Work Text:
nero’s annual botox injection
Otto: I have a confession to make
You: u bleach your hair. fuckin knew it malpense
Otto: Why is that ALWAYS the first conclusion you jump to
You: duh bc it’s the most logical
You: i’ve seen those ash-blond roots
Otto: Where’s everyone else
You: wing’s asleep bc he’s a #loser and his snoring is why i’m not
You: brand is probably also asleep bc it’s like 9am ur time and we both know she never wakes up before 11 unless it’s an emergency
You: and as for franz and nigel? hot sexy times i’m guessing
Otto: You disgust me <3
Otto: Anyway I do not have ash blond roots
You: denial is the first stage of the grieving process. that shitty therapist nero made us see had a little chart and everything
Otto: You’re incorrigible
Otto: Anyway, they can just catch up later
You: hell yeah they can. lay it on me, malpense
Otto: Ew
You: ew urself, loser
Otto: OK what if I told you that I have Nero’s personal number
You: HIS WHAT
You: malpense i need that number
You: it’s for science
You: we can finally find out if the name of this gc is true
Otto: Absolutely not
You: </3 i’m going to get wing to beat u up
You: or i’ll test that raven theory and whisper into random household objects while hoping she has us secretly bugged after all
Otto: You do that
You: i will
You: fr why haven’t u used it
Otto: Idk what I’d say
Otto: Like, ‘sup, former headmaster who was the closest thing I had to a father figure? I know it’s been 2 years since you gave me your number and I’ve never used it before but I just really want a heart-to-heart?????
You: uh-oh
Otto: Do not say it
You: this is a daddy issues situation
Otto: I hate you
You: ur freaking out over something
You: what is it
You: tell auntie shelby so i can bestow my brilliant advice upon thee
You: i might not even laugh
Otto: That’s encouraging
You: look bucko i don’t make promises i can’t keep ok it’s my sexiest quality
Otto: You say that about everything
You: uh yeah cuz it applies to everything god ur so dense otto
Otto: It’s easier if I just ring you
You: then call me jackass
Shelby had just about managed to lock herself into the bathroom of her and Wing’s shared apartment when Otto’s name flashed from the screen of her phone, and she picked up on the first ring.
“Morning,” she said.
“How are you so awake,” Otto deadpanned. “Nobody should be this awake. Isn’t it 4am on the East Coast?"
“It’s my naturally stunning personality,” Shelby shrugged. “I exiled myself to the bathroom for you. Hurry up and spill, my ass is getting numb on the toilet seat."
“That’s what I really admire about you, Shelby,” Otto said sarcastically. “Your selflessness.”
“The words ‘famed’ have been thrown around once or twice,” Shelby said with faux-modesty, “I won’t deny it. Now come on. Get all of your weird Nero angsting off your chest before I have to resuscitate my beloved from the inevitable choking that will be caused by the sleep apnea he swears up and down he does not have.”
“Never become a counselor, Shel.”
“It’s not high up on my list of potential careers, don’t you worry.”
“I don’t know where to start,” Otto said. He sighed deeply, and Shelby traced the grouting of the tiles with her finger while he clearly mulled over what to say. “You know me. I’m not exactly big on authority figures. I never really listened to or respected any of the people who worked at the orphanage when I was little.”
“I remember,” Shelby said. Her voice was a little too soft, so she added, “You had your little kindergartener cult,” for good measure.
“Fuck off, they were tweens at least,” Otto responded on autopilot. The banter between them was always so easy that Shelby sometimes caught herself wondering whether or not she’d chosen the most-compatible male option of their little group. And then, inevitably, her and Otto would get into a week-long fight driven by their deep-rooted competitiveness and inability to admit when they were wrong, and she’d forget all about it. She did love Wing; it was just that, in an alternate universe, she’d like to think that she could love Otto like that, too. “But then there was Nero, and it’s just...different. I think he cares about all of us, in his own weird way, and then there was this moment after the whole incident with me and the Animus fluid? I don’t know if I ever told you, but I was sitting there, in the hospital bed, and telling him about all the horrible things I’d done, and how I was sorry and that I wished I could take it back, and he just...cut me off mid-sentence. And told me that he was the one who was sorry. I mean, he even used my first name, I genuinely thought he was having a stroke or something.”
“He’s overdue for one,” Shelby said agreeably.
“So, yeah, that was weird,” Otto continued. “No more weird than, say, your stress-induced breakdown in Nero’s office where you asked Raven to take you to Thailand, but definitely up there. There’s been other odd bonding moments, too, like when I begged him to kill me-”
“I’m sorry, what?” Shelby blinked, pausing her picking at the grouting. “Was this when you were Animus’d?”
“No, it was when I got possessed by Overlord,” Otto said impatiently, and then, as if realising that that probably didn’t clarify much, added, “The first time, in space.”
“This conversation is making me wonder just how many details you leave out when you give us the dramatic retelling,” Shelby muttered under her breath.
“-and he hesitated, which I know seems like normal behaviour, but it’s Nero, he threatened to murder me because we got into a fight with Block and Tackle on our first day-”
“There was no ‘we’ in that scenario,” Shelby informed him. “Like most trouble you get us into, that one was all on you. Plus, it wasn’t even an explicit death threat. He didn’t start launching into those until second year.”
“Is this what we’ve come to, Trinity?” Otto asked gravely. “Splitting hairs about whether or not our death threats are explicit enough?”
“Uh, yes,” Shelby said. “Now, Raven? There’s a woman who tells you outright when she’s planning to send you to the big, badly-secured jewel exhibit in the sky. An example to follow, for sure.”
