Show Your Face • •

[brett damien parrish]

Brett’s job wasn’t one he wanted to go home and talk about. There were times when he discussed things with his father, given the man’s career with the FBI, but Brett wasn’t going to say anything over the dinner table about his day. Besides, with the speed media reported at these days, what had transpired would likely be common knowledge by the time he even sat down for something to eat. Brett didn’t have a burdening need to unload at the end of each and every day. If a day had been stressful, then he worked it off at the gym, sat down with a glass of something strong before bed and then got up the next day hoping it would be better. Sometimes it was and other times he needed to repeat that cycle for an extra day or two. It all depended on the outcome. If he had been successful, if crisis had indeed been averted, then typically it was a one-night deal. Other times, if the suspect had been too far gone, too unstable, then it required more self-medicating. Today was likely to be the former. The only shots fired at been at the hostage taker, and while Brett hadn’t approved them and would likely be involved in a jurisdiction battle with the commissioner of the NYPD in the coming days, the man had lived. He’d have a sling for a little while, and a scar for life, but he’d be fit to stand trial.

Brett would be holding down the fort for a while. There was going to be a whole to-do over who was right and wrong, and he wasn’t going to leave now so something could be blamed on his team. He leaned against his own car, wiping his hands with a cleaning wipe. The gunshot had hit glass, too, and some of the shards had been on the hostages when he was helping them. A few minor cuts were no big deal to Brett, but he didn’t want to be driving back to the office and accidentally push one deeper into his hand. He felt like that might cause the kind of accident he’d prefer to avoid. Someone had mentioned getting coffee for him a while ago, but Brett had no idea what had happened to it. The likelihood was that by the time he saw any semblance of his coffee order, it would be cold, and taste a little off.

Nodding to the crisis team that they could follow the victims to the hospital if they were going for treatment, Brett checked his watch. His job sometimes drained him. It was the unknown element of it all. He toed a very dangerous line of calming a suspect down or tipping them over the edge. He could have had all the training in the world, but humans were still unpredictable. The right man in power and everything that went wrong could be solely blamed on Brett. His father had warned him as much before he took the position, but Brett was meticulous about recording and keeping written files backed up. He wouldn’t go down without a fight, which was why he was going to be the annoyance of the NYPD team that were on the scene. He heard – and felt – someone rapping their knuckles on the hood of his car. “Yeah, what?” He asked, only partially glancing over his shoulder. Brett had been keeping his eye on the suspect as he was assessed by the EMTs and loaded into the ambulance.

• • •

TAGGED! Annalaina Octavia Nyqvist
WORDS! 590!
LYRICS! Masquerade - - - Nina Nesbitt
NOTES! <3 <3 <3

[Annalaina Octavia Nyqvist]

Laina didn't want to get in the way of what was going on around her. She was, after all, just a lab tech with field experience. She was one of the trained technicians to be out in the field. She didn't carry a gun but she was trained with one all the same. She understood the need to have one handy on a tough case but she saw better ways to handle the various situations that the police were called to. Unfortunately, she was part of the team that usually came in after the worst possible scenario won out. She'd been called ahead to this particular scene ahead of time because they wanted to be able to get the techs in there as soon as the scene was cleared to do so. She had been keeping apprised to the situation but with only half an ear because she'd been doing other work beforehand. She was a brilliant tech and enjoyed fitting all the puzzle pieces together. Figuring out who did what and why was a nice bit of closure. For her, in a way, it was therapy. Therapy, for her survivor's guilt, that she still occasionally, allowed in, from her best friend's murder. She'd wished there had been more than she could have done but she knew there wasn't. Just like she knew things happened the way they did, no matter how hard people try to stop things. Perhaps it was just her time, just a bit of bad luck but Laina didn't want to think that was true. The Fates were a cruel set of sisters to allow a young girl to stay a child forever.

When she'd been called up, told that she would be heading out to the crisis situation, she'd been nervous. She hadn't wanted to walk up to a scene that was similar to the one she and her father had driven up to that last night of her childhood; never mind that she'd been a teenager. She'd been haunted after that night, still occasionally had the bad dreams but they were less intense as the years went on. She didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad one but it was a fact all the same. Murder scenes broke Laina's heart and brought on a night of fitful sleep afterwards. She would find the person responsible, or she would continue to try. Her career was still fairly young, so far hadn't had that case that haunted her more than her best friend's death did but she also knew from talking to her older colleagues that it would come. And it would haunt her to her dying day if she never did all that she could to solve it. Laina didn't want a killer to go free because she'd missed something but also, sometimes, those crucial bits of information just weren't there.

Laina hadn't expected to recognise the FBI agent in charge. But she did so, she grabbed a couple of bottles of water from the cooler she kept in her car and headed his way. If she could help before she went to work on the scene, she would try. She rapped her knuckles on the car, waited patiently for acknowledgement. She understood from previous cases like this that the crisis leader usually needed a few minutes after everything cooled down to decompress and come to terms with the outcome, whether it was what they wanted or not. "You look like you could use this," Laina said, holding out a bottle of water. "Really, you look like you could use a whiskey more but the water's all I have on me." It had been a hard scene to be on. She'd only arrived basically on the tail end of it so she hadn't witnessed everything but she'd still seen enough to know.

♦ ♦ ♦

TAG; brett damien parrish
WORDS; 641
LYRICS; Think of You --Chris Young ft. Cassadee Pope
NOTES; <3