Max knows Mouse likes (muchness) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-04-22 15:18:00 |
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Entry tags: | dormouse, witch |
Who: Dylan and Max
What: A rescue that ends in a Molotov Cocktail
Where: Outside of town → Dylan's apt
When: Immediately after this
Warnings/Rating: Explosions and an alter-change thing for Dylan.
One of the first things Max learned in special training was how to endure pain.
She'd been twenty, fresh out of two years of basic training and general infantry in the Army, and she'd been homesick and miserable. She'd been scheduled to go overseas in six months, to a hotbed of uncertainty in the middle east, and that meant a fast track on conditioning training. It sounded so harmless until she was actually there, learning how to break without breaking. But it was something she'd never forgotten; none of them ever forgot that particular training.
And so she'd managed to grit her teeth and bear the hours while she decided who to call. She sat in the truck, and she ran names through her mind, pros and cons, and she managed not to scream in frustration thanks to willpower alone. And, while it might be enough to knock the wind out of a civilian, the pain was nothing compared to the weeks spent as a prisoner in Bangladesh. She could handle this. She could even give McKendrick shit in the process. She was a good agent, at least when it came to handling pain.
The truck was off the road, flipped over once and teetering unsteadily on the embankment, upright again. It was just far down to be out of sight from main traffic, but that didn't matter very much. The place was an hour out of town, and it was barren. There was nothing there but the abandoned warehouse on the southeast corner. There were two bullet holes in the truck's side, and one shot out tire in the front. The front window had shattered at the flip, but the truck looked fine otherwise. It just needed the flat changed, and it needed someone who could actually press a foot to the gas; that person wasn't Max.
Inside the truck, Max had closed her eyes once she got off the comm. There was blood at her temple, from where her head had slammed against the steering wheel, but that wasn't the problem. Without her wheelchair, she couldn't get out of the truck, and her wheelchair was back at the townhouse. And the pain that radiated through her body, well, that was almost insurmountable. The sniper rifle rested along her thighs, and her handgun was in her relaxed right fist. This had been stupid; she wasn't looking forward to the lecture she suspected was coming, but it would have been worth it if she'd succeeded. She'd failed, all all the ineffective painkillers still lingering in her system couldn't take that hurt away.
Dylan could have killed her, and a huge part of him wanted to. For the first couple of miles that his tires chewed up, shaking her senseless seemed pretty feasible. Although a few minutes later, he'd conceded to the idea of just yelling. He could see it, though. Why people ended up murdering people that they cared about. All that he could think of was the very real possibility that he was going to be too late. What if the police were there? With her disability, she wasn't exactly the crowned jewel of the CIA at the moment. He wasn't entirely certain that they'd pull all of the strings necessary to spring her. Considering her father, they probably would, but if there were witnesses..
His mind was racing faster than his car. How could she be so fucking stupid? "Damn It, Max!" Dylan slammed the heel of his hand against the soft padding that surrounded his steering wheel before he veered sharply onto the next road, following her signal. When he finally saw the truck, those curses slipped into a regrettable silence. "Jesus," he whispered softly while cutting off his headlights and pulling up a few yards away from her. Judging by the body damage, the truck had obviously flipped. He could see the marks now that distinguished the complete lack of a tire pattern in the sand and dirt. Out of his car, and getting closer, he could see the truck's gunshot wounds.
Whatever lecture he'd had prepared for her was worlds away now. When he approached the driver's side of the truck, Dylan dropped what was assuredly the concern in his eyes and the hesitation that was knotting up his forehead. He did so only because he knew she'd hate the sympathy.
"License and registration, ma'am." He managed a smile while leaning up against the driver's side door, which was dented enough that his relaxed stance felt awkward. Glancing down at the rifle in her lap, Dylan considered the fact that now might not be the best time to start joking.
Her hand closed on the handgun when she heard the voice. Eyes closed and gone in the pain, she didn't recognize it at first. Her finger kicked the safety, and she had the barrel pointing at the shattered window before Dylan finished his sentence. The gun stayed there, just centimeters from Dylan's face, where it wavered unsteadily. Her brown eyes were pain shot, rimmed with red, and it took a second longer for everything to catch up. She clicked the safety, and she let the gun go to her lap, where she gratefully took her fingers away from it. "Have you ever been a PoW, agent?" she asked, the question so completely casual that it seemed unimportant. She shifted in the seat, and she pushed the sniper rifle and the handgun a side, an unwitting sign of trust in the fact that she didn't think she needed them anymore. He was right, for what it was worth, about her not being the kind of priority for the FBI that she had been once. Desk agents were a dime a dozen; good field agents, those were prized.
Her white wifebeater was sweat soaked, and the sweats she wore were blood dotted, and she didn't even bother trying to move, not even for the show of it. But she did scan his faze for anything like sympathy or concern and, finding none, she managed the barest of playful grins. "I don't know if you could pull off being a cop, McKendrick. How about you try for mechanic instead, and we skip the glove box and the registration?" Not that she'd be able to drive the truck, even if he managed to get the tire changed, but she didn't want to think about how she was going to get the truck home. Pain cut the logic off at a certain point, and that certain point included license plates with visible numbers and the fact that driving was so not happening.
