It's a Disaster 1/4
A/N | Note to self: wait a day before posting any fic, even if it's a quick one for RP. Inevitably you'll come up with a much better idea in the morning.
This replaces my previous entry by the same title. This fic takes place directly after the events of this thread.
---
Let the record state that for once, none of this is my fault.
One moment I'm standing at the buffet cramming canapés into my mouth and watching plastic socialites and their matching boyfriends try and fuse at the pelvis on the dance floor, and the next the wait staff is pulling out pistols and the party turns to chaos. As everyone bolts, trips, and screams, I hit the ground and scramble under the buffet table. The tablecloth swishes down behind me as I crouch against the wall and hope that in the panic no one noticed my escape.
Shots fire. Someone screams. I realize that I don't know where Brody is, and the anxiety stops my heart. Suddenly, I can't think of anything else but finding him. It takes me several deep, shaky breaths to convince myself that I'd be even more useless in the open than I'd be in the shadows; besides, from what sounds like the center of the room a voice erupts with enough authority that the stampede beyond the tablecloth stumbles to a halt.
"Everyone sit down and shut the fuck up!"
The speaker's accent is thick, a little Hispanic mixed with a whole lot of Beantown. I hear shoes scuffling and the muffled creak of bodies settling down on the carpet. Silence, now, except for whimpers. There's low, hurried Spanish that I only catch snippets of, followed by "Get up!"
"Me? What do you want me for?"
I recognize that voice from the start of the evening: Kimber something-or-the-other, the birthday girl herself. My brief impression of her during her giddy introduction was that she'd gone way too heavy on the spray tan, and that even if the rest of her was turning twenty-one her voice hadn't graduated kindergarten. I hear the thump of flesh hitting flesh and her whining cuts off abruptly.
"Call her father," says another gunman. Then, louder, "Here's the deal people. We have some business with Ms. Waterson here. You're all gonna sit nice and quiet while we take care of it, all right? Anyone decides they wanna play hero or calls the cops, and I'll blow your goddamn head off."
Great. We're being ransomed. Well, Kimber is anyway. If this is anything like the movies, they'll be dumping the rest of us shortly. Probably full of holes, and into the ocean.
You've trained for this, a voice in my head pipes up.
Trained for fending off a room full of gunmen? Like hell. This situation falls pretty firmly into the ten percent of times when I'll actually pay attention to my limits.
I fish my phone out of my bra and whip off a text message. The gunmen said no cops. They didn't say anything about assassins.
----
"So, what are you running from that brings you to Boston?"
I dropped my napkin from my mouth to scowl across the table at Brody.
"What's that supposed to mean? I can't visit you just because?"
"Sure. But not on fourteen hours' notice."
A waitress arrived to refill our glasses. Even after she darted off again I said nothing.
"C'mon, Ames, I know you. What is it? You in trouble? Something go bad at your job?"
At that I stabbed my spoon into my clam chowder so hard that the place mat could've charged me with assault. Brody jerked in surprise, but soon leaned forward to touch my elbow and frown.
"C'mon, Uno."
It was a nickname I hadn't heard in a while, a relic from our days as the Dos Bandidos before Brody got put away. The memory of that was enough for guilt to squat in my gut and squeeze the truth out of me.
"There's this guy," I said.
He reeled back with a look of horror on his face. "Are you getting married again?"
"No," I said, rolling my eyes. "I learned my lesson the first time."
I could practically taste his relief. Jeez, where was he before the whole Alejandro debacle? Oh, right. Telling me the entire time what an awful idea it was. Huh. Maybe I should start listening to him. Someday, anyway.
"Okay, so it's not that bad."
"It still might be."
The first step is admitting you have a problem. I took a sip of water to steel myself, and by sip I mean half the glass. Brody's eyebrows got higher by the ounce.
"Ames."
"I've got feelings for a guy at work, okay?"
There. I said it. Brody seemed to weigh this new information before speaking.
"Is it that blonde guy? Um, Luck?"
"Chance, and no." It would be so much easier if it were Chance. He'd have given me a firm, clipped "no" months ago, and I'd have been on to the next thing to catch my eye. "It's another guy. You never met him."
"What's wrong with him?"
"What do you mean?"