Otto snorted. “You weren’t kidding when you said you were going to make a fancam of Raven, were you?”
“Drunk me just says what sober me hasn’t had time to idiotproof yet,” Shelby admitted. “As soon as Raven lets me keep any photographic evidence of her in my iCloud, it’s so on.”
“She lets us call her Natalya now, I’m sure she’ll relent eventually,” Otto said. “Sidenote: I will never call her Natalya. It doesn’t matter how many times I hear Nero and Diabolus say it, it feels wrong.”
“Agreed. Tangent over, get back to your point about Nero.”
“You’re a cruel mistress,” Otto said fondly. “But fine. I don’t know, it’s obvious the initial favouritism and overzealous protection detail was because of Number One, but after that...I can’t describe it. Then, to cap it all off, he gave me his personal number the day we graduated, in that envelope you claimed was a bomb.”
“Which you haven’t used,” Shelby supplied.
“Which I haven’t used, because I still talk to Nero all the time, anyway, now that I’m doing contract work for G.L.O.V.E,” Otto confirmed. They’d all been unable to talk him out of his decision to immediately qualify as a G.L.O.V.E operative - Otto said that he already had his degrees, all five of them, and that he neither wanted nor needed the ‘classic university experience’. Shelby privately thought that that was bullshit, because if anyone needed a stab at normality, it was Otto, but she’d elected to keep her mouth shut on that specific topic. He seemed content enough, bouncing around from place to place doing intelligence ops and occasionally crashing with Laura in her student digs in Oxford. “And, again, I’m not giving it to you just so you can pester him about whether or not he gets fillers.”
“Well, I know the truth,” Shelby said with an air of superiority. Still, she added a touch of gentleness to her voice when she said, “But there’s something that’s making you want to use that personal line now, right?”
There was a long pause. For a second, Shelby thought he’d hung up. And then, “Shel, can you tell me about your parents?”
Shelby was thrown. “What?”
“Your parents,” Otto repeated. “Can you-”
“Uh, sure,” Shelby frowned. Her backside really was getting numb now, so she stood up and paced around the bathroom while she talked. “My dad is a tech mogul in Silicon Valley. Owns like half of Apple and a quarter of Twitter or something. My mom is some kind of heiress from New York. Which, metaphorically speaking, makes me the Midwest. They got married to make their parents happy, fought a lot, had me, fought even more, and then had a billion-dollar divorce while they sent me off to boarding school ASAP. Um, when I was ten my dad decided to violate the custody order by pulling me out of boarding school and sending me to some Montessori day school in San Francisco to piss my mom off, and that’s when I became the Wraith. I don’t think they even noticed when I came back from H.I.V.E. My mom just signed the payment forms for Yale and went right back to doing lines of coke off a gold sink or whatever the hell she does in her spare time.”
“I’m sorry,” Otto said.
“Yeah, well,” Shelby shrugged, trying her best not to let her voice crack. “It’s why Nero didn’t have to say anything to me about my home life when he caught us following your insane laundry room plan. He knew it sucked, I knew it sucked, and I think he took one look at my face and realised he’d be better off saving his breath. Raven told me in, like, third year that my dad didn’t even bother looking at the information packet for H.I.V.E when she came to kidnap me. Asked me if she should’ve roughed him up a little. Always regretted saying no.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, we’re not here to talk about my tragic backstory.”
“See, you get it,” Otto said. “The feeling of having nothing before H.I.V.E. It’s like that for me, too. Being away from everyone all the time...it’s difficult. Sometimes I forget who I am. And I think I was at my best when I was at H.I.V.E, too. It was where I felt most secure, and I think a lot of it was down to you guys, but also down to Nero, too, and everything he did for me. He’s the closest thing I have to a parent. We had that really emotionally intense conversation on the last day, but I just don’t think that that cut it, you know?”
Shelby, allergic to emotionally intense conversations in general, didn’t know, but she understood what Otto was getting at. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t miss H.I.V.E, either; the recurrent stress dreams about Nero drug-testing them all was definitely an indicator. “So call him.”
“Very helpful.”
“I’m being serious,” Shelby said. She reconsidered. “As serious as I am about anything, I guess. Talk it out. Nero probably feels the same way about you leaving, too. I mean, I didn’t get a copy of his phone number.”
“Raven did hug you, though.”
“Yes, and it was terrifying, and I thought she was going to break my neck for the entire second that it lasted,” Shelby reported. “The hug she gave Wing was remarkably less murderous, so I’m choosing to believe she just hates me and that it’s not a symptom of, like, wider intimacy issues.”
“Oh, Shel,” Otto said fondly. “Never change.”
“Not planning on it,” she promised.
“And you don’t think he’ll think it’s weird?” Otto pressed. He sounded almost shy. Almost, because Otto had lost some of his arrogance in the eight years and counting that Shelby had known him for, but not all. “That I’m using it for the first time in two years?”
“You know what’s weird?” Shelby asked. “Getting kidnapped at age thirteen by a Russian assassin and being taken to a high-tech school for villains where we get shot at for funsies and a sentient AI who, by the by, kind of reminds me of Clippy from Microsoft Word, helps run the place. What’s not weird is taking the time to process all the freaky stuff that happened to us in school, in your case literally before you were born , and deciding to act on it. I’ll make fun of you over anything, but not this.”
“Yeah,” Otto said. “Thanks, Trinity. That - that means a lot.”
“No problemo,” Shelby said. “Now can you take back the comment about me not becoming a counselor?”
“I’ll think about it," he said, his grin somehow audible, and hung up with a soft click.