Fic: Stay Around Here, For a While (Last Resort)
Title: Stay Around Here, For a While
Fandom: Last Resort
Rating: T
Genres: gen, het if you quint
Summary: Grace Shepard left James King out to die. James King finds Grace Shepard on a beach. Coda to Skeleton Crew.
A/N: Arrr! Maybe I do need a Last Resort icon... wait, I'm currently downloading screen caps *rolls eyes at self Got one! And it's snurchable. Anyway, kind of spoilery for Skeleton Crew, so if you haven't seen that ep yet, maybe rethink opening the cut. Everyone else... tell me what you thought of it, please?
Stay Around Here, For a While
“Aching heart, troubled soul
I wanna tell you something wanted you to know
Look at these eyes, look at this smile
They're gonna stay around here, for a while.”
Amy MacDonald, “Troubled Soul”
It’s oh-dark-hundred on the island and he’s running. Best time to do it, before the crack of dawn. Island’s asleep then. No Julian fucking everything and everyone, no islanders eyeing him wearily, no Navy trying get a hold of him and stuff him into the oversized tin can they call their fucking boat. No Pakistan screaming in his head.
Just sand, stars, wind. Breathing steaming like a well-oiled machine, sweat running down his body, legs pumping on, on, on. Nothing better in the damn world. Thoughts are staccato, to the beat of his feet. Chaplin, Kendal, Shepard, Prosser, Tani, all in one, one in all, on, on, on. America, China, Taiwan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, on, on, on…
Shit.
Not supposed to be there. Someone on the beach, not supposed to fucking not be there. Eyes closed, breathing needs to be in control, control, dammit. Tick, tick, tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Every second calms down his breathing more and he needs maybe thirty in all. He’s more out of shape than he thought.
He has no side arm with him, no knife, not even a wire. SEALs are weapon enough to themselves. So he walks up, with caution and the light treat he was taught in another country, another life, another time. Figure on the beach is not who he expected.
So he didn’t actually expect anyone but sure as hell he hadn’t expected that. Lieutenant Shepard. Grace. He doesn’t know why they call her that. Nothing gracious about her. All steel and bullets and nukes, their Grace.
In the moonlight, there’s nothing graceful about her, either. Just a huddled lump on the ground, knees drawn to her chest, head bowed down in defeat. He heard her father shot a presidential advisor. He heard her father nearly shot the SecDef, too. He heard he did it because Curry was about to kill his daughter.
Not a lot of grace in that family, he thinks.
Sadness, though. Sadness is there, right now. Body language says it all. Lieutenant Grace Shepard is sad and maybe scared, too. And she’s out on a not quite friendly island, or maybe hostile, depending on whether Julian is awake of not. She’s out alone, not paying attention to her surroundings wallowing in maybe grief and fear or self-pity.
Later, he will never be able to say why he did that. But here and now, he lowers himself to the ground, right next to Grace Shepard and sits down. No reaction and he thinks she might be asleep. Not with contempt, exactly, but he’s a petty officer and she’s a lieutenant that looks as if she’s asleep on beach on Sainte Marina. You do the math yourself.
Then she does her own math and she looks at him and she might or might not have noticed him before he sat down, after all. He sees a small movement, her right hand twitching and he sees the side arm she wears. Smart lieutenant.
She seems to have registered that it’s him. He can see that her body is suddenly tight, like a frightened animal poised to either jump away or jump you and there’s a surge of something inside of him. Same surge that had been there whenever she’d confronted him, told him what to do, wouldn’t take no for an answer. Respect, he thinks.
Respect, he hopes.
And disappointment, the moment she decided not to perceive him as a threat. I could be dangerous, he thinks. I know you think I’m going native, he thinks. I’m not, he thinks. Because kissing Tani doesn’t mean he’s going native. It means he wanted to kiss her. If he wanted to kiss Shepard, it would just mean he’d wanted to kiss her.
There’s no way to find out where that thought just came from.
She’s still there, in the same position. She’s not looking at him anymore. Just staring out into space, not even at the sea. He thinks he knows what she must be seeing. Chaplin must have filled her in on what happened, in front of China invading Taiwan. If Grace Shepard knows what’s good for her, she didn’t give a shit about China and Taiwan then.
She doesn’t seem to give a shit now. And he wonders what he’s doing here, all of a sudden. He should be getting in shape again and she should be recovering from keeping the sharks away from the Colorado. He shouldn’t be wanting to stay here and not leave until the sun rises.
It’s real easy, this whole thing. Back out there, she left him out to die. She left him out to die and if he told Tani, she’d probably want to skin Shepard alive. She would probably skin him alive for being with Shepard right here, right now and watching her struggle with her demons. She’d say Shepard deserved the demons. Maybe she’d even ask her father to summon them for real and sic them on Shepard.
Sometimes he’s a real idiot.
He heard Prosser and the crew saluted her. He would have done the same, taut as a steel rope between two wooden poles. That took guts, guts the crew thought she never would have but he knew better. The moment he saw her standing in front of him and she stared at him instead of his body the first time, he knew she had the guts she didn’t even know she had herself.
He admires her. It is what it is and it will probably change into something more or less but right now he admires her. He thinks he should also pity her, because Daddy Admiral will be dragged in front of a trial and or maybe a firing squad and she’ll be forever sorry she meant so much to him that he wouldn’t accept her boat to be sunk.
There’s no way in hell she’d accept pity. There’s not much he knows about Grace Shepard but he knows she’s a girl on a submarine that needs to be a bad ass motherfucker to be accepted by motherfucking Prosser and his cronies. And he knows she’s tugging at him, pulling him down like she nearly pulled him down with the damn boat. It’s bad for him to be around her and maybe that’s why he stays.
He looks at her again and sees exhaustion creeping up on her, like one of the demons she must be wrestling crawling over her skin and making her shoulders sack, her eyelids droop, her head drop on her knees. Before she falls asleep, she blinks and looks at him again. There’s a smile, tiny and graceful. She’s bad for him, as bad as Tani is good for him.
That’s not the only reason why he decides to stay, in the end. There’s a dark swirl in his mind, all the things he’s thinking about her, about them, sucking him in, all the way down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. But there’s something else, too. Something bright, something that kept him upright until now. Something that makes him stay.
It’s that he’s a SEAL. It’s bone deep, it’s all he is, all he will be, all he wants to be. He’s a SEAL. SEALs protect. So tonight he protects the woman who left him out to die to save a boat full of people, maybe save the world, and damn it all. It’s the least he can do for her.
Fandom: Last Resort
Rating: T
Genres: gen, het if you quint
Summary: Grace Shepard left James King out to die. James King finds Grace Shepard on a beach. Coda to Skeleton Crew.
A/N: Arrr! Maybe I do need a Last Resort icon... wait, I'm currently downloading screen caps *rolls eyes at self Got one! And it's snurchable. Anyway, kind of spoilery for Skeleton Crew, so if you haven't seen that ep yet, maybe rethink opening the cut. Everyone else... tell me what you thought of it, please?
Stay Around Here, For a While
“Aching heart, troubled soul
I wanna tell you something wanted you to know
Look at these eyes, look at this smile
They're gonna stay around here, for a while.”
Amy MacDonald, “Troubled Soul”
It’s oh-dark-hundred on the island and he’s running. Best time to do it, before the crack of dawn. Island’s asleep then. No Julian fucking everything and everyone, no islanders eyeing him wearily, no Navy trying get a hold of him and stuff him into the oversized tin can they call their fucking boat. No Pakistan screaming in his head.
Just sand, stars, wind. Breathing steaming like a well-oiled machine, sweat running down his body, legs pumping on, on, on. Nothing better in the damn world. Thoughts are staccato, to the beat of his feet. Chaplin, Kendal, Shepard, Prosser, Tani, all in one, one in all, on, on, on. America, China, Taiwan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, on, on, on…
Shit.
Not supposed to be there. Someone on the beach, not supposed to fucking not be there. Eyes closed, breathing needs to be in control, control, dammit. Tick, tick, tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Every second calms down his breathing more and he needs maybe thirty in all. He’s more out of shape than he thought.
He has no side arm with him, no knife, not even a wire. SEALs are weapon enough to themselves. So he walks up, with caution and the light treat he was taught in another country, another life, another time. Figure on the beach is not who he expected.
So he didn’t actually expect anyone but sure as hell he hadn’t expected that. Lieutenant Shepard. Grace. He doesn’t know why they call her that. Nothing gracious about her. All steel and bullets and nukes, their Grace.