When the gun rose, his grin fell. He watched her with blue eyes gone soft, and all of that focus was centered on his expression behind the shiny, ominous barrel of her handgun. Silly him for being concerned about the sniper rifle. He didn't reach for the gun, and he didn't say anything. Even when her hand quivered, and those clenched fingers could have easily pinched a trigger, he stared past the metal and forced himself to watch the disconnected shock in her eyes. "Hey," he finally said in a whisper. It took everything he had not to sidestep and reach for the gun. Then it was over. Just when he'd begun to seriously worry that she was going to shoot him, Max clicked the safety on and started talking. His smile was slight, and not relieved at all, even if a large part of him truly was.
"No," he said of being a prisoner of war, and his eyes followed to where she'd set the weapons. Dylan couldn't help it that the sniper rifle made him frown just a bit. The frown was only because he knew it was a sacrifice for her to use it. A necessity, but a teeth-gritting one. Max seemed like the kind of woman that wanted to feel her revenge, and not at a few hundred yards away. He wondered if she'd asked him that for a reason, if she wanted to talk about Bangladesh.. either way, now wasn't the time to chat. Dylan tugged on the handle of the truck with all of his weight, finding the steel decently stuck for a long moment before it popped open with a bent scream of protest.
"I used to be a cop, smarty pants." Reaching inside the truck, he held his hands off without touching her. She seemed reasonably jumpy. "Come on," he didn't reach for her but his eyes dropped and raised with the suggestion that he was going to carry her. "I'll come back and take care of the truck, but we need to make sure you're not hurt." We. They were in this together, okay? He wasn't the enemy in case a concussion started to kick in, no need to point a gun at him again.
That no registered in a way the hey hadn't. She watched his gaze follow to the guns, and she almost managed a grin. "I'm not going to shoot you, FBI. I thought you were him for a second," she clarified, because that had been her worry early on. That Kellan would realize she couldn't move, and that he'd come back and kill her. It was what a smart criminal would have done. But Kellan hadn't come back, and now Dylan was there. And he was right about her hating the fact that she'd needed to try to take Kellan out at a distance, but she hadn't had a choice.
But that no was still there, and she felt like she needed to say something, since she'd brought it up. Even if she was having trouble remembering why she'd brought it up. "I was twenty-one. It was fun," she said, which it wasn't, but it was a train of thought that went along with the pain tolerance. "I can deal with some pain, McKendrick," she added, tying it all together in a bow that made more sense in her mind than it had when she said it.
When he managed to get the door open, that scream of metal had her reaching for the gun again, but she forced herself to loosen her grip. So much for insisting on not needing any more psych after Bangladesh. Would it be too much to ask to have one part of her that wasn't fucked up? "Sorry," she said, once her fingers had let go of the gun completely.
His teasing was exactly what she needed to slip back into that comfort zone of banter, that place where nothing was serious and nothing mattered. "Yeah? What kind? A beat cop? I can't see you chasing down dealers, agent. You'd be bored to tears, and you wouldn't even have the decency to abuse your power in any interesting way." The joking made it back into her voice at the end, even with the pain, and she just looked at his hands for a moment before nodding. She knew she wasn't going to be able to manage it herself and, as much as her pride hated accepting the offer of help, she knew there wasn't any other option. She glanced at the weapons, at the security they offered, then back at him. "I shouldn't take those," she said, lucid enough to understand that, even if her tone said she didn't like it. She sighed. "One second of pity, and I'll shoot you the next chance I get," she said, taking back some of her own with the meaningless threat. This was going to hurt, and she knew it.
He didn't say anything when she promised not to shoot him, but he did smile. Dylan had a good smile; it never seemed forced, even when it was. There was the shadow of a dimple underneath the soft yellow of the truck's interior light. She was hurt and traumatized, whether she wanted to acknowledge it or not. He wasn't going to force that kind of truth on her, but he knew that she was on the razor's edge of slipping into a kind of shock that was dangerous for the two of them. Just because Max didn't want to shoot him didn't mean that she wouldn't do it by accident. When she instinctively reached for the gun once more, he again didn't try to stop her. Like trying to hold down a rabid animal, that was a quick way to get hurt. She undoubtedly had some head trauma, and she'd just been through the night from hell judging from the clues he'd gathered.. it was no time to make her feel trapped or unsafe. Instead of worrying about the gun, he chose to focus on things that made her smile. The dimple popped into action again when she mentioned being able to deal with pain.
"Yeah, I know. You're a badass." There was no sarcasm to be found, just grinning admiration when he slipped an arm around her waist. "Now come on, Superwoman.."
It was awkward to pull her out of the truck without expecting her to move a great deal in compliance. She'd been injured before the accident, and he hated the brief thought that this might just have made things worse. What if she was stuck in that chair forever? With an arm slung beneath her knees, he lifted her out of the truck slowly. Even with him trying not to jostle her very much, he knew it was going to hurt. Dylan tried talking to take her mind off of it. "Of course I was bored, why do you think I stopped being a cop?"
