Re: Marvel: Cris & Sam
He was ready for the violent panic. He didn't want to scare her, but he had to stop her. Cris didn't tighten his grip, but he held fast. Sam's wild elbows caught him, one too high, bouncing painfully off his ribs, forcing a grunt out, another swung to the stomach. He grit his teeth and turned her, spun her on the spot.—The cars on the road one step back whisked by, fast, unstoppable, a force of nature in an unnatural place, and Cris couldn't swallow. There was a lump in his throat and, suddenly, he was winded. His lungs were empty of air. It wasn't from running. It was an immense, gripping pain radiating outward, terror—he recognized it by the sear of sand-stench in his nose, black-eyed, white-knuckled, because, for one timeslip of a moment, he was underground and he was reaching for Sofia as their train came out of the tunnel and she jumped with the rictus of a smile onto the electric tracks.
Only this time, he caught her.
Sam sobbed. She pounded weak fists on his shoulders. She screamed. She was collapsed against him, and she begged him to let her go, and Cris stood dazed. He held her and he tried to make himself breathe, but it was like the entire apparatus of inspiration and expiration had froze like pipes in the calcium of winter's hold, and he couldn't force anything through. It had happened in Fallujah—this kinda thing—and Cris could feel himself start to shake, some automatic response he didn't want, his fingers digging bone where they bit into Sam. Bile rose acidic in his throat. The world squeezed around him.
He clenched eyes closed and opened them, focusing on the racket of the girl's voice splitting near his ear, and he focused on the blunt blot of her fist on the tendons tight in his shoulders.
Air came through like it was being shunted through a straw, too small, in sips, and Cris was petting Sam's hair without thought, without realizing he was doing it, until he could breathe again. He gasped a little, no idea what was even going on around them, people watching, trying to shuffle around this new, very dramatic obstacle, as the crosswalk turned white.—They'd been here, not him and Sofia, him and Sam. Her wanting him to let her go—needing him to?—and him keeping her pinned to his chest. And maybe it was a mistake to do now what he did then, but what else could he do?
Cris didn't let her go.
"Por favor, Sam." It was pleading, breathless, damp at the edges; it was fingers grazing cheap cotton, trying to get a hold on a girl trying to spring away like she was spinning away in a dance, ending in a spray of red. He still couldn't swallow, and his voice raked like nails. Cris held her and he swayed, the way his mother had when he was little and crying. "Mi amor, por favor, te necesito."