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This guy beside him won’t stop talking.
Boomerang’s traipsed off somewhere. Floyd doesn’t know where. He also doesn’t care, because if Boomerang gets hit by a car or something, no one can get mad at him about it. Floyd’s no babysitter. He’s made that exceptionally clear.
He carelessly discards half of a cigarette into the dregs of his beer and waves the bartender for another, feeling himself wavering slightly on the stool. He’s acting drunker than he is, which he usually does, because he’s used to people underestimating him and he’s stopped doing it by being competent and rich. He can’t properly fathom why he bothered coming out -- it’s not as if he’s interested in chasing tail, and Belle Reve is fine for a night in. He’s been teaching himself smoke rings in his bunk at night, as if he’s a teenager trying to impress someone.
But the guy beside him won’t stop fucking talking. And he talks about everything, but mostly he talks about guns, and about line of sight, and that’s really irritating, because Floyd would venture to say he knows more about guns than anyone else he’s ever met, so who’s this asshole trying to explain it back to him? He thinks he should tell him that, tell him that he knows, but he can't make himself look at him. He can’t will himself to do it. It just isn't happening. So he’s focused on the beer, the glass, the way cigarette ashes swirl along the remnants of liquid, the way dim bar lights dance along the glass’ rim.
The voice is familiar. Smoke-curdled and hoarse from use, but familiar, the kind of familiar you only get with your hands, using them day after day and never properly seeing them. His hands are fine, all things considered. He knows his hands, practically speaking. He's got a persistent ache in one, the kind doctors have told him is probably developing into arthritis and that no amount of stretching seems able to help, and he could source it down to the very muscles. That's how well he knows his hands. Who cares if he doesn’t know how to use them? So the guy won't stop talking, and Floyd recognizes the voice, recognizes what he’s saying, and can’t seem to bring himself to recognize the guy.
He slides off of the stool without looking, wobbles a bit on his feet. He supposes it’s lucky that they’re not getting called in after that last fiasco, and isn’t surprised when the Chatty Cathy just beside him doesn’t make a move to help. He never would. He knows the guy beside him, even if he wouldn't ever tell anyone that, and he knows that the guy beside him has never made it his business to help anyone else. It's just not pragmatic. It just isn't done.
But he also can't help himself from continuing to talk. He hears a remark about how he's unsteady on his feet, relayed as easy as anything. Floyd hates him, in this moment and in every other moment. There is no point at which Floyd doesn't hate him. He's the worst thing anyone's ever tried to drown in a river, ever held the head of below the surface as his hands scrabbled for useless purchase at the bank, and Floyd wishes the river had worked. That it would have taken him away, replaced the early woes of life with the ripples of something calmer. Something else that moved and flowed but didn't bleed or stare empty at a wall or do things just to prove something in him was capable of doing anything at all. The river would have been kinder.
But the river didn't happen. It's stupid to think about the river. So Floyd thinks about shooting, about the weight of a gun in his hands, about how he’d bruised his thumb on the bolt, back when he was young, and about how wind weighs on a bullet. How you have to account for it. He wouldn't have to in this bar, not if he was contemplating shooting the guy, which he is. He doesn't have a gun on him. This presents a large problem, and Floyd has to think of his hands instead of what's in them.
He doesn't. He can barely conceive of having hands. And still he balls one up, feels nails cutting into his palm through a generally hazy understanding of his body, and throws a punch.
It doesn't land. Not on a person, anyway—his fist connects with something cold, and there's a shattering of glass.
The bartender gives him a long look, and it's the first thing Floyd's been able to focus on since Boomerang left.
"Shit," Floyd mutters, instead of doing something sensible, like apologizing for breaking a glass. Privately, he thinks it ridiculous that that's the expectation; he paid for the drink, his patronage is paying for the bartender's wages, it just doesn't track. But he doesn't voice that, because the bartender is giving him that long look, as if he pities Floyd, and there's some kind of guilt in his stomach.
"Jesus," the bartender says, "You closing out your tab now?"
