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Chapter Text

December 1947

He places a call halfway across Utah, crammed into a tiny phonebooth that barely fits the full breadth of his shoulders, toes crunching in the slippery underfoot combination of thick snow and crusting-over salt. The wind outside is whistling sharply enough that he can barely hear the operator's voice clicking away on the other end of the line, and he wraps his scarf around his head and the phone, cocooning himself in a cigarette-scented haven of damp wool.

"Cas!" Rhys' voice crackles down the line. "How are you, you oversized bastard?"

"Why'nt you ask your fiancee about my oversized self?" Cas shoots back at once, mouth curling into a smile just from hearing his brother's voice. The smile cracks into an open-mouthed grin at the sound of Rhys' offended splutter at the other end.

"I ought to pummel your ass into the snow for that." he threatens.

"You and how many Marines?"

"Az and I ought to pummel your ass into the snow for that."

"Az'd be on my side."

"I'll bribe him."

Cas snorts, losing the battle with hilarity. "It's good to hear your voice, brother."

"Good to hear yours too." Rhys says warmly. "It'll be even better to hear it in person."

"Ah." Cas sucks air through his teeth. "About that."

"You are still coming?"

He softens at the worry threading through Rhys' voice. "Yes, I'm still coming. I'm just running behind schedule."

"And you a military man and all."

"I know, it's shameful. They'll kick me out — oh, wait, they can't." Cas quips. "I already left."

"Yes, you did." The grin is audibly back in Rhys' voice. "And may I say, about time, too."

"Yeah, yeah." He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, glancing out the grimy window. Through a small gap in the folds of his damp scarf, he can see the lights illuminating the tiny train station, picking out the building through the haze of swirling snowflakes painting the world in shades of white and grey. "Anyway, listen, I am still coming, but this snow that's come in is putting me behind schedule. Train took twice as long already, and it's only the first leg."

"Oh." He hears a murmur on Rhys' end, probably talking to that gorgeous fiance of his. "Yes, we heard something about that on the radio — something like the worst snowstorm in years."

"Peachy."

Rhys laughs at the dryness of his tone. "I'm sorry, old sport. Where are you now?"

"Only just into Utah." Cas shoves his hat off to rumple up his hair with a sigh. "The tracks are covered and half-frozen-over. They're having to dig us out all along the line."

"Slow going?"

"A tortoise crawling through molasses would leave us in the dust just now."

Rhys clicks his tongue. "Sorry to hear. Anything I can do?"

"No no, it is what it is." Cas heaves another sigh. "Just wanted to call and let you know I'm behind schedule." He bites his lip, but can't resist adding, "and if I'd taken a plane, the way you wanted me to, I'd still be stranded in California."

"I'm making it my New Year's resolution to take you up flying one day." Rhys threatens. "You should be in a plane before you continute besmirching them."

"I've been in a plane before."

"Being air-lifted off Okinawa to a cruiser doesn't count as really being in a plane." Rhys fires back.

"You're the bane of my existence."

"Thanks, sport." Another murmur on the other end. "Well, don't worry; the house is here whenever you arrive, no questions asked. We even told the doorman and the housekeeper to expect you, in case you arrive some time when we're not in — but we're not really going anywhere."

A little knot loosens in the pit of his stomach. "I can't wait to see you."

"We can't wait either." Rhys reassures him, just as the blast of the train whistle rattles the walls of the phonebooth. "Just get here safely. Don't take any foolish risks."

"Like flying?" Cas quips. "Keep a place set for me."

"Always."

He hangs up and struggles out of the booth. The train is boarding again, a long sleek grey line of steaming cars barely visible in the whirling snow. Cas mounts up quickly, catching the same exhausted, slightly shell-shocked faces of his fellow passengers at the prospect of yet more time in the same seats, after a long six hours there already.

The weather could be worse, he supposes, settling into his seat by the window with a sigh; it's not truly a blizzard, merely clumps of soft white snow coming down hard and heavy, brushing against the windows with the soft shhh-shhh-shhhh sound that reminds him of the curl of ocean surf on the beach. Once the train begins to move again, with the clank and groan of cold metal on icy tracks, he can just about glimpse through the snow flurries a patch of cotton-grey sky, mounds of soft heaps of snow surrounding the tracks, the slightest glimpse of telephone-wires on poles.

Visibility is low, though, and the cabin rocks lightly side-to-side as they trundle along, and their speed is more of an army-crawl. A chill comes off the window, enough to make him burrow deeper into his coat and tuck his hands into his pockets. There's a stack of dog-eared dime-store novels waiting for him in his bag, but when his eyes slip to half-lidded and he yawns hugely enough to crack his jaw, he gives up that idea and settles in to doze.

Take a plane. He snorts derisively at the thought. Not at a cool thirty-eight dollars for one damned ticket, Rhys, no thanks very much - not that he'd list that as his reason, or Rhys would wire him the money overnight, casual and blithely dismissive as only those who've grown up with a safety net of money can be. He himself is still struggling to adapt to using money at all; the army has been his bread and butter for five years now, responsible for clothing and housing and feeding him. Since '42, he's only dipped into his monthly salary for small things like extra soap, stamps, Christmas presents, and in the sudden postwar economy, he's reeling under the dual notions of suddenly being expected to use his money, and the concept of having money to use at all. When he went to the bursar on base, as he finally left the barracks for good and for final, the amount of bills handed over almost made him faint dead away on the spot.

He keeps thinking there's a responsibility he's forgotten; something else, someone else who should be getting some of that paycheck - and then he remembers all over again, and the lump rises in his throat at the thought of her. Ma. Gone almost three yeas now, and the thought of her is still a twist in the chest, a raw hurting sound in the depths of his soul. He's so used to her being there; invisible, but there. He hasn't lived at home since he was seventeen years old, had gotten used to her not being physically there, but the tie between them was as strong as cable-wire, held together by the letters sent whenever they could, by the packet of his paycheck he sent her without fail every single month, by the constant quiet calculation in the back of his mind of her needs versus his own. He'd been so proud when he started working with the Civilian Conservation Corps back in '37, because it meant he could send her a whole thirty-five dollars every month; when he got that job building ships in '39, and could bring that up to forty dollars a month, he about burst his jacket buttons with glee. And when he found out that Marines earned a whole hundred dollars a month, and he could send her a cool seventy-five to cover the rent five times over? Well, that was just another damned-good reason to sign up in December '41.

And now? What is he to do with an extra seventy-five dollars in his pocket every month? Almost three years now, and he still can't answer that question; still can't even think of it. It's too much for him, too much for one man. He should be spending it on her - hell, he'd give it all twenty times over, if only it could bring her back. Just the thought of blowing thirty-eight bucks on one measly plane ticket, when he worked so hard to send her just thirty-five, when she kept them alive on half that for years while he was a kid, smacks him in the face like the rankest blasphemy.

It was the seventy-five bucks that told him she was gone. Or part of it, anyway. A blistering jungle heat, the stench of too-warm bodies and blood drying for the flies, lying sprawled across a thin mattress just outside Iwo Jima. The doctors were still pulling shrapnel out of his chest cavity, and the first thing his bleary eyes saw was the envelope on his bedside table. It was too full; he knew at once that something was wrong.

It was from their neighbours, the old Katzes; God bless them, they'd used the money he sent her that month to give her a good funeral and put a stone over her head, then sent him back the change and a crumpled letter written in a shaky hand. He didn't even count it, just shoved it into a sock in the bottom of his kit bag and left it there for months. What did it matter? He couldn't sit up on his own, he could taste his own blood in the back of his throat, and she was thousands of miles away and already in the ground. He wasn't there to see her go, to hold her hand and tell her he loved her one more time; he wasn't the one to bury her, as a good son should. All he could do was pay for it; and money wasn't enough to keep her alive.

He went to see her resting-place once he could walk and breathe again — months later, after Iwo Jima, after the burning hell of Okinawa. By then, they were close to the end anyway, with the Brits in Burma and FDR gone. Germany had fallen, and he figured he should go before they called everyone in for the land invasion of Japan - he didn't want to die without seeing her grave. But it didn't matter, in the end, because the bombs fell before he'd even left, and then it was all over anyway, they could finally go home - and she'd been gone six months, and with her the only home he had. What's more time in the army, by then? He'd nowhere else to go - nowhere else he wanted to go, or could even fathom going. It was a relief when the army posted him to Japan, to live among ruined buildings and conquered people; at least he still had orders to follow, on the days when he could barely tell himself to get out of bed.

It's a Christmas treat enough to have this: somewhere else he wants to be, and the freedom now to go wherever he pleases.

The long slog from Salt Lake City to Omaha should, in good weather, take about twenty-four hours, but the train fairly minces along, inching down the track almost as fast as the workers can clear it. He gets a cup of coffee and a slice of pie in a diner about halfway along, and the last stop before nightfall is a grubby little place that does a decent meatloaf and mashed potatoes; civilian food is still a luxury he'll take any day, after years on end of MREs and watered-down slop — when they got enough food, which was rare and far in between. He'll have to be an old, old man before he forgets Guadalcanal, back in '42 when the rations first ran out and the men were desperate enough to eat insects and lizards.

Funny: when they train you for war, they teach you every way to kill, and they teach you as best they know how to survive. They never tell you about the hunger. Or the heat, or the bugs, or the bad water. Makes a man wonder, if they'd put the warnings about malaria and dengue fever on the enlistment posters, right under that great big I WANT YOU, would men and boys still crowd the offices clamouring for their chance to go?

Probably. He snorts at his own thoughts. He's going soft; he's thinking about today's boys, the latest crop of soft-faced young ones who just arrived in Japan as he was leaving. God, they looked so shiny and pink and little, next to his own grizzled self, his rough-handed hard-jawed steel-eyed squadron. Little pink boys who were too young to fight the Japs island-to-island, too young to go off to European battlegrounds; they grew up in the boom of a wartime economy and came over with starry-eyed fantasies of wartime heroics. They'd never seen hunger, 'till they saw the civilians they were there to occupy. Never known cold or disease or poverty — and they'll never get the chance to be heroes, either. They'll learn, as every soldier does, that war is not about heroes; and they'll learn, as every conquering occupier does, that there is no glory in holding reign over a crushed populace. Come to the land of the hated enemy you grew up hearing nightmare stories about; they'll hate you so much, you'll hate yourself in three weeks!

Yeah, those pink little boys wouldn't last a week. His lot, though, the ones who grew up riding rails looking for work, taking on odd jobs, splitting rails and digging roads and hauling rocks to feed their families — hell, they wouldn't have been scared off even if the enlistment posters had MALARIA and MOSQUITOES scribbled all over that picture of Uncle Sam. What's more pain and misery, when you grew up in shantytown shacks with fleas and shingles, and never a pair of boots for your feet?

Tough sons-a-bitches, to a man. He smiles, a little bitter and a little sad and a lot of proud, around the rim of his water-glass.

Full and hunger sated and bundled up warm, he stretches out in his seat, and dozes away the long, long overnight stretch, the lights in the cabin gone dark, only the cold yellow flicker of the lamps outside through the snow to light their way.

Morning brings clarity — clartiy, and a newly-empty stomach demanding his attention. The heavier snow has left off; they rattle across the enormous open plains of Nebraska under a picturesque powdered-sugar dusting of soft white flakes, the ground obscured with enormous, heavy piles of snowdrifts like melted marshmallows. A thin sun peeks through the shredded-cotton clouds overhead, leaving little patches of sunlight where the snow sparkles diamond-bright.

The sight brings a smile to his face; the muscles practically creak with disuse. It's been a long time since he saw a white Christmas; last one must've been Christmas of '43, the time he actually got enough leave to make it home to Maine and Ma for the holidays.

He has to smile at the sight, so picturesque, so pretty: like a picture postcard, like the cards she sent him every year he was away. Mail being what it was, sometimes he got her Christmas cards in June, but they always made him smile to see the big white snowdrifts and lit-up pine trees, the snowmen with carrot noses and a little lit-up cottage with a wreath on the door.

You don't get snow like this in California, on that damned base he'll never set foot on again. Definitely don't get it in the Pacific islands; the only things whirling about in the air there are the goddamned bugs. And snow in Japan…

He shudders at the thought, biting down on his tongue. Nothing in Japan brought joy or cheer or comfort, not even at Christmastime. Last two Christmases, without her, living on a base surrounded by a beaten-down ravaged population who hated the sight of him, not a damn thing could make him crack a smile, no matter how cold the snows.

Be nice to have a good memory, this Christmas. He's going to try for it, at least.

He gets a breakfast that's at least trying to be hot in the railside diner just outside Omaha, and digs for change to use the payphone again.

"Chicago, East Elm Street, 43150."

"Hello?"

His chapped lips crack into a beaming smile at the sound of the voice. "Fey, it's me."

"Cas!" Even through the crackling static, she sounds delighted. "Hello! Rhys, come here, quick — oh, he's on the other line." She huffs, frustrated. "How are you? Are you alright? Where are you now?"

"I'm fine, little Fey." he reassures her, grinning wider at her little humph of irritation - not that little, but the nickname has stuck over the years. "I'm on my way just as fast as I can move."

"Oooh, how far away are you? Maybe you'll be here by lunchtime!"

"Slow your roll, doll-face." he says with a snort. "I'm only outside of Omaha, and we're still just crawling along; it'll be another twelve, fourteen hours at least."

She groans. "God, Cas, you'll miss dinner at this rate."

He shifts on his feet. "Sorry, Fey."

"Oh, don't apologise, it's not your fault." She huffs again. "It's only - well, we're a rather large party tonight, and I was hoping you'd be with us."

"I'll be there by morning."

"Christmas Eve." she reminds him, with a grin in her voice. "I hope you brought a stocking to hang by the fire."

"I don't know what your airforce boys have been telling you, Fey, but we Marines don't go around stripping random stockings for our own nefarious purposes."

She barks out a laugh at that, the sound sending him into his own rusty-sounding chuckles. "Trust me," she says archly. "I remember what the airforce boys are like when it comes to stripping stockings — Rhys!"

She breaks off into a squeal and there's a low rumble of laughter on the other end, then a few scuffling, bumping noises before Rhys takes up the line.

"Ignore my wife, she's terribly uncouth in the morning." he says, a smirk visible in his voice. Cas can lay good money as to which of the two of them is the more uncouth in the mornings, and it ain't Feyre. "You're in Omaha?"

"Just outside." Cas props one shoulder against the wall, keeping one eye on the train through the windows. "Snow's lightened up, but it's still slow going."

Rhys clicks his tongue sympathetically. "Are you warm? Eating?"

"You remember I survived in the jungle without you mother-henning me, don't you?" Cas asks drily.

"By the skin of your teeth." Rhys sniffs. "Should've joined the airforce."

"Nah." He smirks a little. "Had to leave some stockings for you."

Rhys barks out a laugh, and there's the sound of Feyre's voice down the line again, high-pitched, breaking into giggles.

"Feyre says you'd better watch your tongue when you get here, or her sisters might have your head." Rhys warns him, laughing.

"Oh, are they both coming?"

"Yeah, they'll be here tonight — or Elain will be, anyway. Don't know about - yes, darling?" Low murmurs. "Oh, Feyre's telling me to be nice."

"Has she met you?"

"I know, I'm the soul of gentlemanly courtesy." Rhys says loftily, blithely skipping right past the sarcasm in Cas' tone. "But yes, the two of them, and Elain's husband, plus us, Az, and Mor - oh, and Amren's bringing someone as well."

"Another hapless victim?" Cas lets out a low whistle. "Which one is this, number four?"

"Five." Rhys corrects him. "I don't know what she does with them, I think she just collects bodies to drink their blood under a full moon."

"You need to stop watching those Theda Barba films." Cas says idly.

"Remember that picture show we snuck into in London, back at Eton?" Rhys asks.

"A formative experience." Cas snorts. "For you, at least."

"Madame Mystery." Rhys lets out an overly-dramatic sigh. "And then I went and met a feral little gremlin - ow, don't bite me, you little fiend - "

"Alright, I'm getting off the phone."

"Don't bother, she can behave." Rhys says blithely. "Well, we'll miss you at dinner tonight, but we'll see you tomorrow?"

"You will." Cas says firmly. "Don't know when, exactly, but I'll be there."

"And you brought your dress blues?" Rhys checks. "Tomorrow evening is the cocktail party, but we can always find you something, it's not a problem."

"I brought the dress blues." Cas reassures him. "Brought everything, really."

"Your room is ready whenever you are." Rhys says warmly.

"Just get here safe!" Feyre adds, in a shout.

Cas laughs. "I promise. Keep him on his toes, Fey."

"I always do." Her voice is back on the line, sounding smug.

"And say hello to your sisters from me."

"Ugh." she groans. "Wish me luck."

"Luck." He sets the phone back in the cradle, grinning a little. Feyre Archeron makes one hell of an impression: when he first met her, a year and a half ago on her wedding-day, she'd been throwing her shoes at Rhys' head for pulling pins out of her carefully-done chignon. She'd pivoted on one bare foot, grinned widely at him, and said "You must be Cassian! Come and help me throw Rhys into the duck pond!"

He'd liked her immediately, and loved her within an hour, when they were at the altar. Rhys' hair was still damp, and he smelled faintly of pond-scum under his expensive cologne, but his eyes lit up his whole face when he looked at her, and she looked up at him glowing like the North Star brought down to earth. Hard not to love someone who loves your brother with her whole heart and soul.

The day passes interminably. He dozes, lulled off by the soft whush of snow on the window, and reads a bit; he's been trying to catch up on all the novels he missed out on in the last ten years. When For Whom the Bell Tolls hits a little too close to home, he switches. His battered copy of The Hobbit, a present from Rhys in 1938, is almost falling to pieces by now, and he keeps it tucked very carefully between both hands as he loses himself in the familiar story.

Fifteen hours later, he swings down the slippery steps at the Milwaukee station, his very bones feeling cramped, cut short and pressed painfull together from too many hours spent crammed into a tiny seat that smelled fainlty of stale coffee and unfortunate cologne. He edges past the queue of people waiting to board, muttering "'scuse me"s as he goes, trying not to slam his shoulders or elbows into bystanders, boots slipping in the thick puddles of slush on the edge of the sidewalk. When he finally makes it to the building on the inside of the sidewalk, he sets his back against the bruck and drops his bag with a heavy thunk to the ground, balancing it on his feet. He rolls his arms backwards and forwards, groaning deep in his chest as his shoulders crack and knots of tension slowly ease. Even as he moves, sighing with the relief of muscles easing from their cramped positions, his eyes flicker mechanically back and forth, up and down, canvassing his every surrounding with a mechanical, rote ease born of long practice — too-long practice, really.

Finally, he puffs up his cheeks and blows out a long breath, the white fog of condensation gathering in the air, before scooping his bag off his feet, shouldering it, and heading inside. The next train to Chicago is leaving in twenty-six minutes when he tramps across the lobby, where the air is heavy with the stench of wet coats and cigarette smoke, even at nine o'clock at night.

After waiting in a long line of coughing, yawning, muttering, complaining civilians for a quarter of an hour, he buys his last ticket, thanking the clerk with a quick upwards jerk of his chin. The boy is another pink-cheeked young scrub in his new uniform, and he has to bite down the immediate impulse to rap out an order — stand up straight, private, and salute your superior officers.

He snorts, shaking his head to himself. He's only a superior in the military; civilians don't salute captains, at least not stateside, and a clean, healthy young man has a right to lounge yawning at his post when there's no need to snap upright and look alert for death behind any and every corner.

He eyes the clock again, then wedges himself into a yet another phone booth to painfully count out nickels and dimes.

"Hello, operator? Chicago, please — East Elm Street, 43150."

"One moment, please." a woman's voice crackles pleasantly down the line. Barely a minute later, the other end picks up with a sudden cacophony of noise plainly audible even through the static.

