Fic Outtakes - Something Called Honor
Jun. 9th, 2019 08:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
argentum_lsAfter over three years of working on it, I'm finally wrapping up Something Called Honor. This story met a number of milestones for me, including: being the longest one I've ever written (over 73,000 words posted and another 5-10 needed); being a third story in a trilogy (admittedly it wasn't a planned trilogy) (it's also technically story #5); being in the top 5 of all my works by hits, kudos, comments, and subscriptions; being the most complicated story (it was, as mentioned elsewhere, written entirely out of order).
That whole out-of-order thing was an experience because a number of scenes written in the early stages ended up turning into very wordy placeholders in later stages, and had to either be cut entirely or extensively/entirely rewritten. As one would expect. Since I'm the kind of person who is fascinated by out takes and alternate cuts, I thought I'd post some of SCH's.
In earlier drafts, there were several scenes of Jo and Henry talking on the phone or laying in bed talking. All of these were cut because they didn't go anywhere. This one, in fact, ends in the middle of a sentence. It's set between chapters 12 and 13.
Jo rolled over, curling an arm up under her head. Her eyes were adjusted to the dark enough to make out the shape of Henry's head on the pillow next to her. The rest of his presence reinforced what she saw. His weight on the bed and the steady in-and-out of his breath already had the comfort of familiarity and the faint scent of his body assured her that he was quite real. She hated to disturb him, but she needed to talk. "Henry, are you awake?"
"As much as you are," he answered. His voice was sleep-roughened, but held none of the dreaminess or irritation that indicated someone who'd been awakened. So, he'd been lying there too, unable to wind down enough to drift off. "I imagine we are mulling over the same issues."
"You mean Tommy?" She sighed. She barely knew the kid and here she was lying awake worrying about him. "I keep thinking: what if he is Immortal? What if he's one of them?" She tried not to make the pronoun sound like a dirty word, with limited success. "Is there some kind of procedure here? A protocol?" The unfamiliar pillow pressed against the earring studs she wore to bed. She shifted, searching for a more comfortable way to position herself, only distantly aware that the real cause of her discomfort might not be the jewelry. "And how can I be responsible for introducing him to it?"
Henry must have been pondering the same questions because he had an answer right away. "It is our responsibility as caregivers to be sure he receives an education that is best suited to his needs. As it stands, among the people with whom he currently has interaction, we are the best suited to recognizing what those needs are. There is no need to feel guilty about that."
Jo allowed a small smile, though the tension in her chest only wound tighter. "Only you could make killer training sound so reasonable."
"Warriors, Jo. They're warriors. The fact that modern society doesn't recognize their cause doesn't change that. At the risk of sounding juvenile, their Game did come first."
She lapsed into silence for a moment. So, that's how he justified it. A part of her worried that he'd found a way, and a smaller part worried that she was envious as him having found a way. Her consolation had to be different. "I don't know. Maybe I didn't see anything unusual. Maybe this case has me so primed to see Immortals everywhere that I'm inventing them now. Next thing you know I'll be accusing [Detective P] of being Immortal." That possibility elicited a small snort at her own ridiculousness.
In the darkness, Henry's hand groped out from under the covers to find her head, traveling down so he could run the backs of his fingers along her cheek. "Jo, you are the last person who can be accused of being prone to jumping to conclusions. While I'll concede that we should proceed with care, I have no reason to doubt that your assessment of what you saw was accurate."
"Yeah," she said, "but what if it wasn't? How can we know?" She squeezed her eyes shut and sparklers burst behind her eyelids. "I don't think it's something we can just ask him. If he's not, we look like lunatics. If he is, he might not know—or might not have the vocabulary to tell us. He's so young." The idea of a kid becoming Immortal was so hard to wrap her head around. Richie was young, yes, but he was also a fully-grown adult. Who would allow a child to become Immortal?
"We don't know how old he is," Henry pointed out.
"That's true. There're no records—"
Henry cleared his throat and Jo heard in it a "you know what I mean" she couldn't ignore.
"He can't be that old
Here's one of the wordy placeholders. In a very early draft of the story, this was chapter 13. The published draft is, instead, an entirely different conversation between Jo and Liam. This was cut and a new one written because I realized during edits that, where Jo & Richie were emotionally at this point in the story, this conversation was extremely out of character. As I toldidelthoughts, the reason I can't figure out how to move the story past this scene is because this conversation wouldn't happen.
