He does want to get cleaned up. Desperately, in fact, because his hair is matted with blood and dirt, and he's itchy in the sort of way that comes with being, objectively, filthy on a very primal level. He watches Rip with quiet interest, thankful that future technology provides him with more or less immediate relief and not, say, a twenty minute wait for pills to kick in. He feels better enough to sit up, albeit slowly and carefully, and reaches for the cup of ice to hold it in both hands.
"Snacks, a bathtub, what don't you have?"
Ray's smiling, though, edging off the side of the bed and to sort of - well - all right, he doesn't mean to fall quite as heavily into the wheelchair as he does, but it's what he accomplishes and, all things considered, he did achieve his goal.
The smart part of him wants to say you don't have to do this for me, but the emotional part of him, the stupid part that got him all wrapped up in violence in the first place, in the yard and then with the guards, just wants to be close. He wants to let Rip care for him, and he wants to be safe, and - maybe that's not such a bad thing, is it?
Rip's eyes widen for a split-second after Ray lands, quite carelessly, into the wheelchair, but it's made of sturdy stuff-- it doesn't bend or slide or anything, doesn't change save for the natural droop in the seat to account for his weight. He's all right, and it's not a task to calm himself down, but Lord, it's certainly something when Ray still looks so much like shit.
"Careful," he ends up scolding, but there isn't any real bite in it. Rip just hates the very real truth that Ray had been on the verge of death, and as much as he's aware that Gideon had saved him, that doesn't make the memory of seeing his teammate's battered body lying unconscious in the jumpship any less vivid.
Rip wheels him along, and when they encounter Kendra and both halves of Firestorm, they fuss about Ray for a handful of minutes before Rip clears his throat and says they have somewhere to be. Jax hollers out a 'get well soon, hero!', and Rip is glad his back is to them as he wheels Ray away, if only so no-one can catch the smile that almost flitted onto his face.
There's a whole palmprint and typed code set-up before Rip gets his bedroom open, but whereas his office is full of personal effects and trinkets, his quarters are exceedingly plain. There's a picture of Miranda and Jonas on his bedside table and a Bible with a worn-out leather spine, but besides that the whole place is startlingly sterile.
"You can stay here," he says, "while I draw your bath. Any preferences for oils, salts, bubbles?" Rip himself hasn't used the tub, ever, but he never has the time for it.
Something about being fussed over makes Ray's eyes well up all over again - he's just not used to being cared about, or - loved, like this, and maybe that's why he's so invested in the first place. It's not exactly that he's trusting and naive and kindhearted, and that he thinks the best of everyone, and he's wickedly, disarmingly, terrifyingly smart when it comes to numbers and mathematics and science but not people; it's that Raymond has always been lonely, and the idea of a team with friends, a found family - saving the world mattered the most, but having these people (misfits, really) around him was a nice second best.
"What," Ray says, caught off guard by the prospect of anything other than "hot water, soap, a towel." He blinks, startled; he'd been distracted by looking around the room, about thinking it was sort of sad, really, that there was nothing here. "Uh. Surprise me?" Ray grins at him.
Everything is normal. Everything is fine. Raymond is alive, and he's not hurting so much, and he's still joking and playing, and everything is okay. He didn't die, which is the important bit, even if he came close - but he didn't, and his brain is so determined to protect him from the reality of this that it's pretending nothing happened at all.
He takes another mouthful of ice chips, staring owlishly at Rip over the edge of the cup. "I was kidding when I asked what else you were hiding back here. I didn't know you had a spa."
"You collect a few things over the years," Rip says, shedding his coat and tossing it onto the neatly-done bed and its white sheets. "I received holiday gifts as well, doctor."
But true enough, he does leave, and if Ray chooses to stand from his chair and look about, that's his prerogative. There really, truly isn't anything of interest, though-- even Rip's closet houses just the same nondescript grey shirt and more of his absurd trousers.
The bath he ends up drawing for Ray, kept at a consistent, warm temperature for his muscles, has both salts and bubbles. The salts, Rip imagines, ought to help with his pain. The bubbles just seem like a typical Ray Palmer sort of thing, as far as Rip knows about him.
He'll have to make a trip to the fabricator to create new clothes for him, but that can wait. The first order of business is leading Ray into the bathroom instead.
"Would you like me to leave you alone?" he asks once Ray's by the tub. It's a terribly private thing, a man's bath. Rip is sure Ray's already suffered enough humiliation.
Ray does, in fact, stand and look about. He's limping, and he's unsteady on his feet, but he looks at the photo of Miranda and Jonas, holding it in one hand with his cup of ice in the other. He's put it down by the time Rip comes back - which he's thankful for, because he doesn't want to be caught out being nosy, even though he's curious and investigative to a fault.
