![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
okaywolfSometimes The Mountain Buries You is a queer novella about the monster that threatens your attempt at a much-needed quiet life. Check out the about page here.
You really, really hope Sheppard doesn't have to come into town for the next week. He doesn't. But Murre is very, very useful and you find yourself hoping Sheppard doesn't have to come into town for the next couple of weeks—though Murre is in town only about half of the time. They're on lamb watch the other half.
But then the ranches start filling with the usual hands and you find Sheppard on an examination table again. There's quite the gouge out of his side.
"Did you fall off a cliff?" you exclaim.
He smiles. "How'd you guess?"
You purse your lips and take deliberate breaths before attending the infuriating patient. It takes some effort not to just shove him down on the table when he hesitates to lie on his non-gouged side as you instruct. "Did you break a rib?" "Fracture maybe?"
You exhale your whole self. When you come back, you're bent over, elbows on knees and hands on temples. Across the room, you can feel Sheppard's uncertainty in getting up to comfort you. Part of you wonders if he spent the last two weeks at the bottom of the cliff, another part screams at him not to tell you. He does his best to collect himself into a posture that bothers you the least.
You're done picking spines out of his side and just starting regular wound treatment when it occurs to you that this is about the best timing to ask him.
"I don't want to get to know more people. I've tried that."
"Was that the bar fight?" Your voice is clinical, focused on providing excellent medical care.
"One of several attempts from only the latest time someone," Dr. Lacey, "had convinced me into it. I don't want to know more people."
There would be something to say about isolation and social needs but Sheppard had always—previously—only come to you for medical aid, spending weeks at a time without seeing or hearing even the most distant human. He's also spent unknown years alone, albeit long ago, stitching himself back together. You don't know what, if any, physiological affects of isolation or socializing Sheppard may experience.
"You already know them?" Your voice shapes a question mark, a proposal. And, from your initial meeting and the vague impressions when they don't say a words about Sheppard, they already know basic Sheppard information—equally a point in disfavour—and the things you increasingly have to acknowledge are in these woods. You never asked Sheppard about the fire that gave off no heat and burned only what it was fed. You've never seen Sheppard do anything alike before or since. But now you've helped with the things in the wood that tear Sheppard apart enough he has you stitch him back together. And but you've come face to face with It.
When you blink your eyes into focus, you're holding a wash bottle of sterile water in one hand and a needle driver in the other. Sheppard appears to have worked through the medley of emotions about who you were planning to introduce them to. He mostly looks worried about you. "Sorry, it's all very— I didn't move here for interpersonal," you gesture with the needle driver that you put down to finish preparing Sheppard's side. "And then It."
You have a little notebook—not the one Dr. Lacey left you—in which you've started tracking time losses like these, how long, where, when, what you were thinking. It's all been stress, been little moments of dissociation. You feel silly for writing it all out, for how obviously something terrifying happened and your body is having a natural response that you already know and have experienced well enough.
Sheppard doesn't know what all It could do to a person, so he doesn't assure you that you're right about it just being dissociation within expectations or look worried that this maybe something more. He lies there on mostly his back while watching your face the way he looks out across the horizon. "What's their name?" When you tell him, he says, "like the bird."
After stitches and dressing, you sit together with tea on the clinic's back step in the growing dark. You've explained Murre's return and their helping you, the space and need running out for them at the ranches. Sheppard is cautious and hesitant but he nods a lot. You tell him about how you're going to offer crashing at yours "just until picking starts", but that means Sheppard likely seeing them again. "Is that like, a concern?" Outside of the usual 'don't trust anyone not to stab Sheppard'.
"I uh," he looks at the bottom of his empty mug. It was made by a friend of the ceramicist who stayed in town the other year, the glaze is unintentionally drippy. "I mean, if they needed help with the fire—wait, no." He hums. "I'll keep my guard up and also," he raises his eyebrows and looks above yours, then clears his throat, "Two promises. One, they don't ask me for anything else."
"Ahuh."
You wait.
Sheppard's eyes look past you. You look for any alarm or freeze response, then you look for the dissociation you've been struggling with. "Two?"
"I honestly don't know how to put it into words." He slides an arm across your back and you slip yours around his shoulders. He smiles. "But I would prefer you remain my sole medical provider."
You laugh, he leans into the shake of your ribcage.
