He looks at her differently than she has ever been looked at before.
She doesn't notice it, not immediately-because she is caught up noticing other things; things like the twinge of the needles the Afterlife doctor's have stuck in her skin, and the couple of doors through which she might be able to make a getaway, and the way the churning pressure beneath her skin has eased back for the first time to a dull, quiet, throb. She is noticing how it feels to actually be able to feel her joints, to feel her fingertips, to feel the impulses coming from outside her skin again.
The bed she is in is soft.
His eyes are blue.
When she meets his gaze, she notices how bright he is, how open. She notices how he is scanning her expression minutely, notices how when blue catches brown he shifts his attentions shyly elsewhere, notices how his tongue trips over a retort to Gordon and notices how his nose wrinkles just a bit when he realizes the clumsiness of his words. His eyes flick to her again, reading her response-and when he sees she is still watching him, he looks swiftly back at the screen displaying her vitals.
He is in a shadow, but she thinks that the tips of his ears burn pink.
/
When he talks about her powers, he doesn't use the voice she has become accustomed to. The scientific, detached musings that separate her and the thing inside her and the people around her and make her small, make her a victim-make her weak.
He talks about her powers gently. He talks about them like she is a cause and they are an effect and like if what she touches crumbles, it is its own fault for stepping in her way. She can't remember the last time that someone made her feel normal. The last time she felt a part of something, but not a burden-belonging but not holding back. When he talks about what he coins her gift, she somehow feels like she is herself again.
She has been on the opposite end of pity time and time too many, and he talks to her like an equal.
When he shows her that he is just like her, her fingers tingle and her heart pounds and she isn't certain that it is all a result of the static that his powers send pulsing through her veins.
His smile is brighter than his eyes and this time when their gazes meet, he doesn't tear away.
There is honesty in his eyes, supplemented by his stuttering incapability to lie, and she doesn't realize how unsafe she has felt up until this moment.
/
He looks at her like she is mightier than the mountains Jiaying helps her crumble but he doesn't let that make her into something too strong for careful attentions. He makes sure she eats, he makes sure she has company-he cracks awful jokes when even she doesn't realize her spirits are low. She isn't sure who to trust anymore, not really-but she knows without doubt that his eyes are always watching her back.
She is a force of nature but she is only human, and he has a way of reminding her by just being at her side that she can be fierce and vulnerable all at once. She knows he has other responsibilities, other jobs to tend to in the little city where she is beginning to feel at home-but his priority is being at her side, listening to the stories she tells him about her past and opening up with his own.
He is a guiding force but he lets her lead, following cautiously in the steps she takes.
His company is easy and fun, and the more she opens up to him the more he opens up to her, and the hours she spends missing her friends slowly fill up with the making of memories with a new one.
She thinks he is absolutely crazy. He is studying to be a doctor, he helps in the Afterlife when they need him. In his free time.
("Because med students have so much free time."
"Careful, Skye. I can and I will go get one of my textbooks and make this a real party."
"God, please don't.")
He asks about the scars on her stomach and when she tells him she got shot, she thinks he thinks she is just as crazy as she sees him.
She is in awe of him regardless. He looks at her like he might think she makes the world turn.
/
The world is shaking around them but when he drags her to safety and her fall is broken by his body, for the briefest moment the space between them seems to be frozen in time.
(Her heart had pounded hard against her chest when he appeared, when Cal threw him hard and blood oozed from the wound on his forehead. It was natural for her to move to him, to protect him-grabbing at his arm and placing herself firmly between her friend and her father.
It seemed just as impulsive when he stepped in front of her path for the first time since she has known him, putting himself between her stubborn movements and the threat.)
Intuitively she knows that she has to move, has to run while there is still a chance. He believes in her, believes in her abilities-but he is honest, and she has in no way honed her powers enough to use them safely.
But all of her senses are suddenly on him in a way they have never been before-noticing the pleading behind the blue of his eyes, the solidness of his warm body between hers, the tingle building beneath her skin that she isn't sure whether to attribute to his powers or something else entirely.
She feels herself hover impulsively closer to him for the briefest of moments before a yell from the hall beside her tugs them both sharply back to their senses and he pleads again for her to hurry.
She is too dazed to make her tongue form the "be careful," that pounds in her skull.
/
She tells herself she has to save him because he was taken protecting her. That she owes him for putting his her life before his, in the Afterlife and beyond.
