fandomtownies | Running and then some serious emotional trauma with Jack, Tuesday morning, probably on the beach

Entry tags:

Running and then some serious emotional trauma with Jack, Tuesday morning, probably on the beach

Kaidan wasn't jogging, he was running. It was -9C and the air coming off the ocean was almost bitter with chill. The beach was deserted in the pre-dawn and that suited him. Mostly he wanted to run and let his head sort itself out. It hadn't been a light week. There were, Kaidan thought wryly, going to be few of those in the future now that Jack was here. It wasn't a bad thing. In a way, it was comfortingly familiar. He appreciated her viewpoint, even when it was aimed at him.

And if she was here, she wasn't back home terrorizing governments or making heads of state cry or whatever she did for fun these days. She was also not on the Normandy casually telling Vega his fly was unzipped when he walked past just to make him check. Maybe Jimmy'd get time to settle in and grow some confidence roots. Wouldn't be the worst thing to happen.

His feet beat a tattoo against the rocks in rhythmic thumps as he paced the running. Made a mental note to bring a sling with a thermos of coffee in it next time. Water was great for thirst but it was cold out here.

[Open. Jack's thread is last.]
[And the sparring turned into some serious emotional trauma. Yum.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She'd woken up early because she was thinking even in her sleep and it bugged her. At least if she was awake she could control the direction the goddamn thoughts went instead of wherever her sleeping brain wanted them to go.

A glance at the clock was met with a grimace. He was probably out goddamn running. She crawled out of bed and geared up so she could stomp down the stairs and go find Kaidan. It was cold and she did the math until she could almost feel him like an annoying buzz in the back of her mind. He'd be running into the wind and the most windy place would be along the shore with no trees to break it.

Asshole.

At least running kept her warm. Not that she really cared about the cold. It was just fucking annoying. It was a little bit of a shame she couldn't read Kaidan's thoughts when she cut through the trees and saw him. He appreciated her viewpoint, huh? Well then this should be a banner fucking day.

Lips skinned back off her teeth in a smile and she sped up into a sprint. "Kaidan!" she barked, "Incoming!"

Jack hit the small lip where land met beach and leapt right at him.

Kaidan heard the footsteps but didn't think much of it until they sped up. He looked up just in time to hear Jack shout and launch herself at him. They were on a rock beach. Not a pebble beach, a beach with chunks of rock all over it. If they hit the ground it was really going to hurt.

Kaidan took a breath and whipped his left foot behind to brace the weight and then he caught her when she landed on him. Breath left him in a grunt while he shifted his weight automatically. "Damnit, Jack!"

Jack landed and perched with her knees locked over his hips and her hands on his shoulders. A smirk curved her mouth and she bent down to bonk her forehead on his. "Goooood morning, sunshine! How the fuck are you today? Isn't it just a great goddamn morning for some exercise?"

Kaidan eyed her. "I was doing great until 60 kilo of bald bitchitude landed on me." He slapped the side of her knee and let go. "Geddown. How are you even awake right now? I thought you were allergic to mornings."

Jack snickered into his face but obliged him by hopping down. She jerked her head down the beach and set off at a jog. "Brain wouldn't shut up and I knew you'd be out here doing this shit so I thought I'd come find you and have conversations with someone other than the asshole voices in my head."

Kaidan shook his head and began pacing her. Hey, if she wanted to run, he was not going to discourage her. "Yeah? What's your brain going on about?" A beat. "Or, what other conversations do you want to have so you don't have to think about what your brain's going on about?"

Jack ran for a little while and then said slowly, "You're not going to like it."

Kaidan narrowed his eyes skyward. This was karma. This was karma biting him right in the ass for every time he'd ever said the exact same thing in that exact same tone with that exact same pause to Kanan. Karma.

He tried to handle it with the same grace that Kanan did every time. He took a breath and held it. Ran a few steps. Let the breath out slowly and said, "Duly noted. What is it?"

"It's a few things," Jack admitted. She wasn't looking at him. Part of her was a little bit worried. But this is what they did back home. Before he went missing. They'd all go running and hash things out because Kaidan dealt with things better when he was in motion. Jack held onto that.

