the_lawless (the_lawless) wrote in the_colony, @ 2010-04-02 00:27:00 |
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Entry tags: | ^ week 06, alice munroe, jared bivens, leo parker, | jared and leo |
Week Six - Sunday
Character: Leo Parker and Jared Bivens, with a cameo by Alice Munroe
Location: Siena Suites.
Summary: In the earliest hours of the morning, Leo gets to 'baby-sit' Jared while Alice leaves to assist Kathleen. Jared is horrified.
Rating: S for Swearz
Of all the things he'd had to do, of all the things Alice expected of him, this was by far the most mortifying. At least she'd let him put on pants first.
"Y'know, I could've slept through the whole thing and not even noticed you were gone," he whined as he followed her to the main building, where Leo was on guard duty. "It's not like I need to be bottle fed or something."
"I have no idea how long this'll take," Alice said, her voice on edge. Luc told her to eat something while she still had a chance, but it wasn't until she'd gone back to her suite that she'd realized Jared was alone. She had to be quick. "Would you rather watch the miracle of life in action? Because I'm more than happy to have you sit outside with the others."
Jared scowled in response, sulking along after her. When they neared the door, he finally said, "This guy better not be gun-happy as Jed."
Walker was sleeping soundly on the lobby couch beneath a pile of worn blankets, his back to the automatic sliding doors of the main building. Leo, on the other hand, was perched behind the front desk, his booted feet propped on the marble desktop and his shotgun cradled in his lap. He could see the muted forms of two figures approaching and almost immediately thought he recognized Alice. Whoever they were, they were coming in quickly, not sneaking around, so Leo only felt a little apprehensive.
As soon as he saw their faces in the light, he relaxed, and except for sitting up a little in the tall stool and squeezing his fingers against the cold barrel of the shotgun, he didn't move an inch. His eyes were steadfast on the teenager from the moment he came into sight, only wavering to Alice when he finally asked the inevitable. "What's going on? Did something happen?" He always expected the worse.
With one look, taking in the boots on the desk and shotgun in the lap, Jared felt his insides tense. The guy looked like some corrupt sheriff in an old western. "Fuckin' great," he muttered.
"Oh, relax," Alice said agitatedly, moving past the front desk and toward the back room to grab one of the boxes of cereal bars to take along with her. "Baby's on the way, so I've gotta go play coach," she directed to Leo. He nodded, briefly searching her eyes for some sort of secret 'hello and goodbye', before his attention shifted to Jared again.
Leo's drew his feet off the countertop and placed the gun there instead, leaning forward a little so his elbows would rest on his knees. "What," he asked, apparently unperturbed by the boy's initial reaction to seeing him. "You don't want to help?"
Jared knew the move was probably meant to intimidate him; what was worse was that it worked. His jaw tightened. "Yeah, 'cause I know so fuckin' much about havin' babies," he snapped.
Alice came back in on the tail-end of Jared's words, and aimed a disapproving glare at him. She stopped just next to Leo, holding three of the cereal bars loosely in her hands, one of which was open. When she was close enough, Leo breathed her in. She smelled like shampoo and granola.
Hardly caring that the teenager could see, she leaned up to brush a quick kiss to Leo's mouth. "Please don't kill each other while I'm gone," she said directly to Leo. "Wish me luck."
He was barely quick enough to return the brief kiss, though his fingers instinctively grazed against her hand, cereal bars and all. "No promises," he joked and glanced to Jared, ready to shoot him a glare if he dared to say anything about the exchange between he and Alice. "Good luck. And tell Kathleen I said good luck."
"I will," Alice said, quickly heading out at a trot once she had another bite of cereal bar between her teeth.
Jared only rolled his eyes at the kiss, trying not to scowl deeper as she left without even saying a word to him. Instead, he turned to Leo, staring at him with lazy contempt and not saying a word. Leo stared right back, though with less contempt.
"Don't pout," he said simply. "It's not like you gotta stay here forever."
