#coppercrane2

Two sides. Yin. Yang. Light. Dark. Good. Evil. Angst. Fluff. NOW WRITE ME THE DAMN YAKUZA FIC.

Twilight covered the skyline of Tokyo, like velvet shimmering beneath moonlight. Usagi pulled the collar of her wool coat a bit tighter, puffs of breath escaping between the flaps, as she rounded the darkened street corner.

A streetlight flickered, beams of light filtered like a haze stretching into a fog. It haloed a woman wrapped in green silk, a golden katana sheathed at her side, a sprawl of limbs at her feet. The gasp of surprise lingered on Usagi’s lips as the katana clicked, a flash of gold and green bolting across her vision.

Usagi laid in a heap, red creeping across concrete. Bara-hime slipped into the shadows, Tokyo stilled once more.

---------------------------------------------------------------

More of the Raven and Jude show, just because @coppercrane2 is awesome and deserves all the things. Actually, dedicated to her, and @apsaraqueen, and @antivanruffles, and @antivanonmytongue, and all my other R/J shippers. <3 you guys!

**

They’d struck up something of a friendship-- perhaps a flirtatious correspondence, if one wanted to be completely accurate-- after the messenger bag snafu at LAX and his impromptu visit to Manhattan. It had seemed the right thing to do to invite her for drinks and a tour of LA the next time she’d been in town. They’d had margaritas and taco truck tacos and walked through the Huntington in the afternoon, Raven looking impossibly pretty standing on the bridge of the Japanese garden, her silky black hair loose and flowing in the breeze. Then he’d in turn looked her up when he was in New York City again for a work summit, and they’d gone together to a Broadway show-- West Side Story. They’d had dinner together-- not at some fancy restaurant, but a hole-in-the-wall deli, and if Raven had made an incongruous picture in her sleek black dress and stiletto heels, wiping mustard off her mouth with scratchy napkins, Jude had found it endearing and rather adorable, and that’s when he knew he was truly in trouble.

She’d called him a cab back to his hotel, and on an impulse, he’d kissed her right as the car had been pulling up. Just a moment, little more than a peck on a mouth that tasted like Sprite and expensive lipstick, and he’d felt the little gasp and sigh against his own mouth before her lips pressed back against his, but there wasn’t time to say more than a quick “Good night” before the cabbie had honked, impatiently waiting for him to get on. He’d passed a slightly sleepless night wondering if it had been the wrong thing to do, especially considering the sheer impracticality of entering into anything more than a casual friendship with a woman whose life was a whole three time zones away from his own. Jude was not a flirt or a ladies’ man by any definition of the word, and certainly, Raven was not the type of woman one dallied with. 

But she’d shocked him two days later, when it was time for him to leave and head back to LA, and she’d popped up at his hotel just as he was checking out of his room, with two Starbucks cups and a to-go bag from a bagel place. She’d been in a hurry-- there was some type of meeting with some landlord/building super or another, to set up an apartment for some fresh-out-of-the-backwoods-boonies model or another who’d just relocated to the big city from Small Town USA all of a week ago-- but she’d claimed that he was on her way, anyway, and she was so almost-defensive about the sweet gesture of bringing him breakfast and sending him off that he’d plucked both coffee and bagels out of her hands, set it perhaps-rudely on the concierge desk, and hugged her for perhaps too long before kissing her, again. 

“I’ll call you when I get to LA,” he’d told her in a rush when he’d finally pulled back, heart stuttering a bit as he watched her thick, sooty eyelashes flicker slowly as her eyes opened. “I’ll miss you.”

“Yeah. Have a good flight. I-- I’ll miss you too.” That last bit was tacked on at the end just as he finally found the wherewithal to get his bags and the bagel and coffee, and even before his plane boarded, he knew he’d be counting down the days until one of them had a reason to fly across the country again. 

