Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was a beautiful day up until Agent Venom found him.

Maybe beautiful was overselling it. One moment Kaine was wondering how to get monster blood out of whatever high tech fabric his suit was actually made of, and the next he was turning around to stare straight into the eyes of Agent Venom.

“Scarlet Spider,” he said, sounding way too friendly for someone who had last seen Kaine drive a stinger into Carnage’s skull. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”

“Go fuck yourself,” Kaine told him. Then, for good measure, he added, “No.”

How that ended up with him sitting at a table at an outdoor café with Agent Venom across from him, Kaine had no idea. Nothing in his life had made sense since – well, since ever.

Their waitress looked nervous as she handed them menus. Probably because Kaine was still covered in monster blood.

“I have a proposition for you,” Agent Venom said. He’d pulled back the – whatever it was that made up his suit, the symbiote gunk, and his face underneath it was all too disarming, startlingly handsome in an all American type of way. All square jaw and blue eyes. Kaine wanted to punch him.

“I’m not killing anybody,” he said.

“That’s – why was that the first place your mind went to?” Agent Venom asked.

“That’s usually what people want when they come to me asking for favors,” Kaine said. He glanced down at the menu, wondering if Aracely would like this place.

“I don’t want you to kill anyone,” Agent Venom said, in a tone like that should have somehow been obvious.

Kaine considered it, glancing from the menu back up to Agent Venom’s stupidly handsome face. His jaw line really was terrific. Kaine had a blurry almost-memory, a memory that he possessed but that had never belonged to him, of him in high school, before he’d started bleaching the strawberry out of his blond hair, before he’d really grown into his ears.

Fuck Peter Parker. Story of Kaine’s life.

“Okay,” Kaine finally said. “So you don’t want me to kill someone. That still doesn’t explain why you came to me.”

“I need someone I can trust,” Agent Venom said.

“And you thought of Spider-Man’s criminal clone?” Kaine asked, his chin propped up on one hand.

“Wait,” Agent Venom said, looking confused. “You’re Spider-Man’s clone?”

Kaine played back their previous encounter and realized that Agent Venom did not, in fact, have any way of knowing that.

“Shit,” Kaine said.

Working with Agent Venom reminded Kaine of something Ben had said to him when they’d been in Las Vegas, during a rare moment of something like a truce.

“You want to be the Scarlet Spider? Fine,” Ben said, taking a sip of a cosmopolitan in the low lit bar of Kaine’s expensive hotel. “Here’s what you need to know about being the Scarlet Spider: literally everyone you will ever meet in this business is in love with Peter.”

Ben, granted, had been completely out of his mind in Las Vegas.

“Okay,” Kaine said, slowly, trying to figure out what to do with that. He was not used to be the stable one in their dynamic. It was taking some serious readjustment.

“I’m serious!” Ben said. The words came out slightly muffled; he was trying to tie a cherry stem into a knot using only his tongue. Kaine didn’t want to look, but a kind of morbid fascination had come over him. “Everyone you ever meet in this business? In love with Peter. In lust with him. They want to have his little spider-babies.”

“Please stop,” Kaine said. Then, because this was probably the longest conversation he’d ever had with Ben where nobody tried to kill anybody else and he couldn’t help himself, he asked, “What are you even talking about?”

“Just be glad you’ve always known you’re a clone,” Ben said, as if Kaine could possibly be glad for those years of living rough and knowing he was a broken copy. Ben pressed a hand to his chest and continued, “I thought I was the real one, I’m finally Spider-Man, I think I’m going to reclaim my life, and then the next thing I know I’m running into a conga line of Peter Parker’s past conquests. A long conga line.”

“Okay, you’ve made your point,” Kaine said.

“I mean, have you seen the Black Cat?” Ben demanded.

Kaine had. He didn’t really get the appeal. Ben tried to illustrate it for him by drawing exaggerated hourglass shapes in the air with his hands.

Kaine gestured to the bartender.

“Cut him off,” he said.

The bartender glanced at Ben. “He’s had one drink.”

“And don’t get me started on Johnny Storm,” Ben announced loudly, to nobody in particular.

So that conversation hadn’t exactly been the clone bonding Kaine had always dreamed of or anything. Still, though, he couldn’t help thinking about it on the trip upstate. Thinking about the way Agent Venom had looked at his face with that mix of awe and longing. Thinking about how he wasn’t really seeing Kaine at all. He was seeing Peter. That look on his face had nothing to do with Kaine.

“This is a bad idea,” he said out loud.

“No, it isn’t,” Aracely said, sitting next to him.

“I thought you weren’t talking to me,” Kaine said.

Aracely “hadn’t been talking to him” on and off since he’d come back from Las Vegas.

(“She’s mad at you,” Donald had said when he and Wally brought Aracely to meet Kaine in New York, as if Aracely slamming doors and saying that she was mad at him to his face had somehow gone over Kaine’s head entirely. “For not taking her with you.”

“I got that,” Kaine said.

“Because you’re prone to, you know, dying in very weird ways,” Wally put in, pointing at Kaine.)

“I’m talking to you to tell you that it’s not a bad idea,” Aracely said, as if that made any sense. “It’s a good idea. I saw Agent Venom in your mind and he’s cute and you like him.”

Kaine was beginning to wish Ben had just killed him in Las Vegas; it would have been easier than dealing with this.

“I don’t “like” him,” Kaine said, complete with air quotes, because apparently the only way to have this conversation was to stoop to Aracely’s level. “I just… don’t hate him, that’s all.”

“You like him,” Aracely decided. Kaine gave up talking to her for the rest of the trip upstate. At least the luxury bus he’d shelled out for was comfortable.

Agent Venom had suggested they travel together, but Kaine needed the time to think. Something about Agent Venom made that hard for him, which Kaine was pretty sure was the only reason he’d ever accepted being part of this stupid mission in the first place.

They were headed to upstate New York towards something that billed itself as a luxury family wellness retreat, which Kaine was pretty sure was a totally bullshit concept made up to swindle people out of their money, but then he’d been grown in a vat in an underground cloning laboratory by a mad man who’d tried to kill him, so it wasn’t like he was exactly an expert on families. At least the hotel had looked nice.

Three couples, Flash had explained, pulling a manila folder out of somewhere in that black armor and setting it down in front of Kaine, had been killed over the past two years. All gay men, all married with children. All killed in the exact same way.

And all, Flash had said as Kaine looked at the gruesome photos, had attended this family wellness retreat shortly before their murders.

They’d be posing as a married couple of three years with a teenaged foster daughter. Kaine had no idea why he’d agreed to this. Everything in his life had been simpler when he’d been a bad guy; back then nobody would’ve asked him to play married with them in order to catch some kind of crazed killer with a thing for torturing married gay men.

“Why me?” Kaine had asked. “Why do you want my help on this, specifically?”

Agent Venom shrugged.

“Because I feel like I can trust you,” he said. “And because you care a lot about people.”

Kaine had scoffed, but he had, in the end, agreed to go along with Agent Venom’s stupid plan.

Maybe it was because of Donald and Wally that he’d accepted, about the desire to protect them. They’d shown Kaine kindness when no one else had, and been repaid with so much suffering. Even if things were better now, even if they were talking again, even if Donald and Wally had both said they’d forgiven him – Kaine would never forgive himself.

Aracely reached over and squeezed his wrist. She left her hand there for the rest of the ride.

The resort was nice. Not as nice as the Four Seasons in Houston, but Kaine had high standards, and it met them. Flash had texted him ahead of time that he was already there and to tell him the suite number -- come up when you arrive :) -- so he and Aracely got into the elevator with a nice old couple from Connecticut who let Aracely talk their ears off on the ride up.

“You wanna go live with them instead?” Kaine snorted when they parted ways.

“They wouldn’t leave me and go to Las Vegas alone to fight the original Scarlet Spider and die,” Aracely said sweetly.

“It was just the one time, for like five minutes,” Kaine said, rolling his eyes. He wrapped his knuckles sharply against the door. “Let it go.”

Aracely huffed.

“You’re here,” Flash said when the door swung open. He smiled at Kaine, like he was actually happy to see him. “Come on in. Oh, hey, who’s this?”

“This is Aracely,” Kaine said as she beamed up at Flash. He squinted at Flash. “I thought you said we needed to pose as a couple with a kid, so I brought her.”

“Uh,” Flash said, gesturing behind him. There was a teenager in heavy makeup and ripped up cargo pants sitting on top of the desk, painting her nails. “This is Andi. I’d planned for her to pose as our daughter.”

