(394 words.)
The job goes well and the coin comes in clean and easy, so Billie claps him on the back and pours out a generous amount of whiskey into two tumblers to celebrate, shoves one into his hands before he can protest.
Daud still winces a little as he knocks back the drink, not quite accustomed to that burn down his throat, and Billie smirks to see the quick shudder pass over his face.
He holds the glass in his left hand, the mark of the Outsider clearly visible as he lowers it again, and her smile flickers for a moment. She takes her own drink and sits down at her table, kicks the other chair out toward him. "Stay a while," she says. "You've earned the rest of the night off."
His eyebrows lift in surprise at the invitation – and it is a good thing they wear masks while they work, as she has yet to train those tells out of him – but he sits obediently. He doesn't quite keep the grimace from his face as she pours more whiskey, but he gamely takes another, slower drink after she clinks her glass against his.
She waits until the tumbler is empty again before she gestures to his hand and asks, "You ever going to tell me how you managed to earn that thing?"
He covers the mark with his other hand quickly, almost self-conscious more than defensive. "No," he says, frowning. "Not tonight, anyway."
Anger flashes suddenly through Billie's heart, and an old desire to just cut the whole damned hand off and see if she can figure it out from there comes surging back through her thoughts. He hardly even knew what to do with that incredible power when she found him, a half-starved street kid stumbling along the rooftops of her gang's base, dead-eyed and hopeless and holding a fury at the world so deep and vast it would've driven men twice his age mad. He would have been dead without her, no matter how interesting the Outsider happened to find him.
Daud's marked hand stretches across the table until his fingers brush against hers, and the touch jolts her from her thoughts with the way that it burns. The black lines of the strange symbol flare to bright white.
"But I think I can share what he's given me with you."