Chapter Text
"I don't remember you being this tall," you complain as Jade's rib-cracking embrace lifts your feet clear off the floor.
Your name is DAVE STRIDER ROGERS, and you're still at your wedding.
"I don't remember you being this married!" Jade blusters back, mock-angry as she tucks her winsome jaw down against the cradle of your neck. "Who do I hafta kill for stealing you away!"
"That's not funny," you mumble, squirming to loosen the embrace.
Jade relents her superhuman grip, dropping her voice to a more personal conference against your ear. "Sorry, Jones. Too soon?"
'Davey Jones' was what Jade used to call you, back when missions would send the Striders to her Grandpa's Island lab, back when you thought you'd be marrying her. Back when you knew, deep down in your bones, that your Bro would never fork you up to some stranger, that the Harleys or the Lalondes or definitely the Egberts would help keep it in the family, figuratively speaking. It's too soon for Jade to joke about that, because Jade had more officially rejected your hypothetical proposals -several- times over the years, which, whew, sure hadn't been great for the friendship.
You didn't have a crush on Jade, but you could have seen yourself loving her. You never had a crush on Jade, and she knew it, and she loved you But Not Like That, and She Wanted What Was Best For You, which apparently meant leaving you to twist in the wind, for the off chance that you might 'fall in love' with an appropriate suitor or some garbage.
"Yeah, like eight hours too soon," you bitch, shrugging away to wipe at the sun-warm smell of pineapple all down your neck. Love was an option you could never afford; not even with the Alpha you had actually fallen for. Especially not with him, because it would have meant Bro's arrest or execution, or this current situation exactly, Bro gone and you reclaimed.
Jade only smiles, and it's John's smile but handsome, teeth straight and face wolfish. "That's what weddings are for! Wouldn't be any sport in it, if there was nobody to fight."
She means you, and the tradition of the ceremony, the 'fight' to keep the Omega in the Pack they're from, or claim the Omega for the Pack they're being given to. Megs make the rounds, Old Pack and New Pack giving their marks. It's supposed to symbolize a fight, a contest, but really everyone knows that it's a peacemaker, a collective diplomacy; we're all here because we love the people in this marriage. We're all here because we've decided not to fight, so the people in this marriage can claim from us a Pack. Romeo and Juliet wasn't a tragedy it was a comedy of errors, blah, blah, blah.
Nobody here was ever your Pack, before, so you guess your Skaian friends will have to do -- or, at least, John thought they would have to do. You would have been perfectly fine keeping this series of indignities totally to yourself; at least until the Press Release and Tony Stark's undoubtedly epic public reception, where you could more properly dazzle and amaze.
You stiffly remind Rose that, no, you don't need a Sentry, and lecture her gently on The Proper Wedding Ceremony with an exaggerated Texan drawl, suffering the proximity of her embrace all the while. You don't get a Sentry, sentries were for Alphas so they could relax; tricky broad was suggesting you couldn't relax, and was reverse-pshychologizing against you like you might force yourself to relax just to prove her wrong.
"Stop telling everyone you can't read," Rose scorns, and she doesn't talk nearly as English-ly as she writes, though she does go a little syrupy on the vowels. "Our earliest throes of friendship were forged in typeface."
"Speech-to-text program," you dead-ass right on back, and the hug parts much easier than had the embrace with Jade, yet somehow Rose's church-after-dark scent is more the stronger, sticks to your clothes. "Did I always have to look up to meet your eye?"
"I am wearing heels." Rose is, indeed, in heels. Apparently the game of telephone John pulled to get these two here before he even got out of work didn't leave room for much in the way of pertinent detail. Rose was dressed in something black and professional, to go to a wedding. Jade was dressed to go to a racecar derby, because flannel and jeans were the warmest clothes she had on the island.
You were dressed to go to bed, because there was no more obligation to try and impress anybody here, and the coziest thing you owned to battle that south-wester blowing in from the Atlantic was felt pyjama bottoms.
"What'd I tell ya," Sam prompts from behind, clapping your shoulder to interrupt the intimacy of your conference with the scariest Alpha in the room. "Naps are better for your health." He means your returned vigor, fresh out of the bedroom on Steve's heels, bright-eyed from the reward of an expertly landed lie. Sam squeezes, moves in for an embrace, arm around your waist, The Fight. "Listen to the black man. The only reason they kill him off early in the movies is because he's gonna be the character with the most sense. And that's not good for the conflict arc. Just, diffuses all the tension right on out, character making sense left and right."
You genuinely like Sam. It's not necessarily the grudging respect and big gay crush you've got for Natalie, or the ... grudging respect and big gay crush you've got for Steve. OR the grudge-free respect and flagrant Daddy Issue you're harboring for Tony Stark. You like Sam the same way you like Jade; you wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers but there's a different tone to the value of his presence in your life.
It's friendship, instant and easy and fairweather, like a trip to a tropical island. It wouldn't survive a hurricane, not like the (newly discovered) friendship you and Brodie had fostered against each other over the years, which was nothing BUT stormy weather.
"I'll diffuse your tension," you threaten, swaying your hip against Sam's because annoying Rose Lalonde is to you like scaling glaciers is to middle-class retirees; dangerous, but might as well 'cos you're gonna die soon anyway and the fall will be worth the vine.
And look, Rose isn't scary because she's easily annoyed or anything (she's pretty chill, actually); she's not scary because of her Alphahood (which doesn't hold a candle to Jade's, who is studiously contending an approach to Thor Odinson's corner of the apartment as soon as she's had more champagne); Rose isn't scary for all the spooky-chick accessorizing or her dry sense of humor or the way she can laser a person down to the base components in the span of a conversation, no.
Those are all just garnish on the veritable smorgasbord of dread that hangs around Rose Lalonde like the neon green aura that those dumb woo-woo cameras insist all you skybabies got. There's nothing you can pin it on; she's only about as tall as yourself, pretty par for an Alpha, and she lives a sedentary academical life that has seen her grow up quite round. She's polite, reserved, doesn't bluster or impose. She's pretty but not intimidating, sharing bone structure in common with you, a visible genetic relation.
Even if Rose was some gum-popping Valley Girl on a clear liquor diet, she'd still be the scariest person in this room right now. Maybe it's the undercurrent of monotone in her speech, which you also have and which the HarleyBerts decidedly do not. Maybe it's just Rose's whole entire 'tude, completely at ease and patiently observant, distantly amused by everyone and everything here, like she knows a secret and that secret is her raw and unmitigated ability to murder people with her brain.
Wanda Maximov can literally actually murder people with her brain, AND she's STILL not as scary, doesn't inspire half the downturned gazes or dropped volumes in her presence as Rose Motherf*cking Lalonde.
Sam laughs nervously because he's not sure if he wants to help you annoy the Scariest Alpha Here, but he's about as drunk as Jade right now and doesn't relent your waist.
You loop an arm over Sam's shoulders and lick the side of your teeth, then grin the mega-watt grin that always tugs a smile out of your fellow albino skybaby.
Rose returns the smile in her own little begrudging smirk, chin down as if to condescend at you over a pair of readers she isn't wearing. "I've already had the run of introductions, Dave, so in the stead of asking you for Dr. Wilson's acquaintance, I suppose I could ask..." Rose crosses her arms behind her back and wags her shoulder to the side, surveying the crowded apartment. "The story of the moment you and your paramour met. Dr. Wilson, keep in mind the story as was told to you by Captain Rogers, and let us compare the differences in that which each held most significant." She shoos at you to lead the way to the bower so you can sit, intent on a lengthy interview.
"The story," Sam repeats, at a loss, and looks to you even as he's swaying your weight bower-wards. Does he tell the scariest Alpha in the room that her (clearly beloved) Omegan friend had been taken in by an arranged marriage of political (and medical) convenience? "Well, actually, I don't think Steve has told me 'the story' just yet. Fella likes to play things close to the chest, you know?"
"I do know," Rose demures, taking the elbow you offer so you could help her high-heeled self to a careful sit on the bower steps. "This one hadn't breathed a word that he was even in courtship. Perhaps to avoid a 'jinx'."
Steve, having heard Sam's unspoken prompt, shuffles himself down from the couch to join you all in the bower, right next to Sam and one stair up to stay a head above the rest, chin turned your way to ask a question with his eyes.
Never one to pass up an opportunity to outrageously lie, you lead -- "Posie over here wants to hear our 'first meet' story. Better get it practiced now so it'll come out smoother in the interviews later."
"Right," Steve exhales, eyes going complicated and stormy and a bit to the side, searching the floor. "Okay. All right. So, timeline?"
Jade summons the bravery to join Rose's other side in the bower, despite how much closer this brings her to Odinson, whose bulk is perched forward on the reading nook's bench seating, keeping Sentry at the open window because nobody wants to kick him out just for tradition. The apartment is quickly falling quiet, the Avenging half of the guests aware of your crash-landing into their ranks and the two spare Skaians convinced your wily ass has been honeymooning this past half a year and they finally get to meet who with.
Pete, from the open kitchen foyer where Wanda and he were assembling delivery food from waxy cardboard to serving dishes, "Oh, I didn't know you knew each other before yesterday."
Which almost gives up the game, but Steve smiles that smile that means that he forgives whoever he is smiling at and he nods, hands curled into loose fists atop his thighs. "Past... four months, I think," going off an Egbertian lament over your radio silence during which you actually had been in a sort of honeymoon drift with your actual boyfriend, end of the State obligation and all, getting all irresponsibly tangled up in one another before the move to Hawaii.
"You 'think'," Clint challenges, shifting his weight on the couch to cross his arms, tablet screen fallen dark against his chest. He was dressed as humbly as most here; zip hoodie, jeans, uncomplicated shirt. He's sticking with the couch because the couch is the most comfortable place to sit with a shoulder-holster full of handgun under that unassuming zip hoodie, 'standing sentry' indeed. If he'd known Odinson was going to show up in his mysteriously-always-knows-when-to-show-up way, he'd have left the firearms in their locker and got his comfy on with Nat, who has made herself mysteriously scarce the further the afternoon sun has dipped toward the horizon.
Clint checks his watch. If Nat's on the roof, she'll be waiting to Have Words with Egbert, poor kid. "You want to clarify that timeline, or you gonna use the excuse that you were too distracted to mark the date?"
"This is a first meet story," Sam says, catching on. "Not a first date. There wouldn't have been any scheduling involved."
Rose looks sidelong at you, the faint line of confusion in her pale brow given over to a small frown of displeasure. "When did you actually meet, David?"
Nobody here wants to tell the scariest Alpha in the room that her clearly beloved Omegan friend showed up alone and distressed to answer an arranged marriage he wasn't even supposed to know about at the time.
You say, "Don't use my name like it's an insult, Rosenthal."
Rose's eyes go flat. "Did you just Muppet-Caper-Movie me."
"'Miss Piggy, you're wearing my mustache'." You toss a hand out to serve the air, forwarding the go-ahead Steve's way. "One of the excavation end-missions. You were just background noise, Steve, just more Alpha Brass standing around feeling important; except you were one of the rare few who didn't go all cow-eyed from being under ground."
There is something about those places beneath the earth that reminds the human animal of caves, of deep cool recesses to shelter in, that speaks to Alphas on some low instinctual level. You'd rarely find an Alpha who hated the dark of an enclosed space, and especially not a dark enclosed space with all the damp earthy scents of ancient dens past. "I didn't?" Steve asked, burying the lead.
You shake your head, confident in your natural story-spinning element. "Naw, I mean you didn't hate it down there like some of the more squirrely Beta civilians, but you weren't petitioning me and the five next available to get in on a cuddle-nap." It was always only you and Brodie, in the dark with nobody but each other, surrounded by people but still all alone. You like this story better, you like the idea of a crowd of otherwise perfectly respectable scientific and military authority throwing in together for a post-lunch pile or two. "I thought that was pretty cool, insomuch as it was the thing that made you stand out."
Steve's mouth tugs to the side. "Well, I didn't know anyone there. If it had been given the months, or years that your team had in their rotations to get to know one another, I'm sure I'd have been stamping for a Den, too."
"That must have been it, then," you continue with a shrug Rose's way. "So we met at work."
Steve, "We weren't supposed to be there when the Striders were on deck; Avengers can't officially approach other meta-humans unless their proposal passes Fury's desk, first. It's up to SHIELD to do that footwork, and we only show up if a pursuit turns violent. This could work, if we're admitting to SHIELD's involvement in Houston's contract end with the State of Texas."
