Stuck in the middle with you [CLOSED]

[fucking_ebay]

When he comes to himself, Peter cannot see. He gasps into awareness, his own breath rasping loudly in his ears, and it takes him several moments of straining to understand that he is not blinded but blindfolded. His wrists are heavy when he reaches up to tear away the cloth tied over his eyes, and when one stops partway to his face, halted by tension, he realizes that he has been chained. Hurriedly, almost panicking, he yanks off the blindfold with the hand that can reach to find himself blinking in the dim light of a stone room.

On either side of him is a man in a similar predicament, one of Peter's wrists connected to one of the wrists of each by a chain about two feet long. Each man's other wrist is chained in turn to a bolt in the crumbling walls of either side of the cell, and each is similarly blindfolded -- or was. Peter recognizes both of them as he turns his head back and forth to stare at each in disbelief -- first Seth on his right and then on his left --

"Oh, come on!"

Comments

[fucking_ebay]

"FUCK!" Peter bangs his hip as he falls sideways up the stairs, his arms spread wide each way and utterly unavailable for things like catching himself. He kicks at the stairs below him to find purchase and avoid sliding down into Seth's legs, but ends up stuck sitting awkwardly on the steps.

"I could really use my hands about now," he points out testily, very much not accepting Daniel's apology.

[powerdealer]

"Yeah..." Seth says, sounding only mildly pained, but at least not annoyed at Daniel like Peter is. Annoyed at circumstances, but that's different.

He manages to get to his feet again, with the help of his free hand against the wall, and stretches out his arm towards Peter so he can at least have enough reach to get himself up. He might've actually helped Peter himself, but somehow he doesn't think Peter would welcome it, and Seth isn't feeling that giving towards him either.

[peacefulexplorer]

"All right, all right, here." Daniel backtracks in an effort to release some of the tension on the chains and hopefully give Peter more maneuverability. As grating as the man's being right now, he can't exactly blame him for that. He's in the most unfortunate position out of all of them by far, even if the other two have to listen to him be fully aware of that fact.

This entire endeavor is going to be an extremely slow effort if this kind of poor coordination persists. Daniel exhales when he fully processes this fact, short and annoyed, and looks up ahead and hopes that the staircase isn't that long, and while he's at it he silently curses his subconscious or whoever's subconscious it was that's responsible for filling out this dreamspace, because spiral staircases are the least helpful staircase design possible.

"We're really going to need to get better at this," he points out, completely unnecessarily.

[fucking_ebay]

Peter resists the childish urge to yank on the chains now that they're both being decently helpful about it, and instead just takes advantage of the slack to brace himself on the wall and get back on his feet. He follow's Daniel's gaze upwards -- there's really not that much more, but after that fall it looks like much farther than he'd really care to go.

"If you two weren't so heavy I could have us up there already," he grouses. Really, for Peter that's pretty good -- at least he's thinking in terms of how to get everyone where they need to go. "It's almost like you've never been in chains before," he says, cracking an unexpected smile.