Logs:Operation: S.L.A.M.
| Operation: S.L.A.M. | |
|---|---|
Spies Losing Any Mystery | |
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia
|
2020-09-19 "Where do you know each other from?" |
| Location
<NJ> Deaf Poets Society ASL Poetry Slam - Newark | |
The sign out front reads "21st Amendment", but tonight this cheeky retro bar has been taken over by the Deaf Poets Society to host its monthly ASL poetry slam. The interior is all exposed brick and industrial beam ceiling with ample suspended lightning. There seems to be an attempt here at a cottagecore aesthetic, many of the booths and walls decorated with folk art and crafts (including a kitschy framed cross-stitch that reads 'Bless this Happy Bar'). It's crowded here tonight, and the crowds are rather animated--a gathering of deaf and hearing signers from all across northern New Jersey and New York City. Clint's eyes skip unsteadily from Nat to Dawson to Steve and then back again."Oh!" he says finally, but switches to signing and speaking again right after. "You know each other." He hesitates a beat. "Nat is just--my date! Tonight." Another beat before he adds, awkwardly, "Where do you know each other from?" 'Your date.' Dawson is eying Steve's whiskey a little wistfully. His signing gets more halting, less grammatical as he speaks: "Scramble is devastated, where have you --" He stops. Looking between Nat and Clint with wide eyes. "What's going on --" Steve starts to speak, then shuts his mouth.. Signs 'What?' again, looking to Dawson in hopeless confusion, then studying Nat and Clint as if the mystery will somehow resolve itself. "Wait...you look --" He cuts himself off again. Signs to Nat, 'We meet?' Natasha's eyes dart from Dawson to Steve to Clint. Back to Dawson. Her shoulders tense as Dawson looks between her and Clint, her head tipping up toward the others. "Game night," she supplies for Steve, aloud and in sign both. "Maybe we should go outside." "Scramble?" Clint repeats, clearly nonplussed. Then his eyes widen. "Oh..." He adds signing to his voice again. "Yes. Maybe we should go. Outside." But not before he slams back the entire rest of his drink, apparently. He hooks Natasha's arm and draws her along out into the crisp air. There are a few smokers lingering on the sidewalk, their animated conversations making the brands of the cigarettes trace patterns in the semi-dark. Dawson and Steve make it there first, with a touch of Dawson's hand to Steve's arm, a rapid flicker-blink of strobing motion that sets them down on the sidewalk outside. "Are you with them?" Dawson is demanding as soon as Natasha and Clint arrive; this comes out in sign as 'You work together?' Followed by, "S.H.I.E.L.D." Steve sways slightly in the wake of Dawson's teleportation. Narrows his eyes at Clint and Natasha, as if he could divine their loyalties by looking. Natasha draws in a deep breath of the slightly smokey night air. "You know what they were planning?" Her simcomming comes a little easier than Dawson's, though her grammar slips more Englishy as she speaks. "It would have been a lot worse. For them. For everyone. If they pulled it off." "Pulled it off?" Clint mouths, perplexed. But then his frown clears abruptly and his eyes go wide. "What were they planning?" he sim-coms again, though his voice is hushed and his gestures sharp and agitated. "I can take a wild guess or two." Dawson's eyes narrow, his posture tenser, but his mouth just opens, then closes again, some of the gathering anger deflating from him. 'It's pretty bad already.' His arms wrap around his chest, abruptly looking more chill in the crisp night air. It takes a moment for him to collect himself enough to start signing again, choppily as he speaks. "I have to tell them. After Shane got snatched -- everyone thinks something horrible happened to you." "Who's 'they'?" Steve blurts, but then firmly shuts his mouth again. He runs a hand through his hair and returns his attention to the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., his expression hard and perplexed. "You do what you have to do." Natasha just nods at this, glancing aside to Steve with a very small thinning of her lips. She hesitates, then turns a hand up. "There's a chance I can do something, still. About B's case. The last thing we want is a flashpoint for rallying more violence, anyway. I know people who might listen." "'Terrorism' isn't always just code for 'activism', Cap," Clint says with a long-suffering smile. "But we're not law enforcement--we just try to keep the world from ending." | |
