Who: Max and Gabe What: Paperwork Where: The office When: Recently Warnings/Rating: Nope
Max wasn't glad to be back in Las Vegas.
No, Max was pissed off, and she was in a bad mood. Her temper was bright, and her patience was short. She refused to call the kid and check on Corvus, despite wanting to. And she refused to beep into Corvus' ear herself, despite the fact that there was a plane landing at 0900 that had a questionable passenger aboard, one that Corvus should be trailing from the time the woman landed on Las Vegas soil.
The fact that this (whatever this was) was starting to interfere with work was a problem, and it was one Max had trouble ignoring. When they'd reassigned all her live cases to Corvus, she'd thought she could handle it, that she could handle him. She hadn't brought up any concerns to Davis, but then Davis hadn't been around at the time. He'd been MIA since the incident with the Pit, and she couldn't exactly blame him. Dying was something no one should come back from, and it made her uncomfortable to even think about it.
But now there was a problem, and it needed to be handled.
Reed was just convenient. Max had spent most of the morning getting feedback from his superiors about how he would fare as a handler. It was an annoyingly pressured position, being in someone's ear and not being able to actually do anything if they got themselves killed while you listened. It took a special level of calm, and she'd actually had a handler disconnect her mid-job once, because the woman couldn't handle the stress of listening while people were killed all around her asset. Max wanted to make sure Reed could handle it.
She was in the office that day, for the first time since the accident. After all, she wasn't going to be able to keep the cat in the bag forever, not with Brandon sending Amanda down. Brandon hadn't said as much, but she knew Amanda was therapy in the form spring break. And, truthfully, after spending a month with her over Christmas, Max was looking forward to it, even in the chair.
She was at a desk that looked previously unused, because Max never came to the office. The receptionist in the lobby of the cybersecurity front was instructed to send Reed back when he showed. In the meantime, Max busied herself with sorting paperwork, which didn't make her any cheerier. She had caved and purchased a sleek black chair, something that savored uncomfortably of permanence, and she was dressed in track pants and a grey tee. Her long hair was scraped back, and there was a huge mug of coffee on her desk (hazelnut, by the smell of it, and expensive). She wore no makeup, and she smelled of clean, no perfume, no scented shampoos, no floral dryer sheets. All business, and not a smile in sight. Corvus' digital file was up on her screen, ready to be flipped around and presented to Reed.
She only hoped this wasn't a mistake.
The man who entered the building did so carefully. He had walked from the large, black car in the parking lot very close by and he did so with an uneven gait, one that put over-emphasis on his left leg and allowed his right to drag a little. He had a cane in his hand, and as he put his weight onto his left, the cane swung down in a clipped fashion so the sound of his progress was a heavy step and then the pock of the cane and then the drag of his other foot. He was tall and he gave the impression of being big, the two independent of one another. Gabriel Reed had the height he had been born with, a full unfolded six foot two and his shoulders were the kind of broad that said football player or athlete. He was not quite burly; he was solid-looking, although that was as much a trick of the black coat layered over the jacket and the dark color of his shirt - he would have been burly had he been in the condition he had when last he’d been in a government building. He had the corded look of steel wire, and he was the thin of hospitals and of foreign prisons that had not quite dissipated with diner visits and motel sleep.
When Gabe came through the door of the building, he did so with the rigmarole of opening the door and then managing the cane and passing through - made more difficult of course, by a large paper box he was being especially careful with. The receptionist in the lobby looked up, all polished professionalism and not a nametag in sight, but Gabe met her with a smoothness and a warmth that made the cane much less apparent. He leaned on the edge of the desk (and apologized for doing so) and he filled out the first sheet of paper with his name and his birthdate and his ID number and whilst he did so, he chatted. By the time Gabe was buzzed through the door to the wing of the building devoted to cybersecurity, the receptionist was smiling and she had a bear claw perched on a napkin on the edge of her desk and Gabe knew her name was Hannah.