Blame the layer of Vicodin for her not noticing it herself. A good agent should know when shock was setting in, but her body still didn't feel like her body, and she wasn't aware of it as she'd been for the past decade. And, honestly, that layer of pain made everything else secondary and hard to focus on. Even that dimple of his wavered under the onslaught of ache that came with a simple shift, and she groaned and saved herself the embarrassment of reaching out and touching the infuriating thing. She was good at smiling, normally, or she had been before December. These days, her temper was pain-short, and her sense of humor was nearly nonexistent, but she liked that dimple. She smiled. "You are so full of shit," she said companionably. "I bet you think gamer girls that sit at their computers all day are badasses, agent," she said, curiosity seeping into the question. She wondered if that was really the case. Probably, she decided, and the distraction was enough to make her not notice the hand sliding around her waist at first. For about a second.
When she'd woken in that cell in Bangladesh, the first thing she'd tried to do was wiggle her toes. And, when she'd managed it, she'd cried for a full half hour. Even feverish, even in so much pain that she'd bitten the inside of her mouth bloody from it, she'd equated that wiggle with mobility. She could move her legs; she just couldn't bear weight. And, just then, even the moving part was a challenge. She hissed as she slid an arm around his shoulder, and the pain of being lifted made the world threaten to go black, and grey overtook the edges of her vision. But she gritted her teeth, and she didn't cry out or scream; she was still enough of an agent for that, even if the pain was stark on her now-pale features. She tried to focus on his question, because focusing on anything other than the agony in her hips would be a good thing. "I usually imagine someone I want to shoot, when I'm trying to deal with pain," she gritted out, "but alright. I'll bite." Sweat dotted her brow, and blood dripped from her temple onto his shoulder. "I think you stopped because- Let's go with corruption," she suggested. He was, after all, an idealist.
If Dylan had known what she was thinking, he could have gotten the lecture started a little early. A good agent might have been able to discern when he or she was going into shock, but Max wasn't an agent right now. It had nothing to do with the wounded disability that she was understandably letting run her, but rather the glaringly obvious fact that she wasn't on assignment right now. She was acting out vigilante methods on somebody that she'd developed an all obsessed vendetta against. It really got under Dylan's skin that he hadn't even guessed at the lengths she would go to, or how close she'd actually came. Would he ever have found out if things had gone according to plan tonight? The man had obviously been more than she'd anticipated, and there was that momentary feeling of his stomach dropping down around his ankles as he gingerly carried her toward his car, which was parked several yards away.
He didn't say anything about the corruption in the police department where he'd worked, even if her estimate was close enough to strike a nerve on a bad day or make him smile on a good one. She was tight with the urge not to jerk despite the pain that was clear on her face. Her voice shook, just a breathless little bit. Even if she refused to cry out or acknowledge the agony. He wondered if she could hear it the way that he could, or if the pain and the pills masked that kind of thing from herself, and probably blissfully so. Dylan tucked his head to the side, bending a bit so that his mouth settled in the sweat and blood of her hair. He whispered, and it was soft enough that the desert air could take it away if she didn't want to hear it right now.
"You don't have to be tough right now, Max. Not for me." He said it like he could just disappear if she willed it so. It was so dark outside that the sky went on forever with needlepoint stars, millions of things to wish on if she wanted to.
For all the time Max spent getting on Corvus and the kid about not killing, she never thought of herself as any kind of vigilante. That was something she'd been insisting on since Seattle, where the vigilante scene was the thickest it was anywhere in the country. She wasn't a vigilante; this was personal. And there was truth to that. Max wouldn't go lethal for a stranger on the street. She'd do it on the job, and she'd do it for someone she loved, but she wasn't Corvus, and she wasn't the kid; she didn't randomly go out and save strangers. To a certain extent, she even believed in the legal system. Well, no, but she believed individuals shouldn't have the power to subjectively decide who lived and who died. But this was an exception, wasn't it? It didn't help that things with this arsonist went back five years and into a baby crib in Seattle.
She didn't notice his lack of response about the police department. She might remember it later, once the pain had subsided, but she didn't notice it then. She would have liked to know she was close; she never thought she had a good read on McKendrick. Max just wasn't very good at people, at emotions and feelings and figuring out what made people tick. It made her uncomfortable normally. Well, she'd let that guard down once, hadn't she? And nothing good had come of it.
But all that thinking only lasted a minute, because the pain became everything. She hated weakness; she hated showing it. Even more, she hated being weak. But that tuck of head to the side, and the feeling of pressure when his mouth settled against her hair, that made that conviction waver. She took in a deep and shaky breath, without even meaning to. The whisper was enough to make her lip quiver, and she had a fleeting mental thought that she couldn't break down, not here, not now, not with him. Breaking down, being vulnerable, that had cost her everything once. Not now, not now, but his words managed to cut through what was left of her resolve. Her arms tightened around his neck, and her shoulders shook, and she willingly buried her face against the salt-warmth of his shoulder.
Dylan could only imagine what it had cost her to grab onto him like a life raft, and he was silent when she did so. He was out of jokes anyway, and he didn't want to push her with whispers about how it was all going to be okay. Even if he wanted to desperately tell her that, he hated the idea of lying to her. Nothing was okay right now. The names on the list, the wrecked truck, the living arsonist, and her disability had seen through with that pipedream. She'd know he was full of shit if he told her that everything was okay. In the end, there was only one thing he could promise her when Max pressed her eyes against the muscled carve of his shoulder. "I've got you.."
