Participants:
| Scene Title | Ships Passing |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | After an increasingly hectic spring rolling into an even worse kickoff to summer, Aman and Isaac have been little more than ships passing in the night. They finally find an impromptu moment to catch up on what's been happening and what's about to unfold. |
| Date | July 6, 2021 |
Aman's Townhome
Another day down the drain.
Aman tosses his keys in a dish by the front door as he enters the house, closes the door behind him only with a twist of ankle on leg extended backward. That foot comes down after to help free its compatriot for a dress shoe before it gets its shot at freedom, and then he's free to amble vaguely left toward the blackout-curtain-darkened living room, thoughts only for the couch. He knows he should take himself straight upstairs and get into better clothes, but he's not thinking that far ahead at the moment. The couch itself was a thought too far ahead, frankly, as he realizes sinking into it would be better done with a beer in hand, and leads him to redirect further down the entry hall toward the kitchen.
As he makes his way in there and around the corner, he pulls open the fridge with its dwindling food and drink, reaching inside for a nearly completed six-pack to draw it one closer to finished. The bottle is retrieved by neck, and with his other hand, Amanvir tugs on the tie that feels like it's choking him to loosen it up, then closes his eyes along with the fridge. He stands socked like that for a long moment, looking and feeling heavy, the cut of his new-yet-already-worn-in beige suit looking a little wrinkled after the day's events.
He has at least a few minutes to get his shit together, he thinks to himself. After all, Isaac's been spending a lot of time out of the house recently anyway. With a grunt to acknowledge that thought to himself, he begins to wrestle with the bottle cap on his beer.
Aman does not, in fact, have a few minutes to get his shit together; it is, in fact, particularly fortunate that he had chosen to redirect his tunnel vision to the fridge instead of the couch, because, as it happens, there is someone laying on said couch, concealed by the gloom… and as Aman opens the refrigerator, they stir, sitting up.
"Aman?" Isaac Faulkner calls, rising from napping to wakefulness like a fish swimming up out of the depths. "Home already?" He most definitely hopes that's the case.
The bottle cap goes skittering as Aman pries it free right at the moment Isaac's voice startles him. "Nah," he answers through the house. "I'm just some burglar who had our key and went straight for the fridge."
His ears thrum with the sound of his pounding heart, and he looks down at himself quickly. His temp badge is still on a lanyard on his chest, and he quickly weaves it off his head, setting the bottle aside on the countertop to free a hand to try and wrap the lanyard around the badge as quickly as possible so he can shove it in his pocket. "You doing okay today?" Aman asks while he works, a forced neutrality in it. "Feel like we've been ships passing in the night since the fires." There it goes, a nice bundle which can hopefully be hidden away without notice.
Into his pocket the lanyard goes, right before he kneels to pick up the bottle cap. He resigns himself there's nothing he can do for his current outfit, but maybe Isaac won't come in here right away?
"Funny," comes Faulkner's reply, delivered in a bland tone that suggests that particular bit of humor had gone a bit wide of its intended mark.
Then, for the second time in as many minutes, Aman's hopes are roundly dashed as Isaac rises from the couch and heads for the kitchen himself, clad in the T-shirt and pajamas he sleeps in. "Felt a migraine coming on, figured I'd pop a pill and try to nap it off before it started. Succeeded," he says, a questioning look on his face as he peers at Aman — and at his outfit — and arches an eyebrow questioningly.
Shit. Aman hears the footsteps and resigns himself to the new reality as he comes up to his feet, thumb rubbing on the rough underside of the bottlecap. "Well, glad to hear the medication's working…" he starts, but a glance up to Isaac directly shows him exactly how outed he is. He holds a breath, looks down at himself– possibly trying to come up with some kind of cover story– and then lets out a sigh as he releases all self-defense.
"I… know it's not gonna put Ande in the best of spots, both of us and Shaw being out, but… I might be out on a permanent basis, too." He lobs the bottlecap aside on the counter. "I, uh… I got a job offer I couldn't exactly turn down." Aman doesn't quite look at Isaac as he shrugs and broadens his posture in a facsimile of being entirely open, arms coming out from his sides. "It– it pays 'wear a suit' money and comes with better benefits. Kind that maybe will get people to stop wondering how I came up with the money to buy this place if all I was doing was working for Pigeon."