“Hey, new stepdad,” Andi said, giving him a sarcastic wave.

“Did you steal a kid for this?” Flash said, giving Aracely a bemused glance as she practically flew over to introduce herself to Andi.

“What? No!” Kaine said, bristling. “I had her before!”

“I’m joking,” Flash said, holding up his hands. “I just didn’t know you had a kid.”

“She’s not my kid,” Kaine said. “She’s my…”

But there really wasn’t a good single word answer for what Aracely was to him. How Aracely had saved him, time and time again, just by being there.

“He’s my champion,” Aracely tossed over her shoulder.

“Oh,” Flash said, still looking bemused. “Of course.”

“Coach, does this mean I’m out?” Andi asked.

“It’s fine,” Flash said. “So we’ll be a couple with two teenaged foster daughters. That’s cozy, right?”

“Are we gonna have to split a room?” Andi asked, pointing at Aracely.

“She levitates in her sleep,” Kaine said, sticking his head into the master bedroom. “And she snores.”

“I do not snore!” Aracely said, though she made no move to deny the levitating bit.

“Is there only one bed in here?” Kaine asked. He didn’t know why he’d bothered voicing it; there was clearly only the one bed, and it wasn’t even a king.

“Oh,” Flash said, leaning around Kaine to look. His broad chest brushed against Kaine’s back, his hand briefly clapping him on the arm. “Sorry, I guess the hotel must have just – assumed.”

“It’s fine,” Kaine said, even though it wasn’t. Kaine didn’t share beds with people, not like that. He hadn’t since that night with Louise, when the degeneration had finally worsened to the point Warren always warned him it would, when the pain had driven him mad.

“I’ll sleep on the couch,” Flash said. “I was in the army. I’ve had worse.”

If Kaine made a disabled veteran sleep on the couch, Donald would probably be able to psychically sense it a hundred miles away and Kaine would be lectured for hours.

“It’s fine,” he said, taking a deep breath. “We can share. It’s not a big deal.”

Andi peaked around the both of them. She looked at the bed, then at them, then at the bed again before she whistled.

“That’s a lot of man for one little bed,” she said.

“Andi,” Flash admonished, going red. He was so fair every blush stood out starkly against his skin. Kaine supposed he should be thankful Peter’s complexion didn’t make him an easy blusher.

“Hey, you are supposed to be married,” Andi said. “Go get ‘im, coach.”

She clapped him on the back and then wandered towards the second bedroom.

Flash glanced at Kaine. Kaine glanced at Flash.

“Teenagers,” Flash offered, shrugging helplessly. “Can’t live with ‘em, can’t lock ‘em in an underground government bunker for a week.”

“Uh-huh,” Kaine said, rolling his eyes.

“Hey, I bought something to put the final touches on the whole married cover,” Flash said.

They were in the living room, going over the basics of the mission. Andi and Aracely had joined them in the beginning, reviewing the resort’s brochures, going over their respective backstories, but eventually they’d gotten bored, Andi had offered to put eyeliner on Aracely, and they’d been in the bathroom ever since, giggling. Kaine was getting a headache.

“Like what?” Kaine asked, looking up from the papers spread out around them.

“Here, give me your hand,” Flash said. Kaine felt strangely reluctant doing so. Flash’s hands were large like his, palms squarer than Kaine's own long fingered hands, and Kaine’s hand fit in his nicely. It felt better, he thought, than when Annabelle had wanted to hold his hand, her small fingers feeling uncomfortably breakable.

Flash drew out a small velvet jewelry box.

“Sorry, it’s pretty cheap,” he said, sliding it onto Kaine’s finger. “But it fits and that’s what counts.”

Kaine pulled his hand back, holding it up to the light. The ring glinted, plain and polished silver. It did fit perfectly, which made Kaine feel suspicious.

“How’d you know my ring size?” he asked. He didn’t even know his ring size; there hadn’t been a lot of opportunity for jewelry shopping his life.

Flash went red again.

“I figured it would be, uh, the same as Spider-Man’s,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck.

Kaine narrowed his eyes.

“How did you know Spider-Man’s ring size?” he hissed.

“It’s a good thing we’re all going for bougie family counseling,” Andi said, leaning out of the bathroom and brandishing a fluffy makeup brush, “because you guys really need it.”

“Thanks, Andi,” Flash said, looking chagrined. “If you girls are almost done in there, we should probably head out for the meet and greet with the rest of the families here.”

“Yay,” Andi said sarcastically, rolling her eyes.

It was almost impressive the smooth way Flash ushered both Andi and Aracely along, always patient while making sure neither one of them wandered off, which was impressive, given Aracely’s tendency to take off at the first sight of anything shiny or interesting.

“I'm a high school gym teacher,” he said to Kaine. “There’s nothing she can throw at me that I can’t handle.”

“She reads minds,” Kaine pointed out.

“A high school gym teacher in New York,” Flash said smugly. “It’ll be fine. She seems like a great kid. And Andi could use some friends her own age.”

Kaine glanced ahead of them to where Andi and Aracely were talking, heads bent together, and guessed that he couldn’t exactly disagree on Aracely’s end.

“Our girls are great,” Flash said, smiling benignly. “Honestly, I can’t complain.”

A couple scoffs went around the room. They were at the parents’ meet and greet, or at least that’s what it said on the brochure Kaine had been handed. There was coffee, and cans of mineral water, and everyone was sitting in a circle introducing themselves and telling the group a little about their family, all under the guidance of a couple of so-called professionals with very shiny teeth and very white clothes.

It was going to be a long week.

The kids, meanwhile, were off taking a mandatory two hour class on beading friendship bracelets.

(“Coach,” Andi said, wide-eyed with horror.

“Be strong, kiddo,” he replied, waving cheerfully as she and Aracely were swept away with the rest of the group.)

“Honestly!” Flash said, laughing. “I mean, they’re teenagers, so it’s not like it’s ever smooth sailing, but I can live with the loud music and messy bathrooms.”

Kaine had to admit, looking around the room, that he thought they might actually get away with this. They didn’t look less like they liked each other than a lot of these people. If anything, they seemed happier; Flash had reached over when they’d gotten settled and taken Kaine’s hand, holding it in a loose grip, his thumb sweeping over Kaine’s knuckles every few minutes. And Flash was naturally disarming, with his all American good looks. He’d introduced himself as a veteran and Kaine had watched as what seemed like half the other men in the room suddenly sat up straighter.

(“You using the wheelchair, coach?” Andi had asked before they’d left.

“Number one rule of undercover work,” Flash said. “You use people’s assumptions to your favor.”)

Not that he was enjoying having the hottest husband in the room or anything. It was just a fact. Brad Whatever-His-Face-Was across the room with his fake tanned pecs halfway out of his shirt couldn’t compete with Agent Venom and his broad shoulders and easygoing smile.

“So why are you and your husband here then, Mr. Thompson?” Angelique, the resort’s founder who’d introduced herself to the group as a commitment counselor and, to Kaine's total mortification, sexologist, asked. “What areas of your life are you hoping will be enriched by your stay with us? You’re both young, and yet you’ve taken on so much responsibility, fostering two teenage girls. Let’s talk a little bit about the pressure there.”

If Kaine had to listen to her talk about responsibility for another thirty seconds, he was going to lose it. Flash had told him to sell it, so what the hell.

“He’s in love with my brother,” Kaine said bluntly.

Flash made a choking noise.

“That’s – I am not in love with Pe – with your brother,” Flash said, but he’d gone crimson all the way to the tips of his ears.

Got him, Kaine thought, feeling both smug and bitter.

“I am not in love with his brother,” Flash repeated to the group, all of whom were now staring at them with interest.

“Let’s talk a little more about this, explore Kaine’s feelings,” Angelique said. “Why do you feel that your husband is in love with your brother?”

Kaine hadn’t actually expected to be asked to elaborate. He kind of just thought it would be like in a movie – the therapist would write something down in her little notebook and then they’d move on. He licked his lips, glancing at Flash.

“It’s important that we share our honest feelings in this safe space,” Angelique said, with her squeaky clean bright white smile. Then she looked expectantly at Kaine, her hands folded in front of her, just waiting, and Kaine realized he’d done this to himself.

Everyone was staring at him, including Flash.

“It’s – everyone’s in love with my brother,” Kaine admitted, looking down at his hands. “My brother is – he’s smart, he’s talented. He always does the right thing. Why wouldn’t he be in love with him?”

