Listen and Save! [AoT X Sabrina Fair]

The Drowning Man

Against what was probably her better judgement, it wasn't long before the chauffeur's daughter was again descending from the apartment above the garage and going to meet Zeke. She wondered what kind of outlandish request he'd have for her today. If by some means he conjured up a new market property for her to photograph, she might scream.

One last time. One last day in the shoes of a movie star, and then she would return to her place... wherever that was. The photographer didn't belong in a mansion, nor a garage; now she wondered where her in between was.

The city felt different today. She paused for arguably too long in that sandstone lobby, watching as the screens displayed a new Yeager Corporation ad. It depicted footage of the moon landing as a cheesy love song played in the background— the photographer wondered what on earth had enticed Zeke to approve such a thing.

Eventually, her nerves still piling, she went up the elevator along with a crowd of businessmen, packed in like sardines. And then she was on the top floor. Zeke's floor.

"Miss Fairchild," Pieck reached for the intercom. "He was expecting you much earlier. I'll tell him that you're here-"

"Maybe this isn't such a good idea... don't tell him I'm here."

"...But he pays me to tell him." Before she could protest further, Pieck had already announced over the intercom, "Miss Fairchild for you, sir."

Zeke had been sitting rather uselessly at his desk, waiting, as if a lost puppy, for her to arrive. Waiting... and dreading the cruelty he would have to do against her. Business. Enterprise. Profit. They seemed pointless things the moment he saw her.

"I was beginning to worry," he said softly.

"Why?"

He rounded his desk instinctively to be nearer to her. "That's a favourite question of yours." Those eyes. If she would just stop looking at him like that- "...Didn't you want to come?"

"Um, well..." she stuttered, moving ever so slightly closer. "I asked you first."

"I asked you second."

She conceded with a sigh. One last time. "I've been wandering around Manhattan all afternoon. Um... it's something to do with maybe... never seeing you again." Her thoughts were spiralling now, spilling out beyond her control. "But that's ridiculous because we don't-" she gestured vaguely between them. "Don't have to uh, well, except by accident." The message was sharp and clear in her heart, but her lips kept fumbling, unable to speak it aloud when it meant so much. "And uh... how could that be a problem?"

Zeke was still looking at her, his expression unchanging. That intense stare from the midnight New York street of yesterday.

"Um..." the photographer began again, struggling against the urge to flee. "If two people... I asked you first ."

He tried to retain his sanity, but with every step they took towards each other, he thought less and less about the merger and more about the great cacophony of strangled desire that lay just beneath the surface. "Well, um... what you said, whatever it is-" The desire was rising now; step after step, "-makes what I was going to say... obsolete, I think." Closer.

She grabbed onto that word like a lifeline. "Obsolete?"

"—Irrelevant." Now's not the time to be quoting the dictionary, Zeke, he warned himself.

"Okay. I like irrelevant." Even closer.

Closer still. "...Do you?"

She seemed about to bridge the gap between them, those doe eyes glossy and vulnerable, when- "Who cuts your hair?"