Giving a snort, Jared shook his head. "Clearly you don't know anything about birth," he said, finally breaking eye contact to look around. Spotting a free chair, he pulled it over to the desk, setting himself up across from Leo. The older man couldn't help but smirk a little.
"You don't either," Leo said. "You just said so yourself, five seconds ago." He reached up and grabbed his shotgun, placing it back on his lap. Alice was looking after this kid, and she'd asked him to help out, but that didn't mean he had to trust him. "Quit bein' so pissy." Leo leaned back again. He could never decide if guard duty was boring or peaceful, but he already appreciated some company, even if the company didn't want to be there.
"I'll stop being pissy when people stop watching me like I'm some troublesome three-year-old," Jared said, pulling a slightly deformed packet of cigarettes from his pocket and tapping one out. "And what I know about birth is that it takes forever. Even you should have learned that in junior high biology."
Pulling out his bic, he lit up.
Leo glanced up at the small, inconspicuous sprinklers that were strategically placed around the lobby and wondered if cigarette would set them off. He had never smoked inside the building. Without warning, he reached across the desk and swiped the cig, taking a drag from it before he smothered the cherry on the cold marble surface between them. "You're gonna set off the alarms," he explained somewhat aggravatedly. "Get all our shit all wet. Then Alice'd kill us both."
For a while, all Jared could do was stare open-mouthed at the squished cigarette, his fingers still up as though it was held between them. Then his mouth closed with a clack. "You idiot, you could have told me to go outside," he snapped. He tried salvaging what he could of the practically-new cigarette. "You realize they aren't making these any more, right?"
With his eyes narrowing in self-defense, he brushed some of the loose tobacco in Jared's direction. Leo hadn't meant to crush the thing, just extinguish it, and now he felt a little bad. He knew, more than anybody, the value of a cigarette. "Calm down," he said indifferently, with an annoyed sigh. "Here," Leo produced his own dwindling pack and slid out a clean white new cigarette. "We'll trade."
He pushed the peace offering across the desk. "And I'm not an idiot," Leo added, his eyes lifting to meet with Jared's. His tone had suddenly gotten much darker, and his expression a lot less friendly, despite the cigarette exchange. The name calling, minutes after the little dig about junior high biology class, had hit apparently hit a nerve.
Jared paused in reaching for the cigarette, his eyes meeting Leo's long enough to make his heart do double-time. A glance at the shotgun didn't help any, and Jared quickly busied himself with trying to tuck Leo's cigarette into his pack. Knowing that Leo had such an easy soft spot was good information, but maybe not to be used just yet. Still, he didn't want the man to think he'd gotten to him.
"You always care that gun around, or is it just for Sundays?" he said, tucking the pack back into his pocket.
"You don't have a gun?" Leo asked, pressing Jared's broken cigarette between his own lips just for the sake of having it there. Now he wanted a smoke, too. There was something like surprise in the way he asked it, but something belittling as well. He knew Alice would never let him carry. At least, not any time soon.
Gritting his teeth, Jared's mouth twisted in a smile. "No. I don't have to compensate for anything."
Leo's brows drew together and he stared at Jared for a moment, silently, studying the cruelty in his smile before he rolled his shoulders in a disinterested shrug. This kid was after a fight, it seemed, and Leo wasn't going to give him one, just for the sake of being stubborn. Or so he told himself. But that had always been a problem with Leo; he'd let things go like they didn't bother him and then he'd suddenly snap.
"Neither do I," he said flatly. "Why you running your mouth like that? You scared of me?"
"No," Jared said, adding a snort for effect. There was some truth in that, though. Mostly, he was seeing how far Leo would let him go. "There's just nothing else for me to do. I should be in my own room, not sitting around with a fuckin' stupid babysitter."
The older man waved a hand toward the couch. "Fine. Go take a nap with the other little baby."
Jared's jaw tightened. "Fuck this shit," he snapped, getting up and going for the door. He didn't care what Alice wanted him to do, he was going back to his room. She could yell at him in the morning.
