Ryder McAuliffe

Ryder Sullivan. Special Agent, FBI. Surveillance. [HQ]

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audrina-redford:

“Really really.” Audrina quoted Shrek with a small smile to herself. Might have been an obscure reference but she enjoyed it none the less. Chuckling to herself, Audrina looked up at Ryder. “I’m only helpful when it suits me. Kind of like everyone else in this joint. My help comes with terms and conditions and mostly a pay check. You owe me some popcorn right now and you don’t even know it.” She teased him with ease. “So you know. That’s not really a hero type thing.”

Audrina liked Ryder. He had joined a year after her, ending her newbie status. The thing about Ryder was he seemed normal. Everyone in the team had their baggage, Audrina had read about it all but Ryder seemed to be the one who dealt with it in the healthiest fashion. Loss, pain, anger, it tainted every facet of the team and some normal seemed to come in the form of Ryder McAuliffe That’s why she looked at him the way she did. “Documentary?! Oh god, no. You’ll like Parks and Recreation, it’s impossible not to love it.”

Ryder didn’t understand why she was doing a Scottish accent for a moment, but luckily it stopped as quickly as it had begun. He was usually ten steps behind on these references. Probably because he didn’t watch television. “That’s fair.” he replied. “Owing favors I didn’t even know about? That’s more of a Mafia thing, than a hero thing, yeah. You don’t have a proclivity for spaghetti and semi-automatic weapons do you?”

“Phew.” he said with a nod. Ryder had a former academy buddy who had decided to be a park ranger. Visiting him had been the most boring three days of his life. Wasn’t much joy in watching nature when you could watch people. He smiled at her, hiding the guilt he carried because of her trust. “Well if it’s the natural law.” The theme song began, jaunty. “Oh. Oh! If this is making fun of city employees I am so there.” He caught himself, explained quickly. “I got caught on a traffic violation once. Homefree with the goods, then I turn through a crosswalk like every other mug from Boston and BAM. 5 to 10.” 

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madelyn-prescott:

He was playing with her and she knew it, but it didn’t bother her; cat and mouse was a game she knew all too well. She cocked her head, assessing him, and let a slow smile play across her lips. “That’s all right, didn’t I tell you that being an ass is the lifeblood of my people? I’m sure you’re not the only person, just a rarity.”

He matched her smile with a half smirk. “You neglected to mention it, yeah. I guess it was implied. Though “ass” is so vulgar. Let’s go with vixen.” During his stint in  at the BPD, Ryder had learned their were two kinds of thieves: the cat burglars and the pickpockets. The cat burglars were invisible. Your eye would slide by if you saw them in the crowd. But the pickpockets mesmerized you while they went for your wallet. Despite her specialties, Madelyn was the latter, at least as he understood her. She was the kind of person who knew when she was being watched and could even relish it, something Ryder envied with every fiber of his being even if it scared him a little. “Be careful, Miss Prescott.” he warned, teasing gently. “You almost had me thinking I was special.”

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blancherogers:

A smirk curled onto her lips at Ryder’s so called ‘impression’ of her. In her opinion it wasn’t very good, but she wouldn’t tell him so. Wouldn’t want to break his gentle little heart. “You drive a hard bargain,” she mused, before nodding. “Done deal, Chipotle and Dairy Queen. If no Diary Queen, we’ll find a Baskin Robbins. I’m too lazy to figure this one out, compared to when I can just throw money and ice cream at you.”

Vera had called him RoboRyder, and that was accurate, to a point. Ryder was pretty unflappable. He only laughed when he wanted to, and this was one of those times. “If it’s Baskin Robbins, you’re doubling the order.” He shook his head with disdain. “Baskin Robbins. Really.” He leaned back a little, stretching. “As the other person who spends the most time sitting on their butt for a job, I worry about this laziness. Is it contagious?”

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thomasgarrettt:

By no means were him and Ryder going to become best friends. Thomas could never see a future where that happened. Ryder was too serious, too morbid at times, and he challenged Thomas too often for him to ever trust him. Still, there was respect mingled in his indifference to him. Any man who could hold a gun and have the balls to shoot it was decent in Thomas’ eyes. It was only when that gun was pointed towards him that the company became that bad. “I’m not worried about you, buddy. Your face isn’t the nicest, but it isn’t bad enough to want to forget it. I have to stare at it at meetings all the time, anyways.” He laughed at the female name Ryder returned and laughed even harder at the nice shot; one of them was definitely getting shit faced. “We’re drinking both, remember?”

