[Tombstone, Arizona] Log 3
Oct. 22nd, 2012 03:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theycallmecapThe town hall is packed to the rafters, but the applause after Ed Schieffelin concludes the meeting is everything but enthusiastic. It's become clear, during the meeting, that nobody expects the four strangers to succeed, and as the town founder turns to them on the dais, while people file out of the hall, it becomes clear that neither does he.
"You're signing your own death warrants, I'm afraid," he tells them, thumbs hooked on his belt.
"We're confident we can make a difference," Steve assures him. Again. It feels as if he keeps saying that.
"But the women?" Schieffelin asks skeptically.
---
She’s on the spot in front of a whole town, which isn’t fun, but it’s made ten times worse by the fact that it’s a 19th century town, in which she’s the smiling demure wife of a soon to be dead hero. Exactly what she’s always wanted.
“We’re here to support our fine gentlemen, just as we’ve always done.” She glares a subtle dagger or two at Steve, in a way that says ‘reference that in the future and you will die’.
Logan’s pulling at his collar. The shirt fits but that don’t make it comfortable. He’s perfectly willing to risk his life to get the map, but can’t they leave him alone until then?
---
Zoe has a peculiar cough right then that sounds a lot like "frak that" when you pay attention to it, but Steve smiles at Schieffelin in that genial way of his, and holds his hand out for a shake.
"We'll keep them safe," he says, guessing that he'll have to pay for that later. "Thank you for the welcome, Mr Schieffelin, and arranging our accommodation."
"Don't mention it," Schieffelin answers, and after shaking Logan's hand next, leaves them to go and talk to his fellow townsmen.
"That was fun," Zoe states with a roll of her eyes, and bats her hand on Logan's arm to get his attention. "Saloon?" She could use a drink, and hopefully a proper one this time.
---
“Lead the way, cuz.” Logan nods and starts for the Bird Cage without seeing if blond and blonder are following.
Right outside the building, he’s stopped by an unfamiliar drawl.
“You boys are bona-fide heroes. The whole town’s buzzin. I wonder if they told you what happened to the last of your kind to breeze through these parts?”
---
"And to the cavalry," Zoe confirms, even as they're joined by Steve and Sharon. She's turned to face the owner of the voice, but he's in the shadows and she can't make him out clearly enough. She's also completely forgotten about the meek persona she is supposed to display, and has her hands on her hips instead, head tilted slightly to the side.
She ignores Steve when he lays a hand on her arm, probably to tell her to take it down a notch. Just like Sharon, that meeting inside was hell for her, and she's had enough. "What is it to you?"
---
“Nothing, honey. ‘And this weak and idle theme, no more yielding but a dream.’” Doc intones the bard with a grin. “Ephemeral as a flower, little darlin. And if you pardon, I will mend.” He tips his hat.
“Name’s Doc Holiday, formerly of Dodge City.”
Sharon makes a skeptical face at the way this sickly looking blowhard is looking Zoe over.
“We’d probably better get to bed. Long days ahead.”
The stranger smiles.
“Too true, pretty lady. I just wanted to pass on a good luck charm or two.” He holds out his coat, which is lined with six gorgeous pistols and a rifle. “In the hopes they’ll do you more kindness than they did their former owners.” His smile dims a few watts. “Friends of mine.”
---
There's something about the sadness in that smile that makes Zoe frown, but not in disapproval. "Thank you," she says, after a beat, holding his gaze, and wondering what it is that has his complexion looking so pale.
"Yes," Steve confirms the thanks, "but I don't -"
---
“Want to deprive you of your keepsakes, of course.” But Sharon’s already stepping forward, pretty sure that this ‘Doc’ isn’t gonna bat an eye at a woman handling guns.
Logan hates the feel of metal that ain’t attached to him, but the claws can’t be counted on, so he sticks a pair in his belt anyway.
“Join us for a drink?” He’s extra polite to weirdos. Especially weirdos that give him free weapons.
Doc smiles. “What shall we do else?”
---
It's a couple of drinks later, and Steve just hinted at their party that they should get some sleep. They never know when they're going to be needed, after all, and they need to be in shape, even if he's certain to toss and turn tonight, like he always does these days. Apparently, only Sharon sees the wisdom of his words, and they leave together.
