Archive of Our Own

It was a cold winter in Chicago, as they often are. The year was 1922. Booze was illegal, jazz was in, and I was in love with a very dangerous woman.

I remember it like it was yesterday. The soft crackle overlaying the gentle nuance of Paul Whiteman’s orchestra. The fine layer of dust along the edge of my desk mostly concealed by too many stacks of yellowing papers. Even the look of the motes themselves as they caught the light from my desk lamp.

Didn't have time to dust back then, really. It was a busy time for a private eye. In fact, I'd only just found the time to roll up my sleeves and make my first strokes on the heavy keys of my Underwood in an order that might produce an acceptable response to the landlord’s hastily scrawled demands about my past-due building fees.

I'd only just found the time, when the bell over my office door chimed.

“Hey, handsome,” Valeera’s voice was a smooth, easy drawl as she walked in wearing the dress, the room, and everything else. Like it was all working for her. Like the atoms themselves moved on her rhythm. Even the thin bars of light that filtered into Liadrin’s dim office from the lamps outside had a part in her number.

But she wasn't one of those types that always wore these dresses. At least, not if Liadrin had her pegged right. She was the type that wore exactly what the situation called for and nothing less. Liadrin guessed she was a situation, now. She didn't mind.

“Hey, Dollface.”

Liadrin smiled faintly as she looked Valeera over while she approached her desk and made her cat-like way around to the front of it so she could sit on its edge. Just the right angle for the garter that made its lacy home around her thigh to show through the slit of her dress.

“What's this?” Valeera asked with a frown as she reached towards the typewriter and lifted the paper resting over its roller. Her eyes darted across the words quickly before her attention returned to Liadrin and her frown softened.

“I can fix that for you, baby,” Valeera crooned as she traced her fingertips up the line of the underside of Liadrin’s jaw until she was slowly tilting her hat from the top of her head. “I can make it all go away. You know that, yeah?”

I knew. I knew what it would mean, too. I wasn't a stranger to folks selling their souls to the devil. But sometimes the devil is just so fucking pretty.

Sometimes, like on that night, the devil lowers herself to her knees between your legs and wears your hat while she gives you the best head of your life and doesn't come up for air until her chin is dripping and you damn sure aren't thinking about past-due rent anymore.

It was always like that with her. She could turn herself into your whole world with a single look. She could make you forget who you were with a single touch.

She touched me a lot that night.

Liadrin stared ahead of herself over the water as the last ripple disappeared from the body that had only just slipped beneath its inky surface. She wondered how many of them were down there, now, lining the bottom of the river like so much silt.

Her breath fogged in front of her as she glanced down once more to see that the job had been cleanly done before she moved away from the edge of the water back towards the waiting Royce parked a few yards away in the gravel.

A gift from Valeera. Like the watch she wore around her wrist, glinting gold in the moonlight. Like the tailored suit she was wearing with its vest and the coat over it. Like every article of clothing that hung in her closet.

A closet full of so much more than clothes.

She didn't open the driver’s door right away when she got to it. She turned her back against it and slipped a little gold case from the inside pocket of her overcoat and pulled a cigarette from it slowly. Clove.

Liadrin was still fond of her old zippo. Of the sound it made when she flicked the lid open and the warmth of the little flame as it flickered against her palm while she guarded its life against the wind.

She deserved nice things, Valeera told her. Regularly. She deserved this smooth exhale and the subtle sweetness of cherry that lingered on her lips in a way that Valeera loved to chase after with her tongue.

Liadrin extinguished the glowing tip of the end of her cigarette against the bottom of her Italian leather shoe and tucked what was left into her coat pocket to be disposed of later. Not here. Never here.

I used to wonder if Valeera loved me or if she loved what I could do for her. The perfect murder every time. Clean. Precise. Untraceable.

If there's one thing I learned before I met her it was how to catch a criminal.

Incidentally, it was pretty easy to become the perfect killer as a result. She knew that, obviously. She knew it the moment she first passed me on the street outside my office and I cut my eyes at her, but not because she was gorgeous.

