Chapter Text
Bob had no real idea how they ended up in Florida of all places for his junior year, no real base in sight. It was some desk job for a few years, his dad seething the entire time they were packing up the UHAUL, effectively silencing any questions he had. He got enrolled in a public high school, the first one they’d ever been to. Bob had ended up with an extra credit job filing papers and manning the front desk during lunch in the office to get some extra volunteer hours, no real reason to invest any time in this school, he'd be at another one in a few months. That was a good enough reason to keep himself completely closed off to the idea of putting himself back out there, still had a cast of friends back at his last school well on their way to forgetting he existed.
They had him on the phone that day, a job he’d slid his way into early. It was easy listening to people's calls and moving them onto the people who could fix their problems. The office was quiet and a controlled environment, there was always movement through it. It was nice to be surrounded with the noise associated with people, his home growing dead quiet the farther they all grew apart. He couldn't remember the last time he had seen his dad out of uniform or heard more than a few sentences out of his mom, the thought making his skin feel this side of too tight. One day he’d be gone and they would go on without him, like he had never been there at all more than likely. It made him feel like a ghost most days, like people could just see through him like he wasn't there.
He looked away from the clock ticking above the door for what had to be just two minutes and the next thing he knew the star of cheer team, still in her pressed uniform now spotted with the remnants of the fight she definitely started, was deposited into the chair farthest from the door, busted lip and cracked knuckles heralding a story he was going to have to get creative with before calling home for both girls.
She sat in her chair like a reigning prizefighter until security dropped the other girl into the door closest to the door, nose still dripping blood and with an impressively battered set of knuckles of her own to match, having been the one to end the fight. She was all raw anger and rough edges, posted up next to the door like she was more likely to kick it down then just walk out. She looked at him and nodded. He did the same without thinking about it, like cowboys striking up a truce in an old western movie, Bob thought.
It was odd, she had looked right at him and it was like she saw him, really saw him. They’d never talked to each other before, passing by each other countless times before. Everybody knew who Natasha was, reputation for a short temper and an even meaner right hook chasing her everywhere she went. A rumor had gone around that she had spent a summer in juvie the year before and it wasn't true, Bob had seen her record and the impressive amount of time she spent down in the shop class fixing anything she could get her hands on was what was written down where any charges would have been. Bob had seen her on her motorcycle a few weeks before, peeling out of the school's parking lot like her hair was on fire and all he could think was that she didn't have a helmet.
Both girls refused to tell what actually happened when asked, both claiming responsibility and arguing who had the better right hook when asked, getting louder and louder until administration gave up and kicked them both out back into the general population with a hand waved warning and a vague threat to call home they never followed up on. Bob took that as a sign, sliding the files they’d had him pull back quietly, Nat’s folder thick with traffic violations and a laundry list of fighting back against anybody put in front of her with a little bit of authority. The administration had never double checked anything he’d worked on before, they sure weren't going to start now with a “forgotten” phone call here and there.
This strange and angry girl that had crashed up on entry into his life walked right up to the front deak and introduced herself as “Natasha Trace and I’m going to get the fuck out of here.” Bob nodded, not used to the way she stared at him, with all the focus of the sun shining on down. “You’re Robert or something right?” She asked like she already knew the answer and was just waiting on him to catch up, like they were old friends and he just didn't know it yet.
“Bob, people usually use Bob.” He answered, the name he chose for himself years ago still feeling like new every time somebody asked for it. “Wait, how did you know that?” The question slipped out, trying to look back and see if there was a time they crossed paths where she would know that. It was a little sweet, as sweet as the terrifying girl in front of him could come across at the moment, still battered around the edges.
She crossed her arms, little flecks of drying blood from her fight catching the light on her battered jacket, and smiled at him all fire and mischief. “Make it a point to know who stopped calling my mom every time I get dragged up here. Pretty badass of you, Bobby.” She leaned over and punched him on his shoulder in her way of thanking him, harder than she probably meant, she always seemed to forget her strength. It was a companionship type of pain, something that tied them together now at least physically, a bruise given freely.
He had started “accidentally” slipping the notes telling him to call Nat’s mom into the trash when nobody was watching after the second time she’d been deposited in the office. She never got hurt bad enough for anybody to really worry and never hurt anybody real bad, just enough for them to stay out of her way going forward. Nobody had picked up the phone the first two times and he had seen the way her shoulders slumped hearing the voice mail pick up when Bob called. He picked up pretty quickly. She was on her own too, mom worked days and no siblings around to take care of. If he packed an extra sandwich or something small for the days she wound up across from him, to slide over the front desk and act like it was an accident, nobody had to know. It was something small, something he could do without thinking about it, something he wished somebody would do for him sometime. It made him feel less like a ghost when she took the little bag from across the table with a nod like they were in this together.
