Through the blurred windows the bar, the rain slicking through his hair and into his eyes, Finch can just make out the edges of the figure he's been trying to track down. The grapevine in Torchline is a long and elaborate one, winding and knotted and deliberately hard to track, but many thieving hands had pointed to Mateo as the one to go to for this particular task, and Finch had followed the winding path to The Last Word. Thankfully here, and not some damp portion of Rae's Fingers or somewhere else equally slick and miserable, because Finch could really use a drink to warm him out.
He pushes against the door with a wet shoulder, exhaling a relieved gasp as the warmth of the bar hits his skin. A lithe hand wipes the water from his eyes, flicking it onto the floor and he rolls his shoulders back like an acrobat preparing for a performance. In a way, he felt like he was. He stalks up to the bar, taking a strategic seat a stool away from his target and orders the cheapest thing the bartender would call drinkable; it turns out to be some murky-colored thing of ambiguous liquor that tastes vaguely like ale and of sad yeast. It warms him up, though, and after sipping for a calculatedly normal amount of time, he turns his head towards Mateo, letting a roguish grin spread up his face that hopefully looks more 'dashing and devilish youth' rather than 'feral and mysterious criminal.'
"You're Mateo, right?" He says, lacing the words with trepidatious familiarity. "Sorry. Don't mean to ambush you. Some friends pointed me in your direction. I've been looking for a gardener. My old one recently retired" -- read, pissed off the wrong person and disappeared, "and I'm looking for someone to help me get some interesting new plants for my garden." He keeps his words light and friendly, expecting and demanding nothing, and with just enough casual friendliness that if Mateo turns him away, he could feign like this whole thing was a misunderstanding.
He pushes against the door with a wet shoulder, exhaling a relieved gasp as the warmth of the bar hits his skin. A lithe hand wipes the water from his eyes, flicking it onto the floor and he rolls his shoulders back like an acrobat preparing for a performance. In a way, he felt like he was. He stalks up to the bar, taking a strategic seat a stool away from his target and orders the cheapest thing the bartender would call drinkable; it turns out to be some murky-colored thing of ambiguous liquor that tastes vaguely like ale and of sad yeast. It warms him up, though, and after sipping for a calculatedly normal amount of time, he turns his head towards Mateo, letting a roguish grin spread up his face that hopefully looks more 'dashing and devilish youth' rather than 'feral and mysterious criminal.'
"You're Mateo, right?" He says, lacing the words with trepidatious familiarity. "Sorry. Don't mean to ambush you. Some friends pointed me in your direction. I've been looking for a gardener. My old one recently retired" -- read, pissed off the wrong person and disappeared, "and I'm looking for someone to help me get some interesting new plants for my garden." He keeps his words light and friendly, expecting and demanding nothing, and with just enough casual friendliness that if Mateo turns him away, he could feign like this whole thing was a misunderstanding.
