Horns
The prompt horns made me think devil, which obviously made me think of my favorite contract killer. And, uh. A few other things.
HOHW-verse. This absurd tale references The Conversation that Harry and Kincaid have in Chapter 1. So it's very, very AU, set post–Battle Ground. Read at your own peril.
The elevator doors chimed open onto a penthouse suite. It was a little overdone for my taste, modern and overtly masculine, austere. It even smelled expensive. The Baron had chosen the location for the latest meeting of members of the Accords, and naturally, he had picked a building that he owned.
The lights dimmed as I stepped out of the elevator, then died altogether a moment later. The city's infrastructure still hadn't been completely repaired. Between that and the amount of magic users staying in the building, the electrical system was being taxed to its limit.
"Again?" The woman standing near the window sighed, silhouetted in the glow of moonlight on the snowy city below. The only other light came from the battery operated exit sign over a service door, and the flames flickering behind glass in one of those low, linear gas fireplaces set into a wall between a sitting room and a bar. "Good. You got my message."
"Looks like it's the whole block this time." I joined her at the window. "What are you doing up here all alone in the dark?"
"Wouldn't you like to know, wizard boy," Murphy said without turning, though I saw the corner of her mouth quirk into a smile. "Stop staring. I'm trying to focus." She held what looked like a wooden pencil box in one hand, and was counting out a row of little rune-etched tiles onto the wide marble windowsill.
"Ooh, Scrabble. You know, the Q's are worth ten points."
Murphy shot a mildly annoyed look in my direction as she picked one up and snapped it between her fingers. I felt the prickle of magic against my senses, oddly familiar, like tuning up a guitar — a slight increase in pitch and tension each time she snapped a tile. I followed her from room to room, crossing from windows to thresholds and back again in a methodical pattern, weaving a web. She stopped at the door of the service entrance to the freight elevator and emergency stairwell. She bent, drew a knife from her boot and pricked her fingertip, swiping a drop of blood onto the last tile before snapping it. I felt the spell spring to life, complete; not a defensive ward but a proximity alarm, straightforward and uncomplicated, delicate but stronger than it seemed. Definitely hers.
"Nice work."
She frowned as she looked up at the ceiling. "There's somebody on the roof."
"Probably maintenance," I said.
She shrugged and nodded. "Still feels weird." Murphy swept the broken tiles into the box and joined me at the window again. "I know it's not me, and all I'm doing is the cosmic vending machine thing, but it's strange being the one to actually do it."
"You're doing great," I reassured her.
"Yeah?" She looked up at me, shyly pleased for a moment before she made a face. "I still prefer logging hours in the Blackhawk."
"Naturally. Where's your boss?"
"Won't be here until tomorrow."
"So what exactly did you need my help with? Because it looks like you've got everything under—"
She just smiled, arching an eyebrow.
"Oh," I said. "Okay."
I picked her up and set her on the windowsill, and she dragged me closer by the leather straps of my shoulder rig beneath my coat, laughing softly as we kissed. In a matter of seconds we were both breathless, hands roaming, impatiently pulling at each other's clothing, taking advantage of every second we managed to find ourselves alone together. Those were very few and far between, lately, and usually in a car or an alley, or the bathroom at Burger King, and not in a penthouse suite.
"Slow down," she whispered, though it didn't sound like she meant it. "We've got the whole place to ourselves until—" she pushed away and froze, her eyes darted to the open service entrance a moment before I heard a familiar voice:
"You know, when they say get a room, shutting the door is usually implied."
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Murphy swore under her breath, huffing her hair out of her eyes.
"Don't stop on my account, it was just getting good."
I turned to glare at the man standing in the doorway. "Where the hell did you come from?"
"The roof." He grinned at me from the shadows beneath the brim of a black baseball cap and leaned lazily against the doorframe, dressed for cold weather. "But also… yeah. Hey, Blondie. You're looking—"
He was cut off by the unmistakable sound of a revolver's hammer being drawn. Murphy held my Smith and Wesson leveled at him in one hand. I hadn't felt her take it.
"Armed and dangerous, as per usual," Kincaid observed, amused. "Congratulations on the promotion. Looks good on you."
He wasn't wrong. Her hair tumbled loose around her face, tinted red-gold in the emergency exit light, a snarl on swollen lips, blue eyes burning. She slid down from the windowsill with the handcannon still trained on him, more attractive than ever when she was angry. Apparently I wasn't the only one who thought so.
"Special occasion?" he asked, eyeing the black lace beneath the half-buttoned white shirt that slipped down her shoulder. I was annoyed enough at being interrupted, but Winter was taking it personally. I briefly considered kicking him out into the stairwell, This is Sparta-style, slamming the door and picking up where she and I had left off a moment ago.
