wake up or you'll wake up six feet down (rp for fortheportfolio)

[the_vigilante]

"Yo, so you know that blackout, a couple of months back?" Aces starts. Aiden didn't catch his name, if it came up at all, but the guy's had more face cards show up in his hands than there are in the whole of the deck, so the moniker feels appropriate.

"Yeah, what about it?" Lamb asks, glancing up from where he's been frowning down at his cards. He's getting fleeced, but he hasn't noticed yet. No one at the table has, as far as Aiden can tell, but that's their problem, not his. He's not about to fill them in.

"Word on the street's dude who cause it is in the city, now," Aces answers, picking up neat stack of chips to add to the pot. "Call," he mutters, before, "Word is Blume's got it out for him, too. Fifty thousand to anyone who can bring him in -- or roll up with his head on a spike or some shit."

"This ain't TV," Blank puts in. Aiden hasn't been able to come up with a nickname for him, drawing a blank. The guy is, as far as he's concerned, completely unmemorable. "Blume's a tech company. You really think they're gonna post some bounty, like they suddenly the Club?"

"I'm just telling you what I heard, man," Aces protests, holding up a hand. Blank throws down his, folding, and Aces continues, "Ask any kid in the Yards. There's a fifty thousand dollar contract on the dude who caused the blackout."

"Guy was a desk jockey or something for them, wasn't he?" Lamb wonders, laying down the turn card. Aiden, more interested in the conversation than the game, barely glances at his own hand. Fifty thousand dollars would be nice, especially considering money's tight now that Nicky's had her baby, and as Lamb continues to point out, "Sounds like it'd be an easy job. Dude probably doesn't even own a gun."

If there's a price on his head, their guy has probably bought a gun since then, Aiden thinks, but the Lamb's assessment isn't far off, otherwise. Chances are he doesn't know how to use it, not like he does, so the hard part, then, becomes finding Blume's guy before another fixer, looking for an easy pay out, does -- or before he skips town. Aiden doesn't want to have to leave Chicago, easy paycheck or not, not when Nicky might need him.

"You in or you out, man?" Aces asks, breaking him out of his thoughts.

Aiden glances down at his cards, his attentions again cursory, then taps them into a pile on the edge of the table and sets them down. Without reaching for his share of the chips, he starts to stand. Fifty thousand dollars will make what he's leaving behind look like pocket change. "I'm out."

Behind him, a chorus of jeers start up as he heads for the door, but he ignores them. He's got bigger things to worry about now.

► ►
It takes him too long to piece it all together -- who he's after, exactly, where he is -- but somehow, somehow it's still him who gets to Raymond Kenney first. While it should feel like a Godsend, however, the check all but in the bank, it puts Aiden on edge, instead. For all he knows, Ray's a hell of a lot more prepared than anyone's been lead to believe, and he's walking into a trap. For all he knows, this is some CPD set up, to see how many would-be murderers they can bait into catching, and it's still a trap, albeit one that ends up with him arrested, rather than with a bullet in his head. Maybe. It really depends on how the CPD is feeling today or if Lucky Quinn has them cleaning house.

Either way, he doesn't go in the front door and he doesn't let the cameras catch him. He hugs the building, instead, slipping from one blind spot to another, so that Ray or whoever's watching doesn't see him, and works his way around the back. From there, he finds a way up to a window on the second floor, climbing a stack of pallets high enough until he can pull himself up onto the catwalk under it, and pries it open just enough to slip inside. He takes the time to catch the window, once he is, and close it again quietly. He allows himself a breath out then (so far, so good), and on the inhale flinches, the smell of alcohol hitting home like a sucker punch. It takes him a minute to remember to breath through it, and when he does, he edges towards the railing of the walkway, and looks down into the warehouse.

Someone is definitely sleeping in the proverbial bed, here, and like Baby Bear, Aiden finds him still there, who he imagines to be Kenney sitting at a table in the center of the room, apparently unaware. He's also the source of the smell of booze, Aiden notes, a mostly empty bottle and glass at the table, too. Aiden makes a face, disapproving, getting drunk when half of Chicago's looking for you a terrible idea, but starts down the stairs all the same. Ray doesn't seem to notice him, doesn't move up until Aiden has the barrel of his gun pressed up against the back of his head, and even then, it's only a minute thing, just him stiffening, straightening.