Richie almost didn't answer his phone when it rang. He was here to have fun, and whichever one of his students or students' parents needed to talk to him right now could leave a message. He only glanced at the screen out of habit, and when he did his stomach fell. After their last encounter, Jo wouldn't be calling him unless it was an emergency—which likely meant Henry.
"Hello?" He couldn't keep the suspicion out of his voice when he answered, and he caught Emily giving him a questioning look. "It's a friend," he mouthed to her. "I'm gonna—" He waved vaguely toward a small strand of trees nearby, then headed toward them. The beginning strains of music from the first stage to go live thrummed through the air, doing nothing to quiet the chatter of the crowd in the park. In the copse he at least hoped to be able to hear what Jo wanted. Emily would hold their place in line at the beverage stand until he got back, as long as he wasn't going to be asked to go fish Henry out of the East River.
"Hey," Jo answered. "I'm sorry to bother you." She paused and a tapping came from her end of the connection like a pen being drummed against a desk. "I had hoped you'd answer a couple questions for me."
A glance at his watch confirmed that Jo should be at work right now, which meant she was looking for work-related information. Richie sighed. "Why? So you can throw the answers back in my face?"
"Ouch. I deserved that." More tapping. "It's something I need to check for the Drake case."
He could have hung up on her; he probably should have hung up on her—except the case concerned him too, and if she was going to ask him for help, then maybe she'd also be willing to share what she learned. He stepped closer to the tree, trying to put it trunk between him and the nearest cluster of other people also making use of its shade. "I'm listening."
"Did I catch you at a bad time? I hear music."
She was stalling. Was she that nervous about whatever she wanted to ask?
"I'm at the music fest. If you have a question, you'd better ask it before my girlfriend gets back." And before the band started up for real. He was already having trouble hearing her, even with a hand cupped over his off ear.
Emily had advanced almost to the front of the line. She turned and waved at him; Richie pointed again to the phone and made a face. That earned a smile and an understanding shake of her head. The end of her ponytail bounced against the nape of her neck, and Richie found himself wishing he could sweep the ponytail out of the way and kiss the spot it touched instead.
"You have a girlfriend?" Jo asked.
"Yes. Well, working on it. It's really new. And, before you ask, no, she doesn't know anything, and I'd really like to keep it that way until I know where this is going."
He could almost hear Jo's disapproval in the slowing of the tapping pen. Of course she'd want him to tell everything. She'd think the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth was first date material. Look at how she was treating him, though—and she'd had reason to stick around and ask questions.
"Jo?" Richie prompted. Emily had reached the front of the line.
"OK, yeah. The question." Jo took a deep breath and the tapping stopped. Her next question came softly enough that Richie had to press the phone hard to his ear to hear it it. "How does someone become…like you?"
"Like me?" It took him a second to figure out what she meant. Being here at the festival with Emily had allowed him to forget for a little while that he was anything but a normal guy. The security rules for the festival had even required him to leave his sword at home, which left him able to walk around in nothing more than a muscle shirt and a pair of cargo shorts. "Oh." Of course. He scrubbed a hand over his face. "Someone doesn't. We're born with the potential. It's either there, or it isn't."
They'd touched on this topic enough that Jo easily filled in the gap. "Which is triggered when you die. What happens if you don't die?"
"Then it doesn't happen. What's this about, Jo? You don't think that someone's trying to become…you know." Being direct would be so much easier. Talking like this made it sound like he was ashamed of his Immortality, and he wasn't. He had plenty of complaints about the problems that Immortality brought to his life, such as the sheer effort that went into forming a relationship with someone when you had to lie about everything that went into the groundwork. Emily smiled at him again, and Richie's chest tightened.
On those occasions when he started to question whether the Immortality was worth it, he only had to remind himself that he'd been killed by a mugger at the age of 19—an unpredictable, unavoidable, and perfectly normal crime. He'd already died once, which is all most people got. Everything after that was the bonus round. Vetting people before he dumped his reality on them was a necessary step in getting to keep the bonus round going, especially if there really were mortals out there again who wanted to control the Game.