Brody pushed aside his plate to fold his arms on the tabletop. "You wouldn't care if something wasn't off."
I had an idea of what he was getting at by his tone, but I still tensed when he said, "Is he like Darin?"
"No," God, no. Never again. "He's nothing like that."
He's worse, actually, just not in the way you're thinking.
"Okay. So he's not a complete asshole."
Brody shook his head. I could tell he was fishing now; relationship problems weren't his forte, mostly because his average relationship could be measured in drinks and hours.
"Is he married?"
"No." Maybe. Who knew? He had a kid after all; there may well be a Mrs. Guerrero squirreled away in some white-picket-fenced safe house. But I couldn't imagine Guerrero as the kind of guy who'd two-time a girl, so I brushed the thought aside.
"So what's the problem?" Brody asked.
Stab, stab, stab. I expected my bowl to flag down the waitress so it could be whisked to the safety of the kitchen.
"It's just that I didn't mean to like him, you know? At first all I wanted to do was sleep with him, but..."
"But...?"
"But we started spending more time together. And I always thought he was cool professionally, but the more I'm around him the more I realize that he's pretty cool in general. I dunno. I guess it's a lot like hanging out with you, only--"
"Only you want to bone him."
I grinned. "And I really like that. That it's easy to be around him, not the boning thing. If we'd gotten that far I probably wouldn't be here right now."
Brody nodded. "Does he know?"
"Yeah."
I don't care about the sex, I want you. I cringed at the memory. Brody must have noticed, because he frowned.
"He turned you down?"
"Sort of." Several times, in fact, but never so hard that I hadn't tried again. I mean, he had to be a little interested, right? What with the flirting, and the banter, and hell, we even cuddled a few weeks ago--
"I'm sort of sorry?"
I laughed. That was why I'd come to see Brody rather than sticking around San Fran; a pity party with my girlfriends would've been comforting, sure, but what I really needed was humor, booze, and damn near anything that'd help me forget what awaited me when I returned. Or rather, wouldn't be.
No more training sessions. No more poetry. No more reluctantly enjoying Sondheim in the dress I had totally not purchased expressly for the event. It'd be like when I first joined the team: civil, blunt, humorless. If I were him, I'd do the same. But knowing that it's coming doesn't take the sting out of the prospect.
I started to feel eyes on me. When I looked up I realized that Brody must have been watching me the whole time. I could read concern in the crinkle of his eyes and the soft slope of his mouth. When he finally spoke it was like he was testing each word before letting it roll off his tongue.
"Just tell me one thing," he said. "Are you in love with him?"
---
Are you in love with him? The question stalked me for the rest of the week. It lurked in the posters for Les Miserables as we swayed drunkenly through the theatre district; it winked at me from the reflection in the mirror of a '65 de Ville; I even saw it in the unblinking eyes of the koi fish at the swanky Chinese place I treated Brody to for putting up with my mopiness all week. I hadn't had an answer for him that day in the diner. How could I, when I didn't even know myself?
What I felt now was miles away from the reckless passion that had kept me clinging to Darin, and nothing so light as the heady buzz I'd felt with Alejandro. When I was with Guerrero, it felt like... like curling up in bed beneath a thick blanket on a drizzly day. It was comfy. Warm. Happy. But was it love?
Not that it mattered, I reminded myself. Regardless of what I felt, he didn't want me.
Saturday rolled around with its promise that come tomorrow morning I'd be heading back to ground zero, which left tonight for my last hurrah. We spent most of the morning trying to figure out what we wanted to do, but by three the answer arrived in the form of a call from Tasha, a friend of Brody's who owned the parlor where he'd gotten his latest tats. Seemed that one of her long-time clients was throwing an I'm-now-old-enough-to-get-shitfaced-legally bash on her daddy's yacht. "Free drinks, free food, and enough drugs to fill an evidence locker," Tasha promised, though the latter didn't interest me. Rich people h'orderves though? Much more my scene.
"So, you wanna go?" Brody asked me when he'd finished relating Tasha's invitation. I knew he wanted to, judging by the puppy eyes and matching whimper.
"You big baby. I'll go."
"Yes!" he clapped me on the back. "This is gonna be awesome."
