driftfleet | everybody's starstruck in june.

Entry tags:

everybody's starstruck in june.

Who: starstruck crew & visitors
Broadcast: n/a
Action: aboard the ship
When: june

[ another month; another mingle. but there are changes in the air! the starstruck has some fresh crew to boast of, as well as a spiffing new lounge. things have been difficult, lately -- the common area might make for a great place to decompress and socialize with your fellow starstruckers.

after all, it seems the captain's gone and requisitioned max's record player. for the first week in june, it'll be returned again and again to the new lounge. good luck hiding it from her, rockatanksy.

ready steady go! ]

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Perhaps they also like board games. [ heaven knows if they do. peggy's not bothered to ask; for most of them, she's been more interested in their skills than in their personalities. ] You can help me find out.

[ it's all about him. it shouldn't be so surprising. peggy carter's willing to steal a record player over and over to force max into some sort of social interaction -- it goes without saying she'll be just as ruthless with the man she loves. ]

Well, I think Sam wouldn't mind. Might just like it.

[ that's all he's wiling to vouch for, really and only because it's so terribly easy. sam is a friend, after all and steve has always been oddly comfortable around him. it's not something that he can say for most other people on or off the starstruck. ]

Speaking of. [ oh, no. maybe it's good the crate of records stays between them. ] Sam's a -- bit an experience. Isn't he? Disarmingly forthright.

[ which is putting it mildly. ]

He's something alright. Never really met anyone like him.

[ and to think, this was one conversation steve had started, all those years ago on a chilly d.c morning. he eyes his little stack of book and starts arranging them, if only for something to do. ]

Natasha and I became friends after I asked her to be more honest, she said I might be in the wrong business but it ended up working out. Sam never had that problem.

[ they're two pillars, opposite as they are. ]

[ -- she picks at the corner of a record sleeve, where the paper curls and frays. ]

He's worried about you. [ peggy suspects this is one of those secrets she's safe to tell because there's no way in hell steve doesn't already know it. technically, she'd been the one demanding sam's discretion when they'd discussed steve and his current emotional state; vice versa had never been considered. she uses that loophole, now. ] Enough so that he wanted to talk to me.

He's fresh from home.

[ and that says it all for steve. the burden of what happened at home is something that has weighing on his mind for months, perhaps a bit more so as of late. Sam knows that they remember the exact same things, the avengers breaking apart, steve's horrible fight against tony, bucky and his missing arm. ]

It hit Wanda pretty bad, Nat too.

[ he doesn't say anything about himself. she was there to see him through it, after all. ]

It's more recent to him.

[ her nod is slow -- understanding. she knows the argument steve's trying to make: that because it's more recent for sam, sam feels it more than he does. it's not true; she so often catches sight of the weight on his shoulders. it's a kind of vulnerability she's not interested in sharing with others. that much, at least, is locked up behind peggy's better judgment. ]

I don't think it's a bone he's willing to drop. Fair warning. [ sam will come after steve, next -- to discuss or digest or divulge. peggy can't be certain. but she can give him a heads up; she'd hate for him to be blindsided. ]

Never thought it was.

[ he does smile a bit around the words. sam wouldn't have been sam if he could drop things like these. steve has every reason to suspect sam has been worried about him since the day they've met. he never saw him only as a miracle, the man who stayed alive in the ice but he noted the effects of war and trauma as only another soldier could.

sam found solace in the VA, he knew steve never found his. ]

he's stubborn. it used to be a pattern in my team.

[ until they broke apart, that is. ]

Birds of a feather. [ she answers. ] Or so they say.

[ peggy can't stomach the thought of working with much of an official team; she tolerates the incidental one which has sprung up around her work back home. and even then, she'd never cope if they were ever half as stubborn as herself. she can't do what steve does -- put her faith so easily in the human element. it's tricky.

she's better at it when she's around him, however. ]

[ -- oddly enough, he starts to laugh, low and quiet and very much despite of himself. ]

You should tell him that, you know. Have I ever told you what his code name is?