"I don't know. I just feel like I'm missing something important." Jo dropped into silence, during which Emily handed over the cash in her hand and accepted the two cups she'd ordered. "So, cancer, car accident, poisoning…as long as someone with the potential dies, they'll come back?"
Richie squeezed his eyes shut briefly so that he couldn't see Emily approaching. "Actually, no. It's gotta be violent. I gotta go. Say 'hi' to Henry for me." He thumbed off the call and turned to accept the cup that Emily was holding out.
"That looked pretty serious. Everything OK?" Now that she had a hand free, Emily adjusted the messenger bag slung across her shoulder—it had slipped down while she was walking—then took a long draw of her lemonade. "Ahhh, that's nice." Glancing up at the branches waving overhead, she added, "And good call on the shade. Today's hotter than I expected."
The sun that had been toying with providing springtime for the past month had chosen the day of the festival to bring on full summer. They'd awakened that morning to the beginnings of a muggy heat that abated when a brief thunderstorm passed through, then came right back with more degrees and less humidity.
Less than a minute out of the air-conditioned truck and the surface of the plastic cup was already drenched in condensation. His was also lemonade, a choice they were stuck with because Emily wasn't 21 yet and Richie wasn't supposed to be. His desire to not lie included a desire to not give Emily reason to think he did, which meant holding back the number of fake IDs he had—which only made him more aware of how much he wanted a beer.
He offered Emily a grin. Telling her that the call was "nothing" or "not important" would only make her suspicious, since he wouldn't have spent so much time on it otherwise. But if she pried, no matter how innocently, into the topic, he'd have to start lying. So, that meant it was time to dust off the old skills on telling a version of the truth. "That was my friend Jo." Pausing, he considered taking advantage of the ambiguity of the name. That's also lying, he chided himself. "J-O. I also have a friend J-O-E. She…J-O…had a problem she needed some advice on." In lieu of pumping his fist, he took a big drag on the straw. The lemonade chilled a path down the inside of his chest that did feel good. He could do this.
To his surprise, Emily didn't seem bothered by him talking to another woman. Surprise, and relief. Until she spoke. "You know," she said, thoughtfully, "you never mention your friends. I was starting to think you didn't have any." She slapped a hand over her mouth. "Oh my god, was that mean? That was mean. I didn't mean it like that. You have Matt, and he's your friend, so obviously you have friends."
"It's OK," Richie answered before she could convince herself that she'd hurt him. "I've moved around a lot. Most of the people I knew when I was a kid aren't in the picture anymore." The truth! he thought, this time allowing a mental fist pump. He'd managed to tell her something that was completely true. She didn't need to know that they weren't in the picture because they thought he was dead. And Methos was—who the hell knew what Methos was? If Emily wanted to think he was Richie's friend, then he wasn't going to stop her.
They weren't supposed to be at this question, though. They weren't even two months into their relationship, and most of that time had been spent with her at college and him at work. He was supposed to have another three or four months before the hard questions started.
He hoped the sped-up time line didn't have any connection to how fast he was falling for her.
"Yeah, that happens," she was saying with an understanding nod. "I've lived in the same state my whole life—ended up going to college with half the people I suffered through high school with—and I still don't talk to most of them. Hey, are you OK?"
Richie shook himself back to the moment. "Yeah, you just got me thinking. So much has changed. Sometimes it's hard to wrap my head around it all."
"So when am I going to get to meet these friends? The non-Matt friends, that is." She peered around the crowd as if one or more of them were simply waiting to be acknowledged before coming over to join them. "Sunblock?"
The random word threw Richie for a second before he saw that she'd pulled a bottle of sunblock out of her messenger bag and was offering it to him.
"No thanks," he replied, waving it off. "I don't burn that easily." Minus one point for a half-truth, he thought. He did burn that easily. Then he healed. Fortunately, his Quickening didn't interpret a tan as damage that needed to be healed, so he wasn't going to be stuck with an eternity of looking like a larva. Still not worth the waste of sunblock.
Emily looked dubious, then offered the bottle to him again. "Well I could use some. My shoulders are already starting to feel a little crispy. I have a competition next weekend, and believe me, those are hard enough without factoring in a sunburn."