Sam, settling half behind you to take your lean back against the front of his shoulder, arm returned around your waist to battle Rose's affront in The Fight, "You weren't there for the Striders, but you can't actually say what you were there for. That's not going to read well in print; you know those files aren't debarred."
Steve tips his elbow out, a capitulation. "Well more's the better, if the press can't verify or debunk any of the story's details. Let's say that's how we met, and though I knew of the Striders before arriving, I didn't expect one to be an unmarried Omegan. First thing I said to Dave was that my best friend is an unattached 'Meg in armed service."
Rose, sighing in miffed impatience, "And what did Dave reply."
"Dave didn't reply," you reply, scowling out your need for Rose to just Let It Go, because this total fiction was going to answer her question and she'd be happy with it, goddammit. "Dave wasn't going to talk to another green coat in medals before Dave could get his smoke break. So Brodie replied 'no sh*t, me too'."
Jade is paying rapt attention, a little slack in the jaw but also sort of scowling. She's smart, is Jade Harley; professor of several professions before she was out of braces, even. So she knows you're lying. "And then who asked for the date!" she prompts, like the good goddamn sport she is.
Steve, "Houston did, actually. It was all very above-board, real uh... traditional." He firms his mouth, nods at your nod. "I didn't think it was a date, actually, but a work meeting. There was, hm." He looks around the room, sneaking some truth in there. "There was a lot more career talk than anything, and because it was all under Houston himself, and not the State representatives that enforced Houston's contract, I could imagine the need for a courtship cover-story."
Jade, voice trembling with her enthusiasm, "But it turned out that you and Dave got along really well! In ways you didn't even know you ever wanted to get along with a person!"
You reach across Rose to clasp Jade's forearm. "Sure. But for the first meet story, we can just say 'at work'. And for the first date story, we can also say 'for work'. But I think maybe what Rose was asking after, and what you're trying to answer, Jade, is 'the moment'. Not when we literally first met, or when we first decided to give courtship the old college try. but the moment one decided to marry the other. Rose asked this because she knew our answers would be different, me and his. Because that kind of thing doesn't happen unanimously."
"And??" Jade insists, eyes wide with romantic hunger as she surges forward, squishing Rose against you.
The laugh skips out of you between words, "I'll -- I'll tell you as soon as I find out," and you let your head fall back to loose that laugh at Jade's growl of frustration, her pushing into Rose which pushes into you which pushes into Sam.
Rose stands to avoid the squish, and her cheeks are patchy with emotion. "Captain Rogers," she bids, brushing down the front of her skirt as she steps to the center of the bower, facing you. "Might we have a word outside?"
"No," Steve answers simply, shoring up against Sam to keep your pile from collapse.
Jade's good mood is so contagious, that you're still laughing gently as you make room, Sam's ribs shaking against your own.
"Go on take your lumps," Sam accuses, wagging a hand at Steve to shoo him on.
"I don't think so, Sam," Steve answers again, and he doesn't look away from Rose as Jade settles into Rose's spot, into the cold England stone she left behind, car exhaust on cement in the rain.
If you were following anything like a normal timeline, then Steve would have been nine years old when Rose was born. Rose hadn't been born, though, she'd fallen from the sky; and Steve had spent seventy-odd years asleep in the ice. You'd almost think that Rose was older than Steve, by the comfort she's got with the era she's in, but Rose is only 19 even if she is the scariest Alpha here.
You know Rose can't hurt people with her mind, at least not literally, but you aren't sure what it is she can do, either, except passively intimidate anyone she sets her pale violet eyes on. Hers was as much a life lived in mystery as yours was to her; because you didn't talk shop with these people, you kept your friendships in the sun, casual and bolstering, answering the need to have something weightless for yourself to balance all the heavy sh*t, fairweather to balance all the storm.
"Have a seat, Rose," Steve invites cordially, and the mood in the room drops about ten degrees.
You're not sure this is part of the Wedding Fight, and even Sam has stopped chuckling.
Rose tucks her ankle neatly against the other, and smoothly crouches to a top step, tugging her vest straight of any wrinkles. "When did you meet," she asks simply, determined to have this out even if she can't spare you from the conversation.
You're wincing before Steve even says it, but he says it anyway, "Yesterday."
Rose blinks, paling. You don't think you've ever seen her so unsettled -- maybe it wasn't you she'd been trying to spare from this conversation, just your witness to her reaction. "And where."
Steve narrows his eyes in thought. "Well technically on a roadside down state. But we'll say the Avenger's Complex."
Thor leans forward to listen, head above everyone in the bower. "Truly?"
"That's so cool," Jade stage-whispers, tugging your sweater sleeve. Jade never had much in the way of respect for personal boundaries, was never taught them maybe, and her squish into you squishes Sam into Steve's side. Jade's hair smells like sweat and sunshine and wind off the Pacific.
Rose closes her eyes, scoffs. "I am not so sure 'cool' is the appropriate descriptor, Professor Harley. Dave," her eyes open, the activity in the kitchen stills, quiets, Wanda and Pete droppin' what eaves they can. "Was it 'so cool', meeting Captain Rogers one day, to be married to him the next?"
You wonder how Rose and Jade had gotten here so quickly, from opposite ends of the world. You wonder what it is either of them can actually do, and whether or not it would have been worth it to share your own secrets, brag your own abilities just to know theirs. You used to half suspect that they were mundane; and it was your compulsion to pretend the same of yourself around them, same as you did around your band mates, just some normal-ass berk erring on the side of athletic. "Well the Bond hit like a kick in the teeth," you start, skipping over all the sad, strange minutiae that had gone into this union. "And I showed up knowing the details of the Auction Contract, babes, it just wouldn't go down so well in any interviews, you know? I'm just here for a Public Relations bid, but it would defeat the point if we went around explaining that."
Rose exhales, her relief like parlor-warm tea on the air. "Well why didn't you say so, Strider. Here I thought you'd gone and done something impulsive."
You can feel Steve staring. You say, "Yeah, I know Egbert musta spazzed when he was telling y'all about it, but I had my two-week's notice at the end of the State Contract. Kinda literally."
Rose, "And you didn't inform your friends, because it's not a sincere union."
Your monotone answers her monotone, "Yeah; I mean you don't ring me up for a visit every time you get a new job." You twist at the waist to accept the bowl of coconut soup Pete crouches on the step behind to hand you.
Rogers looks away, mouth bitten, nodding to answer Thor's puzzled eyebrows.
Rose's relief is palpable, now, overpowering the room because she's the scariest Alpha here, whatever her age or rank or experience. Maybe you'll get around to asking her where she gets all her doomglory from, but some people are geniuses, have aptitudes, and some people are just Gods.
"You could say you met at a museum," Pete offers, clambering to a sit to take your back, his knees bracketed around your waist.
Steve glances over with some surprise.
Pete sets his chin on your shoulder, because he's young and inoffensive and you're the soonest physical barrier between him and Rose. "An Art Museum. You go to those sometimes, right Steve? Maybe you met Dave at the Guggenheim."
"Sure!" Jade congratulates, eager to participate. "After hours like celebrities sometimes do, so you wouldn't get harassed by civilians. That's how come you could meet without any crowds in the way. You could get a Building Manager to corroborate!"
You drink soup, and say nothing, wedged in place by Sam's side and Pete's embrace, ears ringing for the weight of all that contemplative silence. Someone awards Jane's suggestion; someone else volunteers to do the research on what exhibits were open and on what schedule. Rose accepts a plate and a beverage, and makes conversation with Thor Odinson from across the room because she ain't afraid of sh*t.
"Waitin' on Egbert's arrival to get some supper for yourself?" You prompt quietly up at Steve from over Sam's plate of dim sum. "He eats about as much as you, I wouldn't risk the loss of starting ground."
"Not very hungry," Steve says, still looking out over the bower, still keeping alert without any obvious linger at your friends. For all you knew, he was just as buggy over Thor's company as he could be over Rose, but you still feel a little guilty.
Sam grunts at that, reaches up to slap a hand lazily over Steve's forehead. After a pause, "Go lay down, kid."
You think Sam is talking to you, and pull your chin in against your neck to make an ugly inquiry about it.
Steve just chuckles, upsetting the pile shored against him to stand. "Whatever happened to 'grandpa'?"
Sam, "I called my grandpa 'kid'. He called me 'sir'. That was the joke."
Steve lends a hand to Pete, who is detangling from the now deflated slump of people to stand as well. "I'm not calling you 'sir'."
Sam sits up to dislodge your lazy press, and Steve agrees to mosey with mock reluctance, bending at the waist to kiss the side of your surprised face in like, weirdly chivalrous farewell or something?
"Didn't think you could catch a fever, hoss," you ask, confused by Steve's turn of health. Maybe Steve wasn't as invulnerable to catching this morning's weird stomach thing as the Captain America mythos would suggest but then your question catches up with the rest of your brain and you wave a frantic acceptance of Steve's silent plea not to have to explain himself. If an Alpha was doing his job right, the Rood would slow them down, give them a sort of flu, aches and fever and complications with appetite.
And Steve had been doing his job plenty, wedding conflict in the air on all these contending Alphas, and the biological count-down waited for nobody's convenience.
A small tremble of homesickness tugs through your chest as Rogers takes his rooding fever out of the bower; and maybe it smells the same on all Alphas, malty and somewhat dry, or maybe it was just a meta-human signature, who knows. Could just be a coincidence. Doesn't make the nostalgia hurt any less.
Rose meets your eye over Jade, who is giggling like an idiot, but that's what you appreciates about Jade, and by the time Jade's big derp-ass self is out of the way to go get some food you find that Rose has followed to join Wanda serving the plates. You'd help, since this is sort of your house too, now, but you're a little worried what'll happen if you stand, all sat up on the returned ache from last night's mating.
Sam settles back in next to you with a sigh, dropping his voice to keep your conference discreet. "You think Stark planned your showing up, right on schedule?"
You scoff, because sure, if you'd left Texas on Bro's earliest command you'd have had at least a week to work Rogers over; and you wouldn't put it past Tony to set the deadline of your arrival the day before Steve's Rood, sort of a take-it-or-leave-it, high-stakes bid. If you hadn't shown up in time to meet Rogers at his likeliest f*ckability, then you might as well have not shown up at all.
What stood out more significantly, was that Rogers knew his own Rooding schedule, didn't he? So he provisionally married you, and further allowed the invasion of his heretofore private Den for this impromptu wedding, knowing well the approach of his chemical vulnerability. Maybe it was another one of those 'old fashioned' switcheroos, like Brodie's isolation and paranoia about his Roods were only the modern standard, and Rogers was acting from the ease and comfort of simpler times.
You're on your second plate of something shrimpy in noodles when John and Natalie arrive, through the door this time not the window and --
they have shopping bags, tall stiff cardstock things with metallic label print and satin handles and all.
"Is that cake," you dead-ass the same time Jade demands to know if they brought any booze.
Natalie produces a handle of Stoli that Wanda celebrates, and John scowls at your cake crack.
"Please don't have any cake at your actual wedding," John demands as he crosses the apartment like a sweaty little boat crossing a river rapids, too excited not to bump into sh*t. He's zeroed in on you so intensely that he doesn't greet Rose or Jade with anything more than a grunt of acknowledgement. The fact that neither Rose nor Jade seem offended by this suggests that John and his Windy Faze have been getting around the globe without that Flight Clearance his government promised he'd need.
"I'll have a cake, and Dadbert will bake it," you threaten, leaning up on an elbow to half-catch John's pounce. "What's in the bag, Eggsy."
"I love those movies," John says of your Kingsman reference, but doesn't settle in your lap, push-pulling himself to a stand to tug your elbow up after him. The perfumed bag rustles under his arm as you stand, feeling more than seeing Pete stand with you. "You ever see those movies?" John asks around you. "'Cos you're a dead ringer for Taron Egerton!"
(Kingsman flicks were to what Rose's mom did for a living, as the X-Files were to what John's dad did for a living; as in, outrageously overblown fiction to distract from all the garden-variety war crimes.)
"I read the comic books," Peter answers, following as John pulls you to the narrow hall.
"What! There are comics??" John pipes, eyes bright as he pushes through the bathroom doorway.
"There are comics about us, man, of course there are gonna be comics about Kingsman...s. Kingsmen?" You frown over your shoulder, not quite sure John means to have you followed in here.
But it's John who pushes you to a seat on the side of the bath tub and John who bustles Peter in to perch on the closed toilet, slapping the bathroom light on and closing the door behind this small gather. "You read a lot of comics?"