That had been about eight months ago, and bless Raven’s contract with the very-famous, very still-not-eighteen Morgan Austen, because there had been many flights to LA, and that flirtatious correspondence had turned into something very akin to a long-distance relationship. He’d wake up to her voice at an indecent hour of the morning, and she’d fall asleep to his, sometime still fairly early to him at night. She no longer cared about facetiming him at inopportune times, and he certainly didn’t think her any less beautiful in a ratty old Columbia University hoodie and yoga pants and no makeup than her in expensive eveningwear, rubies glowing against the sleek darkness of her hair. The first night he’d stayed over at her place, she’d fallen asleep with her feet in his lap on the couch during the tail end of an episode of The Office, and he’d carried her to bed, both of them still fully dressed but for their shoes and jackets. He’d woken up in the middle of the night to her fingers tracing over his skin and sought out her mouth on feeling alone, before even opening his eyes. The next morning, they’d shared a very leisurely shower, where he’d taken his time washing every inch of her hair before she’d tackled him. 

The distance wasn’t something they could truly ignore, however, the longer they were together. Raven’s career was thriving, as was his, and neither of them could sensibly be expected to move cross-country and make a completely fresh start. 

Fall in LA is undoubtedly less picturesque than out on the East Coast, with its leaves changing colours and crisp mornings edged with frost, its high winds and cinnamon-and-nutmeg-scented coffee and pastries, but Jude doesn’t lack for work and other related distractions. He’s up for tenure review at the college that year, and there’s the whole process of putting together the tenure dossier and bringing the completed body of his work to the committee and deans. UCLA is no different from most large universities of its ilk-- professors are either awarded tenure after a certain number of years and an evaluated body of work has been produced, or terminated from employment. It is in the midst of this term of flux that a hush seems to fall over the very halls of his building, unusual indeed for this time of day.

Then he hears it-- the click-clack of Louboutins against the floors, and he peers out of his office door to see his sassy and beautiful New Yorker striding down the hallway like she owns the place, wearing a prim little skirt suit the same silky black as her sleekly-pinned hair. She smiles when she sees him, and he can all but hear the cluster of goggling chemistry majors left in her wake sigh in collective half-terrified awe. 

“Well, this is a surprise. I didn’t know you were coming here.” 

She reaches him, and as though she cares not a jot that there are others watching them, puts her hands on his face, presses her warm red mouth to his in greeting for a moment before pulling away. “I wanted to surprise you, I guess.”

There was more than that, just from the solemnity in her dark violet eyes. He lets her into his office, and shuts the door behind her back. He smiles, brushes a gentle fingertip over the slope of one smooth cheek. “You probably just cemented my reputation in this department as a badass once and for all. Not to mention, you’ve probably given hope to more than one student in these parts that the geeky science nerd can, in fact, someday have a chance with the beautiful woman.” He dips his head, kisses her again, gently. “You look beautiful. Beautiful and serious. What brings you here?”

“It’s Morgan’s birthday tomorrow. She’s turning eighteen. I was invited.” 

Raven doesn’t state the implications of that-- they’re pretty obvious now, after all these months being involved in her life. Morgan Austen will no longer be a minor, and therefore, if the supermodel decides to do the sensible thing and move out to New York for work, Raven, as her agent, would have no more reason to continuously fly out to LA. She would be able to concentrate her workload once again on her home turf, the city she’d known all her life. 

“I’m up for tenure review this year.” It’s apropos of nothing, really, but perhaps a part of him knows that they’re at a crossroads, and both of them could go in any direction. It would, indeed, be easier to separate now, do the sensible thing and stay to their respective cities and lives. But he can’t bring himself to draw away from her, and when she smiles-- a rare, real smile, not the polite one meant for company-- he can’t help but smile back. No matter what that means for them, she’s happy for him. 

“You’ll get it. You’re too damn smart not to.”

“If I do, though, I’d pretty much have to stay here. And you--...”

“I’ll be happy for you. Because I love you, Jude Huntley. And it’s the best thing for you.” 

Her words are brave and steadily spoken, but there’s a bead of moisture on her eyelashes, making her mascara seem even blacker than usual, and he feels his heart skip a beat in his chest even as he pulls her close. She’s a small woman, really, though her presence has the power to fill a room. But in his arms, her dark head tucked against the crook of his neck, those slim legs of hers leaned against the sturdy surface of his desk, she feels delicate, infinitely precious. Her fingers twine around the length of his tie, tugging him down just enough, and her sparkling eyes meet his. 

“Don’t you dare do anything that isn’t right for you, all right? I will love you no matter where we are.”

