#lxr

“Stop stealing my fries.”

Lucrezia answered Ronny’s poisonous glare with a bright smile. “But darling, mine are all gone, and they’re just so good!”

“You can afford another order.”

“Of course I can,” Lucrezia agreed, and made no effort to obtain one.

Maiza and Carla glanced at each other once, and in unison made the decision to stay out of the squabble. Biting back a long-suffering sigh, Carla returned her attention to her own burger.

She had had her doubts about this “double date” from the start. That Lucrezia de Dormentaire and Ronny Schiatto did not like each other was obvious any time they were in a room together. Carla suspected that Lucrezia resented his unwillingness to end up neatly wrapped around her finger; the fact that he was somewhat omnipotent and therefore honestly beyond her control did nothing to soften the blow.

So it had baffled Carla when Lucrezia had suggested that Maiza and Ronny accompany the two of them on a double date—but watching her mistress now, she understood. Lucrezia rarely had the opportunity to indulge in the luxury of hating someone, and she did so love an audience. Carla revised her understanding of the role she was to play tonight.

Ronny, for his part, seemed surprisingly willing to play along. As Lucrezia once more began eying the french fries left on his plate, he sent her a glare that would have cowed a lesser woman easily. “Leave them,” he said.

Lucrezia matched his gaze with a cavalier smile and, without looking down, reached again for his plate.

Ronny sniffed and lifted an eyebrow—

And then the air seemed to freeze.

Lucrezia’s hand stopped in place where it hovered over Ronny’s food, and Carla’s stomach lurched. The danger in the air was suffocating. Her training urged to defend her mistress, but every instinct in her body warned her that against this, she was powerless.

“You will stop,” Ronny said very clearly, his eyes glinting as he looked at Lucrezia—and then the air unfroze.

Lucrezia returned her hand to her lap with a little giggle and a shrug, but Carla kept a wary eye on Maiza’s partner. Maiza cleared his throat.

“Ronny, you’re worrying Carla,” he chided.

The impossibly powerful man sent Carla a look that was benevolent, if smug. “Well, no matter.”

Seeing that this failed to reassure her, Maiza touched her arm lightly. “Ignore him,” he said warmly, not bothering to lower his voice. “He doesn’t mean Ms. Lucrezia any real harm.”

And Carla believed that much: Lucrezia and Ronny were clearly having too much fun vying for dominance to try to destroy each other. Still, she tipped the rest of her own fries onto her mistress’s plate, an action that was as much a humble one as it was an order to behave. Lucrezia tittered, kissed her cheek and obediently focused her attentions on those fries rather than Ronny’s.

*

After they had finished eating, Lucrezia and Ronny set to bickering over who would pick up the check. There was no real animosity to it, but no one would have called it friendly bickering, either.

It went to waste when the check actually arrived. Maiza swiftly raised a hand to call the waiter’s attention and handed him a number of bills. “I already calculated the total,” he admitted, ducking his head with an embarrassed smile. “No change, thank you.”

Lucrezia and Ronny both looked at him as the waiter departed.

“How generous, sweetheart,” Lucrezia remarked.

“I see you’re still putting your contaiuolo skills to good use,” Ronny added.

Neither of them bothered to pretend actual gratitude. Carla found herself fighting a smirk.

Their next destination was the Shea Stadium for a Mets game. It was within walking distance. On the way over, Lucrezia made sure that Ronny—who had been responsible for the arrangements—knew that burgers and baseball were hardly up to her usual standards for a date. She then made sure he also knew that she could have bought a number of the skyscrapers in the area several times over. Ronny answered by detailing the professional and personal lives of some of the skyscrapers’ inhabitants as if he knew them personally. He didn’t.

Before long, the four of them wound up walking down the sidewalk in mismatched pairs: Lucrezia and Ronny in the front, and Carla and Maiza trailing behind them. Maiza sent Carla a rueful smile.