He was still smiling as he came through the door. His progress was slow and the door opened long before he made it through, but Gabe carried it as if there was nothing unusual about the cane and the progress and the white box in his arms and with that confidence came the matter-of-fact assumption that he was right. Gabe was very good at appearing to be right, and when he came in, he smelled coffee and he smelled new plastic, and paper and he shuffled his progress toward the sole occupant of the room, a woman in a low chair who had a look on her face that said she might be Main, the woman of the phone.
“Donut?” Gabe said, companionably, and he set the box down on the edge of her desk.
Max didn't bother pretending that she wasn't watching Reed's approach. If she was going to look away from someone with a limp, she'd have to look away from everyone in her life lately. Physical therapy was nothing but limps and bum shoulders, and she had to deal with it every single day. Her therapist catered to military and federal agents, a fact which had been a point of contention with Brandon, who thought a good, private therapist would have her best interests at heart. And, admittedly, she was fairly sure he was right. Not that her current therapist wasn't good, but she wasn't the kind of woman Brandon's money could buy. She had the distinct impression Brandon's surgeon was the only reason she could feel her legs at all, given her current doctor's surprise at the feat.
"Do you always bribe people with donuts?" she asked, because she'd known the moment he walked through the front door. She knew exactly how much time he spent chatting up the blissfully unaware receptionist. "Sit down," she finally said, missing the days when she could just kick a chair out for him, and missing the days when an attractive man would make her smile and forget everything but the possibility of sex and adrenaline. She settled for pointing to the chair that was beside her desk, and she turned the screen toward him, even as she shoved the papers over. "Just verify everything there seems right," she said of the papers, wincing slightly as she leaned forward. "Usually Davis deals with the warm, fuzzy welcomes," she added. Davis was everyone's friend; she wasn't. She thought that message was coming across loud and clear. And she knew she was being a bitch, but being back at work was harder than she had anticipated, and she'd gotten used to going without the constant pain while she was in France. It would take some adjusting. Again.
Gabe didn’t look at the chair. It was not a careful sliding-past of eyes, one cripple giving dignity to another, it was that he didn’t have to. The woman in it, the one who liked hazelnut in her coffee and wasn’t wearing the lipstick that had been omnipresent on the receptionist and the women in the lobby, was vivid. Gabe took his time sitting. Sitting had ceased to be an easy, thoughtless thing. Now the brace made his leg heavy and it made him lopsided, and sitting involved the cane and preferably something to lean against on the other side as well. He didn’t know anything about private therapists or hold much of opinions on military hospitals; he had woken up every day in one long enough to be thankful for the good nurses and counting down the minutes to sleep on days with the bad ones. He smiled at her, mild good humor and broad shoulders and he flipped open the box, glossy rows of donut varieties and the smell of sugar on the air along with the hazelnut. The cane was wedged against the edge of the vacant chair she’d indicated; Gabe put a hand on the desk. It was a large hand, broad and it was tanned in a faded way, somewhere hot long enough to put a tan there and somewhere out of the sun long enough to take it off again. There was no band around his third finger, but then agents didn’t typically wear wedding rings on duty.
“You eat donuts?” he asked, and the cane clicked as it found purchase against the chair legs, and Gabe’s hand tensed as he put his weight partially on the cane and partially on the desk edge. If it hurt, it was a slight tensing around the mouth but he was sat and then he was all mild bonhomie again and the cane was left leaning against the chair. “Good selection. I know Davis,” and he peered at the screen, squinting at what was there. His hand went to his upper pocket, fished out a pair of spectacles. He didn’t need them a great deal, but the long-sightedness was worse the tireder he was, and the more the pain bit in the less Gabe slept, and there was a good two hours before the little orange bottle in his pocket could unrattle itself into pain relief.