"I used to," Peter says, helpfully scaling his back up the bathroom wall to make room, perched near the ceiling like insert obvious reference to his costumed gig here.
"Yeah, me too," John says, equally morose about the 'used to' part, just as busy in his own emergence into adulthood and superherodom, just as bereft the free time to pursue his interests, because growing up is hard and nobody understands. He shakes himself out of it, though, and plops the shopping bag between your feet before lifting himself up to a sit on the narrow sink counter, beaming.
"Thanks?" you hazard, glancing uncertainly Peter's way.
"Well it's nothing gross!" John blurts, rolling his eyes. "Just something to keep you company, when I can't be around."
You still don't trust that Egbert didn't buy you a dild*. "Then why do I need to unpack this in a bathroom?"
"Becaaause," John throws his hands up, slamming his idiot elbow into an overhead cupboard with a soft curse. "I didn't want you to cry again in front of everybody." He kicks his foot out lazily to nudge your knee. "I know how you hate being seen like that, you big turd."
Eyebrow still lodged in your hairline, you reach down into the bag to pull out... a bright blue pullover hoodie, printed with the WindyKid logo John had scared up from a Windows 98 clip art portfolio back when he first wanted to become a public Hero. "Pretty sure this belongs to a Hotel chain, now," you say of the logo, pulling the sweater out... and out. "Egbert," you plea. "Goddammit, I think I am actually going to cry." The hoodie, see, is oversized; big enough for you to walk around naked under and still keep your modesty -- common joke among your Skykid foursome that's the type of Megwife you were going to grow up to be, bunny slippers and a shower cap.
"You'll never have to wear pants again," John says, blinking a false mistiness from his eyes and sighing wistfully. "The ultimate goal of the stay-home artist."
"Thank you for not getting your stink all over this," you add sincerely. "When you said 'keep me company' I thought you were giving me Bonzo."
John's eyes widen, sky blue terror.
Pete, "Is Bonzo a teddy bear?"
John's mouth works as if to answer, but you beat him to it -- "Worse. You know how Ronald Reagan was an actor before he was a presidential candidate?"
"Uh. I do now?"
You shift your weight like a cat satisfied with its soon-to-be-murdered canary, laughing at John's discomfort. Thought you'd cry over a sweater. What a derp. "Well Bonzo was the name of the monkey in one of Reagan's movies, that happened to be closest to the dateline of one of his political campaigns. So the meme of the decade back then was 'Bedtime for Bonzo', in either support or mockery of his presidential bid."
Pete listens, eyes shifting between you and Egbert. "So it's a stuffed monkey."
You cackle quietly at John's deepening color change. "Yeah sure, but. Worse. The whole comedic crux of the film was how to raise a chimp to behave like a human being, so like the promotional merch didn't f*ck around, made that terrifying button-eyed motherf*cker lifesized, which meant when John wanted to prac--dmphp--"
John's not as quick as you but he is strong, and has your whole entire head in both his hands to muffle your humiliating reveal, one hand flush over your mouth and the other behind your neck. "Practice my debate speeches!" he excuses, smooth. "Talking to a life-sized stuffed chimp, to get used to speaking in front of people!"
Peter only nods, sage in the ways of dweeby social anxiety.
You can see you're not going to get much of a laugh out of Pete over this, like hell maybe the guy still sleeps with his own polyester-stuffed victim of nerdy carnality.
You mean to protest John's clammy grab, maybe get a little breathing room so you could soften the offense of your certified cool-dude takedown, but the starter notes of your mumble and the lean you take away from John's stoop over you only tightens his grip
his grip around the back of your neck
that abruptly wrings every sense down into a steep, sharp focus, no sight nor sound to reach you, just a warm and slightly clammy pressure cradling under the back of your skull, and the noise this squeezes out of your mouth and against John's palm startles Pete off the wall.
John loses balance on nothing but his own fumble, and topples you both backwards into the tub, knees and elbows thumping on the way down. He's laughing when you meet his face, eyes bright and mouth flushed, the stiff crumple of the shopping bag trapped between your leg and the tub side. You think maybe John's floating to keep from squishing you, but it's Pete who caught John's arm, who hadn't startled off the wall but tumbled himself free in spidey-sense anticipation of John's lost balance.
"Boners for Bonzo," you whisper, menacing now that your mouth is free, trying to elbow John off so you can get your earthly senses returned. John lowers the back of your head gently against the side of the surround before letting go, laughing damply as he and Peter straighten up.
"Shut up," John says, but there's no urgency in it, eyes wide and glued to the crooked lay of your aviators down half your face, then your throat, your chest, your face again. "I have an idea."
"Eighty percent of all home deaths occur in the bathroom," Peter warns. "Though I guess that's mostly just the elderly taking falls, or people who suicide in their tubs."
John's overbite worsens until his teeth are showing, eyes wide at Pete and then back at you again. Finally, the dork has met dorkier.
"Yikes," you croak, to break the awkward silence. "Guess we better evacuate, then. Megans and children first." You smirk wide, righting your shades.
Pete scoffs, shifting his weight to prompt John lead the way, but John only falls contemplative, and edges out of the way to open the door for Pete, instead.
"I have an idea," John repeats, using his Serious Voice. "Can you get Ms. Romanov?" At Pete's narrowed mouth and suddenly intense thousand-yard stare, John shakes his head. "Nevermind, come on," he tugs Peter out of the bathroom, but shuts the door before you can clear the tub to follow.
You decide to relax for a minute, sprawled in the cool surround of whatever nylon-vinyl-plastic material they made seamless apartment bath-shower cubicles out of nowadays, rubbing the back of your neck to try and recreate the world-muting power of John's grip. Anyone could put you in a scruff, sure, but your body remembered John's body and wanted to shut its own lights out, maybe because you desperately wanted him to stick around and had fallen out of practice in the asking of that.
Or, well, you never really had any practice at that, at all, since it was always John asking you to stay, if anyone was ever asking anyone else that sort of thing.
The aluminum lip of the glass shower door starts to cut uncomfortably into the hinge of your knees, but just as you're elbowed up to try and crab-flip yourself out of the tub surround the bathroom door bursts open and you beef it on the slippery surface. Natalia Romanova has a fire in her eyes that reminds you of Rose, that maniacal gleam of cold intelligence, that goal-oriented fervor, trying to lend a menace to an optimism she's too self-possessed to smile about.
"Out," Natalie croaks, and you wonder who she means.
"Go ahead and pee, I won't look," you say, and whuff softly when Natalie gathers a fistful of the front of your shirt to haul you neatly upright out of the tub. "Why is everybody here so much stronger than me?" you complain, stifling your confusion when Natalie boots the bathroom door shut before you can leave it. "It's like that 'do you even lift bro' meme has risen from the dead to mock my proficiency at video games. Oh, sorry bodybuilder soundbite whose origins remain uncredited, I must have put the dumbbell down for five federal minutes to have an interest outside of your abusive relationship with gravity." You pull yourself up to a sit on the sink counter where John had been perching not five minutes hence, wringing your hands together between your clamped knees to watch Natalie turn taps and test the drain plug to run a bath.
"If there's a heavy object on the floor, I'm going to respect its autonomy and leave it right the hell where it is. Not my business if gravity wants to keep that cute little disk of carbonized steel all to itself; who am I to get in the way of a committed relationship? Gotta pull those weights around just to make myself better at pulling more weights around? Pff. That's downright Sisyphean, is what that is."
"Video games are Sisyphean," Natalie cooly comments, standing to watch you over her shoulder while the room starts to slowly steam up from the basin she'd stoppered. "We could consider the same true for most aspects of being alive; but the goal is never to conquer the same mountain over and over, because that mountain wears down, erodes, and eventually you expire."
"Yeah, well." You cough, longing for a cigarette. "I don't expire."
Natalie shrugs. "So you'll have a lot of mountains to roll that boulder up. The world changes too much too often for you to already be bored. Undress."
"Mizz Romanoff," you gasp, all southern vapors, but are already peeling off your shirt. "So this was John's idea? Bath and a makeover?" You straighten your shades.
Natalie's eye glints, an inclination of question.
"He's pretty predictable. We've been through several make-Dave-presentable attempts over the years, and that's always his big 'idea'. Like yeah, dude, here's a fresh new creative input against your problems, have you tried hygiene?"
"What problems."
You wince. This wasn't any more or less scarier than a conversation with Rose, but you'd have to see them side by side to make a detailed comparison. Maybe even see how a conversation -between them- would go down, just a bunch of stony glaring and coolbroad telepathy. "Wull, none, right now." You cough into your fist, the building steam of the bath tickling the back of your throat. "I think Egdip just likes to see me engage in the same bullsh*t rituals of socially acceptable manscaping as he feels pressured to. Guy could have a big f*ckoff funnyface moustache of his very own, but whew lad good luck with the Alphas getting used to a magnificent tummy-tickler like that."
Natalie turns to face you, helping your pants down and off while you lift your hips, counter-levered by the heels of your palms on the counter's edge. "Rogers is in season," she says, swerving your bullsh*t. "Not like that makes anyone picky."
You scoff, impressed. "I don't think Ebgert knows that, he just sees 'absent Alpha' and assumes I've scared someone off. So what's it gonna be, Natalie, did you bring a straight razor and a dewy soap or are we gonna wax-peel the interloper until he confesses all those State secrets that he doesn't know, because they never tell me sh*t."
"We're going to wash everyone else off you, because it's sundown and you're heating, and we don't want --" Natalie falters, turns on heel to crouch, to test the temperature of the water. "Steve's my friend, Dave. I don't have many of those. I'd like to help take care of you, if that would make things easier on my friend."
"I'm not heating," you softly capitulate, shivering in your underwear. "Just feral." Muttering, "Sometimes, I guess."
Natalie bites the side of her mouth, nods once. "So you'll be all right tonight? If we leave you here."
"When you leave me here," you insist, sounding braver than you feel. "I think Steve wanted this party moved to the complex, though, so I dunno. Maybe stay, maybe he wanted his people around him." Because what the hell did you know from Roods.
Natalie chuckles, taps the air to ask you down from the countertop. "Steve wanted the party moved to the complex so we could keep you company while he f*cked off on his own to suffer in peace. Don't let him fool you, his motives are as selfish as anyone's."
You smile a little as you drop your underwear, less naked than if you'd have to forfeit your sunglasses, which you don't do despite their fogging up. "I've had experience with recalcitrant Alphas in Rood." Well, one Alpha, and Natalie didn't need to know the same fictions you were giving over to Steve's focused pursuit, because she wouldn't be all up in your crack about it, sort of literally.
Natalie takes your elbow to help you step into the bath, eyebrows up to prompt continue.
"Sometimes they're kind of, like, sh*tty about it, right?" You kneel into the water before sitting, knees up in some insecure ploy for modesty, curious why a shower wouldn't have done a better job at this, running water and all.
"I suppose that's a possibility, with any individual in any situation," Natalie answers carefully, inspecting you clinically as you huddle in the half-full tub of water. "I've never seen Steve in Rood, I wouldn't know what it does to him."
You stare back at the redheaded blob of fog in the dark screen of your shades. "You comin' in, or should I relax?"
"Odinson expects a circuit," Natalie says, dropping the hem of her jogging sweats down her waist and hips. She steps out of those sweats and into the bath behind you, takes a seat on the narrow lip of the tub to frame your ribs with her knees, down to undies and the exercise top. "Not exactly a relaxing concept, for someone who's never been in one."
You almost ask how she'd know if you had been in a circuit before or not, but dry up about it pretty quick because, yeah, Packless berks like your brother and yourself couldn't ever manage something like that. "So why are we washing everyone off, then?" you ask instead, honestly flummoxed.
"The everyones that are here on your behalf, Dave."
"Ah." You fidget, squeegee water from the hem of your shades. Rose, Jade, maybe even John -- all those offending scents in 'the fight'. "This par, then, the mid-wedding dunking of the bride?"
Natalie's fingers still in your hair. "No. I'd say not." She sighs quietly through her nose. "Depending on the culture, it's the bawdy challenge to overpower the marks of the bride's visitors with vigorous bouts of lovemaking."
You chuckle, remembering something along those lines from the wedding-themed smallchat of your production team in their times of mile-marker matrimony, beta-made jokes and innuendos you probably didn't take as sincere at the time of their telling. "And I'm getting the geriatric bath, instead, because you already knew I ain't sound enough to do much vigorous inter-personal anything, but especially no vertical olympics, right?" You hear Natalie take a breath to answer, but interrupt -- "Or is this the part where you warn me, like, no it's not me and my damage, it's actually just that Captain Rogers is a war vet and his Roods turn him into the Indigenous from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Or!" You laugh, lower your volume for the echo of the bare tiled walls. "Or that he's chock full of fa*ggotsauce, and he'll reject me in ways he can't control, chemical signals he can't fake his way past, and I'll break down into a fit from the neglect."
