Butter Pecan #20, Watermelon #10, Coffee #26
Author: winebabe
Title: One Way or Another
Story: LNOVERKILL
Rating: PG-13 (For language; they're allotted one f-bomb, right? lol)
Flavor(s): Butter Pecan #20: hot; Watermelon #10; where did I put that?; Coffee #26: hook
Word Count: 1884
Summary: Really, he should never have let his guard down.
Notes: Reilly Desmarais, Brett Schofield. October, canon. (A little self-indulgent, maybe, but also important to the plot in a roundabout way.)
The hum of electronics and machinery usually provided calming white noise for him during his long hours in the lab, but that evening it did little to focus Reilly’s mind while he sat at his desk, the top completely covered in papers. Instead, coupled with the sound of the wind outside, the noise lulled Reilly into a state of semi-sleep, dozing at his desk with his chin cupped in one hand. The other still held a pen, the point pressing a black mark onto one of the papers.
The lab was always quieter at night, without the sound of Madelyn’s heels clicking on the tile outside, or the slamming of doors as people went in and out of their offices all day. It was nothing compared to the last place Reilly had worked, in a building staffed with over 100 people, but he was a light sleeper and usually any kind of sporadic noise was enough to jolt him out of a relaxed state. Sleeping on the job was not something anyone would have thought him likely to do. He was too high-energy to begin with, and once he focused in on a project, it was hard to get him to stop working long enough to even eat a sandwich midday.
That evening, however, sleep overtook him fairly quickly. Reilly couldn’t articulate what he was feeling, or why he was so exhausted; all he knew was that when he closed his eyes, he ended up opening them again several minutes later, thinking he’d no more than blinked. The sea of notes in front of him was leading him nowhere, which only added to his frustration, and after about half an hour of drifting in and out of consciousness, Reilly finally pillowed his head in his arms and fell asleep.
It wasn’t his best decision.
There was a distant noise--a click and a thud. Reilly stirred, moving his head just enough that he could have looked in the direction of the noise if he’d opened his eyes. He didn’t, though. His eyelids were too heavy. The noise didn’t happen again, and Reilly slept.
Something pushed, hard, on Reilly’s shoulder and he willed it away. It pushed again, grabbing and jostling him, and he came to long enough to hear someone shout in his ear.
“Reilly! Jesus Christ, wake up!”
“Stop it,” Reilly demanded hoarsely, lifting his head up so he could use one arm to swat at whoever had woken him up. “Go away.”
“Hey, Reilly,” the voice demanded as a hand reached out to grab his jaw, “look at me.”
Reilly squinted through smudged lenses at the figure in front of him, until his vision focused enough that he could recognize who had so rudely awoken him. “What do you want, Brett?”
“Don’t panic,” Brett said, “but I think you may have been dosed.”
“Dosed,” Reilly repeated, and then let out a pitiful scoff. “Listen,” he said, grabbing onto Brett’s arm, but never finished what he’d planned to say.
“You’re slurring your words,” Brett said. His voice seemed to lack any patience or compassion, though Reilly didn’t immediately pick up on that. “You can barely keep your eyes open, and I can feel the heat radiating off of you from here. Either you’re really damn sick, or you’re having an adverse reaction to a drug--and I’d bet it’s the latter.”
“Why?” Reilly demanded. His eyes had closed again, but his eyebrows were furrowed as though he was still attempting to glare at Brett.
“Why do I think that?” Brett gave into some incredulous laughter, and Reilly finally opened his eyes once more.
“You’re no doctor,” he reminded Brett.
“One of your vials is missing from the cabinet. How much do you wanna bet whatever it is can cause whatever this is?” Brett motioned at Reilly, who only sighed and dropped his head into his hands.
“Fuck.” It made sense, of course, what Brett was suggesting. Reilly’s brain worked to sort through possibilities, but the lethargic state he was in extended to his cognitive functions as well. “I don’t know what to say to you,” Reilly grumbled. “My brain is off.”
“I know,” Brett said, gently that time, and ran a hand up and down Reilly’s back. “We should go to the hospital.”