In all honesty, he expects Rip to just draw him a warm bath and let him be - the salts and bubbles are a nice (welcome) surprise, one that makes his lower lip quiver in a way that would be embarrassing if he wasn't so sad.
"I..." No. No, he doesn't want to be alone. He stares down into the water, buying himself time with a mouthful of ice that he crunches rather than lets melt, but it soothes his throat anyway. "You can stay," he says, "if you want. I don't really mind."
But - there's a little plea in his voice. A please stay. A don't leave me alone with my own head right now, I might not be able to take it.
He finds a place to put his ice, catches the hem of his shirt in his fingers and peels it over his head, a barely perceptible cringe passing over his face as it pulls scab and dry blood away from - honestly - dozens of wounds, all decorated with the ugly purple-black ink of bruise.
For all his refusal to acknowledge his own damn feelings, he picks Ray's up well enough. He doesn't want him to leave, so Rip doesn't, but he keeps a certain distance from him when he works to pull his clothes off if only for the illusion of privacy.
Still, it's difficult not to look. Ray's skin is coloured in a horrendous sort of way, and as much as Rip is aware that Gideon's serum will help everything return to normal in a few days, it doesn't seem to be enough to reconcile the quiet horror that wells up in him. Initially he'd believed setting Vandal Savage up to explode would've been enough for his anger, but now Rip knows he was wrong-- a single explosion was a kindness, compared to the blows Ray received, and as his trousers come off and he sees the first sign of a bruise on his lower back as well, Rip wishes he'd taken Savage apart limb by limb. Wishes he were the sort to kill men with his bare hands, to get the guards that'd kept Ray hostage.
But reality comes calling, as if always does when Rip loses himself in his own mind. "Can you get those off on your own?" He doesn't mean to destroy whatever illusion of privacy he might have achieved, but he doesn't want to see Ray suffer more than he already has, either.
Ray is, for lack of a better word, utterly broken.
It takes him longer than it should to peel his shirt off, and there's blood running down his back from an open wound, pooling in the bruise where his lower back had been shattered. Thank God for Gideon; thank God for the future, thank God for Rip, and Mick, or he'd be dead in a cell somewhere, and he knows it.
His fingers shake enough that it's hard to get his trousers unbuttoned, but he manages it, pushing them down off his hips with relative difficulty and taking his boxers with them.
"... I'm not sure," he admits, honest as always. "The whole bending down thing is a problem. So is balancing. Or I'd just kick them off and leave them on the floor." He huffs with laughter, soft and a little pathetic.
Rip lets out a low, pensive sound, but even then he's already made his decision. "Hold onto the tub," is the easy command, and once Ray has gotten some semblance of balance it's Rip who pulls the rest of his clothes down.
So much for the attempt at giving him his privacy. Still, Ray is a part of his crew-- is one of the few members of his crew who thinks more of others than himself-- and on that note, Rip can't imagine letting him suffer more when he could do something to help. He'd sorely miscalculated what would happen letting Rip, Rory, and Stein captured; Rip wouldn't make that same mistake again, not if he could help it.
The blood on Ray's clothes have ruined them, most likely, and the fabricator is absolutely necessary now. But a firm hand lands on Ray's back, careful not to catch on a bruise or a wound, and Rip says, "I've got you, Dr. Palmer.
He is, after all, his Captain first and foremost - but he's also safe, he also has this ship firmly and entirely under his control, and he's being so... so soft, and so tender, and so nice. It makes Raymond want to cry all over again as he steps, cautious and with a wince, into the tub.
But... the water's nice. Rip's hand on him is nicer. Steadying, even if Ray's pretty sure he's going to melt as he sinks into the water and closes his eyes. He sobs, once, and it's an ugly noise; Ray cups the water in his hands and rinses his face with it. Privacy be damned; he wants to be safe more than he cares about being seen. Whatever. It doesn't matter.
"You don't have to call me Dr. Palmer," he says after several long moments spent sitting, staring at the bubbles with his eyes half-lidded and his fingers tracing patterns in them.
Ray is hurting and Rip has never felt so unprepared in his life. It's not that he's a stranger to caring-- Miranda had broken through his defences, Jonas was the light of his life, Sara is a friend dearer to him than he expected, and in fact the whole team (perhaps because Rip has never had a team before) matters-- but more the fact he's a stranger to showing it. Despite his best intentions he's no good at open kindness, not the way Kendra, Ray, Stein, and Jackson are. It was never required of him as a child, and it certainly wasn't required of him as a Time Master.
This mission to save the world from Savage might have never happened if his wife and son hadn't died because of his evil, even.
