S T R A Y
shipping meme
Taking in strays is, all in all, an understandable vice. The dips in between their ribs, those large and forlorn eyes, they can help you forget the claws and the teeth and the danger lurking beneath fur. But the habit's a knife edge; your efforts may not be rewarded with kindness (animal instincts aren't discretionary) and you may get bit despite what you've overlooked. A stray doesn't care about pity. All it can know is survival.
These warnings apply to strays of the more human(oid) sort, too.
But what may even more perilous with this type than any drawn blood is what you can get when they grow to trust you. You can earn their undying loyalty...or their love. Either from such a wild thing is a precarious path to go down, if you allow yourself to do it.
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ＰＲＯＭＰＴＳ
- ғɪɴᴅɪɴɢ — Who's that? They're no ordinary passersby! Were they in an accident? Are they foreign? ...should you approach them?
- ʀᴀɪɴ, ʀᴀɪɴ, ɢᴏ ᴀᴡᴀʏ — The elements make this night no time to sleep out of doors.
- ʙᴀᴄᴋ ᴛᴏ ʜᴇᴀʟᴛʜ — Cuts, broken bones, injuries all of sorts...you have to stitch them back up, then make sure they don't get any
- ɢᴏᴏᴅ ɢᴜᴇsᴛ — It's all you can do to show gratitude to the person who took you in. Fix them a meal, care for their house, whatever you can do once you're able.
- ʙᴀᴅ ɢᴜᴇsᴛ — FUCK THIS PERSON AND FUCK THEIR COUCH. You didn't ask to be brought here. Let them clean up after you, you don't even care.
- ᴡʜᴏ ᴀᴍ ɪ? — How you got into this situation is a mystery. Even more of a mystery is your identity, and why the person you were would be so displaced.
- sᴇʟғʟᴇssɴᴇss —
- ʟᴇᴀʀɴɪɴɢ — If you've been injured badly enough or can't remember all too well, you might have to relearn a good deal. Luckily, you have a helping hand.
- sᴄᴀʀs — Scars from the encounter that lead you here or scars from prior, you don't want them to see either. You still have your secrets to keep.
- sᴛᴜʙʙᴏʀɴ — Ugh, your house guest is so stubborn! They always get up when they should be resting, have the worst habits, and completely disrespect your home! You'll get to them, one way or another. Or you'll throw them out. You don't want to, but you will.
- ᴄᴏᴍғᴏʀᴛ — Bad memories or nightmares wreck you; your host and nurse comes to your side unexpectedly.
- ᴄᴜʟᴛᴜʀᴇ ᴄʟᴀsʜ — The person who's taken you in is from a different culture or lifestyle than you, and adapting is harder than you thought.
- ᴄʀᴇᴀᴛᴜʀᴇ ғᴇᴀᴛᴜʀᴇ — Think learning about a new culture is hard? Try being a different species. Can you keep your little eccentricities at bay for the good of your station?
- ᴊᴇᴀʟᴏᴜsʏ — Now that your emotions towards your caretaker/host/jailer are softening, you're finding yourself unusually jealous of those in their life who were close to them before.
- ɴᴇᴡ ᴀᴄᴛɪᴠɪᴛɪᴇs — You never thought you'd have fun after all that's happened, yet such simple gestures as a picnic or a movie make all the difference.
- ʀᴇᴀʟɪᴢᴀᴛɪᴏɴ — You love them, this person who's taken you in or this person you've found. It's not a pity or a thankfulness, it's love, and you know that now. What you choose to do with this information is
- ʜɪsᴛᴏʀʏ — Suddenly, the person who's been so nice to you finds out that the two of you have a history. You killed their loved ones or caused something terrible. How can they forgive you?
- ᴘʀᴏᴛᴇᴄᴛ — So much has been done for you. The least you can do in return for the one who helped you at your lowest is make sure they never have such a low point.
- ᴅᴀɴɢᴇʀ ᴄᴏᴍᴇs ᴋɴᴏᴄᴋɪɴɢ — Anyone in the way of getting to you will be destroyed, and that includes the person you're staying with.
- ʟɪᴠᴇ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴛʜᴇᴍ — You've been given a home, maybe which you've never had before. You don't want to leave.
