Sebastian | Oliver (trickarrow) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-07-11 20:17:00 |
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Entry tags: | black widow, hawkeye |
Who: Shailee and Callum, part 2
What: Routine missions come apart at the seams
Where: Sarmiento, Argentina
When: This past weekend. Timelines are fuzzy.
Warnings/Rating: Some minor violence, nothing serious
Night came, but the house stayed warm and lit through the fire which Callum continuously stoked. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t settle his thoughts, even though his body wanted to simply lay down and just forget. Instead, Callum settled on the couch with Shailee’s head in his lap, keeping a quiet vigil until consciousness was once again her friend. She needed him, and hell if he’d fail her then.
Consciousness came slower than the blackness had, seeping through her dreamless sleep. First came the sounds - the crackling fire, the fierce wind that slammed into the windows and made the walls rattle, the gentle breathing from somewhere above her. Then came the touch - the large bandage holding her side together, the warmth of the fire on the rest of her bare stomach, the slight give of a thigh pillowing her head, and the pain. The excruciating, spine-contorting pain that had set fire to half her body. She moaned under the pain as the full force of the pain crashed into her consciousness, too exhausted by the ordeal she had slept through to do much else. “Jesus fuck.” Curling her elbows under her, Shailee tried to push herself into a sitting position.
“Don’t,” Callum warned her as soon as she started to shift to sit, a warm hand coming to rest against her shoulder, gently easing her back down to where she had been laying before. “If you need something, ask, but I don’t want you up and about right now.” His voice was tired in ways that Shailee had likely never heard it before, and the tiredness leant itself to a softness as well. “I had to stitch your side back together, and I don’t want them breaking when you try to get up. It was hard enough the first time to do it let alone doing it again. So please.” Callum shifted slightly so that he could meet her eyes. “Please lay back down, Shailee.”
Shailee did what he asked and laid back down, but she didn’t know if it was because of the tone of his voice, the way he was looking at her, or the fact that he had just called her Shailee instead of Thakkar. “I feel like I got steamrolled by a tank,” she finally said, by way of conversation-starter. “You stitched me up? I... I can’t imagine you with a needle and thread.” The imagine made her laugh, which turned quickly into a cough and a clutch at her side. “Ow. Remind me not to laugh. Or breathe.” She looked at the upside down face that hung over hers, and noticed the tired set of his eyes, and the utter exhaustion that emanated from his every pore. “How long did everything take? Did you sleep at all?” She reached a hand up to push his hair away from his face without thinking, and found herself momentarily distracted by how soft the light strands actually were. “You look exhausted, Westerberg.”
“Don’t laugh or I won’t do it again,” Callum warned her, but there was no venom in his words, just a simple tiredness that he couldn’t shake. “So just stay still. You’ll feel better and I’ll stop worrying you’re going to bleed out on me.” He was quiet until she had settled back down, her fingers no longer clutching so desperately at her side, and his gaze was hawk-sharp on those white bandages, waiting for any tell-tale blossom of red that would spell the worst. When the attention was brought towards him, Callum gave a shake of his head. “I don’t remember how long. Few hours. It’s getting on towards morning, I think, by the look of the sky outside. And no, I haven’t slept. Not yet.” The touch to his hair made his eyes widen in surprise, the expression lasting only a moment before it settled once more and he pressed the outside of one hand against her forehead. “Are you sure you’re not running a fever, Thakkar?”
“Hmm?” Shailee blinked slowly at him, unable to comprehend what he was saying. “I don’t think so? Do you think I’m infected? I feel a lot of shit, but I don’t think I’m burning up.” Her eyes narrowed at him, a fraction of her usual sternness seeping in. “You need to sleep, Westerberg. You’ve been keeping me alive all night, and I’m still here. Get some sleep. I promise I’ll still be here when you wake up.” She was too immobilized to go anywhere on her own, and in too much pain to consider dying a plausible option. No, all Shailee Thakkar would be doing was staying still, stifling moans of pain, and trying not to freeze her ass off in the blizzard that was now in full swing.
“I’m not leaving you in here on your own,” Callum said, and his words left little room for argument as he drew his hand away from her forehead, giving her a roll of his eyes. “I’m fine right here. Just rest. Stop bitching. Let me do what I feel I need to, okay? You fucking scared me, Thakkar, so cut me some slack on what you want.”
The bluntness in his voice struck home, and the realization of just how afraid he must have been made her breath hitch in her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly, looking directly at him, “but on the plus side I kept you awake through your concussion?” An idea came to her, one that was probably crazy, but perhaps the only answer to their conundrum. “Listen, you need to sleep, and I can’t go anywhere. If you can help me up, we can move to the bedroom, and you can stretch out.” Shailee couldn’t believe she was actually suggesting sharing a bed with an asset, but under the circumstances, it wasn’t as though anything could actually go amiss.
