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John is in trouble.

Not that he would admit he's in trouble. It's true he's been stabbed and there's a great deal of blood trickling down his leg to pool in his shoe and soak through his sock, but nothing important in his thigh has been cut. If it were, he wouldn't be walking right now, he'd be face down and he'd be dead.

The only problem is that he's being followed and he's leaving a relatively easy to follow path behind him, consisting of that blood that keeps dripping down his leg.

It was supposed to be recon and nothing more. That had been his intention. Get into the warehouse, check out what was going on, see what he could when it came to the illegal weapons that were coming in and going out, then get out. Then call in an anonymous report and get the police out to the warehouse with something they can actually go on.

That had been the intention.

But then one of them had snuck up on him. He's not the sort of man who is easily snuck up on, but here he is, bleeding from a relatively deep wound just above his knee. And now they're following him.

All he needs to do is get closer to a more populated area of the city. He has his gun on him and he'll use it if it becomes necessary, but then he gets tied to all this as Detective John Riley and he'll have a fair bit of explaining to do.

Just a few more blocks, though. He can make it.

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It was sort of a slow day at Yankee Gunsmith, which meant Daniel was outside the store cleaning the windows. He was enjoying being able to do that without needing a crutch too, since he had his new prosthetic and could walk and stand unaided. He had a cane nearby just in case, but he didn't usually need it.

When he looked up to see Riley limping down the street towards him and bleeding, he grabbed the cane and hurried over to his friend.

"The hell happened to you?" he asked, even though he didn't actually expect Riley to answer. "Here, put your arm around my shoulders and we'll get you inside and sit down."

Edited 2018-05-12 19:25 (UTC)

At this point, John is fairly certain he's lost the men following him. There are more stores in this area, a few restaurants and there are enough people that the men hadn't wanted to risk drawing any attention to themselves. That works in John's favour, especially since it's Daniel who's now run over to him. Daniel who is helping him walk, helping him into the store.

Peggy will kill him if anything happens to Daniel and John will absolutely deserve it, so he's glad the men seem to have given up. At least for the time being. If they come for him later, he can deal with that when it happens.

"I was doing recon," he says with a soft laugh, as if that'll explain it. "I slipped."

Recon meant the people following Riley might still be following him, and that made Daniel a little more alert. Not that he was ever not alert, not after years of war and then the SSR, but there were levels. He glanced around casually and didn't see anyone, but he wasn't going to relax yet.

"Think you lost em for now, but I'll keep an eye out. If they're not gone, I bet you can figure out how to use most of the guns in this place if you need to."

There were a couple chairs just inside the door, mostly for Colin and his buddies to sit and chew the fat, so Daniel got Riley settled into one of them and then hurried to grab the first aid kit.

John nods as he winces and settles into the chair, then looks at the torn material of his pants. Finch is the reason he dresses in suits like he does, he's just never seen and reason to change it, but now that he does and without Finch's constant source of income to fund it, he knows just how expensive the trousers really are. Still, he can't do much else, and so he carefully sticks his fingers into the tear and rips them open further.

He has to give Daniel space to work, after all.

"It's a good shop," he says as he looks around at the guns now that Daniel has mentioned them. And he's right, John does know how to use all of the ones he can see from where he's sitting.

"It is," Daniel agreed. "I got hired because a lot of the guns are vintage ones and the owner wanted someone who'd actually fired some of them. Something about authenticity. Plus I know how to do his computer stuff since I took that class. That doesn't hurt."

He settled into the chair next to John a little more smoothly than he would have with the old prosthetic and set the cane next to himself, then opened the first aid kit.

"I'm no medic beyond what they taught us all to do, but I can at least get a bandage on that."

"It'll be fine," John answers, ripping his pant leg a little further to give Daniel the room he needs. "They missed the major arteries, it's just bleeding a lot because it's deep. A bandage will be more than enough. I doubt it even needs stitches."

And even if it does, he won't go and get any. Karen will give him a hard time about it, but John needs to keep himself out of hospitals. That's where they keep records, where they'll track his identity and eventually it'll come up in conversation somewhere and he'll have to explain himself to someone. This is better. Daniel is a hell of a lot safer than any hospital will ever be.

"I wasn't supposed to be working tonight," he says. "Call it extracurricular."

"No such thing as not working in your job and in mine before," Daniel agreed as he started working on cleaning John up. At least they'd gotten past just dumping sulfa powder on things and hoping. There was a little tube of topical antibiotics that he'd put on the bandage instead.

"Even when you're not officially on the clock, it's not like you can ignore something if you see it. Or if you can, it's time to hang up your badge."

"I may have gone out of my way to see this particular incident," John admits with a little smile, though it disappears as Daniel begins to clean his wound. It stings a little, but he's had far worse and he can withstand is easily enough.

"We have a bit of a problem with some illegal weapons in Darrow," he says. "No proof of where they're coming from. I wanted to see if I could find a bit of proof and maybe make an anonymous call."

He's been too vocal about it himself, if he brings it in now, they'll know he's done something stupid.

Daniel listened as he worked, and he knew John would know he was doing both. Illegal weapons made him a little concerned considering he worked in a gun store, but maybe it wasn't their kind of weapons.

"What kind of weapons? Are we talking about little detective specials or grenade launchers here?"

Edited 2018-05-17 02:37 (UTC)

"Maybe somewhere in between," John guesses. "I caught sight of a few rifles. Nothing as big as a grenade launcher, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's not there."

That's what makes him nervous. The things he can't see. It's why the police need to get in there, but without some legitimate complaint, they can't do anything. Finch had taught him enough that he'd be able to snap a few pictures and send them anonymously, but now they know someone is looking at them. Now they might not be there after tonight.

"I screwed up," he says with a sigh.

"We all blow an op now and then," Daniel pointed out, then finished wrapping up John's leg before settling back and starting to clean up. He couldn't do anything about the hole in John's pants, though.

"You need me to do any recon? I was a scout before."

He would absolutely do recon for John if he needed it, just like he knew that John would help him and Peggy and Wanda and whoever else if Hydra came back.

"Only if you see something out of the ordinary," John says. "And you might. I have a feeling they'll be moving locations after tonight and who knows what might pass your way."

He hadn't meant to compromise the location, but he has to accept that's been done. They'll move now. They won't stick around and wait for John to return with backup. Not that he has any in the legal sense, he can't bring good cops into his unauthorized work. Not after what happened to Carter.

"It'd be a help," he says. "If you see any movement and can tell me where they might be going."

"Sure. And I'll keep an ear open for any talk about people offering guns anywhere. Colin hears a lot of things from suppliers and whatnot," he offered.

"Where were they before? I could maybe need to walk past there on the way home tonight."

"I appreciate that," John says simply. There are good people in Darrow, people he's lucky to have on his side, and he may not be the most trusting man, but he thinks Carter and Finch would be proud of him. He tries here, he's really trying, and he accepts help far more often than he used to.

"About six blocks west of here," he answers. "There's an old warehouse, it looks like it's under construction to reopen, but it's been like that for about four months now."

It's not going to reopen. They've been using it all this time.

Six blocks west. He tried to picture it in his mind like he'd picture the walk between his apartment and the NY Bell telephone building, like he'd picture the safe route between a picket and the campfire.

"I think I know the one you mean. I was starting to wonder if they'd run outta money or the person who was leading the project disappeared. I'll make sure I take a stroll past there tonight and a few more times. Might even need to tie my shoe just there or look in my phone for something."

Edited 2018-05-22 02:40 (UTC)

"Be careful," John says, even though he's sure Daniel will be. Part of there being people in Darrow he cares about means he's worried about risking them in any way. But of course he's found himself with people like Shaw and Finch, people who have to help others, who feel the drive for it as keenly as they feel anything else.

"Peggy will have my head if anything happens to you," he says and although it's said with a small smile, he's entirely serious and he wouldn't blame her.

Of course he'd be careful, and of course John knew that. But it was something you said, and you meant, and so everyone let it go. He'd told men to be careful plenty of times. Sometimes they'd rolled their eyes, but they appreciated it. And sometimes they even were, and sometimes they even came back.

"She'll have my head first, for being what she considers to be stupid," he replied wryly. "If she's still mad after that, she'll have yours. Speaking of Peggy, has she told you her news?"

He didn't know if Peg would have told John they were engaged or not. He wasn't sure how much she told him in general.

John sits back in the chair, stretching his leg out carefully, testing how it feels. He might need to rest a little bit longer before he trusts himself to walk on it, but that's probably for the best either way. It gives him a little bit of time to make sure no one has followed him here and won't follow him home.

"I don't think so," he says, because when Daniel says it like that, that there's news, it sounds important. And John would remember something important. He and Peggy are friends, but being the people they are, there's still a limit to what they tell each other and how often.

He knew that move. It was someone trying to figure out whether they could walk or not, or whether they needed to wait a little longer. He'd done the same thing.

"If you turn your toes out slowly, it'll let you know how much movement you're gonna have in your hip right now," he suggested. He didn't have toes on that side, of course, but the motion was the same.

"I'll let her tell you then. She doesn't much like it when her thunder's stolen."

John nods and turns his toes, careful with his range of movement, waiting for the pain that might bloom. It's dull, but it's clearly present and he settles in for a little bit longer of a wait.

And if the news were pressing, he thinks Daniel would tell him now, so he nods again and says, "Then let's not steal her thunder. I can be patient."

He's not the sort to press for information either. There are all kinds of reasons why someone might not tell him something and he can respect that decision.

"You need any aspirin? I'm not even gonna offer you anything stronger since I'm thinking you prefer to keep your head clear as you can, but I have aspirin."

He'd hated how stupid morphine had made him feel sometimes, although he also appreciated how it made him not feel sometimes.

They often think along the same lines, John has found, and he nods at Daniel's offer. His own problems with alcohol aside, he tends to avoid anything that will alter his state of mind much more than a single drink tends to do.

"Thank you," he says. "Aspirin will be enough. I've had worse than this."

The scars are mostly hidden, littering his chest and his back, some on his arms and legs. To anyone who sees him as he regularly is, dressed in his suit, they would never know. But Karen has seen them, she knows what he's been through.

He pushed up from the chair almost smoothly and went over to the counter. He kept a bottle of aspirin in the drawer for days when his various aches and pains got to be a little much, and he brought it back with a glass of water for John.

"Kind of makes you rethink pain levels once you've been through something like that," he agreed. "Stubbed toes still hurt like hell, though."

John has to laugh at that and he nods, looking at Daniel in amusement. "My mother used to joke that if you cursed loud enough when you stubbed your toe, all the pain would come out your mouth with the word. I think I was eight the first time she told me that and I took it as an excuse to shout damn every time I could."

He hadn't been very creative even as a child. Damn had been the worst curse word he was capable of thinking of at the time.

He takes the aspirin and water with a smile, downing a few of the caplets and then sitting with the water glass resting gently against his uninjured thigh. "Strange how memories like that come back at times like this."

"I tried to convince my mother that it didn't count if I cursed in a different language. There must have been five languages spoken just in a two block radius, so I had a lot to choose from," he replied, and settled into the chair again. He was keeping an eye on the street but so far no one suspicious or familiar had come walking by. Suspicious was harder to pin down since people could look one way and act another, but there was a sense to it, and he wasn't getting it.

"Didn't work."

Edited 2018-05-28 00:08 (UTC)