multiversallogs | all I am is a body floating downwind

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all I am is a body floating downwind

Who: Don and Kalinda
What: A promise kept.
Where: A rooftop (kind of) bar, Canker Wedge.
When: St. Fuck-this-holiday-I'm-going-drinking
Warnings: Help I can't think of anything flippant.

On this block in Canker Wedge, in a gap between buildings so slight the wind holds its breath to squeeze through, stairs rise from nowhere. A glowing railing corkscrews into the sky in a silver strand. The first step clangs metallic underfoot; as Don sets his hand on the railing its light fades then begins to pulsate. The climb isn't as steep, doesn't last as long as it should. It feels like flipping forward in a book.

At the top is a star-flecked night blanketing a distant city. For a while he drinks in the view; for a while it offers the same soothing burn as a glass of whiskey. Then he makes his way between the two long counters reaching for the bar. Heat blooms in unexpected pockets along the way: it's warmer up here than it is inside.

He orders a drink and as he waits realizes there's no music playing.

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It's a good location he's chosen, Kalinda's decided. She ascends the stairs slowly not out of any need to abate a sense of dread, or prolong the experience, or even quell any emotion that might be gripping in her chest or fluttering in her belly. It's just how she wants to appear at the top of the steps, leisurely and without any sense of anticipation. Which is a little unfair to Draper, because she does anticipate this in some sense. She doesn't suspect he feels the same way, but knows it.

That it's without thumping music to drown out the sounds of insecurities and not dark enough to mask the faltering faltering (others') is only momentarily a problem. When she slides up next to Don, it's like she's been there all along, or like she figures that he expected her there at that very moment. "In the event that the two of us are here long enough, I propose this makes an excellent St. Kelley's tradition."

“There you are.” As if it hasn't been months, as if she'd just stepped outside. Don gives her a look, approving, and the smile that goes with it. By now a glass rests in his hand; his grace with it as he shifts back from the bar could pass for inattention.

A question forms and disintegrates in the space of a sip. He didn't come here for this. His own emotions are remote as the buildings reduced to line and shadow in the fading light, but the more he thinks about it the more he starts to feel like a cat chased up a tree. Like something's howling down there at the bottom of the stairs.

“What, you financing my drinking?” he asks, eyebrows shooting up.

"I was thinking fuck off and ignoring everything, but sure. If that makes you feel most comfortable." Kalinda shrugs her shoulders. She slips into conversation the same way he does, like it's been only a few minutes. She doesn't ask how're you doing, Don not because she doesn't care, but because she doesn't have to ask to figure it out. And he doesn't need her to ask to show her.

She orders scotch and stares out at the buildings. "It's not a bad place to meet women, though." The St. Kelley's Memento party, that is. And yes, she did just say that to see what sort of a reaction she'll get.

Comfortable. Something in him twitches at the word and he lowers his gaze to his glass, suddenly aware of its weight.

In the next moment, though, that's all swept away: his head jerks up, face stripped of everything but a surprise so complete it borders on innocence. It doesn't last. His eyes narrow, close for an instant. His expression turns considering.

The bartender sets out her scotch.

"Drink your drink," he says, eyeing her with almost affable suspicion and taking his own advice. A hint of surrender in the sigh that follows.

Kalinda lifts her drink in a silent cheers before bringing it to her lips. She doesn't watch him out of the corner of her eye, though there's part of her that'd like to. "So... You don't want to talk about it." Whatever's obviously eating him up tonight, and she's got a couple ideas of what that could be, given the theme of the holiday. "I'll give you one freebie. Ask me one question, I'll answer it."

She doesn't stipulate whether that answer will be truthful or not, but it can be inferred.

"Generous," Don remarks; it's not a compliment. A sullenness, some sodden emotion, comes over him. He sits holding his drink scant inches from his mouth and studying her, mistrustfully appraising her offer. If that's what it is.

"Why would you want something following you here?" The question's unexpectedly fervent. His voice, without music to fill the cracks or smooth the edges, sounds brittle.

It's a good thing she wasn't fishing for them then. Compliments. She eyes him at that point, at once feeling guilty and not for whatever it is she's making him feel. Guilty, because it's not like she set out to make him feel... anything. But also not, because it isn't her fault, not really, and because she suspects he maybe needs to feel once in a while.

His question doesn't catch her completely off guard, but there isn't much that does. It's his tone that does. It means Kalinda takes a moment to sip her drink and think about how she's going to answer, rather than hitting him with a flippant reply off the cuff. Misery loves company had sprang to mind.

But that's why they're here, isn't it?