“Let me guess,” Angelique said, not unkindly. “You’re a younger child?”

“Yeah,” Kaine said, snorting. He looked up at Flash. “He knew my brother before he knew me. He was – I mean, they were friends first, before we got married.”

It was the truth, save for the married part. Kaine guessed that was what made it an easy sell. He glanced down at the floor, feeling so stupid for having said anything at all. He should have just let Flash blow their chances by presenting them as a stupidly happy couple who had no problems except that they’d decided to blow a couple thousand bucks of someone’s college fund to come lord their wedded bliss over a bunch of yuppies in upstate New York.

“Flash?” Angelique said. “Would you like to respond to what Kaine just shared?”

Flash blew out a long breath.

“Hey,” he said to Kaine. “Look at me for a sec.”

Kaine inhaled sharply, telling himself it was for the mission. He closed his eyes.

“Baby,” Flash said. “Look at me.”

It was the shock more than anything else that made Kaine look up. He opened his mouth to tell Flash that if he ever called him that again, he was going to rip his face off, but then Flash was staring at him and barreling forward before Kaine had the chance to speak.

“I am not in love with your brother,” Flash said, looking deep into his eyes. He squeezed Kaine’s hand, and the metal of his wedding ring pressed into Kaine’s skin. “I promise you, you are the only one that I am looking at.”

There was a scattering of awws and several people clapped. Kaine swallowed hard.

“Communication!” Angelique said, beaming around the group. “Now that is what we love to see here.”

They moved on after another excruciating minute, to another couple who promptly started laying into each other about whose fault it was their daughter had gotten her nose pierced, but Kaine could barely pay attention. He wanted the floor to open up and swallow him. He wanted some maniac in an animal suit to come crashing through the window.

Why had he ever thought this was a good idea?

“Being stuck here for a week is enough to make anyone homicidal,” Kaine said when they took a break just before lunch. Flash snorted. “Can’t we just leave these people to their own shitty problems?”

“Look, I know it’s tough, but we’re already in the game,” Flash said. “I don’t know about you, but I like to see things in through to the end.” He sighed. “We probably should’ve brainstormed some couple problems before we got in there, though.”

So they weren’t going to just ignore it. Kaine scowled at the far wall.

“Just trying to inject some realism into our marriage, honey,” he spat, and immediately regretted it. He snuck a look sidelong at Flash, only to find him frowning, that easygoing smile gone from his face. That was Kaine’s fault. He dropped his gaze to the tabletop instead.

“Okay,” Flash said, drumming his ring finger against his can of overpriced triple berry mineral water. “I can see you’re not gonna let this one go, so here’s the deal.”

In spite of himself, Kaine looked at him. Flash seemed to have something about him that was always making Kaine look at him, and he hated it.

“I know Spider-Man’s ring size because I helped him pick out wedding bands,” Flash said. “I was his best man. Pete’s a talented guy in a lot of ways, but you can’t ever let him go shopping for anything. I didn’t want him to get slaughtered at the altar.”

“Oh,” Kaine said. Unable to help it, he glanced down at the ring on his own finger. It was so strange sometimes to think of how much he didn’t know, how peripheral he was, when they really got down to it, to Peter’s life.

Miles Warren had wanted to ruin Peter, but instead he’d only ruined Kaine, and, in the end, Ben, too. He hadn’t cared; Kaine and Ben weren’t anything but playthings for him anyway. They’d never really been real, the way Peter was.

“Hey, look at me,” Flash said. Kaine took a breath, slowly uncurling his hands so his nails were no longer biting into his palms. The pain had been about the only thing keeping him grounded.

“What?” he asked, glancing at Flash.

“I am not in love with Peter,” Flash said. “I promise you that. He’s my best friend, and I love him a lot, and at some point, yeah, there were some feelings, but I’m being completely honest with you right now: I’m not in love with him.”

Kaine snorted. “That’s not super convincing.”

“College was a confusing time,” Flash said cheerfully. “You try discovering your high school enemy has abs you could do your laundry on.”

“Do not fucking talk about Peter’s abs,” Kaine said. “I wasn’t – I was just playing along for the mission. We’re married, right? Obviously we’d have problems.”

“Uh-huh,” Flash said, grinning at him. “Like you being massively insecure every time I bring up another guy’s abs. Bet we can’t even go on beach vacations.”

“Shut up,” Kaine said, snorting.

“The kids are gonna be so disappointed,” Flash said, smirking. “Wait, if you’re Peter’s clone, you probably want to send the girls to like, math camp. No way. You can do whatever you want with Aracely, but you’re not making Andi into a nerd.”

Kaine opened his mouth to say that he wasn’t a nerd, but suddenly Flash was leaning in, his face angled just so, like he was going to kiss Kaine. Kaine froze up, but Flash just put their faces very close together, his nose practically tucked into Kaine’s cheek.

“Over my left shoulder,” he whispered in Kaine’s ear. “We’re being watched, “honey.” Make it look good.”

Kaine glanced over. Sure enough, there was one of the counselors, Gregory Graystone, the one who had billed himself as a holistic relationship specialist, some kind of guru or whatever, before launching into a grandiose rundown on all his very many bestselling self-help books. He was tall and well built, somewhere in his thirties, but his hair was steel grey. Kaine had pretty instantly disliked him, but he thought it was just because he seemed up his own ass. But he was definitely watching them, and there was something in his eyes that Kaine didn’t like.

“To hell with it,” Kaine mumbled. He caught Flash’s face between his hands and kissed him properly, full on the mouth.

It had been a while since Kaine had kissed anyone. He didn’t know if he was making it good, because he was too aggressive, because he used too much teeth, but then Flash slid a hand into his hair, gripping just enough but not too tight, and tilted his head and, oh.

Kaine could be kissed like this forever. It probably wasn’t necessary to let Agent Venom slip him the tongue, but what the hell. They had to sell it, right? So he let himself melt into the kiss, into Flash, just a little bit. Just for the moment.

Flash broke away slowly, letting the kiss linger, and Kaine sighed a little when it was over. His fingers were hooked into the soft fabric of Flash’s shirt. He hadn’t even noticed himself grabbing him.

“Okay,” Flash said softly. He pressed his thumb to Kaine’s bottom lip. “I think we sold them.”

“Yeah,” Kaine said, his eyelids fluttering. He looked back over Flash’s shoulder to where Guru Greg had been staring, but he was gone. Kaine guessed he hadn’t appreciated the show.

“That,” Flash said, stopped, and blew out a breath. “That was good. Yeah. Okay. I think we’re pretty well established as a happily married couple right now. Nothing to complain about in that section.”

Kaine licked his lips and nodded. For a long moment, neither of them said anything. Then Flash reached over and squeezed Kaine’s arm, right above the elbow.

“C’mon,” Flash said. “Let’s go pick up the girls from the friendship bracelet chain gang and grab some lunch.”

The bed was way too small for both of them. Kaine lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling, trying not to think about how he could feel Flash’s warmth radiating from the other side of the bed. There really wasn’t enough room; Kaine could have reached out and touched Flash without any effort at all.

This wasn’t working, he thought, scowling. Maybe he’d go sleep in the bathtub or something.

“I think today went well,” Flash said after a moment.

“Yeah?” Kaine said, glancing at him. There was no point in pretending he was asleep.

“We’ve established ourselves here, we’ve laid the foundation, and we’ve already got a couple of people who seem to trust us,” Flash said. “The Cohens at dinner, they loved you.”

The Cohens were a pair of lesbians from the Hamptons who were here because their six-year-old son wouldn’t stop drawing eerily detailed portraits of his grandmother being eaten by Galactus. For some reason they’d taken one look at Kaine and decided he was their new best friend.

(Andi had spent most of dinner trying to scoot away from little Jacob Cohen, who’d demonstrated his artistic sensibilities on the back of his placemat in red crayon.)

“You think we really sold it?” Kaine asked dubiously, staring up at the ceiling. “I mean, that we’re a real couple. You think people believed us?”

“After the way you kissed me?” Flash snorted. “I think we’re fine.”

Kaine scowled up at the ceiling. He didn’t want to think about the kiss, but at the same time he couldn’t stop.

“Why did you ask me to team up with you on this?” he asked Flash, glancing at him. “I know what you said but – seriously. Why me?”

“I don’t know,” Flash admitted, looking back at him. “We worked well together last time, despite, you know, everything. How messy that got. So I figured – this time would be easier.”

Kaine was quiet for a moment.

