Chapter 5
Once Jack lets the two Avengers into his apartment, he closes the door behind them, then walks into the kitchen and gathers up the breakfast dishes.
“Well, you’ve seen better days,” Romanoff says with a smirk as she walks up to Brock and impersonally frisks and disarms him.
Scoffing, Brock laces his fingers together behind his head while she does that. “I think I look pretty good, all things considered.”
“Nice to know SHIELD still has my apartment bugged,” Jack mutters irritably as he starts the sink running and picks up the dish sponge.
“They don’t.” Rogers has his arms crossed and one hip resting against the half-wall between the main door and Jack’s bed. “But she does.” He’s fixed Jack with a piercing stare that makes the hair on the back of Jack’s neck stand up the same way it would if he was facing down an angry grizzly bear.
Brock walks over to lean against the kitchen counter next to Jack, hands on the edge of the counter on either side of him. “Meant it when I said it wasn’t personal, Cap.”
“I’m finding that a little hard to believe, given how much STRIKE had to do with Bucky’s treatment in the hands of HYDRA.”
“We didn’t have anything to do with that,” Brock growls.
“Prove it.”
The tap’s finally spitting out hot water, so Jack soaps up the sponge and starts scrubbing. “I’m not sure we can, Rogers. My memory’s unreliable, and it’s not likely you’d trust anything he says.”
“Fine.” Rogers narrows his eyes. “Then tell me why, Rumlow.”
“Why, what? Use your words, big guy.”
Closing his eyes, Jack sighs.
There’s a long enough pause, tense and charged, that Jack’s able to finish washing the dishes. He arranges everything in the drying rack, then moves around Brock to open the fridge and start updating his grocery list. They can come into his apartment and fuck up his day all they want, but they’re not going to stop Jack from trying to maintain a semblance of being a functional adult.
When Brock finally answers, it’s barely above a whisper. “A man in an expensive suit sits down across from a disillusioned, drunk ex-Ranger who’s the only man in his platoon that survived deployment to Panama and offers him a chance to make a difference, call the shots and keep his men alive? You bet your ass I said yes.”
He looks up at Rogers, and it’s probably only because Jack’s standing just a few feet away from him that he notices the tension in Brock’s eyes. “They manipulated me. Got into my head and twisted shit around, made me think what they wanted me to. And you know what? I knew they were doin’ it, and I didn’t care. I got to build a team of the best and brightest the world had to offer. They gave me a chance to become better, faster, stronger, and I volunteered before they finished asking. They gave me the tools and the men to change the fuckin’ world. They took a powerless, angry kid and they gave me a purpose again.”
Judging by the unsettled look on Rogers’ face, Brock’s words are hitting a little too close to home.
“And you know what? I have exactly the kind of shit-ass luck that gets me the highest performing operator SHIELD’s ever seen on my team, and then has me fall for the goddamn punk.”
Jack’s lips twitch in an uncertain smile because he has a feeling he knows who Brock’s talking about.
“I got cocky,” Brock continues, eyes fixed on Rogers. “And I took a chance. Pierce found out, and he- he had our own team drag Jack down to the sublevels and- and torture him within an inch of his life. Six weeks of torture, brainwashing, and conditioning. Pierce brought him back to me at the end of it, and made it out like he was givin’ me a gift. A reward for my compliance.”
Brock’s hand reaches out and blindly latches on to the first part of Jack he can reach: his elbow. “He thought he had himself a loyalist. And he did, until he took the only good thing I’ve ever had and broke it.
“And then that day, in the bank vault, he brought me downstairs. Had me follow him as his bodyguard. And Jack and his squad, they’re already down there with their sights on Bucky fucking Barnes.”
“You knew,” Rogers growls, taking a step forward before Romanoff stops him with a hand on his chest. “You knew who he was and you let them-”
Brock bares his teeth and his hand tightens on Jack’s arm. “I found out who he was the same time you did! And I saw my husband pointing a gun at his head!”
Eyes wide in surprise, Romanoff looks between Brock and Jack. “Husband, huh.”
Jack closes his eyes and turns so he can pull Brock into his arms, and Brock’s hands cling to the fabric of Jack’s shirt as if he’s afraid to let go.
“Go into the bathroom,” Brock rasps, forehead resting on Jack’s shoulder. “In the medicine cabinet. Look at his prescriptions, and tell me what you see.”
Several seconds pass before Romanoff pads over to the bathroom. She comes back with four orange bottles in her hands, and passes them off to Rogers one at a time. “Ibuprofen, duloxetine, that’s an antidepressant… this one’s another as-needed for vertigo, and- oh.”
“Oh?”
“It’s the Hope Serum. I didn’t know they’d formulated it into tablets. Honestly, I assumed it got shut down, but I learned my lesson about making assumptions last year.”