"I couldn't get to sleep now for the world," Zoe comments, from their table in a corner of the saloon, and happily takes another drink from her glass of whiskey. Actual liquor. She's not much of a liquor fan, but this body can handle it, apparently, and it tastes better than salsparilla.
---
Logan’s got one eye on Zoe, but it’s halfhearted, because he’s pretty sure he could shred everything in this bar before they could touch a hair on that girl’s head. The other eye’s firmly on Annie, but he can’t afford to let himself get totally distracted.
Doc swigs another shot from his little silver cup. “The world is wide, darlin, and and I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum. Momentum that brought you here, and from where?”
---
Zoe knows they're in the United States of America, but that's the sum total of her knowledge of American geography. Doc here might be a charmer, but he's sharper than he lets on, and she tilts her head to the side slightly, watching him for half a second.
"Other side of the country, a small town called Caprica." Thinking of Caprica as a small American town is pretty laughable, but hey. "I didn't think you were the kind of man to care for the past as much as the future, Doc."
---
Doc smiles, a cough building in his throat.
“A little thing like you? All you’ve got is future, darling, miles and miles of future. I’d envy you, but I know you’ll put it to much better use than I.”
---
"I'll do my best, anyway," Zoe confirms, frowning slightly again, that same way he keeps making her do. She's always been the type to speak her mind, so she asks, even if it probably isn't very proper to, "How much longer do you have?"
It doesn't matter what illness it is, although it rubs her the wrong way to think that it's probably one they - Colonials - found a cure for long ago. She's no doctor, though, and the contents of medicine are not something she knows. She hates being helpless, and she has to say that she likes the weirdo.
---
Doc just smiles again. “Longer than most.” He holds out his cup to a passing bar wench. “I have fit a lifetime of experiences into every moment of this cursedly short existence I’ve been blessed with.” It’s not something he considers, not even something he can admit to himself, and certainly not something he’s going to change a bit of his routine for. Which of course entails him romancing the living daylights out of this intriguingly forthright girl.
---
"That's something to drink to," Zoe approves. For once, he isn't making her frown, he's making her smile, a small smile that speaks of appreciation rather than joy. But there's something she's been meaning to ask him.
"I have a favor to ask," she tells him, after she has in fact drunk to the sentiment, and she leans in closer, so she's able to drop her voice and they can't be overheard. "Thank you for the guns, but I'd love a sharper kind of protection. The kind a defenseless girl could keep inside her corset, just in case." She smiles, all too sweetly given what she's asking for. "Do you think you could help a defenseless girl out?"
---
“Fie and fiddlesticks on your defenselessness, madam.” Doc’s pretty saturated, but he’s done the math and found no way to spirit Miss Zoe away without possibly killing her cousin. Which doesn’t usually sit well with young ladies, in his experience. He reaches into his boot and pulls out a bone handled knife with a blade about five inches long.
“I envision this will suit your needs. If you’d like, I can measure to be sure. Thoroughness being a virtue and all.”
---
Now that's more like her kind of weapon (she knows how to handle guns, although not the antiquated versions they have here, but she's always preferred blades, and what she wouldn't give for a katana), and her smile becomes sharper for it.
"I've heard say that modesty was as well," she answers, looking back up in Doc's face, and holding a hand out for the weapon. She's tempted, but she's not that tempted, not when their mission might fly in any moment. "Won't you miss it?" She has to ask; she wouldn't know how to deal with it if he died because he no longer had his blade on him when he needed it.
---
Doc’s smile is slippery and not a little wolfish.
“It’ll do me a world of good to picture it in its new home, I assure you.”
***
Mrs Mallon, the sixty-year-old widow that runs the boarding house, sounds very matter-of-fact as she walks Sharon and Steve up the stairs.
"I'm afraid I only have two rooms left," she tells them, as pragmatic as it comes. "Not much of a problem for the two of you, but I hope the Graystones won't mind sharing a room."
Steve is doing his best not to turn a violent shade of crimson as he answers, more than a little blandly, "I'm sure they won't mind."
---
The proprietress hands Sharon a candle with a wink on her way out the door, and Sharon grimaces. Seriously? Am I on Candid Camera?
She takes in the room; narrow bed, dressing table, wash basin, and Steve, looking seriously uncomfortable.
“It’s OK, Steve. We’re grown ups. We can handle this.”