- ʀᴏᴍᴀɴᴄᴇ — Not only are you living with them, but you're starting a proper life with them.
- ʀᴇᴠᴇᴀʟ — All secrets are laid out on the table. You've decided to tell about your past and what lead you here.
- ʀᴇᴠᴜʟsɪᴏɴ — What you've done and who you are is so heinous, they want nothing more to do. You're to leave their home and leave them alone.
- ᴀᴄᴄᴇᴘᴛᴀɴᴄᴇ — It doesn't matter what they've done. You've opened your home and your heart to them, and nothing's changed.
- ᴘᴀʀᴛɪɴɢ — All things must come to an end. No matter what you feel for each other, it's time to leave. Hopefully, you'll see each other again.
- ʜᴀᴘᴘɪʟʏ ᴇᴠᴇʀ ᴀғᴛᴇʀ — Come what may, you've decided to stay at your new home with the person you love. Now, it's safe enough to do so.
- ᴡɪʟᴅᴄᴀʀᴅ
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bakerstreet2018-10-30 09:31 am
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"Bucky," Her voice is a warning, when her posture is already shifted entirely. Willingness at the ready without even the pause for a breath, as she stepping toward him. "You have to calm down. Everyone's just trying to help."
They could do it with him unconscious, too, but Sara wasn't fond of that having to be the way.
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The panic is too deep seated, written into his bones and brain after decades of suffering. The chair means loss, means his thoughts scrambled and burned away while he screams. Lifetimes of it. Bucky backs away until he feels the solid wall behind him, using it to help keep him upright.
"You don't understand," he bites out. "If I slip I'll hurt them." Kill them. "I don't want to." The last sentence is broken, wounded. He likes the team. He doesn't want to be responsible for hurting them.
Desperate eyes snap back to Sara.
"You. Stop me. Don't let it happen." Kill him if you have to.
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"Yeah. If it comes to it."
It's because she'll kill him. Mercilessly. In as few seconds as possible.
Before he hurt any of them. Touched them. It's a truth deeper than almost all others.
One she won't apologize for, and she'll push through like it's not there, as she approaches on him.
"But that not today, Bucky." She says his name, again, and she reaches out a hand, weaponless toward his arm, and even though she's already ready, every muscle and every thought, for even that single attempt to either make it or not, and for either to possibly explode into a full out war in this room. Wild animals, like they were, were nothing like safe.
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A promise that Bucky trusts. Steve isn't here to stop him this time so he has to place that faith in Sara, to know that she'll stop him. Permanently. She won't hold on to sentiment like Steve does.
His gaze drops away from her for a beat.
He has to do this. He has to trust them and trust her and it's the hardest goddamn thing that he's done since setting foot on the ship.
Bucky reaches out, but not to Sara. To Ray. For a briefly muttered, "Sorry." An apology cheerfully and easily accepted.
The room is beginning to swim and if he doesn't move soon they're going to have to carry him. Bucky sucks in a breath, swallows down the pain and forces his feet to carry him forward. The pain he can deal with. It's the dread that makes every step heavier than the last, but he makes it. He sits down and shuts his eyes as Gideon begins to do her work.
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The feeling, but not the shape of the box.
She doesn't know what all of Bucky's are. It's not her job to.
But it is her job to be able to predict it and take care of it, however that falls out.
Which is why once he's out and Ray's certain they can let him sleep, Sara says she'll be a while, and she thinks only Mick really gets what those words mean. Because Ray is off to get a shower, and fix up something or other having to do with his armor that Sara doesn't entirely listen to. Or understand. Knows Ray has well in hand without her really needing to do more than give him a faintly tried and tired clipped nod.
If Mick stays a little longer than that, it's not that unexpected either, but Sara doesn't move from the stool she's stolen for herself. She knows she won't be leaving the room until Bucky's back awake, and she thinks Mick actually gets that without having to be told. That she has to. That she can't be anywhere else. That she knows better than anyone else on the ship what the other end of the worst dark tunnels can look like getting spat out of them, too.
Especially if you were afraid to close your eyes and lose that control to begin with.
It's a quiet sit, comparing his sleeping face with the one that had been fully formed dangerous panic.
