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Blinking into awareness, Daisy peers blearily over at where Sousa’s crouched near her. His fingers dipping into her pulse kind of direct her to her answer, but she asks her question anyway: “How long’ve you been trying to get me up?”
“Didn’t think you should sleep all scrunched up like you were. Not while you’re still healing.” Fitting a hand under her elbow, he rises, lifting her with him.
“Otherwise known as ‘super nice guy speak’ for: ‘About a decade and a half. What the hell’s wrong with you? I’ve been over here confirming that you’re still with us for the better part of an hour.’"
“Grief can take a serious toll - and getting knocked for all those loops didn’t help. Oh, and in case I forgot to mention?” Sousa stares pointedly at where she’s started to sag into him - thirty seconds of standing upright has apparently finished off her ‘what I can handle’ quota for the day - clutching her side and valiantly attempting to crack the kinks out of her neck. “You’re still healing.”
“I’m okay, really.” He slides away to let her more effectively prove her theory. Instead of staying put like her mind demands, though, she sways. Luckily, her feet remain fixed to the floor and her irritating upper half pities her enough to angle toward - not further from - the security of him. “Ten minutes,” she wheezes. “Then I’ll be good.”
Sousa slings her arm over his shoulder and anchors his grip around her waist but, otherwise, doesn’t move. “Your body deserves a bed, Daisy. You realize that, right?” He glances down at her, his exasperated fondness also requesting permission of some sort.
After a second, a mental lightbulb flares and she arrives at the conclusion that he’d never actually force her somewhere she hadn’t already been planning to go. “Fine.” Any suggestions of irritability she might’ve intended to sneak into her reply wind up buried in barely-hidden affection.
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Daisy decides that Sousa should’ve just left her under a counter, in her awkward - and probably painful - heap. Now that she has all the comforts of her bunk on the Zephyr, her home, sleep appears to have abandoned her - for the foreseeable future, at least.
Exactly like the family she’s spent all these years building, and into which she’s gratefully immersed herself, will soon do - in the spirit of transparent honesty, she also can't ignore the very real possibility that she could leave first - if she opts to believe Enoch. In the entire time they’d been together, Enoch had never steered the team wrong. So, reasonably, how can she not?
This thought throbs in her skull, pokes at her ribs, and stabs around in her chest as sharply as the rest of her aches. [Not that she’s informing Sousa - or anyone - of the extent to which every inch of her hurts, even now.]
Daisy’s awake, end of story. She’ll live; she always does.
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Untangling from the nest of blankets on her mattress and acknowledging the soft tap on her door, Daisy finds Sousa waiting on the other side. She smiles.
“Hey. I’m about to turn in. I just wanted to check that you’re set before I do. Need anything?”
“Some tranqs?” Totally bypassing her quip, he sizes her up while he assesses their surroundings. Initially, she can’t tell if her wording or her sense of humor has unnerved him, but then his understanding registers. “For sleep, not enemies of the state,” she clarifies. “My brain refuses to shut up tonight. The pill-popping was meant as a joke, mostly. Which has - ” she reaches to smooth the worry that wrinkles his forehead “ - obviously landed way out of the drop zone, so.” She shrugs. “I’ll watch a movie - or seven. A masterclass in escapism, if you will.”
She expects him to launch into an endearing - and tremendously well-used, especially in light of the fact that their acquaintance qualifies as fairly new - lecture about how she requires just as much rest as everyone else, or how she should afford herself the same courtesy and care she reserves for other people, or how her pictures will simply substitute one focus for another. She never - not even once - imagines that he’ll offer –
“You up for some company?”
Daisy doesn’t hesitate. “Come on in!” She steps back, inviting. "We’re open all night!” She folds into her fabric fort again as Sousa heads for the chair in the opposite corner - ever the gentleman, this one. “You'll miss all the action from over there,” she warns.
Weighing enjoyment against his sense of duty and decorum, he eventually settles next to her. “What’ve we got on the reel?”
“I’ve never fished?” Daisy assumes some space-casting wouldn’t be a huge leap to a man who should be dead and who is currently being propelled through history. “I might have three-quarters of a salmon roll left in the fridge, but. Other than that - ”
“The film reel?” Sousa laughs. “Judging by that look you’re shooting at me, however, cinema has advanced well beyond my years. Let me guess. Microchip?”
“Close.” She stretches across him, holds up her ever-present metallic companion. “Computer.” Flipping the lid up, she logs in and gives him the grand tour of her collection. None of which he’ll recognize, she figures out, because the most vintage title she owns happens to be Breakfast at Tiffany’s – copyright 1961, six years too late. Damn. “We could just - ”
Sousa seems to have developed a sudden fascination with her keyboard. “Can I - ”
“Yeah, of course!” Clicking the search square for him, she deposits her laptop on his knees and leans over to show him the basics.
While she wouldn’t call his approach to typing slow, his process definitely falls under methodical. Judy Garland finally pops up and, as she does, his grin shifts to ‘winning the lottery’ wide.
When Daisy notices the release date of Sousa’s choice, she feels a little brighter too. Sometimes the smallest hint of an emotion can change a free-fall into cautiously toeing the edge of a cliff. “I’ve never seen this! Aren’t you supposed to save it, though? For the holidays or something?”
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Daisy’s heralded marathon quietly dissolves - in the middle of Sousa’s selection - without completing its full arc. She drifts to the sounds of a scene - John Truitt discovering a raisin once Esther restores his hat to him from the depths of the Smith kitchen - and the touch of Sousa tracing a gentle path through her hair.
“As far as safety nets go?” she murmurs, almost over the line into absolutely asleep. “You’re a very nice one. My windmill-adoring personality appreciates you immensely.”
“Consider me your clean-up crew. Any time, any place,” he promises.