Work Text:
It’s a Wednesday, which means that after school Fitz had PT and then therapy. May is never quite sure what she’ll get when she picks him up—quiet Fitz, angry Fitz. Today, she realizes, as she looks at him in the rear-view mirror, is sad Fitz. He’s got tears streaming down his face, even though he hasn’t made a sound.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
He takes a moment to respond. “No.”
That’s fair. She doesn’t like talking about this kind of thing either, so she can’t imagine what it must feel like for him. But Phil keeps telling her she needs to get him to open up. “It might help.”
“Won’t.”
So it’s a one word answer kind of day. At least he’s answering her at all, he hadn’t been when she picked him up from school.
“I know it feels that way, but your therapist says-“
“I don’t care!” he shouts, and she has to resist the urge to sigh. It’s more than one word, at least. He presses the balls of his hands against his eyes, trying to hold back the tears. “I don’t- fuck.”
“Language,” she warns. Another by-product of Phil. She doesn’t really care when the kids curse (at least they’re expressing themselves), but whenever they do it around him, Phil always gives her a look. “I know you hate this, Fitz. But if you don’t communicate with me then we can’t do anything to change it.”
Fitz pulls in a ragged breath, and drops his hands from his eyes. “I- I-“ He covers his eyes again, fingers digging into his forehead.
“It’s okay, take your time.”
For a while she just drives. Not toward home, because this isn’t a conversation that needs to be interrupted. She’s really not sure if he’s going to continue, but she’s good at waiting.
“It’s not-“ He growls and snaps his fingers, looking for the word. “Fair. Other- other kids don’t-“ He lets out a sigh. “-have to do this.”
“You’re not going to get anywhere comparing yourself to other people,” she says, thinking that maybe she should’ve waited to tag Phil in on this conversation. Fitz likes Phil. But no, this is something she needs to do herself. “But you’re right, it’s not fair.”
“I want …”
She gives him a good thirty seconds. “What, Fitz?”
“… to quit.”
May grits her teeth. This is actually something she’s thought about, whether putting the poor kid through all of this is worth it. In the months she’s been taking him it doesn’t seem to help, only leaves him miserable and frustrated. Antoine, for his part, actually likes therapy. He always tells her what they talked about and what he’s learned, and teaches the concepts to the other kids at school. Fitz seems worse off afterwards, and she knows his therapist is equally as frustrated with how little progress they’ve made, even though they’d been seeing each other since before May had taken him in.
“Therapy can only help as much as you let it.”
“So it’s my fault?” he asks indignantly.
“That’s not what I meant to imply.” God, why couldn’t she have Phil’s grace with words? “I mean that maybe you’re not in a place right now to accept the sort of help therapy is offering. Not everyone is. If you had some distance, tried again later-“
“I can stop?” His voice is perhaps more hopeful than May has ever heard it.
“Regular therapy, not the PT. And with stipulations.”
His eyes peer curiously at her in the mirror. She’s glad she has her sunglasses on, sure her own eyes would give away how uncertain she feels.
“Like- like what?”
“You have to keep talking to someone. Me, or Phil, or one of the counselors at school. It doesn’t have to be the same kind of talking that the therapist wanted out of you, but if something is bothering you, you should tell someone. I don’t want you bottling things up.” Not that he always can bottle things up—sometimes his emotions burst forth from him with terrifying force, and everyone else just has to wait for the storm to pass and try to help clean up the damage. It’s part of the brain injury, they tell her, emotional dysregulation. That’s some of it, she knows, but sometimes she wonders if he’s always been that way, and it just got exasperated by the injury.
He thinks about it for a minute. “You.”
“What?”
“To- to talk to. You.”
She doesn’t respond, too shocked to put together the words. She was sure he would choose Phil, absolutely certain. She’s got a strange feeling in her chest that she isn’t quite sure how to name.
“S’at okay?”
