Just before she throws the punch, his grip tightens, and he holds tighter still in the moment just to have an anchor when the blow pushes him back. His head moves where she moves it, flips on the arc and his body carries, until he's tugged by the link of his hand clutching her sleeve.
When she screams, his fingers loosen, numb things to be shaken off as she takes her stance. His dark eyes are narrowed between suspicion and overt concern, all of him alarmed but his next move far from obvious. I'm trying to help you shapes his lips, but the words don't follow, blood welling from where he bit the inside of his own cheek.
Training with Ren was the last time he'd been in anything like a fight, and it was nothing like this--this was the streets of Manhattan, crawling with the sick, the desperate, the violent. You didn't worry about getting hit, there. You worried about getting shot. You worried about rough coughs and bad fevers and starving to death for want of something to open a can. Taking a deep breath, he spits the blood at his feet instead, licks his lips a brighter color.
There's hurt, under the physical, that she'd strike him in spite of it all. But it's certainly an answer, and there are very few of those between them right now. Should he pretend she's just arrived, the way she can't recall where she is? Should he herd her into the inn at his own peril, and hope someone like Benedict is nearby to hold her?
"Alright," he starts again, hands back up, palms out, his heels marking his path back from her. "You don't know me and you don't know where you are. Do you want to know either of those things?" It hurts to speak, but he finds he can, swallowing periodically against the pain in his jaw, flaring up through his sinus and into his ear when he does. He'll deal with it later: at least he knows where the fuck he is.
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When she screams, his fingers loosen, numb things to be shaken off as she takes her stance. His dark eyes are narrowed between suspicion and overt concern, all of him alarmed but his next move far from obvious. I'm trying to help you shapes his lips, but the words don't follow, blood welling from where he bit the inside of his own cheek.
Training with Ren was the last time he'd been in anything like a fight, and it was nothing like this--this was the streets of Manhattan, crawling with the sick, the desperate, the violent. You didn't worry about getting hit, there. You worried about getting shot. You worried about rough coughs and bad fevers and starving to death for want of something to open a can. Taking a deep breath, he spits the blood at his feet instead, licks his lips a brighter color.
There's hurt, under the physical, that she'd strike him in spite of it all. But it's certainly an answer, and there are very few of those between them right now. Should he pretend she's just arrived, the way she can't recall where she is? Should he herd her into the inn at his own peril, and hope someone like Benedict is nearby to hold her?
"Alright," he starts again, hands back up, palms out, his heels marking his path back from her. "You don't know me and you don't know where you are. Do you want to know either of those things?" It hurts to speak, but he finds he can, swallowing periodically against the pain in his jaw, flaring up through his sinus and into his ear when he does. He'll deal with it later: at least he knows where the fuck he is.