Jason Todd is (thelazarus) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-06-27 23:09:00 |
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Entry tags: | dormouse, red hood |
Who: Max and Jack
What: Beer and discussions. Prior to the Mexico office conflicts.
Where: A dive bar.
When: Prior to the Mexico office conflicts.
Warnings/Rating: None. Max says a few swears. The cut tag is something Max has never said before and will never say again.
Max left the chair at home.
If she was going to make it in Mexico without the "crutch," then she needed to start immediately. She needed to deal with the pain, work through it, and figure out how to move her body quickly. She only had a week, which meant she had to go cold turkey and bite the bullet. She'd shoved the chair into a closet, and she'd walked away. This was a good and easy start. The walk to the cab was short, and the bar was a dive, not much walking required and plenty of high-top tables to hold onto along the way, if it came to that.
She dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt, a sliver of olive skin visible at the hip and sturdy boots on her feet. She'd seen Corvus once in the past six months, and she was highly aware of that fact. Back in Seattle, they'd seen each other often. Here, their interactions were rife with fighting, and she wasn't surprised that so much time had passed without them seeing each other. She wasn't even sure this was a good idea, but she'd agreed and, and there was no denying that it had been too long since she'd seen him.
She arrived at the bar while it was still crowded, and she was a slow lurch from the cab to the door. She needed to pick up a cane, she realized, at least for this week. She'd get rid of the thing before Mexico. She looked around the bar, saw no sign of Corvus, and claimed a high-top close enough to the door to keep her from having to walk much more. She ordered a bucket of beers, and she leaned against the high-top and popped the top off one, downing half of it in a long swallow that caused someone nearby to whistle. She grinned, because this environment was familiar. Something twangy was playing on the jukebox, and the sound of balls smacking against each other on a pool table served as background noise. The tabletop was beer-sticky, and she crooked a finger at a man in a plaid shirt, calling him over and bumming a smoke.
The dive bar was like a familiar blanket, and she rubbed at her hip thoughtlessly as she exhaled a long stream of smoke.
Jack had been expecting Max in a chair, and he'd thought of that when he asked her to get a drink. She needed to get out of the house and start doing things again, not that he really believed the chair would stop her for long. When he walked in and saw her at the high top, however, that line of thought disappeared in a puff of smoke. There she was, same as always.
He, too, was conscious of the fact that he hadn't seen Max since they'd fought at her place over that missing chair, amongst other things. Inviting her out had just seemed right. All they seemed to do lately was fight, and, at this point, he couldn't imagine they could make things much worse over a few beers. Maybe the problem was that he hadn't been seeing her in person the way he used to, for all kinds of reasons.
It was time to be done with making excuses.Things might never be great between them, maybe there was too much baggage there, and maybe things would get better, go right back to the way they'd been, once. It was going to take time, either way, and a dive bar didn't actually seem like a bad place to start. When it came down to it, he missed having Max be his friend.
He knew she'd be watching for his reaction when he saw her out of the chair, and it was surprised, then quietly glad. He sat down across from her and pulled a beer out of the bucket. "You look good," he said, because he wasn't exactly sure what he was allowed to say or not say about the chair, and she did. Either way, she did. There might be psychopaths rolling into town like there was a convention and trouble through the door every two days or so, but, for the moment, he let that go long enough to appreciate that slice of bare skin at her hip.
She raised a brow at the understated compliment. Corvus was, as a rule, flowery and overstated. She expected hand-wringing concern, an order that she sit her ass down, possible a thousand questions about whether or not she should be out of the chair at all. She chuckled, elbows on the table and the amber bottle cradled between long, gun-rough fingers, and then she took a swig. "You haven't changed," she said, cryptic, but then Max wasn't one for ready compliments. Ready insults, yes. Ready compliments, not so much. She took a long drag of her cigarette, and then she turned it in her fingers. "I haven't had one of these in so long, that I forgot what they tasted like," she said, lifting the smoke in thanks to the man in plaid, who had grumpily retreated to the bar when Corvus arrived. It was the kind of dive where men were plentiful, and where women were worn-thin, and the request for a cigarette had been presumed to be more than a request for a cigarette. And, maybe, once it would have been. But not tonight.
