Chapter Text
Cassie is not going to get on a plane to Montreal with Miranda. That’s a pretty simple thing to not do. Not getting on a plane is by definition simpler than getting on one. Getting on a plane when you aren’t there to pour the drinks is a complete nightmare. Getting on a plane as a passenger means no shortcuts through security. It means shoes off, phone in the little gray bin, the TSA guy with the excessively groomed mustache giving you a real squinty look when Stacey Q starts playing from inside the x-ray box and Miranda giving you a full on eyeroll when you scramble to pick it up the minute it pops from the belt to the rollers, reaching all the way around the grandpa grabbing his jacket and still saying “Excuse me, excuse me,” when you pick up, only to hear the click on the other end that means you're one ring too late.
It means Miranda stealing your phone right out of your hand and pocketing it on the far side of her body and taking you by the elbow so hard you can’t even find the wiggle room to grab for it back, just wince and say “Ow, ow, ow, ” as she drags you to the seating area.
Then it means sitting. For hours. Because as a passenger, you show up and you sit around because you don’t trust them to wait even if you’re on time and no one has on time down to an art like Cassie does, and that’s because waiting? Waiting is the worst.
And waiting to get on a plane to Montreal with Miranda would be terrible, right. Right? Because Miranda is a dead silent, un-fidgety waiter that sits right next to you like a frowny, cross-armed marble statue except for the times her mouth opens to say “No,” when you ask “Can I please have my phone back?”
Fuck. Why the fuck did Cassie agree to get on a plane to Montreal with Miranda.
She said no! She said it right to Alex’s face, in the hotel room in her brain. She said it. Out loud. To a person. In her subconscious. Which was still a person, right? She said she was done running.
Then Miranda came in and said “What the fuck was that?” and somewhere between Cassie apologizing and Cassie trying to figure out how to say it out loud outside of her head, Miranda sat down in one of the miniature blue plastic chairs at the Sunday school table and said “Ten minutes ago you were running down that hallway like a crazy person. If you don’t stop running off on me when I am trying to get you not killed, then you die.” and all of a sudden it was a running catch-22 and if running away from Miranda was the only alternative to running away with Miranda, well, Miranda was there, in front of her, looking down at her — somehow, despite the chair that was only six inches off the ground — with a kind of exasperated expectation that was really hard to say no to, and Miranda was saying this type of running had survival odds above zero, and she hadn’t actually felt like her head was this far above water since Bangkok so as long as “I’m not going back in that… thing. Room. Place. Miranda,” got an answer she could live with...
Maybe there was still an okay kind of running if it meant living to not run... some other day.
“Fine, you sulk here, I’ll get what we need and be right back.”
And Cassie did. Definitely did. Definitely sulked. And Miranda was. Up out of the kiddie chair and back fifteen minutes later with an envelope she wouldn’t let Cassie look in, and now Cassie has a knee-bouncing two hour wait with no phone to show for it, and the man across from her is wiping his glasses on the waistband of whatever he has on under his pants, and statue-Miranda is sitting on the hem of Cassie’s coat and every time she moves enough that it even tugs so much as an inch out from under her, she gets that absolutely terrifying glare that makes Cassie think of Murder-On-a-Train-Miranda, and Murder-With-a-Gun-Miranda, and so she hasn’t even been able to get a drink or five to nurse her through the hell of it all because she is never going to get out of her seat with Miranda glaring at her like that, so why the actual fuck is she going to Montreal with her?
“Attention passengers on Air Canada flight 2411 to Montreal — we will begin boarding in five minutes. At this time, we would like to invite any Star Alliance Gold passengers to make your way to boarding lane one, while any passengers requiring special assistance and those with small children can start lining up in lane two. Please have your boarding pass in hand. Thank you for choosing Air Canada for your travel experience today!”
“Thank god,” Cassie groans, fishing around for her boarding pass before she remembers she hasn’t seen it — Miranda kept them both firmly in hand other than the three seconds they were pressed to the scanning glass at the TSA podium. Almost like she doesn’t trust her or something.
“Would you stop fidgeting.”
