Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Marcus has heard a lot about Danny’s brother, mostly from Elliot, who seems to idolize the guy for some reason. (Still, Alex sounds like a reasonably functional person, so hopefully Elliot will take some pages out of his book.) But none of the Facebook photos or stories shared by Danny and Elliot, begrudgingly and admiringly respectively, have really prepared Marcus to open the door to the apartment face to face with someone’s chest.

In hindsight, he really should’ve been prepared for Alex to be at least as tall as Danny, but knowing that and really understanding how tall that would make him are two very different things.

“Hey, you’re Marcus, right?” Alex asks, and Marcus steps aside to let him in.

“Yeah. And you’re Alex?”

“Yeah.”

Marcus closes the door and they stand in the hallway for a moment before he says, “Elliot and Danny are in the kitchen, and the smoke alarm hasn’t gone off, so it’s... probably safe to go in?”

“There’s also no screaming,” Alex observes. “Which could be either a good or a bad thing.”

Marcus snorts. “Yeah, on second thought, no guarantees. You probably should have signed a waiver before you came in.”

“I’ve probably gotten worse at work than whatever could happen here.”

“Oh, what do you do?”

“Haha, um, I’m a security guard.”

“Cool. Let’s go take the chips before they finish them all.”

“Sounds good.”

Chapter Text

Isaiah’s been in the lab for almost a full twenty-four hours now, which is why Eli is standing in the doorway with one coffee (decaf) and one green tea, the latter for himself, and he’s not taking a step further into this room.

“Besides the fact that I could spill something, you need to get out of there for a while, so you’re going to have to come get your coffee yourself.”

“Eli, I’m totally fine,” Isaiah says, pushing her glasses up.

“You didn’t need glasses until you started working at two in the morning. You’ll do better work on that hand if you’ve slept.”

That gets Isaiah to look up, and she laughs. “And yet you brought me coffee?”

“It’s decaf.”

“Of course it is.” She pushes her chair back and stands up. “Fine, I’ll take a break, but I’m coming back tonight. I need to figure out the wiring before my next lecture.”

“Your sleep schedule is so fucked.”

“Mm-hm, so is yours.”

Eli hands Isaiah the coffee and their free hands find each other’s as she kicks the door to the lab shut. It locks automatically, which is kind of an unnecessary precaution, because Professor Anderson has a reputation at Alexitech for the lab most likely to turn lethal if something goes wrong. (That’s left over from when she was working on blasters six years ago, but it keeps people from breaking in.)

“I think I’m gonna take a nap as soon as I get home.”

“Sounds good.”

“You in?”

“Oh, yeah, I told Madina I would be out for a while. Although I was expecting to have to drag you out.”

“Bribery works too.”

“When is that lecture, anyway?”

“Oh, it’s next week.”

“Okay, I love you, but that’s ridiculous.”

“You never know when a vegetable is going to mutate and become sapient and suddenly you have no more prep time.”

Chapter Text

Once it had hit midnight, Kate’s New Year’s Eve party had started winding down. Marcus and Sasha have already gone home, Kate herself is snoozing on the rug in front of the couch, Elliot is working his way methodically through what’s left of the snacks, and Madina and Danny are building some sort of sculpture out of bags of rice, Solo cups, and Danny’s shoes. Alex is sitting on a beanbag with an empty bag that used to hold chips (he’d had to grab something before Elliot ate it).

Ace had vanished at around half past midnight, ostensibly so he could go raid Kate’s linen closet so they could all sleep on the floor, but it’s almost one now, and the house Kate shares with her mom is bigger than the apartments most of them live in, but it’s not that big.

It’s a testament to everyone’s sleepiness that nobody even notices when Alex gets up. He drops the chip bag by Elliot’s pile of empty snack containers and heads upstairs, where the linen closet supposedly is.

The door to Kate’s bedroom is wide open, and there’s a clear path from her door to the window, which is open with a sturdy rope hanging down in front of it.

“Ace?” Alex calls quietly.

“On the roof,” comes the reply through the window. “Come on up, Kate isn’t strict about who can go in her room. Just don’t mess up her desk.”

Alex picks his way around the camera, the extra drumsticks littered around the floor, and the throw pillow that matches another one that’s on the bed. There’s no balcony or anything outside Kate’s window, so he props his feet on the windowsill before pulling himself up to the edge of the roof. Ace is sitting braced against the chimney, which is fortunately just wide enough that Alex can do the same thing next to him. The night isn’t exactly cold, but it’s still nice to have the warmth from Ace’s arm against his.

“I hope you weren’t planning to stargaze,” Alex says, because Ace’s head is tilted up towards the sky.

“If I was, I wouldn’t be living in LA.”

“Touche.”

“I come up here a lot,” Ace says. “Well, rooves in general. Kate’s just happens to be one of the easiest ones to get to.”

“That’s very vigilante-ish of you.”

“Not really, you ever seen Redshift lurking on a roof?”

“Maybe I have. You never know.” Actually, he has done his fair share of lurking in high-up places, as Redshift or not.

“Although now that I think of it, aren’t people not supposed to see you when you’re lurking?”

“Probably, but the other side of the chimney is the one that faces the road, so I think we’re doing pretty well on that front.”

“That’s pretty scandalous.”

“You were the one who decided to sit here.”

“You were the one who decided to follow me up, though.”

“Touche,” Alex says again. Ace scoots closer. “Now who’s scandalous?”

“Looks like it’s both of us.”

“Well, can I kiss you then?”

Ace’s gaze moves from the sky to Alex. “You might as well, it would be really fucking stupid to be put in the stocks for sitting on a roof.”

“That went out of practice literally ages ago.”

“You’re such a nerd.”

“Yeah, okay,” Alex says, and then he kisses him.

(They fall asleep side by side, leaning against the chimney.)

Chapter Text

Elliot is pretending not to watch Kate and Danny at the other side of the room, partially because he’s supposedly practicing guitar riffs and partially because Madina is watching him over her music stand to see if he’s watching them. (The sunglasses don’t make her any more subtle.)

“Okay, we’re gonna need to move my drum stool back,” Kate says.

“How far back does it need to be?”

“Far enough back that your knees won’t be hitting the bass drum, for starters.”

“Good point.”

She and Danny figure out where the stool needs to go, then Kate grabs some drumsticks from her bucket and hands one to Danny. “Let’s start with a drum roll just because they’re really simple to learn, but I’ll teach you some fills too.”

“Okay.”

Madina pulls down her sunglasses so she can look at Elliot over them and Elliot goes back to tuning for one song where he needs to drop to D, but that doesn’t deter her from scooting her chair closer and saying, “Smooth.”

“Whatever.”

Across the room, Danny’s lips are pursed as he repeats the right hand part of the drum roll Kate is teaching him.

“Yeah, that’s it!” Kate says. “Try the left hand. It’s the same thing in reverse, so it might be harder, it definitely was for me.”

“That’s an innovative approach to tuning,” Madina remarks as Elliot’s dropped D tuning turns into more of a dropped... not a note on any known scale.

“Oh my god, Madina,” Elliot says, but he fixes it.

“You wouldn’t be getting anything done if I wasn’t here. Don’t worry, you two are cute.”

Madina pushes her sunglasses back up, and Elliot actually manages to run through the riff a couple times, and he’s in the middle of going back to regular tuning when Danny does a drum roll perfectly and Kate explodes into cheers. Elliot only means to glance up for a second, but then Danny is grinning right at him and Elliot just knows in his heart he’s not going to get anything else done.

“Let’s both stop pretending to work,” he says to Madina instead, who laughs.

Chapter Text

Alex and Danny have a routine. The first Friday night of every month, Alex brings a ton of snacks to Danny’s place, deposits them on the floor while they clear off the couch, Danny finds Meatball, and they watch movies until they’ve run out of snacks or until they’re both asleep, whichever comes first.

The movie choices don’t matter as much as the snacks do, because Alex can count on one hand the number of times he’s actually paid attention for the entire movie, and Danny always falls asleep in the middle of the second movie after getting progressively drowsier through the first one.

Tonight, Meatball is proving harder to find than usual, mostly because he lets Danny get close enough to spot him and then rockets to the other side of the room. That’s why Alex is joining in on the search tonight, so they can come at Meatball from different angles in the hopes that he lets himself get picked up.

“I feel like we’re more like pinball bumpers than goals,” Alex says when Meatball scoots through the doorway to the bathroom, trilling all the way.

“I didn’t think he could move that fast.” Danny crouches in front of the doorway. Alex can see past his shoulder to where Meatball is peeking out from behind the shower curtain, his gaze fixed on something in front of Danny.

“What is he looking—” Alex starts to say, right as Meatball leaps straight for Danny’s sweatshirt laces, and then he laughs, because Danny has slid back almost a foot on the wooden floor from the force of impact.

“Ha, I guess we’ll count that as a victory?” Danny says, because now Meatball seems perfectly happy to hang out in proximity to his sweatshirt.

“Yeah, I think that counts.” Alex’s socks slide on the floor as he stands up, but he doesn’t have as hard of a time as Danny does, what with the bonus cat. “Next time we should just try leaving a trail of sweatshirts to the couch and see if he follows it.”

“Knowing Meatball? Probably.”

