@valiantsword said: ❝ you can’t be serious. ❞
"Deadly serious, I'm afraid," Astoria reports, her voice and expression both grave. "When I was a little girl I was absolutely terrified of rabbits."
Another night courting death, and it feels less like danger and more like, well, a date: they stroll through the city, or a park, or a garden long after the sun has set and the streets become less crowded, enjoying the comfortable evening chill and waiting to see if someone takes another shot at them. She'd be irritated by their failure to draw out an enemy were she not enjoying the process quite so much. Arthur, always close by, was excellent company even before she gave herself permission to be as absurdly attached as she is, and now that they've had that conversation, it's only gotten better.
Then again, it means that there have been all too many moments when they really should have been targeted—the evening they spent in Volksgarten, wrapped around each other like teenagers, Arthur pressing her back against a tree while she slipped a hand under the hem of his shirt and forgot what they were doing there; or the night they spent sitting on a bridge in Aigner Park, feet dangling over the edge while they talked, so enraptured with their conversation that they'd completely lost track of time until the sun started to creep over the horizon. Or tonight, deliberately ducking down every poorly-lit alleyway and seedy backstreet, looking so like clueless tourists she's almost shocked that they aren't getting jumped.
And she's sure now that their cover holds: she looks the part of the enamored new bride, she knows, sneaking glances at Arthur when she thinks he's not looking, letting her lips curl up in a slow and sweet smile when he calls for her attention, even going so far as to slip her arm around his waist and her hand into the pocket of his jeans as they walked one morning. She practically shimmers with excitement when he calls her Birdy, at this stage. She sleeps well with company, she's learned, and she wakes morning after morning feeling safer than she thinks she probably should.
Superstition keeps her from questioning it. Something about the mouths of gift horses. Tonight her fingers are laced into his, and the expression she wears when she looks his way is the same one that made the concierge at the current hotel ask her, in uneven and accented Italian, if you always stay so in love after being together for a while. She tries not to give over too much time to daydreaming about clearing out room in the bathroom off her bedroom back in New York for whatever he uses to keep his hair that soft. She fails miserably.
And, hell, maybe it was a fluke. Maybe it was a wild coincidence, a particularly violent mugging that would have done irreparable damage to any other set of tourists. Either way, tomorrow, they go after the book, and she finds she's actually excited at the thought of it. It's so much less frightening to not have to do this alone.
(She wonders sometimes why she bothered spending so many years on her own, before she remembers that it's not always like this with someone else. This is because it's him. She tries not to think too much about that, either.)
"You're the one who said you wanted to know me better. Now you know my deep, dark childhood fear." The street is slick from rain, and she hardly notices, enamored as she is with the company instead. "I got over it by the time I was about five, for what it's worth. After that it was normal things, like axe murderers. And, after I moved to London, Tories. Your turn." She tugs lightly at his hand, stops in the middle of the alley they'd been wandering down, raises her eyebrows with a mischievous grin. "Unless you want to distract me."