“Aw, you're not so bad looking yourself, big boy. Imagine what would happen if you took a shower.” His tone was somewhere between teasing and contempt, with the contempt buried as deep as he could manage it. Ryder worried about Garrett, but not in a way the criminal would like. It was hard to protect someone from yourself, and the quandary went both ways. Ryder might hurt him, and Garrett might hurt his nephew. It was clear to Ryder from watching him over the last year that Garrett was dangerous, if not a possible bad influence on Olivia’s son. His nephew’s world was shaky enough as it is. The little boy’s mother was a hurricane. A hurricane who loved him, yes, but Liv didn’t always make the smartest decisions. Ryder dreaded the day he wasn’t there to shield either of them from the winds, and Garrett wouldn’t help that, no matter how genial he appeared at the prospect of a little bit of alcohol poisoning. He picked up a shot of Bushmill’s “Yeah, but the Irish is what matters.”

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nursecrawford:

Vera scoffed, shaking her head a little in the process. “If you’re interested in whining, you should go see a psychologist. A non-psychiatric nurse, which is what I am, does not get paid to hear you whine about problems.” She tapped her index finger against her chin, “And you guys do not pay me enough to take on that responsibility for everyone.” 

Her eyes widened in surprise as he spoke. She was not used to catching people off guard, especially him. “It’s the most logical explanation, and I’ve always been a fan of Occam’s razor.” 

“Good guess, RoboRyder.” Rather than explain it to him, she pulled her phone out and tapped on the circle twice. “Siri, what is zero divided by zero.” The robotic voice replied almost immediately. “Imagine that you have zero cookies and you split them evenly among zero friends. How many cookies does each person get? See, it doesn’t make sense. And Cookie Monster is sad that there are no cookies. And you are sad that you have no friends.” She smiled at him, “See, I took this risk once already. I’m not taking it again, with my luck your head would explode and I don’t think I could get that out of my scrubs.” 

“Whining? Is that the clinical term?” He sighed, sinking further into the cushions. “I didn’t say everyone. Just me.” His Southie accent got a little thicker. “I’m special.” He couldn’t hold the laugh at the attempt in, giving up with a slight flail of the arms. “I tried okay?” He went quiet for a moment. “Why don’t you give it a try? Feels good. I promise. Here, I’ll start for you.” A little wink appeared in his eye. “Oh, Ryder it was awful. This douchebag kept wasting my time.” He backed off, knowing the charm offensive had failed even before it had begun. 

Wasn’t he supposed to be the profiler? He thought to himself. If he thought too long or hard about it he’d spiral a little and there was no time for that. There was never time for that. Push forward, Sullivan. “Oh generally, Occam’s is my favorite too but I think all the surveillance has made me want people to be more complex. Otherwise where’s the challenge?” Ryder was never sure when McAuliffe had gotten so selfish but he certainly was.

He viewed the phone’s fake AI with a mix of contempt and mild apprehension. “Very brave of you. Luckily my head is made of synthetic alloy so if you borrow a jumpsuit from Eliza, no one will be the wiser. What’s some motor oil between friends?”

He placed the remote on the coffee table as if it was a sacred text. “Teach me, o learned one.”

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tacticalmoreno:

“Why the fuck are you speaking to me about religion? What part of ‘Godless man’ did you not just get from that conversation? Shut the hell up, Mcauliffe. This isn’t a damned confessional.” Phillip wasn’t sure where he’d even begin if entering one. The priest would likely keel over before the first sentence had even come to a close.

He needed morphine. Blanche didn’t need to know. Screw the prescription meds that were supposed to keep his PTSD at bay. The last withdrawal was harsh, nearly sending him into hospitalized convulsions. How long had it been since he’d locked those demons away? The phantom always lurked; a few months wasn’t enough to make the silence stagnant. Perhaps Ryder would be a good front to use. He could slip away while out, locate what he desired. “Yeah, I am, but you could have picked much better company.”

