Sandstorm {Discontinued}{Rewritten}

24. Football Therapy and Accidental Spying

Rip smirked a little, and Dez couldn’t help feeling a little prideful at that. She hadn’t seen him really smile or anything since they’d began, not even when he talked about his family.  But the look was gone just as quick as it had come, and she might as well have imagined it.

Deserey pushed her hands across her head before dropping them to her sides and letting out a heavy breath. “Okay. Well, why we’re on the topic of flipping out on Mick… I guess I should mention that Kendra did that hawk flight or fight thing again.” Rip looked confused for a moment, so Dez told him what had happened in the galley. When she had finished, he just nodded slowly. He sighed.

“Between Kendra, Sara, and our resident Rogues, what am I going to do…” Rip muttered. Deserey assumed he was talking to himself, but she answered him anyways.

“Not sure about Len and Mick,” she said, “but Kendra and Sara have almost the same problem, so if you can convince them to talk to each other or something maybe they can figure it out together.”

Rip stopped walking abruptly, as a light bulb went off in his head, and Deserey almost left him behind. “That's actually not a bad idea,” he said. Then, he frowned. “Hold on. When did you find out about Sara's – er – troubles?”

Deserey shrugged. “Y’all were fighting about it outside my room the other morning, and then she almost killed me in the training room.” It was weird, even to her, how casual she had managed to sound about it. Then, she made a frown of her own, realizing something. “Hey! What do you mean actually?”

But before Rip could defend his word choice, the duo heard yet another argument ensue. It sounded like Professor Stein and Jax. Deserey wasn’t sure what they were fighting about now, but she didn’t really care enough to figure it out since the two halves of Firestorm were pretty much always arguing about something. In fact, the only time she had seen them actually speak nicely to one another was when Young Marty had followed them on to the Waverider back in the seventies.

Rip shot Dez the most exasperated look she had ever seen, and she could just tell the team was really starting to wear him down. He was probably regretting even asking any of them to join him. “This,” he said, “is why we didn’t just time jump.”

Rip and Deserey found two halves in the cargo bay of the ship. Jax had his arms folded over his chest, a huffy expression on his face. Stein stood across the room, looking just as agitated at the younger man. “Never fear, kiddos,” Deserey said. “Mommy and Daddy are here!” All three men gave her strange looks, and she asked, “What?”

They ignored her. Rip looked at the other males with disapproval. “What's going on, now?” he asked. “Can’t we go three minutes without someone arguing with someone else on this ship?”

“Tell that to Grey,” Jax grumbled. “He's the one who keeps rambling on and on about physics and focusing.” From that comment, Deserey guessed the disagreement had resulted in a training exercise gone wrong.

“I wouldn’t have to ramble, if you would just listen to me,” Stein retaliated, a bit childishly for a sophisticated science professor like himself.

Rip and Dez shared a look with each other, silently communicating in a way that only parents could. The message passing between them was clear: defuse the situation before it ended up like the feud from the previous night.

Deserey took a seat on one of the random crates Rip had stacked around the room, tugging at the hem of her grey jacket and crossing her legs like a pretzel. It was a casual position she always took up whenever she needed to stop an argument between her kids before it got too out of hand. She found the cavalier attitude tended to calm the angry parties down a bit, like seeing her so at ease somehow put all their stresses to rest.