" - and a face like a goddamned plate of mortal sins, CASSIAN!" Rhys' voice booms down the line. "For the love of all that's sacred, tell me that's you."

"No, it's your second cousin four times removed." Cas says at once. "I've come to claim my inheritance."

Rhys snorts explosively. "Let me direct you to my father, Duke of Useless Idleness — oh wait, that means I must connect you with hell, where I hope the old bastard is burning on a spit."

"So I take it dinner went well?"

"Christ." Rhys groans explosively. "It's ongoing, and I need a fucking drink."

Cas' eyebrows bounce up on his forehead. It's not like Rhys to swear in mixed company; he was raised with nice manners, after all (no matter how hard Cas tried to beat them out of him when they were young and stupid). "Everything alright?"

"Suffice to say, when you've got eight people in a room determined to enjoy themselves, and one determined to be a sour-faced killjoy, the killjoy will ruin it all for the eight every single time."

"Amren's misbehaving?"

Another snort from the other end. "She's a peach by comparison. No, it's Feyre's sister."

"The eldest?" Cas guesses. "I haven't had the pleasure."

"No great pleasure, believe me." Rhys mutters, over the click of a lighter on the other end. "No pleasure at all, in fact. I've never met a woman more cold than this one; she's freezing even Elain out."

Cas tries to imagine what kind of person could freeze out the human who, in his completely unbiased opinion, is the closest it's possible to come to Walt Disney's Snow White, and grimaces. "Good God."

"Good God indeed." Rhys agrees. "Sat through every story completely stone-faced, I swear she even managed to look bored when we were talking about Bourgogne — "

"And that's one of your best anecdotes." Cas says in dismay, shaking his head. "What a killjoy."

"Quite." Rhys lets out another whistling inhale, the scent of expensive tobacco almost making it down the crackling line between them. "What an absolute - well, I won't resort to name-calling, though she's making it damned difficult, I can tell you."

"Is she awful?"

"Completely." Rhys snaps. "Her first time meeting most of us, you'd think she'd want to make a good impression, but no, she's been sneering and dismissive the entire night; I swear, she's even been dismissive of Lucien's war record — "

"What?" Cas fish-mouths for a second. Lucien Vanserra has a Medal of Honour, for God's sake, from getting torn to pieces in North Africa; even if he barely knows the man, he respects the hell out of him for that, at least. "What can she possibly have against his war record?"

"I swear, I think she's dismissive of all war records." Rhys says through gritted teeth. "Lucien's, Az's, mine, Elain's, Feyre's — "

Ah. Cas closes his eyes with a wince. Rhys is fiercely protective of Feyre as is, but triply so where questions of her war record arise. He's seen him knock the teeth out of some asshole who made a sly innuendo about female pilots.

" — I mean it, Cas, she sits here judging all of us when she spent the entire war in some cushy office job in Scotland - safe as houses the entire time, mind you, no matter Feyre was getting knocked out of the sky every week, or Elain was hiding in the London Underground every night the bombs fell, no, she was safe and cosy somewhere up in the Highlands with her little secretarial job." Rhys takes a long, deep drag of a cigarette. "Didn't even come down for our wedding; they might've missed her punctuation too much, I suppose."

Cas bites his lower lip. "I'm sorry, Rhys."

"Not your fault." Rhys lets out a groaning sigh. "Though if you were to help me pitch her off a roof, that'd be fantastic."

"Is she supposed to be there tomorrow night?"

Rhys groans aloud. "Yes, God help me. Keep us apart, won't you? Because if she gives Feyre that look just one more time, I swear to God, I'm going to hit the woman."

"Well, I'll try."

Rhys inhales sharply. "Christ, they’re shouting. I've got to go." The line clatters sharply, and the sound breaks off with a loud crackle.

Still wincing, Cas buttons up his coat to his neck and ducks back outside.

The long platform at the back of the station is lit by only two lonely overhead lights, their thin, palely-orange shafts of light showing off the snowflakes dancing and swirling through the air with even greater frequency than earlier in the day. In the three minutes until the train's scheduled arrival time, and the additional twenty he waits, stamping aimlessly up and down and blowing hot air on his hands, the air grows colder and wetter, a sure sign of a heavy overnight snow; as if the world needs more snow, by God.

By the time the train lurches and squeals out of the darkness, he's cold to the marrow, and very glad to swing up and find a quiet seat insid, thinking longingly of warm, dry feet at Rhys' place.

The carriage is half-empty, and those already seated inside are mired in their own worlds, half-asleep agains the windows, buried in books; one old lady near the front of the carriage has a battered novel propped barely two inches away from her nose, wizened fingers busily knitting, her needles clacking tunelessly away and a heap of dark blue fabric piled up on her lap. He finds an empty seat, wedges his bag between him and the window, folds his arms over his chest, and closes his aching eyes.

All he wants by now is a little peace and quiet; a little calm insulation away from the screech of wheels on tracks, the constant rattle of the cars, the whush of snow on the window, the sights and sounds and smells of other people. But — a line forms between his brows out of sheer irritation - it sounds like he's unlikely to get that at Rhys' place, at least for tonight.

Shouting. He frowns, nudging deeper into his seat. Feyre has an explosive temper, it's true; he's heard enough stories and seen enough with his own eyes. Hell, the greatest lore in the family is the tale of how she single-handedly dragged Rhys out of the burning wreckage of his own plane and hauled him into her ambulance, yelling at him all the while and referring to him as an overly-inflated stupid fucking asshole who'd dropped burning wreckage all over the runway.

A scrawny sixteen-year-old girl in a uniform two sizes too large for her, chewing out a Royal Air Force pilot and one of the heroes of the Battle of Britain, a man who single-handedly chased off an entire enemy squadron that very night before his wings caught fire, and she was yelling at him all the way to the hospital. Rhys fell in love immediately.

So yes, Feyre has a temper…but he was there for her wedding-day. He didn't know her well, but he remembers distinctly how her face had fallen when she opened the telegram and read its brief message; hell, he'd read it himself with a scowl before Rhys set fire to it, while Feyre wiped tears off her face and poured herself a glass of whisky.

Can't make it stop. Work very busy right now stop. Sorry stop. Many happy returns stop.

Many happy returns - this from the eldest sister Feyre hadn't seen in years at that point. He scowls harder and folds his arms over his chest. Bad manners or no, never met her before or no, he'll have some goddamned words to say to this sister tomorrow night.

It's the lights that pull him from his stewing reverie, about an hour later by his watch with a sore neck and his right toes gone numb in the chilly car. Outside the darkened window, the lights along the tramlines are brighter now, closer and closer together, and the whirling snow makes their progress seem even slower than the crawl they've been maintaining for hours now — but the real shock is the brilliant, whirling, dazzling lights out there in the darkness, billboards and beacons lit up in marquee lights, houses and entire apartment blocks and skyscrapes ablaze with light, the sudden brilliance chasing the cold winter's night away. He straightens, hissing as his lower back twinges, and leans forward until his nose is almost smooshed against the glass, watching wide-eyed as the lights get brighter and brighter and closer together, piling up on one another like one constellation slapped right atop another.

By the time they pull into the Chicago station, the lights are bright enough to illuminate the train carriage. When he swings down onto the platform, turning to offer the old lady with her knitting needles a hand down the slippery steps, the enormous hulking black line of the train puffs and groans and sweats out clouds of white steam turned gold by the brilliant overhead lights, the sudden blaring sound over the loudspeakers into the train station.

"Ring a-ling," a voice croons, bouncing and echoing off the station's walls. "Hear them ring, it's Christmas-time in the city…"

It most certainly, undeniably is. The sheer wall of noise that greets him stepping into the station literally makes him flinch at first, and he has to flatten his back against the wall and remind himself that he's safe, it's just a crowd of people — and what a crowd. Eleven o'clock at night is no matter, the station is thronged with families come to greet the train passengers, loud shouts and cries of happiness, children screeching in delight, and over it all the booming songs on the loudspeakers, spilling joy and gladness into the air like powdered sugar over a cake.

He fights his way through the throng and outside, only to find more noise: the sidewalks thronged with people, the streets clogged with cars and buses, merrily-jingling silver bells ringing as they coast through the snow. Lights and noise and music, billboards and marquee signs and dancehall tunes, people laughing and chattering and walking arm-in-arm, some even dancing on the sidewalks outside the bars — all the noise and light and music driving away the prolonged hush of the winter snowfall, until even the snowflakes themselves seem to dance and twirl merrily, caught up in the explosion of holiday cheer.

It's only after the fourth time someone trods on his toes that he pulls himself together, stops gawping like a country bumpkin, and joins the streams of foot traffic ebbing and flowing along the snowy sidewalks. He eyes a bus station for a moment before shaking his head decisively, shouldering his pack higher on his back, and turning his stride northwest trhough the gently-falling snowflakes.

Ma told him stories of the Spanish Flu, the epidemic that laid low the largest cities in the world in the same year she brought them to this country. He was only four years old, he has no memory of it himself, but she told him about how New York City itself went quiet, people driven into their homes from fear of the diesease, the fashionable shops and restaurants standing empty. Those who had to venture out for work wore masks to cover their mouths and noses; the poorest used scarves and shawls fro lack of anything else. Some even sported gas masks fresh off European battlefields, even with the city's hopital wards full of the wounded and dying from France,a nd fresh thousands coughing out their lungs on the daily.

Back in '39, when his years in the CCC finally got him a job building tankers right here in this very city, he remembered her stories of empty streets and silent bars. Chicago was just starting to come back to life then; like other major cities throughout the country — a new lifeline of FDR's deal to supply Britain's newest war effort had brought life and industry back into the cities, but only in certain parts, and only slowly. The docks and factories were booming, while across town the lucky swells who'd stayed afloat throughout the Depression drank champagne and invested in airplane stocks, and in between the two stretched blocks and blocks of emprty streets, apartments left abandoned and shops ransacked bare. He passed these exact streets every day for almost two years, had been so happy to see even the most incremental signs of life returning — a lone line of washing hung out to dry, a single light in a tenement block window.

And now — returning is like watching a barren field for months, rejoicing over a single crocus bud popping up from the empty ground, only to wake up one morning to a field overflowing with cornfields and wilfdlowers, an explosion of colourful life as far as the eyes can see. These same streets are ablwze with life, a cacophony of laughter and chatter, music spilling out of doorways, neon advertisements flashing in shop windows, gardlands and bright red bows on every lamppost, wreaths on every door, lit-up windows lined with twinkling multicoloured lights, children running and screeching and pelting each other with snowballs, hurling their little bundled-up bodies at grown-up legs to be scooped up and tossed laughing into the air.

These children have never known hunger. These homes have never been bombed. No rubble lines the streets, no bodies lie crumpled in doorways. Snow is a gift to be caught on the tip of an outstretched tongue, not yet another curse to be heaped upon a barefoot, starving conquered populace. Nobody flinches from the sight of his uniform; no hollowed, accusing eyes track his steps. Two squealing girls pounce to kiss his cheeks; four men break off from a bar to shake his hand, ask where he served.

Pacific? Heard you boys had some hot action over there -

— was in France, myself. Don't much like that sushi shit, ha ha ha —

— held by the Nazis, winter of '44, whoo-ee, lemme tell ya, bub, those bastards were skin-flints —

— hope you gave ol' Hirohito a good one for us, hey son? Ha ha ha ha —

Jesus. Is this what V-E Day was like in London, the champagne and dancing in the streets and marriage proposals Rhys wrote about? Is this what V-J Day was like here, while he and his boys were in the barracks in Manila watching grainy footage of a mushroom cloud rising over Nagasaki?

"Christ alive, lighten the fuck up." he mutters, scrubbing a hand over his face. Thank God he didn't go to Rhys' and Feyre's yet; nobody needs to ring in Christmas with the goddamned gloomy-faced ghost of wartime-Christmases past.

Thank God the docks are much quieter, though all the windows along the waterfront are lit up. He passes the sound of a tinkling piano spilling out of a half-open barroom, and finally reaches the pub on the corner with a sagging sigh of relief.

Windhaven; the creaky old sign overhead is the same, half the letters gone, the other half worn to near-illegibility, the sign itself swaying slightly in the wind off the water. The door still sticks, and comes loose only with a good hard yank. The fraying mat just inside is older, worn almost completely away.

He yanks the door shut, wedging it firmly into the lintel posts with the ease of long-established habit, and takes a deep breath. The stink hits him immediately, the reek of good booze and coal fires, gas lamps and cigarettes, wet wool and damp skin and the stink of waterfront life, and all the muscles in the side of his neck snap loose. Throw in the smells of lobster drying on the quay walls, the starch in his ma's wash-tub, the lavender water she used on the back of her neck, and he'd be back in that tiny waterside hut in a Maine fishing-village, home for the first sixteen years of life he can remember.

A grizzled head pokes up from behind the bar, and he lets out another breath, shoulders loosening. "Devlon." Peeling off his gloves, he stumps across the floor and reaches out a hand. "Good to see you."

A man of few words, as ever, the old barman grasps his hand in that knuckle-cracking hoary old hand. "Good to see you, boy." he grunts out, one rheumy eye looking back out of the mess of scar tissue in his face. "Good to see you."

That's about as effusive as Devlon gets. It doesn't make him smile, but it brings a warm sort of satisfaction to the depths of his chest as he pulls out a stool and shrugs his pack off his back.

As he always did back when Cas would stop in here for a pint after a hard day's work on the docks, Devlon doesn't bother asking what he wants. By the time Cas has laid his coat and hat on the stool next to him and sank onto his own with a sigh, there's a steaming glass in front of him, the hot reek of whisky rising to his nose.

"Lemons?" he asks, arching an eyebrow and sipping with a pleased hum. "You've come up in the world, man."

"So've you, boy." Running a washrag around the inside of a glass, Devlon jerks his chin at his shoulder. "Made captain, I see."

Cas nods. Devlon lowers the glass for a moment to toss him a quick salute — lackadaisical attitude of one who's been out for a while and isn't going back, sharp enough to be borne of long, long practice. He pulls himself up straight and returns it, getting a little grunt of acknowledgement out of the old man.

It's warmer in here than it used to be; sipping his toddy, he lets his gaze drift about the room, noting the thicker panes of glass in the windows, the gaps in the walls now properly stopped-up, the well-patched roof. The little fire down one end of the bar is crackling merrily away in the little cast-iron stove, belching charcoal-scented air into the room. There's even a wireless on the bar itself, a low hum of something Christmas-y on the station…Sinatra, maybe.

Late as it is, the only light outside the warm glow of the streetlamps, he's not the only one in; a handful of other men and boys in booths and further down the bar., even a few women in overalls and headscarves — the working-class labourers of the city docks, unchanged even through war and bombs and the changing of the world. A few glance at his uniform, but nobody says a word - he's just not remarkable, not down here.

His muscles relax further at the thought, the sudden quiet wrapping around his ears like muffling cotton and slowing his heartrate. He wraps his hands around the hot glass and tries to relax into the calm lulling him like a siren's call.

The drink is half-gone when his thumbs start to tap agains the glass; an old instinct, and not one easily quelled. He can barely remember the last time he sat still for more than an hour on end, much less sat still with nothing else to do — no reports to type, no letters to sign, no news to hear, no boys to console. It leaves an itchy, unsettled feeling in his bones; like the cold, deep ache in his right hip, where a bayonet once pierced the skin and turned solid bone into shards — he feels he should be doing something, hands itching for a typewriter to pummel with his fingers, for a blood-stained hand to hold, for cold eyes to close.

No more he reminds himself, and can't think whether it's a blessing or a curse. No more, the war is over, he's not an occupier here, he's home, he's safe.

Sometimes he felt, in the last few years, like a doddering actor alone on a stage; like Lear in that play the boys put on back in basic, back in '42 — a tired old fool alone and abandoned, grasping at straws and pleading with ghosts, struggling to make sense of a world that defied his lens for reason. The great war, the war with Germany and Japan, the battles against those mighty forces of evil, these were all over, and with them left the men he'd fought alongside, bled alongside, the ones he saw dead and dying in hospitals under a merciless Guadalcanal sun, screaming for mercy under a hail of bullets, jaundiced skin stretched tight over starved bones —

He pinches the insides of his eyes with a wince, shoving away the memories. He's taken them out so many times by now, worn them thin like the creased-soft edges of photographs, that by now those nightmares cannot hurt him — but from this posting in Japan, the long slog of miserable, half-ashamed duty masquerading as the service he's proud of, the old nightmares come back with fresh faces. He keeps seeing Joe Reed bleeding out in a hospital base in Manila and has to remind himself that no, Joe wasn't in Manila, Joe was just a kid when we were in the Philippines, Joe bled out in Okinawa instead. Phil Barnes swims before his eyes, bitten-off nails digging clawed marks into his belly, dead in a pool of his own vomit on the trail off Hacksaw Ridge— but no, Phil never made it that far, Phil puked his guts out and died begging for water in the days after Tarawa.

Phil Barnes, died November 1942. Joe Retd, died June 1945. Three long bloody years and a lifetime of his own separated those two dead boys; young, scared-shitless, exhausted eyes saw Barnes die, old, bone-weary, soul-hurting eyes saw Reed breathe his last. Old soldiers never die; they just go on and on and on to the end.

Well, no more. Not for him. Enough dead boys and bright flags and bugle calls; enough of battling real enemies with knives and bloodcurdling screams, and dangerous hot-red ideas slipping through fingers like smoke through a chimney. Enough of bodies piled up from disease and hunger and bad water; enough of supply trains and uniform creases, stars on his shoulders and boys dying under his watch. He's fought his last war. He's going home.

Wherever home is; for now, he guesses, ahead of him will do. Peace and quiet will do; a celebration without anyone crying of homesickness and trying to desert and being shot and begging for their mothers — that'll do him just fine.

He lets out a slow breath, the oxygen turning ragged in his lungs, and pushes his shoulders back, head up. Devlon meets his gaze, a thin-lipped steadiness on his own face, and Cas half-laughs, a little shaky. If anyone will know this feeling, it's Devlon; former commander himself, who lost most of his squadron at the Somme, and came home choking on gas and half-blind himself.

He drains his glass with a decisive swallow and pushes it across the bar, one eyebrow raised. Devlon scoops it up and refills it without comment, and he's glad of the quiet.

Or, at least, he's glad of it for a moment before the door - the same one that sticks so stubbornly - flies open and bangsagainst the wall, loudly enough that not only he, but six other people jump and necks crack around.

A tall figure appears in the doorway, silhouetted for a second against the streetlight outside and the whirling snow, before stepping over the threshold and kicking the heavy, stubborn door shut with one solid, decisive moment. In the ten seconds it takes her to cross the floor, his mind helplessly clocks legs-hips-mouth-legs, God-fucking-damn and his spine snaps upright as stiff as if it's his CO storming into the barracks — because that, right there? That's the movement of a commanding officer and no mistake; each heel comes down as if trying to pierce right through the floorboards.

"Whisky." comes a clarion-clear voice, crisp and hard as ice. She slaps a pocketbook down on the counter as if itching to slap it across someone's face instead. "Neat. Double."

Cas glances at Devlon, fully expecting to see the usual sneer on the barman's face that he usually wears at the sight of uppity women - but much to his surprise, there's a half-smile lurking in the corner of the other man's mouth.

"Rough night, missy?" he grunts, pouring out a double measure of whisky.

The woman takes it and downs the glass in one neat, practiced motion, then slaps it down on the counter and taps it with a fingernail, unbuttoning her coat with her other hand.

"That," she hisses, after the second double has gone the way of the first, "Lying, scheming, cheating, smirking, self-centered, moralistic, high-minded damned-to-hell wanker."

Cas chokes on his hot brandy, and it comes out of his nose in an exceptionally painful spurt. He coughs and splutters, one hand frantically trying to cover the mess of effluvia all over his mouth and chin, the other trying to wipe his streaming eyes.

