Chapter Text
The sign behind the singer, that one singular name, shone like a beacon on a stormy night, the neon so bright, so close to blinding, that it was impossible for any newcomer to make out what color it was supposed to be (red). It provided an atmospheric backdrop to the jazz that bled through the warm air, thick and sultry. Ricky's was crowded, as it always was, the bar packed and smokey and dense in a way that would have made it claustrophobic if it was any other establishment other than Ricky's. Francesca Norris had made it the hotbed of the city in the year and change she had bought was was then called Bobby Mackey's from then owner Ricky Goldsworth. And while the place hadn't done badly under Goldsworth, it was doing much better under Francesca. It was packed.
And among the various patrons was a man, a stranger, sitting at the bar, downing whiskey sours to take the edge off the heat. Just as winters in the city could be icy cold, summers could be as hot as the Sahara Desert. He did not normally frequent bars, and he certainly didn't normally frequent this bar, but tonight was an exception. It was hot, and he was thirsty, and he was also on the look out. He had only recently come back to the city after a trip, and was trying to find someone. So even as he nursed his whiskey sours he made sure to stay on the alert, routinely scanning the patrons frequenting Ricky's.
There was the singer on the stage, Selena, dark hair falling over a smooth tanned shoulder, gloss shining on upwardly curved lips. The stranger tuned out her voice, melodic as it was, eyes surreptitiously scanning the rest of the establishment. At a table he was rapidly coming to realize was almost theirs and theirs alone were the two reporters from the Unsolved column, a column whose quick and meteoric rise to popularity had been both stunning and to be expected at the same time. The stranger focused on their conversation for a moment.
"There is a well of proof, both scientific and-"
"No, don't say scientific, you can't say scientific-"
"It is scientific, even if-"
"It's not scienti-"
"Even if you refuse to believe in the truth-"
"That ghoulie ghosts exist? No fucking way-"
"They do-"
Nothing of substance from Shane Madej and Ryan Bergara. At least, not to their eavesdropper. The stranger turned away, signaling for a new drink. Long fingers played with a napkin, shredding it quietly and systematically as his eyes roved. They were drawn, eventually, to another conversation. One participant he recognized: Francesca Norris, easily the most beautiful woman present, she who had injected the place with new life after Goldsworth had finally sold. She was wearing a bright red cocktail dress that he had seen maybe once or twice before, tight and striking against her dark skin, a matching headband nestled in her black hair. He didn't recognize the man Francesca was talking to, enveloped in shadow with his head turned away. He was lanky, that much the stranger saw, and leaned towards Francesca in such a way that denoted an important conversation. He tuned in.
"How'd they manage..." Francesca's question was lost in the white noise of the rest of the establishment, and the stranger himself edged forward, straining to hear. The man she was talking to started responding, voice too low for anything more than one frightening tidbit to be heard.
"...Dr. Fear..."
The stranger's veins turned to ice. His heart thudded unevenly in his chest, and he sat back heavily, pulse racing. No. No, it couldn't be. He hadn't heard that name in practically two years. Even the mere possibility of what that name could bring made him shake. For a moment, it was as if he was underwater. Everything sounded tinny and hollow, and he barely even noticed when Francesca Norris moved away from her conversation partner towards Selena, who had just finished her set. The bartender put the whiskey sour down in front of the stranger. He downed it instantly, letting the burn of the alcohol soothe his nerves. There was no reason to get into a tizzy over a name. The name wasn't the issue.
It was the people who knew the name.
The stranger focused again on the now solitary man, who was still enveloped in the dark, no doubt taking sharp and quick glances at everything, judging by the almost constant movement of his head. And then, it stopped, the shadow facing him directly. He had been made. For a moment, the two stared each other down. The stranger got a prickling feeling along his spine, and curled his fingers into fists.
The man pushed back his chair and stood abruptly then, without waiting, began to leave, weaving deftly through the crowd. The stranger followed hastily, mimicking his ever move, keeping his eyes clear on the one he was following. He almost crashed into a newly arrived patron, a man with dark, gelled back hair, and briefly lost sight of his target. He managed to see him, whipping open the door of an employee exit and swiftly disappearing. The stranger did the same, catching the door before it swung closed and edging himself out.
