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The first inkling he gets is in college. His dormmate is nowhere to be found when he comes back from football practice one day, leaving him free to do whatever he wants with the room, not that he normally has much concern for Rusty's discomfort whether he's there or not.
Brock's thoughts flash back to the newest hot cheerleader to show interest in him, living on the other side of the college. He's about to go hit her up when his eyes fall on the mini-fridge in the corner of the room, previously unnoticed, half-tucked behind science textbooks and dirty laundry. It's uncommonly small for the time, with the Venture Industries logo in one corner.
"Asshole," he grunts, squatting in front of it and yanking the door open. "Been keeping beer in here without even telling me."
To his surprise, it's unplugged, leaving it effectively a box for storage — and there's no beer inside, only a neat row of unlabeled syringes.
Brock squints in disbelief. His dormmate's been shooting up. He thinks back to Rusty's behavior — irritable, perhaps, but he's never seemed like a junkie. Sure, he walked in on him smoking pot before with his dumbass friends, but that seemed to be the extent of it.
Well, he thinks, closing the container and straightening back up, none of my damn business, as long as he keeps it to himself.
Even if he did feel like reporting it, Venture and his daddy's connections with the college would have him out on his ass in no time.
—
The second inkling he gets is six months after his bodyguard assignment. He walks into Doc's room without knocking, a stupid enough idea on its own, to ask him where he left the keys to the hangar.
And there's Doc, sitting on the bed with no pants on, sticking a needle into his thigh. He pales visibly as soon as Brock walks in.
Before Rusty can stammer out a single word, Brock asks, with characteristic politeness: "What the hell are you doing?"
"Taking medicine," he stutters irritably, eyes narrowing. "Get the hell out of my room."
The bodyguard rolls his eyes, but he's perfectly fine to oblige, and he finds the keys to the hangar in the kitchen behind the scissors.
If Doc wants to get high, that's both none of his business and nothing he can change. He's already been bold enough about taking "diet pills" right in front of him, so it's no surprise. And as long as it doesn't much impact Brock's ability to do his job, he doesn't care.
But still — something about the way Rusty stiffened, the tremble in his hand — makes him feels like he's seen something he shouldn't have.
—
The third inkling is years later, when they're swimming in the family pool with the boys. One day, it occurs to Brock that Rusty never takes off his shirt, even when the heat is baking down on them.
Maybe it's a ginger thing, he thinks. He thinks it'd be more effective if Rusty actually used sunscreen on top of that.
But then he witnesses Doc taking his top off, just for a minute, wringing the water out of it onto the thirsty, boiling poolside cement. There's an odd softness to his chest, easier to see in profile, that's always been hidden by the comfortable looseness of his "speedsuits" — and visible stretch marks around his abdomen.
And then the garment is back on, the scientist flapping it a bit to get some of the excess moisture off, going to sit under a pool umbrella with his ridiculous cocktail of the day.
So Doc was fat once, or something, and he's self-conscious about that. It's not easy to picture when he's always known the man as a bundle of rail-thin limbs, and he's only known Rusty to be far from self-conscious in the worst ways at the worst times, but he can kind of see it. Maybe when he was a teenager.
Brock doesn't ask about it, but he does go through the family photo album, later, out of curiosity. Rusty is as scrawny as ever in every picture, and the only change in thinness taking place is his long-suffering hair.
—
A year after that, some supervillain captures Doc. That supervillain has the bright idea to strip him naked for an extra element of humiliation, even if he's pretty sure there's a clause in the Guild handbook against that, something Rusty complains about in excess over the wrist communicator until Brock arrives.
A few dozen henchmen's worth of blood spilled later and he finds Rusty curled up on the floor behind bars, bare skin against cement, apparently taking a brief nap. The lock isn't hard to break — they never are — and he steps into the cell, sheathing his knife, delicately picking his charge up off the ground.
And wow, that — is — that is not a — That is not what he expected to be down there. All the other little inklings that, until now, had been just that — inklings — come swarming back into his mind, clicking together like puzzle pieces.
But he can't let it distract him from getting Doc out of here. His job, his duty. So he tries to avert his gaze, at the very least to give him some privacy.
