“ — You look like a man who’s realized that too little too late, and you’ve waded too deep into the water. ” Henry doesn’t smoke, but his fingers still twitch when he sees the cigarette. His ticks are not for public eyes, no break in the facade unless he makes it known. No rust in the metal. 

“ — If it gives you consolation, that was a branch that I was able to drag myself from the current.”  Henry Camden, for all his faults and mental illness, could spot a man drowning. 

          “ make you a deal,  i’ll go  EASY  the second you sit down on that damn couch and take a load off.  you’re supposed to be  recuperating,  remember  ? ? ”  so his  bedside manner  could use some work  ;;  he means well.  if nothing else,  he owes james for all the times he’s put lincoln’s  humpty dumpty  ass back together again. 

          either way,  he’s not letting go until james plays nice. 

          “ c’mon,  hobbles  ⸻  double-time it.  er,  whatever  time  you can manage,  i guess. ”  he’s gentle,  but firm enough to hopefully convey the  LACK  of room for negotiation here.  lincoln has next to zero medical experience,  but he knows the man needs rest to  heal.  “ time for the mother hen to get  henned. ”

@captainrevisited

meme

Rod likes drinking, and not being alone, and getting his boots all over James’ furniture. He doesn’t like these weird moments of half-honesty and odd connection nearly as much.

It’s– hard, to hate someone all the time, though. Hard to hate someone even most of the time, when you spend more than a little of that time with them. He gets tired, and the room gets warm, and hate blurs into dislike, and that into a sort of almost congenial animosity that lets him listen to James and not want to punch him in his weasel face.

( the point has been raised that they have similar faces. the point has been ignored )

“I have a muscle car. You can come with me sometime.” The insult that comes hot on its heels is automatic, but if his tone sways a little more towards joking than mocking, well-- drunk men don’t make reliable witnesses anyway.

For a man who can barely hear his own feet when they carry him, he has a light step. It’s why the good doctor looks so startled when he appears. It’s true what they say about the senses; when one fails the others grow stronger. Blood is a tangent thing on the air, copper, and heat. It begs to be seen, bright and scarlet on the man’s hands, spilled open across another’s chest.

He’s no psychic, but he sees the question coming before it comes to life in the air. The hearing aid is turned down to filter out the potential gunshots, but he can see it on the man’s mouth. His own quirks.

“ — I have no problem with you. ” But it’s a warning, a threat. Don’t make yourself one. Allegiances are never so strong that they are worth the ideas some people get into their heads. No honor amoung thieves. To pick a fight with every single man in this line of work would draw him too far off course, his own moral compass wasn’t so true to erase the fact that it pointed left of center and for more selfish, personal endeavours.

Fatigue hangs between them like wet clothes on the line, who isn’t tired these days? He’s not here for solidarity. He’s here for work. There’s an angry exchange of words in Russian between Mercy and the fumbling patient who can only provide fragments of words. The gun is tucked away and scaple drawn across the man’s windpipe when he realizes nothing more will come. 

I regret nothing

9. Your muse wraps their hands tightly around my muses neck

@captainrevisited

Rod talks a lot of shit. Someone’s going to successfully kill him for that, one day. (he’d say try to kill him, but they did, they have, he’s still here, haha). He’s been sitting here for a while, watching James stalk around and keeping up his usual color commentary.

The inevitable happens in three three short strides, somewhere just past the half hour mark. He’s talking and then he isn’t, because there’s a pair of hands bracketed around his neck.

It’s uncomfortable, but James isn’t applying enough pressure to be dangerous yet (hasn’t decided if he wants to have to deal with the body, probably, haha). Look, Rod doesn’t like James. Look, Rod does like a particular sort of thing. The shorter man puts his hands on his throat and Rod stalls out with a mild expression and a faintly curious tone in the back of his throat. 

He’s got a tattoo there, you know, geometric roses done in blacklight ink and then tucked under a layer of concealer. When James shifts his grip slightly he wonders if he can feel the raised lines it left on him. It wouldn’t, shouldn’t matter, and it doesn’t, but it takes time for even that much thought to percolate out.