Potts keeps ending up with Stevens’ dog tags.
It starts with Stevens in civvies, getting ready to go surveil a target in a nearby bar. He realizes he still has his tags around his neck, and that’s no good for an undercover op.
He takes them off and hands them to Potts, who will be monitoring from the surveillance van.
“Look after these for me, will you, Potts?”
Potts grumbles, “What am I, your mother?” but he takes them and keeps them safe anyway.
It somehow becomes a habit.
Whenever Stevens is going undercover and Potts isn’t coming with him, he gives him his tags before he leaves.
It comforting, in a strange way. Stevens might be miles from home and in an unfamiliar place, pretending to be someone he’s not among dangerous people, but he knows a little piece of his real self is safe with Potts.
When he gets back from his missions, Potts will drop the dog tags into his hand and make a dismissive comment and they both pretend it’s no big deal.
But occasionally, Stevens will close his hand around Potts’ for just a moment, and Potts will look at him with a weight that says far more than words.
Eventually it goes bad, like it always does. Stevens’ cover gets blown while he’s infiltrating a mafia operation in Chicago and he gets beaten to hell and tossed in a cell in a dank warehouse in the South Side.
His captors lack the skills for the more sadistic forms of interrogation, but they make up for it with an enthusiasm for petty violence. It’s not the worst confinement he’s endured, but it’s not an experience he’s keen to repeat.
Fortunately for him they aren’t much better at guard duty than they are at interrogation, and after a few days he manages to get hold of a pen. It doesn’t take long for him to use it to pick the lock on his handcuffs, jimmy open the door to the cage they’ve been keeping him in, and make his escape.
The mafiosos took his radio equipment and he doesn’t want to risk contacting SHIELD on an open line so it takes him another two days to make it back to Camp Lehigh.
When he walks through the gate he heads straight to the research lab, hoping to catch Potts before he inevitably gets hauled off to the med bay. He’s got an ugly black eye and he’s pretty sure his jaw is fractured, and several agents he passes on the way express alarm at his condition.
Still, for now at least, he pushes open the door to the lab and just breathes, taking in the low buzzing of the fabrication machines and the smell of motor oil and savoring the feeling of being home.
And then he catches sight of Potts, slumped over a workbench. His eyes are bloodshot and he looks like he’s been crying. He looks, frankly, a total mess.
Stevens’ heart aches with how good it is to see him.
Potts looks up and takes him in, and Stevens sees joy, worry, anger, and guilt all pass over his face in the span of a few seconds. Eventually his expression settles on an unconvincing attempt at casual indifference.
“You made it home in more or less one piece, I see,” Potts says, and he’s trying for aloof but his voice is shaky.
Stevens walks over and puts a hand on Potts’ shoulder. Potts lets out a tiny sob of relief before visibly pulling himself together.
“I suppose you’ll be wanting these back?”
He uncurls his fist to reveal Stevens’ dog tags, which he’s been holding into so tightly they’ve carved lines into the skin of his hands.
Stevens hesitates, then gently closes Potts’ hand back up and covers it with his own.
“Why don’t you keep those for me?”
Potts sniffs and squints at him. Stevens knows he can’t bear anything that seems like pity.
“I’ll only lose them,” Stevens continues. “You’d be doing me a favor.”
Potts considers that and eventually nods. He pushes up his glasses, wipes his eyes with the cuff of his lab coat, and puts the tags around his neck.
The tags sit on Potts’ shirt, next to his heart. It seems right somehow.
He places a hand on Potts’ chest and feels his heart beating. Stevens smiles for the first time in a week.
“I had to make it home,” Stevens says quietly. “My heart’s here.”
dailybridgerton
gummygunk
origamiaround
2087