[the joke is he wants you to be the only person inside him/he doesn't want anyone but you inside him, but also he sincerely doesn't want to kill someone by them trying to help him]
You really, really hope Sheppard doesn't have to come into town for the next week. He doesn't. But Murre is very, very useful and you find yourself hoping Sheppard doesn't have to come into town for the next couple of weeks—though Murre is in town only about half of the time. They're on lamb watch the other half.
But then the ranches start filling with the usual hands and you find Sheppard on an examination table again. There's quite the gouge out of his side.
"Did you fall off a cliff?" you exclaim.
He smiles. "How'd you guess?"
You purse your lips and take deliberate breaths before attending the infuriating patient. It takes some effort not to just shove him down on the table when he hesitates to lie on his non-gouged side as you instruct. "Did you break a rib?" "Fracture maybe?"
You exhale your whole self. When you come back, you're bent over, elbows on knees and hands on temples. Across the room, you can feel Sheppard's uncertainty in getting up to comfort you. Part of you wonders if he spent the last two weeks at the bottom of the cliff, another part screams at him not to tell you. He does his best to collect himself into a posture that bothers you the least.
You're done picking spines out of his side and just starting regular wound treatment when it occurs to you that this is about the best timing to ask him.
"I don't want to get to know more people. I've tried that."
"Was that the bar fight?" Your voice is clinical, focused on providing excellent medical care.
"One of several attempts from only the latest time someone," Dr. Lacey, "had convinced me into it. I don't want to know more people."
There would be something to say about isolation and social needs but Sheppard had always—previously—only come to you for medical aid, spending weeks at a time without seeing or hearing even the most distant human. He's also spent unknown years alone, albeit long ago, stitching himself back together. You don't know what, if any, physiological affects of isolation or socializing Sheppard may experience.
"You already know them?" Your voice shapes a question mark, a proposal. And, from your initial meeting and the vague impressions when they don't say a words about Sheppard, they already know basic Sheppard information—equally a point in disfavour—and the things you increasingly have to acknowledge are in these woods. You never asked Sheppard about the fire that gave off no heat and burned only what it was fed. You've never seen Sheppard do anything alike before or since. But now you've helped with the things in the wood that tear Sheppard apart enough he has you stitch him back together. And but you've come face to face with It.
When you blink your eyes into focus, you're holding a wash bottle of sterile water in one hand and a needle driver in the other. Sheppard appears to have worked through the medley of emotions about who you were planning to introduce them to. He mostly looks worried about you. "Sorry, it's all very— I didn't move here for interpersonal," you gesture with the needle driver that you put down to finish preparing Sheppard's side. "And then It."
You have a little notebook—not the one Dr. Lacey left you—in which you've started tracking time losses like these, how long, where, when, what you were thinking. It's all been stress, been little moments of dissociation. You feel silly for writing it all out, for how obviously something terrifying happened and your body is having a natural response that you already know and have experienced well enough.
Sheppard doesn't know what all It could do to a person, so he doesn't assure you that you're right about it just being dissociation within expectations or look worried that this maybe something more. He lies there on mostly his back while watching your face the way he looks out across the horizon. "What's their name?" When you tell him, he says, "like the bird."
After stitches and dressing, you sit together with tea on the clinic's back step in the growing dark. You've explained Murre's return and their helping you, the space and need running out for them at the ranches. Sheppard is cautious and hesitant but he nods a lot. You tell him about how you're going to offer crashing at yours "just until picking starts", but that means Sheppard likely seeing them again. "Is that like, a concern?" Outside of the usual 'don't trust anyone not to stab Sheppard'.
"I uh," he looks at the bottom of his empty mug. It was made by a friend of the ceramicist who stayed in town the other year, the glaze is unintentionally drippy. "I mean, if they needed help with the fire—wait, no." He hums. "I'll keep my guard up and also," he raises his eyebrows and looks above yours, then clears his throat, "Two promises. One, they don't ask me for anything else."
"Ahuh."
You wait.
Sheppard's eyes look past you. You look for any alarm or freeze response, then you look for the dissociation you've been struggling with. "Two?"
"I honestly don't know how to put it into words." He slides an arm across your back and you slip yours around his shoulders. He smiles. "But I would prefer you remain my sole medical provider."
You laugh, he leans into the shake of your ribcage.
[the joke is he wants you to be the only person inside him/he doesn't want anyone but you inside him, but also he sincerely doesn't want to kill someone by them trying to help him]