He shuffled the papers towards himself and he stacked them - neatly. Once they were lined up, he busied himself leafing through and he only glanced up once at the screen - it was as if Max were not there or not required, for the business of reconciling one data source with the next. He had not given a great deal of thought to Main; she was a very female and very decisive voice on the telephone with just a touch bossiness to her that likely made her impossible. Gabe was a man and he was an agent, and he was used to the types of women that passed through the ranks and stuck around: most of them were impossible for a number of reasons. This was not a difficulty and he was not a man who believed the Company wasn’t a place for women, even the impossible ones. Gabe liked impossible women. He did not look at her now but he filed away the details as a man might fold away a receipt whilst thinking about where he had parked the car. Had Gabe been asked, he would have been able to provide a detailed description without blinking, down to the muscle in her jaw that tensed when she leaned a little too far forward.
“All in order.”
"I prefer beer and wings, if you're trying to bribe me," she said comfortably, bad mood and all. If she was honest with herself, she would admit that people kept her in the job. Not just the nameless people she was helping by tracking down terrorist threats, but the people that ended up here, in places like this. Two minutes in, and she already knew that Reed was all agent. Corvus was the exception here. Most men and women that stuck to this life didn't quote Baudelaire or cry openly. Max got that. Max was that. It made things complicated, and she was getting tired of explaining that she couldn't be anyone but who she was, and that who she was wasn't about crying and feelings. "Making a move on Davis' current spot as hot older guy in the office? I get it." She glanced down at his (obviously) braced leg. "He's got great legs, though. Not sure you can keep up." There was a hint of a dimple when she teased. This was familiar territory, and there was little Max liked better than banter with someone who wouldn't take shit personally.
She waited for him to go over the papers, and she was careful not to reach as far forward to give him the pen to sign them with. Almost everything was digital these days, but there were some things the agency still liked to do the old fashioned way, and signing away your life was one of them.
That done, Max turned her attention back to the screen, where Corvus' complicated past was detailed alongside a photograph. "Jack Corvus. Recruited early last year. He's a tank. Not really suited to be an agent, but you know how we like to hire expendables who'll do anything. He's that guy. Volatile, lethal past, which we gave him a clean slate on, as long as he came in. He's yours now, along with the cases he's got with him. My old stuff, terrorist threats." She clicked the mouse, and the screen changed. The information for the flight was there, along with all known intel on the woman who was onboard. "The intel came from Moore at the FBI. I don't trust him much, so it's grain of salt until proven otherwise, as far as I'm concerned." The screen changed back again, and she folded her arms on the desk before realizing that was uncomfortable. It was a lagged delay, the movement back in the chair, and more obvious than she would have liked. "December sucked for you too," she finally said, a nod toward the leg. No point avoiding the elephant in the room.
Gabe did not reach for the pen across the desk. It was a distance and it was currently near enough to Main that she could, potentially, use it. To stretch for it would be uncomfortable, possibly more than uncomfortable - Gabe had become quickly and unconsciously used to making the quiet assessments, what was going to be costly in terms of pain and thus patience and what could be dealt with in other ways - and then he would have to return it. He slid a hand into the deep pockets of the black coat, retrieved an ink pen. Gabe’s handwriting was slanted and it was neat; it did not give an overt impression of someone who read poetry, even French poetry but it did not give an overt impression of anything. It was bland, deliberately so and he signed his name as if it were any name at all, the Reed very black in ink. It was not signing anything away when there was nothing left to give.
“I’ll bear it in mind,” he said affably, of beer and of wings and he tapped the donut box as he reached into it himself, “If I ever need to bribe you.” A quick, bright grin - dimples in both cheeks, the kind of grin used as cover and that meant precisely nothing at all. He bit into his donut, all crumbled sugar and pastry flakes across the black coat and Gabe leaned in to the desk, his forehead creasing as he listened. It was not a frown, no difficulty, more the concentration of committing certain facts to memory. It was a trick most learned, many without the slightest hint of outward focus but when it came to learning facts about an agent, Gabe considered the learning far more important than pretending he wasn’t doing anything of the kind. He listened, and he put away ‘my old stuff’ with just a fraction of a look in her direction; she wasn’t taking them and the agent on, and that was something but he wasn’t certain what. Moore, and the FBI, and Gabe’s dimples were quite gone, sobriety settling in across worn features, and greying temples.