She is back at S.H.I.E.L.D. and she is relieved to be back with her friends but she misses the Afterlife. Misses the feeling of belonging and of home.
He is her friend, too.
The first thing she notices is his hair, stuck up and staticky.
It should be her unconscious and bloody in the makeshift hospital bed-and she is caught up in the emotion, caught up unsure of her next move-and it isn't until the uneven beeping of his heart monitor goes still that she is forced into movement, forced into doing anything.
The room isn't made for keeping it's patients alive, and she can't find anything Simmons might instruct her to use, nothing that could make a heart beat again. She is growing frantic, thinking of the last time she saw him and how the pulse of his electricity speeds the pounding of her heart.
It is a gamble, possibly even a dangerous one-but a gamble is all she has left.
She focuses on him, listens hard for his usually imposingly loud aura. She finds it in a faint buzz over his chest and tugs at the molecules, letting the warm tingle fill her veins and build up before shooting it all back over his heart.
His monitor starts beeping again, and the warm pulse of static is replaced by cool, racing relief as she sinks weakly against him, listening as his usual buzzing fills in the quiet cracks of the room.
She refuses to leave his side again, even though she knows her friends are whispering about it behind her back. He stayed with her in the Afterlife, protected her at her weakest.
She owes him the same.
She can't imagine losing him again.
He comes back to her in a flicker of lights and a flutter of eyelids, and it is her turn to crack jokes and lighten the heavy atmosphere around them-and the weight on her chest lifts when his bright smile returns to his lips, even if just for a moment.
/
And then things go wrong.
He leaves before she can catch him, before she can even thank him for believing her. For having her back, still, after everything.
She tries to let him go.
/
The first time she tracks him down to ask for his help, she thinks it will be easy. It is Lincoln, after all–Lincoln who seems to think his existence rides entirely on the people he helps. Helping the others like her, like them—it isn't something she thinks she'll have to pitch to him.
She finds him between classes at his university—it isn't hard—and tells him she needs help, that if he still wants to be that helping hand over the damn crater that is transitioning–there is a place on her team for him. It is only after she extends the invitation, only after an odd sort of silence intrudes that she notices how dark the circles around his eyes are and how low his shoulders have slumped, and how this isn't the guy who assured her the thing inside of her that makes the world sing around her is a gift.
She is surprised anyway, when his voice bites on a cool edge and he asks how she found him.
(She knows it is a blatant hint but she refuses to take it until he tells her he isn't interested, that he didn't just cut ties with a manipulative organization to turn around and join a new one, that he isn't interested in further weaponizing the powers of the people like them. She watches him walk away until he disappears into a building. He only looks back once).
/
She tries again closer to his graduation, because there is a part of her that refuses to believe that this is him now. That he has changed into whatever he is.
Because she misses him.
He is stressed and she is growing frantic, and they yell a little—shaking the thin walls of his apartment. She tells him that this isn't who he is, this isn't what he is…and it isn't something he particularly wants to hear.
Mostly, she is growing concerned for him. Dirty dishes are piled in his sink and clothes are unfolded everywhere and when she confronts it, he tells her he is busy and she isn't helping matters, but there is a closed defeat in his eyes that speaks to everything but. He tells her that he is happy in his new life, that this is where he really wants to be and that he wants her to leave him alone–but happy comes with connotations like smiles and light that she sees none of in his life.
And he is a terrible liar.
/
She knows he won't help her after the second time she asks, but she keeps coming around anyway. She wants him to know he is wanted, that he has a place–and she tries to find her own words to combat the new words he attaches to what he once called their Gifts, but it is harder and harder when each passes his lips and comes as a punch to her own gut.
She knows he is wrong–he is who showed her that he is wrong. But he is who is supposed to do the convincing and she is who is supposed to do the fighting and she is at the disadvantage from the start. The piles of dishes grow in his sink and the blinds are always drawn and one day, he isn't there anymore at all.
She finds where he is serving his residency, one of the smaller hospitals in a 30-mile-radius of the dark old apartment. He is helping people again, and she tells herself that it is enough, that she no longer has to be the distraction–that he has a purpose and people and responsibilities. She tries to leave him alone, even though it makes her feel sick to her stomach.
Joey reminds her of how she felt when she came to the Afterlife, but her jokes don't make him laugh. Mack thinks Lincoln is a lost cause and really, so does she.
She needs to see him anyway.
He is more resigned this time, when he pulls back the curtain to find her waiting on the bed—there is no flicker of recognition in his eyes, so much darker than the light, playful blue she remembers from the Afterlife. From that feeling of home.
