Time Off for Good Behavior

[madimpossibledreamer]

(Giovanna which pretty much everyone has decided is John’s “female” name and makes the Giorno parallels even more interesting puts on a subtle artifact-based glamour to have days off as “Maria”; got caught snooping at Lara’s though)

Main Points:
Assassin's Creed/The Secret World
Summary: Harry learns about what mob bosses do on their days off.
Word Count: 475
Rating: Teen
Pairing: Giovanna has a crush

         “I thought it was a power thing. You’ve wanted to control me ever since you figured out I’m the real deal,” I offer weakly and shiver slightly as Maria glances over, heat in her eyes.
         “Are you really that dense—no, wait, don’t answer that.” She reaches up to pinch the bridge of her nose, squatter than her usual nose, but doesn’t give me the time to snark back, which is probably wise, given that she knows me. “You saw what—happened.” The embarrassment would have Harry holing up in her room for days, but of course Maria has a little dignity left and is insistent she use every last ounce of it. “Who was being held down, Harry?”
         She meets my eyes once more, triggering the slight disconnect every time I see blue, not green, and it only takes an instant for me to make sense of her words. My first reaction is Guh. Because I hadn’t considered that. At all. It’s weird, making friends with the “alter ego” of a crime boss who explicitly is using that alter ego to distance herself from her work and have some time off, because it allows my brain to think of her more as a real person and not just a criminal scumbag. I hadn’t ever considered that it would be any different here. She’s made no secret of wanting me working for her. If she’d had any interest in me, I’d have thought, it’d be an outpouring of the frustration she feels in being unable to get me to agree to anything, but this…
         She wouldn’t be this embarrassed about it if it was what I’d thought. She’d probably even gloat about it. But no, she’s vulnerable. She hadn’t wanted me to see that, precisely because feelings were involved and I’d imagine when you’re a crime boss ‘feelings’ is a dirty word.
         “Fortunately, given…everything…it seems the glamour held. Because it didn’t quite match my fantasies. The last thing I need is the White Court to know of this.” Fantasies. Plural. Double guh. I’d only thought of myself as heterosexual and even plain vanilla as far as these things go, but this seems to be doing it for me. Then again, ignoring Bob—intimacy is a problem for me. It never seems to go well, and I overinvest. If I think about it, the Soulgaze is one of the most intimate things you can imagine, baring your soul for another, and Marcone doesn’t seem to have used that to her advantage, even if she could. Even if she wanted to. It would’ve been natural for her to use the knowledge gained as just another pawn in her chess game, and yet she’d been treating it more as a handshake, a deal that I wouldn’t use what I saw against her and she would respond in kind.