Callum didn’t say anything for a long while, his gaze slightly narrowed through the exhaustion that plagued him, but eventually, he nodded his assent, brushing his fingers through her hair in a gesture that was wrought more with concern than affection. “Let me get a fire started in the other room. You stay here,” Callum instructed her softly, and he didn’t meet her gaze then, something within him withdrawing, shutting down, a sign of how tired he really was. He slipped out from beneath her carefully, replacing his lap with a wadded up coat, moving away stiffly to gather some of the wood he had brought inside and taking it into the bedroom to start the fireplace up.
Shailee watched him move quietly through the rooms, taking note of every soft word, every kind gesture. The man who had spent the night keeping her alive wasn’t a man she had met before, despite the myriad of facades she had seen in the time she had known him. She didn’t quite know what to think about it, and any attempt to analyze how she felt about it left her with a headache angry enough to make the holes in her side look like paper cuts. This was something she needed to think through when she was in full health, and had no less than three drinks in her. For now, she would focus on ignoring the pain and making sure Callum’s concussion had no lasting impact.
By the time the fire was crackling in the small bedroom, Callum was moving on autopilot. Over 36 hours since he had last slept, and a concussion on top of it, it was surprising he was moving at all, but he did. Making his way back to the couch, he gave Shailee a long look as she lay there on the cushions before making some silent decision of his own. Crouching, he gently worked an arm beneath her knees, another under her shoulders, and ignoring any protests she might have made, he lifted her up and into his arms, stilling for a moment as he waited for his balance to catch up with him, and then he carried her with stoic silence towards the bedroom.
The bedroom was dark, the curtains pulled against the brightness of the blizzard outside the window now that day had dawned, the fire crackling in the fireplace, warming the room through. The covers were already pulled back, and even though they were dusty, smelling faintly of must and closed up rooms, they were warm, something against the elements. The blizzard continued to war outside, the snow falling heavily, but it was ignored as Callum lowered Shailee to the mattress with surprising gentleness, though the tremor in his limbs was harder to ignore.
Shailee did in fact protest as Callum scooped her up, but she knew the words were futile before they even left her mouth. She forced herself to relax in his arms as he carried her into the bedroom, trying to make the transition as easy for him as she could. The tremor in his hands didn’t go unnoticed, and Shailee caught his hand before he could move away. “You. Bed. Now.” She hesitated for a moment, swallowing hard through a brief internal debate. “But first is there something else in the closet I could wear? I don’t want to get blood on the sheets.”
Callum looked down at their joined hands for a long moment, as though they were some alien thing, his thoughts moving sluggishly as he tried to power through the minutes until sleep. Now that he was fairly assured that Shailee was fine, would not die, the adrenaline had eased and he found himself dragging. “I’ll take a look,” he said quietly, giving her fingers a squeeze as he crossed the room to the closet, pulling the doors open and peering through the motley collection of items that had been left there by other agents and, presumably, the agency itself. He found a t-shirt, probably a little large on her, but it was better than the other things he found, so it was that which he returned with, offering out to her before he moved around to the other side of the bed to crawl in. Thoughts on whether or not she could get out of her clothing right then were so far beyond him, but if asked, he would help.
Shailee took the t-shirt with a grateful smile, excited by the idea of being out of her sticky thermals. She rolled the edge of her shirt back from where Callum had rolled it up to get to her wounds, tugging at the freed edge with her right hand before realizing she couldn’t get the shirt over her shoulders without moving the left side of her body. “Westerberg, hey.” She shot him a sympathetic look, hating herself for keeping a bone-tired man awake. “Can you help me out?”
It took a handful of moments for Callum to even think of stirring, but eventually, he managed to pry one eye open to look over at her, her shirt half pulled up, and it didn’t take a brain surgeon to realise what it was she needed. Hauling himself up, those same gentle hands helped ease her out of the shirt, working one sleeve off, up over her head, and then down the other arm, keeping her as still as he possibly could even in his exhaustion. “Sorry. Should have thought about this to begin with,” he said softly, letting a tired hand run over the now bare arm, meeting her gaze. “Glad you’re okay, Shailee,” Callum murmured thickly before he took the t-shirt from her, drawing his gaze away as he shook out the worn cotton shirt.
Shailee let the impossibly gentle hands ease her out of the shirt, amazed at how bearable the pain was when he helped her out. “So am I,” she said to the man who was fighting to keep his eyes open, fully aware that she’d be up a shit creek, if not dead were it not for him. As she sat there on the bed next to Callum, wearing nothing more than jeans and a bra, his hand on her bare arm, something in her stomach did a serious flip, and Shailee knew it had absolutely nothing to do with the bandage on her side. She watched him as he helped her into the oversized t-shirt, pulling her hair free before sliding back down onto the bed. A few minutes of silence passed before she spoke out again. “Callum?” Her voice called out gently, not wanting to make the man if he was already asleep, “Thank you.”
As soon as Shailee was in the shirt and back laying down, Callum had pulled his limbs back to his side of the mattress and laid back down, tugging the blanket up over his shoulders, and then, as a side thought, he reached over to tug it up over her as well. Eyes fell closed and his breathing evened out, laying on his stomach one one arm curled beneath his head. Shailee’s words fell upon deaf ears, the man already asleep.