read this or you're gay (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
derogatory) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
jackassery2014-07-31 11:32 pm
derogatory) wrote in jackassery2014-07-31 11:32 pm
Entry tags:
oh what a noble disguished collection of fine little friends youve made
Nathan is pretty used to fatal dismissals from the other Avengers by now. After all- immortal. Not like he's got anything to worry about from any physical harm. They always assemble again eventually for Natasha to give him shit for not being around when they needed some ghost spotting, and sometimes Cap even looks a little sorry he had to die. But no matter how he gets offed, Nathan ends up always waking up to Victor standing guard.
"What're you doing?" he grumbled once, shoving himself on his elbows, listening the distant shriek of Kree warlords. "Go help fight, I'm fine." It was half true, his spine had almost completely realigned by then.
"Didn't want anything to happen to you," Victor replied, eyes open for any lingering alien assault.
"I can't die!" Nathan countered. "What's the worst that could happen?" Victor glanced back, held out a hand to help him up, to bring Nathan back to a fight where he'll probably just die all over again.
"Let's never find out, okay?" he smiled.
When Nathan wakes up, removing the rebar from his chest and catching his breath, Victor's not keeping watch. He's not there at all, not completely. There's a lot of rubble from the building, lots of beams and flooring that it takes Nathan a while to realize that Victor is there, only in pieces. Nathan has half the bloody scraps gathered in his arms before the other Avengers find them and Tony knocks one of his teeth loose.
"Calm down,” Iron Man apologizes in his own way for the punch, pulling Nathan back to his feet. "Banner, I think the rest of him is still under there."
"There's a lot of him out here," Barton mutters, using his foot to nudge a scrap Nathan missed.
For the dread dripping down his neck, Nathan still has the semblance of mind to hiss, "Shut the fuck up, Hawkeye."
"Did she kill me?" Nathan asks, looking blearily around the hospital room. A doctor- or he figures has to be a doctor, white coat and all- is sitting in a chair opposite of the bed. The guy’s a fidgety bastard, tapping his foot, shifting around enough he's probably the noise that woke him.
"Natasha?" the well informed on super heroes doctor replies. Nathan nods, that's the last thing he remembers, Black Widow launching herself between him and Banner when they dragged out shards of metal in Victor's uniform. Bloody bits of metal smeared and clattered behind them, like someone ran over a doll filled with jam.
"I'm gonna-" he croaks out half a warning and heaves over the side of the bed. The doctor pushes his chair a few squeamish steps back, which Nathan feels a medical professional shouldn't do.
"No, uh. She just sedated you. You were pretty worked up."
"No shit," Nathan snaps, throat raw. There’s a bandage over the rebar’s entrance and exit wound, because shit that’s ridged like that heals a little slower than your run of the mill stab. It’s mostly scars that’ll clear up by tomorrow. Nathan peels back the bandage, focusing on his own healing skin, people wounds, human injuries because he’s dealt with Victor getting hurt before, it’s always mostly human with some metal thrown in. That kind of shit, he can handle, you stop getting grossed out by flesh wounds when you’ve been eviscerated three times since Easter. It’s the mix of robotics and skin that’s turning his stomach, the idea that robot or not, there’s damage an auto repair won’t let you walk away from, that will spread you out like a burst balloon beneath a Sentinel’s fist.
Nathan gags, which is cue for for the doctor to peace out. The man stands up, adjusting his collar, tossing a hand through his hair a few times, grinning with all teeth and nerves.
"I'll get somebody in here to clean this up," he says breathlessly, turning to the door and twisting quickly back around on his heel, "Oh, by the way. I'm Doctor Henry Pym. I'm here to put Victor back together."
In his dream he wakes up and Victor is looking down at him, same as ever, post mortem awakening. Nobody was smashed in by a sentinel, his skull is put back together and then the ceiling fans turn into chainsaws and the television grows legs.
"The fuck does she put in those meds," Nathan chokes, waking up before the furniture musical interlude starts.
An eternity of hitting the call button later, the squeamish doctor from before shows up rather than a fit nurse. Nathan gestures to the hospital room (with a thankfully now vomit free floor), then to his perfectly put together body.
"There a reason I'm not at home?" he demands. Hank taps his pen to his chin.
"You did blow chunks all over my shoes,” Doctor Pym begins gently, leaning against the doorframe. “And then you passed out again pretty quick. Seemed rude to wake you.” Nathan rolls his eyes, like any Avenger balked at bad manners before. "If you're through throwing up," he adds. "You're free to go anytime. I just figured you’d want to stay close."
"Yeah, no place more comfortable than the hospital," Nathan mutters, throwing his legs over the side of the bed. There's an orderly pile of his clothes next to the bed, and he maintains awkward eye contact while he undresses until Hank turns around. The pile of clothing is folded, not perfect, but deliberate and it has one of his old shirts that Victor sent to the hospital as backup so they didn't have to come home in uniform.
Then it hits him.
"Pym! Abuelo!" Nathan cries, pointing directly at the man, who groans. "I know you. You're Victor's granddad."
"I asked him not to call me that," Hank groans, hands in his pockets. "So you have heard of me." Nathan shrugs, back to putting on his jacket. "Even though he's an Avenger now, it kinda seems Victor leads a pretty separate life- from me at least."
"Isn't he programmed to like, hate fuck you or something?" His grin widens at the crease that puts over the old man’s forehead.
"I don't think that's in Ultron's exact coding," Hank counters cautiously and Nathan waves it aside, heading towards the door. "We'll call you when-"
"Nah, I can wait around. 'Bout time I beat him to the waking up thing. What room?" Nathan leans back on his heels, waiting patiently for 0.5 seconds while Pym chews his answer over. "Grandpa Ultron, where am I headed? Vic’s room, his auto-repair’s gotta be kickin in by now." Maybe it’s an aftereffect of the horse sedative Natasha gave him, or part of his roguish devil-may-care attitude, but Nathan hasn’t felt anything beyond grossed out at Victor’s state until he watches Hank try and work up some bedside manner.