“I love you, too. More than a job or a city. I hope you knew that already.”

“Shut up.” The fingers tugging on his tie now pick nimbly at their knot, and soon after, go to work on his buttons. His own hands find purchase on the curves of her hips, and a moment later, she’s seated on that desk with him standing between her legs, and the look she shoots up at him through that dark forest of lashes is sultry and, to his gratification, no longer sad. “Is there anything important on this desk that I need to be worried about?”

There are a number of his academic papers for the tenure dossier he’d been compiling, but he sweeps that aside carelessly onto a nearby chair. “Just you, love. Only you.”

It’s an indeterminate amount of time later that she leaves his office, almost looking as spic-and-span as she did when she’d come in, except her lipstick is smudged and her hair is loose and a little wild as it spills down her back. Neither of them are any closer to an answer to the unspoken dilemma than before, but he feels a bit better about the future. Whatever comes might prove incredibly difficult for a couple to weather, but he thought that, perhaps, they’d be the two people who’d prove that statistic wrong.

“Ahem. Extra credit assignment, Professor?” 

Jude almost jumps out of his skin at Charlotte’s familiar voice drawling at him from across the hall. There’s almost certainly a smudge of lipstick on his collar, and he can’t be completely certain that his buttons are correctly aligned. “Umm...”

“These situations are usually found in bad pornos featuring actresses wearing short pleated plaid skirts, aren’t they? I could make a pun about your lady being well ahead of the curve. But perhaps it’s a good thing I figured out what was holding you up just before I knocked on your door, because you certainly wouldn’t have heard the banging over your exertions banging on something else altogether.”

“You, Professor Charlotte Rhys-Jones, are terrifying and evil, and I would never want to make an enemy of you.”

“Well, of course not. Why would you ever do something so foolish? I am a small and deadly commander of a diabolical penguin army. What did your girl come here for, aside from office-hours private tutoring?”

Jude is fairly sure that he’s blushing and can’t quite meet his colleague’s eyes, though he knows that she’d be sympathetic, all jokes aside. “She’s here in town because Morgan Austen is turning eighteen and invited her for the birthday party. Now that her celebrity client is no longer a minor, she’ll probably not have as many opportunities to come out this way.”

“Oh, God. She didn’t come out here to break up with you, did she? Because I think all the respect I gained for her not only walking in those ice picks but for getting you to partake in office desk shenanigans will be lost.”

“No. But I don’t know if we will have as many opportunities to be together as before.” Jude manages a self-deprecating smile. “I could always give up on tenure and move out east. There are probably schools out there that need Chemistry professors.”

“You could, but I’d hate you, and she’d hate herself, if you did that.” Charlotte says bluntly. “Weirdly, I have faith that you two might make this weird long-distance relationship of yours work out. There are frequent flier miles for these sorts of things. And the internet. People have done this since the Pony Express days, so you two should be fine. Plus, who knows what might happen? There could always be another Morgan Austen type out here somewhere just waiting for her. Do I get to be your Best Woman at the wedding?”

“I don’t know. You might have to escort the original Morgan Austen down the aisle.”

“No problem, and I don’t see you denying that there will be a wedding. Anyway, did you see that memo from the Dean that got sent yesterday?”

The conversation turns to work, and Jude sets thoughts of Raven aside for the time being.

YOU KNEW THIS WAS COMING

For @coppercrane2 specifically because she wanted this scene but also for whoever else wants it and needs some R/J cheer up emo.

**

If JFK is a post-apocalyptic wasteland where manners and dreams went to die, LAX is simply a clusterfuck. Raven Fletcher isn’t stupid enough to mean-mug the smarmy-looking TSA agent at the end of the line, not exactly, but the smile in place on her face is about as gruesome as Heath Ledger’s Joker. She had the whole system down pat by now-- plastic bag of toiletries, no belt, no hat, no jacket, no sunglasses, shoes that could easily be slipped off and on, no electronics and items in the pockets-- but the whole process is a drag, anyway. And of course, they still always gave her crap, and this time is no exception.

“What were you doing in LA?”

“Meeting up with some clients in the industry, catching up, making plans for New York Fashion Week.”

 “So you live in New York, then?”

