Chapter Text
“I know, god, I know, Brian, it’s just.” Frank paused, fiddled with the coffee mug Alicia had stuck into his hands on his way into the office. “Well, there’s just a reason they call him ‘Spooky Way’, right?”
Brian raised his eyebrows, but Frank continued, undeterred. “He once asked me for for my old pencil to, and he straight up phrased it like this, “look into the way socioeconomic circumstances impact use of writing utensils”,” Frank quoted, “so could you maybe understand that it doesn’t really feel like a promotion, this transfer?”
He breathed in through his nose and looked up at the desk where the rectangular ‘Brian Schechter , Section Chief’- plate was trying to ascertain its dominance over the numerous stacks of paperwork organized in what was, to anyone not Brian, completely mystifying series of stacks.
What a waste to spend so much energy on digitally encrypting the bureau’s files, Frank thought, when Brian’s obscure sorting method was a way more effective way of discouraging snoopers than any data protection software could ever hope to be.
“Did you expect a promotion?” Brian asked and continued, “because you know that the stunt you pulled up in Melville doesn’t fly with the higher ups. This transfer is the best I can do-”
“But Melville was a shitshow before I even got there!” Frank protested, “I just untangled, what, a fucking fraction of that mess and suddenly I’m to blame for the whole thing? Dude, this is such crap, I can’t believe-”
Brian brought his hand down on the desk, on the single spot not overflowing with three thousand stacked files, with a slap.
Frank shut up.
“Frank! Come on now; I’m not your enemy here! I get why you did what you did, doesn’t mean I can condone it. Not when the rest of the department is still working overtime to clean all of this up. The board was livid, placating them with this was what stood between you and a firing, so could you please stop whining so I don’t regret singing your praises?” He sighed and rubbed his forehead, pushed up the glasses that were slowly inching their way down his nose towards the papery armageddon on the table below.
And okay, Frank still felt wronged, angry and annoyed, but when Brian pulled out the forehead rubbing or worse, the pinching of the bridge of the nose, Frank always felt bad.
He knew he was a shit, alright? Impulsivity and the bureau weren’t on good terms at the best of times and Frank was pretty sure he was a walking, talking definition of improvisation, so he knew that the majority of Brian’s headaches were linked to him. It was just... It was unfair, alright, that winging it in an emergency led to demotions, when the improv was what caused them to make it out alive.
And this transfer would mean working out of the basement, the backroom of the freaking archive, for months! Frank was an energetic person, okay, he needed his space! Sunlight! Human contact! A place that wasn’t literally a graveyard for moldy cases!
“You just need to… not be noticed for some time, alright? Let things settle up here, prove to the bosses that you can be a stickler for rules. And Way needs someone to keep him earthbound, centered.” Brian picked a brown folder of the top of the stack nearest Frank and handed it over. “This is the papers for your relocation. He’s-”. A pause, “His conclusions have been out there lately, but he’s bright, skilled, so we don’t want to have to let him go. Keep him on track and you’ll be back on the ground floor in no time.”
“Back on the ground floor in no time.” Frank repeated when he made his way downstairs. Even the lighting was creepy down here, cold and blueish, making his skin look pallid and sick beneath his tattoos. “In no time, no fucking time.”
The basement of the bureau was sort of mystery. The numerous expansions of the building and the ongoing need for more storage space meant that the additions to the floor had been made gradually with no actual plan for its layout; the hallways were varying in height, width and length and were all twist and turns and unpredictable dead ends.
Frank had been down here once before, back when he started and one of the senior managers had mistaken him for an errand boy and send him to collect files on the case she was working on. He had ended up lost for two hours and sworn to never go down here again.
As far as he knew, only the interns went down here, pulling up files or moving outdated office appliances into overstuffed storage rooms. With the majority of the files digitally available now, the number of real, live persons wandering about down here must have dwindled to a near zero, Frank thought morously, leaving only Special Agent Gerard ‘Spooky’ Way and possibly the ghosts of those poor souls who had gotten irrevocably lost in the many winding corridors. And Frank.
He had the blueprint of the floor in hand and checked every plaque on every door but still ended up taking the wrong turn twice on his way to the archive. It had originally housed three employees as well, in charge of filing and checking out the files, but their bare desks lay abandonded in the far right side of the room. Long rows of shelves stretched from all the way from the front to the back, where Frank could see a bland, brown door slightly ajar.