Brodie never did put you in Thrall, even though it was so obviously a benefit to your keeping; like maybe he couldn't. And for an Alpha Bro sure didn't do enough running around sewing wild seeds, didn't even seem to want for Beta companionship. You loved Bro endlessly. Bro found that hilarious.
Bro could just be gay, the kind of gay that might have kept him under the thumb of the State, disposable if he couldn't make himself useful.
Natalie's breath brushes the top of your ear, and she pushes on your shoulders to get you laid back, submerging your torso in heat while your knees curl up to make room, legs cooling and feet braced above the spigot. "This is the part where I warn that you're anorexic, and you'll need a few days on a focused diet and vitamin IVs to get up to fighting weight. Despite what Texan culture might have told you, fainting Omegas are not standard. I've seen your vision wobble. I've seen you wobble."
You blub at the waterline, roll your head back to get your hair wet. "What about the circuit? Is that even what Asgardians call it? We just called it a pile in Texas, or you know, a 'gather'. A happening. An afternoon tea. A taking-in of the hot goss. A quilting circle. A study sesh."
"Keep going."
Your grin warms, using one of Nat's knees to pull yourself upright to a sit. "A corporate lunch."
"A debrief."
"Tip-toe through the tulips."
"Sleepover."
You whisper-scream nice at that one. "Can John stay? Seein' as I've never done?"
Natalie lowers her eyelids. "Only if you can convince Sam to join, seeing as he's never done, either."
What you don't know, is that John has already agreed to stay, for much longer than a lunch, and much longer than an overnight, and that he just wasn't ready to admit that out loud, but the Alphas in his life knew as much already, Dadbert and Rogers both on silent agreement, a wedding style abandonment to leave John slightly unfooted.
You nod, challenge accepted. "Have you?"
Natalie drizzles alpha-spice shampoo into your hair, replaces the bottle to its wire caddy. "Maybe. Mind your business."
You let your puzzled silence string through the air, certain you'd been on heart-to-heart territory, here.
Natalie foams your hair up, curls her toes until the knuckles crack audibly under the water. "You can tell people to mind their business, too, Dave. If you don't want to answer something. You don't have to lie all the time."
That... had honestly never crossed your mind. "Won't they just coerce it out of me, regardless? Ain't it easier to give them a distraction to chew over, instead?"
"'Them' who? Us? Me?"
"Anyone." You shrug back, ready to dunk for a rinse. "Everyone."
"The problem with that tactic, is that it weakens your credibility, rots away at whatever truth you might need believed one day. There's a lot more power in telling the truth, and claiming your own silence."
You hum a distracted agreement, and when you dunk back you submerge all the way, eyes shut tight and aviators drifting up off your face through shampoo-bubble water. None of your truths were up for believability and you'd like to keep it that way, whatever transparency you were flagging in front of all these professional lie-detectors. So Natalie's advice is still good for you -- keep lying, effectively bury any evidence against the lies that were the most useful to your situation. You grab at your shades where they'd settled at your neck, coughing gently as you rise back into the air. "I like being in Thrall," you confess through the snuffle of palming water off your face, the loose thread of your thoughts caught up on a stray but topical thorn.
You wipe your hair back from your eyes. "I like it enough that I can't think of any reason to avoid it, and I don't think I'll get a lot of control over what information goes where because, hey, it's this other force at the wheel, picking my brain or whatever. I'm just doing what I'm told."
Nat hums, a light note to her agreement. "In some ways, Meganhood was tailor-made for the Armed Services. Just taking orders. Just doing your job. Just honoring your Alpha's direction."
"Right!" You laugh, throat dry.
"Right. But nobody here is going to put you in thrall to make you tell the truth. The work required to do that would be intensive, and they'd have to be trained for it, have to train you for it too. The whole gamut would take the better part of a year, because of the delicacy of the connection. Which is why we'd consider it more suited to spycraft, a subtle approach given under a guise, rather than any blunt-force overture of interrogation. When someone doesn't want to follow the instruction of a Thrall, they shut down." Natalie sluices handfuls of shampoo-cloudy water down against your neck, brushing at the oils that would have lingered there, working her fingers up behind your ears and down under your jaw to get a little bit more of yourself returned to your own skin. "John's visit doesn't have to bank on Sam's compliance, I just want Sam to stick around if Steve's Rooding. Like I said, I don't know Steve's habits, but I know you aren't in any shape for wedding games."
You hum, uncertain. "Cos I can put every taco truck from here to Canada out of business and still get called 'anorexic'?"
"Anorexia nervosa; you lose appetite when you're under stress. Doesn't mean you don't eat, just means you don't eat enough, in the time you need to most." She speaks with the sort of even, plodding detachment narrative of a nature documentary. "It's a pretty common affliction in workaholics across the board, no matter their orient. Stark, for one. He doesn't register his obsessive absorption in his own thoughts as an anxiety disorder, but it is."
"Harsh."
"Diagnoses aren't insults, D." Natalie wicks water across your shoulders and down your upper arms, then pushes against your bony back to lever her rise from the tub. "And if I thought Rogers had intent to marry you so soon, I would have advised against it."
You brush your legs down under the water, curling forward to reach past your knees, fingernails exfoliating little nubs of dry skin off your ankles, pores unused to the constant chill of a New England autumn and the dry air of constantly running furnace. "Fair." Because sex to answer a fit was one thing, but claiming someone with a bite was a whole other ballgame.
Natalie is toweling her shins when the background noise of the apartment's company lets a smattering of surprise free, Jade exclaiming loudest for John's sudden Windy-Faze arrival. A handful of approaching footsteps later and John flings the bathroom door open, which Natalie kicks shut immediately back in his face, because there are pantsless people in here, John, get a grip.
"Rose only had purple," John insists through the muffle of the door, a plastic bag rustling.
You level a cool accusation at Natalie, who turns her back to step into her pants, ignoring you. You say, "So I'm guessing that's either makeup or underwear you've gotten me, Egbert." You drape your arms over the side of the tub, chin slotting on the cool reprieve of its edge, bath water dripping from your fingertips to patter against the bright blue hoodie half out of its cardstock.
"Why would I want to give you anyone's underwear," John opens the door a crack to stage-whisper at you, and drops the plastic bag through like an offering of peanuts to a zoo animal through the bars of its cage. "It's just I think that, you don't have to hide your whole face anymore, if you're here to have your picture taken!"
You expect a flat disk of concealer or the telling brick of an eye shadow palette, or the nubby cylinder of lipstick or mascara, and you lurch over the tub edge to grab up the bag -- but your fingers clasp around something more complicated through the flimsy plastic, with divots and narrow edges, and you pull out a pair of black sunglasses, lenses darker than the prescription readers you wear around indoors, but much smaller than your swank aviators.
You relax back into the bathwater, insides all mashed up by emotion. Your aviator shades had been a gift from John for your tenth birthday, to replace the weaboo kaminas your BRO gave you to help keep your tiny baby leucistic retinas in tact. What was John saying, here, that you shouldn't wear his gift around any more?
"Those Stiller shades are a collector's item," John crouches in the doorway to answer your loaded silence. "I'm surprised they haven't been wrecked yet!"
You grunt, fish the aviators out from their errant drift through the bath down against your hip. They'd been wrecked plenty over the years, but it had always been your privileged talent to be able to rewind the damage on them, the cracks and the scuffs and the odd full-bore shattering from the hazards of your lifestyle. You hold old shades and new side by side, deciding which should go into the DEX.
John reaches through the door to snag the plastic bag away, shaking out a receipt. "If you don't like the style, you can always return them for another pair. I just thought, hm, maybe you can look less like the unibomber in the paparazzi grabs."
Natalie foots the door open, hand on hip. "You got what you needed."
John shoots upright so quick you think you hear his spine crack. "I did!" He shifts his weight foot to foot, impatient to join you in the small humid space, brandishing a ten-pack of safety razors.
Your expression darkens, knees drawn up to protect your bits from all the ogling going down up in this heretofore most private of rooms. "The hand that goes for my sideburns gets bit."
But Natalie only offers an arm down to help you to a stand as John shuffles in to close the door covertly behind him, so you consolidate both pairs of sunglasses to one hand and take that help, eyes still narrowed in suspicion. The sunglasses clatter into the sink to dry, and you suffer through a vigorous hands-on toweling from both Natalie and John's derpy, giggling-ass self.
John, "You barely even have sideburns, shut up. But I had an idea! Since you're kind of unwell right now!" John loops the oversized WindyKid merch over your head and tugs its coziness all the way down to its full drape, then bundles you in a hug, trapping your arms.
Natalie's mouth narrows, and she only nods once before bending to pull the tub drain, movements precise. "I can leave you to talk this over."
"Talk what," you ask airily, elbowing out of John's grapple to get your arms through the sweater's sleeves. You've been too badly surprised too many times in a row to have the stamina for shenanigans. Anorexic, huh. John's increasingly PG-rated gifts, delivered with his usual innuendo-pranksterism that you're only ever half sure he's even aware of pulling. And now John's got a ten-pack of safety razors, apparently, but none of these are puzzle pieces that fit anywhere close to one another to form any sort of coherent picture of just what the f*ck is going on.
John quickly resolves your confusion, helps bundle your offensively smelly t-shirt in your only slightly less offensively smelly pyjama bottoms. "About standing Second!"
You suck air past a molar, pushing into John's armful to get your DEX out so you can captchalogue the COLLECTOR'S EDITION SUNGLASSES that had once sat on Ben Stiller's weirdly handsome, sort of gaunt looking face. "I don't need you to fight Thor for me, dude, you go on and live out that fanboy's wet dream on your own gumption." You've been left bare-legged like a giant blue popsicle, hoodie draping all the way down to mid-thigh, and so totally plan on raiding Steve's linen closet for what spare blanketry could be summoned to protect your lower half yukata-style. Steve seemed like the kind of guy to have a quilt or an afghan tucked away somewhere; most likely a gift and damn certain more than likely to have clashed too terrifically with his personal aesthetic to have won an honor spot draped over the back of the couch.
"That's standing Sentry," Natalie corrects, derailing your relieved scorn at John's weird need to ban the five-o'clock shadow on his dimply little chipmunk cheeks for a round of fisticuffs. Because what the hell else did he need a razor for, the wacky little sh*t.
John only scowls, hugging the bundle of your clothes against his stomach. "Maybe you should actually stay and help me out a little, so we can talk."
You veto John's input, John is no longer a reliable source of reality, sh*t's too weird around him right now and doesn't make enough sense to handle, and ask Natalie instead -- "Yo, seriously, what's the difference. I literally never had to study social modules they ain't offer past the eighth grade and The South is too repressed to let weddings make the cable programming," You lie easily, and stuff your hands in your new hoodie's kangaroo pocket and pull your shoulders tightly up, one ear rolling hard to scrub away at the tickle of a water droplet.
Natalie takes the bundle of clothing from John.
Natalie bends at the waist to the now empty tub to plug the drain again.
She runs the taps, finds a good temp, and straightens to nod at you. "Your friends'll have the address to the gatehouse for the Avenger's complex. They can visit any time." But just not right now, not anymore, it went unsaid. That's what a wedding was, for an Omega. A sweeping, emotionally charged reunion and abrupt departure of Pack, meant to very lightly unfoot the meg-bride, we are here because we love these people, we will share a meal and an evening's trading of business cards; now half of you f*ck off so half of us can own them both (unless you're joining the new Pack, then by all means, stay).
"I'll get their contact info for the public reception." Natalie gives you a beat to answer, but your brain is doing that funny shut-down thing when it's dealing with something too f*cking absurd to process. So Natalie pats your upper arm, squeezes your shoulder. And Natalie leaves.
You end up naked again squished down in the tub in front of John, because John, absurdly, wants to shave his legs. This is also the warmest spot in the apartment, and if you'd known you were going to end up here again you wouldn't have left, toweled off or redressed. But life rarely happens in any tidy, narrative-friendly way, just a series of actions and reactions, just a script of mistakes and mistaken info, nothing but clumsy assumptions and comfortable lies.
Okay, it's not so absurd that John wants to spruce his gams -- that's a thing that John does, would even be a thing that you do, were your hair dark enough to warrant it and your scars not such a f*cking roadbump hazard not even the saftiest of razors could swerve nicking.
