2020-05-26 - The Price of a Cup of Coffee

The afternoon's ruminations of portents of rain have come to fruition in a steady drumming against asphalt, a painterly slanting against windows and plink, plink, plink against gutter pipes. Anyone with sense has been driven indoors, and those looking for a decent cup of coffee have come here. Maude's, proclaims the unlit sign out front in looping, curling script, and the placard on the door, a cheerful 'open!'. Today's special, proclaims the handwritten note on the sandwich board just inside, is peach cobbler. There are a couple of college age girls seated near the counter, comparing homework notes, and a middle-aged Hispanic man huddled at a two-person window seat, blowing on his cup of coffee. Watching the boats come in and the boats set off for the open ocean tilted beneath a cloudswept sky.

What magic produces Gray Harbor's lead librarian strolling down a puddled-strewn sidewalk by the waterfront at 2:57 on a wet and blustery, Pacific Northwest Wednesday? If one looks closely, there is all manner of magic involved, not the least of which is the scent of roasted coffee beans that greets the dark-haired woman in the spring green jacket when she pulls the door open to a faint but charming ring of bells. No. There's no umbrella. Harper doesn't mind a few wet locks clinging to her skin. One might even guess that she likes it, given the fact that the jacket isn't pulled close or buttoned up, her soft, white top dotted with damp drops of precipitation.

If you grew up in Gray Harbor, there are very few corners of the banal parts of town that are hidden mysteries, but Maude's is a charming corner all the same. Secreted away from the stormy day like a dusty attic full of forgotten treasures, it promises sanctuary, coffee, and, today, company of the most interesting sort (and peach cobbler!).

Does the woman always wear red shoes? No. She didn't at the casino, unless one counts the underside of those black pumps she wore. Nor did she wear red shoes at the woodsy birthday party. Today, however, the shoes are red. Again. Lower heeled, they still make a satisfying, purposeful snap of sound as she walks. Tailored, dark-denim pants with the slightest sheen to the fabric follow her legs in a slim fit that adds some polish to her attire.

Letting the door swing closed behind her, Harper skims her animated, brown-eyed gaze around the small space, noting the collegiate duo, then whoever is behind the counter, only to slide and stop on the middle-aged Hispanic man. For a long moment she simply considers him from across the eight steps between where she stands and where he sits. She lifts one hand to tuck a stray strand of damp, dark hair behind one ear before stirring back to her easy stride, circling a chair here and a table there to approach him, stopping within arm's reach and flickering her attention down to his coffee. She has thoughts on how he takes his coffee and considers his mug with inquisitive assessment. "You beat me here," she accuses lightly, reaching out to graze two fingertips to the man's shoulder in an almost-touch before she takes a seat across from him and drapes the strap of her purse across the back of her chair. "I'm not sure that's at all fair. Perhaps you've used up all your interesting thoughts and we'll end up talking about --" With a curving smile she considers just what the substitute conversation in this scenario would be. "-- the fact that your car needs new wiper blades."

Black. No cream, no sugar, ceramic cup; he knew he'd be here a while, or he gives a shit about the environment. He also spots the tall, sylphlike brunette wending toward his table, and favours her with a smile. Fleeting, it's gone almost before it's found residence at the edges of his mouth, but lingers in the deep grooves that mark the corners of smoke-dark eyes. "No de ninguna manera agradable, te lo aseguro," he murmurs, stilling at the almost-touch that doesn't quite become one.

A nudge of the chair opposite him, before she makes to settle in. His gaze tracks her as she sits, lingers on her eyes and her smile and her shoes, and he digs out what looks like a ratty laminated menu from under his coffee cup and phone, turns it around, and slides it over. His fingertips remain settled atop it, the knuckles weathered and heavily inked. Letters (K, E and H), symbols (a stylized fish, a phoenix, a pentagram and a skull), not pretty things. Not work he had done because it had beauty or meaning. "The car isn't mine," he explains in a low murmur. And, "What would you like to drink? Or eat. The pie is good." The cop himself is dressed down, as he most often is; black hoodie with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, tight-fitting black jeans, those expensive looking boots with the pointed toe. No ball cap today, dark curls slightly askew.

If Ruiz expects Harper will gloss over a plethora of interesting pieces to his response to her arrival, he may be greatly disappointed. She tracks each minute glimpse the man offers of himself and will thoroughly examine them one by one in her own sweet time. Black coffee. That earns a faint suggestion of a nod. Her hypothesis was correct. The fleeting glimpse of warmth to his expression is gathered up like a precious secret and savored, her smile melting away in response and leaving her studying him with overt fascination that is complemented by the ambiance of the tiny cafe. "Oh, I see how this is going to go. You're going to tease at me until I lose my mind yearning for my dictionary. That is hardly fair, Javier." Her voice floats through the name like cream in coffee. If she notices his reaction to the initial presumptuous play of her fingers, she doesn't so much as bat an eye.

Settling into her chair, she pulls it forward a few inches before sliding one leg atop the other, watching him as if he were a piece on a chessboard making a move she hasn't quite sussed out just yet. A menu slides over to her side of the table beneath an inked hand that speaks of ferocity, violence, and darkness. Harper is rarely the sort of person who just lets things go. Particularly not when her interest is piqued as it is. Whether it's in retribution for the words she can't translate, some sort of dare to the complicated man sitting across from her, or something else entirely, she returns his volley by lifting a fingertip with a pale, pearly painted nail to trace a winding path across those invading knuckles, navigating letters and bold images -- fish to phoenix, pentagram to skull -- her grazing touch light and faintly rain-damp. "So many stories..." she muses almost to herself.