“Why didn’t you ask Peter instead?” he asked.

Silence fell, heavy and awkward. When Kaine found Ben Reilly again he was going to strangle him to death with his own stupid hoodie for putting all these stupid ideas in Kaine’s head.

“Uh,” Flash said. He laughed a little, but it was strained.

“I mean,” Kaine said. “He’s your actual friend. I’m just some guy in a costume you teamed up with once.”

“Is this still happening?” Flash asked the ceiling. “Look, if I wanted to ask Spider-Man, I would have asked Spider-Man. But I didn’t – I wanted to work with you on this.” He was quiet for a moment, but Kaine could practically hear him grinding his teeth. When he spoke again, his voice was tense. “I thought our styles would work better together on this. That’s all.”

Kaine could tell he was annoyed, and that made him annoyed in turn. He rolled onto his side, determined to shut his mouth and just forget about it, like that had ever worked for him. Stupid Peter Parker, screwing up his life yet again.

“I didn’t even know you were his clone until after I asked you,” Flash pointed out. “You can’t make this out like I’m treating you as, I don’t know, some kind of Spider-Man substitute.”

“I’d like to think you would have figured it out anyway when the mask came off!” Kaine tossed over his shoulder.

“Listen, just stop worrying about it and go to sleep, okay?” Flash said.

“I’m not worrying,” Kaine grumbled.

“Uh-huh,” Flash said. Kaine could practically hear him rolling his eyes. “I wanted to work with you. My mistake, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Kaine snorted. “Next time you’ll know better.”

He pulled one of the spare pillows into his arms, settled his chin on top of it, and stubbornly closed his eyes.

Kaine woke up screaming.

It was the same dream he’d been having since Las Vegas, but worse.

In the dream, Ben stood in the center of a casino floor, but it was Ben as Kaine had known him, Ben at his best. The version of Ben that Kaine had tried so hard to drag down to his own level all those years ago. Ben with shoulder length hair and stubble blending into Ben, blond and clean shaven.

At Ben’s feet was a pile of broken bodies, and in the dream Kaine knew that they were clones, that Ben had made them, and that he had killed them one after the other. All of the clones looked exactly like Aracely. All of them showed signs of the New U degeneration.

Kaine searched through the bodies but he still couldn’t find the real one. When he looked up, he saw Ben sneering down at him.

“Do you think you don’t deserve this?” he said. “After everything you did to me?”

And Kaine did. He knew he did. But what had Aracely ever done to Ben?

Kaine had had the dream at least a dozen times since he’d come back from Las Vegas. There was something new about it this time, though. High, crazed laughter filled the room, raising the hair on the back of Kaine’s neck.

The Jackal was behind him, and he was wearing that smile, the one that always turned Kaine’s blood to ice because he knew what it promised. His first thought was that he had to protect Aracely – but Ben had already hurt her, and cloned her, again and again and again, and it was just like the pit full of dead girls with the same blond hair and the same face, the ones that his father had deemed failures, like Kaine was a failure, and that was why he was destined for the pit, too.

But his father would make him beg for it first.

He woke up fighting, his hands lashing out, stingers aching in his wrists. Strong hands caught him, and a voice called him name, sounding a little desperate.

“Kaine! Kaine! Wake up!”

Feathers flew all around them. The sight made Kaine still, mind racing as he watched them float and fall, before he realized that in his terror he must have slashed open one of the pillows with his claws.

Agent Venom was staring at him, those blue eyes wide.

“You back with me now?” he asked after a beat.

Kaine couldn’t say anything; his chest was heaving, his throat stinging from screaming. The Jackal’s phantom laughter was still ringing in his ears.

There were footsteps coming from the adjoining room, and then the bang of a door. Light flooded in from the hall to frame Aracely, looking panicked, and Andi standing behind her, concern clear on her face.

“Coach?” she asked. “Is everything okay?”

“We’re fine, Andi,” Flash said. He squeezed Kaine’s shoulder and said, “You girls go back to bed, okay?”

“Okay,” Andi said slowly, looking doubtful, but she turned and trudged back to the other room.

Aracely didn’t go with her.

“Kaine,” she said, taking a few steps into the room.

Kaine looked at her and saw the shadows of all those dead clones lying at her feet. It had never happened, he told himself. It was just his mind finding new ways to torture him. Ben, in the depths of his madness, had never touched Aracely. Kaine had made sure of that.

But he’d been so afraid of it. That entire time, chasing down the new Jackal, and then hunting Ben to Las Vegas, he’d been terrified that somehow Ben would find out about her. Ben would hurt her, clone her, and try to use the clone as leverage against him, the way he’d done to so many other people. And then afterwards Ben expected to be able to start over.

Kaine’s hands trembled where they clenched the comforter, but not from fear this time. He forced himself to let go, raising his hands to hide his face. He couldn’t look at Aracely right now, not without seeing shadows of the dozen dead clones his mind had conjured.

“Kaine?” Aracely repeated. She could feel him, he knew. When he was this upset, she didn’t even have to try, the connection between them was so strong.

“It’s okay,” Flash said to Aracely. His hand ran up and down Kaine’s back, strangely comforting. “I’ve got him. You go back to sleep.”

Aracely felt doubtful, her mind brushing up against Kaine's. There was concern there, and a little bit of an urge to fling Flash off of him using only her mind.

“I can stay,” she said to Kaine.

“Go back to bed,” Kaine said from behind his hands. He couldn’t stop seeing her collapsed at Ben’s feet. She didn’t understand why he wouldn’t take her to Vegas, why he had left her when he’d gone after Ben. She didn’t understand what he’d been so afraid of.

And she was mad at him, he thought, almost hysterical with the pain and the rage, for leaving her behind.

“Kaine, please talk to me,” Aracely said, touching his elbow.

Kaine hurled the thought at her before he could stop himself, suddenly so angry with her, that she didn’t understand that he’d done this to protect her. He’d realized he could do this a few months after they’d met each other, that the connection between himself and Aracely wasn’t a one way street. It was easier for her to get into his mind, but if he directed something, if he tried hard enough, he could silently communicate it to her.

It was useful for missions, mostly. Situations where they couldn’t verbally speak to each other. He’d never done it like this before, never done it to hurt her.

He saw the moment the image hit her, the way she flinched. She’d only ever flinched at him once before, when she’d tried to get into his mind while the Other was raging. He regretted it instantly, just like he had that time.

“Aracely,” he said, reaching out, but she’d already whirled out of the room, the door slamming behind her.

Kaine took a great shuddering breath, pressing his hands over his face. He was such a fucking idiot. All she’d wanted to do was to help him.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” Kaine said. He made to get up, to go find Aracely and apologize to her, but Flash closed a hand around his bicep.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he said. “Just give her some space, okay? Whatever it was, I’m sure she knows you didn’t mean it. Give yourself a minute. You’re shaking.”

He tugged Kaine back down, bringing him close as Kaine shuddered, trying to shake off the dream.

“I’m so fucked up,” Kaine said, his voice breaking.

“It’s okay,” Flash said, cradling Kaine’s face between his broad palms. Kaine took a great shuddering breath, thinking no one had ever held him like this after a nightmare before. Not even Louise, when he’d woken up screaming. Louise had looked at him like there was something wrong with him, like he was a wild animal that had escaped his cage. Like she’d been afraid of him.

Flash didn’t touch him like he was afraid of him.

“It’s okay,” Flash repeated quietly. He pulled Kaine’s head down against his shoulder, ran his fingers through his hair. “I’ve got you. Shh.”

For a second, Kaine thought he would push him away. He didn’t need to be touched like this, to be coddled. He didn’t deserve it, either.

But it felt nice, to have his hair touched like this. Before, back in the lab, when he’d first shown signs of degeneration, the Jackal had liked to trick him. He’d pull Kaine close, telling him to rest his head on his lap, croon to him that Kaine was his poor boy, his firstborn son. And then he would grab fistfuls of Kaine’s hair and yank as hard as he could, cursing at him, telling him it was his fault he was broken, his clawed fingers digging into Kaine’s scalp until blood dripped down his forehead.

He hadn’t really let anyone touch his hair since then. Only Aracely, when she’d cut it for him after he’d bonded with the Other.

“You wanna tell me about it?” Flash asked. “I know it doesn’t feel like it, but trust me – talking helps.”

“You learn that here?” Kaine asked, his words coming out muffled where his mouth was pressed up against the old army t-shirt Flash wore. His fingers flexed a little bit, claws extending and retracting as he swallowed down shudders, leaving little pinpricks in Flash’s shirt.