Richie winced in sympathy. The parts of her shoulders the straps of her tank top didn't cover did have a golden glow to them, but Richie wasn't completely obtuse—this offer had nothing to do with sunburns. It only took him two tries to see it. He set his cup down at the base of the tree and dried his hand on his shorts. "Sure. As for Jo…and Joe and Henry—" And Liam. They were all too old. For someone his apparent age to have one or two friends from an older generation wasn't unheard of. He only had older friends. Methos was right; Richie needed to spend more time with people the age he was supposed to be. "They're mostly work-related friends. [Insert some other feeble explanation that doesn't insult everyone too much.]"
Emily had turned, so Richie couldn't see her face. The way she leaned back toward him at least suggested she didn't see anything suspicious in his answer. She removed the messenger bag, then tugged the straps off her shoulders. "There's no hurry," she said. "We have plenty of time."
"Sure," he agreed. He did, anyway. Her shoulders were thick with muscle, and as Richie rubbed the sunblock into them, he made himself enjoy the moment instead of dwelling on where their relationship could be headed.
From on stage came a long squeal of feedback and then a mash of an announcement.
"Oh, sounds like the first band's about to start. Ready?" she asked, settling her clothes back into position.
Richie smiled, and lied, "For anything."
Unlike the other two, this one was a false start and a tonal mismatch. It's an excised middle from, what is now, chapter 6. As you can read, Jo is a lot more combative than she should be at this point, which is making Richie a lot more defensive, which ran the scene into the ground.
"For all I know, you changed your mind and doubled back afterward. Or called him as soon as the witnesses were gone and set up a time. I don't really know how it works and I don't care when I'm stuck dealing with the result. Someone cut off this guy's head, and right now you're the top suspect."
"I didn't do this," Richie repeated, slower. All his hopes that he could get Jo to separate the Game and his role in it from her duties as a police officer vanished under the force of her accusation. He'd thought she was coming around, too. She'd asked the right questions, seemed to understand the answers, and had seen first hand how the law broke down when people came equipped with a Get Out of Jail Free card. "I'm not going to fight someone unless I absolutely have to."
"So maybe you 'absolutely had to' this time," she responded. "Next you're going to tell me that if I had that—" She pointed at the sword that was mounted on the wall behind Richie's desk— "tested, I wouldn't find any of Drake's blood on it."
"You wouldn't. Because there isn't. Look, why would I start lying to you now?"
"Oh, I don't know—because you went too far and you know it? I ran your file, you know. Richard Ryan. You've always had trouble knowing how to behave. Your juvenile records were sealed, so I'm going to take a guess what's in them: larceny, breaking and entering, fencing stolen goods, possession—"
"I didn't do drugs," Richie responded coldly. "Saw too many people go down that road and get torn up in the process. No way I'd want to follow them. Alright, so I was a thief. You already knew that. I walked away from that the first chance I had."
"Did you? Because your adult record was a lot more forthcoming. You were arrested on a string of homicides across Spain and France—"
"And released, cleared of all charges," Richie countered. "That was a frame job."
"—and three years later, you were arrested for breaking into a museum. I suppose that was a frame job, too?"
Richie slumped back into his chair. Hearing his history laid out like that almost made him see Jo's point of view. Only that he knew the reasons behind those arrests kept him from giving up and letting her arrest him again, which she clearly wanted to do. "So you got me on a fifteen year old charge. Got anything more recent?"
"How would I know? Seems like 'Richard Ryan' was killed in a car accident a few months later. It's anybody's guess what name you invented then."
"Redstone," he answered, then bit his tongue before he gave her more. Richard Redstone had been an identity he used only in Europe, but if Jo bothered to run his records, she'd find more charges to hold over him. "I still didn't kill Drake."
"Then who did?"
"How would I know? This is a big city, and I don't have the foggiest idea who all's in it. Could've been someone passing through like Drake was." He wasn't convincing her, and he really didn't want to have to call up Emily and tell her their weekend plans were off because he'd been arrested for murder. Their relationship was still too new to survive that. Hell, most relationships wouldn't survive that. So, if denial wasn't working, then maybe blunt would. "Has it occurred to you that every time I face someone, there's a 50-50 chance that I'll be the one in the next picture?" He stabbed his finger onto the photo. The force of the action sent the glossy paper slipping off the another one that had been below it. He hadn't realized the folder held multiple pictures. "The only way to win is not to play," he finished. The War Games paraphrase fell from his lips limply because he was too engrossed in the details of the new picture.