Ryder put his hands as if fending off a series of blows. “Just making conversation. Is there a topic you would prefer?” A vaguely sardonic grin pushed across his face. “If we don’t talk, I’ll start humming, and I’m sure you wouldn’t like that.” He resisted making a joke about not wanting to end up in a body bag. McAuliffe might have done it but Sullivan was still too wrapped up in Vera’s pain to be so cavalier about the possibility that Moreno could have killed her. Not to mention that the profiler in him was starting to feel out where the lines were for the former soldier, and he knew that he crossed them at his own peril. No, the best way to handle Moreno was polite pleasantness, unrelenting but not too bright or sugary. (That had never been Ryder’s style anyhow.) Moreno seemed very interested in pushing everyone away, but if Ryder could stick around long enough he hoped to figure out why. He may not have killed Trinity Crawford, but he knew something, that was for sure. 

“Has better company surveyed all the Thai joints in Portland? Because otherwise they’re no use to me at the moment.” His father would have added something about negative self talk being a self fulfilling prophecy but thank God Ryder McAuliffe didn’t know Commissioner Sullivan. Honestly, Ryder McAuliffe would have thought Commissioner Sullivan was kind of an asshole. 

Ryder headed downstairs towards the cars, not looking back to see if Moreno was following. Let him come to you, Sullivan. He thought, remembering his patrols back in Boston. Foot chases are a last resort. 

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audrina-redford:

“Okay. Tell yourself that.” The joke didn’t land as lightly as it should have but Audrina did try, adding a smile and everything. Interactions were still difficult for her at the best of times and adding humor to the situation didn’t always help as it should have. She had done what was asked of her and now she was suddenly very aware of her hands wrapped in latex. “Hero?” Audrina repeated the word, it sounding foreign on her tongue. “No one has ever called me that before.”

It had been simple for her to do, she was sure that if Ryder gave himself a chance, he would have been able to get used to the TV easily. But she offered her help and she wasn’t someone to go back on that. Smiling a little brighter at Ryder’s own relaxed smile, she realized it was the first time he looked like a person around her, just happy and human. “You have a nice smile.” She commented quietly, fumbling a little with the remote before sitting down next to Ryder.

“I try.” Ryder shrugged, letting her comment roll off him. It was obvious she was nervous and he didn’t want to push her. “Really?” He had to keep himself from telling her she could be a hero if she just switched sides. Even he knew that was cliche, but it was true. There were certain people on Julian’s team that deserved better, could be better. It wasn’t the time to tell them yet, but it hurt him to see their skills squandered on stealing things. “I find that hard to believe. You’re very helpful.”

He looked at her for a moment, taken aback. “Huh? Oh, yeah. Well, right back at cha. The credit’s all yours.” He both liked and hated the way she was looking at him. There was an earnestness to Audrina that made him feel both protective of her and ashamed of himself. What right did he have to lie to her? There was no protection he offered. Only predator and prey now. He couldn’t guarantee his word would be enough to save people like Audrina, Gabe, Vera, maybe even Blanche if he could swing it. That was the thing about command structures. You had to trust your leadership, just like they trusted Julian. The same instincts made Ryder himself untrustworthy, he knew, but with Audrina smiling at him, for just a moment he contemplated letting Ryder Sullivan slip into the deep water of his mind, leaving the man she’d smiled at to do as he will. No more lying, except to himself. “Okay, so Vera gave me a few shows to watch for my education in downtime. Parks and Recreation? If that’s a documentary I’m out.” 

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madelyn-prescott:

Though she didn’t find his quip about the Boston Tea Party particularly amusing, she twisted her lips up into a grin anyway, for his benefit. “Clever,” she replied, tilting her head and pursing her lips. “I don’t know, I suppose they just have a darker outlook on life.” 

Ryder could tell she wasn’t exactly happy, but he’d never really been able to entirely get past his moral judgments of Madelyn, brilliant and talented as she was. There was a pulling her pigtails quality to it. She seemed to like to be fawned over, but if he fawned over her he’d have no authority to protect the team. “Is that because the sun set on your empire?” He softened a little. “Sorry, I’m just an asshole today. I think it’s because I feel like the only person in the world who doesn’t watch television.”

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blancherogers:

Blanche sputtered for a minute, trying to think of an option before realizing she didn’t have to. “Hey, now,” she leaned over, closer, as if she was making a top secret business deal (Blanche thought every conversation in this house was like making a top secret business deal), “I’m just paying you. You work on the details, champ.” And then she leaned back, satisfied with how she played this round.

