i hope i'm gonna make you notice (original) (raw)

I really do have a noir obsession. That is the only explanation.

Series: along this road he lost his soul
Story: Notorious
Summary: [One hundred drabbles for the casue100 prompt table.] The problem with John Miraz is that he has his goons everywhere. The problem with Ian is that, as she levels her gun to his chest, she can’t really bring herself to kill him for it.
Notes: The byproduct of watching Miller’s Crossing and reading The Maltese Falcon in one weekend. Yay for AU forties-era drama.

Prompt

: suspicion.

Can I just say—I do not have a problem with Ramandu’s daughter. I actually kind of like her, in most situations. So keep that in mind.

~

In her defense, he is kind of an idiot.

“I’m sorry?” he prods, holding his hands level with his chest. “Did I do—er, say, that is . . .”

“No,” she says, somewhat regretfully. “You didn’t do much of anything wrong, Ian. Except that you got involved with the sort of people it was somewhat stupid of you to get involved with.”

“Really?” His eyebrow arches, the swagger coming back into his voice, and she steadies her hand, reminding herself to be practical, she was always the practical one. And when it comes to protecting her family, she can be eminently practical, even to the point where she is left in a depressingly dank office, holding a small pistol (.22) level to the heart of a man she is fairly certain she is in love with.

“Ian,” she chides lightly (they are used to playing word games; makes them feel clever). “You know exactly what I’m talking about. Taking up with John Miraz again? Really?”

“Dammit, Susan, I wasn’t taking up—”

As he takes a step towards her, she clicks off the safety and empties a round into the crumbling plaster over his left shoulder. “I was always a better shot than you, Ian. And let’s be honest with each other, please. John Miraz killed your father, and yet you still went back to him when there was the slightest hint of Peter faltering.”

“Susan,” he says as frankly as he can (which isn’t much, considering the business they’re in, but beggars can’t be choosers and Susan isn’t much of either). “I would never abandon Peter for Miraz. You said it yourself. He killed my father. He killed Cornelius. Goddammit, he almost killed you! I took a bullet from him to save your neck!”

Susan’s eyes narrow. She knows she has to shoot him (the reason for this entire sordid affair with the wet plaster ceilings and the soft whoosh of the river outside the walls and the heavy shuffle of Ian’s footsteps across the floor as he attempts to be subtle and subtly fails at it), but his voice has always calmed her and she wants to draw as much of it as possible out of him before she has to put a bullet in his chest.

“I’ll always be thankful,” she tells him, “honestly I will, Ian. And I did love you, I still do, but considering how Tom Reepicheep’s men saw you disappearing into the Dancing Telmar and coming out with some blonde on your arm, I think we can both decidedly infer what went on in there. How is Brigid Ramandu, by the way? Still inspid?”

Dammit. She didn’t want to make this come off as anything other than a rush of strict professionalism. Now she sounds like a sickly jealous little schoolgirl. To make herself feel better, she tilts her head so her hat casts long, dramatic shadows over her face. (She doesn’t have Brigid’s bone structure, but she damn well has a better sense of style than that pathetic hussy.)

“Susan,” he says, and his paces have become less subtle and more restless in the intervening moments, “Brigid is a friend and I got her out of Miraz’s grasp and that was it. I didn’t even see him when I went to the casino. I put her in a car and sent her uptown and for all I know she’s on a boat halfway back to her father.” He is looking at her with something innocent and powerful brimming behind his eyes, and she kind of wishes she hadn’t knocked off his hat, that she had left something to mask that pull she feels.

God damn him and god damn this stupid business.

“You know I wouldn’t be here if we didn’t have more, Ian,” she says, her voice surprisingly light. “Edmund found out who laid out Ryan Glenstorm, and it certainly wasn’t Miraz’s men.” Ian’s face blanches and stretches. “You didn’t honestly think you could keep something from him, did you?” Her tone has turned motherly again, the voice she uses with Lucy. “He knows lies like I know guns, Ian. We knew you were playing us the moment you stepped in with your sob story.”

(God, she loves him. She really does. She loves him even though she knows that his mother is alive in Surrey and he and Brigid Ramandu used to be engaged and John Miraz has him playing on bloody puppet strings. She loves that he still looks like a little boy.)

Ian’s mouth is a line between his teeth, and he releases his lips with a hiss of something that might’ve been amusement in a less bitter moment. “I laid out Glenstorm,” he admits. “I knocked him over the head with a pipe but I didn’t put the bullet in his face. Someone else did those honors.” He is saying this as though the words are pulling teeth, counteracting instinct. “And Brigid Ramandu and I were never engaged. We were partners.”

He is staring at her, wide-eyed, and then his eyebrows narrow and lower and his lashes brush against his cheek in a quick blink, as though he is attempting to tell her something.

“We were partners,” he stresses.

Susan blinks. (Oh. Oh.)

“We’re going to need proof,” she says crisply. “Lots of proof. Lots of proof with David Aslan’s signature scrawled in it so deep it leaves impressions on the other side.”

He takes the last step towards her, and carefully pushes aside her wrist. “I can do that,” he agrees, gently, and he doesn’t try to release her grip, just moves closer and begins to tug at her hatpins. “The Agency hasn’t ever been happy about letting outsiders know anything, but if it means you don’t shoot me, I think I can handle bureaucracy.”

“I have questions,” she reminds him as he lifts her hat and flings it in the general direction of the doorway that she pushed him through a half-hour earlier.

“I have answers,” he says, and his fingers ghost across her jaw line. “I promise, Susan."