“Not here,” Flash said, running his fingers soothingly over Kaine’s hair again. “But yeah, I’ve done my fair share of therapy. It’s okay, if you don’t want to share. But if you do, I’m right here. I’ll listen.”

For a second, Kaine thought about it. He wondered what it would be like to tell Flash everything. About Ben, Louise, Peter, the Jackal. Everything that had happened in Houston, and then everything that had happened after.

But even someone like Agent Venom wouldn’t understand, he told himself.

“I don’t think I can talk about this,” he finally said.

“Okay, we don’t have to talk, then,” Flash said, and Kaine felt a little surprised when he didn’t push. He tucked a lock of Kaine’s hair behind his ear, then reached over and put Kaine’s hand on top of his sternum. “Just try to take some deep breaths. Match your breathing to mine. In and out, there you go.”

Kaine rolled his eyes a little, but the rise and fall of Flash’s chest was soothing, so he tried it. It was so quiet in the room, and despite himself, Kaine felt himself soothed, some of the ever present tension draining out of his shoulders.

“Can I do anything else for you?” Flash asked, looking down at Kaine with nothing but concern in his eyes. Kaine couldn’t remember the last time a man had looked at him like that. Donald, or Wally maybe, but this was different. This felt different.

Before he really knew what he was doing, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to Flash’s. It was a quick kiss, almost chaste, as close as Kaine could get to sweet and nothing like the one they’d shared earlier in the day.

To his relief, Flash kissed him back, his hand cupped to Kaine’s face.

When the kiss broke, when Kaine pulled back, they just stared at each other for a long moment.

“Was that just more practice?” Flash finally asked, tongue darting out over his lips.

Kaine shook his head no, and leaned in again. The kiss was deeper this time. Kaine’s fingers twisted in Flash’s shirt, suddenly desperate to get closer, to have more. He wanted this, in a way he didn’t know if he’d ever wanted it before. Flash’s body felt so good against his, hard and solid, with that alien strength just beneath it.

And he was kind. Kaine had been watching him all day, the way he interacted with Aracely and Andi, the way he smiled at Kaine.

Someone good, and kind, who wanted Kaine, and who Kaine wanted back in the exact same way. Someone he honestly wanted in this way. When had that ever happened to him before?

“I’m not Spider-Man,” Kaine said when the kiss broke, staring at Flash. If that was what this was, then it needed to end now. If Flash only wanted him because he looked like Peter, then he needed to make that clear. He couldn’t give Flash the same kind of things Peter could.

“Yeah, baby,” Flash said, taking him by the chin and tilting his face towards Kaine’s. “I think I figured that one out already.”

Then he kissed him, soft and slow.

“I got coffee.”

Kaine groaned, pulling a pillow over his head. Flash immediately tugged it away, his fingers pushing into Kaine’s hair for a moment, gently avoiding any morning tangles.

“Okay, c’mon, Sleeping Beauty, up and at ‘em,” he said.

“Fuck you,” Kaine mumbled, but he cracked one eye open to look at Flash.

He wore a soft smile on his face, his blond hair flopping over his forehead. The sunlight streaming in the window behind him made him almost look like he glowed.

“Hey, if you’re up for round two,” he teased, and Kaine groaned, pulling the pillow over his head again.

There was a strange feeling in the center of his chest, like a miniature glowing little star. Happy, he thought. He was happy – and hopeful.

It felt so strange. He wanted more.

He rolled over, pushing himself up, and wrapped one hand around the back of Flash’s neck, leaning in for a kiss. Flash met him gently, their lips sliding together, and it was so soft, and unhurried, and Kaine had never been kissed like this before.

It felt nice. It felt right.

“The girls are already up,” Flash mumbled against Kaine’s lips, and Kaine groaned.

“Well, tell them to go the back to bed,” he said, tangling his fingers in Flash’s hair.

“Can’t,” Flash said, grinning at him. “Aracely’s too excited about baby goat yoga.”

Kaine groaned. He’d forgotten that the first night they’d gone over the schedule and divvied up duties. Today, Kaine was attending baby goat yoga, whatever that was, with Aracely and Andi while Flash took the opportunity to sneak around doing recon.

“You think you’re James Bond or something?” Kaine asked him, raising an eyebrow.

“Venom,” Flash replied, winking. “Agent Venom.”

Then he did something ridiculous and kissed Kaine on the forehead.

“Go get dressed,” he said.

Kaine didn’t know how to do this, he thought as he scrubbed down in the shower. Everything with Flash so far had just been so different than what he’d experienced before. Maybe Annabelle would have still been there, the morning after, if it had really been her Kaine had slept with and not Shathra in disguise.

He didn’t want to think about that now.

Kaine wiped the condensation off the mirror, wondering what it was Flash saw when he looked at him. He raised a hand to touch his hair, then pressed his fingertips against his lips.

Then he sighed and looked away. He was being so stupid.

Baby goat yoga was apparently just what it sounded like: they were supposed to do yoga with baby goats running around. Aracely saw them and made a noise only dogs could hear. Dogs, and maybe symbiotes; Andi cringed, clapping her hands over her ears.

The instructor was an overly cheerful young woman in neon leggings and a company logo branded tank top. She made everyone go around the room introducing themselves while baby goats tried to eat their yoga mats until a couple of the younger kids present started chasing after them.

It should have all annoyed him. Any other day, it would. Today, though, he felt good. Relaxed, almost. He really didn’t want to think that maybe all this time he’d just needed to get laid – to have sex that he enjoyed, and that didn’t end in someone trying to kill him.

“Are those soccer moms behind us staring at my ass?” Kaine asked as they got started.

“Yes,” Aracely confirmed, sitting down to let the baby goats crawl over her.

Kaine glanced over his shoulder and made a face. Flash had whistled too when he’d come out of the bathroom wearing a tank top and the yoga pants Wally and Donald had somehow conned him into buying, but that had been different, even if Kaine had flipped him off for it.

He ran around in red spandex every other day of his life, so there was nothing new about this.

Andi was lying flat on her back, a book over her face. A baby goat was sitting on her stomach and trying to eat the pages.

“Hey,” Kaine said to her. “You gonna participate?”

Andi raised one hand and gave him the thumbs down. Kaine rolled his eyes. He glanced over to his other side, where Aracely was busy tying herself into a pretzel. He took a deep breath.

“I shouldn’t have done that last night,” he said.

Aracely pursed her lips but said nothing.

“I’m sorry,” Kaine said. “I didn’t – you know I would never want to hurt you.”

“You were the one who was hurting,” Aracely said. The I understand went unsaid between them.

“I was,” Kaine said, dropping into the next pose. “But it wasn’t an excuse to take it out on you.”

“You look happy this morning,” Aracely said to Kaine, giving him a considering look. “You feel happy.”

“Stay out of my feelings,” Kaine told her. “What does that even mean?”

“You feel like you’re all bright and shiny on the inside,” Aracely said. “All lit up, like a Christmas tree.”

“That’s stupid,” Kaine said, even though it was in fact what he felt like.

“You didn’t feel happy when you came back,” Aracely said, frowning at him.

Kaine breathed out.

“I wasn’t happy when I came back from Vegas,” he admitted. “But that had nothing to do with you, okay? I just – I wanted to keep you safe. I don’t think I did a good enough job of it.”

“You always keep me safe,” Aracely said, sighing. “But who is going to keep you safe?”

Kaine was silent.

“Just don’t leave me behind again,” Aracely said. “We’re a team.”

“I reserve the right to dump you on Donald and Wally whenever my genetic double has a breakdown and starts cloning people,” Kaine said, snorting. He took a deep breath when Aracely glared at him and said, “I’m trying, Aracely.”

“I know,” Aracely said, and Kaine breathed out.

The next half hour passed silently. Almost peacefully, if it wasn’t for the baby goats constantly trying to jump on Kaine.

“Kaine, give me your hand,” Aracely said, just as the class was wrapping up.

Confused, Kaine extended his arm, and watched as she pulled something out of her pocket and quickly knotted it around his wrist.

“There,” she said, looking proud. He held his wrist up to examine what she’d tied onto him: it was an intricately beaded bracelet, all black and red. His colors.

“Aracely…” he said, sighing. And then he felt his lips lift up into a smile. “Thanks.”

“She made one for me, too,” Andi said, still with the book over her face. She held up her hand and jingled her wrist, showing off the black, white, and purple bracelet tied onto it.