He found himself in an alleyway, light by flickering signs of pink and blue and purple hues, advertising clubs and bars and seedy parlors. Near the stranger's shoe was a puddle, the sole residue of last night's summer shower. Steam billowed from somewhere further down the alley; he wasn't entirely sure where. In that one minute, he wondered where the man he'd been following could have gone.
He got his answer very soon. Instantly, he was pressed up against a brick wall, the rough texture digging into his back, a long and lanky body pressed up hard against his. He gasped, and focused on the man pinning him in place. The oxygen left his body.
"You-!" The arm holding him moved from his chest to his throat, cutting off his air, digging into his windpipe. The stranger choked and squirmed. After what could have only been a minute but had felt like more, he was released, and the stranger fell to his knees, coughing. The assailant stepped back, now illuminated, allowing the stranger to look at him full in the face.
The neon colors reflected off his hair, washing the sandy blond out to white. His eyes were still that electric blue, that pale robin's egg color that somehow managed to stay the same no matter the environmental lighting. His physique was the same, tall and reed thin. For a moment, the stranger was baffled as to why he hadn't figured it out back at the club; very few people were this instantly recognizable. It was the trench coat, he decided. The trench coat was as iconic as the rest of the appearance, at least to those of them who knew of this man's existence and eccentricities.
He wasn't used to picturing C.C. Tinsley in his head without the trench coat that had flapped at the edges of the LCD's nightmares.
"You're supposed to be dead!" Tinsley looked at him cooly, as if daring him to stand, to see what happened if he tried. Coming to physical blows had never been the stranger's style or forte; he stayed on the ground.
"And yet, here I am."
"Here you are," the stranger repeated, still massaging his throat. "Still pretty as a picture." Tinsley's smile was as false as the modesty he infused it with. "I thought you would look like blackened bone." The smile fell; the eyes became the Arctic.
"That would be the other guy." His gaze went far away when he said that, as if reliving a memory. But the stranger knew better than to try and run. Anyone who could put together as complicated a plot as the Sodder family debacle would not be so entranced in the past to simply just let someone go.
"Then you're lucky." The stranger lowered his hand, and yet remained on the ground. "But what are you doing here?" Tinsley tilted his head quizzically. "Why are you back in town?"
"Just because Dr. Fear is gone doesn't mean the people who put him in power have gone that same way. Unfortunately," he added, with no small measure of distaste in his voice. The stranger raised his eyebrows, feeling a shock go through his system. "That's surprising?"
"No, not that." Fear was, after all, a cog in a machine. A very important cog, a second in command cog, a cog with as much influence as one could possibly have without being the big boss, but still, a cog nonetheless. Losing the cog hadn't meant losing the machine. "I just didn't realize you would still be so...keen on that particular inquiry."
"Being dead does wonders for your ability to obsessively focus on things," Tinsley commented dryly. "But I'm not here to just make idle chitchat in an alley outside a bar." The blue eyes flickered towards the door, and that same far away look made as if to creep back into them. He shook himself out of it quickly. "I'm here for a purpose."
"And what purpose would that be?" the stranger demanded. Tinsley fixed his gaze back on him.
"You." Something about it, the implications, sent a spine down the stranger's chest. "I'm here for you. I've been trying to get you alone for two days now." The thought of that did not sit right in the stranger's head.
"Why?"
"Because I need information, and you seem like one of the few members of your evil cult spineless enough to do what I say and not immediately set people on my tail." He would have been offended if the description hadn't been so dead on accurate. Tinsley seemed aware that what he had said was harsh, and gave the other man a look that was almost apologetic. What a conundrum, this reanimated corpse was.
"What information do you need?" Tinsley crouched down beside him, long legs folding as he did so. He was close enough that the stranger could see a faint, silvery line, a scar, on his throat, parallel to the ground, as if someone had tried to slit a clean line evenly along his windpipe. He wondered what Tinsley had been doing the past year and change to acquire such a scar.
"I need to know where I can find a man by the name of Banjo McClintock."