Kilroy

For as hot as it is in DC in August, Jack’s dreading getting off the plane in Atlanta.  He’s also still not entirely sure how Brock talked him into this, but he wasn’t able to do a lot of arguing after his boss said she’d already approved his vacation.  So, Jack sits in the window seat watching the coastline slowly drift by, with his legs pretzeled up and Brock snoring quietly on his shoulder.

They’re only planning to stay a few days.  Jack’s not sure he can handle much more, even if it goes well.

He feels like his nerves are trying to vibrate out of his body as they disembark, each carrying a sturdy backpack filled with everything they might need short of materiel for invading a sovereign nation.  Brock looks up at him, eyebrows furrowed with concern, and brushes his hand against Jack’s but doesn’t hold it.  Not here, not where there’s so many people that might react poorly to a gay couple.

“Do they know we’re coming?” Jack asks as they drop their backpacks into the back seat of a rental car.  Brock doesn’t answer as he ducks in and starts the engine.

It’s roughly an hour’s drive due east from the airport, and by the time they turn off the highway onto a dirt road, Jack’s hands are sweating and he feels a little sick.

Ten more minutes go by while Jack fidgets with the abandoned pen that was in the glovebox.  The dirt road seems to go on forever.  Cows and crops hem them in on either side for as far as the eye can see.  At one point, Jack turns to look out the side window and sees someone off in the distance riding a leggy chestnut horse, silhouetted against the horizon.

He knows from the way Brock keeps glancing at him that he’s trying not to ask if anything seems familiar.

The house they pull up to is gargantuan by DC standards, with a huge paved circular driveway, two spacious stories, a narrow veranda at the front, and a large covered patio protruding off the back.  A few hundred feet away looms a similarly sized barn, upper doors open so a fan can extract the hot air pooling in the peak of the roof.

A grizzled old man in a rocking chair rolls slowly back and forth, one boot up on the railing of the veranda.  He leans back and raps his knuckles against the side of the house as Brock parks the car, and the front door opens a moment later.

Three people come out: a woman with dark hair and a belly boasting a child on its way, a thin man with strawberry blond hair and a nervous smile, and-

Kayla.

Jack’s heart stutters for a moment as he sees his sister for the first time since the trial.

The parking brake ratchets as Brock tugs it up, then he nudges Jack in the shoulder.  “Go on.”

Kayla’s reddish-brown hair is pulled back in a loose ponytail that trails down the shoulder of her denim shirt.  Her eyes, piercingly green even from this distance, watch Jack carefully as he fumbles with the latch on the car door.

He eventually gets it open, takes a quick breath to brace himself, and stands up into the oppressively humid Georgia heat.

Boots thump on the steps on the veranda, and Jack only just barely looks up before hands grab the front of his shirt and pin him to the rear door of the car.

“I am torn, Jackie Rollins,” Kayla growls, and it feels like the ground is tilting out from under Jack as he looks at her face and sees the same nose, the same high forehead, the same thin jaw he sees in the mirror.  “I am torn between huggin’ you until you faint, or punchin’ you in the goddamn face for the same reason.”

She glances over his shoulder and one of her eyebrows quirks up.  “Hey, Brock.  Nice to see you again.  Don’t think this lets you off the hook.”

“No, ma’am.”

Jack’s still staring at who he’s beginning to realize is his twin sister.  “Hi,” he says weakly, and that’s when Kayla decides to deck him.

Brock sighs, short and exasperated, as he gently cleans the scrape on Jack’s cheek from where he took a sudden detour to the driveway pavement.  “I didn’t think it was gonna go there,” he murmurs, dabbing neosporin on one of the abrasions.  “Then again, she’s always been the pissier one of the two of you.”

Closing his eyes, Jack tries not to flinch away from the sharp stinging on his cheek.  Something hard and heavy gets placed on the table next to him, and he looks up to see the dark-haired woman smiling at him awkwardly.

“Tea.”  She pats his arm.  “Jimmy’s talking to Kayla, getting her calmed down.”

“It’s fine, I probably deserve it.”

“On what account?”

“Marge-” Brock starts, but she cuts him off with a sharp raise of her hand.

“You’re family.  Both of you boys are.  Decisions and mistakes be damned, we stand by our own.”

Jack swallows thickly and wraps his hands around the mug.  “You saw the trial?”

“Oh, honey.”  Marge’s face does something odd and it takes Jack a moment to realize she’s sad.  “We were there.”

Jack finds Kayla on the back patio that evening, smoking a cigarette and swirling a glass of scotch.  He scuffs his feet as he approaches to give her some warning, waiting a few paces away in case she wants to be alone.

“Free country,” she tells him gruffly, and gestures to the empty half of the loveseat with her glass.