“The hospital?” Reilly scoffed. “And just what are they going to do about this?” He gestured with one hand towards the cabinet in the back of the room. “Experimental compounds, Brett. If I was dosed, and it was with something of my own creation, no doctor is going to know how to treat me.”
“I feel like that’s just an excuse,” Brett replied. “Could anything in there kill you?”
“Enough of anything can kill you,” Reilly muttered.
“Really helpful, you asshole.” Brett jostled him enough to make him slip off of his stool, and then caught Reilly once it was clear he wasn’t stable on his feet. “I’m going to take that as a hopeful ‘no.’”
“No,” Reilly agreed, and when he leaned into Brett, he chose to interpret it as anything but an overt sign of weakness. “Not unless they wanted me to overdose. Which I haven’t.”
They know what they’re doing, he meant, and Brett understood. “Where’s your coat?” he asked instead. “It’s cold out.”
Reilly, much to Brett’s surprise, leaned in and nuzzled his cheek against Brett’s upper arm. “Why?” he asked. “Where are we going?” His voice still came out sounding thick, his tongue heavy and uncooperative in his mouth. “Why are you here, anyway?”
Brett sighed. “The kids have some information they think we’d like to hear.”
“The kids,” Reilly spat, and turned to bury his face in Brett’s arm. “God, don’t take me back there.”
“It’s there or the hospital, Reilly,” Brett said. “Jesus. You are really not okay. What is this shit?”
“A strong sedative.” Reilly chuckled and tried to pull himself upright, his fingers clenched around the material of Brett’s coat. “They wanted a knockout drug.”
“Well, I’d say you delivered,” Brett replied. “Are you going to be okay? I’m serious here, Reilly. I’m concerned about you.”
“Yeah.” He decided against nodding, figuring that would undermine his efforts to actually appear okay. He was close enough to losing his balance while standing still. “Just have to wait until it leaves my system. I’ll be groggy for a while.”
“Sounds real pleasant.” Brett stood with one hand against Reilly’s back, steadying him, while he searched the room for Reilly’s coat. “Here we go,” he said once he spotted it, hanging on a hook near the door, partially obscured from view by the wall cabinets. “Come on, let’s get your coat on and we can go.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child,” Reilly protested as Brett guided him towards the door. “I’ve been drugged; I’m not regressing.”
“I’m not trying to,” Brett huffed. “I’m trying to let you know what’s going on, since your awareness isn’t that sharp right now.” His patience for the scientist was thin even on his best days, and although his feelings vacillated between irritation and concern, Brett found himself wanting to leave Reilly on the floor of his lab to sleep off whatever he was on. At the same time, though, he was terrified of what could possibly happen if he was left alone. “Make your choice, Reilly,” Brett demanded. “Either we go visit our young anarchist friends, or I drop you at the hospital.”
“You wouldn’t just drop me off,” Reilly disagreed, grabbing onto Brett’s shoulder for balance. Even so, he was a little more willing to cooperate. “Let’s see what they have to say.”
--
Once the cold October air hit him, Reilly began to shiver violently, which only set Brett’s nerves further on edge. He reached out to place a hand on Reilly’s forehead at every red light they hit, and by the time they pulled up at Henry Avelar’s apartment, Brett had lost every ounce of irritation he’d been clinging to.
“You’re starting to scare me,” he admitted, turning the car off but leaving the keys dangling from the ignition. “Reilly, this isn’t normal.”
“I’m freezing,” Reilly hissed through gritted teeth, huddled so deep into his winter coat that he looked like he was trying to let it swallow him completely.
“You have a fever,” Brett reminded him. “But you shouldn’t, right? Drugs aren’t supposed to cause fevers.”
Reilly sighed heavily, and for a moment he looked to be in a state of clarity, wearing the same bemused expression Brett had grown accustomed to seeing when Reilly was about to impart some knowledge on “the ignorant FBI agent.” It passed quickly, though, and Reilly slumped back against the seat, barely making an effort to look at him through half-closed eyelids. “Never tested it on humans,” he muttered.
“So you have no idea what’s going on with you right now,” Brett clarified. “Jesus Christ, you could really be dying, couldn’t you?”