---
"You take the bed," Steve tells her, and means it. There's a ratty old chair he doesn't think would be much good, which means he's set to sleep on the floor, and that's fine by him, if he manages to sleep at all.
---
“Well, duh.” She gives him a look, but it’s meant to be funny. “You know you did this to yourself, right? You could have said you were my brother.” She’s just going to wait for a laugh, or for him to flee to the washroom. This is just too goddamn much to take seriously.
---
"I wasn't sure - I thought a husband would be more likely to make him leave you alone," Steve admits, and he isn't sure exactly what shade of red he is, but his cheeks are burning again. "I'm sorry if it embarrasses you."
Never mind that he's clearly the more embarrassed of the two.
---
Sharon runs a hand through her hair, laughing at the whole thing, now. The getups, the ALIENS, and the fact that she’s been thrown so close together with someone she’s been trying to keep at arm’s length for months.
“Embarrass me? Come on, Steve. I’m not the one who looks like a tomato right now.” It’s not sharp, just teasing.
---
Sharp or not, Steve gives her a look that seems to ask why she must keep on kicking his puppy, and, as she predicted, flees to the bathroom.
A little while later, Sharon's in bed, and Steve's settled himself at the foot of the bed, on the floor, with his back to the wall. Predictably, he isn't exactly sleepy, but he'll try to find some sleep anyway.
"What made you change your mind?" he asks, after they're settled. "About the map."
---
Sharon sighs, staring at the ceiling.
“A couple of things.” She’s seen too much in the past few weeks to pull her punches with him, and the station having proved that none of them are safe spurs her on to a bit more honesty.
“I knew you weren’t going to back off, and I wasn’t going to let you go alone. Plus it didn’t seem fair to let aliens mess with our ancestors.”
Mostly the former.
---
"You could have helped with all of that without securing the map as payment," Steve points out, because he's been thinking it over. Of course he'd expect her to help against the aliens, because it's about saving people. It's the map he can't figure out.
---
“Oh come on, Wonder Boy. If we’re going to risk our necks to save the day, we might as well not tempt the wrath of the great Space Station, too.” She links her hands behind her head, wanting to tell him he can sleep in the bed, that it won’t mean anything, but the words stick in her throat.
---
Steve makes a noncommittal noise that's acknowledgement more than agreement, and lets the silence stretch for a few seconds. "Good night, Sharon," he ends up telling her, and swallows down anything else he might want to say or do.
***
Logan stumbles up the stairs to their room, not sure why he’s not following Annie to hers. He opens the door and flops face first onto the bed with a groan.
“I forgot what that rotgut whiskey does to me. Shit.”
---
"It's my first time getting drunk," Zoe answers, as she walks into the room mostly steadily, but only mostly, and only because she's focused on loosening her corset once her blouse has come off. There is no way she's sleeping in it. She wouldn't normally admit to something like a first time when it shouldn't be, but she is drunk, so she doesn't really think about how weird it could sound.
---
“Well congratulations.” Logan growls into the pillow. He’s not awake enough or sober enough to feel weird that one of his super teens is supposed to be sharing a bed with him. It’s a surface, it’s better than the floor, and that’s the end of the story. If he’s gonna get inappropriate with anyone, there are way better targets around.
--
He's not going to get inappropriate with Zoe, because it would probably end with her knife close to his private parts, and she's really not worried. It's Logan, he's not like that with them. She is, however, having a lot of trouble with her corset. "I need some help here," she points out, and prods him on the shoulder so he will get his face out of the pillow and help.
---
Logan opens one eye and sees Zoe asking for help undressing.
“Seriously?” He considers telling her to go find her best girlfriend to help her, then reconsiders.
“I guess Carter’s probably too busy being totally awkward to help out.” He loosens the laces for her, turning back to the bed in a flop the second it seems like she can wriggle out on her own.
---
"Thanks," Zoe simply says, and wriggles out of it, and of her main skirt, so she's in her underskirt and undershirt as she claims her space on the bed - what little there is left. Never mind that she's forgotten to take off her boots. "I was actually hoping she'd be too busy frakking," she adds, as she pushes him slightly so she's got room to breathe.
---
Logan laughs good and hard at that one.
“You’ve met Rogers, right? Betcha a million dollars he’s sleeping in the bathtub.”
