Blurgh RL delays. Ever have a shitty week at work that seemed to turn into a shitty month somehow? That was October in a nutshell.

Mmmm so I have to write two dinner scenes for two different stories and make them distinct enough that they don't bore anyone reading both? Challenge accepted.

Disclaimer: see part 1

Kidd eyed the table once more, adjusting the candle slightly until he felt he had found the true center of the rectangle. It was hard to eyeball something like that, unlike how he'd easily adjusted the tablecloth. He'd declined a menu or water until his companion arrived, thinking how he could easily drink enough while nervous to necessitate a bathroom trip soon after Maka sat down. Whatever variable he could control to assure this night was perfect, he would.

She didn't glide in so much as wobble, covering the distance with unsteady determination in her too high heels. From the way she seemed to be concentrating on her forward momentum Kidd figured someone had talked her into wearing something outside her comfort zone. He'd compliment them on their efforts someday, but not in Maka's hearing because it seemed like she wasn't totally on board from the way her face flushed on seeing him, coupled with pulling down the hem of the purple dress as if that would cover more thigh. They were very nice thighs, and he forced his eyes not to linger on them.

Once she was close enough, Kidd stood up to greet her. "Maka, you look lovely. I'm pleased you could join me this evening." It was difficult to keep from extending a hand out as if this were a business meeting, and he cringed inwardly at his formal words. Kidd knew he wasn't particularly good at setting people at ease.

"I was told by my friends that if I didn't show up tonight they would commit me to a mad house." She paused when he didn't laugh. Objectively he understood the joke, but he was troubled that she was reluctant to see him. "Because I'd be crazy not to… darn it all I told them I'm bad at being entertaining."

He pulled out her chair and she sat fairly gracefully, if tilting on the path down, and seemed much more at home once all he could see was the v-neck that exposed her collarbone and a small swath of skin. The hint of sensuality was more intriguing to him than he would have admitted as an attentive waiter brought them menus and water. They both took time to read the menu, but Kidd quickly decided and spent the majority of the companionable silence peeking at Maka.

There was the soft glint of gold from the braided choker around her neck but otherwise she wasn't ornamented. He was used to women practically refracting from every angle they were so loaded down with trinkets and gems. Over the course of dozens of subway rides he felt like he had memorized her face, but he still found it interesting from the curve of her nose to the way her eyebrows moved and her eyes narrowed as she considered something.

"Oh, how's your face, by the way?" Maka said it causally, but he could see she was tense, and she wouldn't meet his eyes. No entrée list was that interesting.

"Just fine, and it had the added bonus of making my managers think I had been in a fist fight prior to work which ultimately worked in my favor." He saw her finally look up in surprise, searching for sarcasm in his words. Actually, it had made the executives that reported to him much more hesitant and respectful. Asura had commanded people around him with both charisma and fear, and Kidd didn't have the kind of personality to sweep in and carry a room like his brother. Their altercation really had done him a favor this week. If only he had thought of getting in a physical fight to win respect earlier. A couple of the executives that had been favorites of his brother could use a fist to the face, in his estimation.

"I'd say anytime, but I don't think either of us wants that." When Maka smiled at him he felt like no matter how the night turned out from here, he'd have that smile to take home. Internally he gave himself a smack for thinking like that, ever the pessimist.

"Once was enough for me, I'm astonished you didn't split a knuckle."

She blushed prettily. "I still use the heavy bag here and there to keep my callouses in good form, but it isn't like I compete anymore. I stopped that in college when my coursework got too demanding to support the trips out of town."

"I can relate. Every now and then I make it to the shooting range, but all that free time I thought I'd have as an adult never seemed to materialize. Particularly these days."

Maka's expression softened. She probably had come here nervous, fearing the worst, and Kidd didn't want to be anything less than authentic tonight. He gave himself roughly half a day tomorrow before someone called with some new finding from the special investigation team he'd assembled for an internal audit about his brother's dealings. Had to enjoy the good times while they lasted.

