Jenny felt like she was in love with everybody she really shared herself with at the time, then looking back, she'd dismiss it. Not Chevalier. Looking back, she knows it was love long before it was anything else. After Cheval, she would chase that love and not find it (not until Eli).

He was a rare animal; unwounded but careful, well-mannered by habit, genuinely happy with nothing to hide. Woke up on the right side of the bed every day. He never seemed to get really angry, held no grudges, was never bothered by the opinions or ire of others, and it made Jenny terrifically self-conscious. Her own wrath was like a poltergeist, coming out of nowhere to destroy a room. Sometimes she'd find herself trying to pick fights with him, and it bewildered him under his smile. She would shove him, punch his chest, and he would take her fists in both his hands and kiss them.

Cheval grew up in a suburb of Vancouver with three younger sisters and a long line of German Shepherds. He was the tallest Chevalier in the family tree, and the tallest kid in his school, which made him a target for every idiot with something to prove, so he started working out. He got real big real fast, and was courted by a boxing coach from a local gym who showed him how to win those fights when he couldn't walk away. By nineteen, he was competing in the AIBA heavyweight division, and he had a choice to make -- recruit to join the Vancouver police department, as he'd planned since he was a kid, or pursue what looked to be a winning boxing career. His coach persuaded him to stay.

He had no killer disposition, but made up for it with skill and stamina. He competed for three years, until he won by knockout against a young Samoan dude whose mother came to find Cheval at the gym the next day. She told him he'd broken her son's jaw and neck; they'd put him in a steel halo collar. The gym fell quiet while she shouted at Cheval through tears, slapped him and left. He handed his gloves to his coach that afternoon. He just wasn't cut out for a mean sport.

After that, he laid low, made friends, saved his earnings. Worked as a bartender in an Irish pub, where he met Miss Kiva, the owner of Clever Girls gentleman's club, who was looking for bouncers. Reluctant to get into a job that required him to be physically threatening, Kiva asked him to think of it as being a protector, not a thug. Her girls needed to be looked after, not just looked at. So he took the job, and there he met a pretty hostess named Ruby, whose personality filled him with joy. It was two months before he saw her without her long wig, one night after closing.

She bent over and shook out her loose mohawk with her fingers, and grinned at his expression.

"Is it a dealbreaker?" she asked.

He said, "I think I'm in love."


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<sub>This is Chevalier the way I wanted him. Kevin Durand has a little bit of a preternatural handsomeness that don't wanna be put down on my paper, but I'm satisfied. I do like inking this way. The little junk boat I drew, but the waves are from stock by christinemarie33 (and are apparently by Hokusai). They were absolutely perfect.

materials: ink, paper, PS8
music: XTC, "In Another Life"
Do not reproduce without my explicit permission.</sub>