come_sailaway | AUGUST EVENT: DRAGSTRIP RIOT

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AUGUST EVENT: DRAGSTRIP RIOT

[it begins with a PA announcement on the morning of the 12th, Friday’s voice coming through clear and cheerful.]

Any passengers that wish to debark to our latest port of call can exit the ship through the metal detectors on deck zero! Please be advised that all alcohol will be confiscated prior to your exit!

[and whoever heads down to the lowest deck will find that what she said was true: there is a metal detector set up there, with Friday manning it. after placing all metal objects (including weapons, and all your weapons) onto the tray, she gestures for the passenger to step through the metal detector.

they exit in an entirely different location. suffering from a splitting headache, and wearing an entirely different outfit than they had put on this morning, but unscathed. they even got their weapons back!

the interior of the diner is essentially your average jonathan rockets establishment. the narrow lane between booths and counter is manned by an entirely mute Friday clone, who cheerily takes orders and serves up food (cooked??? somewhere???) with an almost unnatural talent for roller blading. there is a jukebox in the corner that can be fed with quarters passengers will inexplicably find on their person. the available songs range from the 50s to the 80s, with a particularly wide selection of songs from the platters.

outside, the diner is a great chrome boxcar, circled by a small parking lot. a large neon sign proclaims it to be GIL’S; it buzzes and flickers on and off often. passengers who have regained vehicles will find these vehicles parked outside. there are also a handful of midcentury American cars; none of them seem to require keys, and the gas tank seems set at full.

past the parking lot is a seemingly endless expanse of desert sand and scrubland, bisecting by the empty highway that the diner abuts. a few miles down this highway, the road forks into a smaller one, which winds its way up a steep, ragged mountain until plateauing into another parking lot, with only a small, old wooden fence between the cars and the edge of the cliff.

should they wish to return to the ship, passengers can leave at any time the same way they entered: walking through a doorway that now claims to be a mop closet. passing through will leave them on deck zero, again with a splitting headache. it’s probably fine.]

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( she bites her tongue on any further complaint or reassurance, if only because dog with a bone recognizes dog with a bone, and she thinks pal's worry is better assuaged than dismissed. better sooner rather than later, if there's even a hope of salvaging the mood here, or at least not ending things on a terribly awkward note. so after a slight huff, clarke nods. )

Yeah, alright.

( please let the record reflect this was NOT the reason she'd been expecting to unbutton her shorts and pull up her shirt, but. fingers make quick work all the same, and then the careful peel of fabric from flesh to show:

yup, that's definitely a stab wound from a steak knife that's been cauterized by supernaturally heated metal.

it sits a little above the curve of her right hip. sleek, fresh skin shiny and stretched in the middle, puckered edges of knotted keloided tissue turned dark in the process of healing over. all in all, a rough looking scar, but one that's held up for nearly five weeks with no reopening, no infection and not putting much of a dent in clarke griffin's stride. there's no sign of re-tearing, no oozing of heme or blood, just a lot of burnt, angry nerve endings that scream in agony every time they're brushed too hard — and sometimes just for no reason at all.

pal can look all he wants, and there probably won't be any objection if he chose to gently poke and prod. it's been a few days since she's properly inspected the wound either, but after peering down her front to give it a once over: )

See? It looks fine, you didn't cause anything new.

Thank you.

[There is absolutely nothing sexy about the way Clarke peels back her clothes and Palamedes examines her wound—though in a certain light, one might consider his attention tender. He worries his lip as he looks it over, prodding very gently at the edges in a few places, silent and serious. In the end, he has to concede that as nasty as it looks, the injury is healing well.]

No sign of infection…I’ll have to give Jade my compliments. [He sighs] I suppose if I asked you how you got it, you wouldn’t tell me.

[For all his exasperation, he sounds awfully fond.]

( she hadn't been trying to broadcast the fact she'd been stabbed, and so far as keeping it on the downlow thus far it's been a pretty successful venture. jade and natsuno know out of necessity, sharky she has no control over, and pratt was there — though not in his right mind. her roommate probably has some suspicion, having seen the bottles of painkillers and discarded dressings throughout the room. obviously friday and the captain, for all they care.

but pal's at least a bit of a choice.

something something the intimacy of allowing someone to look at your vulnerabilities and scars. and coupled with the deeply rooted urge to be contrarian, clarke abandons the secrecy of my business and at least gives him the general run down. )

Little while back, a guy was walking around the deck talking about culling the herd and killing the weak. I wasn't about to let that happen, and he tried to gut me. ( emphasis on tried, and greater emphasis on the beat of silence where pal can hopefully infer how that chance, blooding meeting ended. her wound is unhealed, after all. )

We've talked since, though. You could call what he was having a psychotic break, I'm not holding it against him.