Chapter Text

Alex stares at the counter, which is covered with various boxes and jars of ingredients and a single sheet of printer paper, and then he stares at Ace, who has unearthed aprons from God-knows-where and is looking for a spatula. “I’m just going to go on the record saying that if this goes horribly wrong, I was the one who said we should just buy a mix instead of making it from scratch with a dodgy recipe from the Internet.”

“Hey, do you want the cake to be unique, or do you want it to taste like Betty Crocker?”

“I’d rather it be Betty Crocker than a mess?”

“The reviews said it was good. Besides, if it doesn’t turn out good we can just write our own reviews.”

“Okay, okay, let’s decipher the recipe.” Alex scans the paper. “Do you have an electric mixer?”

“Yeah, I was waiting for you to ask that, because there’s a stand mixer on the top shelf of the cupboard and there’s a thirty percent chance of injury if I try to get it down myself, so you and your three quarters of a foot of extra height can go get that.”

“What kind of injury?”

“Duh, it would fall on my head. Your head is too high up for it to fall on yours without defying gravity.”

They manage to combine the wet ingredients with minimal splattering and only one eggshell that Ace had to pick out of the bowl, so they move on to the dry ingredients and Alex flicks the stand mixer on to high.

“Oh my god shit that was not a good idea!” he says as the flour starts flying out of the bowl. Even with super speed, it takes him a while to turn the mixer off, mostly because it took a few seconds just to register what was happening.

Ace snorts. “You look like your hair is going white prematurely.”

“ You look like you just bleached your mohawk really badly.”

“Yeah? Well, the stand mixer just happens to have a low setting that everyone uses to mix in dry ingredients.”

“First of all, you just went ahead and let me set it on high? And second of all, I doubted you for the aprons, but not anymore.”

“I know what I’m about when it comes to cooking.”

“Pft, no you don’t, you spent twenty minutes looking for a cake recipe.”

“I’m a perfectionist. Okay, now let’s set it on low. We can deal with the flour on the walls once the cake’s in the oven.”

Ace operates the stand mixer while Alex tries to get some of the flour out of his hair, but he only succeeds in spreading it around.

“Did we ever come up with a reason to rationalize making a cake?”

“No,” Ace says. “I think the batter is ready?”

“Yeah, it looks ready to me.”

They’ve cleaned the flour off the kitchen, made the icing and stuck it in the fridge, washed and dried all the bowls and stuff, played with Lil Ashtray, cleaned the flour off of themselves, finished a bag of popcorn, and still have had plenty of time to stare at the timer as it ticks down.

After what seems like an eternity, it beeps, and Ace gets up to open the oven. “You have longer arms, you get it.”

“Ugh, fine.” Alex puts the cake pans on the counter. “How do we tell if it’s actually done?”

“We stick a toothpick in and if it comes out dry, it’s done.”

“Okay, so where are your toothpicks?”

“Oh, I don’t have any, so I figure we’ll just use a fork.”

“That’ll make a huge hole in the cake, though.”

“I’m pretty sure every frosting recipe has extra frosting so you can cover up your mistakes.”

“Can it cover up my eighth grade school picture?”

“Same. Well, probably, but I’d rather put it on something edible.”

The cake is done, and they pile on enough frosting to make it look like they knew what they were doing, and Ace takes a picture before they cut into it which is a good thing because it doesn’t look nearly as neat once they’ve taken pieces.

“It tastes good,” Alex says once he’s about halfway through his slice.

“What did I say about not doubting me?” Ace replies with a grin.

Chapter Text

When that Sharp Zero guy had showed up, it had started causing a lot of problems for Ace. Mostly because Redshift apparently hadn’t thought to try punching Crank’s mask as a way to get him out of commission— he can’t exactly fight when he’s trying to hold it in the place. The mechanism isn’t the sturdiest. ( And he’s probably going to lose some teeth eventually.)

So Redshift has been using that as a way to get out of fights, but Ace has been able to get away before either his mask falls off or he gets his ass kicked, mostly thanks to Kate.

It was probably only a matter of time.

Crank is the diversion, since they have some breaking and entering to do and they can’t accomplish it if Redshift is always on their tails. Unfortunately, Redshift went straight for the mask, and Ace is having some serious difficulties keeping it up while also posing enough of a threat for Redshift to keep focusing on him. The flames can only do so much when he can only use one hand.

Redshift likes to teleport directly behind people, and it’s a trick of his that Ace knows, but when he goes to swivel and punch him, Redshift catches his free arm instead in an unforgivingly tight grip.

“Great,” Ace mutters, because one hand is stuck holding his mask up, the other can’t move without it breaking, and he’s in the middle of a turn, so he’s not exactly balanced. (He proves this last point by falling over backwards.)

Redshift is surprised enough to let go of his arm, but then Ace tries to catch himself. As his hands, both of them, hit the ground, so does his mask, and Ace can just tell that Redshift is standing over him. “Fucking great.”

“Who are you?” Redshift asks. “You can’t get away, so there’s not really anything you can do except tell me.”

Ace looks up, and he’s about to say something that was probably going to be witty, but then Redshift says, “What the fuck.”

“Huh?” (Which is definitely not the snarky response Ace was going for.)

“Ace? You’re Crank? Of all the damn people in LA, it’s you?”

“Do we know each other?”

And then Redshift takes off his mask.

“What the fuck,” Ace says, because it’s Alex. Alex is Redshift. Redshift is Alex. It’s kind of all he can say. And then his brain proves him wrong because the next thing out of his mouth is “You’re literally the tallest person I know, how did I not realize?”

“I don’t think that’s what matters right now.”

“Yeah.”

They stay there for a while, Ace sitting on the ground, Alex standing over him.

“We tried to stay relatively harmless,” Ace says finally. “Me and Dispatch.”

“What, by showing up and starting fights? How exactly is that harmless? Why are you doing it in the first place?”

“We needed the money.” The biggest fight Ace and Kate had ever had was when Ace tried to help pay for Mrs. Rodriguez’ hospital bills with the paycheck they both got for causing havoc as Crank and Dispatch, and she’d never backed down on that, but Ace sneaks groceries into Kate’s fridge and she pretends not to notice that in three weeks she’s only had to go to the store once, for tissues. “And we never went out if there was something else going on.”

“You almost killed me eight times.”

“Ten times.”

“No, it was eight.”

“No, I’m talking about how many times you almost killed me.”

Alex sighs. “I have no idea what to do in this situation.”

“Same.” Ace picks up his mask and stands up slowly. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to sleep on it.”

“It is four in the morning. We should both be asleep.”

“Yeah. Damn, I can’t believe neither of us ever noticed the other, like, vanishing in the middle of the night and coming back with a shit ton of bruises.”

“Probably because we were busy trying to disguise our respective shit tons of bruises.”

“Probably. I’m gonna meet up with Dispatch.”

“You aren’t telling her who I am, are you?”

“Nah, I’ll just say that I know who you are and you know who I am. She won’t pry.”

“I hope not.”

“Right. Well. I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m going to crash with Kate for tonight.”

“Oh, I was going to say I would stay with Danny?”

“Kate has a guest room, Danny doesn’t.”

“Okay. See you tomorrow, then. Hopefully we’ll straighten something out.”

“Knowing us, probably not.”

“Fuck you for the straight pun, and also, I think we can figure out what to do. In a way that won’t get either of us killed, fired, or imprisoned.”

“Yeah.”

“And I’m not breathing a word of it to anyone in Mission Control until we have a solution, because otherwise someone will explode.”

“I’ll talk to Dispatch.” Ace is halfway down the alley when he stops and turns around. “We’re gonna be okay.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think we will be.”

Ace leaves to go find Kate.

Chapter Text

Ace throws the bathroom door open before poking his head out into the hallway. “Alex, I need you to help me fix my mohawk.”

“Huh? What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing, if you like roots coming in that make your hair look like you tried and failed to get a chocolate mint-colored ombre.”

“Okay, do you have dye?”

“Yeah. I know what to do, I just can’t do it myself because I would have to dislocate my shoulders. Here.” He tosses the box of dye down the hallway, right at Alex’s face. “That has the stuff we need listed on the back, it’s in the kitchen, I’ll get things set up in the bathroom.”

“This says you should have washed your hair one to two days beforehand.”

“Yeah, got that covered. I have a schedule of when I need to re-dye my hair.”

Alex grabs the gloves that are usually for washing dishes and a bowl, then heads down the hallway to the bathroom, where Ace already has some ratty towels and a comb.

“Hey, you know the best part of dying your hair?”

“What?”

“You have to be careful to make sure you don’t get dye on your shirt.”

“So?” Alex asks, even though he’s pretty sure he knows where this is going.

Ace grins. “So the easiest way to do that is to just not wear one!”

“I mean, it’s not like that’s really different from your usual state.”

“No, but it’s nice to have some variety in the reasons. Okay, here goes.”

“Are you sure you should be trusting me with this?”

“I know exactly what should be happening, so I’ll stop you from fucking up, I promise.”

“Well, that’s reassuring.”

“I can’t tell if you’re joking.”

“Me neither. Alright, let’s fix that shitty fake ombre.”