“Ronny’s having fun, I think,” he admitted.

Carla let a wry smile curl her own lips. “So is my lady,” she answered. “I suspect that observers would mistake which of us are actually paired up.”

Maiza looked forward at Ronny and Lucrezia just in time to see Lucrezia clutch Ronny’s arm to point out a building that the Dormentaires already owned. Then returned his gaze to Carla and gave a quiet chuckle. “I’m afraid you might be right. And I’m not sure they’d be wrong about those two. Are we their dates or their audience, do you think?”

Carla was by now quite certain it was the latter. “Does it bother you?”

The question was blunt, but Maiza’s smile didn’t falter. “No, I wouldn’t say it does. I don’t believe that Ronny would play into Ms. Lucrezia’s wiles if he thought it would offend me. To tell the truth, I’m still not sure whether our relationship is one that lends itself to ‘dates,’ properly speaking. It’s certainly nothing as clearly defined as yours with Ms. Lucrezia.”

Carla frowned slightly, reading between the lines of that statement. “We roped you into this. I’m sorry.”

“No, not at all! Even if the evening’s premise is looking a little thin right now, I enjoy spending time in your company, Carla.”

“You’re a flatterer,” Carla said, her wry smile returning to her face. Then she cast an analytical gaze at Maiza. “No… that isn’t true. You’ve always been sincere, haven’t you?”

“I do my best to be,” Maiza answered.

“Just so that it’s clear, please let me emphasize that I have no interest in men at all.”

“You have nothing to worry about on that front; Ronny’s the closest I’ve ever been to feeling that kind of interest. And even then, like I said, I’m not sure what our relationship is.”

“I see.” Carla held back a quiet sigh of relief, but her posture did relax minutely. “I suppose we may yet make comfortable friends, then.”

“Are we not already?”

“Perhaps we are.”

*

When Ronny suddenly smirked, Lucrezia broke off a monologue to tilt her head. “Hm?”

“I’m not sure your little scheme is going to bear fruit,” the demon answered her with amusement in his voice, and nodded his head back towards the other two.

“Scheming? Me?” Lucrezia protested airily, but she stole a quick look behind her anyway. Carla and Maiza were smiling at each other. The look in Carla’s face was one of respect and high esteem; it could not have been further from infatuation. Damn, she thought with a click of her tongue.

“If it makes you feel any better, I doubt she ever would have taken well to me,” Ronny offered, still amused.

Lucrezia turned a brilliant smile towards him. “You’re probably right, darling. Your personality is just awful, after all.”

“I don’t think that’s the problem. A rotten personality clearly does nothing to dissuade her from her fondness for you.”

Lucrezia answered with a tinkling laugh, high and clear above the sounds of the city. Ronny’s assessment was unkind, but hardly inaccurate. She took him by the arm. “Are you going to indulge me, at least?” she breathed.

“That depends on whether you manage to amuse me.”

“Oh? And how am I doing so far?”

“Well, no matter.”

“…That’s not an answer at all, you capricious thing.”

*

If Carla were perfectly honest, she might admit that she would not have minded the opportunity to separate Lucrezia and Ronny once they found their seats at the stadium. She was irritated, too, by the idea that she might be thought to be with Maiza, even as she enjoyed his company. So, ideally, they would have seated themselves in the appropriate pairs with Carla and Maiza sitting in the center.

She realized, walking in, that to separate Lucrezia and Ronny now would take a miracle.

So Maiza and Carla wound up on opposite ends, their dates stationed comfortably between them. Well—everyone but Lucrezia was comfortable, at least. She was not, and she clearly intended to make sure that the rest of them knew it.

“These chairs are dreadful,” she complained to Ronny, squirming pointedly. “Why didn’t you tell me this was the plan? My family has a suite here, darling; we could be sitting in an air-conditioned little room with cushioned seats and a perfect view right now…”

“Do you have a problem with the view from these seats?” Ronny asked mildly. They were tucked just behind the dugout; the view didn’t get much better than that.

