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The main room was a mess.
There were soda cans and chip bags everywhere. Clue cards littering the floor from when Alexei flipped the board earlier. Bucky had left an hour ago under the excuse of "mission prep," which was code for 'I refuse to play games with these people ever again.'
John slammed his cards onto the table, curling his lip. “Ugh. That’s so gay.”
Everyone stopped what they were doing. Yelena raised her eyebrows, Alexei paused in the middle of trying to "sneakily" trade out his cards, Ava narrowed their eyes, calm and unblinking.
“No, wait, that’s not what I meant,” he said, hands raised. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant– like, it sucks! You know? Not that gay sucks! Just– this sucks. Like the cards. The cards suck.”
Ava’s mouth twitched in the faintest hint of a smile—half amusement, half exasperation. They folded their hands on the table and leaned forward.
"Solid forty-five percent," they said, voice deceptively calm, "could have been worse. At least you tried to salvage it."
John’s cheeks flushed, but he squared his shoulders. “Okay,” he admitted, voice low. “Forty-five percent. I–I’m learning.” He looked around, eyes wide, searching for any sign of mercy.
Yelena let out a low whistle and tossed a chip into her mouth. “Forty-five percent is generous. I would’ve gone with sixty.”
Alexei leaned over to Ava. “What is gay about the cards?”
Ava didn’t take their eyes off John. “Nothing, Alexei. That’s kind of the point.”
Alexei frowned thoughtfully, like he was running mentally diagnostics on the concept of slang.
Yelena tossed another chip into her mouth, smirking. “Walker has two brain cells, and they don’t speak to each other.”
John made a noise halfway between a groan and a sigh. “C’mon, I’m trying here.”
“Trying what?” Yelena asked, kicking her feet up on the table. “Our patience?”
Ava leaned back as well, mimicking Yelena's stance. "Okay then, Walker. You're at forty-five percent homophobia. To not risk losing 'acceptable teammate' status, you need to get below twenty."
John swallowed. “Right. Below twenty.” He glanced at his cards as if they held secret instructions. “What do you want me to do?"
Ava tilted their head, the glint in their eye both amused and deeply, deeply unimpressed.
“I want you,” they said slowly, “to think before you speak.”
John opened his mouth, then shut it again.
Yelena snorted. “He’s already at a disadvantage.”
“I’m serious,” Ava went on, gesturing loosely. “Words mean things, Walker. Saying something’s ‘gay’ like it’s a synonym for ‘bad’? That’s some 2005 playground-level crap. You want to improve? Stop using ‘gay’ as an insult. Literally just stop doing that. Easy win.”
John frowned. “I wasn’t trying to insult–”
“But you did.” Ava’s tone sharpened slightly, enough to clip the edge of his defensiveness. “We know you don’t mean to be an ass, you just... speak fluent asshole.”
John’s ears went pink. “Okay. Got it. I’ll work on it.”
“Forty-five percent,” Ava reminded him.
“And if you slip up,” she said, eyes glittering with mischief, “you owe us your percentage in push-ups. No excuses. We’ll count. Consider that motivation.”
John let out a breath, a nervous laugh rattling through his chest. “So if it seventy percent, I do seventy push-ups?”
Ava shrugged, feigning indifference. “Them’s the rules.”
John looked around the table. No one objected. In fact, Yelena was nodding seriously, wiping chip dust on her pants like she was preparing to officiate.
Alexei, meanwhile, had located the scoring notepad from an earlier game of charades and was now scribbling WALKER HOMOPHOBIA SCOREBOARD at the top in big block letters.
Yelena leaned over to peer at it. “Oh, we’re tracking this officially now? Hell yeah.”
“Wait– hold on, that’s not fair,” John said, pointing at the notepad. “I’ve been trying. I’ve come a long way!”
"If Bucky were still in here you'd already owe us two full laps around the tower and at least two hundred push-ups.” Ava shot back.
John took a breath. “Okay. No more ‘that’s so gay’ when I mean something sucks.”
“Good start,” Ava said. “Also, no more of the 'I dont care, but…' it makes it sound like you actually do care."
John nodded, trying to lock the rule firmly in his brain. “Okay. No ‘that’s so gay,’ no ‘I don’t care but.’ Got it.”
