Jake and Remy | Rooftop Encounters

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Jake is caught being lazy and gets put to work.


When the temperature reaches triple digits, there's only so many ways New Yorkers still in the city bounds can cool off. This summer day found one Jacob Gavin camped out on the roof of one brownstone building, sprawled out in a beach chair scrounged up from somewhere or another. Even more unlikely, a bucket of ice sat within arm's reach filled with a number Swiss beers not found in your average cornerstore bodega. Every once in a while, he flipped the page of the book in his hand, far too slowly to be paying full attention to the read.

There was the shushing sound of fabric overhead, like a flag caught in the wind, and then the mutted thump of feet hitting the cement. Remy's trenchcoat flared around him as he dropped from the opposite building on to his own roof. After all these years, it was as familiar an entrance to him as the front door. He straightened, adjusting the coat and only partially regretful of its presence. It was a very useful field item, full of key things for him. With it on, he had a small arsenal of personal weapons, counter-security tools, and the materials to disappear on a moment's notice, and reappear a half world away. Unfortunately, it was also hot in it.
Jake glanced up at the sound, then the approaching figure. He shook his head slightly, rolling his eyes. "Show off," he said, with a laugh. Not that Jake was one to talk--his dramatics were just usually of a different sort. "Beer?" he offered, gesturing at the bucket before taking a glance past Remy. "Or someone hot on your tail?"

"Not unless Remy getting old and slow." He reached down to snag one of the bottles by the neck, popping the cap with just a spark of kinetic force. "See dat you working hard. Can't you just morph a tan when you need it?"
"I could," Jake nodded, a smile forming across his face as he countered with, "but I'm already working so hard, I figured I'd make the sun pick up some of the effort. What are you up to?"

"Dese days, Remy hard pressed to think of anything dat I'm not up to right now." Remy drained a third of the beer in a long swallow. "Any contact wit' New Son or any watchers, Jake?"

"Heh," Jake nodded, tapping out a slow rhythm on the neck of his bottle. "Same old Remy, your hands in everything. Nothing recently," he added in response to the question a moment later. "It makes me uneasy, actually. At least before, I could watch them watching me. Now it's all...did I lose them? Scare them off? Are they just biding their time?"

"You didn't lose dem." Remy shook his head. "Dat's not a bad thing. If dey do some digging, dey likely found dat you being housed by Frost again, which means Hellfire Club. Dat's a nice piece of misdirection for us. Thanks to our efforts, dey don't have a stable presence around de Brownstone or de office, so it has to be passive survaillance; agents inserted in de area collecting intel as opportunity presents itself." Remy was glad, since that was exactly what he hoped was going to happen. Tailing a person wasn't easy under the best conditions, and a shapeshifter made it that much more difficult.

Well, this particular shapeshifter tended to make just about everything more difficult. For everyone. "Handy, that," Jake nodded. He stopped the tapping in favor of actually drinking the beer, draining the last of the bottle then setting on the ground beside the chair. "I suppose not having to lay out all of my own false trails might be worth..." he trailed off. "Well, whatever it is you're going to make me do."
"You sound suspicious. Dat hurts Remy." The Cajun took a long swallow, and motioned to the city around them. "Whoever is after you thinks dat you are tucked up in one place. Dat can't get to you yet, but dey know where you are now, and think you can't give dem de slip. Dat's how we want it for now, while we use dere surviallance as a way to identify dem and work back to dere real structure. In de meantime, I think dat we're going to get you back out in de field. I'm short trained people."

"The problem with letting them think I'm 'tucked up,'" Jake said, with a sigh that emphasized the phrase, "Is that I am stuck in one place." He pauseda a moment, before admitting, "It's a good plan, though. But I'm ready to do something. I'll probably regret saying this, but let me know what you need me to do."

"I'll have information on your desk tomorrow. We'll set it up so dat you're cycling in town enough to let dem think you're settled here between jobs." Remy nodded, considering his plan. It wasn't the best, being short handed, but it hopefully work just based on the simplicity of it.

"I'll be waiting with bated breath," Jake said dryly. It would never do to appear over eager. After all, he had just volunteered to do work. Anything more would just be too un-Jake, no matter what he was getting out of the bargain.

"You got de bait part right, homme"