#LIKE YOU HAVE TO SCRAPE THE BOTTOM OF THE BARELL FOR ANYTHING | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

starpirateee · 4 months

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Could I request something where Curt tries to stop Owens fall but instead they both end up falling.

Where they BOTH fall?? Jesus wow, i'm all in! again i'm so sorry that this took an absolute age, i wasn't so confident about this one at first and it did go through a revision or two....

tw for injury detail and blood

The ground was unsturdy beneath their feet as they ran. Curt knew the weight of what he'd done— some confidence that had been present in him before let him completely ignore Owen's bet of four minutes— but he didn't have the time to consider how he could've done anything differently.

"Shit. We gotta run!"

Owen's hand scraped through his hair, exasperated. "For god's-" He cut himself off with a sigh, and shook his head. He was the first to start running past the fallen agents that had collapsed when the ground began to rumble, and sent a sharp gesture to Curt in the hopes that he was following him. "Curt, god only knows you're gonna be the death of me..."

"Nah, no way!" The two of them made a beeline for the stairs, and Curt saw the way Owen's hand had tensed against the railing as he started to ascend. There was going to be two sets of explosions, then. It was a matter of surviving long enough to get out before the second lot threw them off their course again.

He followed Owen closely, briefly glancing behind to check for pursuing agents, and then forced himself to focus. "I'd never let you-"

Owen's foot caught something, and he slipped over the edge of the railing with a cry that perfectly radiated their collective surprise. Curt's eyes went wide, and he scrambled forwards in an attempt to catch him. Just before he could get there, Owen's fingertips scraped the balcony, and he just about managed to catch himself before he fell all the way.

"Jesus Christ-" Curt breathed as he lowered himself quickly, one hand flashing out and grabbing the closest railing for extra stability. "Owen! Take my hand!"

He didn't see the cause of all this, but he had the worst suspicion that he knew exactly what it was... This was the same set of stairs they had been using to make their way down to the main floor, where he had dropped that trash on the grounds that nobody would care if the whole place was gonna be annihilated anyway.

This was the same set of stairs, right?

His heart sank. If Owen was even slightly slower there, he'd have fallen, and it would've been his fault, and he wasn't sure if he'd have ever been able to shake that.

Thankfully, he hadn't. Thankfully, he didn't have to think about that possibility.

Really, he shouldn't have been thinking about that at all, not with what was at stake right now.

Owen struggled to transfer his weight, even after Curt crouched closer to the ground and tried to reach out to his furthest. He could hear people behind them. They were gaining ground quickly, and there they were, looking like they were ready to accept the fate that was to be thrown at them, stuck in a catastrophic balance.

"C'mon, you bastard, it's not gonna end like this! I- said I'd never let you down and I... Damn well mean it!"

Owen reached, and almost slipped again. His eyes were wild with panic, which was unusual for him in itself. It looked so out of place among his otherwise perfect features, and it took Curt a moment to realise it was only multiplying by the second. His other hand was starting to falter, fingertips digging desperately against the edging as he tried to haul himself up.

His effort— their collective effort— was completely in vain. The last time Owen tried to force himself to land a grip and reach up for Curt’s hand, his fingertips gave way with the momentum, and Curt lost him to whichever fate awaited him at the bottom of the silo, carried away by a desperate scream.

Curt stared at the empty void that was the space in which he’d just lost Owen. His breath ran short. His pulse thundered in his ears. Every inch of him was screaming, but he was silent. Too much shock had overrun his body, and he could barely produce a coherent thought, let alone the strength to call out Owen’s name.

He tried to stand, but his legs felt weak. There wasn’t enough time to register the world spinning around him, blurring the edges of his vision, because the moment he managed to struggle to his feet, someone shot at him. The bullet tore through the air from a point on the staircase that he didn’t have the time to locate before it struck him straight in the shoulder.

Blurs of dark colours— shades that all looked the same among the threat of tears that were all too close to falling— flashed through his vision as he stumbled, but he was unable to stop himself, and unable to realise just how little balcony he had left.

He fell. The balcony was left long behind him, and the effort of trying to save himself became too great.

The world went black.

===

Owen was first to wake. He and Curt were in close proximity, but not in the place he recalled falling from. That was an industrial silo they’d been using to make their escape. This was… somewhere else.

What had happened?