"Am I allowed to talk shop?" she asked, having already checked the place for electronics with the bug detector she kept on her keychain. "Or was this a purely social invitation?" she asked, not taking a seat on one of the high stools when he did. She wasn't sure her body was up to that. But it was nice to stand on her own two feet, and the high-top was a perfect place to rest her elbows.
Jack could see that she was leaning, but he didn't comment on it. If she was working on getting mobile again, which he had to assume was the case based on the fact that there wasn't a chair anywhere in sight. "I don't know if I should be reassured by that or not, but I’ll take it," he said, extracting a beer from the bucket and cracking it open. He didn't drink often, and when he did, it was generally with a purpose. He glanced over to the disappointed guy in plaid and smiled a little, brief but genuine. "You haven't either. Still leaving disappointed men in your wake."
"We can," he said. "That's up to you." He'd honestly just wanted to see her, but they did work together, now. And expecting Max not to bring work even to a presumably social meeting just meant you didn't know her. "We can talk shop and then put it to rest and talk about the weather, how about that? I'm assuming you didn't ask unless you have something to tell me." It wasn’t as if the social talk was a great deal less grim than counter-terrorism, not with some of the things that had been going on lately.
She used her beer bottle to point to the people in the bar. "Corvus, it's not hard to be the best choice in this joint," she said of the disappointed man because, really, the competition looked like it had been fucked through and tired out. "Admit it, you picked it to give me an ego boost," she joked, taking another sip, before turning her attention to the cigarette and the pleasure of the nicotine burning her lungs. She'd given up cigarettes for Brandon, when she'd been pregnant, and she'd never picked the habit back up, because the lectures about dying of lung cancer before Amanda finished high school had made her head spin.
As for talking shop, he was right. Her life was her job, and that was one of the reasons that her acquaintances outside the agency were severely limited. For someone who lived and breathed the terrorism index, it was hard to pretend she didn't. Which was precisely what she needed to do with people who didn't know what she did for a living. Max wasn't good at pretending. She stubbed the cigarette out, taking her time with it, long fingers twirling the remaining white. "I need to talk to Davis, but I think I'm going to pull you for a trip to Mexico. Our intel about Stockholm was off." Reed might not like it, but McKendrick wasn't a field agent, and she needed something with one-hundred percent mobility and a gun arm down in that black zone. She grinned at him, even as she popped a second beer. "And I don't talk about the weather," she said with a smirk. "Too easy, and not enough potential for arguing."
Jack didn't say anything about the smoking, because he was hardly one to criticize anyone about bad habits. "Mexico?" he asked, taking a swig of the beer. "I can only imagine what sort of fun vacation that will turn out to be. You're coming?" That was good news. It wasn't that he didn't trust the other members of the team, but things with Max were different. Having her around while dealing with this name sale thing was likely to make things run a bit smoother. "Have you talked to McKendrick?" He assumed it would be fine - it wasn't as if Gabe was his keeper, except for the moments where he was. He wasn't running away, though, just going on a warm weather vacation with a different handler.
He finished half the beer while she was talking. It came in a bottle, by the bucket - it wasn't really there for savoring. Max was already on her second, he had some catching up to do. "We could argue about what kind of weather?" he proposed. "I could say it's cloudy, you could say it's only partly cloudy, we could go from there." He leaned back a little. "Mexico should be fun," he said, dry. "It's been awhile since you've seen me kill someone live and in person." There was no one anywhere nearby after Max had made it clear she wasn't up for grabs, not that this was the sort of place where anyone was likely to run off and tell someone anyway.
"I'm coming," she said, after a long swallow. "It was McKendrick's plan," she said, not trying to take the credit for herself. After all, she'd gone through the trouble of borrowing the man from the FBI because he was good at what he did. She trusted him. "He's trustworthy. After the arsonist, he's the one that got me out, and he's the one that got his apartment blown up for the favor," she explained easily. "I'll let Davis know. Reed will fall in line," she said, because Reed might not like lending out his agent, but he'd follow orders. He was like her that way; a good soldier. She suspected he would have made a better military man than a spook, but that wasn't her call to make, and it wasn't like he had much of a future that wasn't behind a desk, not anymore. And he was getting up there in years. Field agents had a higher mortality rate past thirty, so maybe it was for the best.
