Dylan is armed with (jazzhands) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-04-04 01:46:00 |
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Entry tags: | fantine, witch |
Who: Dylan & Max
What: Spy games, guns, beer, ego boosting.
Where: Max's.
When: Recently works for everything, right?
Warnings: A little language.
With all of the benefits of spy-era technology - which didn't even begin to account for various illegal upgrades and the kind of eye-in-the-sky monitoring that would make Big Brother queasy with a moral dilemma - it took him a minute to find her. It wasn't that Dylan took his job with the utmost seriousness, actually employment valor was all kind of tertiary. He would jokingly say its importance laid somewhere behind hitting a mile in under five and maintaining the high score on that Tetris arcade at the bowling alley downtown. The truth was just that he was a greedy motherfucker when it came to information. It was nice to be the guy holding all of the cards. When one kept track of bank activity, phone calls, wire transfers, internet histories, and world-wide facial recognition bouncing off of satellite fronts, it made it a little more difficult to be double crossed or blacklisted. And maybe it dampened the patriot poster boy image when Dylan couldn't really trust his country not to drop some black ops sniper into his window, but it was the truth. After a point, the information that he stumbled upon and blocked files that he kicked open were as much about creating a linchpin of security for himself as about satiating his toddler-level curiosity. Sometimes he wondered if anybody could even imagine the things he knew, the operation briefings he'd come across in the past few years. Oh well. If they did they probably would have already tried to have killed him. Or at the very least cut his pension. But nothing like that ever happened, and maybe everyone else was really as dumb and blindsided by Axe bodyspray commercials as he suspected.
In the end, Dylan just had to cross known contacts of Max's with cell phone tower signals and that narrowed the area down. It wasn't exactly an address, and it wasn't exactly legal.. but worst of all, it wasn't convenient. When the muscled steel of his car devoured the freeway onramp, he idly wondered how difficult it would be to stab her with a tracking device. He kind of cursed himself for not bringing one along, but ultimately knew that shit like that was cheating and would only kill the fun of whatever spy games they'd created for one another. When Dylan pulled onto a main street, he typed a string of code into his dirt-age GPS system, and with a USB strung up to a burner phone, his car did most of the hacking for him.
Dylan didn't rip apart her file, he'd been honest about that. He was honest about a lot of things for a spy, which was probably why he was typically shanghaied to more of the dark, solitary room kind of operations. Still, he knew that she had a few basic contacts in the past few years. Thomas Brandon and Laura Daniels were notable. It felt kind of like a bitch move to use the babydaddy as a cloak and dagger, and maybe it was a cheap shot to use the best friend too, but he did it anyway. Out of both phone records, only one number seemed to exist between the two. Siphon the signal down and he was at her door, picking the lock. Not entirely stupid, Dylan knew enough to stand off to one side in case a shotgun blast came through to hit him in the chest.
Max knew McKendrick would find the townhouse. Even without poking into his file to see how good he was at breaking into data, she knew he'd manage it. Her division of the CIA worked with the FBI often enough to know who the good hacks to have on a team were, and he was definitely high on the list. When she'd been assigned to Bangladesh, she'd crossed her fingers that he would be sent out with her, even without having ever met the man. You didn't get his kind of reputation with marks on your ledger. But she'd ended up with someone much less skilled, and they were all paying the price for it now. Every good agent she knew was lying low these days, hidden away in a desert, behind a desk somewhere, conveniently failing psych evals and unable to do field work. Everyone was keeping their heads down, and it all traced back to one FBI hacker's inability to handle questioning. Being field trained wasn't the same as holding up under torture, and the FBI that had made half off the UC agents in the field hadn't been able to hack it. And now they all had huge targets on their backs, their names sold to the highest bidder in a battle of who wants this agent the most, a payback auction for previous jobs.
Max's location was well hidden, and her cover had never been compromised before. She knew that all this safety was false, though. She knew that she had too many repetitive behaviors, too many habits to be really safe. She knew he'd find her using them, and she was planning on using his knowledge to close the gaps someone else might try to slip into. It wasn't just that she was a sitting duck in a chair. It was Daniels, who she was starting to realize was going to have to move. It was Amanda, who at least had around-the-clock care from an agent-turned-nanny. It was the kid, and his family. And it was even Corvus, who really didn't need someone else to target in this lifetime.
She was waiting for him when he started picking the lock.
Once upon a time, she would have rounded the perimeter and gone around behind him, taken him down before he even got in, just to prove she could. She missed the adrenaline of those days; there was nothing worse than an agent who couldn't spook anymore. Daniels was asleep upstairs, and Max positioned her chair to the side, because being in full view of anyone picking a lock was bad news, even for a woman in a chair. And chair or not, she wasn't completely helpless. Dressed in track pants and a thin, white wife beater, long hair scraped back, she had her firearm cocked and loaded, the silencer on in order not to wake the slumbering woman upstairs. She spent her last few seconds trying to decide which way he would feint.