"My God, boy." Devlon's voice drawls.

"Here." comes the same crisp female voice, and something soft and expensive-smelling is pressed against the back of his hand. He grasps it, slides off his stool to turn his back, and blows his nose explosvely.

"God." he gasps, straightening and turning about. "Beg pardon."

The figure has turned her head to gaze at him over her shoulder. Most of her face is obscured by a black, finely-knit veil, leaving only her jawline and mouth visible (but good God, what a mouth), but he has the distinct impression of sardonic amusement at his plight. "What a babe in the woods you are, soldier." she says. "Are you not a little past the age of being scandalized by some fould language?"

Babe in the woods, indeed. He straightens and squares his shoulders, chin up. "It's not the language I mind, ma'am." he says. "Only the vocabulary choice that caught me off-guard."

"Oh really, how so?" It's posed as a question, but it doesn't sound as though she's all that interested in the response.

"I would've expected that sentence to end in sonofabitch." he says, feeling the back of his neck prickle as if expecting a slap upside the back of the head, using bad language in front of a lady - to her face, no less. "Ma'am. Wanker was somewhat unexpected."

Her head tilts a little to one side. "I never had the pleasure of meeting his mother." she says coolly. "I should hate to be presumptuous."

He snorts a little in amusement. "But you'll be presumptuous with the word 'wanker' instead?"

"I call that educated guesswork." is her dry retort. "Having met the man, I'm sure of my assessment; he can hardly pass a mirror without attempting, however poorly, to seduce it in a hands-on sort of fashion, if you get my drift."

Cas laughs outright at that, and even Devlon's patchwork face twitches into a grin.

"One hopes you did not suffer through one of his attempts, then." he quips, again silently and inwardly scandalized at his cheek to a lady he's never met, but quashing it with vigour.

"Thankfully, he is my brother-in-law, and so I am to be spared that indignity, at least." She looks over the counter. "Another, Devlon, please."

"Ah - " Cas glances down at the handkerchief crumpled in his fist. Even under the mess of snot and alcohol, he can see it's a fine cambric linen, lace-edged, with monogrammed initials picked out in one corner, the whole thing elegantly scented like something very expensive. "I can - I don't know if - "

"Keep it." She waves one gloved hand dismissively. "Call it a memento."

He takes the momentary sting of dismissal on the chin and resumes his stool, carefully folding up the hankie and tucking it into his jacket pocket. The lady seems to be finished with him, for now, and is preoccupied with removing her gloves, pinching the finger-tips of the right hand one before tugging it off. On the left wist, over the glove, she wears an expensive-looking gold watch, and her coat is a cream-coloured waterfall of thick wool and deep, rich fur.

This is not a woman; he's not usually tongue-tied around women, having served alongside comabt nurses for yeas now — excellent, brave, kind, stubborn women all of them, but very definitively women, working-class and hardworking, tidy uniforms and netted hair and hands worn rough with labour. Hell, the women around this bar are the same, gaping slack-jawed at the vision on the barstool. This is a lady, from the top of an emerald-green wool hat with that veil, to the tips of matching emerald-green heels, damp with snow. This is a lady, quality and class in one fur-wrapped package, and down here on the docks close to midnight with no discernible sense that she is as out of place in this well-worn, working-class-man's pub as an elephant in a blizzard.

She seems completely and blithely unaware, stripping off her gloves and slapping them down with the same force she used with her pocket-book, before re-clasping her watch and taking up her third whisky; this one to savour, apparently, with a deep sip and an appreciative hum to Devlon. She's attracting looks all about the room, glances of wide-eyed disbelief that linger and start to slide into looks of naked appreciation - hardly surprising, but it makes him bristle all the same, for some idiotic reason.

"Wanker." she mutters again, before taking another deep sip.

"I believe you." Her head tilts slightly in his direction, and he can't decide whether or not to cut his tongue out. As is, he's has to swallow not to stammer or apologise for breathing too loudly, let alone speaking; even with her eyes obscured by that veil, there's something cutting-edge and cold communicates very clearly in the set of her jaw and her knuckles going white around the glass. "You don't look like the type to throw strong language around lightly." he adds, aiming for casual and only somewhat succeeding.

"Indeed." she says archly. "And what type do I look like?" She slips her coat off her shoulders, a strategic move if ever he saw one, and he almost chokes on his tongue. Jesus, the sight of her…God only knows he's seen enough nurses to last a lifetime, but he's never once met a woman like this.

He can't think fast enough to catalogue her and respond at the same time, so he keeps his gaze on her face and miraculously off the sheer quantites of real estate contained in an emerald-green dress, and manages to say "The dangerous kind" with a straight face.

Devlon snorts, rather crushingly. "Boy, roll your tongue back into your mouth."

Cas shoots him a very dirty look, grateful for the excuse to take his eyes off her for a second; she's like a comet, searing his retinas and demanding his full attention at his peril. "Mind your own business, old man."

"He's harmless." Devlon says to the woman, grinning openly, and so broadly it tugs at the rippled, raw-red patches of scar tissue left across his face from tear gas. "An idiot, but harmless."

"I'm sure there are several defeated squads who would disagree with you." she says drily, glancing in his direction again. "Marines?"

"Yes."

She hums. "A little gun-shy still, hmm?"

"Only been out a few months."

"Occupational force?"

"Yes ma'am."

"But I'm the dangerous one?" she counters, looking at him squarely through his veil, an abrupt lull after the questions rapped out like a drill sergeant's inspection.

"Yes." Cas says firmly, returning the look. "And you know it, too."

A little quirk tugs at the corner of her mouth. It ruins abruptly the blaring image of something deadly and dangerous and burning up from the inside, softens the line of a wide, full-lipped mouth.

"Might I trouble you for one of those?" she says to Devlon, nodding towards Cas' glass.

"Soon's you drink some water, yeah." he grumbles, back to wiping out his glasses. "Don't need you swooning on my damned floor."

"When have I ever?" she retorts, but takes a sip of water from the glass he slides across the counter. She's tall and long-limbed, but the real kick-in-the-teeth in her stance is her posture, absolutely perfect, chin up and neck long, shoulders pulled down, a poker-straight line from her back to the top of her scalp. She stands well, no fidgeting or leaning into one hip, her free hand resting lightly on the counter next to her coat, gloves, and pocketbok.

For all that height, though (she's got to be at least five-eleven in those shoes), she's got curves to dry out the throat, wrapped in sleek green wool. The cut of the dress is downright modest, especially compared to what he's seen in California: sleeves just past her elbows, a slightly high collar, the hem down just past her knees — but it fits her like paint, the fabric wrapped smooth and wrinkle-free around every curve and nipped-in at her waist, showing off…Jesus, well, highting every single one of her multiple advantages from every angle, a profile that could stop traffic in Times Square.

He hauls his gaze upwards with an effort, resting on what little he can see of her face in profile, still mostly-obscured by that veil. White skin, very pale and as cool as vanilla ice-cream on a hot day; a sharp jawline, and the half-hidden cuve of a high cheekbone. Light hair; a cool blonde, but with darker hues, almost light brown, at the roots and scalp, smoothed back and secured behind her right ear with a gold-tipped comb. A little white pearl stud in the naked lobe of her right ear. Long, slender fingers wrapped around her glass, cherry-red nails.

Dangerous.

She takes her hot toddy from Devlon with a nod of thanks, and raises it in a little mock toast in Cas' direction. "Soldier."

He lifts his own glass and takes a blisteringly-hot swallow, choking down the immediate urge to ask her if she'd call him that with those legs wrapped around his hips. The second the image flashes into his head, he clears his throat with a cough and has to adjust his seat on the bench, leaning forward to prop his elbows on the counter.

"Delicious." she declares, again in that crisp accent - not quite British, the consonants are a little soft for that, the vowels just a little too elongated. She sounds like a Hollywood actress; trans-Atlantic, he thinks they call it, trans-Atlantic by way of Kate Hepburn at her very snottiest. "Do you play?"

The penny only drops that she's addressing him when she revolves that head on her long long neck and faces him head on (wide, soft mouth, in a perfect cherry-red hue). "Play?" he repeats dumbly.

"Darts."

"Oh, thank God." he says honestly. "For a moment I thought you meant the piano, and I'd hate to subject you to that."

"My ears and your dignity will be spared, at least for now." She scoops her things off the counter. "You play, one presumes."

"I do." He stands immediately, fights the urge to stand at attention under that half-hidden gaze, and hoists his own bag off the floor.

"Come along, then." She pivots on her heel and marches off with that same stride - not long-legged, not in that skirt, but quick and rapid, with perfect balance, each heel placed precisely in front of each toe as if walking on a tightrope.

And if that walk does deadly things to her hips, by God he's not about to complain.

He throws a wide-eyed glance at Devlon, who only looks at him as if he's the biggest idiot in the Northwest. "She won't bite, boy." he drawls. "Well, she might."

I'm not that lucky. He coughs to clear his throat, and hurries to follow her.

She remains blithely unconcerned with the goggle-eyed looks thrown her way as she crosses the room, or with the sudden hush that follows in her wake - merely placing her things on a table near the board pinned to the wall.

"Do you play often?" she inquires, stepping aside as he puts his own things down, and fetching the cup full of darts from a rickety little stool next to the board.

"Fairly often." He bites off the ma'am as he puts his own things next to hers.

"Then endeavour to keep up." she bites out, that hard set back in her jaw, as if inspired by suddenly having something sharp and potentially lethal in hand. With the other hand, she tugs up the end of her veil and folds it smoothly over the top of the cunning little hat still on her head, then turns the full effect of high cheekbones, strong jaw, and slightly-slanted grey eyes on him like training a missile on an enemy target. "Don't bore me, soldier."

He pulls his shoulders back and gives her a level look. With a little lift of her brow, she turns away, takes one deep breath, throws her shoulders back, and narrows her eyes at the board on the wall approximately ten feet away.

The dart hits wood with a resounding thwock barely an inch from the bulls-eye, and he has to pick his jaw up off his collar for the second time in five minutes.

He's not one to let a woman win just because she's a woman, and thankfully she doesn't give him the option. She plays like someone with something to prove for the next ten minutes, every motion of her arm contained, but with enough fury that her darts hit hard and stay embedded deeper than they really need to be. She wields each one like a javelin, free hand clenched into a white-knuckled fist, jaw tight, almost silent save for the little growl escaping through clenched teeth with every hit. After a while, though, the line gradually smooths from between her brows, and her movements slow. Her gaze tracks each motion more carefully; she takes each throw more slowly and precisely, hitting mark after mark after mark with near-pinpoint accuracy once some of that rage is worked out of her system.

She wins, but it's a close thing: his own marksmanship is no slouch. When she gets the final score, a smattering of applause goes up from the little knot of onlookers that's gathered to watch them, and the corners of her mouth release a little more tension.

"Excellent match." he compliments her, offering his hand. "You're one hell of a player, ma'am."

She looks up at him with those sharp eyes under slightly-arching brows. Her hand is soft and very strong in his own. "My name is Nesta. Not ma'am."

Nesta. "Cassian." he offers in exchange, squeezing her fingers. He checks the impulse to do so very gently and carefully, as he's done with girls in the past: this is not a woman who breaks easily. "Can I get you a drink?"

She pauses, aborted in the motion of releasing his hand, and tilts her head on one side, looking assessingly up at him. "I don't know, can you?"

He huffs through his nose. "May I?"

"You may." She releases his hand and turns to their table — he scoops her things quickly up, and steps aside. She shoots him another little look but doesn't comment, instead seating herself on one of the benches. He settles her things beside her, shoves his own things onto the opposite bench, and heads for the bar, trying to keep his pace steady instead of outright bolting like an eager boy.

He manages to wrest two hot brandies from Devlon without comment, thank God.

There is a detail to her dress formerly overlooked, which, now that he sees it, sliding back into the booth across from her, sets up camp in the foremost part of his hindbrain and flatly refuses to be dislodged by man or beast: a line of creamy-white pearl buttons, pure as driven snow against the deep green wool. They start at the hollow in the centre of her throat, stretch out parallel to her left shoulder, then fall in a caressing line down her side, hugging the outer curve of her breast, waist, and hip, down the long, long line of her left thigh, and finally the last one fastens her hem just on the outside of her left calf, under her knee. He cannot look at them for longer than a minute without imagining the long, achingly-pleasant arch of unbuttoning them, one by one, baring her in strips — so he jerks his eyes back up to her face, and determines that they are going to stay there.

"And what brings you to Chicago, Cassian?" she asks, accepting her glass with a nod of thanks.

"Family." he supplies, seating himself and trying to subtly tuck his legs under the table without kicking her; not an easy task, in such a small space.

"Parents?"

He shakes his head. "No longer with me." he says briskly, skipping over the throb that opens in his chest at the reminder. "My brother and his wife live here; they're starting a family Christmas tradition, and I'm called to do my bit."

She nods slightly, taking a sip. Her pale gold hair has a deep side part over her right eyebrow; while the right side is brushed back and secured, the left side, in a smooth, perfect wave, drops at the outer coner of her left eye, brushes her cheekbone, and falls in a perfect curve to her chin, not a single strand out of place. When she cocks her head slightly to the left, the effect is somewhat devastating.

"And what do you think of your brother's wife?"

Unusual question. "She's a brick." he says gamely, warmly at the thought of Feyre. "Just a kid, really, but strong and brave and smart as a whip; far too good for him, but she's good to him."

"And is he good to her?"

"He's the best man I know." he says simply. "I only met her at the wedding, sad to say, but they worked well together then. They just…glow together, you know?" He shrugs, a little helplessly.

"How very romantic." she drawls, slightly sarcastic. "You trust him to take care of her, then."

"I do."

"That's good." she says, with an approving sort of nod. "It's not easy to trust people who marry your siblings."

"I take it you don't trust your brother-in-law."

She takes a long, slow sip before she answers; she doesn't rush to respond, and he likes the moment of quiet, the little pulse that kicks up in his chest as he wonders what she's about to say. Her hat matches her gloves and her dress and her heels perfectly; the veil secured by a little gold-and-pearl pin that matches her earrings and her watch, even the clasp on her pocketbook. This ia a lady who puts an effort into the smallest of details - even a conversation.

"Difficult to trust anyone you don't know." she says. "I only knew him from her letters, from before they were married."

"And that's not enough for a good impression?"

"Not when the letters were written by a teenager with more foolhardiness than sense." she says tartly. "Do you have sisters?"

"No."

"Well then, I put it to you like this, if you were away from home, and all you got for months and months on end were letters with these little references to a certain someone - not romantic, you understand, just an annoying someone she worked with - would you think of romance?"

"Probably not." he admits.

"Precisely." she says crisply. "I mean to say, she mentioned him more and more frequently, and I thought perhaps there might be something there, but she only wrote about how annoying he was, so arrogant and full of himself and such a showoff."

"If he liked her, I'm sure he was showing off for her benefit." Cas points out. "We men tend to do that, you know."

"I'm familiar with your species." she says drily. "And that's all well and good, but I never imagined she was thinking about him that way; not seriously at any rate! Goodness knows, we all had an inappropriate crush or two during the war - I'm sure you did."

"A matron." Cas admits, and she cocks an eyebrow. "What can I say, she fed me ice-cream."

"Every man's dream." Nesta intones. "Well, I blame myself, really. There was so much else to worry about besides my little sister's co-worker, and suddenly quite out of the blue they're engaged and inviting me to the wedding?" She shakes her head, mouth twisting. "No idea how they went from being at each others' throats to madly in love, but suddenly here we all are, for better or for worse."

"Do you think it's for worse, then?" Cas asks, leaning back a little in his chair and relaxing his shoulders.

"I think she's very young and stubborn, and he's very charming and sure of himself." is her retort.

"That's not a guarantee for disaster."

"It's not a guarantee for success, either." She traces the handle of her glass with one polished finger, eyes tracking the motion as if riveted by something so simple. "She was so young; she's still so young. I tried to counsel patience, I asked why rush, the war's over, no more threat of imminent death hanging over our heads, you can take your time." She glances up at him, a wry twist to the corner of her mouth. "She said that one never knows when death might be lurking around the corner, we could all be hit by a bus tomorrow, and she didn't want to wait another moment."

Cas snorts around a mouthful of his own drink. "Stubborn little thing."

"Intensely." Nesta says darkly. "And she takes it quite personally when she feels I'm not supporting her to the hilt."

"So she's not so happy with you at the moment, I take it?"

"Not in the least." She grimaces. "I don't mind telling you, dinner this evening was an unmitigated disaster.."

"I'm just curious, did he do something in particular to earn the title of 'wanker', or is it a general impression?"

"He exists." is her flat response. "That's quite sufficient."

He huffs out another life, swallowing a hot mouthful while she opens her pocketbook for a packet of smokes — Woodbines, he notes with some surprise; exceptionally strong.

She flicks a brow at him. "Do you mind?"

"Not at all." He waves her off, and fishes his own packet of Lucky Strikes out of his breast pocket. She uses her own lighter, a little red thing that looks more like a toy, and lights up with ease, the brief flash of flame throwing her cheekbones into blazingly-sharp relief.

"Do you want to discuss him?" he asks around the tip of his own smoke. "The wanker."

"Most emphatically not." She leans back in the bench, right elbow propped on the table, cigarette held elegantly between her pointer and index finger. She quirks a brow at him. "Do you wish to discuss your brother and his wife?"

Rhys' brand of bombastic camraderie does not belong in a room with those gunmetal-grey eyes, those cheekbones, those legs. "Not at this precise moment, no."

"Damn." she says crisply. "All topics of conversation failed. Shall we discuss the weather?"

"It's horrid." he says succinctly. "I'd rather discuss you."

Something shutters in her face; very subtle, just a little flick behind those eyes, a little stillness in the movement of her mouth. "What about me?"

"'Nesta'?" he asks, lifting one eyebrow. "Where on earth did come from?"

She lowers one eyelid in a wink, over-dramatic to the point of sardonic. "From your dreams, of couse, soldier." She takes another long drag on her cigarette. "My mother's family had pretensions of grandeur."

"And is your sister's name pretentious as well?"

"Excessively so - but you're a fine one to talk, Cassian."

"You don't like my name?"

"As it's unlikely your parents chose it with my prefences in mind, it's immaterial whether I like it or not." she says crisply.

Damn, but she's quick. The smile spreading across his face is starting to hurt his cheeks. "My mother chose it." is what he says instead, leaning back in his seat. "But I'm sure if she'd met you, she would have been gracious enough to take your prefernces into account."

"Deeply flattered." Nesta says drily. "Did she choose a similarly ridiculous name for your brother, as well?"

"Oh, he's not my brother by blood." he clarifies. "Technically, we're not related at all, just close enough friends to be as good as brothers."

Nesta's eyebrows rise. "And how did that happen?"

Cas hums, debating for a moment before shrugging. "My mother sent me to England when I was thirteen, to attend Eton." He nods a little at the further lift of her eyebrows. "I met him there and, uhh, tried to pummel him into the dirt."

"Did he provoke such an action, or were you just bored?"

Cas barks out a laugh. "He was a pampered little prince from a noble family; literally noble, and my mother was a washerwoman." He shrugs one shoulder. "He made some snotty remark about my clothes - I took that as provocation enough."

She snorts, somehow managing to make even that elegant. "I hope you rubbed his face into the dirt."

"I was doing my level best to," he admits. "Got into trouble for it too; the headmaster was furious. He hauled us both into his office, and was threatening to expel me on the spot because gentlemen do not resort to fisticuffs." He says the last in his best toffee-nosed imitation of his old headmaster, grimacing in distaste.

"And what did your little bully do?"

"'Fessed up." Cas says, grinning. "He stood right up and said that it was his fault, he'd provoked me, if anyone should be expelled it was him. Mightn't have done us any good, but his mother swooped in to back it up, said her son ought to be ashamed of himself and I should be commended for defending myself."

