Kilroy

Brock finally falls asleep at his workstation on Friday around noon.

“You two get some rest,” Hill tells Jack.  “Take time to recover and check in once you’re back on your feet.”

Nodding, Jack nudges Brock awake, and manages to get him to the couch before Brock’s legs give out.

With how his hands are shaking from fatigue, Jack’s barely able to tear the wrapper for a tea bag.  He manages to get it open, then drops the sachet into his mug and leans heavily on the kitchen counter.  His headset is still active on the team channel, and he’s half-listening with a muted microphone as Fury’s team coordinates relocation of the evacuated Sokovians.

He almost doesn’t notice when the doorbell rings.  After attempting to rub some of the fatigue out of his eyes, he adjusts his glasses and heads for the door.  When he rounds the corner into the entryway, there’s three silhouettes visible against the frosted glass.  Jack takes a breath and holds it for a moment, throws the latch, then opens the door.

“Whoa,” Cassie says, and takes half a step back straight into Kevin.  Ryan looks up from his phone, then his eyes go wide.

It takes Jack a moment to realize that he’s still wearing a SHIELD uniform and his headset.  And he’s noticeably armed.

Closing his eyes, Jack hangs his head a moment, then just steps to the side to let them in.  The click of the door closing is eerily loud, and all three kids just awkwardly stand there in the entryway, staring at him.

Cassie’s the one that breaks the silence.  “So… I’m guessing this has something to do with what’s been on the news.”

Jack nods.

“And your uniform says ‘Rollins’ on it.”

He nods again.  Kevin looks like he’s going to be sick.

“You missed the midterm.”

“I know.”  It comes out raspy and hoarse; he’s spent the past four days yelling at various people in Serbian.

Cassie bites her lip, then looks around the corner into the house.  “Is Fred okay?”

“Been a long week.”  The kettle beeps, startling all three of the kids.  Jack takes a breath, then pushes off the wall to head back into the kitchen once Ryan scoots out of his way.  The steam from the kettle fogs up his glasses briefly as he fills his mug.

“Jack?”  Brock’s voice is sleep-muddled and fuzzy as he sits up on the couch.  His hair is a fluffy mess with a dent in it from his headset, there’s creases through the burn scars from the couch pillow, and his eyes are even more bloodshot than usual.  “Wha’s goin-”

He’s interrupted by a high-pitched, brief shriek, and it takes Jack half a second to realize it came from Kevin.

Brock stares at the kids, frozen in place.

The kids stare at Brock.

Jack leans forward to gently thunk his forehead against the cabinet in front of him and sighs.

“Rollins,” Brock says, his voice eerily calm.  “Why do we have three millennial-sized holes in OPSEC standing in our house?”

Turning, Jack leans against the counter with his mug in one hand; he reaches up and turns off his headset, then wraps his other hand around his tea.  “I let them in.”

“What do you- are you nuts?”   Lurching to his feet, Brock drags his hands through his hair.  “We have no idea whether-”

Kevin reaches out and puts a hand on the wall, then his skin turns the same color as the fucking wall.

Tea sloshes over Jack’s hand as he startles, and he croaks out a curse as he sets his mug down quickly and gets cold water running over his hand.

Kevin makes an unhappy noise.  “Sorry…”  As soon as he takes his hand off the wall, his skin’s back to its normal color.  “I just… you’re… not the only ones that are hiding.”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Brock takes a breath.  “Cassie?  Ryan?  Anything else we need to know?”

“I’m hyperflexible,” Cassie says with a wince.

Ryan snaps his fingers and the ceiling lights turn off.

After several long seconds, Brock puts his hands on his hips and shakes his head helplessly.  “Of all the college students you could have adopted, Jack, you had to pick the mutants.”

“What can I say?” Jack rasps, his lips pulling into a smirk.  “I tend to pick up strays.”

Brock scoffs.  “Clearly.”  With a quick twist, he flops back down onto the couch.  “Don’t wake me up unless it’s bleeding, on fire, or Ultron.”

Tilting his head, Ryan opens his mouth a few times.  “Did he just…”

“Fall asleep again?  Yeah.”  Jack refills his mug and drops in a second tea bag for good measure.  “He can sleep through gunfire if he wants to.”

“I don’t want to know how you know that,” Kevin mumbles, shaking his head.  He walks over to the fridge, opens it, and starts digging around.

“Hey, what-”

“Sit down, we’re cooking for you.”

Jack’s about to protest when Cassie nudges him toward the kitchen table.  “When was the last time you two ate?” she asks.  “And don’t say you had a protein bar an hour ago, I mean a real meal.”

He starts to tell her, then realizes he can’t remember.

“Thought so.”  With a quick pat on Jack’s shoulder, Cassie catches the fridge door as it swings closed behind Kevin, and starts pulling out more ingredients.

Jack pulls his headset off, drops it on the table, and can’t completely hide the small smile on his face.

Brock’s finally deployed on his first undercover mission, which leaves Jack alone to deal with the block party flyer taped to his front door a week before Memorial Day.  Cassie and Kevin are up at her parents’ cabin for the weekend, Ryan went back home, and Sam is with his family up in Harlem.

Not that Jack minds quiet holidays, but he’s gotten a little used to having some people around him.

He doesn’t even need to call Sam to hear him saying something about making friends and meeting people, though.  A quick Google search for easy potluck recipes nets him a few options, and he RSVPs for a dessert before sitting down with dinner and homework.

By the time the block party rolls around, Jack’s just about out of his mind.  Brock’s on a deep cover assignment, so there’s no contact besides a quick alive <3 every night from a different spoofed phone number each time.  He appreciates it, he really does, even if he’s starting to become more aware of that tether to Brock’s pulse that’s hooked in deep behind his sternum, but it’s just not the same as a phone call.

