Six months and two jobs later finds Edward Masen in a smoky jazz club, swearing at the piano. Libby Swann, the barmaid, keeps a cautious eye on him, because while he's a bloody decent player he's less than stable, like most good musicians. It isn't all that common to see a really excellent white jazz player, but he's certainly one. Starving artists, she says to herself, they're all the same. So she keeps an eye on him.
It doesn't have that much to do with the fact that he's handsome as all hell.
"Fucking fucking fucking fuck," Edward tells the keyboard which his fingers are slumped against.
"Got a problem, Eddie?" she says lightly, wiping off the glass for the second time, on automatic as she is.
"Edward, please," he replies, and then, sighing: "Yes."
"Well?"
"Dizziness, is all."
He had the 'fluenza, she knows. He survived mostly unscathed - he's far better off than some, to be sure - but he does have fits, on occasion; headaches and shaking, sudden weakness. Generally he makes it through his nightly performances without breaking down, but during the day, when he practices and plays fragments of older, slower melodies, his fingers occasionally stop, as if someone up there just cut the strings, and slip limply to his sides. It makes her faintly uneasy, the first time she sees it; it feels like something that wasn't supposed to happen, that wouldn't have happened in a better world. She doesn't know why; suppresses the feeling, most of the time. Libby is a practical girl, and while she's not devout in any reasonable sense of the word, she believes quite stoutly in God's creation: the idea that there are other sorts of world sits ill with her.
"Need a drink?" she asks now, setting the glass down on the counter.
"Yes," says Edward, leaning back on the bench and stretching, his fingers still hanging helplessly. "I don't care what. Even this place's regular old rotgut is fine."
"One rotten rotgut, coming right up," she retorts, laughing. "I'm very offended by that remark, Mr. Masen. I may never forgive you."
"I'm not blaming you, miss. I know it's not your fault that the brewers piss in it before sending."
"The very idea!" Libby kneels down next to the barrel and opens the spigot, filling up the mug with brown liquid that does, she admits, look like it could harbor all sorts of unknown substances. When it's full she marches over to where he's sitting, dozing off now, it looks like, and slams the mug onto the table at his elbow with a satisfying thud.
He startles, and glares at her. "Libby!"
"Your drink, sir." She is perfectly grave.
Edward seems about to say something else, but then he stops. Sighs; nods, picks up the mug with two hands, which have apparently recovered, and drinks half the cup in one go.
"That's not healthy, you know."
"I know," he says. He probably does; Libby has seen him at the bar as often as the piano, blank-eyed and reeking of liquor. The sight usually brings on her motherly side, but right now is different. Right now he is taking another swig and she is admiring him, not pitying him, faulty fingers forgotten briefly. Any living woman would. There is much to admire, from his pale skin to his flushed cheeks, from his full lips to those green eyes, downcast now, watching the world through bronzed lashes, watching the world under translucent eyelids, curving gently.
He lowers the mug and swallows. She watches the movement of his throat, is aware that a good Christian girl oughtn't be quite so flustered by details like that. Oughtn't notice details like that.
"Are you waiting for a tip, miss?" He raises a scraggly eyebrow.
"I'm not waiting for anything, Mr. Masen," she says, on impulse, and steals a kiss from the corner of his mouth. It's only a peck, her dry lips brushing his, which are wetted with beer, but it is a small half-secret, warm and pleasant.
Edward blinks at her. "Oh."
"Barmaid's fee," she says cheerfully, and sits down on the table. It's not as if there's anyone else in the clubroom; at noon, most of their eminently respectable clients wouldn't be seen within a mile of them and the rest can't be seen within a mile of them, because they'd be arrested. The space is left abandoned and smoky and dim, but Libby is aware in a vague, subconscious way that Edward is more comfortable in echoing gloom than stifling bustle, her own preferred habitat.
He looks at her for a while and then, smiling in a way that redefines his face around it, from the shape of his eyes to the shadows of his cheekbones, leans forward and kisses her back.
It is longer and deeper and sloppier and considerably less decent: she finds herself bent back, gripping the table's edges. Twenty years ago, she imagines, some righteous angel would have come in and stopped them by government edict; but they are young and wild, at the cusp of an era, and there is nothing to stop them from falling recklessly in love. Thus the kiss, which is where it begins.
He sits back, finally, and the smile's been transmuted to a full out grin, rakish and insouciant. She grins right back. It marks only the start of a fling with a temporary performer, just another in a rotating set of the pub's attractions, but it was a bloody decent kiss, she thinks, one to fit a bloody decent man. Plenty of reason to grin like there's no tomorrow.
"Pianist's fee," he says, and she laughs again, sweeter and truer than her earlier mockery.
"If I'm paying you, you should play me something. Play me something, pianist."
Edward flexes his fingers thoughtfully and nods. "Fair enough, Miss Swann." And play he does, until daylight fades and the world expands and they go back to their real lives, changed just a little - just a little! - by stolen kisses and paid for songs; something to last them until noontime tomorrow rolls around.
A/N: Libby is Bella's ancestor. Feel free to correct me if there's some reason she couldn't actually exist.
And yes, this chapter is fluff incarnate. I know. I know. More plottage next chapter, whenever that may be.