Arriving to the passenger side of his car, Dylan knelt and winced while trying to cause her the least amount of discomfort that he could. Relying on the way her arms were strung like barbed wire around his neck, Dylan let go of her with one hand. Just long enough to catch the door handle and tug it open. He worked the steel trap open with his knee until it was wide and sustained by the mechanics of tight springs. "Alright," he whispered with preparation. "I'm going to try not to hurt you.." Although it was easier said than done while lowering her into the deep bucket seats of his vintage car.
She was glad he didn't say anything. It was hard enough without having to talk about it, the fact that she was clinging onto him like some weak woman who hadn't been trained to do this kind of thing without letting any emotion show. She could make herself feel better by justifying - the trauma of Bangladesh was still too raw, her injury was still too painful, and the drugs were still too strong. But none of it really took away the horrible feeling of vulnerability. None of that even touched it. That I've got you was enough, and she tightened her grip just a hint when he said the words. And he had been right earlier; she'd trusted him enough to call him, and she trusted him enough to believe him. Bullshitting wouldn't have helped; he was right about that too.
They were at his car before she realized it, and she managed to regain some of her will and strength when she realized there were things that needed to be done. Letting go of the brief reprieve, she did the work of holding on while he opened the door, and she managed a laugh that almost sounded natural when he said he was going to try not to hurt her. "Leave it to you to have a car with bucket seats," she said, biting back a groan when he settled her down. Once she was there, though it was better than the unforgiving flatness of the truck seats, and she leaned her head back and closed her eyes. "At ease, agent. I'm not going to start crying on you," she said, not yet letting go his forearm, which she'd unknowingly gripped death-tight at some point.
His forearm might be bruised with the morse code of her fingerprints tomorrow morning, but at that moment he didn't notice a thing about the way that her blunt nails dug into his skin. Dylan knelt in the sand alongside the passenger side of the car. One knee tucked down on the ground while he reached across her body to latch the seat belt into place with a resounding, antique click. He smiled a little, relieved when she started talking. It was a real smile, one that didn't care it wasn't going to be seen while she had her eyes closed. She seemed to relish the passenger seat like it brought some safety, but he imagined that it felt like just another step closer to home. He watched her face without any immediate awareness of the fact that he was only a few inches away. She had her eyes closed, so it didn't matter. He pulled back at that moment anyway, but not before promising, "It would be okay if you did, you know.."
Even if she'd been trained and brainwashed against the kind of vulnerability that it took in order to break down and cry. He doubted that she'd let herself do it when she was alone, and certainly not when he was here. She was always going to have that guard up. Maybe it made her stronger, but it must have been a brick wall between her and everyone else. Standing, Dylan scanned the horizon for a moment, although most of it was darkness. "I'm going to grab the guns."
He didn't like the idea of wasting time in getting her back home, but it wasn't a good idea to leave weapons in an unattended car. He popped the trunk on his car for a moment, then slammed it closed while making his way back to her truck. Dylan was gone for several minutes while he checked out the busted vehicle, outside and in. He had a drill and a screwdriver with him, and used those things to unfasten the rivets on the vin and unscrew the plates from the truck. As an ex-officer, it was only normal to be an expert at evading the police.. but that wasn't his focus when he forced anonymity onto the truck. Yes, she didn't need to be tied to this by law enforcement.. but more so, the arsonist had surely seen her. She didn't need to be in this vehicle again. There didn't seem to be any personal items in the cab, and Dylan returned with the rifle and handgun a good fifteen minutes after he'd left. He sank into the driver's seat and slipped the sniper rifle into the back before handing over the smaller firearm.
"I didn't see anything of yours in the truck, is that right?" He said it like she wasn't going to see the vehicle again.
She didn't jerk away when he leaned across her to click the seatbelt into place; she didn't open her eyes, either. She sighed, and that was the only acknowledgement of the fact that she realized how close he was when he spoke. There was a tensing of her shoulders, a resistance against reaching for him and keeping him there when he moved, and there was the reluctant slip of fingers from his arm. The reaction was tangible, and it was as real as the scent of blood on the air from the injury at her temple. But, luckily, the safety of the car, combined with the fact that she didn't need to worry anymore, made her less concerned. That numbness was setting in, the one that came with cold and chill. Her senses didn't need to be attuned to the arsonist returning, or to the police coming upon the truck. She kept her eyes closed, and she didn't even realize time passed while he was away, collecting the weapons.
She felt his return, the weight of a body behind the wheel, and her eyes flew open before he spoke, brown eyes verifying that it was him. She stared at the gun a moment, surprised he would give it back to her, but she took it gratefully and set it between her thighs. "I haven't driven it since before Christmas. There's nothing in the truck," she agreed. She'd loved that old truck, but lately it had been a taunting reminder of the fact that she couldn't get behind the wheel, and it had just been collecting dust in the garage.