“Yeah. I thought it says so on my license.” And moreover, she certainly didn’t sound like a Californian, now did she? 

The TSA agent gives her a warning look; her sass is clearly not appreciated, and undoubtedly he’d use it as an excuse to make her suffer in the next five to ten minutes and probably go through every last bit of her bags, down to counting how many tampons she stashed in and probably testing her makeup wipes to ensure that nothing was radioactive. Raven bites her tongue and tries not to roll her eyes as he beckons over a female officer to pat her down even as he paws through all her belongings. He shakes out a Dior dress that’s tucked into her garment bag that’s likely worth more than the X-ray machine that the bag just passed through, and Raven wants to ask that he change his damn gloves first, but at this rate, if he goes any slower, she’d miss her connection. Sunny weather or not, she’d be damned if she got stuck in LA for another day.

Finally, the ordeal comes to an end, which leaves her roughly half an hour to get from one end of the airport to the other on four-inch Louboutins. Raven has no problem with mowing through crowds-- sharp elbows and the aggressive New Yorker walk does wonders-- but to have to do so just to get to her gate in time is aggravating when it was certainly not her fault that the security check took so long. She certainly couldn’t just crumple up the damned Dior and stuff it back into the garment bag-- she had a client dinner right after getting back in town, and on no planet did Raven Fletcher appear at such events anything less than perfectly dressed and groomed. 

There’s the moving walkway up ahead, and she strides on, a woman on a mission, long legs eating up the length of the conveyor. Raven is a petite woman, five-foot-four before the stiletto heels and too short for the modeling work that she immerses herself in dealing with on a daily basis, but she’s leggy, and can walk, jog and possibly do step aerobics in heels with the best of them. She steps off at the end of the moving walkway, leading with her shoulders, and smacks painfully into a solid male chest.

“I’m so sorry. Are you all right, miss?” A pair of big hands wrap around her elbows and pull her up, and had she landed any harder, she probably would have broken a thousand-dollar heel, and perhaps an ankle. Raven looks up from legs clad in casual gray chinos to a torso in blue tweed, with brown elbow patches, up into an almost-unforgivably handsome face, all golden California tan and tousled, sun-bleached blond hair, wearing horn-rimmed glasses over his baby blues. And... headphones. Of course. Because it would certainly be too much to ask for a man to be too perfect, so this particular specimen had to be moseying through the airport deaf to his surroundings like an oblivious moron.

“I would be better if you were watching where you were going, but forget about it.” She bypasses the hand he holds out to help her up, and snags both her garment bag and her briefcase. Her ankle gives her a twinge as she stands up, but she stalks off without a backward glance. If she hurried, she’d have just enough time to pop into the Starbucks by her gate for a quad venti iced macchiato to wash down the Excedrin before getting on the plane. 

The boarding process, after she reaches her gate, and where someone else might have passed their time sleeping or watching a movie or two on the five-hour flight, Raven opens her briefcase after the plane reaches cruising altitude to organize her files for the upcoming client dinner. Not that there is much to do, really, because Morgan Austen, even at age seventeen, didn’t exactly require much of an introduction. Blonde and willowy and charming and self-assured, the girl’s celebrity background might have gotten her in the door, but she’d certainly lived up to all the hype. Only too often were the celebrity actor-model types unforgivably uppity and spoiled, and while a small, petty part of Raven enjoyed putting them in their place as needed, it always came as a pleasant surprise when someone didn’t have to get told off for their own good. 

Her heart gives a pitter-patter, though, when she reaches inside the bag and feels, underneath her manicured fingertips, a bunch of manila folders rather than the sleek leather portfolio that should be contained in that compartment. Cautiously, she draws out the papers, then only barely manages to avoid swearing loudly and noticeably in the airplane cabin. 

“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me. This is a joke. A really bad joke.”

In place of the carefully-curated and prepped collection of headshots and polaroids of Morgan Austen is a collection of lab reports, all with the header of ‘153BH, UCLA/Huntley’. Raven has exactly zero interest in the subject of Nucleotide Metabolism, and the worst part about it is the fact that she has a whole three and a half hours before the plane lands and she can even get on her phone to do something about this mishap. 

It’s the longest three and a half hours of her life, feels like, and she pulls out her cell phone almost before the flight attendants turn off the seatbelt sign, calls the agency to postpone the dinner with the rep from Michael Kors.

“Yeah, there’s been a problem with my bag. Stupid LAX. Can you just... tell them my flight was delayed, or something? They’ll be a-o-fucking-kay because they’re getting Morgan Austen to walk their damn show in a month and it’ll be the biggest thing to happen to them since dude designed Michelle Obama’s official portrait dress. Thanks, Luna. You’re a whole bag of organic non-GMO peaches. And... someone’s calling, and it’s a 310 area code, so I’m going to let you go.”

She recognizes the area code as Los Angeles, of course, and expects that it’s some minion from some customer service desk in LAX reporting that they’d found her bag, but the voice which comes through is male and sounds oddly familiar, with that faint Calfornian drawl. “Am I speaking to Ms. Raven Fletcher?”

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

“My name is Jude Huntley, and we bumped into each other at the airport? I seem to have your work bag rather than mine.” The tone is summery-smooth and apologetic, the cadence quick yet lacking the almost-harsh briskness of Manhattan. “It’s entirely my fault, and I’m going to get your bag back to you, but could you tell me where you’d like to pick it up?”

“Well, if you can’t tell, I’m kinda on the opposite coast to you now, buddy. Elite Models, New York, New York. We’re on 5th Avenue.” He doesn’t seem at all fazed by her slightly snotty tone, which takes the wind out of her sails, just a little. “Look, pal, if you want to send off my bag to New York, that’d be great. I can do the same with yours. UCLA, right? At least it’s summertime. Hopefully school’s out for you. Shitty time for me to lose my bag because summer’s prime time for campaigns, but it’s not like my stuff can just magically appear overnight.” All around her, people are rising up from their seats, and Raven scowls at nothing in particular. “I gotta get off the plane. Look, since you clearly got my number from my card, you can get the address, too. I’ll get your bag back to you as soon as I can.” 

She hangs up, and seethes from the gate all the way to the taxi stand and then all the way to her apartment, before kicking off the heels and unapologetically ordering pizza delivery, to be consumed with wine while soaking in the tub. After the day she’d had, it was the least she deserved.

**

Raven arrives at the agency at eight o’clock sharp the next morning, with the briefcase-that-is-not-hers in one hand, a giant to-go cup of coffee in the other, and spends the first hour of her day making a phone call to the reps at Michael Kors to explain her bag mishap and reschedule the dinner meeting. Thankfully, Morgan Austen’s name is enough to negate any wrath which might have been incurred at the inconvenience, and, crisis averted, she’s just about ready to schedule a conference call-- with a talent scout out in BFE, Cornfields, Small-town USA somewhere-or-another-- when her assistant Phoebe knocks on the door. The diminuitive brunette has a peculiar look in her beady eyes.

“Someone’s here to see you. No appointment. Great face but I doubt he’s a model, unless he’s doing some sort of ad for Geek Chic. Says his name is Jude. Do you know a Jude? I didn’t think you knew a Jude, though this guy’s sort of got the hot younger Jude Law thing going on so...”

Raven’s eyebrows shoot up to her hairline. She’s only made the acquaintance of one individual by that name, and certainly Phoebe is wrong. There is no freaking way that the man from the airport in Los Angeles was actually in New York at this very second. She waves in a vague manner at Phoebe, who takes it as assent to let him in, and then her jaw drops. It’s the man from the airport, all right. Still wearing his tweed jacket and his horn-rimmed glasses, but now sporting dark-blond five-o’clock shadow like gold dust smudged against his chiseled jaw and deep shadows under those blue eyes. But his lips quirk into a smile when he sees her, and he holds out her bag, like an olive branch.

“You asked for it to be overnighted, didn’t you? I took the red-eye over.”

“But--- but---why?” Flying a red-eye from coast to coast is the worst, and doing so on standby just seemed like her own idea of Hell on Earth. “You could’ve just dropped it off at a FedEx. I...” She had barely been civil to him on the phone, and definitely was on the wrong side of rude when they’d bumped into each other at the airport. Under no circumstance could Raven see a reason for a man-- especially one who looked as though he had a job and a life well on the other side of the country-- to drop everything just to bring her her bag back in person. 

But rather than give her a hard time, the man named Jude smiles, and it’s a great smile, with a dimple in both cheeks and in the chin. Geek chic indeed... “Well, I need those lab reports back, too. Summer class. I have a commitment to my students to get it back to them by Friday, and they’re kind of time consuming to grade. Call it an impulse, I guess.” He’s still holding out her bag, and this time she takes it, and belatedly hands him his own. “Anyway, let’s start over again. My name is Jude Huntley, and I’m an assistant professor at UCLA’s Chemistry department.”

“Raven Fletcher. I’m an agent here at Elite Models. Nice to meet you.” Two almost-identical bags switch hands, just before his fingers close around hers, and the touch is warm and sharp with the brush of static electricity. Raven’s fairly sure that her spine is, metaphorically speaking, stainless steel. And yet a shiver works its way up and down as he holds on for just a moment too long, and a decidedly unfamiliar warmth creeps up into her cheeks as he smiles at her again. 

For @apsaraqueen and @coppercrane2, follows this

**

The 18th Room is sleek yet dim, echoing the air of mystery surrounding Prohibition-era speakeasies but featuring all the modern amenities one would expect out of a trendy spot in New York City. Raven arrives at nine o’clock on the dot, because ‘fashionably late’ does not apply to everyday standards of etiquette, and furthermore, one does not turn up late on a reservation in Manhattan if one actually wanted to be able to enjoy one’s drink and food for that night. She’d offered to buy the UCLA professor, Jude Huntley, a drink for returning her bag in person, of course, and had given him the address to meet her up there that evening.

“Hello.” She hears his voice, warm and slightly gravelly, sound behind her, and turns to see the Good Professor, looking a bit less nerdy shaven and without the elbow patches, smiling at her. Weirdly, though the white shirt and dark gray blazer are certainly more appropriate night-out apparel, she thinks the look from earlier in the day had suited him more. He still wore the glasses, though, and the low lighting of the place glint off the lenses, shine brilliantly in his blue eyes. 

“You made it. Good. They have custom drinks here based on what you like, and pretty good food.” It’s a bit of an abrupt greeting, but Raven isn’t quite sure what to make of Dr. Huntley and his actual presence in New York City for apparently no other purpose than to return her bag. When in doubt in dealings with the male of the species, toughness was always a good default to fall back on. 

“It’s definitely some very cool digs. I can’t say that bars back at home look much like this. Like something out of an old movie, almost.” 

They get seated, and both of them opt for the custom-made cocktails. Raven gets a smokey-sweet Scotch concoction with ginger beer and Angostura bitters, and Jude opts for something with gin and an orange twist. They share some small plates, and of course when Jude asks her about her day, she is not surprised. These are normal pleasantries, and no one truly wanted to pass a cocktail hour in awkward silence, but he leans forward and listens as though he actually cares, and that’s a bit more off-putting.

“Morgan Austen? You were negotiating a contract with her? No wonder you wanted to kill me for grabbing your bag by accident.” His smile, even apologetically full of chagrin, is lethal. “I can’t say that I’m hugely in favour of starting kids out young in the entertainment industry, but she seems surprisingly well adjusted whenever we see or hear her on the news.”

“She was born for this, and as exploitative as the industry can be, she’s got a good head on her shoulders, and I definitely don’t just mean all that shampoo-commercial blonde hair.” Raven’s mouth firms, and she squares her shoulders. “She’s a good kid, weird unorthodox Hollywood upbringing aside. Nothing’s about to happen to her if I have anything to say about it.”

“I understand what you mean.” There’s not even a hint of a patronizing tone in his voice, just simple understanding. “I can’t say that I get to know every single student who enters my lecture hall, but you always get to meet some, and you always hope that whatever they learn from you academically aside, they’ll remember you as a positive figure in their development as young adults. I know full well not all of them will go into a Chemistry-related field, but I hope no one hates me or my class, all the same.”

“Aren’t you going to be exhausted, going to your class tomorrow after flying in all the way from here?” That still didn’t make sense-- the fact that he’d crossed the entire continental United States to return her bag. Not that she was ungrateful, of course. Or that she was hating this time and conversation right now. Jude Huntley might be a virtual stranger whose life intersected with hers in the most random of ways, but he was... nice. In such a low-key, easygoing type of way that it lowered even her fierce defenses. 

