Chapter Text
John doesn’t know how he got there.
It took him a good five minutes alone to realize he’s sat at the kitchen counter. He achieved that by opening his eyes by fractional increments until the light filtering through his eyelids got to be unbearable and he had to close them again.
He couldn’t tell the floor though, moving his head to check if there are magnets on the fridge feels too much like tempting fate.
He hasn’t been hungover in years, but even so he doesn’t remember it ever feeling like this. His brain feels a couple sizes too big for his skull and each beat of his heart pulses behind his eyes which threaten to pop out of their sockets as the pressure mounts.
He should probably drink some water, isn’t dehydration one of the main causes of hangovers? He’s in the kitchen already—is that why he’s in the kitchen? He remembers drinking half a glass—was it a glass?—of Alexei’s moonshine while he talked about someone named Melina? Malena? Milena? Some M-name woman and then some singing in Russian and then nothing. Complete and total black out until he opened his eyes ten minutes ago or so.
He rolls his head so he’s now lying with his right cheek on the counter to get a view of the time on the oven clock. It reads 8:26, the last time he blinked it was 7:01. Is that why his eyes feel so dry?
He should drink.
Water.
He should drink water.
With superhuman effort—though he supposes anything he does can be considered superhuman what with being a super soldier and all—he lifts his head off the counter enough that he can turn it and prop it up by leaning forward on his chin so that now he’s got use of both eyes to survey the room.
He notices two things.
One, he’s definitely on the 84th floor, he can see the magnets on the fridge and Bob and Ava’s mugs set out to dry next to the sink.
Two, he’s sitting about midway on the wrong side of the kitchen island: he’s not even six feet away from the sink faucet and its hydration properties but it might as well be on the other side of Manhattan.
How did he even get there? It seems unlikely that Alexei managed to carry him up from whatever floor they were on, the way he kept knocking back beakers. Then again, it seems even less likely that John dragged himself there under his own power.
"Rough night?" Ava says into his left ear right as she appears where nothing but thin air was there before.
John startles so bad that he tumbles off the stool. He throws his arms out in a desperate attempt at keeping himself upright but he only succeeds in slamming his right elbow into the edge of the counter. His left arm moves in a wider arc, colliding with Ava who yelps and phases out, thus depriving him of any support he might have gained from grabbing onto her. With John’s reflexes shot and nothing to break his fall, the impact with the floor is painful and knocks the wind out of him. He just lies there, dazed, feeling like a pile of jumbled and disjointed limbs and body parts that someone swept aside.
"What the hell, Walker?"
"’M okay," he mumbles. His tongue feels like a dried up slug in its death throes as it struggles to form words, so he raises his right hand and curls his thumb and forefinger in an O.K. sign.
"I can see that," her voice is much closer now and so is her face. John goes cross-eyed trying to get it into focus. She grimaces and lets out a disgusted sound. "Jesus, you smell. Did you fall in a still?" Her fingers curl around John’s upper arms and she helps him up to a sitting position.
The room spins so he squeezes his eyes shut and bends over with his head between his knees, taking deep breaths in an out to stave off the nausea. "Funny story," he chokes out between one gasp and the next.
"I thought super soldiers didn’t get drunk."
She pulls on his arms but his knees refuse to cooperate, so he waves her away and slumps against the side of the kitchen island, rolling his head so he can squint up at her. "So did I."
She shakes her head and walks away, leaving his sight, so he closes his eyes against the blinding light of the morning that’s streaming in from the floor to ceiling windows directly into his eyes like photon knives to the brain. He follows her progress by the noises she makes, bare feet on the ceramic tiles, a cabinet opening, the clinking of mugs and glasses, the cabinet closing, the sound of water, and then steps coming closer until she’s standing in front of John again.
Something small rattling around in a plastic bottle or a container.
"Here."
He opens his eyes to find Ava crouching in front of him, a tall glass of water in her right hand and a handful of pills in her left. He wraps his hands around the glass and drinks from it like a man dying of thirst, draining the glass in a few gulps. It feels incredible flooding his parched mouth and going down his raspy throat. It might be the best tasting thing John’s ever had.
Ava shoots him a bemused look when he hands the empty glass back to her, but doesn’t say anything as she stands up and goes to fill it again. When he makes another attempt to grab the newly filled glass however she phases out so his hand goes through her.
"Ah-ah!" She clicks her tongue. "Pills first," she beckons his hand forward and then upturns her palm so that six white pills drop from her hand to his. "Triple the normal dose, hopefully that’s enough." It probably won’t be, they dosed him up with four times the recommended fentanyl dosage when he got his arm broken and even that had faded before they were halfway through setting the bones. Still better than nothing, though.
She hands over the glass and he dutifully swallows each pill followed by a sip of water, before draining the whole glass again.
She disappears around the kitchen island again and even though John feels moderately more like a person now, he remains sitting on the floor, stretching out his legs so the bare overheated skin of his legs can soak up some of the coolness from the tiles. She’s right that he stinks, some of it is stale sweat but his shirt smells of alcohol too, so he probably spilled some on himself the previous night. He doesn’t even want to think about the state of his breath. He should probably take a shower, but at the moment even the task of dragging himself back up to the stool feels insurmountable.
There’s more noises of Ava puttering around the kitchen, plates and cutlery and then the microwave being turned on, the coffee machine heating up. Pretty soon the smell of coffee brewing reaches his nose as well as that of—some kind of tomato-based sauce? But no, it smells almost sweet—ketchup? At the smell of food, his stomach wakes up and growls despite the fact that it still feels pretty tender. How can he feel hungry and nauseous at the same time?
The microwave pings and the toaster clicks and then there are more Ava moving around noises.
Finally, she comes back around the island with a steaming mug of coffee and a plate with a single slice of toast topped with...baked beans?
"Beans on toast," Ava explains. "My mum used to make it for me all the time when I was little." She holds out the plate to him. "These came out of a can, heating them up in a microwave is about all I can do, food-wise, I’m not a good little househusband like you, Walker."
John groans at the dig, but she brought him food so he lets it pass as he carefully sets aside the mug on the floor and reaches for the plate. When he picks up the slice of bread it sags in the middle where most of the beans are piled to the point of compromising its structural integrity, so he lifts the plate until it’s under chin to prevent spilling any on himself.
He takes a careful bite. It tastes like...heated up baked beans from a can on a slice of toasted bread.
He likes beans and he likes bread and the slight tang from the tomato sauce adds a little flavor. All in all it’s not bad, but what all he’s craving for right now is something greasy and half a dozen fried eggs. Maybe some hash browns, too.
"I ordered breakfast from that place you like," Ava says then.
His head snaps up at that and he feels some of the sauce dribble out the side of his mouth, but thankfully she’s looking down at her phone. He hastily wipes his mouth on the back of his wrist, he didn’t go to the gym, but his compression shirt still needs to go in the laundry anyway.
He devours the rest of the bread and beans and chases it down with half of the coffee, but his hunger has been awakened now and it’s like a chasm has opened where his stomach used to be.
"Food should be here in twenty."
"Thank fuck."
Ava wrinkles her nose. "Plenty of time for a shower."