“Brett.”
“I’ve seen what your other mad science concoctions have done, Desmarais! Some of the deaths were caused by drug-induced hyperthermia; you told me yourself what you witnessed in that observation box. Am I going to have to watch your body boil itself alive?” Brett didn’t realize he was shouting until he took note of the fact that Reilly had cupped his hands over his ears in a vain effort to block him out. He swallowed and slowly sat back against the seat, his heart pounding in his chest.
“You would have already,” Reilly replied quietly, his voice semi-muffled by the fabric of his coat.
“What?” Brett turned only his head to look at Reilly.
“If you were going to have to watch me die,” Reilly repeated, “you would have already. It happens quickly.”
“Oh my God,” Brett said and punctuated the sentence with a harsh, abrupt laugh. “Come on, let’s just--let’s go.”
“I don’t understand why you’re laughing,” Reilly said, struggling to push open the car door.
“I’m not laughing,” Brett called in response. He slammed the driver’s side door and walked around to Reilly’s side, waiting patiently for him to get out. “This isn’t amusement,” he clarified as he grabbed Reilly by the arm, “it’s--I don’t know, panic.”
“Reasonable,” Reilly said and then cleared his throat, “considering you were the one telling me not to panic.”
“Oh, I think I’ve earned the right to. Come on.” The cold must have woken Reilly up somewhat, because Brett only had to hold his arm to steady him as they walked to the apartment building’s entrance. Under the harsh yellow lamplight, he still looked terrible, but his eyes were open and he didn’t seem to be in as much of a daze. “How are you feeling?” Brett asked as he pressed the buzzer. “Any better?”
Reilly rolled his eyes, which Brett took to be a good sign. “‘Not as horrible’ is just about the only way I can quantify it. I wouldn’t put myself anywhere near the ‘better’ side of the spectrum.”
“Noted,” Brett said, and allowed a faint smile of relief to cross his features. The click of the door unlatching stole his attention back, and he held it open for Reilly to pass through.
“I better not get punched again,” Reilly grumbled, and Brett laughed as the door slammed shut behind them.
Title: One Way or Another
Story: LNOVERKILL
Rating: PG-13 (For language; they're allotted one f-bomb, right? lol)
Flavor(s): Butter Pecan #20: hot; Watermelon #10; where did I put that?; Coffee #26: hook
Word Count: 1884
Summary: Really, he should never have let his guard down.
Notes: Reilly Desmarais, Brett Schofield. October, canon. (A little self-indulgent, maybe, but also important to the plot in a roundabout way.)
The hum of electronics and machinery usually provided calming white noise for him during his long hours in the lab, but that evening it did little to focus Reilly’s mind while he sat at his desk, the top completely covered in papers. Instead, coupled with the sound of the wind outside, the noise lulled Reilly into a state of semi-sleep, dozing at his desk with his chin cupped in one hand. The other still held a pen, the point pressing a black mark onto one of the papers.
The lab was always quieter at night, without the sound of Madelyn’s heels clicking on the tile outside, or the slamming of doors as people went in and out of their offices all day. It was nothing compared to the last place Reilly had worked, in a building staffed with over 100 people, but he was a light sleeper and usually any kind of sporadic noise was enough to jolt him out of a relaxed state. Sleeping on the job was not something anyone would have thought him likely to do. He was too high-energy to begin with, and once he focused in on a project, it was hard to get him to stop working long enough to even eat a sandwich midday.
That evening, however, sleep overtook him fairly quickly. Reilly couldn’t articulate what he was feeling, or why he was so exhausted; all he knew was that when he closed his eyes, he ended up opening them again several minutes later, thinking he’d no more than blinked. The sea of notes in front of him was leading him nowhere, which only added to his frustration, and after about half an hour of drifting in and out of consciousness, Reilly finally pillowed his head in his arms and fell asleep.
It wasn’t his best decision.
There was a distant noise--a click and a thud. Reilly stirred, moving his head just enough that he could have looked in the direction of the noise if he’d opened his eyes. He didn’t, though. His eyelids were too heavy. The noise didn’t happen again, and Reilly slept.