Ava gave a slow, deliberate clap. “Look at you. Progress.”
Yelena smirked, slidingthe chip bowl across the table toward him. “Here’s a tip: if you feel the urge to say something and it sounds like it’s coming from a canceled 90s sitcom, just don’t say it.”
John took a chip. "Ok. Ok. Got it."
“You say that now,” Yelena murmured. “But then someone uses they/them pronouns and your neurons start arm-wrestling each other.”
John opened his mouth, hesitated, then closed it again. His eyes flicked toward Ava.
They raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“No, nothing,” he said quickly. “Just.. wondering if I’ve ever… you know. Said something dumb about that.”
Ava stared at him for a long beat.
“Walker,” they said slowly. “You called me ‘they/them girl’ for two straight weeks.”
John’s face went through the color spectrum—from “Oh god” red to “please don’t look at me” white—in roughly two seconds. He cleared his throat, shoved another chip into his mouth, and tried to find his voice.
“I did what now?” he croaked,.
Ava leaned forward, arms on the table, gaze razor-sharp. “For a week. ‘They/them girl.’ Every. Single. Day.”
Yelena was already cackling, nearly falling off her chair with how hard she laughed. “Oh my god. I remember that."
Alexei tilted his head, visibly trying to piece that together. “I do not understand. Are they not a girl?”
Ava gave him a sideways glance. "I am. Kinda. But thats not the point. He didn't know that."
John slumped in his seat, fingers tight around the chip bag. He looked like he wanted to dissolve into the cushions and be forgotten by history.
“I genuinely thought that was like… a nickname,” he muttered.
Ava’s eyes narrowed. “A nickname?”
“Yeah, like–like how people call each other ‘dude’ or ‘boss’ or…” he trailed off, realizing mid-sentence that there was no version of this explanation that didn’t make him sound like a complete idiot.
Yelena leaned her head onto her hand, voice syrupy with sarcasm. “Please, Walker. Dig deeper. Let’s hit bedrock.”
John groaned and ran both hands over his face. “Okay, fine. That one’s on me. I didn’t know what the hell I was saying.”
"We should bring up how you tried to relate to me by talking about how hard it's been to date after your divorce when I said was aroace, or you told Ava that you 'get it' when they told you they were a lesbian," Yelena added, exchanging a look with Ava.
John winced. “Okay, okay, I was reaching. I didn’t want to just say ‘cool.’ I thought maybe if I shared something personal, we’d connect.”
Ava leaned forward, voice softer but still firm. “All right, Walker. How 'bout this: you owe us seventy-five push-ups for today, then you owe another five for slipping up on my pronouns last week.” They flicked a finger at Alexei, who dutifully added “+80” next to John’s name on the notepad.
John dropped his head to the table with a loud thud. “I’m never going to recover from this.”
“Eighty push-ups is barely a warm-up for you,” Yelena said cheerfully. “You’ll be fine. Maybe even less stupid by the end.”
Alexei nodded along, tapping the notepad. “I will keep track. There will be no mercy.”
John fell onto his side dramatically, like the weight of his own ignorance was too much to bear. “This is bullying.”
Yelena leaned over and ruffled his hair, just enough to make it stick up in five different directions. “This is love. Extremely judgmental, vaguely threatening love.”
“I feel so supported,” John muttered into the table.
Ava stood and stretched, cracking their knuckles. “C’mon. Lets get your push-ups over with.”
John blinked up at them. “You’re actually going to make me do them right now?”
Ava gave him a slow nod, folding their arms. “Right here. Right now. No one said you could hide behind excuses.”
Yelena rose too, dusting crumbs off her jeans as she started moving the table to make room. “Alexei, you’re the official scorekeeper. Count them out loud so Walker can’t argue about math.”
"Where's Bob when you need them?" John muttered, rolling onto his stomach. "They wouldn't be making me do push-ups right now."
"Hey, you used the right pronouns!" Yelena cheered half-sarcastically, clapping. "Great job, Jonathan."
John groaned, letting his forehead thump against the hardwood floor to hide his blush at her praise. “You know this counts as harassment, right? Like, textbook.”
Ava smirked, kneeling beside him. “Harassment with a purpose. Consider it character building.”
John gritted his teeth and pushed himself up into the first push-up, him and Alexei both counting out of sync with each other.