His head was pounding with the beat of his heart. Twice to every pulse. Once, twice, and then a beat. Once… Twice… And then another beat. It was agonising, and trying to think about the happenings made it worse. Eventually, he decided to just stop trying and focus on something else.

There was little else available to them besides the ominous chill in the air, and the nettle sting numbness that spread across the surface of his skin. It felt like a canvas, pulled taut against a wooden frame, and stretched beyond limits. The muscles in his face were trying to work against him— he could feel the prevalent twitch near his cheekbone, it was driving him crazy— but on the surface, it was tight, and he could still feel a residual heat.

The tightness— a violent and rather dramatic burn, from the feel of it alone— spread from about halfway down one side of his face, down the length of his neck, and trailed far beyond the line of his singed shirt. He traced it carefully, feeling the line between what his skin should feel like and this new area where sensation ended altogether.

Curt wasn’t conscious. That was enough of a concern in itself, but whatever had happened to them only seemed to make things worse. By the looks of things, he was pretty badly injured too; the most prevalent of which being a large gash that split his hairline from the rest of his face and left a crimson river pooling at the side of his head. Owen pressed a hand gently against the gash, and was relieved beyond measure when his fingers came back relatively clean.

His racing mind wouldn’t let him rest, so instead of straining himself and trying to find out what had happened to them, he gave Curt a quick once over with a glance while they still had the light available to them.

Curt had been burned too, across his shoulders and presumably down his back as well. They’d taken the heat from different angles, but it had struck them both rather harshly.

Owen remembered flashes. An explosion, rescuing Curt from the hands of the Russians, hitting something hard after falling from a height and being surprised when his spine didn’t immediately snap upon impact. He drew his hand away from Curt slowly and slumped back against the closest wall.

One, two, and then a beat.

One… Two… And then another beat.

An uncomfortable silence washed over him as he breathed quietly and hoped to god that Curt was going to wake up. He couldn’t face this unknown alone, not when he knew that Curt was right there, and it would be an injustice for anyone to have kept him alive alongside Curt’s corpse, even if they were both alive when they were left behind.

What he had managed to gather was that the two of them were trapped. They were at someone’s liberty, and logic had to determine it was the same people who had captured Curt the first time.

That meant they hadn't left the facility, but the last he checked, he and Curt were—

They were trying to blow the place up.

That would explain things. It explained this twin set of burns lining both of their bodies, and the excess of heat left simmering underneath his skin like a reserve. They had been trying to rig this place to blow, and they hadn't gotten out in time. There was still a large, empty space there in the blurs and eroded edges of his mind, but he had neither the energy or the capacity to figure it out.

Curt was uncharacteristically still. The more he stared— having given himself no other way to cope— the more he had managed to convince himself that Curt wasn't actually living at all.

Surely they hadn't actually left him with a corpse, had they?

Nobody would dare to be so cold, not in their right minds, anyway. Giving him hope that Curt might pull through, and then ripping it away from him with the cold image of his lover, left frozen in time and forever trapped in the same, non-changing body.

But he didn't look like he was moving, not even a slight rise of the chest. He looked like he'd be cold to touch.

He had to check. He couldn't stay here a second longer without knowing for certain whether Curt was alive. So, he leaned forwards, shifting to get himself in position, and then pushed Curt's collar out of the way and desperately took a pulse.

He's dead. They've left you dealing with the aftermath.

A position change. Another check. A breath held in anticipation.

Owen let the dread speak for itself. He knew only moments had passed, but waiting for something of this weight made the moment stretch out into eternity.

Then there was a beat. Owen didn't think he could physically feel more relieved if he tried. The moment he felt a beat beneath his fingers, he sighed deeply and sat back, letting the absolution wash over him.

Shit. Curt was alive.

He tried again, and again he found that there was a pulse present. Curt was alive. All of his stagnant thoughts would subside on their own in good time now, if he let himself really take in the signs that he was still there with him.

The most prevalent factor trying to make sure that wasn't the case was the gash splitting his forehead near his hairline. Sure, Owen was aware that his fingertips had come back mostly clean from his last check, but there was still the fact of the matter: it was still bleeding.

Most of the remedies he could think of weren't possible in such a space where they had nothing to hand but what was on their person… He couldn't think of a single viable way to tend to it until something in the middle of the blurred expanse of his mind remembered something he should've thought about a long time ago.

Curt was carrying alcohol.

