A/N – So what exactly did happen in Manhattan? Romance *gasp* - Marauder is willingly writing (kinda) romance…check the sky for flying bacon, people!
Disclaimer – Surprisingly, despite my best efforts, Criminal Minds is still not mine. And neither, really, is the title; if you know your Shakespeare, you'll get where it came from…
The heady scent of cigarette smoke wafted through the old fashioned, wood panelled bar of the small hotel as the members of the midnight crowd nursed their fifth, sixth, seventh drinks of the evening. A small window above the counter had been opened early in the evening to try and combat the heat of the unusually warm Manhattan evening, but the breeze blowing through and unsettling the clouds of smoke – enough to slam the door on the other side of the room - didn't seem to be bothering anyone enough to have the window closed. The same could be said of the noise coming in from the street; typical, New York noises streamed through the gap into the relative silence of the room but no one seemed to hear them. The horn of the taxi, the yells of groups of young people out for the evening – nothing was enough to stir any of the drinkers from their solitary contemplation. The world was in the bottom of the glasses that they gazed at and into, in the amber and red liquids that they sipped, and nothing else could get in. Not then.
The bartender had long ago dimmed the lights, even though he knew that the people in his care past eleven pm needed no reminding that night had come and they should be sleeping. The man was old, working in a bar of some sort or another for so long that he could spot an insomniac from a hundred feet away. These were the people who paid for hotel rooms, because if they didn't they would have to leave the bar at half eleven, with no real intention of using them until they found themselves falling in the door at some godforsaken hour in the morning. He imagined that there was something about an empty room in a nameless hotel that did nothing to help give some evidently troubled people the peace they needed for just a few hours or so; the anonymity of it, the fact that the bed was cold and the walls painted a colour that no one in their right mind would choose for themselves – it all added up to make the experience one that the bartender himself would never willingly choose to put himself into. He hated hotels. Hated them with a passion.
He finished polishing the last glass from the dishwasher and placed it carefully on the shelf, watching from the corner of his eye as the youngest person in the bar – a boy with ID that said he was just twenty one – stood up slowly and wandered out, half of his sixth beer abandoned on the table. He would be alright, the bartender decided, if he could leave a drink halfway through and remove himself from the bar when he'd had enough. He'd put so many kids – barely old enough to even be in the city by themselves – into taxis, slipping an extra five bucks to the driver to ensure that the guy made sure his passenger actually made it in their front door, that he always appreciated it when one seemed able to think for themselves. But then, kids tended to be resilient; they bounced back, because that was the nature of being young. It was the older people in his lair that he was concerned for; the people who were trying so hard to find something that alcohol and cigarettes could never provide them with.
There were four of them, now that the boy had left, and the bartender knew how much each of them had drunk since they took their seats and how much more he was likely to give them before he got them gently escorted to their rooms for the rest of the night. There was one woman, aged about thirty five, dressed for business and on her fifth glass of red wine. Every two minutes, she would pick up the phone that rested at her elbow – even though no one had heard it make any noise since she first arrived – and check the screen, the soft greenish glow on her face more pronounced now that it was darker in the room. And then she put it carefully down and took a sip of her drink. He wasn't going to let her have anymore; when she came back for a refill, he would gently enquire as to her problem and try to talk her into going to sleep it off. It was always that sort that he knew he could help; the ones who had some outward sign of the pain they were in. It was easier to choose his balm when he could see the wound. This girl was waiting for someone, and all he had to do was convince her that the bastard would call eventually, when he realised what he was missing out on. Yes. This one he could help.
Two of the men were old like himself; at least sixty, if not more. On their sixth and seventh beers respectively. With these two, he was unlikely to interfere until they literally could not stand up to walk to the bar, and then he'd call reception and have them taken to bed. It wasn't that he cared any less for men of his own age – in fact, it was quite the opposite – but he knew how damn stubborn they could be. Unless they asked for his ear, he would never offer it, and advice would never be forthcoming either. Old men had seen enough of life to know that drinking, heavily and alone, was never an ideal, but then they had also seen enough to know exactly what they were doing and, as a peer rather than an older, wiser shoulder to cry on, he believed he had no right to interfere. This type of customer always intrigued the bartender most, because he could never tell what they were staying at the hotel for. Never.
