Slow Play [Clarke]

[November]

A heavy hand lifted to his face, nails scratching at the skin beneath the thick strands of beard that coated his face, the glorious show of manliness a point of pride for the hulk of a man, and something of an identifying feature of his back in the big city, where most beards were trimmed short or, worse, shorn completely off, leaving a man’s face completely naked. Barer than a babe’s ***, his father had always said. It had always made him laugh, before. But the old man just wasn’t the same anymore, not since his wife had passed.

It had hit them both hard, and though Old Joe Smith tried his best to put on a brave face for the world, November knew the hurt that ate at him every single day. It was hard to pretend to be blind to the pain, when it had taken a fifty year old man of iron and made him look like a wad of chewed tobacco nearer to ninety than fifty. He hated seeing the old man like that, it hurt him almost as much as seeing the way his old lady had withered away, right before the both of them. And she’d been so damn young, too. Just thinking about her made his eyes sting, though he refused to acknowledge tears, keeping them in check by sheer force of will. He clenched his fist and let out an irritated breath.

He wasn’t sure if the little blonde would have remembered him, before. He’d seen her a time or two down here in the dark, and he’d known her the moment he’d caught the very first glimpse of her as she’d vanished around a corner into the dark of the catacombs. He would know those long legs anywhere, as often as he’d seen them in his dreams the past year. She was like his own elusive Snipe, a creature that had existed, and he was sure of it, but that the world had spent every day and every night ever since trying to convince him that it had all been some kind of a dream. He knew better, though. He knew that he wasn’t crazy, that he hadn’t made her up, and now, down here in this pit that he had honestly come to believe led into the mouth of Hell itself, he had found her again.

He’d even seen her face, and she’d seen him. He would have known that she’d be at the game yet again, even as she’d slipped up to him all cool and collected, that sparkling smile on those perfect teeth as she dipped her hand into his pocket, slipping that little scrap of paper down his pants like a sly little fox. Then she’d dashed off, leaving him standing and staring after her as she’d whipped around that corner again, leaving him with nothing but a flash of her golden mane and a lingering scent of honeyed cinnamon that burned at his brain like living fire.

He sighed, flexing his fingers as he watched the creatures shambling through the darkness of the mouth of the catacombs, where he’d set up camp next to the only exit.

She would have to leave, eventually, and when she did, he would be there waiting, as he had been most of the night. Then, he would have caught her, at last. The thought made him grin as he closed his fist loosely. Then, maybe, they could finish the date, as promised.

[Clarke]

wearing

There had once been a time when she had been afraid of the dark. She had believed that the shadows would come to life, their forms morphing until they became monstrous. She remembered sitting in bed one night, her back pressed against the wall, her eyes open and wide as she stared into the corner of her room, watching for any sign that something was lurking. The very second her eyes made her believe that something had begun to take shape, she screamed until her daddy came running, shotgun in hand. She had thought him a hero that night, because, with a flick of his fingers, he had bathed her room in a bright light that washed away the demon that had come for her.

Now, she lived a life of perpetual darkness. She could no longer risk the warmth of the sun against her skin, and she lived most of her life underground, trotting around with the dead and the unworthy. At some point in her life, she had taken a wrong turn, and God had forsaken her. She found it hard to hold onto her faith as she trudged through bone and blood, her hand curled around the grip of her handgun, her finger pressed tight to the trigger as the barrel cooled. In all of her years, she had never suspected that she would be the kind of woman that would ever take a life – and here she was, shrouded in shadow as she crept through dark, stale tunnels filled with the very monsters that she had feared so much as a young girl.

At first, Harrison had been the only good thing about her new life. He was that light that washed away the shadows when they threatened to overcome her and had quickly become her unsung hero. For a brief period of time, he had been the only one she bothered to speak to. Then she had stumbled into him. He had been unmistakable, with his hair wild and loose around his shoulders, his eyes stern as he swung his blade, muscles tight and controlled as the metal sliced through the ancients neck. There was no denying that power radiated from every inch of his body - nor was there any denying of the darkness that had taken him, as well.