He followed her gaze to his own leg, sat uselessly like a lump of twisted metal. Gabe cleared his throat; the crumby mess was somehow, suddenly a detraction, a more-obvious misdirection when he was somber. “No.” A beat. A grin. It was very clear Gabe was used to using them, as obviously as the donuts and the social engineering of the receptionist downstairs. He looked at Max and he smiled like his leg didn’t hurt and he wasn’t counting the minutes to the next pain pill. “No snow forts, lot of hospitals. Not a fan.”
She tossed the pen she was holding out back on the desk, and it rolled and came to a stop at the edge of her keyboard. She didn't expect him to give her any trouble about signing. After all? It was just a formality. They'd all signed their lives away a long time ago, and she knew it as well as he did. So she addressed his quip about the beers and wings instead, giving him a dimpled smile that made her look younger than her thirty years. "Hot sauce, and I prefer American brews and country bars," she added, and her smile was genuine. That had always been her downfall as a spook; she felt too much, and she always had. It showed on her face when she joked around, even if she managed to hide it fairly decently in the field.
She noticed the way his face turned when she mentioned the FBI, and she had to keep from rubbing her hip. She got it, of course. After all, she'd be dead in a cell if it wasn't for Brandon not wanting Amanda to grow up without a mother - even an absent one. She considered asking how he'd gotten out, since the CIA hadn't done very much to extract her. But she kept the question to herself. She could dig and find out on her own, but she didn't like to pry unless there was something to be gained from it. And he was good at those smiles. Better than her, and that was saying something. "You'll do just fine here," she finally added, because anyone who could put an act on like he could would be right at home. Well, Corvus would be a problem, but Corvus always was. The rest of them were more CIA than anything else these days, and that involved a lot of banter and very little deep connection. After all, making friends was just a bad idea when they might get killed in front of you at a moment's notice.
She opened her drawer and pulled out a small box with his new comm, which was set up to phone home whenever needed. "It has a hook to Davis, one to Corvus, and one to the team." She grinned, dimples again, and then she reached for a glazed donut. She took a bite. "If you want me, you'll have to go through the effort of looking me up and adding me." A beat. "Any questions, Reed?"
Judging by the wince earlier and the blunt lead into discussion of December, he put her damage (despite the chair; chairs meant nothing, that much had been clear in the first sessions of physio with a relentlessly German who had hard, cold hands) as severe. Main wasn’t a name he’d heard in his time in service but Gabriel Reed had spent the majority of his time dealing with narcotics and cross-border terrorism, dandling on the edge of South America rather than a greater stretch abroad. Cybersecurity now and he didn’t own a personal computer. There’d been murmurs since; old networks he hadn’t tapped since he’d been issued a gray plastic cane and a pair of orthopedic shoes and told he wasn’t quite done yet. “You giving orders already?” Yes, he could see beer and hot sauce and Main was the kind of woman who played Thanksgiving football along with the boys; one dimple darted in and out as if all Gabe had thought about was sugar glazed and jelly stuffed. He smiled like he took orders easy, like he was amiable enough to give where others didn’t.
The tiny piece of technology looked ridiculous in Gabe’s big hands. It was black plastic and smooth efficiency and it was as small as it could be made because they were all issued exactly the same. His fingers were thick and they were calloused, heavy whorls of toughened skin - from throwing around a ball on a basketball court with friends of a weekend, perhaps, or from mechanically breaking down and remaking up his gun in pitch dark with a rhythm that meant he’d find its music even when caught off guard and bleeding. He was surprisingly deft; he pried the thing apart, and he found the battery, and he put it back together, a palaver of government issued plastic and a curious mind.