"Ray Kenney?" Aiden breathes at his ear.

"Yeah," he answers dumbly.

Humming, Aiden cocks the gun and -- well, he's not sure what makes him hesitate, really. Maybe it's how easy this all seems, even for what's supposed to be an easy contract. Either way, however, he's pretty sure he hears Kenney hiss, "Just fuckin' do it, man," and then, for whatever reason, he can't. He fucking can't. He bites out a swear of his own, then at a loss for anything better to do, decocks the gun and brings the butt of it down on Kenney's temple, instead. Mercifully, Kenney slumps into the table, and Aiden watches him for a moment, frowning, before willing himself to move, to head for the door.

He's fucking himself, he knows he's fucking himself, but he can't do this. He can't be someone's apparent suicide. He'll leave that to someone else.

► ►
Aiden's not sure what makes him go back any more than he's sure what made him leave, but the next night, he's back at the warehouse he found Kenney at. He goes in the back again, this time hoping not to be seen from the street rather than by the cameras, it still smells like booze when he lets himself in, and Kenney is still unconscious -- or is unconscious again, considering the bottle and glass have been swapped out for what looks like two empty six packs. Either way, Aiden wonders if Kenney isn't trying to kill himself, either by drinking himself to death or waiting here for someone else to find him, when someone already did, and that disgusts him more than the smell of booze did, last night.

He's tempted for a minute, then, to just fucking leave Kenney here, to the suicide he's too much of a coward to even do himself, and he turns to head back towards the stairs. He stops when his eyes fall on a nearby drum, filled with what looks like water, and all at once, he has a better idea. Marching back to Kenney, he fists a hand in his hair and pulls, trying to drag him back to consciousness or at least out of his seat. No matter his reaction, though, one thing is sure -- Ray's about to get a nice bath in the form of Aiden dunking him.

"Get up," he hisses, regardless, belatedly.

Comments

[fortheportfolio]

Ray jolts awake at the tug on his hair, flailing backwards. "What the fuck," he growls as he all but falls sideways out of his chair, not quite landing flat on his ass, though it's a near thing. He's not awake enough to put up a proper fight, but he does struggle back to his feet. "Who the fuck?" he asks this time, still flailing ineffectually.

Apparently, for all his depression and passive attempts at suicide, there is still some fight there.

[the_vigilante]

"Shut up," Aiden snaps, letting go of his hair, now that Ray's upright, to try and pull him into a headlock instead, that much less awkward in any number of ways. Regardless, he continues dragging him towards the drum. "Just keep your fucking mouth shut."

He'll be less likely to accidentally drown that way.

[fortheportfolio]

Ray's really too drunk to put up much of a struggle, stumbling along with Aiden as he drags him toward the drum. He's also too drunk to really put together any coherent sentences, especially with Aiden's arm around his neck. He manages something that sounds like "Let me go, fucking punk", at least.

[the_vigilante]

Aiden jerks him sharply towards the drum, a sort of warning for the backtalk, then shoves him forward. With luck, or considering how drunk he is, he'll collide with the drum and double over it, in perfect position for Aiden to push his face into the water. If he's less lucky, it won't take much to take Ray's knees out from under him and get him into the water. Either way, easy way or hard way, this is still happening.

[fortheportfolio]

Ray does in fact collide with the drum, staring at it for a moment in confusion before he realizes exactly what this punk has in mind - and he has just enough time to take a breath before his face is being pushed into the water.

He starts fighting to pull back immediately, starting by pushing on the sides of the barrel and then swinging blindly at Aiden when that gets him nowhere.

[the_vigilante]

Turns out, it's Ray that gets lucky, his fist connecting with Aiden's stomach. His grip relaxes in shock and as the air gets knocked out of him, and Aiden gasps out a swear before his fingers find Ray's shirt again. This time, he'll be a little more careful, dunking Ray. This time, he tries to hook his arm around his chest as he pushes him under, tries to pin his arms to keep him from swinging again.

"Sit still."