The small bottle rattles as Rogers takes it and reads the label.
“We hid it,” Jack says, slow and quiet, eyebrows furrowed. The memory is just starting to worm its way through the wall in his head, unraveling in real time. “My… powers. I could… mask it, before. Hide my markings. Make myself appear baseline.”
Brock nods against his shoulder and clings to him a little more tightly.
“And when you had your head injury…” Rogers begins, then trails off, frowning at the pill bottle.
Romanoff smirks at Jack. “Sorry.” It’s clear by her tone that she’s not. When Rogers gives her a confused look, she shrugs. “He came at me with a gun when Pierce was trying to launch Insight, so I set him up on a blind date with the conference table.”
“Cognitive recalibration,” Brock mumbles, and shakes his head. “Should’ve known that’s all it took.”
Looking up at Jack, Rogers holds up the pill bottle. “I think I’m gonna go knock on a few doors. Maybe even knock ‘em down if I have to. Is it okay if I take this with me?”
Jack swallows, looks at the bottle, then looks down at his lace-patterned arms where they’re wrapped around Brock. The ethereal glow is gone again, overpowered by the chemicals in his bloodstream, but… now that he’s seen them, he feels… incomplete. Like there’s holes in more than just his memory. His skin feels cold without the warmth of whatever energy was swirling around in his tattoos.
Pulling away just enough to look up at Jack, Brock studies him carefully. Brown eyes flick back and forth between Jack’s, hope warring with guilt on his face.
Jack nods, Rogers pockets the pill bottle, and Brock closes his eyes before tucking his head back into Jack’s neck.
“Don’t try to look for my bugs,” Romanoff tells them as she turns to leave. “You won’t find them. Oh, and...” She looks over her shoulder as she stands in the doorway. “Don’t leave town.”
The click of the latch makes Jack startle a bit, even though he sees the door close.
Brock leans into him and lets out something that might be a laugh if it weren’t so strained and sharp. “Jesus fuck.”
Curling his fingers into Brock’s still-damp hair, Jack closes his eyes. “That went better than it could have.”
“Understatement of the fuckin’ century, holy shit.”
Jack pulls away just enough that he can look at Brock, properly look at him. Sure, they’ve both been through hell and back, and looking a bit worse for the wear in some ways, but somehow, something brought them back together. And even though Jack knows he’s looking at one of the deadliest operators SHIELD’s ever seen, it’s oddly endearing to see his hair all fluffed up from the shower and how even now, Jack’s clothes are still too big for him.
Brock meets his eye, then gives Jack a mirthless half-smile and looks away. “Stop staring.”
“Just thinking about how we match, now.”
“How’s that?”
The difference in height between them is only a handful of inches, maybe four, but it’s still easy enough for Jack to kiss Brock’s forehead. “Two skinny ex-soldiers who hate wearing short-sleeve shirts in public.”
Huffing out a quiet laugh, Brock lets his shoulders drop. “I hate being in public. I used to be able to be invisible. Now I get stared at unless I dress like a goddamn hobo. And even then.”
“Let’s not worry about that right now.”
Brock’s stomach gurgles, quietly the first time, then more insistently the second.
“Christ, already?”
He nods and gives Jack an embarrassed smile. “Serum means I need almost four thou a day to maintain fighting weight.”
-only thing open this late is Denny’s, but the guys are starving. Half of them haven’t even bothered to change out of their fatigues. Jack’s just hoping they won’t get turned away. One hour later, one squadron fed on Brock’s SHIELD credit card, and Brock is still finishing off the last bits of everyone’s plates. He’s a bottomless pit with hollow legs and never seems to put on any body fat-
Shuffling them to the side just enough that he can reach the pen hanging from his grocery pad, Jack jots down protein drinks on the first empty line on the list. “I’ll hit the store this afternoon, provided my eyes let me leave the apartment without waging war on my frontal lobe again.”
Brock mumbles his thanks and leans back into Jack. He seems more exhausted at this point than anything else, so Jack gently herds him over to the bed and gets them both laying down. The groan that Brock lets out is worth it as he stretches out on the mattress; his shoulder pops as he pulls his arms above his head. A nap will probably do them both a world of good right now; they always help whenever Jack’s head is getting spastic.
Hesitantly, Jack scoots up against him, curling around him with an arm over his chest. “So… that kiss earlier.”
“God, sorry. Tell me to fuck off if that was outta line.”
“Eh…” Jack props himself up on an elbow and pulls his glasses off, then sets them on the nightstand. “I was actually gonna ask if you wanted to try again. Y’know, make sure that’s not the only one I can remember.”
Brock blinks owlishly at him a few times. “You sure?”