“Yeah,” said Gabe, easy and mellow and reaching out across the desk for another donut. He ate like a growing man rather than one obviously done growing. There had been eggs that morning, diner food served hot with coffee, but the donut disappeared in three bites, and Gabe dusted sugar off his fingers with obvious relish. “Where can I get coffee that smells like that?” Gabe did not believe, as Max did, in not making friends within the CIA; he was simply bad at it, too good at fitting parts into boxes. More than one box at a time got to be open with the government; this, to Gabe, was the closest to friendship that was allowed. He smiled at her, warm like he’d decided to be friends, like they were fitted cogs that ticked to the same time-piece.The smile looked like the others, as genuine as government paint on the walls and as false identities down to the details.
No, he wouldn't have heard of Max's name. She'd come from deep Army cover, and her time in the CIA had been hidden as a university lecturer that traveled to schools and taught digital forensics. It was a good cover for her, since the area was one of genuine interest. But there was nothing on paper that said she was an agent, Army or CIA. And her father ranked too highly in the government to cause anyone to think he was hiding a spook in in plain sight within his family. Her manner and demeanor was all soldier, from the way she held her shoulders to the way she moved (when she could move), but that was natural for an Army brat who had spent a life bouncing from base to base. Her clearance was high, and her connections were many, but she didn't actually exist anywhere. "I always give orders," she said, and it was light and husky, one of the boys, and no one had ever mistaken her for a woman. Why would they? "Davis is the nice parent." As much as Davis tried to pull rank, she was definitely the disciplinarian in this house.
She watched him with the comm, and she let him do his looking, big hands and curiosity. "If we have you bugged, it's not going to be anywhere as obvious as that," she reminded him, and the comment savored of McKellar's hatred of the organization; maybe he'd left a little of that behind when he died.
She finished her own donut without daintiness or apology, and she smiled when he asked about the coffee. "It's French Press, a blend from the import place off the strip. One of the many things living with my ex left behind," she said easily. When she was younger, she wouldn't have mentioned any significant past relationship on meeting, but that was a thing of the past with the advent of Amanda. It was hard to hide the fact that something memorable had happened somewhere along the line. She could have written it off as a one-night stand, but that would be a lie, and she wasn't much for lying. She'd been doing it to all her friends since December, and she was at her wit's end with it.
She sighed, and she idly rolled the chair with a hand on the wheel. "If things explode with Corvus, let me know," she finally said.
Gabe rolled the earpiece up to where it would sit, as if he’d not heard a word of bugs and warnings, as if Uncle Sam was the kind of uncle who gave five bucks on greeting and the kind of hug that made your bones ache on Christmas Day. He had no hatred for the government and he looked at Max, the mild sort of look that could have been studying someone new to learn their face, the way spooks did on greeting or could have been a reaction to the mention of an ex, and he made a quiet assessment of her tone and the comment and folded it up and away. Gabe did not hate the government but he hated the persistent pain that fire-crackered up along his leg and accidents happened when the chain-links didn’t hold tight. He grinned, and he passed her a paper napkin from the stack tucked into a coat pocket, stamped with the name of a local donut shop, and he didn’t say one word about bugs and bitterness that tasted faintly like cold, black coffee.
“Stand down then, buttercup,” Gabe said and there was a laugh in there, folded like a handkerchief, “I take orders fine.” And didn’t he - he’d had all kinds of voices in his ears over the years, older men and older women, all with the knife-cut tone to their voices that said business until he went too deep for voices, slid off the grid like electricity earthing into cold, wet dirt. “Give ‘em, too,” he said, calm and casual and leaning back in his chair like it wasn’t hell on his leg and he could feel without reaching for them, little bottle of painkillers tucked into the pocket by his thigh. He looked at the coffee cup, and he could catalogue the smell of good coffee, pocketed it and the name of the place it had been bought both. Putting it away shook something else out of the tissue paper and mothballs; loose tea and the chime of a spoon against bone china, the hiss of water. Gabe’s smile licked itself down to nothing, like a flame blown out.