Knowing Murphy, though, I probably wouldn't get the chance. She started toward him. "I told you what would happen if I saw you again, you son of a bitch—"
"Murph," I warned. "Be polite."
"I'm not going to kill him," she said tightly, aiming lower. "I'll just shoot him a little bit—"
"Hurtful," said Kincaid. "Come on, Dresden. We both know this is her, being polite."
She spat something clearly obscene in what might have been Norwegian, and he put a hand to his heart, mock-wounded as she begrudgingly let the hammer down and gave the revolver to me. I put it back in the holster beneath my coat. "What I meant was what are you doing here?"
"Other than interrupting your fun?" Kincaid looked around approvingly. "My job. Nice digs. Not yours, though, so what are you doing here?"
"My job," Murphy growled.
"Right." The assassin shrugged. "Some kind of security sweep for Marcone, huh? There's nothing up here. Except for me, but I guess he didn't tell you he brought me on to consult, did he? I wonder why not." He dropped the heavy gym bag he carried onto the carpeted floor and headed for the fully-stocked bar on the other side of the room. He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it and his hat onto one of the barstools, waving dismissively at us. "As you were. Just pretend I'm not here."
"Or," she said reasonably, "you could fuck off."
"Believe me, I would love to do exactly that." His voice echoed from behind the bar and he reappeared, holding out a few beers. "Hm? Might as well, because we're stuck here until the power is on again. Unless you guys want to deal with sixty floors of stairs and non-functional magnetic locks. Personally, I'd rather be stuck in the penthouse than a freezing stairwell. Even with you two going at it."
"Plenty of windows up here," she growled. "Take your pick."
"Murph, please." I put a hand on her back and the tense line of her shoulders relaxed a bit. "You know as well as I do that we'd need to be in a much taller building for that to work."
"True enough," Kincaid agreed, frowning at a label on the bottle before he offered again, nodding us toward the bar.
I didn't have a grudge against the guy, or at least not as much of one as I once did. And as much as I would have enjoyed a little wanton destruction in a building owned by Marcone, raiding the bougie liquor cabinet was also a tempting idea. Though neither option was as enticing as my previous plan of banging the crimelord's smokin' blonde security consultant on every piece of furniture in the room. I sighed disappointedly and followed, pulling her along with me.
"Fine, whatever," she grumbled, but accepted a beer and went to stand by the fireplace, staring stonily out the window as she drank.
I sat down at the bar. "How's the kid?"
"Couldn't say." He shrugged. "You've probably seen her more recently than I have."
"Oh," I said.
"And yours?" he asked.
"Good."
There was a beat of painfully awkward silence.
"Yeah, I'm gonna need something a little stronger," he said bluntly, heading behind the bar again, looking over the shelves.
"Make it a double," I agreed.
Kincaid pushed a copper bucket at me. There was an ice maker behind the bar, and I pointed at it, but he just stared at me until I took the bucket and turned toward the kitchen.
I took my sweet time about it. I could hear them talking, quiet but intense. I tried not to drop any eaves, but it was hard to ignore the sharp, wounded edge to her voice she was trying to hide. If they didn't care for one another at all, she wouldn't have been so angry and hurt, and he would never have made an effort to acknowledge it.
And it was my fault. I had nuked that relationship without a second thought, assuming she wouldn't know and he wouldn't care, and I wouldn't have to deal with the fallout, being dead and all.
I lingered in the main room for a moment, pretending to check out the bookshelves, definitely not looking over my shoulder at them.
"Listen, I know you're pissed. That's fair, I get it. You can hate me until the sun burns out. You wouldn't be the only one." His words were measured and matter-of-fact as he set three crystal glasses on the bar. "But I don't think you will. In fact, I don't think you do right now, not really. Stay mad as long as you want, Blondie. It's not like you don't have the time."
Her expression softened but she remained silent, her arms crossed tightly as she sat down in the middle of the sofa. There were obviously some feelings in the mix that she hadn't dealt with, though to be fair, she had been through a lot in the past few years.
Most of that had been my fault, too.
"And I meant what I said, earlier," he added. "The new job? It suits you."
"Flattery will get you nowhere," she muttered, but she smiled a little when she said it, glancing in my direction. It was dark outside the bar, but she knew exactly where I was standing, waiting for a less awkward moment to walk in. Murphy rolled her eyes and subtly nodded me into the room.
"Can't blame a guy for trying. Hell, I even tried to get Dresden to help me make it up to you, but he said no." Kincaid smirked as he lined up the glasses and cracked open the bottle. "Like some kind of coward."
"I didn't say no." I thumped the bucket of ice down on the bar, abruptly reminded of the last time we'd had a drink, and a conversation I had done my damnedest to forget. "I said it sounded like a really bad idea."
"He says, like he isn't the uncontested heavyweight champion of Really Bad Ideas." He mimed shooting me between pouring drinks.