Chapter Text

Sometimes, Dispatch reminds Ace of Kate. A lot. There are too many weird coincidences, like how Kate is always busy whenever Crank and Dispatch have to go out, and how they both tap out drum rolls on their legs, and how Ace can feel their side-eye without even looking at them (or, in Dispatch’s case, without being able to see through her mask).

The only problem is, Dispatch has never even hinted that she knows Ace, or someone like Ace, and it would be really stupid of him to assume Dispatch was Kate and reveal his own identity to her when they were actually two different people. Ace can’t exactly make the best judgment of character when the only time he interacts with Dispatch is when they’re literally being paid to fuck things up.

Kate knows Crank is Ace.

Honestly, it wasn’t hard. He doesn’t even cover up his damn mohawk, and that’s just the first thing on the list. They talk exactly the same way, Ace has bruises that need covering in the same places Crank got punched the night before, and once they were hanging out by the Royal Flush and Ace had pointed and said, “Hey, my band plays there all the time!”

“Huh, you’re in a band?” Kate had asked.

“Yeah. I front it.”

“Cool.”

“You play any instruments?”

“No, I always meant to learn one though.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, drums, maybe?”

Dispatch has got to be lying about not knowing the drums, the rhythms she taps out are way too complex for someone who doesn’t play any instruments.

“So what do you play, then?”

“Guitar, and I sing. Sometimes I switch off with the other guitarist.”

“Awesome,” Kate says. “Are you any good?”

“Of course I am. I’m great. ”

“Pft. You’re ridiculous, Ace.”

Crank blinks. “Wait, did you just call me Ace?”

“Oh, fuck.”

Chapter Text

“So how’d it go?” Marcus asks when he picks up the phone. Elliot’s been staying with Ace for a couple days, just to figure out if the whole living together thing is actually going to work before they commit to it.

“Oh my god, awful.”

“Uh, okay?”

“Eleven fights. Eleven.”

“In total?”

“No. On the first day.”

“So did it get better?”

“You know, the second day was going pretty well? And then... yeah, no.”

“Are you going to provide any more context than that?”

Elliot’s sigh is audible over the phone. “He got really mad about me taking food into the bedroom? And then we were almost late for practice twice because he wanted to clean the dishes, so I kind of blew up at him about that. And just— oh my god, so much stuff. So this morning we kind of both knew that wasn’t gonna work out so. We’re taking a break. For the nineteenth time.”

“That sucks.”

“I just feel like this might be the last time, honestly. It never works out.”

“I’m glad you decided to do a test run.”

“Me too. I’ll be home after rehearsal. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

Chapter Text

Kal is... not what Beezle expected from their brief call before he was summoned.

Of course, he was expecting someone who died young, since Elliot is only twenty-three, but is it fair to say his immediate guess of what Kal had looked like as a human was trending along the lines of ‘awkwardly tall, gangly, and clumsy’?

Kal is none of those things.

“GREETINGS!” He says with a beaming smile once he’s fully in their world. “ELLIOT, MY FRIEND! AND ALSO YOU, PRINCE BEEZLEBUB.”

Then when he’s leaving the sriracha pentagram, he trips and falls directly into Beezle’s arms. So maybe the ‘clumsy’ part is true, but not the rest— Kal is unfortunately attractive, and the single thought running through Beezle’s mind is that he is incredibly glad that Greg and his snark aren’t here right now.

“Woah there, big guy,” Beezle says, because his brain apparently isn’t working.

Kal grabs his arms as he regains his balance and says, “DEEPEST APOLOGIES, YOUR HIGHNESS.”

“Uh, no worries. Please just call me Beezle.” And then Beezle does an about-face and says “Let’s get out of this crummy toilet,” because the bathroom is a mess, he’s a mess (Kal’s face is not a mess), and they should probably go see if anyone has died while they were summoning Kal.

What has he gotten himself into?

Chapter Text

When the band finishes their set and they all get out of the bar, Alex says, “That was amazing!”

“That’s what I said the first time I saw them,” Danny says, and then he’s going to talk to Elliot, but Alex hangs back for Ace, who’s still in the bar.

When he finally gets out the door, the first thing he says is, “Hey, have you seen my—” and then Alex tosses Ace’s flannel at him and it lands on his face. The “oh, thanks” is slightly muffled, then Ace puts it on properly and says, “So you caught it, then?”

“Obviously.” He’d barely even had to move to grab it out of the air when Ace had unexpectedly tossed it into the audience.

“Good, I was aiming for you. So what did you think?”

“It was amazing,” Alex repeats. “I don’t think I knew how good you were at guitar until tonight.”

“It’s my hidden skill.”

Alex grins at him. “It’s your hidden skill that you show off onstage?”

Ace smiles back. “I’m bad at hiding it.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty obvious.”

“Hey, I hid it from you.”

“Not for that long.”

“Long enough.”

“Sure, whatever you say.”

“I’ll take that deal.”

Chapter Text

“ Ugh,” Ace says from the kitchen. “Can you come help me get this stain out?”

“What is it?” Alex gets off the couch and heads in the direction of Ace’s voice. The man in question turns out to be standing in front of the sink, scrubbing at a gray tank top.

“Hair dye.”

“But you haven’t dyed your hair recently.”

“I know.” Ace punctuates that remark with a particularly vicious movement of the steel wool. “I put it in the wash with a towel that had dye on it, and I’m pretty sure the steel wool is going to destroy the fabric before it gets the stain out, but it’s the only thing I haven’t tried yet.”

“I’m not sure what you think I can do to help.”

“Stand there and look encouraging. Or just order a pizza. I’m in the mood for someone to deliver food to me.”

“I’ll order the pizza. Looking encouraging is not my strong suit.”

“I mean, this way we get food, so that’s probably for the best. I want bell pepper and pineapple on my half.”

“That’s disgusting, but fine.”

“At least I don’t put peanut butter in Greek yogurt. You have no room to be criticizing my pizza toppings.”

“Maybe so, but that’s not going to stop me.”

“Good to know.”

Chapter Text

“WHAT’S A PANCAKE?”

Elliot finds it easier to point at a nearby table than try to answer. “That. It’s for breakfast, usually.”

“BUT IT’S THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT.”

“Yeah, well, the distinctions between which food is for which meal get fuzzier all the time.”

“THIS MENU HAS MANY TYPES OF PANCAKE.”

“Just get a short stack. That way you can figure out if you like pancakes before you start ordering weird stuff.”

“I WILL.”

The waiter arrives a few minutes later and hands them their hot chocolates before taking their orders.

“I WILL HAVE A SHORT STACK, PLEASE.”

“And a chocolate chip waffle, please.”

“THAT’S A LOT OF CHOCOLATE. WHAT’S A WAFFLE?”

Chapter Text

The first thing Ace notices when he wakes up is that Alex is still there. Usually he gets up at the crack of dawn, heads to work, and Ace comes home after rehearsal and finds him back and napping at three in the afternoon.

The curtains let enough light into the room that he can see the door, the closet, and the blankets heaped pretty much everywhere except on Alex (who is the exact opposite of a blanket hog— he kicks them off instead). He can also see Alex, who’s leaning on one arm and frowning deeply at the sliver of light that can make it through the curtains. (Fortunately, he isn’t propping himself up with the arm that’s currently slung over Ace’s ribs.)

“Maybe the sun will turn off if you glare at it long enough,” Ace says.

“That’s what I’m banking on.”

“You’re not working this morning?”

Alex stops propping himself up and drops back onto the pillows. “Nah, I told my boss last night I was only going to come in in the evening today. I think his exact words were ‘it’s about time you stop taking such weird shifts.’ Do you have plans?”

“Not until one. I was thinking about just not getting up for a couple hours.”

“That’s what I was thinking of too.”

Chapter Text

Elliot is positive he put his shoes with his jacket. Unless he put his jacket down here and put his shoes somewhere else, or he just left his shoes by the door, or they might be at Kateʼs again because he wore his other shoes home. The options are pretty much limitless, and Elliotʼs jacket was next to his bed, where heʼs checked a million times.

At least if theyʼre at Kateʼs heʼll get them back. The same is not true for IHOP.

He can hear Ace talking in the kitchen, so he gives up on the shoes for now, since they need to leave soon to get to the concert.

“...and Iʼm pretty sure thatʼs what she meant? But then she said it was inside, so basically I have no idea.”

“Just donʼt buy the fake merch and youʼll be fine,” Marcus says.

Aceʼs laugh is a little loud, especially since Marcus didnʼt even say anything worth laughing at. “Donʼt worry about me. Now, Elliot? Worry about him. But Iʼll be fine.”

Elliot figures heʼs been standing outside the kitchen clutching his jacket long enough— he shoves the door open with his shoulder and says, “Will you, though?”

“Oh, hey, Smelliot,” Ace says, and then he holds up Elliotʼs shoes. “Kate says you left these at her house.”

“Right.”

And Elliot grabs them and puts them on, and Ace says, “And yeah, I will, thanks.”

“Sure,” Marcus and Elliot say at the same time.

“You asshole,” Ace says, and Elliot doesnʼt have to look away from his shoes to know that heʼs talking to Marcus, because that is the softest-sounding ‘assholeʼ Ace has ever said in his life.

“What, Iʼm the only one?”

“I can expect this from Elliot, youʼre the betrayal.”