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Goddamn chairs. Mick gets it, realized something was up the second that metal hand slammed into his chest and tossed him backwards. So he pretends to listen while keeping his eyes on Sara, pretends to listen while he all but kicks him out the door to get cleaned up and get to work already.
There's a full and unspoken conversation between them when Sara raises her eyes to his. A nod and Mick is out the door, headed for the galley. He knocks together a plate of food and finds a bottle of something strong, pushing both into Snart's hands.
"Go take this to Blondie."
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He could have asked. He could have made a comment about the Russian screaming he'd heard. But that is...mostly self-explanatory. The why is still not in place, but it's not as important as this new why in front of him.
He spins on his heel, plate of food and bottle of liquor in hand, and heads toward the medbay. He leans in the doorway for a second or three, looking in at the pair of them. Bucky isn't awake, and Sara hasn't moved. He doesn't doubt she heard him long before she felt his presence standing in the doorway, though. "A little birdie told me you need to eat."
He pushes away from the doorframe and sets the tray and the bottle on the first flat surface he can find near her. He pauses and glances at the unconscious soldier in the chair, hands finding their way into the front pockets of his jeans. "What happened?" his eyes slide back toward Sara.
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She'd looked up when Mick finally left, because he was bound to eventually, right? He knew why she wasn't moving. Why it should be her, if had to be one of the two of them, and why if she had to be here, she, they, knew the rest would still be handled, if he was out in the rest of the ship, with the rest of the crew. Which isn't the same as the stillness staying when Leonard's footsteps invade the edge of her thoughts.
She's grateful that Mick understood as much, in that almost no words when he did, because there's a strange sprung-twist of emotion for those footsteps. For Leonard being near, but just as much for someone among them making an obvious foisting of Leonard into the same spaces as this. Her, wuth this. The little dance that can only be best done by her toward the Russian Super Soldier Assassin turned well, no one quite knew yet, since Bucky was still picking that out for himself.
But letting Leonard know, in the smallest of ways, he wasn't left out of this.
It wasn't a space he controlled or spoke, but it wasn't one he was locked from either.
There is a small movement, to glance over her shoulder, taking in his face, his posture, as he set down the food and the drink, even though she wasn't much hungry yet. The slide of his hands into his pockets, that made something in the center of her expression scrunch for a second, before she shifted, and lifted a hand, holding it out to him. A flicker of fingers, sort of like an offhand request for a hand, even though her glance went back to the man who lay in the chair.
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She doesn't, even, in fact, look in the direction of their hands when Leonard's expectedly awkward stillness gave into the careful place of fingers, of a hand in hers. Sara simply curled her hand, loose around it how it arrive, and she pulled Leonard toward her. The kind of tug meant to actually bodily shift him, her weight already pressing down into her calves and the toes of her boots, pushed into the rungs of the stool she balanced on.
The whole thing to pull him closer enough they knocked against each other, and Sara let go of his hand, even as she crossed her own arms on her lap and instead leaned against him. A little more than just her shoulder and the side of her head, but a little less than all of her weight. Solid, but, also, well able to catch herself if.
There's always the if. They are, the three of them, all wild in their own ways.
The same as there was something on the inside of the breath she didn't let out doing it.
"I don't know exactly." Her words return to the question asked earlier, like a wholly other wordless conversation isn't happening already, or maybe because it's easier to ignore the one, especially if it can't, if she follows on the prior. On the part that loops into the second. "Bad. Something bad. Like with the Time Masters." And Mick, she doesn't say. "Ray thinks he's going to rig something else up for the room for the next time."
Is there something to that phrasing? Or even more the more objective, than informing, tone that its said with.
Like it's a repetition she's still turning over and over to see if she agrees with. If she can make herself.
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"Oh..." is all he can manage at the mention of the Time Masters. He doesn't like thinking about them, for such a wide, multitude of reasons, least of which is the gnawing guilt that comes attached when Time Masters leads to Chronos, to abandoned and--
A simple nod at the comment about Raymond, though he has nothing to say about it. It's a focus on something outside of the thoughts swirling in his head, which is forever better than going down a train-wreck-track.
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Given it's just them and the unconscious former Russian assassin. Given it's really not a thing Sara does either.
Leaning on people. Touching them for any extended period. Maybe if she was wounded. Maybe if it was required.
