Title: waiting for a start to call
Fandom: Assassin's Creed
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 492
Pairing: Layla Hassan/Victoria Bibeau
Author's note: canon divergent, because I don't know an awful lot about the modern day part of the AC storyline
Summary: Small steps, and no sudden movements - that's the way to avoid startling workaholics. (And secure a standing maybe-lunch date, but Victoria's not going to say that part out-loud.)

English, as she is spoke, is as lovely a language as any so shaped by centuries traded and mismatched can be, a fact exacerbated rather than ameliorated over the years as the world grows smaller and more interconnected - and so it happens that the line in the meaning between date and date is a thin one, but at one and the same time the ambiguity can be, in its own way, beneficial. Especially when a person may want a date, but doesn’t want to risk asking outright.

(Vic might be getting a little rambly, even in her own head, but she has come to accept that she has a tendency to avoid things she doesn't want to confront. Doesn't want to be rejected for. By. As a result of.)

Layla is like sunshine over a desert, bright and cheerful and direct enough to burn the unwary. She knows her own mind, more than perhaps she knows her own limits (she has, at best, a college students understanding of what a healthy amount of sleep is) and she isn't shy about making it known, either. Altogether, she should be the most infuriating person Vic has ever met. If she wasn't so fond of her.

In the same line of not actually verbalizing relevant aspirations, Abstergo Entertainment's building being situated within ten minutes walk of an office-worker's choice of food options makes grabbing lunch as easy as getting Layla out of her cubby and out the building. A daunting prospect, in other words. Layla is just a tad obsessed with making a good impression on the brass.

There's a knack to it, is all. Vic times it carefully, with a bit of help from the surveillance, and catches her on her way back from the bathroom.

Victoria has learned that it’s best not to let her object - at least not while they're still in the building - so she distracts Layla with a steady flow of conversation – she doesn’t have to make anything up; some of things that security gets up to in break room are truly ridiculous – until they're in the lift and heading down.

Layla pauses mid-sentence as she notices the direction they’re moving, the sort of pause that would utterly derail their journey's momentum if it had happened before they'd stopped walking. It's all about the timing, really. Timing and being able to act like nothing's going on. Not that anything is - it's not like they're - they're just having lunch. Maybe a drink. Lunch and a drink in pleasant company, that's all. They could both do with getting out of the office more.

"Victoria ..."

She ignores the complaint and continues, unbothered and unabashed with the ease of long planning. Layla needs to see more sunlight. Sunlight and real food and, just maybe, Victoria's company instead of her computer and code. "So I found a sandwich shop that does a wonderful selection of artisanal iced teas -"