"Yo, Egbert-and-ernie, you got any lotion in your carry-on too?" Because you have been waaay over-bathed lately, skin tight and hair brittle. What is absurd, is that John wants to shave his legs now, in your house, when he knows damn well you don't mind a little fur on your partners. Whatevs, though, if it's his comfort zone to be smooth for the cuddle-pile then you're not going to razz him too hard about it, naw. It's just absurd, see, because you had thought John wasn't going to stay the night.
John pulls his razor under his calf the same time you pull your razor over his shin. He'd gotten the disposables, cheaper than the ergonomic handles with the changeable heads. "Mmh, just the medicated kind."
"That'll do, pig." You sigh, relax back into the little-spoon position best suited to this errand while John navigates the stubble from his knees. "That'll do."
John's scoff drops against the front of your wet shoulder, his pudgy, training-fortified chest firm against the back of your shoulders as he squishes forward to reach. "So um. Standing Second is like --"
"Tag team, dude, I know what it means." You just like to pretend to be dumb, because it's less labor-intensive than asking someone to reconsider, a more subtle forcing of them to explain their circ*mstances, comprehensive introspection. "I ain't mad about it cos like do whatever you wanna do; I'm just kind of suspicious, you know? Like, you're about as subtle as an 1870s nun in a 1970s brothel mydude, your wimple so f*cking big it catches wind off someone's poxy queef and sends you careening into the mirrorball. I barely hear from you for like half a year and soon's you see me married, it's all ooh, awh, John can't tear his eyes offa the guy he suddenly can't have any more --"
John splashes his razor down, rinsing Barbasol and stubbly little leghairs free. "I didn't stop talking to you, don't be morose."
"Smallchat where you bitch about your stupid perfect job and your stupid perfect Dad isn't the same thing as talking and you know it." Because sure, you hadn't dropped contact in totality, naw -- you didn't ghost like that. But distracted half-finished ideas and a few random strings of jokes weren't the same as a night's Skype diatribe or an e-mailed essay of introspective confession.
John lifts his other shapely leg out of the water to check for any spots you might have missed. You lean forward to more closely inspect his ankles, swiping your razor over the veiny top of his foot.
"I know," John admits quietly. "I've been really busy lately, and I do feel bad that I only had good news to share. And that shouldn't be like that, should it? It's not your fault --" he huffs, voice cracking. His nerveless fingers fumble the razor, nicking the bony hill of anterior ankle you aren't working on.
You curl your hand over that wound, watery blood dribbling out from under your fingers as you squeeze to help stem the shallow cut. "It ain't my fault my life sucks, and I know I shoulda done better to celebrate my friends insteada hiding away ashamed that I wasn't keeping up. I mean, Harley's accomplishments alone kinda put everyone in the dust; I only saved the world about every month but even that gets redundant if the threat is always the same and the victory always comes out feelin' kinda guaranteed."
John presses his scowl against the back of your neck. "No. I mean it's not your fault if you lost interest. In, um, in 'us', I guess. Because I changed, and I got kinda bossy, and I wasn't just some cute Megan hanging off your every word anymore, and I didn't have as many interesting things to say."
You snort so hard you choke on your own spit, and lurch to an upright sit, coughing into your curled fist. "Y'think I ain't changed none?" Wait. sh*t. You exhale. "I mean, okay, so I admit, once you reach perfection there isn't really anywhere to go but down, so that's my bad for keeping so consistently awesome and raining on everyone else's self-improvement parade." You serve the air, half-turned to address John's crooked jaw of scorn. "But I only lost interest because you lost interest, first. And I mean, I get it -- there's only so much 'first love' can do for a guy before the concept of being able to fart in front of your partner loses all novelty. We lost the danger, John; and without the danger there wasn't really any thrill for you left. With Rogers I've got, like, whole loads of this sort of new, next-level risk-taking; like I'm pretty sure I'd have to be strapped into a chair that was bolted to the floor to even have anything close to a reasonable excuse to fart in the same room as this guy; does that make any sense?"
John's mouth pulls to the side. "If you can't fart in front of your own spouse, you have social anxiety. Maybe body image problems?"
You roll your eyes so hard it hurts a little, and sling John's leg back in your lap to delicately shave around his missed spots, sparing him any more road rash. "If you want in on the Pack-building all polycule style, man, I would be hella jazzed to hear it. But if you're only standing Second for me as like an obligation or some sort of brave sacrifice you're gonna try to debt me over later or whatever, then thanks but no thanks. You gotta volunteer for the Hunger Games for your own reasons, as like something you actually want and know you will enjoy."
It takes a few lingering swipes of your safety razor over the last whisper of John's upper-thigh stubble for John to answer, and when he does his voice is low and quiet and maybe a little grumpy. "I want to be here for you when you actually need me, Dave. I've never -- literally not ever! Gotten to see you act like other Omegas, before today. And I know I will 'enjoy' it, I guess, if I get to be there when you're asking to be held, even if it's not me you're asking.
"Because, I mean, it's only ever been me? Asking that, asking you to do that, and I think I must have never really liked being the only one who does that, between us; but I just always thought that's what I was supposed to do? Or maybe you didn't think I could support you like that, like you wouldn't let me wear the Alpha-pants because I wasn't reliable? Help me out, here."
You take a few moments more to process this little bombshell of a factoid, consulting the middle-distance for clues. Yeah, actually, you always played it off whenever John tried to wear the pants, stuffing him into the 'cute meg' box. Because you needed that, you needed someone around to be the dependent so you could keep yourself built up, fortified against all the sh*t in your life knocking to get in and break you down.
"It honestly never occurred to me before, to get with the stereotypical Meg program, Egbert," you report woodenly. "And now that I've been through it I can't say it's exactly my favorite, so..." You exhale, wait for John's stony silence to spill over with his spastic impatience and bloom into a demand.
John says nothing, only pulls the razor from your hand and sets both aside out of the tub. He then sinks both legs under water to sway them in a lazy rinse, wraps his arms around your middle, pulls you in against his soft chest, against the pudge of his belly, his package an abstract bundle of pressure points at your lower back and asscrack, his erection stiff and balls pulled taut with anticipation. "That's really dumb," he whispers into your neck. "Dave, that's a really stupid, mean-spirited fib, and I don't want you to say things like that any more, okay?"
"Uh," you say, caught out. "No? No it's not? Just what's true, Egbert, don't make it A Whole-Ass Thing."
John shifts, leaning back, pulling you tight -- strong, f*ck -- to lay back against him, though you're too tall to fit until you slouch down, the back of your head cradling against the side of John's neck. "It was fine, when we were kids," John continues in an even lecture that reminds you of Sam Wilson, or Natalie, or Pepper. Adults you didn't have in your life before to compare to, until these the most eventful 72 hours of your short, dumb, idiot get-around. "It was okay to fib like that, because there were parts of you that needed protecting and you really only trusted one person to see that side of you. But I think you're strong enough, now that you're all grown up and on your own, that you don't have to lie about certain things any more. And it's pretty awful of you to say that you don't like being put in the 'Meg seat -- that would be like me saying I don't like the fact that I like sh*tty movies, because I want to be able to hate sh*tty movies, so I'll just lie and say I hate sh*tty movies. Even though I really like them and everyone can tell and I'm only making myself sad when I pretend to hate the thing that I actually sort of really enjoy, because I'm all stuck up my own ass trying to look 'cool'."
You sway your bent knees to the side, tub surround cool and smooth and clean against the side of your leg. Here's the part where you pretend to be Too Gay To Function, because it more readily hides who you're actually missing and why you're actually upset. "Hate to break it to you, buddy, but it's not that far of a graduation, from every part of me I could ever try to fit inside of you at once, to taking Knot. You're not exactly chucking all of your carefully shored personal ethos to the four federal f*cking winds, over here, you're just volunteering to tag team on the sort of Alpha you always wanted me to be." You inhale sharp, pain ghosting through your chest. "Which, thanks for that. My gender dysphoria never felt more tenderized."
"Oh," John blows a raspberry, "to your 'dysphoria'!"
"Rude. And you wonder why we don't 'talk' like we used to."
"I mean it!" John protests as you struggle to shove yourself upright to begin to escape the bath, his embrace only tightening around your slippery fish torso. "Like you think I don't know when you're bullsh*tting to deflect! I never 'wanted' you to be any which way but yourself! And here you are, married to an Alpha I could never even hope to emulate, showing him things about yourself you never showed me?? Sheesh!"
"For my job," you snap. And goddamn that phonecall, anyway, Steve.
"Well is it 'for your job' that you get all --" John flusters, water sloshing as he throws his hands forward and up. "All gooey?" There's real despair, here, sharp and terrifying. "Is that part of the role, Dave, that you get to be all uncool and nice and soft; but I'm not supposed to be here to help you feel good?" Voice cracking now, a little, and oh jesus christ Egbert this absolutely murders you. "You honestly still think I'm so shallow that I can't support you when you're having a hard time, when you're freaking out because this is new and scary? That I don't know how to help you out now that you're ill, or -- or that I don't want to?"
No, not with John, or Jade or even Rose (though she always came closest). These people were your fair-weathers. The daycamp. The vacation spot. You can't taint that with all the, all the heavy rain and the howling wind and the blood-dark swell of fathomless ocean. You can't put any of them in the best-friend seat that Brodie occupies.
Occupied.
"I think your blocker pills gave you a boner," you play off, light, patting at John's forearm to beg for freedom.
"I'm sorry I ran away, back on the roof," John blubs, but there's more heat there than soggy remorse. "I wanted to meet the guy who made you cry; maybe beat him up if I had to!"
You laugh, a damp attempt to placate John's iron f*cking grip around your underfed stomach.
John, "If it had been just us two up there today, and nobody for me to beat up, I would have, uh, taken liberties!"
You try to leave the bath in earnest, now, a little dizzy with disappointment. "If you can't even say it out loud, EB, then you're not ready to try it in meatspace." What would John even look like as an Ace, huffing away between your legs like you were his whole world, and not a single giggle on the horizon?
John lets you pull yourself away, wrinkling his nose at you as he curls his knees up to alleviate his neglected boner. "You're the only person I've ever been with, Dibs, and I still don't know if you'd have let me get one over on you. You're such a proud, stupid jerk, and then you try to act like me putting up with all your pestering wasn't ever some sort of deferment! Guh! How's that supposed to make me feel!"
You slosh out of the tub and step off onto cold lineoleum, then slap at Egbert's DEX for the fluffiest towel you know he had stowed in there somewhere. "Oh naw, man, you've always been my bottom bitch; I've just been all extra nice to you about it, on account of your lame suburbanite sense of equality. Progressive living is for the financially secure and politically successful, you privileged East Coast f*ckwit. If I'da ever stopped playing boss I'da got my ass whupped on the street, and not just by my psychotic f*cking parent. You could always put the butch mask down and pick it back up whenever it was most comfortable for you; so, a'ight cool? Congratulations EB you win again; the better life, it is yours. Don't mean I ever had to sit around and let you wave that sh*t in my face, dude, f*ck."
John turns bright red. It must have been years since you talked to him like that, in a tone not even approaching a joke.
You towel your hair before anything else, scars and dick on full display, because you're the Ace in the relationship and Derpbert better not f*cking forget it. "You can play at Knot as soon as you learn how to say 'get dicked' without giggling; and you can try to knot me as soon as you've actually gotten dicked without giggling. Because Egbert, christ," you fume, still stung through with offended jealousy, "There's never been a day in your precious pissbaby life, that you've ever had to do anything that you didn't want to. f*cking think about that, will you? For like a minute?"
John pushes himself to a splashing stand, scowling as he unplugs the bath drain. "That's what I mean, when I say you're being cruel, lying like -- or implying, I guess! That you don't want to be here, that it's some sorta huge tragedy or whatever; and acting as if, all, bluh, like you're sooo put out because you get to be under someone's protection for once. Welcome to MY life, Dibs, now you don't have to do anything that you don't want, either! Kinda spoils you for choice, doesn't it?"