Something pushed, hard, on Reilly’s shoulder and he willed it away. It pushed again, grabbing and jostling him, and he came to long enough to hear someone shout in his ear.
“Reilly! Jesus Christ, wake up!”
“Stop it,” Reilly demanded hoarsely, lifting his head up so he could use one arm to swat at whoever had woken him up. “Go away.”
“Hey, Reilly,” the voice demanded as a hand reached out to grab his jaw, “look at me.”
Reilly squinted through smudged lenses at the figure in front of him, until his vision focused enough that he could recognize who had so rudely awoken him. “What do you want, Brett?”
“Don’t panic,” Brett said, “but I think you may have been dosed.”
“Dosed,” Reilly repeated, and then let out a pitiful scoff. “Listen,” he said, grabbing onto Brett’s arm, but never finished what he’d planned to say.
“You’re slurring your words,” Brett said. His voice seemed to lack any patience or compassion, though Reilly didn’t immediately pick up on that. “You can barely keep your eyes open, and I can feel the heat radiating off of you from here. Either you’re really damn sick, or you’re having an adverse reaction to a drug--and I’d bet it’s the latter.”
“Why?” Reilly demanded. His eyes had closed again, but his eyebrows were furrowed as though he was still attempting to glare at Brett.
“Why do I think that?” Brett gave into some incredulous laughter, and Reilly finally opened his eyes once more.
“You’re no doctor,” he reminded Brett.
“One of your vials is missing from the cabinet. How much do you wanna bet whatever it is can cause whatever this is?” Brett motioned at Reilly, who only sighed and dropped his head into his hands.
“Fuck.” It made sense, of course, what Brett was suggesting. Reilly’s brain worked to sort through possibilities, but the lethargic state he was in extended to his cognitive functions as well. “I don’t know what to say to you,” Reilly grumbled. “My brain is off.”
“I know,” Brett said, gently that time, and ran a hand up and down Reilly’s back. “We should go to the hospital.”
“The hospital?” Reilly scoffed. “And just what are they going to do about this?” He gestured with one hand towards the cabinet in the back of the room. “Experimental compounds, Brett. If I was dosed, and it was with something of my own creation, no doctor is going to know how to treat me.”
“I feel like that’s just an excuse,” Brett replied. “Could anything in there kill you?”
“Enough of anything can kill you,” Reilly muttered.
“Really helpful, you asshole.” Brett jostled him enough to make him slip off of his stool, and then caught Reilly once it was clear he wasn’t stable on his feet. “I’m going to take that as a hopeful ‘no.’”
“No,” Reilly agreed, and when he leaned into Brett, he chose to interpret it as anything but an overt sign of weakness. “Not unless they wanted me to overdose. Which I haven’t.”
They know what they’re doing, he meant, and Brett understood. “Where’s your coat?” he asked instead. “It’s cold out.”
Reilly, much to Brett’s surprise, leaned in and nuzzled his cheek against Brett’s upper arm. “Why?” he asked. “Where are we going?” His voice still came out sounding thick, his tongue heavy and uncooperative in his mouth. “Why are you here, anyway?”
Brett sighed. “The kids have some information they think we’d like to hear.”
“The kids,” Reilly spat, and turned to bury his face in Brett’s arm. “God, don’t take me back there.”
“It’s there or the hospital, Reilly,” Brett said. “Jesus. You are really not okay. What is this shit?”
“A strong sedative.” Reilly chuckled and tried to pull himself upright, his fingers clenched around the material of Brett’s coat. “They wanted a knockout drug.”
“Well, I’d say you delivered,” Brett replied. “Are you going to be okay? I’m serious here, Reilly. I’m concerned about you.”
“Yeah.” He decided against nodding, figuring that would undermine his efforts to actually appear okay. He was close enough to losing his balance while standing still. “Just have to wait until it leaves my system. I’ll be groggy for a while.”
“Sounds real pleasant.” Brett stood with one hand against Reilly’s back, steadying him, while he searched the room for Reilly’s coat. “Here we go,” he said once he spotted it, hanging on a hook near the door, partially obscured from view by the wall cabinets. “Come on, let’s get your coat on and we can go.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child,” Reilly protested as Brett guided him towards the door. “I’ve been drugged; I’m not regressing.”
