vocab_drabbles | #94 cynosure - due South

Title: cynosure (AO3 link)
Fandom: due South
Author: flownwrong
Rating: General Audiences
Word Count: 338
Characters: Ray Kowalski
Warnings: none

I toss the bills next to the plates—mine, ketchup-stained; his, mirror-clean, wolf-licked—and follow him to the door, but turn back for—yeah, there it is. Two paper sheets, one missing a corner. I stuff them into my pocket, gonna get crumpled, but so what. Curiosity might kill a cat, but a cop, an undercover one, with a wacko for a partner? This can save lives, plural.

In the car—his face, like one of those hologram cards they put in comic books, relief tucked behind the tilt of his mouth, the ghosts around the corners of his eyes flickering in and out with the pools of sodium lights passing by. I watch him watch the road. He takes my hand as I drop him off, and we shake on something I can't see from here, not yet. The heavy consulate doors are silent, or maybe my head is, full of insulation and white noise.

Back home, I elbow away the mail and straighten the sheets out on the counter. They're small in the frame of my hands. Crosswords. He fished a pen out from somewhere and scribbled as we waited for the food. One is done, the second only has two words, letters all neat and snug in their boxes. Across: prescient. Down: cynosure. S, a curling intersection.

My ribs hurt,, leaning down like this, my eyes full of sand, my neck itching like sunburn where the heat licked up and around us. There's a sketch in the margin, a tiny car—a Riviera. All smooth lines and firm-handed shading.

An object that serves as a focal point of attraction and admiration.

I blink the red from my eyes. It's too bright in here with the lights off. I fold the sheet, once, twice, flattening the crease with my nail, and slip it into my wallet, careful with the edges.

Out the window, a motorcycle turns the corner, lays rubber, engine a piercing whine. I wonder how fast you can go before you miss a turn.