Inamorata

Chapter Thirteen - Mr. Darcy Unbends His Pride

Chapter 13. Author's note - A very quick update, I know. Sorry if it seems rushed....

Update! Artwork by the fabulous foreveratrocious! Who also has a delightful username!

Nightingale, for one of the first times in her life, was happy. Not just happy, she was full of effervescent joy that frightened her for how much it did not resemble her usual depressed cynicism.

"You seemed to like Robin very much," observed David. They were high above the city again and the sun was setting, causing the glass and chrome buildings to flash with oranges and pinks.

"That is correct, Detective Beckett," she said.

"And he seemed to like you," replied David.

"He might stop liking me if he knew what I actually am," she observed sadly.

"You don't know Robin," remarked David cryptically, eyes tight and unhappy.

Nightingale was curious, but did not pursue the matter. To her, David was fairly mysterious. His cool stoicism, mixed his his sudden stellar commendations of her, added to the time he'd nearly killed her when she's surprised him, all made him enigmatic.

But her careful schooling in the art of seduction had taught her how to read men, and she knew that, should she try to ask him anything, he would invariably shut her out. And considering that his protection, as much as she loathed the fact that she need it, made her feel safe, she was not going to jeopardize it for a few snippets of David's life.

And so she said there in perfect silence. Her eyes fell once or twice on the anklet and she had a vicious urge to open the hovercraft's door and toss the nasty device out, but she realized that was foolish.

So to distract herself, she turned to David and said:

"So, why Robin? Why did you pick Robin for me to meet?"

He glanced quickly her way with the air of having been interrupted from something extremely important. Though it must have taken concentration to fly the hovercraft, Nightingale was certain that he was not as occupied with it as he made it seem.

"Isn't it obvious?" asked David, his voice forbidding.

"I don't believe that it's just because he's a good judge of character. Why else is it?" pressed Nightingale.

"No other reason, Nightingale," snapped David.

"Bullshit," she growled back.

David simply rolled his eyes and the pair of them sat their in sulky silence until David slowed the hovercraft and they circled one of the many tall buildings.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"This is the Neptune Building," he said. "It's residential. It's where I live. I have a condo here."

Nightingale looked out in astonishment at the building. It was dazzlingly tall, so tall, in fact, that the people running around on the streets below seemed the size of ants in comparison to its behemoth size.

"It's full of people?" she whispered.

"Yes," he said, and he had a strange, tiny smile on his face as he said it. As they swept closer to the building, Nightingale was able to see a hole in the side, about halfway down, opening like a gaping mouth. She gripped her seat in primal nervousness as they floated down towards the hole and then into it.

"This is the main hangar," he said, evidently having picked up on Nightingale's confusion. She gaped at him as they touched down and he sprang out. She was still gaping when he came around to her side of the hovercraft and yanked open her door.