“Hm, fair.” And then Marcus turns to the hallway and says, “Have fun,” and then heʼs gone.

Elliot heads for the door, stops, and turns around, because Ace is still in the kitchen. “Hey, asswipe, the concert.”

Ace blinks. “Yeah.”

Chapter Text

Opening a door while holding two large pizzas is not the most difficult thing Alex has ever done, but it ranks pretty high. Well, the holding part is easy— it’s making sure the pizzas don’t fall that’s hard.

He probably doesn’t need to get plates out, but he does anyway, since they might as well have the option, and then he goes to knock on the door to Ace’s room, since he’s been sleeping for thirteen hours straight and should probably be woken up.

He only has to knock a few times before the door swings open and Ace says, “I know you get up earlier than I do but this is ridiculous.” Then his face changes. “Pizza?”

“Yeah, and it’s four in the afternoon, so I think you’re the ridiculous one.”

“I think you are.”

“No, you are.”

“No. What kind of pizza?” Ace asks, already sliding past Alex to get to the kitchen.

“See for yourself.” Alex has memorized Ace’s top two pizza orders (it isn’t that hard to do when he can summon up dozens of different memories of Ace ordering pizza), so his bases are probably covered.

Ace opens the boxes and says, “ Fuck yes, I love you,” and then he does take a plate, so getting them out wasn’t useless after all.

Alex blinks. ”Okay, when you say love, do you mean love as in like loving pizza or as in love, love?”

“Both, if you’re down with that.”

Alex grabs a slice of pizza. “I’m down with both.”

Chapter Text

Eli flips another page in the book he’s reading, then says, “You know what we need?”

Isaiah looks up from her journal at the other end of the couch. “Some chips?”

“I was thinking some couch pillows, but that works too.”

“Chips are faster gratification.”

“You are completely right.” Eli sticks his bookmark in just before page 101 and heads over to the cupboard where he stuck the chips, but Isaiah says from the couch, “They’re in the kitchen.”

Eli swings open the cupboard door, where the chips are on the second shelf, right where he left them. “What? No they’re not.”

Isaiah looks at the chips in the cupboard, then says “One second” and goes into the kitchen. She comes back a moment later with an identical party-size bag of chips.

“...Well, huh.”

“I don’t really see this as a problem.”

“I mean, me neither, but when did you go shopping?”

“Right after you did,” Isaiah says. “I wanted chips.”

“I guess neither of us can be accused of eating more than half the bag, then.”

She grins. “Yes we can.”

“Fair.”

Chapter Text

“Fucking weirdass shithead fish bear,” Redshift mumbles. He would say it louder— pissing off enemies is his strength, after all— but the fish bear thing, despite it not being able to see very well because its head is literally the front half of a fish, can punch really fucking hard, and something’s making it hard to breathe after Redshift’s sustaining a couple of those punches to the torso.

He’s banking on the fish head not being very good at hearing, since he can’t see any ears, but he’s gonna have to shift if he wants to get around the fish bear’s surprisingly good eyesight. And if he wants to shift, he’ll have to buy some time to get ready, because it’s a lot harder to shift without destroying his molecules when he’s distracted by a metric fuck ton of injuries. Or at least what feels like that much.

He’s moving as far out of range from the fish bear as possible so he can collect himself before shifting, but all that gets ruined when one of his feet— he doesn’t have enough mental energy to figure out which one— slips on some of the debris the fish bear had left when it was punching things earlier, and it takes all of his energy to roll on impact so he doesn’t get hurt more, except now he’s lying on the ground and his arm hurts from when the fucking fish bear punched it and took out his comms so it’s not like he can call for help, and he has no energy to fight off the fish bear, which he can hear is getting closer to him, because of course it is, and—

“Did someone say fucking weirdass shithead fish bear?” a familiar voice says.

Redshift would look around to find whoever is saying that, but unfortunately his head is facing the wrong way.

There’s the sound of what’s probably a punch, judging by the popping sounds that the fish bear has made whenever Redshift has managed to land a hit (which must be... fish noises?), and then Redshift can see somehing glowy and green out of the corner of his eye, and that’s weird because the only person he knows who has glowy green powers is Crank, so... that’s weird and he really doesn’t have the time or energy to worry about that right now.

His other arm is fine, and his suit seems to be holding up, so it could be a lot worse.

He gets that arm under him, starts pushing himself up— even sitting will be better than lying down, and he’s got to get out of here somehow— but then his gaze lands on the guy punching the fish bear with glowing, fiery green fists, and he forgets to use his arm, and then he falls over again.

Fuck.

Because that is Crank, and any situation where Crank and Redshift are fighting the same enemy (if what Redshift is doing can be called ‘fighting’) means something weird is happening.

Crank lands a punch right in the fish bear’s fishy face, which seems like the last straw. The fish bear gurgles something and staggers away, swatting at the glowing green flames on its leg.

“What... the fuck...” Redshift manages, pushing himself up with his good arm (it’s easier now that he knows who to expect to see).

“You’re welcome, honeybunches,” Crank says, extinguishing his flames. “Gotta go, I just popped by to help you out, but I’ve got shit to do elsewhere. Love ya.” He makes a kissy sound under his mask and takes off, his dark uniform blending into the shadows quickly enough that it looks like he vanishes.

Well.

That happened.

Redshift tests out his comms, but all he gets is static. Great. That means he can’t get Mission Control to come get him, which means... he needs to transport himself. But he really can’t be seen walking around injured as Redshift, and if he walks around injured as Alex, people will think he’s been mugged or something. So he has to either shift all the way home or get up to the rooftops and get back that way.

There are balconies on this building, and a drainpipe, and he can probably shift from balcony to balcony, so that’s his best option.

He groans as he has to lean on the building to stand up. It’s gonna be a long trip home.

Chapter Text

In Alex’s opinion, the worst part of having a breakdown is when it’s almost done, when he’s thinking clearly and acknowledging what’s happening but he still can’t make his breathing slow down or his chest feel less tight and his stomach still feels like he swallowed a handful of rocks and he can’t do anything about it and that’s shitty enough that it almost sends him back into tears, which are worse because he’s hyperventilating and there’s saltwater dripping off his face which is just fucking unpleasant and the whole time he’s mad at himself too, because he was getting there, but then he just had to get worked up about not controlling his breathing perfectly and now he’s almost back at square one and it just fucking sucks, okay, and the more he lets himself get worked up about it, the worse he gets, and he should know better.

“Hey,” Ace says quietly, and Alex thinks, wow, it sure would be great if I was composed enough to give some signal that I know he’s there and that he said something, and he suddenly becomes aware that his nose is running too, because of course it is.

“Hey,” Ace says again. “Are you okay with me touching you right now?”

When Alex nods, Ace puts his hands over one of Alex’s. They’re cold, just enough that it feels kind of... grounding.

“You’re okay,” he continues, softly and steadily, just over the sound of Alex’s breathing, which is still firmly in ‘hyperventilating’ territory. “Take your time. Do you want me to count?”

Alex nods again, and Ace starts counting in that same tone, which kind of makes Alex feel like Ace is treating him like a wild animal, but on the other hand, it’s working.

His first few attempts to inhale along with Ace’s counting only last a second or two before he has to suck in a breath again, but he can control the exhale better— it still takes him a couple of tries, and his lungs still feel worn out, and he inhales so much air that he feels like it’s forcibly pushing his chest out (which he knows that it is, that’s how ribs work, but still), but he’s inhaling and holding the breath and exhaling and he doesn’t know how long they sit there doing that, but eventually he can let go of the tension in his hands, bit by bit, and he’s left feeling like he had been submerged underwater and just got out.

It’s not a great feeling, but at least the worst part is over.

His throat feels kind of raw, but he gives Ace a small smile, and lets his stomach relax— he hadn’t even noticed that he’d clenched up his core like he was doing crunches— and puts his free hand over Ace’s, and that’s all he needs to do.

Chapter Text

Alex lives in a big city. It’s not like he never hears the sound of something breaking, followed by multiple people cursing eloquently.

But he knows those voices.

“You said this would work perfectly,” Dispatch’s voice mutters from the alleyway he’s about to pass.

“I exaggerated?” Crank’s voice replies.

“Well, I still feel like I’m playing one of those grabber claw games.”

That settles it. Alex pulls his hood up over his face and edges up to the corner of the building he’s next to, which gives him a great view of about three feet of the alleyway and one of Dispatch’s arms.

He risks poking his head in just a tiny bit further, and sees that Dispatch is operating one of those grabber arms that people use to pick up trash, except the grabber arm is pointed up at a balcony, and there are pieces of terracotta and potting soil everywhere and some leaves on Crank’s head.

Huh.

Dispatch isn’t that tall, Alex knows that. He could probably just shift in, take the grabber arm thing, and shift out, and since his hood is up, he could do that with a reasonable expectation that they wouldn’t be able to tell who he was (or even get a good look at him, which is maybe more important, since Crank and Dispatch know very few shifters). Not for the first time, he wishes he had Danny’s invisibility— that would make this so much easier.

But he doesn’t even know what they’re trying to get, and they haven’t spotted him over here yet, so he could just hang out here for a little while longer and figure out what they want. And then shift to Mission Control, hand the grabber claw thing over to Madina to figure out what’s going on since Eli doesn’t like to know whenever Alex interacts with Crank and Dispatch, and continue going about his day as usual, which means getting his suit on and going to find Crank and Dispatch again.

