driftfleet | Open | A Monthly Starstruck Mingle!!

...Oh. Peggy digests his words. Her expectations had mattered to him. Perhaps not hers, alone, but certainly the Starstruck's. And whatever other bridges he'd build within the fleet. She hemmed and hawed for a moment -- and erred on the side of a very light and very brief touch. She cups her palm against his elbow. A little moment, and then she retreats.

"As much as you likely don't want to hear me say it, I have far more faith in you than that."

And it's her victory; he doesn't flinch, despite his guarded and skittish nature this week. Maybe he looks a bit flustered, though. A bit embarrassed. It's a very open thing for the likes of him to admit. And really, he's not sure whether he should be relieved at her answer or not. It's such a terrible mistake to put faith in him. A terrible, horrible, no good mistake. Makes a icy pit in his stomach at the thought of how badly it could go wrong.

"Worry about that, sometimes," he says, shaking his head.

A pause. He scratches his nose, careful to avoid a spot where a deep dark bruise has formed.

"... Thank you."

Because it's something. He appreciates it, even if it scares the piss out of him.

Also he just thanked you for something the sky is falling.

Peggy smiles. Nothing broad and gaudy -- but small, thoughtful, and bursting at its tiny seams with affection. As smiles so, it's more in her eyes than anywhere else. She can sense his wariness when it comes to handling someone else's trust, but she means what she says. Having faith in him means she also has faith in his ability to digest such a gift with at least a grudging amount of grace. And, with two words, he proves her right.

"Now, there is some sweet music." She teases, calling abrupt attention to the rarity of his spoken gratitude. "Wouldn't I like to have that on a record. Play it back all bloody day."

He gives her the flattest stare, all black and blue and frazzled.

It's quite funny, even if the situation had been relatively dire.

"Sure you wouldn't have enjoyed the peace and quiet?"

"It's not like you're a particularly boisterous person, you know."

At least, she thought, so long as the rest of the crew keeps from underfoot. But Peggy resisted the urge to give him an additional fwap on his arm. He looked bashed up enough, and she wasn't feeling particularly needle-y today.

"But -- your continued absence would have been noted, Max."

Well. Maybe a little needle-y.

"Only when someone takes my things," he grumbles.

... He has things here. Very strange. Almost sounds unnatural to him. Not that he has much — but the tools, the shuttle, his jacket, they're all very important to him. And now he's collecting... records... things like that. He owns a record player. He lives on the ship. What a horrifying thing. He rubs a scabbed and ugly mark on the back of his wrist, tormenting it. "That's... hnm..."

He's not really sure what to call it. Not sure how to explain.

He settles on something simple.

"Frightening."

Frightening? When someone takes his things?

Peggy cants her head. It took her a moment, truly, to suss out what was truly chilling the blood in his veins. It wasn't the loss that unsettled him. It was the gain. She betrays that brief desire to lay a hand on his shoulder -- but, ultimately, resists.

"Believe it or not, I understand. It's hard to trust the nicer things found here. The record players and the -- opportunities."

Her opportunity, it seems, is shaped like Steve Rogers and she barely knows how to trust its presence. Barely understands how to take hold of it, and set aside grief.

He glances at her, and for a moment, he offers a sense of vulnerability in the way the light is cast across hollowed, bruised features. It's not like this is new information between them; she's told him before, the dangers of keeping people close. But now he's not just caring about people, taking care of things like wounded dogs. He's carving a place for himself here that should have never been carved. That's what he tells himself. People expect to see him wandering the cargo bay. People visit him. And sometimes even need him for something or another.

He's been here for nearly a year, he'd surmised.

A year. He hasn't been in one single place in decades. The fact that he's settled even as much as he has is what is frightening. He was taken on that ship and actually had a passing thought that he wouldn't be where he was supposed to be. He was taken, and instead of wondering where his captors would lead him, he worried about where they were pulling him from.

He reaches to rub his fingers against the scarring on the back of his neck. A symbol of where things changed, before he'd ever shown up on the fleet. Max drops his fingers and leaves them to scrape the scab on his arm again.