“Maybe this place isn’t the worst,” Kaine admitted.

“No,” Aracely said, frowning. A goat hopped into her lap. “There’s darkness in the corners, trying to slither into people’s minds. It wants to eat them.”

Kaine grimaced.

“Great,” he said. “Thanks.”

“Let’s talk about your father,” Gregory said.

Kaine froze.

“What?” he said.

They’d booked themselves in for a private session with Gregory Graystone, the man Flash had caught staring at them on the first day. He was the apparent golden boy of the place; everywhere they went, the other couples raved about him. The Cohens had practically talked Kaine’s ear off about it the other night, claiming that he and his husband just had to have a session with him.

Kaine didn’t think it had actually worked wonders for them, given that their kid was still drawing his grandmother being dragged down to the ninth circle of hell in a mixture of crayon and spaghetti sauce, but who was he to judge.

Flash had done some research on him the night before their session, when they were lying in bed, as if they couldn’t think of better things to do. Gregory Graystone billed himself as a relationship specialist, like most of the people in this place, and his resume was long if not actually impressive. He’d written several bestselling books about saving marriages, all with close ups of people holding hands or flying doves on the cover. Kaine thought they all looked like garbage. He was going to get Donald and Wally one as an anniversary gift just to watch their faces.

“Your father,” Gregory repeated, staring at Kaine intently over the rim of his glasses.

“I,” Kaine said, swallowing hard. It was like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water down his back. Suddenly he couldn’t help but feel like the Jackal was standing behind him, like any minute a clawed hand would reach out and curl over his shoulder.

"Daddy’s missed you, Kaine.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to do that.”

Gregory looked interested, uncrossing his legs and leaning forward. Kaine focused on the perfectly pressed line in his slacks rather than at his face. This wasn’t what he’d been expecting; he thought there’d be more holding hands and affirmations, like everything else in this place.

“And why is that?” he asked.

It was like the temperature of the room had dropped twenty degrees. Warren had always kept the lab cold. Kaine could feel him like he was in the room, like he was breathing on the back of Kaine’s neck. It was like he was waiting for Warren to touch him, for him to strike him, as if he would melt out of the shadows or reveal to Kaine that somehow he had never left the cloning lab.

He jumped when he was touched.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Flash said, his hand at Kaine’s back. “You don’t want to talk about that, you don’t have to.”

“Now clearly there are some deep-seated issues here,” Gregory said, leaning forward. His eyes were too bright behind his steel framed designer glasses, staring at Kaine like he was something under the microscope. The Jackal had used to look at him like that all the time, too. “I think we need to explore them a little more, see if we can’t get to the root of the intimacy problem you were telling me about.”

Kaine felt like he couldn’t breathe.

“I said he doesn’t have to talk about anything he doesn’t want to,” Flash said sharply. The stone cold authority in his voice made Kaine shudder. He groped for Flash’s hand, holding it tight, thankful for the excuse their cover gave him. It was fine. He was safe. The Jackal wasn’t here, and he couldn’t hurt him – or Flash.

Gregory hadn’t liked that. His eyes were sharp now, looking at Flash with some measure of contempt.

“And what about your father?” he asked.

Flash had been rubbing slow circles on Kaine’s shoulder, but suddenly he stopped. He was quiet for a long moment, his jaw tight, his eyes hard.

“Flash,” Kaine said. “You don’t –”

“It’s fine, baby,” Flash said, his voice tense and quiet. He squeezed Kaine’s shoulder and looked up at Gregory. “I work hard every single day to be a better man than my father.”

“I see,” Gregory said. He made a note. “You had a difficult father then, Eugene?”

“It’s Flash,” Flash said coolly. “You could say that, yeah. I didn’t exactly find a role model in him growing up.”

“And what would your father think, if he was here,” Gregory said, “about you being married to another man?”

Kaine glanced at Flash. His face had gone hard and blank. When Kaine awkwardly squeezed Flash’s hand, he flipped his own over and slotted their fingers together, squeezing back tightly.

“It doesn’t matter what he would’ve thought,” Flash said. “If he were alive, there’s no way in hell I’d let him get within six feet of Kaine or the girls.”

Gregory’s gaze flit back to Kaine. He didn’t have to say it for Kaine to know what he was thinking: And what about you?

What would Miles Warren think if he could see Kaine now? Sitting here, next to Flash Thompson, pretending to be married, and having slept with him for real. He’d laugh. He’d ridicule him. He’d find it one more reason why Kaine was a flawed, imperfect copy of Peter.

He looked at Gregory again and an image of the Jackal seemed to reflect back in his glasses, just for a second. He must have flinched, because Flash looked over at him.

“Yeah, I’m getting my husband out of here now,” Flash said. “We’re done here.”

Kaine didn’t feel like he could breathe until they left that room. Flash glanced at him, concerned, and then so quickly Kaine would’ve missed if he’d blinked, a tendril of Venom shot out and knocked the security camera in the corner of the hall away from them.

“Hey,” Flash said. “Look at me for a second.”

Kaine dragged his hands down his face.

“I just fucked that whole thing up,” he groaned.

“No, you didn’t, I promise you, you didn’t,” Flash said. “Hey, forget about the mission for a second. Are you okay?”

Kaine nodded jerkily. He didn’t know why he was acting this way. It was like something about this place had dug its claws into him, made all his fears real again. He wasn’t fresh from the cloning tube anymore, helpless to whatever the Jackal decided to inflict on him that day.

The Jackal wasn’t here. Kaine needed to stop acting like he was.

“I guess neither of us do so great with the topic of fathers, huh?” Flash said, smiling at Kaine.

“It’s not like he’s really my father,” Kaine said, letting his head fall back against the wall with a dull thud. “I came out of a tube. He just… liked to call himself that.”

What else did you call the man who’d made you, anyway?

Flash reached out and squeezed his wrist.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I get it.”

“You’re not a clone,” Kaine said.

“Nah,” Flash said. “Just regular fucked up.”

Despite himself, Kaine let himself smile.

“I think we may have been made,” Flash said, glancing over his shoulder. “Listen, I want you to go upstairs, grab the girls, and get them out of here. I know they can handle themselves, but I don’t want to put them in a situation where they have to.”

“What about you?” Kaine asked.

“I have a call to make,” Flash said. “I’ll be right behind you, I promise.”

The door to their hotel suite was lying wide open. Kaine barreled through it and then stopped, his heart beating wildly at the sight in front of him.

Aracely and Andi were lying unconscious on the ground. Andi’s symbiote was spread out around her on the ground like a puddle of ink. There was blood streaming from Aracely’s noise, although it didn’t look broken.

“Hey!” Kaine said, leaning over them.

Andi groaned a little and Aracely shifted towards him when he touched her cheek. Kaine only allowed himself a brief second to sigh in relief.

Aracely and Andi would be fine. Whoever did this to them, though – they wouldn’t.

He glanced at the cracked door to the master bedroom and pushed himself back up. Times like this, he thought, it would be nice to have some kind of spider-sense, just to give him an idea of how bad of a situation he was walking into. Anything that could take out Andi and Aracely together had to be real trouble.

Gregory Graystone was standing in the middle of the room, holding up Kaine’s Scarlet Spider suit for inspection.

“You know, I really wish you’d brought this up in our session,” he said without looking at Kaine. “It would have been much more interesting.”

His nose was bleeding steadily, a long streak of blood down his chin and onto his shirt.

“Get on the ground and put your hands up,” Kaine said, “and maybe I won’t hurt you too badly.”

Graystone sniffed, raising a hand to wipe at his nose. He drew his hand back, glancing at his fingers as if surprised by the blood.

“Your daughter – if that’s actually what she is to you – is quite interesting,” he said. “There’s something in her head that didn’t want me in there. I couldn’t read anything about her. That’s never happened to me before. But at least the psychic backlash took out the little goth girl.”

Great, Kaine thought. He hated dealing with telepaths. At least that explained how this man had been able to take on both Aracely and Andi singlehandedly.

He had speed on his side, at least. He vaulted across the room, ready to sweep him off his feet, get him off balance and knock him out, end this as quickly as possible, when Gregory took off his glasses.

One look stopped Kaine in his tracks. It was like he’d been frozen on the spot. He could feel icy cold mental fingers creeping over him, holding him in place.

“Now you,” Graystone said, smiling, as Kaine legs buckled underneath him. “You’re an open book. Let’s read a page or two, shall we?”