She hums, the corners of her lips curling up. "An unusual thing for a British lady of title."

"She was American." he counters. "Married a Brit, yes, but American by birth."

"Ah yes, our democratic principles come out in the blood."

"The true spirit of Thomas Jefferson lives on." he agrees, smiling at the memory of Astra Moreno, Duchess of Marlborough. "At any rate, she thought her son needed to be taught a lesson."

"I'm rather inclined to agree."

Cas snorts, amused. "Well, he learnt it, and so did I, when she told me off for being so stupid as to jeopardize my future because I couldn't control my temper."

"She told you off?"

"After she saved me from being expelled, yeah." He scratches along his jaw. "She said that if I was indeed the son of a washerwoman, then the least I could do for my mother was to take the chance she worked so hard to give me, and not squander it at the first chance."

Nesta hums. "And were you? Trying to squander it?"

"Yes." he admits stoutly. "I was young and hotheaded and angry; I didn't want to be so far away from home, and I was looking for an excuse to be expelled and sent home to her."

"That's almost sweet, in a way." she says with a little moue of red lips that makes him think, in a part of his mind that he refuses to acknowledge at this point in time, of raspberries and jam smeared in inappropriate place. "But you made a friend out of the experience."

"I did — two, in fact. The next time we got into a brawl, we made a friend in a boy two years above us." Cas smiles again, thinking of Az at fifteen, all gangly-limbed and scowling. "He knocked our heads together whenever we got too stupid, and kept us out of scrapes when she couldn't keep an eye on us, but she always invited all three of us home during the school hols."

"What a lovely woman."

"Not really, she used to put us all to work around the estate so we'd learn the value of hard labour, which the other two hated."

Nesta's lips twitch. "The little prince wasn't fond of hard labour?"

"It was the one thing I knew how to do better than them, at that age." Cas admits. "I was hopelessly behind in everything else at school; I wasn't so good at lessons, I didn't know how to play the same sports, I was only good at starting fights and pulling pranks, but when we were back on the estate, I knew how to curry horses and rake a lawn."

"Hmm." She takes a final drag before stubbing out her cigarette, cocking her head on one side so that curtain of blonde hair swings free from her cheek. She has a way of sitting very erect, head held high, looking down the length of her nose with eyes half-lidded, as though sizing him up with every word. It's a carefully-curated pose, designed to impress and intimidate, he knows - but knowing does not make it any less effective. "And did you come straight out of a novel by Alexandre Dumas?"

Her French pronunciation is flawless; Rhys' old nanny, fresh out of Provence, would have been impressed.

"I have led a very scandalous life, it's true." He stubs out his own smoke. "Care to hear more?"

"By all means." She jerks her chin out a little, towards their empty glasses. "But I'll have another drink first."

He stands immediately, scooping the glasses off the table. "The same?"

"Please."

"Pathetic." is Devlon's assessment once he reaches the bar. "Absolutely pathetic."

"Mind your own."

"You're going to get chewed-up and spit out again." Devlon says, refilling their glasses. "Look at her, she's like honey to the bees."

Cas throws a glance over his shoulder; sure enough, plenty of eyes are directed Nesta's way, but she's ignoring them all, staring out the window. Against the soft glow of the streetlamps, her features stand out in sharp relief, like the carved prow of a stone angel on a cathedral steps.

Not a single one has worked up the courage to approach her, and he grins, hot and fierce. "She's not honey, she's whisky and spice." he disagrees, gathering up the glasses again. "Put hers on my tab."

"Already done, idiot." Devlon says witheringly. "You should pay for the privilege of being that stupid."

Cas just winks and crosses the floor back to Nesta. More than a few furious glances are thrown his way as he goes, and he can't even blame them; between the lips and the creamy skin and the fit of her bodice, he's already one lucky bastard.

"Where were we?" he asks genially, sliding back into the booth. She hums, settling her shoulders back and rearranging her legs under the table.

"Your sordid past."

"Ah, yes." He takes a fortifying drink. "What part, specifically?"

"Your mother the washerwoman sent you to the most prestigious private school in England, where you befriended at least one noble, if not two?" Nesta asks. At his nod, she shakes her head. "And forgive me, but just how the hell did your parents manage that?"

"Ah." He leans across the table again, lowering his voice. "Can you handle a bit of scandal, Nesta?"

She eyes him drolly, lowering her lashes to half-mast again. "One sister married a hotshot, the other had a very speedy engagement." she says drily. "Do your worst, soldier."

He's really starting to like it when she calls him that. He narrows his eyes right back at her, and drops his voice even further. "My parents were not married." he murmurs, watching the tiny, tiny shiver that runs over her shoulders at his lower voice, and feeling it like a punch to the gut. Maybe it's just the cold…but maybe it's not.

Her lashes lift a little. "Indeed."

"My mother was a chambermaid." he clarifies, chewing down the knot of anxiety that rises in the pit of his stomach. He is not ashamed of his origins, but thirty-two years on this earth have taught him to be very wary of others' reactions to it. "She was working in one of the big estate houses in England when they…met. My father was convalescing there, after coming home from the front."

"An affair?"

His jaw cracks and he bites back the old surge of temper. It's not her fault; the blame lies solely with the bastard who sired him. "No."

Her eyes narrow a little further at the bite in his tone, then widen. "Ah."

"Ah." he repeats. "Not an affair — but I came along nine months later."

"Ah," Nesta says again. straightening. She lifts her glass and takes a long sip. Cas waits, hands tangled together on the tabletop.

It's a good card to hold in your back pocket, a scandalous history; nothing is a better indicator of a person's character, than testing how they react to such scandal.

Her eyes narrow again, calculating. "So I imagine she was forced out of her position once her condition became apparent." she muses, to a quick nod from him. "And this would have been in — when were you born?"

"1915."

"Ah." She takes another sip, head straightening to look at him head-on. "Your father intended, I presume, to marry after the war."

"He did."

"So your mother blackmailed him into handing over the tuition for you to attend Eton."

She says it so definitively that his mouth quirks back up into a smile. "She did. How did you guess?"

Nesta shrugs one shoulder. "It's what I would've done. Well, no," she backtracks, with a little wave of her hand. "I would've strangled him with a stocking, but I congatulate your mother on her self-restraint."

Cas snorts, and takes a fortifying sip of hot whisky. "Fair, but I like your thinking."

"Thank you." she says, rather primly. "So then, I imagine, she brought you over here?"

"You imagine correctly."

"If I blackmailed someone with that much money, and of a sufficient rank in society that his marriage would be threatened by fathering an illegitimate child on a chambermaid, I'd leave the country too." Nesta says with a decisive little jerk of her chin. "And if it was after the war, well, there's your cover story right there." She spreads her hands. "Buy a ring at a pawnshop, sell a nice story about being a war widow with a little boy, and come to the land of opportunity — very neat, I must say."

"You like detective novels, don't you?"

That something shutters in her face again. "I actually don't." she says crisply. "But I applaud your mother's spirit."

"Thank you on her behalf."

"You're welcome on her behalf." She eyes him speculatively. "And so, the son of a chambermaid-turned washerwoman gets an Eton education at his odious father's expense." She whistles lowly. "Definitely a novel out of Dumas' oevre."

"Well, I never got that education, so I think that makes it a novel by Ernest Hemingway."

Her brow rises. "Did you manage to get yourself expelled even with your friend's mother's steadying influence?"

"No." he snorts. "Christmas of 1930, Ma had to write to tell me of her new address; she'd been evicted, for failure to make rent."

Nesta's face tightens in open sympathy — eyes open fully, chin straight and face open, her expressions are easier to read, no longer behind that cool, implacable mask of intimidating disinterest.

"I had to do something, so I snuck into the bursar's office." He snorts a little. "I had help, of course."

"Of course." she says drily, while he grins at the memory of younger Rhys picking the lock on the office door, a younger, scrawnier Azriel standing guard. "And you found your father's name?"

"Took the train and surprised them at the dinner-table." he says, grinning. "Felt bad about that; his wife seemed lovely, if very young." Nesta pulls an obliging expression of disgust.

"So you blackmailed him in turn," she says, smirking now. "Like mother, like son."

"I got the rest of my tuition money, and took the next ship home." he says, nodding. "Turned up outside Ma's new home on Christmas Day — she almost fainted from the shock." And then took a wooden spoon to his backside, half-weeping and half-hugging him all the while.

"And so you gave up your education."

"I did indeed." He stretches, cracking his neck. "Not a bad trade; we kept a roof over our heads for the next five years, and I got two lifelong friends into the bargain. I wouldn't take it back."

"You admired your mother very much, I think."

"I did." He cocks an eyebrow at her. "Did you admire yours?"

"Decidedly not." Nesta says crisply. "For quite a while, though, I wanted very badly to be her."

"What happened?"

"I grew up." she says simply, cupping her glass between both hands. "I saw with my own eyes that she never lifted a finger to help others, and I decided that no matter how elegant she was, I did not want to be like that."

"You'll forgive me saying so, but you certainly manage the elegance just fine."

She gives him a cool little look, a smile tucked into the corners of his mouth. "That's not what people usually say."

"What do people usually say?"

"I'd hate to offend your babe-in-the-woods ears." she says, smirking around a sip of her drink.

"Offended? Sweetheart, I've spent five years in the army," he challenges, propping his chin up on one elbow. "I promise you, you couldn't offend me if you tried."

"Nonsense." she says lightly. "Anyone with dimples like that can still be offended by the world."

"Noticed my dimples, did you?"

Another woman might blush scarlet, caught out and abashedly pleased at his noticing. Nesta just gives him a droll little look, half-admonishing and half-indulgent, as if he's a puppy who's done something both naughty and amusing.

Something is probably very wrong with him, that that's a look that gets him hot under the collar. "What about your father, then?" he asks. "Did you admire him?"

"Also no." Her expression is different, this time; talking about her mother, her face was cool and very smooth, a still pond giving no hint as to its depths. Talking about her father brings a sour twist to the corner of her mouth, as if biting a lemon, and a little line between her brows - shame and pity and disgust all at once, before she wipes it away like chalk off a board. "I hardly need ask whether you admired yours."

He snorts loudly. "I could never admire a man like that."

"And I suppose you never left a girl broken-hearted?" she asks archly. "Not your mother, I mean; I'm very sorry, of course. But another girl, I imagine? Wilting away from a broken heart?"

He laughs. "No."

"Nobody pining out the window for you?"

"Definitely not."

"No white handkerchiefs waving at your back as you marched off?" she asks loftily.

"Absolutely not."

"You seem very sure of yourself."

"And you seem overly concerned that I might break your heart." he says boldly. This time, the smile that curls her lips is a little deeper.

"No fear." she says lightly. "I'd have to have a heart for you to break it."

"Don't sell yourself short, Nes." he advises, straightening and collecting their empty glasses once more. "You should know I won't believe it."

"How can I know that if I barely know you at all?" she shoots at his back as he starts for the bar. He pivots sharply on his heel and swings back around.

"We'll just have to fix that, won't we?"

"Alright." is Devlon's grumble once he reaches the bar. "You're not doing a terrible job."

"Thanks so much for the feedback." Cas grumbles back, setting the glasses down.

Devlon shoots him a gimlet eye through the tangled strands of his grey hair. "You'd better be nice to that girl."

"I think if I was nice, I'd've already lost her." Cas says speculatively, eyeing the row of bottles behind the bar. "What vodkas do you have, Dev?"

"What's this?" Nesta asks when he sets the martini glass down before her.

"It's the next step in getting to know each other." he says smartly. "I took a gamble; if you don't care for it, have mine."

She pins him with the same knock-your-lights-out look she used to face down the dartboard. "You took a guess as to what I like to drink?"

"Maybe." He settles back in his chair and crosses his legs under the table. "Or maybe I asked Devlon for advice."

Her eyes narrow. He puts on a pleasant smile and waits, expectant.

Being the sole focus of her attention reminds him viscerally of being twenty-six in a brand-new Marines uniform, freshly stripped of the assumption that he was all grown-up, getting his ass neatly packaged and handed to him by his first drill sergeant: the burning, biting edge of ambition is still razor-sharp in his chest, the almost tangible need to prove himself to be better, be more — more than another anonymous grunt on a factory line, more than another open hand at payday, more than another set of shoulders fit to wield a hammer and an axe. To be different; to be better than what he'd been for every day of his life so far.

She inspires the same feeling: to be more. To be better. To set himself aside from the dozen other men staring at her in this bar, from the doubtless-countless men who've ever tried to chat her up; to open up those locket-doors of a smooth face she wears, to see what she looks like when she lets her guard down.

She lifts the glass and takes the tiniest sip. Wets her red lips, and takes a second sip.

"You didn't ask for advice." she says decidedly, setting it down. Her fingers interlace over the stem.

Victory is a burn in the chest like a shot of hot rum, like the searing scald of a gun-barrel on his finger-tips. "Did I not?"

"No." she says firmly. "You're far too sure of yourself. You're a man who acts on his own volition. You wouldn't ask for advice."

"I'm a man of impulses, it's true." he agrees, eyeing her. "You're not."

"No, I am indeed a woman."

He laughs. "Trust me, I am very well aware." He lets his gaze drop to the smooth column of her neck, drags it slowly up that creamy slope to that red, red mouth. Lets her see him do it.

Her cheeks are flushed when he looks back into her eyes; another shot of victory "You're a lady," he says with emphasis."Who doesn't like to leave anything to chance."

"Says who?"

"Says that getup." He nods appreciatively at her. "No-one who coordinates their lipstick and their nail polish leaves anything up to chance."

"You should see what else I coordinated." she says lightly, and sips her martini while his brain flips over and flops like scrambled eggs in his skull.

"Touche." he says, when he can speak again and not resort to just wolf-whistling at her like a caveman — or worse, dropping to his knees and begging to see.

"You said it yourself." She smiles a blood-red-hot little smile. "Dangerous."

"Deadly." he mutters, taking a deep drink, and she lets out a little laugh.

"Steady on, soldier."

"I object to your calling me that."

"Oh my apologies, Captain." she drawls, with a little honey-rich slowness to her accent that has his ear pricking up.

"Where were you born, Nesta?"

"I sprang fully-formed from my father's forehead." she says drily. "Why do you ask?"

The vision of her as Minerva fits a little too well; he can already picture her in the pages of The Iliad on his old school desk, grey-eyed Athena bestriding the world, spear in hand, Aegis on her back.

"You've got a bit of an accent, is why." he returns. "Well, once you let the Brit slip."

"Sure of that, are you?" she asks, in the crystal-cut high-toned hob-nobbing accents both Rhys and Az used to spout back at Eton.

He grins. "Yours is very good," he allows. "Very, very good, but I know I hear a little something else."

She actually grins back at him, little white teeth against her red lips. Her nose crinkles up at the move, and his pulse skips a little in his veins.

"Virginia." she admits. "Just outside Richmond."

"Ah." he hums, taking another sip of his drink. "And what else?"

Her nose crinkles. "We moved to the mountains in '29." she admits. "Little mining-town in West Virginia; I doubt you'd know it."

It's clearer now that she's not trying to hide it, a subtle twang and a little elongation of her vowels, a southerner hiding under that polished, practised silver-screen voice.

"How long for?"

"Far too long." she says frankly. "Daddy owned a mining operation, you see, and it all went down in the crash. We had to move into the middle of one of his mining-towns, and we weren't very popular."

"I can only imagine."

"Oh, you really can't." She grimaces. "Some of the children used to throw rocks at us whenever we ventured out. One of them struck my sister in the forehead one day; she bled all over her last clean frock, took forever to get the stain out."

A woman who worked with her hands; who knows, despite Daddy's money and her own elegant suit, how hard it is to wash blood out of clothing by hand.

"When did you leave?"

"'38." She lifts one elegant shoulder, lets it drop. "On my twenty-first birthday, I received word from my mother's people that I had a modest inheritance in my name; a trust fund, gathering dust in a bank until I was of age. It was just the three of us by then - me and my sisters, I mean - so I packed us up and we went to my mother's home, in England." She cocks an eyebrow at him. "In London, as it happens."

"You went to London in '38?" He whistles. "Bad timing."

"Well, there was nothing left here for us." she says with another shrug. "At least there, we could find work."

"What did you do?"

"I was the best typist the local government office ever had." she says, flashing a little self-deprecating smile at him. "My middle sister went to nursing-college, though; she'd never have been able to do that here."

"Nursing college in '38?" He lifts his eyebrows. "In London?"

"Yes, I was terrified for most of the Blitz." she says, mouth twisting.

"Sounds like guts runs in the family."

Her nose crinkles further. "Guts?"

"Courage." he says baldly. "Spine. Grit. Bravery."

"I'm not courageous." she counters, shaking her head a firm, decisive little no.

"To move your sisters across the Atlantic when you were only twenty-one and start a new life?" he counters. "I call that courage."

She shakes her head more firmly. "I only did what I had to do; I only did what was necessary to protect them." she says firmly. "That's not courage. It takes no courage to do something when your back is up against the wall, because there's no choice involved. Courage is having the choice to walk away, and doing the brave thing anyway."

He frowns a little. "I think you're wrong."

"I think you're wrong."

"Can we agree to disagree then?"

Those grey eyes narrow. "You're stubborn."

"Yes." he agrees. "So're you."

She lets out a harsh little laugh. "Now that is the true family inheritance." she says dryly. "Stubborn to the backbone, the lot of us."

"What happened to your nurse?"

"Graduated at the top of her class, and never missed a day all throughout the Blitz.." she says, half-smiling and half-grimacing. "Nodded along when I told her it was dangerous, what with a war coming and all, agreed with me all the way, and went and did it anyway."

His grin broadens. "You've been doing everything you can for them, and they just turn around and run circles around you, don't they?"

She cuts him a very sharp look, but after a moment eyeing his grin, her shoulders slowly relax. "Ungrateful little brats." she mutters.

His grin widens even further. "Shameless little hoydens."

"Appalling little beasts."

"Must be very stressful for you." he agrees, tapping his glass against hers. "Cheers to coralling stubborn little sisters."

"Cheers," she murmurs, taking a sip. She cocks her head on oen side. "Are you trying to intoxicate me?"

"I doubt I could." he says honestly. Her gaze is as coolly direct as ever, her posture just as erect. "I think you could drink me under this table, if you so chose."

"I'll have no speculation as to what might go on under a table, if you please." she says crisply. "My mother would be ashamed of me."

"But if you don't want to be like her, what do you care?"

She narrows her eyes at him. "This is the problem with drinking with Russians," she says loftily, admiring her martini glass, tone dropping as if she's just musing aloud to herself. "One minute you're genteelly getting a headache from a glass of sherry, next thing you know you can handle your vodka with the tolerance of a rhinocerous, and isn't that attractive."

"Yes." he says baldly. She bats her eyelashes and takes another sip, tapping another cigarette out of her case. He offers his lighter and she accepts, dipping her head to catch the flame on the tip, until that golden sheen of hair brushes his wrist. The sweet scent of her hair rises up to his nose, mixed with the acrid scent of cigarettes.

"Russians?" he asks, when he can think again.

"Russians." she coutners, face back to that smooth cool blankness. "There are a few of them about in Europe, you know."

"Even in London?"

"I've met one or two."

"Piccadilly Circus?"

Her mouth curves into that red smile again. "Right next to the bears."

When he laughs at that, her smile breaks into an open-mouthed grin, all pearly teeth and a little flash of pink tongue. The sight makes him faintly dizzy, and he has to look out the window for a moment to collect himself before he can look back at her.

He likes how straight she sits, even relaxed now in the booth; the casual, precisely-elegant motions of her hand and wrist, smoking and drinking, the way her chin tilts a little to the side until the light glances off her cheekbones, the amused slope to her red mouth.

