enter if you dare (i'm kidding we're 80% approachable)

[theroadwarrior]

Who: Crew and visitors for the Starstruck!
Broadcast: None!
Action: The SS Starstruck
When: March! And, y'know, until the next mingle too.


[EVERYONE GET IN HERE AND MINGLE AND STUFF OKAY.]

Comments

[theroadwarrior]

[Max relents easily, wandering over.

He seems tired, upon inspection. His eyes are bagged, and he looks a little more weathered than usual. Sleep has not been easy for him as of late. Thoughts brewing, tossing and turning, ghosts taking advantage of that small vulnerability that is self-doubt.

Despite this, though, he seems in a semi-decent mood. Maybe because Peggy is not, and he's not about to contribute.

Actually, he raises his eyebrow at her, gives her a skeptical look, speaks in a dry, sarcastic way. Humor in the face of anxiety.]

Ahh. Wouldn't know at all how that feels.

[mucked]

No? [ her shrug is for show. peggy undoes the wrapping from first one hand, and then the other. and then she does something she's never done before: she holds out a palm, and invites max to place his hand in hears. presumably so she can wrap his knuckles instead. ] I'm sure the specifics don't matter much. Feelings are feelings. They find a way out, no matter their source.

[theroadwarrior]

[Max almost stupidly follows her lead and offers his hand -- and while he doesn't pull away as she moves to wrap them, he snorts.]

I don't like fighting.

[Such an odd thing, from someone who fights daily to survive. He's never trained, never sat and learned basics. It all came with a need, one fistfight at a time. His way of combat is as unorthodox as hers: use a skull, use a car door, a shotgun with no ammunition for show. Throw your body weight into someone and let the feral nature of living take over. Swing until bone snaps.

Though, his hands are an odd matter, There is one finger -- a pinky, that Peggy will find is too damaged to properly straighten out anymore. A severed muscle, never able to repair. On the other hand, quite literally, there are two fingers that are stiff, barely yielding. had been crushed before. His hands are at 70% function, it seems.

And yet, he is not a fighter.]

[mucked]

It's a punching bag. Not a person. [ she tosses one wrap over her shoulder and begins by placing the other's tail-end against his hand. her attention is on his knuckles, and she feels the telltale callouses of challenge on his skin. a life, lived. ] I wouldn't call it fighting. Catharsis, maybe.

[ peggy has her own way of caring. she wraps with efficiency, and although her touch isn't clumsy or rough...neither is it much in the way of gentle. she hoards her gentleness for other moments. other people, perhaps, who need to feel it to know it's there. ]

You walk around here wound tighter than a starlet's girdle. A bit of catharsis could look good on you.

[theroadwarrior]

[Who, him, tightly wound? The bearded man with a sometimes unfriendly way about him, who paces for things to do? That guy? He watches her wrap his fists, flinching only minutely whenever her skin touches his -- he's always been very bad at being touched in any capacity. Even for this.]

It's a bad risk.

[He taps his temple. It's only fair to tell her things when it could be true. As private a person as he is pretty much most hours of the day -- this was the first interaction he'd even had, other than Ahsoka and the odd fella trying to name the dog -- he knows they know already. They've been too close by for too long to not know.

Despite the subject of conversation, Max has a pleasant, calm expression. It's like talking about the weather, only he's implying he's dangerous and unpredictable -- though one could argue he's perhaps the most predictable person in the ship.]

[mucked]

Not a risk at all, actually. Not so long as I'm here.

[ her looks are pointed -- to max's leg, and then back to his face. peggy isn't trying to grandstand. she isn't trying to make the great wide boast that she could take him in a fight. but she's observed him closely enough to know the dents in his armour.

tidily, she wraps his other hand. ] I won't let it become risky. But -- [ she concedes ] -- I won't make you do something you don't want to do, either.

[ those wraps can come off as easily as they were put on. ]

[theroadwarrior]

[Not for the first time, he wonders how long she'd last in the wastelands. It's not easy. And it's such a difference of... things Peggy probably would not surrender. Personal dignities and morality. He wonders, though. He has no doubts she knows how to fight. And fight dirty, possibly.

Maybe she would be much like a Furiosa. Maybe.

But when he's in his modes -- when he's there, he's all panic and fear-biting and it turns him into something else entirely. He knows she'd move to handle it, but the idea is not having to fight and hurt crewmates.

.... Unless they're FDR.

He makes a fist around the wrap. His hands are heavy and warm, thick-skinned and rough. But compliant. He glances to the bag as she finishes wrapping the other.]

Don't kick my leg.

[That is a minor threat, young lady. He gets very sore about that.]

[mucked]

[ peg steps behind the bag and steadies it -- two palms pressed firmly on its far side, so perhaps it might not jangle and thrash so much. she understands she's playing with fire, but they've danced around the negative spaces a little too long. she wants to understand just how hedged-in his mind has become. ]

I'll whatever I need to kick, thank you very much. [ already, she pulls no punches. ] But I expect I won't have to.

Go on. Throw a punch.

[theroadwarrior]

[He looks at her, and then to the bag, as if having stepped in something gross -- nose wrinkled, uncertainty in the way he makes a fist.]

Hrm.

Feels kind of --

[He fights for the words.]

Ridiculous. Hitting a bag of sand. This helps?

[mucked]

Sometimes. [ she watches him from around the bag's curve. a tilted head, and eyes askew from the usual angle. ] It helps me. Won't necessarily help you -- but you won't know until you try.

[theroadwarrior]

[Until he tries, huh? He feels ridiculous. This is a waste of valuable energy — you're not in the desert, Max. He sighs, like a big insufferable child, but eventually he puts his fist to the bag. Not hitting it, but just putting his knuckles to it, as if trying to imagine something else under his punch. A face? Yeah, alright. A face.

Won't know until you try.

After nudging off his jacket (a true feat to get him to do such a thing; he loves his jacket, that much is obvious), he brings back a fist, hesitates. For all his talk, and for how often he's overpowered in the desert, he's not a bad specimen in terms of battle. He's solidly packed, and though he's shorter than most men he's ran into aboard the Fleet, he's got the muscle to make up for it. He'd fought off plenty of war boys, hands bound and teeth unavailable for gnashing.

There is an important reason they muzzled him. He tastes blood in his mouth, not his, when he remembers.

He pulls in a breath.

"Max... Why are you here? Why aren't you coming to find us?"

He throws a punch at the sound in his head. THWUMP. It rattles the bag, the chain ringing out slightly. For a moment he seems mortified — swinging at the voices, at the ghosts, that's not something he's supposed to do. They get restless, and he shouldn't swing at 'em. And even if they didn't — who's fault is it, that they're ghosts to begin with?

Readjust. He imagines — War Boys, yeah. War boys, trying to grab him. He swings again, and this time it feels easier. It's not real — there's no bruising skin or cracking bone. Easier. He feels his chest tickle, his stomach flop, like he should run, but he does not. He swings again, and he escapes capture. Swings again — still free. Swings again — that was the tall one, big guy, threw a skull at his head. The guy who broke one of his back teeth in half when he slammed that fist into his face. Swings again, his knuckles throb.

As it turns out, Max has a lot of festering rage and unresolved feelings far under the surface that hasn't seen the light of day.

He cycles through faces. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. People who'd deserve a punch. People who make his insides ice. He sees Toecutter — murdering piece of shit — and he swings harder, panting, knuckles stinging. Swings again, indignation in his eyes. If he could have just gotten a hold of him — death was too quick, and he wouldn't have minded that kind of blood on his hands, and —

He sees the cage, small, his knees in his face, the taser jammed into the inside of his thigh, and he seizes up as they force him to drop, hang upside down, tongue bitten and bleeding and breath taken from him. Muzzle, forced over his face, but he can't move his legs, hands are tied, and he snaps wildly with his teeth — ]

[mucked]

[ and all the while, peggy is stalwart. she is the tower -- the sturdy strength behind the sand-filled bag, holding it steady so that it could absorb his hits without swinging wildly. the last thing he needed was wild kinetic movement within reach. and (without a drop of guilt) she takes the opportunity to watch him. she watches the narrowed vision and the curled lip and the barely-contained snarl. and lungfuls of breath taken not for economy's sake but at the behest of wild emotions.

out from under the protective drape of his jacket, she can see the body he works with. compact muscle -- a lot like a dog himself, with chambered strength in a deceptive stature. without his jacket and without his usual guard, she's a bit better at determining his strengths. before now, she'd mostly seen weaknesses. he wore them on his jacket sleeves and trumpeted them to the world.

she doesn't say a word. she watches; she holds the bag; she lets him blow himself out, like a northeastern gale, storming its power away until it's exhausted. ]

[theroadwarrior]

[thud, thud — thump.

One last good punch leaves him sweating and stepping back, fists throbbing painfully. He's not tired, though; he sizes the bag up for a splint second before he realizes... it's not a person. Even still, Max's thrumming with more energy, seems to be a fountain of it, like that gale hasn't at all blown itself out even yet. It's a familiar sensation, one he usually feels after fighting for his life, tooth n' neck. He seems dazed for a moment, and he steps back again. He's just as easily a muscled, stout pit bull circling around a makeshift fighting ring.

Something about it unsettles him — that he had gotten out so much aggression, lost himself for a moment again. slowly, he peels his hands into open fists.