[fortheportfolio]

Ray manages to come up enough to get another proper breath - but it's lost almost immediately as Aiden gets his arms pinned and shoves him back under. He still fights Aiden's grip, trying to kick out at him, now, but he's unsteady enough that it's a much weaker effort that leaves him more leaning on Aiden than actually doing any damage.

He also seems to realize this, to realize he's not going to win this - and all at once, the fight goes out of him.

He might have been ready to cash in his chips, but he really wasn't expecting it to happen like this.

[the_vigilante]

His conscious, as it turns out, isn't clear.

From what Aiden can dig up, it turns out Ray wasn't lying about -- well, anything he said, and before too long, Aiden starts to feel like, even if he didn't pull the trigger, he still served up a death sentence to an innocent man. Someone else will try, succeed, and that'll be on him -- doubly so, if and when they find out that someone already found Ray, that he found Ray, and follow his path to him, and as much as Ray might not mind the idea of a little double tap, back of the head, Aiden does. All of this is on him.

He lets it gnaw at him for a whole couple hours after the verdict is in before, under pretense of threatening him to leave again, of trying to get him to sober up so he can leave, Aiden goes back to the warehouse. The bag of tacos he brings with him as more to do with, again, getting him sobered up than the realization he had, somewhere along the way, that Ray, the dumb fucker, might try and starve himself to death, if the drink isn't doing it. Good news is, Ray isn't there, his tacos for naught. Bad news is that his gut's telling him Ray didn't make it out of Chicago. It doesn't look like there was a struggle, his feeling isn't that kind of cold knife, but somehow, he knows Ray hasn't gone far. Blame the fact that the guy didn't exactly cover his tracks well.

Anger creeping in, Aiden gives chase, sure that he's going to beat Ray to death with the fucking tacos by the time he reaches him. He's so angry, in fact, that he fails to notice the electrified section of flooring as he steps off of the elevator and into the -- whatever weird base thing he's stumbled upon, here. He doesn't have time to wonder if this is something Ray's set up in the last few days or if this was always here. All he has time to do is register painpainpain before his world collapses around him, in time with him.

He comes to, some time later, to the feel of something touching his face. It's strange, at odds with something, something he's forgetting, and erratic, but annoying. He reaches up to swat it away, and realizes he can't. His eyes snap open, then, and he realizes several things all at once. One, he's been tied to a chair. Two, his head fucking hurts. And three, there's a strange little man crouched down next to him, a toaster tucked under one arm, poking him. Mercifully, in the case of that last one, he stops when Aiden comes away, and skitters backwards, clutching the toaster to his chest like a shield.

"What -- who the fuck are you?" Aiden manages, after a moment.

[fortheportfolio]

"Who the fuck are you?" the man echoes and demands, arms still wrapped around the toaster. "You shouldn't be here, no one should be here." He pauses a beat, eyes darting away from Aiden for a moment. "I shouldn't even be here, but that's beside the point, because he owes me." He looks back at Aiden fiercely as he finishes that, looking like he might poke him again if he wasn't awake, now.

[the_vigilante]

Aiden shifts a little in his seat, getting the hint that the goblin is thinking about poking him again, and trying to shy away without actually flinching. A sneer follows, and he hopes that will deter the other man, if he commits to touching him again, regardless of whether or not he senses weakness.

"Let me go," he orders. Fuck you and your questions right along with your poking.

[fortheportfolio]

The man dances back a step or two as Aiden shifts, eyeing the ropes warily. When it seems the knots are holding, he relaxes again - or, well. He rocks forward again, at least. "Mmmmm, no, I don't think so," he says, almost laughing. "I know you're here to kill him and since he's not here you'll kill me and no, huh uh, you can stay right there."

[the_vigilante]

Aiden takes a moment, then, wondering how the fuck he got himself into this situation. He then makes a mental note to actually kill Ray for this, because everything that's happened today from being electrocuted to being tied up to dealing with -- this guy and whatever the fuck's wrong with him, is his fault. He stews in that for a moment, fingers balling into fists as he strains a little against the rope, testing their strength, and then he forces himself to reign it in and relax.

"I'm not gonna kill him," Aiden promises. Even if this isn't Ray they're talking about, like hell he'd tell the goblin he's actually here to kill who he thinks he's here to kill.

