#ruginite

@ruginite​

There’s a thing that you don’t get used too when you’re him. Have done what you’ve done, and are more literally than metaphorically paying for it for the rest of the foreseeable future. And that thing is being apologized too. At least more so than in passing. More so than an accidental shoulder check in the street, or when his coffee or food order took a little too long. Or when his mother is so deep in her meditations she doesn’t hear him ask her if she knows where his shirt is. Or his father accidentally startles the piss out of him because Bastian hadn’t heard him come in the side door of the garage.

So when Beth repeats her sentiment…there’s a second or two of deer in the head lights staring. That thousand yard look on his face, because his brain is lagging, and that higher IQ of his just can’t compute at the speed it’s used too. So for a minute, while he settles in the passenger seat he looks a bit dumb. Because he really can’t figure out what the hell she’s apologizing for. She came and rescued him apparently–and he’s pretty sure him being knocked stupid (almost literally) on the side of the road hadn’t been Apples fault.

          “F’what?”

         Hol’still.

For about a solid fifty-six seconds there’s no real difference between Bastian Barton and one of those Japanese animated characters that just saw the person of their dreams. All stunned and near stars for eyes. And while the idea is commical, the way his face translates it is anything but. Caught up in green, and the silk sensation of her fingers. He can’t be sure he’s even breathing but that’s become oddly (or maybe not so oddly) unimportant. Lost somewhere in between the person that Beth is and what’s happening.

And what’s happening is…it feels like coffee after a few hours of out in the snow. That first sip that weaves its way down into his insides. That spreads out into veins. Followed by another and another until every aspect of him is warm again. Has forgotten what the numbing cold and the snow felt like in his skin and bones. And maybe it does take him a second to realize that the haze is quite literally burning off. Evaporating in the wake of whatever it is, that Beth’s doing. Because she’s got to be doing something right? The dawning revelation that she’s something more than she seems; and that, that is somehow a secret. A secret (that though she hasn’t asked) he’s going to keep.

     Dis. Le’me know….clear-head. Need two sets eyes…can’t search an’ drive….at once.  

He lets it linger though doesn’t he? Misses that point of clarity. Rushes right by it at a snails pace and doesn’t even notice. At least not until the warmth has stopped spreading because there’s nothing left for it to dispose of. And a hand is coming up, moving as though it were going to dare reach out and touch her in like kind but—common damn sense slaps him in the back of the head. That hand shifting its path to rest instead on her own. A squeeze given to it, though he doesn’t pull it away. And maybe though he’s very well balanced on his senses now, his voice is still a little husky. A little shy. Something that settles in his ears in so many light shades of red.

       “M’good.”

           “Thanks, Apps.”

It's not something she's used to. Doesn't have the experience or the control to be subtle, to finesse it so that it's more about the magick and less about herself. She unfolds layer by layer blooming like roses that she hates, opening herself up to him until the connection is as raw as a flayed wound. There's more of herself in that single touch than in a thousand screen kisses, and she's never been more vulnerable before. The ghost of hurt haunts her, looming out in the darkness beyond the glass of the car's side window, and she doesn't know if it's what's been or what's yet to come, but she feels it just the same.

It's pins and needles and limbs waking from long slumber; it's snowflakes on a tongue still warm from the inside where it belonged. It's chains she'll never be free of because of some twist of fate; she'll bleed herself dry some day and still look to see what else she can sacrifice. She can do no less than that in this moment. But what she sees is blankness and it comes crashing down on her with a mountain of regret that she almost thinks would make a fitting end. He hadn't asked for this, and she shouldn't have intruded.

She makes excuses because ‘it’s the right thing to do’, because ‘he’s hurt and your gift is to heal’. It has nothing to do with that, though. She stays away from the truth of the matter which is she wants to, has wanted to for a while now. Deprivation though has been something she’s aimed for, made a goal because it’s weird, Beth. No one likes it when you do it. Not so much using her power, but to touch. It’s a need that has become painful, that lays just under the surface, that she tries to ignore. And the silence is killing her by slow degrees, the look in his eyes that she can’t interpret.