( the stabbing? nah, the backstory's too tragic to hold a proper grudge. the unintentional cockblocking though??? )

Clarke. [Pal exhales with something like a laugh. The story is precisely as exasperating as he expects it to be, but it warms him, in a strange sort of way. It’s possible, even, that Palamedes is feeling a little proud at the idea Clarke tried to protect the ship from someone so obviously dangerous.]

Well, at least you’ve settled your differences. [He tries very hard to keep a straight face, but it’s a close thing; there a grin tugging at his lips and a snicker in his throat. Really, Clarke? I’m not holding it against him? And, presumably, he’s not holding it against her? Despite the fact that she killed him? Emperor’s bones, this ship is weird.] Just…try not to get nearly disemboweled next time, all right?

( it's even worse than not just holding it against each other, pratt said thank you and clarke said a jumbled, round about i'm sorry. )

I didn't set out to be nearly disemboweled that time. ( hello? why is that humor catching? it's like a disjointed wave of humor and aggravation washes over her features. )

Are you about to start laughing at me? ( why does she want to take up huffing around a giggle fit right along with him? ) You're not supposed to be laughing at me, Pal, I — ( literally killed a man with a glorified friendship bracelet, then bled all over the hallway and underwent some seriously questionable medical treatment without anesthesia??? )

Clarke. The man just about eviscerated you, and you presumably did even worse to him, and then the two of you sat down and sorted out your differences over tea. I can either laugh or track him down and stop his heart.

[ok, now he’s barely trying not to grin.] Which would you prefer?

It wasn't over tea, but there was an ungodly amount of mashed potatoes involved in the beginning...

( but heart stopping, huh? don't tease her like that, nor open the doors for a flurry of all-too-interested questions all centered around the "how?" and don't look too closely at the sharp light that sparks in her irises, nor acknowledge the strange stutter-stop in her pulse at the offer — you'd do that for me? )

Can I pick a third option?

( instead, focus in on the way she digs her teeth into her lower lip to literally bite back a smirk of her own. and drops hands away from holding back her own clothing in order to better brace one hand against the door paneling and drag her other palm squarely to the center of his chest — five individual points of pressure at the edge of her fingertips, urging pal to lean back in his seat. then she leans in, just enough to bump noses and tickle both their cheeks with a curtain of blonde hair. testing the waters again, waiting for that green light, chest so full with sentiment her lungs feel close to bursting. )

[Okay, to be fair, Palamedes isn’t quite skilled enough to stop a stranger’s heart, and he wouldn’t be particularly inclined to do it even if he was. But he knows theoretically how it could be done, and it’s the principle of the thing.

An ungodly amount of mashed potatoes almost sends Pal into hysterics, but then Clarke looks at him like that and presses him back into the seat, and his laughter dies on his lips. The horror of their surroundings fades again; even the fact that Clarke got stabbed and killed a man becomes uninteresting and unimportant. How strange it is, he’ll find himself thinking later, that his mind’s frantic activity settles down to a background buzz when she leans in like that.

He turns his head just enough for their lips to meet.] Depends what you have in mind.

( he can get there, let's call it a work in progress. meanwhile — )

You're maybe one of the smartest people I've ever met.

( pal turns his head accordingly and their mouths brush in the faint imitation of a kiss. another tease, as they both continue talking only now it's like they can breathe words directly into each other's mouths; a well rounded sensory experience, not sentiment just to be heard but felt as well. clarke's left hand will find his right, gentle grip encircling his wrist and tugging back so pal can splay his palm across her sternum; fingers free to press into skin stretched over her ribs all the way up to collar bones, and focus on pulse points. feel the slower, more certain way her heart thuds in her chest.

turns out deep 50's v neck halter tops are good for something, she likes — and decidedly revels in — the feel of his skin on hers.

lastly, clarke's eyelids drop. not all the way closed, she can still see a swath of his skin through her lashes. there's a faint click of her teeth meeting, like she wants to bite at his lower lip as much as she'd like to kiss it. )

And I trust you can figure it out.