She tries to tell herself it doesn't sting.
He has to flee and she swallows hard when Mack catches her arm and doesn't let her follow behind him. It is the second time she has snatched his normal right out from under him.
She doesn't intend to do it again.
/
He reaches out to her and she isn't delusional, she knows it is because she is all he has left—but it is a start. It is a crack in the mile-high walls he has slammed around himself.
He is different than she has ever seen him before, all nervous pacing and slumped shoulders and eyes dark and pleading and guarded.
She doesn't think she can take letting him slip through her fingers again, not with the way her heart gives at the state she is in. It is ridiculous but she feels responsible, in part—feels like she has failed to protect him in the way he has protected her.
It isn't her fault and it isn't his fault.
The world is shaking but they are frozen in another moment.
She shouldn't do it but she has to. Words are his specialty and he isn't hearing what she tells him, isn't listening to her for the first time that she can remember. He wants her help but he struggles against it, too closed off to let anything she says in.
She shouldn't but she can't help it.
Kissing him feels like home.
But then he is gone again.
/
The first time he calls, she almost doesn't believe it is him. She has thought about calling him, reaching out herself—but she can only see how badly it could end, like every other time she has tried to contact him. To bring him back to her.
She holds her tongue because she has only imagined scenarios in which he hears her hesitant voice and quickly hangs up.
There is a pleading longing in his voice when he says her name again, and she swallows hard—squeezing her eyes shut before affirming it is indeed her with a murmured reply.
"Lincoln."
It takes a moment for common sense to kick in, to remind her that the ATCU is still after him, that there are still monsters on his heels—and she calculates quickly the longest she can keep him on the line without putting him in danger.
It isn't long enough.
He asks her if she is alright and she isn't sure if the pressure of the words make her want to laugh or cry.
("You're an idiot."
"Don't act too happy to hear from me.")
She tells him he will remain an idiot until he tells her where he is, but she follows the threat up with a crumbling reminder that there are only 15 seconds until the call is traceable—he can't take the words too seriously.
He calls her again the next day anyway.
/
He is more or less in one piece when they pick him and Mack up on the jet, and it takes every ounce of her poor self-control to keep her greeting to a soft, relieved smile from across the plane. There are too many people around who can't be trusted and there are more important things to worry about, people in danger and allegiances up in the air.
She doesn't realize exactly the extent of the self-destructive streak he is on until he practically offers himself up to Andrew—he knows as well as she does that his powers are useless against him. She bites her tongue and listens anxiously in on him through her com, heart racing at every pulse of static.
She tries not to be cool when they return to the base, tries to show him how glad she is that he has taken Coulson's invitation to hang around—but his discrepancies in the field are stuck stubbornly in the forefront of her mind and even if he were not a weathered professional at reading her mood, it would be hard to miss the chill to her tone.
He tells her that he is sorry but she knows that he is lying.
"No more crazy hero moves, got it? You aren't trained. You have to follow commands regardless."
"Whatever you say."
She is afraid that bringing him here, putting his impulsive protective nature in the field, might be one of the bigger mistakes she has made. It is too late to rectify it now.
She doesn't want to lose him again.
She clears up the bunk next to her room and despite the raised brows around her, tells Lincoln it is where he is staying. That she is right next door and that if he needs anything, she is there. She wants to spend more time with him, wants to sit and play games and dedicate herself to his transition to the new place the same way that he dedicated himself to her—but she is sure Coulson is already growing impatient, waiting for her debrief.
She hesitates in his doorway anyway, watching him move to sit quietly on the edge of the bed in the otherwise empty room, setting his backpack down beside him and looking more lost than she has ever seen him.
Her heart gives a little, and after a stretching moment he glances up and sees her still watching him.
He smiles softly, and it is the first hint of the version of him she knew in the Afterlife that she has seen in a long while.
"I'll be alright, Daisy. You don't have to worry about me."
She does.
/
He sticks close to her side as the days tick on and she begins to breath easily again. He is brighter, there is less weight on his shoulders holding him down.
He looks at her in that way no one has really looked at her, not before him. The mix of awe and soft, careful affection that doesn't ask anything of her, doesn't press for her to be any different from what she is. She likes that they have no expectations, no goals to meet. She likes that things are easy between them.
They aren't back in the Afterlife but the warm feeling of home she attributed to it has found a way back to her.
"Will it happen again?"
She hopes so.