"That was a team effort—"
"This could be, too—"
"And when you said it, I thought you were just trying to fuck with m—" I bit my lip, immediately regretting the choice of words. "Shut up."
He laughed darkly as he slid a glass down the bar and into my hand.
"What the hell are you two talking about?" Murphy demanded.
"Your idea. You explain it."
"Where are you going?" Kincaid asked as I took a few steps backward.
"To stand outside the blast radius?" I toasted him with my glass and downed the contents. "Good luck."
He sat down to her left, put a drink in her hand, leaned in and murmured something in her ear. I didn't know exactly what he said, but I knew the gist of it, and I knew how many steps it would take for her to cross the room and kill me after she threw him out the window.
"So?" he asked. "What do you think?"
Murphy glanced at me and then at him and then immediately away, silent and wide-eyed. Which was definitely a reaction, though not the drink-in-the-face and closed-fist backhanded bitchslap across the room I expected.
"But you've never—"
She shook her head.
"But you've thought about it," he said, seeming awfully certain.
In a fight, Karrin had a better poker face than anybody, but when it came to admitting to physical attraction, she might as well have been carrying a neon sign. Even in the half dark, it was easy to see the bloom of color across her cheekbones, the way she was very careful not to look at either of us when she shrugged and drank what was left in her glass.
"And you?" he asked with a smug, told you so grin in my direction.
... And I had been worried about the wrong damn thing, as usual.
"Nope."
"Never?" He frowned at me. "I thought you did porn?"
"I didn't do it." I grabbed the open bottle from the bar and sat down on the other end of the sofa. "I just worked on the set."
"Christ, Dresden." The mercenary shook his head. "That's like being the guy who parks the spaceship while everyone else gets to walk on the moon."
The woman sitting between us let out a strangled snort of laughter before she clapped a hand over her mouth and glanced at me, apologetic.
"Yeah, well." I refilled each of our drinks. "You're not exactly my number one pick for that particular mission."
"No? I always thought the three of us made a decent little team. And it's not like we'd be boldly going anywhere we haven't been before—"
Murphy drove an elbow into his ribs with enough force to make a cracking sound and Kincaid doubled over, wheezing with pained laughter and fifty dollars worth of bourbon staining his shirt.
"Neither of you idiots," she snarled, teeth bared in a feral smile, "will ever, in any amount of lifetimes, be able to make up for that dumb fucking stunt you pulled."
The venom in her tone was enough to shut both of us up. He sat back, both hands raised in defeat. I said absolutely nothing and tried not to look directly at her, lest my face melt off like in Raiders. From the corner of my eye, I saw her smile turn dangerous and contemplative.
"... Might be fun to watch you try, though."
That was all the consent Kincaid needed. He reached for her. Her hand had snapped out and caught his wrist in a lock before he could touch her, though her eyes never left me.
"She didn't say yes." I heard myself over the crackle of ice in my glass.
"You didn't say no," he shot back, though he didn't try to break free from her hold.
"I mean—"
"I seem to remember you said you didn't mind sharing," Murphy said with a grin, defusing the tension but clearly enjoying making me uncomfortable.
… Though not so uncomfortable that I couldn't enjoy the way she desperately tried to hide the fact that she was into it. I had expected violence, not interest, and she was all quick breaths and hungry eyes and—
Well, it wasn't helping.
"With that foxy redhead." I took another long drink. "Not your asshole ex. No offense."
"None taken," said Kincaid. "But this isn't about me, and I know it's difficult for you to hear, Dresden, but it's not about you, either."
Which was a good point, but—
"This is a bad idea," I repeated, setting the glass aside to drink directly from the bottle.
"Y'know, I think somebody spent a lot of time trying not to think about what you and I liked to do behind closed doors." He leaned forward and put his chin on her shoulder and then they were both staring at me. "And he gave himself a complex."
"No, he's into it," she said surely, still smiling as she looked me over. "And he's terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought."
"Unfair," I mumbled, raising the bottle to my lips again. My own possessive hang-ups weren't going to let me say yes, at least not aloud, and I had never been good at telling her no, and all the apprehension I could conjure up was drowned out by Winter, rattling the bars of the cage I had built, eager and willing no matter the situation. And as much as I hated to admit it, he was right. It wasn't about me. "You know I can't help myself when you start with the Ghostbusters jokes. Just, uh. Let me finish this, first."
I drank until the bottle was empty. She pulled it from my fingers and set it aside, moving my hand somewhere warm and soft as she let go of his wrist.
"So." I swallowed hard, unable to suppress a nervous laugh as one of them — not sure which — grabbed the front of my duster and hauled me closer. "Is anyone else having a vampire bargain-basement flashback, or is it just me?"
"Is he gonna do that the whole time?"
"I think it's cute."
... sorry, not sorry
Next up: Ghost