In the moonlight, there’s nothing graceful about her, either. Just a huddled lump on the ground, knees drawn to her chest, head bowed down in defeat. He heard her father shot a presidential advisor. He heard her father nearly shot the SecDef, too. He heard he did it because Curry was about to kill his daughter.
Not a lot of grace in that family, he thinks.
Sadness, though. Sadness is there, right now. Body language says it all. Lieutenant Grace Shepard is sad and maybe scared, too. And she’s out on a not quite friendly island, or maybe hostile, depending on whether Julian is awake of not. She’s out alone, not paying attention to her surroundings wallowing in maybe grief and fear or self-pity.
Later, he will never be able to say why he did that. But here and now, he lowers himself to the ground, right next to Grace Shepard and sits down. No reaction and he thinks she might be asleep. Not with contempt, exactly, but he’s a petty officer and she’s a lieutenant that looks as if she’s asleep on beach on Sainte Marina. You do the math yourself.
Then she does her own math and she looks at him and she might or might not have noticed him before he sat down, after all. He sees a small movement, her right hand twitching and he sees the side arm she wears. Smart lieutenant.
She seems to have registered that it’s him. He can see that her body is suddenly tight, like a frightened animal poised to either jump away or jump you and there’s a surge of something inside of him. Same surge that had been there whenever she’d confronted him, told him what to do, wouldn’t take no for an answer. Respect, he thinks.
Respect, he hopes.
And disappointment, the moment she decided not to perceive him as a threat. I could be dangerous, he thinks. I know you think I’m going native, he thinks. I’m not, he thinks. Because kissing Tani doesn’t mean he’s going native. It means he wanted to kiss her. If he wanted to kiss Shepard, it would just mean he’d wanted to kiss her.
There’s no way to find out where that thought just came from.
She’s still there, in the same position. She’s not looking at him anymore. Just staring out into space, not even at the sea. He thinks he knows what she must be seeing. Chaplin must have filled her in on what happened, in front of China invading Taiwan. If Grace Shepard knows what’s good for her, she didn’t give a shit about China and Taiwan then.
She doesn’t seem to give a shit now. And he wonders what he’s doing here, all of a sudden. He should be getting in shape again and she should be recovering from keeping the sharks away from the Colorado. He shouldn’t be wanting to stay here and not leave until the sun rises.
It’s real easy, this whole thing. Back out there, she left him out to die. She left him out to die and if he told Tani, she’d probably want to skin Shepard alive. She would probably skin him alive for being with Shepard right here, right now and watching her struggle with her demons. She’d say Shepard deserved the demons. Maybe she’d even ask her father to summon them for real and sic them on Shepard.
Sometimes he’s a real idiot.
He heard Prosser and the crew saluted her. He would have done the same, taut as a steel rope between two wooden poles. That took guts, guts the crew thought she never would have but he knew better. The moment he saw her standing in front of him and she stared at him instead of his body the first time, he knew she had the guts she didn’t even know she had herself.
He admires her. It is what it is and it will probably change into something more or less but right now he admires her. He thinks he should also pity her, because Daddy Admiral will be dragged in front of a trial and or maybe a firing squad and she’ll be forever sorry she meant so much to him that he wouldn’t accept her boat to be sunk.
There’s no way in hell she’d accept pity. There’s not much he knows about Grace Shepard but he knows she’s a girl on a submarine that needs to be a bad ass motherfucker to be accepted by motherfucking Prosser and his cronies. And he knows she’s tugging at him, pulling him down like she nearly pulled him down with the damn boat. It’s bad for him to be around her and maybe that’s why he stays.
He looks at her again and sees exhaustion creeping up on her, like one of the demons she must be wrestling crawling over her skin and making her shoulders sack, her eyelids droop, her head drop on her knees. Before she falls asleep, she blinks and looks at him again. There’s a smile, tiny and graceful. She’s bad for him, as bad as Tani is good for him.
That’s not the only reason why he decides to stay, in the end. There’s a dark swirl in his mind, all the things he’s thinking about her, about them, sucking him in, all the way down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. But there’s something else, too. Something bright, something that kept him upright until now. Something that makes him stay.
It’s that he’s a SEAL. It’s bone deep, it’s all he is, all he will be, all he wants to be. He’s a SEAL. SEALs protect. So tonight he protects the woman who left him out to die to save a boat full of people, maybe save the world, and damn it all. It’s the least he can do for her.