"He's still-" Hank starts, stopping and fumbling with something absent in his hands, eyes shifting throughout the room. "I’m working on it,” Pym eventually settles on that non-answer. Nathan can feel every meal he’s ever eaten rising up again. The entire conversation he’s spent pushing down that thought, that spot where a face used to be, Victor’s teeth in the dirt.
"No," Nathan manages, like Victor's status is a yes or no question suddenly. He shoves a finger close to Hank's face. "Working on what?? Victor has told me at fucking length that he caught a Teflon missile with his face and walked away from it after a day of naps. And you made him by proxy, so he should be up and running at least."
Pym flinches and gingerly tries shove the hand aside. "Like I said, I'm working on it."
"How is sitting in here watching me have fuckin fever dreams 'working on it,' you pervert,” Nathan snarls. “Put him back together, humpty dumpty that shit." Nathan only has a few seconds to be proud of being the first person to make that reference before Hank interjects.
"That's just the thing. Ultron's tech has self-sustaining capabilities; they can regenerate any number of injuries." Yeah, Nathan snarls, that's what he said, missiles plus face equal self-fix. “He was a teenager then. Victor isn't tech anymore, not completely. Ultron made a point to create him with nanites that would fuse into his biological makeup when he was twenty-one, making him indistinguishable from a human."
"In English, you brainy twat!"
Hank sighs, "It's a contradiction. How do you pose as a human and also self-repair from an injury that would've killed a human?" Nathan doesn’t give a shit about riddles, and this old man is taking too long to get to the point, which is-- "Both objectives are overriding one another."
There’s a beat while this information sinks through the haze of still wearing off meds, the comfortable shroud of dying, the reality that the situation was just as bad as it was when you spotted him.
"So, what you're saying is he's still fucking crushed," Nathan croaks, mouth turned in disgust, enough that Hank takes a couple nervous steps back in case the puking resumes.
"He's in suspended animation."
"Yeah, the biggest parts of him are hooked up to a-- This is un-fucking-believable!" he cries, twisting back into the room, not entirely sure his legs won’t give out underneath him. "You made him! Fix him!"
"Ultron made him."
"Then get him in here!" He has enough composure to keep himself upright, Nathan can be thankful for that at least, although it’s not without clutching the wall for support. He takes a few measured breaths, because letting yourself get emotionally compromised in a building where people regularly die is asking for more trouble than just bad dreams. He shudders, pressing a palm into his eyes until he sees blots in his vision.
"Can I see him at least?" Nathan eventually asks, lip curling at how miserable he sounds, at the fact he needs permission to see Victor all of a sudden from some guy he’s barely even met.
"It looks bad," Hank replies quietly. Deflated, he adds, “It is bad.” And Nathan pushes, because that’s what he does, that’s the easiest way to respond to the news that your boyfriend is nothing but a bloated bag of soup that’s spread out over some collapsed building, and eventually the doctor is shoved around enough to snap, “Which part do you want to see?” So Nathan clocks Hank Pym right in the nose.
Victor reaches over him to grab the remote off the coffee table, muting the Donkey Kong menu music, the flashing option to restart the game.
“You wanna talk about it?” he asks, quietly. Nathan rolls his shoulders, unaware how tightly he’d been gripping the controller before that second, the distant ache in his muscles.
“About how you’re clearly cheating? Good of you to admit it, let’s have an honest round.” Nathan hits continue, but the screen sits on ‘Player 2: Confirm’ until he sighs, tossing the controller to the other end of the couch, twisting to face the cyborg. “Talk about what?”
“You seeing ghosts when we’re trying to finish a mission,” Victor replies instantly, in the tone that says he’s been practicing this conversation soon lecture for the last few levels. “That’s why you froze up, isn’t it.” It’s not really a question, and Nathan concedes it’d be dumb to think Victor wouldn’t notice it, since he wasn’t exactly smooth when he chokes. It’d been a recon mission, check out the location and ascertain if there were any survivors. For what it’s worth, Nathan is getting a little better at telling the dead from the living, or at least, he thought he was.
“I didn’t freeze,” he argues half assed, eventually conceding with another lie, “It’s not ghosts.”
Victor scoffs, leaning back against the couch.
“So you can’t handle the pressure of a simple extraction mission even though you’ve literally done like seven already this month.” Nathan likes being underestimated even less than the pity, and it must be written over his face judging by the smug tenor of his voice ne when Vic says, “So. Ghosts.”
He shrugs, but Victor’s expecting more than a nonverbal response, and Nathan mutters, “You saw what they’re doing in that lab, there are obviously ones that didn’t make it. Gonna be ghosts.”
“We should tell Jessica,” he says right away, dammit the robot did practice this, which isn’t fair considering the amount of bananas he collected over the past few levels, shouldn’t the fucker have been distracted?? “She can add that to your abilities. We can find somebody to coach you-”
“‘the hell is all this we?” Nathan counters, scrambling over the cushions to fetch his controller. He shoots Victor a challenging look, “You don’t have to worry about the ghost stuff. If I need to tell Powergirl about adding something, I’ll do it.” It comes out harsh, and honest that had been how he meant it at the time. But Ultron must’ve figured out the exact downturn of somebody’s mouth, the startled twist of a person’s gaze and the shuffle of their feet against the carpet as they reposition themselves on the couch, close to the border of the imposed distance you’re trying to force. Ultron clearly designed Victor with all that in mind so you’d fess up when he came at you, you’d give a shit about when he was disappointed or offended but never mad, because fuck you if you pissed off the cyborg working his entire life to be a better person than Ultron programed to be. Of course Ultron managed to think up all that in the planning stages of Victor-bot, Nathan rationalizes, because otherwise you’d be a total needy queer for noticing all that in him.