---
"Do they even have bathtubs here?" Zoe asks vaguely, with a frown, but she doesn't really care for an answer, and frowns and shifts and finally reaches between them to yank one of Logan's guns from there. She'll have to ask him to teach her to shoot it tomorrow, in case it isn't used like the guns she knows, but for now, she puts it down on the floor beside the bed. "Sharon's stubborn. A girl can dream."
---
Gossip is fine for teenage girls, but Logan doesn’t give the first fuck what’s happening in the other room. SHIELD-related romances have always made him kind of pukey, and the whiskey won’t need much of an excuse to come back up on him, so he changes the subject.
“I’m more worried about your modesty than Rogers’, kiddo. Doc Holiday’s a dangerous guy to take a shine to.”
---
"My modesty? Really?" Zoe has to ask, with a disbelieving grimace. She shoves lightly at Logan's shoulder, because like hell she needs a big brother - cousin, whatever. "You have your fun with Annie, I might have my fun with Doc. No danger there. Shut up."
It is more than just fun, though, she wouldn't sleep with someone just for fun anymore, but she doesn't want to put it into words. She isn't sure that she could right now, anyway, not with the strong buzz of whiskey in her veins. But it doesn't mean that there's any danger lurking, no matter what happens, or doesn't - they're only going to be around long enough to get the map, after all.
---
This is about the only idea more disturbing than Rogers and Carter, and Logan actually makes the effort of turning his head to talk about it. He fixes Zoe with a hard look.
“Just understand that if he tries anything, I’ll beat his TB to the punch.”
Holiday’s too old and way too slimy for Zoe, whether she gets it or not.
---
Zoe actually stares at him for a few beats, and normally wouldn't have reacted this way, but with the alcohol in her veins, instead of giving him a piece of her mind, she ends up bursting into a fit of giggles. "Yes," she assures Logan, still laughing, "of course, I'll run all my sexual partners by you."
It's not even that she plans on having many of them (that's in the past, and in fact, never happened to her, but she has the memories, and it feels like it was her in all the ways that matter), but it's so preposterous. She's the only one who'll have any say about her sexual partners, and Logan claiming to be the protector of her virtue is just too funny for any other (drunken) reaction.
---
“Couldn’t hurt.”
Logan’s used to this kind of rebellion. It’s no good trying to convince Zoe, but she’ll find out soon enough how seriously he’s taking his cousinly duties. He’s not going to be awake much longer to argue, anyway. With a grunt, he turns back to face out, one arm hanging off the little bed.
"You're signing your own death warrants, I'm afraid," he tells them, thumbs hooked on his belt.
"We're confident we can make a difference," Steve assures him. Again. It feels as if he keeps saying that.
"But the women?" Schieffelin asks skeptically.
---
She’s on the spot in front of a whole town, which isn’t fun, but it’s made ten times worse by the fact that it’s a 19th century town, in which she’s the smiling demure wife of a soon to be dead hero. Exactly what she’s always wanted.
“We’re here to support our fine gentlemen, just as we’ve always done.” She glares a subtle dagger or two at Steve, in a way that says ‘reference that in the future and you will die’.
Logan’s pulling at his collar. The shirt fits but that don’t make it comfortable. He’s perfectly willing to risk his life to get the map, but can’t they leave him alone until then?
---
Zoe has a peculiar cough right then that sounds a lot like "frak that" when you pay attention to it, but Steve smiles at Schieffelin in that genial way of his, and holds his hand out for a shake.
"We'll keep them safe," he says, guessing that he'll have to pay for that later. "Thank you for the welcome, Mr Schieffelin, and arranging our accommodation."
"Don't mention it," Schieffelin answers, and after shaking Logan's hand next, leaves them to go and talk to his fellow townsmen.
"That was fun," Zoe states with a roll of her eyes, and bats her hand on Logan's arm to get his attention. "Saloon?" She could use a drink, and hopefully a proper one this time.
---
“Lead the way, cuz.” Logan nods and starts for the Bird Cage without seeing if blond and blonder are following.
Right outside the building, he’s stopped by an unfamiliar drawl.
“You boys are bona-fide heroes. The whole town’s buzzin. I wonder if they told you what happened to the last of your kind to breeze through these parts?”
---
"And to the cavalry," Zoe confirms, even as they're joined by Steve and Sharon. She's turned to face the owner of the voice, but he's in the shadows and she can't make him out clearly enough. She's also completely forgotten about the meek persona she is supposed to display, and has her hands on her hips instead, head tilted slightly to the side.