He feels sort of stupid, stood there at the side of the tub and turned slightly away so he isn't watching Ray try to take care of himself. No, scratch that-- he feels entirely stupid, and stupider still when Ray speaks to him and all he can manage is a 'hn?' in his throat.
The fact Ray isn't looking at him makes it a bit easier, but Rip still can't help but feel he's interrupting something, somehow.
Should he answer? Perhaps talking would help. The raw sound of Ray's sob is still fresh in Rip's head. "What would you prefer I call you?"
Laughing, it's sad and tired and so, so genuine, like everything he ever is and says and does. He meant it, walking through the prison and greeting strangers in the corridors and the yard; Mick told everyone all about it, how ridiculous the whole thing was.
"Just Ray's fine. Or Raymond," he smiles, "if you're feeling fancy. Or if I'm in trouble."
What a fucking concept. It's almost out of place here, with Ray bringing water up to his face and over his arms, his shoulders, sinking into the heat and closing his eyes. If he didn't look so damn content, he might have been mistaken for dead all over again - if he wasn't still running his fingers through bubbles for the pleasant sensory input. It's out of place, except for the part where Ray is seeking comfort in order and in abandonment of any power he might have ever had, at least just for a little while.
"Erm." It's like Ray's really set him up to use nothing but the nickname, but the whole thing feels so personal-- made even more so with Ray just lying there in the water, feeling the bubbles with his fingers-- Rip can't be entirely sure he has the right. It was his fault that Ray needed this in the first place. It was his lack of care, of foresight, that had him injured.
And so, corner of his mouth twitching up slightly, he manages, "Raymond, then. I imagine only fancy men get to bathe in bubbles." He's lying. It's just the easiest way to concede with Ray without ridding himself of that personal barrier.
"Can you reach your arms up?" Rip supposes the answer is 'no', but he asks it anyway. He moves away from the tub, but only to open one of the cabinets in the bathroom, pulling a bottle of shampoo out and a handtowel that's never been used.
"The fanciest," Ray murmurs, soft and easy. He likes Rip's accent, he thinks. He's never really had a thing for them - for accents, the way some people fall head over heels for a nice Irish lilt or a cowboy's southern drawl, but Rip has a soothing cadence about him.
Maybe it's just the intimacy of the moment that has him thinking about it, even if Rip is lying through his fucking teeth.
Finally, after several beats of considering the hell of lifting his arms, he says "I don't think so," which is true. "But I could try." Always, always aiming to please. Always wanting approval, and isn't that going to be his fatal flaw, one of these days? It was then, in the gulag. It will be with Rip, too, though in wholly different ways.
"Don't," Rip says immediately, stern as he goes to set the items he'd picked up on the side of tub against the wall. With his coat already gone, all that's left is for Rip to shed his jacket, the unzipping efficiently done in one quick move, and place it neatly on a counter. Left now in his shirt, he takes the hand towel and moves to stand behind the end of the tub Ray's back is leaning against, bending to soak the towel without explicitly brushing against Ray's bare body.
"Tell me if I'm being too rough with you."
Because he's started with the towel against the back of Ray's neck, clean compared to the rest of his back, and from there he'll run it slowly along his shoulders, and then lower down the length of him. Rip's strokes are even, moving in opposing directions with Ray's spine as the middle point to differentiate them, and his hand has settled gently on the nape of his neck in something he hopes is grounding.
Rip scolds him. "Don't," he says, and Ray does not. Ray sits where he is, with his hands under the water - it's so warm, and it's so nice, and compared to freezing to death in the cold of a Soviet winter, this is heaven. He doesn't even want to curl up into himself quite so much - not that he could if he'd tried, at this point, with everything sore and stiff even through mild pain medication. It's taken the edge off, certainly, but it isn't magical.
"I will." Ray pauses, swallows hard - "Thanks, Captain."
There is nothing in the world that's as soothing as Rip's hand on his neck, though, and Rip cleaning blood and dirt off his skin. With the shock beginning to wear off - and he hates that, for the record - the real terror of things begins to set in, probably because he's safe enough now that his brain allows it. So, against everything that he wills his body to do, the tears well up and spill over, but at least his face is clean enough now that they don't carve tracks through muck when they roll down over his cheeks. Small victories, at this point.
Rip notices, as one who is wont to perform interrogations (and tortures, if he's being truthful) tends to about body language, the moment Ray starts to cry. There's a change in the way he holds himself-- Rip is especially attuned to this, with the hand on his neck and the hand that scrubs his back-- and he swallows thickly because, Christ, he really isn't equipped to handle this sort of thing.
Should he bring it up? He's not sure. He scrubs the grime off Ray's back, even when the towel dips underneath the water, and when that's done he's moved and taken his free hand with him to brush over Ray's shoulder and slide to his arm. He scrubs here, too, gentle and thorough, but at this point it's impossible to pretend he doesn't see him cry.