But Leonard doesn't move. Or he does, but he doesn't move away. Sara actually draws a faintly surprised breath in her nose when his fingers drift up her back to gently find her hair, and she lets her weight settle a little more solidly against his side, head against his shirt, and the ribs under it, and lets herself frown just the littlest bit more pronounced at the body on the bed, letting out a heavier breath through her nose.
Like maybe all of it --
Leonard; leaning; the fingers in her hair
-- is some strange and unexpected, if half-sought for, key that clicks a lock.
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Sending faint shivers of warmth up her scalp and down part of her neck, and if she wasn't here, if they weren't -- if he wasn't over there -- maybe she'd close her eyes. Let herself have this, even just for a single, solitary, untainted moment. It feels good, and somehow she has to wonder if she asked for Leonard for himself, or for herself.
If Mick sent him for Leonard's sake, or hers. Or both. If that even makes sense,
since she hadn't planned for this, not even to reach for his hand,
until she looked up and saw him standing there.
Still, it's comforting in a way that's hairline fracturing. It makes some part of her chest ache to relax, to want to lean closer, be wrapped away from the thing unwrapping in her head, even if she doesn't. It makes some part of her bones grind and squeal, like the low grade warning that if Bucky came up swinging, she'd be seconds later than if she weren't sitting there. Alone. At the ready. Absolutely, and only, focused.
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He might have been fine with the silence drawing on, but some things just need to be said.
"Thanks." It comes as a quiet mumble, treading along the tightrope of silence, so as to disturb it as little as possible. Thanks, for knowing him so well. For reading the things he needs, even when he doesn't know he needs them. Thanks for dealing with all the hangups and oddities that come attached to him. For everything this second represents, that doesn't fit in this moment, or this room.
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This symbol she can do something important right now.
Maybe even still do one of the most improtant somethings.
That she picked right, fought this battle and won, without a single word instead of waiting for it to brew and come to head. Making it apparent that as much as she's needed here, it's not about anything Leonard's own maze of a mind might make of it alone and waiting. That the fact she's needed right here -- maybe even more than that, not needed but the only two qualified; and how does it not help that those two are his two -- that it's what someone else needs.
That this is still what she does. Him. (Mick. Them.)
Even if it catches, strange, larger than expected in her throat.
Making her do as little first as simply glancing somewhere upward barely, and not far enough to really even find Leonard's face again, before she's just nodding her head. If this is all that it takes (to help, to thwart, to show, to admit) then it's the so little she can do. She thinks she could make it glib. Trite. Light. But she can't. Doesn't.
Still isn't sure how to even clarify she knew he needed it, but she didn't know she did until he was here, until he was at her side. The rise and fall of his breathing, the steady, faint beat of his heart, anchoring her and undoing her both, feeling like it was both too big and inappropriately small to not make it past an affirmative mummer of an "Mmhm," that almost sounds too distantly professional to her for the true weight of it.
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Insecure in anything vaguely shaped like good in his life staying, it's so much easier to think and expect the worst, makes it easy to let the most negative assumptions steamroll every drop of logic he usually swears by. Jealousy, however wrong and assumptive, misplaced or misguided that it ever is (and it always is), is the sort of thing that likes often to slither into his veins and set up a home in his chest. It takes a lot of forms when it presents itself to the world, too. Too many, maybe, which make it even harder to decode into what it is, or why. And jealousy has the benefit of not needing to make one, single ounce of logical sense at all to exist. An idea gets placed, or he creates one himself out of thin air, and that's all it takes. The beginning of a cascade of dominoes into a bigger mess than he ever asked for.
This, though. This minute. This second. Standing in the medbay, Sara leaning into him and letting him play with her hair, like this is as much something for her as it is for him? This second dissipates any inkling of anything like it, quiets any part of a thought that might have tried to take a crazy-bad-wrong turn and relaxes that never-quite-vice in his chest.
If he were someone else, he'd say something. Small, maybe, but something, anything that was indicative of how solid and good this was. Something beyond a barely-there gratitude that was nowhere near enough to get all the point across. These are the things he needs from his people, and the depth of his appreciation is, and in many ways can never be, completely shown. He's long-since missed all the lessons (and oh, how he hates that word, but it fits, still) on how to express things he feels. There's a life-time of catch up, and he'll never gain enough ground in it to make a difference on the test. It's easier to stay where he is, where he's comfortable, even if the people around him, the people who matter, are the ones that suffer the most for it.
Because the ones that matter understand it. Him. How he thinks, how he reacts. And they learn to edge around it, to read between all the blurred lines he so often gives them.
The silence that slides between them, smooth as velvet, after Sara's soft hum of a response is comfortable, like an old, worn t-shirt you just can't get rid of. It isn't awkward or tense, and it winds around them, and the room, and she keeps leaning against him, and his fingers don't really ever stop the now-steady pattern they've made in her hair.
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The problem is that she wants to. That she doesn't.
It's tumbling inside her chest. Her throat.
The need, the want, to say something. To admit, if not in the same way, he's not alone in the unsettling nature of all of this. Unsettled. It's not a thing Sara admits easily in words, and trying to frame it in her head (maybe I'm not right for this; maybe I'm... ; someone else should... ; I shouldn't... ; you don't know... ), they are not her words. Not words that she could say. Should. Can even find a right phrasing to open with.
They're not collecting right in her head. The lack of which only heightens it.
This need that can't collasce into more than that.
When those words are boulders. The idea. I need.
Even she can think the details that lead to why, it doesn't mean she can say it.
Wants to. Admit. Even to him. Either them. That they accept her is enough.
Precision muddied with too much feeling. Awareness. Judgment. Shame. Not red and dripping, with curled shoulder sympathy, but the cold kind, rigid, unblinking, that knows better than to request kindness for cruelty still unchanged. Still existing. The kind that makes her want to push into Leonard's side slightly hard, just to feel something more than her skin, that this feeling. But she doesn't move. She lets a breath out, following the breathing of the body in front of her, unchanged, unchanging, won't wake for hours likely, but she doesn't know everything about Hydra. She doesn't know if he has training that could overcome this, too.
She doesn't doubt Gideon, but she's wise enough to doubt the efficiency of sharpened weapons with questionable controls over their own will, decades and decades-long removed, so much longer than new self-possession or even the self-creation before it, more its years than any other. Even one that keeps itself sheathed. Even one in its own hand instead of others.
(She knows it, because she knows herself.)
"He'll probably be asleep a few more hours."
How are those the words she chooses instead?
no subject
That he asks, instead of just setting up camp to stay, or disappearing without much of a word at all, is foreign. Not his usual way of handling things, but a loudspeaker of trust, and of the ease that has managed to settle a handful of stray thoughts that led him to confronting Bucky before. Not all of them, because every single one can't be settled or eased. But enough that he could be okay with leaving. Her. The room. It may not be his favorite option, but he could do it, and find a way to be a version of okay with it.
It isn't that he hates Bucky (he kind of does), or that he doesn't trust him (he really doesn't), but that this unspoken thing exists in the air between him and Sara. A thing Mick can maybe glean a piece of every now and then, if not every ounce of it; and one Leonard has no guidebook for at all.
He could deal with the unspokens between Sara and Mick. They're his people. He trusts them. But this... this is different than that ever had any chance of being. It was a harder pill to swallow, because it was a piece and part of her he had no part of. He knew it was there. He accepted it. But there's a difference in those and in true understanding. And that. That's something that was harder to accept in someone outside of his circle. It ate at him, gnawing him from the inside, to know there would always be something in her that would never be his.
no subject
(Her. Inside. Wrestling with things she should stop having to wrestle with.
Again, and again. Never ending. Never changing.)
It is good of him to ask, which is a thing she can still see through it, looking up at him. The medbay is too much quiet and too much light for any of a number of faint impulses that suddenly eat at her edges like shadowed-mice so easily swept away with a thought. Silencing herself has always been too easy, but looking at him while doing it isn't. And she doesn't entirely want that either. To do it. To have to. And she doesn't with him. With them.
It might even be necessary later on. But she doesn't want it now.
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Since he is staying, he pauses and grabs another chair next to hers. He settles, one foot perched at the edge of the seat. There's a comfort in repetitive motions, and she doesn't seem to mind it, so he winds his fingers back into her hair.
Silence is easy. And familiar. Coats the room like a thick fog with only soft beeps and occasional whirs to break it. He just keeps looking at her. Looking at him. Waiting, waiting, waiting, for even the faintest glimpse or glimmer or twitch that said she needed to go from settled on her seat to instantly on her feet. Ready, ready, ready, but not exactly tense. There is a tension about her, but it's only that Leonard knows her so well that he can see it, the tiniest subtle rigidity in her jaw, her shoulders. Impossibly still, but able to be nothing but motion in less than a blink, if it became necessary.
He has no idea how long they may end up sitting here, but he's decided already that, unless she sends him away, he isn't leaving. Doesn't plan on moving at all. "If you don't at least make it look like you attempted to eat, Mick's gonna fuss." The words are a quiet mumble, but clear enough to be understood.
no subject
The light and touch of him snagging parts of her back from the dark, that it had already tugged away again in only seconds.
As relieved at it as the question. As the chair. That soft, repetitive touch that invades the space that hallowed so quickly after it stopped for him to even just get the chair. That she knows what's needed of her, doesn't mean she always -- or much of ever -- seems to really think about what she needs. And when she does how to even quantify that into her own words, no less into someone else's actions for it, and maybe that whole thought process and Leonard's presences, Leonard's fingers, Leonard's actions that are nothing like silence in the silence, being broken by those words?
Those specific words.
That cause a small huff of breath. A near soundless not-enough-weight to be a laugh. Out her nose.
The barest barely-there edge that tries to tug the tip even the topmost corner of her mouth. "He's good at that."
Which maybe to anyone else would sound like a commentary on Mick's fussing. But it isn't. Not with that sound, not with that tone. It is what it actually means to be. Mick is good at taking care of them. He really is. Even if more people miss that. That absolute steadiness of him. How he cares and how he shows it. He's good at it. Taking care of the people he cares about. Taking care of her. They both are. They both do what they can. They do it better than she ever does in taking care of herself.
Mick sending food, and Leonard is here, even if it plays on his fears, is still here, fingers running through her hair, while Mick is, also, she knows, somewhere taking care of the ship for her. The team. It's more than she deserves, and in seconds like these something almost more than she knows how to even hold in her chest, no less the jagged pieces of her heart. In rooms like this, that remind her all too much of who she is, and they're still here. Even in these places. Right next to her.
Sara turned her head to look at Leonard and raised a hand for the plate. To at least try. "Okay, c'mon."
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Leonard isn't very good at taking care of himself, which might explain why he needed someone like Mick in his life. He might not have done half as well, lived half as long (the first time) as he had without Mick to make sure he did things like eat and sleep, even when he was caught up in the most intricate of plans. The only person Leonard ever really never skipped a beat in caring about, and for, and catering to, was Lisa.
He tries with Sara, because he recognizes certain things she does, or more specifically, doesn't do because he does, and doesn't do, the same things. Or similar enough that it's not hard to make the appropriate leaps. He tries, but most of the time, he's not sure how good at it he ever is.
He reaches for the plate that Mick had sent with him, placing it in that outstretched hand of hers. Sometimes, a person just does things because they knew it was something that would make other people happy. Like eating, when it's probably the last thing on your mind really, because you can't let their efforts be wasted when they went out of their way to bother in the first place.
Leonard doesn't mind being here, being whatever sort of solace he can be for her. As long as she needs it, or until she sends him away.
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Sit up. Balance to plate in her lap, because she asked for it, because Mick sent it. (And Leonard.)
She's never done so good with that. Need. But she can convince her body to move, and her mouth to chew, while that body in front of them remains in easy repose. The cocktail of a lifetime still coursing through him, and Sara batting back to the words and the thoughts that had been behind them. Mick. Mick, and the food, and Leonard. Not the chairs. Not her own, still existent, personal ruthlessness. A guide post of comfort. Or disgust. Both.
"It's not bad." It's not a compliment, but it's not an insult. It's food and he means well, and she can't taste much of anything, but she knows it's not bad. His food rarely ever is. It's simple, but good. And from a left side, she has no idea who is cooking tonight, but she knows Ray has that, too. She draws in a breath through her nose, all the way down into her lungs, letting it stretch her lungs, her spine, her ribs, before breathing it out.