dogma abandonded.

WHEN: Thursday, March 12th. WHERE: Chloe’s apartment building downtown. TAGGING: @calvinxmccoy​ & @wesleyblck​

                Why hadn’t Chloe evacuated yet? The first reason was that she didn’t have a car, the second was because she didn’t have any money to go anywhere or stay anywhere, and the third? She was trapped in her apartment. Phone lines were down she gathered since she couldn’t get a signal on her crappy pay-as-you-go cell and her asshole of a landlord ran off with her pounding on the door to help her out the day before. He yelled that he’d find help and send someone for her. A day went by and no one had come. The building was so cheap it was breaking down under the hurricane conditions — the stairwell had fallen apart and was flooding, but as it broke down a beam jammed against her door. Fire escape?  It had been broken since she moved into the building and now it was dangling from the side of the building, ready to fly off at any moment in the heavy winds. As much as Chloe wished she could say she stayed brave, the blonde had broken down a few times. Especially after debris busted her windows and blew through her apartment. In an effort to escape it all, Chloe hid herself in her closet and hoped she’d survive there until the storm passed. If the building didn’t crumble.

                   The storm had only been beginning. Somehow, someway, the cop had to endure what seemed to be chaos in the city they all called home. From riots, looting, shootings, to storm damage, accidents, and more. It was all hands on deck from anyone who carried a badge to lend their helping hand to the firefights and medics that were faced on the front lines. It had been the only reason Calvin had remained in Wilmington while he had ushered his loved ones out. Most of them he knew had been accounted for, he had the peace of mind knowing that Caleigh finally got in that car that morning. He hadn’t caught wind of Isabella nor Chloe, but while Calvin busied his hands with the dirty work, he would tell his subconscious that they took care of themselves. After all, with the McCoy bloodline, that’s what you did. Something wasn’t right though. Maybe it had been fate, but his presence was on the street of Chloe’s apartment after a previous call turned fatal and he was instructed to retreat back to the shelter from a higher command than himself. Something wasn’t right. “Black!” Calvin hollered toward the agent that was also dressed to the nines in a similar fashion, ready to get elbow deep, ushering the man to follow when he rounded the corner and spotted the disaster of Chloe’s building. “Chloe──she’s in there. She’s gotta be.” 

tag you’re it @wesleyblck​ !!!

LATE THURSDAY NIGHT, MARCH 12TH, 2020. → at HIGHWAY 765 en-route to charlotte. featuring: @wesleyblck.

                  Panic was still heavy and thick on Sophia’s mind, making it fairly difficult to breath or think clearly, but the worst of the worst was over. She knew that, she would remind herself of that. She was freed from the restraints of her seat belt and no longer in that cramped space of the backseat of a BMW… but that didn’t take away the fear that was rooted in her bones at that very moment. “Are you sure this is safe?” Sophia pulled the jacket she was gifted tighter around her torso with it being two sizes two big, having to practically shout over the noise the chaos behind her was making and the loud spin of the propellers of the chopper. “With the weather?” 

      Upon exiting the chopper, Agent Black grabbed the blankets and jackets they had on hand to distribute once he approached the horrific scene. He and the few agents he had with him helped to distribute to those they could that had been displaced but personally wrapped a jacket around the petite shoulders of Sophia Patton. The publisher was a woman he’d known for some time, someone he’d call a... friend? “Positive. This isn’t your standard chopper, Patton.” With a scrutinizing sapphire gaze, the blond swept her hair back from her face so he could better examine her and her condition. “I’m going to get you to a hospital and checked out. Your whiplash could take a while to have an effect, your adrenaline may be high still and therefore keeping injuries from being detected.” Without finishing anything he was about to say, Wesley tucked the woman under his arm and hugged his arm around her shoulders. “C’mon... let’s get going.” 

T H U R S D A Y,   M A R C H   1 2 T H. stranded on the roadside with @wesleyblck​.