There's quiet between them for a moment. The noise and chatter of the bar rises in their surroundings - the music a little louder, a crowd gathering around to play darts, Devlon refilling glasses - but somehow the spell between them is unbroken. Nesta sips her martini, and gazes out the window, grey eyes following the dance and whirl of snowflakes. Cas rests his chin on his hand and unabashedly watches her.

There's something here, he can feel it. Like the sing of an axe in mid-air before the perfect strike to cleave a log in two; like the electric taste on the back of his tongue before lightning cracks across the sky; like the hiss and pop of static on the phone line giving way to a smooth voice on the other end. He feels it like an electric pulse in the base of his spine, like a blow to the back of the knees, like a dash of ice-cold water on a fever-flushed face.

Nesta. Grey-eyed, pale-skinned, sharp-tongued, red-mouthed, perfect-aim Nesta, hitting him right between the eyes in every second just as easily as she hit targets on that dartboard. Nesta, quick and steady in her high heels, tall and solid in her emerald-green finery, ice-cold vodka and red nail polish and quicksilver smarts. Talking with her is a sparring match, one word after another like darts; flirting with her is like provoking a tiger, leaping out of the path of its jaws; laughing with her is like sinking into a hot bath, the gasp of too-much-can't-take-it before molten heat melts into his bones and he relaxes. She's just this close to too much; this close to can't-take-it. Only way out is to run, or step closer, wrap his hands around grey-eyed vodka-cold flame, and let himself burn.

"A captain in the Marines." she muses, turning that sculpted head like an owl to pierce him with those grey eyes once more. "When did you make captain?"

He grins at her, lazy and melted-butter content. "About two years in."

"Impressive." she says, one eyebrow quirking. "Pacific?"

"How'd you guess?"

"You don't get a tan like that in France." she says, with another one of those genteel little snorts. "And you don't make captain from private in two years unless the higher-ups are getting killed off."

He smiles a little. "You're sharp."

"Have to be, in this life."

He tips his head a little in acknowledgement. "True - mine was a battlefield commission."

She hums. "Joined up in '41?"

"December 9th." he confirms. "Heard the radio address, went straight to the nearest recruitment office. And you?"

"Well, we were well in it, by then, on my side of the water." She takes another sip, licks a drop off the corner of her red mouth. His fist clenches reflexively and he has to breathe slowly out through his nose to release it again. "By the time you boys were signing up, we'd already lived through the battles of the North Atlantic and of Britain, and the Blitz, andDunkirk."

"You ever think about coming back?" he asks. "Once the war broke out?"

"What, cut and run at the first sign of trouble? Leave merrie old England in the lurch?" She tosses her head. "That's hardly how the west was won, is it?"

He grins slowly. "I'll bet you were a regular little hellraiser as a child." he says. "You've got that look like you'd love to haul off and blacken someone's eye."

"Only when provoked." she quips.

"Like that brother-in-law provokes you?"

She heaves a deep sigh, rolling her eyes up to the ceiling. "You had to go and bring him up, didn't you?"

"Maybe I just want to learn how not to provoke you."

"Is that it?"

"No." he admits, folding like a stack of cards under that grey gaze and completely unabashed about it. "I'm looking for someone I can pummel on your behalf."

"And I see we've resorted to the most chivalrous method of wooing a woman."

"Who says I'm wooing you?"

"If you're not wooing me, then I'd like to know just what exactly your hand is doing."

His thumb is, indeed, stroking the backs of her fingers where they rest on the table; an unconscious touch he didn't even mean to start, but now is sending sparks skittering up the back of his neck. He covers as best he can with a lopsided smile. "If you'd like it to be doing something else, you've only to ask."

She gives him another one of those arch little looks (he silently names it her down-boy look), but there's a little dart of something in the back of her eyes that makes him pause, cocking his head.

"I should apologise." he says quietly. "That was unasked-for."

The flicker dies. "I'll inform you when you need to apologise." she says with a sniff. "In the meantime, you may proceed."

Oh, his face hurts from smiling. "May I?"

"I already said so."

"Say it again."

"Absolutely not."

"But then how will I know you mean it?"

"I do not make a point of saying things I don't mean."

He huffs a laugh. "Nesta, can't you just tell me you want me to touch you?"

"I cannot and I will not."

"Why not?"

"Because you do not need any further inflation to your ego, Captain." Only Nesta, he decides, could make his title into something spine-tingling like a challenge and a caress all in one.

"True." he admits, rough thumb stroking over smooth knuckles. "My ego has been unassailable since you first glanced at me."

"You cannot possibly be that arrogant."

"I'm sitting with the most gorgeous woman in the room, of course I'm arrogant."

"Your choices are somewhat limited, I'm one of only ten women in this room."

"Eleven, actually - Devlon is secretly a dame in a wig."

She splutters and breaks down into peals of laughter, and his grin breaks across his face like a sunrise: inevitable and unavoidable. She cups one hand over her mouth, trying to muffle it and glaring daggers at him, but the sound of her laughter is still clear.

Ah, victory — victory with wings outspread and one foot leaping forward into flight.

"Stop grinning like a trained seal." she huffs, when she's finally gotten herself under control.

"No" he retorts. "Since when do seals grin?"

"Don't be pedantic."

"Don't scowl at me like that."

Her scowl only deepens. "Don't presume to tell me what to do with my own face." Oh, there's that crisp Bacall-style kick-you-in-the-balls accent again.

"Keep scowling with that face, and I'm going to kiss you right here and right now."

The scowl drops off her face. She blinks, and then a very faint pink blooms in her neck. "You wouldn't."

"I would."

"We are in public."

"Damn their eyes if they don't like it."

The scowl is back, eyes narrowing and lips compressing, but he knows her tells now; she's trying not to smile at him and his nonsense.

"You are absurd." she declares, swinging her fantastic legs around and standing. "Utterly uncouth. A complete savage."

He snaps his teeth at her, laughing when her eyes narrow further. "You scold like an English nanny."

She quirks one eyebrow and props a devastating hip against the table. "Are you asking to be sent to bed with no supper?"

While he's fish-mouthing, she scoops the glasses up, gives him a triumphant glance, and steps back. "I'm choosing the next round."

"And here I am trying to be a gentleman."

"And failing utterly, might I add." she flings over her shoulder, striding off. He half-collapses back against his seat, blowing a hot breath out from his lungs. What a woman, by God, what a fucking woman.

He is completely powerless to not watch her as she crosses the floor to the bar, noting the swing of her hips and her firm, decisive stride all in one; how she moves with pride, straight-backed and square-shouldered, doesn't mince and simper her way through the room. She is who she is; and damn your eyes if you don't like it, indeed. When she reaches the bar, she doesn't bend over it, as some coquettes in a tight dress do; she stands square, ankles and knees together, hands resting lightly on its surface like a ballerina at a barre — that's it, he realises abruptly. That's what her posture reminds him of: the ballerina classes he used to idly watch at a downtown Chicago theatre, winter of '38.

Devlon's face creases into a smile at the sight of her, and isn't that a mystery that needs solving. While he's filling up the glasses, some fair-haired fellow scoots closer, and says something. Nesta revolves her head on that long neck and pins him with such a withering look that Cas snorts with laughter from clear across the room. The fair-haired bloke scatters. She looks a little further, catches his eye, and smirks before turning back to the bar.

He was wrong, she's not a lady - not one of those pampered, soft, stand-off-don't-touch-me high-society misses who always turned their noses up whenever he passed them on the pavement. She's a dame, a gold-flint rock-solid classy dame of the old school, best seen on silver screens in black-and-white and shrouded in a cloud of cigarette smoke, trading barbs with the likes of Bogart or Jimmy Stewart. Not as brashly confident as Kate Hepburn, not the slinky self-congratulation of Ava Gardner, no, she's all Lauren Bacall — cool, smoky-voiced, tip-tilted eyes with that way of looking at him dead-on as if down the barrel of a gun, square-shoulders and swaying hips and that smile that reaches right up to her eyes.

Suddenly, he wishes fiercely he could take her to base; the one in California, full of tattered posters of pin-up girls, the bawdy jokes and ribald pranks of a homesick horny band of boys dreaming of movie stars. He wishes he could send her walking through that room like a ballerina-turned-schoolmistress-turned-drill-sergeant and watch their jaws drop just as his did.

Look and learn, he thinks fiercely at men thousands of miles away; hell, at his own younger self, cracking wise about Rogers' girl with the blonde ponytail. This is a woman worth dreaming about.

He's humming along to the radio by the time she returns, weaving expertly through the crowd. Several drinks down and balancing in high heels and a tight skirt, she doesn't falter once; other guys step into her path, say something to her, crack wise, and she tosses back dry quips and keeps moving. Heat rises up vicious and proud in his chest, to see her coming back to him with nary a pause.

She's humming too, and she flashes a little sideways smile at him when she realises he's humming as well. "You like jazz?"

"When I hear it." he says honestly. "Two hundred men in a barracks and only one radio to share among us, I'll listen to anything I can."

"Well, consider it a welcome bonus of being out of duty at last." she points out, nudging the trailing ends of her coat off the dirty floor with a neat little kick. "Now you get to change the station as you please."

"Unless I'm in public."

"I'm sure Devlon would accommodate you."

"I'm sure he'd accommodate you, he'd tell me to go pound salt."

She grins, letting that pass without comment, and plunks a glass of something dark and foaming down in front of him. "You're not the only one who can guess a person's preferences. Now be a good boy and taste that before you propsition me again."

"Did I proposition you?"

"Didn't you?"

He snorts. "When I do, trust me, you'll know for sure."

"When you do?"

"When." he says firmly, and takes a sip. It's an effort to keep his face impassive. "Huh. It's alright."

"You're a dreadful liar." she informs him, swinging her legs back into the booth. Her ankle knocks against his. She doesn't move it. He could turn a carthweel right here and now.

He certainly can't lie to her. "It's delicious." And it is - a dark smooth workman's brew beer that goes down cold and musty-tasting with a bitter kick.

She gives a little nod of self-satisfaction. "There was a pub around the corner from my office in London." she says, settling herself with her own drink - another vodka martini, he notes with satisfaction. "And all the workmen came in there for pints after a hard day's labour, and that's what they would drink." She takes a sip from her own glass. "I'm pleasantly surprised to see Devlon has it here."

"Devlon's Welsh by nationality." he points out. "He's got a taste for English pints."

"His taste is correct." she says with a little sniff. He likes the casual elegance with which she holds her martini glass; he likes the neat tuck of her ankles together; he likes how she casually props her elbow on the table to lean a little closer to him. He likes her, so much.

"I remember," she's saying with a little laugh when he refocuses on her voice. "One night during the Blitz, half the block went down in rubble." She shakes her head, mouth tugging down at the corner. "Everyone was busy the next day, digging through the rubble for worldly possessions, and this pub - the barman served up pints for everyone working, just like that." She laughs a little. "When they ran out of glasses, people brought teacups and saucepans."

He laughs along with her, nudging his hand with the pint glass across the table until he's touching the backs of her fingers again. That pink blush rises up in her cheeks again, and she looks away from him, miming fascination with the latest round of darts going on nearby.

"Oh, good shot." she murmurs. He could break out into song right here and now, and takes a deep draught from his glass to avoid leaning right over the table to lick her neck. "Oh, by the by, our erstwhile Welshman said to remind you that you're an idiot." She turns those eyes back on him, a grin lingering in the corner of her mouth. "Any idea what he meant?"

"None whatsoever." Cas swears, and she breaks out laughing again.

"You are completely ridiculous." she informs him, eyes sparkling.

"True." he says, grinning back. "But I get by alright."

"I'll say you do." She nudges her pinky finger against his index. "Is this your usual move with a girl?"

He clears his throat. "To be clear, are you asking to see my usual move?"

"Why not." She props her chin on her hand. "Go on, impress a girl."

He coughs, then folds his arms and leans across the table. "Hello." he rumbles, giving her his most direct (and slightly over-the-top) look. "I'm a Marine. I might be dead tomorrow. Want to make a night of it?"

"I should throw my drink directly in your face." Nesta informs him, smile tucked into the corners of her mouth.

"Funny, they never say that in the films."

"Do they say that in real life?"

"Dunno. The only time I ever tried that line was on a nurse." He takes another swig. "And to be very fair to me, I'd sustained a very heavy blow on the head, and genuinely thought I was talking to Marlene Dietrich."

"And you thought that would work on Marlene Dietrich?" she snorts. "Not a chance."

"I was thinking she'd take pity on me!" he protests, laughing. "I was bleeding out, after all. It might be her patriotic duty to let me have one victory in my life."

"Marlene Dietrich would never stoop so low."

"Ouch." he says, grinning. "You wound me, Nes."

"At least I didn't hit you on the head."

"Or throw your drink in my face."

"Sorely tempted." she reminds him. "You're only saved because it's far too delicious."

"My saving grace."

"It won't save you twice."

"Then I'd better come up with a better line, hadn't I?"

"No, thank you." Nesta sniffs. "I doubt my delicate sensibilities could handle whatever nonsense you think is a good line. Just keep bringing me decent drinks, and I can continue to tolerate you."

"Very noble of you."

"I'm self-sacrificing to the end."

I want to kiss that pout right off your mouth. Another deep draught of his workman's brew. "How is your martini?"

"Did I not just tell you it's delicious?" She's smiling outright now. "You're slipping, Captain."

"It's that smile of yours." he says honestly. "I can't think straight when I'm looking at it."

Her smile widens. That devastating blush deepens. "Some big tough Marine you are."

"They don't make 'em like you out in the jungle." he informs her. "Matter of fact, I've never seen your equal in all the world over."

"There, see? That wasn't a half-bad line."

"I wasn't trying to think of a good one."

"There's the secret, then." She lifts her drink in a little toast. "Don't think."

"No fear, I rarely do."

She laughs again, swirling her martini. "Let's test your mental faculties then, shall we? What do you think of this song?"

He cocks his head, brow furrowing. "Is this Sinatra?"

"Fred Astaire."

"Ah, the dancing-man himself."

She cocks her head on one side. "You don't like to dance?"

Shit. He swallows and hoists a broader smile onto his face. "I doubt I could match Astaire on the dance-floor."

"Not to worry, I'd say it's rather unlikely that Ginger Rogers is about to grace us with her presence." She quips, fiddling with the clasp on her pocketbook as if considering another cigarette.

"Could you give her a run for her money?"

She throws him a slightly wide-eyed look. "Could I give Ginger Rogers a run for her money?" she repeats, as if Ginger Rogers is foreign royalty.

He nods.

She straightens her chin and considers. "Yes." she says finally. "With the right song."

"Not the right partner?"

"Oh, the idea that it's the man who's the dominant partner on the dance-floor, and all a woman has to do is spin prettily is entirely fictitious." she informs him, selecing a cigarette and placing one end between her red lips. "Rogers does everything Astaire does; just backwards and in high heels."

"And with nary a hair out of place."

"Not a one." she agrees, lighting the cigarette. She takes a drag, removes it, and exhales slowly, eyes sparking at him like embers. "A woman's job is to bleed right through her heels to get it right, and keep smiling all the while as if nothing's amiss."

"Well, I'd try not to step on your toes."

It's a new voice, it comes from behind him, and an unseen hand slaps down on his shoulder, all jokey-camaraderie with an undercurrent of wanting to harm. It doesn't hut, but he flinches all the same, setting his glass down quickly before he can spill it. Across the table, completely unmoved, Nesta's eyes narrow.

"What about it, honey?" the man asks, all jovial grins as he looks at Nesta. "Give you a spin?"

She drags her eyes slowly off Cas to scrape up and down the lankey newcomer, then looks back at Cas. The right corner of her mouth quirks up, wryly amused, inviting him to share the joke.

He can't see the humour in it, abruptly hollowed-out. The sound of bold brass trumpets rings out from the radio, tinny but loud and his stomach muscles clench, shoulders twitching.

"Well, Captain?" she asks. "What are your thoughts on a spin?"

Her tone is light as it's been for the last hour, her mouth quirked, and his stomach is sinking like a rock through quicksand.

He lets out a long, slow breath. "Why not?" His voice comes out cracked, playing at joviality. He looks up at the lanky newcomer looming over him like a scarecrow in a field. "Be nice to her."

He looks back at Nesta just in time to see the smile drop right off her face, mingled shock and sudden betrayal on her face. He wants to punch himself in the goddamned teeth as the man's face brightens.

"Great!" He holds out a hand. "Come on, then."

She stares at Cas for a moment before the shutters come down in her eyes. Her ankle moves away from his, and she stubs out her cigarette with vicious movements.

"Of course." she says coolly, rising. "Certainly. Thank you."

The crisp, almost-British accent is back. She takes the ginger man's hand and steps elegantly away from the table. The bubble bursts and noise floods in, with a sudden sickening lurch of cold all down his front, as if he's just turned away from an open fire.

Trumpets sound out again. She steps easily into a casual two-step, another man's shoulders under her hands, another pair of hands on her tiny waist. Cas debates the logistics of drowning himself in his beer.

Across the room, Devlon catches his eye, sour-faced. He mouths a very obvious you fucking idiot.

Too right. He drains the rest of his glass, shoulders slumping. Too fucking right.

He's fucked it all up. He's fucked it all up monumentally, a fact driven mercilessly home again and again and again as the next four songs play over the radio, and Nesta accepts one dance after another and doesn't look at him once. All it took was one bold man to approach their table and ask her for a dance, and now they truly are all swarming around her like bees to honey, a tangled knot of men literally tripping over themselves to offer her a drink, ask for a dance, crack a joke, spin a yarn. Neat and cool and unruffled even in their hot midst, she accepts one hand after another and spins about with an effortless grace. Her face is back in that flat, still little mask, only a mechanical lift of the corners of her lips — she's not there, not really. She's retreated somewhere, and none of them even seem to notice, scrambling over each other to say something else to this dazzling goddess, to stand in her grey gaze for just a moment.

And he's the goddamned idiot who started it all. He's the moron who put her on a serving-platter by talking to her in the first place; now he's only gone and given up the little claim to her he had, and they've swarmed in to take his place like maggots to fresh meat.

It's not fair, he wants to howl, like a boy who's lost his favourite toy. I made her laugh - me! Nobody else! I did that!

But he doesn't say it, because that would be absurd. He sits and drinks his beer while her abandoned martini grows warm on the table across from him, and tries not to notice that she doesn't glance his way so much as once.

Coward he snarls inwardly, shame a cold fist around his innards. Stupid cowardly fucking lion.

Devlon's face, when he hauls himself out of the booth and approaches the bar, says it all.

"Did you leave your goddamned brains behind you when you shipped out, boy?" the old man growls.

"I don't - "

Devlon takes his glass and slaps him upside the head hard enough to make his ears ring. He doesn't even flinch at the motion, too beaten-down to react. "Where the hell else are you going to find a girl like that?" he growls. "What, you think they grow out the goddamned ground, boy?"

Cas slumps against the bar. "No."

"Fuckin' eejit." Devlon snarls, slapping on a tap as if it's personally offended his mother. "Feckin' useless shit-for-brains punk, thinkin' you're too good for her - "

Cas snaps his head up so fast his vision spins for a second. "That's the last thing I think!" he protests. "She's — she's so - and I'm - "

"Then what the shit were you playing at?" Devlon hisses, thunking down his mug and slopping half the contents over the bar. "Don't you know how that looked?"

"She wanted to - "

Another slap, this time up the opposite side of his head. "You talk to her for over an hour, you're making her laugh, you're fetching her drinks, and then you just hand her off to the first dryshite who grows half a bollock?" Devlon demands. "You know what that looked like? It looked like you decided she wasn't worth it after all, so you couldn't be bothered. It looked like you decided she wasn't worth dancing with. It looked like you thought you couldn't get her drunk and into the sack, so she's not worth the effort of a conversation."

Cas' pulse stutters. "Shit." he rasps. "Shit, I — did it?"

"Yes." Devlon snaps.