Dispatch tries to grab something again, but this time the grabber claw gets tangled in the balcony railings. “Damn.”

“Is this even worth it?”

“Probably not. Should we just go?”

Fuck, they’re leaving. Alex tightens his hood over his face, steps into the alley to get a better idea of where he’s aiming, and shifts onto the balcony, yanking the grabber claw out of Dispatch’s hands (normally she would probably be able to hold onto it, but Alex did take her by surprise).

Except the building is tall enough that he’s not sure he can shift all the way up to the roof, and the other side of the alley is blocked off by a brick wall, and he can’t just run down the street holding a grabber arm while being pursued by Crank and Dispatch.

Fuck.

The best (and by best, he means worst) part is that he’s spent just long enough standing on the balcony debating his options that Crank and Dispatch have realized what happened.

“Who the fuck are you?” Crank asks.

“Uh... I’m Sharp Zero?” Alex tries, because it’s the first thing that came into his head and it worked for Elliot. Never before has he been so grateful that his mask includes a voice modifier.

“Not again. Hey, how did you get so tall?” Crank squints. “And how did you get up there?”

“Is this that guy who punched you?” Dispatch asks.

“Unfortunately. Except a foot taller. You sound different too.”

Alex tries to glance behind him as subtly as possible. The door onto the balcony is a glass sliding door, and the curtain on the other side is only partially drawn, meaning that he can see into the room, which looks like an apartment.

Hm. If he can shift into the apartment, he can probably also shift into the hallway and then the stairwell and get out that way?

Crank is still rambling about the differences between the last time he saw Sharp Zero and this time, presumably because he and Dispatch both think that ‘Sharp Zero’ is trapped on the balcony. Alex uses that time to shift into the apartment, where—

“Hi, Alex! What are you doing here?” Isaiah asks. “And why do you have a grabber arm?”

Why are Crank and Dispatch trying to steal stuff from Isaiah’s balcony?

“Uh... long story,” Alex says as he hears Dispatch say, “I don’t think Sharp Zero could do that last time we saw him.”

“Yeah, usually only Redshift pulls stuff like that,” Crank agrees.

“Hey, Isaiah? You have extra security stuff here, right? Can you enable it?”

“Does that have something to do with the shouting from outside?”

“Yeah. And the grabber arm.”

“Say no more.”

Chapter Text

Redshift’s original plan was to headbutt Crank in the face. Because Crank currently has his arms trapped and he can’t afford to get his legs tied up in some complicated kicking maneuver, since tangled legs make it approximately 813% harder to shift away.

So he aims for the face. Specifically, the nose, because that’s nice and breakable.

He does not hit the nose.

Right at the moment that Redshift moves his head down, Crank moves his head up, resulting in their chins slamming into each other with enough force that it almost makes Redshift wish he’d gotten a mouthgard like Eli had suggested.

Almost.

“Ow, fuck,” Crank says, but he still doesn’t let go of Redshift’s arms. “You know, if you wanted to make out, you could have just asked.”

“Nice try,” Redshift says, and he stomps on Crank’s foot and shifts out of his hold.

They’re only a little drunk, but apparently drunk enough that Ace has decided to overshare about his romantic history, and Alex is thanking heaven for small blessings that Ace has decided to focus on Marcus instead of anyone he’s actually had sex with, because otherwise who knows how the conversation would go.

“His face is so kissable,” Ace laments. “Like, is it depressing that I have a vision for how making out with him would go? It’s depressing, isn’t it. That’s what I thought. And he’s straight. Ugh, the world is the worst. Guys with the nicest faces are always straight.” He finishes the wine in his mug and pours himself some more. “Are you?”

“Huh? Straight?” Alex says, because he’s been very focused on his own mug of wine and not as focused on listening to a detailed description of Marcus.

“Mmhmm. I’m not.”

“I know. Nah, I’m super bi. Haha. Super bi.”

“Weird. ‘Cause you have a nice face. So according to my algorithm you should be straight.”

“I don’t know if that’s how algorithms work? I don’t know how algorithms work. But I don’t think that’s it.”

“Whatever. It’s close enough, right?”

“Yeah.” Alex drinks some more of his wine and finds himself saying, “You know, you have a nice face too.”

“Mm. Thanks. I’ve been talking for so long,” he says all of a sudden. “Have I? It feels like so long.”

“Not that long.”

“You haven’t talked that much.”

Alex shrugs.

“So talk to me! It’s wine drunk feeling sharing time. Like... I don’t know. Tell me about your Marcus.”

“My... my Marcus?”

Ace throws his hand in the air in some sort of attempt at a gesture. “Yeah. Like that person who’s like, straight or some bullshit, but their face is really kissable, like did I tell you about—”

“You did,” Alex says, because he does not want to get drawn into another Ace monologue about Marcus. And it looks like Alex is a little more sober, also. “I don’t have a Marcus.”

Ace gapes. “You don’t?”

“Nah. Like, what makes a face kissable? I don’t know. The face can be... whatever it wants to be, and I’ll just be over here somewhere because I don’t know what I’m doing. Because I’ve never done it. Too busy,” he clarifies.

“Huh. Well, do you want to try it?”

Alex blinks. “Like right now?”

“I mean we’re just sitting here getting drunk, it’s not like we’re doing anything important.”

“Eh, why not.”

“‘Kay. I’m gonna kiss you, then.”

“I mean, I already said you had a nice face. So that’s fine.”

Ace puts down his wine mug, and he scoots over on the couch, but then he flops down on Alex’s legs and says, “Nah, I’m not gonna. ‘Cause we’re both drunk and you never kissed anyone before. You gotta remember.”

“What, you’re just so great that I need to be sober?”

“Damn straight.”

“Damn not straight.”

“Yeah. That too.” Ace moves so he’s actually lying on the couch with his head resting on Alex’s shins and his feet hanging off the other end (it’s not that long of a couch). “But call me when you’re sober. Hey, that’s a song name.”

“I don’t know it.”

“‘S Evanescence.”

“That’s why I don’t know it.”

“Sucks to be you.”

“You’re a little slow today,” Redshift says as he sidesteps Crank’s elbow and returns one of his own. “Late night? Bad hangover? Missed your morning coffee?”

“Something like that,” Crank replies. “But how about you, hm? Don’t think I haven’t noticed you not shifting. That plus the fluffy hair is a dead giveaway.”

“Oh, don’t worry about me. I’ve just decided you’re not worth shifting for.”

“Really? I’m hurt. I’m deeply wounded. Or I would be, if you were landing any hits.”

“Whatever. Not like you’re landing any, either.”

“So I remember all of last night.”

“I hope that’s not sarcasm, because you were definitely not drunk enough to black out.”

“It’s not sarcasm. So I thought I’d just mention that I’m sober now, and I’m still down if you are.”

“Well, I’m still down too.”

They stand there in silence for a few moments before Alex says, “Okay, so how do we do this?”

Ace steps closer. “I think you stop being so damn tall and get on my level, and then we can figure out how we do this.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Alex finds out that Ace’s face is very kissable.

Chapter Text

Two hours of sleep is not enough. Not even for Eli. He’s used to a healthy four hours, and frankly, this is not cutting it, so Alex had better be prepared for the ass kicking he’s getting as soon as Eli can figure out where he is. There was absolutely no need to run through the wall of a chocolate factory, and there definitely wasn’t any need to run through the wall on the other side as well. And yet that’s exactly what Alex did, and he’s cut Eli’s sleeping hours in half because Eli has been up fixing it.

He gets to Mission Control, drops his laptop bag on his desk because really, he paid money for it to protect his laptop, it should be able to handle a two-foot drop, and is psyching himself up to ask Kevin what he missed while he was sleeping when—

There’s a rush of wind and a coffee cup and a chocolate bar appear on his desk with a Post-It note stuck to the top of the chocolate bar.

It says, in Alex’s shitty-ass handwriting, Sorry about the chocolate factory. I bought a ton of their stuff to help with costs. Also there’s five shots of espresso, I thought you might want them.

This situation is so familiar.

It’s not like people don’t bring each other coffee at headquarters, it happens all the time. But this is different.

Eli remembers early mornings— earlier than now, but to be fair he was also going to bed earlier then— at headquarters, back when he was an intern, and then later, when he was still a new hire, still very junior in terms of the responsibilities he was given.

He always came to work early, especially when he was an intern, because the fewer the interns, the more likely it was that one of the Vindicators would need a hand with something, and that Vindicator was almost always the last Redshift. He came in early too, although he always left at a normal time— just took naps during the day. He’d bought a couch and put it in the super training center so nobody else would use it.

Anyway. Most of those days were blurs now in Eli’s mind— it had been a while— but he did remember the first time he’d brought two coffees to headquarters in the early morning, instead of just one.

For the past couple of days, Redshift had looked drawn and tired, no matter how long he slept during the day. Eli knew he wasn’t the only one who had noticed, but none of the other interns would do anything. Management had chided Redshift for working too much, told him to take more time off, but he’d refused. That was something Eli could understand. He’d always felt like there was more that needed to be done than he could do in the time he had.