You can tell a lot about someone by looking at their eyes.

Valeera can tell a lot more than that.

She can look at you and figure out if you'd kill for her. She can look at you and know you'd die for her.

I'd died for her a hundred times over by ‘85. All kinds of deaths. My sense of right and wrong, though, that shit lingered. Like flies to honey.

She knew it, too.

She always knew.

“Look at me.”

Liadrin swallowed thickly and slowly turned her attention to Valeera where she'd moved to sit next to her in the bed they shared more often than not.

“What's under your skin, handsome?”

Valeera’s voice was so gentle. Like aloe to a burn.

“I love you,” Liadrin managed to breathe, and Valeera reached over to stroke across her bare stomach towards the shining buckle of the belt that held her slacks around her hips.

“You know I love you,” Valeera responded easily - the words falling effortlessly from the perfect ruby red of her lips.

“Do I?” Liadrin asked, her voice thick and only half-willing to cooperate.

Valeera observed her quietly for a moment. From the polished dress shoes to the impeccable socks exposed beneath the hem of her pants where her legs were crossed at the ankle.

And then higher. To the muscles of her bare arms on display and her shoulders and the scar between two of her ribs.

Valeera moved her hand and traced over that scar, and Liadrin lifted her arms to cross them behind her head as she watched closely.

“You remember this?” Valeera asked, looking almost far-away, suddenly.

“‘37. Behind Green Mill. Guy caught me leaving the back door. I think that hit had been out on me for a good two years by then.”

Valeera’s jaw set firmly as she pressed her hand over the scar and shifted closer to Liadrin. Close enough that Liadrin lowered an arm to wrap around her lower back out of pure instinct.

“Do you know what happened to him?” Valeera asked as she slowly pulled Liadrin closer until her head was against her chest.

“No. By the time the doc was done with me, all I knew was he wasn't around anymore. Figured you had one of the lackeys handle it.”

“I cut his throat with this knife,” Valeera murmured like it was nothing. “The one that did this to you. Real slow.”

Valeera exhaled, and Liadrin’s brow furrowed when she realized there had been a tremor in that breath.

“That's why I wasn't with you when you were getting fixed up,” Valeera sounded a little calmer, now. A little clearer. “And maybe I should've been. But I don't think you understand that when someone hurts you, they hurt me. And I can't have that.”

Liadrin listened to those words come from Valeera’s chest like broken glass and then pulled away to look up at her. It was Liadrin’s turn to reach out and touch, then. To stroke along the side of Valeera’s neck with one hand as the other reached for her nearest leg until Valeera was swinging it over her and straddling her lap.

“What part of you does it hurt?” Liadrin asked as she trailed her hands languidly along Valeera’s thighs under the hem of the black silk robe Valeera was wearing. “Is it your pride? Does it feel like someone dropped your favorite glass?”

Valeera looked down into Liadrin’s golden eyes as she traced her fingertips upward along her sternum, and Liadrin didn’t so much as flinch as her hand splayed across the front of her throat - all presence and no pressure.

“The fact that you're mine and the fact that I can't stand you getting hurt are unrelated,” Valeera said in a low, even tone, and Liadrin wondered who she was convincing. Both of them, maybe.

“Sure, Boss.”

Valeera sighed quietly and slowly relinquished her barely-there grip on Liadrin’s throat in favor of leaning down to brush her lips against Liadrin’s temple.

“Please don't call me that here,” Valeera murmured as Liadrin’s hands further parted her tone and her thumbs grazed the upper crooks of her thighs. “Sunny.”

Liadrin’s ears flicked back sharply in response to hearing that name here, in their bed of all places. It’d stung. And then the guilt creeped in. She'd had it coming.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered as her hands faltered for a moment and she turned her head just enough that their noses brushed together. “I've just been missing you. Got myself in a state about it, I guess.”

Even after sixty years or so, a few weeks was a long time. For them, anyway. For oil and water, they behaved more like fire and gasoline. A carefully contained disaster each and every time. But the flames were warm and familiar and necessary. Fire cleansed, after all. And they were both filthy.

