legionworld | (no subject)

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Who| The Boy Who Would Be Agent North Dakota (and the man himself, occasionally)
What| mostly, a young man being either very responsible or very irresponsible, depending on the precise moment
Where| all over Legion World, see starters for details
When| for the duration of Time Ripples

we are young we run free
Within a handful of hours of waking up in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar house full of unfamiliar military-looking supplies, Gabriel's figured out more or less what the situation is. Sure, he spends a few hours at the beginning there creeping though the habitats with a paranoia-backpack full of weaponry and food, but hey. No one has to know about that. Once he's figured out that this superhero thing is actually apparently real, he can be found for several hours zipping around the habitat deck performing a series of increasingly hair-raising manuvers, really getting his flying skills down and testing the essentials, like how much speed assist you really can get from a freefall. Trying out the shield-bubbles is reserved for periods when he's catching his breath, and he spends awhile figuring out how big he can make them (surprisingly big), if they can move or not (they can, apparently, under certain circumstances), and at one point if he can use them to float on a body of water (he can, but trial-and-error shows the bubble definitely has to be big enough to be buoyant). It's not a stretch to see North's features in the lanky seventeen year old, though both his unruly fluff of white-blond hair and the silver ring curled around his bottom lip are outside his usual regulation standards.

you won't wanna be nowhere else
Once he's figured out his powers well enough - and once he starts grasping the actual scope of the situation - he takes to the full breadth of Legion World itself, a sort of patrol by way of fascinated sightseeing. He's back to the backpack, though with all the reports of actual kids running around, there's less in the way of weapons and more in the way of snacks and amusements. He doesn't know what he's going to do with anyone who de-aged to three but still has laser vision, but he guesses that with the bubbles and all, he's probably one of the best people to handle it. When he feels like taking a breather from all the novelty he ends up crashing at Taylor's place, which is both comfier and far less quiet than what's apparently his own house. Without his sister around, it's nice to have someone, and Taylor has a habit of bringing people back on a regular basis. It means he's making things to munch on pretty regularly, but all things considered, playing co-host to a bunch of his (apparently) similarly-afflicted teammates at least lets him pretend that this is kind of normal.

just leave your problems on the shelf
It's that same hunger for normalcy that leads him to post a quick sign-up for pick-up basketball outside of one of the sim rooms. And, in a few cases, offer unsolicited advice to likely-looking teammates that they should really consider signing up for a game.

Hey, it's a base full of super heroes. Who doesn't want to see that match?

(stay up late, we don't sleep)
It all makes a lot more sense when he's older - the hours when the ripples trough enough that he's suddenly North again, with years and years of memories behind him and all the old calluses and scars back where they should be, along with the jarring clarity of who he was beside who he is without those gradual intervening decades to soften the comparison. The first time he comes back Theta's all over him, and he spends a lot of his time when he's not a teenager doing what he did on the Mother of Invention, walking wherever his feet take him, reassuring the little nightlight flicker in the back of his mind that it's all right, that he's doing great, that it won't last forever. Sometimes he's talking apparently to himself, a low constant murmur, sometimes he's just humming a vague semblance of a tune. Sometimes he's quiet, metronome of his footsteps broken only by the occasional chuckle or hum. Rarely, there's a little flicker of purple and blue over his shoulder, though that blinks out the moment anyone else draws too close.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

After a few days of having little North hang around and help out at his place while they compile information and become ye olde hub for recovering time displacees- it's good to see his friend again. Full grown and talking to Theta and himself. Not fair, probably, to immediately take that time to wander close and headbutt his shoulder but-

He's been the responsible one for a few days. It's fucking exhausting. A break to whine feels overfuckingdue. "Goddamn I missed you."

Just. The solid, calm certainty that is North Dakota.

North tries not to be too much of a nuisance when he's doing this, and he's surprised when York tracks him down. Even if it's just rambling along the path between the house and the bar. He blinks at the insistent thump into his shoulder, then snorts a laugh, spurred on by the little flicker of empathy that sparks off of Theta.

"I'm gonna take that as a compliment, and not that teenage me was driving you insane," he murmurs wryly, obligingly remaining still and hooking an arm around York to ruffle his hair.

"Nah, he's great. But I'm the only sane man right now and I'm not used to that." So, so not used to it. He is not meant to be the only responsible adult type person keeping track of many damaged people, some of which threaten him with violence out of well earned paranoia. It's. Jarring. And draining. And exhausting. At least it's not all bad- keeping an eye on little Gabe is stressful but not in a way that'll kill him.

Mostly.

"Also you were such a little shit. Jesus. No wonder we get along so well."

"You think I was bad, you should've seen South at that age," he drawls, relaxing himself with the familiar weight of York against him, like his troubles are a weight he can let slip and tumble to the ground if he leans just a little more.

"What made you mellow out? Also: Rude, not telling me about being loaded or living in Germany." So rude. The most rude. IF he looked up Gabe could see he was deeply wounded by this.

"If I had to guess? It was probably the two decades of shooting and getting shot at." He chuckles at the gripe, giving York's shoulder a friendly pat. "Our family moved around a bit. We sort of split time between America and Germany. It didn't seem all that relevant to Freelancer business."

"Yeah, I guess. Still feel kinda weird finding out like this, though." Like there's any other way to find this shit out. He continues the lean, hands slipping up to loop a careless arm around North's waist. Just for a little while longer he can let North be the adult.

Then it's saddling back up and getting on with keeping everyone else settled and informed. Ish.

"I don't mind you knowing, if it makes you feel any better." If he's being honest, York knowing things without North having to find a way to divulge them himself is actually nice, in a way. A little strange, mostly because he hadn't thought that was the kind of thing York would care to know. But nice. "Did you have any other burning questions, as long as we're baring our souls here?"

The weirdest part, York's noticed, is that there wasn't ever any real warning. No shimmer of light, no flicker like a hologram, no visible ripple effect like in bad sci-fi movies. One moment a person was (and when) one way-

then then next? Older. Younger.

Head tipped forward like this the first thing to notice is Delta's chip. It goes from neatly embedded in the port nestled in York's too long to be regulation hair to sliding down the back of his neck, bumping against North's arm. Second: Too long to be regulation is shaved down to regulation longer top, shaved sides. York's posture shifts, somewhat uncomfortably, the arm looped around North gone from loose and casual to awkwardly stiff. His shoulders have more meat to them, a coiled tension, and his voice? Gone the playful drawl for the most part, tucked neatly away in clipped, even, commanding syllables. "Who are you and where are we?"

He doesn't step back that much, though he does lift his head to peer up at North with both of his eyes, a leaner angle to his jaw- wrinkles and scars gone. A quick glance at the surrounding area- night, Texas, dirt road- makes him frown. "...Am I on leave? The hell was in that beer Ramirez gave me- if the boys put you up to this-"

North blinks down at the skitter of light pressure along his arm, expecting to see some little insect and instead finding a chip teetering on the edge of falling to the gravel. He squints and takes it with the hand that was in York's hair, uncomprehending for a second as it feels like he shifts, maybe takes a deep breath or rolls his shoulders or-

-something much less normal.

"-what?" He pockets the chip, spinning half a step behind and buying the seconds he needs with a blink of innocent confusion. It's all reflex, dropping back to the oldest trick in the book - if you don't know how to answer yet, look even more confused than the person grilling you. "You don't remember?"

"...Shit, sorry." No tags, no uniform, no smoke or fire or sign of the boys, the bar down the road behind them and they'd been leaning in pretty cozy, hand't they? "Sometimes my mind walks away with me. Nothing against the current company but-"

He relaxes a little bit, reaching back to rub the back of his neck. Here he is apparently having game for the first time in awhile and then he goes and ruins it. "Bet the boys didn't tell you about that when trying to get you to buy me a drink, huh? 'Oh yeah, Sarge sometimes goes off to his own little world for a few seconds.' Sounds crazy, right? So. Uh. Sorry. What were we talking about?"

Easy context clues, because they're from the same context so many of them come out of, and North has to put effort into keeping his thoughts off of his face. This is Taylor before Freelancer, settled into service enough to have the boys and leave and those blank mental-reset spaces that came with long enough in the pressure cooker of combat.

"Ah, I bet it was my fault." He lets York (Taylor, probably, he's going to have to keep that straight until he figures out how he wants to break it to him) take some space, slouching closer to his line of sight with an apologetic smile. "I started talking shop about being my squad's marksman. Probably bored you to sleep for a second there."

"Hell no- I think I know where I went. Ramirez- he's our squad's marksman- had a rough moment with an unstable nest mission just before we got leave." And he went and did the commander thing. How'd they get there, how to avoid it, how to make sure they're not caught out like that again and if it does happen he's got a way to get them out of the mess before someone dies. It's easy to angle his head and his smile (no crooked edge to it, no cocky twist) up to this tall ass drink of water and try to regain what game he might've run not long ago. "Guess I needed the drink and the talk more than I thought if it's still on my mind."

A beat, his smile widens and there, just the barest glimmer, is a shade of the cocky fratbro that knows he's got a line but is too unashamed to not use it. "Does explain those pretty blue eyes, though."

All right, that's definitely confirmation that if they're not presumed to be on a date, they're at least on something. For a moment, North wants to start setting him straight right there, before any more expectations get hung on the presumption that they picked each other up in a bar. Then he smiles, unfamiliar warmth sliding into that smug self-assurance, and he thinks it can't be that long before he changes back. York's been himself this entire time - if a ripple does hit him by now it should be a brief one. Why mess up a rare carefree moment by trying to push him back into the thick of it?