The last time she had stood in November's presence was over a year ago, and she had been too foolish to stay. She still remembered the weight of his arms as they encased her small form and the way her heart had leaped into her throat when he gave her a smile full of promise and charm. He was the type of man that could have turned her into a kept woman, had she allowed him to lead her from the bar and into his bed. It was exactly that reason that had her pressing her lips to his cheek, whispering that she'd be right back before she disappeared into the night. She had even changed her number, just in case he had managed to track it down.

She had been foolish then.

Which brought her back to the present. She didn't understand what had possessed her to saunter up to him, fingers curled around a blank strip of paper that she had found littered on the decaying stone. She couldn't come with a single reason as to why she had pressed her hand to his abdomen and slipped the paper into his pocket. It was a game, of course, one that she had played a handful of times before she had met Jackson - and one that she never thought that she would play with him. Yet, when she had caught sight of him, it felt as if she had been graced with a second chance. God had given her a chance to right her wrong, and what a wrong it had been to have abandoned this specimen in the middle of a slow song. Hell, now that she thought about it, he probably hated her - if he remembered her at all. A man like that had to have a train of women lined up outside of his door, just waiting for him to flash them that perfect smile. She was just a Southern girl too far from home, drowning herself in tequila and wishing for that taste of adventure that she had been too afraid to grab.

"What a fool I was," she chuckled, the sound echoing off the damp stone as she took the corner that would lead her to the exit. She had only managed a few short steps, her mind encased in thoughts of the man she had left stranded not once - but twice - when she suddenly stopped. It was if her thoughts alone had the power to summon the man that haunted her, and she couldn't control the slow grin that curved on her rose painted lips. With a sweep of her hand through her golden mane, she added a little sway to her step as she closed the distance between them, thick brow arching in a teasing fashion.

"I'm beginning to think you're stalking me, sugar."

[November]

Another of the creatures had shambled too close, the undead thing catching sight of him and turning in his direction. It was mostly bone, its flesh long decayed away, leaving a skeletal thing behind to carry on the fight. As it approached, it picked up speed, long, skeletal arms raised before it, bony fingers twisted like talons as it opened its mouth, a hiss like air passing through dust and dirt left its throat as the fumes of ancient decay and a hundred years of dust belched from its dead lungs as he stood unmoving, his brow drawn low as the creature broke into a run, sure of its prey, sure of the kill. As it rushed headlong, it drew back an arm, prepared for a single strike at the mountainous man’s broad, muscled chest, a strike aimed for his heart.

At the last moment, the hands resting on the pommel of the tremendous weapon planted before him moved, along with the rest of him, as he stepped to one side, affording himself a space in which the weapon could travel, through the vacuum he had just created. The heavy steel block of the warhammer’s head ripped through the air like a meteor, a sharp wail whistling through the air as it cut through the darkness with an unlikely speed. The impact with the creature was jarring, the concussive force enough to rattle the teeth of anyone that had been standing too close.

The dried old bone imploded, what had once been the dessicated chest of some poor man or woman, as he could no longer tell the difference between those so long zombified, had become a massive crater, the ribs staved in, sharp protrusions jutting from their back as the corpse was flung backward, into the darkness. He heard the sound of that hiss still leaving the thing’s lungs, until it was punctuated with the sharp, ear-splitting crack of bone on stone, the thing nothing more than a heap of old bone on the floor of a forgotten catacomb beneath a city too busy to care about the things that threatened to sweep over them all.

He smiled at the irony of it all, as he saw it.

