“Sure,” he supplies as if the answer absolutely doesn’t matter. “If you like…”
The man was entirely too stable as the tipped glass hovered over the tumbler, especially when one considered his rather prolonged state of inebriation. There was limited-if any-swaying, he poured the drinks with precision, Eddie watched the ripples fill the glass. They barely trembled. He glanced at the bottle, now almost entirely emptied. Jay’s level of balance would take a control that was more than practiced, that was instinctual. A need to defend, to be sentient at all times, it was ingrained in him. Even by Gothamite standards it was excessive—it had to be bred. Childhood habits either shed themselves like snake skins against bark and stones, or clung on like an armor—eternal.
Eddie’s blood had been shaped into a consistent state of flight over fight—until he’d clawed it all out of his system. He had been a pitiful, frightened child…But this, this was not a man born out of fear—or at least, not fear cut of the same cloth as Eddie’s. This man had realized his power much earlier—and Eddie wondered why.
“So, Jay…Tell me, what is it you do?” he kept his tone polite but vaguely disinterested, people felt more obliged to reveal secrets when he pretended he had no interest in hearing them. “No offence…but this bar seems a tad…snooty for your tastes.”
“Snooty?” Jason snorted. “This is twenty-seven year old whiskey, Friend. Not just every bar has this stuff.”
But he was right. Men of Jason’s size and disposition didn’t normally associate with coked out Wall Street types, not in Gotham. There was a caste, a system of who-was and who-wasn’t. Jason was not in his assigned group.
“You’ve got a point, though. I’m here for an-oh, how do you say this. Fifteen years ago, I was murdered. I came back. It’s a celebration party.”
He cocked an eyebrow, waiting the shrewd man’s response. It wasn’t often that he told truths like this, but there were just so many variables to dying that he felt confident in his ambiguity. Plus, no one would believe the real story.
“I have a private security business. Army for hire, government contractors, the works. Cut my teeth in the East, mostly Mongolia and Russia. A little bit of Italy.”
He grinned, swirling his whiskey.
“Man of many hats, Eddie. You?”
and all of this will never be the same again 