“What on earth is going on in here?” he asked, lurching gracelessly to a stop beside his handler. Hazel eyes darted up from the monitor, startled. His ridiculously fluffy pompadour had gone from artfully mused to chaotic mess over the course of the morning. Arthur desperately wished he had a free hand available to smooth it out.
“Bi-monthly training seminar. Sorry,” he darted his eyes back to the computer, “we had a last minute change of agenda. Did you need something?”
Arthur didn’t.“A chair would be nice,” came out instead, and he immediately cursed his own stupid mouth for piling on the other man’s work load.
Syler’s brows furrowed, glancing around for one, frazzled mind apparently just remembering Arthur was hurt. He bit down on the urge to snort. At least someone wasn’t making a spectacle of him, more’s the pity it was the only person he might have welcomed it from. His own mouth was doing a fine enough job of making up for it, at any rate.
“Have mine,” he replied, hopping up.
“No, it’s fine.” Syler was having none of it, gently pressing a hand down on his shoulder. Arthur gave in with a graceless slump, neck automatically turning to chase his hand. God, he was pathetic. “I have to present in a few minutes anyway.”
“On?”
Syler winced. “Erm, your Mexico mission actually. Tutorial on rapid coordination of resources in response to the need for a new exit strategy.”
“Oh good,” Arthur scowled, darkly. “I can serve as a visual prop of what happens when the agent in question fucks up their own intel gathering job.”
“You don’t have to stay.” Syler brushed his hand consolingly over the back of his neck, movement absentminded, attention already returned to the monitor displaying security cam footage of his rooftop escapade two days prior.
Arthur kicked his bad leg up onto the desk, aiming for casual as he suppressed a wince. “Nothing better to do. Go on, whiz kid. Lecture to your adoring fans.” His handler rewarded him with a fond look, shaking his head, riot of curls somehow going further askew. “Oh for god’s sake, hold still.” He reached up, hands going to work in the bird’s nest the young engineer called hair, just as fluffy as he expected, smoothing it neatly back into place. The other man froze in his position bent over the desk. He withdrew his hands reluctantly, finger curling a wayward dark strand before letting go completely. “There we go, that’s better.”
Syler blinked owlishly, glancing at his reflection in the chrome trim of the monitor. “How the actual fuck did you do that? It never behaves for me!”
“Patience and persistence have their own rewards, sweetheart. I’ll teach you after we get done visiting my tailor.”
“Oh please tell me you’re not still on about that.”
“Promised I would, didn’t I?”
Syler grumbled, tugging self-consciously on the hem of his sweater before returning his attention to the computer. Arthur settled deeper into the chair, content to watch.
“Arthur, how are you feeling?” Thompson called, voice rising over the noise of the room as he appeared at his side, returned from wherever he’d darted off to. The man was damned quiet for a retired army officer pushing 70.
“Been better.” He shrugged.
“Happens to the best of us. You’ll be back to work before you know it, so enjoy the vacation while it lasts.” The Colonel paused, glancing to his deputy then back at Arthur, considering. “Make the most of it. You never know what can come from some unexpected time off.” His voice pitched lower on the last comment, for all that Syler was entirely too engrossed in his coding to pay them a lick of attention.
“Is that so?”
“Yes,” Thompson grinned, tone conspiratorial. “Yes, I think it is.” Arthur couldn’t help feeling buoyed by the tacit approval.
The Director of Operations cleared his throat, settling a hand on Syler’s shoulder to draw his attention before addressing the rest of the room. “Now then, everyone, we’re running behind enough as it is. To your stations so we can get started, please.”
Arthur slumped a bit deeper into the command chair as the cacophony increased then cut off altogether, suddenly reminded what this damned meeting was actually about. He liked to believe he was above such paltry feelings as embarrassment, but being faced with the prospect of a detailed play-by-play of his inglorious fuck up daunted even him. He turned his eyes to the space in front of the command desk, settling on the main monitor bank, his handler, and the Colonel, the later of whom had taken up a position off to one side.
“Alright, time and date for the record is 1205 on 16 October. Training session begins now. Deputy Perrin, if you will?”
“Right. Situation as follows. On 11 October, our agent was deployed just outside of Mexico City to begin surveillance on identified drug trafficking leader Salvador Sanchez with the final objective being elimination of the target. On the night of 14 October, SA Dufault—” Arthur couldn’t help throwing up a jaunty wave, brazen in the face of his humiliation.
“Yes, thank you Dufault. You are, as always, a known entity to all of us.” Syler quipped, offhand. “As I was saying, at approximately 1100 hours, our agent was posted on an upper floor of the office building across from the cartel’s headquarters. Initial intel gathered pointed to Sanchez being located within the neighboring building with plans to leave for a drop meeting with another cartel head sometime that night. As we later learned, Sanchez actually changed the time and location of the meeting, leaving with his men an hour prior through a concealed side door outside the range of our CCTV coverage, and returned shortly after 1100. With a convoy. This—” he paused to emphasize, “is what we call things not going according to plan.”
Arthur snorted, momentarily forgetting they had an audience. “When does it ever, honestly?”
Syler hummed along, unbothered. “First rule of providing support to a field officer—accept
