InsaneJournal

Lackadaisy Cats Fic: "Real Sweet Guy" (PG)
Yeah, I held out a whole 48 hours before starting fic for this.

Title: Real Sweet Guy
Fandom: Lackadaisy Cats
Characters: Viktor, Ivy, cameos by others
Rating: PG
Length: 1700
Warnings: No spoilers for anything except character details that exist as intrinsic to the characters in question.
Notes: Takes place a week or two before the comic arc begins.
Disclaimer: This awesomeness belongs to Tracy J. Butler. And you should totally read the comic.



Viktor pours watery whiskey and tries to avoid thumping the glass on the bar. They break. He’s found this out a few times, and Ms. Mitzi can’t afford to replace tumblers because he is strong and in a foul mood. There is a flicker of movement to his right, where he can’t see it—but it is only two more thirsty people. This is a rare busy night, and it seems like someone is having a birthday in one corner. As though another year older is something to celebrate. Pah. He stumps down the bar to find out what they want—Zib and Rocky and the band are so loud he cannot hear himself let alone hear well enough to hear whether this drunk or that one wants his liquor with a wedge of lemon or with sugar, as though anything can help the taste. He throws a bit of lime in a glass—ridiculous, these showy brats, who try to pretend they were old enough to have a real drink before Prohibition—but they put money in his hand, and the cash drawer feels almost fat tonight. He smoothes the bills—remembers Mordecai in the action—and there’s no use being proud of this. This money was spent a month ago. His left knee locks mid-step, and he growls down at himself. Ms. Mitzi cannot even afford to replace him. Eventually the pressure eases with a click like his shotgun closing, and he wishes for five minutes of quiet. It won’t come, and the night drags long. He is bored in all of this noise, but his hackles are up, too—too many people to watch.

At the door, Horatio looks back at him, smiles over-wide. He should cheer up, Viktor hears in his mind. The Lackadaisy is busy, almost like when Atlas was still around. Viktor still cannot find it in himself to glare less. He wonders, though, where Ivy is. It is early for the Lackadaisy, but late for her not to be here, and that does not make him feel easier. Horatio glances back at him again, hunches his shoulder against the weight of Viktor’s eye.

He is wiping out glasses when he hears her coming down the stairs. He can always hear her before he sees her. He doesn’t look up, because he doesn’t need to. Eventually, though, there is a lull again, and Ivy is hanging on the arm of some tall, skinny, cream-colored cat in a dark suit, the fringe on her skirt swaying because her hips follow the music. Her tail, too. It is a dusky waving and he catches himself watching her. Before he can turn away, she glances over her shoulder, and she catches him, too. She doesn’t look away, the way he wishes he could, but instead she grins brightly—half her face, all sharp white teeth—and waves so that he can even hear her bracelets jangle. The one she’s with turns to see who she’s flailing at, and when his eyes meet Viktor’s hard stare, he actually takes half a step back.

Viktor might smile a little then. Ivy lets go the dark-suited arm and excuses herself—Viktor knows that expression—and walks over to the bar. He turns his back then, pours a drink that no one’s even asked for yet. Ivy climbs up on a stool, pushing between two patrons who are too flummoxed to even notice her. He holds back the urge to bash their heads together and tries to pretend he is surprised when Ivy says his name.

She has her fingers hooked in her pearls, and she twists them, left, then right. She’s still mostly grinning. “Be nice, Viktor. Jimmy’s a real sweet guy.”

Jimmy is staring at how she’s bent over the bar. Viktor flashes teeth, and Jimmy’s eyes are back on his friends, his tail low, nearly curled around his own ankle.

“Ya. He looks it.” Coward. Lech. Stupid calf.

Ivy’s tongue shows between her teeth, amused that some boy was looking at her like that. She reaches, pats his arm. “You’re sweet, Viktor.” And her small hand is warm. Then she pulls away, licks one fingertip, smoothes her eyebrows. Her yellow eyes wink. “But go easy on the poor lug. He’s trying real hard.”

Viktor mutters. That is what he’s afraid of.

Ivy props her chin in her hand for just a moment. “If he survives the night, might even give this one a second date.” She nods, matter-of-fact, before stealing a sip of the drink he poured and stealing back to the fellow’s side. She’s only there for a moment before she’s in motion again, to the band this time. He watches her plead with Zib for something—he dreads this, what he knows will follow, and before she’s even back to her pale, too-skinny escort, the music swings up fast.

