York (badlocksmith) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-07-03 21:18:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, agent washington, agent york |
Who: Wash and York
When: Late June
Where: Park
What: Random Encounter
Rating/Warnings: Low/Some swearing
Status: Complete!
Being back in the states was good for a lot of things. The food was better, for one. There were quite a few more ladies around, which was also quite nice. And York didn’t have a lot of things to occupy his time. That part was drastically different from both being in Tex’s squad, and his subsequent injury and rehab. He’d been healed up, offered a metal or something, and then kicked back to the good ole US of A to start his new life as … as something. York wasn’t sure what that meant, entirely, so he decided to go flop on his big brother’s sofa until he had part of it figured out.
The only problem was that his brother was now married, and had a nine month old baby boy. So living on the sofa wasn’t exactly easy. York traded babysitting for room and board, though he bought most of his own food out of his pension. His plan was to treat his brother and sister in law to a few fancy dinners over the course of the next few weeks. Only a few weeks, though, because he was already looking for work and his own place.
This afternoon he’d given his sister in law a few hours off, and had brought the little one to the park. Getting used to caring for a child--an infant, no less--was really strange. But he figured if seventeen year old girls could do it, how hard could it be? They were sitting in the shade under a big tree, and York had to frequently reach over and stop the baby from putting grass into his mouth. He had some toys instead, and continually pushed them into the baby’s hands.
Now that Wash had a skateboard again he had been spending a considerable amount of time at a local skate park. It felt damn good to be on the ramps and grinding rails again. Even though he hadn’t been on a skateboard since high school, the feeling of the deck under his feet was unforgettable.
Pushing thirty, Wash was easily one of the oldest guys at the skate park. That had put him off at first, almost made him not want to come back. However, he had quickly realized that while the vast majority of those around him were teenagers and early twenty-somethings, there was a handful of diehard lifelong skaters, who like him, had a certain kind of passion about the sport. They demanded a certain amount of respect from most of the “kids”, who watched with rapt attention when one of the Old Timers was on a ramp. Wash had found they even asked for pointers and even wanted to hear stories about what skating was like when they had first started. It made Wash feel a little old, yes, but also kind of good.
He was on one of the ramps that afternoon, rolling back and forth, doing handstands and flips and just overall blowing off steam. He just happened to be at the top of the ramp, hand-down with feet and deck up over his head when his eyes settled on a familiar face seated under a tree. He looked a little different, but that face...so many times Wash had depended on that face to watch his back, he’d never forget it.
Was that...York?….and….The fuck? Was that a kid?!
The shock of seeing his (presumably dead) squadmate with a kid made Wash utterly forget what the hell he was doing. Gravity, however, had a long memory. In that fateful moment it took for Wash’s attention to be placed elsewhere, his body arched back over the ramp, wrenching his hand free from the rail. A second later of falling ass over head, Wash came to a sliding stop at the bottom of the ramp. It was another moment before a few of the onlookers came running up to him calling his name. “Wash! Wash! You alright, man?” ”Jesus, you look like you’ve seen a ghost or something, dude.”
A ghost. Yeah. Wash felt like he’d seen a ghost. It took a moment for him to gain his wits about him enough to pull himself up off the ground and assure the others that he was fine. He made up some kind of excuse about sweaty hands before making up some excuse to walk away from the half-pipe. Then, as if in a daze, he headed over towards that tree.
“York?”
The man sitting with the infant under the tree lifted his gaze. That was a name he hadn't heard in a while--not since his accident. He'd lost track of most of the squad after his accident, though Tex checked in once or twice to make sure he was all right. Sure. All right. He'd lost most of the vision in his left eye, was left with scarring on his face, but he was all right, wasn't he? Fit to move on? Then he'd been kicked out of the military, and now he had no idea what to do with his life. That was all right, too. (Okay, there may have been some anger issues there. But he was working on it.)
Wow. Blast from the past, wasn't it? A little smile broke out across his face as he laid eyes on his best friend from a long, long time ago. (Or what felt like a long, long time ago, anyway.)
"Wash." He shoved a chew toy back into the baby's hands. Sorry, teething toy. He’d already been corrected by his sister-in-law once. "Wow, what a small world."
It was York. All at once Wash was overcome with relief. York was alive. Epsilon whispered in the back of his mind that it wasn’t possible. The ghost told Wash that he’d found York’s body, had blown him and his armor up, had recovered his equipment to keep it out of enemy hands as was his job, but Wash shoved the whispering A.I. back. No. That wasn’t real. That hadn’t happened here. But York’s eye…that had happened. The grenade. No. Tex had saved him, had kept him from getting his entire head blown off. But that hadn’t happened here, either, had it? Memories blended and for a moment Wash felt himself slip, lost, uncertain of where, and for one frighteningly long moment, who he was.