He hadn’t known what kind of coffee Redshift liked, so he got a plain one, medium roast, about as neutral as he could get, and strode through the building, found Redshift shuffling through black-and-white images of security feeds, and handed him the coffee.

Redshift had looked up immediately, the kind of quick reflex that comes from someone who’s used to being attacked suddenly, and taken in the coffee, the intern, and said, “Good morning.”

“What is that?” Eli had asked, because nobody would ever tell unless he asked them straight out.

“Someone with invisibility’s been going around messing with public buildings. I’m trying to find them on the security feeds.”

“But they’re invisible.”

“Invisible people can still be seen if they’re moving fast enough. Takes a lot of concentration, and someone who’s running and maintaining invisibility is going to get more of a camouflage thing.” Redshift frowned. “Of course, if they’re not running, then this is pointless, but I’m not willing to give up just yet. Here, your eyes are probably better than mine, you take a look.” He picked up the coffee cup Eli had set down on his desk and took a sip.

“Is it okay? I wasn’t sure what you would order, so I tried to get something that you probably wouldn’t hate.”

“I usually get black coffee, actually, so this is great.”

“Oh, awesome!”

Redshift slid the images Eli’s way. “If you see any inconsistencies, tell me. Or maybe just circle them, because I’ve been looking at these for a while and I haven’t seen anything.”

Eli squinted. They were two pictures of the same hallway, but the first one...

“The corner, there,” he said, sliding it closer to Redshift. “Doesn’t that look... squiggly?”

Because it did, there was a blurring and a swelling where there should have been a straight line between floor and wall, and it wasn’t there in the second photo. But Eli didn’t say any of that, just in case he was wrong. He could show his conviction once he knew he was right. He really didn’t want to look stupid in front of Redshift.

Redshift, who squinted at the pictures as well and said, “It does. I’ll double check that with Bridget when she gets here, but I think you’re right. Can you... draw an arrow pointing to that, or something? I don’t want to lose track of it.” He handed Eli a pen, and Eli drew the arrow, and then Redshift said, “I think this is the start of a beautiful partnership.”

After that, it had become a routine. Eli would bring coffee, he’d find Redshift, always sitting in the same spot, and then they’d either work together on something, or they’d each work on their own stuff, but Redshift had never hesitated to get Eli’s thoughts on something, and after a while, Eli had gradually started doing the same thing.

(The first day Eli worked there as a full-time employee, Redshift had bought the coffees. They’d alternated after that.)

And now here’s a coffee from Alex with enough espresso that Eli could have identified the smell, dark and full, even without the Post-It note, and a sugary chocolate bar that he will definitely eat all of today and not feel bad about it.

Well.

“It was pretty quiet after you left, but the night shift made some notes anyway,” Kevin says. “I was looking through them and... uh, you good? Do you have something in your eye... or something?”

“My eyes water a lot when I don’t sleep enough,” Eli half-lies. (They do, but only when he’s staying up really late.)

“Oh. At least you’ve got coffee, though.”

“Yeah.” Eli smiles a little and picks up the cup. “That’s true.”

Chapter Text

Alex only lasts for a couple of minutes before he finally says, “Stop with the tongue thing, it’s strangely attractive.”

Ace flicks his tongue like a snake again. “Nope. No chance. I’m doing this forever now.”

“I really don’t think you’re going to hold out forever. Tongues are muscles. Muscles get tired.”

“Maybe they do, but don’t worry about mine, it gets plenty of exercise.”

Alex lifts one eyebrow. “Like now?”

“I was thinking of other things,” Ace says. He lets the silence hang and they make direct eye contact for just a beat before he says, “But sure, like now,” and sticks his tongue out again.

“Ugh.”

“Make me stop.”

“You know what? Just because I know you want me to—” Ace widens his eyes in a show of innocence— “I’m not going to. Do the tongue thing all you want.”

“Aww.”

“You brought it upon yourself.”

“You should try it, I can, like, feel myself getting better at it.”

“Is flicking your tongue around suddenly a useful skill?”

“Babe, it’s been useful for longer than we’ve been alive.”

“You’re physically incapable of resisting innuendo.”

“That’s kind of the point, isn’t it?”

Chapter Text

“We’re fucking out of tea,” Ace says when Alex gets back from walking Jet. He’s huddled on the couch in at least one blanket with some cooking show playing silently on TV. It’s a different one from the one that was playing when Alex and Jet left.

“How miserable are you?”

Ace crumples up a tissue (clean, thankfully) and tosses it at him. “That’s the worst thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Not true.”

“No, but it’s close. Why?”

“Because I’ll go get more tea stuff if you’re really miserable, buuuuuuut it’s rush hour, so you see where I’m coming from?”

“You literally have super speed,” Ace says, but he doesn’t contest the rush hour part.

“I shifted into Wamlart once and I can never go back there again. And that was while I was Redshift.”

“What did you do?”

“You know the freezer aisle?”

“Yeah.”

“I, uh, missed a little bit and wound up in the ice cream freezer. Scared the shit out of some college students, but then I’m pretty sure they were really high so I don’t think it had a lasting impact.”

Ace laughs, coughs a bit, and then grumbles, “I’m thirsty.”

“Do you want me to grab you something?”

He pulls the blanket tighter around himself. “Yeah, can you get me a glass of...”

“A glass of...” Alex prompts.

“Whatever. Doesn’t matter as long as it’s not cold soup.”

As much as Alex would like to take that opportunity to give Ace something completely disgusting, that’s the least specific he’s ever been about something he wants, so he’s getting something healthy, and frankly Alex doesn’t trust him to not spill juice everywhere, so he’s getting water.

He glances at the time when he goes to get the water, but it’s only been half an hour since they last took Ace’s temperature (101.3, higher but not by much from the time before that), so it’s probably too early to do it again.

“Here’s a glass of whatever.”

“Just what I wanted. Thanks.” He takes the glass and sips at it gingerly, gaze focused on the television.

“What are you watching?”

“I don’t even know. The other show ended. This one’s worse.”

“Then why are you watching it?”

“It makes me feel better about my life that I’m not spending it trying to invent a sugarfree milkshake that tastes good.”

“Fair. Also, I grabbed some more tea while I was walking Jet. It’s in the kitchen.”

Ace immediately throws another tissue at Alex. “You asshole. You let me wallow. I’m sick.”

“Yeah, and this way you’ll get more fluids, because I’m not letting you make tea until you’re done with your water.”

“Evil.”

“Thank me later.”

“Jet would never do this to me.”

“Jet also has no money to buy you more tea.”

He sniffs. “I’m going to attribute my lack of response to my fever.”

“You do that. Try to get some sleep while you’re at it.”

Chapter Text

“Hey. Hey, Marcus.” When Marcus looks up from his book, Elliot says, “I have the best idea.”

Marcus has lived with Elliot long enough to know that their definitions of ‘best’ are not necessarily the same, so he exercises some caution. “What is it?”

“ Turtles.”

“Like the animal or the candy?” Please say the candy.

“Oh. Uh, both, I guess, but I was talking about the animal.” Damn it. “Turtles, the candy, are a good idea, but they’re not the best idea, you know?”

Marcus doesn’t answer that. “What is your idea that has something to do with turtles, the animal?”

“We should get some!”

Uh.

Marcus lets himself pause long enough to get an arsenal of reasons why that is not the best idea ready, because Elliot looks ready to argue over this, which means that he’s already gotten attached to the idea, which means Marcus is going to have to hold his ground very well in order for them to not get turtles.

“What does the landlord say about pets?” he asks first, because that would be the simplest solution. If the landlord says no turtles, they’re not getting turtles.

“The landlord said small pets were okay.”

That’s a less strict policy than Marcus was expecting, but he can work with it. Last he checked, turtles weren’t that small, and he’s pretty sure their landlord meant, like, fish. Or maybe a gerbil. “Elliot, I’m not sure you realize how big turtles can be.”

Elliot frowns. “Not the big ones. Like little tiny pet turtles.”

“How small is that?”

“Like... pretty small? Small enough to qualify as small pets. I don’t think you can even get the big ones as pets.”

“True. Okay. Where would we put them?”

“In a tank. Obviously. Google says they should have some water, but it doesn’t need to be all water.”

Damn, he’s prepared. “What if the Wiimote hits it?”

“That’s why we don’t play Wii Tennis anymore.”

“We can still play Wii Bowling though.”

“True. Hey, we should play Wii Bowling once we finish figuring this out.”

“Okay. But again, what if the Wiimote hits it?”

Elliot looks around. He’s standing in the doorway to the kitchen, which is also not a great place to put a tank. Especially not one that will have water in it. “Uh... by the door?”

“So people can walk into it every time they open the door?”

“Good point. My room, then.”

Marcus can’t argue with that, so he reverts to the real reasons he’s fighting Elliot on this. “What are we going to do when we both move? And who’s going to take care of the turtles?”

“I don’t know, and I will.”

“You killed a cactus.”

“I forgot where I put it! A turtle’s way bigger.”

“Big enough that it doesn’t count as a small pet?”

“You know what I meant.”

