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Smile [Barbelyse, GTA AU, 3.5k words]

Summary: Barbara is captivated by Elyse in spite of all allegiances and common sense. It has something to do with her sense of humor.

Self-indulgent femslash.

[Read on AO3]

Barbara loves her from the moment they meet.

Elyse, always with this little crooked half-smile, her leather jacket and metal bat.

They meet at the kind of party where the champagne flows freely and too many people know each other only by fake names. Barbara has always been with the Fake AH and their crowd, trading information for a living and handling their community of hired hands and underlings. Geoff has made something that requires an immense amount of tips and rumours to keep going, and Barbara is a supplier. She gives them names and blueprints. She hangs around the dirty warehouses where the deals are struck, always at arm’s length. She never goes with them into the fray… But she is at their parties.

Now, in the middle of the crowd, she is fussing over the fact that she spilled wine on her new dress. Not far away, Gavin just made Michael empty an entire bottle of some kind of expensive alcohol, making him gag and cough. She spins around to look for a napkin or something and then -

Then she sees Elyse over by the window. Her blonde hair cascades down her back, her gaze fixed on the street outside. She isn't celebrating the heist; she isn't laughing at Michael. She is smiling at something else.

Barbara wants to know what that might be.

It takes Barbara weeks to get any closer. Elyse is gone before she can learn a thing about her, so she pulls all the strings she has. She learns where Elyse works: this is pretty easy for an experienced information broker. Elyse is part of that rival-except-not-really-gang that struck a deal with Ramsey a little while ago. Out from the west coast.

Then, Barbara has to find her. This is also pretty easy: One of the first things to learn about Elyse is that she is fond of her bat and leaves a trail of blood, easy to follow. Barbara admires the simplicity of Elyse's choice of weapon. Something destructive and direct. She has never been good at that herself. She prefers jokes, can spend days constructing the perfect ironic death in her head when she wants to kill someone. It helps that she only commits one or two murders a year - mostly her rivals and the few people she cannot trust anyone else with killing. Elyse is much more productive and, it seems, the muscle of her crew.

Later, when they meet face to face, Barbara notices her biceps and her chipped nails.

Her whole appearance is rough, but somehow beautiful.

They end up meeting because Barbara was rushing and committing rookie mistakes. Maybe word got out through the Fake AH that she was looking for Elyse, wanting to know about her role, wanting to talk to her. Maybe she used a source she shouldn’t have and a rumour started to spread. Hard to say in a city of tattletales.

It’s a late Friday night. It's in Barbara’s dark apartment. The cars are going on and on outside her window. The monotonous noise is the only sound – then there’s something rattling on the fire escape followed by a crash.

Broken glass everywhere.

The pieces reflect the blue and white light, the laptop screen with the scrolling numbers and names and the outside streetlights, drawing all attention to that one broken window and the woman in front of it. Barbara forgets to breathe.

Elyse, bat in one hand, straightens her back and smiles again, stepping forward nonchalantly. "You wanted to talk? You wanted to know who I am, huh?"

Barbara crosses her arms in front of her. A defensive reflex. She can’t cover up her old T-shirt and pyjama pants, but she can face the intruder with squared shoulders and a hard glare. "You broke in."

Elyse looks over her shoulder, then back at Barbara. Her eyes are almost sparkling. "Yup, I did."

"How'd you know I was looking for you?"

The end of the bat touches the floor, Elyse holding it loosely. "Some guy told me some other guy had asked him, and this other other guy traced it all back to you. No big deal, really."

And now you're standing in my house, Barbara thinks. No big deal indeed.

"So..." Elyse shrugged. "Explain?"

Barbara twirls a lock of hair between her fingers. "I saw you at an event a while back. I didn't know who you were."

"Do you know now?"

Barbara looks Elyse over: her stance, the stickers on her bat, her provocative movements when she takes a few steps further into Barbara’s space, free hand trailing over the knick-knacks on the shelves. "No," she says, her voice low. "I kind of wanna know more."

"It's a weird way to make an acquaintance." Elyse touches a bundled up scarf, and it unrolls and falls from the shelf. White and red spirals to the floor. "Wait a sec." Her eyes scan the room as she squints. "You've got a Canada-coloured scarf here, and a - a not-Christmas sweater with a menorah on it…?"

Barbara follows Elyse's glance to the pile of laundry in the corner of her bedroom, just visible down the hall and through the door. Elyse is observant, at least. "What?" she asks, "It's cold. What’s the problem?"