"The car isn't yours." Her gaze wanders up a forearm, past his elbow, almost tangibly (again) across his shoulder to lift to his face as she offers a mild almost-smile. "Regardless, the wipers still ought to work in the rain."

What would she like to drink? The question finally sifts into her awareness, belated. "A cappuccino would be marvelous. With extra cinnamon. I'm not particularly hungry."

Curiouser and curiouser, this girl and her hungry eyes and presumptuous fingers. Fingers that touch, and find him still again. Almost preternaturally so; like a big cat in the grass, eyes dark and bright and claws pricked for the faintest whiff of prey. And his body is a story, indeed; what can be seen of it, at least. More ink scrawled up the back of his hand and all along his forearm, disappearing under the ruched sleeve of his hoodie. Black and grey linework, roiling waves upon waves upon waves of open ocean, and a beleaguered fishing trawler hopelessly lost at sea and surely about to break up on the water. Imminent tragedy or eleventh hour miracle?

"A cappucino with extra cinnamon." His hand remains where she left it for a few moments, and then a brush of contact. The rough pad of his thumb grazed, as if in secret, along the outer edge of her little finger. Then the steady stare is relinquished as he eases back in his chair. A brief diversion to gain the waitress's attention and place Harper's order before he turns back to her. "The car's not mine," he repeats. "GHPD property." He drove over in his unmarked cruiser, the black Charger whose engine sounds could strip paint on a good day. "I'm sure you're right, though. Tell me why you agreed to see me today."

All the story visible to read in the waves of black and grey is thoroughly examined on that journey up the man's arm with a moment's pause at the trawler. The faint brush of his thumb draws her gaze down and her lashes follow. A touch of a smile teases at her lips once more as if he'd whispered something in her mind.

Ruiz leans back and Harper leans forward, settling a forearm familiarly against the tabletop in front of the pull of white fabric across her chest. The man flags down a server and Harper watches him as he orders for her, afforded a few moments of unobserved scrutiny. "Of course it is," she agrees lightly about the status of his car. On a dime, he swerves the conversation in a new direction entirely. Harper doesn't so much as blink. "I find you fascinating, Captain. You keep good company. You quote Milton. And --" She tap-taps a fingertip of that hand atop the faded, stained menu where it remains. " -- I pursue intriguing enigmas with reckless abandon." The librarian doesn't mince words.

The story, perhaps. The constituent pieces, the characters and the narrative, but not the resolution. That part is left frustratingly vague. Not the impetus for it all. Why.

He seems perfectly content to retreat that short distance, and let her chase. Like some little game, and he does like games, and it seems so does she. She must, or she wouldn't be here. "Yet you've got a boyfriend," he counters flatly, voice that rough, warm purr that lingers heavily on the vowels and melts away the consonants. His hand hasn't been withdrawn far; it lingers within reach still, near enough - and bold enough - to attempt to grasp her own hand and turn it over slowly until it faces palm up. And then to hold it there, trapped under his fingertips, unless she tries to thwart the attempt. His gaze, steady and intent, no sign of even a suggestion of that smile from earlier.

Ruiz is not the only one who can be damnably vague. Two are playing at that game, each in their own way.

Harper is, in some ways, exactly what she seems; and, in others, she is her own brand of contrary. "I do," she agrees. She has a boyfriend. A dark brow sketches upward. "I measured you wrong if you thought I was here to seduce you, Javier." The timbre of his voice, the play of vowels and consonants, the accent: it is all a melody of a sort if one listens the right way. She doesn't so much as blink at the words he speaks. Wiper blades or complicated motives, they're the same in this moment. She doesn't snatch her hand away from the touch of a rough hand turning her own so that her soft palm is facing up, fingers faintly curved. If this were a poker game, there wouldn't be much of a tell to read from the woman with the expressive brown eyes. "Are you the sort to believe everything is black or white, on or off? If so, I'll admit to being very disappointed."

Then with slow, carefully pronounced and clearly practiced words, Harper murmurs quietly, sharpening the moment and slowing it down.

"Esperaba que fuéramos amigos cercanos."

There's just so much a person can do when trying to literally translate words into a language she doesn't know. Verb tenses are a thing. But the effort is there.

"Here to seduce me," he repeats, in that same maddeningly even voice. All rough warmth tinged with amusement at the very edges; and his fingertips still resting against her palm, pinning it in place with just enough pressure to ensure that trying to pull away will give him the advantage. The upper hand, if you will. The opportunity to snag her wrist in his stronger grip, and draw her in quickly, and couldn't he? Wouldn't he? The question isn't whether he could, but whether he would. "No, fuck, I didn't think that at all. Te interesa el juego largo, me lo dijiste."

A chuckle as the contact's finally relinquished, and his coffee cup reached for. A sip, a swallow. "Mm, some things. Some things are." The rain continues to slant against the window, and against his cheek in reflection, seeping through the close-cropped beard, making him look like he's weeping. Even when he smiles, a little more, at her Spanish. "Friends? You'd like to be friends." Sip. He seems to think about that.