The walls of the hotel suite fell away. Kaine found himself instead in a room he knew like the back of his own hand, even though he hadn’t been there in years. The Jackal’s original cloning laboratory rose up around him, stealing his breath from his lungs. He whipped around, but there was no way out. There never had been.

The cloning lab even smelled the same, the harsh chemical cleaning scent that couldn’t quite mask the odor of blood in air. Kaine had been made to clean this floor before, sick and shivering, hunched over while Miles Warren watched him.

There was a clone lying dead on the ground, her blond hair spilled around her head like a halo, her neck twisted an unnatural angle. Warren must have perceived her as imperfect, somehow. He was never really ever satisfied with how they came out – if they smiled funny, or said the wrong thing, he’d lash out, furious at them for going against the perfectly preserved image of a girl he’d barely known.

“This isn’t real,” Kaine told himself, even as he knelt down next to her. “He’s doing this to you. It’s not real.”

But he could hear Miles Warren coming now, the strange sound of claws clacking on the floor. Kaine pressed himself back against the wall, thinking it was always worse when he gave up the illusion of Miles Warren, when he reveled in being the Jackal.

He might kill Kaine this time, Kaine thought with a strange sort of numbness. It was a thought he’d had before, many times over in this place. He groped for something to defend himself, a length of pipe or a discarded syringe, but there was nothing.

“You idiot, it’s not real,” Kaine said to himself, but he couldn’t stop himself from pressing himself into a corner, from hoping that the Jackal wouldn’t see him as he rounded the corner.

He did, of course. He always did, no matter how well Kaine had hidden from him. The grin that stretched across his face was pure evil.

It was impossible for Kaine to tell if this was one specific memory or an amalgamation of all the times this had happened before, in this lab, on this floor. The Jackal’s rage was swift and vicious, and in this place Kaine was powerless against it. The Jackal had many ways of ensuring that.

All Kaine could do was try to protect himself as best as he could.

When he looked over the Jackal’s shoulder, he saw a tall figure in a perfectly tailored suit and an Anubis mask staring back him. Ben’s eyes glimmered behind the mask as he watched, wordless, and Kaine howled.

He came to on the ground, his arms thrown up to defend himself against an attack that had never been real. Shaking, he turned to the side and was sick all over the floor. For a long moment he stayed there, frozen and heaving, until a pair of expensive shoes appeared at the edges of his vision.

“Well, that was fascinating,” Graystone said, grinning down at him. “I can see why you wouldn’t want to talk about that. Does that big blond husband of yours even know?”

“Fuck you,” Kaine spat out.

“The lives of superheroes are really so dramatic,” Graystone said. “But let’s get to the root of the problem, shall we? Let’s see what you really think about your husband.” He leered down at Kaine with his shiny straight white teeth. “I like to watch.”

The room melted away again before Kaine could even begin to think about ripping his throat out.

This time, the room he was in was less familiar to him. It took him a moment to place it. It was the NASA LBJ Center, in Houston, Texas, and the smell of blood was all around him, but none of that was as pressing a matter as the large body barreling towards him.

It was the first time he’d met Agent Venom, and Flash – although Kaine hadn’t known his name then – had lost control of the symbiote. He’d told Kaine to run, but Kaine hadn’t even stood a chance.

Kaine remembered this fight, remembered the terror he’d felt, remembered how desperately he’d fought back. He remembered yelling at Agent Venom, demanding to know what the hell he was doing, and Agent Venom yelling back that it wasn’t him, that he couldn’t control it. Kaine had fought like he’d had something to lose, and he remembered thinking, too, that that had been new. He’d never had anything to lose before.

The symbiote would have killed him that day if Flash hadn’t wrestled back control at the last minute. He could feel Venom’s breath on his face through his mask, could feel those huge hands grabbing his wrists, crushing them.

This wasn’t how the fight had gone. Kaine’s breath caught in his lungs as Venom leaned into him, like a twisted mirror of how they’d embraced the night before.

Except it wasn’t Venom over him anymore, not Venom’s hands pinning him down, not Venom’s jaws snapping at his neck. That pitch black body shifted, that pair of white eyes grew somehow more alien. Shathra was staring down at him, and Kaine was on his back in his bed back in Houston. This time he knew what was happening to him.

Shathra leaned in and Kaine took a shuddering breath, clenched his jaw, and closed his eyes.

A loud gunshot made him open them again.

He wasn’t back in his bedroom in Houston. He was lying flat on his back on the hotel room floor in upstate New York, and Shathra was nowhere to be seen. Kaine had killed her himself in Houston, after all. Instead, Graystone was standing over him, reeling back as he clutched his shoulder. He’d been shot.

Agent Venom was framed in the doorway, holding a gun. He kept it trained on Graystone. Kaine let his head fall back against the floor with a thump, breathing a sigh of relief.

“You okay?” Flash asked Kaine.

“Fine,” Kaine said, fighting another bout of nausea. “Telepath. Don’t let him get in your head.”

“Noted,” Flash said. His voice sounded strange. There was the usual strange buzzing undertone to it that always occurred when he was Agent Venom, his own voice merging with the symbiote’s, but it was more than that. He sounded tense, his voice strained.

Kaine didn’t have time to think about what that might mean. Graystone tried to make a break for it, clearly intended to barrel right past Flash, but the symbiote reacted before Kaine could even blink, a black tendril shooting out and wrapping around Graystone’s neck as it slammed him violently back into the wall.

Venom snarled as Flash leaned in, teeth gnashing, long tongue flicking through the air like a snake.

“Gregory Graystone,” he hissed. “We did a little research on you, too. Bet you thought you covered your tracks well, huh, pretty boy? Not good enough to escape from us. We’ve got friends who can dig up anything.”

“I can’t,” Graystone stammered, staring up into Venom’s face, his own gone pale. “I can’t see into your mind. It’s just darkness. Nothing but darkness.”

“Symbiote minds don’t work the same way human ones do,” Venom chuckled, and it finally clicked for Kaine. Flash had put the symbiote at the forefront of their bond, taken the backseat in their connection, his own mind sheltered by Venom’s. He must have bet that Graystone wouldn’t be able to get into the alien’s head, not the same way he could get into a human’s. “What’s the matter, Greg? You’re looking a little pale.”

The symbiote began to shift, Agent Venom’s structured, spiky armor changing into more organic shapes as Venom grew bigger, his shoulders broader, his smile wider.

“I saw you in his mind,” Graystone said, staring at Venom’s face. “I saw you fighting.”

“Foreplay,” Venom said with a dark little chuckle, that long tongue flicking at Graystone’s cheek.

Kaine cringed, pulling himself up into a sitting position and rubbing at his neck.

“Maybe for you,” he said to Flash, but he was ignored. Venom was still staring down at Graystone hungrily, big hands planted on either side of him on the wall. The gun was gone, pulled back to wherever it had come from in the suit.

“You wanna talk about daddy issues, Greg?” Flash said, Venom’s mouth stretched into a cruel smirk. “Let’s talk about you.”

Graystone looked terrified. Kaine wanted to enjoy it, but for some reason, he couldn’t.

“Flash,” he said, grabbing onto the bed to support himself. His legs were shaking. “C’mon, stop playing with him. You’ve got him. We’re done here.”

“We’re done when we say we’re done,” Venom purred. That huge head tilted like a bird's, tongue running over sharp teeth. “When’d your daddy kick you out anyway, huh, Greg? When he caught you messing around with his business partner’s underage son? Or when he found out you were a mind reading little freak? Guess daddy shouldn’t have been so eager to build that golf course over that Roxxon dumping ground.”

Graystone was trembling.

“How do you know all that?” he asked in a hushed whisper.

“We have friends,” Venom chuckled, and then he snapped forward, his teeth sinking deep into Graystone’s shoulder. Graystone screamed as Venom ripped chunks out of his flesh. Venom was still laughing, deep and sonorous, and the sound of it seemed to fill the whole room.

“Did it drive you crazy?” Venom asked, that in stereo voice rumbling over the sound of Graystone’s screams. “Seeing into everybody’s minds? Seeing just how sleazy they found you? Seeing how the others loved each other? And there you were, bitter and hateful and unlovable.”

Graystone’s eyes had rolled back in his head; he clearly wasn’t able to listen anymore. But it didn’t seem to matter to Flash.

“Believe me,” he said, his voice so loud the floor shook with it. “We can relate!”