“I don't have to be away for so long again any time soon,” Valeera’s tone was coaxing as she reached down and untied the sash of her own robe.

She was so perfect. She'd always been so perfect.

Liadrin sometimes forgot herself and felt ashamed for wanting to taint such beauty with hands that had done so many terrible things. She always reminded herself that Valeera relished these touches for that same reason.

Liadrin’s hands were so many things for Valeera. Hands that killed ruthlessly for her. That caressed her gently awake in the mornings. That fucked her. The only hands in the world that would ever touch her the way they did. They were her retribution and her salvation and every inch of them was stained with blood deeper than any soap would ever reach.

As they stroked up her stomach under her parted robe they were so gentle you'd never think they could snap a neck.

“You're so quiet tonight,” Liadrin murmured, and Valeera exhaled her amusement softly through her nose.

“You've been in a mood since I got here,” Valeera explained simply. “I thought I might be better if I let you get it all out. I can take it.”

Valeera’s hand had meandered its way down Liadrin’s stomach and begun toying with the buckle of her belt right around when she said that, and Liadrin felt her cheeks get hot as a result.

Liadrin wondered, as she slipped Valeera’s robe from her shoulders, if some part of Valeera had missed her, too. She especially wondered that when her hands grazed the curves of Valeera’s breasts and drew a hushed, sharp gasp from her.

Valeera was so guarded, really. Would pull a trigger without blinking and everything about her screamed that fact.

But right now, she was pressing closer to Liadrin in her lap and resting her arms over her shoulders when Liadrin moved to sit up and lean back against the headboard. Right now, she was tilting her head in to ask for a kiss she'd never ask for with words because Valeera could kiss people all day long but she wanted to be kissed.

Liadrin knew that. And maybe her sour mood was lingering, because she pulled back at first so her lips were just out of reach.

“Say it,” Liadrin whispered as her hands came up quickly to rest along the sides of Valeera’s face. Confidence and desperation mingled in Liadrin’s tone and in her eyes and Valeera lost a war she'd never even begun to fight tonight.

“Kiss me, Liadrin,” Valeera whispered, her brows furrowed and her eyes only half-focused and half-open.

Liadrin gathered a fistful of her hair and pulled her forward and there was nothing gentle about this anymore. Valeera breathed in sharply through her nose as Liadrin kissed her hard and deep and bruised her lips with her fangs. She didn't pull back until she tasted copper on her tongue.

She didn't know whose blood it was. She didn't care.

“There's my girl,” Valeera’s voice was a trembling whisper and her encouragement earned her a place on their bed on her back beneath the solid heft of Liadrin’s body because Liadrin had always been the muscle.

The gold buckle of Liadrin’s belt felt the same as any other metal when it dug into Valeera’s hip. It got warm a little faster, maybe. That was all.

But Liadrin looked good in gold and that's what mattered. She looked good in every belt and every watch and every chain Valeera got her.

Especially the one she was wearing now, because the sensation of a crucifix dragging between her breasts as Liadrin left bruises in the crook of her neck with her teeth was as close to church as Valeera would ever get.

At least, until she was leaving trails of red in the skin of Liadrin’s back and coming hard to the sound and feeling of Liadrin’s fingers filling her hard and fast until she couldn’t take it anymore and had to breathe.

Liadrin was still trying to edge her along into another orgasm when Valeera’s shaking hands finally found the buckle of her belt and undid it hastily. She didn’t even have the patience to turn them over before she plunged her hands into the silk boxers beneath the pleated pants she was wearing.

Liadrin came just as fast and just as hard - shaking and gasping her pleasure into Valeera’s neck where she’d already left a mark that would likely wind up being more than just a bruise.

But then, they never came away from these nights unscathed. Be it physically or emotionally, the decades had seen them leave so many marks on each other. Most of them much less superficial than bite marks and bruises.

It was ‘95 when I knew for sure that she loved me. Isn’t that a damn shame?

