(The title means 'kisses at the secret bar')
('Murder' is 1930s slang for 'WOW!')
Sweet Nothings
The best thing about the wedding, it was widely agreed, was the brevity of the wedding vows.
Chane Laforet took this man to be her lawful wedded psychopath, and Claire/Vino/Felix had opted to wear a shiny new name to the occasion as the priest had denied his wife the fetching title 'Chane Tracer'. He'd spent the weeks up to the wedding threatening to assume a matching vow of silence, and she had observed his promises with big, steady, golden eyes; he had indicated a desire to demonstrate his love for her via circus acrobatics, and she had accepted this with big, steady, golden eyes, he had stage-whispered to his brothers his intent to swing in on a chandelier and steal her away from the altar on the day itself, and she had overheard this with big, steady, golden eyes; without a single flicker of apprehension or regret.
So they stood opposite each other, the mute and the madman, and in honour of their meeting and defiance of their crimes the ceremony took place under the very roof on which she had engraved her answer, over the very tracks which he had threatened to smother with blood in order to learn her location.
Perhaps it is a little inauspicious to be married on the train where almost everyone in the congregation committed a murder or theft, but it is also deliciously daring, and the vicar was none the wiser.
So Felix had by sheer whim restrained himself, and managed to say his vows without committing any further atrocious acts of valour and showmanship. Standing behind the bride as the maid of honour, Miria had dressed up as Chane in a black dress and ill-fitting brunette wig; mumbling the vows the elegant mademoiselle had written out in an obscure, possibly French accent around the dagger clenched between her teeth.
"Do you take this woman, Chane Laforet, to be your lawfully wedded wife?" asked the vicar, pitching his voice above the murmurs of the crowd and the juddering train.
"I do." Said Claire, contriving to make two miniscule words speak volumes on how proud, elated, and downright smug he was feeling at that moment.
"Do you take this man, Felix Walken, to be your lawfully wedded husband?" continued the priest solemnly, unaware the name was only a week old and his flock of beloved lambs were all darling little gangsters.
But her eyes, big, golden, steady, were turned away from Claire all of a sudden, at the key moment, and the Rail Tracer felt her spell over him snap and his heart break. Her eyes were widened in surprise, irises amber with warmth, speechless mouth open in an audible gasp. As her face turned away at his moment of triumph, he saw only the whites and the curve of her eyelashes, as clearly there was someone at the back of the room worth a whole sunrise to her, against whom he was only a sputtering candle.
He heard the bloody monster in the back of his mind unleash a jealous hiss.
But just like that her bewitching, unhesitating eyes switched back to him and spitted him on Cupid's arrow, her parted lips drew in a deep and ecstatic breath, and her tongue moved sinuously as she declared:
"I do."
He forgot to search for his rival in the crowd. His cheeks burned bright red. He thought he would faint. Her voice was exotic, honeyed, mellow, educated, graceful, unexpected, strong, peerless, a dagger to his preconceptions just like her debut upon the rooftop carnage had been.
He would quite happily hear that for the rest of his days. He almost didn't want to kiss her, in case that would prevent her from speaking more.
The mafia watched in amusement as Claire Stansfield, an unsettlingly real urban legend, was blatantly poleaxed by his diminutive wife's first words.
She watched him with dancing eyes and a nearly-restrained crimped smile, moving forwards for her promised kiss. He shifted backwards in the small compartment, raising his hands.
"Not unless you ask me nicely," he grinned, a swift return to audacity.
She shook her head, certain her father had only granted a brief reprieve for that one moment, for a little experiment he would say, and curiously not brave enough to test and prove the theory. She wanted to pretend a little while longer that she could speak whenever she wished, and trigger that charming look of shock on her husband's face again.
"Your voice," Vino swallowed nervously, his audience apparently forgotten; "is murder!"
"Shhhh…" she whispered, able to make a simple fricative noise at the very least, and by the way he melted into putty at her command and swept her into a dizzying kiss, the best and least she could manage seemed to be perfectly sufficient.