Nathan sighs, “I get you wanna help, but it’s like. a onetime thing. Not gonna be spying on the undead as part of a tactical response, all right?” It’s still not enough, Vic’s picking at the tearing corners of the analog stick. “What, Robocop?”
“You froze up,” he points out gently. “If there’d been a hostile there, you could’ve--” Nathan can feel the eyestrain of too many hours playing video games with this worried loser when he rolls his eyes, hard.
“What? Died? Oh, I’d really be in the shit then, not like I haven’t died twice this week already.” When sarcasm doesn’t wipe that anxious look off his friend’s face, Nathan leans in suspiciously. “You’re worrying about me more than usual. Maybe there’s something up with you.” Vic sputters in protest like he’s been holding his breath.
“There’s nothing up with me,” he flinches away, hurriedly unpausing the game. “Let’s play.”
And they do, at least until the cart careens into the depths of the mineshaft for the five hundredth time that day and Victor lingers on the continue screen. He keeps his eyes locked there when he speaks, like glancing at Nathan’s skeptical look will make him lose his nerve for the very gay emotional shit he’s about to bust out.
“I’m responsible for you.” What, like in some pseudo Avenger mentor shit way- “No, pendejo, in a best friend way!”
When it comes to overemotional shit, Robocop does not disappoint, Nathan can attest to that at least. Emotional availability, even between himself and a guy who was maybe holding his hand the last time he snapped back to life- his organs were still getting eased back into his chest so Nathan’s memory’s a little fuzzy- but. Emotional availability has never really been one of Nathan’s stronger points, even with a guy like that.
“Does that mean I’m responsible for you?” he jeers. “‘Cause you’ve got a bit more baggage than a couple ghosts.”
Victor hisses, "No, don’t worry; I wouldn’t dare put such a burden on you." Game start.
“Hey, you just said you are responsible for me, as my best friend.” Nathan holds one hand over his heart. “I’d be a pretty shitty mate if I didn’t return the fav- fuck!” He takes the controller in both hands again, but it’s too late, Diddy Kong has careened off the cliff.
“No thanks,” Victor huffs, glancing over at Nathan with a grin that doesn’t reach his eyes. “I can take care of myself.”
Nathan’s not sure he prefers the flashback dreams to the wild hallucinations. His eyes open slowly, focusing on the dimly lit hospital room. It was definitely light out when he punched Hank, but its night now, and it’s weird he was the unconscious one after throwing the punch. There’s another surge of tranquilizers in his system, he can feel that as he sits up slowly, makes his way through the hospital. It’s not as if there is a “robo-recovery” ward, so he’s not sure what he’s looking for, squinting under the florescent lighting, empty glances into hospital rooms.
“So is it Avenger protocol to shoot me full of meds when I feel an emotion,” he asks as Hank appears when he rounds an endless hospital hallway, his nose a little purple. “Or is there some kind of immortal cocktail you’re working on?”
“Sorry,” Hank raises an eyebrow. “What emotion was you punching me in the face?”
“Anger, mostly,” Nathan supplies helpfully, mirroring his own grin that doesn’t meet his eyes. “You better have good news, I told you to quit spyin on me when you could be-”
“Working, yeah, I remember.” Pym doesn’t look too thrilled about taking suggestions from an untenured Avenger, but Nathan’s not exactly feeling generous. He gestures for Nathan to follow him, over a few wards to something that looks a lot more akin to a metal shop than an intensive care ward. Richards, Pym and Tony have made the disgusting trifecta of nerds in the past few decades, so he’s not wholly surprised they’d got a spot in the Avengers clinic floor space for tinkering with bots. It’s like the entrance to a surgical room, the table in the center with viewing glass separating potential spectators looking out over the doctor/mechanic’s progress.
The half of Victor’s face that was strewn around the pavement earlier is covered by a sheet that’s sunken in too low to imply much progress there, but maybe scars could be hot, Nathan admits. That Death Locket chick has half of a metal face and she still gets boyfriends, possibly on account of her great cans, but it’s not terrible, Nathan figures he could live with that in a boyfriend, maybe. He has two arms, two legs and the framework of a chest cavity. It’s a lot farther along than he might’ve expected, and Nathan starts to wonder if maybe that last knockout gas put him down for longer than one night.
“He’s put together,” Nathan breathes, white knuckling the edge of the window frame.
“Well, I can do that at least,” Pym huffs. “Earlier, I didn’t think you’d want to see him empty, but your fist convinced me that I don’t actually care about upsetting you.” Pym’s entire life is talking big game, but the more Nathan looks at Victor laid out through the viewing glass, the more he can feel his face twist in self-doubt. “Are you actually upset? I was mostly kidding.” The doctor clears his throat. “If it’s the face thing, that’s tempor-”
“Why’s he like that?” Nathan angrily gestures at the body on the table, Hank meekly adding that you’ll have to be a little more specific, Young. “Shouldn't he be in a proper bed or something? Putting him on a slab like that, you’re already acting like he’s dead.”
Hank turns to face Nathan, incredulous, “I’m sorry, I just put your boyfriend back together piece by piece… And you’re complaining to me about the presentation?”
“How fucked up is it gonna be to wake up on an operating table, its bad enough being stuck here, he should at least wake up in a room--”
“Nathan, he’s not waking up. He’s not in there.” Hank ducks in time for this punch. “Wow, we definitely should’ve kept you sedated. I mean-”
“You mean he’s dead,” Nathan spits, and it wasn’t entirely the point he wanted to get across, it’s more complicated than that. But it’s too hard to put into words, the uncertainty of Vic being trapped in some pseudo technological ether that hangs between them like the awkward silence between himself and Pym.
“Get something to eat,” Hank says at last, steering Nathan from the room. “The cafeteria is on the sixth floor. I have your phone number if anything changes.”