          You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kidding me. Sydney glared at the deflated back tire of her car with enough venom to outmatch a thousand rattlesnakes. Just for good measure she even lowered herself to delivering a few swift, frustrated kicks. Not like it did any good. No matter how much she cursed the vehicle - the wind, the rain, and the  debris left in its way - the little Nissan was well and truly fucked. She should’ve borrowed a truck. Possibly shouldn’t have gone out at all let alone without backup… but what other choice did she have? Ignore what she heard? Leave Eren’s defenseless mother to roam the waterlogged, wind ravaged streets? Everybody else already had both hands full so she did the only thing she could think of, knowing every second delayed might be a second too late. Figures her decision to take off ill equipped and in a hurry would come around to bite her in the ass. Her hands braced on hips while she inspected the flat. “Of all the times not to have a spare…”

     It wasn’t as though a hurricane or even people's stupidity were foreign to Wesley, yet somehow he was still surprised by some of the bullshit he encountered. A large scale mandatory evacuation had been ordered, citizens were fleeing the Wilmington, as they should, but then there were the dumb fuck assholes that the FBI Special Agent in Charge of North Carolina just wanted five minutes alone with. Those people would be the looters, mostly, or the pieces of shit that decided a hurricane on the horizon was a great time to rob a hardware store. And here it was, Thursday, the storm had been upgraded a category and people were finally getting the hint that this was serious and fleeing town and he was still having to throw down looters attacking people. The amount of arrests made in the last week and handed over to local authorities was staggering. What made people lose their goddamn minds like this? He’d grown up in Boston, remembered escaping up the coast with his family — more than once, and he never fell to this level of depravity. Which was saying a lot considering the things he’d done in his life. Now, he was out driving the streets, looking for stragglers and people struggling when he saw a dark haired woman kicking the tires of what he assumed to be her vehicle. Wesley had just dropped off two looters he’d grabbed with the local PD to be transported to a jail out of the area, and this looked like something simple for a change this week.

locatated at beespoke coffee & dry goods. open to everyone ( @wilmingtonstarters​ ).

           Mayor Carson have advised our residents not to panic…. Remain indoors… The  sound of one Kevin Hoffman was easily heard through a busy coffee shop, especially as everyone stopped in order to pay attention to what was said. She didn’t blame the murmur that came afterwards— what did that mean for the people of Wilmington. Her eyebrows furrowed as she lowered her sigh to the phone she had in hand and started Googling for some information pertaining to Charlotte, she had not been there in years, but it was still the place she had been born. Her mother and father were buried there somewhere. She didn’t want it to be taken down by a storm, no matter how she insisted she didn’t have anymore ties to that place. After scanning a few words and sighing loudly, Corinne took a sip from her steaming hot coffee and wondered if Taylor was worried about her. Should she pick up if he called again? Probably not, maybe she could ask her parents to give him some news ( the adoptive, alive ones, not the dead ones ) or maybe Katie could help her with this. She raised her eyes to the TV again and it was talking about possible evacuation plans. “This is ridiculous— can you believe that? They speak about evacuation plans and don’t want people to panic… it’s counterproductive.” Corinne spoke to no one in particular, and scoffed, shaking her head.

     Wesley sipped on his coffee as his ears perked up to the news that came streaming out of the tv in the coffee shop. It wasn’t shocking nor surprising, he’d been through hurricanes before and this likely wouldn’t be the last. Plus, the storm had been brewing for a few days and unfortunately was making landfall south of them. This was the peril of living coastal, especially on the east coast when no doubt hurricane season would pick up as summer approached in the coming months. If this Selena creeped north as was being suspected then that meant a lot of work for him, and that caused the agent to groan slightly into his coffee cup before taking another drink. When the woman near him spoke up and released her frustration and fright, the blond glanced her was and focused his sapphire gaze on her. “Yeah I can,” the Boston native shrugged, “it hasn’t made landfall in Charlotte or Savannah yet so they’re giving as much warning to prep as possible. It’s important to remain level about this…” He spoke easily, not wanting to come across as condescending in any way since that was far from his intent or objective but this was already signs of the hysteria everyone needed to avoid. “Just pack a bag when you get home, make sure you have a full tank of gas, pack water and food, and starting looking at arrangements of what and where you can go west.” Since this wasn’t his area of expertise, Wesley wasn’t about to tell her head out as soon as possible, nor would he advise that she should leave when the hurricane did his land south of them but it wouldn’t hurt to be prepared. Which was exactly what the city was urging residents to do. “There’s no reason for any panicking.”

