Darcy is only half listening to you. JSYK. (halflistening) wrote in incompletedata, @ 2017-10-16 01:27:00 |
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Entry tags: | marvel: mcu: darcy lewis, marvel: mcu: matt murdock |
Who: Matt Murdock, Darcy Lewis
When: The day the specimens were released from that locked Alfa ward.
Where: Romeo Block
What: Stubborn men become slightly less stubborn for a short period of time.
Rating: G.
Darcy was sore and sweaty but it was a good kind of sore and sweaty. It was from a night of moving and music and dancing and fun and not from sleeping on sand and scrabbling over rocks. Even the annoying scratches under her arms from the sequins on her dress didn’t bother her all that much and she couldn’t find it in herself to care that her sweat had caused her normally not-quite-unruly hair to curl up around her head in a wild halo that refused to be tamed… But that was something that another nice hot shower could rectify, followed quickly by a night in her own bed. It was weird, a little, thinking of her little cubby hole in Romeo as her own, but it was. For now. All in all, it was the first (or, okay, second) good night she’d had since arriving at the Institute and she was grateful for it. It was about time she had an easy day. She was due for one. But as she opened the door to her room, she could hear something from a little further down the hall. Something that sounded like a less than good night. And she had a good idea about which room it was coming from. She sighed heavily and entered her room. She didn’t bother changing her clothes, but she did lose the giant, sweaty, rubber boots, the spiked collar around her neck, the boa, and her gloves. The boots she traded for a pair of socks and she pulled her hair up into a messy bun before padding down the corridor toward Matt’s room. “You are a glutton for punishment, Darcy Christine,” she muttered softly to herself before knocking lightly on his door. It was just as well that most people were at the party. Matthew was not having a good night. He'd been brooding before he went into the arena and now that he was out of it he was - yes, still brooding. Perhaps even more than he had been before. He'd spent the bulk of his time catching up on all the things he thought he might have missed while he was gone, made an offer to help people he didn't think should be tried for the circumstances their supreme overlords had carelessly dropped them into, and for the most part he thought he was getting back on his feet. The comment Nat made after his hasty but honest profession of love had his device almost meet an untimely end after a tablet vs. wall incident. He didn't bother checking whether it'd survived with any issues other than a cracked screen. Having worked himself up with no viable outlet, he skulked to the chapel and sat in one of the pews, trying to calm himself down whilst silently sulking with a bible in his lap. Clearly it hadn't worked. He was no less agitated when he returned to his room later on at night. The first thing that fell victim to his calloused knuckles were his wardrobe doors. The chair crashed noisily against the wall before he took his anger out on the table. He managed to get blood from his hands onto the wall and the sheets when he assaulted his bed. There were no footsteps, no heartbeats, no distant laughter anymore. Just the sound of the Devil panting as he ripped everything apart with his injured hands and the smell of his blood filling his room. By the time Darcy knocked on his dented, unlocked door, she would find no devils inside. Just a man curled up in untouched corner with tears still warm and wet on his cheeks. When no answer came, Darcy thought about leaving. It was quieter now than when she’d entered her room- maybe he’d decided he was done with whatever ruckus he was making. But even though logic told her that she should leave, that Matthew had made it more than clear that he didn’t care for her company, she couldn’t just let it go. She was a helper and he was someone who needed help, and no matter what he seemed to think, it wasn’t pity that drove her. It was compassion. When another knock when unanswered, Darcy tried the knob and slowly opened the door. “Um… Hello?” Her voice cut through the pain and confusion, and he lifted his head, turning away from the door to listen out for her better. Darcy. Before he could stop her from coming in she'd already pushed the door open and so she would catch him standing there awkwardly in the corner, not unlike a puppy that had gone stir-crazy in a small enclosed space and knew that it'd been a very bad boy. He sniffled and turned his head to the side, hiding his hands behind his back. His shades, cane and vigilante outfit were safe in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe, but as light from the corridor flooded into his dark room, she would note that the room and the man responsible for wrecking it had both seen much better days. "...hi." Okay, wow. Darcy had seen a mess like the one she found Matt standing in the middle of before once. One of her roommates in college had adopted a dog and, though he was a sweet boy, he had separation issues. Not that her roommate had known that until after they’d left the dog in the apartment while they went to a movie. They never made that mistake again, not after they’d had to replace every piece of furniture and the carpet. She pushed the door open far enough to squeeze inside, careful not to step on anything. She wanted to ask what happened, what had set him off, but one look at him told her that wasn’t what he needed. It wasn’t what he needed at all. He looked like he needed a shower and a hug and someone to tell him that everything was going to be alright, even if it probably wasn’t… But she didn’t know if he would actually accept any of that from her. After having been on the receiving end of his ire more than once, she was reluctant to offer the comfort that every bit of what