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 --"
Rip lets the water trickle in a way that rinses the shampoo off without drowning Ray's voice out entirely, letting him speak his mind in what he expects to be a coping mechanism. He lets out low 'hm's in acknowledgement, and speaks once more only when he's sure Ray's done.
"It sounds quite like your body needs time to heal." He finishes rinsing the last of the shampoo off, ruffling Ray's hair gently to be sure it's clean. Then he goes to put the dipped down at the side of the tub, with the shampoo replaced in the cabinet from whence it came.
"And rest." The tone there is meaningful-- so you better.
Ray is clean now, mostly, having spent the time to take care of his lower half. The salts have helped soothe battered muscle and, with the adrenaline and fear wearing off, the exhaustion is truly beginning to set in.
"I will."
His face is wet, so it's hard to tell if he's been able to stop crying, but he rinses it again and takes a breath as he sits up a little straighter. "... Sleep will probably help." If he can manage it, and if he doesn't wake up stiff.
"Mm." Ray looks like he could fall over with the wisp of a wind, and so Rip goes to retrieve both a towel and a soft robe for him to wear. Finding slippers isn't so tough, either, but Rip has to remove them from their original container-- there're a lot of luxuries he doesn't use, a lot of things he forgets he has.
The slippers are placed by the tub, and with the robe over his shoulder, Rip unfolds the towel so he's got it hanging over his forearm. His other hand touches Ray's shoulder, over clean skin that hasn't been hurt.
"Shall we work on getting you out of there now, Raymond?"
Ray watches him with tired interest, pursing his lips in thought. "Do you even know what you have in here?" he asks, watching him open the packaging and take out slippers (and, admittedly, Ray is somehow quite honored that he's been given such a privilege.)
But he wants to be out and dry, now, so he nods and pushes himself up out of the water, a little unsteady and a little sleepy. Coherent, though. Cognizant. The important things, those are all intact - he knows who and where he is, when he is, what happened - he's lost nothing, thanks to Gideon and his team. He wants to ask a hundred thousand questions about the technology, but that can wait.
Really, the most concerning part is that he doesn't seem to be fussed about privacy, but that's something he'll think about later, too. "Pretty amazing," he says, as he steps out and steadies himself on the edge and on Rip's shoulder (and gets him wet, in the process,) "how much you don't feel like yourself when you're that dirty."
Rip doesn't seem to react to the pressure on him and the subsequent wetness that seeps into his shirt. He's more focused on getting Ray out, letting him get to his feet without argument, and the moment he's got a hold on himself, Rip starts with two hands ruffling the towel over his hair.
Assuming Ray still can't bend properly, it's probably best if Rip dries him off, too.
"Grime is as much a layer as anything else is," he observes, looking up when he pats at Ray's cheeks and then careful as he starts to work the towel down the rest of his body. "And we all tend to lose ourselves when there're too many layers, don't we?"
It's funny whenever he considers just how tall Ray Palmer is; in the tub he'd looked so small, dwarfed by water and bubbles and his own trauma, but Rip sinks lower to dry his legs, keeping his gaze focused and his touch gentle, even if his mind is methodical.
"I'm glad you're feeling better," he says, rising once more, and with the towel slung over his shoulder, he holds the robe up and spreads it open for Ray's arms. "Come on, now. You can stay in my room while I go get clothes for you from the fabricator."
Ray is tall, but that doesn't mean anything, not really. It's not even that he's insecure, that he lacks confidence - it's just that he has the cadence of someone who needs protection more than he offers it, who needs looking out for. The shame is beginning to set in, so he turns his gaze up to the ceiling and closes his eyes, until Rip's standing again.
Obedient, he slides his arms through the robe and winds himself up in it. "Clothes would be nice. I look better that way."
Well - no. But not the point. He's got to crack jokes, because if he doesn't, he might actually melt altogether, and that's infinitely worse. Smooth it over with humor. "Can't promise I won't get into your snacks, though. You sure you want to leave me unattended?"
"Of all my crew," Rip says without hesitation, "you may be the one I'd trust the most here."
Seeing how Ray's muscles seem to be working better now-- perhaps that healing serum's begin to kick in-- he doesn't bother with the wheelchair, but he does keep a steady hand on Ray's back to lead him into his bedroom. Rip will have to come back for his bloody, dirty clothes later.
But this is a little bit like penance, taking care of Ray after his mistake of leaving him to the gulag. Maybe it'll make things a little better (but then, maybe not).
