Kilroy

The end of the school year brings with it warmer weather, plans for the three kids to go on a road trip, and grades that are better than Jack expected them to be.

Brock insists on taking him out somewhere nice for dinner the day his transcript is updated, and once they get home, he backs Jack into the bedroom and pushes him toward the bed insistently.

Not that Jack’s in much of a rush to get up the next morning, all things considered.  He’s not sure his legs remember how to work properly.  At least Brock changed the sheets before they actually went to sleep.

It’s a lazy morning, and they greet it with equally languid movements, bodies still warm and supple from the night before.  The sun’s starting to shine in through the bedroom window by the time Jack finally feels like he wants to get out of the warm cocoon of happy hormones that is their bed.

Brock bats a hand at him blindly and grumbles into the pillow when Jack extracts himself to go to the bathroom.

“I’ll be right back,” Jack promises, then bends over to place a kiss just above the base of Brock’s spine.

“Mm.  You’d better be.”

The doorbell rings as Jack’s relieving himself, and his shoulders slump as he sighs.  After washing his hands, he heads for the dresser to grab some sweatpants, but Brock groans in protest.

“Leave it, it’s probably the mailman.  He’ll-”  He’s interrupted by another chime.  “Sonuvabitch.”

Jack closes his eyes and pokes around mentally; he can tell someone’s at the door, but they don’t feel familiar.  When he senses the cluster of energy turn away and start back down the front steps, he shrugs.  “Whoever it is, they aren’t sticking around.”

Crawling back onto the bed, Jack lays himself out on top of Brock, smiling down at him.  Brock’s eyes crinkle as he yawns and stretches, arms above his head, and Jack takes advantage of that to lace their fingers together and gently pin him in place.

“Did you pop a Viagra or something?” Brock grumbles, but he tilts his head to the side and up to allow Jack better access to his neck.

“What, you can’t keep up in your old age?”

A low growl is all the warning Jack gets before he’s suddenly on his back with Brock on all fours above him.  Brock gives him a toothy grin, then leans down to nip at Jack’s nose.  “Remind me which one of us has an enhanced metaboli-”

Dull tapping on the window startles them both badly enough that Jack accidentally slams his knee into Brock’s balls.  Brock crumples to the bed, groaning, and Jack swears a few times before finally looking up to see what just happened.

A lanky man with curly black hair and a few days’ stubble is watching them from outside with a bemused expression.  “I can come back,” he says, muffled through the glass.  “Doesn’t seem like now’s a good time.”

“Fuck off, Doc,” Brock grits out loud enough to be heard outside.

“Nah, you two seem to have that covered.”  The man gives Jack a bit of an awkward half-wave before looking away.  “I’ll, uh, go stop by the diner a few blocks away, grab some breakfast.  Give me a call when you’re… presentable.”  Without waiting for a response, he turns and walks out of view.

It’s less awkward than it could be, when the stranger comes back to the house after Brock calls him.  

“Sorry about that,” Jack says, scratching the back of his neck as he lets the guy in.  “We weren’t expecting company.”

The man waves it off, glances down at the shoe rack near the door, and bends down to take his own shoes off.  “Sorry for not calling ahead.  HQ has a bug up its ass about how Rumlow doesn’t have a recent physical on file.”

“They can stick me full of needles and run me on a treadmill when I’m dead!” Brock growls from the kitchen.

“Yeah, well…”  With a smirk, the man walks past Jack and into the house.  “They also assigned me to you as your partner for missions.”

Brock turns to look at the stranger, eyes narrowed.  “What.”

“I’m the only idiot still willing to work with you, after they found out you’re the one that launched the helicarriers.  Sit down, shirt off, I need to listen to your lungs.”

Leaning against the wall at the end of the entryway, Jack watches this happen with mild amusement as the SHIELD doctor bullies Brock into submission.  “Partner, huh?  Did they clear you for combat?”

The doctor’s shoulders stiffen for a moment, then he nods.  “I’m one of the few medics who passed STRIKE qualifications.”

“And the only medic you never threatened to kill whenever you were at sick call,” Brock informs Jack, gritting his teeth when the doctor pushes his head to the side to look at the burn scars on his neck.

“I’m also the only medic willing to hit back,” the doctor mutters.  “Seriously, dealing with you two enhanced assholes is a full time job and it should damn well come with hazard pay.”

Jack is… really not sure how to react to that.  Not only did he apparently know this guy Before, but the doctor also knows Jack’s a mutant.  And he’s manhandling Brock in a way that would get most people eviscerated.

-Took you to the Retreat with D’Ambrosio as a medic-

Rubbing at his temples, Jack sighs when he runs face first into one of the increasingly rare walls in his head.  “I’m sorry,” he mumbles.  “I… don’t…”

“It’s fine.”  D’Ambrosio’s voice is tight as he shines a light back and forth across Brock’s eyes.  “I testified at your trial.  I know what happened.”

Jack nods, swallows, then walks into the living room.  He sits sideways on the couch, laptop resting on his thighs, then tries to focus on one of the programming projects he started last week for fun.  It’s hard to keep the lines of code from blurring together, though, as Brock and the doctor murmur quietly back and forth.

D’Ambrosio’s doing a good job of hiding it, keeping the heartbroken disappointment from leaking out into the world around him much better than Jack expects.  But he still feels the doctor’s eyes on him every few minutes, looking over, cataloging the ways Jack’s changed since he left active duty at SHIELD.

Jack usually loops his hair into a small bun at the nape of his neck, now, and he knows his glasses soften the lines of his face to begin with.  It still hits him every so often how little he resembles the man in his personnel file; there’s nothing left of the angular efficiency and flat professionalism.  And while he’s still fit, wiry and strong, the muscle mass he’d maintained so carefully through his years in STRIKE had melted away within months.

“Looks like he did back in the Academy,” Jack hears Brock say, quietly enough that he just barely catches the words.

D’Ambrosio hums in agreement.  “Okay, I need to check the burns on your legs, now.  And yeah, although his hair was still shorter back then.”

“Least he ain’t dyin’ it black anymore.”

It takes some effort to avoid shooting Brock a skeptical look, but Jack manages.

Chuckling, D’Ambrosio crouches down out of Jack’s field of view.  “I still have a box somewhere of old Polaroids and four-by-six Costco prints from Ops Acad.  Want me to dig it up?”

Jack doesn’t wait to hear Brock’s response before he closes his laptop with a snap, gets up, and walks outside to the backyard.

He’s not even sure why he’s so pissy all of a sudden, but it’s bubbling under his skin and flickering through his tattoos in tiny little spurts of flame.  Pacing around the small vegetable garden just starting to sprout doesn’t help him calm down any, and he resorts to torching some weeds just to (literally) burn off the excess energy.

“Well, that’s one way to do it.”

It’s a small miracle that he doesn’t spin around reflexively and roast the doctor alive; Jack hadn’t even heard him walk up.  Catching himself and closing his eyes, Jack takes a deep breath, then looks back at the seedlings and pokes at another dandelion until it withers away.  “It’s cathartic.”

Walking around to the other side of the planter bed, D’Ambrosio squats and gives Jack an unimpressed look.  “Sometimes you make me wonder which one of the two of you is the clinical psychopath.”

“We’re all somewhere on that spectrum, in our line of work.”  A cluster of mustard grass smokes a little as it dies.  “You should be concerned when someone isn’t.”

D’Ambrosio snorts.  “Truer words.  Listen, I’m sorry about-”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not, Jack.”

“It has to be fine, okay?”  Dragging off his glasses, Jack presses his thumb and knuckle into his eyes.  “It has to be fine, or else I’d go fuckin’ crazy from the fact that I can’t even remember my mom’s name.  It ain’t in my goddamn file because half of it’s fucking redacted.  I don’t know who you are beyond an offhand comment Brock made a few months ago.  I didn’t even recognize my own sister and Jesus fucking Christ-”

D’Ambrosio hops awkwardly over the seedlings and plants his knees in the grass next to Jack, then pulls him into a hug.  The intense familiarity of it, the sudden and overwhelming sense of right that floods through him as soon as their skin makes contact, it’s enough to leave Jack breathless.  Even if his brain doesn’t remember the man, his body does.