"You'd know," Jo answered.
"Jo, Drake wasn't killed in a fight. Someone ambushed him. Before you accuse me of resorting to cheating, let me remind you that we can't sneak up on each other."
That whole out-of-order thing was an experience because a number of scenes written in the early stages ended up turning into very wordy placeholders in later stages, and had to either be cut entirely or extensively/entirely rewritten. As one would expect. Since I'm the kind of person who is fascinated by out takes and alternate cuts, I thought I'd post some of SCH's.
In earlier drafts, there were several scenes of Jo and Henry talking on the phone or laying in bed talking. All of these were cut because they didn't go anywhere. This one, in fact, ends in the middle of a sentence. It's set between chapters 12 and 13.
Jo rolled over, curling an arm up under her head. Her eyes were adjusted to the dark enough to make out the shape of Henry's head on the pillow next to her. The rest of his presence reinforced what she saw. His weight on the bed and the steady in-and-out of his breath already had the comfort of familiarity and the faint scent of his body assured her that he was quite real. She hated to disturb him, but she needed to talk. "Henry, are you awake?"
"As much as you are," he answered. His voice was sleep-roughened, but held none of the dreaminess or irritation that indicated someone who'd been awakened. So, he'd been lying there too, unable to wind down enough to drift off. "I imagine we are mulling over the same issues."
"You mean Tommy?" She sighed. She barely knew the kid and here she was lying awake worrying about him. "I keep thinking: what if he is Immortal? What if he's one of them?" She tried not to make the pronoun sound like a dirty word, with limited success. "Is there some kind of procedure here? A protocol?" The unfamiliar pillow pressed against the earring studs she wore to bed. She shifted, searching for a more comfortable way to position herself, only distantly aware that the real cause of her discomfort might not be the jewelry. "And how can I be responsible for introducing him to it?"
Henry must have been pondering the same questions because he had an answer right away. "It is our responsibility as caregivers to be sure he receives an education that is best suited to his needs. As it stands, among the people with whom he currently has interaction, we are the best suited to recognizing what those needs are. There is no need to feel guilty about that."
Jo allowed a small smile, though the tension in her chest only wound tighter. "Only you could make killer training sound so reasonable."
"Warriors, Jo. They're warriors. The fact that modern society doesn't recognize their cause doesn't change that. At the risk of sounding juvenile, their Game did come first."
She lapsed into silence for a moment. So, that's how he justified it. A part of her worried that he'd found a way, and a smaller part worried that she was envious as him having found a way. Her consolation had to be different. "I don't know. Maybe I didn't see anything unusual. Maybe this case has me so primed to see Immortals everywhere that I'm inventing them now. Next thing you know I'll be accusing [Detective P] of being Immortal." That possibility elicited a small snort at her own ridiculousness.
In the darkness, Henry's hand groped out from under the covers to find her head, traveling down so he could run the backs of his fingers along her cheek. "Jo, you are the last person who can be accused of being prone to jumping to conclusions. While I'll concede that we should proceed with care, I have no reason to doubt that your assessment of what you saw was accurate."
"Yeah," she said, "but what if it wasn't? How can we know?" She squeezed her eyes shut and sparklers burst behind her eyelids. "I don't think it's something we can just ask him. If he's not, we look like lunatics. If he is, he might not know—or might not have the vocabulary to tell us. He's so young." The idea of a kid becoming Immortal was so hard to wrap her head around. Richie was young, yes, but he was also a fully-grown adult. Who would allow a child to become Immortal?
"We don't know how old he is," Henry pointed out.
"That's true. There're no records—"
Henry cleared his throat and Jo heard in it a "you know what I mean" she couldn't ignore.
"He can't be that old
Here's one of the wordy placeholders. In a very early draft of the story, this was chapter 13. The published draft is, instead, an entirely different conversation between Jo and Liam. This was cut and a new one written because I realized during edits that, where Jo & Richie were emotionally at this point in the story, this conversation was extremely out of character. As I told
idelthoughts, the reason I can't figure out how to move the story past this scene is because this conversation wouldn't happen.Richie almost didn't answer his phone when it rang. He was here to have fun, and whichever one of his students or students' parents needed to talk to him right now could leave a message. He only glanced at the screen out of habit, and when he did his stomach fell. After their last encounter, Jo wouldn't be calling him unless it was an emergency—which likely meant Henry.