There's a bit of a grimace there, open, and Aman licks the wound by taking out the neck and thensome of his beer in a single, determined swig.
Well, well. And for all that Isaac likes to think his brain generally works pretty well when it's not getting stabbed by icepick migraines, for the moment that's as far as his brain can get, to the point he eventually decides that saying it aloud is the only way he'll be able to move past it. So he does.
"Well, well…" Faulkner muses aloud… followed then by a soft huff of a laugh. "And here I thought you had a hot date or something," he says with a smirk. He chuckles again, this time with a bit more of a melancholy tinge to it. "Tibby, too. Haven't seen her around in awhile, either…"
Then he looks back to Aman. "It would seem that our clutch of Pigeons has flown, one and all. But I don't think Ande will have too much trouble filling positions; there are always people who need opportunities, always people looking for jobs. Nor do I think he'll begrudge you for good fortune, particularly not if you remember to use some of that big suit money to send packages by Pigeon Courier Service," Faulkner says with a smirk.
"So where's this big job?"
Aman lets out a pained chuckle at the joke, trying to not emit drink through nose even though he snorts. The bottle is eventually set aside on the counter for the purposes of making it easier for him to lean back against it and fold his arms over his chest, right over the faint pink tie splitting his torso in vertical half. "It's um…" He runs his tongue over his lower lip before admitting. "It's a government gig, actually. I've been… working through the whole onboarding process for a few weeks now."
"It's awkward and weird," he blurts out after, sounding frazzled and frustrated in equal spades. "It feels like a job, especially in the sense that – being there doesn't mean there's suddenly fucking answers for everything. I don't just magically know more about anything. It's… it's…"
Shoulders hunching up toward his ears, Aman shakes his head as much as gestures with his torso the remaining part of a shrug. "Not what I thought it'd be, that's for sure," he mutters.
Faulkner frowns, eyes narrowing as he studies Aman; there's a subtext here he hasn't picked up on. "Something tells me you're not talking about a job as a postal inspector."
A startled laugh leaves Aman at that. "Damn," he acknowledges as he looks back at Isaac. "That should have been my cover story for sure." With that light rib at himself accomplished, his arms slowly begin to unfold.
"I… was hoping I could learn more about your situation with it. Figure out what they weren't telling you, because I figured they had to know more." His hand slips into his pocket to relieve his lanyard wound round his identification. "But…" Then it leaves his hand with a sail and clatter to the countertop. On the blue card is a logo which says 'Office of Exterior Investigations' and has a boring photo of him above it.
"I haven't found shit if there is," Aman admits uneasily.
Isaac's eyes widen a bit — this, he had not been expecting. "Damn," he says, lips curling into a smile. "So that's what you've been up to." He pauses for a moment, the bit about hoping to learn more about your situation sinking in… and for a moment, Isaac's at a loss. "Damn," he repeats.
"Well. First thing's first, I suppose. Congratulations are in order, I think," Faulkner says with a smile, nodding to the badge. "And for the second thing…"
Faulkner's smile becomes a bit more subdued, but no less real. "Thanks. For trying. For keeping an ear out." He pauses, that smile shifting back towards being a smirk again, but this time with a bit of a self-conscious air. "And, while we're at it — for opening your home to me. For saving my life, more than once. For helping me deal with my… ex-girlfriend, I suppose." The whole situation with Isis still feels like a wound that's not quite healed; he wonders, in a corner of his mind, if it always will. "For being a friend. For everything." It's uncommonly sincere, for Isaac.
"Yeah, I uh…" Aman grimaces more than smiles. "Wasn't sure where to stick in hey, by the way, I got cornered by the agents who have been following you around for the last year in with everything else that's going on, but…" He rolls a shoulder and looks off at nothing, mumbling. "You know."
He swallows hard and then reaches for his tie again to yank it loose as though it were still choking him, even though it's far from doing that. He looses it enough to pull it off his head entirely, though, and that's progress toward comfort in a different way.
"You're a good friend, Isaac. Someone who's been dealt a shit hand, and someone I thought was crazy for living out in Park Slope how you were to begin with, and I wasn't just about to stand by and wait for you to just … not show up anymore." His head turns vaguely back toward Isaac, but any eye contact is brief under the weight of the topic. "I just wish there were answers, and justice. You, Kaylee, and the rest of them fucking deserve it after all you've been through and how hard you've fought to get it."