"So long as I'm back by four," I said, unzipping my suitcase to start digging around for a suitable outfit. "Remember, I've got a flight to catch."
This replaces my previous entry by the same title. This fic takes place directly after the events of this thread.
---
Let the record state that for once, none of this is my fault.
One moment I'm standing at the buffet cramming canapés into my mouth and watching plastic socialites and their matching boyfriends try and fuse at the pelvis on the dance floor, and the next the wait staff is pulling out pistols and the party turns to chaos. As everyone bolts, trips, and screams, I hit the ground and scramble under the buffet table. The tablecloth swishes down behind me as I crouch against the wall and hope that in the panic no one noticed my escape.
Shots fire. Someone screams. I realize that I don't know where Brody is, and the anxiety stops my heart. Suddenly, I can't think of anything else but finding him. It takes me several deep, shaky breaths to convince myself that I'd be even more useless in the open than I'd be in the shadows; besides, from what sounds like the center of the room a voice erupts with enough authority that the stampede beyond the tablecloth stumbles to a halt.
"Everyone sit down and shut the fuck up!"
The speaker's accent is thick, a little Hispanic mixed with a whole lot of Beantown. I hear shoes scuffling and the muffled creak of bodies settling down on the carpet. Silence, now, except for whimpers. There's low, hurried Spanish that I only catch snippets of, followed by "Get up!"
"Me? What do you want me for?"
I recognize that voice from the start of the evening: Kimber something-or-the-other, the birthday girl herself. My brief impression of her during her giddy introduction was that she'd gone way too heavy on the spray tan, and that even if the rest of her was turning twenty-one her voice hadn't graduated kindergarten. I hear the thump of flesh hitting flesh and her whining cuts off abruptly.
"Call her father," says another gunman. Then, louder, "Here's the deal people. We have some business with Ms. Waterson here. You're all gonna sit nice and quiet while we take care of it, all right? Anyone decides they wanna play hero or calls the cops, and I'll blow your goddamn head off."
Great. We're being ransomed. Well, Kimber is anyway. If this is anything like the movies, they'll be dumping the rest of us shortly. Probably full of holes, and into the ocean.
You've trained for this, a voice in my head pipes up.
Trained for fending off a room full of gunmen? Like hell. This situation falls pretty firmly into the ten percent of times when I'll actually pay attention to my limits.
I fish my phone out of my bra and whip off a text message. The gunmen said no cops. They didn't say anything about assassins.
----
"So, what are you running from that brings you to Boston?"
I dropped my napkin from my mouth to scowl across the table at Brody.
"What's that supposed to mean? I can't visit you just because?"
"Sure. But not on fourteen hours' notice."
A waitress arrived to refill our glasses. Even after she darted off again I said nothing.
"C'mon, Ames, I know you. What is it? You in trouble? Something go bad at your job?"
At that I stabbed my spoon into my clam chowder so hard that the place mat could've charged me with assault. Brody jerked in surprise, but soon leaned forward to touch my elbow and frown.
"C'mon, Uno."
It was a nickname I hadn't heard in a while, a relic from our days as the Dos Bandidos before Brody got put away. The memory of that was enough for guilt to squat in my gut and squeeze the truth out of me.
"There's this guy," I said.
He reeled back with a look of horror on his face. "Are you getting married again?"
"No," I said, rolling my eyes. "I learned my lesson the first time."
I could practically taste his relief. Jeez, where was he before the whole Alejandro debacle? Oh, right. Telling me the entire time what an awful idea it was. Huh. Maybe I should start listening to him. Someday, anyway.
"Okay, so it's not that bad."
"It still might be."
The first step is admitting you have a problem. I took a sip of water to steel myself, and by sip I mean half the glass. Brody's eyebrows got higher by the ounce.
"Ames."
"I've got feelings for a guy at work, okay?"
There. I said it. Brody seemed to weigh this new information before speaking.
"Is it that blonde guy? Um, Luck?"
"Chance, and no." It would be so much easier if it were Chance. He'd have given me a firm, clipped "no" months ago, and I'd have been on to the next thing to catch my eye. "It's another guy. You never met him."
"What's wrong with him?"
"What do you mean?"
Brody pushed aside his plate to fold his arms on the tabletop. "You wouldn't care if something wasn't off."
