If Sara hadn't. . .
. . . quite stopped Gideon in time:
"Of course. For example, last night you had a rollicking fantasy involving a young nurse with features strikingly similar to those of our own Mr. Snart."
Sara's back stiffened as the words sounded through the AI's in-ceiling speakers. She closed her eyes for a split second, knowing that Rip had processed the words as quickly as she had.
She contemplated playing it off as a coincidence, citing some fact about how all of the faces that we see in dreams are those made of composites of ones we have seen in day-to-day lives, but she knew that the time traveler, with his growing ability to read his crewmates, would see through her lie. She could already feel her mouth going dry.
She turned slowly, lifting a figure as she stared hard at the ship's captain.
"Not a word, Hunter." The man raised his hands in submission, though he didn't even bother hiding the glint of humor in his eye.
She turned her attention back to the boy in the chair before adding,"And, Gideon, stop spying on my dreams."
. . . brushed off the comment:
"About you?" Leonard's eyes flicked up to her as he said it, daring her.
She knew it was bait, knew that he was trying to change the topic to anything but the strained relationship between him and his best friend.
"That's not what I came here to talk about, Crook." She let a small smile out. "Not right now."
He rolled his head back against the container behind him, shifting his focus from her to the rubber ball in his hand, tossing it into the side of the crate just to the left of her head and catching it on the return.
"Why not, Lance? They go hand-in-hand, you know, the tempest and the temptress. I can't say you caused the storm, but you did throw us into the gale. And now the ship is shattered on the rocks and you think a few kind words are going to make it all better." He rolled the ball in his hands, watching as her eyes tracked its movements between his fingers. She decided to keep with his metaphor.
"You are a thief, aren't you? Steal a new one. The old one won't sail any more, not now that the crew's ties have shifted, but maybe the new one will have more room for-", her hand shot out to capture the ball as it whizzed past her face again, "-new additions to the ranks.
. . . let him sit alone:
"Are you okay? That eye looks kind of gross. So does the jaw. And the-"
"I get the point, Ass-assin, I'm a lot less pretty now."
She slide down the wall to sit next to him, sure to leave plenty of space in between them. She knew taking a beating like that can leave a person more than a little wary of proximity.
"Nah, it won't be that bad until you start yellowing out, then you'll keep getting mistaken for a low budget 'Hulk'." She smiled, and his lip twitched like he might join her, but it quickly turned into a grimace.
"Fairly certain that 'green' is somewhere in the beast's criteria, Lance."
"Fine, a very low budget 'Hulk', then." She was quiet for a moment, glancing at his knuckles.
"Jeez, did you even land a second punch?" She asked, noticing the skin was barely cracked. Then he smirked, carefully, and out of the less bruised side of his mouth.
"Didn't have to, the first was enough to keep him coming. Fighting back would have meant giving him another reason, a less directed reason. And I was pretty sure I would lasted half as long if he thought he was really fighting for his life."
"You went in meaning to get the shit beat out of you. Of course you did."
"Yeah, it was the best course of action. I'm one of the few people still around that has actually seen him fight with bare knuckles, and trust me, if you thought he liked burning people, you should see him when he punches some poor bastard into a wall." He glanced across the room to where the others were going over options. She sighed, realizing that she could make out even more bruises at this angle.
"So . . . do you wanna have that talk now, Leonard?"