Who: Bo and Faol When: Recently Where: The hospital What: Bo gives Faol his ankle jewelry. Bo spends the next week trying to find a babysitter. Warnings: None. Language. Maybe.
There were less machines hooked up to him now, less IV pumps that beeped and clicked throughout the night when they were being changed or a new rate had to be set. Now there was only one slowly dripping IV. When Faol was bored, which was often enough, given this hospital room where there was only the TV and the two people outside that were tasked with keeping him inside, he would watch the slow steady drip drip drip of saline into the tubing. Before there had been more lines, separate lines, some with antibiotics, some with a steady flow of pain medication, some with blood. If he had one thing good to say about this place, it was that the pain medication came at a steady flow for an injury he'd caused himself.
The first couple of days after surgery the psych team had showed up. Did he want to kill himself? (No. Not yet. They could ask again when they were done with this little interview.) Did he want to harm anyone else? (No, definitive and sharp. If he'd wanted that, he would have stabbed Gabe and not had to deal with any of this shit.) And then had come the real psych team, pawing at his brain. Faol had been half tempted at one point to tell them to simply open up his stitches if they wanted him to spill his guts.
It had not been productive. The meeting with Bo (not what he had been expecting, but time changed everything) had been more so. He'd gotten his phone back and that calmed down the girl that was pacing angrily around in his head. A trip through the door would heal the wound in his side, but it meant taking a whole contingent of CIA agents with him. That wasn't an option and they both agreed on that. Which meant he kept his ass parked in this bed and let them feed him shitty hospital food, and every few hours he got a shot of morphine that made him glassy eyed and loose-limbed and abso-fucking-lutely pain free. It was almost enough to make him not care about the soft restraints at his wrists and ankles that limited his mobility.
When Bo entered the room a bit later, Faol was in a drug induced nap and he didn’t wake him right away. In fact, before too long he was sitting in the hospital room, reading a copy of “AARP Magazine” with his feet on the foot of Faol’s bed. He was quite comfortable, he had managed to get rid of most of the cavalry and closed the hospital room door. He knew they were still out there in ear shot, but he was well beyond senior enough to have his way for the most part.
His cane was hanging on the arm of the chair he was relaxing in and he had set a bag of what he considered the best sandwiches in Vegas down on Faol’s hospital tray. He was humming to himself reading an article about some kind of new knee replacement that was all the rage. He saw Faol stir a bit out of the corner of his eye and looked up, “Michael J. Fox is on the cover of AARP Magazine, we are on our way out.”
It took Faol a moment to realize where he was and who was speaking to him. Immediately the cuffs at his wrists were tried, but they had no give to them that they did not before. His eyes blinked open lazily, still brazenly glassy as he pushed his tongue against his teeth to work up spit. Hospital. It was Bo speaking to him. And then there was the bag of sandwiches that he could smell. Hot. He started leaning towards them, only to be caught by the restraints hidden by hospital issue thin blankets. A ball and chain would have been less cruel at that point, as his stomach gurgled at the thought of real food, not the careful meted out portions of bland hospital food.
"If you came to torture me about Michael J. Fox, I don't know anything," he grumbled before his gaze fixed lazily on Bo. How long had the man been there? "But I will tell whatever you lie you want me to if you give me all of the sandwiches in that bag." Morphine didn't impact his ability to lie, but it made him care a whole lot less about wanting to lie. Made him care a whole lot less about everything, like the world in which he lived and the world in which he existed were two separate things, divided by a cottony cushion of 'do not give a fuck'.
Bo grinned and put his feet down on the floor and stood up taking keys out of his pocket and undoing the restraints at his wrists with little to no fanfare, he left his ankles for now but he wasn’t about to feed him. He brought the tray over closer and opened the bag taking two of the sandwiches out and set them down. “I’m not really into torture,” he said with a shrug, and that much had always been true. “What are the doctors telling you? I was handed a big old fat file with your name on it yesterday and not one doctors report.”
"Not to stab myself again," Faol quipped as he reached for one of the sandwiches. Hot ham and swiss. How long had it been since he'd had one of these? Not even once he'd come back had he sat down to actually have a hot sandwich and McDonald's never quite cut it. Appetite was a distant thing, but still needed, and his stomach seemed pleased by the prospect of having the sandwich in it. Before he thought much of it, the entire thing was gone, eaten with all the speed of a man who'd lived the past couple of weeks on food designed to sustain life but not make it enjoyable. "I'm surprised you got that much. HIPPA." Maybe he had signed a form. Had he? It was another one of those things caught in the cotton webbing of not now.
“It wasn’t a medical file, it was an Agency file,” he said simply enough though he was a bit concerned that Faol was eating too fast and about to make himself sick and he doubted that would feel nice. “I can get you a couple of the things you asked for, sort of - but you have to cooperate with me, and if the report I deliver is sufficient they will stop breathing down my neck so much, and while I doubt they will come running to you with any government secrets they might not lock you in a box. But again, you need to play nice, and I got you a gift,” he was glad at least one of the sandwiches were gone as it was never good to provoke a man when he was hungry.
He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the electronic monitoring anklet and gave a small shrug. “I get to be the boss of you.” Keeping it light might help - or make it worse - Bo didn’t have much choice in the matter, he was who he was.
"Am I a star on the wall?" Faol asked, curious in a way that didn't matter. If they thought he was dead -- obviously he wasn't, but he wanted to know what his parents thought. Had he simply vanished without any trace? Was he dead in some training accident? MIA and presumed dead? What lie had they been given? He knew he should feel something about that, anger or indignation, but there was nothing. No shred or speck of emotion as he reached for the second sandwich and carefully peeled back the wrapping.
The electronic leash was met with the same nonchalance, a cursory once over as he took a bite of the hot Reuben sandwich. Mmm, good. Faol stuck his leg partway out from underneath the blankets. "Are you going to shock me if I go out of the yard?" He asked, partially teasing as he reached for one of the lovely hospital delivered cups of ginger ale. "Or are you just keeping tabs on me?"
“You’re MIA,” he answered easily and leaned against the side of the hospital bed. There was no reason to beat around the bush in their line of work. They were both old enough to accept the truth about who they were and what they did, and what would happen to them. Eventually they’d all be MIA.
“I’m going to shock you if you go out of the yard,” sort of. “You’re with me, for now, and you have a radius, a short one. You’ll be lucky if you get into the hallway at first. But my office monitors you, I’ve got complete responsibility. So I am asking you not to ruin my career. If you have a need to run, I’d appreciate you telling me first so we can work out option B. I’m doing you about a half a dozen favors every minute you aren’t cuffed to this bed, so - this is the offer. It’s a starting point, but you need to be patient, I’m not here to screw you.”
Faol gave a slow nod to this information. It was better than he expected. He expected to be listed as dead in their computers -- it would at least offer a reason why no one tried. But it was done now, and while not water under the bridge, Faol wasn't at the point where he could give a good goddamn about it. Maybe when the morphine was easing off, the peak settling into the trough, he'd give a hot fuck about it but not now.
Both eyes slanted towards Bo, one eyebrow slowly crawling up his forehead. "If you were here to screw me, you should take your pants off first," Faol quipped. Later, when he wasn't riding the euphoria that morphine brought, he'd be able to think more about what exactly Bo was offering. "No shocking. Give me more than your hallway, at least down to the mailbox, unless you're going to take me on walkies."
He rolled his eyes and sighed, at least he was in good spirits. “I’m trying take this as seriously as I can, I realized I blew it with the screwing comment, and then again with the blowing comment just now, but I’m attempting to seem somehow sympathetic to your plight. Which I am not.” Nope.
He shook his head, “You have to earn the hallway. Do we have a deal?” He didn’t wait for a response mostly because the other option was a dark room for the rest of eternity and while that was likely the good answer, he didn’t know if it was the right one. Not yet. He was compromised, and he knew it, he felt responsible, he was never one to ignore the emotional trials of this job, and he didn’t encourage anyone else to either. But this was still a serious enough situation that required him sticking his neck out further than he usually did - and there had only ever been one person he’d stuck it out for further than this and she was still with him. Without waiting for an answer at all he was already unlocking the restraint on one of Faol’s ankles and went about attaching the anklet. He sent a quick message to HQ that the anklet was attached and up and running and shrugged. “Option 2 and 3 really aren’t going to work for me. So. There you have it.”
"No walkies, no sympathy, no sense of humor," Faol said under his breath, though he was sure it was loud enough for Bo to hear it. It wasn't worth the fight right now, though he did briefly ponder hitting the button to call the nurse so he could get more meds because it was beginning to feel a lot more like something. Morphine had to be wearing off.
As soon as his ankle lo jack went on, he dragged his foot back under the blankets. "What are options 2 and 3?" He knew at least one of those included his incarceration and would be immediately turned aside. He hadn't fought to get back here just so he could be locked up again. As always, there was the brief thought of running, it was possible, but more likely to end with him in a cell or dead, which was the opposite of what he wanted. "What do you want then, if I'm supposed to earn it?"
“I never said no walkies, I said I was trying for sympathy, and I always have a sense of humor.” He was just having a hard time finding anything worth laughing about in this particular scenario.