     Every once in a while Wesley humored a friend or one of the ladies in his office and sometimes that meant being set up. Most of the time he turned the offers down and told everyone to relax, he wasn’t trying to find someone new or some kind of happy ending. His life happened the way it did and the Boston native was never sure he could handle a serious, committed relationship again in his life. If he did, Wesley figured it would be the driving force that pushed him back to the bottle. It was anyone’s guess why he said yes this time, but he never really was opposed to meeting someone new and sometimes he liked to switch up the ways in which he wound up in the sack by the end of the night. Not that he had expectations, he never did, he wasn’t that guy — things just had a natural way of going that direction. 

Bosko lightly nodded his head in agreement with the other man. There were plenty of ways to justify such actions; not that Bosko ever got too hung up on those details. In the past, he’d do things on a whim and then make something up as to why it happened. The excuses were never good, always landing him into hot water. All of that needed to stay in the past, especially if he wanted a real future. “Same age,” he answered, thinking back to his childhood bully. “Nah, not worth my time.” Plus, he didn’t want to know how great the man’s life probably turned out to be. He was part of the privileged back home, no doubt his parents ensured his future was bright. “Now, if I happened to be out and just come across him, well…I think that would be the universe telling me to drop his ass as fast as I could. What about you?”   

     “Ehh,” Wesley’s chin quickly cocked to one side and he tsk’d. “You’d likely be looking at assault charges if you just randomly dropped him in public like that.” Which was his assumption based on the bit of scene painted for him. Happen to come across him? The agent doubt that meant the two would somehow end up in back alley together and approaching the former bully in a grocery store line or on the sidewalk outside of a coffeeshop meant witnesses. “Gotta be more calculated than that.” And the blond, in his position, shouldn’t be handing out any tips or advice. “Oh me?” The Boston native’s hand went to his chest with some oddly timed feigned innocence. But that was Wesley Black. An enigma. Impossible to figure out. “You could say I’ve made some people pay in my time.” In fact, he went after some people and leveled organizations that would have him looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. “I think about it every day though… looking him up.”

Claire stepped out of her home with a garbage bag in one hand and a box filled of recycling in the other. It was a rare day off for her which meant she was attempting to knock a few things off of her to do list. By the state of surprise on her face and the way the woman stopped short, she hadn’t been expecting anyone. Frankly, if someone had told her to guess a person who could be standing outside of her apartment, Wesley would have been the last person to come to mind. At least from past events where she was often the one to reach out to him. Brows furrowed in confusion as she peered over him, unable to unravel the assumptions that jumped to the front of her head. “You came all the way over here to ask me out to dinner? How long have you been out here?” She questioned in disbelief, peering over at him. Somehow, this was on brand for the male. She’d gone through hoops in order to get some news from the male and when she least expected it, he didn’t even bother to call but simply showed up. “I mean, I can always eat but I have to put this away.” Her hand rose at the various items in her hand. Silently, she swore at herself for having chosen the outfit she did. “How pressed are we for time?”