When the door opened she waited a second, and then she shot the lockpick right out of his hand. The message was clear; I let you come in.
Things were going well, and the scene was quiet as a fucking mouse until a bullet claimed the kit of lockpicking tools and tinkers. The collection went flying out of his fingers with the velocity of.. well, a bullet. Needless to say, getting a metal tin smashed out of your hand at relatively the speed of sound fucking hurt. Most people were hardwired to cry out for help when this kind of thing happened, although most people didn't abuse their special ops training to poke at government schooled gunwomen out of a dangerously high element of boredom. In the field, one was told to keep their cover and silence in order to maintain preservation. It was hard to peel back those hammered layers of education, even if he'd never had a cover to begin with. Dylan wrenched his hand back with a hiss, curling the wide fingers into a fist to try and get some semblance of feeling for if they were all still intact. They were, but that realization was like some back alley echo as he tucked his body back behind the door jamb in case anymore bullets decided to come his way. Nobody had said anything, and he hadn't completely forgotten that Max had a laundry list of enemies that ran the gamut between terrorists and vendetta'd arsonists. From his side of the door, there was the familiar click of a gun's hammer being cocked back. Then one blue eye appeared from around the dark edge for a brief glimpse. Nearly expecting a criminal threat, he stiffened with the realization that it was just Max. Immediately he rounded into view, all chastised disapproval. "What the shit, Main?! Did you skip the class on friendly fire?"
She put a finger to her lips as she looked up at him, a universal gesture of shut the fuck up that came with a finger pointed at the upstairs. She was smiling, which was probably infuriating, but it was nice to get the upperhand in a wheelchair; it felt better than getting the upperhand under normal circumstances. "I didn't hurt you. I'm a perfect shot, FBI," she reminded him, a fact that he probably already knew. There was a tenseness to her shoulders that said it might have all been overcompensating. After all, facing someone wholly competent, respected, and who you'd hit on just weeks earlier would have been hard for Max on a good day. Facing them in a wheelchair? That required some emotional courage in the form of a perfectly aimed bullet. Hey, no one could say she didn't rationalize like military. Being CIA was secondary; she'd always shoot first.
She rolled the chair back, better with the thing now than she had been the previous month. It was a slim black model, a final capitulation away from the hospital issue chair she'd been calling home since the start of the new year. The distance made it easier for her to look him over all at once, and she nodded to the door, expecting him to do the honors of locking up. "How easy was it?" she asked him, and it wasn't an insult. He would know the new risks as well as any of them. He hadn't been compromised, but she knew the FBI was on high alert, just like the CIA was. That question out of the way, she gave him a grin that was younger than her thirty years, and she jerked her head toward the kitchen, just past the foyer they were in. "Grab us a couple of beers?" she suggested. She hated the kitchen in the townhouse; it was impossible to get in and out of. "Then you can give me that dance," she added, tease as she put the reengaged the safety on the firearm and tucked it beneath her thigh, against the black seat of the chair.
With a crooked scowl, he glanced up to the ceiling. Roommate, right. Dylan still wanted to yell about getting shot at, but he also respected the pipedream fairytale of a full night's rest. No active agent, and very few retired ones, knew what that was like. To sleep with both eyes shut, hands at one's side and not half-cocking a gun under one's pillow. At that thought, and with a bit of delay, Dylan popped the safety back onto the government issued piece, and he tucked it into the front waistband of dark jeans, beneath the midnight shadow cotton of his tee shirt. Amusement slipped into his expression at last when she mentioned being a perfect shot. "Maybe that's what I was worried about." He was regularly enough of a pain in the ass that getting shot for it didn't seem like that much of a stretch.
He shrugged a little on his way to the kitchen to grab those beers. After a bit of navigation(Dylan knew his way around a take out menu a few hundred times better than he did any kitchen), he returned with four in tow between the knuckles. He could have kept it ambivalent like that, but Dylan knew why she was asking. With a price on your head, it was important to know how much deeper you had to dig to just be hidden from scope level. Stepping forward, he passed a pair of the beers off to her. A lid was twisted off the first, and he downed most of it in a few swigs as he settled against the wall. Even if he was something of an adrenaline junkie, getting shot at was rare enough that he appreciated the sweet calm that came with drinking a beer.
"I looked into your past associates. The father and the kid were first tier, anyone that's actually looking would see that first. I dug deeper, came across your friend Laura. Cross phone records, triangulated the signal, found you." He took a breath and another sip, trying to weigh whatever was behind those eyes of her's before he added. "It wasn't easy, but.." He hesitated and then straightened with the truth. "Its impossible to keep hidden when you're still half living the civilian life." Friends and family were luxuries.
