in·ca·pac·i·tat·ed
ˌinkəˈpasəˌtādəd/
adjective
deprived of strength or power; debilitated

"On a scale of one to ten, how much does it hurt?"

"Yes." I wasn't really listening to what Brendon was saying. I didn't really care, honestly. He told me to focus on the road, and I was focusing on the road. The streetlights and the sparse cars speeding past us, stop signs shining bright and buildings flickering out for the night.

"Dallon, look, you gotta stay with me, okay?" He grabbed my shoulder and shook it a couple times, swerving the car slightly as he did so. It hurt. It hurt a lot. From a couple shakes alone I felt like my body was going to split in half and burn to ashes.

"Mmm, no promises, Urie."

Patrick - the guy from the hotel - turned out to be more than just a receptionist. I'd always been told Quicksilver was not a criminal to be reckoned with, and I should've listened. 'He's skilled with knives', Wentz would tell me, 'mess with him and you'll barely walk away worse off than I did', and he'd show me the scar running all the way down his chest. I'd be able to one up him though - mine was bound to be two times as worse with even more scars sprinkled around like stars in a galaxy.

Quicksilver wasn't dead, though. We ran while we had the chance and didn't look back, even after another knife blade shot it's way through the back window. We were lucky he hadn't aimed for one of the rear tires, although it would've been a smarter move.

"Look, gah, fuck," Brendon muttered under his breath, "we'll stop in a couple miles. I'll turn on the lights for the back seats and grab the first aid kit, and I'll do this myself."

There was no way I was going to allow him near any part of my body, whether or not I had the possibility of bleeding out. He'd probably take the opportunity to kill me right then and there. "No way in hell, I'll do it!"

"You're bleeding all over the seats."

Maybe I was, but that didn't mean I'd let him clean it up. He'd asked for help when I stitched him up, and I didn't want or need any assistance. "Yeah, but it's my blood all over the seats-"

With one hand still on the steering wheel, Brendon grabbed the collar to my shirt and pulled as hard as he could, jerking the car to the left along with me. "Listen here," he growled - growled -, "you're going to sit in the back seat and let me clean you up, or I'll stop this car right now and leave you out in the middle of the night to bleed out in a stolen vehicle."

My entire body was aching even while he was holding me up. There was no way I'd be able to tend to my own wounds while a maniac like Brendon drove the car around curbs like he was trying to achieve a flawless ninety degree turn. I didn't have any other options. "Fuck you."

"Love you too."

⋘⋙

When Pete had told me about Quicksilver's strengths lying with lodging sharp objects into various body parts, he wasn't joking.

"I didn't even know he'd gotten ahold of glass," Brendon looked away and scrunched his nose while he pulled out another - another - shard of a jade green vase from my chest, "I bet we could piece back together this thing and sell it."

"It's perfectly logical to sell a jar broken into a couple hundred bits that we glued back together."

His face lit up, the opposite of my intentions with the joke. "Exactly! We'll tell the buyers it was stuck in the chest of a secret undercover agent dealing with super villains working alongside other more murderous super villains." Brendon held out his hand and made the childish grabby motion towards the first aid box we'd kept on the floor so I could pass him tools. "Antiseptic wipes."

I handed him a few packages of the wipes to the best of my ability, and sucked in a breath while he reached down himself to snatch up a towel. His shirt barely brushed against the blood running down to the seat.

Brendon held the towel in one hand and tore open a package with his teeth, yanking out the fabric almost dripping with rubbing alcohol.

He twisted the wipe in his fingers and took a few quick breaths, which was what I should've been doing instead of him. "This is gonna hurt, like a lot."

"I'm fucking aware."

His gaze traveled to the roof of the car for a second before flickering back down to the larger cut, placed up near my shoulder, threatening to bleed until I passed out. "On the count of three, I'm gonna go for it, okay?"

I rolled my eyes and nudged him my free arm. "Just do it, yeah? I can handle it!"

Brendon shut his eyes in what seemed to be disgust before taking in another sharp breath. "Okay, okay. One... two... t-"

"Freeze!" The click of a gun sounded just outside the window. I hadn't seen it previously, but soft red and blue lights flashed on the back of the seats, spilling in through the windows.