“Well, LA’s three hours behind, so it will still be early enough in the day by the time I get there that I’ll have a few hours to rest before having to stand in front of a bunch of grad students and talk about metabolism. And besides, I’ll have plenty of time to grade the rest of those lab reports on the trip back. There’s not exactly much to do on the plane, otherwise. I’ve already gotten a head start on them earlier today, before meeting up with you.”

That has her chuckling despite herself. “You’re in New York City and not during the tourist-mad seasons of Christmas or whatever and you’re holed up in your hotel room grading lab reports? You could’ve done a bunch of other stuff for fun.”

“I could’ve, but it’s no fun doing the touristy thing alone. I don’t exactly know anyone here aside from you, and I can barely claim that acquaintance, either, could I?”

“I don’t know, I don’t usually meet people up for drinks unless it’s somehow work-related. There are almost always too many fucking people, everywhere. At least it’s not a Friday afternoon happy hour in the Financial District. Banker Bro’s probably have a whole level to themselves in Hell waiting for them someday.” 

“Well in that case, I’m definitely flattered, and honoured.”

Their food comes, and it’s undoubtedly his relaxed, no-pressure manner that makes her linger over her Scotch and stuffed zucchini flowers and the easy flow of conversation. Jude-- and since when did she start thinking of him by his first name on such short acquaintance?-- had been born and raised in California, though he’d lived in the Bay Area before moving out to SoCal for school, then work. They talked about some of the more problematic youngsters they’d had to deal with in their respective jobs, as well as the merits of the dollar slice vs. the daily special off the taco truck. Raven’s a diehard bagels and lox and coffee for breakfast type of girl, and declared smoothies and avocado toast to be faddish and overrated even if a great deal of the models booked with the agency seemed to enjoy them. Jude laughs and admits that he’s not much of a green juice sort of guy himself, but claims that the mythical long lines at In-n-Out are worth it.

At some point during their conversation, some of the other patrons start dancing to the jazz music playing in the background. It is definitely not the sort of place most people out on a date night would expect to dance-- no grinding, or DJ’s, or top 40′s here. The music’s something from the Gatsby era, and tastefully muted so that conversations at the tables and bar could still be conducted without leaning in and shouting. After a handful of sets, Jude holds out his hand, one blond eyebrow slightly cocked, and gives her that should-totally-be-illegalized smile again. 

“I feel like I should ask you to dance. Of course, you can say no if you don’t want to.”

For @coppercrane2. Also written during the traveling time. Implied R/J and a certain cameo. 

**

That word would get out about his impromptu trip to New York City he totally expected. For all it was a huge and fairly anonymous college campus, the faculty in the science departments tended to be a tight-knit group, sharing war stories about uppity pre-meds and abysmally disaffected senior-year burnouts alike. But he had not expected one of his work friends to make it a point to pick him up from LAX with the most obnoxious, knowing smirk ever. Charlotte Rhys-Jones was a genius in the zoology department and a reputed holy terror to her PhD students, but she typically left Jude out of it.

Not today, though.

“Why are you looking at me like that? I promise you, I did not get up to any trouble while in New York. I even managed to finish all those lab reports, although I’d really prefer that students stop taking my class to fulfill a science credit requirement. A few of those poor kids are really playing into the stereotypes about jocks and their academic prowess.

“Well, definitely don’t send them my way, either! Remember the shit that went down three years ago with the football players and the penguins? Not that they’d try that again, I don’t think. Penguins are fucking evil and even the meatheads know that by now.” Charlotte eyes him beadily over the rim of her glasses. “So. The girl. Tell Charlie all. I took the liberty of checking out her LinkedIn. She’s very pretty, isn’t she?”

“YOU are also evil, and a stalker, and scarier than even your penguins. But yeah, she’s pretty.” Beautiful, if he were to be completely honest. “Does it matter? She kind of lives on the opposite coast to us and doesn’t have any reason to move. I dropped off her bag, she returned me mine, and we wrapped things up neatly with a drink at a bar before I flew back here.”

“Uh-huh.” Charlotte drags the last part of that word into almost three syllables.

“She texted me to thank me for bringing her bag back and to say she was glad I made it back here safely. Why am I getting the third degree? I feel vaguely like a a seventeen-year-old kid explaining to the parents of his prom date that he’ll have their daughter home promptly at curfew. I’m pretty sure that both Raven and I are past that age in our lives.”

“Friendly enough to be on a first-name basis with her, are we now? I suppose it would be odd if she were to call you Professor Huntley. She’s a step up from the sorority chick co-eds that you encounter here and there between the actual students who mean to learn a thing or two from your classes.”

“She’s definitely not like the students. Far too decisive and self-sufficient to be any of our students, actually.” Jude isn’t quite sure of Raven’s exact age, but pegs her for mid-twenties, perhaps a few years younger than himself. At that age, he’d been a hapless grad student still, at the mercy of his academic advisors and the powers that be in charge of his student loans. Her... competence, for lack of a better term, is slightly intimidating. And yet...

“Do you intend on keeping in touch with the lovely and self-sufficient Miss Fletcher of Elite Models, New York City?” Charlotte is not one to beat about the bush. “It would do you very well to make friends every once in a while. Have someone to talk to when you need a sounding board or some advice.”

“Don’t I have you for that, Charlie?”

“Sure, but our conversations have an unfortunate tendency to degenerate into rants about rude students, idiotic deans, evil penguins, or all of the above. You could stand to discuss a few new topics. Keep your mind sharp and all that. Plus, I’m not likely to inspire you to travel cross-country with a goofy smile on your face. You also attempted to deflect my question with another question as opposed to actually answering it, and that says it all, doesn’t it?”

“Have you ever considered being a law school professor instead? I think you’d be phenomenal.”

“I’m sure I would be, but then I’d be trading penguins for lawyers-to-be. At least the first category has the decency to be quietly evil as opposed to the obnoxious variety of evil that never shuts up and enjoys arguing with you whenever you say anything at all. You should invite your Raven out for a drink, maybe some tacos, next time she’s in LA. Return the favour, you know.”

Charlie continues on this vein until she drops Jude off at his apartment, and perhaps it’s her intention that he turn his thoughts towards Raven, thousands of miles away. It’d be pretty late now, in New York City, but he texts her before he can talk himself out of it. 

“I’m glad you don’t hate me for the bag mishap. Margaritas next time you’re here in LA, my treat?”

To his surprise, she texts back within minutes. “That’d be great. A margarita sounds amazing right now. Been in meetings all day with the people at Vogue. Anna Wintour’s minions eat and drink what she does and it all sucks!!!!!”

He finds himself laughing, charmed by her refreshing honesty, and texts her back to inquire about her meetings with the designers in negotiations for working with Morgan Austen, asking about her day. She replies, asks him about his, and before he knows it, it’s full dark outside, which means that on the East Coast, it must be well after midnight.

“Am I keeping you up? If I am, I’m sorry. Go to sleep.”

He doesn’t expect her to respond back, but her text comes through a minute later.

“I didn’t mind. it’s late though. Talk to you tomorrow?”

He tells himself it’s lame to text her a wave and a smiley face emoji, but does it anyway. There isn’t exactly a precedent for how to deal with the likes of Raven Fletcher, after all, and he eventually turns in for the night, fairly sure it’d be the end of it.

But he wakes up in the middle of the night to a text notification. Morning rush-hour, Eastern Standard Time. Raven texted him a pithy comment about her morning commute on the subway.

It’s nothing, really. But he texts her back, bleary-eyed and sleepy. And turns up on campus with a bit of lightness to his step and a smile on his face.

Charlie takes one long look at him and walks away, smirking and humming something that sounds suspiciousy like the Wedding March under her breath. She is, of course, teasing him on the basis of their long professional friendship.

Jude, however, texts Raven again during lunch, laughs at her witticisms about some designer or another’s outlandish winter-season line, shares an anecdote about a small lab mishap. Neither of them, he knows, has more than the faintest inkling of what the other person is talking about. He really could care less about fashion.

But talking to Raven, about any topic at all, was wonderful. Charlie would call him smitten, probably.