It seemed like a place where an architect would put the broom cupboard if the room had one. Only the reflection from a copper sign hanged on the door hinted that this was actually the office of someone. So this is it, thought Frank and worried his bottom lip between his teeth. I’m going to work with a rumoured nutcase, squeezed into a tiny cleaning closet in a haunted labyrinth parading as a basement.
Somehow, this makes him think of this horror movie he made Brian watch with him when they were still in the academy and living together in this grimy little shoebox, way before Brian became a big shot section chief.
In the film, Charlotte, a young, naive nurse stuck in an asylum with homicidal patients, ventures into the basement to escape the admitted, armed with only a toy boat to protect herself against ankle-grabbing doctors and torn corpses. He tries to picture himself as Nurse Charlotte, both brave little toasters diving into the dark and stuffy basement out of sheer desperation and hoping to God they don’t find anything unpleasant behind the next corner. The metaphor gets slightly out of hand then, because would that then make Agent Way Doctor Stephens? Or, like, Jennifers rotten corpse? The toy boat?
He’s reached the door at the back of the archive and pushes it open with the back of his hand, taking a step forward and-
Stops.
This is not a cleaning closet, it the first thing he thinks. For one thing, it’s bigger. There’s actually two desks, probably, maybe, if whatever’s beneath the precariously stacked coffee mugs, papers, rolled up maps and...comic books(?) are anything to go by. A black lump is hunched over the table to the left and must be the infamous Way. There’s a pencil sticking out of the ruff of dark hair and another one in his hand, scribbling frenziedly on a piece of paper. He’s bobbing his head in some sort of silent, nonmetrical rythm and hasn’t looked up at the creak of the door opening.
What really draws Frank attention to where Way’s sitting, is the bright red of the wall beside him. It is entirely covered in maps, pictures and sloppily scribbled post-its. Frank’s not even sure it’s actually letters on the notes, from where he stands the crows feet could be anything. Dots, stick men, actual crows feet, maybe.
Red thread is strung out between tacks on the wall, creating a spiders web of information like something out of a bad crimi or…. oh man, horror movie. This is like, a murder cave. And Frank’s not proud of it, but he does panic a bit right then, blurts out “Uh, you’re not prone to violent fits of anger or like, into stabbing yourself on metal desks, are you?” as his heartrate kicks up. He should have brought a fucking toy boat, oh man, so not cool to go down like this.
He’s wearing his only hole-less socks today, getting violently murdered in them will leave no socks to dress him in for the funeral. He’ll have to enter the afterlife bloody sockless. Stupid fucking white people, making bad, murder-inducing decisions in all basement situations. Frank curses internally at himself for making horrible life choiches. Death choices. Whatever.
Agent Way has stopped scribbling, and as he looks up, the stray pencil in his hair tumbles out and clacks loudly to the floor. “I-” He starts, then stops and seems to consider the question. “Not normally, no, why, is that something you’ve been told? I’m like 99% sure that someone on the second floor is spreading false information about my kinks to the new guys, so dude, you shouldn’t take it personally that they said that to you.”
And just. What.
The agent continues, while straightening out of his slouch a bit. “Was it McCracken that sent you down here? This woman, his new intern, came down last week and asked what I thought of horse play. It’s like working on these freaky cases makes everyone think I must be into all things freaky, and this is a kink shame free zone, you know, but also like a workplace, right?” He then shrugged as if to say ‘What can you even do about these freaky co-workers, man’, which… Frank couldn’t really deal.
“I printed out a list of hotlines and websites you should check out if you still want information though, because the sexual education in the US is really lacking, and even if they sent you down as a prank, you should still get the information you were looking for, allright.”
Frank wordlessly turned his head to the side, and sure enough, a black box with a stack of papers labelled “Curiosity might have killed the cat but will save your sex-life” really was placed on the lanky cabinet by the door.
Frank remembered vividly how offended he had gotten on Way’s behalf when he found out the department had named their basement-dwelling introverted agent “Spooky Way”, like the bureau was the sort of workplace that could be allowed to stoop to name-calling. But he could definitely see how Way had been earned a reputation for being a bit of an oddball.
“I’m not.” Frank said. “I’m not ‘dared’ to go down here, or pranked or here for kink-explanations.”
He pulled the folder from Brian out of his messenger bag and placed it on the desk, “I’m your newly assigned partner.”