"When was the last time you cried?" she asked, her voice slightly slur-slow, and more of that lull coming over her. The pain was still there, a persistent throb, but she felt removed from it in a strange way she hadn't felt since Bangladesh. The question harkened back to his, as if he'd just asked it seconds earlier, without the time it had taken him to get the guns in the middle. "The last time I really remember crying was years ago," she said lethargically, clearly unthinking. "I'd just come home from having Amanda. God, I was a shitty mother at first. I didn't even know how to hold her. It felt wrong. Everything about it felt wrong. I walked into the bedroom, and I asked Brandon to sit on the bed with me. I don't even remember why. But he hesitated, and I asked him if he still found me attractive after the baby. He said no. I cried." Simple, and not the kind of confession she would make if things weren't starting to get hazy. "Are you taking me home?"
Dylan wasn't sure that he was going to like where this conversation was going once she asked him the last time he cried. Not because he was uncomfortable with the subject matter, but because he knew that Max probably wouldn't be talking like this if she wasn't suffering from a head injury. It felt a little invasive to listen, especially when he didn't like what she had to say. He frowned, negating his own seat belt as he shifted into drive. "You must have cared about him a lot if you let him talk to you like that. If he said that, he is an ass, and you should have kicked him in the fucking face." His attention drifted away from her and onto the necessity of the road laid out before them.
"Although if he couldn't see how attractive you are, he might have had some kind of like.. visual impairment?" The one-sided conversation took a tailspin into pure theory at this point, and Dylan's voice went a little distant as he considered the hypotheticals. "In which case, I don't know how kosher it would have been to kick the shit out of him.. but Daredevil could hold his own because he had that super blind-sight, so.."
He interrupted himself to glance over at her again with a smile partially illuminated by the neon blue glow coming from portions of his dash, "No. I'm turning you in to the police." Although maybe it wasn't the best time to kid around, since he'd given her the gun back. Sighing, he looked back to the road, gunning the gas and chewing up the speed limit so that they could make good time. "I'm taking you to my place, where I'm going to decide if you need to see a doctor."
She laughed when he said she must have cared about Thomas. It was a tired laugh, and she barely turned her head to look at him when he started making jokes about visual impairment. She was distanced enough not to care about the conversation just then; he was right about that. And she would find a way to make it not matter in the morning, maybe chalk it up to the kind of shit alcoholics said when they were too drunk to make sense anymore. "Daredevil?" she asked, a quirk of eyebrow, because only McKendrick would make that segue. But it saved her from following the memories down any further, and it kept the shame of stripping naked only to have Brandon tell her he didn't like what he saw anymore. She had fought off that vulnerability for five years; she didn't want it back now, when everything hurt and nothing felt normal. She turned her head, and she looked out the window at traffic for a second.
She closed her eyes again, missing that smile of his. "My boss will get me out. He'll bitch at me for days after, but he'll manage it somehow," she said of Davis, who had seen her through thick and thin for the past five years. Her response made it obvious that she didn't think he meant it, though, about taking her to the cops, even before he said he was taking her to his place. "You could be implicated," she said, forgetting that he could already be implicated. She didn't, notably, say she didn't want to go there. It would be hard to explain this all to Daniels, and she wasn't sure she could manage it anyway. She wasn't even sure how long she was going to be able to stay awake. The pain had hit that throb-constant shock point, and sleep actually felt possible for the first time all night. "I just need sleep," she assured him.
She managed to drag her eyes open, and she turned her head to look at him. The gun in her lap was forgotten, and it slid to the floor without notice. "If I fall asleep, you need to let Daniels and the kid know I was in a car accident. Say I was stupid and took the truck out or something, but that I'll be fine. Alright?"
"You're not falling asleep," he corrected with a tone that said it wasn't really up for debate. Dylan's primary level of attention might have been on the surrounding streets and the traffic levels - which popped up on the touchscreen of a burner phone mounted to his dashboard. Analyzing the spiderweb crisscross of surrounding streets, he cut a left to take a back road with less streetlights to the freeway. He expected her to rest, the emotional waver that crested in her voice now and then dictated that she wasn't okay. His attention flicked continuously to the rear view mirror as he changed lanes back and forth with experimentation as the miles ticked on his odometer. They weren't being followed, and that was a bit of a relief. Dylan dropped his driver's side window to push an elbow out into the night, and warm desert air whooshed over them.
Considering something after a few minutes, he glanced over at her. Not only to ensure that she was still awake, but to ask, "What kid?"
"My stepson," she said, shaking her head a moment later. "Not legally. Brandon and I never got married." She waved a hand, knowing he already knew that, because her file had been locked up tight as a safe, which meant McKendrick had found it irresistible. She wasn't naive or innocent enough to believe it had anything to do with her then. She was high clearance, deep cover, and he couldn't resist. He was just that kind of hacker; she knew the type. "Luke Henry," she said, knowing he'd find a number on his own. She trusted his abilities; it was the reason she'd been so pissed when she couldn't get him in Bangladesh with her, but the agency had insisted there wasn't a risk. Well, the agency had been wrong.
She smiled then, a fuzzy and belated smile, younger than her normal grin and nowhere near as guarded. "I'm not going to die on you, agent. You aren't going to have to explain to the government why their now-useless agent isn't on the payroll anymore. Relax," she said, closing her eyes again. One of her hands twitched, and then she squeezed his upper arm and sighed. "Just let me sleep it off. You'll have me out of your hair in the morning." Which was a crock of shit. But maybe in a few days, assuming he could get some of her pain meds to her by then. Right now, all she wanted was sleep, and she sighed as it threatened to overtake her. "Wake me, and I'll find the energy to get the gun off the floor," she threatened uselessly.
He smirked sideways at her, but it wasn't a pleasant expression. Not at all. "You know that you can't go to sleep. You might have a fucking concussion, Max." She knew these kinds of things, and he was trying to remind her of it as he raced against traffic that was virtually unaware of him until he flew past. The brighter lights were fastly approaching, and they'd be in the pumping heart of the city soon enough. He wasn't worried about the time, life or death wasn't on the line here. Still, he didn't want her to fall asleep and it seemed like getting her to the destination sooner rather than later was the best way to do that.
"You need to stop threatening to shoot me, or I'm going to think you're hitting on me." It was an easy tease, and one that he hoped would earn him a snorting or scathing comment. "Come on, tell me about all of the ways that the FBI is second rate, you love that game." And he wanted to keep her talking.
"Oh, god, you look like my kid when I try to tell her she has to wear a dress," she said of the unpleasant sideways smirk. It made her smile, though, and she grumbled her concession. "I don't have a concussion," she said, a second later. She had medical field training; every field agent did. She took the next few minutes to catalogue what was wrong, now that the pain was a distant, hazy thing. She cursed beneath her breath a few seconds later. "Probably shock," she said a second later, her voice turning more serious, more agent calling in a report to her handler. "Lowered body temperature, slow pulse. I should still feel the pain in my head and my hips, but I don't, not in the same way as before. But my head's fine," she added, and there was a stubborn lick to her voice, because she knew that shock precluded that kind of a statement. "But," she added, the shock making her slow to find the shards of her argument, "I hit my head hours ago, and I fell asleep before you got to me. Careful, agent, or I'll think you're worried about me."
There was a hint of a tease in that last sentence, and she laughed when he said he was going to think she was hitting on him. "I already tried that; didn't work," she said with the kind of blunt nonchalance that she always shifted onto feelings these days; safer that way, less chance of getting hurt that way. "Everyone knows the FBI likes their desks more than they like the field," she said, as if it was a given, and the way the corner of her mouth tipped up as she opened her eyes and looked at him again, brown eyes bloodshot and unfocused, but mostly tired. "You don't have anyone at home that'll mind you dragging in a bloody invalid?"
Dylan listened to the formulation of her argument for why she didn't have a concussion. She didn't seem to be nauseous, but the sleepiness couldn't be a good sign. As soon as they got to his apartment, he intended to check the responsive dilation of her eyes, whether she tried to shoot him or not. "Of course we like our desks, where else are we supposed to practice our calligraphy?"
Sensing that she was looking at him, Dylan glanced her way as he downshifted and took an off ramp into the unsleeping metropolis of Vegas. "I don't see an invalid in this car," he said while watching her. His attention slipped back onto the road in that moment, and perhaps sensing that she would contradict him.. or just feeling too serious, he shrugged. "My roommate might care, but he's a cat, so I think I can handle it."
She laughed at his comment about the calligraphy, because it was so exaggerated. It was a short laugh, a tired laugh, and she sighed and closed her eyes a second later, when he made the comment about the invalid. She didn't argue; she didn't have the strength to argue. She scoffed instead, figuring it got the point across. The comment about the roommate didn't surprise her, but the revelation that said roommate was a cat did. She grinned, eyes still closed. "I've always been a dog person," she admitted, and she turned her cheek toward him, though she didn't open her eyes again. "Just let me rest until we get there, alright?" she asked, and the question was asked in the appeasing tone that agents used with handlers everywhere. It said she'd already made the decision, and he'd have to fight her out of it, or let her have her way. She might be desked, but she could still sound like someone in the field, when she needed to. And really, her breathing was already evening out with exhaustion. "Once the shock fades, I'm going to hurt like fucking bitch, and I won't be able to sleep for days," she added tiredly, giving him a peek at what her life was like. "Give me these few minutes, McKendrick." It wasn't a plea, but then it was, and her gun-calloused fingers landed on his wrist with the request.
Well, of course he was ready to argue with her. That's what they did. Pushed each other until they were either laughing or screaming in frustration. The argument was there, it was always there and ready to fire at will.. but when she reached out and touched him, Dylan said nothing. He glanced down to register the pale brush of her fingers against his hand, and despite himself, he whispered over the roar of the city night, "Alright, Max." He didn't want her to be hurt, but he also had to put enough faith in her that she would be okay. The woman was tough, and they'd be at his place in another fifteen minutes if the streets stayed decent. He reached out to switch on the radio, and a song roared softly out of the speakers while he drove.
So focused on the surrounding cars and any behind him, the apartment complex came up before he realized it. Dylan slid into his traditional spot beneath a metal awning and cut the engine off. He glanced over to Max, where she was quietly resting with her eyes closed. "We're here..."