It spooks her when he finally seems to remember he’s alive, when breath staggers drunkenly into his chest and expands his lungs. She can feel that too and exhales a soft sigh in the wake, not out of any sense of relief but rather that she hasn’t done any harm with her impulsiveness,

She wants to pull her hand away, no worse for the wear outwardly; but inside she's a sea tempest, voices ~all of which are her own~ hounding her, asking her what exactly she thought she was doing, why now, this moment, when so many other chances had passed her by. So when his hand comes up she thinks he's going to push. To pry her fingers off his skin and hurl accusations. When he doesn't she finds herself on the edge of tears. She blinks them back and forces her eyes to find some other focal point, beyond the windshield, and in the night. She stumbles over the right words to say, how to express everything she’s overwhelmed with in the moment, but it all falls flat in the small space between them.

"I'm sorry...I no mean..."

But he thanks her just the same and she doesn’t know what to do with that. So she doesn’t do anything at all. Her fingers flex beneath the warm weight of his own and with the tables turned, tries to find some place to hide, to run away because she can’t really stand the awkwardness she feels, the way her heart is hammering too loudly in her own ears, throbbing at the pulse points in her throat, her wrists, elsewhere.

“Are you...” we “...good? Like for reals, or jus’ sayin’ dat?” The question is barely a breath, a reiteration of what he’s just said because she needs the reassurance, needs just a little more though for the life of her she isn’t sure what that is. She was never good at this kind of thing, and until recently, had something larger and stronger than herself to run interference, to make the world make sense. Now, she only has her own judgement to rely on.

There’s that little shark grin of hers, the kind that lights up her whole face, brings out the dimples rarely seen, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes, doesn’t quite make her nose scrunch when she’s not paying attention. No, the smile swimming at him through the shallows is completely self-conscious. She weilds the wooden spoon like a dagger, the pot lid a pointless buckler. She wouldn’t win any trophies for posture as she gestures toward the newest addition to her almost immaculate ~and rarely used~ kitchen. It’s a mason jar with a hole in the lid that looks nonplussed by the situation, merely waits. The instructions, written in purple ink that glitters like crushed stars tell him ‘Swear Words are Bad’. She’s drawn little wildflowers and clinging tendrils of ivy for a border.

She doesn’t believe he’s dying, even if he maybe wants to. “Andy.” Bats her eyelashes like sunrise.

Turns her back, goes back to putting utensils in the dishwasher, but not before she steals a piece of orange chicken from the container with her fingers. Scrapes the sweet-spicy-sticky sauce off her thumb with those same teeth.

“He’s righ’ ya know. Was talkin’ wi’ ya maddah an’ she tole me...it all started wi’ holdin’ Barney’s hand. I t’ought it was sweet. An’ t’ink. If dat no happened, dat one hand hold...you no would be here on a Friday night fixin’ my dishwasha...an’ eatin’ Chinese take a’way.”

She looks back a minute, and this time there’s a furrow in her brow. “Ya t’ink is li’dat for every one?”

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@lilxlionxman {continued from XX, Part the First}

She knew he hadn’t wanted anyone to know he was there. Anyone was one person, was her. The shock of his resonance sends her reeling and it’s all she can do to slam up every false dawn she can find inside of her. Weaves together all the gifts she’d once held in abundance into a patchwork whole that will fool his eyes if she’s careful enough, if she can keep her voice from cracking.

The breath he heaves into the air is heavy and she can see he buckles under it slightly, gaze shifting away from her as it had before, down and down until he has no where else to go, before he’s reached bottom. Hand through his hair a gesture of nerves. Even after time has crumbled to dust, she can read him like a favourite book; the ink on pages are faded and broken in places but she knows the story by heart. She wishes she didn’t. Because it wouldn’t hurt to see it come off the page to stand before her wearing its cloak of guilt.

