#freaking finally

He folds his newspaper delicately, eyes cast down, and places it on the table in front of him, then crosses his arms and squints at Valentino past the midmorning glare. Valentino takes that as an invitation; swings a chair from the neighbouring table to sit opposite Marc, hefting one knee over the other.

“You look like a real P.I., with the newspaper and the trench coat,” Valentino remarks. He hadn’t been following Marc — at least, not today. Last week, sure, when he’d sat in his idling car and watched Marc take an hour out of his day to read at this same table. The coffee is good and the pastries are better. Sue him, that they have the same taste.

Marc grins, but the ticking vein in his jaw belies his irritation.

“I am a real P.I. I like to read the news, stay abreast of things. And it’s cold. Winter.” He peers disdainfully at Valentino’s hoodie-jacket combo. “Is this you… undercover?”

Valentino snorts. He flags a passing barista, says, “Whatever he’s having,” before returning Marc’s smile with a few more teeth and adding, “day off, actually. You know what they say about all work, no play.”

Marc hums, unwilling to indulge. He threads his fingers together on the table.

“How do you know you’ll enjoy what I’m drinking? Coffee is very individual.”

Because I tried it yesterday after I heard you order it through the wire threaded into your jacket lining.

He shrugs.

“I’m sure you have good taste.”

A glint forms in Marc’s eye, and it looks like something internal giving way — some load-bearing pillar of attitude. Valentino allows his smile to tilt a little sweeter, a little more genuine.

“And I’m sure there’s some conflict of interest in you sitting here with me. If it is your day off, and if this isn’t work.”

Marc is very good at pinning him, wings spread and stuck behind glass. Valentino lifts a shoulder. He’s going to log this coffee catch-up as overtime when he gets home. But Marc doesn’t need to know that.

“Call it a personal endeavour. Allora, it is no harm to me if you enjoy my company — if that in turn makes you more helpful.”

His coffee arrives. Marc watches the waiter leave, and then smoothes his newspaper out again, eyes on the front page. Valentino can tell he isn’t reading a single word.

“I said I would help. I have been helping.” He sounds affronted: a nerve hit by the idea that Valentino thinks Marc isn’t genuinely doing his best. Ironic. The apparent sincerity in his voice is stunning — if Valentino wasn’t so dedicated to seeing this through, he would laugh and blow everything. 

Instead, he tips his head to the side and huffs gently.

“Then, maybe I enjoy your company. Is that so bad?”

Marc blinks up at him. Suspicion pulls his brows together.

“Do you ever say anything simply, the first time?”

Valentino can’t help his grin. Getting under Marc’s skin gives him an unbelievable amount of satisfaction — an inappropriate amount, even. 

“Lying is half the job.”

“I should watch what I say around you, then.”

Ah.

“Only if you have something to hide, Marc.”

He’s not trying to scare Marc away — just knock him a little off-balance. But Marc smirks and leans to rest his chin on his palm. Valentino can smell his cologne, this close. It’s metallic, hot and spiced. The breath he takes is too deep.

“I keep secrets for a living, you know,” Marc says. Valentino swallows; leans back into his chair to escape what feels like a quicksand trap. His voice is hoarse when he answers.

“Any fun ones?”

Marc reaches for Valentino’s coffee. Takes a long sip, places it down, tucks his newspaper under his arm, and stands.

“Hundreds.”

He can’t find anything to say before Marc is already halfway down the road, coat fluttering in the wind. Valentino peers down at his cup. Unease rolls in his stomach, the sense of being absolutely bare — vulnerable as anything with a knife at his throat. How very dangerous. 

He spins the saucer till he can raise the side Marc drank from to his lips. The move is perverse, something he does without thinking, acting on instinct. The coffee scalds him all the way down like a punishment. It tastes fucking fantastic.

His phone rings on his walk back, taking a route he’s never seen Marc cross into just to be safe. Can’t risk raising any more suspicion than he already has. The streets are too loud, too crowded. He can’t imagine a car chase here — this fucking traffic. Valentino hates New York.

Maybe I enjoy your company. 

Christ, he needs a good knock to the head. Uccio’s voice pulls him back to the present, away from the other side of that little table.

“Vale. You’re working this slower than usual.”

Valentino allows an eye roll that he’s sure his partner will sense across the ocean between them. A taxi misses killing him by a half second as he crosses the street, and he catches his breath on the end of a yelped curse.

“Ah, it is just difficult. This one — so little to go off. And he is smart, knows the system.”

Uccio lets the words hang. Inwardly, Valentino knows he’s right. That for whatever reason, he’s ambling his way through the evidence, unrolling the red string at a snail’s pace. Like he’s pressed every button in the elevator just to see what’s happening on his ride to the top. A sigh rushes through the speaker, a crackle of sea foam.

Uccio doesn’t dig into Valentino’s excuses. They know each other too well for that.

“Okay,” he says, “I’m here, you know.”

“I know.” 

He can hear the beginning of a sulk in Uccio’s voice, triggered by a preternatural sense that something is being kept from him. “And if I need you, I’ll tell you, yes? I don’t keep secrets from you.”

It’s not even a lie. Usually.

But this time, it’s just — Valentino doesn’t think it’s because he likes Marc. He doesn’t know Marc, beyond the file in the vault and what he’s seen and heard. His stomach rolls. He hates the types of feelings that he struggles to name.

For now, he’ll call it playing with his food; a waiting game. Anything to make this feel less like lenience and more like leisure. Anything to let him wrestle back a little bit of control.

“Check in when you get back to your room,” Uccio reminds him, reeling him in again, “so I know you made it.”

“Yes, yes.”

All these near misses over the years has made the man paranoid. It’s reassuring, though. Having someone looking out for him like that.