"Almost lost the... opportunity." He really lives here. As a person, living with a name, with a job on the ship, with frie — with shipmates, who have names that he says sometimes. He shares with them sometimes. He worries about them. And they worry in return, much to his eternal confusion. He raises his eyebrows at her, and he finds it surprisingly easy to look her in the eye when he says, rather softly, "You mean the people."

The record's over, been over, skips over itself without music. And you know, Max had already determined he'd take a blade to the throat for Peggy not too long ago. He'd drain himself dry of blood to save her, Furiosa, or a number of people on board the ship.

Maybe he says as much with the loyal, watchful eye he carries.

He hates what you all do to him.

And yet he's sitting here.

Edited (shh i like editing randomly) 2016-12-01 08:40 (UTC)

-- Peggy meets his eyes with ease. They've always betrayed her feelings far quicker than the rest of her face. Just now, they gleam a little. She takes a seat on the ground and leans her shoulders against the nearest shuttles wall. By now, more than a year on, the fleet has changed her too. Some of her harder tenets of secrecy have softened. And thanks in no small part to those around her, she's managed to exchange abject grief for that same elusive thing they're talking about: opportunity.

"I mean the people," she concedes -- letting him have this correction with no argument and no indignation. "Do you know what it means when I say carpe diem? It's Latin. I don't know how much of it would have survived by your time."

He looks just a bit surprised, and the expression smooths into confidence.

"Seize the day." He ducks his head, looking toward the record box. "I know some."

Remember that saying, 'don't judge a book by the cover'?

There's apparently Latin in Max's book.

Peggy smiles. She relishes her shock that he should so smoothly understand that which has, by many measures, grown archaic already by her decade. She likes it when he surprises her with his hidden depths. She likes it when it turns out he's more than what he pretends to be. In those moments, Peggy supposes she feels closer to him. It comforts her, at times, to know he can be as tricksome as she is. Give her hope for his well-being in a world unlike his own.

"Bravo, sir," she tips an invisible hat. Tugs an invisible forelock. "The saying stands. I've been trying to teach myself how to seize the day, so to speak. And now allow opportunities to slip by me once again."

Gentler: "I'd like to see the same for you."

The idea has never been tempting, not once. He's never considered chasing opportunity other than that necessary to live. Playing it safe is simply a better option, regardless of what is forfeit. He's tried very hard to imagine going back home as he is, trying to live as he's done here. He knows that going home will destroy a part of him again. Maybe not immediately, but eventually, the moment life slips away again under his watch.

So... the idea of seizing the day is quite intimidating.

It makes it sound too simple. Not just one day. A whole lifetime. A whole lot of regret, all born from this one day. He breathes out, stretching out his bum knee, readying himself for the daunting challenge of rising back up to his feet. He's been alright and the general ache has been limited before, but the attack on him has set him back a little. Supposes its his own fault; he hates doctors, after all. Maybe if he tried to get anyone in his world to look at it...

But the Organic Mechanic makes his throat hot and rancid, and he avoids the idea.

"Maybe," he finally says, because he knows his true, honest answer isn't as appealing. It's at least a way to leave negotiations open, and he's learned enough about Peggy to know just how much negotiations matter in this relationship. It leaves room for further discussion, even if it's not immediate. "It's good for you, though. The opportunities."

He holds out his arm, frowning. Help him a little as he gets up? Usually such a request would be impossible, stubborn bastard that he is. He's in a semi-decent mood, though, and he knows he'd be more embarrassed struggling to get up on his own in her presence than getting a hand.

Besides, the joint's stiff something awful, today.

He needs to walk on it.

"Good for us," she corrects him -- a little curtly, maybe, but with undertones of something sweeter. Peggy eyes his arm and wonders whether he truly wants her help. Her eagerness betrays her, however, because she's quick to find her feet again and grip his wrist. A little too quick. A little too eager.

Peggy hoists him. She pulls him upwards and inwards, dragging him back to his feet. And she doesn't let him go, either. Instead, she hooks her elbow quite firmly around his -- insisting silently that should he want to go a-walking then they would go together. Arm in arm. Like two sisters in a Jane Austen novel.

