#d.tricky01

[containatrocity]

"Oooooh the traitor returns!" It's a greeting bellowed from the very back desk of Station Alpha, Duck's familiar dust-covered cowboy boots kicked up on the top of it and his hat pulled down over his face. It's almost impressive, the fact he seems to have identified Trick by little more than a sliver of a ranger uniform from beneath his hat, lifting it up and sitting it back in place a moment later, flicking the front up. "Rust's doing a sweep if you're here to annoy him about something work related. They keeping you in line down at South Station or are they letting you run riot undoin' all my hard work?" It's sarcastic, playful as it always is. Duck seems to be the only one in right now, the actual rangers likely out making their morning and afternoon sweeps of the forest or hunting on their own- the game warden often left to sit around by himself.

"It's gonna be so much colder soon! And you're a migratory bird- so it's bad luck you-" Rusty's voice chimes behind Tricky in the doorway of the ranger station, the man absently conversing with a bird tucked into his jacket, peeping softly, snuggled against the biting wind. "Oh- Hey Trick- what brings you up? Business 'er pleasure?"

"Boy you ain't had a pleasure call since ya grew into yer beergut." Duck snorts, watching as Rusty throws a pencil at his head- only to wiff, and miss by a mile. "Missed." He mocks, drumming his hands on his desk in front of him. "Mockin' you boys aside, what brings you in, ain't it your day off, soldier?"

@backmaskcd

[containatrocity]

"I think, if I try hard enough, I could domesticate a Coyote. Brute's gettin' up there in years. New family pet: an agitated, singular coyote." Duck stands up as Tricky takes the joint, stretching his arms over his head with a long, low groan and grabbing his cane from beside the desk, wandering into the kitchenette with a grunt. "Well if you lot are bored, that's not on me or Rust to solve, get some board games, convince somebody to give up their game console and play it on the stupid little wheely TV we used to use t' train newbies before all our recorded training content ended up real fucking outdated."

"The most outdated thing in those training tapes is lil junior ranger Mallard's fucked up little mustache." Rusty posits, squawking in alarm- in tandem with the bird on his desk- as a pencil flies back at him from across the station, plinking harmlessly off the side of his head. "Lie all you want! I know you were stoked when I decided givin' a verbal briefin' worked better because there's a 17 year old version of you in the thickest fuckin' glasses they could give ya without strappin' a microscope to yer fuckin' head mean-muggin' the camera while ya go over gun safety!" Their bickering is good-natured as it can be, Duck rolling his eyes as he returns to making his sandwich.

Tricky questions how Rusty can identify the songbird, he picks it up, carefully, motioning to it with his other hand. "'cause I've been huntin' and livin' in these woods since I was pushed outta my mama, and fer like a decade an' some change now I been teachin' the local kids about our wildlife. This here's a tufted titmouse."

"That's what they called my ex wife in high school."

"Mallard."

"Ha!"

Rusty rolls his eyes, returns to the task at hand- raising a brow at Tricky. "Aw shit, who you gone done and knocked boots with now?" He questions. "Anybody who's got an angry husband 'er wife who's gonna come knockin? My aim's all fucked on account a the one eye, Trick- I can't spot your ass if you're on somebody's shitlist."

"I meant at the south station, Mal," Tricky gave Duck what passed for a soft look from him, shaking his head. "You know better than anyone we can't unprogram me from responding with yes sergeant half the time you ask me to do something." Letting out another groan, Tricky rolled his eyes once again. "Stop encouraging people like Elijah to bring animals in. Apparently he's bored we need more enrichment in our enclosures that don't involve live animals running amok - especially not coyotes because those are dangerous and someone is gonna see something they don't wanna see me do."

Rusty's greeting was far more agreeable, and he easily clapped the other man on the back before taking Clara's spot, letting out a soft sigh. "Trust me, if I thought it would be a good idea for all of us to be over here, I'd switch over in a heartbeat - but one of us has to keep up Mal's standards, and clearly it will not be you, Rust." He gave the bird a quizzical look. "How the fuck can you tell what that is?" All the same, if Rusty wanted to nurse it back to health, there was nothing stopping him.

"Well, what can I say Mal; you really know how to get in a guy's head," finally relenting and giving the other a slightly bemused look, he reached forward for the joint, settling back as he took a pull from it. "I don't know. I keep getting into trouble when left to my own devices; I figured harassing you two, I would at least keep my dick in my pants." He didn't have to say he was self destructing again - they probably already knew that.

[containatrocity]

"Can't ask me to leave, I'm in charge. And that is the talk of a traitor. I do not negotiate with South Station." He rolls his eyes playfully as the other man insists he has to 'improve' on Mal's work in the military. "Listen, were it not for me, you two would be dead a thousand times over, the least you can do is show some gratitude fer my hard work." He jokes, shaking his head as Rusty appears holding what appears to be yet another injured bird. "No, actually, he's bringing wildlife in to rehabilitate it, I'm the one bringing it to various stations to release upon the staff and I think the rest of you are starting t' jack my routine. I'll just have to get more weird with it. Coyotes. I'm gonna have to start bringin' in coyotes." Duck hums, Rusty shakes his head, gently sitting the shivering bird on his desk in a nearby empty paper tray.

"What'm I supposed t' do, then, leave 'er outside? She's just a baby. Just needs to warm up and if she ain't got nothin' broken I'll let her go. Ain't gonna huck her at my coworkers. One of us has to be the adult here." Rusty insists, shrugging out of his coat and hanging it by the door. "Besides, she ain't good meat, she's a songbird." Rusty chuckles. "Always good seein' you in for somethin' that's not work related, Trick, means I ain't got more work to do. Pull up a chair, relax a bit, Clara's not gonna be in for a while, you can steal hers." He reasons, settling in at his own desk to attend to the bird he'd brought in, tattooed fingers gentle as he adjusts bedding and gently brushes the top of the bird's head. "You ain't food, are ya sweetheart? No. No, Trick's just bein' mean t' ya." He coos.

Mal eventually speaks up again, a joint lit and smoking at the corner of his mouth- he takes a drag, winces as he straightens up. "I can think of a lot of good ways t' spend a day off. Drinkin'. Sleepin'. Trying to regain my fucking high score on Dragon's Lair AGAIN because that power outage wiped 'em. But, I am flattered you couldn't stand to be away from me long enough you came in instead." He offers the joint between two fingers. "Want a hit there, killer?"

The groan started before Duck even finished his sentence. "Mal, for the millionth time, if we put all three of us on the same station, we would be asked to leave or forced out." The fact that the other didn't even need to look up to know it was him was almost irritating - how he still recognized him by the way he walked was a mystery to Tricky, especially since there had been a very large period of time where they hadn't been forced together. "Of course I'm undoing everything you did - I gotta improve it." Despite the comment that Rusty was out, Trick still let his eyes sweep over the station in case he missed something. However, as Rusty walked in the door, another groan left his throat.

"So you're why Elijah and I are always squabbling over wildlife in our station? Rust, you gotta leave the animals outside unless your plan is to eat them." Despite this, there was a wide grin on his face. The relationship he had with Rusty was far different than the one with Mal - and a lot of that had to do with the fact that Rusty was not his superior. He'd always felt a closer kinship to the younger man, had that not been evident by the fact that he followed him here. "Yes, sir," the moniker is sneered. "It is my day off. But what better to do on my day off than annoy the shit out of my best friends?"