“Yes, Fitz, that’s more than okay.” She has to resist chewing her bottom lip, an old tell. “How about we go get some ice cream? Just the two of us, don’t tell the other kids.”
He wipes his cheeks, though they’re mostly dry. “Really?”
“I think you deserve it.”
He smiles shyly. “Yeah. Okay.”
They go to his favorite ice cream shop, which is a little further of a drive than the other ones, and don’t talk the whole way. It’s his favorite because they have a flavor called ‘monkey tracks’, which he once admitted is not his favorite taste, though he gets it every time.
May gets out of the car and almost trips, her hip giving out beneath her. Fitz runs to the trunk and grabs her cane (the weather’s been bad and it’s one of those days), passing it to her with a worried expression.
“Okay?”
She grips the cane and tests her weight on her leg. “I’m fine, thanks.”
They buy their ice cream and then walk to the little park across the street, settling on a bench in the shade.
For a while they eat in silence, Fitz with his monkey tracks, May with her chocolate and bananas. His feet swing rhythmically, not touching the ground. He’ll probably have a growth spurt soon, she thinks.
She pushes a banana slice around with her spoon. “You’ve never told me what happened.” She really doesn’t want to have to bring this up, but it’s probably best to do it now. While he’s calm, and fresh off agreeing to do this in the first place.
He gives her a searching look. “You mean you don’t- you don’t already know?”
She shakes her head. “Why would I?”
“Thought the- you know, the therapist. Thought she told you.”
“Have you heard of doctor-patient confidentiality?”
“’Course.”
“Well, it means she doesn’t tell me anything unless you tell her it’s okay.”
He thoughtfully swirls the ice cream in his cup. “Oh. Even Phil?”
“He wouldn’t say anything without your consent either.”
He seems to mull that over. “He asked. When we first- when we moved in with you. I- I said no, cause- Well I thought he just, you know, told you anyway.”
“He wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Okay,” he says, sounding unconvinced.
She readjusts her sunglasses, though they don’t need readjusting. “If there’s something I need to know, then I have to trust that you’ll tell me yourself.”
“What if I don’t?” he asks, not quite looking at her.
“Then I won’t know, and I can’t help.”
He nods, and finishes his ice cream quietly. He sits his empty cup next to him on the bench and then points to hers. “You gonna-?”
She passes it off and he grins happily, eating the bananas first and then the ice cream around them. It’s just to delay the talk, she knows, but she lets him have it. He’ll talk when he’s ready. When he finishes he still sits quietly, both of them watching a dog play frisbee with its owner.
“What kind of dog is that?” she asks, when the silence has gone on for a while.
He squints. “Border collie cross?”
She nods. He finally turns to face her on the bench, pulling his feet up under him, though he doesn’t look at her. When he speaks, he speaks slow, enunciating each syllable carefully, but he still stutters around his words and has to pause to gather his thoughts often.
“The first house me and Jemma were in together, when we were six … the dad was really mean. He’d get angry a lot. And I was angry too, so I’d provoke him.” He chews on his thumbnail for a second, and then pulls his hands into his lap. “Well one day he was picking on Jemma, and I was just so mad, I couldn’t take it anymore. I started yelling at him, throwing things. I called him an idiot and a pig. So he grabbed me, and tried to drown me in the bathtub.”
May inhales sharply without meaning to.
“And I don’t really remember what happened after that, not for a few days. But Jemma came in and threatened to call the police, so he stopped. And then she did anyway, and they took me to the hospital, and the guy got arrested. So we got moved to the next home. But they thought I was too difficult, so Mr. Fury took us.”
May takes a moment to steady herself. “That sounds like it would’ve been really scary.”
Fitz shrugs, and leans his cheek against the back of the bench. “I guess.”
“What that man did, that’s not your fault.”
He picks at a swirl on the wood of the bench. “I prov- provoked him.”
“Doesn’t matter. He’s an adult, it’s his responsibility to hold his temper. And there’s no excuse for hurting a child.”
