The Basin, Vienda
broad-clocking-daylight on the 15th of Bethas, 2719
"I'mnot yet convinced you're not replaceable, Mister Spencer, but I read the papers. Someone may miss your impressive lack of spelling errors in your pieces, sure. Or at least your subtle use of wit." Rhys kept his threat and made it known that he wasn't unaware of the human once he gave his name, playing the part of just another galdor officer—almost.
"You can stop calling me Sergeant now. Maybe you didn't notice I wasn't in uniform? Maybe it's for a reason. Just Rhys'll do. I'm not on duty. I don't want to be right now, either." The last sound left his lips and he couldn't help but let his tongue brush over that ridiculous scar again, blue eyes rolling as he leaned away, as he set his listless, lanky, dirty half-blood body into motion down the street, "I look like a drink, do I? That was nothing. Someone like you? What, a human? Or some godsbedamned nosey reporter who obviously doesn't have any qualms about getting in over his head? You've got to make a living like the rest of us—I'm given a lot of shit for just how clocking tolerant I come off as with so-called folks like you."
He smirked, the only one between the two of them aware of the metallic tang of irony in his words.
He laughed then, quick to bury such thoughts behind a thin veil of forced humor, but the blond was perhaps a little put out at the implication that this small bit of even potentially violent interaction had somehow put him over the edge enough to require intoxication. Fuck that. He'd been shoved roughly over the cliff of no return months ago by the hard crushing blows of one Captain D'Arthe's Seventen-issued baton, and the twinge in his left arm reminded him of everything else that had careened him far from his oath-sworn path as he watched the way the other man walked for a moment, always the Inspector, ever the officer even when pretending not to be.
He scoffed as the reporter made his honest request, turning down a totally unoccupied side alley as if he knew what he was doing. While he led, he dug back into his pocket and removed the pouch of Drake's Tongue. Adam would feel the not-galdor gather his powerful glamour, a field strong enough that to a human like the reporter, there was hardly a difference at all, especially considering he spoke Monite with such measured confidence, such comfortable trust, that no one would ever have questioned what he was, let alone what he wasn't.
The bag began to spark and smolder as he channeled Static mona that didn't normally cling to his aura, the leather pouch swiftly consumed by bright white and dancing blue flame, Rhys tossing the whole thing onto the cold cobblestones and concentrating just enough to make sure that everything inside began to crackle and burn, turned to ash almost without any smoke. He wasn't about to bring that home, nor did he need to bring that back to headquarters. The young Valentin scowled, scuffing blackened remains with the muddy toe of his boot before he set them both in motion again,
"I bet you'd love to hear all the shit the Investigative Division knows about the Resistance. Then you could plaster it all over the papers in nice black ink, get a sweet promotion, and I'd have to watch all our best laid plans shift with the wind, eh? Maybe another time. Let's see how trustworthy you are first, Mister Spencer, with information I'm currently not reporting to my superior officers instead. Fair?"
Rhys had built his career on the prison sentences of Resistance cadets and he wasn't about to give away anything that might cost him the tenuous hold he had on his career already—wait, yes he would. Just not that. Not yet.
"You're more famous than most humans, sure." He grinned, mostly giving the other man a hard time now and not actually attempting to outright insult him. Gods, if Adam only knew the company he kept, the family he had, the mother who birthed him.
The tall blond couldn't help but look around once they were in an open square, blue eyes shifting from the dark-haired man's face to study the passer's by, unable to shake the kind of paranoia being beaten in broad daylight had scarred into his entire existence. They hadn't been followed. This was the Dives. Home wasn't too far away in the Painted Ladies, after all, but Adam didn't need to know that. Not now. Possibly not ever. Fumbling almost compulsively for his pocket watch, he noted no patrols were due through this area for another ten minutes. Yes, he had every one of them memorized. More precisely than ever.
He shouldn't be doing this, either. Sharing what he knew. Spinning his current personal quest for justice with the press, with anyone other than Charity and Gale. Benjamin's body was fish food by now, somewhere downriver. He still had Diaxio to hunt. He still had Damen to—
His shoulders sagged at the reporter's words, fingers stuck for a moment in the slim pocket in his vest, hooked on the hem where he'd slid his time piece away. The Sergeant's jaw clenched as if he'd heard something that angered him, but the flicker of emotion that passed over his face, that puckered at the scar that ran through his eyebrow and curled his lips was sadness, was hurt, and was genuine concern. Tilting his chin toward the little hole in the wall that could barely be called a pub given it was surely a glorified liquor cabinet with a window, Rhys' tone was suddenly far heavier than it had been,
"You have no fucking idea, Mister Spencer. I know, you think you do, but you just don't. Trust me because I didn't, either. If you're saying you can probably help me out, you're probably right. But the price is high should truth end up in the wrong hands." There was a waver in that admission, the not-galdor looking away from the other man to hold the door open for him and usher him into the small space, his glamour tightening against his person with a purposeful dampening, suddenly quieter, weaker, and far less noticeable than it had been out on the street,
"The question is, where do I start? The present? The beginning? Somewhere in between? There is too much for one sitting." Rhys moved to find them the furthest table from the bar, scooting the human out a chair firstt and then himself second with his own foot before removing his coat and tossing it over the back, before sinking so heavily down into the seat,
"You have a whole series of articles potentially with all me, myself, and my honesty could put on the table. But what in all the Circle do you have to offer the likes of me?" Self preservation. He was forced to value it now, even if in over eight years as a Seventen and ten as a student, he'd hardly given a chrove's erse about his own well being.