“Come on Bob, think we can still swing some lunch?” She all but dragged him out the door, still reeling over the fact that not only had she noticed him but that she was taking him with her. “I don't know, I think the cafeteria is closed.” He trailed off as Nat led them well past that side of the school, the back door that opened up to the student parking lot coming up to meet them. The stack of tardiness and absent marks in her record coming back up in his mind, contrasted with his perfect record. It wasn't easy with the constant moving and the days he’d missed to take care of his mom but he was quiet enough that people don't usually notice when he was gone. The more he’d looked at Nat’s record the more he’d notice that somehow she always ended up in the top few of her classes, too smart for her own good and too willing to go looking for trouble instead.
“Looks like we’re going to go on an adventure then.” She fired back, trouble sparking up in her voice like there wasn't a chance Bob wasn't going to follow her. The thought didn’t worry him the way it would have from anybody else, hanging out with Natasha felt like chaining himself to a comet. It might not end well, but god would it be a sight to see.
Fifteen minutes later he found himself sitting in the back of a building he hadn't even known was a restaurant, still trying to process just how fast Nat liked to drive that bike of hers, with a plate of the greatest meal he’d ever eaten slid in front of him. Months down the line Natasha had admitted that it was the back of her uncle’s closed down restaurant she hung out at sometimes when she wanted to be alone and that she had whipped up the meal on an old-fashioned gas stove in the back. She kept a small cupboard stocked with the basics to cook, odd mechanic jobs here and there keeping the little hideout liveable. Her bringing him there felt like a confession the same way him slowly sliding things off her school record did, small acts of compassion from two lonely people.
And with that, their odd little group formed right there in the lobby of the high school that couldn’t wait to get rid of them, now just the two of them against the world.
When a passing friend asked what he saw in Nat, he told him he saw a girl who was trouble and did not everybody want some of that sometimes? Nat was about as different from him as two people could be, at first look at least. She was Florida born and raised, never left the state before. She built her motorcycle that she just barely got the license for, speed limits a suggestion at best for her, her heavy metal angry music trailing in her wake like a warning siren. She could fix anything she looked at and could pick a fight with a brick wall if she wanted to. She walked around like she was just asking the world to get in the way, to give her a chance to burn up on re-entry, all sparkling gold edges and scorched earth in her wake.
But Bob could see the same hopeless anger bubbling up in her, the way he got real bad without something to focus on, it hurt to watch her burn up so fiercely. So he slid her an actual helmet for her bike with a little phoenix he’d carefully painted on it for her 18th, saying she was going to get them out of there one way or another. She’d hugged him so tight after that he was a little afraid she was really trying to crush him. He ignored the shine of a few unshed tears in her eyes after she pulled away, letting her have them to herself.
When it was her turn to come up with an 18th gift, she got him a travel guide for the whole world, careful handwriting in the margins with notes on everything she had planned for them to do and see once they graduated. What had really sealed it as the best gift he thought he’d ever get was in tiny perfect letters on the first page she had written, “To the best baby brother I never knew I wanted. Love you Bobby.”
Really deep down what he saw who needed somebody looking out for her, and she needed somebody to look out for in her own way. The two of them never fought after that. Whatever kicked off Natasha in the first place died that day, the realization that they weren't the only two who felt so lonely sometimes it hurt, the way it felt too big and all freezer burn cold for their bodies drawing them together far more than the violence did. If anybody saw the way they looked at each other like they hung the stars, they didn’t say anything, letting the two of them figure that out for themselves.
It had been Nat’s idea for them to enlist, throwing the brochure down like a proclamation on the bed they both were piled in, pretending they couldn't hear how quiet the Floyd house was, almost sterile in the late summer afternoon. They had all started the tentative looks into the future, and had started getting postcards from schools all over the country. Late that night, she had admitted she didn't want to go anywhere without him, they were a family in themselves and she didn't think she could lose this one. Bob had agreed, knowing this limited them even more, not much overlap between them other than a shared bone-deep loneliness clawing them up from the inside out.
They went back and forth for hours about the idea, Bob not wanting to repeat the cycle he’d been stuck in their whole life. The never ending moving, never being settled in one place, and seeing how his dad had ended up was more than enough for him to be put off to the idea. Nat was head first without a second to think about it, heart set on flying as far as she could and never coming back down. Laying on the floor that night, staring up at the glow in the dark stars she had pasted to the ceiling months ago, he told her that he just didn't want to become his dad and he would follow her anywhere if she asked. It felt like a weight had been lifted off him after that, that old ball and chain worry verbalized after a life spent living in opposition.