Aman reaches again for his drink and shaves off another inch of its contents with a deep gulp, feeling like the pause after that is needed to show the depths of its sincerity. Or maybe just to stop him from saying anything else tragically sentimental.
"But… yeah–" he segues back to something else as he sets aside the beer once more, able to look at Isaac properly now. "I imagine this is going to get more serious before long. Might end up having to overnight it here and there who even knows where. I get to keep living here full-time though– based out of the Safe Zone for now."
"Park Slope wasn't that bad," Isaac retorts, grinning… though that soon enough fades to a grimace. "It was a good place to lay low, before all this. Not that that seemed to do much good," he grumbles.
But he, too, falls silent for a moment, both to consider Aman's words and to choose his own; he has some news of his own to bring up, and Aman's words about him not showing up anymore sit uncomfortably close to some of the possibilities hanging over his own future. "So… on the subject of future plans… I, uh, might be taking a trip of my own in the near future."
Aman had grinned too at Isaac's defense, his more a bit knowing and teasing, but it fades quickly enough with the tone behind the words. His brows begin to pop up in question. "A trip, huh?" He could imagine a dozen catastrophic things it might mean, but it doesn't mean there might not be a positive reason as well. With a dip of his head, he wonders, "What kind?"
"The kind I might not come back from," Isaac says, with a nonchalance he doesn't feel. "Of course, these days that could be said of any trip I go on — I could fall over dead on a walk to Red Hook — but… this one more than most." Faulkner falls silent for a moment, his brow furrowing as he contemplates his own mortality. Had he ever thought about that, before all of this had happened? Turned the thought of his own absence from the world over in his mind, examining the facets of it like a jeweler scrutinizing an unproven diamond? He doesn't think so.
"Isaac, what the fuck," Aman protests, every hair on its end. "That's not even funny to joke about." It's not a joke, though, and he's fairly sure he even knows that, but the words come anyway. He stands more upright, looking Isaac over. The getting lost in thought bit is what worries him farther. "Obviously, the clear thing to do is make sure you don't die."
His brow knits together and up in his concern. "What's going on? Where are you headed?"
It is indeed not a joke, though Isaac finds Aman's reaction surprising in its intensity. Aman's suggestion sees Isaac's surprise give way to amusement — a rather warmer species of it than is usual for Isaac, at that. "A good suggestion. I'll give it some thought," he says dryly, a hint of a grin visible on his face.
Aman's questions see Faulkner's expression grow more serious, though; for a moment, he remains silent, sifting through his words, trying to find the right ones. "We've got… not a lead, maybe, but at least a lead on a lead."
Isaac's friend and roommate goes through a rollercoaster of emotion in the span of seconds with regard to that news. "Okay," he finally says, leaving that first and full of positivity even though he struggles to maintain it. The lead is good right? His inclination is to help. But even as Aman stands there, he knows that his situation probably doesn't make him a good candidate to help with whatever's happening.
The trip to Manitoba, the lying and secrecy and cutting through red and black tape– nothing like that would be possible now.
Aman gapes for a moment, mouth trying to find words. Everything feels so inadequate. The most he can do is ask, too many moments later despite drowning in earnestness, "Is there anything I can do to help?" A beat passes before he tags on, desperate to add some levity, "I mean, preferably in the not dying category if you need someone on hand to navigate that, but literally anything I could do to help…" He trails off, swallowing hard.
He would, is what he means to say.
"Not dying would be best for all involved, I think," Faulkner agrees, smiling wryly at Aman's attempt at humor; it's painfully obvious that Aman's not feeling it at all, so someone has to try to pick it up, at least for a moment.
But it's only for a moment, and then his expression grows more serious. "You've already done quite a bit to help. But…" Faulkner pauses, his expression thoughtful. "This is… going to be a double or nothing sort of thing, this trip. My… original? Donor? The real me, a mutual acquaintance of ours– or several of them — might insist," Faulkner says, mouth drawing tight with momentary frustration before smoothing again.
"I don't know what sort of condition they'll be in, if it turns out to be a double situation. For that matter, I don't know what sort of condition I'll be in, so having a safe place to stay for awhile longer would… take a load off my shoulders on that front. Off our shoulders, come to that." He hesitates for a moment, considering. Would the other him — the him who hasn't spent a year powerless and with debilitating brain failures — be willing to give up a measure of independence and crash at Aman's place? Or would he be stubborn and want to stick to Park Slope? It's hard to say… but having the option on the table certainly won't be a bad thing.
"If it's… not that situation," Faulkner says slowly. "If we fail. If I come back injured… having a place to stay until will still be helpful. And if I don't come back at all…"
He considers for a moment. "I'll not ask you to avenge me. For one thing that's too heavy a thing to ask of anyone, and for another… vengeance is a fool's game. Everybody who plays it loses, and frankly I've had enough of loss for awhile. But if you happen to get an opportunity to cause some misfortune to those responsible for this… well, take it if you can, would you?"
"Fuck yes, I would," Aman replies right away on the tail end of a long exhale, because it's easier to say that than figure out how to respond to any of the rest of it. At least at first. He sinks back against the countertop and blinks slowly, looking away for a moment. "And… you know you're always welcome here. You, other you, a third you if one shows up."
He stares off into some middle distance, eyes unfocused. "Fuck, man," he whispers.
After a long pause he steels his voice to insist, "Here's safe. If you get back and you need protected, doesn't matter from who, just tell me. I've still got contacts in the underground in Queens… or could get something more official rolling, if you felt like it was needed." Aman looks back to Isaac with a firm nod. "All you gotta do is say the word."
Isaac smiles and lets out a breath. "I appreciate that."
Then his grin broadens. "So, with all of that said… Amanvir Binepal, Secret Agent!" Isaac grins merrily. "Quite a move up in the world; sounds to me like cause for a bit of celebration. What are the entry requirements, anyway? How much do they pay you? What's it like? Tell me all about it." He has more to do — there are some letters he has to write, and a will he has to set up in the event that he doesn't make it back — but that's business for later. This, it seems to Isaac, is a time for celebrating a friend's good fortune.
Isaac's praise brings Aman to crack a grin again, looking off to try and hide it as he shakes his head. He pulls his beer off the counter again to drink from it. "Yeah, well, they showed up one day with an offer I couldn't exactly refuse…" he murmurs with a knowing grim of lips against the lip of the bottle before taking a sip.
"And the benefits are to die for," he goes on with the dryest, blackest of humour. "Definitely making more bank than I did for Ande, no offense to him. I like the flexibility– I get to still live here, obviously. Requirement for entry was they found out about my side job and decided to, ah," Aman winces with some good humor, "Decided to make a targeted offer based on that."
"There's not much to speak of going on just yet, but it's shaping up to be a lot of… paperwork and cold calls related to an assigned incident to follow up on?" He sounds like he's stepping around talking about the thing in full, and he absolutely is. "But definitely growth opportunity, and is a job I can tell my ma about and her be happy about, you know? No more 'Rahu, why are you wasting your life like this when we came to this country to give you good opportunities.'" Aman's eyes roll into the back of his head as he lets out a sigh of relief. "Thank god there's not more of that."
He sobers, though, and takes a drink. A dark voice whispers to him, wouldn't have been more for long anyway, potentially.
Isaac nods, grinning. He does not grab a beer, but he's fine without — better not to rouse the nascent migraine after he's just managed to lull it into uneasy slumber. "I'll bet," Isaac chuckles… but his expression turns pensive for a moment as his thoughts drift to his own family. "I'll just bet," he says again, a little more quietly.
Again his thoughts turn inward — to the memories that had burst out in the middle of the inferno. His father, his mother… and his sister. If this hadn't happened, would he have ever found out the truth? Isaac muses on that for a moment… but only a moment. There's only so much dissociating mid-conversation that can be forgiven, after all.
"Well. I can say that the people I've met from the OEI seem like good folks, so… I'm sure you'll fit right in. The ones I've met seem like they genuinely want to help," he says, managing to catch his thoughts before they can drag him back to the experiment at the Dirty Pool Pub. "So when do they give you a codename?" he asks instead. "Do you get to choose it or do they pick for you? I hope you don't end up being Agent Endtable or something," Isaac comments, grinning slyly.