"Hello?" He couldn't keep the suspicion out of his voice when he answered, and he caught Emily giving him a questioning look. "It's a friend," he mouthed to her. "I'm gonna—" He waved vaguely toward a small strand of trees nearby, then headed toward them. The beginning strains of music from the first stage to go live thrummed through the air, doing nothing to quiet the chatter of the crowd in the park. In the copse he at least hoped to be able to hear what Jo wanted. Emily would hold their place in line at the beverage stand until he got back, as long as he wasn't going to be asked to go fish Henry out of the East River.
"Hey," Jo answered. "I'm sorry to bother you." She paused and a tapping came from her end of the connection like a pen being drummed against a desk. "I had hoped you'd answer a couple questions for me."
A glance at his watch confirmed that Jo should be at work right now, which meant she was looking for work-related information. Richie sighed. "Why? So you can throw the answers back in my face?"
"Ouch. I deserved that." More tapping. "It's something I need to check for the Drake case."
He could have hung up on her; he probably should have hung up on her—except the case concerned him too, and if she was going to ask him for help, then maybe she'd also be willing to share what she learned. He stepped closer to the tree, trying to put it trunk between him and the nearest cluster of other people also making use of its shade. "I'm listening."
"Did I catch you at a bad time? I hear music."
She was stalling. Was she that nervous about whatever she wanted to ask?
"I'm at the music fest. If you have a question, you'd better ask it before my girlfriend gets back." And before the band started up for real. He was already having trouble hearing her, even with a hand cupped over his off ear.
Emily had advanced almost to the front of the line. She turned and waved at him; Richie pointed again to the phone and made a face. That earned a smile and an understanding shake of her head. The end of her ponytail bounced against the nape of her neck, and Richie found himself wishing he could sweep the ponytail out of the way and kiss the spot it touched instead.
"You have a girlfriend?" Jo asked.
"Yes. Well, working on it. It's really new. And, before you ask, no, she doesn't know anything, and I'd really like to keep it that way until I know where this is going."
He could almost hear Jo's disapproval in the slowing of the tapping pen. Of course she'd want him to tell everything. She'd think the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth was first date material. Look at how she was treating him, though—and she'd had reason to stick around and ask questions.
"Jo?" Richie prompted. Emily had reached the front of the line.
"OK, yeah. The question." Jo took a deep breath and the tapping stopped. Her next question came softly enough that Richie had to press the phone hard to his ear to hear it it. "How does someone become…like you?"
"Like me?" It took him a second to figure out what she meant. Being here at the festival with Emily had allowed him to forget for a little while that he was anything but a normal guy. The security rules for the festival had even required him to leave his sword at home, which left him able to walk around in nothing more than a muscle shirt and a pair of cargo shorts. "Oh." Of course. He scrubbed a hand over his face. "Someone doesn't. We're born with the potential. It's either there, or it isn't."
They'd touched on this topic enough that Jo easily filled in the gap. "Which is triggered when you die. What happens if you don't die?"
"Then it doesn't happen. What's this about, Jo? You don't think that someone's trying to become…you know." Being direct would be so much easier. Talking like this made it sound like he was ashamed of his Immortality, and he wasn't. He had plenty of complaints about the problems that Immortality brought to his life, such as the sheer effort that went into forming a relationship with someone when you had to lie about everything that went into the groundwork. Emily smiled at him again, and Richie's chest tightened.
On those occasions when he started to question whether the Immortality was worth it, he only had to remind himself that he'd been killed by a mugger at the age of 19—an unpredictable, unavoidable, and perfectly normal crime. He'd already died once, which is all most people got. Everything after that was the bonus round. Vetting people before he dumped his reality on them was a necessary step in getting to keep the bonus round going, especially if there really were mortals out there again who wanted to control the Game.
"I don't know. I just feel like I'm missing something important." Jo dropped into silence, during which Emily handed over the cash in her hand and accepted the two cups she'd ordered. "So, cancer, car accident, poisoning…as long as someone with the potential dies, they'll come back?"
Richie squeezed his eyes shut briefly so that he couldn't see Emily approaching. "Actually, no. It's gotta be violent. I gotta go. Say 'hi' to Henry for me." He thumbed off the call and turned to accept the cup that Emily was holding out.
