thisavrou_log | it's in my head, darling i hope

it's in my head, darling i hope

Who: Nick & Cassie
When: 7/17
Where: Medbay
What: Nick comes out of cryostasis
Warnings: none

[Something rattles. Something falls and breaks. Nick has his hand outstretched even before his eyes are open, like he can move the numbness and confusion far away from him, instead of whatever he just broke.

If he doesn't break himself in the process. He's still gasping for breath when he hits the floor, - he'll be feeling that later, probably even have a nice bruise to show for it, but for now the impact is dulled. His body is still catching up. Everything feels tingly, and not in a good way.]

Cass-

[His voice sounds hoarse and unused. Nick grimaces as he pushes himself to his hands and knees, the cryo-fluid dripping off his hair, his eyelashes, rolling down his arms and spine to remind him that he's naked. It doesn't matter, only one thing does. Nick lifts his head to look around the Medbay, using his powers to help him get up and steady if his liimbs can't be trusted. If she's gone - shit, what if she's gone? His voice is louder this time, louder than his chattering teeth.]

Cassie?!

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[ At first, she'd counted the days. Each one felt worse the longer it went on, checking on his tube and wondering if he'd ever wake up, and Cassie spent a lot of time looking through the network, bored and worried and a little too scared to actually admit she wanted to go home. How could she when the one person besides her mom was here? After a few weeks, she gave up going back to their room and started sleeping in the medbay, sometimes tucked between the space of the cryotube and the floor with the stuffed thing he'd gotten her on the Collective or sometimes sprawled out in a chair she'd dragged close. It's a good thing sleeping anywhere has sort of become a habit because it's not the most comfortable situation she's been in.

She's been awake for a while too, staring blankly at the pages of her drawing pad and unable to figure any of the sketches out. For a week, she kept drawing Nick in that stupid thing, and each time, she'd gotten a little too close to crying over it. Then, eventually, it had faded, and now, all she seems to be able to draw are a bunch of chains wrapped around the ship. Or the sad faces of the crew she sees here and there. (At one point, she'd taken her favorite red pen and scratched out the one she'd drawn of her and Nick, and all of it reminded her too much of blood to feel safe enough to sleep that night.) But she's awake, having stretched out across the room to give some of the other people who visited their friends some privacy, and she recognizes her name almost instantly between all the hushed voices, pushing up out of her seat with wide eyes.

Is she hearing things? Is that real?

Except it has to be, when she hears him say it again, and she's abandoning everything to push past some of the medbay personnel to get to the other side, not so much frantic as she is nervous and excited and sick to her stomach. And when she first sees him, her brain processes it in too many steps to feel coherent—he's awake, ew, gross, he's naked, he's not dead. He hadn't left her. Maybe, if she'd been thinking about it, she would have just grabbed one of the nearby blankets and thrown it at him, but she doesn't. She throws herself at him instead, the tears hard-fought to stay down burning her eyes as she presses against him and squeezes her arms around him just as tight. He's kind of slimy, kind of wet, but she doesn't care. He's still with her. ]

Nick -- [ It's all she manages to get out before she's crying, the stress of the last month suddenly so overwhelming that nothing else matters except this moment and them and him. There's a lot she has to tell him, fill him in on, but that can wait. She just needs to have this for a second or two before she yells at him for being dumb, even if it wasn't his fault. ]

[He doesn't get a good breath until he spots her, because only then does his chest unlock to allow for it. That's when his heart feels like it's thawed and starts to beat again. That same breath gets knocked out of him when they collide, arms instinctively locking around her amidst the whoa, whoa that escapes his lips. Nick hunches his shoulders, ready to hit the ground first if they fall. But somehow, miraculously, they stay upright.]

Hey.

[It's a whisper, maybe unheard over her sobs. He doesn't know what else to say, but Nick would have trouble getting the words past the lump in his throat anyway. He feels the heat in his own eyes, because Cassie crying is Not Allowed, and suddenly he's so fucking angry with the ship and the other people on it, because how can they let a young girl be this alone and scared. But it's really just Nick being angry at himself. Yeah, he knows that she's smart and brave and thirteen going on thirty. It doesn't change the fact that he shouldn't have left her alone.

Nick caresses her hair, realizing too late that he's getting that cryo-goo in it. Maybe it won't take the color out of her hair. Then again, would that be such a bad thing? He smiles to himself, blinking quickly before he kisses the top of Cassie's head, just keeping his lips pressed there as he murmurs an apology.]

I'm sorry.

[ Even if he thinks she doesn't hear it, she does. It's not the hardest thing to focus on besides the fact that, beneath all that weird, cold fluid is the warm beating sound of his heart, and Cassie presses into that for a long, long moment, unable to catch her breath. Relief is a strange thing when it makes her feel so helpless, and that's exactly what she'd been with Nick in that tube and the universe around them falling apart. The future is hard to face when you don't know it, but knowing it and realizing there's nothing you can do-- she bites at her lip in an effort to stop most of the sounds sitting in her throat, unable to bring herself to look at his face just yet.

She's never liked crying. Still doesn't, and her fingers flex against his back, loosen before pushing in to clutch at him. ]

I didn't think you were ever going to wake up.

