#thats great cause im jsut about o emotionally implode

[agent-kentauris]

d140, 141, 142

now with edits, yay

In my dreams, dull thudding gunshot sounds. Strange, because, the sound was not the right shape. Then I realized I was awake, or that I’d woken myself up, and there were no gunshots at all. I was staring up at the grey fabric of a car…ceiling? The faint rumbly hum of an engine. And then someone was patting my head, and I was falling, and sitting next to an old creek that used to run in the woods behind my house when I was a kid.

“Wake up, Mikey. We’re here.”

Everything hurt. Should’ve listened to Mom about…vegetables, or something. Milk? A yacht sailed by on the stream.

“No, I got him. Take care of the laptop.”

A splash snaked up around the captain’s shoulders and she pointed it at the cloudy sky.

“Yeah, of course try to stall Yancy.”

Someone shook my shoulder.

“Come on, Thorton,” he said, and I looked up at Sean Darcy. The river was gone. I tried to look around for it, but my neck was sore and besides I couldn’t remember what I had been looking for anyway.

“Good morning,” he continued patiently. Smile wide, but eyes quickly scanning me, up and down. Blue stormy grey but if you had to put it in a crayon, maybe? I narrowed my own eyes at him while he reached around me and unbuckled a seatbelt. Suspiciously sturdy arms nudged me closer and closer to the edge of the seat.

“You’re supposed to be made of water,” I told him.

“You’re concussed,” he told me. “Ya gonna help, or not?”

“With?”

“With walkin’, whatdya think?”

“Oh,” I said. “No.”

He looked like he wanted to roll his eyes or something. Jaw tight, eyebrows twitching. The hand securing my shoulder tightening, along with his smile.

“I don’t really want to help, no,” I clarified helpfully.

“You don’t wanna help.”

“You’re doing fine,” I said, with enough stumbling over letters that it occurred to me, I might have something hurt with my head. Concussion, probably.

He let go of my shoulder and I slumped back against the seat. Focused on breathing. Which was tricky. Air had to go in, but also you had to exhale too. My leg felt empty, which was good, because I was mostly certain I’d been shot and that usually hurt.

“You’re a little out of it, aren’t ya?” Sean Darcy said, leaning over the car door with one hand on the top. “Listen – I gotta get you inside, and I’m not carryin’ you, so…what do you want me to do?”

“You’re doing fine,” I said, and when I opened my eyes again, I was laying on the couch, the right side of my pants hacked off above the knee and my lower leg stuck up on a pile of folded towels.

Sean Darcy sat a large, metallic bowl back on the coffee table and looked back over his shoulder.

“Welcome back, Mikey,” he said evenly. “How’re you feelin’?”

“Good-” I started, and then pain remembered I existed and I couldn’t talk over the choking noises coming from my mouth. One hand was tearing at the damp bandage around my leg, the other shoving away Sean’s attempts to push me back flat on the sofa.

“Sorry about this,” he said, and with a swift motion that sent a sharp twinge up my neck, he twisted one of my arms around and pinned it behind my back. My other hand still succeeding at tearing away soaked strips of gauze, each moving piece burning the inside of my leg but I couldn’t stop the impulses traveling up through my wrist, not even after Sean laced his fingers awkwardly across it and yanked it away, bracing my hand against the sofa back. Too much blood in my body, I could feel it pressing on everything, felt like someone was kicking me each time my heart beat. My fingers straining without my permission, his thumb making deep indents on my forearm as he struggled to keep hold. Slowly, though, the shaking started to subside, and I could begin to stand the feeling of pressure against the inside of my skin, and I could stop making mangled collection of random vowels and start breathing more normally.

He was rubbing light, idle circles with his thumb over the sore place he’d been holding on to a second ago, and I think both realized it at the same time. I looked up at him, trying to recall how words worked, and he seemed almost frozen for a second, the remnants of concern and focus still pulling the skin tight over his jawline. The only words I was getting a fix on were ow and goddamn it, so I settled on smiling at him as best I could with little electric shocks still stabbing at my leg.

His eyes danced around, stopping everywhere but at mine.

“Do you want some Percocet?” he said, nodding and sounding uncharacteristically un-smug. “I’m gonna get you some Percocet.”

Then he dropped my arm on my stomach, and stalked out of the room.

I thought about turning on my side and checking to see if the soft noises of his footsteps was because he was in socks, or if it was just because he was light on his feet. But moving my neck sent fireworks through my head. Better to stay put.

I laid back down and watched the wicker ceiling fan spin lazily. And when that quickly sent me grabbing the edge of the sofa to stop the world from spinning around, I closed my eyes and worked on forcing the needling pain to the back of my mind.