorway and stood at attention. "It still can be," he offered. Voice clipped but urgent, assertive. Promising her: an easy day.
She peered at him from between her fingers.
With small movements, he knelt beside her to gather the fallen tupperware. Stacked it neatly, silently, on a clear portion of the table. Then he looked at her with soft eyes. "Why don't you," he began, as he retrieved something from his breast pocket, "take the evening for yourself?"
Gently, he pressed the item next to where her elbow laid on the table. A money clip. Stuffed with enough bills for more than a half decent night. She peered at that too - then sighed. "I can't take that," she nearly laughed, caught at the final hurdle by another groan. "Where would I even go with it?"
"Wherever your heart desires. It's a beautiful day outside." The sunlight kissed the back of their heads as it streamed through her lace kitchen curtains. "The whole evening is ahead of you, ready for you to engage in whatever you please."
"'Whole evening'." She still shook her head. As if she could fill a library with the things Spy just wouldn't understand about this whole idea. "What about the boys?"
"Why not call your sister?" He answered with a shrug. Not a shrug of indifference; no, this shrug oozed the understated confidence of knowing it carried the perfect solution to her problem. How easy it would be to pick up the phone to call her sister. "From the sounds of things, you would delight her with the chance to treat them for a night."
She stewed on this. Brow tensing - but no longer bowing - as she bounced her eyeline over to the third wheel still blubbering in the high chair. "And who's gonna take care of him?"
"I will."
That earned him a scoff, one his ego did its best to ignore. "You?"
He raised a brow. "I am a man of many skills. He will be in safe hands, I assure you."
"Oh, I'm not afraid of that," she snorted. "He doesn't make the most elegant company, you know."
"I have faith we will find common ground."
"Oh yeah? On what?" She chuckled, finally moving one hand from her face to prop against her cheekbone. "Getting big into toy trucks lately, handsome?"
There was a tear released as she shifted her hand - god, her eyes looked so tired - and the sight shot a dose of panic through Spy. But he calmed himself when he realised it meant she was relaxing enough to let those tears go.
He leaned in, propping his own hand under his head in a similar manner to her. "He and I, we are both lucky enough to share the company of the most beautiful woman in the world. Is that not enough to bond over?"
He slid his spare hand gently over the back of her own, until she squeezed his in return. Take it, he urged wordlessly, nodding once more to the cash on the table. He'd have given her the world right then if he could fit it in his jacket pocket.
He was left thinking about her face, her tired smile, as the afternoon rolled into evening. Just him and the boy together as the sun went down. It wasn't a large house; modest, albeit gratuitously suburban. Yet given it had a typical occupancy of nine, there somehow was a uniqueness to seeing the place so empty. Spy never turned up during the peak hours, as it were, but every corner of this house echoed those who lived in it. Beared those signs of life like a grin full of crooked teeth; a full, happy grin, one where your cheeks rose to your eyes. Like the children of the home made when their mama tickled them.
She was out there now, somewhere in that warm early evening, finding a distraction to take her mind off the day. On the surface level of his thoughts, Spy found he wished that distraction could have been him. That had been the point of the visit. To step in the room and watch her smile light up. To steal her away to a venue she stopped being able to afford around child number four. Once they'd gotten their fill of it they'd go for a drive in the brisk night air. Or maybe a walk, through those cobbled lanes so similar to the one she found him in. Alleys had always held a faint charm to him since. Either way, he knew, that night she was to have her adventure alone. And yes, something in Spy's heart tensed at that. At the idea that he had orchestrated their first chance at alone time in however many weeks into a scenario where he spent that time out of her company. Instead of a fairytale outing he stood by the sink scrubbing her dishes. A lesser man might have even felt bitter about that. A lesser man, because the more Spy stood there, rinsing soap suds away, the more he realised he had achieved exactly what he set out to do by coming. That romantic evening on the town he vowed to share with her was right here; in him lightening her load, if only for those few hours. He was exactly where she needed him to be.
As the sun sank farther in the sky, Spy sat in the living room with the child on his lap, the two of them together in the empty house. Well, with a blanket between Spy's lap and the baby. He had not been willing to risk any accident that could stain these trousers. His jacket had already been neatly folded over a chair across the room, and his tie tucked into his shirt away from curious infant hands. He had to look his best for when the boy's mother returned, now didn't he?
He took those little hands in his own; each fist barely curling around one of Spy's fingers.
"Did Mama scare you earlier?" He asked softly, playing with the boy's hands. He was a sight far removed from his outburst in the kitchen; a late afternoon nap turned him docile and drowsy. Not one full of answers to his question.
How funny it was, that little boy's existence. Spy did everything in his power to remain an unknown; to clean up his every trail; to, in all tangible methods, not exist. Except for this little boy gazing up at him from his lap. He went against everything he made of himself. He shared his blood. He was a trace, a chink in Spy's perfect armour. The boy in Spy's lap should have terrified him. And he didn't.
When Spy hummed again, Jeremy smiled up at him from where he lay on his back on the blanket, and Spy smiled back.
When Spy's eyes refocus he's staring into a shop window a few stores down. Though the memories of that quiet evening are rosy, they do not tug at his cheeks in the same way today. They do, for whatever reason, leave him standing in front of glassware stores. In the prime position of the shop display sits a blown glass table centrepiece not unlike one she had in her kitchen that day. She kept it for many years, acquired as either a housewarming gift from a neighbour or Smissmas present from some relative; he never quite caught its origin. He always thought it was tacky. He wonders if she still has it.
