Disclaimer: I don't own the movie "Drive Angry." Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.
Authors Note #1: Part two of the "Thearchy" series. Sequel to "Calavera."
Disclaimer: post movie, gore, blood, canon appropriate violence, adult language, drama, angst, romance, The Accountant basically doesn't have time for this shit but he makes time because honestly he is probably bored and Milton is interesting and Piper is lurking and there is something about all of that combine that he might just like that.
Tracasserie
Looking back on it, he wasn't entirely sure how he'd ended up pressed into the back booth of a dim, beer-stained bar in the deep south. Watching Piper make love to a bottle of vodka like she didn't know any other way to drink. He'd merely passed from one threshold to another and caught the glint of dirty blonde hair on the other side of rain-streaked glass.
Milton had escaped again.
That was all he really remembered that wasn't her.
"There are some people you can't just lock up and throw away the key- even if they deserve it," she told him throatily. Making him eye the flagging line of liquid in the bottle as she slammed it down across the worn wood between them.
He frowned, partly because of the words and partly because somewhere along the line he'd lost track of time. Realizing his internal clock - the alignment he based all the other rhythms - was out of sync. He hadn't meant to stop. But once she'd caught sight of him he couldn't help but join her. Settling down into the seat opposite as she crooked a finger at the bartender and had a beading glass of scotch on the rocks in front of him before he could refuse. Forcing him to eye the amber liquid doubtfully as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Somehow managing to make the action look regal and powerful rather than sloppy and unrefined.
"I assure you, I can," he pointed out, straightening the line of his sleeves with a fastidious air before his gaze stalled on the way the sweat of the room was trickling down her collarbone. Highlighting the honey-tan of her skin. "It's the entire point."
"Yeah and how's that working out for ya?" she shot back, slightly slurred.
He chewed on the molecules, surprisingly thoughtful despite the familiar thrum of pride that usually flared first. About to say something to mirror that when she interrupted him before he could speak.
"My momma used to say some people just had wandering souls and that was all there was to it. Wasn't right to chain them down to no one or no place. Not when they wanted to be free. It's like caging a bird when God meant for it to fly. That's what Milton is," she imparted, wincing slightly as the pitching scream of shattering glass echoed from the other side of the bar.
His head cocked, the action seemingly outside of his control as he automatically tried to find her in his records. Ah, yes. There she was. Marion Manning. Dead seven years. Sent upstairs by a hair's breath and not much more. She'd flipped him off when he'd taken her heart. Feisty. He liked that. He'd even smiled, showing her sharp teeth but gentling the hair off her face almost tenderly all the same. Cleaving into her soul as she screamed and screamed. Filling the air with pure, white light as the scales began to lean.
Like mother, like daughter.
"Milton had a choice. The same choice you all have. He chose poorly. It's a simple concept," he answered eventually. Fingers spidering out as he traced the linage of the wood that made up the vinyl-lined pulp under his fingers. It'd been a towering pine once. Two men had met under it every day with soft freckled skin and pale throats. An ageless summer. New love. Forbidden, but pure.
He hadn't reaped them yet.
They were old now.
Married to good, patient women that they loved in their own way.
But they weren't old enough to forget that summer.
"Have you ever kissed anyone?" Piper asked. Momentarily blanking his thoughts to nothing else as the emotion humans called surprise rippled through him. Not for the first time, but close. "I've seen how you look at people...how you touch them? I know... Men are easy to understand."
She was intoxicated.
The sweetness of her scent was partially drowned out by the wheaty tang of the clear liquor she was downing like water. Not enough to drown out the soft scents of baby powder and menthols that clung to her like a second skin, but getting there. His nose twitched. He didn't like it. This willful erasure. It wasn't-
But he still, he smiled.
Of course it would be her that would ask.
"I don't think you have," she half-slurred, elbow slipping across the mildew-wet of the table. "I don't think anyone has ever kissed 'cha either. No man I know of can sit that straight in a thousand dollar suit and pretend he hasn't gotten hard in them slacks at least once."
The string that connected him to Milton glowed molten and insistent. Reminding him that he had business to attend to. That he was wasting time in a way that was so unlike himself he was almost tempted to carve into her and suss out the reason. There had to be one. There had to be-
"I believe it's time you were getting home, Miss Piper," he hummed instead, sliding predator-smooth from the booth. Brushing his hands down the front of his suit until the crisp material rasped smoothed under his hands. Self-soothing in a way he'd never allowed himself to dwell on. "May I?"
She eyed his hand when he offered it like it was more liable to bite. Looking up at him from behind thick strands of dirty-blonde before finally taking it in a strong grip. Leaving the bottle on the table with a dismissive snort as she straightened her top and tapped the pockets of her cut-off shorts until they jingled with the sound of keys.
"I got a hotel room about a block away," she responded threadily, wavering only slightly. Ignoring the steady crutch the line of his shoulders provided as she took a step towards the exit before pausing and looking back at him. "I can get there myself, Milton is probably miles ahead of you by now."
Two hundred, forty-five miles, to be exact.
And currently fucking his brains out if his personal brand of foresight was any judge.
The man was nothing if not predictable.
But instead of using the out she so graciously provided, he hesitated. Shrugging as the little hairs on the back of his neck prickled in a very human sort of way. Enough to make him uneasy as he turned in a slow, wrathful circle. There was intent and a sickening sort of entitlement in the eyes of more than a few of the bar patrons. Their eyes burning right through him as Piper started to sway with the music. Hips rolling in a slow, honey-sweet sort of way that pulled at something animal and unfamiliar in the pit of his gut.
He shook it away.
It was neither his affair, nor his concern.
He had a job to do.
A tally to balance.
Yet, he followed her out anyway.
"The baby?" he asked, figuring it was polite to ask despite the clear lack of the child in the rundown hotel room. Unable to ignore the warmth of her pressing against him as he steered her through the door by the gentle of her elbow. Allowing it when the line of her back firmed into his chest until he found himself almost solely holding her upright.
"With Webster. I was seeing about a job and it didn't seem right taking her on a thirteen-hour car ride. He's good with her. Smitten as anything. And she knows it. Typical," she replied with a fond huff. More falling than sitting across the mattress as she toed herself out of her boots with a sloppy jerk that irritated him for reasons he didn't completely understand. "I didn't get the job, if you were wonderin'."
"I wasn't," he remarked, skating on the line of prim as he allowed his wrists to settle crossed in front of him in his usual, confident posture. "I know."
Her glare was baleful this time. And for some reason a dark rumble of a chuckle tried to make tracks from the depths of his throat. Amused in spite of himself by the emotion.
"Don't suppose you can steer me in the right direction?"
A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth again as she tossed herself flat against the mattress. Bare feet cracking through a full body stretch as she tucked the pillow underneath her arm and looked up at the ceiling with a rude sound.
"Yeah, figured."
He stayed in the chair beside the window, lulled by the rhythm of her breathing until dawn streaked the sky. And even when he eventually tracked Milton down and took him back where they both belonged, he still didn't have a satisfying answer as to why.
A/N: There will be one more part to this series, please stay tuned. Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think.
Reference:
- Tracasserie: a turmoil; annoyance.