Fuck no. Floyd shakes his head, and the bartender sighs , a real exasperated kind of sigh, like this is a bad choice, and Floyd is feeling that guilt evaporate in real-time. Fuck this guy and his pity. Fuck the guns. Fuck the bar, fuck the prison, fuck living here. The bartender ducks down, and the shards of the bottle clink against themselves, and Floyd thinks about guns. About where he'd have to be to shoot someone who's behind cover. Honestly, the easiest thing is to wait for their reappearance rather than to change position; sniper nests are hard to come by, but everyone moves eventually. Though Floyd's good at adapting, so if he wanted to shoot the bartender, he could find a place to do it. It would be easy to lean right over the bar, but it would lack panache — maybe something with the dartboard, some fancy maneuvering, who knows? It's just a hypothetical. He wouldn't shoot the bartender, unless Waller said it had to be done because the bartender was a threat to US safety or something. G-d bless America. He's in no shortage of people to kill and guns to use to do it.
A gun is a powerful thing. Everyone knows that, and everyone knows that it's powerful in anyone's hands. G-d bless America for that, for the hours he spent learning marksmanship as a kid and for everyone who never stopped him. Knowing how to use a gun elevates it to a new level, knowing how every mechanism works together and how every element impacts it makes it all the more powerful. It makes it something to fear. Not to Floyd, who murmurs thanks as the bartender sets another bottle of beer before him, because Floyd doesn't scare easy.
He wonders if anyone at this bar is thinking of killing him. Of what it would be like to shoot him with a gun. If they would do it right, or if it would be on impulse because the guy at the end of the bar is muttering about guns and wouldn't it be nice to give him a fright?
Floyd starts to bring the beer up, and then he feels the presence of someone behind him, the weight of a hand on his shoulder. It cuts through everything, through the hum of music and the smog of nicotine and the din of blissful unawareness, and then someone says, clear, even, “Deadshot.”
In this moment, Floyd hates Rick Flag Jr. It’s a strange feeling, hating Rick Flag, and it’s swallowed by a resurgence of guilt the instant he recognizes it as hatred. Other people can hate Rick Flag – plenty do, Grace couldn’t stand him, Boomerang takes him for a bootlicker, Waller doesn’t respect him. Floyd picks up on these things. He’s good at watching, and Boomerang’s pretty mouthy, anyway. Floyd’s frankly surprised that he hasn’t been picked up for impersonating Mirror Master yet, but then he supposes that the rest of Task Force X is too busy jacking themselves off in the name of their own unending issues to really pay attention to Boomerang. And maybe Boomerang’s good at talking so much that no one knows what’s of worth, and that suits Floyd just fine, usually.
Rick Flag is here, though. He doesn’t like that Rick is here, and he supposes Rick doesn’t like that he’s here, which puts them at something of a standstill, because Floyd’s not leaving.
“Rick,” he says, and he likes to think it sounds pretty slick, pretty cool, pretty detached. “You here for the drinks?”
He doesn’t think it’s funny. Floyd can tell. He spends a second wondering how Rick wound up here, but then he remembers horrible Boomerang and how he never stops talking, and sinks in his seat a little. Floyd drops his gaze to his shirt, spots the pack of cigarettes in his chest pocket, and gets one out as fluidly as he can. Rick watches the motion with his arms crossed, jaw tight, uncomfortable and out of place.
That’s funny. How Rick Flag is out of place. He’s so caught up in serving that he’s long since lost what he’s serving for. Can’t even enjoy himself in a bar nowadays. What’s America if not that? Floyd smiles around his cigarette, keeps staring at Rick and the way he can’t wear a shoulder holster in public but he stands like he expects it to be there, wonders if Rick was always a little freak or if service beat it into him. Floyd brings up a lighter, flicks his thumb uselessly against it once or twice, mutters a swear. Rick heaves a sigh through his nose, aggressive and short, and snatches the lighter before Floyd can react. Maybe he doesn’t want to react, because he can’t bring himself to be bothered–he just grins, cigarette held loosely between his teeth.
Rick flicks on the lighter, holds it to the tip of the cigarette, and then pockets it. Back right. Floyd keeps that in mind. He could buy a new one if he had to, but he likes the idea of having to get it back. Not now, though.
“Finish that up. We’re leaving,” Rick tells him, issuing a nod to the beer bottle.