"It just means you're the centre of the weirdest Venn diagram," Elyse says. "A Jewish Canadian woman gangster."

"And how would you describe yourself?"

"Well..." Elyse rolls her eyes. "Pretty much the same, minus the Jewish, and more batshit. Emphasis on bat." She lets the weapon hit the floor once more for effect.

"So are we having some kind of competition to see who’s crazier?"

"Depends. Can you compete?" Elyse's hips sway as she takes one, two steps, brings them closer.

"If you want."

For a moment they stare each other down. Elyse's eyes look like there's broken glass in her irises. Just a myriad of variations on the colour blue, and Barbara knows that she's fucked.

"Maybe we could hang out and shed some light on that," Elyse says. "Meet me by the waterfront sometime?"

"…I'd love to," Barbara says. The words come out breathier than intended.

Elyse spins her bat around, the metal catching the light. “’Cause hey, I swing that way.”

“That’s your pun?” Barbara asks. The tension ebbs; there’s no way it can be sustained after that. “You couldn’t go with ‘batting for the other team’ or something?”

“Okay, okay. Next time, it’ll be better.” Elyse places her hands on her hips. "So... Do I go out the same way I got in?"

"You can use the stairs if you'd like."

"Thanks. You show the way."

Elyse has a motorcycle parked outside. She straddles it as Barbara watches from her window.

The night is dark and heavy, but Elyse's tail lights are all the brighter for it as she speeds away.

The Los Santos waterfront is not as pleasant as it looks. Barbara knows this from years of reporting, from the papers, and from, on occasion, being one of the people dumping bodies into its still waters. She is fairly sure that at least a couple of the fancy boats are stocked with drugs or guns. The seagulls are fed on flesh and coated in slick oil.

So all in all, it seems a fitting place for her and Elyse's... Well, is it a date? Barbara isn't quite sure. She considers the question while she sits on the stone steps leading down to the harbour, waiting.

When Elyse finally shows, she isn't dressed up for a date. She's in jeans and a T-shirt, hair made up in a loose ponytail. No makeup, or at least not any Barbara notices. She swings a plastic bag in her hand as she walks. Barbara imagines glass flasks clinking against each other inside it, because Elyse strikes her to be the type to carry around booze in the daytime like this. She tries to catch a glimpse of the bag's contens, but then Elyse makes eye contact.

She comes down to Barbara, two steps lower on the stairs, and reaches out to pull her up.

"Nice day for a walk," she says.

Barbara takes the offered hand. Once she is pulled to her feet, it starts to burn where they touch. Elyse’s hand is so very warm. Barbara lets go, as if afraid that Elyse's handprint will be seared onto her skin. It is a simple reflex, some part of her brain still sure that Elyse is dangerous - and it isn't wrong, it's just that Elyse is not dangerous to her right now. "Where are we walking, though?"

"Just a stroll along the beach?"

"Sounds fine to me."

There is a little sweat on Elyse's forehead, and the wind makes her hair messier. "Sorry 'bout my appearance," she says. "I just left the crew like, ten minutes ago. Y'know, Adam Kovic's?"

Barbara scoffs. "You don't have a snappy name for yourself?"

"The press seems fond of Fakehaus. I don’t know. I think it's one of the guys who's been spray-painting it on a shitload of walls lately."

"A bit too close to Fake AH turf, too," Barbara comments, "Like the name."

"And in bright fuckin' orange." Elyse smiles. "Anyway, there was a mess back at HQ that needed to be dealt with, and then I almost ran late here. Guys, right?"

Barbara shrugs. "I don't know your guys."

"You have your own."

"They're not mine. They have each other. I just sell them info."

"I admire informants, actually. It takes guts to go and get all that knowledge, and brains to keep it and know what to do with it.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean, I couldn't do that."

They reach the beach. Concrete gives way to soft, sun-heated sand. The distant thunder of ship engines is replaced by the sound of waves. It is too cold for bathing, and an odd time of day to boot, so they are alone save for an old couple wandering by the surf, looking for shells or pretty stones judging by how they stare at their feet.

Barbara stops to roll up her jeans and take her socks off. She can never walk in sand without trouble. Elyse, in her flip-flops, has no such problems.

"I'm flattered," Barbara says.

"Huh?"

"That you think my job is cool."

"Yeah." Elyse looks out over the water, at the waves and the sky. It is a faded blue, like washed-out denim, like pastel ecstasy pills. "My job is simpler."

