a/n: hello, lovely soul that is reading this. Ana here ;)
sooo this thing. it doesn't make any sense. at all. honestly. i got the idea while rewatching pll 4x19 (the gorgeous noir episode), so i guess it's inspired by 1940s/film noir? i don't even know. it's au and random and drabbley and whatever so...yeah.
shoutout to my girl Silvia (lovefortvshows on twitter) for giving me the push to post this. you are a gem.
reviews make me so happy. maybe leave me one? ;)
xoxo -Ana
noir et blanc
-:-
"She's fluid movement, husky laugh, crimson lips. He doesn't believe in love, but he sure as hell believes in her." / In which Toby Cavanaugh meets Spencer Hastings, and black and white become shades of gray. AU. Oneshot.
-:-
It's velvet midnight when he first sees her.
He's halfway through his second - make that third - drink, and the bar is close to deserted. He closes his eyes, inhales the scent of hard liquor and lost hope.
And imagines what it would be like to just escape.
"Vodka on the rocks." A soft purr from beside him causes his eyes to fly open, his attention to revert. She's perched on the edge of the barstool beside him, mile-long legs swaying as she flashes the bartender a cool smile. "Not too many rocks." As the balding bartender, who's struggling to scrape the remnants of his jaw off the floor, turns to get her drink, she turns her head slightly, meeting his gaze.
He feels himself grow warm as she skims big, doelike eyes over his rumpled three-piece suit, the fedora sitting at an awkward angle over his chestnut waves.
He considers himself reasonably eloquent, but under her careful study, his words are swallowed faster than a swig of whiskey.
"Long night?"
She's watching him steadily, peering at him in a way that makes him feel as if she's looking into his very soul. And for the first time in a long time, he feels a flutter in his heart, foreign to him after so much time spent feeling nothing but numbness.
"Long lifetime," he replies, and her plump lips curve.
"I'll drink to that."
/
He's a detective, so it's his job to read people, to figure them out, to apprehend them for their sins and wrongdoings. He has always thought himself good at it, good at the art of understanding the complexities of the human mind.
But Spencer Hastings is a puzzle he just can't solve; he can't arrange the pieces to form something whole. There's a fragment here, a jagged shard there, but not much more than that.
She's an enigma.
"You ever get tired of it?" She asks, six nights after their initial meeting. She's sipping her vodka and he's downing whiskey, and her eyes are glowing celestial orbs in the bleak sky that is his life. "Looking for the worst in people?"
"It's almost always too easy to find it."
She chuckles; the sound is like smoke. "So you're a cynic."
"Yeah, I guess I am," he admits. He studies her now, world-weary blue eyes taking in the satiny mahogany curtain of hair that falls over a sculpted face; the lithe, willowy frame clad in a midnight blue ensemble with a slit that has his pulse skipping; the tiny mole on her ivory cheek. "What are you?"
It's not a question he asks out of spite, or even nosiness; he simply feels this burning desire to know her, her secrets and her scars.
In response, she simply lifts one elegant eyebrow.
"It's a secret."
/
Another week later, he has a particularly awful day and drinks about twice as much as he normally would have. She joins him, though about three drinks in, she comments, "I'm not good at losing control."
"Neither am I," he affirms. And then, "You're something else, Spencer Hastings."
She smirks. "You have no idea, Toby Cavanaugh."
/
When they finally do fumble out of the bar that night - the bar he foolishly thinks of as their place - they're so wasted they can hardly stand. She lights a cigarette and somewhere in the distance he hears music playing, and the sky is pouring rain and it's two a.m. and she's laughing in his ear and he knows it's not the alcohol making his head spin; it's her.
/
Even pristine, perfect Rosewood has it's dark side.
He drives past the seedy back alleys and rundown, ramshackle buildings on the edge of town just as dusk falls, the twinkling stars overhead doing little to erase the feeling of hopelessness as much a part of these streets as the stench of garbage and the stealthy exchange of drugs and sex.
When he spots her leaning against a lamppost, a cigarette poised between her pointer and middle fingers, bundled in a fur coat, he slams on the breaks, his instincts reacting before his brain can catch up.
"Spencer," he calls, getting out of the car. "What the hell are you doing here?"
She jerks at the sound of her name, and when she sees it's him, her eyes darken. "What's it to you?"
He pauses. Damn her, how does she manage to render him dumbstruck? "You shouldn't be here. This is a bad neighborhood."
She lets out a humorless laugh. "Is it now?"
He motions to the car behind him. "Let me give you a lift."
She looks at him for a long moment, a staggering moment, before nodding.
He doesn't try to explain to himself why his heart skips a beat.
/
"You do that often?" She queries, her eyes meeting his in the mirror as he drives carefully down the bustling streets of downtown Rosewood. "Rescue damsels in distress?"
"I don't usually think of myself as a knight in shining armor."
She lets out that harsh chuckle again. "Good. Because I'm nobody's damsel in distress."
They don't speak for a moment, and it occurs to him that silence is really the most deafening sound.
"What were you doing?" He asks finally. "In that side of town."
She meets his gaze, unwavering. Those brown eyes aren't dancing, aren't seductive. They're...empty. "Why do you care?"
"Because." Suddenly frustrated, he slaps his palm against the steering wheel of the boxy automobile. "Because I care about you, damn it. That's a bad neighborhood. You could've been hurt."
She smiles a little. "Not just a cynic," she notes coyly. "An alpha male, too."
"You didn't answer the question."
She sighs. "Maybe I'm a bad person who does bad things, and goes bad places. Did you ever consider that, Detective?"
He doesn't know what to say at first, but when the words come, they return a flash of light to her eyes.
"Down these mean streets a girl must go, who is not herself mean."
When he drops her off on the corner where she instructs him, she gives him another little smile before leaning forward so her lips whisper over his cheek.
"For what it's worth, I wouldn't mind if you were my night in shining armor."
He grins all the way home, absently touching the ghost of red lipstick lingering over his skin.
/
It happens almost by accident.
One minute, they're downing wine while he tells her some stupid joke with a punchline he's not even sure he's getting right, but she's laughing anyway, and she almost slips from the barstool, causing him to grip her arm to steady her, and then their faces are closer together than he'd realized and he smells her lavender perfume and feels the softness of her skin beneath his palms.
His lips are on hers before he can even recall how to breathe.
/
She tastes like liquor and vanilla and smells like flowers in a meadow.
He realizes in that moment what guilty pleasure means.
/
She doesn't show up the next night.
He drinks alone, cursing into the bottom of the glass, staring at the dregs of amber liquid the same color as those eyes.
One drink turns to two, and two to three, before he gives up, because no matter how much whiskey he drinks, it'll still be her taste on his tongue, and her voice in his head, and her name on his heart.
/
She's more than just a girl he lusts after, a skirt he's infatuated with.
She's touch, smell, look, sound, taste.
She's soul-searing eyes, mysterious smile, puckered brow, sly wink.
She's fluid movement, husky laugh, and crimson lips.
He doesn't believe in love, but he sure as hell believes in her.
/
She answers the door at his third knock, probably realizing he's not going anywhere without seeing her first.
"What do you want?"
He isn't sure of his answer right away. But looking at her, the flawed and damaged and dazzling and bright woman before him, he knows. He knows there's no light brighter than her smile. No drug as addictive as her touch. No one and nothing in his world like her.
And so he tells her the truth.
"You."
/
Light meets shadow.
They are not black or white; they are shades of gray.
They're okay with that.
/
fin
/