Floyd glances at it, and then back at Rick. He finds that he doesn’t care much about staying anymore, especially if it was Boomerang running his mouth that brought Rick here, but he wants to make Rick acknowledge it. He’s not sure what it is. Maybe it’s being here, in the world, and acting like a freak. Floyd’s good at not acting like a freak. His freakishness was inherited, or at least innate. He knows he’s never been not a freak, but he’d never much got along with his old man to ask if he’d always been like that, been so distant and careless, and never much considered that anyone else could have been. So maybe the gene of being fucked up got passed along, or maybe it was some defect that no one could’ve predicted: Floyd isn’t sure. But the upside of being a freak all along is that you get real good at hiding it. Rick isn’t. Rick couldn’t tell you the difference between the mechanisms of war and the machinations of love, and Floyd isn’t sure he’d be any happier if he could.
Happiness, though, has nothing to do with it. “No,” Floyd tells him, and he shifts to face the bar again. The bartender has moved away, now, it’d be easier to shoot him from this angle than point blank, though he’s still watching Floyd. Willing him not to break a second bottle, he assumes. Or maybe grateful that someone is here to pick him up. Boomerang’d been here earlier, but then he’d left, and he’d run his mouth until Rick came to clean up the mess. Floyd thinks about shooting Boomerang. Wonders if it’d be easy. It probably would be; situational awareness in regards to boomerangs is not the same as situational awareness in regards to bullets, and most of Task Force X isn’t great at not getting shot. Moone hadn’t seen it coming and hadn’t put up a struggle, and Boomerang doesn’t even have a tether to some supernatural entity with an unbreakable will to stay alive. So it’d be easy. The momentary allure of doing it is lost. Boomerang wouldn’t see it coming, he wouldn’t fight back, and no one’s asking Floyd to do it. No money, no pride.
Rick, to his credit, takes a second to process this. Didn’t expect resistance outright, or maybe something snarkier. He squints, says, “You’re gonna turn this into an issue.”
He likes that phrasing, an issue . Rick didn’t strike him as a man of euphemisms, but he supposes men of war usually are. Always having to soften the blow for those they serve for. Floyd exhales, watches smoke curl through the air. “It doesn’t have to be an issue. You’re free to go, Flag.” Floyd makes sure to drag it out, push that Rick’s staying here is a choice . Something he’s doing, not something he’s been ordered to do.
“I’ve been told to get you,” Rick answers, and it sounds like it’s through gritted teeth. Rick isn’t a good liar, and Rick is self-righteous, and Rick is trying to rescue him. Floyd doesn’t like the idea of needing to be rescued, but he likes the idea of Rick having to be the one to do it. He's pretty sure Rick can't save anyone, and the idea of him trying to save Floyd excites him. Another lost cause.
Floyd waves a hand, takes another drag on the cigarette. "Yeah? Waller concerned about her team running off?"
He's taunting him. Maybe that isn't very nice, but you don't kill for someone more driven than you and wind up at Belle Reve at the insistence of someone more powerful than you and get chosen to kill yourself at the behest of someone more important than you if you're very nice. Very nice doesn't get you very far at all, truth be told.
If Rick notices he's being taunted, he doesn't let on. He looks away, cheeks taking on a subtle flush—anger. He thinks he's still being argued with. "Something like that."
A grin grows around the cigarette once more. Rick doesn't smile back. It'd be safe if Floyd didn't expect it, and if Floyd didn't like him better this way, miserable and angry and guilty. "Right," Floyd coos, "I'll hurry along." And then, to demonstrate just how much of a rush he's in, he takes another languid drag on the cigarette, milks the nicotine for all it's worth. Rick doesn't flinch. His lips are pressed into a tight line, and his arms are crossed, and he's staring at Floyd with the certain kind of vitriol that really gets a guy going, but he's not speaking. He exhales, takes a moment to blow out those half-assed smoke rings he’s been working on simply because it’s fun and because Rick wouldn’t know how to take it. And he doesn’t. So Floyd tips back the beer bottle, drinks heartily, makes sure to get it a little messy, makes sure he can feel alcohol dribbling down his cheek. And Rick still doesn't flinch. His expression hasn't changed, but he looks more tense, which is good enough. Floyd lowers it, contemplates setting the bottle back down and peaceably returning to the prison, but that's not as fun.
He offers it to Rick. It's a simple motion, just a tilting of the bottle's neck toward him and a quirk of Floyd's brow, but it does the trick.