“Maybe if you give me my boarding pass and let go of the mile of my coat you’re sitting on so we can get ready to go already, I will.”
“Why, are you a small child?”
“Ha, ha.” Cassie puts a lot of deadpan in both syllables, but there’s a little shake on the end of it. She needs a drink. Badly.
“Relax.”
Miranda drops a floppy piece of paper in her lap. Cassie flips it disclaimer-side-down and feels her eyebrows shoot up when she realizes it says “First Class.”
“Just because we’re running doesn’t mean we have to travel like rats. Just let the extra special golden mooses through and then you can get up and for fucks sake, shake off those jitters before we get on. You look like you’re on something.”
“Well you— you look like a—- a— scary, murdery lady,” she finally hisses under her breath, not coming up with anything better in the two point five seconds it takes for Miranda to skewer her with her scary, murdery lady eyes.
“Thank you,” she says flatly, then stands up.
They’re side by side. The armrests between them could take up the whole aisle and half a seat in coach. Takeoff is smooth. Totally uneventful. The voice talking them through the is-this-your-first-time-buckling-a-seatbelt? training is male, and Cassie thinks about Shane even though they don’t sound anything alike. God, was that going to have been the last time she talked to Shane? Sheesh. That might be the Thing (trademark) out of all of this that makes her a terrible person.
No, no. That was Davey. Lying to Davey in a church was go-to-hell level bad person shit, if you believe in that kind of thing.
Oh, god, nope, not even that. Because then there was Annie— Definitely Annie was the Thing. Lying to your best friend who you just dragged out of her loverboy’s hospital room which you had gotten said loverboy into in the first place was—
Then she sees the buckle-your-seatbelt voice, and it helps shake the weird mix of workplace deja vu and existential running away crisis spiral she’s been having ever since she walked past the interphone. For one, he’s more like Megan’s age than Shane's or anyone else on her usual crew. For two, he’s white, and for three, he’s very white. Like, cookie-cutter. Super bland — brown hair, brown eyes, uneventful, reasonably symmetrical face — except for a man bun so aggressively overstyled in that just-a-few-hairs-out-of-place-but-I-absolutely-put-them-there way only single, heterosexual men ever think is a good look. Someone needs to teach them that it's fine to just go all in. Embrace the pretty, or embrace the sheer human mess of it all - stop doing everything so… halfway. Shane could teach this guy a thing or five, especially about how not to take ten years getting back to her with that promise he’ll be back soon with her drinks she can hear him giving the Star Moose Gold people in the first two rows. The worst news is, she can smell whatever Super Duper Strong Man branded male cologne or soap or something he took an entire bath in from three seats up, and it's not pretty. It’s almost bad enough she doesn’t want to order a drink from him — like, if that smell sticks to the glass, and she has to drink vodka through a cloud of Carbon Pine Muscle Fresh—
Key word being almost. She is one hundred percent having that drink.
Miranda reaches down to tuck the handle of her black handbag further under the seat in front of her. Cassie, watching the approach of her soon-to-be-drink-order-taker with eagle eyes and a scrunched up nose, watches the man stare straight down the front of Miranda’s shirt.
She blinks. Seriously?
He’s still doing it. I mean, sure, Miranda does have like, two buttons open but that is not an invitation to be that fucking obvious in the middle of a fucking airplane.
Cassie clears her throat. Man-bun kind of glances her way, but then Miranda is sitting up again, and he’s right up in her personal space with a “Can I get you anything from our food or beverage selection today?” in a voice two steps lower and slower than he just used with the old businessman on the other side of the aisle.
Cassie, separated from her drink by this half-assed middle-aged-man-flirting because the murder lady just had to take the aisle seat, finds herself going from travel-stressed to travel-pissed in about half a second.
“No, thank you.” Miranda answers evenly.
“Are you sure? We have an excellent selection of—”
Cassie leans around Miranda, hoping to grab his attention by sheer force of glare, only to see he’s still not looking at Miranda’s face. Ok, this is beyond gross now. Miranda looks totally oblivious — she barely even looked his way when he got here which, honestly, Cassie could have done without the whole seeing thing herself.
“Quite sure,” Miranda cuts him off.