It wasn't ideal, not the best of solutions by any means, but it was a solution of sorts. Curt had whiskey in the pocket of his jacket, and that would at least do something to disinfect the wound… He could use an edge of his own shirt to apply what was left of the whiskey, pain be damned, and he could make sure that at least that factor had been taken care of.

There was a whole list of things he could've sorted or tried to rationalise, but his thoughts were taking him nowhere but here. He wasn't bleeding himself— not anymore, anyway, not after he'd discovered a split laced just below his bicep and discovered it to be at least healed over with layers of dried blood— so the only thing he could allow himself to focus on was the fact that Curt was.

He shrugged off his jacket— something that took far more effort than it should've— and tore his shirt at the sleeve, where his own gash had produced a sizable hole in the fabric. The bitter chill hit him immediately, and he winced as the air messed with new wounds just below the cutoff and agitated them further. He'd never been the type bothered by the cold, but there was something about this particular strain of cold that just served to make everything worse about the situation itself. Everything became far more terrifying when things that normally weren't bothersome became noticeable…

Owen clenched the fabric of his shirt in his fist until his knuckles paled. He couldn't lose himself now, not when he had something to do. And Curt still wasn't showing signs of coming around, so he still had time to get on with it, too. In fact, there was no better time. Why was he even hesitating? It was sometimes just part of the job to see one's partner sprawled out on the ground, barely breathing and bleeding from the head. That was totally normal, what was he even getting himself worked up about?

His hands shook as he reached for Curt's jacket, trembling fingers fumbling with the zip and only managing to get it down at all because he landed a grip for all of a second. This particular issue transcended agency. Went far beyond the professional, and deep into the personal. Sure, it may not have been out of the blue to see one's partner in a bad way after a particularly rough mission, but it was a little worse when the other definition of partner— the one supposed to be a separate matter from business altogether— was bleeding out on the ground with no end in sight.

Owen reached for the whiskey in Curt's innermost pocket. He couldn't afford to even think if that was the direction his mind was going to take him… At least that would be easier on the aching in his head.

Removing the cap from the flask was certainly not the easiest of tasks, what with the state of him, but he did manage, and immediately poured the alcohol onto the severed sleeve of his shirt.

He muttered an apology to nobody in particular, and immediately pressed the cold, hastily folded fabric onto the wound only not dripping blood into Curt's eyebrow because of the position he was in. His free hand messed with the cap again before anyone who was around noticed that they were carrying supplies, and he just about managed to screw it back on before his frustration boiled over.

Focus, Owen.

He tucked the flask underneath his jacket for the time being, hoping not to get caught by outside forces, and turned as much of his attention as he could to the repetitive and apparently grounding motion of cleaning the gash on Curt's forehead with his makeshift rubbing alcohol and cloth.

He almost didn’t notice the fact that it wasn’t one continuous streak of blood until it was too late. The blood was running down the side of his face in a continuous, seemingly unbroken line, but that wasn’t quite the case, as Owen realised when he got close enough to the end of the trail.

Because there was also blood running from his ear.

Owen’s eyes widened the second he noticed that, and he swore he heard his breath catch in his throat. That was never good. That was something that had already caused lasting damage, and was going to have it’s effects later on, if Curt— when Curt— eventually woke up. He couldn’t think about this now. He’d appointed himself a job to make this worsening hell a little easier on both of them, and he couldn’t think about the fact that Curt might have just been close enough to the danger to warrant definitive hearing loss.

That scared him. Why was it so hard to kick his brain into action to produce something coherent on what had happened to them? Why did he have to pull it together from scraps left over from the ashes, and blood, and scars that were going to dig deep and leave an impact?

Nothing he did was enough to be able to account for everything wrong with them or their situation, but he felt slightly more at ease knowing that there was something he could do to alleviate a little of the dread settled deep within his chest, one piece at a time. Even if neither of them would ever recover. Even if both of them had to learn to survive in a different way, in a solidarity with one another deeper than it had ever been before.

From now, they were the only people who understood. He was right before. This ran far beyond agency, and anything they could comprehend in their limited scope of vision for their agents— no, their assets.

Who cared if a few of them came back battered from a badly done mission? Who in their right minds would even notice if one of them came back with a haunted vacancy in their eyes that was hard to shake, if it was hard for them to concentrate because of what they’d seen?