"Do you really want to talk about work?" Barbara asks. "Now?"

"Nah. Maybe you're right. There are lots of fun stories, though."

"Then… OK, go on, as long as it's funny.”

Elyse looks thoughtful. She reaches into her pocket as she walks and withdraws a tube of chapstick that she applies slowly, giving Barbara ample time to admire her lips. Then she speaks.

She tells Barbara all the things that are just gossip to her. Barbara, of course, files it away as possibly-useful information. It’s all about Bruce and James and Adam, Lawrence and Matt, going into plenty of gory detail without getting grimy. Stories about falling into dumpsters and e-mailing the police anime porn instead of leads. Crash landings and company picnics with guns.

Barbara listens intently as Elyse opens that window to her world.

Once she is finished, Elyse stops, facing the sea. She breathes in deep enough that Barbara can see her shoulders rise and chest expand. "I love this place," she declares.

"The beach?"

"The city." She looks back at Barbara, her expression suddenly serious. "Don't you?"

Does Barbara love it? The streets, the sirens, the summers where the heatwaves make the air unbreathable? Does she love the corpses in the bay and in the trunks of cars?

As she hesitates, Elyse asks, "How about the Fake AH?"

Barbara looks down at her feet and her footsteps in the sand. She thinks of Geoff who calls himself so lucky and happy, and then of the empty whiskey bottles in his kitchen. She has only seen it once, but she remembers the image. It’s the first thing she thinks of when she hears the name of him or his crew. Maybe that’s kind of fucked up.

"I don't know," she says.

"Don't let them drag you down." The wind makes Elyse's hair whip around her head, as gold as the faint sunlight. "It's always just annoyed me how the guys view the whole deal we have here. I mean, you heard the fun stories just now."

Barbara nods.

"But they're all so serious and bleak about it, right? At least mine are. They all expect to get shot like, all the time - "

"And they talk about 'till death do us part' and was poetic about scars and bruises and love?"

"Yeah." Elyse raises an eyebrow. "I mean, I've seen Ramsey and his folks around. They have that melancholy vibe."

"It's rare moments of masculine vulnerability," Barbara says. "I don't think it's like that all the time. They're crazy, too."

"But there's no reason to be gloomy in the first place." Elyse stretches out her arms as if trying to embrace the horizon, almost hitting Barbara who stands so closely beside her. "The crews keep talking about death, but we're so fuckin' alive right here! Nobody else get what we have! It's light, action, fire, getting rich as balls. What's not to like about that, Barbara?"

Barbara feels herself melt into a smile. "I don't know," she says, and in that moment it is the truth. They stand so close, hands brushing against each other.

They are almost-lovers, staring at the sky and the sea.

"I like you," she says. “A lot.”

"Same," Elyse responds, like it's a bad joke, and Barbara wants to kiss her.

She doesn't. Not right there, with the wind against her face, distracted by all the red in Elyse's cheeks. She just stares.

Elyse looks alive. She looks like she's in the right place at the right time.

Barbara wonders what that feels like.

"How'd you get here?" she asks.

Elyse answers, "Motorcycle, like last time."

And it's when Barbara says goodbye to her, when Elyse has her helmet in her hands, that they finally kiss. It tastes like chapstick and not giving a fuck. Barbara leans back and breathes in the pollution in the middle of a pedestrian crossing.

The third time is the charm, the spell that seals the deal, the moment Barbara steps into Elyse's apartment. She has a note with the address crumpled up in her hand. She got the info through an informant, but it was easy enough that she has no doubt it was only because Elyse wanted it that way.

It is an invitation.

So when she had gotten the phone call earlier that day - Elyse, voice all breathy, telling her a time - Barbara had known where to go.

It is a small place on the bad side of town. Perfectly camouflaged, nothing out of the ordinary. Inside, it is much more luxurious that it appears. The door is unlocked, and Barbara enters cautiously: She takes in the fake-gold mirrors and the expensive coats on the hangers.

She can't see Elyse, but she can hear running water.

Further in, she enters a living room.

On the middle of the floor, there is a tarp and a bloody bat.

Down the hall, there is a dirty sports jacket.

Blood on the rug.

It's like a perverse version of a trail of rose petals leading to the bathroom, the door half-open. Barbara walks almost soundlessly. She has a small pistol in her bag, and she reaches for it when she pushes the door in. Steam escapes into the air, bringing with it humid moisture and a scent of shampoo.