John huffs, snags his towel out of your grip to start swiping down his arms. "And now you're trying to be all mad about it, when all you ever did, Mister Tough Guy, was complain how you never got any support from Bro -- how he let the State push you two around, how even his suppression was stone-cold and how you were lonely and could never really unwind --"
You laugh, because John's reciting your lies right back at you in an attempt to prove something. "You're right," you hold your hands up, shivering with emotion, "I do want to be here. I love these people, in little individual ways I never knew I ever wanted to love anyone. I'm sorry there was ever any implication to the contrary." You settle your hands on John's shoulders, finding no scars, hungry to push him down and make him squeak and a little resentful that you're not actually horny for it right now. "But you, John? You're the one who is spoiled. You've lived a much more comfortable life than anyone out there in that whole apartment; and frankly, you ain't earned the privilege of seeing a Strider on his belly." Please John, please don't f*cking push this, oh god you need him to stay the anchor that brings you back to the cool douche you need to be to survive all of this, you need to be able to compartmentalize or you're not going to be able to handle anything anymore.
"A Rogers, you mean," John mumbles, expression wounded the way it always was whenever he was accepting your totally bullsh*t made-up rules as actual factual, inarguable reality. "And I guess this means you really don't trust me to help."
You crack a breathless grin, drop your hands from John's shoulders. "Yeah, cos you don't even know what it is I need help with. Man, I love you, and I want you around, but not if it's just to peanut-gallery my suffering, like it's cool and neat and makes you feel big. We spoke on some real heavy sh*t, me 'n Captain Provisional, cracked open some pretty steep interpersonal eggs to scrumble up some post-traumatic omelets, and you're comin' in on our breakfast like your stale little pastel rainbow cereal marshmallows make a good replacement for green peppers, y'dig?"
This hurts, this hurts so bad to even say; because it true, and you don't mind really that John's a marshmallow, but he can't -- John can't do the things you do, and you don't want him to ever have to, you don't want to see what kind of person he could turn out to be from all that blood and fear and triumph; good or bad, you don't want him to change.
John wilts, stuffing the towel around his waist, and ghost pains haunt your breathing. "You need to give me a chance," he argues evenly, because he's John and he's good, he's just so goddamn good. But, there's also -- and you don't know this yet, because life doesn't script itself in neat little thematically appropriate reveals -- because there's also something here that John's not telling you, that John hasn't told you. Secrets as big as you ever felt you had to keep for yourself, which he kept for the same reasons you ever kept your own, to protect his friends.
"To do what," you deadpan, cold, putting stone in your glare. "You ain't on the team. f*ckin' tourist." He'll take the bait. It's gotta feel like his own idea.
John flinches, reddens darker. "Wull!" he blubs, watching you up and down, you in your effortless nudity and this week's new handful of scars. "I'm on contract, and there's nothing I can do about that!"
"There a non-compete?" You'll run John ragged until he's useless to any missions the Feds would want him for, or get him knocked up by someone in your new Pack, and disqualified from the field. "Steve's still a Captain in the Army, and an Avenger. And Tony's a director for SHIELD, a tech magnate, and Iron Man. f*ck, Egbert, get with the late-stage capitalism already; you can have two jobs." Sensing, if not a win, at least a path to one, you turn to John's SYLLADEX to browse for a change of clothes you know he keeps for rainy days or trips to the gym. You'll get him in the Avengers and under your thumb nice and safe, without even asking.
You'll convince him of his autonomy in the choice, like Brodie always kept up convincing you, with mind games and fake-outs, reverse psychology.
You're swiping through John's garbage fetch modus for a set of running shorts among several when John musters his final advance.
"I went on the blockers so I could have this job," John starts, voice smoothing of its warble. "Not the mail room. The job I have lined up for me now, I mean, when I graduate. And I used to think that I needed this job so I could stay off the Registry. But," frustration creeps into John's tone, slurs his consonants with the threat of tears. "But then I found out there's a reason to stick with the position. That it's more than some last resort or trade-off for independence, that I can actually help people? Like you."
John makes a frustrated sound, fists balled in the towel. "I mean help people who are like you, not that I wanted to be like you because you helped people."
You hand John back the shortest pair of shorty short shorts you can find, because you want the Pack to want John around badly enough it'll guilt trip him out of his career. "You don't actually know what I did underground, man. You just got the epic highlights."
"I know that." John swipes at his face, puffy with turmoil. "There's lots of stuff you don't tell me. Stuff I've been sort of finding out over time? All the stuff we never really talked about, even though it's been staring us both in the face."
You stop rifling around for skimpy wedding tack and still, nervous now. "It's cool, man. You had school, I had hellportal conclusions. Now you've got FBI and I've got Avenging." But Jade and Rose had acted so passive with John's company, like they saw him all the time despite their geographical distance, when you hardly ever --
"No, Dibs, I mean I went on these pills, so I could go to school, and I --" John's bottom lip tucks in, eyes glassy. You want to cup your hand over his brown little nipple, chase the water droplets off his flushed skin. "I could sort of wake up, from being around you, in a way I guess I couldn't before. And you know what I found out?"
You don't like this. John went on a different, more powerful set of blockers about two years ago, when the natural long-distance drift of your relationship really began to widen. "Everything started to smell like soup?"
"I found out that you were an asshole. That everything I used to think was so awesome and on-brand was actually just, hff, this whole huge stupid front!"
Dread flickers through you and dissipates. "Oh, Jesus, I never made it any big secret I live for performance art. You don't need goddamn medication to grow the f*ck up and find that out."
John stifles his frustration, turning his back to step into his shorts. "Unless that medication means I didn't have to 'listen' to an Alpha's scent!"
You pause in your confusion. As always, the ruling powers had access to miracle meds the unwashed masses didn't even know could exist. f*ck. "Kay. So. I'm not actually an Alpha?"
When John gets sad, he blusters, mopes, deflects with humor. When John gets mad, he cries. John's crying, now, sort of. There are tears, doughy and salt-warm, and his breath is hitching. So you can tell, objectively, that he's angry. Not upset, no, upset John would be pale and breathless and clingy, because he has healthy coping frameworks and never once lacked for support, he'd be sad like a 'Meg gets sad. This is angry John, because John is so rarely angry that it alarms him, and he hates hurting people, hates himself if he's hurting someone, if he's 'being mean' because he has to, and all desperate for an excuse to not have to do that, to not have to 'be mean'.
"No, you're not an Alpha. But," John hiccoughs, takes his DEX from you to find a thermal shirt from the camping map in his dumb lifestyle modus. "You always smelled like one. And it came off you in ways a custody marking wouldn't, and I used to always think maybe! You were! You were just like that, you were just sort of maybe both!" There's a pause, asthma threatening. "Which was cool, and would explain all your dumb posturing," his hiccoughs go rapid, trying to laugh. He pulls his thermal shirt on as you numbly climb into your briefs.
"How 'bout that lotion," you mumble, delaying this conversation to the confines of the bathroom, needy for the excuse to get back to some sort of cooperative goal.
"Will you let me put it on you?"
Your expression twists up in toothy affront, eyebrows better exposed by the new shades. "I guess?"
John sighs, like he'd expected you to say something else. "So Captain Rogers wanted to know if you had a partner, if you ever told me about anyone --" He snaps the lotion open carefully and sets your new, oversized blue hoodie aside on the sink. "Sit on the counter so I can reach." He waits for you to get underweared. Underworn? You tug your underwear up, and sit. John, "So Rogers asks me if you ever told me about anyone, you know, harassing you, at work or whatever, and I tell him no, but it's a lie. I give him all these plausible excuses, too," John's medicated lotion nulls scent, for obvious applications of use, and he starts to work it into your skin up at your shoulders and neck, hands made sure by purpose, strong with practice and familiar with the hills and valleys of your scars. "But he knows I'm lying. He knows I'm lying before I know I'm lying, because you have told me, a lot, about your Alpha."
"Hey Egbert," you rasp, throat closing up around your desperate whisper. Not that you think anyone can hear your furtive argument outside of this humid little room, ceiling vent loud in its hum, but because you don't want what's real to also be what's known and acknowledged and admitted out loud. "Can you do me a favor, and shut the f*ck up?"
John's hands pull lotion down one arm, into your pulse points, and then up the other. His jaw is set and anger still puts a hitch in his breath. You are acutely aware of the differences between your bodies; that he is rounder and shorter than you, that he is wider in the limbs. You are acutely aware of how alike you remain, that John is still pretty tall for an Omegan, that his mouth is wide and derpy and he was never going to fit in on this planet. "Okay," John warns, "so let's talk about my job, instead. All the things that we have to learn at my job, to help profile the meta-humans we're tasked with shepherding."
You've only been in this bathroom thirty, maybe forty five minutes -- first with John's weird hoodie errand, then with Natalie's compulsion to get all the Jade and Rose out of your hair, and now these last fifteen minutes getting John ready for his wedding night, since apparently Captain Rogers has opened up a boarding home for uberMegs, inspired by your plight. Only forty minutes but it feels like years, like time dilation scraping you over the hot coals of Hell, spaghettification into the Black Hole of your hubris, Bathroomstuck: the world's sh*ttiest escape puzzle and pun sincerely unintended. "Don't you f*cking profile me at my own wedding," you deadass.
"Kay." John sets his jaw. "But you want to know why we stopped talking, really talking about important life-related things? I went on these blockers, and I could see you a little more clearly, and I was also in school, and then at Academy, and I was learning stuff, Dave." His gripping hands tremble, just a bit, before they firm on the top of your bare lap, swiping in to rub the slightly numbing sting of scent-b-gon inside your thighs. "Stuff I didn't want to talk with you about, because I didn't want to ruin our friendship. But I also couldn't --" he cups his hands over your knees, bracing himself with a thoughtful exhale. "I couldn't keep going the way that we were, just feeding into your problems, enabling you. And you were always flaunting yourself around Dad, and I never got why Dad put up with you doing that, why he never told you off about it or told your brother on you, but then I all of a sudden found out, in this coursework, that's the thing that abused kids do --
John ploughs on, rushing his point, unaware of, or unaffected by the toll of his accusations, "--because the only attachments they learn to form with people are sexual ones, and then I really thought about it, about your relationships with other people, and how we were always ragging on Jade and Rose to 'rescue' us, or whatever, but you were always a little bit more serious than me, and actually tried to date Jade, and were always flirting with, well, not just them but, hm! Sort of everyone! Like your worth was only ever based on, you know -- and, like the coursework pointed out, that you wouldn't know how else to be."
John takes a breath, attempting to center. "And Istoppedhavingsexwithyou, just to try to confirm my theory, and you did -- we fought about that, remember? And you blamed my job, or the pills, and I let it slide because I didn't want to hurt your feelings. So I waited, and I tried to stay as close as we used to be, but man, how close were we really, ever? If we took the sex out of it, did we ever really talk about anything important? I didn't even know you had died! I had to read about your 'talent' in a case file!"
You thought this would hurt so much worse, Matroyshkas cracked through like empty eggs, but really you just feel kind of relieved. "Okay. But I told you about Bro. All the time."
John hiccough-laughs, angry tears sprung anew. "You did! You told me all the time what was going on, and I thought you were joking, or just trying to skeeve me out!" He dashes the back of his wrist against his eyes, careful of the lotion. "Because you're right, D, I'm a dumb spoiled pissbaby who's never had to do anything he didn't want to, in his whole privileged life. But now I don't know what I should do with this information, or I mean I guess I never knew what to do with it? Because I sort of always had it, had the info?" John curls his sticky hand under your calf, squeezes a cold noodle of lotion down your shin. "And my dad! Sheesh! You know he was going to custody-contract you, like, several times over but the appeals never managed to make it out of court? I never understood that until just now, augh, why he kept trying for that even though he and Houston were supposed to be such great chums; like if your bro wanted you somewhere safe from the Registry then why didn't he just let us have you??"
Okay, this part hurts, and you're not really sure if mister 'abused child profiler' over here is ready to hear about your half of the crime, but you're not going to sit silent and let that sorta slander slide. "Maybe Bro didn't let y'all 'have me' because I didn't want to get had, all right?" Sure, you joked about going along with Dadbert all the time, but realtalk you were never going to abandon your bro like that unless the State pushed you to it (and even then, well).
"You hid food in your closet," John all but pleads, and this is so off-course that you close your mouth and have to try again.
"What."
"That's textbook child abuse symptom number one, D, if a kid feels so insecure in his own home that he's gotta hide food -- doesn't matter if the abuse is just simple emotional neglect, or the family always has plenty of food around to eat, that anxiety always manifests the same. When we check the home, we check the hidden spots a guardian wouldn't know to fix up for our visit." John's expression firms, professional detachment, Dadbert in the tension of his cheeks. "It's primal. They feel, on a subconscious level, like the people in charge of them aren't going to help keep them alive, so they need to start fending for themselves in the most obvious ways, which means food hoarding."