“Honestly, I think us getting a turtle would suck for the turtle. I mean, neither of us is around a lot. Both of us are moving out soon. I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

They play Wii Bowling and forget about it, but if Marcus goes to the World Wildlife Fund website later and adopts a spotted turtle, no one needs to know until the package with the letter and plush gets there.

Chapter Text

Eli’s job has three parts. He herds the supers into a semi-organized group when they’re not on missions, coordinates them when they are on missions, and cleans everything up afterwards.

Honestly, it’s the last part that’s the worst, because everything’s out of order. There’s property damage coming out his ears, insurance companies fistfighting each other behind Denny’s, and countless civilians asking questions that they really shouldn’t be asking while covered with debris.

And then he has to deal with the aftereffects of the Vindicators, which are a catastrophe in and of themselves.

He’s just gotten back the report on how many windows Zipper’s extendo-arm smashed through, and he’s going to let the insurance companies fight that one out, and that has to be the last thing because nobody can do anything about Samira’s sheet of ice paving the streets except wait. They’ve tried salt in enough quantities to poison people and Eli may or may not have purchased a culinary blowtorch and tried to melt it by brute force.

Which didn’t work, because apparently they would melt on their own, as long as they had enough time, but that was it. And in the meantime, this street is freezing.

Literally.

As soon as he thinks that, something warm settles around his shoulders, and Isaiah says from behind him, “I got another blanket.”

“You know that just happens because you change out of your uniform so fast, right? If they knew who you were they wouldn’t think you were in shock.”

“Ah, but you’re missing the key point,” she says, coming around to stand next to him. “Which is that you did not bring a jacket.”

“You got it for me?”

“Well, I didn’t tell them that.” But she smiles, and nods at the ice still covering the street. “Samira says she’ll try to find a way to discreetly get rid of it.”

“Tell her she doesn’t need to be discreet if she just wears her damn uniform— actually, never mind, I’ll tell her myself.” He goes to pull the blanket tighter around himself, but Isaiah’s not dressed for the weather either, so he offers one side to her.

She takes it. “At least the hard part’s over.”

Eli doesn’t say what he’s thinking, which is that it was over as soon as she walked up, because him being able to get these building owners and insurance representatives to listen to him depends entirely on him looking like a hardass.

But they know each other so well that they don’t need Natia around for Isaiah to know what Eli’s thinking, and they both smile, accidentally at the same time, as Samira appears in her Coldfront uniform and starts taking away the ice.

Chapter Text

‘Fuck’ is really a very useful word.

It fits anywhere, in any sentence, in any word. It can be any part of speech. And sometimes, it’s the perfect word to describe situations that can’t be described using anything cleaner.

So, fuck.

Major fuck.

“Major fuck,” Alex mutters out loud, because it just happens to encompass everything that’s going on very well, and thus, it bears repeating.

“Uh...” a familiar voice says. “What exactly is happening here?”

Alex can’t exactly see Samira, because he’s dangling facing the other way, but he does his best to rotate around a little.

And then the web un-twists itself, and he’s back facing the same angle as before, except now it’s worse, because the webbing is slowly twisting the other way, so now he’s rotating .

“You’re gonna have to come over here,” he sighs.

Samira walks around so she’s standing in front of him and says, “What exactly is happening here?” This time, she only barely gets through her words before a snicker fights its way out.

“Fuck if I know. Kim’s hell spider has completely taken over this hallway, apparently. ” He doesn’t really know what happened. One moment, he was walking along, minding his own business, and the next minute he’s got webbing around his legs and he gets yanked upwards, except it’s not actually him that gets yanked upwards, it’s his legs, so now he’s upside down. And somehow there is more webbing.

There is webbing everywhere.

Everywhere.

“And I couldn’t break it. So can you try something?”

“Like what?”

“Like, I don’t know, freeze the web or something? Then it would be breakable.”

Samira considers it for a long time before saying, “Nope, I don’t think I can do that. What if I freeze your feet? Or I break your feet? Or I break the web, but then you fall and get concussion number— what is it, seventy-six? I think I just have to leave you like that for a while and wait for it to dissolve.”

“It is not concussion number seventy-six, it is concussion number four, thank you very much.”

“Same thing. Oh, but don’t worry, I’ll send Kim a picture so they know what’s going on. I’m sure that picture definitely won’t find its way onto every Vindicator’s phone in a couple of minutes.”

“Is this revenge for me eating your chips?”

“Yes.” Samira sounds supremely satisfied.

Chapter Text

“So...” Beezle says. “Do you need a place to stay while you’re helping Elliot?”

Kal looks around at the dark streets, the orange goop on the ground from when Elliot had slipped on his own shoes and fallen and gotten it everywhere, and the waitress in the diner, still on the phone with the 911 operator. When he’d found Beezlebub outside the diner, he had told him that Magda had left to take Carmen home, and Greg had vanished somewhere. “YES, I THINK SO.”

“Come back with me, then. The Witchmother always seems to have room somewhere for extra people. WiFi’s great, too.”

Kal blinks. “WHAT?”

“Don’t you talk to the newly deceased in Ouranos? WiFi, it’s been around for... uh, a while now. At least ten years, I think. I’m not really sure.”

“ELLIOT IS THE FIRST FRESH I HAVE CHARONED IN A WHILE.”

“Huh. Okay. I’m gonna have to teach you about the world today, then, because a lot’s different.”

“THAT SOUNDS LIKE A PLEASANT WAY OF SPENDING TIME.” Before Beezlebub has time to start questioning that statement, Kal continues, “I AM ALWAYS INTERESTED IN WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN THE WORLD. WHAT TIME IS IT?”

“Uh...” Beezle can’t really remember the last time someone asked him that, ironically. “Past midnight.”

“PLENTY OF TIME BEFORE I MUST BEGIN TEACHING ELLIOT, THEN.” Kal steps forward like he’s about to stride boldly straight to the Witchmother, but then abruptly stops and looks around. “WHICH WAY?”

“It’ll be faster if I take you. Give me your arm. And when we get there, we’ll get you some, uh, different clothes.”

“WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE?”

“They are not going to help you blend in at all.”

“OH. I SEE. THAT MAKES SENSE.” Kal holds out his arm. “SHALL WE GO?”

(Kal is closer to Greg’s height than Beezle’s, so if one of Greg’s ubiquitous sets of a gray T-shirt and sweatpants goes missing and Beezle just happens to hand Kal a set of clothes that look just like it, well, nobody needs to know.)

(On the other hand, Beezle probably needs to find a bigger size before Kal flexes again and accidentally ruins his shirt Hulk-style.)

Chapter Text

Ace knows for a fact that Alex is not asleep.

He knows this because when Alex is asleep, he breathes deeply, and he tucks his arms into his chest. That system works for them, because Ace is significantly shorter than Alex, so their legs don’t really come into conflict, and they generally stay on their own sides of the bed because Alex gives off a ridiculous amount of body heat.

But all this is getting away from the point, which is that Ace knows that Alex is not asleep, which means he is doing this intentionally. And by ‘this’, Ace means ‘spreading out like a starfish to the extent that Ace is way closer to falling off the bed than he would prefer’.

“I’ll kick you,” he says.

“Shh, I’m trying to sleep,” Alex replies. It’s muffled because half his face is buried in a pillow.

“No, you’re not. Your arm is poking me in the ribs.”

“You’re not ticklish.”

“And yet.”

Alex sighs loudly and removes his arm, but he takes the blanket with him. Ace can practically feel his shit-eating grin.

“Oh, fuck off,” Ace says.

“I did, I’m all the way over here now.”

“Ugh.” He slides closer so he can take his rightful portion of blanket back, ridiculous amounts of body heat be damned.

“Hello,” Alex says.

“Hello. Go the fuck to sleep.”

Ace is close enough that he can feel Alex’s chest move when he laughs quietly. “Will do.”

Chapter Text

“How comfortable are you with people touching your hair?” Kate asks.

Carmen frowns, her fingertips brushing a couple of pieces of hair that have fallen in front of her face. “I don’t mind, but... it’s really tangled, and I know it’s not, like, soft or anything. I never do anything with it.”

“I’ll help you with it.”

“You would do that?”

Kate sits down next to Carmen, who’s sprawled across Kate’s bed idly smoothing a fuzzy pillow. “Look, you’re not the first person I’ve known with depression that affected their ability to take care of themselves. And I like doing hair. It might take some time to comb it out, but we can put on a movie or something in the background. Do you want to do it?”

Carmen sits up, hugging the pillow to her chest. “...Yes.”

“Okay, let me get some hair stuff and my laptop, and you start thinking about what you want to watch. I’ll watch pretty much anything except Adam Sandler, so it’s up to you.”

Kate goes to her bathroom and grabs a wide-toothed comb, a fine-toothed one, and her favorite leave-in conditioner, remembers her laptop at the last second, and returns to her room to find Carmen still sitting with the pillow in her lap, with a thoughtful look on her face. “Ready?”

“Lilo and Stitch?”

“Sounds awesome. Okay, just tell me if you’re going to move. Your hair’s long, so we can both sit and I’ll be able to comb your hair.”

She hits Play, then gets started on the very bottom inch of Carmen’s hair. It’s tangled, and there’s honestly a lot of breakage and split ends, but that’s not important, and anyway Kate can’t fix split ends with two combs and some conditioner. That’ll be a work in progress.