Sitting, Jack pulls his legs up and wraps his arms around them.  “Almost wasn’t.”

“You really wanna do this right now, bub?”

“Well, Brock has the car keys and the boarding passes, and I don’t fancy walking all the way back to Atlanta.  So, it’s not like I have anything better to do than get my dick chewed off.”

Kayla snorts inelegantly and the corner of her mouth pulls up in a smirk.  “Nope, that’s definitely Brock’s job.  Also, gross.”

The cicadas hum just enough that Jack’s tinnitus doesn’t start driving him crazy as the minutes stretch between them.  Finally, he rests his chin on his arms, not-quite-watching the sun dip lower in the sky.  “I’m sorry.”

“For?”

He sighs and rolls his eyes slightly; for as little as he remembers of her, they share so many mannerisms.  “Bending over and taking it up the ass from the secret Nazi cult.  Not calling you after I got released.  And still not calling you even after I started remembering.”

“You were brainwashed, Jackie.”  Kayla stubs out her cigarette and picks up the pack next to the ashtray, considers, then sets it back down.  “Rogers made that pretty damn clear.  He even apologized to us that it happened, like he could have done anything while he was frozen in the Arctic.”

Jack feels a twitch of a smile form on his face, but it disappears just as quickly.  “I signed on for STRIKE before they did that to me.  It’s not like I didn’t know the risks of my job.”

“Why’d HYDRA want you so bad?” she asks, turning to him and frowning.  “What could they possibly have offered you to make you sign yourself away like that?”

In answer, Jack just lifts his left hand up, and his wedding ring catches the amber light of the setting sun.

Kayla purses her lips, then sighs and shakes her head, turning back to look toward the horizon.  “You’re lucky he loves you as much as he does.”

“I know.”

One of the barn cats pounces in the bushes and trots out a moment later with a vole between its jaws.

“He still ain’t said it?”

“Not in as many words.  But he doesn’t have to.”

Kayla gives him a skeptical look, then just shakes her head.  “I guess if it works for you…”  She tosses the rest of her scotch down, then sets the empty tumbler next to the ashtray.  “Just tell me they never found out what you are.  Tell me they never used you.”

“They didn’t, and I’m inclined to trust the people who told me that.  I don’t know what strings Brock pulled to keep me off SHIELD’s Index, and I’m really not sure I should ask.  But-”

“Good.  I just-”  She closes her eyes and exhales, then adds more quietly.  “Good.”

After another breath, Kayla unbuttons the cuff on her sleeve and rolls it up as if she’s preparing to hit someone.  Jack recognizes the nervous bravado easily, another quirk shared between them.  He looks closer at her hands and blinks in surprise when she shows him a set of markings identical to his own.

“Same DNA,” Kayla murmurs, and with a quick, unsteady movement, reaches over to clasp her hand around Jack’s.  Her long fingers, callused from decades of ranch work, match his better than he expects.  “Same DNA, just…”

Jack starts to say, “Better living through chemistry,” but he chokes on the last word and his eyes sting.  He turns his hand to lace their fingers together and the deep, cellular-level knowing that rockets through his body makes him dizzy.  Brock may be his husband, his partner, the person he shares his life with, but Kayla, she’s his other half.

It feels like a lightning storm in Jack’s brain as Kayla reaches over and drags him into her arms.  When she curls an arm around his head and starts rocking them back and forth gently, Jack realizes he’s crying.  Warmth floods through his skin, and their tattoos start shimmering with a rich golden yellow, pulsing in time with each other.

It’s painful in the best way as the walls left in Jack’s head start to crumble, the holes are filled in, and everything comes back in a dizzying, whitewater crush of memories.  He clutches desperately at Kayla’s shoulder, looking for some sort of anchor, and she holds him tighter as both of them threaten to shake apart.

When Jack resurfaces and the torrent is slowed to a trickle, it’s past dusk and fireflies are floating lazily over the fields behind the house.  Kayla pushes on his knees to get him to put his feet back on the patio deck, then pulls her own feet up into his lap and curls up under Jack’s arm.

He’s pretty sure both of them are a mess at this point; his nose is stuffed up and his eyes just ache, and at some point his glasses ended up on the end table next to Kayla’s ashtray.  Based on the way she’s sniffing, she’s not doing any better.

Her hand thumps against his chest over his heart, then her fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt.  “I’m still mad at you, you bastard.”

“Yknow,” Jack murmurs as he rests his head on top of hers, “I’m twelve minutes older than you.”

“Suck my dick, cowboy.”

“That’s incest.  And you don’t have one anymore.”

“Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for that.”

Jack closes his eyes and smiles.

Behind them, Brock looks a them with a soft, fond warmth in his eyes, then draws the curtains shut and pads upstairs.