station72 | [closed] should i try to hide

[ Sam'd stayed back last night when the feeling of dread overtook the camp, keeping in contact with the crew that'd gone out investigating mentally rather than joining himself and have one more person tromping around in the dark - but he can't resist heading out there once the first light of dawn starts.

It's clear they don't have long before the procession starts on its journey again, and Sam only barely has time to grab Damon and Shepard and explain what his thinking is as they head in the direction that the others had gone last night. Mentally, of course - he's trying to keep their cover here, and this is the best he's got as far as being a spy goes. He and Damon can cover for Shepard, pretend to be out here for some alone time while she tries to find anything that might be a clue for what happened last night.

When they're far enough in to be out of sight of the general camp, he murmurs a request for Shepard to go keep watch, and then slips into Damon's personal space, tangling his fingers in his robes.

His side of the mental connection is tinged with just a little bit of amusement, a little bit of adrenaline, a little bit of you good for this? as he leans in close. ]

We gotta make it quick, we don't have long.

[ He and Damon aren’t in the first place they’d started their kissing. Because clearly their affair is just that passionate, that they’re constantly pushing each other into rocks and trees and having to move deeper for better cover, picking their path carefully. Sam’s attention has been split, part focused in on Shepard in case she finds something and they need to direct their stumbling in a different path, part looking for things as they move around, part focused on what he’s ostensibly out here to do - and he’d be lying if that wasn’t a big part, all right - and part keeping an eye out for anyone who might come their way.

Sam feels someone nearby before any of his other senses pick it up, and though he doesn’t stop kissing Damon, his focus does shift more towards that last part. ]

( At the risk of sounding like every couple at the beginning of every horror movie, I think I hear someone. )

[ Rust is the opposite, Rust is nothing but sensory input, skill bound to instinct like muscle to bone. Rust is every night he went hungry because he stepped wrong, spooked a grouse.

Rust can taste the air.

The path couldn't be more obvious, laid out in flattened grass, snapped twigs. A piece of fabric, which he collects, snagged on a rock. Not a struggle. Not, in all likelihood, what he's after.

He hears them next—the scrape of rock, a noise he classes simply human before he identifies it as a moan. He sees and feels them at the same time, a pair of more-or-less-robed figures wrapped up in each other.

Rust straightens up, regards them with something he can feel falling short of disbelief.

He has to search for his voice. There's a feeling of effort, of force applied where a deft touch might do better. ] ( You two stay put. ) [ He's pulling away even as he says it—mental landscape overlapping the physical, his thoughts doubling back before they can tear off down some trail. ]

( Anyone else out here? )

Edited (changed literally one word) 2017-08-07 15:31 (UTC)

[You know what the worst duty in the entire world is? Playing lookout for your CO's makeout sessions. Particularly if you'd rather switch jobs and let Damon do the lookout thing-- best the, that Shepard's where she is, then, because she doesn't have to fake the disgruntled annoyance in her gait. Shepard's a good liar, but that doesn't make her a spy, it just means she can bluff. This whole thing is like something out of a fucking harlequin novel. She hates it.

The interruption in her careful, methodical seep for clues-- ostensibly for intruders on the "romance" happening not far-off is very welcome.]

( Hold up. We've got company. ) [This to Sam and Damon. Either it's another Host, or god help them they'll have encountered another group of telepathic people and that's the end of this idiot mission. Either way, things are looking up-- and she broadens her mental "voice" to include Rust.] ( Identify yourself. )

[The 'or I'll blow your knees off' is implied. By the blunt, round muzzle of Shepard's shotgun protruding from her robes as she steps towards the source of the mental voice.]

( Cohle. ) [ Yielded promptly, without emotional shading. Irrelevant, right now: help yourself.

He's as mindful of the gun's potential for noise—an echo in his head, an eruption of sound—as its lethality. As much concerned with the trail the figure's trod as the name it answers to. ] ( Shotgun on a covert mission, that's a fine fucking idea. )

[ The gun does have this effect: Rust checks the impulse to scrape up against the other person's mind. Waits, forcing his thoughts into a holding pattern. ]

( Aww, you'll hurt my feelings. )

[The shotgun isn't subtle, but it makes a good distraction, and it has such a nice way of underlining her threats. She holds it level, unconcerned, waiting for the other shoe to fall. Waiting for backup.]