The cop knocked on the glass with the butt of his gun. "Who are you? Open the door!"

Brendon slowly let the wipe fall from his fingers to flutter down to the floor of the vehicle, hand slowly skimming along the side of my stomach to the firearm I kept hidden from sight. "Sir," he clenched his jaw as he spoke, "if you let us go without consequences, I can promise it'll be much easier than what will go down if we try not to forget that this ever happened."

I couldn't see, but I assumed the cop hadn't taken his statement very seriously. The door handle jiggled twice before another loud slam rang right next to my head. "I'm afraid I can't do that. Please step out of the vehicle."

I caught Brendon's glare for a split second. If he tried to shoot, anything to get the cop off our back, both of us wouldn't make it out. Alive or dead, it didn't matter. We'd both be turned in and never released, and the mission would be marked as incomplete, and I would never see the light of day again.

"Don't you dare," I hissed in hopes he'd take my advice instead of following an impulse, "don't you fucking dare-"

His fingers hit the gun in my waistband, and on instinct I pulled my knee up to his back and shoved him off as hard as I could. He lurched forwards, slamming his head on the window and crashing down to the floor and the box of first aid supplies.

The cop seemed stunned, to say the least. I wouldn't have anticipated any suspects to willingly surrender either.

⋘⋙

The willing surrender hadn't lasted very long, though. Before I knew it, Brendon was bursting into my own room, blood on his hands, key ring dangling between his fingers.

I didn't even question him. I didn't want to know why, I didn't want to know how. I followed him out and let him do his thing like I knew he would.

"So, uh, I was listening in to their conversation right? Like when they were questioning me," He held a hand against my chest just before we rounded the corner, and an officer sprinted past down the other way, "Animosity and Virulent's show is tomorrow. It's in Los Angles, underneath the basement of some old rundown hotel."

"On the outskirts of Los Angeles then?" That was were most of the abandoned buildings were. They wouldn't be stupid enough to host an event with billionaire villains in the heart of a major city.

Brendon shrugged, grabbing my wrist and keeping me behind him down the hall and under a desk in the lobby of the station. The door was less than a dozen yards away at the most. All that kept us from tracking down the Mercenary Lovers was a plexiglass door. "It's our best bet. They said the entrance was guarded though, I'm not sure how they found out."

"How're we supposed to get in, then? We're far from super villains, we don't know who they are so we can't drop a name and expect immediate entry-"

"I know, I know," Brendon hissed, "we have to go steal some tickets in. One of the officers was talking about Inimical and Enmity discovered nearby, at some other hotel."

Inimical and Enmity were another criminal couple well known by both the agency and the public - they weren't the brightest duo when it came to keeping things under wraps. And as a result of their carelessness, they were found often, and were required to fight for their lives more than others. No matter how many times they were caught red handed with millions worth in their pockets, they still made the news for the slaughter of too many.

"You want to pose as a few of of the most wanted criminals in the country to reach the most wanted criminals in the world?"

He smiled and fired three shots with a hidden gun, sending a cop tumbling backwards. "How else do you want to do it?"

I wanted to do anything but that. The last time I had tangoed with Inimical and Enmity, someone got killed. "Not like that, preferably. It's too dangerous to pull a stunt like that."

Brendon rolled his eyes and rustled around in the closest drawer, sliding a loaded gun from the space and smiling as if he'd won the lottery. "C'mon, Dallon. I'll do it if you don't want to. You gotta live a little!"

"Living a little could put a bullet in your head-"

His hand grabbed my shoulder where one of the results of Quicksilver's debut had struck the worst. I ignored the sharp pain and shoved his grip off before he could dig into a cut. "See, you're hurt-"

"No shit, Sherlock-"

"I'll do it," he insisted with a serious frown on his features, "you can stay in the car and be the getaway driver, but if we don't get in to this show, it could be months before we get any other information."

He was right. We had to take the chance while we had the opportunity while it was still directly in front of us.

Brendon held out his hand, still clutching the gun in the other. "We got a deal then?"

"Only if you can get us out of here alive." It was a stupid idea. I shouldn't have trusted him one bit after witnessing his behavior switch like night and day. His file for Clandestine said I should do anything but trust him.

He smirked. "So you trust me?"

"Sure."

[it goes down next chapter cool cool]