Who really cared if the scars started multiplying by the day, until the fresh faced recruit who’d walked in through those doors became nothing more than a shell of their former self, with no trace of the spirit that left them the first time they realised they’d be permanently changed by this repetitive purgatory of abuse with no recognition?

===

Curt awoke to the sound of static. It flooded his ears, pulsing through the space left in his brain. He’d been painfully aware of how little time they had left, but he knew that they hadn’t the time to sort it for themselves. This was what he got for vastly underestimating his own overconfidence and openly jeopardising the both of them. The buzz was a little too much for him, but gave way to certain thoughts before he could even think to make a move to dispel them. On either side of his periphery, there was nothing. Everything in his head was too loud to try and prove that theory otherwise, because he couldn’t hear anything from the outside either, so by all logic, that meant he was alone, at least until proven otherwise.

“... Owen?”

His own voice sounded strange, like no more than an echo through the aether that would never be heard. He was with Owen when all of this happened. He was with him, that much was for sure, so if something had happened to him now, if something had gotten them separated…

He pushed himself up against the wall, and immediately winced in pain as the top of his shoulders made contact and some kind of all too recognisable pain shot down his back. It felt heated, and he knew he’d experienced it before, only to a much, much smaller degree.

Fighting through the pain and his own body rebelling against him, he managed to clear his vision enough to see that, in fact, he wasn’t alone at all. There was someone sitting feet away, watching him with a kind of intent. The shadowy nothing gave way to a familiar— albeit bloody— face, framed with familiar waves of dark hair.

Curt’s relief was palpable.

“Owen!”

There he was. Tense and beaten and shaken in a way that he had never seen on him, but there all the same. Seeing him made all of this a little more bearable, but such a feeling was instantly eradicated when he registered what had happened. The explosion had hit them both. Owen’s low cut shirt was the only thing that made him see how far it had spread, from a point he didn’t want to imagine on his shoulder, to about halfway up his face, stopping in a vicious series of uneven flashes just beyond his cheekbone.

Owen seemed to make an effort to answer. He looked over, his shoulders dropped as soon as he seemed to register the fact that Curt was conscious, and he sighed. That was about where the familiar, comforting presence ended. He went to say something, but through the violent buzz, Curt couldn’t make anything out but the shape of some of the words as they left him.

The only thing he could truly make out was the fact that Owen looked strained, and therefore probably sounded a little different to that which he was used to. He tilted his head, trying for all it was worse to fight off the static and the ringing, even though they insisted on getting more violent. “Huh?”

It was easy for him to read what people were saying. That was all part of the job, honing in on conversations of all kinds from a distance, to make a judgement on whether a situation was viable for infiltration. But when Owen was injured— and he was injured— he tended to talk fast without realising it, and that wasn’t exactly making things easier.

It looked like he tried to repeat whatever it was he said, but Curt was getting nothing but the violent mess going on in his head. Either his thoughts were running too fast and he couldn’t discern one thing from another, or something had gone worse than he thought when…

When he too had fallen from the height of the balcony and left himself and Owen to the depths of the explosion that they’d set up.

He couldn’t hear his own breath permeating the air. He couldn’t hear the sound of Owen's breathing.

He couldn’t hear Owen.

What was going on in his head? Why was it only getting louder with every passing second? He tried to think, but was stopped by the pain running it’s course through his body, through his mind, pounding inside his skull.

One thing of everything else was certain.

“Owen, I can’t- I can’t hear you!”

The next thing that was said was familiar. Curt knew well the way Owen’s face fell as a fresh wave of surprise flooded him, and could just about make out the “what?!” that followed.

He didn’t need the repetition, it was clear enough that he had heard him, but the only thing that Curt’s suddenly stricken mind could think to do was say the same words again. Maybe it would solidify it in his head a little more. Maybe he would come to accept it if he just said it enough times for it to stick.

“I can’t hear you! I-I can’t hear anything!”

Owen shifted then, until he was sitting in front of him, leaning forwards against his knees. It was always him. He knew how to sense the panic that lay deep inside his chest, and he knew how to quell the flames for long enough that he could finally think for himself. If he could get rid of the static too— if that were even possible— then he would owe him more than just his life.

An offering was made. Simple as Owen holding out his hand. Curt knew what his instinct wanted him to do, but his stiff, slow working mind didn’t want to allow it. But, he made an effort, and Owen met him halfway, hand so carefully laced in hand. He took a breath, clearly in the realms of being aware of the pacing of his own speech, and making a conscious effort to try and slow down.