“Gotta give Romanoff something to listen to if she insists on keeping my place bugged, right?”
“You-” Brock pokes him in the nose. “-are a massive troll.” The smile slides off his face fairly quickly, though, and he looks at his hands before dropping them to his chest and closing his eyes. “I don’t look like I did when you married me.”
“Yeah, well, neither do I.” Jack takes that opportunity to lean down, closing his eyes as he does. They don’t end up taking a nap for a while.
Jack goes back to work the next day, after Brock manages to guess his laptop’s password and log in to his Netflix account. Around 11am, he gets a text from an unregistered number, and all it contains is an eggplant emoji, a brick, and a green check mark.
Squinting at that for nearly a minute doesn’t make the colorful modern hieroglyphics resolve into anything Jack can understand, so he just drops his phone back into his pocket and heads off to class.
“Yo dawg, I heard you like data structures,” Cassie grumbles as they walk out of the classroom. She tugs her hat down over her ears more firmly and decides to velcro herself to Jack’s side as the chilly February air greets them.
Jack’s about to snark the rest of the meme back at her when he looks up and stops dead in his tracks.
Leaning against a nearby column with an overstuffed Subway bag hanging off one arm, is Brock. The skin on his face is smooth and clean-shaven, and with the weight he’s lost, he looks closer to Jack’s age than his own. He’s tapping away at his phone, one of the new models from Samsung, and looks up when the students start filing out of the classroom.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Brock says with a wide smile, and walks toward Jack. “I think I got enough sandwiches for everyone.”
Cassie looks between them, mouth hanging open, then playfully slaps Jack’s chest. “You didn’t say you had a boyfriend.”
“I- I… don’t.” It takes a few blinks for Jack’s brain to reboot, and Brock stands there smirking at him the whole damn time. “We’re married, actually.”
“Damn straight,” Brock says and steps forward to give Jack a quick kiss before turning to Cassie. “Fred Kruger, nice to meet you.”
It takes all of Jack’s willpower not to burst out laughing at the cover name, but that fails him the instant Cassie starts slapping his chest repeatedly.
“How could you have a husband and you didn’t tell us you complete tool-”
Trying desperately to not laugh until he pisses himself, Jack gently catches Cassie’s wrists and rolls his eyes. “He just got back from deployment, apparently.”
“Yep.” Brock grins and sidles up to slide an arm around Jack’s waist. “And for the next thirty days, I’m a free man again. Oh, by the way…” He digs his dog tags out from under his shirt, pops the chain, and pulls off a ring; that’s when Jack notices Brock’s already wearing his own. “Hell of a good luck charm, but I think you want it back now.”
Brock pulls off his jacket once they claim a table in the cafeteria, and Kevin noticeably goggles at the webbed burn scars covering Brock’s hands and arms.
“Battle scars, baby,” Brock says, then pops the top on a can of soda. “The ladies love ‘em.”
Rolling his eyes, Jack plants his hand on the side of Brock’s face and shoves him away. The kids, predictably, love this.
That evening, Brock shows Jack a book-sized case with NANO MASK debossed into the lid. “Romanoff brought it by this morning after you caught the bus,” he says, then taps twice in front of his ear and the mask deactivates. It takes him a few seconds to pull the flexible mesh off his face, then he carefully folds it and sets it back in its case. “She’d already programmed in my face from… before.”
Jack reaches out and presses his hand to Brock’s cheek. “What’s the catch?”
“They want me - us - to be double agents again. For them. Help them take down crime rings. Use our contacts from HYDRA to take ‘em down for good. Callsigns Crossbones and Lucky, just like on STRIKE.”
Closing his eyes, Jack shakes his head. “I have a life here. I- I can’t-”
“I told her that,” Brock murmurs, leaning into Jack’s hand. “And, for once, she actually agreed to respect it.” He steps closer and wraps his arms around Jack’s chest. “You really did build a new life for yourself, sweetheart. I’m a soldier, though. I always was, and I always will be.”
“So you’re gonna do it.”
Brock nods. “But… if you’ll have me… I think I’d like to come back here between missions.”
“Might have to get a bigger place.” Jack smiles, a little lopsided, and bumps their noses together. “And you’re going to have to chip in for rent. I’m pretty sure SHIELD’s going to stop subsidizing it once Cap’s done lighting a fire under their asses over the pills.”
“Jack, I will buy you a goddamned house if it means we get to have a place to call home.”
Putting his hands on either side of Brock’s face, Jack traces his thumbs over his cheekbones and takes a moment to marvel at the orange-white flicker that flows through his tattoos. “With a white picket fence and our obligatory three dogs.”
Brock chuckles and nods. “Deal. Now shut up and kiss me.”