Closing his eyes, Jack leans into him and struggles to pull in a breath. 

“Aislynn,” D’Ambrosio tells him, soft and gentle.  “Your mom’s name was Aislynn.  And your dad was Eoin.  And you grew up on a ranch in Bumfuck Nowhere, Georgia, with more cows and horses than people.  You went to college studying architecture at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, and then you joined SHIELD before you even graduated.”

A warm hand slides up and down Jack’s back comfortingly, and he tries to keep breathing, steady and slow.

“I showed up at the Ops Academy for my first day with two duffel bags and a backpack, managed to get lost three times on the way to my dorm room, and when I got there, I saw this weedy, scrawny Irish kid already asleep on the other bed.  Fast forward a month, and my roommate turned into the biggest pain in my ass that I’d ever dealt with.”

With a quick huff of laughter, D’Ambrosio shifts around so he can hug Jack a little better.  “Fast forward another six months, and, uh.”  He clears his throat, and Jack can feel the embarrassment warming D’Ambrosio’s skin.  “Well, you weren’t exactly a pain in my ass at that point.”

-opening up a care package from LOUISE D’AMBROSIO, there’s no note inside, just a… oh.  Jack opens and closes his mouth, genuinely not sure what to say.  Instead, he reaches in and lifts out what he can only describe as a cactus-shaped dildo-

-home late and sore from a day of getting his ass kicked by the drill instructors, and the smell of bitter black espresso hits him half a second before the sharp tang of alcohol.  A half-empty cup of coffee sits forgotten next to an organic chemistry textbook, shot glass half-submerged-

-music is loud and thrums through every fiber of Jack’s being as the band onstage plays.  He turns to his right and grins at Gabe, who looks both out of place in a borrowed too-large concert shirt and like he’s having the time of his life.  Jack grabs at his shoulders and roughly pulls him into a kiss-

-one of the med students is trying to ride the statue of Hippocrates like a mechanical bull and like hell does Jack want to get pulled up in front of the director for not doing something, but hands pull at his arm and he turns to see-

-‘anatomy study’ does in fact turn out to be the euphemism Jack thinks it is but holy shit he’s not complaining-

Jack shudders as that piece of the wall around his memories comes crumbling down, flooding him with three more years of his life.  His hand is curled into Gabe’s shirt, tight enough to pull the fabric into creases, and his breath is hissing through his teeth as he tries and fails to control it.

Another hand brushes against his shoulder, then slides to the back of his neck: Brock, grounding him with the gentle pressure.  It takes a few minutes, but Jack’s lungs finally stop fighting him and he’s able to breathe steadily again.

“How much did you remember, sweetheart?” Brock asks as he works Jack’s hair loose and starts carding his fingers through it.

Jack takes one breath, then another, and relaxes into the touch.  “Enough to know that there’s no way in hell this isn’t unbearably awkward for you, Gabe.”

Laughing, Gabe pats him on the back.  “Trust me, I’ve learned to deal with it by now.”

“Still.”

They sit there for a few more minutes, waiting for Jack to remember which direction down is, then Brock hauls them both to their feet, herds them inside, and insists on cooking lunch.

Two weeks later, Gabe lets himself into the house minutes before Brock’s phone goes off with a mission alert.

“Be safe,” Jack says, looking first into brown, hard eyes, then younger gray ones.  “Be safe.  And if you can’t be safe-”

“Be deadly,” Gabe finishes for him, and Brock steps up to Jack for a kiss.

He gets the familiar I love you hand sign flashed over Brock’s shoulder as they walk toward the waiting unmarked black SUV.  Halfway down the driveway, Brock slings an arm companionably around Gabe’s neck, and Gabe’s arms flail a bit as he’s pulled off balance.

Jack closes the door after the SUV pulls away with Brock riding shotgun and Gabe driving.  He closes his eyes, slows his breathing, then reaches out to brush against that tether tying him to Brock.

He knows he’s not imagining it when there’s a subtle pulse of fierce, burning affection that rolls his way through the connection between them.