"Oh, God." He twists around, just in time to see Nesta's eyes snap away from him and to the wall behind her current partner's face. Two spots of red bloom in her cheeks, a hot colour utterly unlike that pink she'd blushed when he touched her hand.

Cas' stomach plummets. "Shit." he says again.

"Moron." Devlon says succinctly. "You embarrassed the lady, you knobend. Why'd you think she's still dancing with those yokels? She's trying to save face."

"Shit." Cas repeats desperately.

"She's got a lot of pride, that one." Devlon goes on mercilessly. "She won't walk out of here with her tail between her legs, and let everyone assume you thought she wasn't good enough."

"Shit." Cas hisses, raking a hand through his hair. "Christ, I swear, that's not what I meant, I thought - "

"Don't tell me," Devlon berates him. "I already know you're an eejit, tell her."

Cas swallows hard. "Think she'll even still give me the time of day?"

"I wouldn't, but I'm not a dame."

"Thanks, that's so helpful."

Devlon rolls his eyes heavenward. "Lad, just pull your thumb out of your arse, go over there, and cut in with the next dance, for God's sake." He turns away to fill up two pint glasses, muttering about youth being wasted on all the wrong people.

Cas swallows hard, a sudden cold, clammy knot of snakes squirming about in his stomach. Go over there and cut in. Dance.

Christ. Facing another kamikazi squad might be easier. He swipes his suddenly-sweaty palms down the sides of his slacks.

No, no. He can do this. He will not be a pissant little coward, he will go over there, and he will beg her on bended knee, if he must. He will. Yes, he will. Any minute now. Any second now. Okay, at the end of this song.

He swipes a hand through his hair again, shoving the slightly-too-long forelock off his forehead and wishing for divine intervention.

The dance comes to an end, and Nesta steps away from the man she's dancing with, some brown-haired twig in a pinstripe suit. He doesn't let go her hand, though, tugging her back around to face him. She says something, chin lifting, and he laughs, reaching for a glass on a nearby table and taking a sip. She removes her hand and turns away, only for him to grab her wrist and jerk her back, right into his body.

Cas straightens, frowning, but she's recovered her footing in a blink, taking Pinstripe's hand again. He revolves her around to the beat of a new song crackling from the radio; a familiar one, finally. Her face is coolly blank as they move around; he seems like a good dancer, for all that he's holding one glass and sipping as he spins her, apparently utterly careless to the risk of spilling beer on her shoulder.

He passes it back to his friend with a wink, and drops her hand to loop both arms around her waist. Her posture stiffens, feet stalling, but before she can move, his hands have slid down to cup her arse, pulling her body right up and into his.

A chorus of mutters and a few calls go up, Cas bolts off the bar as if struck by lightning and crosses the floor in three strides, knocking some guy off-balance with his shoulder in passing, but before the shout of hey, asshole! can even leave his throat, Pinstripe reels back as if punched.

He doesn't go more than half a staggered step, and men around the room draw in their breath with a sudden hiss like a flock of angry geese.

"You - " Pinstripe wheezes out. "You - you bitch!"

Nesta cocks her head coolly on one side. One hand is braced on her hip, like a schoolmistress interrogating a hapless pupil. The other is wedged securely between Pinstripe's legs - Cas' jaw sags slightly - fist closed in a white-knuckled grip around his balls. "What was that?" she inquires, wrist tensing as her grip tightens, and he chokes on his own spit. "Bitch?"

Suddenly the loss of colour from Pinstripe's smarmy face makes a lot more sense. "Let - leggo a me!" he staggers, hands scrabbling uselessly at the front of his jacket — clearly battling the urge to reach out and hit her, but terrified to do so.

Nesta's smile is all shark teeth. "Say please."

He throws a desperate glance around, but no help is forthcoming. "Please - fuck, please!"

She hums, examining him like dirt on her shoe. "I'll never understand the male urge to throw punches and beat your chests like gorillas." she says coolly. "You see, when a man does not seem to understand the word 'no', I like to make my position quite clear." She squeezes slightly, and he staggers on his feet.

"If anyone is curious," she says, pitching her voice a little louder. "Seize the miscreant by the bollocks, dig your nails in if you've got them - " Pinstripe lets out a whimper. "Rotate your wrist sharply as if turning a doorknob - " She twists her wrist slightly and he chokes, slapping his hands over his face. "And if need be," she finishes, "Yank hard, and bring his balls home to display on the mantelpiece."

"P-please," Pinstripe stammers. "Please, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"Have I made the consequences of you behaviour quite clear?" she inquires, ice-cold tones and that Hepburn accent firmly in place.

"Yes! Yes, damn you!"

She loosens her grip and shoves him stiff-armed away, making him stagger on his own feet and stumble straight into a table. It goes over and takes him with it, glasses sliding and crashing in a sudden explosion of beer and whisky all over the floor, Pinstripe lying full-length in the wreckage clutching his privates and gagging as if about to vomit.

"Serves you fucking right!" Devlon calls over the ruckus of conversation and wolf-whistles at Nesta's stiff shoulders.

"Nesta." Cas shoulders between two men. "Nesta, wait."

He touches her shoulder and she whirls on one heel like a tiger. He quickly puts up his hands. "I'm sorry, I should've have done that."

She glares at him for a moment; no cool, detached mask, just anger and red blotches breaking out along her jaw under her powder. "What do you want?" she raps out. "If you've come for the same treatment, I'd be more than happy to oblige, I can promise you."

He manfully hides a wince. From the sounds behind his back, Pinstripe is dangerously close to being sick, and his friends are trying to drag him out. "No." he says quickly. "No, I need to apologise."

She scoffs. "You already did."

"No, I mean for - wait!" he begs as she stalks towards their table, spine stiff and shoulders squared as if braced against a solid wall. "Wait, please, I'm sorry for saying you should dance."

Another furious look over her shoulder. "I was unaware I needed your position."

"No, I mean for handing you off to someone else instead of asking you myself."

"Handing me off?" she repeats, tone dropping. "Like an unwanted spinster you thought the better of?"

"No - God, no - "

"Save your breath." she snaps, gathering up her pocketbook and gloves with quick, jerky motions. "I'm not interested in another word out of your mouth."

"I should've asked you myself, only - "

"Only you thought about it and decided you weren't all that interested after all." she snarls. "So thank you very much for allowing me to make a fool of myself - "

"I didn't mean - "

" - truly a masterpiece, really marvellous job altogether - "

"I didn't think - "

"Evidently not, but it's not as though I care," she lies viciously. "So I cannot imagine why you're still here, wasting my time." She flings her coat over one arm and stalks for the door.

"Nesta, please - "

"Why don't you just fuck off?" she spits over her shoulder, already halfway across the floor.

"I don't know how to dance!"

His shout bounces off the walls, and quite abruptly the din in the bar quiets, eyes turning to them. She spins on her heel, coat flaring out dramatically. "What?"

"I should've asked you to dance." he says quickly, hands spread. "I wanted to, I swear I did, but I wasn't quick enough, and when someone else cut in, I didn't want — " He blows out a breath, scrubbing a hand over his face. "I didn't want to admit it." he says, face burning. "I didn't want - I just, Nesta, I don't know how to dance."

She stares at him, his fumbling apology hanging in the air like wet laundry on a line. There's a ringing silence for a long moment.

"Christ almighty." Devlon mutters from across the room, clear as a bell. Someone sniggers. Someone else guffaws. Cas closes his eyes and prays for the floor to open up beneath him as a low rumble of laughter rises throughout the length and breadth of the bar.

The laughter rises in a slow, welling tide, drowning out the music still playing from the radio. Heat rises prickly and aching up the back of his collar, the same sick embarrassment he last felt in the enlistment office, when the inspecting nurse had announced in ringing horrified tones to the entire centre that this one has lice, by God!

When he manages to open his eyes again, she's still staring, face unreadable. When he meets her gaze, her spine stiffens. Then she marches past him, and dumps her things on the table.

The sniggers die down again as she pivots and marches across the floor in the other direction, to the radio on the bar. She fiddles with the volume and the wires for a few moments.

" — next, Ella Fitzgerald, with 'Oh Lady Be Good'." comes a crackling announcer's voice, loud and clear in the hushed room. With a little jerk of her chin, she pivots once more and, over the sound of a jangle advertising Christmas lights, marches across the floor before coming to a halt before Cas.

"What -- what are you doing?" he croaks out.

She ignores him entirely. "Right hand up." she orders, and his arm obeys before he pauses to think. "Elbow slightly bent, palm open, fingers soft." She watches with narrowed eyes as he obeys. "Fine. Your left hand goes on my waist - my waist, Captain, and nowhere else."

He gulps. "Nesta - "

"I'll lead." she cuts him off. "Follow my steps, and don't step on my toes."

"Nesta, what are you doing?"

"You're going to dance." she snaps back.

"Why?"

"Because it's easy to lie with words, it's harder to lie with your body." she fires back.

"I really, truly don't know - "

"And consider it an apology." Her head is up, face still flaming scarlet along her jaw, fists clenched. This is a test, he realises, in more ways than one: to see whether his pride is more important to him than helping her. Whether his own ego is more significant, in his mind, than saving her from the very mess he put her in.

He swallows hard and lifts his chin. "I'll try not to step on your toes."

"Do not try." she insists, all battlefield-sergeant giving orders. "Do as I say. Don't fumble your chances."

He straightens his back and squares his shoulders. With one more narrow look, she steps into his arms, and despite the ball-crushing glare she's still levelling on his face, a shiver runs down his spine at the feeling of her hand resting in his own, the sudden warmth of her body under her green wool. Perfume in his nose. God help him.

"One," she counts off, as the violin string swoops out of the radio, followed by a woman's voice rich as coffee, light as honey. "Two…and three."

She steps back at the soft downbeat on oh, sweet and lovely, lady be good, and he follows, palms sweating, hot flush creeping from the back of his neck right down his back.

It is not perfect. It's not even close. He stumbles over his own feet and fumbles the steps and bumps into her when he steps forward instead of back. His face feels like it's on fire, made worse with every turn and the knowledge all over again that the entire bar is staring and whispering.

After a few turns, he closes his eyes, and leans into the soft drumbeat beneath the songs. It's easier, when he doesn't have to face that cool, blank mask of hers.

I am so awfully misunderstood, Ella sings. So lady be good, to me.

It's a lovely song, sweet and gentle; he's not sure of the name of songs, but this feels a bit like a waltz, best as he can tell, just a simple motion of stepping out and then bringing his feet together, revolving slowly in little circles on the dirty floorboards.

As the song is dying down, he dares to open his eyes again. He looks down to see what his feet are doing, and she lifts her right hand from his shoulder to tip his chin up with one cool finger until he's meeting her gaze again. He blushes so hot he feels it in his ears, but he doesn't drop his gaze.

She holds his steadily, a little faint pink creeping into her chest as they slowly sway to the closing bars. The announcer's voice doesn't come on, instead the music just swaying right into another tune. I hear singing and there's no-one there,croons a man's voice.

"This one is a little faster." she says quietly, "Keep up."

He obeys, following her into a faster two-step, their little circles wider and broader now. He doesn't look to see if they're still being stared at; he looks down into her face and just focuses on following her.

Dancing, he's realising, is not really about listening to the music and taking cues from the rhythm. It's about listening with your body, his entire form tuned into her every tiny motion like a radio frequency. The little pressure of her hand on his, the twist of her waist as she turns, he clings to both like a lifeline and follows along, tugged into her orbit and revolving.

You're not sick, you're just in love coo a trio of female background singers, and the blush grows hotter again. He ignores it, just keeps up as best he can.

"Slower," she says at the opening at the next one, as a piano swings into motion and Louis Armstrong's familiar rasp fills the room. "But wider - here," and she moves their clasped hands out a fraction.

More swaying in this one, while Louis croons about a kiss to build a dream on; she moves under his hand like three separate parts - ribs, waist, hips - bolted together with the loosest of ties, letting her move as smoothly and sinuously as a snake, only far lovelier. He does his level best to mimic of her, certain he looks ridiculous, but she doesn't comment, only keeps revolving them around and around. They're covereing the entire floor, he realises, as she throws them into big loose turns around and around when the orchestra takes over, sweeping them around the room as if they really are Astaire and Rogers cutting up a silver-screen rug.

She absolutely could give Rogers a run for his money, he's certain. He probably looks like a wallowing buffalo in comparison, but he firmly throttles the creeping, self-conscious little voice, slams it into a trunk in the corner of his mind, bolts the lid, and metaphorically sits on it. She doesn't need a man who cringes away from her; and besides, he already did that, however inadvertently.

He throws himself into it as exuberantly as possible, and is rewarded: the smile curls the corners of her red mouth and stays there. The shutters leave her grey eyes and stay gone. She smells heady and spicy, something very expensive and very feminine that he wants seared into his nose forever. She's grace itself, floating them over the scuffed-up floorboards without missing a step, no matter how badly he falters. She somehow covers his clumsiness with elegance and a sheer ballsy capacity to simply not care whether anyone is watching.

Still, he huffs out a breath as the next one starts. "Finally," he murmurs, quiet enough for only her to hear. "One I know by heart."

Her lips curve. "Don't quit now, soldier. Now, this one - "

"Ah." He lifts his hand off her waist for a moment to hold up a warning finger, cutting her off. "Don't tell me." He puts his hand back on her waist, a little further around her back this time; holding her, not just touching her. "Show me."

The smile is real as she whirls them dizzily into the opening lines of Crosby crooning "Winter Wonderland", and almost takes his breath away entirely. They spin and float about like snowflakes, and it's a moment before he catches his voice enough to pick up the song.

"Later on," he sings softly. "We'll conspire, as we dream by the fire, to face unafraid, the plans that we made - "

"Walking in a winter wonderland." she finishes, almost in a whisper as she spins them about faster. Without looking down (he wouldn't dare), he knows their bodies are closer: her left hand is now behind his nape, her elbow on his shoulder, their hips and knees brushing. They're just off-center below the waist; with one foot between his and one of his between hers, she keeps them close enough to spin in tight, fast circles, dizzying if not for the grasp of his eyes on hers and her palm steady in his.

As Crosby draws out the final notes, resplendent with the bouncy, jazzy upbeat notes and resplendant with boughs of holly and snow-filled wonderlands, Cas dares to raise their hands and use his grip on her waist to nudge her into a final twirl under his arm. He almost stumbles, but the glowing look she throws him and the chorus of wolf-whistles makes it all worth it.

"Not bad." she admits, dropping back down onto her heels when the song finally ends and the announcer takes back over. "But time for some water, I think." With supreme indifference to their audience, she twirls on her heels and returns to their booth by the dart-board.

Three different men slap him on the back on his way to the bar. Devlon plunks down the water jug with a face like divine retribution. "Don't fuck it up again, boy."

Still tongue-tied, he hurries back to the table and the grey-eyed goddess there. Nesta, still supremely self-composed, fills both their glasses before leaning back in her booth. "Relax." she says criptly, eyeing the set of his shoulders. "I consider your apology complete."

Thank God. "You're very kind." he says, wedging himself back into his seat.

"It's pure self-interest, I assure you." She takes a long drink. "Shall we change the subject?"

"Um." He casts about frantically.

"Lost for topics?" she asks, quirking a brow. "Shall I remind you of where we were?"

Cas coughs to clear his throat. Pull yourself the fuck together, man. "I believe I was flirting shamelessly with you."

"Mmm." She eyes him over the rim of his water glass. "Do you intend to continue in that line?"

"Yes." he says at once. "Unless you have any objection."

She clicks her tongue. "You don't know how to listen, do you? Don't you remember what I told you before?"

"No, I remember very well." He settles his shoulders deeper into the seat, reflecting her posture at a distance, even with palms itching to climb across the table and invade her personal space at will. "You'll inform me when I need to apologise, and until then, I may continue."

He waits for the little jerk of her chin. "I'm asking, Nesta." he says seriously. "Do you want me to stop?"

Her mouth twitches. "No." she says baldly, blotchy red breaking out along her neckline again. He's embarrassing her again, but she still meets his eyes squarely and doesn't flinch away.

He takes another cooling sip of water and thinks for a moment. She looks prickly and uncomfortable still; she doesn't like direct questions, he thinks, watching her fiddle with her watch. She needs something to focus on, other than the blatant declaration of interest hanging in the air between them.

So does he, and, floundering, seizes the first topic that comes to mind. "Your youngest sister is the one married to the wanker - what about the other one? The nurse?"

She blinks. "What about her?"

"Is she still nursing?"

"Oh." She sets down her glass. "Good Lord, yes, she's an excellent nurse. She's starting a round on the surgical ward in the new year."

"Did she specialise in surgery, when she was in college?" he asks, wincing a little. Of all the questions…

She doesn't seem to mind, if the little smirk tucked into the corner of her mouth is any indication. "Not at all, but after three years as a combat medic, you might say it's her speciality."

"She was a combat medic?" His brows bounce upwards. "Straight out of nursing college?"

"Straight out of nursing college and the Blitz." she reminds him. "You couldn't ask for a better training-ground; that's two full years of nothing but classes and emergency medicine."

"I didn't realise they had nursing students in the hospitals."

"They had to." Her mouth twists a little. "After Dunkirk, the hospitals were crowded with so many men that they desperately needed extra hands - and better nursing-students who knew something than civilians, who'd be just above useless."

"Quite a trial by fire."

"Separated the wheat from the chaff quite effectively." She takes another deep drink and huffs out a laugh, eyes brightening. "Funny story, actually: in that week from hell, there was a young idiot carried in through the front doors — fresh off the Dunkirk beach, covered in oil and seawater, soaked in blood and barely alive, severely dehydrated to boot — and the moment he was able to open his eyes, he looked up at her and said 'it's you. You're the one'."

Cas snorts into his water glass. "How romantic."

"He really sealed the deal by then vomiting up half the Channel onto her front, passing out, and collapsing right off a gurney onto the floor." she says drily.

"The things we do to get a girl's attention."

"His own saving grace was that he didn't mistake her for a movie star and proposition her on the spot."

"Low blow, Nesta."

She smirks. "Well, he was about the fortieth man to fall in love with her that week alone, so she patched him up, moved him along, and thought no more about him, naturally."

"Naturally," he agrees, with vivivd memories of the matron who'd patched him back together, no nonsense about it and rolling her eyes at his rambling nonsense (damned morphine).

"Two years later," Nesta continues, hands gesturing as she warms to her story. "She was freshly stationed in North Africa, attached to a front-line hospital, and who should come limping into the tent, but the self-same starry-eyed romantic dreamer, covered in blood and dirt again, and the best he can do is ask her whether she 'comes here often'."

By some miracle, he manages to avoid snorting water right up his nose, and instead coughs and splutters it out over his hand. "Excuse me," he gasps, fumbling for the same handkerchief she lent him almost two hours ago, mopping his face. "By God, what a line."

"Truly remarkable how the male mind operates." she agrees drily, mouth twitching.

"I agree, we're very complex creatures." He wipes his face, takes another, more calming drink, and props his forearms on the table. "So, what did she do? Throw him off another gurney?"

"Worse." Nesta says calmly. "She married him."

"What?"

She flaps a hand, waving away his ejaculation. "Not at once, of course; she rolled her eyes at him, again, but several years later…" She trails off eloquently.

Cas blinks rapidly. "How long was she a combat nurse?"

"Oh, right up to V-E Day." Nesta says. "And attached to his very unit, more often than not."

"Ahh," he breathes out, leaning back. "That makes more sense."

"Quite." she says, amused by the curl of her mouth. "Somewhere along the route between North Africa and Italy, she stopped lecturing him about being a walking waste of morphine, and instead started spending most of her time by his bedside, reading to him and letting him make her laugh."

Cas' heart softens like butter on a pan. "Now that truly is downright romantic."

She shrugs one shoulder. "By D-Day, they were besotted with one another."

"Your sister was at D-Day?"

