Title: Appraisal
Disclaimer: Demons and all characters are the property of Shine Group and ITV.
Character Focus: Ruby/Rupert, mentions of Luke/Ruby.
Summary: It takes a certain kind of stubborn to have no special surname or powers, and stick to a life that demands them.
Context: Set during Smitten. References They Bite, The Whole Enchilada, Saving Grace and Suckers
Ruby watches Mina dart towards the door of the Stacks, in pursuit of Luke, somehow managing to snatch up and shrug on her coat on the way. The threat of Luke slipping away from them makes her move faster than normal; maybe not vampire-blur fast, but still so quickly it's hard to believe she's blind.
She makes a mental note to check her for fangs. Can't be too careful, what with evil blonde Luke-stealing harpies coming to town.
"This can't be easy for you, Ruby," Galvin says from across the table, for no apparent reason than to fill the silence. Kill the worry about how Luke's coming back: slapped into sense by Mina, or cold in a coffin, courtesy of Alice. He gives up staring after Mina and turns around, rubbing a hand over the back of his head and letting out a breath, tense and frustrated and maybe a tiny bit tired of it all. With a glance at the books scattering the table, he pulls out a case from a shelf and starts locking and loading some guns.
She eyes him while his are elsewhere, wondering if it's a nervous tic or just what he knows best. Research is Mina's department. Fighting is his. Her gaze lingers on his hands, moving over the weapons, practised and easy, making it look like poetry. It makes her remember how her hand felt in his, which makes her stomach flip flop and her mouth flap open, blurting out things best kept to herself.
"Trying to stop Luke seeing his girlfriend?"
"Okay," Galvin drawls, voice shot through with sarcasm. "So it's not exactly a hardship..."
Ruby feels more than sees him, watching her. She's been feeling it a lot lately, more than ever since she was kind enough to save him and Luke from a watery grave. As if he's got more time for the person who's crashed his freak-hunting party than he's prepared to admit.
Luke never looks at her like Galvin does – even when he's not mad at her for trying to prove his girlfriend is a harpy – and never in so many different ways. The sentiment shifts in the blink of an eye.
Sometimes she's new and intriguing, an outsider intruding on an orderly world. Sometimes she's old and familiar, as easy to read as an open book. She isn't the only one who had a Van Helsing for a best friend, and she can't help but wonder whether Galvin stumbled into the smiting game and chose to stay, the same way she did; whether, when he looks at her, if he's really seeing something of himself.
In Luke-world, she's just part of the furniture. He's her closest friend and she is his – but sometimes he doesn't seem to realise she's even there. He's as blind as Mina when it comes to seeing her, the way she wants him to. All grown up. Ready to be noticed, by someone who'll appreciate what they see, and recognise the value of it.
"Is that why you called me yesterday?" she asks, trying not to sound as desperate for approval as she really is. "Because you thought I'd jump at the chance to be Luke's own personal stalker?"
"You mean you didn't?"
Ruby can hardly deny it, so instead she dares to look up. Galvin's still standing there, looking at her. She drops her eyes back to the floor, not sure if the expression on his face is interest or impatience. Her feelings for Luke have left her hypersensitive to these kinds of things: every glance, smile, bit of body language. All carefully filed away in her head for study later, just in case there's a sign among them she's managed to miss.
"I did what I do with every member of my team," Galvin adds, replacing the case and moving to check his pet pulse gun, the one he keeps inside his coat – under his pillow, probably. Not that she's spent a second thinking about what Galvin does in bed. For all she knows, he spends every night hanging like a bat from the rafters of the Stacks.
"Assess their strengths and weaknesses. Position them accordingly."
Ruby flushes in pleasure at the 'member of my team' part. It doesn't go unnoticed.
"What did you want?" he asks bluntly. "A badge?"
She's about to retort that it's flowers or chocolates, actually, or even better, both: when it hits her. She flicks back over his words, thrill temporarily flattened. "Weaknesses? I have weaknesses?"
Apart from Luke, that is...
"Well you can't fire a gun worth a damn," Galvin says, eyes gleaming at the chance to expand on the subject. In one quick movement he tosses her the pulse gun. Ruby scrabbles to catch. The metal is warm on her skin, where he's been holding it.
"Not too hot on basic research, either. You found out Luke was the last Van Helsing and didn't bother reading 'Dracula'."
"Neither did he!"
"Boy's the brawn of this team, not the brains."
"Are you calling Luke thick?"
Galvin, possessing a healthy regard for self-preservation, ignores the question. "If you're gonna be our back up," he says, looking thoughtful, as if he's constructing a timetable in his head, "you gotta work on the basics."
She fingers the pulse gun nervously. "Like lethal weapons?"
"Sure. They could do with a polish."