[ It's a quiet admission, something soft and choked with her tears as she squeezes her eyes shut as tight as she can. Just real, all real. Not a thought pushed into her head, not some place where Division can get them. She breathes out, slow and careful and isn't crying now so much as trying not to shake. Nick is cold, she can feel it through her clothes and the thermals she's got on underneath her t-shirt and skirt, and maybe she's just going to stay there to help with that. She isn't going to move, doesn't want to, and if he thinks he's going to be less than an arm's length away after this... He is so, so wrong. ]

What, never? Never ever?

[Nick tries to inject some humor into his voice, something that will make her smile or smack or give him that judging look that she's got down to an art form. But she still sounds tired and vulnerable.]

How long was I out?

[He suddenly dreads hearing the answer to that, because he knows what each and every day did to her. He doesn't even want to think about the times that she cried and it didn't help at all, because none of the bad stuff could be lifted for as long as he was in that damn cryo. Nick can already tell that she didn't have any visions of this. There's no crappy little drawings of stick figures hugging in her notepad.]

Did you stay in here?

[Because it's cold and she's dressed for it, so her misery was complete right down to the physical. He's in no more of a hurry to move than she is, so Nick reaches a hand out to bring a couple of blankets to them.]

[ All Cassie does is just shake her head a little at that. She knows what he's trying to do, and it hurts to try following up with a smart remark of her own. It's impossible to think about looking at him without seeing how he'd looked in that cryotube either, wanting to remember him any other way, and she eventually turns her head, wiping her face against her shoulder. It's gross, she's gross and he's gross, and all of this is just turning out to be the worst space trip ever. ]

I don't know. A couple weeks, I guess. [ Because trying to shrug it off is easier than thinking about the nights she really had cried laying there underneath his cryotube, and Cassie wiggles a little to snatch up one of those blankets, thinks about throwing it at his head for trying to make her laugh all this off before unfolding it and wrapping it around him like a towel. No more mostly naked Nick, thank god, and she's never going to acknowledge that fact for the rest of her life. Probably. Besides, she's seen a few people pop out of cryo before him and how they hadn't exactly had it together for a while after they'd woken up. Cassie shrugs, still a little unsure about looking him in the eye but eventually making herself do it anyway. He looks mostly the same with the same fuzzy face and the traces of color from when he'd let her dye it. That gets a smile, though only a partial one. ]

Wasn't really anywhere else I wanted to stay. [ A sigh, and Cassie tries so hard to let it be normal, to get them back to where they'd started and had quickly rolled their way towards. ] So, what was it like? Did you dream about anything while you were in there?

Two weeks in that thing? No wonder I feel like crap.

[All stiff and weak and kind of sick. Nick frowns and wipes at the cryo-slime with the other blanket, two swipes at her for every one that he takes at himself. In the end, nothing's going to help but a shower and a change of clothes.]

What? [He smiles at her when she finally lifts her eyes, looking worried about what she might see, or at least a little unsure.] I guess that counts as beauty sleep. Don't I look more beautiful?

[God, it's even in his ear. He takes the corner of the towel and starts trying to get it out, at which point he's probably super attractive.]

Nah, not a single good dream about anything. No winning the lottery, no supermodels, nothing.

[ She makes a face when he tries to clean her off with the blanket, but rather than push his hand away, she just stands there and tolerates it. Cassie's never liked the fact that he sometimes tries to baby her, having been on her own long enough to take care of herself. Still, it's nice to have him awake and moving around and doing all those Nick things she'd missed those really long weeks. ]

You kind of look like hell. [ Sorry, Nick. It's true. ] But I don't think anyone's going to care all that much. Not after all the stuff that's been going on.

[ Which is probably a long, complicated story she's just going to sum up real fast so he doesn't start worrying or blaming himself for something that is (apparently) not his fault. She'd asked around when it had first happened, why people get stuck in those things, and no one seems to know why. So, it couldn't have been his choice. Cassie's firm on that, pushing sticky hair over her shoulder as she looks at him. No use being touchy-feely right now; she hopes she's gotten that out of her system. ]

We should get out of here before they decide to keep you even longer. [ A pause, and she frowns a little. ] Bad dreams?

[Look, at least he's not doing that whole 'clean off with spit' mom thing, so she should consider herself lucky.]

Just 'kind of'? I'll take it. [Getting out of there sounds like a good idea, but Nick still puts his arm around her shoulder to keep her against his side.] Just the one. I dreamed you got a mohawk.

[He smiles down at her. She had to miss this. Had to.]

Now tell me what happened.

[ She has missed it, which is why she doesn't fuss over the arm on her shoulder or his comment. In fact, just for that, she pokes an elbow into his ribs and nudges him, but she doesn't stray very far, glancing at the chair across the medbay she'd left all her things in and deciding that leaving with Nick is far more important than that. She could come back later for that. ]

You won't like it. [ Considering the fact she now has a gun and some weird knife thing stashed in her bag. ] Some guys tried to attack the ship, and stuff got turned into glass after they were tossed into that thing we came through back on that planet. You should really see the mess hall.

[ It's just one huge empty room now. Super boring, no color at all. ]

How the hell did they turn it to glass?

[That's weird, even for a guy who move things with his mind. She's right though, he doesn't like it. He doesn't like that she had to face it while he was a Nicksicle, doubling the load on her shoulders.

He nearly stops at the thought of the mess hall being messed up.]

But they still have ramen, right?

[Priorities.]

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it's in my head, darling i hope

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