Chapter Text
It was his third time on Facebook since breakfast that morning, sue him. The team was taking a break for lunch, he wasn’t doing anything illegal. It’s not like he was desperate or anything, he was there to see pictures of his son. And while he was there he just had to check her sister's page using his alt account. And her fathers. Maybe Conner had gone to his grandparents in the two hours since he had last checked.
“What did you think?”
Walker looks up from his phone to see the entire team looking at him, “what did I think about what?”
“Never mind,” Yelena grumbles, and the rest of them go back to eating and conversing amongst themselves, leaving John back in his own world. It was familiar, scrolling through his past while his future sat in front of him. He needed to stop. He needed a plan.
It takes him a while to come up with one, and the entire process makes him question how the hell he ended up with someone as amazing as Olivia in the first place. He thinks of finding someone to set her up with, but that would come back to bite him in the ass. He tries reaching out to a few outlets to get her a tell-all interview, one that would get the entire public even more on her side than they already were. He makes it pretty far but is met with the answer Ava had given him on their first-ever mission, someone other than you would have to ask.
Ava. If anyone could make him more of a bad guy, it was her. The lightbulb finally goes off, and the plan comes together.
He pulls Bob aside after a team meeting, keeping an eye on where she goes. “Bob, listen, I need to borrow you for a few minutes.”
Bob looks nervous. John doesn’t ask for help. Ever. “With what?”
“If you’re feeling okay today,” he prefaces, waving his arms in Bob’s general direction, “I need you to keep Ava from ripping out my organs.”
“Ripping out your organs?” Bob raises an eyebrow. “That’s a bit dramatic. She just phases her arm in when you piss her off.”
“With what I’m about to ask, I’m at risk of losing a kidney. Or my heart.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing yet, but I’m asking for a solid here. Literally. I need you to use your force field while I ask her for something really important.”
For someone so skilled in the art of blunt assholery, John is surprisingly nervous about the plan. It has too many variables, relies on other people, and has an unpredictable outcome on multiple ends, but his desperation sends him to corner Ava in the common room, Bob hidden behind a wall.
“Hey, Ava. How’s your day bee-”
“Cut the shit, Walker, what do you want?”
Any confidence he had drains in an instant. Not only is he about to ask her for something monumental, he’s managed to catch her on a bad day. He doesn’t stop to run over the things he might have done to piss her off, instead just going for it. “I need to ask you for a really big favor.”
She doesn’t answer, just crosses her arms and waits.
“I need you to pretend to date me.”
It takes a solid five seconds for her to register what he’s just asked. Her reaction goes from stunned to laughing until she studies his expression closely. “You’re serious?”
“Yes, I’m serious.”
Her hand moves forward phase through whatever internal organ is closest before hitting a force field. She reels her hand back and rubs it. “Bob!”
“I didn’t know he was going to ask you that!” Bob protests, peering from around the corner at John. The force field drops almost instantly.
“Alright, I get that you’re angry. I just need you to hear me out-”
That was the wrong thing to say. “I am not your rebound, Walker. You don’t get to ask me to be your fake girlfriend because you fucked things up with your wife. That’s not how this works.”
“I know how bad I fucked up. I know that. I fucked up so badly that she won’t date again. She won’t go out. None of her friends have posted photos with her. Our mutual friends, the few that still speak to me, are telling me just how shattered she is. And for some godforsaken reason she thinks the way things ended was somehow her fault.”
He stops to catch his breath, letting the shame seep into his words. “It’s been a year. A year. I broke the sweetest, kindest person I know with my own stupidity, and I’m doing this to try and make it right.”
“How is seeing her shitty ex with a new girlfriend going to make her feel any better?”
“Because we’re going to light this ‘relationship’ on fire with a tactical nuke. It’s going to end with the messiest, nastiest breakup imaginable. It’ll be a tabloid nightmare.”
Ava pinches the bridge of her nose. “You’re already a tabloid nightmare.”
“For a lot of other reasons, but not my relationships. I need a sob story, one Valentina’s gonna spend weeks cleaning up. I’ll be a heartless monster who broke your heart and left you shattered. And when all of it is over, you can go back to hating me and Olivia will finally realize that I was the problem all along.”
“That seems like a lot of work to prove something so painfully obvious.”
“Do you have any better ideas?”
“Yeah, go ask Yelena.”
John throws his arms out in protest. “And get her dad involved in this whole mess?”
“Fine, fine, I get your point.”
“So you’ll do it?”
She hesitates, then smirks. A mean smirk. “For a price.”
“You can’t have any of my organs.”
She shakes her head. “You have to be part of your son's life again.”
John stares at her. Of all the things she could have asked for, that was at the bottom of the list. Hell, it wasn’t even on the list. “Why do you want that?”
She steps closer. The very faint hum of the force field goes back up again and Bob peers from around the corner, curious. “I only got to know my father for a few years. I would pay any price, give up any freedom, commit any crime, all for the chance to see him again. But I can’t, he’s dead. Do you know why?”
“I know what he did for you, I know he tried to save you, I get that.” He treads carefully. “But don’t imply that I wouldn’t do the same for my son.”
“I have no doubt that you would die for him. But what good is dying for him if he doesn’t even know who you are?” She stares at him with the intensity of a thousand suns. There’s no mockery in her voice, just pure vitriol.
“Your son is out there living with his mother, knowing that you’re alive and well, just living without him. You didn’t fight for him, you laid yourself down and accepted defeat without so much as a word of protest.”
John stands still, eyes moving back and forth from the floor to her general direction. He can hear her energy start to charge up. It’s not voluntary. She’s angry, angrier than he’s ever seen her.
“Is that why you hate me?”
“I have a lot of reasons to hate you, Walker, but abandoning your son is at the top of my fucking list.”
He wants to protest. He wants to say that ‘abandon’ is a harsh word for someone he cares so much about. He wants to yell at her for implying that he doesn’t love his son. But he holds back. If Olivia moves on, then Conner will eventually have someone better in his life. He’ll have a stepdad, a real role model. He won’t have to think about his monster of a father.
“If I get visitation rights, and make this whole arrangement on your terms, will you do it?”
There’s a painfully long pause. The silence comes back as her energy fades back to normal.
“Yes.”
A crash comes from the hallway. They both turn to find Bob desperately trying to pick up the broken pieces of the potted hall plant. “Sorry, sorry.”
A few groans echo from the hallway and the rest of the team steps out from behind the wall.
Alexei is the first to walk up to them, wrapping his arms around both of them with a huge smile. “Oh, you two are going to be the most adorable.”
“The most adorable shit show to grace New York,” Yelena taunts, crossing her arms as she stares at both of them.
“Sure, if that’s what you want to call it.” Ava phases her arm towards John, and Bob makes no effort to stop her.