Lucrezia, of course, did not admit that. “The suite is better,” she pouted.

“Hmph. No matter. Considering how greedy you are for experience, I’m surprised you can tolerate being so far removed from the action. It isn’t the same if you can’t feel the crack of the bat in the air.”

“I don’t care about that. Besides, you can have other kinds of experiences in the suite, and this is a date, after all.”

Ronny opened his mouth to provide what was presumably another snarky reply. Carla exhaled through her nose and spoke before he could. “Lucrezia, you are being ungracious.”

Lucrezia turned towards her, lips still curled in a pout. “But Carla, you know how nice the suite is.”

“Yes, Lucrezia, but we’re not in the suite tonight. There is no need to dampen the festive atmosphere by belaboring that point.”

“You don’t look very festive, darling.” Then a moment of comprehension flashed in her eyes. “Am I dampening your mood? Don’t be annoyed, sweetheart, this will still be fun!”

As though Carla, not Lucrezia, had been the one complaining. The sparkle in Lucrezia’s eyes revealed that she was well aware of her own caprice, but at least she obliged to put her arm around Carla as the game began. Ronny, still looking privately amused, did the same for Maiza. Carla and Maiza exchanged a look over their dates’ laps.

The moment of peace didn’t last long. Between the first and second innings, Lucrezia turned to Ronny again.

“I bet the Nationals win tonight,” she said brightly.

“You think so? I’ve got a good feeling about the Mets, personally.”

It was Maiza, not Ronny, who answered, his calm smile in place. Lucrezia wrinkled her nose at him. “Really? They haven’t been having much luck in the past few games, have they?”

“Even so, it’s not like they lose every game. Maybe they’ll turn it around.”

“You’re very optimistic,” Lucrezia remarked, her voice making it clear that it was not really a compliment. She removed her arm from around Carla’s shoulders so that she could instead clutch Ronny’s arm. “What do you think?” she pressed, vying for his indulgence again.

There was something more scornful than amused in the smirk Ronny directed at her. “I don’t bother to bet on sports games,” he told her. “Sometimes it’s more fun if you don’t even try to predict what the future could hold.”

“But it’s fun to make guesses, too!” Lucrezia wheedled. “Come on, you silly old thing, how do you think the game will end?”

“I’m sure there’s no way anyone could know the answer to that,” Ronny said airily. Carla wondered if he knew, as Lucrezia did and as Carla had accidently overheard the other day, that someone from the Dormentaire conglomerate was paying quite a bit of money to manipulate the end of the Mets’ season.

For a brief, significant moment, Ronny’s eyes meet hers, one eyebrow lifted in private amusement. He knew.

He looked back at Lucrezia then. “Let me watch the game for two more innings,” he said. “If it goes the way I think, I may consider taking you up on your bet.”

Lucrezia rolled her eyes. “If you insist,” she said. Then she turned to Carla and pulled her close. Her lips an inch from Carla’s ear, she murmured, “Don’t tell him, but the Mets are going to lose horribly tonight.”

Carla kept her face dutifully blank; Lucrezia giggled and gave Carla’s ear a little nip. Then she leaned back in the chair and watched as the second inning began, her face alight with possessive amusement.

As Lucrezia had predicted—as she had known—the Mets did not do well as the game went on. After the third inning, Lucrezia turned to Ronny with a dazzling smile on her face.

“Well?”

But before he could open his mouth to answer, a rock song began to blare over the speakers.

I was made for loving you, baby. You were made for loving me…

Carla pinched the bridge of her nose, guessing what was coming next.

“Grab your sweethearts and pucker up, folks, because the KISS CAM is a-rolling!”

Fantastic. The conspicuously heterosexual part of the night. Carla directed a stony gaze at the players on the field instead of the big screen and tried to ignore the blasting music and the even-louder, cartoonish kissy noises emanating from the speakers.