Viktor picks up the tumbler and drains half of it in one swallow. It chokes—foul stuff, he’d kill for good vodka—but the cough dies in his throat. On the dance floor, Ivy and the ox-calf are spinning around each other. Whatever else he is, he is a good dancer—if you call such gyrating dancing. Little Ivy sweeps up in the air, rolls over the fellow’s back, her legs splayed enough to show the straps of her garterbelt, the lacy tops of her stockings, and Viktor looks away fast. He drains the rest of the glass, and when someone slurs out a call for another, Viktor pours it and drinks it himself. Across the room, Ivy’s hands lift and wrap around those skinny shoulders and Zib’s saxophone croons. When Ivy’s cheek crushes close to his, Viktor debates throwing a bottle at the band. When the milk-toast dewdropper lifts her, Viktor sees the effort in his face, and he is disgusted, too. Little Ivy weighs nothing. If this wretch cannot lift her, he shouldn’t even touch her. He thinks even Rocky could manage that much. Viktor could hold her up with one arm—but the fellow’s black-shining shoes clip nimbly around Ivy’s, his knees bent and waggling. He looks ridiculous. But, Viktor knows, supple. Viktor flexes his fingers, takes up a coin. It rolls across one knuckle, stutters on the second, falls. Across the floor, Ivy’s date falls into a split and she twirls over him. Another flash of garter. The glass in his left hand breaks, its thin-blown edge crushed in and splintered.

When he notices, he just lets the glass go, and the crash comes as the horns draw to a close. Mitzi looks over, long-suffering, and then returns to her conversation. No one else seems to notice.

He is kneeling—a labored thing, and he is glad anyone close enough to see how long it took for him to crouch is too drunk to understand the passage of time—scraping the broken glass into a dustpan, when he hears the jangle of bracelets again, and a shadow falls over him, one with a feathered curve above the ear.

“You are missing the dancing,” he says. He doesn’t look up. Ivy’s fingers touch his shoulder, brush away what must be dust from the cellars, and that means she is dangling herself over the bar again. He straightens as much as he can without getting up. “The bar is for drinks.”

Ivy glances over her shoulder, grins down at him. “What if someone just wants to drink me up?”

Viktor is certain he should kill the piker. She is still leaning like that. “You are too grown up to drape so, dievka.” He stands, slowly, and both knees crack like they are the broken glass. They ache. Ivy slides back to simply stand against the bar.

She winks at him. “I was wondering when you were going to notice.” She leans in again, hugs his arm, and whirls off again to the dance floor, her tail waving.

Viktor grits his teeth hard, and growls, to no one in particular, “I go get ice.”

The air in the caves is cool, cooler still in the blocked-off cellar where the vast blocks of ice are stacked close in their bales of insulating sawdust. The icepick handle is hard in his hand, and Viktor slams it home, the whole spike buried and the ice unbroken. He puts his forehead against the stone, keeps his fist against the ice until he doesn’t think he’ll punch it.

When he gets back to the bar, the bucket brimming with more ice than they will need tonight—only the timid girls ask for ice to cut some of the ugly taste and the dizzying feel, and, he can see, there are not so many of those here. He crunches some between his teeth, and it is good to bite.

On the dance floor, the music’s gone slower, sultry, and the lights are going lower. He is doing his best to burn a hole in the side of Zib’s head with only his eye, and the saxophonist sidles behind Rocky, and Rocky is oblivious, sawing at his violin and trying to make eyes at Mitzi. He watches them, so he is not watching Ivy, but that is nothing he can avoid for long. When he looks, there are cream-colored hands sliding down the yellow fabric of her dress, down her back, and they don’t stop at her hips. He thinks he is ready to go over the bar itself when there is a muffled hiss and the fellow’s black-shoed foot jerks up, jerks back. Ivy has one small brown hand against her mouth, so sorry, I’m clumsy after even a little sip, the whole of her foot propped up on its heel. The spike of it grinds into the floor, still in time with the music, and Ivy’s face is all innocence.

Viktor crosses his arms and turns his attention to the rest of the Lackadaisy, slinging gut-searing gin into a glass and even dropping an olive in it with only half of a snarl. He still hates this job, and he misses the productive quiet of the garage, but the dance floor can take care of itself.