Aman does his best to not set up with a noseful of drink at that rate, but it's a near thing. He shakes his head and chokes out a laugh. "What?" he asks first, completely befuddled, and then realizes, "Oh, you mean like…" To which he trails off, thinking, "Yeah, I dunno. It's not like I have a skillset that merits it, from what I can tell. With my only trick being 'anything you can do, I can do better, but only if you hold still to let me take it, and even then, only sometimes', I think that's hard to put down into a single vague-yet-descriptive codename for how I can safeguard operations…"
"It isn't like Agent Pickpocket is going to be easy to say with a straight face or anything, you know?" he rhetorically asks with another snorted grin, glancing back to Isaac.
"Oof," Faulkner winces at Agent Pickpocket. "Yeah, I can see how introducing yourself as that might put people on their guard. Your mom might not like it much, either," he grins, then frowns. Castle's name hadn't been particularly indicative of their actual skillset either, though. "Maybe something like… Agent Toll?" He considers that, then grimaces. "Maybe not."
"I'm not sure I'm under the right classification for a code name, anyway," Aman relents with a grin. "And I think I'm okay with that. I don't want to be anyone special, in the end. I'm okay if I don't stand out. Spotlights aren't something I exactly go seeking." He cants his head to the side and makes a circular gesture absently with his drink. "Besides– I'd rather get a lay of the land before making myself integral to anything, you know?"
His jaw twinges with that and he gives Faulkner a meaningful glance. For all that things have gone well, after all, and all that he hasn't found that the OEI know far more than they're letting on … it doesn't mean that'll always be the same. Trust with them is a thing that's going to have to be built, after all.
"If there's a bad apple in the bunch, I'd rather not end up their pawn somehow. Just going to stick to my assignment for now, with open eyes and open ears for anything that puts me in proximity to." He drinks to that.
"Clever," Isaac smirks. "I'd probably do the same, in your shoes. I did do the same when I came back to town…" he says… but as he does, his smirk starts to fade into something more thoughtful.
"At least, until that first kidnapping incident." Ordinarily there'd be a wry smirk to accompany that, but not this time; it had been an absurd coincidence before, but despite the utter ridiculousness of the idea, he'd had no logical basis to view it as anything more than that. But now, now, he has context, and that priming is all it takes.
"You know. If we assume that all of this wasn't random. That I wasn't chosen for this at random… I was laying pretty low. Up until that… super-powered bum fighting ring thing," Faulkner says, waving a hand dismissively as if to ward off the specter of that particular bad time before it can settle in for a proper haunting. "I wonder if that's how I popped on their radar?"
Or it could have been the Isis thing, back when her bones had started turning into Jello in his apartment and they'd had to call in her friends. God, wouldn't that be ironic, in a sick sort of way.
Aman's nose wrinkles. "As someone living off the grid and easily kidnappable for some rich superpower to fuck over? Fuck." He'd not thought of that now til either, and it's an unsettling likelihood. His eyes close as he sighs hard. "The profile of all the victims of this shit range from 'Definitely someone making a political statement with this crime' to, uh…" A glance to Isaac is given in lieu of calling him the crime of opportunity out loud.
He lifts both hands in a kind of surrender. "It's … the closest thing to a viable reason for someone going after you that I could think of." Frowning, Aman acknowledges, "Like you said, you mostly keep to yourself, it's not like you've got a prominent family member or something that like someone would target you to get at…"
He almost follows that up with a rhetorical 'right?', but feels confident that if such a person existed, they would have shown themselves by now.
Isaac does not respond to that immediately. "No," he says at last. "Well. Maybe." His father definitely had some enemies, but it's hard to get at someone who's dead… but then there's the matter of Elia, isn't there?
He doesn't follow that up further, his eyes seeming to drift off a bit. "Remember the evacuation? The day the river caught fire?" Also the day they were attacked by a horrible murder robot, but two catastrophes should be quite enough to narrow down the day in question. "When I was… spacing out… I remembered some things. Things I think I might've had some help forgetting, crazy as that sounds."