The hospital cafeteria didn’t sell booze, so Nathan didn’t stick around there for long. Luckily there’s a convenience store down the road, and entirely intentional, they have a wide array in choice liquors, beers, and medication of varying quality to improperly interact with whatever Pym left in his system to keep him calm. If a super scientist couldn’t come up with the correct mixings to settle the ache in Nathan’s chest, the pounding just beneath it, he’ll take it upon himself to concoct his own genius brew.
The hope is he can take whatever cruel mixture in some back alley, but his feet drag him back to the hospital, to the surgical meets mechanical ward. He drinks in plain view of Pym, finishing the bottle at the window while the doctor works.
To: Kelly
Subj: he y
Victor broke
To: Nathan
Subj: re; he y
shit Im ina meetin. u broke up??
To: Kelly
Subj: re; re; he y
No broke as in hes BROKEN and they dont know if theyre gonna fix him.
To: Nathan
Subj: re; re; re; he y
well fuck. u want me to call up some idiot american scientists n help em put ur bf back 2gethr?
Nathan hesitates on that reply because it might be the booze making up for half his blood at this point, but it doesn’t sound like the worse idea in the world. If anybody could fix him, it’d be his own personal rocket scientist and her think tank of nerds.
Instead, he drafts a new message.
To: Robo-hermano
Subj: fuck ur fukc
Victors dying an yure an asshole
It’s weird, you’d think the combination of liquor and over the counter drugs and residual tranquilizer drugs would be the kicker, but it’s just not as potent as before.
Nathan pulls a chair into the viewing room, like he can understand any of the technobabble Hank’s mumbling, the weird chorus of self-congratulatory bullshit meets manic breakdown that is Pym’s own monologue. He props his feet on another chair and watches the doctor put together Victor’s face, recreate fingerprints, fill him with organs that can pump blood in a body that won’t take back a human consciousness. In Nathan’s defense he only pukes once, and that’s largely because he knocked back the whiskey and Zzquil in one half hour.
Around morning, the chest cavity is closed and the brother shows up to deliver his response in person.
“Visiting hours are over,” Hank smiles, despite being elbows deep in blood like some kind of Frankenstein or the monster or whatever the reference was, Nathan was never bothered to read assigned curriculum. “But I can make an exception for family.” Vision doesn’t share his grin.
"I received a very disturbing text message."
"You get text messages in the sun?" Hank gapes, leaning away from the sink. "Where'd you get a phone that does that? The interface on mine doesn't even let me improve its autocorrect functions-- Oh." He turns to face the crumpled up Irishman across from them. The Vision turns from Nathan, approaching Victor’s framework.
“Is this a result of the Sentinel attack on Ellis Island?” he inquires. “You seem to have made quick work on the structural damage he sustained.” Even if he did the bare minimum, and it was mostly his fault Vic is in this mess, Hank still looks pleased as fuck to have his own work complimented.
“Just enough that he won’t bleed out every time I try and reboot him,” Pym does admit, shaking his hands dry. “The rebooting is sorta the tricky part.” He sighs. “Any insight you wanna share?”
“None at this moment. I'll do a full assessment later.” Vision replies, tone crisp and empty, the way Victor sounds halfway through a reboot. He turns to face Nathan. “You were misinformed, Young. He’s not dying. Victor has simply been removed from the physical plane of existence.”
“Wow," he sighs. "If that’s your idea of makin me feel better, I’m gonna grab a bit more booze before the wake, if you don’t mind,” Nathan groans, hands through his hair, casting a glower to Pym. “You designed a real smooth talker here. How’s that any different from dying?” The Vision weighs this question carefully, scanning through a variety of conditions he can liken to why Victor won’t simply wake up in a (mostly) repaired body.
“I imagine it’s better explained by referring to it as a coma.” And Nathan’s heart sinks because that’s a word he fucking understands, one that comes up in movies where guys never wake up, in episodes of soap operas where people move on because the guy will wake up with amnesia or some bullshit. It makes more sense than any of the jargon Pym’s been spouting, coated with so much technological jargon that Nathan’s convinced himself it wasn’t that serious, and that despite everything Hank’s said, once he’s put together and healed he’d have Victor back.
“It’s a defense mechanism for an android,” he explains, “The damage to his brain caused the program to retreat to protect itself. But he is alive somewhere. Just not here.”
“So make him be here,” Nathan hisses. That’s beyond my control. “Oh yeah? And how’s that work out? You're a robot too."
"A.I," Vision corrects him.
"Victor is actually a cyborg," Hank supplies.
"Whatever! You guys can combine your super robot smarts and fix it, okay?"
“I don’t think it works like that,” Hank says, exasperated. “Look, we don’t deal with this kind of thing every day. We’re doing the best we can.”
“No, you’re not. You’re wasting time you could spend fixing him, putting him back.” Nathan’s used that excuse countless times already, but it’s not like he can admit the truth, that it’s hard to sit in the same space people who can’t fix this, who are as useless as he is, who should’ve dove in the way of those collapsing beams.
Vision doesn’t have pupils or anything close to human eyes, but he catches Nathan’s desperate looks quicker than Hank can. He crosses to stand- or hover? guy's fucking fast- in front of Nathan, between himself and the body. Not a body, it's Victor and he's supposed to be in there, he'd be in there if Pym was a better scientist and you weren't a shite boyfriend.
Nathan pries his gaze away from his.
“I’ve been dismantled similarly before, and the time that is spent outside of a physical body is irrelevant. It will feel the same regardless.” And weirdly somehow, maybe from having an alternate universe wife and family, of being surrounded by humans so humane they’re super, Vision is the one to think to say, “He’s not in any pain, Nathan.”
“You don’t know that,” Nathan snarls, except Vision totally does, if anyone would it’s him. Sadly, that’s the extent of the A.I’s empathy processes, and he goes back to stand still in the corner of the room while Nathan covers his face with his arm and everyone pretends not to notice.
