Better Than a Horse
By: Riley
Summary – And with the cracked door blowing in a cool breeze across his back, sending shivers down his spine, Alex did the one thing he never thought he would do.
Alex opened the door to the pub, standing aside to let the couple that was on their way out by. The handsome looking man raised his fingertips to the cap that was snugly perched on his head and tipped it towards Alex. Giving the ghost of a smile, Alex nodded and waited for them to be completely out of the doorway before heading inside himself.
He allowed his eyes to adjust to the dark, smoky haze created by the cigarette smoke as he took off his jacket and hung it up on the coat rack standing next to him. He turned and blew on his hands, trying to get some feeling back in them, before walking over, his feet squelching over the slushy, sticky floor and over to the bar. He climbed onto a stool and ran his hands over his face before crossing his arms and leaning forward over the counter.
His neck was hurting more than he thought it would. That sudden and sharp twist of his head to the side when he had fallen into the water off a high jump off a platform to avoid receiving a face full of fire from an explosion. He had nearly ruptured his ear drum from that fall and his neck was still feeling the side-effects. There was a knot in the side of his neck that not even the best masseuse M16 could find was helping him. He would also try acupuncture, but having had so many knives shoved towards him over the past four years of being a MI6 spy gave him a slight phobia of needles or anything of the like.
Bringing his hand up, Alex started to rub his neck, pressing the pads of his fingers into the muscle that was still tight. It periodically brought pain up into his jaw and the side of his face, which he found he would absentmindedly mess with while in public. He couldn't have that. For those that knew him as Alex Rider the spy, he would be giving his enemies the satisfaction of knowing he was hurt. However, even he deserved to have some time to kick back, relax, and have a beer at his favorite, lesser known pub when he wanted to.
All of a sudden the pub owner, Alfie, walked over to Alex, holding a glass in one hand, a rag in the other. He started to rub the glass with the rag and lifted his chin in greeting towards Alex, who did the same. "I haven't seen you here in a while, Alex. How's it going?"
Alex sat up straight. "Not bad," he replied. "I just had some work I needed to do." If stopping a massive drug smuggling ring bringing brought over to the United States that had been sent out to unsuspecting Senior Citizens was 'work'. He nearly laughed at eth thought. Not many people could say they had the same experiences he did and while he still didn't feel like a patriot or that he was serving his country, he had grown a sense of not wanting anyone no matter race, gender, or nationality to get hurt or oppressed. So he did his best to keep the casualties down as much as he could. "Things seem to be coming up a lot more often now. I'm always going off on some trip."
"What is it that you do again, mate?"
Alex was silent for a moment. "Sales," he finally said. And that was the last he had to say about the matter. Alfie recognized the finality in his tone and changed the subject, still running his cloth over the glass in his hand. "What can I get for ya tonight?"
"Just a beer," Alex replied. "Nothing too fancy, I just want to know I can get up tomorrow without thinking I want to kill myself."
"No worries. I'll be back with it in a minute."
Alex nodded and lowered his head once more.
He was aware that someone had occupied the stool next to him but didn't look to see who it was until she spoke. "Well, well Alex Rider. Or should I say Alex Friend? You know I still have a mark where you stuck me with that pesky dart."
Startled, Alex jerked his head up and twisted in his seat to find Fiona Friend sitting next to him. Her lips, red with lipstick, stretched into an amused smile and while she didn't openly laugh at him, he could tell by her eyes that she was enjoying the expression of stunned surprise that was inevitably on his face.
"No need to be so surprised, Alex, I'm sure by now you would find that the people you encounter always have a way of showing up in your life again," Fiona said. She turned to the side, crossing her legs at the knee. Her long, slender legs hitched out from a slit at the bottom of her black dress, her stiletto covered feet gently grazing the side of his leg.
Alex's eyebrow twitched. She was speaking to him so formally, as if she knew everything about his life. He wouldn't be surprised if she did, actually. Her father had a fortune so big she could probably mention how she wanted something that wasn't invented and he would have a team o scientists and engineers working to get what she wanted. The one time he had been undercover, masquerading as her brother, the two didn't get along. They came from two different worlds and his punk appearance at the time hadn't made things easier.
She immediately wrote him off as someone that was an inch tall and didn't deserve to be in her house or to share any of her luxuries. He had immediately been turned off by her attitude and while he had to pretend to be her brother, wanted nothing to do with her. Even after having saved her from a near fatal train accident where she seemed to suddenly turn around and warm up to her, the damage had already been done.
A smirk graced his lips as he leaned back to get a good look at her. He was right with his thoughts when he had first met her; pale skin, black hair, dark eyes and already close to the woman she would grow into. And she looked exactly how he imagined her to be.