Ryder leaned in conspiratorially. “That’s gonna cost you extra. Hazard pay.” He leaned back as if thinking, though he knew what he’d been craving all day. “Chipotle and Dairy Queen. Does Portland even have Dairy Queen?” He shrugged off handedly. “Well, if it doesn’t,” he slipped into a very good impression of Blanche, if he said so himself. “Work on the details, champ.”  

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tacticalmoreno:

“I don’t worry,” he replied disinterestedly, ”no higher power has ever done anything for me. It’s just a false naivety.” His tone had lost its firm nature, and the ex soldier had taken on a more distracted voice. He was worn and torn, nearly incinerated by nature’s outside antics. Pills. Where was that damned bottle? The prescription he constantly abused but managed to have refill was as sinful as it got. He often downed the drug with the contents of vodka. Now, though, despite Ryder’s presence, Phillip removed the destructive canister from pocket and popped the lid. As usual, the man did not look when he shook a random count within his palm. The anxiety rushed him, overtook him as a wave curled over to crush a ship’s hull. The four tablets were quickly swallowed, and Phillip willed them to end his suffering. “I suppose the excess amount of Thai takeout containers scattered among the kitchen gave that away. I won’t waste my time speaking of something you’re clearly already aware of.”

“I’m a C&E Catholic now but I may have missed the part where God’s supposed to do anything for us at all.” He nodded after consulting with himself. “What did JFK say? It’s not what He can do for you but what you can do and so on and so fawth.” Ryder shrugged. “I haven’t done anything for Him in ages, though. Confession is just awkward. Maybe that’s the favor. Keeping it to myself.”

He watched Moreno down the painkillers with a neutral look. These things added up. They always did. Ryder wondered how often this happened. He had his suspicions. Had Trinity caught him unmedicated? Or was the opposite worse? Or had this habit started after? Dealing with a guilty conscience? And was that guilt out of action or neglect? “Aware of what?” Ryder’s eyebrow raised. “If you found the best place already, ante up, Moreno.” He turned to head out of the room towards the garage then looked back to his boss. His fellow fighter. His suspect. “I’m not a delivery boy. You coming?”

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nursecrawford:

She smiled at him, somewhere between sardonic and genuine. “You’re a grown man, Ryder, I’m sure you don’t need me to help with that.” Vera got enough of that at the hospital. Gross guys wanting sponge baths and people expecting her to help them with minutiae. That wasn’t her job. Her job was to help make sure people stayed alive through vigilance and action. 

“Lucky you.” Her tone was more gentle this time, teasing. Exercise had never been something she particularly enjoyed, more of a necessary evil, but it made sense that it helped him. He was more of the strong, silent type. Time alone was probably more restorative to him than monitoring social interaction. “Then again, you also watch people and places for most of your day anyways, so of course the tv wouldn’t be interesting to you.” She almost felt dumb for not realizing it earlier. 

Sometimes it was hard to tell when Ryder was being funny. His sense of humor was so subtle that had he not just impersonated a robot for her, she would have thought he was mocking her. “I’m not going to do that, I already asked one electronic to do that and I got a very depressing answer involving food and friends.” He didn’t seem like the kind of guy to understand viral jokes or memes, but maybe she could show it to him. If he was still in a mood to humor her, that is. 

“I’ve always been annoyed that being a grown man means you’re not allowed to whine. Whining is a human right.” Ryder Sullivan was not a whiner. The impulse had been ironed out of him through admonishment and disapproval. Ryder McAuliffe, on the other hand, was a bit of an attention whore at times, especially if the real person inside him felt nervous. McAuliffe was every bad instinct Mrs. Sullivan had erased from her son, and somehow Vera found them all and made him want to fix them all over again. 

“I...never thought of it like that.” He hadn’t. Ryder wasn’t very good at self examination in general, especially when it came to his ‘quirks’ or whatever the kind word was for the fact that he had no life outside his job. “Yeah. It’s probably that.”

“You asked it to do --?” He looked at her. “That sounds like Siri.” The program’s name was more of a groan than title. “Is it Siri?” His last two targets had been Blackberry users but you never forgot that AI’s inane answers. 