“Hey,” Nathan blinks through the dried blood on his eyelashes at Victor, tucked under his arm. He gingerly raises his head; they’re back in the apartment, curled up around each other on the couch. Somebody had to carry him back home, he wonders if Victor does it himself or they found some poor intern with insane upper body strength.
“Don’t tell me you were spooning with a corpse,” he chides, setting his head back down.
“Nah,” Victor murmurs, tucking his face against Nathan’s neck. “I made sure you had a pulse first.”
“Don’t, there’s still blood on me,” he argues, but makes no effort to move himself or Victor away from him.
“Mm,” he says, hands at Nathan’s waist. “Don’t know how to tell you this, but there’s blood everywhere, we’re going to need a new couch.” When Nathan sputters in surprise, realizing the copper smell isn’t just blood trapped in his airways but soaked through cushions. Victor presses his lips over his, a new method to shut Nathan up for a few moments at least.
“You’re a bit of a freak, yeah?” Nathan laughs at how much that seems to offend the guy cuddling a half-dead body on a blood drenched loveseat. “You gonna make a habit of curling up with me every time I get killed? Because I could get used to that.” Victor shrugs, leaning over him to push back Nathan’s hair from his eyes. Nathan watches him, not a stranger to having Victor looking after him when he wakes up, but the kissing bit is still relatively new at that point.
“I didn’t like seeing you just lying there,” he admits at last, voice quiet under the fans, the oppressive New York summer heat.
“So you wanna crawl into the grave with me,” Nathan snickers, because the emotional honesty just got ratcheted up to levels he’s not comfortable around without some black humor. “I didn't know we’d got that serious.” Victor rolls his eyes, but settles back down against Nathan’s chest, still sore from its earlier collapse. “You-”
“Shut up,” Victor sighs, eyes closed, ear over his heart, and kissing or not, it shuts Nathan up for the rest of the night.
“Before you get upset about my not working or whatever,” Hank says and Nathan hears it before his eyes have adjusted to the hospital lighting, or lack thereof. The room is lit only by the distant glare from behind the glass. “The Vision’s with him right now, he's got a theory. We are working on it.” Nathan offers him a surly look in response, or at least he hopes it’s surly. There’s enough in him to down a horse, he’s not entirely sure his face muscles are even working at this stage.
Hank holds out a snack pack, “Pudding cup?” Nathan barely has a chance to refuse it before the other man’s wolfing it down his fat face.
“You wanna know when I first met you?” he asks, mouth full of chocolate.
Nathan glares out of the corner of his eye, “‘the hell would I want to know that? You met me the same fuckin time I met you. I was there, I remember it.”
“No,” Hank says and points at Nathan with his spoon. “I met you six months before Victor went to Ireland.” How the hell would that even work, you spying on me? No, Pym shrugs, “Victor told me all about you.”
Nathan regards this revelation suspiciously, because Hank’s on an upswing and Vision is just over his shoulder, working by his own light, hands over Victor’s empty face. Pym rolls his shoulders an continues,
“We were working on a project and it was long hours and we started talking about that island. The whole concept of it is fascinating, when you imagine the amount of cognitive work it must’ve went into them to create a space out of nothing and then produce entities across realities without--” Nathan groans loudly, international code for speed it the fuck along. Nery wordiness clearly runs in their fucking family. “Okay. But I wanted to talk about that with him, the paradoxes it created, the twists on existing realities, that kind thing. Except all Vic wanted to talk about was his best friend Nathan.”
Nathan’s not entirely sure Vision isn’t listening as well at this point.
“Sure, he told me about the aliens and the girlfriends. But long before he even knew you were a part of this universe, all he wanted to talk about was you.” Pym isn't chewing through this part of the story, frozen still, absent of his usual fidgetting, calm and serious. "He missed you a lot."
They’re quiet for a while.
“It was pretty annoying, actually,” Hank shrugs, twisting in his seat again, taking another bite. “But then I met you- actually you- and I could see why.”
“Because I’m irresistible?” Nathan offers helpfully, clearing his throat.
“Because you take up his whole world,” he corrects, leaning forward in his chair. “So I get why this is hard, because if he’s dumb enough to feel that way about you, you sure as hell have to feel twice that way about him.”
Nathan wonders if Victor can hear them where he’s at, or maybe he’s somewhere far away and cold. He’s not sure which he likes less; Victor being someplace alone, or him lingering around the room, unseen, like a ghost that’s out of Nathan’s reach.
Hank speaks up, possibly to cover the ragged inhale of Nathan’s breath, his face pointed to the ceiling.
“Anyway,” Pym starts, “If we bring him back, you gotta make him come by on Fathers’ Day. I know he sent a card once and thought it was weird, but it wouldn’t kill him to meet me and Jocasta for dinner.” Hank twists his face into a sympathetic gesture through the glass, dropping his volume to mutter, "Vision isn't all that touchy feely, so.."
"Come to your place for dinner?" Nathan forces a smirk, “Meet you and sexy-step-mom-bot? Sure. But you’re technically a grandpa--”
“And I should be getting back to help Vision,” Hank interjects, pushing himself up from his seat. He pauses at the doorway before turning back to regard Nathan carefully, “Whatever happens, Nathan,” he says softly. “You have a place here.”
“You really think that’s what I’m freaked out about?” Nathan snaps, adjusting the blankets over his legs- who the hell brought a blanket? “Not fitting in with you superfreaks if you let my boyfriend stay on lockdown?”
“No,” and he’s more resigned than he was embarrassed, still, like the heavier emotions ground him steady. “I just know what other people do when the love of your life dies.”
It’s like Victor is in the room with them, simultaneously cringing at the emotional honesty and painful revelation a collection of overpowered heroes might not be the best company for fresh grief.