“Nice habit to leave you with; I was the only one who liked coffee in my place.” Past tense. Careful words, like inching over live wire - but they swung out easy, like the past was buried, scattered dirt, flowers. Not fresh. Gabe blinked quiet alarm, “Explode?” Quietly, the good time, easy-going demeanor dissipated; he reached for the paperwork, the sharply aware readiness particular to an agent with an unknown quantity. “The hell would he be exploding?”
"Buttercup, huh?" she asked, all entertainment and a knowing smile. "Not in this lifetime." She'd been fond of pet names once, but that was when she'd thought she needed them to soften her personality. She'd been fond of cursing then too, back when she'd thought it made her look stronger. These days, she was comfortable in her skin. Or, rather, she had been until the chair invalidated every part of her body that she had unquestioned confidence in. "We all take orders just fine, Reed, or we wouldn't be here." Which was just a fact. Defiance didn't go over well in their work, and that was just a plain fact. "This is just me. Take it or, well, take it." She smiled, because that was just how things were. "You can leave your orders for Corvus." And that was the only nice thing about not being a field agent; no one gave her orders just now. It wasn't like she could carry most of them out anyway.
She watched the reaching, the ordeal with the pocket and the tissue, and she wondered what made his face change. But she just nodded toward the Press in the back, just past the empty desk that awaited him. "That's yours," she said of the space, "and you can finish off the coffee, if you make some fresh." Because doing anything in a world that was was made for people over five feet made life hard these days. He could make the coffee the next time around.
"Not a bad habit," she admitted of the good coffee. "I walked away with some other things too, so I did alright," she added, a fond smile for Amanda crossing her features and really softening them for the first time. She noticed his use of the past tense, and he wondered what he had in his past. Agents were careful about things like that, and she wasn't always as careful as she needed to be. But she wasn't in the field anymore, and it obviously didn't matter as much now, at least not for her. "I told you, he's not a trained agent. He's passionate. He's hard to control." She didn't say any of it like it was bad. After all, that was why they'd brought Corvus in-house in the first place.
Main had the kind of confidence that was sharpened blade, that came from marked and measured wetting against stone and tempered heat. Gabe heard warm self-assurance and he heard hours of training beneath it, the kind of steeled self that was common to government and its spider-stems through military and police. Gabe looked at her as if there were no taking or leaving, as if Max was as much part of the set-up as the empty desk waiting for his office detritus, and he followed along the look toward the kitchen. “Think I can manage making coffee,” he said, all broad weight and mild like a bull with a ring through its nose and nothing of tempered blade about him on show.
The smile on Main’s face lit her up, switched her on and Gabe watched with the flicker of interest that was any agent put in a room with something out of place. She was visibly relaxed for a single second - that wasn’t work that did that. Husband? Dog? House? Kid? He went through the list as easily as if it were paperwork in his hand and he noticed the tone went soft as butter for a second. Yes, the colleagues would be interesting, he acknowledged, used to no colleagues at all for much of it.
“If he’s passionate, that’s one thing,” he’d had hold of the cane once more, the same palaver but in reverse; wedged in against the chair at an angle, a shift of weight so it was partly on the desk and partly on the cane’s head. Gabe swung himself up like it was nothing, no audible sound, no visible wince, as if it the cane and the brace were an unnecessary inconvenience and he was just dandy. He gathered up the mug with the dregs from the edge of her desk in his free left hand, and the walk - uncomfortable as it looked in pieces, the dragging right leg and the tipsy lean against the cane - parceled itself up with a free smile thrown back, and a point toward the kitchen with the near-empty mug until Gabe made it seem as though it were easy.
“But exploding? He done that much before?” His voice drifted; the kitchen was close enough for the conversation to continue; Gabe sounded as though they were discussing dogs and favorite dinner places, not agents and their likelihood for trouble.
