Who: Dylan & Daniel What: A little drive to the hotel. Where: Dylan's sweet ride. When: Recently. Warnings: Daniel pukes.
Dylan had very localized preferences when it came to the finer things in life. Younger women, older cars, and high gravity beer. The car in this case was a firebird out of the late 60's with a silver body carved out of hammered steel and a crown of black racing stripes. The interior had seen better days even if the engine was new, but the sutures of duct tape along the vinyl bench seats spoke of a restoration project in the making. As if he had the time. Between the FBI reports, the hotel tech work, and all of the spying in between.. Dylan didn't have an hour to himself that wasn't spent sleeping. Except for this excursion, which he couldn't really justify as work in either arena. Everybody needed a chance to clear their head, he supposed. Reflect, get a new perspective. Not to mention that he'd been intending to gain insight into the hotel phenomenon through someone else's experience. He pushed his issued gun into the glove box while hiking his passenger tires up near the curb that welcomed a view of Turnberry's glass doors.
It took a minute for Daniel to get to the door. This was absolutely no surprise, because he was so drunk that it was really a surprise he could even stand upright. He thought he could see goldfish swimming through the whiskey he was sunk in up to his eyes, and he was beginning to feel the sloppy pound of his head and the oncoming nausea of dawn. Normal men wouldn’t have been able to see straight in that condition, but it was obvious when Daniel approached that he was not normal. For one thing, he wasn’t wearing any shoes. For another, he didn’t seem troubled about leaving his apartment to go meet a supposed acquaintance, seeped in whiskey and wearing old jeans and an even older t-shirt, second first-impressions be damned. He had shaved somewhat recently, so his mouth was just visible in its low curve of bitterness and fatigue as he approached. Somehow he managed to look both sleepy and rested through the alcohol haze, and only an elusive impression of ill-health lingered in the red-streaked sapphire blue of his gaze and the way he held his body, tilted against an intangible wind that only he could feel.
Daniel caught his weight against the side of the car, barely registered the amount of money, effort and unmistakable machismo under his palm, and then pulled open the door without even squinting into the driver’s face. His arrival into the vehicle smelled like a hundred year old Irish pub on a Saturday night: sharp whiskey, old wood, distinctly male skin and hints of greasy food. He made no effort to greet Dylan in the neighboring seat, and he looked ahead from under his brows as if bracing for impact even though the car wasn’t moving.
Tonight wasn't for making impressions. Dylan had resigned himself to that long before he'd headed out the front door and hit the pavement in a renewal of park avenue elbow-rubbing. Dylan's clothes typically would not have been anything to write home about, but in contrast to Daniel, he seemed positively vogue homme. His tee shirt was loose, some pale crest embroidered on Hollister's dark blue cotton. With his head against the vinyl rest, Dylan watched the man climb into the passenger seat with all the grace of an inebriated zombie. The lack of greeting and eye contact was noted with a side scrunch of his mouth and a discerning squint of one eye. "Well, alright."
Shifting gears, the Firebird's metal carriage rolled back on its rubber heels before the engine revved and tore forward to devour asphalt. If Daniel was easily carsick or the slightest bit uneasy about a potential collision, Dylan's style of darting between lulling taxis and taking wide turns was bound to make one uneasy. "I know you have a vow of silence against anyone but yourself, but what's with the hotel?" A horn blared somewhere behind them when Dylan cut off an SUV.
“Hotel’s better than a hangover. If I get there alive.” Daniel was so drunk it felt like the car was taking the Indy 500 by storm even before it left the curb. By the time Dylan went through the first red, his palms were plastered to either side of his seat, one leaving ghostly steamed fingerprints on the inside if the passenger-side window and the other gripping the resistant vinyl edge inches from the gearshift. He wasn’t frightened but he was sick. “Mercy,” he moaned, squinching his eyes shut against the violent motion of the vehicle as they dodged a taxi that screamed offense after them. “Christ, whatever I did, I’m sorry.” He clamped his mouth shut to keep what was in his stomach there and braced his feet under the dash.
Even soaked in whiskey Daniel was more observant than he had any right to be, and he compared this sleek young man with the vague impression he had of the kid he’d seen on the fringes of wealthy society all those years ago. Even the east coast lilt of his speech brought that time back. It wasn’t Daniel’s favorite, but even he could be nostalgic.
This kind of car was meant to prowl forward on open road, to chew up tarmac through endless stretches of desert. It had traction on tokyo drift turns, but just wasn't appreciative of inner city speed limits. Downtown, everything came to a red light standstill once the sun went down. Las Vegas was a city built for drunks and white collar degeneration, most of whom failed to adhere to any form of jaywalking policies, and were completely negligent of crosswalks at the major intersections. So bad traffic got nightmarish after happy hour. Thankfully most tourists didn't drive, so it kept things from getting too crowded. Still, the Firebird came to a lulling purr somewhere past the Mirage, and Dylan hung his arm out the window in appreciation of the evening air. The city was finally beginning to cool down, breezy beneath the blue moon.