When Lucrezia gave a delighted gasp a moment later, all she could think was Of course.

*

Sitting in a nosebleed seat across the field, Victor Talbot was similarly unimpressed. “Goddamn straight bullshit,” he muttered under his breath. Work was (as always) stressful enough; did he really need to have heteronormativity shoved in his face on what was supposed to be a relaxing evening off?

He was about to look away from the screen when a familiar head of golden hair, framing a familiar beautiful face, caught his eye. In spite of himself, he snorted; Lucrezia always loved an audience, so whoever she was with about to get a hell of a kiss. Victor looked next to her—

“Are you fucking shitting me?!”

The family sitting in front of him turned to glare at him for his foul language, but he hardly noticed. His eyes were locked on the screen. To Lucrezia’s left sat a stone-faced Carla, but she wasn’t the focus of the camera; instead, as Victor gaped, Lucrezia exchanged a deep, passionate kiss with the man seated to her right:

Ronny Schiatto of the Martillo Family.

“Motherfucker,” Victor swore at no one in particular as the camera finally shifted its focus to another couple (before the two had stopped kissing), and he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket.

*

Lucrezia finally pulled away from Ronny and then laughed with delight. “Mmm, you’re still wonderful at that,” she cooed.

Ronny, too, was dangerously smug. Carla, who had somehow found herself looking their way, bit back a sigh and took her phone out of her pocket to fiddle with it. Apparently she had a text from Victor. She was not interested in dealing with that right now. She put her phone away and looked towards the field once more.

So resolved was she to step back into her role as bodyguard accompanying her mistress on a date with someone else that she almost started when Lucrezia touched her arm. And when she turned back towards her mistress, she was drawn at once into a kiss. She caught her breath, her head spinning at Lucrezia’s attentions. Distantly, she worried about animosity from those seated around them, but when Lucrezia pulled back, cradling Carla’s chin in delicate fingertips, her eyes were too bright for Carla to think of anything else.

“My Carla,” she breathed, her voice barely audible over the crowd. Carla had to lean closer to hear. “Are you terribly angry with me? You look upset.”

Carla felt color come to her cheeks. “Please don’t worry about me, milady,” she said.

Lucrezia raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

There was honesty hovering on the tip of Carla’s tongue, and she was tempted to swallow it down. But there was honesty in Lucrezia’s eyes, too. Carla softened her words and spoke. “I had hoped to spend time with you,” she confessed. “I hope you will allow that sometime soon.”

Lucrezia’s eyes shone. “Mm… Carla, you know I love it when you tell me what you want,” she said. She pressed another kiss to Carla’s lips, softer than the previous one. “Of course I’ll give you some of my time later, darling. I’m sorry I got your hopes up for tonight. Forgive me?”

Carla gave a wry smile. “As my lady wishes.”

Lucrezia smiled back at her and settled her arm around Carla’s shoulders once more. But when her gaze shifted back to the field, she sat up straight. “Oh! I almost forgot!”

And then her attention was on Ronny once more. “Are you ready to place your bet on the game, darling?”

Ronny eyed her, his lips curling in a smirk that didn’t look particularly kind. “Yes, I think I’ll go with Maiza on this. I think the Mets can turn this around.”

“And you’re willing to bet on that?” Lucrezia asked, her eyes sparkling.

“Are you suggesting that we bet something concrete?”

“Mm, relatively concrete, I suppose,” Lucrezia answered.

Carla cleared her throat before this could get out of hand. “Lucrezia…”

“Hmmm?” Lucrezia turned towards her.

Carla kept her voice low. “I would not presume to question your judgement, but do keep in mind that he is literally a reality-bending demon.”

“I’m not literally a demon,” Ronny corrected her (though he shouldn’t have been able to hear her in the first place), “but no matter. Do you really think I’d use my powers for something as petty as a bet over a baseball game?”

 Maiza spoke up. “Please don’t let him fool you. He would absolutely do that.”