made her her was insisting she give. She picked her way through the carnage, closing some of the distance between the two of them. “What happened?” He pursed his lips and didn't answer her straightaway. The guilty look on his face said what she needed to hear. He nudged at a splintered wooden plank with the toe of his shoe and ducked his head. Well, she'd seen him at his weakest. Now she could see him at his lowest. What did it matter? He couldn't ruin what she thought of him even more than he'd already done. "I'm angry," he said quietly. Granted, most people didn't unleash their inner incredible Hulks when they were angry. Maybe most people didn't have incredible Hulks to unleash. She would have probably seen him reduce the fallout shelter to a similar state if she'd chanced upon him half a day later. He kept his hands behind her back as his blood dripped down onto the floor, leaving dark outlines of his hands on the wall. "It- it's fine. Don't- I'll clean up." The blood dripping behind him didn’t escape her notice, but she didn’t think mentioning it right then was the right call. So she’d bide her time and wait and, after a bit, she’d see if he would at least let her bandage up his cuts. “Do you want to talk about it?” She ignored the mess, because it was the least of her worries right then. It would get cleaned eventually and maybe, if they could get through a conversation without attacking each other (and God, did that thought hurt), she would help him with it. He bit on his lip and started shaking his head, but then he seemed to be giving it some thought. Third time lucky, Darcy. He’d unsuccessfully pushed her away, but when she came back for more this time he seemed more receptive to the idea of letting her in a bit. “Not really,” he said aloud. The place was a mess. He was a mess. One drinking or gambling or porn addiction problem from having more baggage than a 747. “But I… I used to talk to my priest. In and out of confession. He’s uhm… I mean I- don’t talk to anyone anymore. Since we got here.” Not exactly letting her put her foot in his door. But leaving the door slightly ajar, letting a bit of light through, letting her shadow in - it was a start. There wasn’t a sitting surface left in the room, and it would be presumptuous to pull down his bed, so Darcy moved to one of the lesser damaged cabinets and leaned against it, her hands behind her back. He was talking… It was a good sign, she thought. “Have you thought about talking to one of the priests here?” she asked. Yeah, one of them was the Pope, so he probably didn’t do a whole lot of time in the confessional, but that didn’t make him not an option. Of course, it could be a trust thing. Most people tended to like Darcy right off bat- She was pretty, friendly, pretty easy going in general. Maybe Matt had at first as well, but then his solitary nature and tendencies had arisen and he hadn’t just pushed her away, he’d shoved her out the door and over a cliff. She wasn’t ready to forgive that, not even close, but like she’d told Maria earlier- she was ready to move forward. Maybe that would include the man bleeding before her as a friend, maybe it wouldn’t. Only time would tell. He sank back slowly down onto the floor, wincing as he put some weight onto a dislocated bone in his left hand.There was no point hiding them now, now that there were blood streaks down his wall like some B-grade horror movie setting. Probably what the fallout shelter had looked like without him realising. He set his upturned hands gingerly in his lap, resting an injured wrist on top of an uninjured one, letting the blood cool and thicken and dry up on his skin. “The Pope seems like-... quite the character.” That was the first smile that bloomed on his face. Matt then chuckled to himself, running his tongue over his molars. He respected the young man, with or without the Pope mantle. “They’re not people you just dump everything on, you know? They’ve got a lot to deal with themselves. They didn’t come here on some missionary trip. Didn’t ask for-” Matt tilted his head back and his eyes seemed to move across the ceiling. “-any of this.” Of course, when you put the robes and collar on, you sort of had a duty. You had to be prepared to get cornered by a horde of self-loathing guilt-burdened nutters and have life-affirming, spiritual, ‘enlightened wisdom’ up your sleeves to dispense at will. That wasn’t really why Matthew wasn’t dragging the Pope or his priest friend into a corner of the chapel and ripping his heart out. He just-... it wasn’t really the same as talking to someone who knew who he was, where he came from, his struggles with Daredevil. “I get angry. I hit people. Break things.” He swallowed the lump in his throat and narrowed his eyes, ducking his head as the shame set in. Suddenly he felt very homesick. And physically sick. He breathed in a shaky breath and let the tears fall onto his palms. “I don’t- I don’t enjoy hurting people, but. But I like- But I don’t want them to… think of me. As…” She almost had it. Almost got it out of him like this dark little room was their private little confessional. But he swallowed what he was going to say and shook his head, sniffling in an effort to stem the waterworks. “You shouldn’t be here.” Darcy followed Matt’s lead, pushing some of the debris around her aside with her feet before sinking down to the floor. This seemed like it was going to be a long conversation and although she knew it was a bad idea with him, trying to plan her moves ahead of time like it was a game of chess, she already had an idea of where she was going to try to go with it. She didn't interrupt or interject when he spoke, knowing it was far more important for her to just be a shoulder for him to lean on, someone to listen. Was she frightened when he admitted his temper? Not particularly. He might not have physically struck her during their arguments in that locked ward, but he’d still lashed out, still hit her with everything