For the h/c bingo: head trauma - Peggy, Jack and Daniel
There were two things Daniel wanted at this particular moment in time: painkillers, and the ability to lie still and just ignore the dizzying, spinning world for awhile.
“Hey, wake up, Sleeping Beauty.”
Things he did not want: Jack frigging Thompson poking him every time he closed his eyes.
“Yeah, because that’s a piece of news that definitely won’t get me punched in the mouth when Marge finds out about it.”
Daniel cracked an eye open and tried to sit up. The world swooped sickeningly and he made a grab for anything stable. When things stopped spinning around him, he realized that the stable thing he’d managed to grab hold of was Jack, who didn’t look any happier about it than Daniel was.
“No, she’s not back yet.” Jack gripped him by the shoulders and lowered him back onto the pile of feed sacks they’d improvised a bed out of. Dusty sunlight slanted through cracks in the wall of the abandoned storage shed where they were currently hiding out. “And if you fall asleep, you’ll miss the big rescue, so keep those baby browns open.”
“You’re not the boss of me anymore,” Daniel muttered, and shut his eyes just to be contrary.
“Fine, die of a bleed on the brain, see if I care.”
Daniel really wanted to fall asleep, but there was a series of soft-yet-insistent clicking sounds from beside him that made him, eventually, crack his eyes open to see what was making that noise.
“Oh, look who’s awake again,” Jack said. Sitting beside Daniel on the pile of feed sacks, he was loading and unloading the three shells they still had for their one gun. Peggy had insisted on leaving it with the two of them; Daniel vaguely remembered a painfully loud argument about it, which he would have participated in if he hadn’t inconveniently passed out.
“I didn’t fall asleep,” Daniel murmured.
“Yeah, you did.” Jack snapped the cylinder back into the revolver, spun it, flipped it out again.
“For the last time,” Jack said, with an impatient snap in his voice, “I’ll tell you when she gets back.”
There was a sudden muffled explosion and an outbreak of shouting from somewhere not too far away. Dust sifted down from the sagging rafters of the shed.
“Oh, never mind,” Jack murmured, snapping the cylinder back into place and settling the gun watchfully across his knees. “She’s back.”