Ronny glanced over his shoulder at his partner. “I wasn’t asking you,” he said, still smirking.

But Lucrezia’s smile was just as bright. “That’s no problem at all. We just need to come up with terms that mean you wouldn’t mind losing.”

“Did you have something in mind?”

Lucrezia crooked a finger and Ronny obligingly leaned closer. She whispered something into his ear, resting one hand on his collarbone as if by accident. He quirked an eyebrow when he pulled back.

“That’s if I lose?” he said.

“That’s if you behave yourself and keep your hands off the natural order of things,” Lucrezia answered primly, her eyes dancing.

Ronny snorted. “The ‘natural order of things,’ huh… Well, no matter.” He considered her for a long moment with narrowed eyes. “All right. You’re on.”

“Wonderful!” Lucrezia laughed and clapped her hands together with delight, and the two sat back in their seats, apparently satisfied with the negotiations they’d just carried out. Carla very carefully steered her thoughts away from the question of just what sort of terms Lucrezia had proposed. A glance at Maiza’s face and the way he raised his eyebrows with a wry smile suggested that he had guessed as well.

The Mets lost the game.

Ronny didn’t seem too displeased. Lucrezia was, as always, delighted.

*

Once they left the stadium behind them, Ronny dug a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.

“Sometimes I think you’re addicted to those, you know,” Maiza remarked, raising an eyebrow at his partner.

“Give me a break; it’s not like humans knew the dangers of tobacco when I picked up the habit,” Ronny answered with a smirk. He tucked a cigarette between his lips and lit up. “Besides—I can stop at any time.”

From someone else, they would have been words of an addict in denial; from Ronny, they were another boast about his inhumanity and the extent of his powers. Carla wondered if Maiza ever tired of such bragging, or if perhaps Ronny was being more blatant than usual given the occasion.

The likely intended audience of his bragging didn’t seem to pay it much mind. She watched him out of the corner of her eye; then, in between drags, she plucked the cigarette from his lips and put it to her own. Brazenly, she inhaled, looking straight into Ronny’s eyes. But something changed mid-breath; the cigarette vanished and the sudden shift in reality left Lucrezia coughing. Carla looked to Ronny; the cigarette was back between his fingers as he exhaled a confident lungful of smoke.

Lucrezia changed her coughs into giggles, pressing a curled hand over her mouth. “Not fair,” she protested, though she offered no explanation of what, exactly, she considered unfair.

Maiza interrupted with his mild smile. “Ms. Lucrezia, you didn’t strike me as the kind to smoke.”

“That teaches you not to make assumptions, doesn’t it, sweetheart?”

“I guess it does. My apologies.”

Carla glanced over at Maiza, hoping he had not taken the rebuke too seriously (he hadn’t). As a matter of absolute fact, Lucrezia did not smoke regularly; it would have been more accurate to say that she occasionally used cigarettes to flirt. Which would be why she accepted a new one from Ronny now and let him light it for her.

“Ooh, this is a nice brand,” she said, taking the pack from his hand and examining the label. “At least your taste isn’t half bad.”

“Ronny’s always appreciated the finer things in life,” Maiza agreed.

“I’m sure he has.”

On her mistress’s face, catlike with self-satisfaction, Carla could read the thought, He’ll be tasting one of those finer things later tonight. Rarely was Lucrezia subtle about her desires, and it seemed she was done hiding her intentions for the rest of the evening.

That just left the question of how they would be leaving the ballpark. At the beginning of the date, Maiza had picked up the other three in his car, assuring them that after a thirty-year road trip across the world, he was more than comfortable behind the wheel. Would he now drop his own partner off at Lucrezia’s hotel, giving the two of them a polite wave as they vanished inside to enjoy a night of smug debauchery? And for that matter, when was someone going to speak aloud the obvious change in their plans?

