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Crisply: "Hey."
His frustration builds in those thirty seconds, so his voice is clipped when she picks up. "Where are you?"
"How about we talk about that face to face, Tess?"
"Sure," she replies anyway, businesslike, as she lets herself out of the Brew. "Where to?"
"Your cabin should be fine."
He's not going to murder you behind closed doors. He just doesn't want to do this out in the open.
She's there shortly, rounding that last corner in the hallway already steeled for a disagreement. Her chat with Bill hadn't taken much of the edge off the encounter with Yunlan, anyway.
Arthur's resting against the wall, her pistol in a hip holster. He gives her a nod when she walks up, then notches his chin at her door. Shall they?
"Can't wait to hear how he spun this one."
"You gonna start out that way? After a fella who I don't consider a friend shows up on my doorstep with your firearm in his possession?"
Fuck that. He's straightened up, but he's not even going to start this conversation if that's going to be her attitude.
"I know what I did, and I haven't pulled the gun on a single person since you gave it to me," she replies, and she puts out the hand for her gun. "So yes, I'm starting out that way. I want to know what he said to make you think it has anything to do with the gun."
He is definitely not handing her that gun back, now. He hates being this, the lawman, the warden. But he's also got a responsibility towards other people here.
He closes the door behind him, a little too loudly. "It has nothing to do with the damn gun, but if you're gonna come up rollin' your eyes right off the bat it's gonna be about the gun."
"Well excuse me if I'm not in a good mood, getting frisked like that," she replies. Being denied the gun for showing a bit of attitude is beyond bullshit to her, but she'll play ball. "He waltzed up to a conversation he wasn't a part of and decided to power trip."
He's got his arms folded right back, mirroring the hell out of this conversation.
"What about the blood, Tess?"
"Why the hell did you want to take it! I don't care if that goddamn vampire wants you to take his blood, he's a vampire, and he ain't particularly stable!"
"Because I said I would months ago, and now I'm trying to finish the job so I can get myself out of this stupid fucking situation!" she argues.
He isn't afraid of a little shouting, even if he's not really likely to do it himself, these days. Then again, few people get under his skin enough to piss him off like Tess can, sometimes.
Still. He doesn't do it now, because that sounds like something that warrants 'slow-and-steady'. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"You want me to be happy now? 'Cause you realized you wanted out? Because I don't know why the hell you'd even want to get into that. Liquor's one thing, Tess, but shit like that?"
He isn't judging her, he's just baffled, but it sure could come off that way.
"Do you think I want to do any of this shit?" she demands. "That I ever have? No! But it's my job, it's all I've fucking done for twenty years, and I need people in my corner, I need people to owe me favours so I can collect on them when I need to, I need people to respect me, and I am good at it."
She lets out an angry breath. Holds a finger in his face.
"And you can't tell me wardens care at all about the blood," she warns him. "They don't. Yunlan just wanted an excuse to frisk me."
It's giving a lot away that she's never told him. The uncertainty, the insecurities, the need to keep going. How can you stop? How did Arthur ever stop?
He stopped because someone else was fucking up so hard he couldn't go along with it anymore. Well, that's not an option here. He grits his teeth and bats her finger away - he's been in too many fights in his life to accept someone getting in his space quite like that.
"This is no longer about Yunlan and what he cares about, and we both know it. How long ago did this start?"
"No, it's about Yunlan," she disagrees, brushing right by the question. "He's been looking for an excuse since London. How much do you even know about the blood? Because I'll tell you exactly how it works."
"Tell me. I doubt it's gonna piss me off more than this is already pissin' me off."
She lets out a hard breath.
“And I’m telling you, Yunlan is power tripping, pushing me around and bossing me around, because Steve has been using it himself on Pagan for goddamn months. Saying shit like ‘do you think he loves me?’ when he’s drugging the guy. But I’m the fucking problem here? He knocks on your door instead of Nadja’s? Bullshit.”
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