They were out of control, Kaine realized, Flash and Venom both. They were going to kill Gregory Graystone, and they were going to make it messy. Rip his head from his shoulders. Shred him to bits. Paint the walls of their hotel suite with his blood, with Andi and Aracely lying just outside.

Didn’t Graystone deserve it, after everything he’d done? For the people he’d hurt? Yes, he did, Kaine knew that. But it was Flash who’d have to deal with having to be the one who’d done it when he came back to himself.

Venom stretched his jaws unnaturally wide, teeth as long as steak knives gleaming as he leaned in close again.

Kaine grabbed the bedside lamp and thrust it between Venom’s teeth. It crunched as Venom bit down, snapping the metal and tearing through the lampshade, sparks flying everywhere. It wasn’t enough to hurt the symbiote, but the shock of it seemed to stun him. That hulking body froze for a moment, and then Graystone’s body dropped from his hands as he spit out a mouthful of lightbulb shards.

“Why did you do that?” he demanded in a snarl, looming over Kaine. He seemed to fill the room like this, in his rage, back hunched nearly to the ceiling. “He hurt you! He hurt Aracely and Andi! We’re going to kill him!”

Kaine planted both his hands on Venom’s chest and shoved hard, forcing him back a step.

“No, you’re not!” he snapped. “I know exactly how you feel, but it’s over! Let it go!”

“Why should we?” Venom demanded, pushing back, crowding into Kaine’s space.

His breath was hot on Kaine’s skin, their face inches apart, those teeth gleaming as Venom’s mouth stretched open, long tongue lolling out. Kaine had only just relived their fight minutes ago, when Venom would have killed him if Flash had wrestled back control.

“He hurt you,” Venom said. One big hand came up, the back of one knuckle touching Kaine’s cheek. “Hurt Andi. Hurt Aracely.”

“You wanna do something for me?” Kaine demanded. He thought of the Jackal. He thought of Shathra. He grit his teeth and said, “Then for once you can be somebody who stops when I fucking tell them to.”

Venom froze. Kaine stood there, waiting him out. Letting him make the decision. It felt ridiculous, but he found himself trusting him to make the right one. He found himself suddenly desperately hoping he could trust Flash, the way he’d never really let himself trust anyone since he’d seen Louise in that warehouse, holding a gun to Detective Raven’s child’s head.

Slowly, Venom pulled back. He seemed to shrink on himself, shoulders going from monstrous to quarterback broad, tongue withdrawing into his mouth. He went from hulking and monstrous to just a big man in body armor, sitting on the floor of their hotel room, breathing deep. Kaine knelt down next to him as the symbiote melted back, revealing Flash’s pale, sweaty face.

“Fuck,” Flash said. He stared up at Kaine, regret on his face. “I was just – I didn’t want to let him get in my mind, and then when I saw what he’d done to you all… Venom and I both lost control. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Kaine said, his arms around Flash’s neck. He leaned his cheek against Flash’s soft blond hair, looking at Graystone’s unconscious body on the ground. “I understand. I’ve got you.”

“Okay,” Andi said, sitting cross legged on the hood of their rental car. “Next family vacation, me and Aracely definitely get to pick the location, because this one blew chunks.”

“I want to go to the beach,” Aracely said, sighing. She took a noisy slurp of her milkshake.

“Hell yeah,” Andi said, tipping her head back. “Hey, dads, when are you gonna take us to like, Six Flags or some shit like that?”

They were driving back to New York City together, but Aracely and Andi had joined forces and pleaded in the backseat until they found some hole in the wall joint to stop for burgers at. (“We have food packed in the back of the car,” Flash said, and they both booed him in unison.)

“Swear jar,” Aracely muttered under her breath and Andi rolled her eyes.

“We don’t really have to get a swear jar, do we, coach?” she asked.

“Sure,” Flash said, taking a bite of his burger. He’d spent ten minutes trying to get the little old lady behind the counter to make it nearly raw for him, the way Venom liked it, and it looked disgusting. Kaine couldn’t believe he was still going to kiss him after this. “We can use it to save up for that Six Flags trip.”

“I’m not going undercover again,” Kaine told him. “You can forget it.”

“You loved it,” Flash said, waggling his eyebrows at him. Kaine snorted, glancing away.

Everything had been a whirlwind since they’d faced down with Graystone in the hotel room. When Flash had pulled himself together, he’d gone to make some calls, and Kaine, Andi, and Aracely, all feeling to some degree like they’d been hit in the head with a metal baseball bat, had moved to stay out of sight while a worrying amount of military types flocked into their hotel room.

Somehow this had ended up with the four of them in a disturbingly nice and expensive truck that Flash said was “a rental” and then, sheepishly, “more like a favor”, watching as Graystone, bandaged up and locked into some kind of power dampening collar, was escorted into an ambulance.

“I need popcorn for this,” Andi had said, leaning over the cupholder to watch as Angelique hysterically cried over a man in a black suit and black sunglasses. Aracely, holding a wad of napkins to her nose, made a grumpy noise of approval.

They were both fine, Kaine told himself, passing Aracely another clean napkin. They would all be fine.

Now the mission was over, though, and Kaine had no idea what happened next.

“Level with me here, coach,” Andi said around a mouthful of her burger. “Are these undercover missions just what superheroes do instead of speed dating?”

“What?” Flash spluttered, turning red. “No! Why would you – No!”

“Are they?” Kaine asked, leaning forward, and Flash shot him a dirty look. “Hey, I’m new to all of this. If this is what people expect every time they go undercover for something, I think I should know.”

“It’s not,” Flash said, scowling at him. “But don’t go on any undercover missions with any other guys. Just in case.”

Aracely snorted into her milkshake and Andi started catcalling, her hands cupped around her mouth.

“Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” Andi chanted while Aracely snorted with laughter. “C’mon, coach, lay one on him! Kiss him!”

“They’re not gonna stop until we do, you know,” Flash pointed out.

Kaine rolled his eyes and leaned over, curling his hand at the back of Flash’s neck. It was just a quick kiss, barely more than the press of his lips against Flash’s, but it made Andi whoop and throw her arms in the air, Aracely laughing as she clapped.

Kaine leaned back and said, “Are you happy now?”

“Ecstatic,” Andi replied, smirking at him. It was kind of annoying how she didn’t seem intimidated by him even a little bit.

“Hey,” Flash said, holding up a twenty dollar bill. “Go get us more burgers?”

Andi snorted, snatching the money out of his hand.

“C’mon, Aracely,” she said, heading back towards the burger shack. “They want to be alone.”

Kaine waited until they were out of earshot to say, “I say we leave them here.”

Flash snorted, shaking his head.

“What? Just for a few hours,” Kaine said. “We can let it get dark and then come back for them. They’d be fine.”

“Yeah, I think we’d get like five minutes down the road and you’d want to turn around,” Flash said, grinning at him.

Kaine glanced away, rolling his eyes. It felt strange, to be known in this specific way, but not bad.

When he put his hand out palm up on the table, Flash reached over and took it. Kaine curled his fingers around Flash’s hand, and let out a breath.

“You got plans when you get back to New York?” Flash asked.

“I don’t know. Regular weird superhero stuff,” Kaine said. “Rescuing cats from trees. Kicking people in the face. That kind of thing.”

He almost told Flash about Ben, who was still out there. Kaine wanted things to be different, the next time he met Ben, because they would meet again. He and Ben had always been connected in that way. But wanting something to be true didn’t make it so.

That was Kaine’s baggage, though. He was sure that Flash had his own. They both lived in this superhero game; there was no way to survive in it as long as either of them without some heavy baggage. Kaine understood that. And maybe there was time, he thought, somewhere down the line, for him and Flash both. Maybe Kaine didn’t have to tell him everything right now like he was just waiting for Flash to say no, thanks.

“Yeah?” Flash asked. He tilted his head to the side, smiling at Kaine. “You think you might need any help with that?”

“With what?” Kaine asked, leaning forward. “The old ladies or the cats?”

“Either or,” Flash said. “Old ladies can be tough. I wouldn’t want you to get in over your head.”

Kaine snorted and kissed him. He could hear Aracely and Andi chatting just a few yards away, could hear the birds singing in the trees. It was a warm day, and Flash’s lips were soft against his. He could just let himself have this, he thought, just for now. For longer than that, even, maybe, if he played his cards right, if he bet smart.

“Okay,” he said, pulling back. “If I meet any tough old ladies, I’ll give you a call.”

Flash smiled at him, soft and fond, and reached out to push a lock of Kaine’s hair behind his ear.

“You got me,” he said.