Sweetcakes

Participants:

aviators2_icon.gif raith_icon.gif

Scene Title Sweetcakes
Synopsis Aviators hates Raith so much.
Date January 18, 2010

USS George Washington


Every creak of the ship's hull could be a gun's hammer clicking back.

Every shadow could be a silhouette in just the right light.

Every footstep behind him coule be his.

Every noise could be the last one he hears.

Hurriedly stalking down the narrow corridors of the USS George Washington, the noise of hard and purposeful footfalls announce the arrival of a sunglasses-wearing CIA operative with an anxiety issue. Hands tucked into the pockets of his slacks, shoulders hunched and dark sunglasses shielding his eyes, the man known as Aviators hasn't had a moment of comfortable rest for the last twenty-four hours, because in that time, Jensen Raith seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.

The number of people who frighten Aviators can be counted on one hand, and three of them are his former CIA compatriots from Afghanistan; the Queen of Cups, the King of Swords, and the Queen of Wands. Only one of those three, at this very moment, are the source of his very pointed paranoia, because if there is one place Aviators has learned never to be, it is at the mercy of the King of Swords; Jensen Raith. Right now, that is exactly where he is.

When he stops storming down the hall, a quick and nervous glance is shot to a shadowed corner at the end of the hall. His one good eye remains fixed on that, and his blind periphery is afforded to the door at his side. Creaking down the hatch handle, Aviators leans his weight against the door to Jensen's rack in the carrier, then swings the door open and reaches inside of his jacket, withdrawing his Walther from the under-arm holster.

This has to be a trap— an ambush— he's searched the whole ship and this is the last place he could be.

When the door swings open, Aviators is not confronted with a rigged up shotgun, or shotshells and thumb tacks taped to the door (an old favorite of Raith's), a direction mine, punji stakes, or even a face full of down feathers. Rather, he is confronted by someone sitting down on the rack, calmly reading a newspaper. A moment passes before there is any movement, Jensen Raith's face curiously peeking around the right edge of an old copy of the New York Times to see what all the fuss is.

Without so much as a word, he calmly closes the paper, folds it in half along its crease, and then into thirds before laying it, and his hands, in his lap and looking at Aviators almost, expectantly, as if he'd been waiting for him to show up with some message or another.

"Yes?"

Gasping out a breath of disbelief that comes with a shot of spittle down his bottom lip, Aviators jerks his head around, searching the room as he steps in, gun still leveled at Raith. A few huffed breaths of confusion come later, a look angled to the open door, then another shake of his head in disbelief. "You— how long have— " Aviators' brows twitch alternatingly up and down, and with a shaky motion of his arms he lowers his gun but doesn't bother to do anything except let it hang at his side in slack grip.

"You're a sick fuck." Comes Aviators immediate response, a few stumbling footfalls taking him back far enough to slouch against the opposite wall from Raith's bunk. "What— the fuck do you want from me, Jensen?" Lifting his gun up, Aviators scratches at his temple with the barrel of his Walther. "Seriously. Just— what the fuck do you want…"

"Mon ami, take it easy, huh?" Raith says, far too casual to be pleading with a man on the edge, "You're getting yourself all worked up over little things."

"We're friends, you and me, aren't we? I don't have a gun." Indeed, he doesn't. Raith is, perhaps conspicuously, unarmed. "So why not put yours away? We'll talk this out like civilized men. We'll have to pretend we have the beer, but we can still be civilized, can't we? Now, come on, work with me. No guns, okay? We're civilized men now."

Silence is Aviators' answer to Raith's question. He stares languidly down at the floor, barrel of his gun still scratching at tge gray hairs at his temple. After a moment, he murmurs a curse under his breath and just slides the pistol back in his unde-rarm holster inside of his jacket. One tired sigh later, and he's lifting his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose, fingers covering his eyes as he rubs at one of them, and then lowers the sunglasses back down.

"You're the one who said he wanted to— fucking talk to me and then disappears for a goddamned day." The irritation in Aviators' tone is a simple sign that he's breaking just a little around the edges. A moment later his wristwatch is beeping, and Aviators swallows noisily, fingers fumbling for his pants pocket as he pulls out an orange pill bottle, contents inside rattling around. The cap is unscrewed, top rolled off, and he's popping two greenish capsules into his mouth to choke down dryly.

"Honestly," Aviators rasps out after the swalow, "the fuck do you want from me?"

"I think the better question," Raith begins, "Is, 'the fuck you want from me?' Because really, that's what all this boils down to, doesn't it? Why we're here."

"So, tell me." The man who isn't wearing sunglasses indoors leans forward conspiratorially, resting his elbows on his knees and his head on his hands, face partially hidden behind steepled fingers. "Why are we here? Why am I here?"