If this were 25 years ago, he would have already bought her a present for their meeting at noon: another priceless piece of jewellery, perhaps, and a line about how it shone when paired with her already dazzling appearance. The kind of compliment she always knew he meant every word of, with nothing less than his full heart. The kind of compliment just corny enough for her to laugh at. Smooth enough for her to swoon at. Though she hadn't swooned last time.
It had been maybe another five or six years after that evening where Spy took care of Jeremy. Spy had dropped by for barely another five or six visits in that window. His career was picking up - an exciting time for a man who did not functionally exist - and with it came slimmer and slimmer chances of making a trip to Boston to see her. He would always find the time for her. He'd be a louse of a man if he didn't. But he'd be worse if he gave in to impatience and risked his adversaries tailing him straight to her home. That, he would never let happen. She knew that. She understood that. She had understood it for years. Even in that warm March, she had no complaints; when she got home from her day to herself, she found him in her bedroom (hiding, very professionally and tactfully, in the wardrobe, where her children wouldn't find him in case they got home before her) and peppered him with the kisses he gave up on accepting throughout the day - then a good few dozen more to tide him over until their next meeting. So when he dropped in for a spontaneous midnight rendezvous all those years later, over a year since his prior visit, bringing gifts and sweet words and offering to bear her problems for those few hours in any way he could, he didn't expect her response to be,
"Is that it?"
He had been confused at the time. Not anymore. The more he looks back on it, the more he berates himself for not noticing the signs of her frustration building sooner. She didn't want his gifts. Didn't want his money. Didn't want his promises. They meant nothing if he were never going to actually be there. To return as a presence in her life; intermittent and mysterious, sure, but she used to know he would be there when it counted. Now he had become harder to reach than ever. Hell, at this point he was one-upping her sister at being a pain in the ass guest. She understood: work was work, and always would be. But with so much on his plate he didn't have time to put the same thought into his actions as he had before taken so much pride in, so much joy in. His work didn't stop her from wanting the old him back.
But that him wasn't something he could give her.
Is that it? Those words still echo in his brain like the reverberations of a chisel striking the inside of his skull. Was that it? Had it all truly ended that night? He couldn't offer her what she needed. Not without putting her in peril. And when faced with the decision of either breaking her heart or risk stopping it beating altogether... he knew his answer.
So he forgot about her. Forced himself to. Relegated her to a lovely fancy of the past however many years and not the hole in his open weeping heart. No, he would not let himself grieve this, especially not when it was his decision. He sewed his composure back together like he intended to the first night they met, the outcome of a simpler world where he ever made it back to his hotel room. A needle and thread and his own steel will were all he needed to keep her from coming between him and his profession. Until he got employed at RED and was forced to reckon with a familiar face. With a loud mouth that, for as much as it irked him, will always remind him of her. Knowing his own flesh and blood found its way into a job like this: now that should have terrified him. Somehow, once more, it didn't. Because for everything that boy had a penchant for screwing up, he still found a way into that mercenary job. He could take care of himself. All of her boys could. And he knew firsthand that Scout's job was a comfortable one, despite all of the violence of it. With a position like that, Spy no longer had to worry about inadvertently dragging danger to his door. Scout could handle it. Spy had room to come back again.
A pit in his stomach opened the day he realised that. Coming back, of course, hinged on him not having blown his chance already.
That contract with RED rolled into years of employment, then a good stint of unemployment, then the current contract he held with TF Industries in the wake of RED's dissolution. His life was moving forward, moving on. But he couldn't stop thinking about getting back in touch with her. In the end he didn't have the guts to call her, so he wrote - and after three weeks of waiting, he got a response.
So here he is. Window shopping. On his way to his meeting at noon.
He checks his watch again: it's eleven-forty. He should get a move on. He can't turn up empty-handed, especially not after all this time, but everything he lays his eyes upon just reminds him of that painful night. He now wishes he had found some way to ask more about her over Smissmas dinner at Jeremy's house; it wouldn't do to find a payphone to call Jeremy now and ask, he'd be perturbed. Likely wouldn't get much mileage out of calling Flo for advice, either. He has cash on him, but would rather arrive with nothing than imply her forgiveness can be bought. Other than that...
Well, he still has a platter from the party in his trunk. Jeremy insisted on sending his guests home with the leftovers and somehow managed to swindle a batch of cookies into Spy's possession. Homemade, too; when did the boy get to be so good at baking?
Nevertheless, those cookies are here when he needs them, and Spy retrieves the plate to the front seat as he sets off for the meeting point. He drives south. For the suburbs. He could drive the whole way, but at a point there's a little something inside of him that would rather stop the car and get to the end on his own two feet. Her house is barely a twenty minute walk from Jeremy's new place. Walking closer to it, he's surprised how he much remembers of the area. Each unchanged lawn and roof and driveway, even the spots with patio furniture that have somehow stuck around for twenty years: they're all familiar. And for everything he's found has stayed with him, he wonders how much he's missed out on.
Soon enough, he arrives at her front door. It's noon. Today, he's meeting the love of his life for the first time in nearly three decades. He's in Boston, a city he never thought too highly of - but right now, there is nowhere else he needs to be more.
He straightens his tie, hides the plate behind his back, and knocks.