"Aw." He smirks, slinging an arm around his shoulders and nudging him none-too-subtly toward the house. "Do you tell Ramirez he has pretty eyes too?"

"Hell no, you don't flirt with the people under your command." He snorts, arm slipping back around his waist. The usual familiarity and casual certainty that it's welcome isn't present- but there's an almost delicate curl to the way his thumb hooks around Gabe's hip, a buzzing warmth in the idle slide of it swiping back and forth.

A bro leaning is not the same as a guy flirting. And now? He's flirting.

"He's not my type. You, now..." Big, blonde, blue eyes, big, did he mention that? He should. "I don't know. But I think I'm down with finding out."

"Let's get some coffee in you first," he chuckles, giving a companionable pat on the shoulder that doesn't really budge the maybe-more-than-companionable weight of his arm that has Taylor tucked in at his side.

That sounds like a plan. Sit him down inside, get him some coffee, and if by that point he still hasn't snapped back then they can have a very long talk about what's going on. Worst-case scenario Taylor flips out a little and he still has a bubble to keep him in while he shows some proof.

Yeah. This is going to be fine.

"Sure, this your place we're going up to?" Home for him is in a gig bag tucked up under a shuttle's chair and the men that he carries around in photos tucked in his wallet. His place is as nebulous and electric as everything else during The War; but this slice of...something calmer? He'll take with both hands.

"Looks cozy. Kinda always wanted to save up and get one of my own, afterward."

"It belongs to my buddy who owns the bar. But he lets me stay whenever I'm around." He can't help smiling with the disclosure, self-satisfied with how he is absolutely, indisputably telling the truth.

"It's a pretty nice place. You should go for it."

"After the last couple of missions..." He shakes his head, listing a bit to rest it against Gabe's shoulder. "I don't know. It feels like there might not be an after. That we're just going to keep fighting till we've exhausted all our resources."

That the war won't ever really end.

"Seriously? No happily ever after for our brave soldiers among the stars?" Gabe gives a slip of a grin and a teasing shake of his shoulder, letting go just long enough to fish out his key and open the door. "What's this dark night of the soul stuff?"

It's playing, all of it - even bullshitting as much as he is now, he can't pretend he hasn't seen things that would put his brain in the exact same place. He can't pretend anyone who's had boots on the ground and a rifle in their hands hasn't probably thought it at least once.

"I get maudlin after two beers? There's a reason I'm usually the DD. Jacobs didn't tell you that? Or, well. That'd be Martinez. Or Chao. Or Sodi- Lemme retroactively apologize for them. Having fourteen marines close in on you and talk a guy up must be. Weird." Not so weird he didn't go for it, Taylor notes, but. Weird none the less.

It's just his life. His boys, his squad, the mission- and this nice house and nice guy to spend the next few hours with. Or night if he's lucky.

"There's worse things to have than a slightly intimidating cheer squad," he chuckles, flipping on the lights and gesturing Taylor inside with him. He goes right for the kitchen, the well-loved drip coffee maker that he sets to filling and running with the ease of handling equipment he's run dozens of times already.

So this is York before York, huh. Command and a tight squad and, if not happiness, at lease as close as they get in their line of work. It's hard to imagine why he'd give all of that up for Freelancer - even knowing how rosy-tinted their view of the project had been when they'd joined up.

He must come here a lot, if the coffee maker's that familiar. Taylor...well. Wanders to the livingroom and looks everything over. There's a moment where things feel deeply familiar to him, a warmth and relaxation in his bones he can't quite blame on the beer. Something about this place screams safe and not just because the furniture all has solid sightlines and easy access to exit points.

"They mean well." He offers, wandering back to the kitchen, cocking a hip to lean against the counter. "You have to tell me what sold you though- was it the 'Sarge can dance' line or the 'Sarge will climb you like a tree' line? Or something else. I'm never sure which is the one that gets me a walk somewhere nice."

"You really do not give yourself enough credit." The observation comes with a bemused look, nearly incredulous. It's night and day from the swagger and quip of the guy who strolled into the project like he'd been there for years, the guy who apparently thought he had a shot with Carolina. It's a hell of a thing to see and hear for himself, and he's briefly distracted from the next item in his mental to-do list of "explain exactly what their situation is."

"Only as much as I'm due." Which, according to past experience, was sometimes more than he was due if the usual pattern falls into place. But this isn't- it's a good time. A fun night. It doesn't have to be anything else. "You are the first military guy they've walked me over to in...ever."

They'd avoided the sort since Malcolm, honestly. "Not saying I mind. Not at all." And it's subtle, the drag of his eyes, less cocksure than the normal blatant appreciate glance he'd give someone he was gonna roll around with for awhile.

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Stay up Late, We don't Sleep

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