That amusement, paired with the comment about worrying about her aim, made her grin. She had never been the kind of woman to feel uncomfortable with a man in her space, and the chair hadn't changed that. Her insecurities were beneath the skin, tied up in rejection, but she'd managed to find a way to hide that behind the agent's demeanor years ago. She wasn't raw like she'd been when Thomas had looked at her and told her he didn't find her attractive anymore. That woman, five years ago, would have barred McKendrick out of the townhouse after he'd rebuffed her in France. But she didn't let it get below the skin these days. She'd learned that lesson well; if you didn't care, it didn't hurt.
She rolled her way back into her bedroom when he went to the kitchen, wanting the privacy the room offered. It wasn't that she didn't trust Daniels, but Daniels didn't know what she did for a living. Daily had been her friend in Seattle, and she'd been Daniels' friend too; she and Daniels had been connected by the redhead, and they were people who were almost friends now, not quite making it all the way to that connection. Because Max did have connections, but most of them were old things; she didn't make new friends easily. And it was becoming painfully obvious that she was going to have to shed the old friends as well. But Amanda, Amanda came first. She would need to cancel the little girl's trip out for spring break; she knew that wouldn't go over well. She was disappointing her daughter more and more often recently, and she was going to have to cut the cord soon. She'd been resistant, but this new threat cast everything into a starker light.
She took both beers when he offered then, setting one on the nightstand and popping the other one on the edge of the wood, not caring if it marred the surface. There was nothing personal in the room, nothing that indicated life, or love, or friendship. It was just a space; a bed, a desk, a chair. There was a cord nailed to the roof above the single pillow, a makeshift aid to get out of bed and into the hated chair, but there was no other concession made to comfort.
She took a long swig, and there was nothing dainty about the swallow that took half of the liquid in the bottle with it. She was perpetually on some painkiller or another these days, thanks to therapy wearing her down and wearing her dead, and she knew the booze would go to her head quicker than it ever would have before; she didn't really care. He'd brought reality crashing in when he picked that lock. "I need to get rid of the civilian life. I've been putting it off since Bangladesh," she admitted. But she had more red on her ledger than anyone she knew; some of it had to come calling eventually. "You don't have one, do you, a civilian life?" she asked, the question an honest one. "You're not in this for country or cash. What are you going to do when the thrill fades?" Maybe it never would for him.
He examined the quiet simplicity of what he could only assume was Max's bedroom and not some cell kept in shape for a captured terrorist. Although Dylan did admittedly hope quite briefly for the latter until he noted the lack of bars or chains. Talk about a bum place to lay your head. There were no pictures, no posters like his own pad, no sense of life. But even Dylan knew what that was like. Living undercover he was expected to be normal, to have an apartment that mimicked what the average early-thirties' bachelor apartment looked like. He ordered take out every week because he wasn't supposed to know how to cook(which was kind of convenient, because he didn't). Most of his computer upgrades and surveillance gadgets were undetectable to the untrained eye, so that was easy. But this room was depressing, and it kind of hit him in that moment that ghosts weren't really anybody when they weren't pretending to be somebody else. "You don't have to get rid of it forever," he offered. Mr. Brightside. They both had to know that it was safer not to play with maybes though. When it came down to hoping for the best, lives shouldn't be in contention for the loss file. There were things that were acceptable to lose; your job, for example. Losing a loved one because of the life you chose to live wasn't warm or fuzzy, but it happened often enough to people in their line of work. That was the ghost story that tucked the spies in at night.
Dylan could have argued that there wasn't a thrill, but who was he kidding? "I don't know," he shrugged with absolute honesty before taking a sip from his beer and wedging the sharp edge of his shoulderblade back against the door jamb. "Become a criminal?" It was a joke, probably.
Max watched his perusal of the room, and she grinned in the end. "Don't get depressed on my behalf, FBI," she said, taking another swig. "There was an explosion at my place before the Bangladesh job, and this place is new. Decorating in a chair isn't the easiest thing." Because Max had never been careful enough; there was a box full of pictures in the closet, up on a shelf that she could reach, and if the doors were open, he would see that the top off the box was off, and the pictures were well handled. Her own cover had been a simple one - Digital Forensics Lecturer. She'd never been made, not in all her years undercover, not until now. This was the first time she'd needed to consider cutting all ties, strangely enough. Maybe she'd just thought she could take care of anything that came up before this, but the chair made that unlikely. And, truthfully, this was exactly the kind of shit McKellar had gotten on her ass about before he died; she had too many exposed nerves.