This is, for whatever reason, the last straw. Rick snaps into motion, swatting the bottle out of Floyd's hand and onto the floor. It shatters. Floyd couldn't have done a better job of breaking it if he'd had a gun and time for target practice. Floyd starts to say something snarky, get the rest of the evening in motion, but Rick's clapping a hand to the back of his neck, hard, and heaving him upright.
The bartender is stepping over now, eyes wide, and even Floyd's helpless shrug and grin don't serve to reassure him that it's okay, this is fine. He glances at the second broken bottle of the night, smacks the bartop with a pronounced thud! , and gestures for the door.
"Get the hell out."
"Hey, no need to tell me twi-"
Floyd's cut off by being borderline dragged to the door. He's not going to struggle, Rick is both sober and physically stronger, but he's not going to make it easier, either. Let Rick be embarrassed about causing a scene, let him have to ignore gawking patrons; such is the price of trying to save Floyd Lawton.
They're out on the street faster than Floyd has anticipated. The haze of smoke is gone, and the end of his cigarette has gone out — Floyd pauses to return the rest of it to his pack the moment Rick releases his neck. A moment, really, is all Floyd has to do it: as soon as he assumes Rick has caught his breath, he's throwing Floyd against the wall, right next to the bar's entrance. It catches him off-guard. He has to take a second to remember where he is, and it makes him remember the asshole from earlier, and he wonders if Rick would think he's crazy. Think he's a freak. Though he thinks Rick already knows, or maybe Floyd just operates on the assumption that everyone in the world is fucked up and incomplete and ready to die in the same way he is, which would really take the fun out of telling Rick about the guy and his guns. But maybe he'd think Floyd was crazy, and he'd try to kill him, here, on the street outside the bar, and that would be interesting. Fun.
So he's wondering about telling Rick this, and Rick isn't speaking, just bracing a forearm against Floyd's chest firmly enough that he can hardly breathe, and Floyd thinks that maybe that isn't enough. That telling Rick he's crazy might make him cry, or something stupid like that, because he's been unstable since Grace.
"How'd you know where to find me?" Floyd asks, although he knows, although it's difficult to talk.
"Boomer said so. Said you were talking to yourself." Rick's answer is clearer than he seems, as if he's starting to gather himself back up. The pressure on Floyd's chest loosens, and that sends a spike of panic up his spine.
"What, don't you?" Floyd fires, and it's not enough, Rick just sniffs. He lets Floyd go altogether, and Floyd straightens himself out, trying to put words together.
Nothing is coming. There’s fragments of sentences on his tongue, but they don’t fit together. "Let's go," Rick mutters, nodding for the car parked down the road. It's simple, sleek, a government vehicle if Floyd's ever seen one. But they can't go.
"I'm surprised you weren't there yourself," Floyd tries, waving a hand at the bar. The sign over the door flickers cheerfully. "Seems you've got plenty of sorrows to drown."
Rick pauses. For a moment, Floyd worries that he is being ignored, and then Rick says, some kind of tension behind his voice that Floyd positively relishes in, "Guess I'm better at handling it." He stops, and Floyd chides him mentally for half-assed it was, but Rick's a military man with a superiority complex. He comes through. "Didn't think you were human enough to care about having sorrows, Deadshot."
Decent material here. He needs to get to something that'll make Rick angry, make him use those hands. "You'd know about not being human, Flag?" It's not his best, but Rick likes being angry. No one with a cause doesn't. Floyd's never had a cause, so he isn't well-acquainted with anger, but he knows what it looks like. People who hire him have causes, and they’re angry, or else they wouldn’t be hiring him. So he gets anger. He understands what anger looks like, and how it operates, and where it comes from. And Rick? Rick's usually angry.
Right now, for instance. He doesn't turn, but he's stopped moving. "Deadshot," Rick says, voice strained, "We're leaving."
"I dunno," Floyd says, "Most guys I know would at least knock back a drink or two when they get someone they love killed."
