@selfdstruct said: [ WRAP ]: when sitting astride a horse/motorcycle/etc. together, the sender reaches back, takes the receiverâs wrists, and gently pulls their arms around the senderâs waist in an embrace designed to keep the receiver safe, despite feeling remarkably intimate.
It's not shyness that stays her hand, but caution. She knows better by now than to trust in anyone's good nature, and she doesn't know him, not well enough to imagine that he'd be an exception to the rule. But needs must and when he tells her to get on so they can go, she doesn't argue. She has always been willing to do what it takes to survive.
"Hell of a welcome to town." Not to sound ungrateful or anything, mind you; she's always pleased to make it out of a fucking mess in one piece. Astoria'sâAstrid's, Christ, she's still not used to using a new nameâhands settle on Dean's shoulders as she mounts the bike behind him, though they fall uselessly to rest on her thighs once she's on. "So, uhâwhere exactly are we going?"
She'd guess not to the cheap motel she's been staying in the past few days, trying to lay low after a few too many close calls at rest stops and gas stations. She starts in surprise when she feels hands collect her wrists to wrap around his waist; she has to press closer to him, flush against his back, to sit at all comfortably, and she tries not to think about the intimacy of her new hold on him as the bike roars to life beneath them. She had, in the few hours she'd given herself to get the necessities together and lead a trail pointing anywhere besides where she was going, anticipated the practical risks, but not this one: that she hardly remembers touch that isn't intended to hurt, consumed as she is by the ghosts haunting her.
He shouts an answer she doesn't hear. She doesn't ask him to repeat it. The epitome of wrong place, wrong time: Astrid on foot, walking from the motel a few miles down the road to a gas station in the hopes of getting something resembling fresh air, and Dean, popping in to pick something up. Polite, even friendly banter, and then gunfire and blood as the man behind the counter took a bullet to his shoulder and the man behind the gun aimed wildly for Dean.
She had ducked and hidden, because it really wasn't any of her business, but security cameras exist, and the last thing she needs is cops anywhere aware of her faceâwhich meant the gun aimed at her when she made her way behind the counter to destroy the tape (who still used tapes? Actual, literal VHS tapes? What is Kansas?) that led to her getting grazed, and Dean hitting the guy in the back of the head with a bottle of beer, and the fuck was she supposed to do from there? How many heavily tattooed redheads are rolling into town? Even without the tape it'll get her on someone's radar, andâ
âand now she's here, clinging to a practical stranger, ignoring the blood on her arm and the pain shooting up her shoulder, because it's got to be better than doing nothing, right?