"Had a talk with Sparkle on Sunday about Kanan and Hernando," she began. She paused to give Kaidan a chance to get all his yelling out at once.

Definitely karma. Kaidan just took another breath and then said calmly, "How'd that go over?"

"I didn't threaten Hernando," Jack said defensively. Then she walked it back, "Ok, I said I wanted to punch him and then Sparkle made me not want to punch him because he sounds like a pretty damn decent guy but Kaidan.."

Jack took a breath, "Kanan's still a fucking mess and the longer this goes on until he says something the more it's going to hurt both of 'em. Sparkle sees that shit too. He doesn't want Hernando to get hurt and I sure as fuck don't want ickle to be confused and hurt and shit anymore. You asked me not to get involved and ..now I'm fucking involved."

A few more steps. "Go ahead and fucking yell at me if you want."

It took him a minute to parse that. And then it took him another minute to just breathe and swallow against the lump in his throat.

She didn't see it. She didn't see it and if he called attention to it, she'd get defensive and shut down and deny everything about the tone of her voice and what she was saying. Jack was actively engaging with other people. She hadn't had a knee-jerk reaction. She'd talked to someone else she trusted about the situation, someone she knew would be biased in the favor of the party she was biased against.

"I asked you not to get involved because usually your version of 'getting involved' means someone goes to the hospital," Kaidan said calmly, "I'd rather not have that happen to either or both of the people involved, because I care about both of them."

Jack eyed him a little warily and scanned for signs of tension. She blinked when that wasn't what she read in his face.

"You're not wrong," she admitted, "but he's your fucking friend and he's Sparkle's boyfriend. Kanan's.." Family. ".. ickle. Sparkle thought maybe getting them together in the same fucking room with him and me playing moderators for each of 'em. Letting them each say what the fuck was goin' on in their heads? Then if shit went sideways Sparkle and I could step in because he knows Hernando and I got Kanan's back."

She ran for a little while and then asked almost timidly, "You see it, right? You see where the fuck this'll wind up if they don't talk? You usually see all this kind of shit so.. Am I fucking wrong here Kaidan? I could be. We both know I'm shit at this but I see it goin' bad and goin real fuckin' bad real fuckin' hard sooner rather than later."

Kaidan's turn to run for a bit without saying anything. It wasn't a bad plan. It was, in effect, the plan he wished he could do. He knew what a bad idea that would be. He was still too angry at Hernando.

"You mean where Hernando continues to go out of his way to include Kanan until Kanan finally snaps and demands to know what the hell's going on, why he's doing it, and what he wants? Yeah. I see it. Kanan could ask that calm as cream and Hernando'd still react defensively. At best, he'd be injured and that would make Kanan feel like he was a giant asshole. At worst.. At worst, he'd lash out and give Kanan what he's expecting. There'd be no coming back from that. Kanan would never have anything to do with him again."

He ran a little while longer and then added quietly, "For what it's worth? This is the only time I've ever heard of Hernando snapping at someone like that. He wouldn't even tell his awful ex off. Want a laugh? Kanan was the guy who did that for him. They were fine. Friendly, even, until this shit happened. It's my fuckup and it drives me nuts I can't fix it. Has to be them."

Few more steps. "It's not a bad plan. Having translators, I mean. You'd have to talk to Kanan and see if he'd be willing to do this and then you'd have to talk to Hernando. I'd lay money on Hernando being fine with it. Kanan? He might not want to go there."

Jack threw an immediate sharp look at him, "How is this your fuckup?"

Kaidan ran for another few minutes in silence. "In no particular order: Shouldn't have answered the damn phone. Should have talked to Kanan. Should have listened to Hernando when he told me to talk to Kanan. Should've checked in with Kanan right after the shadow shit happened instead of assuming he'd need space. Should've given him the chance to tell me if he did need space. I mean, again. He'd already told me he needed space which is why I was giving it to him in the first damned place but I should have checked again. If you want to go into stupider stuff? Shouldn't have sent my blankets out for dry cleaning, shouldn't have given Hernando a key to my apartment, shouldn't have promised to call him the minute I got back. I mean, this crap's been going around in my head for awhile, Jack. It's not my fault this happened. I wasn't even there when the talk went down. But my fuckup started it and every time there's fallout, here I am, doing the woulda-coulda-shoulda dance."

