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Ryan was a man of action.
His track record spoke for itself. Generally, he didn't play well with others due to his cavalier attitude towards violence, many of his previous mission partners complaining that his seeming inability to stick to the plan, and his penchant for responding to an unexpected problem with less than conventional tactics, would end up getting both him, and anyone he was working with, killed.
Despite all this, he was one of the Agency's best. His methods, though largely frowned upon, always got results. And when he went on a mission with his partner, Gavin, he was damn near unstoppable.
Which was why he was so tense and twitchy now, pacing back and forth over the cramped floorspace of the van that was serving as a mobile command unit.
"Any change in status?" he asked, absently rapping his fingers on the edge of Michael's chair.
The younger man resisted the urge to slap his hand away. Ryan was very capable of breaking him in half, so he found it best not to antagonise the senior agent. Michael was having a hard time of it, though, with the regularity at which Ryan was asking that same question. "No," he all but growled. "Just like there wasn't any change ten minutes ago, when you asked me then. Or ten minutes before that. As soon as we know anything," he indicated to himself and Ray, who was sitting to his left, "you'll be the first person we tell."
Ryan ran a hand through his hair, tugging slightly at the ends. "Sorry. I'm a little on edge. I'm used to being a little more physically involved in a mission."
They both knew this was only part of the reason for his agitation. The other was in the form of the British-born field agent currently working undercover in the building across the street from the alleyway that the van was parked in.
The company that Gavin had infiltrated was run by an ex-mob boss by the name of Adam Kelso. Unsurprisingly, his business (very unoriginally named Kelso Enterprises) was involved in some rather unscrupulous dealings. Over the years, Kelso had amassed a vast library of contacts, including details of many of their projects, legal and not-so-legal alike. The collective information was conservatively estimated to a value well into the billions.
It was also highly encrypted and scattered across a series of different systems. Extracting a worthwhile amount of intel wasn't possible within the timeframe of a standard mission. As such, the Agency had decided to send in an undercover agent to extract the data over a series of days, downloading the information onto an external data pad in manageable chunks.
Gavin was their prime pick. The Brit had started hacking into things in his early teens. By the time he was eighteen, he was already skilled enough to get into the British government's systems. So he did. He didn't do anything malicious with the power suddenly at his fingertips; rather, he indulged in an act of cyber vandalism and inserted a banner that read 'Vav was here' on the British government's homepage that took a whole day to get taken down. It was long enough for the cyber community to take hold of the 'Vav' moniker and try and get in contact with the man who had managed to hack into the British government. A number of these people searched for him because they wanted to proposition him for a job that would require his skill set. He quickly became a hacker-for-hire, holding down some shitty low-paying job for appearances but really making his money with his unlawful talent.
His criminal activities were always bound to draw attention to him eventually, and Gavin had moved more times than he could remember, often going underground for a few weeks or even months after a particularly big job. He was just shy of his twenty-third birthday when a careless error got him into an unpleasant situation with the Secret Service, who then ostensibly lost track of him when the American government recognised his potential worth, and offered him diplomatic immunity within the USA in exchange for his services. Glad for a way out, Gavin took the offer and began training at the Agency.
Along with his talents, Gavin's less-than-spotless record, as well as his history of being able to disappear without a trace, made him the perfect candidate for the job. The inactivity of the 'Vav' hacks over the period of time that Gavin had been working as an agent could be explained away as one of his underground periods - the fact that the last major job he'd done had so nearly landed him in trouble with the SIS certainly lent credence to this.
Kelso hired Gavin to further beef up the security measures surrounding his huge store of information, not realising that Gavin's real purpose there was to extract said data.
Normally, Ryan would have been a lot more comfortable with the scenario. After all, he and Gavin went on dangerous missions together all the time.
Which was really the crux of the matter - for the first time in their partnership, Gavin was, for all intents and purposes, running a solo op. Ryan was only in the van with Michael and Ray as a precautionary measure, just in case something went wrong. Being cooped up in the small vehicle while Gavin stole from an ex-mob boss went against the grain of Ryan's entire being. The only comfort he had was that because of Kelso Enterprise's illicit business practices, it wasn't abnormal for Gavin to be carrying a gun while he was in the building. Of course, this was only a slight comfort, as it meant that pretty much everyone else that worked at Kelso Enterprises was also permitted to carry a firearm.
"Any change in status?" Ryan asked again, unable to help himself.
Ray glanced over at Ryan as Michael hunched his shoulders and made an irritated noise. "Seriously, man? You asking us that over and over is getting kinda annoying, not to mention that's it distracting us from- oh, shit."
"What?" Ryan was on alert immediately, hand resting on the back of Ray's chair as he peered at Ray's computer screen.