[ oh, he'd hate it. steve has to do it now. he still remembers his annoyance in the middle of their arrest, bird costume? come on. ]

You haven't. [ peggy's smile pops into existence the moment he laughs. ] Someone else has. But you should, all the same. I want to hear you say it.

[ god, how ridiculous. ]

Falcon. It's not the same without seeing his gear. it sure is something.

[ steve is rather fond of the wings, really. sam saved him from many tight spots with those. ]

I don't know if it's worse than Captain America but.

[ he shrugs. it's not his title anymore, is it? without his gear, it seems sam wouldn't have to claim his own title if he won't want to. ]

It's not. [ worse. peggy's brutally honest on that front. she's got a great deal of fondness for steve, but the 'title' had long since been soured. ] Falcon is downright decent by comparison, I'm afraid.

Yeah, I figured as much.

[ he nods, accepting her judgement as true without too much of a fuss. it seems that the title has been ruined for both him and her but at very least they're on the same page. ]

I'm glad you've talked, he's a good guy.

He certainly seems that. [ a good guy. ] If a bit nosy. It's no surprise he wanted aboard the ship -- he asked me himself. That was a nice touch.

Must have been. He volunteered himself to my team back in the day, too.

[ it fits sam, always so proactive, placing himself where he thinks his help is needed. they so direly needed his help back then but steve needed him as a friend too.

he never told him but sam hardly ever needed to be told. ]

[ and as lovely as that proactive nature must be, peggy takes a wicked delight in what she reveals next: ]

I said he needed Buck's permission. First.

[ -- she's been using the nickname, or a variation on it, more often lately. ]

He must have been happy to hear that.

[ sam helped steve a lot with bucky but the two of them seem to prefer a sort of bickering to actually being friends. steve can't really blame sam, seeing how determined bucky was to kill them at first and well, after meeting zemo. they don't hate each other and steve suspects there's a measure of respect beneath all the bite and the sass.

but there is a lot of sass. ]

He made his peace with it, I assume. [ then, behaving as though it's a simple confession, she adds: ] I don't poach from the Heron. Any other ship is fair game but -- not his.

Yeah.

[ which means I've noticed or maybe I understand. ]

He lost a lot of them lately.

[ which, he assumes, is exactly why peggy makes such an exception for the heron. steve is worried about bucky more than not, especially as of late. they see each other, they talk, but there is a sense of loss that steve knows all too well.

it'll take time and a lot of it. ]

[ well, in for a pound? ]

So did you.

[ in for a penny. ]

[ a pause, he considers his options and chooses a safe route, ]

seems like everyone did lately. I'm kinda glad Hank and Raven left together.

[ the same is true for pietro and wanda. sometimes it's kinder not that he thinks atroma are very big on kindness. ]

Their whole team seemed to have vanished at once.

[ charles and erik, too. ]

Do you think it's a coincidence?

[ -- to witness great swathes, whole chunks of a social architecture, be wiped out? peggy has a few painful losses she's nursing. but, for her part, she's not mentioned a single one. at best, she might have looked a little melancholic when she finished the last piece of shortbread from the last batch stefan had brought her.

she'd rather let the world believe herself unmoved by these losses. she'd learned how to wear grief with dignity. hide it under grace. ]

No. Nothing is. I don't know why they do what they do but none of it is accidental.

[ it's not the first nor the last time he'd catch himself being grateful that through it all, despite it all, she's still here. He reaches over, takes her hand in his. An anchor, a reason to breath a little more easily. ]

[ for once, her eyes duck his. instead? she focuses on their hands. joined; twined. peggy shakes her head. ]

Do you ever worry that -- maybe -- they know who we are before we're taken? [ peggy gives her head a little shake, as if she can't quite articulate the problem. ] That they have some knowledge of us before we arrive. Know who we know, who we miss, who we'd long to see...

[ -- did they take him because they'd already taken her? was that part of their design? ]

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