He guides Ray to sit, and after that excuses himself to the fabricator to have Gideon make a soft, long-sleeved shirt and easyfitting trousers. Then, remembering Ray might want to sleep first, he goes again with a sweater and a pair of sweatpants, and takes these clothes and a pair of underwear back to his bedroom with him.
Rip briefly entertains letting Ray sleep here. He has a bigger bed, after all. More pillows. Just because Rip doesn't sleep here himself doesn't mean it can't be slept in at all.
"Here," he says, handing the pyjama set and the underwear over. He lays the other set of clothes out just to show Ray they exist. "Hopefully that's to your liking."
Somehow, it makes Ray warm and fuzzy all at once. It's not like it's explicit praise, but it makes him smile and his eyes soften, and he's not really sure what to do with feeling like that with his captain, of all people, but that's where he is right now.
It's just the vulnerability, probably. The fact that he's been through so much in such a short period of time, and that it's one of the worst things Ray Palmer has ever been through. It feels good to be praised for his good behavior. He decides not to think about that too much.
Rip isn't wrong, either - to his credit, when he comes back, Ray is perched on the edge of the bed where he was left, with one of Rip's pillows wrapped in his arms and his chin atop it. He reaches out to take the new clothes - clean, and dry, and God he's never been so happy to touch anything in his whole damn life - and quirks a tiny smile. "They're great. Thank you."
Without waiting much he moves to pull them on, tugging underwear up under robes and pants, too, and then shedding it off mile-wide shoulders to pull the sweater on over his head. He's still stiff, sore, and it takes some difficulty - but he looks a hundred, thousand times better now, clean and dressed. The blood's gone, his hair is soft and damp, and aside from a few scuffs and bruises and the gash in his lip, Ray looks... relatively okay, with bruises hidden under clothing. He resists the urge to pull the sleeves over his hands, and he looks sheepish when he turns his eyes up to Rip again, grinning. "Sorry, this whole thing is ... probably weird."
Ray apologises, and though Rip expected it, he dismisses it with a quick wave of his hand and a single shake of the head. "I've seen stranger. Being a Time Master, you know-- gives you a bit of perspective on things." And strangeness, he feels, could never outweigh compassion, of which he's not lacking enough to want to do nothing for Ray's well-being.
"Is it..." The image of Ray's arms wrapped around his pillow is stark, somehow, in Rip's mind, and he reaches over to pick the discarded pillow up and look it over. As he hands it back, his gaze turns away, but only because he doubts he could bear whatever expression comes across Ray's face when he says what he says.
It's for the best that Rip is looking away - otherwise, he'd have had to see the unchecked relief that washes over Ray's expression, softening his defensive humor into weary resignation. He takes the pillow back when it's handed to him, and, miraculously. manages to look especially small in it.
"... I would, actually," he admits, soft. He tells himself it's because Rip's quarters are the nicest, the most home-y, and the farthest thing from a gulag. He pauses. "Where will you sleep?"
Somehow, Rip feels the answer I was going to drown myself in drink, actually isn't the one Ray is looking for.
"Erm. I wasn't." And he's not sure if Ray is going to suggest he stay or not, but he sets his hands on his hips and cocks a look in the direction of the desk in the room. "I was going to review the timeline, actually. Gauge the next best time to find Savage so we can stop him with as little damage as possible.
Of course not isn't what he says, but Ray looks sad. Concerned. He doesn't push just yet, but he nods, instead, edging carefully back onto the bed - sitting still out of the warmth of the bath has made things begin to stiffen up again.
"Yeah. No, yeah, of course. That'd be good, I think." He knows. It's somehow less scary to sleep with Rip in the same room, and he curls into the pillows, watching him. "Do Time Masters actually have to sleep? I'm trying to decide how worried I am."
“Time Masters do need sleep,” Rip concedes, and he sheds his wet shirt in favour of grabbing one that looks precisely like it from his closet, “but our body clocks no longer work the same ways that regular humans’ do.
“The amount of time jumps you’re required to do in training is both to learn and to strengthen yourself physically.” He looks back over his shoulder, shrugging. “You’d be surprised how long I can go without sustenance.” In fact, Rip has never had a meal with the rest of the team, and it’s likely a more familiar sight seeing him drink out of a whiskey bottle than consume anything else.
As soon as he’s pulled the new shirt on, he slips into the seat by the desk, tapping at the surface of it to turn its interface on. It’s similar to the table on the bridge, albeit miniature; Rip reaches for a wireless earpiece to put on, Gideon’s voice chipper as ever in his ear.
Ray both looks, and sounds, spectacularly unconvinced when he says "Okay," with his eyebrows raised and his mouth pulled to one side.
But who is he to argue? He doesn't know how Time Masters work, after all, and he trusts Rip implicitly - trusts him not to lie, too.
Not that he has good reason to, but Ray is too trusting to think it through.
All the same, he settles in and watches Rip work through half-lidded eyes, the shape of tired shoulders and the glow of the interface. Ray worries about him more than he should, because it isn't like Rip doesn't know what he's doing and what he can handle, and he is, after all, just an ordinary human eith exceptional intelligence, in the end. He is a human who needs sleep, and it takes him whether he wants it to or not, eventually, dragging him down into the dark.
For... oh, maybe ninety minutes, closer to two hours if you're feeling generous. The nightmare is silent the entire time, but his breathing tightens and picks up, short and ragged; his heart races, and when he wakes it's suddenly, with a gasp and a scream that makes no noise at all. Ray swallows, hard, heart pounding in his ears.
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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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"It sounds quite like your body needs time to heal." He finishes rinsing the last of the shampoo off, ruffling Ray's hair gently to be sure it's clean. Then he goes to put the dipped down at the side of the tub, with the shampoo replaced in the cabinet from whence it came.
"And rest." The tone there is meaningful-- so you better.
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"I will."
His face is wet, so it's hard to tell if he's been able to stop crying, but he rinses it again and takes a breath as he sits up a little straighter. "... Sleep will probably help." If he can manage it, and if he doesn't wake up stiff.
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The slippers are placed by the tub, and with the robe over his shoulder, Rip unfolds the towel so he's got it hanging over his forearm. His other hand touches Ray's shoulder, over clean skin that hasn't been hurt.
"Shall we work on getting you out of there now, Raymond?"
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But he wants to be out and dry, now, so he nods and pushes himself up out of the water, a little unsteady and a little sleepy. Coherent, though. Cognizant. The important things, those are all intact - he knows who and where he is, when he is, what happened - he's lost nothing, thanks to Gideon and his team. He wants to ask a hundred thousand questions about the technology, but that can wait.
Really, the most concerning part is that he doesn't seem to be fussed about privacy, but that's something he'll think about later, too. "Pretty amazing," he says, as he steps out and steadies himself on the edge and on Rip's shoulder (and gets him wet, in the process,) "how much you don't feel like yourself when you're that dirty."
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Assuming Ray still can't bend properly, it's probably best if Rip dries him off, too.
"Grime is as much a layer as anything else is," he observes, looking up when he pats at Ray's cheeks and then careful as he starts to work the towel down the rest of his body. "And we all tend to lose ourselves when there're too many layers, don't we?"
It's funny whenever he considers just how tall Ray Palmer is; in the tub he'd looked so small, dwarfed by water and bubbles and his own trauma, but Rip sinks lower to dry his legs, keeping his gaze focused and his touch gentle, even if his mind is methodical.
"I'm glad you're feeling better," he says, rising once more, and with the towel slung over his shoulder, he holds the robe up and spreads it open for Ray's arms. "Come on, now. You can stay in my room while I go get clothes for you from the fabricator."
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Ray is tall, but that doesn't mean anything, not really. It's not even that he's insecure, that he lacks confidence - it's just that he has the cadence of someone who needs protection more than he offers it, who needs looking out for. The shame is beginning to set in, so he turns his gaze up to the ceiling and closes his eyes, until Rip's standing again.
Obedient, he slides his arms through the robe and winds himself up in it. "Clothes would be nice. I look better that way."
Well - no. But not the point. He's got to crack jokes, because if he doesn't, he might actually melt altogether, and that's infinitely worse. Smooth it over with humor. "Can't promise I won't get into your snacks, though. You sure you want to leave me unattended?"
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Seeing how Ray's muscles seem to be working better now-- perhaps that healing serum's begin to kick in-- he doesn't bother with the wheelchair, but he does keep a steady hand on Ray's back to lead him into his bedroom. Rip will have to come back for his bloody, dirty clothes later.
But this is a little bit like penance, taking care of Ray after his mistake of leaving him to the gulag. Maybe it'll make things a little better (but then, maybe not).
He guides Ray to sit, and after that excuses himself to the fabricator to have Gideon make a soft, long-sleeved shirt and easyfitting trousers. Then, remembering Ray might want to sleep first, he goes again with a sweater and a pair of sweatpants, and takes these clothes and a pair of underwear back to his bedroom with him.