[fortheportfolio]

The man starts to answer - and then there's a clang from overhead, and his head snaps up to stare toward the door. "Ray! Ray, get in here! Ray!" he yells, still clinging to the toaster.

"What the fuck?" drifts down from above. "Frewer??? What the fuck are you doing in my house, man?"

"I caught a fixer breaking in, Ray!"

"You caught a... oh Jesus fucking Christ," Ray says, volume dropping - and then there's the sound of a hydraulic platform lowering and approaching footsteps.

[the_vigilante]

For two weeks, everything goes according to plan. Aiden, as promised, keeps the fixers off of Ray's trail, feeding them fake rumors and, in one case, going as far as to lead a group of them to the warehouse he first found Ray at, to prove that he'd cleared out. He comes back to the Silo periodically, too, to bring food and make sure Ray's not dead, taking care each time to ensure he's not followed. Ray coughs up his allowance as agreed, albeit in chunks, presumably to keep him working, and never mind the fact he would have anyway, as a matter of professional pride, and they don't bond. At all. Aiden doesn't start to kind of maybe like Ray, not even a little bit, and when things go sour as part of an unrelated job, the Silo isn't where he runs, in lieu of the hospital or any other safe spaces he may have around the city.

Except he does, and well, he does, one hand pressed to his shoulder as he comes down from the lift, his fingers and shirt both bloody, his breathing ragged. He's pale, too, pained, and while he's not likely to die, the hole in his shoulder a clean one, even he couldn't say, with certainty, whether or not he's going to pass out. He staggers over to a chair, just in case, then, and sinks down into it, trying to stop the world from spinning or his stomach from doing barrel rolls. (If he doesn't black out, he's going to be sick.) Either would be great, at this point.

[fortheportfolio]

They have absolutely not started to bond, and it absolutely hasn't started to have any kind of positive effect on Ray at all. It isn't why he's cleaned up (for him, anyway), his hair and beard neater than they have been since Blume kicked him (literally) to the curb. It isn't why he's started actually using his skills, again, to look into what he can do against Blume. It also isn't why he's still in Chicago, despite the fact that he really had intended to leave those few weeks ago.

Absolutely not.

It's not long after Aiden stumbles into the chair that Ray comes up from deeper into the silo. He has a very large gun in hand, though it's not raised, his finger off the trigger. His monitors showed him who was coming in - and the state he was in. "Anybody with you?" he asks from the doorway, in case he needs to take care of whoever put the hole in Aiden before he gets around to worrying about the kid's health.

[the_vigilante]

"Don't think so," Aiden manages thickly. He doesn't react to the fact that Ray's carrying for any number of reasons, least of all the fact that, if he really wanted to shoot him now, he'd be in no position to stop him. "I ran them off on Dearborn."

Into the river. He thinks. Maybe.

[fortheportfolio]

"Alright," Ray returns immediately and steps into the room. "Hold on for two seconds, kid," he says even as he heads for a panel on the wall. He opens it, pushes a couple of buttons, and then closes it again before turning around, setting the gun to the side as he approaches Aiden. "How bad is it?"

[the_vigilante]

Peeling his fingers, blood slick and berry red, away from his shoulder, he turns his head to peer at his shoulder as if he needs to look to tell. His breath catches in throat, that little motion, that little pull on his shoulder too much for a minute, and then pushes his fingers back into the wound on a shuddering breath out.

"It's clean," he tells him. There are no strings on him or bullets in him. "I just -- I need ... " He needs to stop the bleeding, to bandage it or stitch it up or burn it closed. If he can manage that, he'll be fine. If he can manage that, all he'll have to worry about is the pain.

[fortheportfolio]

"Hold still, kid," Ray tells him seriously but not unkindly, moving away again to pick up a box from under one of the tables. He brings it with him, kicking a crate along in front of him as he returns to Aiden's side.

Out of the first aid kit - since that's what the box is - he comes up with a pair of medical scissors. "Just hold still," he says again - and he's just going to cut the fabric away from the wound, so he can get a look at what he's dealing with. "This jacket's shit anyway."