"I got out once," she admitted. "For a few years, and I came back. I'm a lifer, McKendrick. Even in this chair, I'm a lifer. You're not." And when he said he might become a criminal, she gave him an appraising look. She could see it, actually. It was a game to him, fun, but the day might come where it wouldn't be. Maybe he would want a family someday. Maybe he might just want something other than this. But she wouldn't discount criminality in his future. After all, he hadn't joined up because of any love for Uncle Sam. Even she could see that. Her brown gaze shifted to the doorjamb, where his shoulder was pressing against the sharp edge. "Sit down, before you break something," she said, motioning her empty to the bed, then holding it out for him to toss in the trash. "Wait. Weren't you supposed to dance for me?" She popped the second beer, and she took a swig.
"My shoulder itches," he smirked but also eased off of the cat-scratch lean at the same time. Finishing off what was left in his first bottle, Dylan narrowed one eye in a laughing kind of wince when she mentioned the dancing. He'd shot his fucking foot off with that joke, hadn't he?
"I went to a salsa studio once, and I'm pretty sure that the instructor made a strong point of never asking me back for seconds." All mentions of work and tails and covert ops spying on one mafia princess was left on the back burner for this particular tale. It wasn't important anyway. Max had said one thing that strung up Dylan's attention like electric barbed wire.
"Heard anything new about the people who burned your place down?"
The second beer went down as quickly as the first, and Max would be lying if she didn't admit that she liked the buzz. She had one hell of a tolerance normally, something learned on Army bases across the country in her teenage years, while her father was off playing general, and while she was off playing debauched general's daughter. Back then, making a scene was supposed to get daddy's attention, and it was supposed to get her sent home, to where her mother and sister spent their days gardening and having normal lives. It never worked, but she'd built up a tolerance early, and it had stuck with her forever. But the painkillers canceled that all out, and she felt good just then. Even the pain in her hip was just a dull throb, and she gave him an easier grin as she finished off the bottle. "No it doesn't," she said of his shoulder. "Scared I'll bite. I already put the moves on you once, McKendrick. I don't bark twice," she said truthfully. She'd learned that from Brandon.
But the question about the fire surprised her. "I didn't know you were helping me get to the bottom of that," she said truthfully, and she shrugged as she set the empty aside on the nightstand. "No, and it's not like I could do anything if I did find him, not anymore." And that was hard to say. It showed on her face, how impotent it made her feel. What was she going to do? Roll down the street after him with a gun in her mouth?
He ignored it at first because the words kept coming from her, and she didn't seem like much of a talker so Dylan wanted to hear it all, assess, gather. You know, the investigative habits he built his weird little life around. There was a straightening in his body that very nearly said he was getting irritated or going to argue, but then it lapsed and he just listened.
"I've looked around a little," he admitted. "Seen nothing on the radar about fires or arson outside of the usual ex-wife seeking a way out of debt. The only reason I kept an eye on the board at all was because I figured you wouldn't let somebody else know if you did spot anything.." His blue eyes narrowed thoughtfully, judging for a moment more before he decided to add on. "Which I'm guessing you didn't."
Then, finally, he could say it. What had tumbled him silently backward in the first place. "When did you put the moves on me?" Because strictly all he remembered of her was a lot of forum headache. He was here anyway.
She considered, for a moment, how honest to be about the fire. In the end, it was the buzz of beer and pills that made her more forthcoming than she normally would be. "There's this guy I've known forever," she said, unsure if he'd landed on Corvus in any capacity during his spying. "He knows the woman who hired the arsonist. It's complicated. If I found the arsonist, I would have to kill him, and I don't think that would go unpunished." She shrugged shoulders that were capable, even with her ass planted in that chair. "And he'd get caught in the middle." She was all gritted teeth when she said it; it pissed her off, but she couldn't see a solution that didn't end in Cerise exacting revenge (Max had already figured out there had to be some connection with the arsonist that went all the way back to Seattle), which would result in Corvus killing her and being even more tormented than he already was.
She would have kept trying to explain her own impotence about the explosion, but his question about her hitting on him made her laugh, all hints of slur and booze-warm. "Go get me another beer from the fridge, FBI," she said. "I need it after that question." She paused, and she regarded him for a moment. "I practically asked you to stick your dick in me," she reminded him. "In France."