he’d had in a verbal sense. She'd been surprised the first couple of times and angry after that, so his admission was met with quiet nodding. She'd seen his temper and had come to accept it as just part of his personality. It was up to him to take steps toward ensuring that he controlled it. But the more he spoke, the more it became clear to her how hard it was for him to open up at all. It made sense, knowing what she knew about his mother leaving and his father passing. She couldn't imagine that growing up in the system was a particularly nurturing environment. He was like a door that had been rusted shut… each millimeter it opened was a battle and it wanted to slam shut and stay that way, but whatever it was on the inside needed light and air as much as anything- or anyone- else did. “I know a lot of things were said the other day and like… My feelings are hurt. I’m not going to lie about that. But… it sounded like someone I consider a friend needed… maybe not me but someone.” She shrugged, shaking her head a little and looking away. “I’ll leave if you want me to, but I don’t think that you should be alone right now.” For someone who seemed very adept at pushing people away thinking it was in their best interests, you'd think he'd be able to recognise it when people were doing it to him. He knew that he'd hurt Darcy - had been deliberate about it - but if she wanted an apology she'd have to glean it off that dejected look on his face. Once upon a time he thought there were some redeeming qualities about him. Maybe he didn't have to struggle with Daredevil so much, maybe he could feel somewhat absolved. But it seemed like he left that man behind in Hell's Kitchen when he came here. He wasn't a lawyer anymore, wasn't a vigilante, wasn't a good or bad or helpful or helpless friend. He was just-... an idiot. And a rather unpleasant one at that. "Did you have a good time?" He's good at this too - this deflecting, changing the subject, going off on a tangent, dwelling on other things business. "I mean you look uh... flamboyant." Darcy laughed, letting the topic change. If he didn’t want to talk about their issues, that was fine. She wouldn’t push it. It wasn’t something that needed to be talked about right then anyway and it wasn’t something she really felt like talking about, because it would inevitably lead to another fight. She was tired of fighting. “I did, actually,” she said, relaxing a little bit and leaning against the broken cabinet doors. “I gave Amos my free drink, so he gave me a lap dance and let me draw hearts on his butt.” Which, when she thought about it, sounded ridiculous. But there were good people in the Institute, ones who were willing to play the fool for a minute or two so someone who needed the stress relief could have a good laugh and she appreciated that. She smoothed her dress down, still smiling. “You missed the boa and gloves and crazy rubber boots, though. They really made the ensemble.” His smile turned into a grin turned into a snicker. Yeah, he could hear them having a good time. They seemed so far away even though they weren't. Matt couldn't remember the last time he took a woman he loved for a slow twirl on his roof on a rainy night. The woman he'd been obsessed with was dead. The woman who loved him walked away from the hot mess. And the woman he thought he loved here - well. There wasn't anything there anymore. "I didn't," he said quietly, tilting his head with a sigh. "You were wearing a collar as well. Took it off before you came here." Just because he was in the middle of losing his shit didn't mean that he turned everything else off and abruptly stopped noticing everything happening around him. “It was itchy as shit,” she said, her smile never faltering. Darcy’s brows pulled together, though, and her head tilted like a confused puppy. “But, seriously… You have to tell me how you know that. Because that is obviously not just an amazing guess.” "Yeah." Everything he wore around here was itchy as shit. He could sympathise. He considered what to say for a while, because he'd already decided he wasn't going to lie to her about what he could and couldn't 'see'. "I can hear things. The music at the party. All the footsteps on each floor. Conversations behind closed doors. I can hear your heartbeat. When you're lying. When you're not. When you're scared. Angry. I couldn't do it, when we were in there. But I can hear everything again." “Really?” It wasn’t actually a question, more a statement of interest. She scooted a little closer, watching him to make sure she wasn’t spooking him like she seemed to do so often. “How far away can you hear things? Like, have you ever tested it?” He... wasn't expecting that. Foggy had been outraged - and understandably so - and Karen had been apprehensive. A part of him was expecting her to pick up an argument they started back in Alpha. But Darcy seemed... curious. "Nothing outside of this building, but. Several blocks, back home." 'Several' was probably an understatement. "It's uh... hard to sleep. At night. Or focus on anything." “In a city as large and as loud as New York, I’m not surprised.” He had to run into serious bouts of sensory overload. She couldn’t imagine that he didn’t, if he could hear as well as he said he could. And he was obviously not lying about what he could do because she hadn’t mentioned the collar and he’d brought it up. “I mean, I’ve heard that when you lose one sense, others will sharpen to compensate for it… Is that what happened to you?” "Maybe. There were chemicals in my eyes. They- did something. I don't know." He didn't want to know. "It burned for weeks. It just burned." There really wasn't any better way of describing that kind of pain, the panic that came over a nine year old when all the colours in the world turned into an endless sea of black. "My dad could barely afford the rent. Some nights we'd skip dinner. The hospital bills were-" He swallowed the lump in his throat and huffed, trying