[fortheportfolio]

Ray's been doing his best to stay out of sight and off of Blume's radar, but he can't exactly stay inside all the time. There's still beer and groceries to buy, and he would feel bad having the kid do that kind of errand running for him when he's already keeping fixers off his ass.

There's also the fact that he might go even more insane if he did stay inside the silo all the time.

Today, he's out, though it's for a different kind of errand running. He's been looking into Blume's plans for the city, and it's occurred to him that he left behind some files that hold some information that might help him shut some things down before they get too far. He's trying his damnedest to be quick, because he doesn't really know how long the cloaking he'd put on the chip in his head will really hold.

He's also trying to hurry things along because he can feel "Joe's" scowl from here. The kid had frowned at him a lot when he had mentioned coming out here, and, while he hadn't said it, Ray could feel him thinking about the possibility of Ray still harboring a death wish.

The thing is, though, that Ray really doesn't. He doesn't know when the urge to let someone put a hole in his head really passed - and sometimes he wonders if it really has. He still has his moments, when the silo is quiet and he's had a few to drink, that those eleven names come back to him and he thinks he might still deserve to let someone balance the books a little - but it doesn't stick around in the light of day anymore. It helps, he thinks, that the kid keeps showing up, that he has some actual company.

He's not sure either of them really understand why the kid keeps showing up, though Ray is almost to the point that he can admit that they are actually starting to be friends. It's why he feels a little bad about the fact that he had run "Joe Bailey" through a search - and found himself staring at that name under a list of aliases belonging to one Aiden Pearce. It wasn't even that he had been specifically looking for information on the kid - he had been bored, and Nudling himself never led to anything good, so he had put in the next name that came to mind. He's been very careful not to mention it so far, and he has no intention of ever telling the kid he knows his real name. He knows how it would go over, and it's somewhat akin to a lead balloon.

Ray hears the shuffle of a footstep behind him, and he scowls at his phone. "C'mon," he mutters at the transfer bar, willing it to hurry up, glancing up at the hard drive. "One more minute," he says a little more loudly, assuming it's Aiden coming to see what's taking so long.

[the_vigilante]

"You're not going to need one more minute," a voice, definitely not Aiden's, informs Ray. The sound of a gun being cocked follows, the man who's clearly a fixer not nearly as hesitant as Aiden was, when they first met, and then --

-- well, there's the thunderous bang of a gunshot, but impossibly, it's the fixer that crumples, not Ray. Behind him and breathing heavy, apparently having hurried to get here, Aiden lowers his own gun, and immediately holds a hand out for Ray. Whether it's to help him up or just to help him away from the very dead man at his feet, now, is anyone's guess, but either way, it's an oddly comfortable thing, an easy one. They absolutely are friends now, and it shows in Aiden's body language. It shows in the concern behind his eyes, regardless of why he reaches for Ray.

"You alright?"

Fuck, he should have been here.

[fortheportfolio]

Ray is just starting to raise his hands when the gun goes off, and he jumps automatically, flinching - and is honestly surprised when there's no following pain. He spins, eyes wide, breathing heavy - and reaches out to take Aiden's hand, stepping over the dead fixer.

"Fuck. Yeah, yeah, I'm good. Thanks." He pauses a beat. "You alright?"

[the_vigilante]

"Yeah," Aiden tells him, pulling him away from the fixer. When he lets him go, he throws a brief glance over his shoulder before he amends, "But I hope you're almost done here. He's not the only guy I've seen creeping around, and that gunshot ... "

That's going to attract attention, but he didn't really have a choice.

[fortheportfolio]

"Just about," Ray returns, glancing back toward the computer to see how his download's going. "Just gotta --"

He looks back toward Aiden in time to see another shadow slide into the doorway, gun raised and pointed toward them. "Aiden, down!" he calls as he reaches for his own gun, bringing it up and firing in the same motion.

[the_vigilante]

Aiden drops down into a crouch, half-turning on his haunches to raise his own gun, just in case. Thankfully, Ray's got him, got the other fixer -- less so, however, his heart doesn't surface back out of his stomach, as his own name, his real name on Ray's lips rings in his ears.

Shit. Just -- fuck.

Pushing back to his feet, Aiden lets out a shuddering breath, and shakes his head faintly. if Ray knows who he is, then Nicky -- fuck.