The last person, a younger man perhaps in his mid - forties, was the only one sat at the bar, in the same seat he had been in since seven pm. A copy of the evening newspaper and a book were placed at his elbow; he'd read the paper early in the game and spent about three minutes looking at the crossword before he gave up, folded the newspaper and put it to one side. The book he had picked up repetitively, read a few pages of and then put down, up until about half past ten and then he'd given up altogether. He was on his sixth scotch of the evening but his resolve was impressive to say the least; when he'd stood up to go the bathroom, there was no hint in the way he moved that he had even had one drink and he seemed lucid whenever he called for another scotch. This was the one that the bartender was really interested in that evening; everything about the man, from the neat trim of his just-greying, short beard to the suit jacket worn with open necked shirt and jeans, radiated law enforcement. The bartender just knew. And the only ones who frequented hotels like this one were FBI agents. He'd had a fair few interesting discussions with a lot of them over the years, and he would have already gently instigated a conversation with this one if it weren't for the distinct aura of foreboding that seemed to surround him. This was a man who just wanted to be left alone. In between his sips of scotch, he was playing absently with what looked to be a bracelet or a necklace; he also wasn't wearing a wedding ring, and so the bartender wondered whether he had taken the jewellery, been given it or had it hurled at him by whatever ex-lover it surely belonged to. Judging from the wistful look on his face, it probably hadn't been handed over in a friendly, accommodating kind of way; much more likely it was thrown his face in a moment of passionate conflict and now he kept it as a trophy, a reminder of what he had lost, in a way that only the most masochistic would ever understand.
As the clock struck half past twelve, the main door swung open and a column of light from the reception momentarily spilt into the room and fell on the hands of the man at the bar. The jewellery glinted before the door shut and the room was once again in semi darkness. The woman walked quickly to the opposite end of the bar, pulling out her purse before she had even finished sitting down. The lonely drinkers all studiously ignored her, an unspoken pact that everyone in their situation seemed to have made with one another, and only the bartender looked at her face. She was beautiful, a fact he could readily acknowledge even as he noted the grey streaks around her temples and the wrinkles forming around her bright, laughing eyes. She smiled warmly at him.
"A white wine please, and whatever you would like for yourself."
"Thank you kindly," the bartender smiled back, reaching for the already half used bottle of white from earlier in the evening. The woman looked impassively around her – obviously not a frequent member of the midnight club – until her eyes fell on the man at the bar. She shook her head sadly, a half smile still gracing her features, and turned back to the glass placed carefully in front of her. She paid the bartender and, when he handed over her change, she raised her voice slightly as she said, "Thank you very much."
Neither of them missed the movement of the other man as his head jerked quickly up, looking wildly in their direction and showing perhaps for the first time that evening that he had actually had something to drink. He knocked his paper sideways and his book to the floor when he turned.
"Em?" he rasped, standing quickly and coming towards her, "My God, is it really you?"
"I guess so," she grinned, standing to meet him and grabbing his hands the moment he was within reach, "Hello David."
The man was silent for a minute, staring at the woman in front of him with eyes that suddenly were no longer dull as they had been all evening, before he whispered again, "God, it is you."
As the woman moved to embrace the man called David, the bartender turned away and found something more interesting to do with the bottles along the back shelf. This seemed like a very personal reunion, if the man's reaction was anything to go by, and he had no right or inclination to play voyeur. He stayed that way for as long as it took them to move away from the bar to a quiet table in the corner and then dared to turn around and eye them carefully. The man still looked slightly dumbstruck, the alcohol now apparently really taking a hold in the light that this beautiful woman seemed to cast over him. Wondering vaguely if she was the one that the jewellery belonged to and how she fit into the equation if she wasn't, the bartender noticed his business woman stand up and wander slowly in his direction. He turned to her, already planning how best to persuade her to call it a night, and for a moment, the couple at the table was forgotten.
A/N – Stay tuned, sports fans. Updates soon.