Ran for a bit more. "I know this isn't my fault. It's just.. I'm what was used to punch Kanan. Hernando basically told Kanan that he was a shitty friend and maybe I'd be better off without him and oh hey, he was mad at me and that had probably sent me into a damn death spiral. I didn't even know that happened but Kanan had all that shit, Jack, all of it in his damned head for days. Because I was trying to give him space. I don't even know why the hell Hernando said any of that. It just about kills me that Kanan took any of it to heart. And I can't do one single damn thing about it except to keep reminding him that none of that came from me."

"So," Jack said slowly, "Basically your regular everyday Kaidan bullshit with an extra helping of guilt cuz Hernando used you as the prybar to crack Kanan open. Kanan doesn't blame you. Tell your stupid fucking brain to shut up."

Kaidan threw her a crooked smile. "Yeah, basically. It's also why I don't want to be the mediator. I kinda can't be. I'm still pretty damn angry about this. It wouldn't be fair to have that in the room with Hernando."

Jack nodded slowly while she ran apace with him for awhile. "You're too close to it. Makes sense. What do you think of Sparkle and me?"

"I think you're both invested in the people involved and if you think you can have the conversation without tearing into one another like junkyard dogs, talk to Kanan and Hernando and if they green light it, go for it," Kaidan said honestly. "For what it's worth, I think you and Sparkle are less likely to go junkyard dog on each other than you might be with anyone else sitting there with you. It's not a bad plan, Jack. It's just not for me to give the go ahead. All I can give you is my opinion."

Jack shrugged as she ran. "That's what I wanted. You're good at this shit. I suck at it. If you said it was a shit plan and said why I'd listen."

Jack ran for a bit in silence. This was the ugly part. The rest wasn't pretty but Kaidan had taken that pretty well. This was the part that she already knew he was going to take about as badly as it could be taken.

"There's another thing with Kanan and Hernando," she began. "About your birthday."

"You don't suck as much as you think if you and Sparkle came up with that idea," Kaidan pointed out. "It's not a shit plan, Jack."

It really wasn't. He trusted everyone that would be in that room.

The next bit had him throwing her a look. "Okay? They were both there. I made sure they'd both be ok with being in the same room as one another for the evening. They seemed to do ok? What'd I miss?"

It was a relief she wasn't going to admit to when she heard Kaidan tell her the plan didn't suck. Jack trusted him to tell her when things did suck because she knew her ideas weren't always the best. She had a narrow scope of vision where other people were concerned and this one made her anxious in a new and unusual way.

"Why'd you ask Kanan to wear leather pants?" she began slowly.

Kaidan was confused. It took him a minute to dredge memories out of recall.

"We were on a portal adventure and his got ruined. He took the leather ones off a guy we'd knocked out in a brawl and by some random miracle they fit Kanan like a second skin. I told him I hated him for it. Later, he jumped up in a tree to get some gummi bears - don't ask - and I was getting video of him doing all the jumping Jedi stuff. Kanan commented to be sure to get a shot of his pants because I had a great angle for it. I hadn't even thought of it until he said it but I mean, yeah. I got the shot and gave him shit about putting it on the internet. Then I gave him shit about showing Iris the video because she'd ogle his ass and from there it went to me giving him shit about the rating his ass would get. Said I'd give it a six out of ten and made some numbers up for other Jedi he knows. He said he wasn't wearing them again and I told him he was wearing them for my birthday."

Kaidan was quietly beginning to panic. "I told him I was just giving him shit about it. He said he knew. He continued the smack-talk. He wore them to my birthday party a couple of days later."

He stared at her for a moment. "Why are you asking me about this?"

"You know Hernando and Sparkle checked his ass out?" Jack asked. It didn't sound like it had come out of nowhere and that was a relief. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad a deal after all.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject