Who: Bishop Coldiron and Jane Rusten. Where: Capitol Building, Capitol District. What: Bishop helps Jane make a decision she's been struggling with. Amazingly, she lets him. When: (Backdated) 4/2/2020, morning.
And now the tables turn, it's over And with my fingers burned I start anew And now I've come back down, I'm older I look for something else to hold on to...
Every time Bishop walked the halls of the Capitol -- no matter how many times he had done it by now -- there was always a part of him that was waiting for someone to snap a pair of cuffs around his wrists and haul his ass down to the police department. He wouldn’t say it made him twitchy, but there was always a heightened sense of caution thrumming just underneath his skin as he maneuvered through marble hallways. Today was no different, Bishop was on alert -- which meant he saw officer Rusten before she saw him.
It also meant he didn’t miss the glower marring her features -- a glower Bishop was usually used to seeing directed towards him, yet the tall blonde hadn’t even noticed his existence yet. A part of him wanted to slip out of her vicinity without being noticed, but a larger part of him -- the part that knew Hazel would be disappointed in him if he mentioned seeing Jane and not saying hi -- told him he should approach her. Shoving the paperwork -- zombie hunter paperwork he had filled out after arguing his case to take part in the program -- he had come to drop off up underneath his arm, Bishop strode towards the sergeant.
“Rusten,” Bishop called out long before he was anywhere near her. He would say it was because he wanted to give her a heads up, when in reality he wanted to give her a chance to escape interaction with him if she so felt like it. “Bet I’m the last face you wanted to see around here.” He tacked on good naturedly. Their interactions had become less hostile over the months, but it would be a long stretch to say they were friends...maybe friendly with each other at best.
Most days, Jane could happily spend her entire allotted work shift in the bullpen and shoot the shit until the cows came home. Today, however, Jane needed to get away from the burnt coffee smell and her testosterone filled jerkoff coworkers before she punched someone in the throat. She’d taken a short walk around the Capitol hallways, thinking that the exertion might dislodge the stubborn resentment and frustration she’d been harboring since she got word from the zombie hunter program the day before.
It didn’t.
Worse, Jane seemed unable to stop torturing herself with the rejection. She stopped in some random atrium and pulled out her phone to read the message she’d received the day before for the upteenth time, seeing red beyond red when she heard a familiar voice call to her. She was on her coffee break, who the fuck was bothering her?
Jane instinctively turned to the sound of her name and growled under her breath when she saw the annoyingly familiar shape of Bode Coldiron. As if her day could get any goddamn worse. Yeah, they had managed to have a civil conversation or two and okay sure Bunny seemed to love him a lot or whatever but that didn’t mean they were going to be buddy buddy, especially when Jane was so effing steamed as it was.
“Unless you’re here to turn yourself in for crimes against hair fashion or whatever,” Jane grumbled, gesturing vaguely to his distinctive coiffure. Talking shit on his hair was, maybe, a low blow and a somewhat easy and well-worn target but Jane hadn’t the energy or heart to be clever. “Then yeah, it’s not a great time, Coldiron.”
“Crimes against hair fashion?” Bishop quirked an eyebrow and fought down a smirk. Least he knew some things could always be counted on, like Rusten’s cracks about his hair. “Point me in the direction of the hair police and I’ll explain to ‘em how this ain’t the worst thing out there.” He continued. “And I’ll tell ‘em who sent me there to bother ‘em in the first place.” Bishop had heard her mention it wasn’t a good time and he intended to leave after he was done speaking. He and Rusten might not have been friends, but he wasn’t about to irritate her just for the sake of irritating her -- especially not when she already seemed bothered by something as it was.
Even though Jane was irked by Coldiron’s presence, she couldn’t help but wonder why he had voluntarily come to the Capitol during a day they didn’t have a council meeting.
“What’s with the papers?”
Bishop’s gaze dropped to the paperwork in his hands and then lifted back up to meet Jane’s. “Mostly it’s just shit saying I ain’t about to hold the government responsible if I get bit doing their zombie hunting shit and it turns out I ain’t immune.” That was the quickest and simplest reply to her question. The paperwork was worded differently of course, pages and pages of legal jargon and all that jazz, but what it boiled down to was that they didn’t want to be held liable for his death if he was bitten and happened to be one of the unlucky ones.
“Reckon their lawyers want to make sure their asses are covered since I wasn’t ‘bout to take no for an answer in participating in their hunt,” Bishop tacked on with a chuckle. “Either that or they were hoping I’d see all this paperwork and change my mind.”