“I’m not trying to,” Brett huffed. “I’m trying to let you know what’s going on, since your awareness isn’t that sharp right now.” His patience for the scientist was thin even on his best days, and although his feelings vacillated between irritation and concern, Brett found himself wanting to leave Reilly on the floor of his lab to sleep off whatever he was on. At the same time, though, he was terrified of what could possibly happen if he was left alone. “Make your choice, Reilly,” Brett demanded. “Either we go visit our young anarchist friends, or I drop you at the hospital.”
“You wouldn’t just drop me off,” Reilly disagreed, grabbing onto Brett’s shoulder for balance. Even so, he was a little more willing to cooperate. “Let’s see what they have to say.”
--
Once the cold October air hit him, Reilly began to shiver violently, which only set Brett’s nerves further on edge. He reached out to place a hand on Reilly’s forehead at every red light they hit, and by the time they pulled up at Henry Avelar’s apartment, Brett had lost every ounce of irritation he’d been clinging to.
“You’re starting to scare me,” he admitted, turning the car off but leaving the keys dangling from the ignition. “Reilly, this isn’t normal.”
“I’m freezing,” Reilly hissed through gritted teeth, huddled so deep into his winter coat that he looked like he was trying to let it swallow him completely.
“You have a fever,” Brett reminded him. “But you shouldn’t, right? Drugs aren’t supposed to cause fevers.”
Reilly sighed heavily, and for a moment he looked to be in a state of clarity, wearing the same bemused expression Brett had grown accustomed to seeing when Reilly was about to impart some knowledge on “the ignorant FBI agent.” It passed quickly, though, and Reilly slumped back against the seat, barely making an effort to look at him through half-closed eyelids. “Never tested it on humans,” he muttered.
“So you have no idea what’s going on with you right now,” Brett clarified. “Jesus Christ, you could really be dying, couldn’t you?”
“Brett.”
“I’ve seen what your other mad science concoctions have done, Desmarais! Some of the deaths were caused by drug-induced hyperthermia; you told me yourself what you witnessed in that observation box. Am I going to have to watch your body boil itself alive?” Brett didn’t realize he was shouting until he took note of the fact that Reilly had cupped his hands over his ears in a vain effort to block him out. He swallowed and slowly sat back against the seat, his heart pounding in his chest.
“You would have already,” Reilly replied quietly, his voice semi-muffled by the fabric of his coat.
“What?” Brett turned only his head to look at Reilly.
“If you were going to have to watch me die,” Reilly repeated, “you would have already. It happens quickly.”
“Oh my God,” Brett said and punctuated the sentence with a harsh, abrupt laugh. “Come on, let’s just--let’s go.”
“I don’t understand why you’re laughing,” Reilly said, struggling to push open the car door.
“I’m not laughing,” Brett called in response. He slammed the driver’s side door and walked around to Reilly’s side, waiting patiently for him to get out. “This isn’t amusement,” he clarified as he grabbed Reilly by the arm, “it’s--I don’t know, panic.”
“Reasonable,” Reilly said and then cleared his throat, “considering you were the one telling me not to panic.”
“Oh, I think I’ve earned the right to. Come on.” The cold must have woken Reilly up somewhat, because Brett only had to hold his arm to steady him as they walked to the apartment building’s entrance. Under the harsh yellow lamplight, he still looked terrible, but his eyes were open and he didn’t seem to be in as much of a daze. “How are you feeling?” Brett asked as he pressed the buzzer. “Any better?”
Reilly rolled his eyes, which Brett took to be a good sign. “‘Not as horrible’ is just about the only way I can quantify it. I wouldn’t put myself anywhere near the ‘better’ side of the spectrum.”
“Noted,” Brett said, and allowed a faint smile of relief to cross his features. The click of the door unlatching stole his attention back, and he held it open for Reilly to pass through.
“I better not get punched again,” Reilly grumbled, and Brett laughed as the door slammed shut behind them.