"I can't get passionate about the weather, Corvus," she teased, grin and warmth in her brown eyes. It was easy with Corvus, when he wasn't busy having expectations of her that she could never seem to meet. As for killing people in person? She chuckled, and she tapped out a fresh cigarette and held the box out to him, in case he wanted one. "Let's hope we don't have to kill anyone. McKendrick wants to light things up, so we can have footage. Unfortunately, we shafted the local cartel on some gun shipments, so they aren't going to be friendly if they make us. You're there in case, not on a sanctioned hit." Not that killing people was a problem, but it would be a whole lot easier to get out without drawing fire.
"Oh, him." Jack remembered Max mentioning him when the explosion had happened. Too many explosions in too few months, in his opinion. "Speaking of the arsonist. Any news?" Kellan was shaping up to either be a serious problem or a possible route to Ian. Either way, he needed to make sure someone was keeping track of him, and while Drake seemed up to the job, it didn't hurt to ask.
Jack smiled back when she protested the weather. It was good to take his mind off work for half a second before diving back in anymore, and he finished his beer, plucking another from the bucket. He shook his head to the cigarette - he smoked on occasion, but he wasn't in the mood. "In case," Jack repeated, with a small smile. "I think you mean 'when'." There seemed little doubt something was bound to go wrong on this jaunt south of the border, now that a pissed off cartel was in the mix.
"We came to an agreement," she said of Kellan. "No collateral damage, no casualties, no one gets hurt but us. And we agreed to wait until we were both back to 100 percent, before trying to off each other again." She took a swig of a fresh beer, and she grinned, because she knew that agreement worked in her favor. Kellan was sloppy, and he wasn't trained to kill someone from two buildings away with a sniper rifle. The only reason Kellan was still walking was because she'd been unable to move, and because she'd been pumped full of painkillers. Without those two things evening the playing field, Kellan was screwed.
"Look at you being the pessimist. Are you going to quote morbid poetry soon?" she teased, arm across the table and the butt of the bottle she was holding tapping against the one he was drinking. "McKendrick's good. We might be alright. If we aren't, we'll deal with it." We'll, which meant she had no intention of sitting on the sidelines down in Mexico, not when she already knew the landscape better than either of them. And she felt pretty good. Amanda's visits always left her feeling like there was something worth fighting for. A reason for the job, and the certainty that she'd still have that, even if everything else went to shit.
"Sounds like fun," Jack said, and he tried to be casual about it, though his eyes told a different story indeed. He knew she was capable, and that she could more than likely take this guy if she could get him on her own terms, where he couldn't just blow up a building to take her out. 'No collateral damage' should take care of that threat. It couldn't eradicate worry for her, going in after a man who'd threatened to kill her and Amanda, and nearly succeeded the second time around. He cracked open a second beer. "You want to tag team, you know all you have to do is call." He knew better than to think she'd agree, even as a joke, because he knew what she thought would happen if he got back into the business of 'unsanctioned hits'. That wasn't what they'd called them in Seattle, but that was definitely what it would be now. "Seriously, though, when it's done, if you need any help cleaning things up, just call. You know how much I love to carry a body."
"Who, me?" His brow darted up a fraction, and he took a swallow from the can. "I don't know what you're talking about." He hunched his shoulders over the table, leaning forward. "I look forward to meeting him. Anyone who draws praise from you has to be more than pretty good." He paused, and shook his head. “No fresh news about our old friend from Seattle.” She hadn’t asked, but he could only assume she still wanted to know. “And Cerise...it looks like she’s got to be off with him somewhere, unless it’s a coincidence that she disappeared just as he came into town.”
"You know how I feel about you and vengeance hits," she said honestly. She wasn't like him, and she wasn't like the kid. She could put a bullet between someone's eyes and not walk away hungrier, which made all the difference. She did grin at the offer to carry the body. "You know just what to say to a woman, Corvus," she said, smoke grin and another swig to empty out the bottle. "Offering to carry a corpse is actually a step up from poetry," she admitted, all grin and a rub to one of her hips with her free hand. The grimace that accompanied to press of calloused fingers to the skin beneath the dip of her jeans was understated, but it was definitely there, and she leaned more heavily against the table as a result.