( Cohle. Why don't you tell me why you're out here? )

[The forest is silent around them. This is the quietest damn stand-off Shepard's ever had.]

[ Blunt: ] ( I'm following you. ) [ There. Impression enough of control that he stops waiting, trails her last thought to its source, intent on gathering what he can from her mind. Sharp, rather than rough. ]

( Wasn't hard. ) [ So git he doesn't say, but there's that itch—mental as well as physical, the need to get back to it. ]

[ Sam's been trying to pretend like he can't hear them all in his head, like he's just letting his guard do her job and ward off anyone who comes too close to them. But the stand off doesn't feel like it's going to end any time soon, so Sam untangles his fingers from Damon's clothes and pushes himself away, heading over to Shepard and Cohle. ]

Looks like we're not the only ones who came out here for some peace and quiet.

[ It's purposefully out loud, but then he switches over to using the mental link. ]

( Look, it ain't much of a cover but it's the only one we've got, all right? Last night they felt like someone was watching them; we don't know what kind of eyes are out here. )

[ Rust's dragged about five ways at once—recoils from himself long enough to glimpse what those eyes might be seeing, a pow-wow out in the middle of nowhere. It is a shitty cover, belongs on a remaindered paperback, and the shotgun's bright hot metal in his consciousness. Maybe it's not worth carrying on with the charade. All these coincidences stacking up—maybe they were fucked from the start.

But he has to decide.

With a mental nod, he steps briskly toward Sam. ] Cut the shit. [ His voice is strained, fondness giving way to exasperation, his mind a high-wire act. His thoughts molding the lie, the lie molding his thoughts. ] You, you're so smooth— [ He shoves Sam's shoulder, affection gone rough. Restlessness in his movements, jittery energy. ] She knows. You gotta get back now, you should've heard her, she'll torch the tent. [ Pause for breath. Step back. ] And you ain't sleeping with me.

[ As though reading from a list: ] ( You left something. Take off, stop, say you left something. )

[ He waits for the stars to fade, the sun to show itself. Patience the first art he ever learned. The dread of the night—slick and invasive, as though fear could be a bodily secretion—has vanished and he feels its absence keenly, a trail already gone cold. He's had hours to turn Rhan's words over in his head, her calling the Enemy's presence a texture.

Rust tucks a canteen into the folds of his robe. He threads his way through the camp, pauses at the outskirts to look up at the sky. Mentally he's already slipped off, the world composed of rock, wind, sun, shadow. He starts walking, scanning for patterns—he's had plenty of time, over the past few days, to familiarize himself with the print their boots leave.

After a few minutes, a bloom of irritation coupled with brief, propulsive satisfaction: he's found the search party from the night before. ]

[ intimately familiar to kaji's understanding is the sensation of a mind being put to work. it feels like a tightening funnel whittling down in search of a center point. a kerr black hole of un-collapsable properties, eliminating everything irrelevant to the task - personal obligations, friends, a wife and children - without truly meaning to. fixation is a strange bedfellow, far away for most people in a sense that distance couldn't correlate. this is the fixation that alerts kaji to rust's goings, propels him out of bed. when kaji stalks rust's focused back he feels more invigorated that he was the night before, when he'd helped in making these footprints. fixation motivates him more than dread could ever hope to. ]

Gentlemen first.

[ coupled with a short whistle as kaji elects to make his presence known. early morning casts the path in a more appealing light. kaji pockets his hands. ]

So, you're hoping to smooth over the edges.

[ He apprehends Kaji's presence as an aspect of the terrain, his mind a jumble of traces: flowers and cigarettes, a deep unreal shade of blue and a ceaseless mechanical stare, light green on dark in a contrast that has the texture of stubble, intentions turned inside-out.

An echo.

A subvocal, subconscious mmm rubs up against his words. ] Doesn't sound like me. [ "Me" something of an abstraction, Rust's thinking skewing only temporarily toward conversation. He doesn't quite grasp the implication, doesn't quite care to. ]

Out for your morning constitutional? [ On its heels: ] ( Were you with them? )

All that's missing is my morning cup of coffee. [ he is apt to be ten times as inconsistent than what would be considered reasonable. spry are the useless mental impressions of his preference: canned coffee containing so much sugar that the 'coffee' part seemed to be included only in jest. what immediately follows is the the meat, the burden, the thrust, sedate and dry as a bone: ] ( From beginning to end. One of them, a young boy, instructed that they turn back before anything could be found. Apparently he has precognitive abilities. Take that as you will. )

[ a signficant inference, one that kaji trusts rust to make, even as his mind seemed to him a distant star. his expression softens into something resembling nostalgia. ]

What about you? Sensing something, or was last night too much fanfare for your tastes?