Snorting like he's got something stuck up his nose, Aviators waves one hand in a flailing gesture through the air. "You're here because you're a lunatic." Says the man with one eye and apparently a pill problem. "You're here because you were a part of the problem and frankly I don't know why they haven't put a bag over your head and flung you into the goddamned ocean yet!" Rolling his tongue over the inside of his cheek, Aviators puts the rattling bottle of pills back into his pocket with a shaky hand.

"You'n your cell mates are going to get a goddamned parole that you don't deserve, because that dead serial killer apparently bargained one out for you and Kershner listened to him." That was awfully charitable of Sylar. "You played ball, and you played by the rules. You're still here because you haven't gotten your walking papers yet, and I figure," Aviators promptly wipes off his forehead with a swipe of one hand, "because it amuses you."

Raith raises his head up from his hands, opening his mouth and raising his eyebrows as if to say 'Ahhh,' but there are no words or sounds to accompany the gesture. There aren't until his face returns to a more normal shape. "Seems to me that you've got a real problem on your hands, buddy boy," he says a little too happily. "Sarisa Kershner, rogue agent. That'd make a great book title if you ask me, but it's a lot less fun when applied to a situation like this. Fact of the matter is this. Something happened to you. We used to be pals, you and me." A pointing finger bounces back and forth between them several times to emphasize this. "Suicide Kings. You never used to have problems with how I did things. So why now? What's it matter to you if I bum around New York, throwing bullets into people who deserve what's coming to them? I'm doing the country a favor, so why's it a problem?"

"I don't give a shit what you do." Aviators spits out with a frustrated tone of voice. "Otherwise I would've put one in you at the building in new York when you and your buddies were rolling people up in carpets." Stroking a hand over his mouth, Aviators leans up from the wall, looking to the door he'd come in from, grabbing it by the edge and creaking it closed part of the way. "The way I see it, is that you become my problem when you become a problem for my superiors."

Angling a look back to Raith, Aviators' lips downturn into a visible frown. "When you and your buddies go and do something off the grid, and it gets noticed, then it suddenly might become my problem. I don't want to give a shit about what you do, but Kershner's my boss, and when she goes on a warpath I'm going to step the fuck out of her way and let her swing a stick at whatever the problem is. Unless she makes that problem mine, like she has for the lot of you."

"Then explain to me why, if she's given us a free pass, we're still your problem," Raith replies. He sits in stark contrast to Aviators, calm and cool as opposed to unfocused and frazzled. And popping pills. Raith has yet to start doing that. "Way I see it, once we all set foot off this ship, we're NYPD's problem. A domestic problem."

"Do I look dumb to you, Jensen?" Aviators is likely squinting behind the lenses of his glasses. "Do I look like I have dumb fuck written across my goddamned forehead?" Pacing around the room like a caged tiger, Aviators lets one hand wave flippantly in the air as he speaks. "I know just as well as you do that the moment you're back in NYC your free pass isn't going to mean shit and you're going to be back to your vigilante nonsense. You won't come back to the CIA, and frankly I doubt anyone in the agency would trust you anyway."

Rolling his tongue on the inside of his cheek, Aviators takes that moment to consider his next tangent to run off on. "You guys become my problem, because guess who gets to be Ruskin's parole officer?" One dark brow lifts up slowly. "Part of her arrangement with the feds, was never being around any of you," he does the same gesture back and forth between himself and Raith that Raith had done, "ever again. I get to make sure she plays straight."

Now content to use his tongue to pick at a piece of carrot stuck between his teeth, Aviators stares at Jensen for a silent moment. "You get to become Homeland Security's problem. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to be watching."

"Oh really?" Raith asks jovially, planting one elbow on his knee and resting his chin in his hand. "My, my, isn't that fascinating? You made it! Back home for good, and we can continue our little game of cat-and-mouse for a loooooong time to come. Just like we always hoped for." With a grin, Raith nods his head without ever lifting it up from his hand. The result is suitably goofy-looking.

"Ah." Aviators lobs out with dry delivery, shoulders slouching and one hand coming to wipe over his forehead again. "You wanted to gloat." Mouth hanging open, the weary looking CIA agent turns his shoulders and takes a few tired steps towards the door. "One've these days, Jensen, all this shit's going to come back on you. What happened to us in Afghanistan, the Queen of Wands, all that shit. It's gonna' drop down on you like a fuckin' sack of bricks…"

Taking a few more uneasy steps to the door of the bunk, Aviators reaches out and pulls it open with a noisy metal creak. "I just hope to fuck I'm there when it does…" he adds with a derisive snort, stepping thorugh the doorway and leaving the door hanging wide open as he does. "Goodnight, Jensen."

"Good night."

"Sweetcakes."


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