Harper quells a smile that is impossible to hide in the sparkle of her eyes. She makes no move either to pull away or to catch at those pinning fingers. But she does splay her own fingers slowly before relaxing them once more. The other forearm remains resting there on the edge of the table. The coffee shop slides away like a Hitchcockian reverse zoom. He didn't think that at all. "You're having pieces of conversation without me again, Javier. At some point you're going to recognize that you're diminishing your own returns, lovely as it is to hear." He didn't think that at all. "What did you think?"

Just as the touch gained her attention, the relinquishing of it does the same. She watches that hand return to his coffee cup. Some things are black and white. "What sorts of things are those?" The server returns with Harper's cappuccino and she slides back away from the table's edge for it to be set down in front of her. She tips a look up at the woman, "Thank you." Instead of lifting the cup, however, she traces a fingertip around the rim, enjoying the scent that curls upward. Back to Ruiz and the shadow-rain juxtaposed on his face. "I must have translated poorly. But I suppose that's the general gist of what I meant to say." He thinks about that and she lets the silence spin out a bit before murmuring, "I didn't expect you would have any inclination for my brand of company, to begin with. I don't imagine that I am in your usual demographic." It does not sound as if the librarian is feeling sorry for herself. Matter of fact. A calibration of her impressions of the man.

A tip of his cup in apparent acquiescence when Harper suggests he's diminishing his own returns, and then it's tipped back for another sip and a swallow, and a long pull of his adam's apple before it's set down again. "Things like.." His thumb brushes the rim. "Whether a man has committed a crime." His lashes are kept lowered, and that soft furrow sits between his brows, like something lingering between being spoken and not. "Whether he should be punished for that crime." His eyes tick up to meet hers, but he otherwise doesn't move a muscle. They're dark grey, in actual fact, rather than the black they appear to be at a glance. Grey like the smouldering remains of a brushfire in the dead of night; and the scent of it lingers about him in the kythe, if her Gift is at all sensitive to it.

He nudges his empty mug away with a soft scrape of porcelain against the tabletop, rubs at his nose with that inked knuckle, and drops his hand again. "You don't know the first fucking thing about my demographic," he observes obliquely, in a low murmur that presages his next words. "Let's be friends, then. Tell me about yourself."

The coffee date is exceeding expectations for Miss Price. Only when his cup is set down does she tip the balance by lifting her own and taking a sip of the foamy, cinnamon-peppered cappuccino. A touch of her tongue to her lips as he speaks and she cants her head mildly to one side. "Truly?" He is black and white about illegal activities? She'll test him on just that with her reply. "I will confide in you, Captain --" And here her words quiet, hushed like a held breath, "--and perhaps earn myself a frown and disapproval." She allows herself another sip from her cup before the confidence is offered, that cup set down with a tap to the table beside the worn menu. "I am quite loose with the line between innocent and guilty, myself. Add to that the fact that I don't feel at all apologetic for that particular penchant. Not to worry, I won't tell you so much that you'll have to give me a ride in your ... I'm sorry, in the department's car."

Harper isn't being so pushy as to activate her Gift. Something between presuming permission and her enjoyment of the slow unfurling of the enigma that is de la Vega. "Not one fucking thing?" she quotes mildly "How oblivious of me. Are you going to enlighten me?" About his demographic.

Friends. Harper's attentive gaze doesn't give away any verdict on that statement. "What would you like to know?" It's not cricket if she is too forthcoming. Not at all.

"I said nothing about beautiful women," he points out, sotto voce. Hard to say, with the slant in his dark eyes and the amusement colouring his tone, whether he means to tease her. Or whether he's being dead serious about that. Either way, there's no frown, no apparent disapproval in sight. Just a low, smoke-roughened chuckle as he drinks her in, and then flags down the waitress for a refill on his coffee.

"And I'm not worried at all," he confides in turn, once the girl's sidled away. It's on the house, honey, might just be because he's law enforcement, or it might be because of that wink he gave her when she asked him what he needed. "If you've done something wrong," he's telling Harper, watching her with those half-lidded eyes, "then there will be consequences. No es así?"

Silence between them for a few moments, unless she breaks it. The rain, relentless, and the burble of conversation around them, the tink of porcelain and silverware and jangle of bells above the door as someone shoulders their way in from the cold and wet. "Tell me where you grew up. What made you become a librarian. What you, uh. Like to do for fun." Conversation? Is not his forte.

Touche, Ruiz. Harper's brown eyes flash with some unspoken reaction to the first comment. Beautiful women? "No. I'm quite sure you did not," she agrees quietly. Settled back in her chair, her hands crossed at the wrists atop her upper knee, when he chuckles like a sip of good whiskey, she draws a slow breath that lifts and lowers her shoulders just so in that green jacket.

He's not worried? "No. You wouldn't be. You don't strike me as a worrier. I expect you do or don't act, but perseveration doesn't seem quite your speed." The words could be translated as an insult: is there a lack of thought, is he a brash and impulsive fellow? But then, like most things that Harper says, there are several other potential translations as well.

Harper watches the interchange with the server. She is exceptionally watchful. Some find it unsettling. Some read it as pleasant interest. Some read the silences as awkward. "Oh, Javier. I have done all sorts of 'wrong' things. And I plan to continue to do as I please. If you want to dole consequences --" And here she lingers on the word with a quiet hum of warmth in her throat as she leans forward to whisper. "-- you'll have to catch me." No es asi. Harper is visibly disquieted by not being able to translate his words. But that doesn't stop her from rolling over the notes of his Spanish with some measure of pleasure.