"That looked pretty serious. Everything OK?" Now that she had a hand free, Emily adjusted the messenger bag slung across her shoulder—it had slipped down while she was walking—then took a long draw of her lemonade. "Ahhh, that's nice." Glancing up at the branches waving overhead, she added, "And good call on the shade. Today's hotter than I expected."
The sun that had been toying with providing springtime for the past month had chosen the day of the festival to bring on full summer. They'd awakened that morning to the beginnings of a muggy heat that abated when a brief thunderstorm passed through, then came right back with more degrees and less humidity.
Less than a minute out of the air-conditioned truck and the surface of the plastic cup was already drenched in condensation. His was also lemonade, a choice they were stuck with because Emily wasn't 21 yet and Richie wasn't supposed to be. His desire to not lie included a desire to not give Emily reason to think he did, which meant holding back the number of fake IDs he had—which only made him more aware of how much he wanted a beer.
He offered Emily a grin. Telling her that the call was "nothing" or "not important" would only make her suspicious, since he wouldn't have spent so much time on it otherwise. But if she pried, no matter how innocently, into the topic, he'd have to start lying. So, that meant it was time to dust off the old skills on telling a version of the truth. "That was my friend Jo." Pausing, he considered taking advantage of the ambiguity of the name. That's also lying, he chided himself. "J-O. I also have a friend J-O-E. She…J-O…had a problem she needed some advice on." In lieu of pumping his fist, he took a big drag on the straw. The lemonade chilled a path down the inside of his chest that did feel good. He could do this.
To his surprise, Emily didn't seem bothered by him talking to another woman. Surprise, and relief. Until she spoke. "You know," she said, thoughtfully, "you never mention your friends. I was starting to think you didn't have any." She slapped a hand over her mouth. "Oh my god, was that mean? That was mean. I didn't mean it like that. You have Matt, and he's your friend, so obviously you have friends."
"It's OK," Richie answered before she could convince herself that she'd hurt him. "I've moved around a lot. Most of the people I knew when I was a kid aren't in the picture anymore." The truth! he thought, this time allowing a mental fist pump. He'd managed to tell her something that was completely true. She didn't need to know that they weren't in the picture because they thought he was dead. And Methos was—who the hell knew what Methos was? If Emily wanted to think he was Richie's friend, then he wasn't going to stop her.
They weren't supposed to be at this question, though. They weren't even two months into their relationship, and most of that time had been spent with her at college and him at work. He was supposed to have another three or four months before the hard questions started.
He hoped the sped-up time line didn't have any connection to how fast he was falling for her.
"Yeah, that happens," she was saying with an understanding nod. "I've lived in the same state my whole life—ended up going to college with half the people I suffered through high school with—and I still don't talk to most of them. Hey, are you OK?"
Richie shook himself back to the moment. "Yeah, you just got me thinking. So much has changed. Sometimes it's hard to wrap my head around it all."
"So when am I going to get to meet these friends? The non-Matt friends, that is." She peered around the crowd as if one or more of them were simply waiting to be acknowledged before coming over to join them. "Sunblock?"
The random word threw Richie for a second before he saw that she'd pulled a bottle of sunblock out of her messenger bag and was offering it to him.
"No thanks," he replied, waving it off. "I don't burn that easily." Minus one point for a half-truth, he thought. He did burn that easily. Then he healed. Fortunately, his Quickening didn't interpret a tan as damage that needed to be healed, so he wasn't going to be stuck with an eternity of looking like a larva. Still not worth the waste of sunblock.
Emily looked dubious, then offered the bottle to him again. "Well I could use some. My shoulders are already starting to feel a little crispy. I have a competition next weekend, and believe me, those are hard enough without factoring in a sunburn."
Richie winced in sympathy. The parts of her shoulders the straps of her tank top didn't cover did have a golden glow to them, but Richie wasn't completely obtuse—this offer had nothing to do with sunburns. It only took him two tries to see it. He set his cup down at the base of the tree and dried his hand on his shorts. "Sure. As for Jo…and Joe and Henry—" And Liam. They were all too old. For someone his apparent age to have one or two friends from an older generation wasn't unheard of. He only had older friends. Methos was right; Richie needed to spend more time with people the age he was supposed to be. "They're mostly work-related friends. [Insert some other feeble explanation that doesn't insult everyone too much.]"