“Curt… Curt, look at me, okay?”

Curt’s eyes met Owen’s for a moment. For all the world had done to him, there was still a stagnant fire left over in those whiskey depths that refused to burn out. He’d always admired him for that.

“Is this alright?”

Curt just nodded, silent and strangely hopeful. Owen wasn’t a miracle worker, he wasn’t going to be able to fix this, but Curt had the slightest suspicion that he’d at least make it a little more bearable.

Owen nodded too, pressing his lips together for all of a moment. “Alright.” He glanced away, as if there was something on the outside, as if the world was bigger than the two of them, but his eyes were back on Curt in a moment. “I… I’m not going to claim to know what happened to us, but you can’t afford to lose yourself now… I’m here, and whatever the hell this is… We can face it together, like we always have.”

“Right…”

Too quiet? Too loud?

Curt never knew how much he’d thoroughly hate not even having a gauge on his own voice. Everything was so violent, and the inside of his mind had never been louder. Maybe it wasn’t static at all… Maybe it was something dragging a sharp instrument directly through the inside of his skull, or a nail being pulled and replaced over and over and over again.

“... Curt?”

Owen looked… Concerned. No. A little more than concerned, actually. For the first time since he’d known him, Owen Carvour looked downright terrified. He had a passionate fear of the unknown, which was why he put everything he had into researching before anything, to make sure he knew as much as he could. He went out of his way to make sure there were no uncertainties, even mid mission, and he was always so careful about it that it was hard to ignore when that hadn’t happened. Curt knew that. He wasn’t sure if anyone else did.

His brow was drawn, and it was obvious that thoughts were running through his mind at a faster rate than he would normally allow for himself. There was something wild in his gaze, and that was worrying Curt enough as it was. He wasn’t going to pretend to have not noticed the fact that his jacket lay discarded on the ground in a hasty crumple, or the fact that he was missing a sleeve, or the fact that said sleeve was covered in blood and laying just beyond their reach.

Clearly, he’d tried to keep himself as busy as possible by ignoring what was going on with himself, and had tried to keep all of his focus on what he could actually see.

“Sorry…”

He wasn’t quite sure what he was apologising for— whether that be the panic beating a heavy drum against his ribcage, or the fact that it was him who had gotten them both into this mess, or the fact that he’d lost focus— but Owen didn’t seem to want to take it, whatever he was trying to make up for.

“You’ve nothing to apologise for, I just- need you to stay with me…”

The world was bigger than the two of them, but it wasn’t like they had any proof for that in the moment. Curt had Owen. Curt had the feeling of his hand as his fingers brushed his knuckles, and the ghost of his voice, and everything he’d done in the last stretch of time to make sure they both pulled through.

Owen didn’t have the memory enough to know what had happened, and that was enough to let the dread settle in and mix with the rising panic that just would not go away. It was only a matter of time before he figured out they were only in this mess because of him, and then what?

Focus, Curt. Stay in the moment.

He forced a breath. Held it. That felt right to him. It did a little in alleviating the pressure, anyway. On the exhale, he gripped Owen’s hand a little tighter, only to have that squeeze returned. “What’s going on?” He asked, having not had an indicator either way so deciding to keep his voice just so.

Owen grimaced. “I don’t know. It’s been too quiet.”

Curt could only imagine the resignation in his tone. His next breath came a little slower, though he could still feel the drum beat in his chest. “Nothing?”

“No. Not yet.”

“What happened there?” He nodded over to the discarded fabric. Owen turned, as if noticing for the first time that his jacket was missing, and then looked beyond it at the bloodied sleeve of his shirt. He reached back far enough to take his jacket, and slipped something metal into his free hand.

“Had to clean you up.” He shrugged, nonchalant, and handed back the flat metal something.

His flask. Empty of the whiskey that had once been in it, but familiar. And he really needed that right about now.

He nodded his thanks and slipped it clumsily into his pocket. It was a comfort to know that it was there in the first place, it gave him an edge more confidence, which sometimes felt like a foothold on the world itself. “What about you?”

“... I finished it.”

“No, I mean—”

“I’m fine. You were bleeding from the head.”

#spies are forever #saf #agent curt mega #owen carvour #tw blood #tw injury #void offering #star mail #nova's tags →#this is brilliant. thoughts were brewing all the way through my mind #i really don't have a lot to say about this au its just... 👌

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