She let her hand fall away from his wrist out of sheer exhaustion, and it rested on the center console while he turned on the radio. She smiled slightly when the song began playing, but she didn't say anything right away. It wasn't the kind of music she expected from him; she expected something horrible and techno, dance, something young and hackerish. It was no secret that she never really understood the agency kids that spent their hours behind a computer screen. She'd always hated having them on missions, feeling pretty strong about the fact that they didn't belong in the field. None of them knew what to do with a gun, and they were always the first to piss themselves when trouble came calling. And she definitely didn't expect them to listen to Waits.
When he cut the engine off, she dragged her eyes open and looked at him. "It wasn't Tim McGraw, but Waits isn't a bad choice," she admitted; she still loved her country better than anything else, but she'd danced at a bar or two, while Waits played on the jukebox. "Army kids like him. He's on jukeboxes in all kinds of shitholes," she admitted. Because only shitholes still had jukeboxes these days. She missed wood floors and checked tablecloths and sweating while she danced with someone. It was melancholy, and she shook her head and looked out the car window. "Apartment guy. Not surprised, agent." Reluctantly, she looked back at him. "First floor?" she asked hopefully. She should have thought to bring the chair along. But, no, that was a useless thought; she couldn't have gotten it in the truck, even if she'd wanted to.
Dylan gave her another one of those crooked, irritated glances when she mentioned Tim McGraw. He wasn't entirely sure if she was joking, although he ultimately decided that she was actually quite serious. It would be something to tease her about later, although he admittedly recognized that doing so would open himself up to a world of hurt. She was about to see his apartment interior with all of its Zelda and Space Jam references. Exposure was a double edged sword, and he shook his head with amusement while climbing out of the car. "Trying to figure me out, agent? My cover is an apartment guy, stop jumping to conclusions, Peanut."
Dylan didn't say anything about the first floor... mainly because he lived on the fifth. Pulling a gray blanket out of the trunk, he laid that over the sniper rifle in the backseat before making his way around to Max's side. "Come on, I'll carry you to the elevator," he said while cautiously reaching for the gun on the floorboard of her passenger side. He tucked her gun into his jeans at the small of his back and reached for her.
Max wouldn't know a Zelda or Space Jam reference if it hit her in the face, even when she was perfectly lucid. "I already have you figured out, FBI," she replied, even though she hadn't figured him out at all. She had no clue what McKendrick wanted, and she had no clue what made him tick. He didn't fit into the neat box that men she normally associated with did. She was fairly certain he'd ask questions before shooting, and she thought he might prefer coke to beer, and she had no idea what the fuck he was doing talking to her, when he didn't want to sleep with her.
Luckily, all those thoughts faded as she realized he hadn't agreed to living on the first floor. It was the pain that being lifted promised that bothered her, more than the shame of it, though there was plenty of the latter now that she was numb enough that she could think past the agony of her hips. She watched him in the rearview as he settled the rifle, and she didn't didn't even bother trying to intervene when he reached for her firearm. She just watched as he tucked the gun into the back of his jeans, and then she gritted her teeth and lifted her arms to wrap them around his neck. She held on harder than she needed to, tighter, as if making a point that she could help, that she wasn't just dead weight that he needed to lug around like some useless damsel in one of Amanda's cartoons. Her arms were in better shape than ever, thanks to the limitations that came with the chair, and her grip was tight for a second, before movement sent pain ricocheting back through her pelvis. She bit back a scream, and her grip loosened when the world blackened. She managed a laugh. "All you, agent."
Dylan had the underside of her knees in one arm while he was repositioning the gun upon standing. When her grip went slack, and her body went tight with the urge not to scream, he tried to steady her in his arms with as little movement as possible. She was holding on tight enough to choke him out, but he managed to adjust for comfort while kicking the passenger door closed and making for the lobby. It was late enough that the building was quiet, and they didn't pass anyone on their way to the elevator. The rise through five floors was brief, and soon he was carrying her down the hallway like a bride on the wedding night, except for the fact that she was smeared with blood and desert sand.
"Keys are in my pocket, can you unlock the door?" He didn't want to risk dropping her while he juggled. Dylan tilted his head slightly to try and catch a glimpse of her eyes now that they were in better lighting, an attempt to determine if she was actually concussed.
The blackness faded to the edges when he shifted, and she gritted her teeth through the pain as they rode the elevator up, letting her head rest against his shoulder halfway through, exhaustion and pain finally winning the battle against salvaging pride. She was somewhere between sleep and waking when he asked her to reach for the keys and unlock the door, and it took a few seconds longer than it should have for her to register the request. "You expect me to do all the work, agent?" she finally asked, because a quip always felt normal, safe and expected, especially when she was facing the daunting task of bending enough to find his keys and fish them out. She dropped them back into his pocket twice, and then she pulled them out and glanced at the door's keyhole. Her eyes were bloodshot-red, but they were reacting to the changing light between elevator and hall, between distance and the closeness required to focus and get the key in lock. She was shock-cool in his arms, but not dangerously so, and she managed to get the key in the hole with a tired smile. She turned the key, and she let him worry about shoving the door open with his body. "Please tell me you don't have bunk beds," she teased, finally seeing an end in sight to this horrible night.