"Fiona," he said cordially. "Didn't think I'd ever see you again." He couldn't help himself with the next part, knowing he was being impolite but figured it was what she deserved after the way she had treated him. "Too bad you had to go and break my streak."
Fiona didn't appear offended. "I should've known the punk act you had before wasn't an act. You're still as uncouth as ever." She then paused, waiting for recognition, before continuing, "Uncouth is—"
"I know." Alex turned back to Alfie as he placed his beer on the counter. Alfie glanced over at Fiona and a hint of a knowing smile appeared on his face before he walked off to greet his next patron. "I went to school."
"And yet you never thought about going to uni," Fiona said. Alex's eyebrows rose in surprise. "I know everything about you, Alex Rider. I know the schools you went to, what your real identity is, and why you came to my house as Alex Friend."
Alex wasn't surprised in the slightest. As he had realized in his eighteen years of life, money and power got you whatever you wanted. MI6 had power and was able to make it appear that someone could be wiped off the face of the earth in a matter of hours when needed. Sir David Friend had money, assets, and a massive estate due to his supermarket tycoon as well as being a close, personal friend of the Prime Minister. While David Friend had been against using Alex as a means to solve a mission, he had turned around and thanked Alex some years later after he had saved the Prime Minister from an assassination plot.
"So you know who I am." Alex phrased it as a statement rather than a question. He brought his beer up to his lips and drank down a long sip. He never really liked the taste of beer, but found it to be of comfort since Sabina had left to travel the world. It had been an amicable breakup, something the two had agreed upon knowing a long distance relationship wouldn't work.
Still, he found himself at the bottom of the bottle too quickly more often than he would like.
"It's no big deal. So many people know who I and frankly, at this point, I'm surprised I don't have a constant red dot on me." Pain suddenly flashed through his body, originating from his chest and seizing up each and every one of his muscles. He couldn't forget at fourteen years old that his work for MI6 had resulted in him getting shot.
The pain would be with him forever.
"You can thank me for that," Fiona said mysteriously.
"Really?" Alex's eyebrow arched.
Fiona nodded but didn't say anything further. She turned to Alfie and held up a finger. A minute later a gin and tonic was placed in front of her and she delicately took a long sip from the straw that poked out of the top. Alex continued to study Fiona. He wasn't sure what it was, but something was different about her. She looked exactly as he would've imagined she would be, but the snooty air of upper class was now gone. Maybe as she had aged over the past four years she got out of her father's shadow and what was expected of her, to meet and marry a Duke or a Prince of some sort and become a Lady of the estate.
"Can't find someone to share your Daddy's wealth with?" He finally asked.
Fiona shifted forward slightly, quickly moving her drink from her mouth. She turned to Alex with wide eyes. "I beg your pardon?"
Alex turned to face her completely.
"You don't have a ring on your finger," he said. "And you haven't tried to thwart the attention you've been receiving from all of the males in this bar since you've arrived."
At that Fiona looked around and gave tiny smiles towards the men that were openly ogling her. Though the smile didn't reach her eyes.
"You deliberately sought me out as you came in here, if not having been following me for some time due to the amusement in your voice when you found me, much like you've been waiting for this moment for a long time. Plus your body language suggests that you're guarded but are open at the same time. So that brings me to the conclusion that you're not attached to anyone at the moment and that you aren't looking, which brings me to the thought that if you're the sole heir of your father's fortune when he ultimately passes you won't be able to get that money until you marry someone up to your father's standards to be sure it stays in the family, so to speak. So I think you rebelled against the idea and are now trying to prove to your father that you deserve that money…or else you're tired of being alone and you're trying to make yourself forget about it for at least one night."
Fiona slowly nodded as she had been, listening to Alex's evaluation of her. "For an eighteen year old you're well versed with how the world works."
Alex took another swig of beer. "You're only a year older than me," he pointed out. "Then again, I'm sure you've traveled more than I've been able to."
Fiona shook her head. "That wasn't traveling, that was Daddy taking us somewhere to open a new grocery store while I was stuck in the hotel with the maids and wait staff."
"You sound bitter."
"Trust me, that's not bitterness."
Alex's eyebrows furrowed together but he chose not to push into her private life. Not that she had any qualms about that herself; she had already dug up enough of his past as it was. Even if she were bluffing about it, she had known something was going on with him and was moments from revealing it to the Point Blanc recruiters that were coming for him before he knocked her out with a dart. He slowly started to smile, remembering the dull thud her body had made when she hit the floor.
"So you're still working with MI6?" She changed the subject, lowering her voice as she leaned closer to him. "It must've done a number on your neck. You've been rubbing it for the past twenty minutes."
Alex removed his hand from his neck, not noticing that he had subconsciously been rubbing at it. It had started to give a dull throb, something he had gotten used to, but seemed to hurt more now that it was pointed out to him. "Probably a pinched nerve or something. I heal fast, it's no big deal."