Jane stared at Coldiron for a long moment. She had sort of assumed that he’d been proven immune a long time ago, what with all the dumb ass antics the Hellhounds had been notorious for. The fact that he’d volunteered to the program despite not knowing his immunity status, and therefore in the same boat as Jane, was not surprising exactly so much as it was frustrating and aggravating as shit. Why hadn’t she thought to argue with the decision? Why had she just bent over and took their verdict as gospel? Why had Bode Coldiron had the idea and gumption to say “fuck your opinion” to the powers that be and not her?
“Well shit,” Jane exhaled, raking a hand through her long blond hair. Her posturing seemed to deflate slightly as she let out a long, weary sigh. “I thought they would have given me the thumbs up, since I’ve been busting my ass for this city and taking down shufflers for years, but nah. I got the big old ‘fuck you’ too.”
“And you took it?” Bishop questioned, surprise evident in his tone. Rusten didn’t strike him as the sort of woman who took ‘no’ for an answer, but she was also a cop, so maybe she was used to accepting orders -- even if she didn’t agree with them. She made a valid point, they should have let her onto the task force for the simply fact she had already proven herself, but Bishop kept that opinion to himself -- no point in repeating what she already felt.
Jane glowered at him. “Well I’m fucking regretting that now, aren’t I?”
She considered large the stack of papers in Coldiron’s hand. As much as Jane hated the administrative side of things, it it meant clearing her for duty, she’d fill that shit out in a heartbeat.
“So, you just went up to task force office, flipped them the double bird, and they just handed you these forms and said ‘what the fuck ever, it’s your funeral?’’
Bishop chuckled. “Not exactly,” he started. It hadn’t been quite as dramatic as that. “More like I went to their office and plead my case, told ‘em that I was going to be out on those streets anyway, like I have been since this fucking outbreak happened, so I might as well be doing it under their supervision and shit. Reckon they couldn’t argue with my logic, that or they just ain’t up for turning it into a true argument,” Either way Bishop had gotten his way and he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. “They just handed me a stack of legal paper and that was that.”
A thought struck Jane oddly and she couldn’t help but blurt out, “What did Bunny have to say about all this?”
“I can’t say Hazel’s jumping for joy ‘bout this decision,” Bishop admitted. “But she understands it’s something I feel like I got to do, plus, it ain’t like I’ve lived a quiet life before now,” he smirked. “I’ve been pulling stupid shit since before my feet ever landed in Austin, if anyone knows that it’s Hazel. Reckon she thinks my guardian angel works over time.” He couldn’t help the smile that appeared as he talked about her, his love for her obvious. “If anything having her and my boys just means I’ll fight harder not to get my ass chomped on by a shuffler.”
Jane’s eyes just about rolled out of her fucking skull when Coldiron talked about ‘pulling stupid shit in Austin’ but, to her credit, didn’t interrupt to educate him to her opinion on that matter.
“Maybe your ass getting chomped on was my plan all along,” Jane said, the barest hint of amusement in her voice. “I saunter in, sweep Bunny off her feet, raise those cute boys as my own. Pretty sure I’m blond enough to pass them off as mine.”
Jane couldn’t help the rare smirk that flashed across her face at the joke.
“Reckon you probably are blonde enough,” Bishop replied with a quirk of his mouth that gave away the fact that he was more amused than any else by Jane’s words. “Rusten, If I do get my ass chomped on and that’s one hell of an if, I reckon you’d take real good care of ‘em,” They might be at odds most of the time, but Bishop could admit there were worse fates his family could end up with than spending the rest of their lives with Rusten filling in his role. “Taking over the MC’s might be a bit harder.” Bishop tacked on with a smirk. In reality if something happened to him Vic would take over, but he couldn’t help seeing if he could get a rise out of Rusten just then.
Jane rolled her eyes but her mouth still harbored a ghost of a smile. Her eyes drifted back down to the stack of papers in his hand and Jane rubbed her mouth before speaking again.
“You got a pen? Might as well go over there before my break ends and get my own fuck ton of forms so I can be as big an idiot as you and shoot shufflers for the greater good or whatever.”
The smirk was still in place as Bishop reached into a pocket and pulled out a pen. “Matter of fact I do got one,” he held it out to Jane. “Welcome to the idiot brigade.” Bishop added, inwardly pleased to see that Rusten was the sort of person he had always pegged her for, which was to say she wasn’t the type to take ‘no’ for an answer.
Jane accepted the writing implement, stuck it in her breast pocket, and spun on her heel to leave. Feeling slightly awkward and strangely beholden, she stopped and faced Coldiron.
“Thanks. For the, uh...pen.” It was as close as Jane could get to thanking him for sort of kicking her in the ass and steering her in the right direction in terms of the zombie hunting program. With a nod, she took her leave of him. Those waivers weren’t going to sign themselves.