Rusty stirs, after a few minutes of jostling him around while darting around halls and past corpses. It takes him a moment to process what's going on, bleary eyes squinting up at Brock's face.
The same eyes snap open as he looks down at himself, covering his groin with his palms as if it'd retroactively hide him. Rusty turns such a bright shade of red that Brock swears he's glowing.
They don't look at each other until after they're home.
Brock sits on the couch and waits, not sure what to think, head swarming with thoughts and simultaneously trying not to make too many judgments. After enough time, Rusty emerges from an adjacent room, freshly showered and clad in one of his usual copper-colored jumpsuits.
"So," the scientist says awkwardly, taking a seat next to him, as if he's aware something needs to be addressed but doesn't want to be the first to broach the subject.
"So you're a woman," Brock replies bluntly, with the first thing on his mind.
From the way Doc immediately tenses up, gritting his teeth in a show of agitation, Brock quickly realizes this was the wrong thing to say.
"Call me that again," Rusty says slowly, carefully, with more venom in his voice than he's ever heard from the man, "and I'll fucking fire you."
Brock falls silent.
Rusty sighs heavily, slumping against the couch, deliberately not looking in his direction. For a minute, Brock almost thinks he's about to give up and walk off, but then he begins to speak.
"Jonas never wanted a daughter. Wouldn't have been good for his image. Wouldn't have made a good heir."
There's a pause, as if allowing for a reply, before he continues.
"So, he raised me as his son. Lucky for him, it turns out that's what I wanted, anyway."
Doc allows for another pause. Brock waits, as if expecting him to elaborate, but he doesn't.
Instead, he finally looks up at him, his expression sober and firm. "You've never known me as anything but a guy, right?"
Brock looks at him, really looks at him. This is — admittedly, new territory for him. It's beyond new territory. He's still having trouble reconciling the idea of a guy with a pussy. But at the same time, Doc doesn't look or act anything remotely like what he's been taught a woman should be.
Slowly, he nods.
Doc stands up from the couch, adjusting his glasses as he moves to leave the room. "Then you shouldn't stop thinking I'm one just because I don't have a dick."
Brock has — questions. A lot of questions, in fact. About the 'medicine' — about who fathered the boys. About who knows, and who doesn't know, and if he needs to go back and kill that supervillain to prevent word from getting out.
But he saves them for later.
—
They don't really talk about it, from there. Brock offers a few of his most burning inquiries at the start, but he more or less gets the impression that it's a sensitive subject.
However, another impression he gets is that Doc is relieved, now that he doesn't have to hide it anymore. Less tense, less secretive. He starts taking his shirt off to swim.
Brock supposes he's glad for that. He wouldn't call himself Doc's 'friend', but he has become somewhat of a confidante, by nature of the job. Whatever makes him more comfortable makes Brock's work easier.
He accidentally walks in on him again, one day. Sitting in his briefs, holding a syringe. Rusty freezes, but there's noticeably less tension in his body, this time.
"Hey," Brock says calmly, trying his best not to make it weird. "You, uh— need any help with that?"
Might as well learn how, in case Doc gets laid up and can't do it himself.
Rusty blinks a few times, expression vacant, as if not entirely registering his words. "Um— sure."
So Brock seats himself on the mattress next to him, listening carefully to Doc's instructions on how to administer an intramuscular injection, and finds himself trying to ignore how oddly intimate it feels to stick a needle into someone else's thigh.
—
"Do the boys know?" He asks one night, sitting outside on the front steps of Venture Industries and having a cigarette, Rusty seated beside him. It's comfortable out, the heat of summer finally giving way to the cooler nights of autumn.
"No," Rusty replies, quietly. "I don't think it matters."
"Or you don't trust them not to out you."
Rusty looks up at him with the kind of irritation that tells Brock he's at least half-right.
"I don't know if they'd even get it," he grumbles.
"Don't know if I even get it, Doc."
There's a moment of hesitation. Rusty's expression is difficult to read, but there's something like hurt in his eyes.
"What don't you get?"
Brock inhales deeply from his cigarette, then lets it out in a protracted breath, smoke lazily blowing past his lips and wafting into the sky. "You feel like a guy, right?"
"Yes," Rusty replies cautiously.