Because he really, truly is.
"Raymond," he says quietly, though in all his inability for proper social interaction Rip fails to look him in the eye, "you're safe now, you know." And still the towel keeps moving, scrubbing the remnants of that gulag's filth off and away from him.
"I know." Ray exhales slowly, a measured breath that is done in the sort of way of someone who has to self-soothe a lot. Someone who's learned to calm himself down, because nobody was ever really there to help him do it, the way he draws air in through his nose and then, like he's counting, lets it out through parted lips even if it shudders. "I know."
And he does, is the thing. He's only crying now, for the first time, because he's safe enough to, back on the Waverider with his friends and his team. There's still danger, of course; there always will be, until all of this is over, but it's not like the Soviets can get him here.
On the upside, Rip doesn't have to try to avoid his eyes too much, since they're closed, still, and he lifts his hand to wipe at his cheeks (which... his hand is wet, too, so what's he really accomplishing?) "It's just been a lot." Understatement of the entire fucking timeline, thank you, Raymond. "I haven't really - I don't think it's hit me, yet. And I'm not used to... this. So I'm just," he breathes again, "overwhelmed. I think. I'm not really sure."
Ray has probably never experienced something to this degree. He's experienced danger, yes-- as a costumed hero in Star City, there isn't much hope about that-- but to be beaten raw by angry prisoners? To be dangled and tortured, smashed with a damn hammer?
The only thing that keeps Rip's pressure from going harder in his anger (both at himself and at Savage's men, really) is the part of him with control that the Time Masters had spent years to hone. It's a good skill, he thinks, especially when he starts to clean Ray's hand and each of his fingers.
"That's all right," Rip says, meaning it. "It wasn't the best experience. This... you're allowed to feel that way."
I'm sorry I let it happen to you. I'm sorry I underestimated them.
"You were very brave, Raymond. Not a lot of men would have done what you did, standing up for the right thing like that.
"It was not," Raymond agrees, the best experience. He's certainly had nicer ones. And as the Atom, there's sort of a safety in it - there's something about being a costumed vigilante who can miniaturize and use it to his advantage. Being... just Raymond, though, vulnerable and human and unprotected, with only his stupid optimism to carry him through? It doesn't work. It didn't work.
He huffs a laugh, soft and sad. "Brave or stupid. I guess it depends on who you ask," he chirps back, with a little humor bleeding into his voice, anyway, even as he sniffles and wipes at his face again, then lets Rip take his hands to clean them.
His palms are scraped from falling. His knuckles are untouched, because he didn't swing back hard enough to hurt them. It says too much about him and about what happened, in there. "Thank you for taking care of me," he adds, again, sounding like he knows he should be embarrassed about it, but he isn't - not as much as he should be, anyway. "I'm sorry I'm not more help. I'm just... so tired." Physically, emotionally, existentially. It takes a lot out of a man, almost dying like that.
"I'd be more concerned if you weren't tired," Rip says, and after the gentle treatment of one hand, he goes back up the opposite side of Ray's arm to scrub at his neck, his clavicle, and over his chest. "You're only a man, as are we all. It's time you wind down."
This time it's the side of Ray's neck that Rip touches as he brings the towel down his body, but even his staunch attempt to keep from being too emotionally compromised isn't enough to let him delve lower towards Ray's legs. He stops just at the edge of his belly before moving up to his other shoulder, his arm. At this point Rip's gotten himself situated on the edge of the tub, expression calm even as he focuses on getting Ray clean.
"There's no need to apologise for yourself, either," he says, holding Ray's wrist with a gentle touch and drawing his arm close to scrub it. He doesn't care for the water that drips onto his own trousers; it's more important Ray come out of this feeling new, feeling clean. "It was my fault you were there in the first place. I should've come in to rescue you from the lab myself before they took you all away."
To Rip's credit, he says it like a statement of fact-- an acknowledgement of his mistakes, instead of some attempt at getting sympathy. He made a bad call and he won't do it again, at least to the best of his ability.
There's a little frown that crosses his face, but he's tipped his head into Rip's hand and, for all intents and purposes, given up. He's not stopped crying, and his voice us still right, but he does move to draw his legs up beneath the water, using his fingers to sxrub away dirt and sadness all at once.
"It wasn't your fault I got hurt. And I don't think," Ray opens his eyes to meet Rip's, big and dark and entirely serious, "that I could have forgiven myself if one of you - especially you - got hurt trying to rescue me from my own choices."
Sure, being there in the first place wasn't Ray's fault, but everything that had come after it, certainly. "Apparently Len wanted to leave me there," he adds, with a half-cocked smile.
"But, hey. There's nothing we get out of should have, yeah? It's over, and I'm okay, and home, and..."
"--and I appreciate your attempts at comforting me, Raymond." Rip interrupts him swiftly, but not cruelly; Ray had been trailing off, though, so it might be more of a thought-completing exercise than anything else. "Thank you."
His arm is clean, so Rip offers him the hand towel for his own use for the lower half of his body. After that, he slips off the edge of the tub to get the bottle of shampoo, squirting some onto his palm.
"I promise I'm not feeling particularly inadequate," he says, setting the shampoo in Ray's hair before the callused tips of his fingers start massaging it into his scalp. "I just wanted to... to verbalise it, that I'll do better next time. I know that you know that, but to put into words and say it...
"It makes things feel a bit more real, doesn't it?"
Ray smells like watermelon. Watermelon shampoo. On Rip, the smell is fainter, but only because he's not washed his hair nearly as recently.
"You're alive, home, and safe," he says slowly, hands moving methodically down the curve of Ray's skull. "And I'm going to do better about taking care of you."
Of course that'd be what Ray worries about, Rip feeling poorly about this whole ordeal. Rip, who has gone out of his way to let Ray into his quarters, to draw him a bath in one that he's never used, and who's talking about taking care of him; Ray wants him to know that none of it, he thinks, was his fault. They all made choices that they might have done differently, certainly, but who hasn't?
He makes a little groan of a sound, tipping his head back into Rip's fingers without really thinking about it. Watermelon shampoo is odd and specific and it makes him feel inexplicably safer.
"It does. Now that I'm - I don't know. Not in don't die mode." He huffs a tiny laugh through his nose. "God. I'm so tired, but I don't think I'm going to be sleeping tonight."
“Well,” Rip says, finishing with Ray’s hair and going to retrieve a dipper from another one of his future tech cabinets, “you’re in a bathtub. Try not thinking about sleep in a bed.”
Ray really is too kind for his own good. It’s a dangerous quality to have in times like these, certainly, and Rip only hopes it’s easier to keep him under control than the opposite. Lord knows it’s a lost cause for the others, already.
He fills the dipper with water from the tap, alternating between hot and cold to make sure it’s warm enough. Then he stands behind Ray’s seated form once more, running one hand through his hair as the other holds the dipper steady.
“Would you rather tilt your head up or down for rinsing?”
He leans forward, shoulders curling like he wants to disappear into himself and, frankly, he sort of does. Not that he's particularly mortified by this whole ordeal (he would be, if he were less desperate to be clean and safe) but rather, he thinks, if he can just get small enough to vanish, then he can forget all of it.
"I don't trust myself to tip my head back. Still dizzy. Wild, huh? The physics of craniocervical trauma are something else. I didn't study them, specifically, you know, but just extrapolating on the impact and shear forces involved --"
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He does want to get cleaned up. Desperately, in fact, because his hair is matted with blood and dirt, and he's itchy in the sort of way that comes with being, objectively, filthy on a very primal level. He watches Rip with quiet interest, thankful that future technology provides him with more or less immediate relief and not, say, a twenty minute wait for pills to kick in. He feels better enough to sit up, albeit slowly and carefully, and reaches for the cup of ice to hold it in both hands.
"Snacks, a bathtub, what don't you have?"
Ray's smiling, though, edging off the side of the bed and to sort of - well - all right, he doesn't mean to fall quite as heavily into the wheelchair as he does, but it's what he accomplishes and, all things considered, he did achieve his goal.
The smart part of him wants to say you don't have to do this for me, but the emotional part of him, the stupid part that got him all wrapped up in violence in the first place, in the yard and then with the guards, just wants to be close. He wants to let Rip care for him, and he wants to be safe, and - maybe that's not such a bad thing, is it?
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"Careful," he ends up scolding, but there isn't any real bite in it. Rip just hates the very real truth that Ray had been on the verge of death, and as much as he's aware that Gideon had saved him, that doesn't make the memory of seeing his teammate's battered body lying unconscious in the jumpship any less vivid.
Rip wheels him along, and when they encounter Kendra and both halves of Firestorm, they fuss about Ray for a handful of minutes before Rip clears his throat and says they have somewhere to be. Jax hollers out a 'get well soon, hero!', and Rip is glad his back is to them as he wheels Ray away, if only so no-one can catch the smile that almost flitted onto his face.
There's a whole palmprint and typed code set-up before Rip gets his bedroom open, but whereas his office is full of personal effects and trinkets, his quarters are exceedingly plain. There's a picture of Miranda and Jonas on his bedside table and a Bible with a worn-out leather spine, but besides that the whole place is startlingly sterile.