Lots of false equivalencies here. Bad assumptions. Floyd doesn't care, as long as it does the trick, and—
He's drunk. The first punch connects with his face faster than he can process it, and there's a swell of sharp pain in his cheek. He's nearly knocked flat on his ass at the weight of it, but he manages to catch himself. Nothing feels loose, or broken, which is good. Floyd takes in a shaky breath, doesn't look at Rick, doesn't think he could bear to, doesn’t think he could handle Rick’s response to the way Floyd might look at him.
"Lawton." It's hard. A warning. The way a shot whizzes by your ear, a bullet shatters the ground by your feet. This is his only warning.
" There's the killer I know," Floyd spits.
He sees the second blow coming, another right to the face, and doesn't bother dodging. It's like waking up to a world that is fresh and new and green, where people aren't moving targets and someone doesn't always want someone else's head on a silver platter. It's exhilarating. There’s blood on his tongue, the roof of his mouth, the back of his teeth. He can taste it, acrid and metallic and rich. It’s the best taste he’s had all night, the kind of taste he’s been after, and he wants to chase it with more of the same.
So Floyd draws a hand into a fist and punches back. It’s messy, and he’s not aiming it very well, but it connects with something : Rick exhales sharply, as if he’s been winded, and Floyd finds some measure of pride in that. He takes the opportunity to throw himself at Rick, tackles him to the ground.
The sidewalk is cold. It’s night, deep in the night, long after the sun has stopped baking the stone. Floyd can feel it on his hands, his knees, and then on his back, the stone pressing into his skin as Rick manages to flip him over. It doesn’t take much of a struggle, and then Rick’s on top of him. The weight of another person takes the breath out of Floyd’s stomach, and he manages one glorious grin up at Rick before he acts.
He bunches up Floyd’s collar in a fist, pulls him up so that Floyd’s shoulders are no longer braced against the pavement. His other fist collides with Floyd’s cheek, and this one— this one—is like a sip of clear water after wandering the desert. Floyd feels himself laugh, a shallow and breathy kind of laugh that tastes of blood, and Rick hits him again. And again. And again. Floyd loses count after a second of it. It’s not the hardest he’s ever been hit, but he’s already not exactly clear on the night’s events, and he wants to focus on the feeling. Not on the counting. Something cracks, and the air smells rife with blood.
Rick pauses here, as if he thinks he’s done something horrible, and that isn’t good. Floyd remembers he has hands of his own, suddenly, and jams an elbow as hard as he can into Rick’s stomach. This exhale devolves into a cough. Rick seems to fall off of him, letting go of Floyd’s shirt, and Floyd had forgotten he’s usually responsible for keeping himself upright; whatever momentary reprieve he’d earned is cut in half by the force with which his head connects with the ground.
The streetlights overhead are too bright. Floyd stares up at them, dazed, and he can hear a car roll along the street beside them. The engine is low.
He’ll give himself to the count of three. Three is enough to get over a mild contusion, and enough to get over being winded, which means they’ll be back on roughly even terms. Maybe not even. Floyd would like this less if it was even.
One. Rick is still coughing, hacking out his lungs, the rubber of his boot soles dragging harshly against the pavement.
Two. The engine in the car dies, just for a moment, and the driver calls something that Floyd can’t make out.
Three. Rick shouts something back, breathy, angry, and the car carries on its merry way.
Floyd makes himself sit up. The taste of blood is heavy in his mouth, and he can feel more of it flowing freely from his nose. He pushes himself up to his feet, looks around. Rick is still on the ground, even though he must’ve collected himself by now. Their break is through. He’s trying to disengage, maybe, which isn’t very promising. Floyd approaches with all of the intention, all of the cause he’s ever had, draws his foot back, and kicks.
Dress shoes, Floyd understands, aren’t necessarily pleasant to be kicked with. He knows his form is off, and that he’s not particularly strong to begin with, and that it doesn’t have quite the same impact as boots or something of that nature, but it’s enough for Rick to crumple onto his left side. He says something, like a swear, but Floyd can’t make it out. Too much blood pumping, maybe. It doesn’t matter.
He drops to his knees, claps a hand to Rick’s back pocket, and retrieves his lighter. Floyd drops it into the same pocket as his cigarette pack, pauses, lets himself breathe. He hates these streetlights. They’re fucking unbearable. Floyd swipes a hand over his mouth, glances at the thick smear of blood the motion leaves on the back of his hand. It’s a lot of blood. More than he’d anticipated. It’s interesting.