"I remember when I thought I'd be able to go to work and then go home and read books all the rest of the day. As if the only thing in the way was school. It was a nice dream." Maka picked a piece of nonexistent lint off her sleeve. "I guess I could still do that if I wanted to ignore cleaning or grocery shopping or friends."

"I don't have any of that and I still don't have time for reading." Kidd sighed a little.

"You don't have friends?"

From the way she smiled he knew she meant to catch him poorly wording a response, but when he paused too long in contradicting her he caught the beginnings of pity sparking. "Friendship gets peculiar for me. People act differently before and after they find out my family affiliations, usually. Meeting people who know my whole biography better than I do seemed to be the way of the world from end of high school on up. I'm either a death dealer or a patriot, or both."

"That doesn't answer the question." Maka chided.

"No, I don't suppose it did." Black Star might be considered a friend, after all these years. Rivalries in middle school that ended up as a fist fight in high school and a kind of casual association since might count. Kilik from work he'd trust with just about anything, and they had had some discussions that were not directly work related, so he might count as well. "I can think of one long time friend in particular, but we didn't start out that way. He hated me for years because he thought I was trying to steal the spotlight from him."

"I had a friend like that too. One day she walked up to me and accused me of trying to get her boyfriend's attention right before she pulled a handful of hair out of my scalp. I gave her a black eye, and she gave me a migraine." Liz had been a volatile teenager. "It turned out he'd been cheating on her with a girl who sat next to me in calculus and the rumor mill pointed the finger at the wrong person. She did apologize to me not long after the truth came out. After that we kept saying hi in the halls, then chatting, and then eventually…"

So she forgave friends easily. It might have been natural to hold a grudge in that situation, but instead she had turned it around. Would he be able to so easily forgive in her shoes? He wouldn't bet on it. Kidd spent so much of his life in a moral gray zone that allowing ambiguity into his private life sounded exhausting.

The waiter came, took their order, then disappeared after a discreet refill of their waters.

"Can I ask you something personal?"

Kidd felt his muscles stiffen. Here is where things usually started falling apart. Women always wanted to know crazy things about him or about his work, as if showing interest in the production and distribution of weaponry wasn't a huge red flag. Ethical quandaries were just as troubling to Kidd as someone having a lack of such concerns. Did he like the family business? He wasn't sure. But he was a fixer, and so long as problems were dropped into his lap he'd approach them methodically. Enemies of the state this month might be allies next month.

"Are the white bits of your hair natural?" She said it shyly, but gave him a funny look when he let out a shaky laugh. "Bad question?"

"No, not at all. Yes, they're natural. I had a few white hairs in front as early as middle school, and now they're full on stripes. I turned thirty this year but people assumed I was lying about my age at the party. It isn't uncommon for society women to have multiple 29th and 30th birthdays, and they thought I was normalizing the trend for men. It was very hard to convince them otherwise."

The twinkle in those fantastically green eyes of hers told Kidd that Maka enjoyed hearing about him inadvertently appeasing the vanity of a load of old rich ladies. So she had a lively sense of the ridiculous, too. Everything he was reading from her was making him more hopeful. Asura had told him again and again that he was the death of every party, or alternatively that any girl that went for Kidd probably had a necrophilia fetish since he was as lively as a corpse in conversation and pasty to boot. Maka seemed to find him passable company, allowing him to brush those deep seeded feelings of inadequacy aside.

The appetizer arrived and he was pleased to see Maka was neither picky nor was she reticent about eating. Not thin from starving herself, then, which made sense given that she had indicated she was athletic. It was nice when what people said turned out to be more than smoke and mirrors.

"So what made you pick this particular place?" She was spearing another stuffed mushroom from the plate, clearly pleased with his choice of starter.

Kidd knew he was better off being honest with her, so he laid it out. "I figured you'd want to go dutch so I chose a place prohibitively expensive expecting you'd be practical enough in that case to let me pick up the bill." He ended his flat statement with a conciliatory smile, as Maka slightly choked on her mushroom and began to cough. She took a deep drink of water while sending him dark looks. Kidd didn't like it when people successfully second-guessed him either.