                  “You can lie to yourself all you want, Black, but we both know the truth here.” Sophia grazed her collarbone with her fingertips like she was gesturing to her beating heart, feigning innocent, but in reality she was just spit balling here. She truthfully had no clue on if he happened to cross her path for her or if he had really arrived for one of her neighbors ── but she did know him well enough to be comfort in a tease and attempting to steal his attention. “You just can’t resist me.” Rolling her eyes, Sophia wasted no time in side stepping around him so she could lead the way. It wasn’t too far off from her apartment and the trip had only taken a matter of minutes, ending up with Sophia wiggling the lock and pushing open the door for the fellow. To make the dramatic flare of her response, she positioned two fingers like a pistol in her mouth and gagged a little, though made no noise of it. “Yuck. Can’t you just leave it with the fact that I know your conquests are pleased and spare me the jarring details?” In reality, he didn’t give any and Sophia was just making up ammo. “You’ve never seen a velvet bralette? Matching set? The burgundy is my favorite…” Sophia also collected lingerie like most women collected shoes or purses, but it made the publisher feel confident and sexy and most of the time she wore it for herself. “You aren’t getting with the right women, then.” Sophia winked back toward Wesley and retrieved the satchel from the top of the luggage, then hoisted it onto the sectional in the living room. “Now why would I be afraid of that?” She questioned, rolling her eyes. Even if she was going to give him a hard time for his request, she still meandered back around the ottoman and into the kitchen to grab the pitcher of iced water. 

     Unable to resist, Wesley stepped forward. Closer. Smirking. He was nearly on the verge of circling her like a shark that smelled blood in the water, but instead he looked down at her with amusement in his eyes. These games, cat and mouse, or coy — the federal agent really got a contact high off of them. “You and I both know,” he inched even closer, put his face only inches from her own, “the only one lying to themselves here is you.” It really was chance that the blond had wound up crossing paths with Sophia, he just wasn’t disappointed with that and found himself stalling a little on where he was supposed to be. To humor both himself and her. “Go on, tell me what else you want from me.” Swiveling, her bags in hand, Wesley dutifully followed after the sassy Sophia. He leaned his shoulder against the wall as they stopped at her door and she went to task to open up, his sapphire gaze never left her profile. “What details, sweetheart?” While he didn’t wear the smirk on his lips, it was certainly in his tone as his eyes searched for the flush he was sure she was trying to hold back. “What’s so jarring and upsetting to you about my sex life?” This was the second time in a matter of minutes that she’d dramatically displayed displeasure at him having one. “Is it because you’re not apart of it?” Nothing would happen, she had a boyfriend but that never stopped people from thinking of things. Or maybe not, this could be subconscious. “Thanks for the info,” he tipped his head, though didn’t bother storing the burgundy info away. Wesley had seen all sorts of lingerie and while a woman looked stunning in the way she chose to display herself, or not, the federal agent preferred nothing. “Well, I think it’s a sad day if the most memorable thing was… the lingerie.” The invite in seemed assumed so Wesley followed behind and shut the door so her dogs wouldn’t run out. He bent and pet them, and became further amused by her. “Because you’re nothing more than simple comments and a few questions. You’re being very careful in not letting me see the real you. The reason,” his sapphires tracked her to her kitchen, “is for you to divulge.” Which, eventually she would. He knew she’d keep this up for a while though, which was what made her more intriguing.

“I suppose you received your answer anyhow then, yes?” It came in a roundabout way, she was aware, though she wasn’t purposefully being difficult. The things she wanted to fight were in the past, a place she wanted to let go of and move forward with her life. Bringing it up for pointless conversation? That wouldn’t serve her well in the long run, and she had no desire to truly satiate this man’s curiosity. “Are you planning on visiting him? Is that why you’re speaking with me, attempting to be chummy?” In that moment, Diana came to a possible conclusion that Wesley was looking for insight. Maybe even motivation. The intrusiveness caused for her to balk, and the only thing she couldn’t figure was his angle and why he was so interested in her relationship with her father. “Things were fine.” It wasn’t a lie. “The two of us have been fine for a while.” Mostly due to Diana keeping things buried and avoiding them. “Why so much interest?” People had a tendency to find her intriguing, only it was usually nothing in relation to the man whom failed at raising her.