It took a moment before Wash’s unfocused grey eyes sharpened again. No. The last time he had seen York, not Agent York, had been nearly two years ago, in Las Vegas. Unwanted feelings of betrayal and abandonment swelled and suddenly Wash could all too keenly remember running behind York through the “abandoned” city, lagging several feet behind, still uncertain splitting the group was a good idea and York, calling back to him, ordering him to move up, move faster, and then….nothing but blackness.
Wash’s hand went to the back of his neck, covering the A.I port and allowing it to ground him back into reality. He realized he was staring at York and probably looking like an idiot. He quickly shook his head. “Small world,” he repeated numbly. He wanted to hug and yell at York all at once. “Does...Carolina...know you’re here?”
James--York--was a little concerned when he saw Wash's eyes slip out of focus for a moment. Suddenly he was back in the squad, moving with his friend and colleague through the training exercise, hearing the explosion go off, performing CPR... Keeping his friend alive. Those eyes--those grey eyes that he knew so well from training, from nights of drinking, from serious and not-so-serious conversations... they looked older somehow.
And then all thoughts of Wash... okay, almost all thoughts of Wash went out of his head. "Carolina?" He asked, brightening and sitting up just a little--he was able to cover it, sort of, and play it off. Play it cool. Cool it, bro. "Carolina's here, too?"
Of course Carolina didn’t know York was here. If she had, she would have said something, right? She wouldn’t have let Wash continue wondering if he was dead or alive, wondering where the fuck he was. And where the fuck had he been any way?! Had he seriously been in the States this whole fucking time?! Long enough to meet a girl...have a kid?!
Wash’s eyes glanced down at the baby, gleefully chewing on the teething ring and reaching out with a small stubby hand towards a wad of grass. Jesus Christ, what the hell was going on?!
“Yeah,” Wash said, his eyes still on the baby. “She’s here. She came looking for me a few months ago. Her father had given her some news and…” Nope. No matter how hard he tried, Wash just couldn’t focus with this major distraction in diapers giggling and looking up at him. Wash pointed at the infant. “The hell, man?”
As distracting as the thought of Carolina being in Orange County was (and it was very, very distracting indeed) the more pressing matter became obvious. Wash was staring down at James' nephew as if the kid had sprouted a second head and was reciting sonnets in Gaelic. And James--York was very amused by the look on Wash's face. This presented as an opportunity for shenanigans. James--York loved shenanigans.
"Oh, this is Roger. Roger, say hello to Wash." Then James leaned over and made a baby-voice. "Hello, Wash!" He pulled some grass out of the baby's clenched fist, and replaced it with a different teething ring. He was definitely avoiding telling Wash the story about the baby on purpose. "You look good," He changed the subject, turning to squint up at his friend. A wave of guilt washed over him, shame that he hadn't been in better contact, embarrassment that he'd let a friend go through all of this alone. But everything had been falling apart, and York let his own fear get the better of him. "Wait, is that a skateboard?"
Wash had changed. The man who would probably have laughed at York’s antics with the baby was nowhere to be found. He frowned slightly when the baby “talked” to him. He did not say hi back to Roger. He was in no mood for games, especially after taking a tumble down the half-pipe only to find his dead squadmate was, in fact, alive and well and playing Daddy.
He glanced down at the skateboard he was holding against his side. “Yeah, it’s a skateboard,” and that was all he said about it. He turned his eyes back to York. “You going to tell me what’s going on?” He asked point blank. “Like whose baby is that?”
Apparently, Wash wasn’t into the jokes anymore. And York could absolutely understand why. He sighed, leaning back on his arms, turning his eyes (good eye) up to the canopy of leaves overhead. He owed his friend and former teammate an explanation, but he wasn’t sure where to start. Or how much Wash would even want to hear.
“You want the long version or the short one?” He asked, turning his attention back to his friend.
“Whichever one answers the question,” Wash said. He didn’t quite understand why York was dancing around the subject. It was making him nervous, like maybe he didn’t really want to know the answer. On the other hand...he really did though.
“Roger’s my nephew.” James replied, giving up on the ruse. He really couldn’t just jump back however many years, and have the same sort of relationship he’d had with his friend before. God, it was good to see Wash. And a constant reminder of what a dick he’d been to just up and leave after Wash’s accident. “I’ve been in California for about a week after my discharge.”
“Nephew,” Wash repeated as though processing the information. His shoulders seemed to relax and his posture opened up slightly. Everything said and done it was good to see York again, to know that he was alive. The last time Wash had seen him...so much time had passed. So much had happened for the two of them. To the two of them. The anger and abandonment Wash had felt after waking up from his coma to find that his squad had been deployed without him had mostly gone. He understood they hadn’t had a choice, and that he was useless to the military.
He had no reason to be angry with York. Carolina may have come looking for Wash, but Wash had never fooled himself into thinking that any one of his squad mates would have attempted to find him. If Carolina hadn’t been given his mother’s address, she never would have known to come to California. Why would any of the others?
Wash took a seat in the grass next to his old friend. “Welcome to civilian life,” he gave him a semi-grin. “You sure picked a hell of a place to come back to.”