"You can stay here," he says, "while I draw your bath. Any preferences for oils, salts, bubbles?" Rip himself hasn't used the tub, ever, but he never has the time for it.
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"What," Ray says, caught off guard by the prospect of anything other than "hot water, soap, a towel." He blinks, startled; he'd been distracted by looking around the room, about thinking it was sort of sad, really, that there was nothing here. "Uh. Surprise me?" Ray grins at him.
Everything is normal. Everything is fine. Raymond is alive, and he's not hurting so much, and he's still joking and playing, and everything is okay. He didn't die, which is the important bit, even if he came close - but he didn't, and his brain is so determined to protect him from the reality of this that it's pretending nothing happened at all.
He takes another mouthful of ice chips, staring owlishly at Rip over the edge of the cup. "I was kidding when I asked what else you were hiding back here. I didn't know you had a spa."
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But true enough, he does leave, and if Ray chooses to stand from his chair and look about, that's his prerogative. There really, truly isn't anything of interest, though-- even Rip's closet houses just the same nondescript grey shirt and more of his absurd trousers.
The bath he ends up drawing for Ray, kept at a consistent, warm temperature for his muscles, has both salts and bubbles. The salts, Rip imagines, ought to help with his pain. The bubbles just seem like a typical Ray Palmer sort of thing, as far as Rip knows about him.
He'll have to make a trip to the fabricator to create new clothes for him, but that can wait. The first order of business is leading Ray into the bathroom instead.
"Would you like me to leave you alone?" he asks once Ray's by the tub. It's a terribly private thing, a man's bath. Rip is sure Ray's already suffered enough humiliation.
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In all honesty, he expects Rip to just draw him a warm bath and let him be - the salts and bubbles are a nice (welcome) surprise, one that makes his lower lip quiver in a way that would be embarrassing if he wasn't so sad.
"I..." No. No, he doesn't want to be alone. He stares down into the water, buying himself time with a mouthful of ice that he crunches rather than lets melt, but it soothes his throat anyway. "You can stay," he says, "if you want. I don't really mind."
But - there's a little plea in his voice. A please stay. A don't leave me alone with my own head right now, I might not be able to take it.
He finds a place to put his ice, catches the hem of his shirt in his fingers and peels it over his head, a barely perceptible cringe passing over his face as it pulls scab and dry blood away from - honestly - dozens of wounds, all decorated with the ugly purple-black ink of bruise.
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Still, it's difficult not to look. Ray's skin is coloured in a horrendous sort of way, and as much as Rip is aware that Gideon's serum will help everything return to normal in a few days, it doesn't seem to be enough to reconcile the quiet horror that wells up in him. Initially he'd believed setting Vandal Savage up to explode would've been enough for his anger, but now Rip knows he was wrong-- a single explosion was a kindness, compared to the blows Ray received, and as his trousers come off and he sees the first sign of a bruise on his lower back as well, Rip wishes he'd taken Savage apart limb by limb. Wishes he were the sort to kill men with his bare hands, to get the guards that'd kept Ray hostage.
But reality comes calling, as if always does when Rip loses himself in his own mind. "Can you get those off on your own?" He doesn't mean to destroy whatever illusion of privacy he might have achieved, but he doesn't want to see Ray suffer more than he already has, either.
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It takes him longer than it should to peel his shirt off, and there's blood running down his back from an open wound, pooling in the bruise where his lower back had been shattered. Thank God for Gideon; thank God for the future, thank God for Rip, and Mick, or he'd be dead in a cell somewhere, and he knows it.
His fingers shake enough that it's hard to get his trousers unbuttoned, but he manages it, pushing them down off his hips with relative difficulty and taking his boxers with them.
"... I'm not sure," he admits, honest as always. "The whole bending down thing is a problem. So is balancing. Or I'd just kick them off and leave them on the floor." He huffs with laughter, soft and a little pathetic.
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So much for the attempt at giving him his privacy. Still, Ray is a part of his crew-- is one of the few members of his crew who thinks more of others than himself-- and on that note, Rip can't imagine letting him suffer more when he could do something to help. He'd sorely miscalculated what would happen letting Rip, Rory, and Stein captured; Rip wouldn't make that same mistake again, not if he could help it.
The blood on Ray's clothes have ruined them, most likely, and the fabricator is absolutely necessary now. But a firm hand lands on Ray's back, careful not to catch on a bruise or a wound, and Rip says, "I've got you, Dr. Palmer.
"Into the tub with you."
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He is, after all, his Captain first and foremost - but he's also safe, he also has this ship firmly and entirely under his control, and he's being so... so soft, and so tender, and so nice. It makes Raymond want to cry all over again as he steps, cautious and with a wince, into the tub.
