Faraday fidgets a little, wishing he had a deck of cards in his hand as an outlet for the nervous energy bubbling beneath the surface of his skin – just something to do with his hands instead of clenching them into fists.

This is wholly awkward. Faraday isn’t in the habit of feeling wrong-footed, except this current situation certainly has him floundering. When Vasquez sits up, Faraday’s gaze unconsciously darts to him, and when he sees the growing mortification on the other man’s face, turning his entire frame rigid, Faraday winces, straightening up a little.

He licks his lips, fixes his expression into a well-practiced blank mask – the mask he wears at card tables, when stakes are high, and he’s trying to bluff his way through with a gutshot straight. (The same mask he wore while he knelt in the grass in front of the Gatling gun, bluffing his way through lighting a stick of dynamite with a half-dozen gutshots spilling fresh blood into the dirt.)

“There was nothing to hear,” he lies with an easy shrug. “You were spoutin’ off some shit Mexican. Didn’t understand a word.”

(Faraday’s usual go-to solution for problems that feel too big? Running from them. Or lying about them.

Today’s solution is apparently the latter.)