“I’ll take another knock out shot if you don’t fucking mind,” Nathan grumbles eventually, but he’s not punching or puking, so he’s to stare at the ceiling, kick around over the blankets somebody brought for him under exhaustion takes him naturally.
He takes a deep breath, hands crossed behind his back.
“I’m here to talk to you about the Aveng-”
“I’m in,” Nathan hopes nobody else heard the crack in his voice, just interrupting the kid was embarrassing enough.
“Oh come on!” Victor cries, rocking back on his heels. “There’s a whole speech,” he pleads, “About the Avenger Initiative and I have to tell you about our benefits and hazard pay and-”
“Answer’s still yes, mate,” Nathan smirks, stuffing his book into his bag and calling over his shoulder to his cousin don’t fucking wait up, he’s off to America! “You think I’m gonna turn down a chance to be an honest to god superhero after all this?”
“I remember a guy who wasn’t sold on the superhero thing a while back,” he laughs weakly.
Nathan stops in the middle of his closing shop to fix Victor with a skeptical look across the counter. “Did you want me to say no?”
“No,” Victor says and he’s grabbing him by his shoulders again, and this is great, really, really great, but he’s legally obligated to say this part of the speech except he’ll rush it, no there’s not a quiz, but you gotta know about life insurance policies and it’s a shit thing to think about now, Nathan realizes. What kind of psycho part of his brain picks this memory, the way Victor’s hands felt against him, the wide eyed excitement like he’s the one who just signed on to be a superhero, not just some twat he stumbled into being mates with on an island that doesn’t even exist anymore. Victor’s trying to talk about salaries in between his laughter-guey let me finish- and the building comes down on them, with Victor looking like a proper superhero for all of a few seconds before he’s crushed.
There’s a dull buzzing, probably from the S.H.I.E.L.D jets overhead.
“You guys don’t have any kind of drug policies, do you?” Nathan asks, arm slung around Victor’s shoulder. The cyborg’s cringe is answer enough, “All right, then we will have a hell of a night before you haul me to America.” Victor laughs because no way, he’s not gonna get kicked out of the Avengers for pot and who said anything about pot? The weird buzzing is getting louder and Victor shakes apart into a thousand pieces. He sinks deep into the ground and every piece Nathan tries to fetch, arms clawing through the mud to pull him out in time, comes out drenched in entrails.
He wakes from the nightmare too slowly, long enough Nathan’s hands still feel sticky with blood. Probably shouldn’t be mixing that shit with alcohol, he groans. The buzzing starts up again- not helicarriers after all. Even if it was a dream, he wipes his hands on the blanket before he picks up his phone.
To: Nathan Young
subj: Update
You’re welcome! ;D
- Your Future Father-in-Law
The surgical table is empty and Nathan starts to think he drastically misunderstood the context of the text before he remembers his own suggestion against waking up on a slab.
In the end it's too simple of a solution for how long it took two masterminds to reach it. Re-enable the feedback from Ultron's programming between Vision and Victor and have the two in contact with each other. The self-repair starts up automatically, which tears back the program of consciousness.exe from whatever cyber limbo it was in. It all seems like a hell of a loophole for Ultron to have missed.
"Then again, the whole spirituality and ultimate logic thing is a no-brainer too," Tony says, slapping a hand on Nathan's shoulder. "See, it all worked out."
"No help from you!" Nathan snaps while Iron Man argues he brought Hank some donuts yesterday, that was helping.
Vision fucks off back to the sun, since it’s safer they keep their brotherly distance with the feedback between them triggered up. Hank says he’ll make adjustments in a week or so, when Victor is back on his feet and the self-repair isn’t likely to be interrupted, so the feedback won’t be a problem. Vision says there’s no hurry, as he hardly has a relationship with Victor as it stands now, there is no need to inconvenience yourself repairing something that doesn’t exist.
Nathan thinks about Jamie standing outside the community center, the fresh grave plot.
“Or maybe you can try and make more of a fuckin effort as a big brother,” he challenges. The Vision pauses thoughtfully, or what might look thoughtful for an emotionally stunted robot.
“I will try,” he concedes, and robots probably can’t lie, so Nathan counts that as a win.
"So you were really worried," Victor murmurs, voice half lost against the hospital pillow. He’s physically put together, and the pink coloring of the tissue on his face is only temporary, which Nathan says is a right shame, because his pretty boy looks could use some scars. His fingers feel like bones wound around Nathan’s knuckles, weak enough that every breath, assisted by a series of tubes and unpronounceable machinery, rattles through Vic’s every movement. He still looks a little like he'll break apart if he moves too fast, and Nathan is being very careful, very quiet, like the wrong thing will set them all back a couple days’ worth of science.
"What do you want me to say?" he grumbles back. "That I spent the time with the Stark pinup girls while your shite brother and grandpa dicked around?"
"No," Victor rasps and deep down Nathan knows Victor means it more than either of them wants to admit. Even deeper down, Nathan knows that's not even a remote possibility at this point.