“You’d never hurt us,” he says, but it sounds too much like a question.
“No, I wouldn’t. I promise,” she says, knowing that that word doesn’t mean as much to him as it should, but it’s all she can offer.
He nods, and then slides forward so his forehead is against her arm. She’s careful not to move, because unlike the other kids he rarely initiates physical contact, and doesn’t like too much of it. Even this is a show of trust.
Eventually he gives a heavy sigh, tickling over her skin. “I think- I ate too much ice cream.”
She laughs, because that hadn’t been what she was expecting. “Yeah, I think so too.” She resists the urge to run a hand over his back. “Thank you for telling me, I know it was hard.”
He nods, but doesn’t pull away from her. “Is it hard f-for you? Talking about- uh, stuff like this.”
She hums. “I don’t have quite the same stuff to talk about.”
He tilts his head to peer up at her. “Did you have a good childhood?”
“Yeah.”
“Could you- um, would you tell me about it?”
She takes a moment to think. She’s not good at talking about herself. “Well during the year I lived with my mother, and during the summers I lived with my father. My mother was strict, but they were both good parents. I did karate and ice skating-“
Fitz snorts. “Ice skating?”
“You got a problem with that?” she intones dryly.
He twists around so he’s leaning against her side, and she takes a chance and put her arm around his shoulders. “No, s’just … seems girly. Ca-can you still? Skate?”
May shakes her head. “Not with my hip.”
He picks invisible lint off his jeans. “How’d-How’d you hurt it? I mean- sorry, you don’t have to-“
“No, it’s fine. You told me, I tell you, that’s only fair.” She purses her lips, and for a few long moments her eyes just follow the playing dog, jumping powerfully into the air. “Me and my partner were chasing a criminal, a real bad guy. We’d been trying to get him for a while and we couldn’t. Finally, we found him, and had him cornered, but we didn’t realize there was a back entrance he could get away out of. So I had to make a call, whether to go after him or not. I knew it was dangerous, now that he knew we were coming, but I was frustrated, and I didn’t want to lose him again. So I decided to go for it. But it was the wrong call, he had people waiting for us. We both got shot. My partner didn’t make it.”
“Oh.” Fitz stares up at her, eyebrows drawn. “I’m sorry.”
She nods.
For a while he’s quiet. “What was- what was your partner’s name?”
“Izzy.”
He wrings his hands together, feet swinging, looking away. “Is that- that’s why you’re not a cop a-anymore?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you ever- do you feel guilty?” he asks cautiously.
She takes a breath. “All the time.”
“Maybe-“ He shakes his head.
“What?”
“If you were still a cop,” he says, speaking slow and careful, “would you have taken us in?”
The question takes her off guard, and she has to think about it for a minute. “Probably not,” she decides on. She wouldn’t have the time. The job was too unsafe. A million excuses.
“Then maybe it’s- not good, it’s not good that- you know, that you went through that. It- It sucks. A lot. But.” He glances up at her. “Maybe it’s like- it’s fate, yeah? You couldn’t- couldn’t save your friend, but you saved us.”
May just looks down at him, again glad for the protection her sunglasses bring. She’s not sure what he’d see reflected in her eyes. Finally, she looks away. “Never thought of that.”
“Jemma doesn’t- she doesn’t believe in it, fate.” He shrugs. “But it brought us together.”
She hums. “Never pegged you for a believer.”
He scrunches his nose. “I’m not, really. It’s- It’s not religion, it’s metaphysics.”
“Right. Of course.”
He scratches idly at his arm, and they both quiet for a while. “You know it’s- s’not so bad, talking to you.”
She snorts. “Thanks.”
“No I mean- the therapist-“
“Yeah, I get it.”
He leans into her more heavily. “I don’t think- I think I can do it. Talk things out, when I- I need to.”
She squeezes his shoulders, and then pinches her nose in a nasally approximation of his therapist. “Same time next week?”
He laughs for a long time.