She ignores Steve when he lays a hand on her arm, probably to tell her to take it down a notch. Just like Sharon, that meeting inside was hell for her, and she's had enough. "What is it to you?"
---
“Nothing, honey. ‘And this weak and idle theme, no more yielding but a dream.’” Doc intones the bard with a grin. “Ephemeral as a flower, little darlin. And if you pardon, I will mend.” He tips his hat.
“Name’s Doc Holiday, formerly of Dodge City.”
Sharon makes a skeptical face at the way this sickly looking blowhard is looking Zoe over.
“We’d probably better get to bed. Long days ahead.”
The stranger smiles.
“Too true, pretty lady. I just wanted to pass on a good luck charm or two.” He holds out his coat, which is lined with six gorgeous pistols and a rifle. “In the hopes they’ll do you more kindness than they did their former owners.” His smile dims a few watts. “Friends of mine.”
---
There's something about the sadness in that smile that makes Zoe frown, but not in disapproval. "Thank you," she says, after a beat, holding his gaze, and wondering what it is that has his complexion looking so pale.
"Yes," Steve confirms the thanks, "but I don't -"
---
“Want to deprive you of your keepsakes, of course.” But Sharon’s already stepping forward, pretty sure that this ‘Doc’ isn’t gonna bat an eye at a woman handling guns.
Logan hates the feel of metal that ain’t attached to him, but the claws can’t be counted on, so he sticks a pair in his belt anyway.
“Join us for a drink?” He’s extra polite to weirdos. Especially weirdos that give him free weapons.
Doc smiles. “What shall we do else?”
---
It's a couple of drinks later, and Steve just hinted at their party that they should get some sleep. They never know when they're going to be needed, after all, and they need to be in shape, even if he's certain to toss and turn tonight, like he always does these days. Apparently, only Sharon sees the wisdom of his words, and they leave together.
"I couldn't get to sleep now for the world," Zoe comments, from their table in a corner of the saloon, and happily takes another drink from her glass of whiskey. Actual liquor. She's not much of a liquor fan, but this body can handle it, apparently, and it tastes better than salsparilla.
---
Logan’s got one eye on Zoe, but it’s halfhearted, because he’s pretty sure he could shred everything in this bar before they could touch a hair on that girl’s head. The other eye’s firmly on Annie, but he can’t afford to let himself get totally distracted.
Doc swigs another shot from his little silver cup. “The world is wide, darlin, and and I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum. Momentum that brought you here, and from where?”
---
Zoe knows they're in the United States of America, but that's the sum total of her knowledge of American geography. Doc here might be a charmer, but he's sharper than he lets on, and she tilts her head to the side slightly, watching him for half a second.
"Other side of the country, a small town called Caprica." Thinking of Caprica as a small American town is pretty laughable, but hey. "I didn't think you were the kind of man to care for the past as much as the future, Doc."
---
Doc smiles, a cough building in his throat.
“A little thing like you? All you’ve got is future, darling, miles and miles of future. I’d envy you, but I know you’ll put it to much better use than I.”
---
"I'll do my best, anyway," Zoe confirms, frowning slightly again, that same way he keeps making her do. She's always been the type to speak her mind, so she asks, even if it probably isn't very proper to, "How much longer do you have?"
It doesn't matter what illness it is, although it rubs her the wrong way to think that it's probably one they - Colonials - found a cure for long ago. She's no doctor, though, and the contents of medicine are not something she knows. She hates being helpless, and she has to say that she likes the weirdo.
---
Doc just smiles again. “Longer than most.” He holds out his cup to a passing bar wench. “I have fit a lifetime of experiences into every moment of this cursedly short existence I’ve been blessed with.” It’s not something he considers, not even something he can admit to himself, and certainly not something he’s going to change a bit of his routine for. Which of course entails him romancing the living daylights out of this intriguingly forthright girl.
---
"That's something to drink to," Zoe approves. For once, he isn't making her frown, he's making her smile, a small smile that speaks of appreciation rather than joy. But there's something she's been meaning to ask him.
"I have a favor to ask," she tells him, after she has in fact drunk to the sentiment, and she leans in closer, so she's able to drop her voice and they can't be overheard. "Thank you for the guns, but I'd love a sharper kind of protection. The kind a defenseless girl could keep inside her corset, just in case." She smiles, all too sweetly given what she's asking for. "Do you think you could help a defenseless girl out?"