The pie he pulls out of the oven is pretty damn attractive if he may say so himself, and he’s setting it down on the counter to cool when someone knocks on the door.  Figuring it’s probably one of the neighbors coming by to check on him or tell him something, Jack shimmies his hands out of the oven mitts and heads over.

He’s not expecting to see Romanoff in a dark brown wig and a sundress, carrying a fruit salad.

Jack briefly considers just closing the door in her face, but he sighs and steps to the side to let her in.

“Sorry I’m late,” she says with a smile that’s just a little too wide.  “Traffic was hell.”

He closes the door behind her and puts his hands on his hips.  “Shoes off at the door.  Why’re you here?”

“Can’t I keep a friend company when his bae is out of town?”  Somehow Jack ends up holding her fruit salad as she undoes the straps on her sandals.

“I’d hardly call us friends.”

“I’m hurt, Jack.  Really hurt.”  The salad bowl leaves his hands again and ends up on the counter next to the pie.  “Oh, look, you can do things other than stab people in the back.”

Leaning against the wall, Jack crosses his arms.  “If Brock’s in danger-”

“I wouldn’t be here in a sundress, I’d be landing a Quinjet in your front yard and handing you a rifle.  Relax.”

Jack raises an eyebrow and looks at her over his glasses.  “There’s going to be kids there.”

“I love kids.  I’m great with kids.”

Honestly, it’s probably not worth the stress or the argument.  Jack remembers enough about Romanoff to know that she almost always gets her way.  “So, who are you, then?  Because saying you’re my sister is a bit of a low blow.”

“Figured I’d go for sister-in-law, actually.”  Romanoff hops up off the counter and ignores Jack’s exasperated look.  “Call me Stacey.”

“Am I going to have to run interference with Brock if he finds out?”

Romanoff makes an ehhhh noise and wags her hand back and forth.  “Probably not.”

“Hm.  Your funeral.”  And with that, he walks into the living room and sits down with his laptop to finish writing an algorithm until it’s time to be sociable.

He shouldn’t be surprised, but Romanoff is delightfully charming and wins over all of his neighbors in minutes.  Jack, having established a reputation as being the quiet one, sits off to the side with the teenagers as they doodle their favorite anime characters in sketchbooks of varying quality.  It’s not long before he’s giving informal Japanese lessons and coaching them on pronunciation.

The evening’s winding down and Jack’s almost done with his second root beer when Romanoff wanders back over and claims one of the empty chairs next to him.

“Had your fill of civilians?” Jack asks, then gives her a pleasantly surprised look when she hands him one of the two dessert sampler plates she’s carrying.

“You have good people around you.  Rumlow picked the right neighborhood.”

“And you-”  Jack pulls the fork out of a small slice of cake.  “-didn’t answer my question.”

She’s quiet for a moment, munching on a cookie, then shrugs.  “It’s nice to remind myself what I spend so much time and energy protecting.”

“You don’t have to listen to the Petersons getting their rocks off at 0400.”  Jack nods subtly to the elderly couple.

Romanoff lets out an inelegant snort, then promptly coughs to dislodge a piece of cookie she inhaled.

“Brock wanted to buy them Life Alert, but I had to remind him how that’s a little outside normal social behavior.”

“His entire everything is a little outside normal social behavior.”

“Pot, kettle.”

The slap on his shoulder is playful, nowhere near hard enough to actually hurt, and when Jack looks over, Romanoff has one of those small, prim smiles that means she’s actually amused.  “Beauty and the Beast, huh?”

“Pandering to my vanity already.”

“You know, you could fly up to the Avengers facility and have Cho fix up that canyon on your chin-”

“Thanks.  Thanks for that.”

“-but I hear the chicks really dig a guy with scars.”

Jack rolls his head to the side to look at her.  “You’re just jealous ‘cause that mission in Riga was aborted before we had to resort to drastic measures to maintain our cover.”

“Was that before or after you married your commanding officer?”  Romanoff picks up a strawberry.  “So your memory really is coming back.”

“Bits and pieces, here and there.  My last MRI showed some good progress.”

She finishes off a few more pieces of fruit, and one of the preteens runs by with a squirt gun before she says anything else.  “I am actually sorry about the brain injury, you know.”

Turning in his chair a bit so he can face her better, Jack sets his plate on his leg and gives her his full attention.

“You’re doing really well with everything you’ve built since you were released,” she continues, looking at her food rather than at him.  “And, from what I can tell, you actually seem pretty happy with it all, too.”

Jack nods.

“But I’m sorry for giving you a life-changing, career-ending injury.  And I’m sorry for the symptoms you’re still dealing with.”

Mulling this over for a bit, Jack nods slowly.  “I hope you’re not interested in becoming friends, because-”

“God, no.  Hell no.”

“-that’s going to take more than an apology you were encouraged to make by the therapist you won’t admit you’re seeing.”

The eye roll he gets is definitely worth needling her, but Jack lets it go after that.  He picks up his dessert plate again and starts whittling away at the cake.

Out of the blue, several minutes later, Romanoff surprises him again with, “Thank you.”

Jack makes a confused noise and looks at her.

She gives him a hesitant smile, not quite looking at him.  “It’s nice to pretend to be normal, sometimes.”

“Well, you pretend enough, and sooner or later it becomes less like pretending.”

“Yeah… not people like me.  Rumlow and I are more alike than I usually admit.”

“Hm.”  Jack smiles as he starts on his pie.  “Maybe you really should be siblings.  God knows you two fight like ‘em.”

That night, Jack watches the Black Widow giggle until she accidentally gets cake up her nose.