It was ‘95 when I pulled up to the traffic light across from my old office and saw it taped off for demolition. Valeera was next to me with her big sunglasses on. Red to match the interior of the latest Jaguar Valeera had fallen in love with.

I couldn’t tell if she saw the way I looked at it at first. Not until she reached for my hand and brought me back through the years to the now with her. Through the dust and the fading memories and things you don’t really talk about if you’re us.

Valeera asked me if I was alright and when I asked her why she let me know I’d sat through a green light. Not that the person behind us had the sack to honk. We still ran that town, then. We still do, now. We just do it different.

It was ‘95 when she bought that building and put it in my name and had it redone for me. Told me she’d set me up however I wanted. Told me she’d leave me to it and never bother me again if I kept my mouth shut.

“What would you do?” Liadrin asked as she ran her hand along the desk in the back office of the first floor. It wasn’t the same desk, of course. This place was so full of ghosts. Liadrin found she didn’t mind them.

“What would I do? What, if you took me up on this?” Valeera asked as she walked towards the desk where Liadrin was standing and sat down on the edge of it.

“Yeah.”

“I would move on with my life. I’m nothing without my word.”

Liadrin’s eyes flashed to meet Valeera’s, then.

Liadrin had never seen her scared. Ever.

She looked scared.

“Could you?” Valeera asked. “Could you be done? Could you just stop all this and be an upstanding citizen?”

Liadrin was quiet as Valeera reached out and touched along the top of her hand with her fingertips. “Or are you always gonna be a killer, baby?”

Liadrin set her jaw hard and looked away, but she turned her hand over and slowly twined her fingers with Valeera’s nonetheless.

Truth be told, she wasn’t a very good person before Valeera, either. Valeera knew that, because Valeera knew everything. She’d never walked into anything blind in her life.

It was ‘95 when I knew two things. Unequivocally.

I loved and would always love her. The pretty little devil that wandered so purposely into my office a century ago, now. The kingpin of the Sanguinar family. A dozen trials and hundreds of hits later.

Still the boss. Still Valeera.

I learned another thing that year. That moment, actually. In the dust motes floating around in my old office. In Valeera’s eyes.

I’d never stop being what I’d always been, no matter what I called it. No matter what anyone called it. Just like I’d never stop loving her.

It’s been twenty-five years since then. A lot has changed, but then a lot always changes. We do business a little differently now.

I still have that first Royce, though. We drive it down to the lake sometimes in the summer. We park it in alleys at night. Alleys good decent people don’t go down.

Alleys I’ve left bodies-

“Sometimes I feel like you love this old thing more than you love me,” Valeera drawled as she reached across Liadrin’s desk and flipped the paper bail forward and away from the page Liadrin had been typing on.

Liadrin’s eyes lifted slowly from the now-loose paper sitting in her old Underwood to find Valeera’s amused gaze.

“Just bought you the new Macbook last week and you’re still pounding away at this fossil.”

“I like it,” Liadrin responded quietly, and Valeera gave her a soft smile as she reached up to stroke along the side of her cheek. “And I don’t want any of this on the internet or...I don’t know. Whatever else could happen to it.”

“You’re cute, handsome. You really are.”

Valeera had always found it amusing how sentimental Liadrin was. Like with her Zippo and this typewriter and the Rolls Royce they’d poured money into for years to keep on the road. She found it adorable how desperately Liadrin sometimes grasped at the way things used to be. When it came to leisure, at least.

Business, though, Liadrin didn’t mind. She didn’t mind the smart phones and the explosives and the silencers. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t hold onto her records and her typewriter.

That didn’t mean she couldn’t hold onto Valeera. To what they had.

“Am I?” Liadrin asked as she leaned back in her chair with a little smirk.

Valeera chuckled soft and low and reached out to hook a finger into one of Liadrin’s suspenders. These were one thing they were both glad had come back into fashion.

Valeera had always loved her in suspenders.

“You know you are. Just look at you,”

Valeera was climbing into her lap, then. Taking up all the attention that Liadrin had focused on her writing. Becoming her whole world like she always had.

Like she always would.