She doesn't break the silence; there's too much living there to savor. The sound of the rain against the window only evokes a certain measure of quiet confidence to the conversation, isolating and insulating the little cafe from the rest of the world. Harper settles back in her chair once more, smoothing one of her hands over her thigh to her knee absently with a glance out the window and a slow, inevitable return of her attention to the man dressed in black with the prowling, dark eyes and a menu of threats, a roughened chuckle, and promises. Would she like to try the cobbler? No, she has quite enough to eat just as she is.

"I grew up here," she lifts a hand to splay her fingers in a slow circle, indicating Gray Harbor at large. "I've lived here my entire life." She's not going to let him draw her out without something in return. That's not how the game works. Not today. "What brought you to Gray Harbor?" She doesn't know his story, but she's quite certain in a town the size of the Harbor that she'd have come across the man long, long ago if he'd been around over the past decade. The comings and goings of other coffee-seekers don't draw Harper's attention in the least.

Ruiz and the rain. Maybe a glance to one or the other of their beverages. The weight of her contemplation is dense, but not cloying. "I became a librarian because I have had a tumultuous, lifelong obsession with books and stories, searching for answers ... and --" She considers him for a moment, as if trying to decide how candid to be. "-- there is a certain persona the job cultivates. I will confide, before you pull out the handcuffs, that it is sometimes easier to be what people expect than to wear the fickle vagaries of reality like bloody clawmarks, constantly having to explain my personal journey. I'm not a fan of that sort of honesty. Most people haven't earned it." It is oddly forthcoming, if what she says is true.

Quid pro quo. "Have you always been an officer of the law, or are there fascinating chapters that preceded this one?"

There's no reaction to the assertion that perseveration doesn't seem his speed. If he takes it as an insult, if he reads it as some knock against his character, he gives absolutely no indication. Which may be just as well, if rumours of his vicious and terrible temper are, in fact, true. Just that dark, steady gaze; the patience he seems to have in spades, and the restraint to sit perfectly, exquisitely still when she leans in closer to confide those soft words to him.

"Chances are, I won't," he opts to remind her. "If you break the law, I mean." A gracias as the waitress returns with his refill, touches his shoulder, withdraws. His eyes don't leave the utterly compelling woman across from him, not for a breath of a moment. "I don't typically run patrol anymore." As a captain, he probably means. His duties involve coordinating his subordinates and with higher order agencies like the DEA, FBI and various other municipalities' law enforcement.

But then she's acceding to his demands to know more about her, and he settles in to listen quietly, watching the movement of her mouth and the splay of slender fingers to emphasise her words. "Work," answers her question to him, perhaps insufficiently. "And no, of course I've not always been a cop. I did some time in the military before this." An obvious question there perhaps, as regards one T. Joseph Cavanaugh, but he neither alludes to nor answers it. Instead, low, warm, "Searching for answers to what, Miss Price?"

Harper misses all the good rumors. She has pigeon-holed herself so deftly that Ruiz-caliber stories have never quite made their way to her ears. The closest she's come to his neck of the woods was delivering a care package to Easton when he and Bennie broke up before Christmas. And, even then, no names were mentioned. Whatever temper she might have theoretically attached to the man she's met on a spare few occasions is hypothesis at best. But one need only watch those dark eyes, observe the predatory mien of the man , listen to the way he parses his words to make certain educated guesses. And Harper is an expert when it comes to inferring character from a few pieces of evidence here and there. The fact that she's never met a man quite like the police captain only adds oxygen to the fire of her curiosity. And he plays. Oh, does he play.

The added parameters to in which case he'll catch her curves a smile to her lips that would be difficult to repress. Likely points are awarded in some capacity. He doesn't typically run patrol anymore. "That's fine," she answers, pleased, settling back in her chair again, shifting to turn her body a bit to one side, draping her elbow just so over the back of that chair. "My lawlessness isn't really the sort measured on a radar gun." He may ignore the lingering touch of the server, but Harper doesn't. She flickers a slow gaze over the woman, takes stock, then looks back to Ruiz with a faintly arched brow. If it's a bluff, she's gone all in with it.

"I want to hear about your time in the military, Javier," Harper demands quietly. What sort of answers is she searching for? "The questions people don't want to answer," she begins. Leaves that to sit for a few stretching moments, Then, with the hand not lightly resting atop the chair-back she reaches for her cappuccino and takes another sip. Almost gone now, a soft bed of foam across the base of the cup. She sets it down and turns the handle one hundred eighty degrees with a playful fingertip. There's a pleasant, sing-song quality to the quiet words, musing. "Answers to puzzles. The more complicated, the better." She really ought not be so forthcoming. There's a calculated risk there that might be a subtle compliment.

Work, he says and earns himself a speculative gaze. And that's all. "You don't talk much about yourself, do you? It's really a shame. You ought to give a girl like me a taste or two. Unless this lovely rendez-vous is a one-off, that is." She lifts those fingers to tuck a strand of dark hair behind her ear in a motion that might be becoming clear is an absent habit. "Though if that's the case, I think I will be enormously disappointed. Let me down gently." The capricious flame behind her eyes is a thing to behold.

She stirs from her graceful lounge in her chair, shifts again and leans back into the table, stretching one hand palm up in invitation halfway across the small bistro table. "Give me your hand, de la Vega." There it is. The chance for him to agree to something more than merely an offering his hand.