[That makes Palamedes chuckle softly.] Maybe? I’m definitely the smartest person you know.

[On the whole, those smarts don’t extend to romance and sex, but in this instance, he knows what to do. One hand he keeps splayed against her heart, warmed by the steady, enthusiastic thump, the aliveness of it, the other he brings to rest against her uninjured hip, and then he enthusiastically surges into the kiss they’re both waiting for.]

( it is absolutely a good thing palamedes takes that enthusiastic plunge, because clarke's set to fire back with and definitely not the most humble and inadvertently keep them in trash-talk-compliment limbo for a while longer.

she's good this time. sans any push pull from the hand at her hip, there's no residual attempts at dryhumping, despite the very recent memory of just how hard he'd felt through the confines of 1950's redressing denim pants. no, she'll remain constrained and wanting, but play above the waist. crowd in until her breasts press into his chest, crowding his hand between the two of them; hands sweeping the planes of his shoulders and sides of his throat until they're well familiar territory, easily mapped like the decks of the serena eterna; neck, jaw, cheeks, and mouth kissed and re-kissed, then kissed again until the taste of his mouth is practically her own.

seconds, minutes, half hour, maybe even an hour of gently tangling in each others limbs and mouths. maybe a break or two, where they fully look at each others faces and clarke invariably smiles, says something stupid and punch-drunk like you have beautiful eyes and they remind me of storm clouds, with a gruff follow up to any bemused fallout of don't look at me like that, i mean it before diving back in to drag their mouths together. one thing registers above all and it's that, beneath her sweeping hands, pal's incredibly thin. feels smaller than the aura with which he carries himself, near breakable. bone easily palpated through flesh, and she'll eventually wonder over if he remembers to eat while poring over notes and theorems. but that's for later.

it's when whimpers against his teeth threaten to turn into please and just let me's that she'll finally withdraw, an air of self imposed finality colored by the sunlight streaming through windows, now the deep yellow of afternoon-evening. hands slip from his body to the backrest of the passenger seat at his shoulders, grip tight and bracing. and a war is waged in her chest, eventually ending in concession as a fraction of her desire is killed off and shoulders resettle into line with reality. they can't just stay here like this. safe bubbles of stolen moments eventually have to pop, and the line of her mouth is indicative of preemptive mourning before it's stitched upwards in a gentle smile. )

I think we need to get back to camp.

( she means, of course, the diner. that dreaded parking lot where their predecessors had died. but old world tendencies slip through in moments of raw vulnerability. it's the same meaning in the end — back to the others, back to people they care about and should share the lacking information they'd learned out here.

there's not much wait for a response. clarke ducks her head for one last kiss, which hits off center at the corner of pal's mouth, then leverages herself back across the center console of the rover with a lot less grace than she'd climbed over it initially. )

[More trash talk compliments can happen later. For now, Pal is very happy to get back to kissing. In the past, he has sometimes wondered what the fuss could be about; sure, he understands nerve ends and erogenous zones from a scientific perspective, but there had always been some part of him had secretly thought it seemed awfully silly. Now, he’s certain that kissing is extremely silly—and also that he doesn’t care. When Clarke exhales across his ear, goose pimples rise on his arms, and when their tongues brush against each other, heat coils in his belly. Still, sometimes he feels a laugh bubbling up inside him. How did they end up here? What are they doing?

How can it be that he feels so free when he has absolutely no idea what he’s doing?

In the moments when they part enough to speak, their chests rising and falling with breathlessness, Pal is ready with his own sweet, silly observations: The sun makes your skin glow, Your freckles right here remind me of the stars out my office view screen in the Library, and, inevitably, no, you stop looking at me like that.

When Clarke stops them, he wants to protest, but he can’t deny the way the sun has shifted in the sky, or the fact that people will eventually wonder where they are. They can’t grow complacent, either; dangers still lurk in these shadows, dangers they may still be able to stop if they are fast enough and clever enough, but not if they spend all their time hidden away like this.

And so he nods with a sad sort of smile, and he lets her go. He doesn’t quite look at her as she settles herself into her seat—not out of embarrassment, but thanks to a kind of stunned awe that envelops him as his mind comes back online.

Before Clarke can grasp the wheel, though, he reaches out and hooks his forefinger with hers.] …Thank you.

[It sounds so inadequate, but he doesn’t know how else to express what he feels in his heart. Thank you for sharing this time with me. Thank you for being someone I can trust. Thank you for making the loneliness a little more bearable.]

