You lack the season of all natures, sleep ;

[wolfintheherd]

Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Ready to drop upon me; that, when I wak’d
I cried to dream again.
-Shakespeare "The Tempest"


[This is what happens when he crawls in like a stray cat. Kara lives in a simple apartment, a far cry from their old haunts but she's back with SHIELD and he...he is somewhere in between. Still thinking about her offer, about selling himself back to the organization and maybe that's what brings back the memories.

Memories of assistant director Johnson back when she was just a girl named Skye and he was just a boy named Grant.

Memories of his different choices.

The things he has done since then. No thoughts no images just feelings.

Really the question becomes did I ever sleep this badly before? and the answer I don't know fills him with an emotion that makes him want to scream and rip apart her apartment. This was a mistake. Coming here to her is always a mistake, he should leave her alone. He has tried. Tried and tried again only to fail abysmally. He should use his powers and forget them all and go back to an empty existence filled with mercenary work. With lost women and broken souls and everything else, the dregs of humanity that's where he belongs.

Powers that he wouldn't have if not for her, if not for that wild desperate bid to save his life, to heal him faster.

It's never been so close. He wants nothing more then to run away.

Instead he stands, shaking. Shirtless and dressed in his shorts he pads into her kitchen and digs - every cupboard, every hidey hole until he finds that one requirement for every spy, for every other broken soul. What's the difference between the dregs of society and the politicians? Timing and lies. Whiskey.

No shot glasses.

his hands are shaking so badly he nearly drops the bottle before he pours himself a quarter of a glass...

And drops it.

The glass shatters. Fuck and he has no idea where the brooms are or the dustpan is or all those normal stupid domestic things. All he wants to do is drink himself into enough of a stupor so he can run from that decision she might ask him about again. So he can try and be strong enough to say yes or no to Skye - Johnson. Decide if he's a hero or a villain, a coward or a liar.

He just wants the feelings to stop.

So he sits and flips on her TV as silent as it can go. Frasier, some old 90s sitcom. He parks it there with her whiskey, her broken glass. Trying to feel less but seemingly heedless of waking her.

That thought hits him about ten minutes in. He turns the television down and wraps the blanket she'd given him around himself.]