Now and then he glanced over to Daniel, dissecting the differences that reared up with enough years in between. Frankly, the guy looked like shit. "Don't get sick in my car, you'll be walking the rest of the way." Instinctively, Dylan hit the button for the passenger window to make a downward crawl, just in case. Although Daniel didn't seem like one for small talk, the driver was a creature ruled by curiosity. As such, other people's disinterest and boundaries were noted, but not regularly respected. "You still writing?"
Daniel appreciated the sudden whip of fresh air to take the smell of his own indulgence out of his nose, and his stomach gave one last heave before settling flat against his spine. He kind of wanted to die, but this was nothing new, and exactly the reason he was putting up with someone who actually knew his name to drive him to the door. His lashes seemed abrupt and black against his pallor as he closed his eyes and leaned back into the seat, white-knuckled and tense around mouth and eyes. Daniel had a soft face that aged well, but he wore years he didn’t have, and more than anything else, he looked intensely tired, completely resigned. There was none of that vibrancy of life he used to throw in his parents’ faces, and even the sharp wit he sometimes brandished on the journals was not in evidence. Yet the full-bodied mask of the languid drunk didn’t quite fit him right, and he flinched as if he’d been struck at the last question. “Nothing worth writing. What are you doing? Killing people in new cars?”
Despite the aggravation that came with waiting at red lights, Daniel got a laugh out of him. The sound was real, spilling from a late rediscovery of youth and a genuine good nature. To his parents' dismay, Dylan'd always had what would be considered a good head on his shoulders. When he was younger, this translated to studying, hard work, and a general disapproval rating for the eccentric living style of his parents. Now, he had the breezy, unbridled energy of some kid fresh out of college. The new penny grin of somebody that knew they could conquer the world, although in Dylan's case, it was more like deceiving the world. Maybe it was just another illusion.. after all, how could somebody so comfortable in their own skin make a living by pretending to be someone else? "Not killing people, and this car's older than we are." One hand deflected from the wheel to tick an index finger in Daniel's direction. Just saying. But then the light was green and cars were churning forward down the automatic conveyer of a speed limited lane. "I'm working for one of the hotels.." Caliginous eyes squinted to discern the the constellation of braking tail lights just ahead, and on a whim Dylan decided to cut right down a side street. He'd circle around a few blocks to hit the hotel from the other side. It wouldn't necessarily be faster, but it would mean not sitting still. "Tech stuff, you know." Not that he figured Daniel did know. Free from the clogged traction of other cars, the firebird gave a diesel growl as it surged forward. All pistons and iron. "Anyway, I thought the whole point of writing was that you get to make the shit up.." It seemed fairly obvious to Dylan that just because Daniel might not be experiencing anything new, didn't mean he couldn't write anything new.
The energy tasted strange to Daniel, like he was used to whiskey and took in a taste of cold, fresh water. He didn't like it. It reminded him of what he did not have, and he never much liked that. He spent a lot of money in the gambling tables and in the bottle remembering what he did not deserve to have. Daniel listened: but it was more to the sound of Dylan's voice, the sound of the coast, of expensive education, money he didn't need to be good at whatever he put his mind to. The car was a keen stroke of velvet against a rough ego, and Daniel appreciated what it did for Dylan even as it made his whole mind and stomach heave with unbidden torture. He remembered what it was like to be Dylan. Fuck him, anyway. "I was a fucking journalist, asshole." And a novelist. Daniel was hoping that Dylan didn't know that. Maybe he'd be too full of himself to have looked it up.
Dylan knew more about Daniel than was probably necessary, a central government grade background check can drill up all kinds of rotten, oily facts. It was probably great thanks to both men in the car that Dylan had decided to only skim the details. When you grew up in a similar foundation of all things aubergine, victorian brocade, and brittle, matronly glances that substituted for knives to the heart... it just wasn't worth reliving (even through typed word) twice. So while Dylan knew that Daniel wrote, he didn't study the guy's listed works. "Yeah.." Casting a smirk into the city breeze, Dylan tilted a wry grin toward his passenger. "Because journalism isn't made up and filling in the blanks half the damn time." That's about as fiction as it got.
Daniel growled like a junkyard dog. Maybe he wasn't a fucking writer anymore, and maybe he'd gone out of his way to be an asshole and cover stories he knew would piss people off just to make waves that would splash back on the home shore, but he wasn't going to let anybody question his journalistic integrity. Maybe he was a rotten son of a bitch, but his work had been pristine, thank you very fucking much. "I didn't fill in fucking blanks. My shit was real, and I made sure it was real before I fucking reported it." All the good stuff about Daniel was in his novels, not his bank accounts or his family history. He probably lit up no few watchlists, because his beat had been international politics, and you don't get around with that much money and that many languages without stepping on a few toes and running into a few spies, even if technically he wasn't supposed to know they were spies. Nobody had gone so far as to question his citizenship, but he ran in some interesting crowds and played poker with people who had more than luck on their side. Of course, that was years ago. Now he was holed up in the desert with a fat wallet and spoke to no one except madmen in books.
"Don't need to get defensive," Dylan said with that puppy dog tongue half lolling out of his overly pleased grin. So what if he enjoyed pushing buttons? He'd done it his entire life with his parents, those rebel aristocrats with so much art and words on their side. And wasn't Daniel just another replica down the same fucking conveyor belt? Dylan didn't resent Daniel.. not for his money or his fame or his accomplishments. That kind of thing had never been important, or even admirable by Dylan's strangely blue collar standards. All he wanted was a good gig, something that pumped pure adrenaline into the heart, something that took smarts and no kind of money to get your foot in the door. Something of his own. Undercover operations were the best, maybe because for such a fleeting moment he got to pretend he was somebody else. At the end of the day there was no shaking the name McKendrick. He'd never give Daniel a hard time, because he imagined that behind the bitchy attitude and the stink of whiskey.. it was the same sinking yacht of inherited hierarchy they were on. "Hotel's up ahead. Think you're going to make it without puking?"
Daniel scowled. He couldn’t believe the boy caught him being defensive about anything, and he resented being caught caring, even if it was something so small as his fucking career. Daniel remembered overhearing the prevailing opinion about Dylan’s parents, and he remembered wondering whether they were really any different. He thought Dylan’s nature was a product of his raising, and was therefore faintly jealous, but in the full understanding that regardless he would always be himself, and always make the same mistakes that he had already made. Daniel’s burnt eyes gave Dylan a baleful glare. “Honestly? No. Pull the fuck over.” Daniel swayed in the seat and leaned one palm against the side of the door, trying to force it open before the car even stopped moving. “All the fucking Door is good for, is this,” he muttered. And he wasn’t talking about the car.
It seemed like Dylan had struck a nerve, although if he minded or even acknowledged Daniel's pouting aggression, it didn't register in his face. Even his eyes remained focused on the road as his lips moved along to a dubstep beat that existed only in his head. Dylan found that electronica in any form was best for tech work and hacking shenanigans, it was like a brain wave tuner to the invisible world. And that's where his thoughts were until Daniel started fumbling with the locked passenger door in a demand for release from the Firebird. Momentarily surprised, Dylan jerked the car to the right in order to dislodge Daniel from his frenzied grip on the door handle. "Do I have to put the fucking child locks on, man?" And even if he should have, even if conceding to Daniel's scowling demand was losing the war, Dylan did pull over. If Daniel wanted to go stumble out onto the sidewalk and vomit with the hobos, by all means.
Daniel pushed open the door and hung out of the side of the car against the seatbelt. He hadn’t been in the front of a car in what seemed like years and the world spun in a dizzying kaleidoscope of past and future. He didn’t even have the presence of mind to be disgusted with himself before the doors swung open and lurched to a stop, the heated air coming off the Vegas pavement and broiling what was left of angry thoughts and limp, overcooked guilt. Daniel couldn’t remember what he’d eaten that day, but whatever it was, it came up, and Dylan could just count himself lucky it wasn’t in his car. There wasn’t all that much, Daniel’s appetite almost gone since he hid from his hangovers in Passages, and he rolled back into his seat and gasped his breath back. He did not look at Dylan, but pulled on the door to shut it again. Something... Other that was not himself with a voice like an earthquake sensed his illness, seemed displeased, but Daniel only felt the vibrations, and heard no words. “Shut up,” he said to it... and to Dylan both, just in case.
"No wonder taxis don't want to take you anywhere.." Daniel had claimed that he detested public transportation, but Dylan was getting the distinct impression that it was the other way around. He said absolutely nothing to the groggy, pain fueled Shut Up. It wasn't easy to insult people like them. Their upbringings, as alternate as they may have been, had gotten at least one thing right. Neither were the type to take bullshit or profane disdain very seriously. Dylan, because he was generally awesome and an all-around nice guy - who could ever really hate him? Daniel because.. well, an infected, inflamed ego had to be good for something. Exhaling harshly through his nostrils, Dylan gave a crooked glance to Daniel as he spewed his liquid diet into the gutter. This wasn't an entirely uncommon practice in Las Vegas, as the Casinos had mastered the complimentary drink as a means of getting the gamblers really going. Let them ride until broke, or shitfaced.. although nights ended with usually both.
"Done?" He asked, unimpressed, when the door snapped shut. "There's gum in the glove box," he offered before turning back onto the street, momentarily forgetting that there were other things in that glove box, like firearms. Or maybe Dylan just wanted the stench of bile gone enough that he overlooked the details.