When the dust began to settle, he saw the very thing that he had been waiting for, the slender, femenine figure of the tiny blonde, Clarke, as she preferred to be called by her surname, he remembered, sauntered into the dim light of the exit. He stood, weapon in hand, like the Colossus of Rhodes, standing vigil over the only transit point between the world of the dead and the world of the living. At her words, his lips broke into a broad, toothy grin, the heavy weapon in his hand swinging down toward the floor in an arc as he loosed his grip, letting the massive head of the Hammer srike the stone floor with a metallic crack of the stone, and he shook his head as he held his open hands out to his sides.

“And I am beginning to think the very same of you, darling Clarke. It’s been too long since we’ve really seen one another! How have you been? How are your brothers? Your dog? What was his name? Skip? By everything, it’s been too long. There are so many questions! But first!” The big, barrel-chested bear moved to her, sweeping her up in his arms and hugging her to his bare chest, squeezing her with, while not all of his might, a tremendous strength. He was careful not to crush her, however, and laughed as he held her against himself for a long moment, merely enjoying the moment of an embrace, remembering every bit of the last time that they had been together, and all of the joy that they had brought one another. He laughed again, at the memories that filled him, and he gently settled her back down onto her feet, his hands helping to keep her upright after the ferocity of his embrace.

“Come! Come. We must catch up! There’s so much telling to do. So much telling, and as I am sure, so much listening! I know a perfect place for us to grab a little something to drink. A little something that, as I’m sure you know by now, meaning the only thing that we can manage. Yes, yes, I’m sure you can see it in me, just as I can see it in you. That’s all a part of the telling, aye?” He chuckled, then, and placed a huge, heavy hand on her shoulder, before allowing it to slide to the small of her back, guiding her through the opening into the sewers. “You will have to tell me all about it, dear Clarke. All about how this past year has been to you, how your journies have fared for you; though I can see their culmination ended not so well for you. Or, perhaps they ended rather spectacularly! I suppose that’s all in perspective. I, for one, have adopted the mind that my adventure has only just begun!” He laughed again, this time a hardy laugh that rang off the stone walls as they walked, his hand resting across his taut abdominals, his other hand grasping the haft of his hammer where it rested across his shoulder. Indeed, he was a jovial giant, a man of tremendous stature and even greater presence. He was a warm glow of light, down here in the darkness, as he was always meant to be.

[Clarke]

There ain't nothin' we need to analyze, no rhyme or reason why...
... this ain't no thinkin' thing

There was something about his personality that called to her, the warmth that surrounded his muscular form like the sun that she desperately sought. She was drawn to him like a moth to the flame, and she knew the risks of flying too close to him, the way he could burn away her wings without a thought. It was the curse of growing up with three older brothers, of having to watch the girls that fled their property with their mascara staining their cheeks and their lips swollen from the ‘kiss of death.’ It was those memories that had her hardening her heart as she aged. When she had turned from a scrawny teen to a curvaceous teenager, she had refused to give in to the admiration of the neighbor boys.

She thought all were like that, and she hadn’t been wrong. The moment she had let her guard down and let one crawl into her bed, she had been left in tears hours later. She had thought he had been ‘different,’ she had cried, her head tucked against Daniel’s chest. He had been the ‘one,’ she argued, when Leonard had come home and washed the blood from his knuckles. It was that night that they changed their ways, and looking back on it now, she couldn’t remember what she had seen in James. She had to be thankful for him, though, when she realized the swift change that had taken over her brothers. They had stopped sneaking random girls through their windows, only to kick them out before they had finished buttoning their shirts. He had been a blessing, even if he had broken her heart.

Shaking her head as the memory faded as quickly as it had come, she watched as the mountain of a man swung his hammer down and stretched his arms wide. His words tumbled past his lips in that rich baritone that had whispered such charming, passionate promises in her ear on the dance floor, but instead of a sweet seduction, it was an onslaught of inquires that border-lined hyperactive. It brought her up short, even as he stepped forward to capture her in his embrace and sweep her from the floor. His strength had doubled since she had seen him last, and she found herself pressing her hands to his shoulders, as if that could stop him from crushing her like a python would its prey.

