At This Time of Night
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Bryan sneaked a glance around the corner of the wall, and froze. Shit. He hadn't expected anyone to be awake at this time. Let alone for the lights to be on in what was clearly the kitchen, a microwave whirring and someone sort of humming in there. No, whistling. While Bryan decided what to do now, his brain notified him that the person was whistling without any kind of tune at all, in fact sounding more like a small bird yammering away to itself. Bryan didn't like small birds. Especially noisy ones. He peered around the corner again, staying out of sight -
"You can come out."
...what? Fuck, I was sure I didn't -
"Or in, really. It's more like in. Come in."
Bryan rose from his stealth-crouch and moved noiselessly around the corner. Dammit, he'd got past the gate, the cameras, and the curious absence of dogs, only to be aprehended by some silly fucker whistling in the kitchen.
At least they stopped the whistling.
"I did say to come in. The lights are on for your benefit, you know, and they won't do any good if you lurk in the doorway."
"Huh." Bryan was somewhat surprised, especially to find himself actually taking another few steps forward, but maintained his poker-face. A slightly-built redhead was cutting fruit at the central counter, wearing pajamas and not even bothering to look at him.
Bryan felt this wasn't right. He was, after all, definitely not supposed to be in the house, let alone at four a.m. and with hostile intentions towards at least one of its occupants. Said occupants, he felt, should have seemed a little more intimidated.
"As you can see," the redhead told him conversationally, "I have a knife."
Bryan scoffed.
"So do I."
"Yes, I'm aware of that. But it's nice to be honest."
The redhead paused to lick apple juice off the back of his hand. Bryan rallied mentally, and drew one of the hunting knives he'd brought from home.
"Get in the corner and be quiet."
There was an abject lack of response. He moved closer, scowling.
"I said get in the corner. Now."
The other looked up, and smiled at him pleasantly.
"Hi there. You're...hmm, Bryan Kuznetsov? We haven't met. I'm Brooklyn."
"I don't care. Get in the corner."
"I recently..." he absently decapitated a strawberry "...covered the world with darkness, and some quite nasty weather. You may not recall. But believe me, I'm very concerned about what you're up to."
Bryan had been about to say something incredulous, when there was a sudden bleeeeep from the microwave. As the other moved away to retrive whatever was inside, Bryan shot forward, pushing the knife-tip into the small of his back, just enough so it would be felt.
"I'm not here to talk," he growled, trying to project as much irritation as possible through his voice, in the hope of it having some effect.
"Oh, give over."
The knife was nudged lightly to one side, and a steaming bowl of rice passed over it; Brooklyn had gone back to the middle of the room, to the counter, and seemed to be putting the cut fruit into the rice.
Eugh. Not even Spence would eat that.
Bryan shook his head slightly, and pivoted on one heel to return the knife to where it had been. After a moment's thought, he jolted it a little, enough to draw a trickle of blood.
"...You know, you're sort of funny."
"I'm not joking."
"Hmm. Well, even so, you should probably take that away, now. Or I might forget you're funny and remember you're currently breaking into my friend's house in order to, shall we say, seriously inconvenience his lifestyle."
Bryan felt the knife being pushed at, but kept it where it was.
"Hah. Your friend - "
"I assume he's my friend. I live on his property, and he doesn't charge rent, so he can't be a landlord."
"So you're watching the house," the Russian sneered, "a guard dog."
Brooklyn turned around quite suddenly; Bryan tensed for a hostile move, but all the other did was fish through the rice bowl with two fingers, extracting an apple slice.
...Disgusting.
"No, the dogs are all asleep. It may be a coincidence." He bit off half the apple slice, and nodded downwards. "And look, you get to stab me in the front now, too. Though I assume that's not what you're here for."
Purely out of annoyance, Bryan slid the knife to one side a little, maintaining the pressure to cut a shallow line across the redhead's stomach.
"Ow. Are you happy now?"
Bryan watched the rest of the apple slice disappear.
"Your friend won't be happy, if he knows you were here. That's your actual reason, hmm? Some second-hand revenge on Gar-chan?"
"That's not your business."