The Puerto Rican hammered away at his keyboard and glued his eyes to his screen, which was basically a monitor panel attached to the interior wall of the van. "Might be a false alarm," he muttered a distracted reply. "Kelso's called Gavin into his office - hang on, we're having an issue with Gavin's cam feed..." Ray and Michael's fingers were in a flurry of motion, flying across their keyboards and re-establishing the feed connection. The grainy video displayed on their screens sharpened. The angle was awkward, only affording a look at Kelso from the chest down as he leant against his desk, suit jacket falling open and his holstered gun just visible to the camera. Ray and Michael were listening intently to whatever they were picking up from Gavin's hidden mic, and Ryan could feel himself getting more tense as he was left out of the loop.
"Aw, fuck." Ray and Michael tore off their headsets almost in perfect unison as the cam feed cut out, a harsh screeching pealing out from the earpieces.
Ryan's grip on the back of Ray's chair tightened further. "What is it?"
The off-field agents' fingers became a blur over their respective keyboards. Ray gave him a harried, "Kelso knows someone's been hacking into his systems, he's turned on some sort of jamming signal- he's questioning Gavin about it because he's such a new addition to the security team-"
He barely got the words out before Ryan yanked open the van doors and took off across the street, gun already drawn.
~* * *~
"I find it hard to believe that you know nothing about this."
Gavin shook his head. "I'm sorry, but I was working on a completely different section than the one you said was compromised. You can check the logging information at the station I work at."
Kelso didn't regard him with any less suspicion. "That's more than a little convenient, wouldn't you say?"
"Mr. Kelso, you of all people should know how huge your information network is. I bet there's a bunch more guys that weren't working on affected sections either. It's just a coincidence."
An alarm started blaring, rapidly followed by multiple gunshots, and both their heads whipped around. "What the bloody hell is that?" Gavin cried, turning back to Kelso, who was now pointing his gun at Gavin. Gavin put his hands up in a defensive position, knowing that with Kelso's reputation, he would be dead in an instant if he went for his own pistol. "Mr. Kelso," he said in a measured tone with just the slightest amount of shake to it, "I know that there's a lot of coincidences stacking up here, but I promise you I have no idea what's going on."
"I'm really finding that hard to believe now. Who are you working for? Who hired you?"
"The only person I'm working for is you! And I don't know what you're bloody well on about!" Gavin retorted heatedly as the gunfire grew closer and closer, then stopped altogether. The door was wrenched open and Ryan suddenly burst into the room. Kelso's eyes narrowed briefly at the intruder and then, just as quickly, swung his attention back to Gavin, grabbing him roughly by the hair. He dragged the Brit into a headlock, pressing the muzzle of his gun to the young man's temple. Gavin's fingers clutched desperately around the arm at his throat, off-balance with the way Kelso had hauled him into the armbar but too petrified to move himself into a more stable position.
"Who's this? Is he your partner?" he snapped at Gavin, jamming the gun roughly against his head. "I knew you were a fucking sneak."
Ryan had trained his own gun on Kelso as soon as he entered the room. Now, he cocked an eyebrow at the furious man. "If I've caught you at a bad time, I could come back later."
"Don't move," Kelso snarled. "You know this guy?" He tapped his pistol against Gavin's temple, and the smaller man flinched.
"No. Never seen him before."
"Please, I don't know who that is, I wasn't trying to steal anything," Gavin pleaded. "This is the first real job I've managed to get in years, you can check-"
"Shut up. I don't believe you. Either of you. I said don't move!" Ryan had stepped forward a few paces, away from the door, and stopped at the sudden shout.
"Look, I don't want to get caught up in anything," Ryan said calmly. "Why don't you just give me access to the data and let me leave, you two can get back to whatever it is you're doing. I won't tell, I promise."
"You take one more step and I'm putting a bullet in his skull."
Ryan shrugged. "What do I care? Sure, it's a bit dramatic, and bad enough for him, but I don't know him. I killed a bunch of people to get into this room, one more dead body doesn't matter much to me."
But Kelso shook his head slowly, not taking his eyes off Ryan. "No. You two are in on this together. I know it. You can't convince me otherwise."
"Oh, for crying out loud," Ryan made an irritated noise, and, slowly, deliberately switching his aim away from Kelso, fired his pistol.
Gavin collapsed with a cry, his left leg buckling underneath him. Kelso let him fall, and Gavin stared in stupefaction as blood started to well up from the small hole in the fleshy part of his calf. He took a few shocked seconds to himself before pressing his hands to the wound, applying pressure to try and stem the blood flow. His face was white as he glared at Ryan. "What the hell did you do that for, you psycho!"
The older man ignored him, lowering his gun and looking pointedly at Kelso. "That good enough for you?" he asked, not breaking eye contact as Gavin groaned and slumped onto his side.
"Well, my mistake," Kelso replied mildly, levelling the gun at Ryan's head. Ryan froze, knowing that he'd be dead if he made any sort of movement to raise his own weapon. "But the fact that he wasn't trying to steal my property doesn't change that you were."