“Well, if you change your mind, just ask for Ben — I’ll be at your beck and call for the duration of the flight.”
“Um, excuse me? Yes hi, me, the other chair. She already said no, thanks for noticing, but I’d like a vodka, neat. Or actually, make that two, for my buddy here’s two eyes you never once looked at because you were staring down her shirt.”
The man has the good form to go a splotchy red around the edges at being called out, then completely ignore the comment, straighten up, and casually agree, “Coming right up, ma’am.” He backs away fast.
“Did he just ma’am, me? Did I look like I waned to get ma’am-ed just then?”
“Did you really just shame that poor gentleman for flirting with a customer?”
“Excuse me?”
“Remind me again how you and Alex met?”
“Uh, listen, you. Alex and I— We— That was totally different. He flirted with me. ”
“Oh, that makes it better, does it? Flirting with the lady who's getting paid to be nice to him?”
“What. Stop it. Did you want to flirt with Mr. Aftershave?”
Miranda’s lips twist in a thin little smile. “Maybe I did.”
“Oh, please.” Then, Cassie stops. Frowns at herself a little. Just because she thought he smelled like he sweated out the entire forbidden men’s deodorant aisle of Bath and Body Works doesn’t mean Miranda had been as repulsed as she was. “Did you?”
Miranda turns an absolutely insulted stare her way.
“Oh thank god,” Cassie groans. “I don’t know how I would have made scary murder lady persona match up with the mental image of musk-bun sneaking you off to the main cabin lav.”
“Hello, steward? Yes. I’m going to need a drink that will wipe the sentence my traveling companion just said to me out of my brain.”
Miranda’s voice is utterly soft, low — so serious she might have been speaking to an attendant at her elbow, but the aisle is empty since beck-and-call-Ben left, and Cassie takes three seconds to stare at her in shock, then bursts out laughing.
It’s way too loud, and high, and kind of wheezy, and then she can’t stop and has to shove her face in her hands and the lot of it into the extra cushy seat-back in front of her before she chokes on it, but it feels good to laugh. Not a nervous, you-think-I’m-crazy-ha-ha laugh, or a panicked, I-think-I’m-crazy-haAA-ha laugh, but a weird, strangled, the-murder-lady-next-to-me-is-kind-of-funny laugh that she feels in that spot between her ribs that pretty much only ever feels warm when she’s five shots in and probably shouldn’t be standing up yet but is totally ready to dance.
And Miranda isn’t looking at her like she’s crazy. Well, a little bit, that exasperation never really seems to go away, but maybe that’s just the eyebrows. Even better, she actually gets that little smile back before she turns to make room for musk-bun to deposit Cassie’s glasses on the side-tray stretch of the big, first-class armrests and pour out the two mini-bottles without a word, and Cassie has the strangest realization that, despite the series of bad, then weird, then terrifying introductions they’ve had, she kind of really likes Miranda. Even when she didn’t remember her and was mostly sure she’d never find her and if she did she might wind up dead for it, there’d been a hazy memory that drinks with Miranda had been… a good time. When had she ever had a fancy first date interrupted by a weird woman and walked away like, yeah? I liked her! I’d spend time with her again. And then after all the shit she’d been through ? She should have been… you know, turning her in or something, the absolute god for fucking minute she was of sight. This woman had bailed her out at gunpoint for fucks sake! She killed someone yesterday. Yesterday!
Cassie takes the first shot.
Yup, still here. Still on a plane. To Montreal. With Miranda. Because instead of acting like a normal person she just… went with it. Said hi, gun lady. Maybe we can help each other out.
Miranda is like… Not real. Not the way anyone she knows in the city is. Whatever weird little piece of Bangkok-with-a-Scottish-twist dislodged from that hell-in-a-hotel-room and stalked her home, Miranda is terrifying and exciting and totally new, and there aren’t that many things that are totally new when you’ve been to as many places as Cassie has. And she’s jittery, and there goes the second shot and she’s still jittery, but something is telling her maybe this wasn’t need-a-drink need-to-get-going scared-of-dying jitters in the first place.
Maybe this is excitement.
Maybe she’s actually excited to see what happens next.