pennysheets | Rescue from Bakerstreet

"They're probably still there right now, aren't they," he guesses, offering her one of the mugs. Dark blue, no design, plain and utilitarian, like most everything in this apartment. "And now that everybody's back and there's gonna be a rush to get everybody housed, I bet nobody's gonna be getting out of 'em any time soon."

Especially not the poor people. Or the people with traits that are less desirable by the people in power. He'd been owned by a Nazi organization for decades; he knows how deep that goes.

She takes the offered mug, and lifts it in a tiny salute, opting to give the coffee a minute or so to cool before she takes a sip rather than run the risk of scalding her tongue.

"They are," she agrees. "I haven't really had a chance to get the temperature here, but things are already turning ugly in Britain. And in half of Europe, from what I've heard for my contacts."

And he hasn't even looked. The guilt hits him again, the disgust that he's just... holed up in here feeling sorry for himself. But what exactly can he even do? He's a former terrorist on a short leash.

But he can agree, offering her a mug and looking hang-dog, "Knowing America, it's gonna be bad here, too. Might be Sam's gonna need that shield sooner than later. At least to make a speech or two behind, even if he can't bash heads with it to fix inequality."

"Too bad," she says, a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "Smacking people over the head until they stop being assholes would probably be cathartic."

"If hitting people made them stop being assholes, I'd have had a lot more luck in my little revenge tour, when we met," he says dryly, and settles back against the counter with his own mug, contemplating just how much to doctor it. "You want sugar or milk with that?"

Layla ducks her head slightly at that. "Probably," she says. And because it's James, because she knows that the violence he was forced into is still a raw wound, she doesn't follow up with a comment that dead is technically no longer an asshole.

She curls both hands around the mug of coffee. "Black's fine." Which is a departure from how she'd taken her coffee the last time they saw one another, but that was several years, dozens of jetlagged trips, and hundreds of late nights ago.

Hey, he stopped killing people... eventually... probably for the best to let it lie, though, since he is a lot touchier about it these days than he used to be. "That's new. Worried about falling asleep on me?" he asks, mostly a tease, but he goes to get milk for his.

"Your time zone is ridiculous," she informs him gravely. "And I might've picked up a couple of bad habits since the last time we got together. At least this one isn't antisocial."

"You? Bad habits? I don't believe it. You're perfect and everyone should be just like you." He's clearly joking, but it does make him smile a little better than his last couple. "C'mon, let's sit. I can turn off the news, maybe you can tell me how you and your guy did through the blip."

She'll take it. At the moment, even a slight sign that he's edging back onto slightly firmer ground is a win.

"I still can't believe that's what they're going with," she says, shaking her head in mock dismay. "But yeah, I'll give you all the good gossip."

Rescue from Bakerstreet - Layla and James

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