---
“Fie and fiddlesticks on your defenselessness, madam.” Doc’s pretty saturated, but he’s done the math and found no way to spirit Miss Zoe away without possibly killing her cousin. Which doesn’t usually sit well with young ladies, in his experience. He reaches into his boot and pulls out a bone handled knife with a blade about five inches long.
“I envision this will suit your needs. If you’d like, I can measure to be sure. Thoroughness being a virtue and all.”
---
Now that's more like her kind of weapon (she knows how to handle guns, although not the antiquated versions they have here, but she's always preferred blades, and what she wouldn't give for a katana), and her smile becomes sharper for it.
"I've heard say that modesty was as well," she answers, looking back up in Doc's face, and holding a hand out for the weapon. She's tempted, but she's not that tempted, not when their mission might fly in any moment. "Won't you miss it?" She has to ask; she wouldn't know how to deal with it if he died because he no longer had his blade on him when he needed it.
---
Doc’s smile is slippery and not a little wolfish.
“It’ll do me a world of good to picture it in its new home, I assure you.”
Mrs Mallon, the sixty-year-old widow that runs the boarding house, sounds very matter-of-fact as she walks Sharon and Steve up the stairs.
"I'm afraid I only have two rooms left," she tells them, as pragmatic as it comes. "Not much of a problem for the two of you, but I hope the Graystones won't mind sharing a room."
Steve is doing his best not to turn a violent shade of crimson as he answers, more than a little blandly, "I'm sure they won't mind."
---
The proprietress hands Sharon a candle with a wink on her way out the door, and Sharon grimaces. Seriously? Am I on Candid Camera?
She takes in the room; narrow bed, dressing table, wash basin, and Steve, looking seriously uncomfortable.
“It’s OK, Steve. We’re grown ups. We can handle this.”
---
"You take the bed," Steve tells her, and means it. There's a ratty old chair he doesn't think would be much good, which means he's set to sleep on the floor, and that's fine by him, if he manages to sleep at all.
---
“Well, duh.” She gives him a look, but it’s meant to be funny. “You know you did this to yourself, right? You could have said you were my brother.” She’s just going to wait for a laugh, or for him to flee to the washroom. This is just too goddamn much to take seriously.
---
"I wasn't sure - I thought a husband would be more likely to make him leave you alone," Steve admits, and he isn't sure exactly what shade of red he is, but his cheeks are burning again. "I'm sorry if it embarrasses you."
Never mind that he's clearly the more embarrassed of the two.
---
Sharon runs a hand through her hair, laughing at the whole thing, now. The getups, the ALIENS, and the fact that she’s been thrown so close together with someone she’s been trying to keep at arm’s length for months.
“Embarrass me? Come on, Steve. I’m not the one who looks like a tomato right now.” It’s not sharp, just teasing.
---
Sharp or not, Steve gives her a look that seems to ask why she must keep on kicking his puppy, and, as she predicted, flees to the bathroom.
A little while later, Sharon's in bed, and Steve's settled himself at the foot of the bed, on the floor, with his back to the wall. Predictably, he isn't exactly sleepy, but he'll try to find some sleep anyway.
"What made you change your mind?" he asks, after they're settled. "About the map."
---
Sharon sighs, staring at the ceiling.
“A couple of things.” She’s seen too much in the past few weeks to pull her punches with him, and the station having proved that none of them are safe spurs her on to a bit more honesty.
“I knew you weren’t going to back off, and I wasn’t going to let you go alone. Plus it didn’t seem fair to let aliens mess with our ancestors.”
Mostly the former.
---
"You could have helped with all of that without securing the map as payment," Steve points out, because he's been thinking it over. Of course he'd expect her to help against the aliens, because it's about saving people. It's the map he can't figure out.
---
“Oh come on, Wonder Boy. If we’re going to risk our necks to save the day, we might as well not tempt the wrath of the great Space Station, too.” She links her hands behind her head, wanting to tell him he can sleep in the bed, that it won’t mean anything, but the words stick in her throat.
---
Steve makes a noncommittal noise that's acknowledgement more than agreement, and lets the silence stretch for a few seconds. "Good night, Sharon," he ends up telling her, and swallows down anything else he might want to say or do.