“Option 2, you say no, try to run, and we kill you. Option 3, you say no, we incarcerate you and kill you eventually anyway. Just slower.” He leaned his hip on the bed, taking the weight off of his bad leg and his hand rested on the bedrail, “It’s not about what I want. What I want is for you to be low key, go where I tell you to go, do what I tell you to do. Just relax a little bit while the temperature in the room dies down. But what you need to do is talk to me, don’t cause trouble, talk to whoever comes to talk to you - and to me. Don’t inflame my team or they’ll report you faster than you can blink. And don’t assume this ends here. Because I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.” He didn’t know what would happen next, he didn’t know all of the conditions, or who would be watching him under the guise of watching Faol. He just knew it needed to be squeaky clean. Every minute of every day.
"You failed two out of three of those," Faol informed him, dry as the desert outside. He almost managed to care -- but nope, no dice, his ability to give a fuck was wrapped up in bubble wrap and shipped off to China until the morphine wore off. Awesome.
Faol relaxed a little further into the pillows and the thin hospital approved mattress. Both hands remained visible, not chained or cuffed, palms up on the white knit hospital blanket. "So what you're saying is you have a hair trigger team and you don't expect me to give a shit about what you want." The latter was true, Faol didn't give a shit what Bo wanted so long as it didn't end up with him locked in some cell. If he needed to play nice again -- Faol knew how to do that, how to give the appearance of giving a shit without ever really caring. At the moment, he just couldn't be assed to do it. "I don't," he said, eyes opening to give Bo a half-cocked dopey smile. "I care about what I want and I'll do whatever I need to do to get it. If what you want aligns with that, great. I'll make sure you can cross your t's and dot your i's on all the paperwork they want you to fill out. I'll play ball, so long as it's in my best interest to do so."
“I don’t have a hairtrigger team, what I have is a team that nearly got killed trying to bring you in and who have a big problem with you killing dozens of people.” He snapped back, he might not have a leg to stand on, but his team didn’t deserve anything. “They’re itching for a reason to talk me out of this whole thing.”
Bo listened, and got angrier with every word Faol spoke. He was trying to help, the fact that it wasn’t good enough, or would somehow need to line up with whatever twisted thing Faol “wanted.” or how he’d get it. He didn’t know. He was exhausted of this already, he hadn’t expected him to be happy about it - but being hostile, and threatening to be uncooperative if he felt like it wasn’t doing much for Bo at all. Or his confidence in the situation.
“Forget it, Faol,” he said finally pushing himself away from the bed. “This is clearly a bad idea. I’ll implore them to give you another handler or something, I don’t care if they laugh me out of the room.”
"They nearly got killed trying to bring me in?" Faol snorted. "Who? I want to know who I nearly killed, besides myself. 'Cause I know I didn't threaten anyone else and I know I didn't nearly kill anyone." Christ, was Bo really trying this emotional manipulation on him?
He went silent, eyes rolling shut. Hair trigger team. Bo wanted him to lie more than he wanted the truth. Fine. Faol could accept those parameters. He openly expressed a lack of sympathy for Faol, but wanted what he would not give. Gratefulness, perhaps. No wonder they sucked at relationships more complicated than owner and house plant. Well, fuck his sympathy. Glass bright eyes opened to regard the man down by the foot of his bed. "I don't want your sympathy and I don't want your goddamn pity. I said I'd cooperate. If you don't want that, then by all means get me someone else, Bo."
“The name sale, the explosion, all of that puts everyone on my team at risk. My team was at risk of completely falling apart over the decision to bring you in,” he spat back.
He shook his head and shrugged a bit from the door. “Actually it’s all up to you. You can’t, in the same breath, tell me about your personal agenda that I ought not get in the way of and tell me want to cooperate. You can’t have it both ways. You don’t get to call the shots. What don’t you understand about that? I don’t give a shit if you cooperate at this point. I did this to try and help you, so this bullshit agenda of yours is going to have to wait until I’m not responsible for you anymore. You want to run? Fine. The window is over there. Knock yourself out.”
He left the room in a huff. The anklet was still on him, he didn’t know what he was going to do with himself in the coming days. The conversation with Max hadn’t been much to make him feel better. This conversation with Faol had gone even worse. And here he was his cane practically slamming on the floor of the hospital as he tried to storm out of the damn place. He was beyond livid, his leg was aching, his back was killing him, and he was incredibly hungover.
'What name sale?' Faol nearly asked, but Bo was on a tear and in his present state, it mattered a whole lot less than it should have. Possibly. Probably. And all that Bo got from his storming out was a raised eyebrow before Faol slowly rolled onto his side, the opposite one that he'd stabbed himself in, and let himself drift, the rest of the sandwich that Bo brought forgotten just like the nifty locator on his ankle was. If Bo wanted to blame him for something he hadn't done -- fuck it. It wasn't even worth his breath.