Emily had turned, so Richie couldn't see her face. The way she leaned back toward him at least suggested she didn't see anything suspicious in his answer. She removed the messenger bag, then tugged the straps off her shoulders. "There's no hurry," she said. "We have plenty of time."
"Sure," he agreed. He did, anyway. Her shoulders were thick with muscle, and as Richie rubbed the sunblock into them, he made himself enjoy the moment instead of dwelling on where their relationship could be headed.
From on stage came a long squeal of feedback and then a mash of an announcement.
"Oh, sounds like the first band's about to start. Ready?" she asked, settling her clothes back into position.
Richie smiled, and lied, "For anything."
Unlike the other two, this one was a false start and a tonal mismatch. It's an excised middle from, what is now, chapter 6. As you can read, Jo is a lot more combative than she should be at this point, which is making Richie a lot more defensive, which ran the scene into the ground.
"For all I know, you changed your mind and doubled back afterward. Or called him as soon as the witnesses were gone and set up a time. I don't really know how it works and I don't care when I'm stuck dealing with the result. Someone cut off this guy's head, and right now you're the top suspect."
"I didn't do this," Richie repeated, slower. All his hopes that he could get Jo to separate the Game and his role in it from her duties as a police officer vanished under the force of her accusation. He'd thought she was coming around, too. She'd asked the right questions, seemed to understand the answers, and had seen first hand how the law broke down when people came equipped with a Get Out of Jail Free card. "I'm not going to fight someone unless I absolutely have to."
"So maybe you 'absolutely had to' this time," she responded. "Next you're going to tell me that if I had that—" She pointed at the sword that was mounted on the wall behind Richie's desk— "tested, I wouldn't find any of Drake's blood on it."
"You wouldn't. Because there isn't. Look, why would I start lying to you now?"
"Oh, I don't know—because you went too far and you know it? I ran your file, you know. Richard Ryan. You've always had trouble knowing how to behave. Your juvenile records were sealed, so I'm going to take a guess what's in them: larceny, breaking and entering, fencing stolen goods, possession—"
"I didn't do drugs," Richie responded coldly. "Saw too many people go down that road and get torn up in the process. No way I'd want to follow them. Alright, so I was a thief. You already knew that. I walked away from that the first chance I had."
"Did you? Because your adult record was a lot more forthcoming. You were arrested on a string of homicides across Spain and France—"
"And released, cleared of all charges," Richie countered. "That was a frame job."
"—and three years later, you were arrested for breaking into a museum. I suppose that was a frame job, too?"
Richie slumped back into his chair. Hearing his history laid out like that almost made him see Jo's point of view. Only that he knew the reasons behind those arrests kept him from giving up and letting her arrest him again, which she clearly wanted to do. "So you got me on a fifteen year old charge. Got anything more recent?"
"How would I know? Seems like 'Richard Ryan' was killed in a car accident a few months later. It's anybody's guess what name you invented then."
"Redstone," he answered, then bit his tongue before he gave her more. Richard Redstone had been an identity he used only in Europe, but if Jo bothered to run his records, she'd find more charges to hold over him. "I still didn't kill Drake."
"Then who did?"
"How would I know? This is a big city, and I don't have the foggiest idea who all's in it. Could've been someone passing through like Drake was." He wasn't convincing her, and he really didn't want to have to call up Emily and tell her their weekend plans were off because he'd been arrested for murder. Their relationship was still too new to survive that. Hell, most relationships wouldn't survive that. So, if denial wasn't working, then maybe blunt would. "Has it occurred to you that every time I face someone, there's a 50-50 chance that I'll be the one in the next picture?" He stabbed his finger onto the photo. The force of the action sent the glossy paper slipping off the another one that had been below it. He hadn't realized the folder held multiple pictures. "The only way to win is not to play," he finished. The War Games paraphrase fell from his lips limply because he was too engrossed in the details of the new picture.
"You'd know," Jo answered.
"Jo, Drake wasn't killed in a fight. Someone ambushed him. Before you accuse me of resorting to cheating, let me remind you that we can't sneak up on each other."
no subject
Date: 2019-06-10 03:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-10 01:50 pm (UTC)Every time I close out another chapter on this fic, I boggle at how much longer it became.