and failing not to get worked up over what happened. His bloodied fingers twitched in his lap. "I felt so guilty about the accident." Okay, she couldn’t sit still then. It just wasn’t who she was. Darcy stood, awkwardly, sorely, and carefully stepped over the wreckage of Matt’s room until she was sitting almost beside him in his corner. She wanted to give him a hug, to take his bloodied hands in hers so he knew on a visceral level that he wasn’t alone, but she didn’t. It was things like that which seemed to set him off and she didn’t have it in her to have another fight with him so quickly. The point of mending fences was to not immediately tear them back down. “You were a kid, Matt. I don’t know the details about what happened, but I know that it’s not your fault. And I also never knew your dad, obviously, but if he was anything at all like mine, he would tell you that you shouldn’t take responsibility for things that you can’t control.” Even though he never really talked about those struggles in his younger days, she could be rest assured he's heard it all before. 'It wasn't your fault son.' 'You did the right thing, Matty.' 'You were really brave to do what you did.' 'Everything will be okay.' He tried to help, but he ended up hurting the people closest to him. And himself. It's the same story since he was nine, repeated over and over again in various iterations until it couldn't be any more obvious who the lowest common denominator was, until he decided everyone was better off not getting too close to him. He'd tried to be a hero, saving a stranger. His father had tried to be a hero, after a young and naive Matthew talked him out of taking a beating and all the money that'd come with it, and he paid for that with his life. Nothing came out of heroism - only pain and suffering. He never wanted for Matthew to use his fists. Not like this. Maybe he thought his son was better than this. That his son could be a better man. But look how far the broken man had fallen. Jack Murdock would be so disappointed if he'd known. Matthew's let everybody dead and still alive down. Darcy couldn't talk him out of his guilt. Many have tried even harder and longer than she had and failed rather spectacularly trying to accomplish the same thing. Really he would have been fine, left alone to deal with the fallout of his emotional outburst. But he didn't really have a choice with her lingering close by. He just sat there silently, hiding in the shadows beneath his walls. He was tired now. Emotionally exhausted and physically the good, satisfied kind of tired with everything broken around him and blood on his hands. "I know," he said, in that listless way he said things that she could tell he didn't believe it. Just like that he effortlessly bottled everything up inside again. "This was all me though. I should uhm... 'unbreak' a few things." It broke her heart, seeing the despondency in Matt’s face, hearing the hopelessness in his voice. He was so hard on himself, and Darcy supposed that was a human thing- She knew that she held herself to a certain standard and she was disappointed in herself when she didn’t meet it. But it was clear that he was shutting down again. He’d admitted a few things, and that was good because if there was anyone in this world who needed to talk and unburden their soul, it was definitely him. Pushing him for more would just put them back at odds. “Leave it for tomorrow. You should take care of your hands and get as good a night’s rest as you can.” He turned his hands over in his lap and grimaced. Usually his left hand would be able to do a slipshod job of binding the right together until it hopefully healed back in sort of the right way. Tonight he'd been smart enough to wreck both of them, and he was steadily losing feeling in his fingertips as this blanket sensation of coldness started to set in. "Could you-..." he started asking, but clearly he wasn't used to asking for help, and he didn't think he deserved anything from her after how he'd lashed out at her. He shrank back a little away from her and lifeless eyes trailed back to the floor. He was more ashamed than shy about it, biting down on his bottom lip, swallowing the discomfort lodged in his throat. "...would you... help me?" “Of course,” she said softly, managing a small smile for him. While earlier in the night she might have assumed that he wouldn’t know that she smiled, she knew better now. She knew better than to take anything for granted. Darcy stood carefully, brushing off the back of her dress. She assumed he’d tell her if he needed a hand standing up. No rebukes. No glares. No 'why don't you just fuck off?' Matthew felt humbled by her persistent kindness and his shoulders sagged as he moved to get up. There was an uncomfortable, closer to pins and needles than pleasant tingling that surged through his weary muscles protesting at the sudden movement. "Bathroom's this way," he said as if she didn't stay in the same block and didn't have the same layout down the corridor. He navigated the unlit room without tripping over anything, moving over or around the wreckage adeptly. Something about the way he moved told her that this was a very different man compared to the one she met in the arena, even if he gritted his teeth and brooded in the same way and had the same hangups that stemmed from a slightly warped view of the world. There were cotton swabs and some of those makeup remover pads that his neighbour had left behind in the bathroom cabinet, but he was otherwise distinctly lacking in medical supplies. It was harder for Darcy to navigate in the dark room, but she managed, only stubbing her toes once (well, twice, but she caught one before she really did it, so that one didn’t count). The distinct lack of medical supplies made bandaging up the worst of the injuries to Matt’s hands harder, but she could at least wash off the blood while she came up with a plan. His room was a mess and it was clear to her that he