I had an idea of what he was getting at by his tone, but I still tensed when he said, "Is he like Darin?"
"No," God, no. Never again. "He's nothing like that."
He's worse, actually, just not in the way you're thinking.
"Okay. So he's not a complete asshole."
Brody shook his head. I could tell he was fishing now; relationship problems weren't his forte, mostly because his average relationship could be measured in drinks and hours.
"Is he married?"
"No." Maybe. Who knew? He had a kid after all; there may well be a Mrs. Guerrero squirreled away in some white-picket-fenced safe house. But I couldn't imagine Guerrero as the kind of guy who'd two-time a girl, so I brushed the thought aside.
"So what's the problem?" Brody asked.
Stab, stab, stab. I expected my bowl to flag down the waitress so it could be whisked to the safety of the kitchen.
"It's just that I didn't mean to like him, you know? At first all I wanted to do was sleep with him, but..."
"But...?"
"But we started spending more time together. And I always thought he was cool professionally, but the more I'm around him the more I realize that he's pretty cool in general. I dunno. I guess it's a lot like hanging out with you, only--"
"Only you want to bone him."
I grinned. "And I really like that. That it's easy to be around him, not the boning thing. If we'd gotten that far I probably wouldn't be here right now."
Brody nodded. "Does he know?"
"Yeah."
I don't care about the sex, I want you. I cringed at the memory. Brody must have noticed, because he frowned.
"He turned you down?"
"Sort of." Several times, in fact, but never so hard that I hadn't tried again. I mean, he had to be a little interested, right? What with the flirting, and the banter, and hell, we even cuddled a few weeks ago--
"I'm sort of sorry?"
I laughed. That was why I'd come to see Brody rather than sticking around San Fran; a pity party with my girlfriends would've been comforting, sure, but what I really needed was humor, booze, and damn near anything that'd help me forget what awaited me when I returned. Or rather, wouldn't be.
No more training sessions. No more poetry. No more reluctantly enjoying Sondheim in the dress I had totally not purchased expressly for the event. It'd be like when I first joined the team: civil, blunt, humorless. If I were him, I'd do the same. But knowing that it's coming doesn't take the sting out of the prospect.
I started to feel eyes on me. When I looked up I realized that Brody must have been watching me the whole time. I could read concern in the crinkle of his eyes and the soft slope of his mouth. When he finally spoke it was like he was testing each word before letting it roll off his tongue.
"Just tell me one thing," he said. "Are you in love with him?"
---
Are you in love with him? The question stalked me for the rest of the week. It lurked in the posters for Les Miserables as we swayed drunkenly through the theatre district; it winked at me from the reflection in the mirror of a '65 de Ville; I even saw it in the unblinking eyes of the koi fish at the swanky Chinese place I treated Brody to for putting up with my mopiness all week. I hadn't had an answer for him that day in the diner. How could I, when I didn't even know myself?
What I felt now was miles away from the reckless passion that had kept me clinging to Darin, and nothing so light as the heady buzz I'd felt with Alejandro. When I was with Guerrero, it felt like... like curling up in bed beneath a thick blanket on a drizzly day. It was comfy. Warm. Happy. But was it love?
Not that it mattered, I reminded myself. Regardless of what I felt, he didn't want me.
Saturday rolled around with its promise that come tomorrow morning I'd be heading back to ground zero, which left tonight for my last hurrah. We spent most of the morning trying to figure out what we wanted to do, but by three the answer arrived in the form of a call from Tasha, a friend of Brody's who owned the parlor where he'd gotten his latest tats. Seemed that one of her long-time clients was throwing an I'm-now-old-enough-to-get-shitfaced-legally bash on her daddy's yacht. "Free drinks, free food, and enough drugs to fill an evidence locker," Tasha promised, though the latter didn't interest me. Rich people h'orderves though? Much more my scene.
"So, you wanna go?" Brody asked me when he'd finished relating Tasha's invitation. I knew he wanted to, judging by the puppy eyes and matching whimper.
"You big baby. I'll go."
"Yes!" he clapped me on the back. "This is gonna be awesome."
"So long as I'm back by four," I said, unzipping my suitcase to start digging around for a suitable outfit. "Remember, I've got a flight to catch."