She knows the movie really well already, so she focuses on combing, just a little bit at a time, and murmurs to say something if it hurts. Carmen nods, but she doesn’t say anything, and Kate keeps combing hair.

It’s kind of meditative. She likes seeing the progress in front of her— at first, she’s starting at the very bottom, and then starting at Carmen’s shoulders, and then her jawline, and then she’s combed through the entirety of Carmen’s hair with the wide-toothed comb.

“Do you want leave-in conditioner?” she says, as quietly as she can (to not interrupt the movie) while still loud enough for Carmen to hear her.

“Sure.”

Kate pumps some into her hand, then starts working it through Carmen’s hair. She can feel that it’s not perfectly untangled yet, but that’s why she’s doing the conditioner now. It’ll make going through Carmen’s hair with the fine-tooth comb way less painful.

“That smells good,” Carmen says.

“It’s jojoba and coconut. I get a ton of free samples because I buy so much stuff, so if you want one let me know because I think I have like four of this one.”

Once she’s gotten the conditioner worked through Carmen’s hair, she picks up the fine-tooth comb and starts from the bottom again. It goes faster this time, and she’s done before the movie is over, so she puts her hair stuff off to the side and scoots forward so she can sit next to Carmen and watch the last couple of scenes of the movie.

Movement from next to her catches her attention, and Kate tries her best to watch subtly as Carmen runs her fingers through the ends of her hair. She can’t stop herself from mirroring the small smile on Carmen’s face.

Chapter Text

“We have a problem,” Eli says. “Zipper, look at all this and make sure the dates are correct?”

Zipper, on the other side of the room, stretches his neck until he can see Eli’s screen, then says, “All correct. What is the problem?”

“The problem is that you’re not eighteen yet. Which means that you need a qualified adult super to register to keep watch on you until you turn eighteen. And until you have one of those, we can’t—”

“I can do it,” Natia says as she opens the door.

Eli looks up from his screen. “I’m not even done listing all the reasons why it’s a problem. For Zipper’s sake, not yours.”

“It’s really no problem,” Natia says. “You were going to say that he has no legal family either so registering him anyway is going to raise some red flags to social services? I’ll adopt him— if it’s okay with you, Zipper,” she adds, turning to look at him, and then says, “Okay. And since I’m registered as a super as well, that means I automatically become his super guardian. Problem solved.”

“Natia, you’re a lifesaver,” Eli says.

“So how do we do this?” she asks.

“I don’t really have time to walk through the whole process right now, sorry. And I’ve never done it myself, obviously, so you can’t read my mind... Ask Alex and see what he remembers. I mean, he at least knows where the agency is.”

“Okay. Zipper, let’s go— if we can get this done today, then Eli can stop fussing about not having all the forms in.”

“You know me so well,” Eli says absently, already typing something into his tablet. “Have fun and make my life easy.”

“It was kind of different for me,” Alex says. “Because they already had me in the system as related to Danny, and a super, and over eighteen. Even if they were not that happy that I wasn’t, like, twenty yet.”

“That’s close enough,” Natia says. “Hold still for a second.” He does— staying still makes it easier for Natia to get specifics from someone’s mind. “Thanks. Also, we were thinking of having an adoption party, just because. Are you in?”

“As long as I don’t have to plan it.”

“Fair enough. We’ll send out information later.”

The forms are signed, the paperwork has been brought to Eli, Eli has been slightly kidnapped because that was the only way to get him to come to the party, and speaking of the paty, it is in full swing. All of the Vindicators are here (keeping a close watch on their devices in case any urgent missions come in), there are two cakes (one made of seaweed, for Zipper, and a vanilla one for everyone else), and Natia can’t help feeling that now, they’re really becoming a team. Maybe even a family.

She’s in the middle of a conversation with Isaiah when someone— Tanis— taps her shoulder.

“I know you just signed a ton of papers to adopt Zipper and I’m about to suggest signing more but I just couldn’t wait any longer to ask. Marry me?”

She gets the words out so fast that Natia is still parsing the overwhelming feeling from Tanis’s brain of ‘family, family, family,’ but she still hears every word and it’s a simple matter to say, “Of course.”

Chapter Text

Ace has been kind of half-heartedly hoping to find Tanis at some point, but he hadn't really expected to without making an appointment— half the time she's in space, and usually the rest of the time she's in meetings. So it's a bit of a surprise to wander into a break room and find her just chilling on the couch with a cup of tea.

"Oh, hello, Ace," she says when she notices him standing half in the room, half in the doorway. "What's up?"

"Can I... talk to you about something?" he says. 

"Of course. Sit down." She scoots over to one side of the couch, and when he sits down next to her, she pulls her legs up onto the couch so she can sit facing him. Somehow, even that little gesture makes Ace feel like he was right to want to talk to her, that she'll have something helpful to say.

"So I joined the Vindicators," he says unnecessarily. She knows he did, she was there, but he needs to figure out how he's going to approach getting these thoughts out of his head. "And... it's a little weird. I don't know how to adjust. Like, the last thing I was doing was basically actively working against you, and now I'm here and I... I guess I don't know what's expected from me? Or I'm just on edge because I'm surrounded by people I've fought many times and I know exactly how all of you could kill me. I don't know."

"That makes sense." Tanis thinks about it for a second. "I don't think I've had the exact same experience as you, but I did also join the Vindicators a little... unexpectedly. It's a mindset shift, right?"

"Yeah."

She sips her tea. "I can at least tell you that Eli is not shy about telling you when he doesn't trust you. No matter what you might have done in the past, you're here now. That means that somewhere down the line you proved that you're meant to be here."

"Yeah, somewhere in all of my stealing shit and breaking windows Mission Control looked at me and thought 'yeah, that's what we want working with us,'" Ace says, maybe a little bitterly. "Sorry, it's not— I didn't mean for that to come out all bitchy. I just don't know what I did to... prove myself, I guess."

"There were a lot of people who vouched for you. And correct me if I'm wrong, but you're not a supervillain. You're someone who has powers and needed a job for them, and a supervillain obliged. And don't forget that you came to us." She smiles at him. "You do deserve to be here, Ace. You're worthy. You're a superhero just like the rest of us."

Aw, fuck. That hits deeper than he expected. Somehow, Tanis has laser targeted his biggest worry about being here and just stated that it's okay and that... he deserves to be here. And she's Captain Stardust. He has to believe her.

Ace opens his mouth and finds out that he's gotten choked up, so he just nods instead. 

"I trust you," Tanis says, and then she gets up. "And on that note, I should be going, my next meeting is soon. But tell me if you get freaked out again. I will do my best to help you."

She leaves, taking her tea with her, and Ace is relieved that she's letting him bawl in dignified solitude. 

She trusts him. They trust each other.

He deserves this.

Chapter Text

It's finally happening.

Shit, it had taken so long, all the paperwork, the forms, redoing the forms, filling out more copies of the paperwork, finding a fucking fax machine because of course the agency needed them to fax things (all in all, that had probably been the one step of the process that had irritated Eli the most, just because of the sheer unnecessity of it), and now it's finally happening.

"We need to paint the room," Isaiah says, which surprises Eli out of the silence he had landed in as soon as he comprehended that it's actually happening.

"Right." They have the paint— Sara's favorite color is green, which had made Isaiah smile when they found out— but they haven't started yet, because Eli didn't want to jinx them. But if they do it now, it'll have the whole weekend to dry before they can go in on Monday and make it official. "I read online that we should put masking tape on the edges, like for the carpet and stuff, so we don't have to worry about them."

"I got newspaper for the floor too."

When they'd chosen this house, it was ready to move into, and most of their home decor efforts since then have consisted of changing some lamps and adding their own furniture. So this is going to be the first time that they actually have to get their hands dirty (well, hopefully not that dirty, but Eli is a realistic person). 

They've changed into old sweatshirts and jeans and gotten the paint and everything's ready to go, and Eli can't help but look around the spare room that they're turning into Sara's bedroom. Off-white walls, a big window, crown molding by the ceiling, completely lacking in personality unless the personality you're looking for is 'too lazy to put any effort into this room'. That's finally about to change.

And then, Sara will move in, and they'll be a family, as long as they don't fuck it up somehow.

Well, that's a lovely thought. Because if Eli is being honest with himself, reading parenting books and shit like that can't compare to actual experience, and he never really had younger siblings or anyone to take care of, and so how the fuck is he going to do this? 

He's probably been standing there with a dry paint roller in his hands for a few seconds now, because Isaiah says, "What's wrong?"

"What if I'm an awful parent?" he says, without meaning to say it. Because he can't shake the idea that somehow, he will mess it up, he'll start yelling or something and everything will be awful and Sara will regret agreeing when they asked her if she would join their family and it'll all go to shit.

"You won't be," Isaiah says calmly. "You care too much about doing a good job to be awful. You were the one who bought all those parenting books and magazines and keeps a list of Sara's favorite foods and completely overhauled your work schedule so you can be at home more. And besides, Alex is still alive, so clearly you can't be a complete failure as a parent."

That gets him to laugh. "Thank you." They always know what to say and how to say it, to get Eli out of whatever current spiral is happening. "Although I never had to prod him to get him to eat his vegetables."

They smile at that. "I think you'll figure it out."