"I'm glad," Max said of his making coffee. "I would have hated to recommend you get relocated because you couldn't make a decent cup." It was teasing, all dimples and honesty, even if the dimples were tucked into cheeks gone taut and strained with exhaustion and a few swing of pain. But it was honest; an indicator of how things would be. "How do you know Davis?" she asked, assuming the answer had something to do with this assignment or that assignment. She didn't expect depth in his response, but that was just how it was in their world. But basics, she knew, would fill in just enough blanks to make her understand how things were there. Friendly, casual, acrimonious, really fucked up, etc.
She laughed when he asked about Corvus exploding. "Someone wasn't listening to story time. He was a lethal vigilante, Reed. He has feelings." She wanted to mention that Corvus' alter was insane, but she knew she couldn't actually say that, even if it was relevant. She was hoping maybe Davis would broach it, since dying had changed Davis in ways she couldn't manage to wrap her head around either. It was, in short, complicated, and she couldn't tell him as much.
Instead, she watched him through the gap that was the kitchen doorway, and she shut her computer screen down a second later. That was enough for today. She wanted a good painkiller and her medical bed, and she wasn't going to get any of them here. She rolled her chair back, and she scooted herself out into the aisle. "I have a few weeks off coming up, so I'll try to help you navigate Corvus before then."
“Leaving already?” Gabe sounded free and he sounded easy; he sounded like it was a normal office equipped with printers and work-place banter with laptops that didn’t require heavy-duty encryption - the kind of job you could switch off from at five thirty. The splash of hot water was just audible and the smell drifted out through the gap, rich and roiling, fresh coffee deeply flavored. When Gabe made small progress out, it was lopsided; the cane had been tucked between arm and side, and he leaned against the wall, cups in hand. The limp was more pronounced without the cane and there was a stiffness around his mouth, like the muscles there were being held very tightly. “Try me,” he said, of good coffee and poor brewing, like it was a test he’d be bound to pass and he set one mug down in front of Main, well within grasping reach. He sat in his own chair, not the one beside Main’s desk and he leaned - like it was comfortable instead of agonizing.
“Davis got feelings he’s developed since I knew him?” Gabe shook his head and he blew on his coffee - with a visibly appreciative look at the cup. Diner coffee was just fine, engine oil in a rusty kind of machine he was these days, but the smell of it, the taste of it, pricked taste buds long dead with hospital food. “Not exactly regular issue. I knew Davis a while back.” Nothing further. Nothing exposed. Just ‘a while back’. His voice was neutral, not a scrap of feeling to indicate whether it was a marriage of minds or deep-cut differences, all things sanded down and made smooth like polished wood.
“You been running with Corvus long?” The plastic bottle was nudging him, but Gabe refused to open it until Max was gone.
"It's my first day back," she admitted of why she was leaving as early as she was. It was almost an admission that she'd bitten off more than she could chew, even if she didn't come right out and say it. But, still, she stayed long enough to take a sip of that coffee, her eyes closing with a kind of pleasure that went deeper than surface and agent and whatever other labels they all carried around with them. She actually closed her eyes to enjoy it, and then she gave him a look that was dimples and a grin. "Not fuckin bad," she admitted, setting the mug back on the desk and fully expecting Davis to empty it out for her.
"You'll have to talk to Davis and make your own conclusion," she said about whether or not he'd developed feelings. She knew Davis cared more than most men she knew, but she didn't know when that had started. She'd only known him four years, and he'd been like that since their first meeting. Maybe Reed's experience was different, but Max wasn't going to run her mouth about it. If there was something she knew, it was not to gossip with agents. Which was why she just gave him a look when he asked about Corvus.
She rolled her chair back to the desk, and she grabbed her phone and keys. She texted the cab company she had on call, the one that wasn't a pain in the ass about accommodating wheelchairs, and then she turned the chair to face him. "Corvus is my stepson's best friend," she replied, counting on that to quash that particular line of questioning. "We go back a long time. I'll see you tomorrow, Reed." If she could get out of bed.
And with that, she rolled toward the door, wondering if this hand-off had been a huge mistake.