Entry tags:

red hood, rose red

Who: Jack and Max (Dual Narrative)
What: Max discovers unconscious Jack under he stupidly drinks the thing he was not supposed to.
Where: Jack's room at the Dead CIA house.
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: None



Jack shouldn’t have tasted the scotch.

He knew better. He definitely knew better. He’d even told Luke how suspect it seemed, these fabulously expensive presents and a bottle that might as well have been labeled ‘drink me’. Perhaps it was the lack of specificity. The guitar was specific to him, to his love of music and the old pawn shop guitar he’d carried with him everywhere he’d been, through all his travels and itinerant living. The book was specific too - his own copy of La Fleurs du Mal had gone to Luke, the one he’d gotten as a teenager, and this insanely valuable first edition was a more than worthy replacement.

He liked scotch fine, but he had never been much of a drinker and that made it seem strange between the other two gifts. Specific, specific, and then equally expensive but more vague.

It was obviously an expensive brand, you didn’t need to know much about scotch to know that.Maybe it was just a symptom of brushing close to (and sometimes through) death, but he was suspicious.

Late in the evening a few days after Valentine’s, he leaned back and dropped his book to the desk, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. All this waiting for something to happen was starting to get to him. Jason spent all his time through the door running away from Damian’s death, but when Jack was out there wasn’t much to do but wait for catastrophe or marching orders.

The bottle of scotch was on top of the dresser, the glass decanter glittering in the low light. He looked at it for a moment, then pushed back, standing up. He could smell it, at least. Just to see.

He carefully removed the top and sniffed at the contents of the bottle. The odor of alcohol peaty and whip sharp, hit his nose immediately. It was pleasant, though, and warm, rich and complex. He tilted the decanter away, looking at the label again. A small batch place. He’d looked them up as soon as his gifts arrived.

He stood looking at the bottle. It was beyond suspect, really. The bottle might as well have had ‘drink me’ tied to it by a ribbon, or been sitting in the center of a rope snare. All the same, though, looking at the of brassy, glittering liquid under the light, he made a decision.

He set the bottle down and fetched a glass from beside his bed, setting the top of the decanter on the desk. What good was living if he didn’t do something foolish every once in a while? How much harm could a taste do? He ignored the rather loud protests of his better sense, possessed of a sudden determination. Deciding to try it was at least a decision, one not made out of apathy or fear but of curiosity and desire in the face of risk. There was a vague thrill to it.

He didn’t have much, anymore. Old outlets were now denied to him, and the rush of battle and righteous fury were behind him in the distant past. Taking a risk in the face of all the death that had surrounded him once seemed so very small and silly in comparison. It was just a taste of scotch. Against those memories, how could it possibly measure in threat?

He poured just a half an inch and took a small sip before he could think again about it. It was heady, floral and herbal and intense, and it burned a little in his throat. It reminded him what he liked about scotch.

He began to check himself for effects. Anything? Any foaming at the mouth, any seizing? But he only just got through that last thought, only just began to feel the rush of satisfied surety that nothing was wrong, when his legs gave out from under him. He blacked out almost immediately as the toxin hit his system, and was unconscious in a few seconds more. Out like a light, and down with a heavy hit to the floor, and the shattering of glass.

---

Max didn't make a point of visiting Corvus, not these days.

She'd had a bad few months, and she was low, and she stayed away out of a concern that she'd do the weak thing and get him into bed, all in order to make herself feel better. For all of Corvus' morals, Max knew it wouldn't be hard to get him from the door to the mattress. Unlike McKendrick, she wouldn't need to shoot in his door to get in. He might flounder - Corvus always floundered in the face of blatant sex and a bossy woman - but he would cave. And that kept Max away, even after Corvus invited her for this beer and that beer.

But she wasn't immune to things, and the building pile of emotions was starting to get to her. Her career was gone. Everything she'd worked for all of her life was gone. She had no clue when she would see her daughter again. And her father, the General, the man that everyone she talked to now despised and hated, she still loved him more than she'd loved any man in her life. Her father had been her world, and now she was dead to him, and there was nothing she could do to right it. Even if she capitulated and told him she was alive, confronting him about Lin had ended everything there; it would never be the same. And all for what? For Lin to ignore her? For Ella to tell her she represented a man that everyone hated? Even that recluse in the tower had said the same thing, and at thirty she felt like she'd lost everything.

But she'd kept trying. She'd kept trying. And then Valentine's Day had come, and she was so angry that she wanted to find a shooting range and put so many bullets in the world that no one could see anything solid for all the holes. She'd tried, she'd really tried to do something nice for her sister, but Ella's choice of friends just weren't anything like anyone she knew or cared to know. She was blunt, and she was direct, and she could wage a war if she needed to, but she wasn't like them. And Max knew she needed to cut ties there too, or else she and Ella would end up at war again. She couldn't handle another war.

She felt tired, and she felt old. She felt it in her bones, and she felt it in an already thin frame that became thinner with every passing day in the safehouse. This wasn't living. And McKendrick, McKendrick was just part of it. He was another Brandon, another man she'd made an ass out of herself over, another man who'd gotten tired and checked out. She'd left the ball in his court, and she hadn't heard anything yet, and she felt like the worst kind of idiot.

It was a familiar sensation.

And maybe all that led her to Corvus' door for a beer. No sex, just a beer - or at least that was what she told herself. Because it had been seven long years, and she could at least get drunk, have a smoke and want to shoot the world, and he wouldn't think less of her for it. With Corvus, there wasn't any need to impress. He knew what it was to be tired. He'd known that all those years ago in Seattle; she just hadn't recognized it, not until she saw it in herself all these years later.

She knocked once. Twice. And then she frowned and turned the knob.