“What if it was the thing in the hospital coming after you, Lincoln? What if it wasn’t me that just came through that door!?”
He doesn’t look at her but more than a glance, and she expects at least a glimmer of relief–some sign that he doesn’t have a goddamn death wish.
He looks away, peering anxiously back out the window.
“I’m talking to you, Lincoln,” she snaps, voice wry and shaking and she wants it to be because she is pissed, wants it to be because he is running her to wits end–but her heart pounds when he faces her again with that same apathetic, empty bloodshot stare, brow creased and tired.
“At what point does this become considered stalking?”
The words sting because he doesn’t bother to intone them with humor, and because she isn’t sure that it is unintentional.
“Are you even listening to me? Your life is in danger, Lincoln. You’re being hunted down.”
She takes a step towards him and he lets out a frustrated breath.
“Maybe,” he responds, voice snapping and causing her to start slightly away from him when his fingers crackle. His jaw clenches and his eyes flicker to his fingers, drawing them tight to his palms before peering slowly, softly back at her. “Maybe it’s because I should be.”
His voice stutters, coarse and tired.
His expression stays soft, pleading for her retreat, but the words send an angry jolt through her.
She shakes her head, slowly.
Her concern for him aches, pulsing through her; loud and angry and demanding.
“That is bullshit, and you know it is.”
He tenses back up as she moves towards him and she pauses, only briefly.
“Lincoln, I know the real you.”
His gaze lowers as a heartbreakingly wry laugh tumbles from his lips.
“You know the scripted puppet you met in the Afterlife, Daisy. You don’t know me.”
He spits out puppet like a curse and doesn’t meet her eyes again for a moment, letting the tension pulled tight in the air between them fill the silence–before he eyes her again, sadly.
“I’ve hurt people. I’ve destroyed things. They are after me for a reason.”
He looks small and his words come our smaller–but steady, a mantra obviously sung again and again in his head.
There is a frantic edge to how his eyes cling to her, something subconscious begging her to prove him wrong.
She takes another step towards him, and this time he doesn’t fade back from her.
“You are not cursed. You are not some horrible thing. How do you think I got through my transition? Because let me tell you, it wasn’t courtesy of those puppet-masters.”
She stops as he tenses, clinging to his gaze, begging him to hear her out.
“You saved me, Lincoln. Now let me save you.”
As she moves nearer the lines of exhaustion in his expression become clearer, the anxious shine of sweat on his brow more defined.
“You’re wasting your time caring about me.”
It is brutally honest–at least, she is certain he thinks it is. It is reflected in everything he does, she doesn’t have to have Andrew or have a psych major to see the heavy wells darkened beneath both his eyes; note how his shoulders slump uncharacteristically beneath the light jacket thrown over them. Even his usually speedy resonance echoes sluggish and drained in her ears–and the darkness, the shadowy aura that has settled in and snuffed him out makes her stomach turn anxiously.
She is scared for him.
It is why she has come after him, followed him to this empty office building hardly an hour from where she couldn’t reach him, couldn’t tear through the rough exterior. He doesn’t want her to. But he has hardly put up a fight.
When she touches his arm she feels his muscles tense beneath her fingers–but he doesn’t pull away.
“If you’re a monster than what does that make me? I killed someone, I was out of control.”
The space between his brow tightens and she grips his arm tighter, trying to ignore the water pooling in his eyes, the concerned anxiety still brewing just beneath his surface.
“You kept me safe anyway, didn’t you?”
“Daisy...”
“If you’re really worried about wasting my time caring about you, you should probably know it is too late. The time has already been wasted.” She feels he brow furrow as she stares into his eyes, beyond pleading at this point. “Please. I can’t leave you for them, Lincoln.”
His throat bobs as he swallows, and his tongue shoots anxiously over his lips–and then she is staring at them, and drifting closer to him–still clinging to his arm. His pained expression shifts softer and then he is moving towards her too, tension still heavy in the condensed space between them–until her brow is brushing his and his fingers are ghosting over her hip and there is no space left for it to fill and it buzzes through her veins instead.
Then the door flies open, and they are immediately pulling apart, raising their arms to the threat, powers buzzing to life.
“I see I’m interrupting something,” Coulson deadpans, eyes shifting uneasily between them as she lowers her arms, still tense, glancing sideways to see a red-eared Lincoln following suit.
“Are we ready?”
Daisy ignores the comment, ignores the heat burning in her cheeks and the way she is still tingling where her skin brushed his.
“Just waiting on you.”
She looks again to Lincoln.
“You’re coming?”
His jaw is tense as he glances nervously at Coulson, and back to her.
She doesn’t let her words lilt into a question.
He nods.