Kilroy

Thanks to the diet chart taped to the front of the refrigerator, Jack’s food budget triples overnight.

Brock gags just a bit as he finishes off the last of his protein drink, then chucks the bottle at the recycle bin.  It rattles as it settles to the bottom, and Brock slumps onto the kitchen table with a groan.  “I don’t know what that was,” he complains, voice muffled through his arms, “but that was not butterscotch.”

“The strawberry ones are less disgusting.”  Scowling at his laptop, Jack taps the arrow keys until he gets to the line of code the compiler error pointed him to.  “I can grab a different brand next time I’m out, too.”

“Maybe we should take out stock in the beef industry.  Fuck knows we’ll be buyin’ a lot of it.”

Jack puts in that goddamn semicolon he forgot, saves and exits, then recompiles his program.  “Did Romanoff manage to get you on payroll?”

“Nah, but she did say she’d work on unfreezing all my assets.”

He can’t help it; he cracks up.  It’s a terrible, terrible joke and it really shouldn’t even be anywhere approaching funny, but, Jack can’t help it.

“You’re hopeless,” Brock says, rolling his eyes affectionately.  “Should have enough for a down payment on a bigger place, once all that clears.”

“Yeah?”  Jack sits back and smiles, his eyes crinkling.

Standing, Brock walks around the table to lean down for a kiss.  “Yeah.  Now get your ass into the shower because I wanna hit the gym for a bit, and apparently I’m not allowed to spar with civilians.”

“So,” Jack says as he weaves the wrap between his fingers, “how much of a show do you feel like putting on?”

Stretching one arm over his head, Brock grimaces.  “Well, you turned into Usain Bolt and I’m made of toothpicks now, so maybe we just start with the basics.”

Half an hour later, Brock’s blood is up, he’s grinning from ear to ear, and Jack’s just doing his best to dodge.

“Jesus fuck!” Jack yelps as Brock spins into a kick that he only just manages to evade.  “I did not miss being your goddamn punching bag!”

It doesn’t take long for Brock to tire out, in the end, since it’ll be at least a few months before he’s worked off the worst of the calorie deficit.  He puts his hands up, then leans over on his knees and pants for breath.

Jack puts a hand on his shoulder and leans down.  “You okay?”

Nodding, Brock lazily waves him away, then closes his eyes.  His nose is dripping sweat and his hair is sticking up in every direction, but the tension in his eyes is gone and his smile is relaxed.

They end up walking back to the apartment covered in sweat and smelling like gym so that Jack doesn’t have to use the communal showers.  Once they get home, though, Jack has to laugh as he gets herded toward the bathroom, where Brock crowds him into the corner of the shower stall and makes it abundantly clear that they’ll still be showering at the same time.

It doesn’t escape the notice of Jack’s myriad of busybody coworkers that not only is he suddenly wearing a wedding ring, but now there’s a cute guy at the front desk asking for directions to the ARS technician’s office.  And he’s carrying a bag of takeout.  And wearing a ring of his own.

When the reference librarian starts calling Brock ‘Persephone,’ Jack laughs so hard it’s several minutes before he can breathe well enough to explain the joke to his perplexed husband.

The next time Brock shows up, he stops by the reference desk on his way down to smile sweetly at the librarian and set a large glass vase of grain stalks on her desk.

The library staff decide he’s a keeper.

The first day of spring break, Jack and Brock move into their new house.

It’s closer to campus, has an actual back yard, enough bedrooms for Brock to have a Batcave, and a large enough driveway for two cars.  Naturally, Brock fills one of those parking spots with a motorcycle.  And, naturally, Brock spends his first afternoon as the proud new owner of a 2015 Victory Gunner giving the kids rides around the neighborhood.

Cassie giggles the whole time.  Ryan starts researching 250cc starter bikes.  Kevin decides he’s never getting on anything with two wheels ever again.

Jack’s elbows-deep in dishwater when his phone rings.  Rinsing and drying his hands quickly, he gives his phone an interested frown when he sees Kevin’s name on the screen, and answers.

The first thing he hears is several hoarse, wet coughs.  Then, “Hey, man, you got any formal wear?”

Raising his eyebrows, Jack blinks a few times.  “If you’re telling me I need to start planning to attend your funeral after you cough up both your lungs, this is certainly a creative way to do so.”

