On the nights when the dark rises up behind Roy's eyes, the dark of smoke and bleak nights, he goes to Madame Christmas' place, and asks for whisky. He seeks it for the clear, limpid yellow it shines in the light, for the unclear way it fills his mind.
On his third glass, Madame Christmas says, "No more, my boy." He meets her eyes, sees her old, wry, wary gaze that says I have known you since you were a boy, my Roy, you can't fool me. Her gaze shifts over his shoulder and he knows without even turning who's there, but he turns anyway, because it is a worthy sight.
Riza wears a camel-colored trench coat and her hair down, and she looks not at him but at Christmas, meets her gaze and the look that passes between them ought to frighten him (the two women who know the most about him in the world). Instead he feels, through the darkness behind his breastbone, deep strong wingbeats that are not quite hope. He doesn't know if Christmas calls Riza on nights like this, or if Riza just comes of her own accord. He doesn't believe in fate or destiny but he does believe in alchemy, and the lines that tie them together are blood and fire; maybe when he wrote his burns on her back he unwitting made an array that binds them.
Maybe she just knows him.
Riza takes his wrist, and he can feel his own pulse echoed in her touch. Her eyes are the warm brown of polished wood or turned earth, and her hair, so rarely loose, is a far truer gold than the whisky in the glass.
He goes with her, wordless, up the stairs.
They cannot meet in safety, except here. "Christmas' girls" know him and know his enemies; they are his guardians clad in laughter and silk. Here, with the door closed and latched, Riza unbuttons his shirt, and for a moment he enjoys the calm in his heart even as he knows it is as insubstantial as the light reflecting on her hair—and then he puts hands over hers to help her. He disrobes her, hears the rustle of her coat on the floor and the lighter sounds of her dress, her stockings, and beneath them she is nothing but herself.
In bed they lay side-by-side so they can kiss continually, as though they need it to breathe. Her long leg draws up over his hip as he moves in her, urgently although he wishes he could draw it out and move as slow as the soft beating wings in his chest. It has been too long, too long without the heat of her body and her soft sounds and her. Orgasm, when it comes, is pure strong light that fills his body, brief but brilliant.
Afterward she closes her eyes and smiles. He winds her hair around his fingers, a hank of clear bright gold, and thinks, Yes.