"If we're talking the general you," she's fairly sure they aren't, "then it's a need to have something familiar. Anything that means home isn't just a distant dream." She looks away again, then down. "As for me, I'm curious if it's even possible. I want things to follow me here, if I have to be here. I wouldn't wish this place on the people I know. And things... can't tell anybody about who I am." Though she'd argue that other people's things can tell her a lot about who they are.

He drinks. Not in gulps but steady swallows, until he's drained the glass and no longer feels like there are goosebumps prickling under his skin. He'll have to make it down those stairs at the end of the night--one of the reasons he chose this place.

He shakes his head, swipes a hand across his lips. His fingers slide beneath his jacket, return with a pack of cigarettes. He tips it in her direction, eyebrows raised as if to say, 'You still smoke?' His gaze wavers from her only for a moment, the moment he touches flame to the end of the cigarette, as he lights up.

"Does that mean you're gonna give me a look at whatever turns up?"

"Are you?" sounds like a double entendre as she takes proffered cigarette between vee'd fingers. Considering he didn't send out a boat, it probably is. There's no tell-tale quirk of her brow or curve to her lips, however.

It doesn't really require an answer. "Sure. I'll tell you all about it. We'll see if the gods decide to give me anything." She settles her cigarette then, waiting for a light.

The question catches Don mid-drag; he looses smoke from the side of his mouth, smiles and looks at her again, with the fleeting sensitivity of someone stepping out of a dark theater. Some minute adjustment being made.

"The gods," he repeats, words curling like a scrap of paper eaten through by flame. He pats his pocket before remembering his lighter's there on the bar. Expertly he lights her cigarette.

Kalinda laughs, breathy, after her cigarette is lit, expelling a thin haze of smoke into the air between them. "Yeah, that's about how I feel, too. Whatever they are, whatever brought us here, I guess I'll see if they deliver on this for myself."

Scotch is swallowed down, empty glass left to sit on the bar as she contemplates whether or not she should go for a second. She got ahead start at the party, after all. "Do I set you off balance?" She catches his gaze, slightly challenging, but also honestly questioning.

He draws in a breath, holds it, exhales through his nose. The line of his shoulders sinks; he reaches for the ashtray, taps his cigarette once. "You'd like that," he says with a trace of disbelieving admiration.

Don dislodges his gaze from her, stares for a minute or so out at the city. The lights in all those far-off windows. "You wanna go back down," he asks. His eyes are dark in the bar's dim light. "Try to throw me off balance there?"

Whether she takes the answer as confirmation or denial, Kalinda smirks. It's a good answer. She could say that she maybe just hopes he can keep up with her, but instead she takes in the sky for herself, working down her cigarette with another deep inhale.

Through half-lidded eyes, she watches the paper glow red and burn down to ash to be caught in the breeze or tapped off into the tray. She considers what he's proposing silently. If he were anyone else, she'd give him the standard warning, that this isn't any more than what it appears to be on the surface. But with Don... she doesn't feel the need to.

"Sure." The cigarette's crushed into the receptacle on the bar rather than beneath the sole of her boot. She leaves her cash there, too. "Let's go." Without waiting to see if he's going to lead or follow, she takes the initiative, pushing off the bar and heading for the stairs.

“After you,” he says to her back. Lightly but loud enough to carry. Mouth twisting in a smile he jabs his cigarette out beside hers.

At the foot of the steps the street waits in a moment of emptiness, a glass in need of refilling. Hooves clop in the distance. The air's regained its chill; it stings the back of his throat when he breathes, a welcome sharpness. “Where to?” Don asks, and not as a formality.

Self-satisfied, she smiles at the way Don falls into line. There's a lot about him that she appreciates. Some of it she can articulate, and some she can't. She sweeps a look down the length of the street in either direction as if she might see something that will decide for her where they should head from here.

"How about your place?" she asks smoothly, not even turning to face him until after the words have left her lips. The look she gives him is politely inquisitive, but appraising at the same time. Then again, there's always a sense about Kalinda Sharma that suggests she's filing away every move he makes, assessing and judging - though not maliciously - as they go along.

The breath that escapes him isn't a laugh: too soft, too contained. "It's not exactly around the corner." He peers at her, pictures their knees knocking together in a hansom. A level amusement in his eyes.

He hasn't said no.

"You chose the bar," Kalinda chides with a grin in her tone rather than on her face. "Unless you have an alternative in mind..." Which doesn't necessarily rule out her own home, but she won't be the one to suggest it. Likely for the same drawback associated with his place. "Ball's in your court."

Somewhere, she hopes Will Gardner is smiling, and with no idea why.

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