It is. It is a thing to behold, that light in her eyes. Like the flame to his moth, or is it the other way around? He watches her unflinchingly as she shifts, turns, drapes her arm across the chair back, spins her cup with the tip of her finger. All these little things that betray her, that give him clues as to her nature and her proclivities; that speak for her, even as she speaks well enough for herself.

"Mm," is all he's got to say, as to her lawlessness. He watches her even as she watches the waitress, gaze lingered on her throat when it flashes with a swallow, then away again by the time she's turned back to him. "My tiiiiime in the military," he murmurs, drawing out that word on a weary sounding sigh as he eases back in his chair, runs his tongue along his teeth. "And you accuse me of not talking much about myself, and yet tu hablas en acertijos y rimas." He shifts seamlessly into Spanish, with the full understanding of course that she doesn't speak it, and won't grasp what he's saying.

Then her hand is held out across the table, and the offer made. The request. The command, almost, and there's a flicker of something in his eyes when she gives it. A tension between them like a static charge, and a few seconds' pause where it seems he might refuse entirely. But then, acquiesence in the creasing of crow's feet at the corners of his eyes, the noise in his throat as he shifts forward in his chair, nudges his cup aside, and slides his rougher, callused palm atop hers. Grip firm and warm, skin a few shades darker in contrast with hers.

Does she feel it through the contact? The way his power threatens her like a stormsurge off the ocean, like a phosphorescent semiconductor rapidly accreting with charge. "Ten cuidado," he tells her, raspy-soft, at the moment that hands and eyes make contact.

Moth and flame, then. The librarian's laugh is brief and warm in her throat at his vague hum of a response to her self-proclaimed outlaw persona. There's nothing held back there: genuine warmth, delight, fascination -- they all live in that laugh and the animated touch of her gaze. Along with something dark and ominous. Sharp and heavy and ready to fall in the darkness. "And yet I .." She waves a hand in a gently billowing motion that indicates all the Spanish he just spoke. What he said. "You put it so deftly. Nail on the head." Oh, how he drags his feet regarding his past. Then the quiet accusation: "Tease."

Harper catches her breath. She doesn't mean to, but the battle that plays out before her eyes when she demands the man's hand catches her like fingers around her throat. She keeps her palm up, outstretched atop the small table and waits. It might be that any outcome to her demand would be acceptable, would feed her understanding of the man via his decision. But he shifts, leans in, slides his hand atop hers. As he does so, she awards him with a small, distracted smile that is half conspiratorial, but half a challenge all the same.

More of that music that is his first tongue. She lets the moment stretch, utters a quiet sound that isn't quite a word as much as it is an expression of profundity. She shimmers with how much she feels it, both via nerve endings and the Mental shudder as two entirely different paradigms lock into place like her precious jigsaw pieces but on a far more epic scale. Then with precise economy of movement, she reaches out with her other hand to place it atop his, only to slowly -- so slowly -- turn his hand between both of her own until it is his palm that is upturned. The hand he initially touched lifts, draws away and she drags her gaze from his to look down to regard the lines across his darker palm. "Sometimes stories tell themselves." Her voice holds that electricity. The words thrum with potential energy. Harper traces a fingertip in a feather light path along his lifeline. It's electric: both pleasantly so and then shocking, like static electricity liberated with contact. He's fighting her. She quells an inwardly turned smile and continues to trace the seams of that door she imagines in her mind.

Let me in.

There's the faintest taste of cinnamon on the tongue. A hint at light refracted through a fine mist of water. A desultory wake of almost-thoughts. Her dark lashes are lowered as she watches his palm, uses it as a focal point, traces so slowly her finger hardly moves, hardly skims his skin.

The accusation finds only amusement in response, and it's immediately, abundantly clear in that moment; he's enjoying this, the son of a bitch. Enjoying leading her astray, but to what end? His eyes give nothing away, and reflect everything back. There's a brush of his thumb along the inside of her wrist, skimming the pulse point, pausing, retreating again. He studies her smile without returning it, but he doesn't seem a man much given to open expressions of mirth.

"And sometimes we hear what we want to, because truth can be stranger than fiction," he returns, his voice like sun-warmed water poured over rough stones. He'll allow her to maneuver his hand around, but that tension in him remains; that animal aggression, chained behind a very thin veneer of civilised behaviour. Like given enough provocation, he might tear free of her delicate grip and savage her. Knock aside the table and pin her to the wall behind by her hair and-

Perhaps it's the fingertip tracing that electric path along his palm that disrupts his thoughts. His eyes flick back up to hers from their study of her mouth, like he's invariably drawn back to it time and again. And then his shoulders begin to shake slightly; he's laughing, soundless, as their power clashes and tangles and struggles and.. well, his seems to be gaining the upper hand. That raw, animal aggression of his; that electrical fire blowing throw open circuit after open circuit until it simply.. stops in a sigh of smoke and ozone and he's silent. Still. Unmoving under that bare movement of her fingertip, for all the impetus that's in his eyes to touch, and to take and to hurt.

Entra, entonces. She needn't understand his language to know what it means.

