Participants:
| Scene Title | Could Have Just Asked |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Deckard gets caught trying to steal a Company car, lucky for him the man who caught him is an understanding one. |
| Date | June 4, 2010 |
It's cold, it's miserable and it's 4:50 AM military and standard time within the hallowed grounds of the Company's Camp Hero.
Dunes of snow are sloped low around an isolated parking lot, pre-dawn light painting drifts in unbroken swaths of grey and azure. There are no lights. No animals. No sound. Everything is perfect.
For MVT.
It's an index crime.
This Deckard recalls dully from the recesses of a memory or mind that isn't strictly his own. Or wasn't, once upon a time. He's a tall, lean presence in a long black coat and gloves partway through the process of manuevering a partially straightened wire coat hanger beneath the rubber buffer that joins door and window of an SUV crusted thick with ice. His breath furls hot with adrenaline urgency and his eyes stand out like brands in the semidark while he works, too blue to be human.
Theoretically this should have been quick. He can see the pin. It's the ice that's making his life difficult, here. Stiffening the rubber. Closing off the space. Cracking crisply in the quiet if he's not careful enough. Occasional applications of warm water he brought along can only do so much. The idea of trying to piss the door into submission is increasingly appealing.
It's too damn early for most people, but there is an older agent that doesn't do things such as sleeping in. When a person gets older, they sometimes develop this need to be up early. Though he isn't as old as he once was physically, mentally his still old.
Of course, it also help that he needs to head into town early for breakfast with some old friends and to stop by the house to see if it still stands.
The crunch of boots should be the first indication that someone is approaching Deckard, that snap of canvas fabric when a gust of wind blows by, but it's a familiar deep rumbling voice that should really give the impression that the jig is up.
"You know… you could simply just sign out a car?" There is actually a touch of amusement to the Assistant Director, as he steps along side the other Agent. Turning to rest a shoulder against the back car door, he reaches into a pant pocket and, with a soft jingle, a set of keys are held out on the crook of a finger.
"Couldn't have waiting a little bit long?" Ryans looks at his watch, keys jingling with the movement, "Mmm.. a half hour? Before trying to break out?" His mouth actually hitches up on one side, in a hint of a smile.
The less famous (and little loved) third cousin of Fight or Flight is Freeze. Probably because it has less dramatic climactic potential.
It's Deckard's adrenaline shock reaction of choice nonetheless. His breath catches and forms hard edges in his lungs; twitchwire muscle rigged across his back draws taut, lifting his scruffy head and squaring his shoulders. If he had a fuzzy little tail he would flick it; as things are, his eyeshine rings wild with light reflected from an unseen source. Both hands still wrapped around the coat hanger, he watches Ryans settle himself without hope of dignity or even decently plausible deniability, panic snarling around in a fanged tangle with reason just under the surface.
It feels like it's a long time before he lets his unholy eyes tick from Ryans' face to the keys offered at the crook of his finger. And he doesn't reach out to take them.
The silence is met with a faint amusement, the keys continue to dangle there for a long moment, before Ryans wraps his fingers around them and lets his hand drop. "You know Deckard. I don't know much about how you ended up here, but you act like a criminal who's been beaten a few too many times."
With a nudges of his shoulder against the black door frame, the Assistant Director straightens, "Don't worry, your not in any trouble. I'd be ready to commit grand theft auto if I felt caged here too." He leans near, and his arm stretches out to point at a little known camera, tucked away, even in the shadows it's not visible. His voice lowers as he adds, softly. "The guys in security called me." The keys are still griped in his hand so he set on the roof of the vehicle in front of the twitchy agent.
"I checked, your free to go off base… to get housing at Siann Hall." Ryans steps away giving the other man breathing room, so that he doesn't feel too crowded.
Ease of mind is painfully slow to thaw through the slope of tattood neck to flared coat collar to shoulder. Flint's capacity to trust is evidently a little on the thin side these days — gaunt, grizzled and worn down to the bone as the rest of him. Ryans' assessment is accurate, and caught for the first time in something that feels a lot like a lie, his quarry has no ready response.
Only more wary staring and a hint of further withdrawal or hardening defense at the label of criminal. If someone with an ulterior motive did send him here under false pretenses, they should have sent someone better at lying about them.
The first hint of movement around him beyond a hollow clench at his jaw is a subtle lean back from Ryans' lean forward. Then he turns his long profile enough to follow the point, breath hanging slow through air not quite dark enough to be black anymore. There indeed lies a camera in distant insectoid traces of electric blue and white, wiring and all.
"Okay," he says finally, voice hushed into the predawn chill and quiet. Ice crackles around the car. "Will this have to be in a report?"
The assistant director seems to think on that, before his head slowly starts to shake back and forth. "I see no reason, too." That smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. "I'll just tell them you lost the keys." A touch of humor colors Ryans' words.
"There is one thing I want you to know, Flint, before you go to where ever you feel you need to be." Benjamin tucks his good hand into the pocket of his pants, blue eyes shadowed under the brim of his fedora. "I am not here to make your life hell, believe it or not."
"I may be your boss, but I was just another agent for many many years before this." Ryans' head tips to the side, eyes narrowing, a hand makes a sweeping motion at the man and car. "So before you get a crazy idea like… stealing a car. Talk to me first. I'll see what I can do. If I can't…" Both shoulders lift slowly, there isn't much more he can do.
"My hands are a touch more tied then they use to be… but I'll try."
Is stealing a car crazy?
It hadn't really occured to Flint that it might be, which is probably symptomatic of an altogether larger and more pressing issue. He's eased back enough to look slightly unsettled by the classification of his actions as such anyway, pupils constricted into reptilian pinpoints against stark blue. Still sizing Ryans up from under the stoop of his brow. From keys to gesture to tipped head.
He's ultra-attentive and probably not actually hearing everything, the way sketchy people tend to get when grasping at straws. Escape straws.
But he nods anyway, assent punctuated by a rattling shiver and an uneven huff of involuntary breath. No hat. No scarf.
"Good." Ryans says firmly, his head giving a firm nod in return. "Now… go on git." The words sound weird coming from the older man, but he says them lightly. "Don't want you late for whatever date you have, not to mention I have to get into town as well." He tightens the ties of his duster, turning slightly. "Got to face the music."
His daughters will no doubt have a lot of choice words for their father, and there is no reason for him to keep them waiting. However… he has one or two more things to do.
"Have a good day agent."
Too close to freedom for slinking to be necessary, Deckard manages a low key kind of slither nonetheless, keeping close to the car door once he's unlocked it and jerked it opened against set ice. No confirmation of a date, but he does summon up a grateful look that's too tiredly earnest to read like an act.
Clap the door closes after him and his breath sifts thin into the cold, quiet leather interior, heat settings all cranked to full before he can fumble the key into the ignition with his left hand.
Maybe he will.