Kevin laughs, which quickly shifts into more coughing, and Jack winces with momentary guilt.

“Nah, it’s just, Cassie has that engineering department social thing tonight, and we got tickets for two, but I’m a walking biohazard right now.  Ryan’s already home for the weekend.”

Checking over the calendar stuck to the fridge next to Brock’s diet chart, Jack purses his lips.  “I think I can pull something together, yeah.  What time should I be at the dorm?”

“Any time before 6:15.  Thanks, man.”

Jack writes in the event on the calendar as he hangs up, then glances over his shoulder as he hears Brock walk into the kitchen.  “What was that?” Brock asks as he puts a hand at the base of Jack’s spine and looks at the calendar.

“Rent-a-date call, Cassie needs arm candy for a night.  What do you think I should wear?”

“Mm.”  Brock turns to nose at the skin under Jack’s ear.  “I think we can find something, as long as I get to take you back out of it when you get home.”

Jack ends up settling on business casual with a leather jacket, since the blazer SHIELD supplied him with is tailored for Jack From Before.

Still, Cassie wolf-whistles when she walks out of the dorm’s main doors in a cocktail dress and heels.  “You clean up nice.”

It’s already starting to get a little chilly as the sun’s on its way down, so Jack shrugs off his jacket and drapes it over her shoulders.  “I brought a tie if you think I’ll need it.”

She laughs and shakes her head, clutching the jacket around her.  Her hair bounces a bit as they head down the steps to the sidewalk.  “I don’t think the professors are going to be wearing ties, you’re probably fine.”  After a moment, she looks up at him.  “The hubbie’s okay with this?”

“We’ve known each other twenty years, been together for fifteen of ‘em, and married for twelve,” Jack answers with a smile.  “He was more surprised that Kevin called in the first place.”

“Well, between one of his frat brothers and the gold star gay vet…”

He can’t help but snicker a bit.  “Fair point.  Well, I promise to deliver you back to him with your virtue intact.”

“Oh, my virtue hasn’t been intact in a long time.”

“And I did not need to know that.”

Cassie bumps into his arm companionably and grins.

“So, what’s this department event for, then?”

“Senior project presentations, catered dinner, music and dancing, mingling and sucking up to the professors for upper-division courses.”

“Meritocracy at its finest.”  A group of energetic frat boys trundle by, talking loudly about a new video game.  One of them says Sniper Elite 3 and Jack can’t help but scoff and shake his head.

“Not a fan of video games?” Cassie asks wryly.

Jack scratches the back of his neck.  “I really don’t understand the draw.  Screentime migraines aside, playing a video game where I kill things isn’t exactly my idea of fun.”

Making a sympathetic noise, Cassie leans into him for a moment.  They walk by the art building before she says anything else.  “Were you and Fred in the same unit?”

“Yeah.”  Jack’s lips twitch into a smile involuntarily like they do every time Brock’s cover name is said.  Fred Kruger.   Someone has a sick sense of humor.  “Used to be his second in command, before I got discharged.”

Cassie barks out a laugh and gives him a skeptical look.  “Is that even allowed?  Dating your- what was he?  Captain?”

“Commander, actually.  And no, no it wasn’t.”  Smirking, Jack swings his shoulders with a little bit of a strut.  “And neither was marrying him.”

“How’d you guys get away with that?”

“If I told you,” Jack grins, “I’d have to kill you.”

Thankfully, Cassie laughs rather than press the issue, and that’s about the time they arrive at the convention hall anyway.

The food’s not half bad, some of the senior projects are actually pretty interesting, and one of the grad students threatens to shanghai Jack into joining the salsa dancing team after he and Cassie have a little fun on the dance floor.  The kids at their table find it hilarious when Jack is surprised by the fact that universities have salsa dancing teams.

Jack waits for the main doors of Cassie’s dorm to close behind her before he turns to walk back to his house.  Pulling out his phone, he sends a quick on my way back to Brock, then slides his hands into his jacket pockets and enjoys the brisk night air on his face.  A group of students across the way giggles about something, and Jack can’t help but smile a little; it’s nice, these small, refreshing little moments that remind him that the world keeps spinning on.

There’s a lot of life he’s missed out on, mostly due to his amnesia, but in part because he’s spent a lot of the past twenty years sitting in Quinjets and crawling through mud.  It’s a little hard to stay up to date on internet culture when the only external communications the team has available is an unreliable satellite phone.