Riley knew her lollipop request could’ve gone one of two ways, but when she was faced with a smirk, she wasn’t surprised. During their short interaction, he had presented himself in a way that exuded confidence and a natural ability to engage with people. In ways she envied him for making it look so easy, despite the fact that they were both features that she liked to think she possessed in one way or another. “So you don’t use them to form thoughts?” The blonde gladly took the candy he had offered up, unwrapping it and popping it in her mouth before returning her gaze to him. She allowed herself a few moments to enjoy the lollipop, something she hadn’t treated herself to since she was a kid, before popping it from her mouth. “Works wonders in the idea department…but yeah, my ex. How much time do you have? Because we could be here all day if I get into it.” Riley had typically kept quiet about everything that went on her marriage, at the time, harbouring a heavy weighted sense of guilt for sticking around for so long. Now though, free from the constraints of marriage, speaking about how big of an asshole her ex-husband was didn’t seem so scary. In fact, it was liberating in ways. “Nuh uh…not letting you pull that off.” His comment was met with laughter. “I show you mine, you show me yours. No judgement.”

     “Isn’t the shower the best place for thoughts?” With some amount of interest, the blond watched as she took the lollipop into her mouth. There was really no disguising the oral fixation, well, when he wasn’t trying to. “You know what else works? A drive.” At least Wesley had moved on from innuendo. “Well, I’ve got at least an hour if you think you could condense it.” Listening to stories and problems about exes was usually the last thing he really sat or stood around for. The reason wasn’t because he didn’t have the patience, or that he was without interest into someone’s life. It was because it generally took him back to thinking of his own ex and he really didn’t need or want to go down that path, at least not for the sake of his sobriety. “Well, when you put it that way…” The federal agent smiled some at her laughter. It was a nice sound, making a woman genuinely laugh again. It felt like it had been a really long time. “Alright, alright. I think I’d fight your ex.” There wasn’t a chance he was about to be serious at this point, plus Wesley didn’t really have much that came to mind. Or perhaps he was avoiding just how much would come up if he gave the question real thought. “How’d he ever let you go? Beautiful, a champion MMA fighter, and funny… what a loss.” The Boston native shook his head. “He’s gotta be one of the dumbest men on the planet.” His genuine compliments were met with an honest twinkle in his sapphires. “Let’s move on, yeah? What have you been doing since you retired from fighting? You were really good.”

               “Yeah, you might be right.” Her reality hadn’t really been equipped with hypotheticals and her fantasies consisted of a nicer and bigger apartment, food filling the fridge and pantry, money in the bank for a comfortable life, and most importantly her daughter returned to her. “Putting it that way, I might have a pretty long list of who I would love to punch in the face. Scamming lawyers and corrupt officials, my creepy landlord, one of the cooks at my work, my father, my mother, drug dealers, Bosko, myself —” Chloe really felt she could’ve kept going but as soon as she’d said herself, she knew that was the person most responsible for all her problems and the weight on her shoulders suddenly felt heavier. “No, no, I —” She rubbed at her forehead and looked anywhere but at the male for a few seconds. “I guess it’s just hard to admit these kinds of things out loud because of what they reveal — what they say about me.” And she was still learning how to face herself in all of this now that she had been clean for some time.

“Good, I’ve got an ongoing list of people I’d like to fight. Mostly people deserving of it, of course. But then there are some people, I don’t know…never actually met them but I just wanna punch them.” Maybe his P.O. had a point and he had anger management issues. Or maybe some people just needed a good punch in the face and he was the only person who truly saw it. “First person to pop up? Easy. Eric Anderson,” he stated, cleanly. “Dude I knew back in the day. Couldn’t fucking breathe without the asshole bringing a hammer down on me. On everyone, really. He was just a mean bastard.” 

     “One way or another we justify a person as deserving if they’ve made the list.” It nearly brought a chuckle out of him, Wesley certainly could relate, but he had also been in law enforcement since he graduated high school. His father was a prestigious judge. The blond knew plenty of people deserving a good punch to the face, some deserving of much more damage. This is where someone would argue where he had the right to be the judge, jury, and executioner. Which, was a good point, but also, he had done enough damage off the books. “Some people are just annoying, I get it,” he agreed with a nod. Once he got a name and the other let out why, Wes was somewhat amused even though he likely shouldn’t have been. “Was Eric Anderson your age or someone older that used to torment? You ever think of looking him up?”