shouldn’t stay there. He’d wake up in the same frame of mind he was in now. Honestly, he was likely to wake up in that same frame of mind no matter what, but a decent night’s rest somewhere calm, somewhere safe… That might help. She was gentle as she washed away the blood to see how bad the damage he’d done to himself was. She didn’t think anything was broken, but she wasn’t exactly a doctor, so she couldn’t tell for sure. The areas where the skin was broken and sluggishly weeping blood were starting to clot so they could knit themselves back together and that was a good sign, but there was another part where something felt out of place that concerned her. “I have some bandages and stuff in my room,” she said quietly, patting his poor abused hands dry. “But I think you might need to see Alpha. There’s a part here that might be broken or something and I don’t want to hurt you more than you already are trying to fix it.” He didn't want to go there. He made a face expressing exactly that. They'd only just got out after all. But Matthew's room took all the fight out of him. He didn't really want to be around all these people while they were having a good time or conducting trials and all the rest of it either. His hands kept completely still as she tended to them, his usually expressive eyes not giving away any hints of what was going on in his mind right now. "Okay," he said quietly. He's been 'okay'ing at everyone since he got back to his room, floating through the hours with an odd sort of numbness. It clearly wasn't his first time he'd done this to his hands and it wouldn't be the last. Darcy lightly, reluctantly, laid her hand on his upper arm and rubbed gently. She wanted to offer comfort, but if all of his senses were as sharp as his hearing, the touch might be more harsh than she intended. “We can try my bandages first, if you want? I might be wrong about something being off. I don’t know anything about hands.” And then she came to the more difficult part. Like any part of this had been easy. “And…. um, you don’t have to stay in here tonight if you don’t want to. It looked like there was a fair amount of work to clean things up enough to sleep. So if you didn’t want to do that tonight, you don’t have to.” "Nothing's broken." She might expect him to make more pained faces if he'd actually broken something, but ultimately she could trust that he could tell. "I cracked something though," he admitted with a sigh. When the adrenaline was coursing through his veins he couldn't feel it. Now it was just... irritating. "I don't really want to go back to the ward." He didn't flinch when she touched him, not like when he couldn't sense it coming, but he did breathe a quiet sigh and his fingers curled halfway towards his palms. "...do you have a couch?" “I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t want to go back either.” She pulled her hand away from his arm, her smile dimming just a little bit. She could only imagine what it was like, how scratchy and irritating the material had to be. “Maybe sleep on it and see how it is in the morning?” She stepped away, back toward the door. “No. Just one bed. But we can put pillows between us or something if you want.” She would have suggested he could be the little spoon again, but it was probably not the right time for that. He would have offered to drag his mattress down the corridor - it wasn't far - but the logistics of trying to fit it out of his door, turn around in a narrow space, squeeze it through hers, and then back again once he cleaned up after himself, while trying to nurse injured hands back to health - that all went in the too hard basket. Of course the next best thing was the floor, but he somehow expected her to take that as an insult and it'd start a fight neither of them wanted to engage in right now. Either way he didn't anticipate getting any sleep, what with the dull, throbbing pain and foreign smells and weird noises, so he just nodded and reaffirmed it with a soft 'okay'. “Come on,” she said softly, urging him to follow. “Let’s get your pajamas and your pillow. Then you can take a nice hot shower and I’ll give you some Advil and we’ll get some rest.” She needed a shower just as badly, she could feel the sweat dried all over her skin, but it was more important to get Matt settled. He needed all the extra care she could provide, because he certainly wasn’t giving it to himself. He’d behave and sleep with a shirt on. It’d save them both the awkwardness despite the added discomfort on a physical level of coarse cloth on skin. He picked up a change of clothes from the bottom drawer of his wardrobe that survived his wrath relatively unscathed and gingerly plucked the abused pillow from where he’d flung it. The room probably looked to be in worse shape than it really was with broken furniture casting long shadows and splintered hazards sticking out in various places, but it didn’t make Matthew feel any less self-conscious about being walked in on mid-shitfit. He’d like to tell her that he wasn’t normally like this. But then she’d spent some time with him in the arena and some time with him outside of, and really the confident blind lawyer might as well have been the lie. “Do you think I’d get in trouble with Ms. Romeo?” he asked, almost comically more concerned about owning up about his explosive episode to their captor than thinking about how to piece everything back together. “Maybe? But maybe not.” She hoped for not, of course. After everything they’d been through, no matter what had set him off, he deserved a pass for this one. “And if it’ll make a difference, I can help you clean up tomorrow. Maybe starting to repair everything before you talk to her will make a good impression on her.” Darcy lead the way down the hall to her room and pushed the door open. The rooms were exactly the same, other than the fact that he had destroyed his and hers was still intact. Even if he couldn’t see, she still rushed to pick up the