And if she uses illusion as a quiet lie, he doesn’t bother. She idly wonders what grave he pulled himself out of. The lines around his mouth are etched deeper than she’s ever seen, he wears a gaunt pallor like a shroud. Years and worry and emptiness have altered the very shape of him and when she looks past the pain his presence brings screaming to life, she can see he’s every bit as much a hollowed out husk as she is. Her heart bleeds for him as it always has, and she knows if he could have tasted it, he’d reject it, as he always has. The gravity holds him in place when his body urges him otherwise. She can almost hear the desire he has to run echoing in the places she thought were empty but he stays. She doesn’t know why. Another unsteady breath she can’t tell it it’s his or hers but already he’s shutting the doors and windows into his psyche. Drawing on a coat of reserve. Beth swallows the cruelty of it  and catches her lip between her teeth. Braces herself for the sound of low thunder through thickets and wheat-fields that his voice has always been.

They come in bits and pieces, those words. He tries to pull together something to say but the thoughts slip through his fingers like dandelion fluff blown into the wind.

“Ya no have to. Ya never did.” There’s no warmth in the shape of her response. Bereft of substance, bones laid bared and bleached under too harsh a sky. Andy was the one who needed words. Who needed thoughts. Andy was the one who pushed and demanded. And inside her where her stomach had been there’s a kind of bitter laugh that never claws its way up her throat. Even now, even still, it’s her brother he talks to though she’s right in front of him.

"So. Le’me save ya da trouble. Andy an’ Seren are doin’ well, but I’m sure ya been dere and seen ‘em. She’s pregnant again and radiant as evah, an’ da most sought aftah para-legal in da state. She may be t’inkin’ ah goin’ for law school. He was promoted for Captain, an’ rumour has it...he’ll make chief by da end of next yeah, mebbe one aftah. Noah an’ da twins are gettin’ on fabulously. Dey buyin’ a new house too.” She doesn’t mean to be cruel, flaunting all the things he had hoped for so easily given to someone else. Ironic, really. She looks down and away, hair falling into her face and her fingers twist in the hem of her shirt. 

“Jay...spends mos’ of her time in Seattle dese days, keeps da shop open though. She eventually made peace wi’ Harvey. Is engaged for Theo now. I t’ink dey are plannin’ a summer weddin’ aroun’ da three days it no rains in Washington. If ya leave a’ address, she’ll send ya an invitation.”

She says nothing about herself. There’s nothing to say. Nothing he needs to know, because none of it’s his problem. It never was before, wasn’t now.  She lifts a hand and cups it, brushing the back of it somewhere between her lips and nose and cheek, where wetness burned.

He says he’s sorry. She can almost believe he means it. Tries to pretend it’s enough. But like her, it isn’t. Maybe it never was. So she says, “I know.”

@lilxlionxman​ {continued from XX, Part the Second}

She’d been waiting on the porch, because of course she had been. Rifle cradled in her arms like it was the night they had met, like it was just before he’d left. That first wild gambol across the sigils, themselves old and faded but still very much rooted to their purpose, through hedge and mist and spiderweb, through low pickets of branches, had alerted her. The rest that passed the warning signs haphazardly affixed to fence posts bent with age and sharing sagging wire, she’d known. Could feel each heavy step as familiar to her as the herbs in her garden, she could call him by name.

He’d lied to her. He’d sworn up a storm, figuratively, that he’d not be back. He’d bared his teeth and she’d snarled right back, because she’d still been licking her wounds before he’d opened new ones. He’d hurt her because that’s what hunters did. They lied and they wounded and they killed with disregard to anything but their own desires and needs. But unlike Andy, at least he hadn’t made promises.

She lifts her little chin, her soft cupid’s-bow mouth drawn into a grim and imperious a line, stares at him from the small vantage the drooping porch gives her. Hurts and fears dance like fireflies in her eyes. But the barrel wavers.  He leeches into her veins, a bright and burning poison. He’s tattered and frayed at the edges, shadowed with grief beyond years. There’s a shadow on him, sure as the mountain’s broad back creates a perpetual twilight in her hollow, never fully day. The weathered wood beneath her bare feet reaches to keep her there rooted in common sense. The breeze whispers that she should just shoot him for trespassing and be done with it.