Logan stumbles up the stairs to their room, not sure why he’s not following Annie to hers. He opens the door and flops face first onto the bed with a groan.
“I forgot what that rotgut whiskey does to me. Shit.”
---
"It's my first time getting drunk," Zoe answers, as she walks into the room mostly steadily, but only mostly, and only because she's focused on loosening her corset once her blouse has come off. There is no way she's sleeping in it. She wouldn't normally admit to something like a first time when it shouldn't be, but she is drunk, so she doesn't really think about how weird it could sound.
---
“Well congratulations.” Logan growls into the pillow. He’s not awake enough or sober enough to feel weird that one of his super teens is supposed to be sharing a bed with him. It’s a surface, it’s better than the floor, and that’s the end of the story. If he’s gonna get inappropriate with anyone, there are way better targets around.
--
He's not going to get inappropriate with Zoe, because it would probably end with her knife close to his private parts, and she's really not worried. It's Logan, he's not like that with them. She is, however, having a lot of trouble with her corset. "I need some help here," she points out, and prods him on the shoulder so he will get his face out of the pillow and help.
---
Logan opens one eye and sees Zoe asking for help undressing.
“Seriously?” He considers telling her to go find her best girlfriend to help her, then reconsiders.
“I guess Carter’s probably too busy being totally awkward to help out.” He loosens the laces for her, turning back to the bed in a flop the second it seems like she can wriggle out on her own.
---
"Thanks," Zoe simply says, and wriggles out of it, and of her main skirt, so she's in her underskirt and undershirt as she claims her space on the bed - what little there is left. Never mind that she's forgotten to take off her boots. "I was actually hoping she'd be too busy frakking," she adds, as she pushes him slightly so she's got room to breathe.
---
Logan laughs good and hard at that one.
“You’ve met Rogers, right? Betcha a million dollars he’s sleeping in the bathtub.”
---
"Do they even have bathtubs here?" Zoe asks vaguely, with a frown, but she doesn't really care for an answer, and frowns and shifts and finally reaches between them to yank one of Logan's guns from there. She'll have to ask him to teach her to shoot it tomorrow, in case it isn't used like the guns she knows, but for now, she puts it down on the floor beside the bed. "Sharon's stubborn. A girl can dream."
---
Gossip is fine for teenage girls, but Logan doesn’t give the first fuck what’s happening in the other room. SHIELD-related romances have always made him kind of pukey, and the whiskey won’t need much of an excuse to come back up on him, so he changes the subject.
“I’m more worried about your modesty than Rogers’, kiddo. Doc Holiday’s a dangerous guy to take a shine to.”
---
"My modesty? Really?" Zoe has to ask, with a disbelieving grimace. She shoves lightly at Logan's shoulder, because like hell she needs a big brother - cousin, whatever. "You have your fun with Annie, I might have my fun with Doc. No danger there. Shut up."
It is more than just fun, though, she wouldn't sleep with someone just for fun anymore, but she doesn't want to put it into words. She isn't sure that she could right now, anyway, not with the strong buzz of whiskey in her veins. But it doesn't mean that there's any danger lurking, no matter what happens, or doesn't - they're only going to be around long enough to get the map, after all.
---
This is about the only idea more disturbing than Rogers and Carter, and Logan actually makes the effort of turning his head to talk about it. He fixes Zoe with a hard look.
“Just understand that if he tries anything, I’ll beat his TB to the punch.”
Holiday’s too old and way too slimy for Zoe, whether she gets it or not.
---
Zoe actually stares at him for a few beats, and normally wouldn't have reacted this way, but with the alcohol in her veins, instead of giving him a piece of her mind, she ends up bursting into a fit of giggles. "Yes," she assures Logan, still laughing, "of course, I'll run all my sexual partners by you."
It's not even that she plans on having many of them (that's in the past, and in fact, never happened to her, but she has the memories, and it feels like it was her in all the ways that matter), but it's so preposterous. She's the only one who'll have any say about her sexual partners, and Logan claiming to be the protector of her virtue is just too funny for any other (drunken) reaction.
---
“Couldn’t hurt.”
Logan’s used to this kind of rebellion. It’s no good trying to convince Zoe, but she’ll find out soon enough how seriously he’s taking his cousinly duties. He’s not going to be awake much longer to argue, anyway. With a grunt, he turns back to face out, one arm hanging off the little bed.