“Slow down, darlin’. You’re goin’ a mile a minute,” she teased, though there was a wariness to her gaze as he settled her back on her feet. When she was certain he wasn’t going to hoist her into the air again, she ran her fingers across her taut stomach, brow arched in disbelief. Over the years, he had managed to remember her, even after the brief encounter they had shared. Had she really revealed that much about herself that night? She had to have, because as he spilled forth their entire conversation, every detail was accurate – except for the dog. She’d had a dog named Skip, but she couldn’t really fault him on that detail, could she? Running her tongue along the sharp edge of her teeth, she took a step back and tilted her head, laughter bubbling from her chest.

“I’m impressed there, sugar. How did you remember all of that? The dog was Bandit, or Spot, but you were damned close. Should I be shoutin’ for the authorities?” Though there was a teasing shine to her eyes, the undercurrent of hesitation was clear as she doubled her stride to keep up with his. Even as his laugh boomed off the walls, almost maddening as bright and warm as it was down here with the dead and dying, she found herself drawn to him. When they made it to the cover that would lead them into the city, she holstered her gun and leapt, slender fingers curling round the rusted ladder as she hooked her heel onto a rung. Without waiting for his help, she pulled herself up – and out. When she was top side, she brushed her hand against her shorts and grinned into the darkness, her eyes sparking with a challenge.

“Goin’ t’ stay down there all night, or are you plannin’ on joinin’ me for a stroll?”

[November]

Laughing as they walked, the mountain of a man shook his head, long, loose hair swaying with the motion as his heavy fist tightened its grip on the massive warhammer racked across his shoulder. He looked down at the tiny little blonde at his side and offered her a wide, amused smile. He was larger than life, his personality larger yet. He was the type of person that could fill a room with his attitude, and could bring a light to the darkest of moods with a laugh. It would seem that it was impossible to bring the big man down. His laughter faded into a mirthful chuckle and he gave Clarke a sly wink. “I can’t say that I’ve ever been accused of going too fast. Ask any one of my customers back home. They’ve got a few choice words just to let you know just how slow I can be.”

He chuckled at the joke at his own expense and lifted his empty hand to push his hair back from his face. The fist was huge, the head of a weapon in itself, though with the disposition he carried with him, he was only mildly imposing with his stature alone the single most menacing thing about him. He shrugged his shoulder, the heavy mass of muscle bunching in response as he offered the gesture to her reaction to his near accuracy of recollection. “I’ve a good memory, that’s hardly a crime,” he chuckled, using a single digit to tap at his temple as he continued, “got to remember what the customer wants. In the forge, I can’t consult an email a thousand times while I’m hammering out a piece. I have to know what I’m doing. Made it a habit of remembering details. Doesn’t always work, but when it comes down to my work, I’m good at what I do. I rarely have to recast a piece.”

He made a sound when they found the ladder to the manhole, a rush of air leaving his nose like a subdued laugh. He watched as she climbed, the sway of her hips more than was entirely necessary for the short climb. He knew her game, but he wouldn’t call her on it. Not just yet. Instead, he let her reach the street and turn to throw down her gauntlet. The challenge brought a wry twist to his lips. A sort of playful smirk. He twisted his grip on the hammer against his shoulder and brought it around, so that it was standing upright, its head resting against the concrete floor beneath his feet as he glanced up at her silhouette outlined by the streetlamp above her.

“Might want to step back.”

With a quick motion, he knelt down, one knee nearly touching the floor as his hand gripped the tall haft of his hammer. He narrowed his gaze, gauging the exit of the sewer that he was about to traverse, and with an explosive force, he launched himself up, bursting through the manhole and into the fresh night air. He landed on the sidewalk with a rough thud, the head of his hammer cracking the concrete where it landed. He stood, dusting off the knee of his jeans as he turned to look at her with a sort of mischievous twinkle in his eye and a grin on his face. “Now. About that stroll?”