"How long am I gonna be holding your hand? Trying to plan my evening, that Stark girls thing sounds pretty good right about now." And don’t laugh, he orders, but he’s just gifted with hilarity, it seems, and Victor’s snickering through a death rattle, holding on tight.
if i ever get over ;D it'll be the day that i die
oh man i hope you are ready for a REALLY incoherent painkiller-fueled novel tomorrow dear fucking god i am in love
no subject
no subject
THATS THE WEIRD PART NOT THE CUDDLING
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
UGH
UGHHHHHHHHHHH
ugh you know how much i love victor always being there when he wakes up bc i put it in the bad end but god. WHAT'S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN! hahahahaha. haha. ha. :( you'll see buddy, you'll see ALSO STILL NOT OVER "THERE'S A LOT OF HIM OUT HERE," HAVEN'T BEEN OVER THAT SINCE I SAW IT IN A WIP POST!! clint you are the WORST TEAMMATE. also sob i love tony knocking him down and pulling him back up again to get him to chill the fuck out. hank why do you think he solves his negative emotions with punches? HE LEARNED FROM HIS BOSS
times i wanted to puke #1: rag doll filled with jam. THANKS FOR THAT. ugh focusing on his own injuries instead because that's normal, that's something he knows how to process. TIMES I WANTED TO PUKE #2: BURST BALLOON rlkdsj worst worst worst worst WORRRRST. god all of hank's twitchy bullshit, i love it so much. the only hank pym i love is the hank pym jackie writes because he's henk pem. FKDJS ALSO STARING HANK DOWN WHILE HE UNDRESSES it's pitch perfect nathan and i fucking love it. fuck the first time i read this i made the saddest stepped on dog noise at victor sending a bunch of his shirts to the hospital for backup and GOOD NEWS, EVERY TIME I REREAD IT I MAKE THE SAME NOISE. it's just so sweet and so sad :(( why you do this to me
flsdkjflsdkjflsdkjf ISN'T HE PROGRAMMED TO HATEFUCK YOU? selective listening: the nathan young story. god hank being all flinchy and careful and trying to get nathan out of his personal space I LOVE IT OKAY. YOU KNOW I LOVE IT. I WANT THEM TO TORMENT EACH OTHER SO MUCH NOW ugh and not feeling anything but grossed out about victor getting crushed until now, that part is so perfectly nathan too FUCK IT LIKE I'VE SAID BEFORE EVERYTHING YOU WRITE IS SPOT ON NATHAN, I QUIT, I RETIRE FOREVER, YOU WRITE HIM PERFECTLY FUCK YOOOU
ugh but his sudden complete and total fear and MISSILE PLUS FACE EQUALS SELF-FIX! but no it's not that simple and oh god :(( UGH IT'S TOO SAD. FREAKING OUT AND INTERNALLY BEING LIKE QUIT FREAKING OUT, YOU ARE JUST ASKING FOR A GHOST MAELSTROM HERE. lkjflsdkjf also despite how fucking sad i was at this part i found myself laughing like an idiot at "THEN GET HIM IN HERE" yeah great plan nathan, bring in killer dad-bot, that'll fix everything. flksdjf fuck you for making me laugh and cry like that okay. and nathan pushing and pushing and HEY COOL PUKE TIME #3 BLOATED BAG OF SOUP
AND THEN
"WHICH PART DO YOU WANT TO SEE"
MY BIGGEST FUCKING HISS
PUNCH HIM
PUNCH HIS LIGHTS OUT
TOTALLY WORTH IT!!!!!!!!!!
oh my god i want to drown in this entire flashback scene, nathan being a mess of tension and victor having rehearsed his end of this conversation the whole time (while still being great at games because fuck robots) UGH. UGHHHHHHHHHH "THE HELL IS ALL THIS WE?" shit he'll feel really bad about saying one day when kissing is involved. HAHA OH MY GOD AND OBVIOUSLY ULTRON DESIGNED HIM TO BE THE PERFECT GUILT-BOT BECAUSE OTHERWISE YOU'D BE A COMPLETE GAYMO FOR NOTICING ALL THIS SHIT HAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA FUCK YOU JACKIE :(((((( "I'M RESPONSIBLE FOR YOU." WHY. WHY. WHY. WHY. POR QUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
flskdj maybe holding his hand last time he regenerated ROBOCOP STOP DOING WEIRD STUFF WITH HIS DEAD BODY jk don't stop i fucking live for it. flksdj ugh "does that mean i'm responsible for you" WHAT AN ASS WHAT AN ASS WHAT AN ASS I LOVE IT SO MUCH baby no you can't take care of yourself. noooooooooo way.
sldkjf WHAT EMOTION WAS YOU PUNCHING ME IN THE FACE? shut up pym. god. oh my god i wanted to PUKE UNTIL I CRIED at the description of victor on the slab, THANKS A LOT FOR THAT. flksdj DEATH LOCKET!! fucking emotional whiplash jackie one minute i'm making whiny dog noises over victor's sunken face and the next i'm screeching DEATH LOCKET BABY HIIIIIII!! flksjdf you're complaining about the PRESENTATION? uh YES? :(((((((( god bless nathan's weird shitty heart and the things he thinks of ok. IT MAKES ME SO HAPPY WHEN YOU WRITE STUFF LIKE THAT UGH he is so important to me and you do him so well and always have and i hate you for it but in the way where i don't at all. jesus christ "he's not in there" YEAH THAT'LL GET YOU ANOTHER PUNCH IN THE FACE man hank should really feel honoured, he hasn't tried to punch an old guy this much since his dad. oh my god do not make that weird
GOD HE DRAGS ALL THE BOOZE BACK UP TO THE OPERATING ROOM AND DRINKS RIGHT IN FRONT OF HANK SDKLJFLSDKJ NATHAN YOUNG. NATHAN FUKING YOUNG LADIES AND GENTS. also oh my GOD KELLY!!! lfksdjlfkjsd scream i just imagined kelly having to explain it to simon. like yeah mate i'm not gonna be around for a while. goin to america. why? idk i guess cos i have to rebuild victor or something. SIMON'S BONER GREW THREE TIMES THAT DAY but thank god she didn't have to. still kelly :((( best chavvy friend. FLKJSD AND INSTEAD HE GIVES THE VISION SHIT!!! doing really great nathan, you're a winner
HANK TALKING TO HIMSELF THROUGH ALL HIS MANIA LIKE A CRAZY MOTHERFUCKER flksdj truly there is no better introduction to the robo-family, jesus christ. GOD REBUILDING VICTOR IS SO GROSS SO GROSS soooooo grosssssss D: oh my god i cannot get enough of vision and nathan though. NOTHING TO MAKE HIM APPRECIATE JUST HOW NON-ROBOTIC VICTOR ACTUALLY IS LIKE HAVING TO DEAL WITH AN HONEST TO GOD ANDROID!! fkljsdf he knows what coma means :(( fucking kill me. ugh but vision being the one to reassure him that he isn't in pain HAHAHAHA KILL ME. AT LEAST HE CAN DO ONE NICE EMPATHETIC THING BEFORE HE GOES BACK TO BEING ROBO-COLD ugh ugh ugh vision. VISION :((
HEY HAVE I ALREADY SCREAMED AT YOU ENOUGH ABOUT GODDAMN BLOODY COUCH CUDDLING? YES? TOO BAD!!!!! OH MY GOD oh my god these unbelievable losers in love please kill me flkshdflksdjf screaming. just. screaming. it's weird victor it'll always be weird no amount of explaining will make it not weird LUCKILY NATHAN IS BROKEN TO BEGIN WITH SO IT'S OK!! lkdjfsd i just can't get over it. you know they wake up, nathan still covered in blood, couch soaked through with blood, victor bloody by proxy, and nathan's just like "we are total fucking garbage." but they're happy :(( WHAT A FUN MEMORY TO HAVE AT THIS POINT sdlkfjsdlkj crawl into the grave with me. god nathan you are a moment-killer. learn to say yes to a good thing.
