Chapter Text
Johnny really hated his body sometimes. Not just because sometimes it caught fire and he burnt a future friend’s rug.
But because it didn’t seem to get the messages from his brain that he should’ve had one X and one Y chromosome.
It was especially apparent whenever he woke up and felt that familiar, dreaded, sloshing feeling in his underwear that made his stomach sink down into the blankets, which certainly had blood on them.
Shit.
He stood up slowly, trying to sneak off to the bathroom without raising suspicions from his roommate, Bob Reynolds. But luckily he slept like a rock.
But still the younger casted a glance towards his roommate. His chest seemed to be rising and falling rhythmically enough that the awake one felt comfortable to leave.
As Johnny walked into the bathroom, he snapped on the light which felt like it burnt his eye sockets. He looked down. Blood. Not the kind of blood he could’ve blamed on sitting on something. No. It was dark and most definitely from his body doing an impromptu cleanse.
“…well that’s great.” Johnny said sarcastically to himself.
He didn’t know where they kept the period supplies. Hell he didn’t know if they had any. He knew Yelena didn’t have any, but he didn’t know about Ava Starr.
He peeked under the sink and found a box of tampons. Johnny didn’t know if they were even the right size for him, but he could worry about that whenever his vision finally returned properly and he didn’t have to keep blinking through watery eyes from the bathroom lights.
He didn’t even know who bought them. Based off the fact that none of the Avengers themselves had periods it was probably bought for someone visiting, who wasn’t thinking about Natasha not having monthlies, or it had maybe been gotten for Pepper Potts. At one point she lived here, or at least Johnny thought so. He didn’t know much about her besides she married Tony Stark and had some kid that’s supposedly smarter than her dad.
After Johnny got the damn tampon in, he glared down at the red smeared inside the underwear he now had to somehow dispose of. He grabbed the nearby trash can and threw it into the gleaming silver thing. He didn’t care much if it smeared or if somehow it ended up getting screwed up, he just needed his head cleared and his body righted.
“Okay…” Johnny glared down at his hands. “What do I do now?” He sighed, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes.
The answer ended up being going and laying in a miserable pile on his bed until even Bob was up. But really Johnny didn’t sleep much, he could hear distinctly the sounds of Bucky waking up, brushing his teeth, showering in that fast time that the military had trained into him and HYDRA reinforced.
He heard Alexei get up and begin giving the Wakanda molded man a hard time about leaving the toothpaste cap off…
But then Bob walked back into the room after taking one of his 30 minute long showers he was infamous for. He walked over to Johnny and his face was clearly uncomfortable.
“…are you okay?” Bob mumbled to the man who was currently buried deep inside a pile of fleece blankets and a hot pack that long since lost its warmth.
“Uh…yeah why?” The astronaut responded as he looked upwards at his roommate.
“It’s just…I saw a pair of your underwear in the trash can and…it's all bloody.”
Shit.
Shit.
Shit
SHIT
Johnny felt like going back out into space rather than having to continue this conversation. He could feel his skin heating up in that way it had before he caught fire every time.
“Oh yeah—“
“Did you get like…ass stabbed?”
“Yeah. Totally.” Johnny replied, figuring it was easier than explaining right now what was going on.
“Oh…do you need help, John?”
“Nope I’m fine, Bobby.”
He could say it, he knew that. It’s not like he was a monster. But the damn words couldn’t come out of his vocal cords.
“Okay…uh lemme know if you need anything?” Bob walked out after saying that, and walked straight into Ava.
“Okay, who’s secretly a trans man? I support of course but I got scared by the blood underwear.” The teen asked the sentry experiment survivor.
“It’s not me.” Bob replied, shrugging his shoulders.
“Figures.” She sighed, biting the pad of her thumb.
“What’re we conversing about?” Alexei asked as he leaned forward, directly into their talking bubble.
“We found bloody underwear in one of the trash can.” Bob responded as he leaned back against the wall.
“I asked Johnny and he said he got stabbed in the butt.”
“Ohh Bob you sweet summer child, Johnny didn’t get stabbed in the butt.”
“Then why is he bleeding?”
“Think hard about it.”
“Oh! He’s t-r-a-n-s?”
“Yup.” She looked over towards the door of the room Susan Storm had been using.
“We could ask Susan—“ right then, the woman they were talking about walked out of the door.
“What’re you guys talking about?” She asked, her eyes scanning them over.
“Uhh…weird question? Is Johnny, trans?” Ava asked, her face not judgement, just relaxed.
The other woman’s eyes raised higher onto her forehead.
“He is. Why?” She asked, her voice tight as if she expected them to be mad, but nobody seemed to give a shit.
“There's just bloody underwear that doesn’t belong to the one person in the Thunderbolts who has periods.” Ava replied, shrugging her shoulders before walking off.
“Oh…so he didn’t get stabbed?”
“No promises he didn’t get stabbed, but still.” Susan replied as she casted her eyes back towards the door, which hid the younger from view.
“So that’s why his voice cracks. Okay.” Bob shrugged, genuinely he didn’t give much of a shit over what gender anybody was. And if Johnny felt more comfortable as a boy, that was just fine by him.
A few minutes later the man himself stumbled out, adjusting his stance at least a dozen times before finally deciding on leaning against the wall.
“Wanna like…watch something together?” Bob offered the tired looking human torch.
“Sure,” the other replied, pushing off where he’d been leaning to stumble towards the couch.
They laid on opposite sides of the couch, watching something absolutely mindless. Neither one of them could really tell you anything besides all the budget went to special effects rather than the actors based on how none of them had been relevant in Johnny’s lifetime.
“Do you ever just feel like you don’t wanna be here anymore but you don’t wanna kill yourself because then you’ll become “poor Johnny who couldn’t handle the world he was born into” so you just become complicit in everything happening to you, hoping that enough wrong decisions lead to an early grave?” The squeaky voiced man asked, his hands hiding his face, which was flushed from an annoying heat flash.
“Yeah. Described me before the whole…Sentry project thing.” Bob replied, pulling on his shirt’s hem.
“That’s just life isn’t it? Either watching your body wither away or making willing choices to just end it but you know too many people would cry at your funeral?” Johnny’s voice was trembling as if he was on the verge of tears.
“That’s one way to look at it. These guys—The Thunderbolts, you, your sister—you’ve shown me that there could be more than just waiting for death. I mean we’ve got Bucky Barnes here. And Bucky cheated death how many times?”
“Less times than Loki.” The metal armed war vet replied, unloading the dishwasher.
Everything seemed to suck a little less surrounded by these six people who didn’t seem scared of Johnny. Because they’re all future comedians—based off how much they joke about their own traumas—and because almost everyone else had a body count, and definitely not talking about sex wise.
Maybe even if life wasn’t perfect. Johnny still couldn’t stare at his torso without feeling hate boil behind his throat. Bob still wasn’t sure what everyone seemed to see in him.
But they weren’t alone anymore in this pool of horrible memories they had once spent their lives in, which was better than sitting around in painful memories all alone.