A gunshot ripped through the air. Despite himself, Ryan flinched as Kelso's body jerked back, blood spraying from the side of his head. Gavin lowered his gun, his arm starting to shake and a thin sheen of perspiration beading on his forehead. Ryan surged forward and dropped to the ground next to him, easing him into a sitting position and hastily pulling his field medical pouch out of its designated pocket, setting about wrapping up the wound to help staunch the bleeding. Part of him was glad that at such close range, the bullet had gone straight through Gavin's calf. At least he didn't have to worry about pulling a misshapen lump of metal out of Gavin's leg without any proper tools.
"Gavin, I'm so sorry, I couldn't think of what else to do-"
"You shot me," Gavin hissed through clenched teeth, the words harsh with anger and pain as Ryan gingerly lifted him onto his feet.
"It was the only way I could think of getting his attention away from you. He had his gun pressed to your head, Gav, there was too much chance his finger would jerk on the trigger if I shot him, and I couldn't-" His voice cracked and he stopped. Gavin glanced up at him, and his eyes widened as he saw the tears on Ryan's face. Ryan was crying? Madcap, indomitable, literally-laughs-in-the-face-of-death Iron Ryan was actually crying?
"Please don't hate me," Ryan whispered.
Gavin gave a long-suffering sigh that cut off with a groan. "Couldn't hate you if you killed me." He grimaced and moaned softly, unable to avoid putting weight on the injured leg as they shuffled awkwardly towards the door. "Wish you hadn't shot me in such a bloody painful spot, though. Prick."
"I'm sorry," Ryan apologised, surreptitiously wiping away his tears. "I really didn't have much of a choice. Your leg was the furthest away from him, I had to make sure that he didn't think I was going to shoot him. He would have killed you." Ryan paused, ostensibly to open the door but in reality to give him time to swallow around the lump in his throat. "I don't think I could have lived with myself if that'd happened," he finished quietly. Gavin couldn't really find a response to that.
"You have the data?" Ryan asked, filling the silence.
A small whimper slipped past the younger agent's lips as he accidentally leaned too much on his injured leg. "Yeah, the pad's in my pocket." He sucked in a breath through his teeth. "I don't know how you can take bullets like you do and just walk it off," Gavin griped, face shiny with sweat. "This bloody hurts."
Ryan cracked a watered-down version of a smile, relieved that Gavin wasn't in so much pain that he didn't feel capable of making jokes. Keeping a light-hearted tone, he replied, "Well, I'm not careless enough to go around getting shot in the leg. It's a lot easier to walk that way."
"S' your fault, you git," Gavin grumbled, but there was no real menace behind the words.
The duo halted their slow progress at the top of a flight of stairs. Gavin glanced down the steps uncertainly. "I don't think I'm going to be able to make it down that," he admitted.
"Me either." With that, Ryan swept Gavin off his feet, ignoring the indignant squawk of protest as he easily cradled the younger man against his chest. Gavin felt his cheeks redden as he looped his arms around Ryan's neck to stabilise himself.
"Now this is just embarrassing," he muttered as Ryan carried him bridal-style down the stairs as easily as if he were carrying an empty cardboard box.
"Well, we all know that you'd be wearing the dress if we ever got married, so..."
"If this is your idea of leading up to a proposal, then can I suggest waiting until you haven't shot me in the past five minutes?"
Ryan grinned, sure now that Gavin would be fine and there would be no hard feelings. "Well, by my count, I shot you six minutes ago."
"Just get me out to the smegging van."
Ryan carried him out of the building, despite Gavin's protests that he could walk on a flat surface. The older agent reasoned that even though Gavin was able to walk - sort of - it would still be quicker for Ryan to carry him. Gavin grumbled to himself as Ryan loaded him into the back of the van, both Ray and Michael immediately exclaiming over Gavin's injury. Gavin was quick to assure them it was a flesh wound, and they calmed down, but only marginally.
"What the fuck happened? Did Kelso shoot him?"
Ryan didn't look at them as he strapped Gavin into one of the van's bench seats. "No. It was me."
"But you're a great shot! How did you miss?"
He tugged on the strap, making sure it was secure. "I didn't."
"What the fuck?" The two off-field agents backed away half a step, wondering if the older man had finally lost his mind.
"Guys, don't be like that," Gavin complained. "He didn't have a choice."
"Hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life," Ryan muttered quietly, still crouching beside Gavin, his head down.
"Well, you saved mine. Besides, Caleb'll patch me up. Hey!" He smiled wearily, his pained eyes lighting up. "I'll finally have a scar now! I mean, a proper one, not just the ones I got blowing up cans of paint with my mates back in England."
Michael shook his head at the Brit. "You're one of the Agency's best operatives, you've just been fucking shot by your partner, and you still manage to be the biggest goddamn dork I've ever met. I don't know how you do it." He turned his attention to Ryan, his mistrust mostly faded. "You want to drive?"
"No, I'm staying back here. You and Ray get in front."
Ryan fastened himself in next to Gavin, hand sliding into the younger agent's and squeezing lightly. "I'll make this up to you," he murmured as the van's engine purred to life.
Gavin smiled, then winced as the van rolled down the alley curb and onto the street, jolting him. Dryly, he replied, "You better."