[ He makes the leap readily: finding something might prove fatal. It gives Rust pause only in that it's new information, about his self-appointed task and his unsolicited companion both.

He takes a little time with precognitive (none with young boy, not now), teasing out the difference between that word and what they'd all felt abrading their nerves the night before. A question flickers in his mind, winks out. Later. Time. ]

I hate crowds is all. [ That perversely slow speech, running its course. ] ( You know the way? I— ) [ —Alaska, the memory sharp enough to draw blood: tracks in fresh snow, the tension in a bow just before the arrow flies. Visible breath. ] ( All my life. )

( Follow me. )

[ he sets down a path, obedient to what remained of the footsteps, meanwhile alaska grips him by the ankles and refuses to let off. kaji hadn't seen snow in fifteen years. second impact had shifted earth's axial tilt and left japan with the parting gift of cicadas and the eternal overhead sun. ]

That's a long time. It explains that troubled mind of yours. [ kaji's idea of 'self-deprecating humor' is both smarting and unequivocal in description. rust's brain was the north pole to his south pole, both uninhabitable, gelid and sterile. ] I guess you're a gumshoe through and through.

[ he could smell one a mile away. all in all this man looked like the kind of investigator whose name rarely found its way into print. an investigator, any observer would conclude, who earned his promotions through an absence of screw-ups, rather than any particularly noteworthy achievements.

the only ones worth listening to. kaji feet falter. ]

What am I doing? You take the lead, Mr. Holmes. [ the innuendo that follows evinced a practiced insincerity: ] I'm better on the rear.

Edited 2017-08-11 22:35 (UTC)

[ He listens to the sound of their steps, the wind blowing through scrubby grass. And the night before: the noise six, seven sets of feet must have made stumbling in the dark. Kaji's voice primarily a matter of depth and volume, the words taking a moment to cohere.

When they do, surprise and regret drift through the link, a heady compound. Rust's feet plod at their same pace but he's taken aback—it's generous. Wrong as much as it's right, wrong in a way that feels like a gift. ] A cop's cop. [ A badge flashed, a punch to the gut, a high. The sky over Lubbock, dishwater gray.

He doesn't look up. Wouldn't expect to see anything if he did.

At the last remark, surprise comes as more of a jolt. Speculative, not quite amused: ] Seems you're intent on further troubling my mind. [ Rust steps past him, picks up a little speed. ] ( We better keep quiet, here on out. You armed? )

[ not to put too fine a point on the matter, but on a list of potential comedians, rust might have ranked slightly higher than ikari gendo. and that was mostly on account of his first name.

kaji follows in blithe pursuit, hands still pocketed, one fist slowly closing around the gun he'd packed with him, squared deep within the pouch of his jodhpurs. the outline of it, the trigger kaji teases with the pad of his glove, the feeling of that hollow barrel, kaji broadcasts forward. that is his answer. ]

( That's your way of saying you won't protect me in a scrap? )

[ he will oblige rust's suggestion, in the end, because they did not have any choice. behind him, kaji looks around with the expression of a person admiring the view and trying not to admit that they're completely lost - but everything, down to the gold tipped blade of grass, strikes familiar. ]

( Message received. I don't much enjoy this telepathy business. It's not you, it's me. )

( That your way of saying you need protecting? ) [ The only weapons Rust carries are the knives they'd been given, his assurance with a blade nothing he can project. Bedrock. ]

( We don't have to talk. ) [ Unperturbed, incurious: there are a thousand reasons it shouldn't sit well with someone. About a thousand more if that someone is a liar.

Without sparing Kaji a glance he continues on—slowing gradually, almost imperceptibly, as the trail loses coherence. Sets of tracks breaking off, prints shortening, weight shifting. Broad smears in the dirt.

Rust steps to one side, agile. Drops into a crouch. ] ( What was there—some kind of scuffle? )

[closed] should i try to hide

keeping cover; for damon

first impressions and finding shit; for everyone

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platonic crime scene investigation; for kaji

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