Before long, graduation crept up on them like a vision of things to come. Bob had dragged them both through applying to schools and the long process of scholarships and financial aid, somehow swinging matching shiny acceptance letters to Embry-Riddle, scholarships to match, and a shared dorm just too small for them. They were set out in the world with the confidence of a plan in motion. Nat came around to the idea of school once planes were brought into the equation, always too smart for her own good, just needed that point of focus to set her razor focus on. Before they knew it, time split between jobs traded back and forth and enough homework to blind them both, graduation was back around the corner, calls from home having come less and less since he’d left.
They had made a point of avoiding any mention of parents day or graduation invitations sent back with no return address. One of Bob’s professors had asked on the last day of class and Nat had just slung her arm around Bob and said, “We got each other, that's enough.” And it was. He’d made a point of taking a spare invitation to their graduation and mailing it to their post office box addressed to Natasha Trace, ignoring that he could have just given it to her and saved the stamp. It was the point of the thing, she was family and he was going to give her a proper invitation. In return she got the girl who worked the flower stand at the supermarket to make what had to be the biggest bouquet Bob had ever seen, all sunflowers and sunshine yellow, and presented it to him right off the graduation stage. It was so big it looked like a third person between them in all the pictures that had of that day, all pretty petals and big victorious smiles.
They snuck out of their cramped dorm the next day, down to the Navy recruiter just off the highway. It took less than an hour with a day trip to the hospital an hour down the interstate and they had signed the next four years of their lives away. It felt like somebody had opened up the blinds and there was real light coming in from the outside, there was something outside of the angry quiet that had filled his home for years. They were flying out on a wing and a prayer but they were doing it together.
Basic training flew by after all that fighting to get there, Nat having run them both through camps of her own making the last few years of high school and college that they had together, trying to get them ready the way she knew best, running headlong into a problem until it bent under the weight of her focus. They finished the top of their class, too competitive and still too close to what they left behind to look back now.
It felt less like running away, the more Bob sat with the idea. Less like he was leaving something behind, more like he was going somewhere he didn't quite know yet. It was a strangely warm idea, seemed to take root in his chest more over time, that they really did get out of that icebox, that he was getting less ready to bubble over with the anger he’d grown up in. He’d spent so long trying to get away, he didn't really know where away was. Nat never let it slip she didn't know either, but Bob knew that she’d go where the wind took her, always going-going-going. It gave him something to hold on too, keeping her on the ground just as much as she let him see just how much world they were going to see together.
Captain Floyd didn't come to their flight school graduation, claiming some deployment came up last minute, his familiar stare of disapproval still felt from half a county away. He hadn’t wanted Bob to fly at all, let alone backseat for Nat. He’d never liked her, claiming she was walking around looking for a fight. He wasn't wrong but she was real and she was there in a human tangible way. That was more than Bob could say about his parents, so if he had to pick up some basic first aid and conflict resolution skills along the way, so be it. He wouldn't trade what rock solid foundation that had formed between them for anything.
His mom had stopped writing as the years went on, the delayed goodbye trailing off in a half forgotten way, like she had just misplaced him and given up on finding him again. It stung but not as much as Bob expected, she hadn't made it to his high school graduation, following his dad’s lead like she did in everything. There wasn't much fight in her, it used to scare Bob when he was a kid, like someday that watery hopelessness would sink into him one day, that he would just lay down and never get back up.
In any case, it felt like the last severed tie, like the divide had become impassable with time and distance. Nat’s mom had come, bearing flowers for the both of them, claiming Bob as hers for the day. They went out and had a real meal on the outside since basic had kicked off and got ready for their first real assignment, having somehow swung it to stay together, still joined at the hip and too good for anybody to think about breaking them up now. The idea that some day they’d be split up looking far off. The whole idea that they had the world in their hands still seemed shiny new in their minds, like they were still waiting for the other shoe to drop and wake up back in the wet-hot Florida heat. Something in Bob couldn't help but think that this was all some dream they had cooked up on one of those long nights they both couldn't sleep, staring up at the fading glow stars pasted to the ceiling as a leftover from the last time Natasha had gotten that restless feeling under her skin.
Nat’s mom had told him to look out for their Phoenix and sent them both off to flight school with a promise to be on solid land, sending them back out when they landed. True to her word, she was in the front row alone at their graduation with a bouquet for each of them, cheering for them like they’d saved the world. A photo of the three of them holding on to each other like they’d been separated for years and not just a few months surfaced every few years since, ending up framed in the tiny apartment they rented out as a landing pad between assignments, walls covered with photos of them all over the world, on a path they made for themselves from the day they crashed into each other so long ago.