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madelyn-prescott:

Madelyn paused to think for a moment, sitting down on the arm of the couch. “It’s…happier,” she said finally, before smiling slightly. “British humor is a lot nastier. Lots of sarcasm.”

Ryder was always a little ill at ease with how comfortable Madelyn seemed. Like some big cat in the jungle. “I was always told we were ruder.” He said with a little grin, his South Boston accent sneaking through a little. “What’ve you people got to be nasty about? That whole Tea Party thing wasn’t personal.” 

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gabrielxspencer:

Gabe scoffed. “There are no fuckin’ barnies in Somerville, you goddamn Southie,” he replied. “Do I look like some Hahvuhd jackass to you?” He honestly like talking to Ryder whenever the other man made some reference to Boston (even if it was at Gabe’s expense). The fact of the matter was that Gabe was still pretty young, and after being kicked out at age eighteen, he had been feeling homesick for years. Now, they were in Oregon, far from the East Coast and the gruffness and the dropped ‘R’s but at least there was some solace in knowing that his accent would always be there, and there was at least one guy here who gave a shit about the Red Sox. 

A raise of the eyebrow, and Gabe took what he was saying in stride. “Yet you were the one offerin’ to fight,” he replied, his accent also getting thicker as he slipped back into old patterns of speaking with Ryder. “You’re gonna give me some wicked fuckin’ whiplash here, Ryder,” he added, rubbing his neck as a part of the joke. He tilting his head when Ryder got more stern, curious about the drastic shift in his demeanor. He wasn’t usually like this. Gabe took a step back. “Look, just because I call you Dad doesn’t mean you’re my fuckin’ father.”

“Barnies, hipsters, it’s all the same to me. MIT is still in the People’s Republic the last time I checked. At least Southie only has yuppies.” No matter his cover, Ryder always laughed a bit when the Cambridge kids and upper class claimed the Boston identity. Kids like Gabe could earn it by birth of course, but attending “a school in Cambridge” was the worst thing you could do for your credibility where he grew up. Aside from being a cop, that is. (Admittedly South Boston, once the stomping grounds of Whitey Bulger, was quickly being gentrified, much to his mother’s delight. She’d always wanted to be respectable, and his parents’ combined pensions allowed them to stay in a neighborhood that was quickly moving out of most of their neighbors’ price range.) 

“I didn’t say I’d fight. I said I’d finish it.” Ryder didn’t want to think about explaining where’d he’d learned to do those regulation restraint holds. “I’m not your fuckin’ father, Spencer. You’re lucky that way. I’m sayin’ this as someone with a brain. Which you apparently left in your room this morning. You’re not doing yerself any favors gettin’ your head bashed in. Baitin’ a guy like Moreno doesn’t make you tough. It makes you an idiot. Which you’re not. So act like it.” Call it profiler’s intuition that made Ryder this worried. That would be the story. He softened for a moment, his father’s voice hiding within him once again. “You want to look like you can handle yourself, right? 95% of that is knowing when you’re out of your weight class.”

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blancherogers:

“Oh, man,” she sighed, thinking of the humiliation alone of walking up to the cashier and ordering five burritos. She would bet every penny she had she would get some joke of ‘a little thing like you gonna eat all that?’ Blanche was small, and she could even, but five burritos was pushing it, even if it was for someone else. To see Julian and Phillip’s face, though… “Done. I want video proof of their reactions or this entire thing was pointless if I can’t rewatch it.”

“Well, seeing as I’m not doing anything useful with my bugs at the moment, fine.” Then a very dangerous thought occurred to him. “How do you propose I get them into Moreno’s little nook? He’s not going to look at the documents in front of you. The man’s paranoia is basically Cold War.”

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gabrielxspencer:

Gabriel noticed his slight change in demeanor, a split second hesitation that made Gabe think twice about what he was going to say next, but as soon as it was there, it was gone. The stranger who had filled Ryder’s shoes for a moment had just as easily vanished, and Gabe was left in the wake of the change confused about who he was talking to—was it something that he said. “No, not really,” he replied. “But I had it coming. I said that his balls dropped off, and that’s not really the kind of thing you say when you’re looking to keep your face fist free.” Gabe raised an eyebrow. “I’m not a kid. I don’t need protecting.” God, this was exactly what he wanted to avoid. Everyone saw him as this mild-mannered kid who was just good with words, but he wanted to be more than that. He didn’t want to weigh the team down with his inability to take care of himself. Gabe shook his head. “I’m not going to the land of ice and snow and 24-hour sun, thank you very much.”

