driftfleet | Open | A Monthly Starstruck Mingle!!

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.

The busywork is visible on her face. A spin of the wheels in mud, sorta, and her jaw goes slack as she prepares to combat the claim that she and Steve are lovers. Of all things! Max so nearly paints her into a corner and (inadvertently or otherwise) nearly tricks her into explaining how the pair of them are not -- strictly speaking -- lovers. Not by the definition she's touting 'round in her head. But that's information he doesn't need and she doesn't want to divulge. Especially since the rest of his claim is true: she's projecting all her fussy nature onto Max.

With a mild growl to her voice, she concedes, "heating pads would be a start, yes."

He barks a laugh.

And there, it's clear he knows he's intentionally plucked her string, broke the note and left it curling up in defeat. The sound is new and rare to hear — the laugh, and the string plucking, but certainly the laugh. It's higher than his normal vibrato and jingles, rough like sandpaper like it's never been used (or perhaps like a dried up water pipe that finally works), as if she had surprised the sound right out of him. Mark the calendar, you won't hear such things again for a while.

"Would it."

What an asshole.

But it's fondness, regardless, that he rustles her feathers.

He's very observant, you know. He's good at remembering what does that.

Edited 2016-12-05 21:56 (UTC)

Her eyes cut sideways. Peggy glares, leveling him with a look that says she knows why he's laughing. And as lovely as it is to hear him express genuine, unfettered mirth? She knows she's the butt of his current joke. Anyone else might get punched, even Steve himself. But the snort of breath out her nose and the slow release of tension along her shoulders suggests to him that she is allowing him this one. One freebie.

"Indeed," each syllable is tight and precise and measured. "And might want to consider a cane for around the ship."

She'll have her revenge, Max.

You might as well have told him cars suck, his nose wrinkles so indignantly.

"M'not using a cane."

Unless he can... put a blade...

No, still not worth it, he will look sour regardless.

His brace works just fine. It's a nicer one. Well, no, it's a bit beat up; Tadashi had made it for him when he had been aboard the Tranquility, but he'd had to fix it up again after his brief time with FDR underground.

Still, it's not too bad.

"-- Then replace your brace. I've got deep-running respect for mend and make-do, Max, but that only lasts for so long. Especially under circumstances that should allow you to improve on what's come before. Don't be stagnant."

Propose a cane; negotiate down to a new brace. Inelegant, but calculated.

"Being stagnant's done a lot for me here," he says dryly.

But he falls into one of those thoughtful silences he tends to drop into, when such questions are put on the table. They end up looping back around and his stomach rumbles a bit, and it occurs to him he hasn't eaten since he began to work on repairing the record-player; not very smart, he knows, because if somewhere bad were to happen and he were cut off from food, he'd have a lower chance of survival. Eating's important. He tries to remember to keep to a schedule. But eating too much is foolish — getting used to large meals will be a pain when the meals shrink in size. And they always do.

The Tranquility was a good example of that.

He finally drops his arm from hers, one hand immediately moving to brace the edge of a worktable he'd set up. "Alright."

Vague Max responses long after responses are due are always the best, aren't they.

Alright. It verges on noncommittal, but Peggy can hear the promise beneath the two syllables. She nods -- allows him, at long last, to abandon her arm without so much as a protest on her part. But she does gently pat his elbow: a common gesture of affection from her to him, for months upon months now. It's about all she allows herself to risk, knowing his contrary nature.

"We can vet the engineers together, if you like. Find someone with a bit of discretion."

"I can ask, but... hn, fine."

He pauses, narrowing his eyes as if he had just imagined throwing someone into the sun.

"... Not a Stark."

"Not a Stark," she agreed. "Not least of all because I'm not convinced Tony will even deign to step aboard the Starstruck, now."

Things had been...difficult. Of late.

His eyebrows raise.

"... Trouble?"

"Maybe." But then she shakes her head and commits to a better answer: "Yes, trouble's likely. Something happened back home between Tony Stark and Steve. An argument. A big one."

"Mn. And it's a... dangerous argument?"

He considers the rather discontent way Peggy's responded.

"... Do I need to hit anyone?"

Max has great solutions. Mostly he figures he'd be hitting Stark, what with Steve being Peggy's punching bag to bear if he truly needed it. That said, Max is only half serious. He's pretty sure she'd punch anyone she needed to without his help.