( parsing it down to the base human enjoyment is logical, but overlooks some of the more integral parts of human connection. it's the same measure of trust where she'd stood with an open back at the edge of the cliff, as it is when she puts his hand on her sternum in the wake of discussions on stopping hearts. it's a lot like him mapping her internal organs in the infirmary and finding what's missing, when his tongue slides between her teeth and they can taste each other's saliva. and not dissimilar to laying in the dirt and patting his chest, when she fists hands in his shirt to prevent them traveling below the belt line — ultimately wanting to make sure he's okay.

and for what it's worth, clarke doesn't know what to do with the silly aspect here any better than pal, she's just rolling with it and not imposing any immediate questions. it isn't like silly is all that awful though, is it? it's different than almost any other time she's kissed someone, and all the better for that change. she misses some of the levity that filled her lungs right alongside the oxygen, once resettled in the drivers seat.

for what? she wants to ask, almost does — lips pursed around the f consonant before recognizing the semi-treacherous path that line of questioning could lead down. what we did equals why did we do it equals where did you think it would take you. and the only easy answer is in response to would you do it again? so after a pause, she simply curls her finger back around his, second knuckles slotted against each other and locked; gives a gentle tug. )

Any time.

( but she's also the first to disengage. unlaces their fingers, turns the key in the ignition, and at some point, belatedly remembers to redo the buttons on her shorts. it's in relative silence that they make the descent from (the aptly named) makeout point. no music hooked up to the aux cord, just the rumble of the engine and the whir of the tires beneath them. they take the paved roadway this time, a little bit longer than off roading but smoother sailing; easier to let minds wander or stay stagnant in a moment now past. at some point clarke takes one hand off the wheel and rests her elbow against the door framing, cradling the side of her head in her palm; almost reminiscent and shy in the way she won't look sidelong at palamedes.

but thought, as it often does, slips. the return to normalcy was inevitable, it just sucks their normal is so god damn retched. maybe five miles from their destination, with the evening sun glinting off the silver siding of gil's diner like a lighthouse beacon — )

We really might die out here... Again.

[This much Pal can say for the universe the Captain has built: it is absolutely beautiful. Maybe the naturally unworldly nature of the desert is more forgiving to the Captain’s uncanny valley approach to landscapes; or maybe he’s just better at deserts than he is at forests. Either way, Pal finds himself unexpectedly entranced, particularly as the sun sinks and the yellows and golds of the landscape bleed up into the sky.

Pal remains quiet for a few moments after Clarke speaks. She’s right, and he hates it. He’s so very tired of living and dying at the hands of beings who treat death like nothing more than an unfortunate spill to be mopped up.]

Would be a beautiful place to die. [He wets his lip, swallows.] But a better place to fight. [Pal reaches across the space between them, across the fear and the gentle shyness, and rests his hand on her arm for a few moments] And no matter what he throws at us, we’ll fight like hell.

( she's in the middle of aggressively, silently, and internally disagreeing — nothing pretty about dying, and the scenery doesn't matter when your vision goes black — when he reaches over to bracket her arm with his hand. hot and cold to the touch, a physical intrusion of her thoughts to go along with the verbal chiseling of her dread. it's commanding, drags clarke's attention back to pal's face; gift of the open road that she can look away from the windshield for a second.

that's a lovely rallying cry. she wants to buy in, but — )

Why not just go back to the ship?

( it's a question lacking pronouns attached — no i, no we, not even all of us — but there's a very strongly implied you intwined in her words, and engraved in the line between her eyebrows. )

[The question makes Palamedes smile. It’s a I see what you did there with your lack of pronouns smile. A are you, of all people, really going to ask me that? smile. It’s a smile that’s fond and long-suffering, with a touch of oh, come on Clarke, you know me better than that.]

Because our fellow passengers, bless them, are a bunch of stubborn fools who would stick their fingers in a socket just to find out what it felt like to get electrocuted. If we can’t convince them to remain aboard before danger strikes, we can do our best to keep them safe out here.

( a mission doomed to fail, but still one she resolutely had to attempt. palamedes smiles at her across the center console between their seats, and clarke smiles back on instinct; but what begins as a sun-bathed i had to try smile eventually slips into something a little sadder. she's seen him in some semblance of a fight; running up the stairs in the midst of pirate jenny's storm, descending the cliff face out of breath. and now she's felt the press of bones through skin and felt just how fragile he physically is.

heart stopping, death defying magic beneath his belt or not — she doesn't want him to break. )

Always.