John squares up, scowling, terrorizing you. "There's evidence in the kid, too, in how they'll emulate emotional maturity -- but it's not actual maturity, just a denial of needs. They'll probably have a lot of anger issues, probably like to say a lot of outrageous things to hurt other people, to get reactions, to reassure themselves that they're 'strong enough' to go it alone. It's called 'Bad World' bias confirmation, D, and if that isn't you from stem to --"
You don't even feel John take your other leg. "Well, f*ck me I guess." And you were hella 'emotionally mature' for your early years, De Nile wasn't just a river in Egypt, et cetera. You would take umbrage with the 'outrageous things' argument, but really the only people who could survive such intensive social forge-blasting, who ever stuck around to any significant degree (beyond the professional attachments, not like you mouthed off to your production team, sheesh) were those who grew up in similarly isolating, single-parent Skybaby households.
Yikes.
Yikes and, Jade was pretty staunchly independent, had plenty of anger issues that just skewed a different flavortone from yours. Rose was a pro at isolating herself and scaring other people away, to the point she didn't even have to speak anymore to do so. And John... well, John might have been healthier than the rest of you but he also had a spectacular parent who was trained for this kinda thing. John's anger issues manifested pretty normally -- he had a temper and it made him cry, because he couldn't process it correctly, because the prospect of being alone scared him sh*tless and he didn't ever want to risk social rejection.
Hence, John not talking about any of this, up to the point it was an actual problem that needed crying over.
Every single one of you in the Skaian childhood foursome had been departed from the usual kid-centric woes. You don't know if Rose or John ever hoarded any apple juice pallets under their beds but you know for sure Jade had to go in for the survival tack pretty hardcore, gardening her vegetables and making her own meals at as young an age as you were making yours.
John has gone pale and quiet, now, so you know he's more sad than angry. "Yeah, buddy. Big f*cking oof." He's rubbing the lotion over your scent glands more than your dry spots, like he's protecting you from something, hiding you away. "So I was learning about all this, about the time I was on the new blockers, and could sort of see you for what you were? And how I reacted to that, that's my fault, Dibs, that's just -- I didn't know what to say to you anymore, so I stuck to the fun stuff we always used to say to each other. Because anything else, I think? I think I would have ruined everything, and you would have stopped talking to me, or something, because you were so totally in love with your weirdo sh*thead brother."
"Present-tense, Egbert," you croak softly. "Whatever anxious manifestations you wanna point out, the guy never raped me, and I kind of miss him a lot."
John flinches at the R-word. "He didn't have to force you if there were Stockholm shenanigans at play, which would also explain the missing him a lot."
You groan in the back of your throat. "You know he'd tell me almost the exact same thing? All, like, 'you'd want to f*ck me even if I had a face like Nixon's wrinkly asshole', because human behavior is just a predictable output response to any calculated series of inputs, and Bro is anything if not calculating." You scoop your knees shut and side-wriggle off the counter, clumsy in your attempt to get the hoodie back on over your head and shoulders. "He wasn't f*cking me, dude, because he didn't thirst for underaged ting-ting," you lie, to soften the blow. "He was just bloodletting a little to keep my feral ass home where it was safe. That hero-worship crush is my burden to bear; always has been and always will be." And how's THAT for emotional maturity, taking all responsibility on yourself to keep Brodie out of hot water.
Bro did what he had to do, and you respect him for it.
John flinches at the word 'feral', too, because he'd just spent the better part of his conversation with Rogers denying as much. "Then why didn't you ever want me finding out where you live, huh?" He says, a valiant attempt to contradict you.
"Tuh pro-tect," you chop your hands flat through the air, "your dumb ass." Which was, well, only half true. You'd been protecting Brodie from John's witness, in a way, but you'd really just been protecting the routine, because that routine was the only promise of affection you ever had from the guy, and you were the only person to whom Bro expressed such goddamn affection; and you didn't want any outsiders mucking that up with their ignorant judgments. "And to protect Brodie too, right? Up to the point you ever met Bro face to face, you'd just think it was all me in my shorts."
Which meant Dadbert, knowing Bro, would have known Bro on you, except Dadbert never knew you as intimately as John did, your rude-ass tiny-slu*t circus show notwithstanding.
"I have to barf." John announces very softly, and shuffles to the toilet to do exactly that.
"You know honestly I thought this conversation would suck so much worse," you say, renewed in your hoodie and briefs, trying to find a decent set of socks in John's DEX because it was f*ck-all drafty out there. "Like number one reason I didn't want you around if I was gonna be all open and soft and sh*t, because you're a goddamn discusser of problems and I've got way too many problems that I never wanted your soft little marshmallow ass to have to handle." John dry heaves a little, wipes his mouth with some TP. You say, "But it's just a thing that happened, that was true, is true. It never really upset me, except what it might mean for Brodie, if the brass ever had to openly acknowledge it."
"I lied," John croaks, throat burned, "To your spouse."
"You lied to my employer." You toss a set of wool hiking socks at John's feet, monkey-angle your knees to get into a pair of your own. "Or I guess my coworker. Why is there all this crap in your Sylladex, man, you like to camp in the woods now?"
"My job," John says, standing to flush the toilet. "The job that I'm not supposed to tell you about, because it's as secret as your job always was," he accuses in a glare. "The one I won't be able to join the Avengers over, and still don't want to tell you about because I know how you feel about killing people."
The obvious flaw to this conversation lies in the mutual lack of self-awareness between both you and John; who are used to the privacy of internet conversation AND the privacy of single-occupancy households, with either guardian more sequestered in their own half of the home, if they're home at all, too busy to eavesdrop. Egbert Senior tends to listen to records, or watch the news, and Brodie is deaf in one ear from his early fighting days, and partial to headphones besides. So you and John are used to conversing without much in the way of concern for thin walls, or super-human hearing.
The party in the bower have their own conversations to mind, Bruce on a laptop's Skype call with intel in on possible remote, unnamed islands Santiago could be operating from and which to investigate first, but Peter Parker and Natasya Romanova, afflicted with enhancement, have found opposite corners of the room to brood in, Peter pale and stricken and Natalie resigned and thoughtful.
Steve is less polite, leaning in his bedroom's open doorway to face the closed bathroom door with his arms crossed, jaw set and expression carefully neutral. He wasn't above an 'any means necessary' approach to rooting out the truth, and hadn't for a single federal f*cking minute believed your improv about the TimeClones (because, duh, if you missed your TC Alpha/s so much, you could have just, you know, summoned them back for yourself).
"The FBI doesn't kill people, dude," you argue evenly, still so easily unfooted by John's world-altering revelations. You're staring at the pinkish corner of his mouth where his diatribe had chapped his lips, trying to piece together the sight and scent of this body with the John that you thought you knew.
John frowns, voice flat. "Yeah kinda that's why it's my dayjob, so I have a cover?"
"You don't," you turn toward the door, suddenly a little short on breath yourself, wondering what parts of this conversation are going to carry on you into the bower.
John looks away, mouth narrowing, and fists his grip around the hem of his thermal shirt, tugging down over his running shorts. He looks like a magazine page right before the centerfold, a stunning contrast to the serious business coming out of his flat professionalism. "So the thing about Skaians -- is that they start out same as everyone else. As kids. And they're not the same as mutants, their differences from Terrans don't wait to show at presentation and there's no mutagen serum you could poison them with to make them mundane. Sometimes, like my dad, they're born here; and sometimes they fall out of the sky as infants, like us. They've been found on roadsides, in barns, near spirograph prints burnt into rice fields or bedding store mattresses or preschool playmats. Some crawl out of abandoned mines. Some crawl into porches to get out of the snow.
"We could attribute quite a lot of historical, urban myth to these arrivals, actually; and most of Terran fairy telling has some traceable tie-in with extraterrestrial migrant history." John leans past you to push at the shut door as if to make sure it's closed, to keep you in, keep your voices low. "My dad's job was to help his department document the arrival of alien migrant families, including 'unaccompanied minors' which are almost always Skaian. Another department was tasked with seeing any unattended or unclaimed kids to good homes, places that were safe not only for the migrants, but to keep the world safe from what those kids could do. That's how come he got me, because I was strong and could call an F5 down on the heads of anything that upset me." The spark of pride dims from John's eyes, and he looks to the side.
"Y'ever think that," you counter evenly, chest shivering from the inside out, an ache under your shoulders. "Brodie was one of those kids?" You remember Bro hating Rose's mom with a venom you didn't think him capable, and the implication that she would have taken you away from him when he first got you, because he was only 15 and she was about the only person who could kick his ass at the time, because he was only 15 and she wasn't afraid to go for the ol' pepperspray and nutshot.
"I know that Bro is what happens when a meta-human doesn't get to have our department on their side. Dad helped with the legalese to keep Bro out of jail, but by the file I could only guess because 'jail' wasn't going to happen without a fight, and a fight wasn't going to happen without a whole lot of death!"
"Bro would never kill anybody," you scorn in a hard whisper, hoping John might match your volume, because it might have never crossed your mind that you might be overheard right now, but you weren't ever going to risk putting Brodie in the hot seat like that.
"Not unless they were going to try and take you away from him, and he signed a paper saying so." John shakes his head. "I'm not talking about how crazy and creepy your gross f*cking bro is, Dave, I'm talking about my job, now, and how sometimes we have to defy certain organisations, certain, uhh, systems of governing who think that meta-humans are tools they get to own and wield in like, uh, power-grabs and military coups and secret ops and stuff." He bounces a little off the door, bundling back in close to keep you warm, the round of his bare thighs brushing the front of yours. "Organisations like SHIELD." Which explains the conflict of interest putting hesitation in John's Pack inclusion.
John, "Like for instance, Wanda out there, who was artificially mutated to suit the goals of her custodians. Her and her brother were abominably misused, and they were just regular orphans! Nearly adults, even! Imagine how bad it gets, how bad it could get, for babies who shows up knowing how to, what, split the earth or shoot lightning from their eyes or whatever. And then imagine the lengths that the power-hungry would go, to keep these kids to themselves. How many people get hurt in those types of conflicts, how many have to die, and who is killing who, and for what reason."
"But you haven't killed anybody," you insist, the back of your head knocking softly into the door to expose your neck, pleading. All you ever wanted was to keep John in the daylight, away from that cold empty feeling in the dark, where you were translating human bodies into lifeless props and viscera into funny putty just to keep a f*cking grip on reality.
John gnaws his lip so hard his chin turns white. "Seven, so far. Clean kills, I used a gun."
You stare.
John, a little less focused because he hasn't replaced his glasses, stares back.
Tension melts out of you. "Jesus, Egbertrand, you almost had me going there."
John, still staring at you, reaches behind himself to pluck his DEX from the sink counter. "Check the Abstratus."
"I already saw the gun specibus, man, lotsa FBI Agents get guns."
"Wull okay then," John folds his DEX safely back into its guise as a wallet, and pulls you away from the door by the waist. "Don't believe me, I don't care, you're not the psychologist I go to for mission clearance. I just wanted you to know about my job, and how it's not your fault if we drifted apart; and that I never stopped loving you, even if there were some bumps in the road where I didn't know how to talk to you anymore, because I was finding some stuff out about you that was pretty difficult to face."
You blink, and swerve that discussion entirely. "Yeah so like, why'd you kill them, then? They kidnap a Skybaby, is what you're telling me, or didn't report their paranormal orphans, or refused to give them up or something?" You're more than willing to keep this about John's job, sure.
Steve disappears back into his room, door silently swung nearly shut, by the time John is opening the bathroom door to the busy hubble of the bower in boisterously Thor-centered conversation. Natalie and Peter remain apart, though they've found each other's eyes to host a silent conference over whether or not to act on their concerns, Natalie against acknowledging anything out loud and Peter only in dire need to hug something.
"Well the one lady shot my partner straight in the face, but our cases are usually a little more subtle than that. We've gotta gather evidence, observe the living situation. We wouldn't try to take a Clark Kent from off his nice family farm, right? So long as he was safe and okay, and the rest of the world could stay safe and okay from him. But anyways, I shot that suspect back kind of immediately! And I didn't feel, uh, any sort of upset about it, which I thought would be a problem?"
Clint looks up from his perch forward on the couch, having heard the gist of John's explanation through Bruce's calm lecture and Thor's increasingly outlandish appeals to smite the behemoths Santiago was releasing into the Terran ecosystem. "Was your partner okay?" Clint asks over Wanda's head, who looks up from her phone with similar concern.
"Oh no, she died before she hit the ground." John fidgets, overbite prominent, deciding something. He takes a breath, asthma affecting his sentence structure in the sudden change from hot, humid air to chilly. "Which was how! I found out! That I can bring people back to life!"