But the ache in her bones makes just as cunning an argument. Preaches peace. The mercy and forgiveness of the Son. The barrel lowers further still, less of a threat when she remembers how to breath and it comes as a soft gasp. And that’s when she tastes it. For the first time. The darkness that’s bit deep into him, and all of his come-hell-or-high-water. That thick bravado worn by a straw man in the face of torches.

She hates her own weakness as she feels herself caving inch by inch. She hates the little huff that seeps from her mouth as for a moment she closes her eyes. Apples. Only he calls her that, and she’s never known why. When he takes a step forward, she doesn’t take one back. She’s seen a picture once, of the gesture he’s making with his hand. She is neither Adam nor the Almighty, can’t bring herself to reach out, take the offered skin. What she does do, though, is she slings the rifle over her shoulder. Removes the threat if only for the moment. Lets the sting of his tone winnow into her.

“Boy, you jus’ dumber'n a coal bucket, ain’ ya?

The words are weary, but relieved, don’t politely ask for a reply.  She lifts a hand to her hair and runs them through, tucking stray wisps away from her face as she collapses into something that isn’t as inviting as he hoped, but maybe was more promising than a door slammed in his face. The swish of her skirt is the only other sound as she turns and deliberately paces her way to the leaning doorframe. She’s almost inside before she pauses on the threshold, small fingers grasping the wood. Eons are born and stars die in the silence of another pause.  Still, she turns her head, and looks at him with expectation. 

“Well, ya cummin’ or no?”

@lilxlionxman

Most nights or mornings, despite what many thought, Natasha found herself sitting down in the club, watching Baz detail the bar. He was a meticulous creature and she appreciated his craft that effort of dedication even if she had told him time and time again it wasn’t necessary to go to such lengths, that his job was secure for as long as he wanted it. But he always insisted otherwise.

And granted sometimes the lot of them didn’t make his job easy. Things were often pilfered and or moved around, sometimes to torment and playfully tease the bar manager and other times just because it was needed and its original location forgotten when one was done with it.

It had been a solid evening, enough that everyone had been pretty beat after the doors had shut and the floor cleared and dealt with. Nat hadn’t worried about a cleaning crew, she had one and it gave them some extra hours on the clock for more cash to make sure they all had what they needed. Tony didn’t mind it, in a way it saved him too even though that wasn’t necessary.

Her night cap at the moment was not a usual for her in any sense, sometimes she craved something sweet and absolutely benign. A strawberry daiquiri, extra on the strawberries and a straw from which she drank, it feet bare and legs crossed and hair down while sharp green eyes watched every move the man made.

He looked good doing what he did and once upon a time she had entertained him as she did others, but after a time or two it just… didn’t jive. He was a friend. He was uncomplicated as fuck and she was perfectly fine keeping it that way. And now he had interests anyways.

“You can ask him out you know, I share. He isn’t mine…”

Though she realized he could be, some of them could. She could settled with one or two, a bit more. They all got a long, they all liked one another for the most part, though some well… sharing wasn’t exactly their thing.

@lilxlionxman

She had promised and if there was one constant about Natasha Romanoff it was she didn’t ever, never go back on a promise.

And she had nothing to do today.

The latter morning found her going down to the garage, the smell oil, gasoline and rubber greeting her. She didn’t mind them, in some ways they were oddly comforting smells.

She was clad comfortably, civilian casual of jeans, a plain shirt and boots. No jacket, it was too warm of a day. Really she wasn’t a fan of summer, especially in places it was humid. Upstate New York was terribly so and so her hair’s natural curl was practically unavoidable. But she did manage to tame it into smooth waves for the day at least.

“Baz?”

She called out in a careful volume not wanting anyone to be startled, which was why she also made her presence known. She could be and was quiet as a mouse, came with being a spy.

She wandered around, looking at this and that while she called his name a second time.

It had been a couple of weeks since their little moment of being test subjects for Tony Stark. She had gotten busy with Avengers and personal things, and she did feel a little bad for having not got around to this sooner or at least popping in to say hi and see how his arm was.

“Bastian Barton?”