"I don't doubt it," Fiona agreed. "You've been working for them this long I'm surprised you keep managing to come back from missions."
"So do I," Alex admitted.
"How does your girlfriend…Sabina handle it?"
Alex's eyes narrowed as he gazed at Fiona, suddenly realizing how similar his ex-girlfriend and she were. They had similar builds but Fiona was more assured of herself and didn't appear surprised at anything that was revealed to her. Sabina, on the other hand, was a breath of fresh air and different from most girls. She was someone who could talk a mile a minute about the most trivial things and yet Alex found himself enamored with her and the way she talked. She was one of the few people that didn't believe him when he first explained that he was a spy, but then having saved her father's life once—though admittedly getting him hurt once—as well as saving Sabina's life twice had quickly changed her mind.
He was glad when she had found out, so he had someone who was able to understand him completely. And yet it had also been the one thing that inevitably tore them apart.
"I get it." Fiona backtracked. "It's none of my business."
"None of my life is your business, honestly."
"I think it is after you stuck me with a dart."
"You nearly got me killed because your boyfriend and his loser friends wanted to have a human target to practice on."
"That was a joke."
"Some joke."
"And you nearly got me killed when we were riding those bloody horses."
"I thanked you, didn't I?"
"No, actually, you propositioned me."
Silence stretched out between the two of them as they finished their drinks. It had been an awkward moment between the two to say the least. She had, in a way, thanked him for saving her after she had fallen off her horse and breaking her ankle. Then she had leaned in close to him, fluttering her eyelashes and pursing his lips as she told him he could "kiss her if he liked", to which Alex replied that he would rather kiss her horse. He had humiliated her with that rejection, he could tell it still bothered her or else she wouldn't have had wanted to find him so badly.
To get back at him.
If that was the real reason.
Fiona cleared her throat, brushing her hair off her shoulder, gathering it behind her and down her back. She pushed her glass aside and spun around on her stool, her legs bumping against his. She glanced at him with an odd look in her eyes, but didn't remove her legs from him. He made no move to back away as well, her body contact spreading a sense of warmth through him that he hadn't felt since he had last been with Sabina.
"I guess I should get going," she said.
She picked up her purse from the counter and swung around; removing her legs from being pressed against Alex's and stood up, brushing off the seat of her dress. Alex stood up and pulled his wallet from his back pocket. Opening the folds he produced a note and placed it on the counter, paying for his beer as well as her drink. It was the least he could do.
"You didn't have to do that."
"Yes, I did," Alex replied. "Besides, I'm sure I'm going to hear something about it from Smithers as it is. I'm testing out a listening device for him." He reached up and unclipped a button from the front of his shirt and held it out towards her, for her to see.
Fiona regarded it with a critical eye then appeared disinterested. "I hope I didn't come across as terribly as you think I do."
Alex smirked at her once more. "No worry about that, no one can think any worse of you than I can."
"It goes both ways, city boy."
Alex and Fiona walked over to the coat rack and he picked up her coat, handing it over to her before picking up his and shrugging into it. Fiona put on her coat, freeing her hair from the collar and draping it around one side of her neck. She looked up and their gaze locked. Fiona slowly dropped her hands from her hair and continued to look up at him as he gazed down at her.
The door opened behind him and he moved out of the way, towards Fiona, to let an older man come shuffling through the door. The man smiled at the couple as he moved by, taking off his coat and hanging it on the rack. Alex turned back to Fiona, noticing how close they were. He could see, even in the dim light, the light flecks of gold that were reflected in her dark eyes as they bored back into his own.
The door slowly closed behind him.
And with the cracked door blowing in a cool breeze across his back, sending shivers down his spine, Alex did the one thing he never thought he would do. He closed the gap between himself and Fiona, pressing his lips against hers. He gently kissed her, his mouth slanting over hers. Fiona's response was less sure than he would've thought. And yet the kiss was still better than he imagined. Fiona's grasp on her forearms was enough to get him to lean into her even further, bringing his hands up to her hair, running it through his fingers. Fiona pulled back long enough to catch her breath before turning her head to the side and kissing him again.
The kiss petered out and Fiona's grip loosened on Alex's arms. He opened his eyes to find Fiona looking back at him, at a loss for words for the first time in her life. Alex rested his forehead against hers, bringing his hands from her hair to her cheeks, keeping his intense gaze steady.
"Better than the horse," he said.
A/N: I meant to have this one-shot up last weekend but some stuff got in the way. Fun fact, this was what You Can Kiss Me If You Like was originally going to be if I hadn't changed my idea before writing it. I hope you guys liked it.
Cheers,
-Riles