But even though there’s still wreckage in the Potomac from Project Insight being emphatically discontinued, even though they’re still running chemical cleanup on the water, and even though they’re still excavating the rubble on Little Island, life still goes on.  People still go to school, construction crews are finally taking building projects now that the demolition work on the Triskelion is better under control.  SHIELD is, both factions of it, still sticking around and trying to fight the good fight.  Captain America keeps punching Nazis, kicking ass, taking names, and pissing off politicians.

Life still goes on.

Jack waves at the dad who lives four doors down from him, just getting in from a late shift at the hospital.  Everyone in his neighborhood tends to keep to themselves, but they’re friendly enough that it’s not awkward.  Hell, all the cookies and cakes and housewarming casseroles people brought over had made the first few weeks of Brock’s bulk-up diet significantly more enjoyable.

It’s a quiet neighborhood, and Jack and Brock have the house at the end of a medium-sized cul de sac full of refreshingly normal civilians.  One of the neighbors has decorated for Easter the way most people do for Christmas or Halloween.

The colorful, metallic eggs peppering the hedges draw his attention to the degree that he doesn’t notice a shadow that’s just slightly the wrong shape as he walks past.

He’s two steps beyond the Easter house when every hair on his body suddenly stands on end.  It’s not enough warning for him to do anything, though, because something slams into his back hard enough to send him sprawling across the sidewalk.

Jack rolls, twists, and comes up in a crouch facing his attacker.  Some forgotten muscle memory has a knife already in his hand, twin balisong handles spinning as he flicks the blade out.

“Oh, that’s cute,” they say as they stalk toward him, and it’s a female voice that belongs to a stocky body, and something tells Jack she hits nearly as hard as Brock does.  She’s wearing black fatigues, sturdy boots, gloves, and a balaclava.  “Lucky for you, I don’t feel like turning this into a gunfight.”

Jack springs to the side to dodge when she lunges at him and uses his foot to give her forward momentum a little extra encouragement.  She twists, catlike, and jumps back at him faster than most people should be able to.

Most people that weren’t trained to the same level he was, that is.

Even though he’s already moving to counter, arms rising automatically, she still manages to take the fight to the ground and pin his knife hand down.  Her other hand latches on to his neck, squeezing hard.

“Traitor,” she snarls through thin black fabric, glaring straight into his eyes.  “I trusted you.  I carried out your orders, I would have laid down my life for you-”

Jack tries to throw her off, tries to break her grip on his neck, but he’s simply lost the muscle mass and conditioning needed to overpower her.  “Don’t take this personally,” he grits out, straining against her, “but I have no fucking idea who you are.”

“Wipe him and start over, huh?”  Her head tilts to the side and her eyes get wider, bordering on manic.  “Tell ‘em everything you know, then sit your pasty white ass down in that magic chair and let ‘em give you a new life?  Talk about WITSEC, you bastard, you sold us out-”

As Jack’s vision starts to dim, there’s a fresh, bubbling, burning rage building up in him.  He grits his teeth, tightens his hand on her wrist, and stares into what he can see of her face.  “I lost everything,” Jack growls.  “You think I sold you out?  I’m fucked in the head!  It wasn’t the Chair, Romanoff gave me a TBI!”

“What kind of shitty excuse is-”  The rest of her words are lost in a shriek as she recoils from  him; the sleeve of her jacket is smoldering and smoking.

Jack takes advantage of that to plant his fist in her face as hard as he fucking can.

Two rapid gunshots ring out, an expert double-tap, followed closely by one more.  The woman jerks as two rounds pierce her chest, then crumples as the third finds her head.

Jack doesn’t notice her body fall to the sidewalk, though, because he’s staring at his hands.  They glow like there’s a fire blazing under his skin, the air shimmers around them, and the occasional spark dances over his skin.  The knife clatters to the concrete, forgotten, and Jack’s panic makes his hands flash blinding white as the fire inside him erupts into flames dancing over his arms up to the elbows.

Someone’s talking to him, reaching forward, reaching for him, and Jack scoots back as far as he can until his back hits something that he belatedly realizes is a car.

“Whoa whoa whoa, hey, not near the- c’mon, sweetheart-”  Hands grab him by the collar and haul him away, even though his arms are still burning-

Something stings on his neck, and he’s-