He chuckles. "I hadn't thought about my mother for years — a strange thing, isn't it? But true. Then, during that trip… suddenly I'm four years old, getting ready to dig into a bowl of Count Chocula and then I see her die in front of me. Or so I thought, anyway. Now I'm not so sure, because it turns out Isa — Shaw's wife, remember her? Makes that weapons-grade citrus moonshine? Turns out her mom and my mom apparently bear a more than passing resemblance. Share the same name, even, isn't that funny?" Isaac says, doing his level best to plow through that particular stretch of hell before any of those specters can try to settle in for a haunting, either.
Aman's eyes flash with confusion that gets itself together in cutting strikes over a series of glances. "Well, fuck," he finally pronounces, aware too much time has past. At least for him, feeling the overwhelming need to say something there.
"And she…" voices the suspicious part of him, quietly, before he can stop himself. "She was caught up in this, too." Isa, and by proxy, Shaw. His brows begin to furrow as he looks back to Isaac. Even compared to moments before, he's questioning Isaac's relevance to his kidnappers and the events that took place. If he was more than just an easy mark.
"You think your mom was…?" Aman can't bring himself to guess on this account, waiting for Isaac to speak the importance he suspects.
"I… I don't know," Faulkner says, looking away. "But Isa… Isa thinks she was… connected to the Company, somehow."
He's silent for a moment. "She might be right about that. You don't… just… forget things like that and never even think about them again." He lets out a shuddering breath. "Isa's talked about having Kaylee take a look inside my mind when we get her back, to see what she can find. If she's willing."
"Do–" Aman's face twists, but then he asks the words anyway, "While you're gone, do you want me to see … if I can find anything out? Someone Kaylee knows, who I kind of know– Luther– he works over at the Deveaux Society. Is friends with the woman who runs the show over there. They're a philanthropic org, but– there were ties to the Company given the name behind it. Could maybe give your and Isa's names, see if just…" He spreads his hands, as much to implicate there's nothing to lose as much as he's signaling they'd be shooting in the dark. "They might have anything with either of your names even loosely attached to it? Who knows what records there might even be, but…"
He pops his brows to let them re-ask the question he lead with originally.
Faulkner is silent for a moment as he considers, as everything comes back around to that question. "Deveaux, as in Charles… right," he murmurs, more to give himself a chance to line his own thoughts up than anything else. The question, however, remains unanswered, and after a moment Isaac nods reluctantly. "I'll not say not to look into it, just… watch your step if you do. I feel like there are snakes in the grass."
Faulkner pauses, taking another moment to try to sort his thoughts. "If you do look into it, you might talk with… with my ex. She… cares." His mouth tightens. "She cares a great deal, I think. She offered to come with me, into…" The Valley of the Shadow of Death, he does not say, but cannot stop himself from thinking. He can, however, stop himself from dwelling on it, and does, looking back to Aman. "That would be my suggestion, at least."
As Isaac grows awkward, so too does Aman grow slightly awkward at the mention of getting in touch with his– "ex". Ex to this Isaac, possibly not ex to the other Isaac, not at all in a way that makes it extra complicated to navigate.
"Yeah," he breathes out slowly, bobbing his head in a nod. "Yeah, I can see if– she's not lost my phone number by now. For sure." He tries to cover up his own hesitancy in interacting with Isis again by the time all the words come out, papering it over and stringing it up with a forced confidence. He offers a smile. "Worst thing that could happen is we end up making some connections for later. Not a bad outcome, ultimately. God only knows the two of us could stand to be more socialized, eh?"
The canine that flashes as his smile widens into a grin seems more genuine at least, and he reaches for his beer again. "You want one of these, or…"
"You know what? Yeah, why not. I'll take you up on that," Isaac decides, mustering a grin.
Aman's more than happy to facilitate pretending that everything's fine for just a moment, or even to just live comfortably with the complexities of their current reality. A sip of his own prefaces a trip back to the fridge to grab another drink, and when he closes it and turns back, he remarks, "Last one." with an arch of his eyebrows and a twist of the cap to open the bottle before sealing it again. "Lucky man."
They'd see whether that luck would hold though. "Catch–" is all that Aman advises as he lobs the bottle underhand at Isaac.
It's an impromptu test of dexterity that they both pass, at least, even if it comes with an aggravation of carbonation that almost leads to disaster. If it also served as a test of luck, they both passed for the moment.
Would that it would hold in the days to come.