SNC: Occupational Hazards (gen, PG-13)
Title: Occupational Hazards
Author:
mad_maudlin
Fandom: Sanctuary
Characters: Henry Foss, Kate Freelander. (Shippy if you squint, I guess?)
Rating: PG-13 for nakedness
Summary: Nobody told Kate these things.
A/N: For
story_lottery prompt: a cliff.
Occupational Hazards
by Mad Maudlin
It wasn't like Kate was stupid or anything. She had gotten the measure of the Sanctuary staff pretty quick during her first couple of weeks there: first couple minutes, actually, because it was clear right off the bat that Zimmerman was smart, the big guy was tough and Magnus was not a woman you fuck around with. Henry Foss she had pegged early on as a soft target, and even when he showed off some skills with a weapon she couldn't really revise the estimate, not when he was fussing about the state of her room and crooning to his computers and waxing poetic about Joss Whedon. Will turned out to be more capable than he looked, the big guy had a brain under that all hair, and Magnus had a heart, albeit a broken one; but Hank was always a great big nerd, good with a keyboard but not cut out for action work.
She did notice the meds he took, and how much he liked the big guy, and she overheard him talking to Magnus or Will about stuff that didn't make sense without the context, and there had been that dig about him having a certain affinity for the monsters they were currently hunting, but still: big goofy nerd. So she wasn't exactly expecting him to pick up a truck. And even when he did pick up the truck, she still didn't process what was happening, not until she was safely away from the edge of the cliff and she saw the fangs. Then it clicked. She said something like, "Oh."
"Yeah," he said, panting. His face quickly shifted back to the normal shape, but his eyes were still fiercely yellow when he looked at her. "Gonna try to sell my skin to the highest bidder now?"
"Don't flatter yourself," Kate shot back, but she couldn't really put her heart in it. She climbed out of the truck and looked down the cliff which she'd come so close to rolling over. "Fuck."
"No, thanks." Henry looked at the tatters of his shirt and jeans and made a face. "Damn it, this never happened to Lou Ferrigno."
They were somewhere in Central America-she wasn't sure exactly which country anymore-chasing invisible lizard people or some shit. Kate had kind of spent the briefing flicking bits of paper at the back of Henry's head, or at least the parts of it after this creature must be taken alive. Magnus and Will had taken their own truck, and sent her with another and Henry for a babysitter, something about how they'd worked well together before, and the thing about "affinity." Which apparently meant he was a goddamned prote as well as a big goofy nerd, and making the two fit together in her head gave Kate a headache. Or maybe that was some kind of delayed reaction to the invisible lizard people who'd tried to flip the truck off a cliff. If Henry had been inside, instead of futzing with one of his computers--
Well, he hadn't been. And he was a big goofy nerd who could pick up fully-loaded trucks and haul them over the edge of a cliff. Kate sat down, with her feet hanging over a couple hundred feet of air, and took a couple deep breaths. "You okay?" Henry asked, sounding alarmed.
"Think I hit my head when I went over," she said. Everything was a little bit spinnier than she was usually comfortable with.
Henry's eyes were the normal color now, but he knelt next to her and sniffed, which, well, shit, she'd just thought he had allergies or something. "You're not bleeding," he said. "Where's it hurt?"
"Back off," she said, batting his hands down when he seemed ready to start feeling up her head. "It's not that bad. I'm just a little rattled."
Henry stood up. "Okay, okay, fine. You wanna sit on the edge of a cliff with a concussion, your funeral. I'm gonna check on the radios." As he turned back to the truck, Kate caught a glimpse of his Ultrabrite-white ass through the split seams of his jeans.
It made a lot of sense in retrospect that Henry was an Abnormal, except for how if he was then why hadn't anybody told her? You'd think that would have been on the new employee orientation, alongside stuff like "don't steal the big guy's coffee" and "your password must contain numbers, letters and characters found only in Unicode." She knew she wasn't exactly in the trusted inner circle, but she'd thought they had a thing going, you know? At least enough of a thing that someone would think to let her know that the sys admin might occasionally grow fur and try to eat people. Or pick up trucks and save them. This shit was relevant.
Henry swore and kicked a tire. "What's the problem?" Kate asked.
"Radio's busted all to hell," he said. "And it looks like I bent the frame when I pulled the car up. We may be stuck here a while."
