WHO. Lincoln & Skye WHERE. The SHIELD base. WHEN. After the events of 4 July. WHAT. A lot of feelings. And gym bag abuse.
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Visiting Ward without the knowledge that she could control her abilities - the rattling which could hurt others or herself, dependent upon where the energy was directed - was simply out of the question. Even Bobbi’s words about towing the line - though true - gave her considerable pause. They’d left objective behind months ago. Now, everything was personal. Everything but getting intimate with the contents of the car that would take Lincoln and Skye to their next site; another Inhuman caught the attention of SHIELD. And they were tasked with collecting information.
Skye also thought it was Coulson’s excuse to get her away from the base for a few days, in case anything happened to turn to rubble. Accidentally, of course.
But in the midst of everything Ward-shaped, she had realized she didn’t give Lincoln’s feelings much thought. He wasn’t accustomed to being on the other side of SHIELD’s battle tactics. They could be jarring, to say the least. And as much as she wanted to ask him and reassure him, she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to hear what she was sure would be a firm critique of their violence. So she packed more furiously, making lists for her lists.
Lincoln knew that being a part of her team would put him on the side of violence. That was what he signed up for. He knew what SHIELD was. But there was knowing and there was experiencing. He turned against Jiaying and Gordon, the two people he cared about most in the world, because of their unexpected violence and callous disregard for life. They stopped seeing people as people, and only as targets, or enemies, or non-Inhumans. Lincoln was a peacemaker in a war, so that meant he was torn, yes. Very torn.
He worried about Skye and her powers with Ward around, not because he thought she would lose control, but because he knew it was a fear of hers. He had complete faith in Skye becoming one with her abilities; he saw it too many times in the others to doubt it. Ward was unsettling. Lincoln didn't know what to make of him. Anything HYDRA made him jittery. The last time he dealt with HYDRA, they cut him up until he died on the table. Skye only barely saved him. He didn't like to think about that much.
A new mission was good. It was distracting. He approached Skye carefully, his concern pretty obvious, for anyone with a set of eyes. He did attempt to knock first. Deceit was not a skill of his. "I'm sure the bag is very sorry for whatever it did to you. Did you read it its rights first?" Teasing. Joking. That they were good at. Most of the time.
As if thinking of Lincoln made him appear, Skye looked over her shoulder briefly and gave him a measured nod. “Rendition says I don’t have to read the bag it's rights. I can beat the crap out of it and then hide it in a hole until I need it again. Fancy, right?” That humor which had been their refuge seemed to be going dark. There was too much to be said. Too much to discover which might out to be left lying there.
But her hand paused out of deference and respect to her friend. She turned, this time providing him her full attention. “Hey.” She took a breath. “So … wow.”
"That's a very on the nose joke." That was precisely what SHIELD did, after all. Ward and his people would probably never see a trial, or so Lincoln was starting to think. He had mixed feelings on that. He wasn't someone who cared overly much about law and order, but the abuse of power was a concern these days.
"Hey," he replied softly. "I'd ask if you were okay, but I know you're not." Lincoln was used to dealing with people when they were scared or anxious about what was happening in their life. It was a little harder when his life was so closely wrapped up with hers now, so it was both of their baggage now. "I'm usually pretty good at reading people, but that guy is a mystery to me." He meant Ward, of course.
“Who said it was a joke?” A clip of ICER bullets, a plastic container filled with Cheez-its; at least there was still some juxtaposition in her life. And if Skye balked at answering the unspoken question, she went red at the mention of Grant Ward. But diversionary tactics worked too, right?
“So did you hear about the public poll? Seventy-three percent, concerned about ‘super-powered beings’ … makes you itch all over, doesn’t it? And to think I actually used to enjoy reading Christine Everhart.”
If she thought that was a better diversion, it wasn't in his case. It was very, very worrisome actually. "It does. It's certain to make everyone in Afterlife nervous too." Lincoln wondered if they could count on SHIELD's protection, and that was part of why he was working with them. Why the Inhumans were working with them. They needed some kind of ally, otherwise they were very much alone.
"First of all, you had questionable news taste, she's always been a little too scandal hungry, second of all …." The kiss made everything have an undercurrent of tension, but before kissing her, he would have made contact. So he still did. It was them. Lincoln reached out to snag her hand, loosely, so she knew she could pull away if she wanted to. There were no traps here. "I don't want to be pushy, but I also want you to know … you can talk to me. I mean, we're partners."
“Yeah, I can imagine. If I’m itching, they’re probably … well, all the metaphors are bad.” She shrugged. It was easy to forget about Afterlife - and the unseen Inhuman council of elders or whoever her mother answered to - when she had boots on the ground. But Lincoln was all too good about drawing her back to remembering the construction of that world. Skye’s focus was on protecting those who did not enjoy the security of Afterlife. She believed it didn’t always take terrigen crystals … or, anyway, the powered spikes had been on the rise.
A sigh brought their palms into contact, and she selfishly vined her fingers with his to squeeze a little too hard. “I’m supposed to ask you that question. Hey Lincoln, this is hard stuff … I’m here for you. Lean on me.”
"Terrified," he supplied. "Probably. Historically, these situations haven't gone well for our people. We've hidden for a reason." Lincoln did wish they were still hidden. He felt partly responsible. They caught and indexed him. He knew it as just a matter of time honestly, considering Coulson was looking for them in the first place. But he was captured, tortured, and then indexed, and bringing him back to Afterlife meant bringing SHIELD there too. There was just a lot of blame to go around.
He relaxed once the touch was accepted and given back. Lincoln was a physical person. Comfort was as easy as a pat on his shoulder on bad days. Connection was always craved. "Give and take, that's how it's supposed to be, right?" He smiled faintly at her. "I'm not great with violence. I don't think that's a surprise. Finding Inhumans, that's something I'm passionate about, but shooting guys - even HYDRA - in the junk, little less so." He winced out of sympathy. So it was almost a joke, just skating the edge. "You?"
Skye’s gaze fell. She didn’t want to talk about how she felt; feeling meant that she had to process it, had to ram it through her chest cavity and deal with it on a myriad of levels. Feeling meant putting herself first. And she didn’t care to do any of that. Instead, she leveled their twined hands at his chest and gave him a good thunk with their knuckles.
“You’re so nice. Like, all the time.”
Lincoln chuckled and raised her knuckles to his mouth, kissing them lightly. "Please don't tell me you have a taste for bad boys, because I would be laughably bad at pretending to be one." He stood out in this place, with the violence and darkness, but it was in him too. Deep down in there, just at his fingertips, when someone needed to be zapped.
"You're getting really good at your powers, just so you know. You have excellent focus when you need it, that's a talent that usually takes time." Lincoln saw their abilities as gifts. As natural extensions of themselves. The better Skye was at it, the more she was accepting who she was, in his eyes. "Not that I'm surprised, because …." He paused. He was about to compare her to her mother, and realized how very not cool that would be. "Because you're strong minded." Also true.
I don’t want to feel this. I don’t. Lincoln didn’t need to finish that sentence and Skye didn’t need precognition to understand what he’d meant. Gently loosing her hand from his, she turned her attention to another round of ICER bullets. Luckily, they were just for precaution. Together, they managed to make the greater number of their encounters less violent than some other counterparts. But 15 year olds, scared of what their bodies could do for the first time, really didn’t hold a candle to people like Grant Ward.
She shook her head. “Because of Jiaying.”
He knew it was the wrong thing to say as soon as it started, but there was no dialing it back. Lincoln winced when she pulled away, sorry that the moment was lost, and he crossed his arms against his chest. "Yeah, that … that too." His history with her mother was long, and he couldn't even start to explain it. Nor did he think she wanted to hear about it. And he couldn't blame her. Not after what Jiaying did. Guilt curled in his stomach. How he wished he could talk to Gordon about everything that was happening, but that avenue was lost to him, and he was more alone than he let himself seem on the surface.
"I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking." He hated feeling out of sync with her, but things didn't always just slide into place all the time. They were still catching step with each other. And Jiaying was a stumbling block they weren't close to leaping over.
“Don’t be sorry. You followed me here, you stayed. You could have gone anywhere and I spend all my time feeling sorry for myself -- and I have nothing to be sorry about.” Skye turned an arched brow on Lincoln. “I get lost in the job …” in you. She took a breath.
“And I never ask you how you are. I just expect you to deal.”
"Skye," he said softly, reaching out to touch her shoulder. "This is exactly where I wanted to be. It's the only place I can be right now. Afterlife's just, well, it's not the best sanctuary at the moment." And everywhere he turned there were reminders of what was lost. Lincoln picked the wrong path, and he wasn't going to forget that, so this was a correction. "I believe in what we're doing, and I believe in you." He was more iffy about SHIELD, but the lesser of two evils.
"You found your parents only to lose them again, one of them almost murdered you. You have plenty to feel sorry about. I lost the two people closest to me." It was difficult to say that, but it was true. He withdrew his hand and looked down at the ICERs too. "It's hard to grieve for people who did something so ugly. To grieve for someone who hurt you, for that I'm sorry."
“ … you’ve got nothing to apologize about,” came on sharp. She didn’t want Lincoln feeling like he owed her something, like there was some element of weakness to her that he had to shore up when he was already in the middle of having to live on the hyphen of what he probably wanted to be.
She turned to him, hip canting against the SUV to lay her palm on his cheek. “All I know is you were training to be a doctor in Cincinnati. That’s it.”
The touch grounded him like it usually did, and he relaxed a little. "I told you about getting my abilities and that's pretty personal to an Inhuman." Lincoln smiled at her. "Before I got them, before I knew what I was, I felt really lost, you know? There always seemed to be something just out of reach, I could feel it crawling under my skin." There was no exact way to describe the feeling of knowing he was more than just the flesh and bone he was used to. It seemed arrogant to say that to others, to know he was special. "I went through a rough patch, before I was brought to Afterlife. And once you're there, people tend to take the second chances. Start over. Which is what I did."
He was found by Jiaying and Gordon specifically, and he owed them a great debt. More than he could tell her, but it didn't mean he was with her because he owed her mother. "You saved my life, Skye. There's not a lot of people who would've risked themselves like you did. You would've been under the knife too, if they caught you." Lincoln was cut apart by HYDRA; the thought of that happening to her was too ugly for him. He touched her hand affectionately. "My hero," he teased softly.
She was still learning what was considered A Big Deal for their kind; and for Lincoln, too. But something in the back of her head told her that ‘rough patch’ was a euphemism for something pretty serious. He couldn’t be that good. In Skye’s experience, nothing that good stayed … and he kept on staying. Even though HYDRA had him on the table, even though SHIELD made him uncomfortable. And her insistence that he share his past didn’t help.
But something kept telling her he knew more about her than he let in. Something kept telling her that digging was a good thing. Or maybe (thanks to a sociopathic Mom and a weirdly singular Dad) she couldn’t just accept the goodness for what it was.
“Yeah, yeah.” A crooked smile. “I’ll always be around to save your ass.”
"I hope it's an ass worth saving," he said with a good natured grin. He wouldn't be surprised at her thoughts. SHIELD wasn't big on trust, and she had reasons not to be too. So Lincoln would just keep being his steady self and hope eventually it would get through. He was persistent.
"I expected our first date to have more of the small talk. Like I enjoy Italian food, beer over liquor, black coffee, I was a complete nerd growing up. The kind with a stack of books and maybe a little bit of a teacher's pet." Lincoln shrugged, but what he really meant was a lot of a teacher's pet. It showed in other areas, and probably set him up for how other people had a lot of influence over him. "Being an Inhuman is honestly the most interesting thing about me." He fake winced and put his hand affectionately on her hip. "Should I try to do the broody thing instead? I can look serious and mysterious. It just involves staring into space with a blank expression."
“Yeah, but you know. Stuff … happens …” The nerdy Lincoln, the Lincoln confident about his ass (when would she get the confidence to touch it, to think about it without blushing?) and Indiana Jones. That, despite the power emanating from them, illustrated such normalcy. And it was what she craved.
“I bet you had, like. A room full of collections.”
"Stuff is definitely happening." He stepped in closer to her, the hand on her hip curling around her back. He laughed at her comment and made a face. "You mean like a stamp collection? I'd lean more toward action figures. And posters. I had a poster of the Rolling Stones over my bed, and I thought it made me incredibly cool. Of course at the time I didn't even know what songs were theirs." Lincoln only came to a good place with the Inhumans because he otherwise managed to stay normal. Normal was necessary when you were as abnormal as someone could possibly get.
"Do we need to get a permission slip to start dating? SHIELD seems like the kind of place that likes to be nosy." Lincoln wanted it to be clear to her at least what his intentions were.
“Well. Before I answer anything else, there’s something I have to know …” Lincoln was as easy as breathing. She could breathe. She could lean into his grip and smile.
“What’s your favorite Rolling Stones song?”
He chuckled and let her lean into him, automatically supporting her without fully being aware of it. "There are so many cheesy and euphemism replies to that, I almost dread having to answer." He bumped her nose with his playfully, breathing her in. "I Wanna Be Your Man." He snickered as he went on. "I Can't Get No Satisfaction." She made his heart thump and goosebumps and all those little things the songs talked about. "Probably It's All Over Now once you dump me for making these jokes."
He kissed her then, because he was having this problem where it was difficult for him not to. She was like joy and salvation bottled up in one adorable package.