clever. he gets that a lot. usually it’s from people who want nothing more than to see him a well - ventilated — but still jarringly handsome — bullet - laden corpse, and usually ‘his own good’ isn’t at the top of their priority list. from chloe, it’s more an endearment than anything else. he’ll roll with the punches on that one.
“hey, i think i can handle a little discretion, thank you. i can be discreet. remember ayutthaya?”
validation doesn’t follow, so he takes his eyes off the road for another beat just to glance at her. just in time for that grin. that grin, the bait and lure, the one she wears when she’s throwing him the kind of challenge that they both know he can’t turn down. she’s right. tempting, to an almost compulsive degree. skepticism creases his brow regardless. a client holed up in a mansion. rich assholes with too much time and money on their hands who seemingly love the smell of wild goose.
“yeah, i’m — familiar with the myth, chloe, but — i mean, it’s a myth. your ‘friend’ sounds like a nutjob.”
and yet, she’s still smiling. nate narrows his eyes in tandem with a sudden hitch at the lefthand corner of his mouth.
“… but you’re smarter than that, which means you’ve already verified that this is worth looking into. because you never waste your own time and you don’t get out of bed for anything less than a sure thing. okay,” the hitch turns to a grin, another glance thrown her way. “i’m in. let’s go catch up with our old pal jason.”
watching him connect the dots when she has the intel and he doesn’t is almost as arousing as anything else they do together. almost. the way his mind works is a thing of beauty. chloe leans over completely, pressing a kiss to his cheek.
“look at that, you really do know me. if we weren’t about to hop a last minute flight out of here, i’d tell you to pull over right here,” she teases, half serious. settling back in her seat again, she pulls her phone out to scroll through some client emails and draw up some pictures from the files.
all hidden away on her phone. in case it made it to the wrong hands of course.
“as you’ve likely gathered already, the fleece isn’t actually any article of clothing,” she continues, still shuffling through various images. picture of old greek relics. sculptures of jason. of his ship, the argo. ah, there it is. “you know how most legends try to make sense of the kernel of truth they find? make it easy for consumption, turned into a warning. an unattainable story of heroism and certain doom,” chloe pinches the screen and drags her fingers out, zooming in on a particular piece. the key to it all, for lack of better figure of speech. “the fleece wasn’t real, no, but medea did help him find something.”
it isn’t a fleece the enchantress is offering him in the picture of a worn tablet, but something more solid. something akin to the heart of greece. her father’s hold to kinghood wrapped up in magic he wished to keep for himself. “my client doesn’t realize the intricacies of all this. a shame really.”
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