Conversation stills, Banner chatting on obliviously from the laptop.
Your eyebrows are slain, like an army of botox bacteria got nothing on John's full-tilt offense against the OS of reality and facial_expression.exe has stopped working.
John grabs your forearm, pleading, "Yeah, no, Dave, we DO try to arrest people, not kill them. The people I shot, they came back! A little shaken, and wouldn't you know it way more open to answering our questions, pff!" He hunh-hunh-hunhs in stifled cackle, eyes bright. "So it just, you know, turns out 'wind' is also a type of 'breath', and if you get good enough at magical Skaian woowoo, you can do magical Skaian CPR!" His grip tightens to keep you upright.
"That's excellent," Clint congratulates, looking between you two with the lightened kind of pleased surprise that carves years off him. From the windowed reading nook, Thor chuckles, eyes crinkled in good humor for how novel a supra-human talent always seems to come off for Terrans. Sam pushes himself to a stand, shaking his head in mute shock as he drifts to the kitchen to find something to do with his hands.
"My grandma could do the same thing, only way better from what I heard," John starts, but you elbow him because there are a few people in the room here who have probably lost loved ones and maybe also don't want to think what could have been, had John been there to help them out. "Oh," John lowers his volume. "Sorry, is this one of those things that's safer to not know?"
"Maybe just don't call it magic," Natalie surmises, sharing a nod with Wanda, whose skillset is equally fantastic. "At least not around Stark."
"Can I--" Peter blurts, the least skilled at recovery from any of the truths he's learned today. "Can we --" he exhales, scrubs the back of his head, elbows up and squint pained. Peter lowers his volume as John is drawn into all due attentions from John's soon-to-be new Pack, and Pete lifts his chin to beckon you nearer. "Dave, do you want to come to my house for tonight?"
You glance behind yourself, at the darkened hall to the bedroom, and then out at the peopled bower. "Kind of in the middle of something right now, Pete."
"No, right, I know that," Peter exhales hard, cheeks puffing out. He's young, and there are a lot of things he doesn't know on the finer points of adulthoods grown from imperiled childhoods, he just wants you as far away from sex right now as humanly possible, which means Aunt May's home, where he's not to have girls over, and not even allowed to close his bedroom door if Ned is spending the night. "But do you?" Helpfully, "I -- I have a bunk bed. I can clear the top off."
"Well if it's the top bunk you're offering," you drawl, throwing aspersions John's way because you can't pinpoint any other origin for this sudden surplus of sheer nerd-bunglary. You're still too sore from the bathroom conversation, too, and shrug your shoulders in, hands in hoodie pockets to approach Pete's corner of the room and get to the bottom of his compulsive hospitality. He looks pale, and smells distressed. Maybe Steve's rood was unsettling to his palette, poor kid.
You don't know that Peter Parker, along with Natalie and Steve, has overheard a facet of your history that you assumed was only to John's discovery.
You don't know that you're eligible for any pity right now, except from the previous night's meltdown maybe, because the crux of your unshakable cool has always sat in your ability to control the narrative. To Natalie, you've made yourself a favorite new companion in training, and to Sam you know you've got a conversation in music history waiting. You don't know when someone might have a perception of you that you yourself did not put forward to observation, because you're always very carefully kept from acting out of turn in any way that might sabotage your image. This was why John felt like you might as well be strangers; this was why you were so good at public image, for the Strider team or your music or your new Pack.
John has approached Banner on the Skype call, introduces himself and takes the other seat next to Clint, tucking one leg under his sit because he's really not used to baring his legs at a room full of Alphas like this.
"Is John joining the team?" Banner's disembodied voice asks, and John gives his self-same soft 'maybe', and explanation on his Academy, and dayjob, and contract. "John's joining the Pack!" Banner guesses correctly soon after, gladly surprised. "Did anybody tell Steve?"
"Steve invited me," John corrects, flushing a little because uhh yeah THAT could come off like, uh, maybe Steve INVITED him, nudge nudge wink wonk.
"What's up," you deadpan at Pete's side, watching him from out the side of your new shades, easier to flash your red out from under. "Never been in a dude's house when he's Aggro? Think Rogers is gonna try and fight you?"
Peter just shakes his head, composing himself down from his mortification. You're living the example of your own stability, as cool and collected and casually as you had recounted your whole stee*ze to Egbert in the first place. Pete, "I think it's just one of those instinct things, like -- like I want you to be somewhere safe right now. Sorry."
"I am somewhere safe."
Peter rolls his eyes, exhales again, catching his breath. "Yeah, I guess I know that. Steve's a good guy."
"How come you don't call him Captain Rogers."
Peter frowns his thoughtful, frog-in-mouth frown. "Do I need to?"
You shrug a shoulder. "It's only polite. He's your elder, and also your coworker, and also the Head of the House you're in right now, ad nauseam."
"He... goes by Steve," Peter says, looking at you sidelong now, too. "You don't have to call him by a formal title."
You shrug again, loosening your posture. "I was raised to respect the Household hierarchy, is all. Can you do me a favor?" You brace, because this is going to suck.
Pete focuses forward on you again, all huge eyes and slightly slack jaw. "Sure, yeah, what do you need?"
"Don't call my Alpha 'Steve' to my face, in my house. Captain, Captain Rogers, or Sir will do fine if he's addressing you." You look Pete deadass in the face, too, over the easier-to-clear rim of your new, smaller, scarier sunglasses. "At least until you present and getchoself a rank, and then you can call him Granny Applesmith for all the f*ck if I care."
Pete... did not expect this reprimand, but you've gotta discourage him from any more social gaffes as sincerely awful as inviting a Meg back to his home on that Meg's wedding night, what the f*ck. Wanda called Steve by his name, but Wanda was also presented, ranked, and knew better than to invite anyone anywhere but especially not invite an Omegan without their Alpha alongside.
Pete just nods, eyebrows wounded. "You're not okay," he mumbles, half to himself.
"Excuse me," you prompt, chin up, taller than him.
Pete shakes his head. "Sorry, nevermind. I'm, ah, I'm not used to knowing when -- when Omegas aren't f," he stops himself, eyes wide, but like a four-lane pile up just can't stomp the brakes soon enough. "Feeling well. And I just know that when I don't feel well, I can go back home, because Aunt May is there, and she -- Miss Aunt, Miss May, uh, Miss Parker," he corrects, trying to be polite, wary now. "My Aunt. You liked her, I think. Don't let me tell you what you -- what I think, I mean, who you like, I just --" Pete chews on his next words, addressing the ground, though his chin is still up, uncowed. "She was kind of flirting with you, but it's not like that, she flirts with everyone. She's really kind and makes me keep the bedroom door open even when Ned's over so you -- it'd be fine. Safe, I mean. If, if you're uh. Ever not feeling well."
Jesus, were you being that obvious? Was it just like John had said, the figurative anecdote about him trying hard to pretend to hate sh*tty movies, when to everyone else it was painfully obvious that he loves sh*tty movies and would just have been making himself miserable trying to be 'cool'? Were you trying to be cool when it was painfully obvious, to anyone paying as close attention as this gobsmacked goober, that you just wanted to take a night somewhere hassle-free to cry your f*cking guts out?
You don't know that Pete knows you came from a bad House. You don't know that Pete knows that John knows you come from a history of, well yes, abuse -- even if you yourself wouldn't ever f*cking call it abuse, wouldn't ever f*cking throw Brodie under the wheels like that.
"I don't hate it here," you argue of your own inner monologue, and Pete's implication. "If you're reading off that I might be some sorta spooked, well, that's just me, babe. My robot bodyguards blew up. Would make any ninja wary." And, because you don't want to be a hypocrite on etiquette, "Thank you for the invitation. I will take you up on that as soon as you Present, and after you clear the schedule with Captain Rogers. No promises I won't just end up drunk with your Aunt watching reruns of Gilmore Girls until dawn." Because you had to distinguish yourself more clearly in the 'adult and therefore nots to be f*cked wit' category and less in the 'fellow nerd teen with whom to engage in sleepovers' column.
And no, you do not like being put in any stereotypical Omegan positions of vulnerability, shut the f*ck up Egbert.
... Okay, maybe... maybe you lose your f*cking sh*t, or you used to, rather, whenever Brodie broke you down to your smallest parts and took all your control away. Maybe that was tight AF, and always felt great, and so it... it maybe would have been
possibly
okay that Rogers did the same, like all cathartic for you and sh*t. Like that's fine. Like okay, Egbert, maybe no, you didn't hate that. But that didn't mean you were in any kind of wrong for taking on the appropriate offense on behalf of like, outside witness against your personal dignity and androgynous pride and all that sh*t.
And Egbert could just go eat sh*t if he was going to reframe the thing you had with Brodie as something criminal or tragic; clearly you and Bro had become more as equals the older you got, clearly you'd maintained your autonomy and were never, what, punished if you ever didn't want to f*ck (and you never didn't want to f*ck, because you had always been, to all new surprise, Feral as). Sure you were living out the role of the emotionally neglected -- you and five hundred thousand other Texan kids from impoverished circ*mstances, with single parents too busy at work to give you all the attention you needed to feel secure enough not to hide candy in the floor vents, Packs splintered and social programs too strict or conditional to trust.
You were dead, literally dead by the age of ten, that was going to leave its mark before all the indulgence Bro got up to re: your horny, broken little ass.
Peter fidgets quietly, closer every time you look until his shoulder is behind your arm. "Good?" He checks, clearly remorseful.
"Always," you volley, because it's not a bad thing to be gently reminded of one's place. Lower, to share in a made-up conspiracy and bring your bromance next-level, "Think we get to have a lie-down tonight?" That's what they called piles on the East Coast, right? 'Circuits' were so coldly technical you're surprised Thor said that; or maybe Natalie had simply used a medical translation, for herself, and Thor had proposed it as a Norwegian Daisy-Chain. Either way, you've got to get John on-lock before he shoots more than one person at a time and finds out any hard limits on that resurrection talent of his (like how you and Brodie were -pretty sure- you couldn't come back from a beheading or immolation, and were always suuuper careful about not finding that sh*t out).
Peter's expression lifts, and he tilts his chin at the bower. "Yeah, I'll check with St--uh. Cap, Captain. For nesting." He damn near salutes, and pulls this weird elbow-cupping at you before he passes, which curls offended confusion through your forehead that doesn't leave even by the time you make it down to the bower.
You shuffle down next to Sam, who has calmed himself with a mug of tea. "Pile time," you announce flatly, kneeling into Sam's lap, because it was Natalie's challenge to get him to stay and you were never above taking advantage of the inebriated. You keep your hands in your hoodie pockets and bracket your knees around Sam's waist, head lolling forward against his shoulder. "Don't let me fall asleep. I'll get a headache."
"What's pile time?" Sam challenges, holding his tea off to the side for safekeeping.
Clint Barton takes that tea as he takes the stairs at Sam's side. "Running a circuit."
"Y'all gotta call it something nicer than that," you complain, wagging your head against Sam's neck. "Sounds like a robotics compilation."
"Knitting circle," Natalie says, taking Sam's other side, because she genuinely wants his company for Steve's sake and isn't above entrapment.
You snap your fingers. "Game of Hopscotch."
There's a soft grunt of confusion from the bedroom hallway, but you're clowning with your murderwoman in wordplay and don't notice.
John notices, looking up from the screen of Wanda's phone. Wanda follows John's glance, watches Peter shift his weight uncertainly, a blanket tucked under his arm to start the ransacking of the bed for nesting.
"Um, so I don't know if this is something wedding-related, but --" he holds a hand out like asking the room to wait, and to Thor (because Thor seems like he knows how to do weddings) "Steve's gone?"
You pull your head up, ready to put a frown on at the lack of honorific, but are distracted by your own immediate goddamn delight.
"Did he leave a note," you urge, and push off from Sam's grumbling confusion to an unsteady stand on cold legs. You're practically jogging the way to Pete, just, so goddamn tickled that Steve would pull a f*cking Ollie, that his damage was about on par with yours, no warning no meltdown, just hide your dignity from harm with a well-executed popstand abandonment.
You pat Peter on the shoulder as you pass, as the rest of the room shuffles behind you, disquieted by confusion or concern, one voice bitterly unsurprised.
Steve is not in the closet, nor under the bed, and did not leave a note -- only the electric tang of a Rooding temper in the air, full of fight, and an open window dragging a draft past your bare legs, tugging a tremble through your thighs.