Ruby throws the gun back at him, sorely tempted to fire. Galvin catches it smartly. One-handed, just because he can.
"You said I had strengths," she persists, waiting for a mention of how she helped him hack into the college records, only that morning. Cosied up to a vampire so she could pluck a hair from his head, a few weeks before. Saved him, Luke, Mina and the entire sodding contents of the Stacks, weeks before that. Sweet-talked – yeah, okay, bribed – a seven-year-old into naming a freak, even earlier.
Multi-talented really isn't the word. She should probably start charging.
Galvin doesn't hold a grudge so much as shape his world around it, and that seems to go for everything else about him. It takes a certain kind of stubborn to have no special surname or powers and stick to a way of life that demands them. Ruby's half-convinced he's obsessive enough to note and remember everything people say and do in his presence, just in case it proves useful later. She can't imagine he forgets a thing.
But he shows no sign of remembering now. He just glances at her, busy examining the gun, as if she might have managed to hurt it. Ruby takes a tentative step closer. She rests her fingertips on the table and leans into it, towards him, the pages of a book rustling in protest. He continues working doggedly on his weapon, as if he hasn't noticed.
"Is there really nothing nice you can say about me, Galvin?"
He chuckles to himself, cleaning the barrel of the gun on his jacket. She wonders if he's trying to wind her up, getting a kick out of teasing her. Or if there are signs that his silence is caused by something else: the deepening crease in his forehead, the tightening of his lips, the little glance at the door; the hand that moves without prompting to his mouth, like he's hiding something...
Like he's determined not to say what he's thinking. Especially with Mina trying to persuade Luke that Alice isn't all she seems, somewhere around the corner.
"You pick up the phone real quick."
Because it's you on the other end, Ruby thinks, instantly, her mind no more discreet than her mouth. For a moment she's afraid it's let her down again and she's been thinking out loud, from the way Galvin looks at her, eyes snapping straight to hers, unguarded. As if he's heard it.
As if he knows.
As if he'd rather damn her with faint praise than put words to what he really might feel.
"You owe me for that pizza, you know," she says, turning a few pages of the nearest book, lying exposed on its spine. Ultra-casual, even though her heart is thumping. Impressively cool, even if she does say so herself. Staying calm under pressure: yet another talent she's got. Honed by being hopelessly in love with a boy who doesn't love her back, and desperately trying to hide it.
When she glances up, Galvin is gazing at the book, mesmerised by the motion. He frowns and slips the gun back inside his coat, folded by Mina's wifely hands over a nearby chair. She reads the question forming on his lips before it leaves them.
"The one I bought when you sent me to spy on Luke?"
"I asked you to watch him, not feed him."
She shrugs off the barb. "I suppose I could get a part-time job that actually pays. Doesn't ask me to risk my life on a daily basis..."
"If you're that torn up about it," Galvin says, not giving an inch as usual, "how about I just buy you another one—"
And then he stops. He scratches at an ear and goes kind of weird and still, as if he's said something he shouldn't have.
Ruby feels a shiver zip down her spine at the words, not sure if it's her ears hearing the promise in them or her stupid, hopeful heart. Always making her look for things that aren't there: want what she can never have.
"I'll hold you to that," she says, lightly, then sucks in a breath, realising how blatant it sounded. But Galvin doesn't seem to mind. There's almost a twinkle in his eye, an ease to the set of his jaw, and his shoulders are definitely more relaxed than they were a minute ago, when Luke stomped out on them. He even seems to enjoy it. As if he's not a damaged, borderline alcoholic at least twice her age, as if she's not a novice feeling her way around a strange new world – as if they're just two people alone in a library, feeling their way around each other.
He flashes her a rare, honest-to-God smile in return, one that makes flames rush to her face and her knees quiver, like they're on the point of collapse. One that's even sort of – unless it's her imagining it – flirty.
Oh, God. Please let her not be imagining it.
Mina comes clipping back down the passage that leads to the Stacks, sky-high heels announcing her return. Galvin spins around at the sound, a magnet seeking its pole. Ruby sinks into the closest chair, not trusting her feet to be steady, and not wanting the questions it might provoke if they weren't. She arranges her face back into a serious expression, hoping it's not still as red as her name. Fingers crossed, as Mina reappears and makes her way down the steps, that Luke will follow.
When he does, even the Stacks itself seems to breathe a sigh of relief. Operation Abduct Alice resumes, and it's like the entire conversation never happened. But she still hugs it to herself when the crisis is over, that smile and the weird, unreadable look on Galvin's face that came before it – yeah, okay, and maybe the way he looks in a waistcoat too – staying with her, burning into the part of her brain she normally reserves for Luke. Filed away for further study, with the rest of it.
She keeps her phone close by too, finger poised and ready over the answer button.
Just because.
Just in case.
END