But... the water's nice. Rip's hand on him is nicer. Steadying, even if Ray's pretty sure he's going to melt as he sinks into the water and closes his eyes. He sobs, once, and it's an ugly noise; Ray cups the water in his hands and rinses his face with it. Privacy be damned; he wants to be safe more than he cares about being seen. Whatever. It doesn't matter.
"You don't have to call me Dr. Palmer," he says after several long moments spent sitting, staring at the bubbles with his eyes half-lidded and his fingers tracing patterns in them.
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This mission to save the world from Savage might have never happened if his wife and son hadn't died because of his evil, even.
He feels sort of stupid, stood there at the side of the tub and turned slightly away so he isn't watching Ray try to take care of himself. No, scratch that-- he feels entirely stupid, and stupider still when Ray speaks to him and all he can manage is a 'hn?' in his throat.
The fact Ray isn't looking at him makes it a bit easier, but Rip still can't help but feel he's interrupting something, somehow.
Should he answer? Perhaps talking would help. The raw sound of Ray's sob is still fresh in Rip's head. "What would you prefer I call you?"
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"Just Ray's fine. Or Raymond," he smiles, "if you're feeling fancy. Or if I'm in trouble."
What a fucking concept. It's almost out of place here, with Ray bringing water up to his face and over his arms, his shoulders, sinking into the heat and closing his eyes. If he didn't look so damn content, he might have been mistaken for dead all over again - if he wasn't still running his fingers through bubbles for the pleasant sensory input. It's out of place, except for the part where Ray is seeking comfort in order and in abandonment of any power he might have ever had, at least just for a little while.
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And so, corner of his mouth twitching up slightly, he manages, "Raymond, then. I imagine only fancy men get to bathe in bubbles." He's lying. It's just the easiest way to concede with Ray without ridding himself of that personal barrier.
"Can you reach your arms up?" Rip supposes the answer is 'no', but he asks it anyway. He moves away from the tub, but only to open one of the cabinets in the bathroom, pulling a bottle of shampoo out and a handtowel that's never been used.
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Maybe it's just the intimacy of the moment that has him thinking about it, even if Rip is lying through his fucking teeth.
Finally, after several beats of considering the hell of lifting his arms, he says "I don't think so," which is true. "But I could try." Always, always aiming to please. Always wanting approval, and isn't that going to be his fatal flaw, one of these days? It was then, in the gulag. It will be with Rip, too, though in wholly different ways.
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"Tell me if I'm being too rough with you."
Because he's started with the towel against the back of Ray's neck, clean compared to the rest of his back, and from there he'll run it slowly along his shoulders, and then lower down the length of him. Rip's strokes are even, moving in opposing directions with Ray's spine as the middle point to differentiate them, and his hand has settled gently on the nape of his neck in something he hopes is grounding.
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"I will." Ray pauses, swallows hard - "Thanks, Captain."
There is nothing in the world that's as soothing as Rip's hand on his neck, though, and Rip cleaning blood and dirt off his skin. With the shock beginning to wear off - and he hates that, for the record - the real terror of things begins to set in, probably because he's safe enough now that his brain allows it. So, against everything that he wills his body to do, the tears well up and spill over, but at least his face is clean enough now that they don't carve tracks through muck when they roll down over his cheeks. Small victories, at this point.
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Should he bring it up? He's not sure. He scrubs the grime off Ray's back, even when the towel dips underneath the water, and when that's done he's moved and taken his free hand with him to brush over Ray's shoulder and slide to his arm. He scrubs here, too, gentle and thorough, but at this point it's impossible to pretend he doesn't see him cry.
Because he really, truly is.
"Raymond," he says quietly, though in all his inability for proper social interaction Rip fails to look him in the eye, "you're safe now, you know." And still the towel keeps moving, scrubbing the remnants of that gulag's filth off and away from him.
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And he does, is the thing. He's only crying now, for the first time, because he's safe enough to, back on the Waverider with his friends and his team. There's still danger, of course; there always will be, until all of this is over, but it's not like the Soviets can get him here.
On the upside, Rip doesn't have to try to avoid his eyes too much, since they're closed, still, and he lifts his hand to wipe at his cheeks (which... his hand is wet, too, so what's he really accomplishing?) "It's just been a lot." Understatement of the entire fucking timeline, thank you, Raymond. "I haven't really - I don't think it's hit me, yet. And I'm not used to... this. So I'm just," he breathes again, "overwhelmed. I think. I'm not really sure."
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The only thing that keeps Rip's pressure from going harder in his anger (both at himself and at Savage's men, really) is the part of him with control that the Time Masters had spent years to hone. It's a good skill, he thinks, especially when he starts to clean Ray's hand and each of his fingers.