( she says, but then breaks eye contact. and is then suddenly very involved with the clutch and gears of the rover. and so they drive. )

[This time, Pal’s smile is one of those ridiculous, stupid, bright-as-the-sun smiles that fully transforms him. For a long moment he watches her as she fumbles with the clutch, and then he goes back to staring out the window and into the strange, illusionary expanse beyond.

Palamedes Sextus is no fool: he knows that horrors lie ahead. But for the first time in a long time, he feels something like hope.

They soon arrive back at the parking lot and Pal hops out of the rover, his hair still tousled and sticking slightly to his forehead with sweat, his glasses smudged and askew. He falls in step beside Clarke as they walk back to the diner.] I don’t know about you, but I could do with one of those milkshakes.

[Enter: Rita Mordio, exiting the diner to squint out at the annoyingly dusty expanse of boring desert, impatiently waiting for Natsuno and Jade to return from wherever they've gotten off to so they can all go back to the ship safe and sound.

It's Clarke and Palamedes that she sees instead, though, and a scowl instantly crosses her face; she's about ready to just turn right around and ignore them, but...huh, they seem a little...messed up. Her eyes rake over them, noting the tousled hair, wrinkled clothes, and dirt smudges, before she gives a knowing eyeroll. Oh, she can tell exactly what they've been up to.]

Hmph--so you two were going at it, huh?

[Except she's also kind of dead wrong, because she thinks they were fighting, not making out.]

( pull in the parking lot, throw the emergency break, clamber out of the car, and wait for pal to circle the rover and fall into step with her. easy peasy.

everything's going pretty smoothly, and that moment of anxiety is quickly chilled over with something so mundane and delightful as a milkshake. clarke's mouth is too dry to water properly, but she's about to ask pal what his favorite flavor is and if he's hungry as well when — enter rita mordio.

and exit: all the color from her face. feet seize up with a mild scrape of heel on asphalt, and just as quickly as it'd left, a wash of uncomfortably hot and unnatural dark blood stains from clavicle to chin. honestly, thank god for the amount of dirt cacked in drying sweat, it probably dims the effect a little. nothing muffles the slightly shrill, high tenor in her voice in response to being so horrifically called out like this. )

Excuse me?

[Palamedes hands are in his pockets, his posture easy, something almost dopey in his expression. He’s about to launch into an unnecessarily detailed analysis of the pros and cons of various milkshakes flavors, including which ones go best with fries, when Rita appears.

He freezes, first going pale, and then a blush creeping up his cheeks. He and Clarke speak simultaneously.]

What?

[She snorts--they're so embarrassed, she bets they were fighting over something incredibly dumb--and gives them her usual judgemental glare.]

Don't think you can pretend it didn't happen--it's so obvious, just looking at you.

We —

( inside, clarke's dying a horrible, painful, mortifying death. outside, she's blinking a bit too much, looking over and up at pal for some sort of help, and then through a herculean effort — setting her mouth in a thin line and committing to playing dumb. )

I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, Rita.

[Pal might be inexperienced, but he isn’t a prude. He doesn’t think that sex, or anything sex-adjacent, is inherently dirty or problematic to talk about. But it turns out that considering such things in theory is very different than having someone in reality look at you with a I know you were just sucking face expression.

Unlucky for him, the ground doesn’t swallow him up. A meteor doesn’t fall from the sky. The Captain doesn’t appear out of thin air and begin monologuing about his latest torture plans. They’ll have to fend for themselves.

Pal swallows a few times, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and he takes off his glasses to busy himself with cleaning them against his shirt.]

Neither do I. Come on, Rita, it’s too hot out here for games. Tell us what you mean, or leave us to go inside.

[It'd almost be funny if she weren't annoyed by both of them more times than not, and the poor oblivious act they're trying only makes her more irritated.]

Hmph--playing dumb isn't gonna cut it, you know!

[They must've fought over something seriously stupid, and while there's a tiny spark of nosiness in her, she doesn't actually care enough to know.]

Whatever...get in all the fights you want; it's not like it matters to me.

Edited 2022-09-30 02:40 (UTC)

AUGUST EVENT: DRAGSTRIP RIOT

cw: some wound talk

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