Miscellaneous Snippets

Miscellaneous fic snippets that may yet be stories.....

Damien growled as he picked the phone up. In turning over, he'd seen the clock blinking the ungodly early hour of nine a.m. -- ungodly to a man who'd been up till five trying to refine one of his firewalls against his own hacking code, and strengthening both in the process. A good night's work, but a lousy morning's sleep.

"Yes?" he snapped into the receiver.

"I'd like to talk." A woman's rich, drawling voice settled his nerves, blanketing his bad temper immediately; Damien smiled as he sagged back onto the bed. "Are you free this evening?" Stormy went on.

He chuckled then, a husky, not entirely awake sound, and promised, "I will be. When?"

"Six-thirty all right?"

Stormy sounded a little nervous as she asked and Damien hastened to tell her, "I wasn't mad at you, Stormy. I always wake up like this."

"Then maybe I'd better get you a better mattress, if we're gonna date," she told him, laughter tingeing her voice. "I'll meet you at six-thirty, Damien," and she hung up before he could ask where, or what, or any other details.

Then Damien finished waking up and remembered their fight, the wreckage of her house, the assassins.... "Start dating?" he asked the ceiling and couldn't help it: he started laughing again.

~*~*~*~

Stormy paused on the porch steps, wondering for the fiftieth time that day if she had lost her mind. A man gets back up after he's dead, and you're wanting to date him. She stood on his narrow porch, considering that carefully, and then chuckled. "But he's got a lovely temper," she muttered and knocked on the door before she could lose her nerve.

Damien answered the door so promptly that she wondered if he'd been waiting on her. She glanced over the entry hall automatically, years of job-honed curiosity prompting the reaction, and came to several quick conclusions, the first being that he had money. The coffee table and bric-a-brac in the living room were not cheap, and the tapestry on the wall, woven in all the changing shades of leaves, was exquisite. He was also a collector of weapons. She saw walking sticks behind the door, a pair of claymores mounted on the living room wall, and a spear leaning against one side of the fireplace. And all of it was clean. Sparklingly so. Shelves dusted, floors swept, windows washed, the brass grate in front of the fireplace gleamed....

Stormy meant to compliment Damien on the house. She really did. Instead her finely honed Southern courtesy somehow came out with, "Oh, thank Heavens, I was afraid I was the only one who was nervous."

Damien stared at her, and at the rapidly spreading crimson of her blush, before throwing back his head and laughing. Then she was giggling too, and somehow it was all right again, and when they could talk she asked between fading giggles and gasps for breath, "Dinner -- out or -- in?"

"I can find something we can cook," Damien finally said through his own slowly subsiding laughter. "Pork chops? Or I've got some lasagna we can reheat."

"Either one sounds wonderful." She pulled her coat off and asked, "Where should I put this?"

Damien simply hung it up the pegs on the wall without commenting on the shoulder holster and gun she left on. "Come on, we can throw the lasagna in the oven and see about some vegetables for it. Do you like green beans?"

She laughed. "I don't think there's a vegetable I don't eat, Damiano, don't worry." They walked side by side down the hallway, not quite touching and very aware of it.

Once the oven was on, though, and dinner in and reheating, Damien paused. Stormy glanced up from her compulsive examination of the placemat's pattern when the awkward silence descended. All she could say in a slow, rueful drawl was, "I know. I'm surprised, too."

"I didn't think you'd call," he admitted. He shrugged, a startlingly expressive movement from such an apparently hulking musculature, and told her, "Thank you."

"I'm scared of your life," Stormy said bluntly, afraid to look away from his face and almost as scared to watch the emotions churning across it. "But I'm more scared of what it felt like not knowing how you were. And I hated the notion that I was hurting you."

His hands tightened into fists where they rested on the counter. "It's not always a safe life."

Damien frowned, reaching for words, and Stormy asked, "What, being immortal? Is that word even accurate, Damiano? I mean, you said y'all can die."

"It's close enough." He shrugged then, pushing aside a difficult topic even as he pulled out a wine glass. "Want some?"

"Love some, thank you."

"Red or white?" he asked as he reached up for a second glass and uncorked a previously opened bottle. Dark green glass, she noticed, and a cream and navy label she hadn't seen before, but the bottle was turned just a bit too far around for her to read it.

A dark burgundy filled his glass as she watched, darker than his hair which was long enough now to have a definite wave, she noticed. Even across the counter, it smelled so good that Stormy had no hesitation in asking for some of it. Damien passed her the glass, and she said quietly, "I never told you thank you."

"For what?" he asked, amused. "You were handling those bastards just fine."

"If you hadn't distracted them, I'd be dead. I'm not a fool, Damien. Dangerous, but not a fool." She sipped at the wine slowly, rolling the taste around her mouth.

"Yes," he agreed quietly after an appreciative sip of his own. "You are dangerous. That was... a relief. Later. I was terrified for you, then."

"You tried to buy me time to run." Stormy glanced up at him, one small, competent hand still holding the wineglass. "I do appreciate it, Damiano. But I couldn't let 'em hound me out of my own house. I just couldn't."

He shook his head, but not in disagreement, she didn't think. "You said something this morning about dating. Do you have any idea what this could be like?"

Stormy leaned back into the wicker and iron bar stool, mourning briefly again that it was taller than she was. Then she dragged her mind back onto more serious subjects. "Damiano, I know someone hates you enough to pay a woman to spy on you in your own bed. You tell me he's immortal, too, and your face closes up like you'd drop a safe on him if you could just get him to stand still for it. I'm sure I don't have the picture close enough for a police line-up, but I don't think I'm too far off."

He chuckled at that and then said, "Johannes and I have hated each other for a long time, now. But he's not my only enemy."

"And you can't guarantee they'll leave me out of it, either," Stormy said quietly. "Hell, Damien, I figured that out while I was cleaning up my house." She shrugged again, blond curls catching the light, and tapped the shoulder holster. "They come after me and I'm shootin' 'em," Stormy drawled.

Damien stared at her, green eyes bright with some repressed emotion that turned out to be the laughter coloring his voice when he finally asked, "Before or after they pull swords?"

"Hell, I thought I'd wait 'til they pulled out the guns, Damien." But she had to force the words out around the giggles, and then the oven timer went off for the lasagna, and Stormy decided that yeah, this was going to be just fine.

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