"It isn't often someone gets the drop on me like that. I want to be mad, but I also kind of admire that you pulled it off." There was an edge to her voice, letting him know she wasn't totally at peace with it. "In that case I'll buy us dessert after."

Giving her an awkward smile, he wondered if he casually put his hand on hers if she would pull away or let them touch. Her hand was currently resting against the thick stem of her water glass, seemingly soft. Kidd well knew how much force it could have behind it, so he stayed wary and did nothing.

Gentlemanly caution felt a lot like cowardice.

"… I remember when I quit practice, but the why is a little fuzzier. Around college I didn't have the time to train the way I wanted to, so I was practicing forms a lot. I got pretty darn good at anything that had a long staff as a base—spears and other things in that family." Maka was cracking every corner of her crème brulee and pulverizing the crystalline sugar into tiny pieces that were getting mixed into the layer below. Kidd tried to concentrate on her words instead of her messy dessert. It was causing him to twitch a little, despite telling himself to chill out. His therapist had told him plenty of times that life was inherently messy. Order in all things was not a practical goal.

"I hit a wall where striving for excellence felt the same. School, internships, martial arts—it was all about climbing ladders to beat some imaginary ideal. I guess work is that for me now." She looked thoughtful and took a bite of the brulee. "I figured if I wasn't doing it for myself, who was I doing it for? I donated a bunch of my gear the next day."

"That sounds like a pretty hasty decision. The next day?"

Maka's smile was rueful. "I don't like to hesitate when I know something is right."

Her words hit at a core of some value in him that gave Kidd chills. Beautiful, formidable, principled—Maka was like a dream woman. She was more improbable than he ever would have hoped for, and he wanted to be suspicious of his good fortune. Faced with the unknown, he tried to think about how to proceed.

One the one side a voice not unlike his father's reminded him that patience and depth of knowledge was the best way to approach a situation when you care about the outcome. That voice said that he should offer to drive Maka home and then arrange another date as their calendars permitted. Caution and respect were the watchwords here.

The other side of his mind sounded a terrible lot like Asura, urging him to invite her back to his place for a nightcap. From her blushes at his attempts at flirting, she was not immune to his physical charms—meager as he had always assumed them to be. If it was the case that she was too good to be true, at the very least he could take a vivid memory of that athletic body with him into the future.

Sighing, Kidd pushed away his own untouched dessert. "It's nice that you can tell what's right so quickly. I'm only just now being given the opportunity to make decisions that matter in my life."

"I'm not saying there weren't plenty of people all around telling me what they thought I should do…" Maka qualified, seeing that Kidd's mood had gone dark. "In the end what they thought didn't matter as much to me as what I felt. It was my time and effort, I was going to be proud of what I decided."

Maybe Maka was the fierce bit of backbone he needed to clean up the mess Asura had left. It gave him an unfamiliar feeling of warmth to think that this golden haired angel might step with him into the uncertain future, even if it was only for a little while. If they ever caught Asura, who was probably in some safe house a million miles from anywhere and rolling around in his embezzled funds, Kid was going to fucking destroy him.

"You seem to know how to cut through to the truth of things. I'd say come work for me and help me untangle the mess I'm sure you've read about in the papers, but I don't date employees." Kidd allowed himself to finally relax a little in his seat, his shoulders rolling forward the barest amount.

Maka smiled that megawatt smile of hers that he figured might be lurking around somewhere, but he hadn't expected to see until they knew one another better. "Pretty cocky, aren't you. Assuming we'll be going on a lot more dates, hm?"

Kidd sputtered, feeling confused when he thought for sure he had read all her signals correctly. Calming him by putting her hand on his, Kidd realized that Maka had a lot more courage than he did. She was able to do the things that he merely fretted about.

"I'd like that. In case you weren't sure." Her fingers laced with his briefly, but they lingered long enough to let him know she was on board to explore this connection they'd made before returning back to her water glass.