Daniel didn’t answer immediately. He wasn’t done. He was going to keep going until there wasn’t anything left of him in his skull, and regardless of what everybody else said about jails and trials. He had this feeling down at the bottom of his sour stomach that Dylan understood that. Without thinking, Daniel drew his heels down across the floor in front of the passenger seat and leaned over his knees. He popped open the passenger side glove box with the tips of two fingers and stuck his hand inside like a blind man. Cold metal made him yank his hand back. Daniel didn’t own a gun, and he’d only shot one once or twice. The last time he’d had one in his hand, it had blood all over it. Daniel pulled his hand against his chest and recoiled from the weapon. “What the fuck, McKendrick?!”
Daniel's explosion freshened the Firebird's interior with the lingering fumes of bile and fresh, unabashed terror. Thankfully, Dylan was was the one with steady, sober hands here and he didn't clip the nearest limo when his passenger began to flip. Screwing up a brow and glancing over, Dylan's expression crumbled ever so briefly at the telltale metallic gleam of the gun's barrel in the glove box. Oh, right. Shit. A half dozen explanations roamed the hard drive in his skull instantly. He could feign ignorance; oh goodness, where did that come from? He could have said that in giving a security guard a ride home from work, the man must have left the piece behind.. but that was instantly dismissed. In the end, semi-honesty was always the best policy. After all, since when was it illegal to own a firearm.
"Oh, I'm sorry man.." Reaching over, whilst steering with one hand around the final corner, Dylan pulled the gun's grip and pressed the firearm beneath the weight of his leg, unconcerned with the knowledge that the safety was well in place. Then he gestured to the cinnamon Trident waiting inside the empty glove box. "There ya go.."
Daniel knew exactly what it looked like when somebody was thinking up a lie to tell him. He might not have been seen in black and white for years, but he still knew, and he’d never forget. His eyes were twisted up into suspicious pinpricks in the chalk white fabric of his expression, and he pressed his body back into the mold of the passenger seat as if camoflauge might erupt from his skin. He didn’t actually anticipate a threat from Dylan; it was as if Dylan wasn’t there as soon as he transferred his attention to the gun. He was looking at it like it bit him, and he didn’t flinch when Dylan made his little crawl through the air with his fingers toward the glove box.
After a split second, Daniel folded and then extended, making a lunge for the gum and dropping back in his seat once he had it. “What the hell are you doing with that?” he said, bluntly, twisting a piece of Trident out of its rice paper wrapper with unnecessary violence.
"This is a dangerous city," Dylan said with a note of incredulous surprise. Didn't Daniel know that? Then again, a man pickling his liver night and day probably didn't pay much attention to the crime statistics of a zip code before he rented out the creme de la penthouse. In Texas, most citizens had at least one gun.. it didn't seem far fetched to Dylan that it should be unusual for him to have one in his glove box. Along with a few in the trunk and the apartment. Guns, to Dylan, were like shoes to most women. They might have all looked alike in one way or another, but they all had their own function.
Pulling up before the hotel, Dylan unlocked the doors and feigned complete ignorance to any discomfort that the exposed firearm had brought Daniel. A lot of people got nervous around guns, but Daniel had gone ghost pale and looked like he would have bolted into the backseat if his drunk ass could have figured a way over the headrest. It was a bit careless for Dylan to have exposed it, but it wasn't the end of the world. "We're here," he grinned at his passenger - who was admittedly looking a little green still. That dimpled smile of purebred charm didn't belong to any criminal.
Daniel knew that it was a dangerous city. He’d gotten mugged at least once that he could remember, which happened when you were that wealthy and wandered around on your own that drunk. There were other times when he found that he didn’t have money or keys on him, but since most of those times he couldn’t remember who he had been with or where, it didn’t matter much in the long run. Daniel worked in cash and most people who mattered knew exactly who he was. Cabs made a car unnecessary and he found he was going out less and less and the months wore on.
But that didn’t mean carrying a gun was really all that common. If Dylan had been some guy off the street, or perhaps stupider and poorer, Daniel wouldn’t have thought as much about it. But he thought Dylan came from his world, and in his world, you only carried a gun if you wanted to shoot innocent pigeons and foxes. Not business-like handguns. Daniel’s red eyes continued to squint suspiciously at Dylan for several long moments, even through the innocent grin, which didn’t fool him for a second.
Abruptly, Daniel grunted. It was a dismissive grunt, one that did not promise anything but seemed to imply that he’d decided not to care enough to argue the point right there in the car. Maybe later. Daniel rolled out of the seat and onto the sidewalk. “Thanks for the ride,” he said, grudgingly. He slammed the door before Dylan could reply and wavered across the walk and into the dilapidated hotel. The sooner he didn’t have to think about this, the better.