ugh surprising absolutely nobody the pudding cup scene is my favorite. I MEAN PARTIALLY BECAUSE IMAGINING ALAN TUDYK SHOVING CHOCO PUDDING INTO HIS FAT FACE IS ENOUGH TO LIGHT UP MY DARKEST GIGANTIC NEEDLE-FILLED HOURS but also because oh my god. ohhhhh my god hank and victor working on a project together and hank wanting to talk about all the intricacies of new moore and the metaphysical sciencey shit and victor just wanted to talk about his best friend. HA. HAHAHAH. HAHAHAHAHHAHA ;A; I'M NOT CRYING YOU'RE CRYING god you told me about that at fanime but i was still so unprepared to actually read it. victor you stupid head over heels idiot flkjds scream. ALSO TRYING TO IMAGINE WHAT TALKING ABOUT NATHAN TO A THIRD PARTY WHO HAS NEVER MET HIM EVEN SOUNDS LIKE. SPOILERS: IT PROBABLY ALL SOUNDS PRETTY DANG BAD. he's a self-sacrificing asshole with a mild substance problem and practically no friends outside of victor. hank's like ah... charming. lsfdjk IT WAS PRETTY ANNOYING ACTUALLY!! thanks abuelo-in-law. flksdj but fucking. high pitched sounds only dogs can hear "you sure as hell have to feel twice that way about him" THIS JUST MAKES EVERYTHING WITH HANK IN THE BAD END SO MUCH WORSE GOD HANK IS THE WORST LFKJSDLFKJ GODDDDDDDD!! jesus christ a ghost just out of his reach. stop. stop. stop stop stop stopsflkdjsfk thank god he's in the diamond with his cute little friend with the cute little hat and not around to hear any of this because jesus christ. COME AROUND FOR FATHER'S DAY!!! puke. except they totally do. please write it. MORE ROBO-FAMILY ALWAYS
also my heart weirdly broke at who brought in a blanket? these people are trying their best to be good to you nathan stop being such a dick oh wait that's the only way you know how to be
I'M HERE TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT THE AVENGERS INITIATIVE!!!!!!! NOPE SORRY ROBOCOP YOU DON'T GET TO MAKE YOUR COOL SPEECH PEACE OUT IRELAND LET'S GO LET'S GO LET'S GO FIVE MINUTES AGO LET'S GO YESTERDAY. ugh ugh UGH all his excitement and trying to explain avengers minutiae VICTORRRR :(((((( MY CYBORG PRINCE!!! sflkjds i screamed out loud at WE'RE GONNA HAVE A HELL OF A NIGHT because you know it just ended up just being them laying on the floor of victor's hotel room drinking guinness and swapping stories or something equally lame because nathan loves getting fucked up but he loves his best friend more. UGH BUT WHAT A FUCKED UP DREAM sob nathan :(( baby. babyyyyy
NEVER OVER ;D NEVER OVER ;D NEVER EVER EVER OVER ;D dlrkjsdflkjsd your future father-in-law. how many times do you think hank calls himself that at the wedding. let's make a drinking game out of it!!
NO NEED TO REPAIR SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T EXIST I FUCKING YELPED VISION YOU SHITHEAD BE A BETTER BIG BROTHER!! oh my god. ohhhhhhhh my god. vision you shithead. I MEAN IT'S TRUE but god. be better. flsdkj i literally have no words for that part i just have an offended little gasp and repeatedly whispering NO YOU BE BETTER
TINY FRAGILE BROKEN VICTOR BLOO BLOO BLOO :(((((((( WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY ugh i love that this ties back into the first ever robohomos thing you wrote i love it i love it I LOVE IT. drklsjdf UGH it's not even a remote possibility. YEAH YOU'RE BOTH PRETTY FAR FUCKING GONE fldksjfds sob. AND HE CAN STILL MAKE HIM LAUGH i can't. it's too sad and too sweet and THANK GOD EVERYTHING IS OKAY BUT OH MY GOD IT WAS PAINFUL
PAINFUL IN THE WAY THAT I LOVE
ugh you are the best never stop writing or i'll cut arms off groot-style which is a weird way of saying THANK YOU SO MUCH ;A; THIS HELPED MY RIDICULOUS HEAD WEEKEND IMMEASURABLY
no subject
no subject
no subject
i thought long and hard about this throughout work
the answer is when tony dropped off the donuts he flung his jacket into the far corner and it landed on nathan
and only when we he went to pick it up on his way out did he go god dammit hank there's a person in here
cover that thing up