Elyse stands naked in front of a full-body mirror, towelling her hair. She turns deliberately slowly towards Barbara. Her skin is dotted with red splotches; the kind you get from standing under too-hot water for way too long. Barbara imagines the possibilities: that Elyse was either waiting or pulling a Lady Macbeth.

"Sorry about the mess," she says. She rubs her hands. "I would say I'm not a murderer and it's not what it looks like, but..." She shrugs. "You know. It's all taken care of, though. Had to wash off the blood."

Barbara tries not to stare at the droplets of water making their way down Elyse's very shapely legs. "It was unexpected.”

"I'm such a dork when it comes to remembering times and dates," Elyse says. "I don't think I really forgot you. I just thought 'fuck it, I'll let her see me in my underwear'."

"This is significantly less than your underwear."

Elyse turns. Barbara smiles, almost embarrassed over the absurd full frontal nudity. Then, as it becomes clear how little Elyse thinks of it, she lets her glance travel along the shape of her breasts and the caramel shadows on her stomach.

And Elyse smiles. "Like what you see?"

Barbara does, head over heels and with her hands on Elyse's hips before long.

For some reason, the bat stays at the forefront of her mind even through what happens after. She keeps seeing that sleek metal covered in blood. The metallic reflections, the stains all the way down to the blunt end. She sees it lying there on the floor. She tries to notice if there's any brutality in Elyse's movements, any sign of the woman who would wield that bat.

She isn't really sure.

Barbara knows it's not like they're ever going to get more than this. Just a series of moments. Nothing long-term and domestic, no commitment because their world might blow up at any moment. Either of them may have to skip town - for weeks or months on end. And then there's the threat of death and the fact that they both have to follow the directions of their own crews.

Still, it's worth it.

Barbara leans against a wall in a coffee shop, leafing through today's paper. The Fake AH have done so much shit to this city that they've been relegated to the third page. Geoff must be fuming. The picture in the article is really small, too, black and white. Barbara is content wasting time, picking out the little details nobody else will notice - like the way you can tell Michael and Gavin are standing a bit too close, or that you can see that Ryan and Jeremy are distracted by each other, if you know what you’re looking for.

It's almost ironic that their weird six-way seems less complicated than her infatuation with a single woman.

Think of the devil and she arrives, almost incognito in dark sunglasses. Elyse claims a table in the far corner, and Barbara sits down opposite her. She places her bag under the table and says, "That should be that taken care of."

"Four pounds?" Elyse asks.

"Five. And a café late. Even though you’re café late."

"Wow. That’s… something. Both the pun and the goods.” Elyse lowers her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “One pound is a lot more explosion. Why the extra?"

Barbara shrugs and stirs her coffee slowly. "Consider it a personal favour."

"Eh. We could use it," Elyse says. Her eyes dart to the paper. "Fakehaus don't get this kind of thing right on the first try no matter what we do. A margin of error might be good for us. And your crew-"

"Blew up a Ferris wheel. Didn't know about it until I read this. And they're not mine-"

"These guys are all a joke," Elyse says. She smiles. "This city's a joke. I'm having coffee - it's really good, by the way - while securing shit for a heist."

"Talk a little lower, maybe?"

"Sorry. But yeah. This life - a joke."

Barbara lays her hand out on the table. She doesn't know why she does it; Elyse doesn't strike her to be the type to do something as slow and boring as holding hands like this. Except she is, apparently. Her hand is warm and soft. Barbara looks out the window.

“Is that your car out there?” she asks.

Elyse nods. “I didn’t want to bring the bike-“

“You drive a goddamn Prius?”

“Yes?” Elyse takes a sip of coffee. “You think that’s funny?”

Barbara tears her gaze from Elyse’s lips and gives the other woman a genuine smile. “I guess it’s as absurd as everything else around here.”

They leave together, stepping out on a sunlit street. Barbara ends up in the passenger seat of the Prius, not commenting further on the car, and Elyse takes her home. Driving together is a new and welcome experience.

This is a moment of quiet.

The engine hums, Elyse taps the steering wheel, and Barbara stares out at the city, their city, containing corpses and alcohol in comfortless kitchens as well as soft hands and Starbucks and this kind of blessed silence.

“We’re not a joke, though,” Barbara says. She catches Elyse’s eyes at a red light.

The bat rattles around in the trunk of the car.

“You and I – we’re the beautiful punchlines.”

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