This flicker of curiosity is cut off by Rick sending both of them tumbling into the road.
Floyd should’ve been paying more attention, but this is fun. He can’t quite breathe, all of the air has been knocked out of his lungs by the force with which Rick threw himself at him, and that’s fun, and he’s not going to let them stop moving now. He laughs again – the sound is interrupted by Rick smashing his shoulder hard against the street, hard enough for something to crack, and they’re in the same position as moments ago, but now with the added threat of getting hit by a car.
Another punch. It’s a good punch. Rick always punches well. He's a fan of Rick's punches, and of Rick’s hands. He likes that they know what shape to take to kill somebody without the need of a gun, because guns are very useful, but Floyd doesn't always know what to do with his hands. They're an afterthought. Means to an end. The gun is the tool, not the hands. He can't imagine Rick's as anything but the tool, not if he uses them to do this.
He can feel Rick’s legs bracketing his hips, pinning him down, and this is properly exhilarating. It’s like spending your life in the dark and finally being able to see the sun, it’s like Plato out of the damn cave, it’s like the first day of spring. Floyd’s stuck here. In the road.
If Floyd’s ever prayed, he’s prayed for this, and he’ll take it as a sign that there comes the buzz of a car, the weight of headlights falling upon them. This one’s faster than the earlier one, and Rick’s already starting to move, already starting to scramble out of the way. It’s not slowing down. Rick wants them out of here, his fist embedded in Floyd’s collar.
Crabs in a bucket. Floyd reaches up, throws his arms around Rick’s neck with all of the strength he’s ever had. He’s not sure what he should be focusing on – the car is honking, Rick is trying uselessly to drag the two of them away, the streetlights are much too bright – and ends up finding that he wants, perhaps, to live in this moment forever.
Rick’s stronger than him. He knows how to use his hands. They’ve fallen out of the way of the car, though Floyd can feel it blitzing by behind him, and figures with some disappointment that their survival, too, is a sign. He’s above Rick now, propped uncomfortably on the curb, and he can only barely make out the horror in Rick’s face through the shadow Floyd’s casting. He grins down at him, watches blood drip onto Rick’s cheek. It's his. It’s crisp and red, a color Floyd holds dear and dearly missed.
He’s let go of at last. Rick disentangles himself from Floyd, leaving him there, on his knees by the curb where they’d just shared a lovely near death experience. Floyd watches Rick get to his feet and listens to him gasp out, “Fuck.” He can feel blood continue to run down his face, warm and wet and nearly overwhelming in its volume. And then Rick marches back over, seizes his hair, pulls Floyd’s head up to look him in the eye.
There's words half-formed in Rick's mouth, something desperate and miserable but never apologetic, and then he must see the expression of barely-restrained awe on Floyd's face. His grip on Floyd's relaxes, and the misery hardens into something more tolerable and less interesting: resignation. Disappointment.
"You want me to kill you," Rick says. It isn't a question. Floyd doesn't need to answer.
"I want to see if you would," Floyd says.
Rick stares. He's looking for something. Floyd doesn't know what, but he can't be bothered to care about it — that was good. The best it’s ever been. Floyd feels Rick's hold relax further, and he brings his other hand to Floyd's cheek, brushes away blood. It’s almost gentle. Floyd has half a mind to protest, but the other half is still dazed and reeling, so he'll leave it alone. It's important to know when to stop.
"We need to head back," Rick says.
"If Waller doesn't need Boomerang back in prison every night, she doesn't need you or I."
Floyd's surprised that he manages to get the words out. Surprised still that Rick doesn't hurt him again for it. "I was told to bring you back," Rick replies.
There's no way for Floyd to be sure if he's lying. He'd been convinced of it earlier, but now he's not sure. Maybe Rick living in anger had thrown him off. What Floyd is sure of is that he wants Rick to pull him up for the second time tonight, drag him to the car, make a real issue out of it.
Rick doesn't do that. No, he lets Floyd go entirely, moves to the car almost silently. Floyd is left there, on his knees, blood smeared across his face and with the splendor of the evening quickly ebbing away. The car door shuts behind Rick with a snap, and Floyd pushes himself up to his feet slowly, stares at the streetlights overhead until the pain in his head is pounding, and follows.