"Guy? He said it with a pop of thick eyebrows and the kind of ooo-ing lilt that was usually reserved for junior varsity volleyball girl locker rooms. But the smirking immaturity managed to fade when she started to talk about killing the arsonist, which would put this guy in the middle. Dylan doubted that a whole lot of average civilians mixed company with CIA operatives and chicks who hired arson assassins, so there had to be a reason not to go to the police. There also had to be a reason not to start killing people, and Dylan lapsed into that thought with silence when Max asked him to go grab more beers. He vanished with nothing on his tongue and returned with the rest of the twelve pack, cardboard caught up in his wide fist. There was also a fresh bottle dangling out of his teeth, caught by the cap. He set the box of bottles down beside where she sat and moved to take a seat on the bed, ready to talk. "You wouldn't turn him into the authorities?" Statistics said that males were fifty times more likely to become arsonists than women, but maybe it was a little sexist to just assume. Did a good agent follow an assumptive hunch or did they think outside the box? Admittedly, he wasn't sure. Dylan pried the bottle cap off in his grip and took a savoring swig. It'd been awhile since he'd had a drink like this.
"And don't say it that way. Stick my dick in you?" He might have just fucking blushed, but it could have been the alcohol. There was a crooked expression knotted up beneath the scowl of his brows. "Come on." He might have been born from profane art hippies, but he'd also rebelled.
"It's a man," she said, because Corvus had told her that much at some point. That Cerise wouldn't give up the name of the man. Maybe Corvus was assuming too, but she doubted it. And she'd only met Cerise twice, but she didn't seem like the kind of woman to be loyal to other women, as sexist as that sounded. "Turning him over the authorities would be useless at this point," she said, grabbing a beer from the twelve pack and popping it open. "Too late, and the evidence is gone. Plus, agents don't take care of their problems by going to the cops," she added, and that was true enough. The only thing that had kept Cerise from a quiet bullet to the forehead was Corvus, not any sense of justice or law, and not any sense of guilt or fear of killing. Her hands were already soaked with blood, what was one more body added to the count? She could see in his eyes that he wouldn't employ the same logic in her position, but she'd grown up in this world, and she'd lived in it for the majority of her life. He played at this. They were different. No, she would have taken care of the problem in a very final way if Corvus hadn't been wedged in the middle, and that was just simple truth. "You're strange for an agent," she admitted, the beer making her talkative. "I told another agent about letting the woman who'd hired the arsonist go, and he never respected me again, and all because I hadn't killed her."
She smiled at the red in his cheeks. "Uncomfortable, McKendrick?"
He smirked, all sly around the mouth of his beer. It was a look that said he didn't know the meaning of the word uncomfortable, but it was also a typically grandstanding agent way of brushing things off by barreling right through them. Nothing made him uncomfortable.. except for maybe the idea of Walt Disney's cryogenic-ally frozen body. That shit was creepy. "Nothing like that, I promise. Scout's honor." There was nothing joking or amused in his tone to clue her in to the fact that he'd never actually been a boyscout. His mother had been crazy, but not quite crazy enough to find any reasoning in Christian youth activities.
"And now I'm strange? Shit, the compliments just keep coming with you." He took a moment to scout the bland solitude of her swank place as if asking himself why he was here again. It was just a veil of humor to brighten up their cell. Although, Dylan had admittedly bad timing and the alcohol was chugging like a talkative locomotive through his brain, so he couldn't really help himself from staying on such a negative topic.
"That much evidence is rarely completely gone, Main. The system would be on your side, it doesn't have to be blood justice or nothing, you know.."
Shit, was that too serious? Too scolding? His wince betrayed none of his thoughts and seemed only like a kink breaking loose from a back brought to soreness by hunching over electronics night and day. But maybe his booze-fueled chattiness conveyed the truth, because he wilted before she could even start with more theories on why the arsonist would get away. "It's none of my business, Max. Sorry. You probably wanna kick me in the shin and tell me I don't know anything about what happened to you, or what you lost.. and you're right." He'd never been in that position.. even if he disagreed with it(wholly and morally). Who was he to say what was right? He took a sip of beer to shut himself up.
Max just gave him a wry look when he countered his discomfort. She wasn't sure she believed him. He wasn't like any of the agents she'd known. There was something about him that wasn't rough in the right places, and she wondered if that came with being FBI, or if it came with being a hacker. Either way, her statement stood, as far as she was concerned, and she left it alone. She'd made her point. She grinned when he said the compliments kept coming with her, an honest grin and another swig of beer. "What can I say? I call 'em like I see 'em," she said honestly. She didn't bullshit; she never had.
She wondered how many of those beers he could drink before he got sloppy. She knew she was getting there herself. The chair actually helped, as much as it hindered. It hid any sway or overlarge movements that might have given her inebriation away in advance. Now, it was only the growing slur that made it clear the beer and pills were combining to make her a little loopy. "Are you sure you're an agent?" she asked when he talked about the system. She'd never, in all her time in the military, heard anyone suggest the civilian justice system. She'd grown up with military courts and court martials. "I'd be in a great mood if I could kick you in the shin," she added, drunken smile and unusual honesty about her own fucked up body. "But it's complicated, McKendrick. Facebook status complicated. And every CIA agent that got made is keeping their head down right now. Going to the cops about this would only put a target on my immobile ass even quicker." She gave him a curious look. "How are you even in this business? We kill people day in, day out." And she knew what it was like to have people not be comfortable with that; she just hadn't expected it from him.
He gave her a tired, but sincere look when she questioned whether he was really an agent. He knew why she said it that way. "Hey, I know we bend the rules to get shit done, but I still believe in the big picture. I don't think its impossible, just a little more difficult. That kind of perseverance can be worth it, don't you think?" Max probably didn't. Considering the world of hurt that she was in, along with the rest of covert CIA, he couldn't really blame her.
"There's got to be a way to find the people who have access to the CIA info. Its a hot commodity, they're not going to pass it around to just anyone. Too many people want you dead for them to give up making a big profit on this kind of thing, right? Your people've got to be able to track that kind of shit down." Overly optimistic, perhaps. Yet it couldn't be completely impossible to lay low.
"I grew up in this, McKendrick. The General never had faith in little courts. I can't say I do either. And we break the rules, we don't bend them." It was simple truth. Corvus should be in jail; he'd killed dozens and dozens of civilians. Were they good people? No, but he'd killed them, and the CIA was willing to sweep that all under the rug to employ his ruthlessness, to own the beast, as it were. No, she didn't have any faith in the big picture. She smiled, and it would have been a warm and teasing smile once, but now it was just booze-pill lazy, layered over a thin sheen of perpetual pain at her hip. "I'd want him dead." It was plain, but true. If she saw the arsonist, she'd shoot first, talk later. It was just who she was. The agency knew that, and he might as well know it too. After all, that particular outlook on life had made her valuable for the last decade. She wasn't a soft woman; she never had been.
"They're looking," she said of the CIA and the people buying the intel from the FBI leak. "But it's international, and it's high money. They're trying to buy the intel themselves, when they can, but it takes time, and the money's good. Better for others than for me, so I'm safe until they get down to the people I've fucked over. Enough time to patch up holes and hunker down." And money would save her in the end, if it needed to. She could always count on Brandon for that, even across the country. It wasn't that he cared about her, but he wouldn't want Amanda growing up without the facade of a mother, even if she was in the desert and inaccessible.
Max made it pretty fucking difficult to look on the bright side of things. Even when a bright side didn't exist at all, Dylan tried to make one out of thin air. All it managed to do for him this time was make him feel like a complete ass, and he frowned at the label he'd halfway peeled from his beer bottle. "You're not going to let me be the ray of sunshine, are you?" That was alright. In the end, he probably wasn't up for the job anyway.
There was a pause and a teething of the lips while he considered everything. Not just this conversation, and not just his own life, or what he knew of her's, but Paris..
"Maybe I was an ass in Paris, all right?" The beer made it come out of nowhere after a thirty second reflection. "I didn't know you were throwing yourself at me, or I didn't want to think that, I don't know. I'm an idiot, but you probably are too.. I.." He finally covered his face with a wide palm. "God, I should go." This kind of bullshit was not going to make a woman recently confined to a chair feel any better.
Max wasn't very good at small talk. Once things changed from being one of the guys, to I tried to have sex with you, she didn't know what to do, and she just downed the rest of her beer and pointed to the door with it. "Don't worry, McKendrick. I don't kill people for fun. I'm not that kind of lethal," she told him, chalking his discomfort up to that, more than to anything else. And she could have smoothed things over, but why? It wasn't like she could lure him into bed, and her last attempt at being more than just an agent's fling hadn't gone very well. She had Amanda to show for it, but she'd never really gotten over it, not really. "You can go, without me taking a shot at your back. And, god, don't fucking apologize for not sleeping with me. That just makes me sound even more pathetic. I'll hit you up if I hear anything about FBI names on the market, you keep being a pain in the ass in my general direction. I misinterpreted. No harm, no foul."
"I'm not apologizing for not sleeping with you, Max." He sounded just this side of pissed off when he said it. As a man who took almost nothing personally, Dylan wasn't all that familiar with getting offended. Did she even think that was something to apologize for? Was he all that sure that it wasn't? Where had this gone so fucking badly? Setting his beer down on the floor, Dylan straightened with resignation.
"You're not pathetic, Main. You're a fucking badass agent." He pulled out a splayed finger hand and began tucking the fingers away while making his points, because in all of their bullshit, he'd never actually told her. Honestly, he'd kind of just assumed that she knew, but upon reflection, Dylan registered that was a ridiculously male assumption. And so what if she knew it? If she was so-called throwing herself at him, she needed to hear it. Dylan's brain still survived in that basic high school time when most girls looked him over. "You're fucking smart. Even with the chair, you could kick my ass. I only skimmed your file and it read like an adventure game, okay? You've done more in a month than I've done in my entire career..." Kneeling down in front of her, he was sincere. "And even if you don't want to hear it, you're beautiful and feminine.. and I guess I think you deserve to be married to millionaires and not flirting with the computer kid playing in the basement.. you know?"
Max didn't mind this side of pissed off. She was more comfortable with anger than emotions. Alright, so anger was an emotion, but it wasn't the squishy kind. She listened to his ego-boosting speech, and she liked him more for it. She did. She'd been in the chair for over three months now, and no one treated her any differently, not on the outside. But she felt different. Her entire existence had been physical, and she'd never stopped moving long enough to let herself feel things, and this chair was driving her fucking insane, no matter how well she hid it with bad moods and crankiness. She had to smile at the end of his speech, and a laugh came immediately after. "You're not a kid, McKendrick." She paused, sighed. "But you are kind of sweet. Get out of here. It's not too late to salvage your night," she said honestly. And maybe that was part of the problem here, with her; for someone whose entire worth was in her physical skill, then what was left when that was gone? Not much, and she felt pretty fucking worthless these days - as an agent, as a mother, as a woman. It wasn't McKendrick's fault; he was just the closest target when she finally broke down and let herself have a few beers.
Yeah, he wasn't a kid. It did nothing to erase the illusionary lack of maturity that he felt most days of his life. It didn't get to him, but not many things did. The way she sighed kind of did though. "You want me to leave?" He was asking her honestly. It was the kind of tone that said he wasn't sure of what or who to believe on a good day, and he sure as hell felt like a bucket of quicksand right now in this moment. Why did he always do this? Always getting himself into situations that he wasn't charming enough to talk his way out of.
"Is that what you want? I will." He wasn't too buzzed to drive.
"No," she said honestly, booze and pills. "I want you to be straight with me." Which was more honesty than she would have ever given him if she hadn't been drinking. "I usually hang around men than don't know how to be subtle, and that don't know what a video game is, McKendrick. You're a new breed for me, and I can't read you." She shrugged, and then she laughed, a drunken, husky laugh. "I can't tell if you want a faghag, a fuck, or something in between. So, help me out, FBI."
"It's got to be one of the three?" He said it with joking, that kind of shit came easier when the alcohol did its job. He was always something of a joker, but it was easier when he wasn't quite himself. Maybe the alcohol just watered down his blood, took away all of that seriousness, all of that bourgeois bullshit, everything that came from being the famous ones' son. The product of money and art, who had no real interest in either.
Then it was time to get serious, and he sighed while looking at her. "I like you, okay? I don't want to just fuck you, because I've read on you, I know you.. if I do that it's probably over." He closed his eyes after saying it because that was completely not how he meant for it to sound. God, he was an asshole. "That's not what I meant.. it's just, you know what I mean."
She liked the joking. If it was up to her, there would be joking whenever life got too real, too awkward, too close to involving feelings. "I can come up with some other options, but I'm not sure you'd like them," she said, slur in her voice, and a smile on her lips. But she'd been honest, too; he was like some foreign creature at a zoo too her. He wasn't military, and he wasn't even Corvus' brand of tears, or that over-the-top emotionality that she'd gotten used to over the years. And maybe it just came of only sleeping with agents, and never doing pillow talk or the morning after, but Max had no clue what to do with members of the opposite sex now. Her fallback wasn't an option and, with him, even the offer of sex had fallen flat.
She wasn't expecting his next statement, though, even drunk. She quirked a brow. "My file says I don't make it past one-night stands, huh? Thorough." She wasn't offended. She'd spent her entire life earning a spot as one of the boys; fucking like them had always been a badge of honor. Feminine women, nice women, they didn't do that. "I can't put out for you anyway, McKendrick. Not these days." Maybe she could, but it would be awkward to try; Max hated awkward - it made her feel vulnerable. "What does my file say about my kid's father?" she asked, because she was curious, and because she wanted to know how far he'd dug.
When she asked if her file included things like sexual activity, Dylan just gave her a look. It was kind of wincing, like he didn't want to actually admit that, and kind of guilty because he wasn't confirming it. "Not in so many words.. but the psych profile was pretty in depth." He'd intended to avoid mentioning the psych profile because it seemed like a betrayal of the worst kind to poke around inside somebody's head without their permission, but alcohol made the truth come out. To his credit, he hadn't completely forgot about the gun under her leg, and maybe that's why he was so close. Not an intention to get pistol whipped, but to disengage her if she flipped her switch like a postal worker. Internally, he kind of laughed to himself at the idea. He'd read enough on her to know that she was as cool as they came, but the idea was still amusing.. Getting shot at shouldn't have been an entertaining idea, and he wondered if that had changed for him before he'd come over, or after.
He didn't say anything toward her comment on putting out, as if even acknowledging it would be insulting to her. For a moment, he didn't say anything about the father either, but it made sense for her to ask. Dylan was accomplished, but he wasn't deluded by all the gold stars on his entrance exams. He wasn't the only one capable of these things. "There's some mention of him, but nothing I couldn't have found without the file." He hesitated before asking, but ultimately knew that it had to be why she mentioned it at all. "Are you worried about anybody going after him? Your family could be put under protective detail, Max." And there it was again, that inherent boy scout trust of the system.
The mention of her pysch profile made her snort. Unladylike, ungraceful, uncaring, and she needed a fresh beer. She reached for one, but the world was too blurred for her to pop this one open, and she handed it out to him instead, waiting for him to do the honors. "I failed my psych when I was seventeen," she admitted, more open for being drunk and painkiller-dulled. "I failed again at eighteen. The General took care of it," she explained, the airquotes almost audible. She grinned, and she let her weight rest more securely against the back of the hated chair. "So, my psych profile told you I sleep around, don't commit, and don't stick around for coffee in the morning. It's right. I meant to ask if it mentioned the one time I did," she clarified about Brandon, tipping back the fresh beer and regarding him. "It didn't work out very well." Understatement of the year, but there it was.
She wasn't worried about his nearness. She could get to the gun if she needed to, but she wasn't worrying about needing to. She wasn't worrying about much, actually, and she chugged the last bit of the fresh beer, knowing tomorrow would come with one hell of a headache. "I'm not worried about Brandon, McKendrick. Brandon walked into to Bangladesh with a cane and brought me home," she informed him, letting more slip than she should because of the pills. She pointed the empty at him. "It's not romantic. Don't think it is. He just doesn't want to ruin Manda's life with a dead mother that she never sees." Her expression went somber, went still. "Did you ever have anyone you stuck around and had coffee with?" she asked, voice going uncharacteristically soft for just a moment.
Dylan opened the beer with smooth instincts, picking up where she left off with the extension. His attention was all for her face, though, as she made brief mention of Bangladesh. There was a weird, banging guilt in the belltower of his chest. He should have fucking been there, she wouldn't have gotten hurt if he'd been there. Dylan didn't like feeling that things were out of control, that you couldn't just flip a switch or press reset and everything would be fine. Tetris on the level of highest difficulty had a similarly fucked up policy. It was unintentional, but he looked a little sad when she mentioned Brandon. More for the context than anything. "I'm sure that's not the only reason he saved you, Max. You don't give yourself enough credit." Nobody was that cold, were they? Dylan saved people every day that he didn't even know, but it said something to travel halfway around the world to rescue someone. He didn't want to push her on that topic, though. It was something that he was going to have to ease her into gradually, the awareness of how impressive she was.
"I'm not much of a coffee guy," he joked in a desperate attempt to lighten the mood. "More destined for red bull."
She gave him a look when he said he was sure that Amanda wasn't the only reason Brandon had gone to Bangladesh, but she didn't contradict him. He was right about it not being a good topic, and she wasn't going to sit there and argue with him about how much credit she deserved or didn't deserve. She wasn't that drunk, and she was still trying to hold onto the facade of strong agent with a heart of stone here, even if she was fairly sure she'd messed that up somewhere around beer three. "Look at you with the pep talks," she said instead, setting the empty aside and missing the nightstand, then watching as it rolled beneath the bed. There was a pang of something soft on her face, something vulnerable as she thought about the fact that she couldn't even retrieve the fucking beer bottle. But it was gone a second later, and she was smirking at him instead, eyes booze-pill tired. "Spoken like a true nerd. Get out of here, McKendrick. Find someone who can get you off," because she knew he would bristle at that. Even drunk, she'd realized he didn't like it when she was crass, defensive mechanism or not.
She rubbed the heel of her palm at her eye, trying to figure out how the fuck she was going to get herself into bed, as drunk as she was, and she realized she was too tired to care. "I need some hacks next week. Mind if I patch in?" And maybe that was her way of showing vulnerability without being vulnerable. Her can we do this again? And, hey, it was true; there was that.
That crude comment worked like a charm, and Dylan actually made a face before pushing himself to standing. She seemed to want him to leave, and he couldn't bring himself to consider a reason to stay. So after taking one last swig of his beer, Dylan set it down on the floor beside her chair with some finality when he turned for the door. Maybe he wasn't even going to say goodnight, but then she asked that last question about patching in.. and it was a strange thing to ask just then. He glanced at her while standing by the door, and there was nothing irritated or anxious in his expression when he grinned. The alcohol made it a little crooked, with a shallow good ol' boy dimple in the cheek. "Yeah, Main.. I'll be here when you got the time."