"Best to not," hit anyone. But Peggy's smile is grateful. Deep at heart, she's a raucous person. She solved her problems with her fists -- and she can't fault him for feeling the same way.

"Things got heated, back home. Their whole bloody crew got split and pitted against each other. Ideally, that won't happen here."

She'll do her best to stop it.

He hums.

"Seen that a lot... Dissension."

When the world ends and everything turns to radioactive ash, you have a lot of, hn. Disagreements. You know. He leans heavily against his table, selected specifically because it can handle him and his sturdy frame.

"Any hope of it, ah, resolving?"

Because that's gonna be a pain in the ass to deal with, if these disagreements persist on the Starstruck. He's too grumpy and too solitary to listen to bickering; then he might really try to boot them.

What a kind soul, he is.

"Hard to say. Stark's as delicate as his father was, I feel, and Steve's -- well...Steve is Steve. He once gave me a tour of Brooklyn via all the alleyways he got pummeled in as a kid. All because he'd refuse to back down. Even so, I don't think them butting heads would ordinarily be such a problem.

Only it's over Barnes."

And she believed she didn't have to explain to Max why the man with the metal arm might be a problem. He'd witnessed for himself the mighty damage he could do. Had done. Peggy had found an mentally acrobatic way of forgiving him, but she had the benefit of knowing the man before HYDRA had hollowed him out.

He blinks.

"The battle fatigue man. Mm."

The one we had some pretty deep conversation over, the one Max spoke with in the cargo bay before. He's not particularly bad, not evil, but Max can only imagine what could have caused a rift here. The man had a lot of baggage, lots of issues Max could understand.

"Why him?"

She peels the bandage off, so to speak, with little tact but a lot of sympathy. Best to tell the story quickly:

"He fell into enemy hands. During the war. And they -- changed him. Changed the very workings of his mind so that a switch inside of him might be flipped and he would do their dirtiest work for them. That's the switch that was toggled when the Atroma hijacked him and he attacked me, and others, on the Iskaulit.

Barnes did a lot of terrible things -- but none while he was in command of his own faculties. But now I'm intimately familiar with the desire to hold him accountable for those things, regardless."

But she doesn't. Couldn't. Tony, on the other hand, seems determined to leave the asset out in the cold.

Max cocks his head slightly, interest clouding his features - in quiet thought. He can already tell there's so much more to this than just falling into enemy hands and doing a lot of terrible things; it's become personal, in some way. More of a wound.

"He did something someone here can't forgive."

Not necessarily Peggy, because she doesn't seem... malicious about it. Conflicted, but not malicious, not angry or battling something she can't contain inside her.

But it's enough to cause a fight between the beard and the brawn.

"Guessing it's Stark."

Because -- well. Steve seems to really care about Barnes, as he cares for Peggy.

"I don't know the specifics. But -- yes, it's Tony. Worse yet, he can't abide by Steve defending his boyhood friend. It's a muddy mix of hurt feelings and clashing principles. I've only heard hearsay from the others: from Barnes himself, and -- Natasha, the red-head who comes by sometimes."

Peggy can guess at what crime was committed, but she'd rather not. It puts an ice in her veins and she begins to doubt she could properly abide by Barnes's defense, either.

Ah. He knows Natasha.

Most importantly, Max uses his own experiences to try and suss out why Stark would be hurt — Barnes did terrible things, the worst things perhaps, if 'dirtiest work' was anything to go by. Immortan Joe used the warboys to pillage and give their lives, to kill, to destroy. He imagines what someone like Barnes could do under someone's control.

"You don't know what he did? To make Stark angry."

He bites his cheek.

"... Maybe you should know. Should ask."

She watches him with care. Sounds out the depth of how willing Max is to becoming involved in this conversation. Months ago, he wouldn't have bothered offering advice -- let alone advice that suggested she ought to get even more tangled up in it all.

"I could," Peggy admits. "But there's no guarantee they'd tell me. Even Steve can be choosy about which parts of the future he 'spoils' in telling. Not even Stark is willing to say it to me. Which, ironically enough, tells me all I need to know."

I'll say. Max hardly sees the progress, but at least Peggy's perceptive. As always.

"... They should tell you. Shouldn't even be a choice for them," he says, quite sure of himself. "Gonna involve you in some way whether they mean to or not f'they haven't already; only fair you know why you're playing, hmm, referee." He glances over it her, cocking his head to the side, studying her carefully. "... R'you nervous about what they'll say?"

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