Is this a good thing, or a bad thing?

He couldn't tell.

He has a hard time telling, sometimes.

When he catches her eyes, he looks away just as quickly, as if he just as well broke something apart by accident. He rubs a hand over his longer hair, pushing it back wetly. Energy for him converts like sugars into caginess. But there's more to his sudden absence, like he wants to melt into the floor.

Surely his cheeks are reddened because he's heated, and not because of something else altogether. Surely no shame or anything like that. Mm.]

It was... hn.

[He looks to be at a loss.]

[mucked]

Bad? [ she asks. ] Good? Somewhere in between?

[ slowly, she steps out from the other side of the bag. peggy's curiousity is barely constrained. but it isn't pure academic interest any longer -- her questions are edged with a very warm concern. ]

Or maybe you didn't feel anything quite like bad and good. There's nothing stating you need to feel a certain way about it. Hell, you need never do it again. [ ... ] But I'm glad you tried.

[theroadwarrior]

[He did try. Which is yet another confounding thing. He remembers a time when he would have ignored Peggy outright and carried on with his existence. But then Furiosa and the wives happened, and then the Tranquility stripped him of privacy and isolation -- and now he's in a smaller ship, looking after yet another dog, trusting too much and itching to ruin it all -- break it all down -- by fleeing.

He doesn't look at her, rubbing his neck with stiff fingers.]

Don't know if it was good, or bad. It does... Something. Takes something.

[He can't tell if what it takes is a good or bad thing, though.]

What's it do for you?

[Removing the conversation from himself seems like a great idea right about now.]

[mucked]

That is a...terribly complicated question.

[ she rolls her shoulders like banishing little twitches and tics from her muscles. leftover adrenaline that begins to course, again, at the very thought of throwing a punch. complicated or not, she owes him an answer. it's the reward he gets for bothering with her bit of 'therapy', though even peggy herself would hesitate to call it by that word. ]

I get frustrated. [ peggy confesses. ] It's better to work that all out in one college try. [ she wets her lips, and remembers jason telling her she couldn't just go around punching all of los angeles. for a moment, her teeth grit. ]

And it's a comfort, at times, to be reminded that I am capable. [ self-conscious, she runs her fingers over her knuckles. ] To remind myself that I am strong, regardless of the circumstances wherein I find myself.

[theroadwarrior]

Easy to get frustrated. Being stuck.

[He glances back to the punching bag.]

Not used to punching unless it's a person... and most times, fists can't work.

[It's almost impossible, to go through a fight with just your knuckles.

But boy, have they helped.]

[mucked]

And that would be why I like to carry a shotgun, as well, but -- [ she closes her fists loose and holds them up. demonstrative, not threatening. ] I make do with what I have.

[theroadwarrior]

[He quirks his eyebrow.]

Bony little knuckles.

[mucked]

What? [ play-acting indignation. ] These things? They hit heavier than you might think.

[ it isn't a challenge. nor much of a boast, really. peggy isn't interested in proving herself -- least of all within the ship. her role here isn't to throw right hooks. ]

Power doesn't come from the knuckles.

[theroadwarrior]

[He shakes his head.]

Misunderstand.

[Because learning his language, misreading's easy enough to do. Hell, even if you were the grand champion at reading him, he doesn't always explain his replies that well. A piece of what should have been said, so to speak.]

... Bony knuckles hurt. They're sharp.

[mucked]

...You were saying something nice. [ sort of. almost. perhaps nice is the wrong word -- but the point is that max had been commenting positively upon her 'weapons'. and she, accustomed to his doubt and negativity, had missed that slant entirely.

but now she warms up to the prospect. ] Thank you.

[theroadwarrior]

[Max glances away, apparently modest about complimenting people. It's not really something he's used to. Or good at. At all.]

Mm.

[You're welcome, the noise says. Probably with a question mark behind it.]

Many think small means weak. S'not true. That kind of thinking will get you killed.

... By the smaller people.

[mucked]

One of the single-most comprehensively trained and impressive operatives I'd ever seen can't have been any more than -- oh, ten stone soaking wet.

[ dottie underwood. because (somehow) it was easier to discuss a mad soviet spy than even reconsider once again approaching the topic of steve rogers. ]

[theroadwarrior]

[He nods, thinking about his own history. His own small warriors out in the sands.]

Smaller's faster. Smaller... finds special shortcuts to get ahead.

Knew a kid, for a few days. Couldn't talk, was, mmm. Worse than me. He made himself a boomerang with a blade. [He motions, mimics a throw.] Used tunnels and copied dog sounds, knew how to sneak around.

[He sounds mildly impressed.

The feral child was strangely endearing. He hated to admit.]