Upon entering, he flicked on the lights. "Don't worry," he teased back, "You can sleep on the floor." Dylan didn't actually intend on her staying over, but he did want to ensure that she was stable before he took her back to her home where he expected that she wouldn't tell anyone to keep an eye on her for potential head trauma. Probably just pop a pill, a beer, and go to sleep.
Despite his joke, he didn't set her on the floor, but rather rested her down against one of the couch's arms. His apartment was appropriately lacking in decoration. There were a couple of posters about, a throw rug, the kind of discount furniture expected of a guy who was young and single. "I've got some grape kool-aid pouches in the fridge, if you're thirsty.."
Dylan canted his head, reading her face with obvious speculation for a moment. But no -- her pupils didn't seem to indicate a concussion. Taking step back, he was already pedaling toward the kitchen to fetch her something to drink, even if she likely wanted a painkiller instead.
"I can sleep at home," she insisted, after hissing in pain when he set her on the couch. She wanted nothing more than to fall into a Vicodin sleep. She didn't even have the strength to keep her eyes open and look around his place, which was probably a good thing; it would just leave her more confused about the man he was, and she refused to admit she was starting to get curious about what made him actually tick beneath that easy smile and annoying love of justice and computers.
She caught the comment about grape kool-aid pouches belatedly, once he was already in the kitchen. "You can't be serious?" she asked. She was imagining the kind of annoying drinks Amanda liked to make her send secretly. Brandon didn't let the kid drink anything sugary, and Amanda loved those drinks that came in tin-colored bags that had to be skewered with a straw. Or worse, maybe he had actual kool-aid boxes, the kinds that were tucked in plastic at the store. Either way, she didn't need one. She began to tell him that, but the sound of someone outside drew her attention.
She was hazy; that was the only explanation for not calling out for him when she heard the lingering footsteps outside the door. She just watched, that pain stupor making her slow, as the shadow moved away from the bottom of the door. Then, she closed her eyes, and willed away all the juice pouches and living room lights. If she could just get a nap-
The crashing of glass from the window woke her almost instantly, even with the lethargy. She reached for her gun, but it wasn't there. She heard the retreating footsteps, even as she managed to throw herself on the floor and drag herself behind the couch. She didn't bother calling out; she knew she wouldn't need to.
Those koolaid pouches had a very short life expectancy, as they burst across the tiles of his kitchen floor in a gush of deep purple. He saw her move, and before that there had been the sound, nondescript really. The sound of somebody walking through the hall, Dylan had momentarily thought he'd heard the jingle of keys. Perhaps it was the single mom who lived across. He'd always intended to ask her out and never quite got around to it.. of course, that was all a fantasy that he concocted on the regular. He could never date anyone, not really.
Dylan already had the gun out when she flung herself to the floor. "Max!" He rushed for her, diving practically, and although he expected somebody to come through the door, he didn't anticipate an explosion. Dylan was partially on top of her when the shockwave of fire and brimstone slammed through drywall. That leap meant that it caught him mostly, the splinters and the sharp air pressure. A chunk of drywall snapped him in the temple, and the borrowed gun collapsed out of his fingers against the wooden floor. Meanwhile, that small explosion had flames licking up every surface, and Dylan's eyes fell closed as he laid half on top of her, unconscious.
She hadn't expected the impact of his body, and it was more pain and jar than her own dragged movement behind the couch. A second later, once the pain had subsided enough to let her think again, she took in the scene, kicking into full survival mode. A significant part of her training as an agent had involved remaining alive during torture, during fire, during full-scale war. She was conditioned to survive, conditioned to survive in much the same way she was conditioned to kill. She couldn't overcome the pain in her body when everything was calm, when she was just herself, but the second the conditioning kicked in? The pain became secondary; it became fuel.
She assessed. Dylan was nonresponsive, the flames were climbing. She had seen the extinguisher in the hall, but there was a good few feet between her and the door, and another few feet across the short hall to break the glass. She knew the fire department would come shortly; given the number of apartments in the building it would be considered priority. The alarm was already blaring. Decision made, she dragged herself out from under Dylan, and she let the couch support her as she stood. She couldn't hold it on her own, even with all the determination in the world, her body too broken for that. But she managed to lunge for the wall, to lean against it and let it give her the support her hips wouldn't. As the flames licked closer to the couch, closer to Dylan (Not McKendrick, not just then), she shoved the door open and stumbled, falling as she tried to reach the extinguisher. She dragged herself the rest of the way, breaking the glass and pulling the alarm.
When the man down the hall opened his door, Max pointed at the extinguisher. "In there. Now," she managed, pointing back at the open apartment door. She could see the couch, could see the beginning of flames touching it. "There's someone in there," she added, which made the stranger hurry.
In her hand, she had Dylan's phone, grabbed from the end table as she dragged herself to the wall. She dialed the number every agent memorized, extraction, pushed the button, and rattled off the address and the two agent IDs present. Her people would beat the firemen. They'd become the paramedics at the scene. They'd get them out. There would be questions, and even Max didn't know whether to blame Kellan or the Mexicans, but the fire was going out in the apartment, and someone else was screaming that Dylan had a pulse. That was all Max needed; she let the pain and darkness claim her.