Rip briefly entertains letting Ray sleep here. He has a bigger bed, after all. More pillows. Just because Rip doesn't sleep here himself doesn't mean it can't be slept in at all.
"Here," he says, handing the pyjama set and the underwear over. He lays the other set of clothes out just to show Ray they exist. "Hopefully that's to your liking."
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Somehow, it makes Ray warm and fuzzy all at once. It's not like it's explicit praise, but it makes him smile and his eyes soften, and he's not really sure what to do with feeling like that with his captain, of all people, but that's where he is right now.
It's just the vulnerability, probably. The fact that he's been through so much in such a short period of time, and that it's one of the worst things Ray Palmer has ever been through. It feels good to be praised for his good behavior. He decides not to think about that too much.
Rip isn't wrong, either - to his credit, when he comes back, Ray is perched on the edge of the bed where he was left, with one of Rip's pillows wrapped in his arms and his chin atop it. He reaches out to take the new clothes - clean, and dry, and God he's never been so happy to touch anything in his whole damn life - and quirks a tiny smile. "They're great. Thank you."
Without waiting much he moves to pull them on, tugging underwear up under robes and pants, too, and then shedding it off mile-wide shoulders to pull the sweater on over his head. He's still stiff, sore, and it takes some difficulty - but he looks a hundred, thousand times better now, clean and dressed. The blood's gone, his hair is soft and damp, and aside from a few scuffs and bruises and the gash in his lip, Ray looks... relatively okay, with bruises hidden under clothing. He resists the urge to pull the sleeves over his hands, and he looks sheepish when he turns his eyes up to Rip again, grinning. "Sorry, this whole thing is ... probably weird."
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"Is it..." The image of Ray's arms wrapped around his pillow is stark, somehow, in Rip's mind, and he reaches over to pick the discarded pillow up and look it over. As he hands it back, his gaze turns away, but only because he doubts he could bear whatever expression comes across Ray's face when he says what he says.
"Would you prefer to stay here, Raymond?"
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"... I would, actually," he admits, soft. He tells himself it's because Rip's quarters are the nicest, the most home-y, and the farthest thing from a gulag. He pauses. "Where will you sleep?"
Please don't leave me alone.
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"Erm. I wasn't." And he's not sure if Ray is going to suggest he stay or not, but he sets his hands on his hips and cocks a look in the direction of the desk in the room. "I was going to review the timeline, actually. Gauge the next best time to find Savage so we can stop him with as little damage as possible.
"Would you mind if I worked here?"
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"Yeah. No, yeah, of course. That'd be good, I think." He knows. It's somehow less scary to sleep with Rip in the same room, and he curls into the pillows, watching him. "Do Time Masters actually have to sleep? I'm trying to decide how worried I am."
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“The amount of time jumps you’re required to do in training is both to learn and to strengthen yourself physically.” He looks back over his shoulder, shrugging. “You’d be surprised how long I can go without sustenance.” In fact, Rip has never had a meal with the rest of the team, and it’s likely a more familiar sight seeing him drink out of a whiskey bottle than consume anything else.
As soon as he’s pulled the new shirt on, he slips into the seat by the desk, tapping at the surface of it to turn its interface on. It’s similar to the table on the bridge, albeit miniature; Rip reaches for a wireless earpiece to put on, Gideon’s voice chipper as ever in his ear.
“I’ll sleep when I’m tired,” Rip says.
Except he always is.
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But who is he to argue? He doesn't know how Time Masters work, after all, and he trusts Rip implicitly - trusts him not to lie, too.
Not that he has good reason to, but Ray is too trusting to think it through.
All the same, he settles in and watches Rip work through half-lidded eyes, the shape of tired shoulders and the glow of the interface. Ray worries about him more than he should, because it isn't like Rip doesn't know what he's doing and what he can handle, and he is, after all, just an ordinary human eith exceptional intelligence, in the end. He is a human who needs sleep, and it takes him whether he wants it to or not, eventually, dragging him down into the dark.
For... oh, maybe ninety minutes, closer to two hours if you're feeling generous. The nightmare is silent the entire time, but his breathing tightens and picks up, short and ragged; his heart races, and when he wakes it's suddenly, with a gasp and a scream that makes no noise at all. Ray swallows, hard, heart pounding in his ears.
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hey this tag's a whole loada nothing