She shaded her eyes and watched him lean in through the driver's door again. She was seeing a lot of blinding-white Foss real estate through those rags. "Thought we had one of those GPS thingies."
"Yeah, but it just pings on a proprietary frequency," he said. "Will and the doc will know something's up, but they might be hours in the other direction, and the nearest Sanctuary with a helicopter is Mexico City."
She scanned the trees at their backs, but there was no sign of movement. "Look on the bright side, though-you musta scared the living crap out of the lizard people."
"They're amphibians," he said, in the same tone of voice he used to say things like we're using nonlethal methods and that's going to damage the hard disk and I can smell your hamper from the other side of the Sanctuary. And wow, but that last one suddenly made a different kind of sense. Henry sat down in the driver's seat of the car and raked a hand through his hair, and only then did he seem to realize just how much skin was showing through what was left of his clothes. He very suddenly crossed his legs. "Oh. Uh. Shit."
"Don't be so modest, Hank," Kate said, but did avert her eyes while he scampered around the other side of the truck and started rummaging through the jumbled cargo. She focused on a large pink flower instead while she asked. "So when were you gonna come out of the closet?"
"What do you mean?" he asked, with his head in a bag.
She climbed to her feet and the world only wobbled a little. "I find it hard to believe that everybody just forgot to mention that you're a protean Abnormal. Which means you're either hiding it from everybody, or just from me. Which is it?"
He pulled a faded Superman t-shirt out of a bag and tugged it over his head. It kinda-sorta muffled him saying, "I don't exactly like to spread it around."
"Hey, I respect that," she said. "I just thought we had something, you know? After all that racing around after the steno baby, I thought we made a real connection there."
He ripped off the remains of his jeans and produce a pair of board shorts from his bag. "Was it more or less of a connection than when you beat me up that first day we met?"
"Are you still angry about that?" she asked, bewildered. "Because dude, do you not remember the part where I was your hostage and Magnus was waving a gun around? Besides, it's nothing personal."
"Exactly," he said, stepping into his shorts.
Kate blinked. "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"
Henry looked like he started to say something, but didn't; then he sighed. When he came back around the side of the jeep he had his hands jammed in the pockets of his board shorts. "It means that until a little while ago, you were the kind of person who bought and sold people like me," he said dully. "Surprisingly, that doesn't really make me want to open up to you."
For a couple of seconds Kate could only gape at him; she kind of blamed the head injury. "Okay, whoa," she finally said. "Back it the hell up, Foss. You make me sound like some kind of...of slave trader or something."
"You saying you never dealt in anything that could talk back?" Henry asked.
"No," Kate said. "Never. I did the same thing I do for Magnus, except I got paid by the highest bidder."
"And what happened to the goods after that?" Henry demanded. "You ever think to ask that?"
"Oh, drop the holier-than-thou, okay? It got old a couple weeks ago," she snapped.
He raised his hands. "I'm not trying to pick a fight, okay? You asked a question and I answered it."
She folded her arms across her chest. "So you lied about being a prote because you were afraid I was going to sell you to a zoo?"
"I didn't lie," he said, sitting down on the rear bumper of the truck. "And that's one of the reasons."
"Are the others all just as crappy?" Kate demanded.
He glared at her again. "I don't tell most people, okay? It's not just that you're...you. Will only knows 'cause he saw me change, or I wouldn't have said anything to him, either."
"I thought you two got along okay?" Kate asked.
"It's not about that, it's just..." He sighed and raked a hand through his hair. "I don't like to talk about it. I don't even like to think about it, unless I have to. That thing isn't me, he's just...sometimes he's useful."
"For picking up trucks?" Kate hazarded. "Or awesome last-minute Halloween costumes?"
That got him to laugh a little. "Yeah, something like that."
After a couple of minutes, Kate sat down next to him. The view from the top of the cliff was actually kind of nice, when you discounted all the lizard people...sorry, amphibian people trying to kill them. "Well, thanks for the save," she said. "I guess it means I have to forgive you, even you were just kind of an asshole right there."
"You're real generous like that," Henry drawled.
She nudged his shoulder. "Any other deep dark secrets about the Sanctuary I oughta know? Like where the boss keeps the good chocolate stashed?"
He snorted. "If I knew that, no way would I be sharing."
"Spoilsport." She probed the side of her head, but there was barely any swelling; no reason not to just sit back and enjoy the sunshine until help arrived. Or they got pushed off the cliff again. One of the two.
Author:
mad_maudlin
Fandom: Sanctuary
Characters: Henry Foss, Kate Freelander. (Shippy if you squint, I guess?)
Rating: PG-13 for nakedness
Summary: Nobody told Kate these things.
A/N: For
story_lottery prompt: a cliff.
Occupational Hazards
by Mad Maudlin
It wasn't like Kate was stupid or anything. She had gotten the measure of the Sanctuary staff pretty quick during her first couple of weeks there: first couple minutes, actually, because it was clear right off the bat that Zimmerman was smart, the big guy was tough and Magnus was not a woman you fuck around with. Henry Foss she had pegged early on as a soft target, and even when he showed off some skills with a weapon she couldn't really revise the estimate, not when he was fussing about the state of her room and crooning to his computers and waxing poetic about Joss Whedon. Will turned out to be more capable than he looked, the big guy had a brain under that all hair, and Magnus had a heart, albeit a broken one; but Hank was always a great big nerd, good with a keyboard but not cut out for action work.
She did notice the meds he took, and how much he liked the big guy, and she overheard him talking to Magnus or Will about stuff that didn't make sense without the context, and there had been that dig about him having a certain affinity for the monsters they were currently hunting, but still: big goofy nerd. So she wasn't exactly expecting him to pick up a truck. And even when he did pick up the truck, she still didn't process what was happening, not until she was safely away from the edge of the cliff and she saw the fangs. Then it clicked. She said something like, "Oh."
"Yeah," he said, panting. His face quickly shifted back to the normal shape, but his eyes were still fiercely yellow when he looked at her. "Gonna try to sell my skin to the highest bidder now?"
"Don't flatter yourself," Kate shot back, but she couldn't really put her heart in it. She climbed out of the truck and looked down the cliff which she'd come so close to rolling over. "Fuck."
"No, thanks." Henry looked at the tatters of his shirt and jeans and made a face. "Damn it, this never happened to Lou Ferrigno."
They were somewhere in Central America-she wasn't sure exactly which country anymore-chasing invisible lizard people or some shit. Kate had kind of spent the briefing flicking bits of paper at the back of Henry's head, or at least the parts of it after this creature must be taken alive. Magnus and Will had taken their own truck, and sent her with another and Henry for a babysitter, something about how they'd worked well together before, and the thing about "affinity." Which apparently meant he was a goddamned prote as well as a big goofy nerd, and making the two fit together in her head gave Kate a headache. Or maybe that was some kind of delayed reaction to the invisible lizard people who'd tried to flip the truck off a cliff. If Henry had been inside, instead of futzing with one of his computers--
Well, he hadn't been. And he was a big goofy nerd who could pick up fully-loaded trucks and haul them over the edge of a cliff. Kate sat down, with her feet hanging over a couple hundred feet of air, and took a couple deep breaths. "You okay?" Henry asked, sounding alarmed.
"Think I hit my head when I went over," she said. Everything was a little bit spinnier than she was usually comfortable with.
Henry's eyes were the normal color now, but he knelt next to her and sniffed, which, well, shit, she'd just thought he had allergies or something. "You're not bleeding," he said. "Where's it hurt?"
"Back off," she said, batting his hands down when he seemed ready to start feeling up her head. "It's not that bad. I'm just a little rattled."
Henry stood up. "Okay, okay, fine. You wanna sit on the edge of a cliff with a concussion, your funeral. I'm gonna check on the radios." As he turned back to the truck, Kate caught a glimpse of his Ultrabrite-white ass through the split seams of his jeans.
It made a lot of sense in retrospect that Henry was an Abnormal, except for how if he was then why hadn't anybody told her? You'd think that would have been on the new employee orientation, alongside stuff like "don't steal the big guy's coffee" and "your password must contain numbers, letters and characters found only in Unicode." She knew she wasn't exactly in the trusted inner circle, but she'd thought they had a thing going, you know? At least enough of a thing that someone would think to let her know that the sys admin might occasionally grow fur and try to eat people. Or pick up trucks and save them. This shit was relevant.
Henry swore and kicked a tire. "What's the problem?" Kate asked.
"Radio's busted all to hell," he said. "And it looks like I bent the frame when I pulled the car up. We may be stuck here a while."
She shaded her eyes and watched him lean in through the driver's door again. She was seeing a lot of blinding-white Foss real estate through those rags. "Thought we had one of those GPS thingies."
"Yeah, but it just pings on a proprietary frequency," he said. "Will and the doc will know something's up, but they might be hours in the other direction, and the nearest Sanctuary with a helicopter is Mexico City."
She scanned the trees at their backs, but there was no sign of movement. "Look on the bright side, though-you musta scared the living crap out of the lizard people."
"They're amphibians," he said, in the same tone of voice he used to say things like we're using nonlethal methods and that's going to damage the hard disk and I can smell your hamper from the other side of the Sanctuary. And wow, but that last one suddenly made a different kind of sense. Henry sat down in the driver's seat of the car and raked a hand through his hair, and only then did he seem to realize just how much skin was showing through what was left of his clothes. He very suddenly crossed his legs. "Oh. Uh. Shit."
"Don't be so modest, Hank," Kate said, but did avert her eyes while he scampered around the other side of the truck and started rummaging through the jumbled cargo. She focused on a large pink flower instead while she asked. "So when were you gonna come out of the closet?"
"What do you mean?" he asked, with his head in a bag.
She climbed to her feet and the world only wobbled a little. "I find it hard to believe that everybody just forgot to mention that you're a protean Abnormal. Which means you're either hiding it from everybody, or just from me. Which is it?"
He pulled a faded Superman t-shirt out of a bag and tugged it over his head. It kinda-sorta muffled him saying, "I don't exactly like to spread it around."
"Hey, I respect that," she said. "I just thought we had something, you know? After all that racing around after the steno baby, I thought we made a real connection there."
He ripped off the remains of his jeans and produce a pair of board shorts from his bag. "Was it more or less of a connection than when you beat me up that first day we met?"
"Are you still angry about that?" she asked, bewildered. "Because dude, do you not remember the part where I was your hostage and Magnus was waving a gun around? Besides, it's nothing personal."
"Exactly," he said, stepping into his shorts.
Kate blinked. "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"
Henry looked like he started to say something, but didn't; then he sighed. When he came back around the side of the jeep he had his hands jammed in the pockets of his board shorts. "It means that until a little while ago, you were the kind of person who bought and sold people like me," he said dully. "Surprisingly, that doesn't really make me want to open up to you."
For a couple of seconds Kate could only gape at him; she kind of blamed the head injury. "Okay, whoa," she finally said. "Back it the hell up, Foss. You make me sound like some kind of...of slave trader or something."
"You saying you never dealt in anything that could talk back?" Henry asked.
"No," Kate said. "Never. I did the same thing I do for Magnus, except I got paid by the highest bidder."
"And what happened to the goods after that?" Henry demanded. "You ever think to ask that?"
"Oh, drop the holier-than-thou, okay? It got old a couple weeks ago," she snapped.
He raised his hands. "I'm not trying to pick a fight, okay? You asked a question and I answered it."
She folded her arms across her chest. "So you lied about being a prote because you were afraid I was going to sell you to a zoo?"
"I didn't lie," he said, sitting down on the rear bumper of the truck. "And that's one of the reasons."
"Are the others all just as crappy?" Kate demanded.
He glared at her again. "I don't tell most people, okay? It's not just that you're...you. Will only knows 'cause he saw me change, or I wouldn't have said anything to him, either."
"I thought you two got along okay?" Kate asked.
"It's not about that, it's just..." He sighed and raked a hand through his hair. "I don't like to talk about it. I don't even like to think about it, unless I have to. That thing isn't me, he's just...sometimes he's useful."
"For picking up trucks?" Kate hazarded. "Or awesome last-minute Halloween costumes?"
That got him to laugh a little. "Yeah, something like that."
After a couple of minutes, Kate sat down next to him. The view from the top of the cliff was actually kind of nice, when you discounted all the lizard people...sorry, amphibian people trying to kill them. "Well, thanks for the save," she said. "I guess it means I have to forgive you, even you were just kind of an asshole right there."
"You're real generous like that," Henry drawled.
She nudged his shoulder. "Any other deep dark secrets about the Sanctuary I oughta know? Like where the boss keeps the good chocolate stashed?"
He snorted. "If I knew that, no way would I be sharing."
"Spoilsport." She probed the side of her head, but there was barely any swelling; no reason not to just sit back and enjoy the sunshine until help arrived. Or they got pushed off the cliff again. One of the two.