"Even if you were born a girl."
More hesitation, as if Rusty wants to say that's not exactly how it works, but for the sake of argument, "...Yes."
"That's what I don't understand."
Rusty wrinkles his brow in frustration, sitting in silence for a couple minutes, visibly trying to put together the best way to explain.
"Imagine you're suddenly in a girl's body. What would you do?"
Brock leans back. He imagines soft skin, big tits, long hair. "Probably masturbate a lot."
Rusty laughs in a way that's only a little bitter, leaning back, too. He looks up at the sky, far enough away from the city that you can see stars blinking overhead. "Eventually you'd miss being a guy, right? How you look, how you feel, how people treat you."
This gives Brock slight pause. "Probably."
"And it'd feel weird if everyone started calling you 'she'."
"Yeah."
They're both quiet for a long time, after that.
"Think I kinda get it."
—
It's years later, when he isn't even working for Doc anymore but for SPHINX, that he reflects on those conversations once more. He's had a suspicion for a while that Hunter's transition, while ostensibly only done to infiltrate the Blackhearts, had always been more than that.
Brock has never been on the best terms with it — Hunter Gathers has always been like a father to him, and the idea of Hunter being something other than a man feels like somehow threatening to take that away. But he's starting to wonder if it's never had to mean that in the first place.
And when Hunter has yet another outburst about having a woman inside screaming to be heard, Brock begins to feel the guilt itching at him.
After their next mission, when most of the men are busy with hard-earned relaxation in their bunks, he pulls Hunter aside for a private chat. It feels about as awkward as awkward gets, but he remembers Doc again, remembers the way he looked like he wanted to jump out of his skin at being called a woman. More than anything, that pushes him onward.
"What the hell do you want now, Samson? Make it quick."
It's a gruff, standard response. He's used to it by now, and it doesn't put him off much, but it does take him a moment to summon his thoughts.
"Listen, I know you're... I know you've kinda, got a history with—" Brock gestures with his hands in a way that doesn't exactly convey anything, as if it'd somehow give him the words he's trying to find. "—with, uh, looking like a— wanting to be a— I mean, if you want—"
Hunter looks at him like he's growing a second head, patience wearing thin. "Spit it out already, son."
"If you wanna be called a woman," Brock finally chokes out, uncharacteristically wilting under the pressure. "Or— a 'she', or whatever—"
Hunter's eyebrows go up so far they threaten to disappear under his — her? Brock wonders — hat.
"I'm... okay with it," he finishes. "I can do that."
A long silence passes between them, broken only by the sounds of decades-old machinery.
Finally, Hunter smacks him on the back hard enough to make him jerk forward in surprise. "You're a god damn softie is what you are, Samson. Get back to doing something useful."
But as Brock walks off, he can't help but notice that Hunter is smiling.
—
Once again, he finds himself doing the most natural job he's ever had — guarding the Venture family from anyone that would wish them harm. Except now, he's doing it from a fancy penthouse on top of a skyscraper, thanks to Rusty's recent inheritance.
It's nice, waking up in the morning to seeing Doc and the boys at the table for breakfast. It's familiar. It's home.
It also makes him feel like he's been away for far too long — Dean is in college, and Hank's got a girlfriend. His "boys" are all grown up, now.
But Doc — at least Doc is as unchanging as ever, and he's not sure whether that's reassuring or disturbing. He's a little calmer, a little less angry all the time, maybe. He's been off the pills for a while, and that's good.
Brock finds him taking his injection at the same time it's always been, eleven in the morning. Rusty scoots over on the bed to allow him room to sit, and it's as if no time has passed at all since he quit.
"Nobody knows about this, you know," Rusty says quietly. "It's you, White, Billy, and a few members of Team Venture. That's it."
"White and Billy?" Brock asks, raising an eyebrow.
"White walked in on me in college, and Billy's practically my doctor."
"I'm surprised White kept his mouth shut."
Rusty grunts, but doesn't elaborate. He sets the syringe aside once it's spent, leaning against Brock so slightly that he almost doesn't notice it.
Brock leans into him a little, too. They stay like that for a little while.
"You want to get lunch?" Brock mumbles.
"Yeah."