"Oh yes. There's a snapshot that made the London papers of her disembarking with her unit." Nesta rolls her eyes heavenward, but she's practically radiating pride all the same. "All curls and dimples, of course, as if she was off to a picnic."

"Brave woman."

"Brave, stubborn, foolhardy girl." she counters. "My stars, by then she was only twenty-four, and she'd seen enough death to last a lifetime, but when they offered her a safer post back in London, she said no and went with her hospital anyway."

"And him, one presumes."

Both corners of her mouth curl upwards now. "I can never decide whether to be grateful he didn't expect her to wait out the war for him at home, or glad that he would rather have him beside her on a battlefield."

"He never once objected to her being there?"

"Not that I've heard." she says, with another shrug. "But all the way from Normandy to Berlin, if they were within fifty miles of each other, he'd cross battlefields to find her and make sure she was safe."

"I'm sure his unit loved them."

"They most assuredly did." she says firmly. "His nickname from North Africa was 'Foxface', you know — some longstanding joke about finding foxholes — and they all started calling her 'Vixen'."

He wolf-whistles under his breath. "A dynamic duo."

"Idiots, the pair of them." she says tartly. "But they certainly found a kindred spirit in each other."

He grins. "How long after the war before they were married?"

"He proposed on V-E Day." she says, swirling her glass. "They were married before V-J Day."

"Your sister moves fast."

"He moved fast." she disagrees. "I'll thank you not to make a single suggestion about whether or not my sister is fast."

"But you like him all the same." he counters. "Foxface, that is."

"I can't not." she says, pulling a face. "He simply refuses to be unlikeable — insists on going about being charming and polite and heroic."

"Untenable."

"It's horrific." she agrees solemnly, ignoring his widening grin. "Quite difficult to do your discerning job as the disapproving spinster sister when your sister brings home, quite frankly, a catch."

"A catch, huh?" Cas quips, smothering the urge to dance the can-can at her describing herself as a spinster. "Fabulously wealthy and imposisbly handsome?"

"A rake and a scandalous flirt, but clever and with a very promising career." she counters, with a little eyeroll.

"So he's industrious and hardworking, as well as being charming, brave, and devoted to your sister?"

"You see the impossibility of my situation."

"My heart goes out to you."

"Thank you ever so." she says punctiliously, refilling their glasses. "So nice to have my travails appropriately recognised."

"Then you have one brother-in-law you like, and one you can't stand." Cas props his elbow up and rests his cheek on his palm. "What heinous sins has the prick committed, that you detest him so much? Or do you simply double-down your efforts to dislike him because you can't dislike Foxface?"

"Slander and lies." she insists. "My disdain for the prick is well-founded."

"Disdain, not hatred."

"I reserve the right to alter my answer, depending on how this holiday season goes."

He snickers. "Go on, what's he done that's so awful? Does he treat your baby sister badly?"

"He treats her well by her standards." Nesta clarifies, with a punctuating little sniff. "Most certainly not by mine, I assure you."

"And how do your standards differ from your sister's?"

She narrows her eyes, picking up on his laughing tone. "Back in '43, Foxface went AWOL from his battalion to run an unsanctioned solo mission behind enemy lines, with only his best friend for back-up, mind you, in order to take out a Panzer division attacking the town where my sister and her hospital were stationed." she says crisply. "Whereas the pricksnuck my baby sister into a fighter plane for a joyride, then took her straight into a dogfight with a German squadron over southest England, while she was an underagred non-combatant."

Cas whistles soundlessly. "And she still married him?"

"I do believe that's why she married him." Nesta says flatly. "She'd been hanging about the airfields for years, trying to get a chance to fly herself, and of course that outrageous flirt seized the first real chance he had to impress her without even thinking about it."

"He didn't return to ground when they saw the squadron?"

"I doubt the thought even occurred: he's not the type to run from danger, even when it means taking my sister right into it along with him."

"Is that how he earned your ire, then? By being reckless about your little sister?"

"He's also smugger than a prize-fighter, boastful, obsessively vain about his own looks, and a bloody show-off." she raps back, accent going crisper — a little British, when talking about war records, interestingly enough.

Cas chews the inside of his cheek. "Does he brag and show off to hide that he's secretly a coward?" he asks. "Or not-so-secretly?"

"Not at all: he's fearless, damn him, and with an impeccable war record. One of the first across the Channel to take on the Luftwaffe during the Dunkirk evacuation, by God." She drains her glass. "Well, an impeccable record if you overlook the number of times he got his wrist slapped by the brass for pulling suicidal death-defying stunts to attract attention away from his wounded squadmates."

"Ah." he draws out, folding his arms over his chest. "So you can't hate him on those grounds."

"I can't fault his courage." she says crisply. "I absolutely can and will fault his reckless, idiotic self-martyrdom, especially when it endangers others, my sister among them."

"That's fair." He cocks his head on one side. "Are you bored of war stories, then? Tired of hearing about another's heroics?"

"Why do you ask?"

"You're bitter." he says simply. "Your mouth puckers up talking about battle stories like sucking a lemon."

She shoots him a startled look, consciously relaxing the set of her lips. "I don't like heroes." she says, still keeping that crisp, bitten-off tone to her words. "Heroes are reckless. Heroes are idiots. Heroes get other people killed."

"Like the prick's squadmates?"

Her expression sours, and she drops her gaze down into her glass. "The problem," she says slowly, tracing the rim once more. "The problem with flyboys like that, is they think they're being all self-sacrificing — they think the only life they're gambling with is their own." One shoulder lifts and drops again. "And they think nothing of sacrificing their own life, and if they want to flirt that hard with death, I shouldn't care." She tilts her head on the other side, still watching her own finger. "But it's never just their own life they're gambling with. Every man in an army is a cog in a machine; you can't risk one without risking ten. Just because they don't know the lives they're risking, doesn't mean they're not putting other people at risk."

He waits for a moment, counting the thrum of his pulse in the hollow under his jaw. "What about Foxface?" he asks quietly, not wanting to disturb her reverie. "Is he not a hero?"

Her lips quirk a little. "He'll risk his life." she says. "He risked it a dozen times over, God knows, but he's not the self-sacrificing type; he never wanted to go down in a blaze of glory, and have his name spoken in reverential whispers for the rest of his life." She crinkles up her nose and shakes her head. "When he risked his life, it was for his men, or for my sister, or for civilians caught in the crossfire…for anyone, really, but never for himself. Never for his own personal glory."

"And you think the prick was only ever concerned with his own glory."

"Not quite." she admits, with another grimace. "There's nobility and patriotism in him, and courage for his fellow man — but he's been praised for being the most marvellous person alive whenever he does the slightest thing from the time he was a boy, and it only feeds his conviction that he's full of some larger noble purpose…one deserving of a noble, self-sacrificing death, maybe." She looks back up at him with a half-smile. "I think he'd benefit from having a schoolboy rub his face into the dirt a bit."

"I'd oblige if I could." He props his chin on his hand and gazes quietly at her for a moment. She lets him, apparently undiscomfited; just sips her drink and looks right back, grey eyes shadowed and lovely face quiet.

"If you were a secretary during the war," he says at last. "Then I am an elephant."

She blinks. "Is this some sort of innuendo regarding your trunk?"

"Don't change the subject." he admonishes, half-laughing. "I'm serious."

"About my not being a secretary?" She snorts. "I assure you, my typing is flawless."

"I believe it." he says easily. "But you've got a war record, and it wasn't earned sitting behind a desk."

A slow, languid blink. Gotcha he thinks fiercely. "What on earth are you going on about?"

"I think you were intelligence."

"I am indeed intelligent."

"Intelli-gence." he stresses. "I think you worked in intelligence throughout the war, and I think you were a field agent."

She scoffs. "Oh really, Captain, whereever did you get that idea?"

"From a wide variety of things." He leans a little further across the table, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial volume. "You see, I've been observing you quite closely, Nesta."

"And here I thought you just wanted to get to know me."

"I can multitask."

"Oh, indeed." She props her elbow up and rests her chin on her palm, fingers tapping her cheek. "Go on, then. I trust it's a more impressive collection of observations than your appalling pick-up lines."

"I had one pick-up line, and since it was under the influence of a concusssion, I don't think it ought to count."

She compresses her lips, eyes sparkling. "Tell me your observations."

"Alright." he says easily. "Your manicure."

"Yes."

"It's quite noticeable, I'm sure you'll agree." He nods towards her tapping fingers. "But you keep your nails short; very short, even with that red polish. So for all your airs and graces, you're not a society lady, or a woman of leisure; you're a woman who works with her hands."

"Am I indeed." she says idly.

"You are indeed."

"And you think the only profession for a woman is an intelligence agent?" she asks, lifting her brows. "For your information, I'm a nurse too."

"No, you're not."

"Says who?"

"Says me." He lifts his chin off his hand and reaches out, sliding his fingers around the soft skin of her forearm and sliding up to close around her wrist. She lets out a breath, but makes no resistance when he gently draws her hand forward, out from under her chin.

He drops his gaze to it, rubbing idly over the back with his thumb. A little hint of extra thickness over her knuckles, easily missed with how gracefully long the bones of her hands are. Neat ovals of nail beds. He turns it over and traces his thumb over her palm, humming when she shivers minutely.

"Nurses aren't allowed to wear nail polish, for one thing."

"Oh, and you don't suppose I would have put in the effort to paint them for dinner tonight?"

"You're precise enough for it, but no." He rubs over the back of her hand again. "Nurses' hands smell of carbolic soap; it's a very strong scent, very distinctive, and very difficult to wash out. Only disappears over a prolonged period of time without using the soap, and it can't be covered up with lotion or scent." He inhales. "That's gorgeous, by the way, what is that?"

Her mouth curves. "Chanel No. 5."

"Beautiful." He looks her right in the face when he says it, and relishes in the deepening fllush of pink in her cheeks before looking down at her hand again. "Not to mention, carbolic soap is very hard on the skin — turns the hands red, especially over the knuckles. Turns the nail-beds white, and makes them crack, especially in the cold." He taps her middle finer lightly, right over her smooth-as-satin cuticles. "You've never used carbolic soap a day in your life. Not a nurse."

"Fine." she says calmly. "I'm a factory forewoman."

His mouth quirks up again. "Good try." he admits. "But no."

"And why not?"

"If you worked in a factory, you'd have callouses, here and here." He cups her open palm in one hand, and runs the index of the other over the pad at the bottom of her hand. "And on all five finger-tips, from gripping tools." He arches a brow right back at her. "I've not been a foreman, but I've worked with my hands for most of my life. I know the look of hands that use tools."

Her smile widens infintesminally, but she says nothing.

"No, you have callouses here." Lightly as a butterfly's touch, he traces the pad at the base of her fingers, especially at the base of her index and middle finger. "That's from holding a pistol. Here - " He rubs the pad of her index. "Another callus; this one's from depressing the trigger. And this - " He traces over the pad of her thumb now. "This one is from squeezing the chamber." He leans back a little, squinting down at the size of her hand compared to the size of his. "From what I saw at the darts board, I'd say you're well able to handle most firearms just fine, but based on the size of your callouses, I'd wager it's a small handgun; a .22-calibre, most likely. One of those pretty, deadly little things you can hide easily in a purse or a pocket." He winks at her. "Or a garter, perhaps?"

"Far be it from me to destroy your fantasies." she says drily.

"Ta very much, sweetheart." He squeezes her hand, then gently lays it down again. "There you have it."

"Perhaps I just like a bit of casual target practice." she suggests. "A woman alone in a city would do well to know how to defend herself, after all."

"True, but you alreay know how to defend yourself, don't you?" he counters. "Most women, they get their asses grabbed on the dancefloor, they either scream for help or slap the cad across the face. Someone who's trained in how to fight would throw a punch — but you?" He shakes his head. "Your immediate, split-second reaction was to handle him very effectively, and very quietly; like someone trained to dispatch a threat with as little disturbance as possible." He clicks his tongue again. "Not your usual brand of self-defense."

"So perhaps I worked in intelligence." she says, rolling her eyes again. "That doesn't mean I was a field agent; I'm sure they would train everyone thoroughly in self-defense."

She's stubborn as a mule with a bit between its teeth. He grins, flashing his own teeth. "Sweetheart, first thing you did when you walked in was to survey the room." He mimics the motion so familiar to his own self. "I didn't even clock it at first because it's so natural to me, and you did it like muscle memory." Side to side, up and down, casual easy motions easily passed off by the unknowing bystander as a casual movement, cataloguing every spare inch of the room in one all-encompassing glance. "You do it every ten minutes like clockwork." he adds. "I bet you don't even realise you're doing it, but I also bet you could tell me without looking how many men are in this room, how many are likely armed, and which ones you could take in a fight." He settles his forearms on the table again, and flashes his dimples at her. "Only someone who's been in a combat zone does that, and does it regularly and thoroughly without fail. Make no mistake, sweetheart: you were a field agent."

Slowly, her smile widens until it takes up the whole bottom half of her face, sparkling. "Bravo." she says softly. "You're so close to correct."

"Oh? What did I miss?"

She shrugs lightly, picking up her glass again. "Technically, my brief was undercover espionage, intelligence operations, and covert assassination." she says lightly.

Victory before was a hot shot of rum to the chest; victory now, faced with a woman who is so very deadly in every single conceivable sense of the world, is an explosion of fireworks in the blood, the sudden pounding pulse he usually associates with a sparring-partner of his weight class, an enemy lunging out of a deep thicket, the comfortable fit of a gun-butt to his shoulder.

He's grinning at her like a complete fool, but she's grinning back, something ice-cold and sharp and fierce as winter in her face.

"How long?"

"I was recruited in early 1940." she says. "I served until this past September."

He whistles. "Europe."

"Europe." she confirms. "I'm not at liberty to give particulars, of course."

"Of course." He cocks his head. "Records sealed?"

"Airtight." she confirms. "My official record places me as senior secretary to the Naval Intelligence Office in Northumbria; far enough outside of London that I couldn't easily return, or be reached should anyone take it into their head to come looking for me."

"And that's a lie?"

"It's a thorough one." she says. "They paid a monthly rent on a flat on my name that stood empty for months on end; they paid my phone bill every month; hell, they even bought clothes for me and had them delivered to that address on a semi-regular basis."

"British intelligence leaves nothing to chance."

"No, we do not." We, said with that unmistakable accent of sheer undying back-to-the-wall pride; the same tone he uses when speaking of his own squad, his own battalion, his own men. The voice that says this is mine, and nobody can take it away from me.

"Do your sisters know?"

"No." She puts her shoulders back proudly. "I wasn't permitted to tell them."

"No wonder you weren't there to put your baby sister on a leash, or keep your nursing student close to home." he muses. "I'm guessing you had reports on their movements, though?"

"One of my conditions." she admits. "My CO — well, he had younger brothers himself, he understood perfectly how much of a…distraction it can be, to not know. It's better to know the worst than know nothing and wonder," she clarifies, and he nods. "So I had regular reports, every time I was back from a mission."

His smirk widens. "Did you commission reports on their future husbands, as well?"

She puts her nose in the air. "I was assessing our strengths and weaknesses as a unit," she says primly, and smiles when he laughs.

"No wonder you like Foxface." he says. "You probably read all his records, didn't you?"

"And a dozen court-martials for disobeying orders to boot." she says with a snort. "A true white knight, that one; MI6 was going mental trying to keep tabs on him and his heroics."

"And that's what you meant about the prick." he presses. "About not liking heroes; how they get other people killed, unseen people killed."

Her smile drops ever so slightly. "I commend courage." she agrees, speaking through her teeth. "I commend self-sacrifice. But heroes…" She shakes her head. "Self-serving mavericks, obsessed with their own legacy; they're the grenade we're always warned about, in the field."

"Do you speak from personal experience?"

She snorts. "Ever had a young idiot in your company?" she asks. "Some young buck who's certain he can pull off some stupid mission, just him, no backup, no plans, and he expects everyone not to ask questions, just fall in behind him?"

He half-groans, half-winces, very particular memories of blood and gore and pain flashing like a newsreel behind his eyes. "Yes." he says emphatically. "I almost got myself ripped to pieces on Hacksaw, trying to save an idiot just like that."

"Grenade?" she asks with professional interest. He nods.

"Shrapnel." He traces his fingers in little lines over his own chest. "Here and here and here; one piece got deep enough to puncture a lung. I almost drowned in my own blood right there and then, all thanks to that reckless idiot."

"Did he die?"

He swallows. Nods. "Easier when they do." he admits, thinking of Ryan with a deep burn of regert. "The idealists…they can stomach anything but looking at the collateral damage they caused."

She lifts her glass in a little toast of agreement. "Mine got reckless." she says commiseratingly. "Got in over his head, then lost the run of himself entirely." She shakes his head. "He blew the covers of almost a dozen agents, me included, and set the Gestapo after us."

He's liberated Japanese POW camps, but the thought of the Gestapo on her tail sets a cold, sick shudder up his spine. "How bad?"

"Not the worst it could have been." she says, her tone as clinical and touch-me-not as his was, describing the shards of shrapnel that almost killed him and kept him bedridden while his ma died alone, five thousand miles away from him. "I was posing as a dancer at the time; they decided to try and get more names out of me by breaking the bones in my feet."

He eyes her again, a quick sweep up-and-down the same way he assesses threats in any given room. "You didn't break." he says assuredly.

"There is a difference between breaking and being broken." she counters. "But I gave them nothing." A wry little snort. "Ballerines train every day on broken toes — if they were going to break me, that would not be the method."

"Something of a tactical error."

She shows her teeth in a ferocious little smile. "I made the error of their ways quite clear to them upon leaving their fine company."

He grins back at her, envisioning the taste of blood between his molars. "Good." he says, tone just a little too fierce to be cavalier. "And what about your idiot? What happened to him?"

Her jaw hardens. "When the Gestapo realised he'd blabbed every secret he knew, they put a bullet through his head." she says coldly. "He got lucky."

"You'd have made it much worse for him." he says with absolute certainty.

"Not for myself." she says quickly. "I know what I signed up for; I knew the risks. But in his blabbing, he told them about a hideout we used sometimes; a garrett apartment in a convent school." She compresses her lips, a look of old rage crossing her face. "By the time we realised, it was too late. None of our agents were there, when the Gestapo arrived to investigate, but it didn't matter."

He lets out a slow breath through his teeth. "I would've broken every bone in his body."

"I wanted to shatter his fingers with a hammer and then force-feed him his own cock and balls." she says fiercely. "I would have, too — not for me," she repeats. "Not even for the other agents, but for those convent-girls…he died far too quickly."

The look on her face demands a drink; he stands wordlessly and strides to the bar, his walk quick and firm and hard enough on the floorboards to stave off commentary from anyone, Devlon included.

When he returns, his intuition is proven correct: she downs half her martini in one hard, quick swallow, and he joins her.

"Your prickish brother-in-law is a braggart." Cas says slowly as he re-seats himself, the final piece of the puzzle slotting into place. "Boasting, you said — does he tell war stories?"

"They all do." she says flatly. "Both my brothers-in-law, and both my sisters, and the prick's closest friends, all of them." Her face is flat and hard, her voice bitter as bad pecans. "All night long."

"And you hate it." he realises. "Because you can't tell your own stories."

She shifts in her seat. "I don't want to brag." she says quickly, firmly. "I did — God, we all did terrible things, not things I would bring up at the dinner table, Christ knows."

"But you do want recognition." he clarifies. "You don't want to be thought of as just the secretary."

"Don't denigrate secretaries." she warns. "I knew many of them in the service; they served the war effort just like we did."

"Of course," he says impatiently. "Just like factory workers and defense contractors and munitions experts, but it's different when you were in the field risking your life for people and you can't even tell anyone about it, isn't it?"

She shifts again, looking half-guilty and half-defiant; like a child caught with her hand in the sweets jar. "I don't need recognition."