dirty clothes scattered around. Only part of it was because she didn’t want to seem like she lived like a pig, but mostly it was because she was already tight on space and every little bit counted. “Okay. Shower first, then I’ll doctor up your hands.” “Yeah maybe I just- won’t say anything.” Which of course was Matt quietly asking her not to talk about what happened tonight at the same time. What people didn’t know couldn’t hurt them, or something. Her room was like a before to his after, with everything eerily in the same place down to the centimetre. Hurricane Matthew felt a little awkward standing in her doorway, like he’d mess the place up just by crossing the threshold. “Are you com- uh… going?” he asked hesitantly. No, he did not just invite them both into her shower at the same time. Perish the thought. Darcy opened the cabinet where she kept her shower caddy, looking at him over her shoulder. “If that’s what you want to do,” she said, “I won’t say anything. But maybe assess the damage first before you make that call.” She was a big fan of the wait and see method of decision making and this was a perfect example of it. She pulled out a couple of towels from the same cabinet, shutting it with her hip. She caught the awkward phrasing and her cheeks flooded with color. “No, you can go first. I need to brush out my hair and everything anyway and it’s just a mess.” She powered through the heat in her face and smiled. “You’re going to end up smelling a little flowery… Sorry about that, I don’t have anything scent-less.” He dropped his pillow onto her chair and his grip tightened a little into his clothes, bones creaking in protest. He'd figured out almost instantly that she'd caught on to his slip, as if he could feel the temperature rise in the room, but remained quietly thankful that she didn't say anything aloud. "I'm not going to complain about your hospitality after what we've been through." Even if he was going to have some mild regrets about trashing his room tonight, he fully deserved dowsing himself in chemical extracts. Smelling like he tripped and stumbled into a Body Shop laboratory was a small price to pay. "Thanks." He moved his head right and left a little, his shoulders rose and fell a little, his Adam's apple bobbed uneasily in his throat as he took a deep breath. She'll come to read his little gestures soon enough, the way he read everyone else around him. For now it just seemed like one big ball of uncertainty and awkwardness as he silently excused himself to slide into her shower. Darcy tried her best to silently bolster Matt’s confidence, nodding and smiling as he spoke. It was on the tip of her tongue to say he’d do the same for her, that he’d done he same for her, but she held back. She actually wasn’t certain that, if their situations were reversed and she had been the one to wreck her room, he would go looking for her. But it was more and more obvious that Matt had demons he had to deal with and one of them was his compulsive need to push people away. While he showered, she busied herself with prepping the room for sleep. She pulled open the Murphy bed (oh, she wished she’d had one in her door room her first couple of years in college) and pulled back the blankets. Things were likely to be a little awkward, sharing a bed after everything and considering the “nothing” that had happened the last time they’d slept so close together, but it was another time, another place, and they were adults. She kept telling herself that it wasn’t a big deal, she’d shared beds with people all over the place and this was just one more. Sure. And if her heart would stop pounding nervously in her chest, she’d probably believe that. To pass the time, she pulled her hair out of the messy bun she’d pulled it up into and began to brush out the knots and snarls. His hands were trembling in the shower. It was just as well that it wasn't his own shower. He would have either broken his hand or broken the wall, whichever caved in first. He wouldn't wreck her things though. As the water roared overhead he had a blissful two minutes of just everything being drowned out by the rush of the waterfall. The look of utter revulsion on his face was priceless as the first glob of soap hit his palm and the burst of spring flooded his nose. He looked like a cat that had just licked some dried chilli. Fleetingly he considered letting it wash away and going without, but he didn't think he could get the scent off his hand no matter how many times he shook it out or washed it. Begrudgingly he smothered himself with the product and washed it off promptly. There were worse ways of torturing himself, he was sure. Smelling like he'd dropped a fruit basket on his head and rolling around a garden wouldn't be the end of the world. She probably heard the water stop running when he got out - it was either a quick shower or he'd use up gallons of water sitting in there trying to drown out all the noise - but she might not have heard him come up to her with semi-dry spiky hair and her towel clutching on to the knot of towel around his waist until he prodded her arm with his other hand. Tiredness had sunk into her bones when she sat, unsnarling the tangled curls that were the bane of her existence. Her hair was barely tamed on the best of days and the past two plus weeks had done nothing to help reinforce the years of hard work she'd put into making it behave. She'd combed herself into something resembling a trance when Matt finished his shower, so when he touched her arm she jumped, laughing from the surprise. Then she looked at him. And it wasn't like she'd never seen him without his shirt on before, but this was different. They were alone in a tiny room with lights on, not in a dark cavern that felt a lot bigger than it had been. Her cheeks flushed again, a brilliant scarlet color, and for a second she was glad he was blind… Maybe that little reaction would escape his notice. “All done?” She grabbed her little first aid kit, the one that had come in her Nalgene bottle, and opened it up. “Let's get your hands taken care of.” He caught the way her breath snagged in her throat and wasn't exactly sure why, but just as she hadn't pointed out his unintentional slip-up, he remained impassive and didn't mention anything. It didn't really register that apart from the few times they shouldn't have interacted in Alpha, she hadn't really seen him when he was basking under the light. "Didn't mean to scare you." He pulled his hand back a little and gave her a small tight-lipped smile. Licking his dry lips, he sat down on the edge of her bed, perching more on the frame than the mattress so his damp towel wouldn't soak through the sheets. The open ends of the towel slid off his right knee, one end dropping between his legs and the other hanging down off the knot by his hip. There were a few nasty scars on the outside of his thigh, like the ones on his torso, though one looked more like it came from a bullet graze than a gash. He rested his palms on his knees. There were lingering faint tremors in his hands, but he tried to keep them still. “Not scared, just surprised,” she said, defaulting to her usual babbling to keep herself from thinking any inappropriate thoughts that might decide to flit through her brain. “But that's what I get, you know? For not paying close enough attention. But sometimes when something feels good it's like my brain just shuts off for a second to enjoy it.” She carefully took one of his hands in her own so she could get a better look at the damage, trying not to let her fingers accidentally graze his knees and thighs. She was curious about the scarring that was peppered all over his skin, but she didn't say a word- He would talk to her about it if he wanted her to know, but considering his reticence, she wasn't going to hold her breath waiting. Most of the damage looked to be over his knuckles, so she laid his hand back down on her thigh so she could open up the packet of antibacterial ointment. “Do you feel like talking about what made you angry tonight?” she asked, dabbing the ointment on the still angry looking wounds. “Or do you just want to ignore it? Because I can do both.” A number of things had set him off. It wasn't just either of the Nats. He could handle being let down not-so-gently like a big boy. He was frustrated with the trials. He was angry at himself. And confused. Most of all, he'd kind of thought that everything would go back to normal once the scenario was over. They could pick up where they left off, like what happened last time. And maybe they will, but the damage had been done now. There was no going back from dying. “Let’s not,” he ended up saying, staring over her shoulder at a patch of wall like it was the most interesting thing in her room. “I think I’ve bored you to tears enough today.” “Okay,” she said, nodding as she opened up a couple of the bandages to spread them across his knuckles. They didn’t have to talk about anything if he didn’t want to. If things had been different, if they were still in that cave with only each other to lean on, maybe he would have opened up more, but she wasn’t going to push and force it. Once she’d doctored up his other hand as best she could, she ripped open a package of painkillers and dropped them into his hand. “Now, take both of these and lay down. I’m going to shower… And I will try not to sing too loudly in there, but I make no promises. The acoustics are pretty good in there and I need all the help I can get.” He was quietly appreciative that she didn't push it - a part of him did feel a little guilty about having conditioned her into trying to find that line he drew between prodding and provocation, making her walk on eggshells around him - but he didn't say anything as he popped the pills without question and knocked them back. He lowered his head and ran his fingertips gently over his knuckles, feeling every little bump under his fingertips. She'd done a far better job than he could hope to do by himself. "Thank you," he heard himself say. He'd get dressed while she was in there and sit in a corner of the bed with his towel draped around his shoulders under his still-damp hair, trying to dial everything down so that it didn't feel like his clothes were trying to cut through him. Idly he found himself wondering if she took in all the strays she came across, or just the really messed up ones who needed more help than she could provide. “You’re welcome.” Darcy picked up the clothes she’d gathered and retreated to the bathroom for her own shower. “Make yourself comfortable.” She snagged her phone before entering the bathroom, thinking that maybe a little music would maybe help keep her on key. It wasn’t likely and she knew it, but she could try. The shower was glorious and the hot water was exactly what her sore muscles needed. In truth, after so long in those caves, she enjoyed long, hot showers. Maybe it was being warm, maybe it was being clean and not smelling vaguely sulfurous. Maybe it was that she could turn the lights on and off as she desired. Whatever it was, she loved it and lingered in the water, singing along to her Random playlist. A little Journey, a little Queen, a little Blondie, a little Bruno Mars. She was still singing The Lazy Song when she exited the bathroom, drying her hair with a towel. “Okay, do you want the inside or outside? I prefer inside, but you’re the guest, so if you want inside, it’s yours.” He hadn't realised he was smiling to himself when the music came on. He could focus on those beats rather than Darcy's Greatest Covers Of All Time. Her singing was somehow worse than he'd recalled - maybe because he was so much closer to her he could hear even more of the straining on her vocal cords - but at least he got some forewarning this time, and it was a small price to pay for spending the night in the company of a kind-hearted soul. "I don't mind." He wasn't planning on getting much sleep anyway. There were all the noises, all the thoughts, all the awkwardness, the lingering pain in his arms, and then there were two really annoying clothes tags on the back of his collar and on his left side that would have him squirming all night. He shuffled around to make room for her to climb in whenever she wanted to turn in for the night. "I'm sorry. For imposing." And her having to see him in this state, but. She wouldn't be the first and was unlikely to be the last. He should be sorry for the things he'd said as well, but those words weren't coming just yet. “If it were an imposition, I wouldn’t have offered,” she said, combing her fingers through her hair to take care of the worst of the knots. There were always knots, she’d given up on the idea of having silky smooth hair. Once the knots were eased, she quickly put her hair into a braid. “So hush.” She slid into the bed, careful as she crawled around him and started getting settled in. “Um… I usually don’t wear pants to sleep because I get hot. So I might take them off in the middle of the night. Would that make you feel weird?” “No.” A part of him felt like they were making this even more awkward for themselves than it needed to be. With or without pants he could see the outline of her legs defined by cool ambient air against warm skin and rustling sheets. He suspected that it might only be weird because of how he'd been reacting with and without his trusty senses. “I'm not- doing anything with anyone else. Or anything.” He seemed rather unaffected by that despite being conflicted on the inside. For better or worse he's accepted things as they currently stood. “Night.” He sat there motionless just listening to her stretch out and relax. That was a weird thing to say, she thought. Especially with the fuss he'd made when he thought she was coming on to him. He'd been very specific about having a gir- Oh. No wonder he'd wrecked his room. Maybe their reunion hadn't gone the way he'd expected it to. Maybe she'd been upset about what happened in the cave. Now Darcy just felt awful. She was going to have to do some sleuthing and figure out who it was he'd been involved with and maybe have a talk with her to explain things. If the other woman would talk to her at all. Darcy rolled onto her side, facing Matt, still awake despite the way her eyelids were starting to droop. “You can do what you need to get comfortable. I don't mind. I mean, you said your hearing is sensitive… Is your sense of touch sensitive too?” This... felt familiar. It was a lot more comfortable, it wasn't wet and he wasn't completely blind. He wasn't worried about being attacked in the same way - and if he had any lingering worries about safety, he was in a much better position to defend them both. "Yes. Everything else is- dialled up. Loud and uncomfortable and... overwhelming sometimes," he admitted softly. He could tell her the threadcount of her sheets if she was interested. The exact temperature of the air around his arm. The composite of the laundry detergent. The weave of the fabric of his clothes. How many other people have worn his or her clothes recently. "It's- I mean I didn't realise how much, until the cave. But it's not bad or anything. I'm used to it." What was weird was those days in the arena trying to navigate the world without them, feeling like he'd been wrapped in a layer of insulation and everything was half-numb. "I'd much rather this than- just blind." Darcy nodded. She didn’t fully understand Matt’s predicament, she couldn’t, but she sort of understood and that was good enough for her. She didn’t think a person needed to be at one hundred percent in order to empathize with someone else. However, her pants situation had to be rectified or else she’d never get to sleep. She kicked off the blanket and peeled off her pajama pants, because they were already bothering her and she was definitely at full comprehension there. After kicking them aside, she balled up half of the blankets and hugged them like they were a body pillow, one leg in, one leg out. “You can take off your shirt and stuff if you want,” she yawned. “Like… Maybe not free ball or anything, but if the fabric is too much for you to be comfortable, get rid of it. I don’t mind.” He probably would end up ripping his shirt off in frustration sometime during the night, and he was more worried about waking her up then than a few minutes of awkwardness now. So he relented, reached around behind his collar and pulled his shirt off before tossing it aside onto the floor and lying down next to her, vacant eyes fixated on the ceiling. Running his fingertips along one of the scars on his stomach idly, he rested one wounded hand on his abdomen and the other on the mattress, closing his eyes, listening to everyone else in the building already sleeping, settling in to bed, or still awake going about their business. He was much more used to this than the roaring of cicada cries or absolute silence. Of course, Matt wasn't going to be there when she woke up in the morning. Sometime in the middle of the night he would have pulled a vanishing act. The patch of vacant bedding next to her would be cold to the touch. That she got him to stay for any stretch of time was a miracle in and of itself. Darcy’s eyes slipped closed completely as she reached over and patted his shoulder lightly. Once she was in bed and comfortable, that was it. There was nothing that would keep her awake usually. She yawned once more, burrowing into the blankets. “G’night, Little Spoon.” He froze completely when she sleepily called him 'little spoon'. A protest was swelling in his chest as he turned his head back towards her after a half-minute delay. It rose up to the tip of his tongue and it almost tumbled out from his lips. But any word that he could have uttered turned into a sigh as she drifted off and he turned back to face the ceiling again. Fine. She'd get no arguments from him tonight. Just this one time, he'd allow it. |