"That's all right," Rip says, meaning it. "It wasn't the best experience. This... you're allowed to feel that way."
I'm sorry I let it happen to you. I'm sorry I underestimated them.
"You were very brave, Raymond. Not a lot of men would have done what you did, standing up for the right thing like that.
"But brave men deserve a cry, too."
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He huffs a laugh, soft and sad. "Brave or stupid. I guess it depends on who you ask," he chirps back, with a little humor bleeding into his voice, anyway, even as he sniffles and wipes at his face again, then lets Rip take his hands to clean them.
His palms are scraped from falling. His knuckles are untouched, because he didn't swing back hard enough to hurt them. It says too much about him and about what happened, in there. "Thank you for taking care of me," he adds, again, sounding like he knows he should be embarrassed about it, but he isn't - not as much as he should be, anyway. "I'm sorry I'm not more help. I'm just... so tired." Physically, emotionally, existentially. It takes a lot out of a man, almost dying like that.
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This time it's the side of Ray's neck that Rip touches as he brings the towel down his body, but even his staunch attempt to keep from being too emotionally compromised isn't enough to let him delve lower towards Ray's legs. He stops just at the edge of his belly before moving up to his other shoulder, his arm. At this point Rip's gotten himself situated on the edge of the tub, expression calm even as he focuses on getting Ray clean.
"There's no need to apologise for yourself, either," he says, holding Ray's wrist with a gentle touch and drawing his arm close to scrub it. He doesn't care for the water that drips onto his own trousers; it's more important Ray come out of this feeling new, feeling clean. "It was my fault you were there in the first place. I should've come in to rescue you from the lab myself before they took you all away."
To Rip's credit, he says it like a statement of fact-- an acknowledgement of his mistakes, instead of some attempt at getting sympathy. He made a bad call and he won't do it again, at least to the best of his ability.
"I'll be better. And so will you."
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"It wasn't your fault I got hurt. And I don't think," Ray opens his eyes to meet Rip's, big and dark and entirely serious, "that I could have forgiven myself if one of you - especially you - got hurt trying to rescue me from my own choices."
Sure, being there in the first place wasn't Ray's fault, but everything that had come after it, certainly. "Apparently Len wanted to leave me there," he adds, with a half-cocked smile.
"But, hey. There's nothing we get out of should have, yeah? It's over, and I'm okay, and home, and..."
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His arm is clean, so Rip offers him the hand towel for his own use for the lower half of his body. After that, he slips off the edge of the tub to get the bottle of shampoo, squirting some onto his palm.
"I promise I'm not feeling particularly inadequate," he says, setting the shampoo in Ray's hair before the callused tips of his fingers start massaging it into his scalp. "I just wanted to... to verbalise it, that I'll do better next time. I know that you know that, but to put into words and say it...
"It makes things feel a bit more real, doesn't it?"
Ray smells like watermelon. Watermelon shampoo. On Rip, the smell is fainter, but only because he's not washed his hair nearly as recently.
"You're alive, home, and safe," he says slowly, hands moving methodically down the curve of Ray's skull. "And I'm going to do better about taking care of you."
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Of course that'd be what Ray worries about, Rip feeling poorly about this whole ordeal. Rip, who has gone out of his way to let Ray into his quarters, to draw him a bath in one that he's never used, and who's talking about taking care of him; Ray wants him to know that none of it, he thinks, was his fault. They all made choices that they might have done differently, certainly, but who hasn't?
He makes a little groan of a sound, tipping his head back into Rip's fingers without really thinking about it. Watermelon shampoo is odd and specific and it makes him feel inexplicably safer.
"It does. Now that I'm - I don't know. Not in don't die mode." He huffs a tiny laugh through his nose. "God. I'm so tired, but I don't think I'm going to be sleeping tonight."
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Ray really is too kind for his own good. It’s a dangerous quality to have in times like these, certainly, and Rip only hopes it’s easier to keep him under control than the opposite. Lord knows it’s a lost cause for the others, already.
He fills the dipper with water from the tap, alternating between hot and cold to make sure it’s warm enough. Then he stands behind Ray’s seated form once more, running one hand through his hair as the other holds the dipper steady.
“Would you rather tilt your head up or down for rinsing?”
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He leans forward, shoulders curling like he wants to disappear into himself and, frankly, he sort of does. Not that he's particularly mortified by this whole ordeal (he would be, if he were less desperate to be clean and safe) but rather, he thinks, if he can just get small enough to vanish, then he can forget all of it.
"I don't trust myself to tip my head back. Still dizzy. Wild, huh? The physics of craniocervical trauma are something else. I didn't study them, specifically, you know, but just extrapolating on the impact and shear forces involved --"
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hey this tag's a whole loada nothing