Lucrezia answered both questions at once by stopping just outside the parking garage. She looped her arm through Ronny’s. “Shall we call a cab, darling?”

“You mean you don’t think we should force Maiza to drop the two of us off together?” was Ronny’s sardonic reply.

“Haven’t we tested his patience enough for the night? Carla’s too, the poor dears.”

“I wouldn’t particularly mind, for the record,” Maiza remarked at the same time that Carla said, “It’s fine.” Their response hardly mattered to Lucrezia and Ronny, anyway; they were too amused by each other. Or by themselves—that was more likely. With a wave of his free arm, Ronny caught a cab’s attention with unusual speed. He helped Lucrezia into the back seat and then, before entering the car himself, turned once more to Maiza.

“Would you like a good-night kiss?” he asked, somehow sardonic and apologetic at once.

Maiza reached around the back of Ronny’s neck and tugged him into the proffered kiss, just briefly. When he pulled back, it was with a knowing expression on his face.

“You’re an asshole,” he informed his partner, but there was no resentment in his voice. “Have a good time.”

“I don’t doubt that I will. Carla, thank you for a lovely evening.”

“Likewise,” Carla answered, politely lying through her teeth.

Ronny arched an eyebrow in a way that suggested he had guessed—or perhaps that he simply knew, considering what he was—her true opinion on the matter. It didn’t seem to offend him. With a shrug and one more “Well, no matter,” he climbed into the cab, and he and Lucrezia departed.

Carla and Maiza watched the cab go; then, turning to each other, they both began to speak at the same time and stopped.

“Go ahead,” Carla said.

“No, please, you go first.”

“I was only going to commend your patience,” Carla admitted.

Amusement lit Maiza’s face and he hid a chuckle behind his hand. “I meant to say much the same of you,” he said.

Carla raised an eyebrow; then she let her smile onto her face and let her shoulders shake with smothered laughter. Maiza laughed along with her, finally shaking his head.

“Is that something Ms. Lucrezia does often?” he asked.

“Which? Switch partners in the middle of a date, or suggest a date under false pretenses?”

Maiza blinked. “…Either, I suppose? Which was this?”

“More the latter than the former this time, I think. Although I wasn’t sure at the beginning of the evening.”

“I… see. You know, Victor always seems to end his stories of her by insisting that she does have some redeeming traits. After tonight, I think I understand both why that clarification is necessary and what some of those better traits are.”

Carla thought he was probably being polite; she wasn’t sure Lucrezia had displayed any of her redeeming traits this evening. She didn’t say so, of course. Instead, she confessed, “I’m not sure my understanding of Mr. Schiatto has improved at all.”

“Really? There’s more to Ronny than meets the eye, certainly, but I think you’ve gotten an accurate picture of his personality tonight.”

“I see,” Carla said, carefully bland.

“He’s an acquired taste,” Maiza said, guessing what she left unspoken. “He’s almost never malicious, but it can be hard to tell that when he’s showing off how fond of himself he is.”

Carla snorted gently and did not say, fond of himself… or full of himself. Besides, after three hundred years of loyalty to Lucrezia and the Dormentaires, could she really criticize anyone for being self-centered?

“They do suit each other tremendously,” was what she said out loud with a crooked smile.

“Possibly too well,” Maiza agreed, “and I can’t say I’m upset that they’ve chosen to go indulge their similarities elsewhere.”

“Nor I.”

Maiza gave a little chuckle, and then he tilted his head and regarded Carla. “I can give you a ride home now, if you’d like. But if you’d prefer—and please, feel free to say no if you’re not interested—I’d be happy to take you to the Alveare for a drink now that we have a little time to ourselves.”

Carla found that she rather liked that idea—and that it didn’t even surprise her that she liked it. “I think I’ll take you up on that,” she said. “Just don’t expect me to get drunk enough to start complaining.”

“Why, Carla, are you suggesting that you might have something to complain about in the first place?” Maiza asked, his eyes glimmering with amusement.