[b]Fiona and John:[/b]

John blinks. “What’s this?” 

Fiona rolls her eyes. “I just mean we should do a practice run.” She looks at John. “She has a lot of repressed murderous impulses that have been coming out when she cooks. We were hoping coming back here might help with it but, you know.” She shrugs. 

“Ah.” He nods slowly, in complete understanding. “I’m like that with the barbecue. Can’t do it outside anymore or I can’t help trying to throw hot coals onto Huntington’s roof, the bastard, and my arm’s not what it was so I just burn my own grass.” 

This would probably be an incredibly powerful metaphor for something if it was about, like, 30% less stupid. 

“See, he gets it?” Fiona says encouragingly, wincing as she shifts the ice pack to her knees instead. “Ow. Anyway. I just mean you might already be safe now, we just need to know."

[b]Apostle:[/b]

“See, that was a boring answer, but you gave so much of a shit about it I have to respect it.” Apostle says, and their phone dings. They look down and snort. "Pfft, fucking hell Adrian. Ah shit, ah, shouldn't use his name, I meant Junta, he just sent me-" There’s a moment of processing, a mental bluescreening. "Wow, shit. So anyway, he's watching court today, and he just sent this."

Adrian (Junta) has photoshopped Apostle into the defendant’s stand, covered the picture in love heart emojis and, in cursive text, added; [i]Wish you were here <3[/i]

Oh hey, Yellow’s got a mutual with someone with the worst OpSec of all time, [i]sick[/i]. 

Bill lightly pats Yellow’s hand. “Don’t take it too personally. We can’t nail him down on anything like that, either.” 

There is the sound of an intense heartbeat as Apostle glows brighter, the lights under his skin burning brighter as he fans of the fire within. “I want [i]vision[/i]. Build a fucking church out of the bones of your loved ones if you want me to pray at your altar. Ruin your entire fucking life and look me dead in the eye through your tears and tell me it was worth it. Burn the entire world just so you have something to light your cigarette off, just make it look good.” 

Apostle shrugs, the glow softens, recedes, like a wave receding into the ocean. “Stop being a coward and pretending I’m too much of an idiot to understand your huge brain, otherwise you’d have more fun going to a MENSA meeting. All the stupidest people I know are smarter than you.” 

To be clear, he doesn’t mean “the stupidest person in my friend group is still smarter than you”. He means “I know someone with three doctorates who microwaved two minute noodles with the fork in the bowl yesterday”. 

[b]Crystal:[/b]

Has it come up before that Crystal is a second [i]dan [/i]in Judo? No? It’s funny, for all that Fiona is the one doing silly buggers in heists and the like right now, she has absolutely none of the martial training. Crystal, however, was absolutely [i]ruined[/i] the first time she saw a woman do that thing where someone reaches for you and suddenly their wrist is pinned behind their back, and went on an eighteen month ‘life goals’ bender over it. 

She goes for the leg sweep first, anticipating the jumping dodging. The second Red goes for it, the followup will be a shoulder to the hips to take her down to the carpet. 

This is playfighting. It’s just the kind of playfighting one reserves for a partner whose foreplay opens with shooting you in the heart.