His amusement. His no-rules games. His enjoyment of her wandering exploration that leads to one dead-end after another. She sees it, it resolves, focus sharpens. "You are a bastard, de la Vega," she murmurs low, not so far across the table to his ears. But that's the nature of this game. Headway isn't the only success to be had; the journey informs all on its own. Her warm, brown eyes offer up her awareness of it all, her willing participation. She's a willow, strong in the way she bends with the fury of the storm rather than resisting it. There doesn't seem to be any part of Harper that is disappointed that this man isn't expressively playful or gregarious. She has had enough of a sample of him that she would likely find such an about-face disturbing, confusing, not at all in line with the evidence she has gathered.

The thumb brushing over the delicate skin of her wrist steals her gaze from his, grabs her attention for a few moments. She takes a breath, then recenters. "Are you accusing me of inventing my own truth?" Her eyes lift to his face once more: the glint in those hard eyes, the minute yet expressive lines at the corners of his eyes, the dimple that only appears now and again, the line of his nose. "You wouldn't be the first to make that claim." It's there -- right then -- that she sees his aggression directly and vividly for the first time, briefly unfiltered and wild. She stills: fingertip, gaze, her warmth fading ever so slightly, her eyes sharp and alert. For a moment she tastes like something to chase --

-- then the moment passes and she flashes an irreverent and untamed look, as though she snapped her teeth when she absolutely did not. Not overtly. Not actually. But what is the 'actual' now? On the fringes of sparking contact, snapping and shorting out all sorts of tautological circuits, fiery filaments cascading to the ground with a sizzle and that breath of ozone. Now there's no chase to be had. Now she faces him and savors the collision. The collision that abruptly -- as he opens that door -- zeroes all input to such silence that the pulse in one's ears and the thud of heartbeats are deafening. In that roaring silence, she tastes his instinct to inflict pain like a stone upon her tongue.

If it hadn't been for the deafening beating of two hearts in her ears, she might have fallen head first into what he opens to her. Instead, she falls into his eyes. He doesn't so much hear her catch her breath as he feels it. The words echo in his mind, replicating as if bouncing off the walls of a canyon.

Show me something real, Javier.

His name echoes: first supplicating, then demanding, a strange juxtaposition of antipodal tones. But there is almost too much in the open connection, too much and not enough. He can feel her close her eyes, not see it. She wills herself to center, and he feels the strength of a familiar, nightmarish sort of tranquility settle through her. Time jerks from its frozen place back into motion like music slowly returning to tempo from doldrum stillness. A wave of her awareness crashes on his shore and recedes, unapologetic. Another one will come, and another, relentless and rhythmic. The scent of the sea is late to the game, a brisk, salty breeze.

Better. She speaks it and thinks it.

Are you accusing me of inventing my own truth? she asks. And yet, "Don't we all, though?" His tone isn't teasing, isn't mocking, but oddly tender. That low, warm rasp of his speech inflected heavily with that accent he's tried for years to scrub away, to remove all trace of. But it's stubbornly remained. His hand, oppressively warm around hers; his gaze steady and strangely unblinking as he tries to parse that fading warmth. That brief taste of pheromones that tells him she's something to chase, something to subdue. His nostrils flare with it, and then it's gone. Just the rain, painterly across his cheek and hers, and the struggle of their power, one against the other, until he gives.

Show me something real.

And she's standing on the shore of him, somewhere in the distant reaches of his mind. Somewhere dark and lost, the sky a muzzy scrawl of grey above and the sea relentlessly beating itself against the shore, frothing and sighing and retreating once more. Standing in the shallows, what could only be termed a dire wolf. Its body engulfed in great billows of white flame that pour off it, carried into spindles of smoke by the breeze, it watches her with brilliant golden eyes, lips curled over long teeth resembling knives.

<<You wanted to see. So here I am.>>

"Some more than others," she answers. The nature of truth. If he wants to go down that philosophical road, Harper may just find it irresistible. But he doesn't know that about her yet. "I'd prefer it if our truths overlapped." A pause. "Understand, Javier, I don't wish that very often. Usually quite the opposite. But you --" Her fingers slide down his atop the table and her palm lowers as he wraps his heated hand around hers. "Do you really hate where you come from so very much?" she inquires so quietly, the thought of it echoes louder in his mind than the words across the small table.

Her warmth may have faded, but in its place is some wonder and more intoxication. There's a physical jolt through her as he ... gives. No, he can't miss how the obvious choice surprised her. Nor the resulting engagement that teases at the periphery of the metaphysical space they both occupy. She won't insult him with the role she plays in this place, not now.

She walks that shore, slowly, drinking it in. The sky, the sea that's simultaneously resonant in the familiar while also utterly foreign. On the shore of his mind, she is barefoot, clad in a white muslin dress whipped by the wind, splashed haphazardly, obscenely with blood, some wet, some long-dried. Her dark hair whips across her face until she lifts a hand to hold it back and stops walking, her bare feet sinking as the wet sand erodes beneath them. The wolf borne of nightmare almost hypnotically holds her gaze across the sand and the shallow wash of cascading waves. Those teeth grab at her brain stem and twist. She forgets to breathe.

Only after a some time has passed does the sudden intake of her breath sound more at the table than in the place where he hunts and prowls. Her heart pounds as she resists the urge to turn and run. They both know what will happen if she does. That's when she takes in the flames, the smoke. <<And yet-->> the wind tries to steal her words. <<... you do things like check books out at libraries and drink coffee while asking pleasant questions.>> She shakes her head slowly.