Edited 2016-12-02 23:39 (UTC)

He bites back a grunt of both pain and exertion, but once he's upright and steadied he's already feeling infinitely better. He moves to pull away and finds himself glued by the other's insistence, and immediately, his expression flattens into the exasperation of someone who's eaten a sour grape.

"Can walk just fine," he says, but he just stands there with his arm still hooked. A clear symbol that too many people around here have him around their pinky finger, and it's not like Max doesn't know that. He huffs like an old dog, and takes a wobbly first step before they begin to smooth out, familiarity with the ache returning.

....... She still has him, latched like a rather helpful ball and chain.

He takes a few more steps.

The sour grape is sour still.

"Really."

P E G G Y THIS IS CRUEL, I'M A GROWN AND BITTER MAN WITH STUBBORN PRIDE.

"Call it practice," she tells him around a sly smile. "Practice for the day you actually learn some manners."

But it's much more than that. Peggy is a little worried about his leg, and she suspects walking alongside him -- even just the length of the hangar -- might help her diagnose it for herself: the extent of his aches and pains.

She pats him gently on the arm. "Walk with me?" Peggy asks. And he's right about one thing: it's a negotiation.

"Don't need manners," he huffs, but otherwise lets her get her kicks. He suspects that she suspects, and as he walks he considers his own state of being. The limp's worse than usual, but that was expected; they hit him there pretty good and knew exactly what would incapacitate him best of all. He's lucky, though. Other than the heavy bruises both visible and hidden (ribs certainly included) and the sutured cut on the back of his head where he almost took a bullet, he's doing relatively well. For someone who was kidnapped off a street.

He's not about to complain. It's by no means as miserable as an infected tooth.

But he's also someone whose pain is read by the tightness and sweat of his brow.

"Irritated it," he manages. "Just need to wait it out."

That's genuinely how he treats the leg, that's his medical prowess.

Wait it out.

He's actually a pretty decent field medic, but the leg? Suddenly it's like an unloved stepchild.

And so she begins by leading him -- gently, almost -- towards the far end of the bay. They can make a turn of it, like the lords and ladies of yore: arm-in-arm, and circling the well-manicured lawns of lovely estates. Quintessentially British, probably, but well above her station. No, she'd venture to say she's happier here in space.

"You're more of an idiot than I ever imagined if you honestly believe 'waiting it out' is a legitimate prescription for what ails you, you know," Peggy huffs.

Happier, maybe, but no less barbed.

Grumble, grumble.

"It is where I'm from."

....

"Worked for the last few decades."

....

Max, please.

"Like hell it worked," she answers -- quick as you like. "You might be able to peddle that line to poor bleeding-hearts but I know better. You're threadbare."

Cruel to be kind, for sure.

Edited 2016-12-03 22:04 (UTC)

Max is a schoolboy evading the dentist, to be sure. He rolls his eyes and tugs weakly against her grip.

"Threadbare's fine. Don't need anything."

He's got his jacket and a decently working shuttle and a dog. That's all he needs. That's medication, isn't it??

She offers him contempt -- a huff, and her own rolling eyes. She tightens her hold on his arm, bringing him near shoulder-to-shoulder with her while they 'stroll' from one side of the hangar to the other.

"Threadbare isn't fine. And I think you know it isn't -- but I understand why you're trying to talk yourself into believing otherwise."

He looks at his feet, willing them to fight against the ache.

"You saying you practice that preaching?"

A wince. His knee tries to buckle, and a bead of sweat crosses down a short distance on his forehead. He's being stubborn — both a curse and a blessing, when it comes to his lifestyle. His stiff, battleworn fingers curl a bit. "Talking yourself into things can be — useful."

A snort. Ordinarily, he'd have her dead to rights. Peggy Carter could be such a raging hypocrite about such things, but luckily for her? Few have had to see her most stubborn angles here in the Fleet. Max is one of the few.

"Practice it? Rather hard not to, really, with Steve lurking around every corner like a mother hen."

"Now you're taking it out on me," he says. "Not my fault your lover's clingy."

His lips tug in the slightest smile, just the slightest.

"I'll — invest in heating pads. Better?"

NEGOTIATIONS.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

1/2

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject