ONE
Help me.
You won't need much of anybody's help. You're good. Chiefly your eyes, I think, and that throb you get in your voice when you say things like "Be generous, Mister Spade."
...I deserve that. But the lie was in the way I said it, not at all in what was said. It's my own fault if you can't believe me now.
Ah. Now you are dangerous.
- The Maltese Falcon
For a few moments, Jack Savage wondered if he had stepped back in time.
It was so, so familiar. He'd been here so many times before. Past midnight, raining in the Marches, surrounded by neon and slow music and the sound of distant thunder. And there, just at the edge of detection, the thing that had been missing for so, so long. The smell of cigarettes - Ambassador Gold Seals, sweet, sultry things - winding down the rickety stairs up to his apartment.
He couldn't stop himself. It was reflex. After a while, he forced himself to exhale, forced the familiar smell out of his head. Shook himself.
Went upstairs.
He didn't know how she'd gotten inside. He'd taken her key. But there she was, like she'd never left, lounging – it was the only word that fit – lounging on the beaten old leather couch, with the dim orange light turning her red coat into a sunset wrapped in a dusky purple suit, cigarette in one hand. A radiant fox-queen, descending into the slums to grace him with her presence.
She exhaled as he entered, enveloping him in a long, slow cloud of sweet-smelling smoke.
He glared.
After a while, she sighed and said, "All right. So we're going to do it this way."
He shut the door and, very slowly, in absolutely no sort of rush, shrugged out of his hat and coat. Just as he finished hanging them on the rack and turned back, mouth opening to speak, she cut him off.
"Not even a hello?"
One of his hands had clenched into a fist as the words died in his throat. He relaxed it slowly.
"No."
He forced himself to look away from her face. She had that look on her, the one she wore when she wanted to appear as though she were sorry and too proud to show it. He stepped around to the other side of the couch, making his way into the kitchen. His ears were ramrod straight, directly forward. Away from her. As good as screaming in her face.
He kept the anger wound like a spring. Forced it tighter. He did not slam the refrigerator door.
"Jack."
He did not turn.
"Jack, I can't stay."
"Good." He was proud of that one. No emotion in it but satisfaction. Not even anger. It might almost have been part of a pleasant conversation.
There was a sigh, and he heard the couch creak as she stood up. The carpet rustled as she strode across it. Outside, the music swelled. The spring got tighter.
She was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame, cigarette dangling from between two fingers as she watched him. He continued slicing cucumber. He did not look at her face. She was standing in the spot where the neon outside would reflect in her right eye, just slightly, and she would be watching him with a half-lidded gaze. It was bad enough without having to see it.
"I'm sorry."
The bang echoed around the room. His hand would be sore later. He might even have left a dent in the countertop.
"Get out," he said. A snarl. Almost like one of hers.
"I will," she said. She was calm. He hated that. Calm and... wistful. "I'm not staying. But I had to come. To warn you."
He glared at her. It was a mistake, making eye contact. Neon glinted. The spring creaked.
And she just shook her head, pushed off of the door frame, and took two steps closer. He clamped down again.
"It's gone wrong, Jack," she said. "I'm not going to tell you what it was, because I know you, and I want you out of it. I want you out of here. I still care about you that mu-"
The look he gave her should have reduced her to ash.
After a moment, she sighed, and her tail flicked through the air behind her. "Right," she said. "I understand. And, for just this once, I won't push." She shut her eyes and took another drag on her cigarette. This time, she had the courtesy to exhale away from his face. "There's money in the briefcase under the sofa," she said, without looking at him. "Enough to get you out of here. Out of Zootopia. Wherever you want to go, whatever you want to do. Just... go." She paused, as if considering adding something more, but did not.
The knife clunked dully against the countertop as he set it down. He barely heard it over the rush of thunder in his ears. The world was red-hot, and the inside of his head was too tight, too tight. Walking was hard. Retrieving the suitcase, opening it, shutting it again was hard. Setting it calmly down by the door, instead of the hundred other things he could imagine doing with it, was still harder.
"I do not take bribes," he grated, without turning around. The wood of the door should have caught fire under his gaze.
"It's not a bribe." The little tremor, the hiss of insistence, in her voice was perfectly calculated. It was a tool. He knew it was. "It's a... an offer. Hell, Jack. Think of it as me begging if you like." He could hear her crossing the carpet behind him. Drawing closer. "I need you gone. Things are bad, and they're going to get worse, and I don't want you in it."
A thousand different retorts roared across his brain. There were so many things he wanted to say. So many that would be oh so satisfying, that would make her gasp and recoil and do that little motion, the full-body shudder that was her fighting down the urge to cry -
- that was her lying about fighting that urge.
He stepped aside, pulling the door open with him, and looked up at her, expression blank.
"Leave," he said flatly. He nudged the suitcase toward her with one foot.
Her eyes were wide as she stared down at him. "Jack, please."
"Leave," he said again. He bent, picked up the suitcase, and held it out towards her. "And do not come back."
Her eyes, brilliantly green even in the dim light, darted from his face to his chest to the set of his shoulders to the suitcase. She opened her mouth. Her chest hitched, as if she were fighting for air. As if she were choking on the things she wanted to say.
On the lies she knew he would not believe.
Dull, molten rage beat through his veins. Dull and hot and, now, harnessed. There was no opening for her. He could see her realizing it.
She very carefully avoided having their fingers brush together as she took the suitcase.
There were no parting words. She did not look back, and he shut the door before she was even halfway down the staircase.
After a while, he turned and, very slowly, very delicately, as if afraid that something might shatter if he moved too quickly, set both hands on the back of the couch. The frame of it creaked under his grip.
In the dark of his apartment, surrounded by slow music and the sound of rain and the sweet smell of smoke, hands and jaw and joints and eyes clenched tight enough to snap, Jack Savage stood for a long time and simply breathed.