If Maka felt any discomfort at getting into the backseat of a car with him, she did an admirable job of keeping her head high as she wobbled her way into it anyway. "Is the tinting on those windows even legal?" She shivered in her coat as the wind blew against her legs and probably up her dress. No doubt she was making risk calculations even as she spoke.

"I like black, and I like privacy." Kidd shrugged a little. If it was harder to aim for his head from the street, all the better, but he didn't let Maka in on the more sinister concerns in his life.

The ride to Maka's condo felt like it took a fraction of a second. There was little to no traffic, and his new driver and part-time bodyguard Harvar was efficient in his chosen routes. Harvar seemed like the kind of man Kidd felt would be extremely valuable for the organization as a whole in the future, but driving was a decent test of his discretion to start.

Maka in an enclosed space was infinitely more complicated than Maka across a dinner table had been. Even though there was plenty of room—another person could have easily sat between them—it felt like she was a breath away. In addition, now that there was no tablecloth to shield his view he was getting an eyeful of creamy thigh. Both of them were keeping their hands in their laps, but Kidd couldn't help but imagine hitting a pothole and ending up sprawled on top of her. An act of God would be pretty damn convenient right then.

Getting to her place without incident only went further to prove to him that there was no God except Black Star, according to the gospel of Black Star. Meanwhile they had had plenty to talk about.

"...You can't possibly believe that! Human nature isn't so easily bottled up and calculated out. You have to leave room for mistakes otherwise you're striving to be, I don't know, inhuman!" Maka stepped out, accepting his hand, but their argument was no less vehement.

Kidd was trying to keep his mind on what they were saying, but every time Maka had crossed her legs one way and then the other he had forgotten at least one word in ten. "So you'll just forgive and forgive indefinitely while people take advantage of you? You have to draw the line somewhere. People may not be infallible, but you can strive for it! Is this your building?"

Maka seemed to get whiplash from the subject change, blinking hard several times in succession and then laughing at herself. "Yeah, I hope you aren't offended if I don't invite you up. I wouldn't want to take advantage of anyone accidentally, apparently." Realizing the double entendre only too late, she clammed up and blushed angrily. Kidd wasn't sure if the anger was for him or herself.

"I'd like to think nothing about tonight could be considered a mistake, unlike our first meeting."

"I had a good time, even including right now wanting to throttle you for being completely intractable. You'll come to see it my way in time." Maka had a hand on her hip, lit from behind by the fluorescent lobby lights of her building. A few quick button presses and then she would be behind a security door and out of his grasp for who knew how long.

Indecision, balancing options, Kidd felt his usual inertia and hated himself a little. This was his chance and he was blowing it…

The hand that had been at her hip cupped the side of his face and then Maka's lips were sliding over his. Her lipstick was so slick he could feel it smear between them, and sensual feelings he almost assumed he was immune to short circuited his heart. Kidd's blood careened through his body, making him hyper aware of how his hands had automatically pulled her closer by cupping Maka's extremely firm behind. There was no way she could mistake his interest as their bodies molded together briefly.

"Careful…" Maka had pulled back from their kiss to half growl the word at him, and Kidd's hands dropped away from her body like she was molten. She took one step back and cleared her throat before catching his eye again. He was mortified that he had gotten so forward with her, uncharacteristically.

"Like I said," Kidd tried to recover his poise, swiping a hand through his white streaks. "Not infallible, but we should strive for it anyway."

"Lucky for you, I'm the forgiving type." And her smile was considering as she swept away to leave Kidd in a cloud of aroused confusion. When had he become this kind of man? He supposed there were still surprises left and growth to achieve in his life, at any age. "I'll see you soon, Kidd. I hope."

Once he was back in the car he and Harvar locked glances briefly, steadily, but all the driver did was tighten his thin lips and nod. Kidd slumped into his seat and examined his calendar from his phone. He'd see Maka again soon if he had to kill someone to free up time in his schedule, he swore.