"Hey!" Leo shot out of his seat, leaving the shotgun on the desktop. He moved to stand between Jared and the door and prepared himself to stop the insolent teen, if only for long enough to make him listen for a minute. "Wait, now." Leo stood with one hand in the air like he was calming a wild horse. "Alice is doing you a solid, letting you stay with her. You leave here and you're just makin' shit harder for her. I ain't havin' that." His hand dropped to his side. "And I don't think that's what you want, either."
"I'm not going to go on a killing rampage or something," Jared said, scowling, though he did see Leo's point. "It's not like anyone would see me, anyway, they're all up with the baby."
"Someone'll find out," Leo said, studying Jared from a few feet away. He reminded him so much of himself, and he suddenly wanted to let him go ahead and leave. "Someone always does. And that'll mean her trustin' you just a little bit less because you can't bother to respect what she wants." Again, he was referring to Alice. His face grew a little tired looking and he let his eyes linger on Jared's for just a second, reading his expression, before he turned and walked back to the desk.
Jared's stomach felt like it was twisted in knots. Not from guilt, of course, it wasn't like he cared what Alice thought or something. Just, he couldn't take any risks, of upsetting her and letting things go south. And he felt stupid that it took this guy to remind him of that. Yeah, that explained the stomach twisting.
Dragging his feet, Jared slumped back into his chair, drumming a beat on the armrest. After a while, he finally spoke up. "So what do you do when you're on guard duty all night to keep from going crazy?"
Secretly enthused that Jared followed him back to the desk, Leo felt himself lightening up a bit. "I already am crazy," he attempted at a joke, and the corner of his mouth tilted in a half-smirk. "That's why it works out."
Jared knew it was supposed to be a joke but he didn't bother smiling. "So you just sit at the desk for eight hours?"
"Sometimes," he replied, his eyes lowering as he thought. "Sometimes I walk around the courtyard and around the inside of this building, but I can't go to far from Walker." With a subtle gesture of his hand, he motioned toward the boy asleep on the couch across the room, behind Jared. Leo wasn't sure what he'd do if something ever happened, and he had to leave Walker alone in here while he slept. He frowned slightly, worry lines creasing across his brow as he drifted off into thought.
That seemed to catch Jared's interest. He glanced around the room, then leaned forward to give the desk a closer look. "It's just this building, then? Something happens around the apartments, you wouldn't even know? Or do you got cameras or something?"
Leo quirked a brow, lifting his gaze to meet Jared's again, and a ghost of a grin briefly graced his features. "Not yet," he said. Now, though, he found himself cautious of what he said. "We're supposed to be figuring something out. Why?" He picked that mangled unlit cig from off the counter, where he'd all but spit it earlier when Jared tried to make a break for it. "You know much about cameras?"
Jared shrugged. "Not really. Not security cameras, at least. I used to avoid the parking lot ones at school to grab a cigarette, but that's about it." He expression almost softened into a smile at the memory.
"Yeah." Leo's own expression very similar to the teen's. "I know all about how to not get seen by cameras, and how to disable 'em, but I don't know the first thing about making 'em work."
That got an eyebrow raise, but not a disapproving one. "I thought you were all Mr. Lawman. What were you doing disabling cameras?"
"What made you think I was Mr. Lawman?" Leo asked, avoiding Jared's question. He appeared bewildered, and had come very close to laughing.
"I dunno, way you looked when I got in. Like you were in charge. And you're on guard duty, what's more lawman than that these days?" Jared pointed out. "You looked like Jed, and he sure thinks he's some tough shit lawman."
"Just because I have a gun doesn't mean I look like Jed," he pointed out. "And even if I did, Jed's a good guy. Just lookin' out for everybody. There isn't anything wrong with that." But now Jared had Leo thinking. He'd spent half his life behind bars for breaking society's rules and now he was there to enforce them.
Any relaxation and friendliness that had crept into his posture tensed right back out again, Jared's mouth twisting into a scowl. "Yeah, well your definition of 'good guy' is a bit broader than mine, 'cause I don't include people who threaten to kill you without letting you say a word in defense," he said. "I know how people work in this kind of situation. Alice leads 'cause she cares about people. Jed just gets off on having power."