"It sort of is. I'm bad at making friends, so you doing anything untoward to my current non-landlord would be - well, I wouldn't appreciate it."
He glanced up again; Bryan made eye contact, and kept it while sliding the knife lightly to the other side.
"...Or that, thank you."
"You're in my way. I don't care what you appreciate," he pointed out. Quite reasonably, in his opinion. This was all taking far too long...it would be light outside, soon, and then how would he explain himself when he got back?
"Hmm, but now you don't seem too good at making friends, either. At least I don't cut people directly after meeting them."
Bryan increased his glare.
"You should be more concerned for the ones you have. I don't really know, of course, but that one you came here for - Tala, is it? He doesn't actually know you're here, right?"
"Tch."
"And he'll probably be mad you tried to do it for him, right?"
"That's definitely not your business."
"I didn't say it was."
"Then keep your nose out of it."
Brooklyn shrugged, suddenly smirking, and folded his arms above the knife blade.
"Excuse me. I didn't break into your house - "
"And I didn't come for advice." Glancing at the clock, Bryan swore a mental blue streak; he wouldn't have time, now. He adjusted his grip on the knife handle. "I can kill you from here. Easily."
"Not really." The other was smiling at him again, horribly self-satisfied. "I've already laid out my clothes for tomorrow. I wouldn't have bothered if you were going to - "
There was a noise upstairs suddenly, and both of them froze.
Shit. No.
"...Aha. Apparently we don't have time, anyway. You should be moving on."
"I know that," Bryan snapped, pulling the knife away with a degree of disappointment, and shoving it back into his belt.
"You'll know you can go out of that window just there, then, and expect no trouble."
The Russian ran a hasty internal debate as to what would be worse: accepting the advice of a smug adversary with a clearly terrible choice of diet, or being aprehended by someone who would actually do something about him and then having to explain it all to his team captain's frigid glare. He gritted his teeth, and went for the window. When he had one foot on the sill - fortunately it was ground-floor - something tapped on his arm. He turned to see the fruit-knife, and Brooklyn smiling at him over it.
"Though you said you didn't come for advice, I will tell you that if you come again, the dogs may not be sleeping. I certainly won't. Good morning."
Bryan stared for a second, but then heard footsteps, and a door creaking open close by. He snorted, and dropped out of the window to a crouch on the grass below. Said window shut behind him instantly.
Shit, it's getting light. Go.
Keeping low, and creeping close along the walls of the kitchen, he headed towards the gates, pausing only for a moment at the sound of voices inside.
"...What's going on in here?"
"Just having breakfast, Gar. Talking to myself. Sorry."
"Are - why are you bleeding?"
"Now that's not your business."
"Ch, it's quite deep...I'll get a towel, don't move..."
Somewhat satisfied, Bryan headed for home, smirking.
At least until the birds began to whistle at him.
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Oh dear goodness what on Earth happened there? feather-duster amusing herself in the small hours of the morning, that's what. Ahahaha.
In case anyone's not clear, Bryan was barging on into Garland's house to do something nasty to him (probably involving knives...feather-duster nominates an impromptu haircut) as revenge for Tala getting his ass kicked in several different directions. This decision is not popular with anyone living in said house, or indeed with Tala. Cuz he can sneak into houses with knives himself, dammit Bryan.
Yeeeah some of the italics are snippets of Bryan-thoughts. And they're just lovely. Typos? Grammar failure? Blame the fact that it's 3.47am here. Wheee.
Brooklyn seems to be suffering from an unusually merry disposition - however inconvenient it may be for invading Russians, he just doesn't feel threatened. And why would he? It's his unofficial-birthday. Wooo!
Yes, feather-duster is aware that this fic is decidedly strange. Thank you for noticing. If it disappears suddenly, never mind. It may have leapt out of a window to avoid Garland and/or law enforcement officials.
And yes, feather-duster believes Bryan would go sneaking into people's houses with knives. Hey, he's evil, right? Right? This is getting like Freddy VS Jason, or possibly Alien VS Predator. Geez.
Review and Bryan will not break into your house with knives! ...Unless you want him to.
(P.S.: Do not try this at home, kids. Especially the part about eating microwaved rice with cut fruit. That is just nasty.)