"But I bet he looks down on you, doesn't he? The prick."

The cold, hard look comes back onto her face. "Yes." she says through her teeth."

"Ah." Cas says with satisfaction. "That's why you hate him."

"It's not the only reason why I hate him," she says firmly. "But…yes, it's a large part of it."

"I'm on your side." he says stoutly, and her shoulder relax from where they've been creeping up towards her ears. "Have you punched him yet?"

"Give me time." she says through her teeth. "If I had been only a secretary, I'd still be offended by his attitude."

"Is it a sex thing?" he wonders. "Just because he's a man, and you're a woman?"

"Oh, God no, he's outrageously proud of my sisters, and his cousin — she worked with the USO." she clarifies. "Praises her extravagantly for it; keeps saying that she wasn't afraid to do her bit, "out on the front lines, good for you"."

"So it's you he doesn't like."

"Presumably." she says, shrugging tightly. "By all means, he'll congratulate her for surviving a performance when she had to go on without nylons, perish the thought, but me?" She shakes her head and takes another quick swallow, knocking the martini glass back like a shot. "The Polish resistance hung me from the ceiling by my goddaned wrists, and he acts as if I spent the whole war sipping tea and taking it easy while everyone else in the world, including my sisters, went out and risked their necks — Christ!" she explodes, downing the rest of her martini in one go.

"But he doesn't know the truth." Cas points out. "So why not just tell them?"

"And sound like a braggart?" she fires back. "Or worse, a liar? My record is sealed; I have no-one to back me up, no buddies around the table to share a story, or tell tall tales, or prove that I did do what I say I did. They'd never believe me." She sighs, twisting her watch around her wrist. "They'd say I was making it all up, just because I hate him."

"That's a bit harsh." Cas says quietly. "Your own sisters wouldn't think that, surely?"

She shrugs again, a bit helplessly. "They wouldn't say it aloud, but they'd be thinking it." she admits. "And without proof…" She trails off, shrugging again.

Cas' mouth twists, bitter bile rising up in the back of his throat. The last time someone made a stupid comment about his own service was years ago; he'd been home on leave, travelling to Maine for Christmas, and some asshole in a diner started harassing him about being a coward who wouldn't serve his country. He'd only been in civvies, but fresh out of a jungle hell with the names of half his platoon dead inscribed behind his eyelids…he'd almost put the man through the goddamned wall.

And to have to sit and swallow that feeling around family? Worse, to feel that outnumbered in a room? To know that you wouldn't be believed without proof, that you had no backup to help support you? To be outnumbered and outgunned at what should be a safe place, among family?

He downs the rest of his lager and stands, pushing out his chair with a scrape of legs on floorboards. Nesta looks up, grey eyes a little wider; looser, in the set of her face and shoulders and crossed ankles. Armour still on, but with gaps here and there at the rivets — and knowing what he now knows about her life in the field, he can see the gift in that, that she'll let him see where the edges of her armour meet.

"Come on." he says, holding out one hand. "I love this song."

He hasn't heard this tune nearly enough times in his life to properly love it, but that hardly matters, not when she accepts with a little uptick in the corner of her lips, not when she steps into his arms and they begin to move while the singer's voice croon fills up the corners of the barroom.

"I think you're brave," he says quietly, as they move about the floor, and she glances quickly up at him. "You don't need my approval, God knows — but since nobody else would say it to you tonight, I will." He dips his chin a little to meet her gaze more fully. "I think you're incredibly brave, Nesta, to volunteer for something like that; even if you'd never gone into the field, you'd be so brave for it."

She searches his face for a long moment before her eyes soften even further, and the tight line in the corner of her mouth eases. "You actually mean that, don't you?"

"I try not to say things I don't mean."

"Whereas I do that all the time."

"You did do that." he counters. "What you do in war is not the same as who you are in peace."

Her mouth quirks up a little. "You're quite a minority in that opinion, Captain."

"My own war record would send a lesser woman screaming." he says quietly, feeling a little chill of wrongness at talking like this with the snow outside and twinkling Christmas lights hung over the windowframes. "If I was the same in peace as in war, I'd be a mass-murderer and a monster by any civilised definition."

"I have a liking for monsters." she says quietly. "Monsters and I, we understand one another."

"You're not a monster."

"You don't know the full extent of my record." she fires back. "You don't know one-tenth of it, in fact."

"And you don't know mine." he says calmly. "Are you afraid of me?"

She scoffs in reply.

"There you have it, then." He tucks her a little closer to his body, and her mouth curls amusedly as she notices his move. "If you're a monster, then I'm a monster."

She smiles. "I've danced with monsters before." she points out. "You don't move like them."

"That's because you're being honest with me, and I'm too desperate to impress you to try and be smooth." he says stoutly, flushing right to the tips of his ears. "But show me how to jive, and perhaps I'll flout your expectations."

Her laugh is almost lost to the opening trill of - thank God - another song he knows, and he takes the lead for a moment to whip her into a dramatic spin, before letting her take the reins again as the trumpets join in for the sweet, brassy melody of "Blue Skies".

"Jive, huh?" she calls over the music, hand tightening on his. "Hold on, soldier boy."

This one is tricky: the beat transitions from slower and brassy, to bold and dramatic flourishes — Nesta takes them seamlessly through slower, two-step turns during the former, to slicing movements and fast spins during the latter, while he holds tight to does his level best to keep up.

She makes him breathless, she really does: those grey eyes sparkling up at him as they move, the smile at the corners of her lips curling wider and deeper with every step he manages not to falter. He spreads his hand on her waist around to her back to tug her closer, so she has to tip her chin up to his; he spreads out his fingers to feel more of her, to pick up on the minute shift of muscles in her spine and shoulders as she moves them.

The beat has scarcely died out when a familiar trumpet riff sounds out, to a ripple of claps and approving sounds around the room.

"Oh God." Cas groans.

Nesta's grin is quick and vicious. "Do you feel unequal to the task, Captain?"

"Do your worst." he retorts, tightening his grip on her hand. "I'm not afraid of you."

She quirks an elbow at the double meaning and yanks him into the first proper jive of his life — and easily the fastest. He has to look down from her face, laughing helplessly at he kicks out clumsily, trying to mirror her flying feet with his own movements, but she just laughs along and keeps moving. She doesn't slow or alter her movements; doesn't accomodate him kindly. She throws one challenge after another his way, hopping on the balls of one foot and kicking out the other, then switching almost too fast for his eyes to follow, and he grabs every challenge and flounderingly follows.

He keeps getting better, though; once he realises the pattern she's moving in, he takes it up with gusto and throws himself in the same way he used to pitch himself off seaside cliffs into cold Maine waters: full-throttle, no-holds-barred, but absolutely damned if he'll let anyone see him falter.

She twirls fully out from him, holding his hand at the end of her fully-extended arm and keeps jiving, every motion perfectly-timed, looser by the minute in her shoulders and hips as she kicks and hops and spins, and he keeps up with a vengeance, laughing aloud when she throws a cheeky, crisp salute in his direction.

She salutes like a Brit, of course, knuckles turned out; he throws her back an American-style one.

"Intelligence agents aren't saluted, Captain." she admonishes, leaping in to seize his other hand. "Don't they teach you boys anything at Grunt Base?"

"That's Marine Base to you." he retorts, spinning her out to the end of his other arm. "And soldiers always salute one another."

That gets him a flashing smile and her feet moving even faster. He tries spinning her out and back into him a few more times, swapping his grip on her hand from one hand to the other, and to his utter delight, she picks up on it seamlessly every single time. It takes the slightest tug on her fingers to reel her into him; the lightest push on her knuckles to spin her out again.

He's panting by the time the song ends, but there's no reprieve when the Andrews Sisters are on the wireless. She swings into him for the opening bars of "Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny Oh!", clasping his hands in her own. They switch back and forth between jiving, feet kicking out and arms fully extended, to the two-stepping for spinning about together; he's completely lost track of who's supposed to be leading. Sometimes he is; sometimes she is. They trade command as easily as they traded quips, as smoothly as if reading minds — or as if fighting together.

He's laughing again by the trumpet solo, for sheer delight.

"What is it?" she asks, catching her breath with a vengeance as she swings past him. He lifts his arm and swings her into a twirl under it.

"I like this," he says, grinning at her. "I like dancing."

That's not quite it, but he doesn't know how to verbalise it: the sudden joy, the flooding, searing-cool relief at using his body not like a tool, not like a cog in a machine, not like a weapon — but purely for joy.

It doesn't matter that he can't say it: she grins back as if she understands.

She would, he thinks dimly, twirling her again. His body has learned a hundred little skills throughout his life, some less savoury than others; he can sole a shoe, knit a scarf, load a gun, throw a knife, split logs, break rocks, haul gravel, wield a machine-gun, sprint a short distance, tackle a man to the ground, slit a throat, break a neck. There is no end, sometimes, to the uses to which his body can be used: but there is a very drastc shortage of the things which it can take on purely and solely for joy.

If anyone else on earth would understand that, he thinks, feeling the span of her strong back under his palm, she would. She can cross a room like a general, throw a dart so well he has no trouble picturing her throwing a knife or an axe, pinpoint a target better than half the sharpshooters he's ever met — and God knows, she can flirt, just as deadly with those quicksilver eyes and slightly-curling mouth.

But like this, skin flushed with exertion, mouth half-open in a gasping laugh, eyes sparkling, strands coming loose from her neat chignon, strong elegant hand firm around his fingers — she radiates joy, as she hasn't for much of the night. She exudes delight in the sheer simple movement of his body and hers, open honest reckless joy.

Wanting to take her to bed is, by now, an old desire; but now, he suddenly aches to see her laugh like that while undressed and pinned beneath him. Or astride him, however she likes.

He coughs and shoves away the lewd thoughts, flinging himself into faster, more frenetic motion as if it'll quell the imagined sight of her bare breasts.

Amazingly enough, it doesn't work. He just dances himself into a frenzy, and the image remainds.

"That was the Andrews Sisters with 'Oh Johnny Oh Johnny Oh!" comes the perky voice of the announcer. "Coming up next, 'It Don't Mean A Thing (If You Ain't Got That Swing)'!"

"What is this station?" Cas gasps out, breath sawing in and out of his lungs with a painful edge to it.

"Music to dance by." Nesta raps, running her fingers back through her loosened hair. She drops his hand and perches for a moment on the side of one of the benches at their table. "Music for cocktail parties and family dinners, fit for a Christmas gala."

"You ought to work in advertising." he comments, eyes lingering helplessly on her knees. She smooths her skirt over her thighs, then redirects her attention to that damned row of buttons, trailing from the hem just on the outside of her right thigh up the long slope of her thigh to her waist.

He swallows thickly as red-polished fingers start unfastening the buttons from the hem up. "What are you doing?"

"I'm not sitting down any time soon." she says, still with that laughter in her voice. "And if I'm going to swing-dance, I need a bit more range of motion."

"I see." Is his voice coming out strangled, or is it only his imagination? From the way she quirks an eyebrow and smirks at him, it's not his imagination.

"That's better," she breathes, standing again. "Shall we?"

It's a special kind of torment, to see and feel the movement of her legs against his own with this next song. Even with three buttons undone, she's quite modest; her leg is bared only barely above her knee, encased in smooth nylon, not exactly the purview of a dancing-girl in a music-hall show, miles more decorous than most of what he's seen in the Pacific and California and Japan — and yet, even four added inches of skin draw his imagination like a magnet.

What he wouldn't give to reach down and cup his palm over those four bared inches. What wouldn't he give.

It does not help matters that swing-dancing involves a lot more…bouncing. Keeping his gaze on her face is quite a challenge, but she just smirks wider and wider at him every time his eyes drift down, so after a few moments, he gives up pretending otherwise and just lets him see her appreciate the sight of her.

He's going to appreciate her with more than just his eyes later this evening, if he's granted the God-blessed chance to do so. By the way she keeps smirking at him and bouncing on her toes more than is strictly necessary, he might just get that chance.

Swing-dancing is brilliantly good fun, as it turns out; fast swapping of hands, easy bouncing on the balls of the feet and hopping from one foot to the other, rhythmic little kicks out of the feet as they rotate and spin and sweep bouncing across the floor. The motion is downright addictive; it seeps from the balls of his feet up and up until he's even bobbing and waggling his head along to the motion.

"It don't mean a thing, all you got to do is swing," croons the radio, and he tugs her twirling under his arm, then tugs her back in with an arm around her waist.

She looks younger when she laughs, the studied smoky-husky-seductive tone gone from her voice as she calls out directions and ribs him when he trips over his own feet, her laugh ringing out when he throws a barb or two back at her. Nesta, Daddy's rich little daughter; Nesta of the West Virginia coal-mine towns; Nesta of London, Nesta of British Intelligence, they all pale in comparison to Nesta of the dance-floor, laughing and spinning and bouncing about with less and less precision to her steps the longer they spin about.

"Here — here!" Devlon calls, finally catching their attention and gesturing them over to the bar. He sets two cold glasses on the counter-top, and flings his dishcloth over one shoulder with a little huff of exasperation. "Drink something, if you're going to carry on like mad people."

"Blame her," Cas gets out through deep, heaving gasps, clutching the glass in one hand, and Nesta's in the other. "She's a show-off."

"So stop watching me." she retorts, taking deep breaths around the rim of her own glass.

"I am constitutionally unable to stop watching you."

Her blush goes a deep pink, under the flush of exertion from dancing, and she's smiling outright as she drains her glass. He downs his own in one deep gulp, then pulls her close and whisks her off again.

They're not the only ones cutting up a rug: men and women alike are thronging the floor, everyone shouting with laughter and jiving like so many lunatics through the rest of "It Don't Mean a Thing" and right through "'Tain't What You Do" — Cas decides to love the latter the moment Nesta joins in singing along, eyes sparkling diamond-bright as she bops across the floor, feet flying and hands waving, fingers snapping along in time, and he follows her like a puppet on her string, mimicking her every motion and grinning when she only laughs harder.

Swing dancing — granted, he knows only what he's learned tonight, and what he's observed in the movies and dancehalls, but simple power of observation informs him — is much less concerned with proper hand-placement and steps and form, the way the two-step or the even the jive has a formula to it. Rather, swing is about looseness and ease, an almost frenetic sense of throwing oneself into the music and letting the beat, rather than formula, dictate one's movements. Watching Nesta give herself over to the beat, hips and shoulders shimmying, arms waving, spinning and bouncing on her toes like a child alight with glee, head bouncing and fingers snapping, is a source of joy in itself.

He follows her lead, throws himself into it and ignores any sense of self-consciousness or abashment at the wild energy of his movements, just loses himself to the pulse hammering through the bar, bodies crowding the floor, energy and laughter and the sheer enjoyment of movement driving them all to new heights of exuberance.

They're not even touching by now, just dancing around each other, orbiting like big cats or planets in orbit, trying to outdo one another in sheer joy. He can't wipe the grin off his face, even as his face starts to hurt, and she keeps laughing in these little bursts that just explode out of her, as if her body can't contain her sheer joy. She shouts along with the chorus, throwing her voice into the mix too —

Oh, it ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it,

Ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it,

Ain't what you do, it's the way how you do it,

That's what gets results!

He laughs and joins in for the next verse — Ain't what you do, it's the time that you do it

Ain't what you do, it's the time that you do it

Ain't what you do, it's the time that you do it

That's what gets results!

Nesta throws her head back with another laugh, shoulders shimmying, dancing in quick steps around and around him like a bird on two light feet, the motion carrying down her arms into her elbows and wrists and waving fingers. He snags her with a hand around her waist and half-tosses, half-pushes her into a spin — she goes fluidly, arms going up overhead and whirling around once, twice, three times on her toes before coming to a halt, laughing and clapping as the sound of the saxophone peters out.

Other people through the bar are applauding, and she turns those brilliant eyes on him over pink cheeks and a smiling mouth. The radio swings into a chorus of string intruments that makes him think of romantic movies, and he's moving on instinct to grip her waist and spin her about so her back is to his chest, tugging her in close with a hand smoothing around her hip and onto her stomach. She lets out a hum, taking his left hand in hers, and flattening her right hand over his on her stomach.

You'd be so nice to come home to, comes the sweet melodic tones of the singer, clear of static, loud and brilliant in the crowded room. You'd be so nice by the fire…while the breeze on high sang a lullaby, you'd be all that I could desire…

He starts a slow, fluid two-step with just a little of that swing-jive-bounce in each motion as they go, and she keeps pace easily; letting him lead, letting him watch her back.

She would be so nice to come home to, he thinks dreamily, hands full of smooth wool and Nesta's heat. So very, very nice: like a thunderstorm and an ice bath and a shot of goood string whisky all wrapped up in one.

There's a faint little drum of incredulity in the back of his mind at the thought: he's never once in his life envisioned bringing a woman into his life for longer than a night, a week, a few stolen hours of laughter and fun. But it's Nesta, he rationlises, with a mental shrug. You don't meet a woman in a bar who dresses like a Dior model and drinks like a Russian operative, who can most definitely sharp-shoot and throw a punch like a prize-fighter, who takes men down with a hand to the balls and a cutting remark, and hope to have her for just a few hours - a night - a week. You move her into your life if you get the slightest chance to do so, and whatever baggage might be in her way, you scoop it up and fling it out the nearest window. He might not have finished school, but he's not actually a moron. He's got the common sense God gave a damned goldfish. So he tucks her close and closes his eyes, cheekbone grazing the smooth silk of her hair, and hums softly along, picking up the tune and letting himself feel every word as they sway.

You'd be so nice to come home to and love.

They're quiet all throughout the song, swaying and dipping soundlessly across the floor to the smooth jazz tune. It's not until halfway through the next, as Doris Day croons out "Dream A Little Dream of Me" that she spins to face him.

"Cassian." Both arms come up to wrap around his neck, and his own slide around her waist, slotting them smoothly together.

"Nesta."

She blinks those devastating eyes up at him. "I shall preface this by saying that I am aware of the reputation of female intelligence agents."

"Yes."

"And the popular conception of our work is not what you might see in the films or the pulp comics." she adds, with a hard, serious tone to her voice.

He smooths a hand up her back and down again, seeking to comfort. "Of course it's not."

"And I've never asked this of anyone besides a mark."

"Asked what?"

She lets out a breath, pink fanning into her cheeks again. "Would you like to escort me home?"

She doesn't coquette: she looks him head-on and squarely, even as she blushes right up her neck to her cheekbones, and he feels a deep wave of affection. Reaching up, he takes one of her hands from his neck and presses a kiss to her palm, inhaling that perfume once more.

"Let me get your coat."

Outside, after — after he's paid the bill to a grinning Devlon, who claps him on the shoulder hard enough to hurt, after he's collected their things, after he's held her coat for her and slid it up and onto her shoulders in front of the jealous looks of half the bar, after he's tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and led her out as though they belong to one another — the snow is still falling. The wind has died, even as the cold comes off the waterfront bitter enough to seep into the bones like a bite, and the flakes tumble down like powdered sugar through a sieve.

Mind gone gloriously quiet, pulse pounding, he walks them slowly down the pavement, following her lead as she tugs him subtly left and right around corners and through narrow streets. He concentrates on keeping his stride short to accomodate her heels; on the flakes gathering on her shoulders and hat; on the warm, tight grip of her hand on the inside of his elbow.

They're halfway through a park, dark with only the faint, far-off glow of streetlamps, the world muffled and hushed-up by the driving snow, when he can't resist any longer. Nobody's around, but he'd do it even in a crowded room - even on a stage before the entire world. He stops them, twirling her slowly under one arm just because he can and she answers the subtle cues of his body without even blinking in surprise. He brings her into him with an arm around her waist, tips her chin up with the other shaking hand, and kisses her in a dark park in the icy winter's night, tasting lipstick and snowflakes and vodka and hot sweetness on her red red mouth.