She wanted to see him. The initial desire to run away melts away and leaves her full of questions, multiple stories playing around her like teasing mist, intrigued and, yes, fierce, a little uptipping of her chin. <<Come closer.>>

Maybe he understands, or maybe he does not. Maybe he cares, maybe he shares her wish that their truths might overlap, or maybe it's utterly irrelevant to him.

Maybe all she is to him is a hot heart, and I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps. I hunger for your sleek laugh, your hands the color of a savage harvest.

<<I don't hate it at all, Harper. Where I came from. I don't hate it, and I don't love it. It simply is.>> His voice, through the mind bridge, is nothing like it sounds in the 'real' world. He speaks with no accent, no inflection whatsoever. Clear and almost androgynous sounding, like water rushing in to quench a fire-choked ravine. <<Tell me what you want to know. And I'll do my best to answer.>> The beast's golden eyes shift and slide over the girl in the blood-spattered dress, making her way across the sand. Then she tells it to come closer, and a snarl starts in its throat like a rattling of bones; lips slid back over those serrated knives for teeth. Gouts of flame leap and twist and sigh into the darkness, painting the water with firelight as it laps against the wolf's great paws.

Then, at length, the snarl resolves to an agitated huff of breath, and the creature prowls forward, out of the water. Head bowed low, the rush of the tide and the crackle of flame as it stalks in closer, closer, to melt into a slow slink around the girl's body. Strangely, it doesn't burn her. She can feel the heat of it, pleasantly warm, like sitting by a campfire, but it doesn't so much as singe her clothing. <<Tell me more. About yourself. Tell me, or I can take what I want. It's up to you.>>

It's utterly clear, the irrelevance. How do the words enter her consciousness? He doesn't speak them at that forgotten table. The dire wolf certainly doesn't run the syllables over its tongue. But, all the same, she hears them in her mind. There's no way to know just how resonant they are until the vibration of it rolls up through her and her soft fingers tighten just so around his.

the sovereign nose of your arrogant face is all she offers back, thinks at him, quick to throw away a further recitation. She shows him that she knows what he speaks. Backward and forward. Briefly, again, there is that sense from her of something to chase, be it by wolf or by puma. With a squaring of her shoulders, she wills it back away, headstrong, an intractable aspect of her that she doesn't wear for just anyone to see.

There's something reassuring to Harper there, though. He can feel it. Something she recognizes in him that deconstructs some of her own carefully curated walls. <<But you shimmer in the Between,>> she argues. <<One moment you dismiss the past, the next you wear it as a badge. Is that a foundation of dissonance, or is it the difference between what you are and what you let others see?>> She considers the words a moment, then adds, <<You are as full of sound and fury as you appear. Fearsome.>> It might be a compliment. The Shakespeare is turned on its ear. He signifies something.

What does she want to know? <<What do you eat?>> No. She's not asking his diet. <<What feeds you in this life?>> She offers up a vision of a nightmarish world full of death after gruesome death. People doing banal, superficial, meaningless things. And, instead of horror, what she feels is an onerous sort of malaise. But not right now. Not in the slightest. The snarl rolls down her spine in a shiver. She continues to walk along the wet sand, leaving a trail of footprints behind her to hunt. At least until the waves stretch their fingers in to steal away the story of her passing.

He huffs. He slinks. He burns. She lifts her gaze to the grey discordance of the sky. Back down to him. He demands more. Promises he'll take it either way. That's when she conjures up the will to reach out to the fire of his fur, intending to drag her fingertips backward against the lay of that fur. He can be dominant, she can be reckless. It somehow works. Like a jarring chord that the ear needs to resolve. <<Everyone around me dies badly, de la Vega. You will too.>> she promises with an uncanny warmth to her words. <<Perhaps more badly than most. But maybe that is what you want most.>>

A wave rushes further in than the others, past the creature of nightmare to splash up her bare calves and wet the fabric of her dress. She simply continues to take one wet step at a time. <<The rest you'll have to take.>> Was that a challenge?

The touch of her fingers, counter to the way his fur lies; and it is fur that her hand touches, rather than scorching flame. It's warm; the outer layer coarse, and the undercoat soft. Old injuries can be felt, depending on where her hand roves, and despite a brief prickling of hackles, he does allow it. To a point. Like an old dog with a younger, more impetuous animal bent on testing its limits.

<<And you avoid each and every one of my questions as though you wish very much for me to drag them out of you,>> replies that whisper-soft voice. Perhaps it's the water, still furling and unfurling from the shore. Perhaps the wind, scrawling the turbulent clouds across a slate grey sky. <<And make it hurt.>> The beast is in no rush; when the girl in the white dress retreats up the beach, it follows in the wet footprints she leaves behind. Each massive paw is easily as big as one of her hands, and by the way it moves and the way it's built, it could easily make up any distance she puts between them in a sudden burst of speed.

<<I think you will find me hard to kill, Miss Price.>> Amusement in the flare and gutter of flame; sound and fury, indeed. <<Many have tried.>>

It pauses, the wolf, at her challenge, and seems to consider the words for a moment. Then prowls in closer. Closer, no longer moving at a slow slink but a trot and then a run, until it's within range to lunge at the girl and attempt to bring her to ground with a flash of claws and steak knife teeth, driving her into the wet sand and surf with a snarl.

She doesn't push it with the tracing of fingers through fur. A twisting path from haunch to shoulder is enough, coarse fur rubbed between finger and thumb. She is quite aware of the raised hackles. But it begs the question: is that why she did it in the first place?