“Brave for a barney.” Ryder said with a smirk. From the outset, Ryder’d noticed some self destructive tendencies in Gabriel Spencer. The gap between the kid’s record at MIT and what he did for Julian Whitaker was strange to say the least. He never understood the members of his team that would have been alright in the law abiding sectors and had opted in instead. He understood being taken in by Julian (at times he felt taken in by him himself) but it was more a confusion with the state of things. The deeper Ryder got into Julian Whitaker’s world the more he wondered what had gone wrong with the forces of law and order that Whitaker had been able to snap up talent this way. It was faith shaking at times. 

His accent got a little thicker when he thought about the risk Spencer had taken. Moreno was volatile. Possibly a murderer. And Gabe was baiting him like a freshman at his first kegger. He couldn’t tell Vera what had happened to Trinity, and he certainly couldn’t tell Gabe, but he still needed to set him straight. “You’re right. You’re not a kid. Which is why nobody’s gonna protect you when you say stupid shit like that. Because it makes you look like a fucking child.” He set his jaw and sighed. Gabe was right. It wasn’t his job to protect him, even if he wanted to, all the younger ones especially. “What the hell were you thinking?” 

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audrina-redford:

Audrina sat cross legged behind the TV until she heard a familiar buzzing on electricity running through the TV. “Do we have picture?” She popped her head out from around the back, smiling proudly at the technology. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. I’ll teach you how to use the remote privately.”

“We do.” Ryder said, embarrassed at how quick it had been. He really did know how to work the equipment he had to learn for bugging. Radio transmitters were easy enough to understand, but Ryder had to learn how to install them himself as opposed to letting the BPD and Statie techs do it. A little sheepish, he tried to turn it into a joke. “I’m going to say that your genius made that look so easy before I run out of ego completely.” His father used to say a good cop isn’t always smart, just capable, but hanging around with Whitaker’s team generally made him feel very outclassed. It didn’t help that profiling was an alchemical art at best -- the more information the better, yes, but even the best profilers got it wrong sometimes. And the dangers of getting something wrong...he pushed the thought from his mind and looked up to Audrina, smiling for her benefit. He moved over on the couch to leave her room to do her rituals and sit if she liked. “Did you ever know that you’re my hero?” he said, the glow of her own smile making his genuine and a little goofy. She really was like Olivia. Her grin was infectious.

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tacticalmoreno:

“I’m a godless man, but Jesus Christ, did you think I wasn’t being sarcastic?” Phillip looked up from the desk, shoving schematics into a worn folder and into a drawer accompanied with a lock. He gave the key a final twist before it came to hideaway within his pocket’s confines. “Something to do? I’d play scrabble with Spencer before I did something with you.” And that was saying something, as Phillip loathed the nuisance he considered a kid along with Julian. Every interaction was an absolute massacre. “I don’t–” A crack in the sky, a streaking flash of lightning, followed by thunderous and explosive noise. The ex soldier didn’t jump but stilled, eyes losing their focus upon Ryder. His heart took form of a drum headed to battle, prepared to give farewell to troops once and for all. “Alright, fine, what do you suggest we do?” Any distraction from his faulty situation was better than memories.

Ryder only smiled. “It’s hard to tell when there’s so much of it. And don’t worry about taking the Lord’s name. I’m not that kind of Irish Catholic.” There went the documents. This guy was never going to trust him. Ryder couldn’t tell whether it was paranoia or his own mishandling of the former soldier. The rebuff was justified. He hoped, beyond hoped, that Moreno hadn’t killed Crawford. He hoped neither of them did, really, but if the man was innocent, it made Ryder’s failure to connect only personal. He could mourn his poor people skills. Better than not getting justice for Vera’s sister because he was a bad cop. Or maybe a good cop and a horrible operative. No. Just a bad cop. And possibly a bad person.

He was shaken from his self flagellation by the deafening sound and flash of white light. He knew the look in Moreno’s eyes. It was familiar. A hidden panic coupled with grim determination. Both welcoming death and petrified by it. “You could tell me more ways I suck. Or we could try to find the best Thai in Portland. While you tell me more ways I suck.”