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Where do you go

It usually happens without comment or even acknowledgement, and maybe she'd think he slept through it if she didn't know better. It's the maintenance of a polite fiction. And tonight is the same, at first: he's still and silent when she stirs, as she sits up, but when she moves as if to leave the bed his hand, in a snakestrike movement, closes around her arm.

He says nothing but he watches her, wide awake, a challenge in the drawn line of his brow and the tension in his jaw.

Fancy Meeting You Here

It was, appropriately enough, America's own words painted across the inside of his eyelids when he was casually asked if he could fill in for a Sahara supply drop, one half of the usual team indisposed with a case of Tried-the-Lab-Coffee-After-Pissing-Off-the-Infirmary. Ten minutes. That's how long it took.

This happens all the time. This is the definition of routine. You have to go back some time. You can't avoid this forever. All very good rationalizations anywhere but the echo chamber of his own head, but all of them a little less vital when he reported to the portal and found a very familiar mission partner waiting for him. It was better and it was worse.

"Well," he said, around an agitated drag of his cigarette. "You piss off any ex-suitors or is this just a hell of a coincidence?"

Bare Necessities

She might have beat him to the room, too, had he not been working outside on something that could not be done in the wet and so come bolting in from the rain himself, shaking himself off near the doors like a dog.

It was inevitable, every time he saw her across a room, that he'd experience a little split second of mood-buoying. Confetti to see her name across an unread text message. The sight of her hair, dark with rain, reminding him strongly of one of his earliest strong memories of her and weaving through a crowd--

In this case the fleeting giddiness was even more fleeting than usual. He caught up to her, yanking her ungently to the side of the hallway and stripping off his soaking coat before realizing that even Fiona, who was decidedly less physically gifted than America, had not been able to close the thing. He stripped off the damp sweater underneath and shoved it at her instead, and Taym being Taym that meant he was still wearing two layers. How thoughtful of him to wear enough clothes for both of them.

"What the ******** are you wearing?" he hissed. "Or more to the point what aren't you wearing?"

Fancy Meeting You Here

Seeing Taym enter, America's eyebrows shot up. She was heading into a rougher zone this week by her own request. Of course they were sending a partner, of course there were but...

"I do this every week," she began slowly, but then shrugged off the oddness, deciding she'd rather he was with her than some other a*****e who didn't know the situation. Just about done with the inventory, she returned her attention to the checklist.

"Did you piss off an ex?" And at this she gave him a squint-eyed gaze, ready to judge any such lady and find her awful and lacking like any good girlfriend.

Where do you go

She tugs, hard but not fighting hard, testing that insistent grip with a set look. "Then I'll try to come back sooner," the girl reasons through gritted teeth, patience running out, her body all tense, shifting muscles.

Bare Necessities

"No. No it ********' isn't. Put the shirt on," he demanded, with a rough touch of his hand on his shoulder that suggested she continue facing the wall to do so. It stuck in his craw but he added "please" like he was saying "right ******** now."

Fancy Meeting You Here

"Naw," she gave a soft huff of laughter. "I volunteer. Like to keep an eye out, just in case I see that thing out there."

List finished, she tested each sand sledge to make sure everything was secured on it, then picked up the handle on side of the first. "Okay, we've got five drops today. Section B." She grinned, "Been a lot of fires there lately."

Where Do You Go

"It's not like that," she snapped, "it's not about you and it's not a thing for talking. Can I just have thirty ******** minutes to get my head straight, Taym? Can I have half a ******** hour to breath a little? Jesus wept, god ******** forbid I disrupt your ******** sleep." Her voice was all bitter rage and hissing resentment.