Leo considered Jed a moment, thinking back on his own power-crazy phases. He'd been a bully in school and the devil himself after the world ended. Jed didn't strike him as the brutal type. He shrugged and his eyes moved toward the windows so he could watch for movement outside. "Well, what'd you do?" he asked. "To piss him off so bad?" Leo had heard the story, but it was in bits and pieces, from a handful of different people.
Jared glanced at Leo, his eyes quickly darting away. Surely Leo knew some of the story; so it was actually kind of nice that he wanted to get Jared's version. He worked his jaw, trying to figure out what to tell. "I was on a beer run with a couple of guys. There was this group - gang, I guess. I mean, you had to stick with anyone you could to survive," he said defensively. "And at the store, we saw this kid - Jack - and a few things happened, and then I was holding her arm while another guy beat her up. I didn't hit her." His voice was firm. "I know I didn't do the right thing, but I didn't hit her. When I went to the meet-up, though, it didn't matter. Jack was yelling that I hit her, and Jed had me by the throat and he wanted to take me out back and shoot me, but Alice stopped him."
He ended, taking a deep breath. He realized his hands had clenched in his lap and he quickly relaxed them. "And that's it, I guess."
The older man listened to Jared's explanation with interest and quiet, his gaze settled on the windows so that Jared might feel more comfortable talking. He wondered if this was what the shrinks at the prison felt like, but he hoped not, because Leo didn't like what he felt; Uncomfortable was the only word to describe it. Leo liked Jack just fine and wasn't too happy to hear the story again, or to picture her in the hands of stupid teenage boys. "Jed's like a father to her," he explained. "If I thought you'd done those things to Walker over there," Leo's expression soured by the very idea of it. "I'd have done the same thing." Or worse, he thought.
"But you can't let one stupid mistake in your life define you, kid. It'll ruin you." Leo said that last part with earnest emotion.
"I don't want it to, but no one's letting me be anything else!" Jared's voice was a lot louder than he'd meant it to be. "Everyone here's got an opinion about me, even if they haven't met me, and it's not like I can even go around and tell anybody different because Alice has me on a leash the whole fucking time."
He stopped a moment, taking a couple breaths. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter. "This whole thing was supposed to be easy, and would've been if Jack wasn't here. If she wasn't here, it might as well have not even happened."
"Nothin's easy anymore," Leo admitted and casually shrugged his shoulders again. "And it's only going to get worse." He thought a little while and then added. "You're lucky Alice saw past what you did; that's all I know."
Jared shook his head, sitting back. "You've got no idea how lucky," he said seriously. Then he tried to shrug it off. "But way to be an optimist. What were you before, a coach? Motivational speaker?"
"What were you?" he asked. "A professional smart-ass?" This time, though, Leo didn't sound put out. This time, it almost sounded like a compliment. With a lingering smirk on his lips, he pulled open the thin drawer on his side of the desk and fished out a worn deck of playing cards. Solitaire may have been an old lady's card game, but Leo played it religiously.
Snapping the rubber band from around it, he shuffled them once and glanced up at Jared. "You know how to play anything?"
"Sticks, spoons, hearts; you name it, my mom made us suffer through a few rounds of it on family game night." For a moment, it was as if his mind had hit a ditch. Mom. How long had it been since he'd said that word? He quickly recovered, flashing a grin. "Anything's good, though. Hell, if it's easy enough that you can play it, I'll have no problem."
Leo noticed the small stumble in Jared's tone and body language, but he didn't dare make mention of it. "Fuck off," he quipped, his face as straight as ever as started dealing the cards back and forth.
Jared gave a snort, grinning. "So, what's the game?" he said, his hand hovering to pick the cards up. Leo thought on it a moment, still dividing his cards.
"Let's play hearts," he finally decided. It'd been ages since he'd played that game. Hell, it'd been ages since he'd played cards with anyone other than himself. Once, he tried to teach Walker how to play Go Fish, but the kid kept getting confused and frustrated and even started crying. Leo glanced up, over Jared's shoulder, to check on the little boy again. "But you might have to refresh my memory."