She chuckled at that who me? It was a knowing, entertained chuckle. She knew him as well as she knew Luke, even if he didn't like it. They might do nothing but fight when things got personal, but that didn't mean she couldn't map out his actions when it came to nearly anything. She was, after all, an agent. "I tried to get him in Bangladesh," she said honestly of McKendrick, nothing but business on the table. "He's good." The comment about Lucien made her take another swig. She didn't want to get involved in that old mess, not any more than she had to. After all, Wallace was going to put a messy bullet in the guy eventually, and she didn't want any of it tracing back. If it was her hit, that would be one thing. But this? This was a vengeance kill, plain and simple, and those were always complicated to clean up. Anyway, she had her own hunting to do in order to figure out why the General was interested in things the General was never interested in.
"I do," Jack said, and finished his second beer. He didn't grab a third, not right away. It was taking a while for the buzz to filter through. In the meantime, he lined the cans up together at the edge of the table. "That's very poetic, that sentiment," he pointed out helpfully. He watched her rub at her hip and decided it couldn't hurt to ask, except that it might, because he knew how touchy she could be about anything resembling a vulnerability. "How is it going? The recovery. And don't just say 'it's fine', I mean really."
Since Max didn't respond to the mess about Ian, Jack let it rest. He understood - it wasn't her problem. "If you trust him, I think he'll be fine," Jack said. Max had been doing this a lot longer than he had, and he was more than willing to leave judging who was fit and who was not up to her.
The buzz was thick enough in Max's belly that she didn't bristle when he asked about her recovery. "Harder some days than others, and pretty painful by the time I get into bed, but nothing compared to what it was. I'll be fine. I might not move quick enough to do field work yet, but I'm getting there," she admitted. She was hoping Mexico would be her last sidelined mission. After all, if they figured out the name sale, then McKendrick could go back to the FBI, and she could go back to working solo. She'd never had someone in her ear, and she didn't intend to start now; that was one of the perks that came with her particular assignments. And she'd be thrilled to get out of the office, where life was turning into a perpetual pissing match. "Honest enough for you?" she asked, another swig, and she pushed her bottle away. She wasn't going to get drunk, not with Corvus, not when they had work on the horizon. As for trusting McKendrick, she just nodded. Things were complicated there, and she wasn't in the mood for complicated. She was never in the mood for complicated.
"How are things with the kid?" she asked, instead. Luke was always a safe topic, and he was someone they both cared about. "Any better since the last time?" Because, as far as Max could tell, Luke was on the kind of downward spiral that led to a lot of trouble. "Like I said, he's going to liaison for us. Might be good to keep an eye on him and see how he handles the added stress." And finally, she tipped her head to the side, brown hair sliding down along her bare arm. "How've you been, Corvus?"
"Pretty good," Jack said, sliding a little lower in his seat at the table. He cracked open the third beer then. The buzz was finally starting to creep in, enough to make him feel a little less worried in general about what to say or how to say it, which was generally a concern when Max was around.
Jack shook his head. "I don't know," he said, honestly. "I haven't talked to him much since the mess in Gotham died down. Things are...they're rough with him and Wren, I think, because of the sudden absences, how long they last, Gus. That sort of thing." He nodded to keeping an eye on Luke. Someone had to do it now that he was transferring over, it might as well be someone who lived in the same house. "I'll make sure he doesn't get in over his head with the workload," he said.
As for how he'd been, Jack could only shrug minutely and flip the loose cap off his beer. "Still here," he said, with a rueful smile. “Better, honestly. I think, anyway.”
"Good," was her response to his assurance that he'd keep an eye on the kid. She wasn't surprised that Luke and Wren were having problems, not after the last conversation she'd had with Luke. Personally, she thought that was doomed to failure anyway, and she didn't like the fact that Wren was trying to make Luke feel guilty about Corvus living at the house. But she hadn't been able to do anything about that relationship five years ago, and she couldn't do anything about it now. Instead, she just took a long swig of her beer, finishing it off and planting the amber bottle on the table.
"Better works." She grinned, a little drunk, a little warm, and she tipped her head toward the pool tables. "Let me kick your ass, for old time's sake," she suggested, pushing away from the table before he'd even had a chance to answer. Her gait was terrible, but she kept it from being an outright lurch. Her therapist had said two weeks on it, and it wouldn't be as awkward; she was counting on that timeline.