Harper's laughter plays out into the wind at the hushed accusation; it's a discordant combination of dark amusement and impetuous challenge. <<You are one to talk. If I avoid your questions, you twist mine until your answers are questions themselves. I think we deserve each other. >>

And make it hurt.

She stops, turns, carefully meets the eyes of the dark dire wolf. There is no lack of awareness about body language and dominance in canids. Her actions again seem to have more than one purpose. <<I think at least I know one thing about you, Javier. You want to make it hurt. What I haven't determined is if you want me to want that, too.> Nuances.

She'll find him hard to kill? She pivots and starts walking once again, turning her back on the creature of nightmares and the man behind its eyes. <<Oh, it's not nearly so straightforward as that. And certainly I don't long for it.>> Death. Many have tried. <<I don't doubt that at all. But you're far too stubborn and arrogant ...>> The words are interrupted in a sudden, violent, untamed dance that easily takes Harper from her feet to her back in the wet, sucking sand, the air knocked from her lungs so it's strangely silent. Is it possible that such a take-down could happen without claws ripping skin and fabric? And that doesn't even factor in those teeth.

When she regains the ability to breathe, presumably pinned, her breaths are heavy as the oxygen catches up to the need for it, her chest rising and falling, some of the blood on the dress hers now, decorating the once-white muslin further. It's not at all about the pain in this moment. Maybe in the midst of the adrenalin, pain isn't so much a factor. She can't refrain from shivering as she finishes, the words wobbly as she watches lupine features, <<... to die easily.>>

<<I imagine we'll have more than enough time to figure that out,>> follows her words about pain, her uncertainty about her role in it. Those golden eyes trace her form faithfully through the light mist that rolls off the water, like pinpricks of light in the muzzy gloom.

And then the heat of him wrestling her to the sand, blade-tipped claws scuffled against her shoulder, her hip; shredding her pretty dress, carving furrows in her flesh where hot blood wells up like a crimson tide. His huge muzzle at her throat, rows of serrated knives caressed against soft skin, threatening but not breaking open the mighty carotid pulsing strong beneath her jaw. They remain thus for what seems like minutes, hours. The heat of the wolf, the scent of it; like a forest burned to the ground, ash and char and ruin. The inexorable sea dampening them with spray, and the wind buffeting her dark hair about her cheek, and her stained dress about her knees, and the gutter and burst of flames fed and starved by that wind.

Finally, <<Your silence speaks louder than your words, my dear.>> And in the blink of an eye, the link is severed. The sea, the sand, degenerate into a fractal tesselation of scattered noise and light, and the wolf is no longer a wolf, but a man. Seated across from Harper at a hole in the wall cafe with his hand around hers and his cup of coffee cooling beside him. It's raining, as ever it is here, and they're playing some sad sack country song on the radio. And, "Do I need to let you go, Miss Price?" How long have they been here, anyway?

Time to figure that out tangles threat and promise in what is apparently thematic for the unlikely pair, either on the shore of Ruiz's consciousness or in seats at a small bistro table.

Her shoulder, then. Her hip. And the knowledge that her throat was probably harder to keep intact than it would have been to tear open with unfathomable teeth. She finds her fingers tangled roughly in fur in a protest that makes not a ripple. The hot breath holds her hostage for an immeasurable span of time while the waves ebb and flow, the wind screams beside the ears. She breathes in that burnt scent, lets it sting her lungs as the moments stretch out in their apogee. Her actions. Her words.

In the space of a blink, Harper finds herself back in the chair she never left, pupils dilated, lips parted with quick breaths that serve no purpose in Maude's. Something flashes in those brown eyes and she drags the nails of the hand in Ruiz's slowly over his palm and down to the tips of his fingers before pulling it back and settling against the back of her chair, both hands dropping to her lap beneath the table. "You're right," she intones low, soft, her expression evolving almost too quickly to watch. So quickly that sanity might be questioned. It's just not how she ought to look in this moment. "The coffee here is something." No, she didn't have coffee, but the statement stands. How she could go from wet, torn, bloodied and completely at the mercy of a nightmare to pleasant and playful speaks to her mind, the game she plays, and the figure she presents.

She frowns; it is a faint marring of her brows, a tightening of her lips as she glances up toward a speaker as if the music had somehow insulted her. Does he need to let her go? "I think you just did, Captain de la Vega. You really ought to do something about those wipers."

And the police captain seated there opposite her, utter quietude in his posture, and a gleam in his eyes. Apogee in the time they spent there on that distant shore, spun further and further out from the light. Perigee as she comes back to him; and he to her, in a decaying orbit of pupils adjusting to the light, and breath evening out and becoming rhythmic again. He drinks her in, then drinks his coffee; the latter with far less relish. Not the least of which because it's gone cold.

"It's not bad. But the company's better." His eyes crease with a smile, and the dimple appears ever so briefly before it's gone again. He doesn't protest the release of his hand, but simply checks his watch, digs a crumpled bill out of his wallet to pay for both their drinks, and starts to his feet with a soft grunt. Joints acting up, perhaps. The betrayals a body begins to inflict as time marches on.

Before he turns to depart, the heat and the sharp scent of him brought in close to her, and his mouth not quite touched to her ear. A growl pitched low into it, "La próxima vez, no seré tan indulgente." And then he pulls away, hands jammed into the pockets of his hoodie as he prowls slouch-shouldered for the door without so much as a farewell.