Work Text:
The elevator doors slid open with a gentle chime, and Kevin—The Deep, he reminded himself, always The Deep in public—stepped inside, already rehearsing his confident superhero stance. Shoulders back, chin up, that easy smile he'd practised in the mirror. He was heading to a meeting with Ashley, and this time he was going to show her he was indispensable. This time would be different.
He jabbed the button for the forty-seventh floor and watched the doors begin to close.
A hand shot through the gap.
"Hold it!"
The doors stuttered open again, and Firecracker swept in, all red hair and calculated energy, her phone already in her hand, thumb scrolling with the efficiency of someone whose entire existence depended on engagement metrics.
Fuck.
"Oh," she said, glancing up with that smile—the one that looked warm on camera but had all the genuine affection of a corporate email sign-off. "Deep. Hey."
"Firecracker. Hey." He tried to lean casually against the elevator wall, then worried that looked too casual, so he straightened up again. "Big day? I mean, you look like—you look great. Professional. Ready for... whatever."
Smooth, Kevin. Really smooth.
She pressed the button for the forty-ninth floor—two floors above his, he noted with an internal wince—and tucked her phone into her pocket. "Just another day saving America from the woke mob, you know how it is."
He didn't, actually, but he nodded anyway. "Totally. Yeah. I've been doing a lot of that too. Saving. America, I mean. From... threats. Aquatic threats, mostly, but also, you know, the other kind."
The elevator hummed upward. The mirrored walls reflected them back at themselves: Firecracker with her perfect posture and media-trained smile, The Deep with his hands clasped in front of him like a kid waiting outside the principal's office.
Why are my hands doing this? What do I normally do with my hands?
He tried crossing his arms, but that felt aggressive. He let them hang at his sides, but that felt weird. He settled on hooking his thumbs in his belt, which immediately felt like he was cosplaying a cowboy.
"So," Firecracker said, her voice dripping with the kind of sweetness that preceded a knife between the ribs, "I heard about your... what was it? Your apology tour to the cephalopod community? That was really somethin’.”
His jaw tightened. "That was taken out of context."
"Oh, I'm sure it was." She examined her nails. "Just like I'm sure that video of you cryin’ at the aquarium was also very context-dependent."
"I wasn't crying, I was—there was something in my eye. Saltwater. Obviously."
"Obviously."
The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on. Kevin stared at the floor numbers ticking upward. Thirty-two. Thirty-three. Thirty-four.
Come on, come on, come on.
"You know," he said, because apparently his mouth had decided to operate independently of his brain, "we should really hang out more. I feel like we have a lot in common. We're both, you know, committed to the team. To Vought. To the mission."
Firecracker's smile didn't waver, but something flickered in her eyes. "Sure. We're both very committed."
Was that sarcasm? That felt like sarcasm.
Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine.
"I mean it," he pressed on, desperate now, the need for connection—for someone to see him as more than a punchline—overriding his better judgment. "I think you're doing great work. Really great. Your numbers are really—"
The elevator lurched.
Kevin's stomach dropped as the car shuddered, groaned, and then stopped with a mechanical whine that sounded like a dying whale. The lights flickered once, twice, then settled into a dimmer emergency mode.
They both stared at the floor display, frozen at forty-one.
"You've gotta be fucking kiddin’ me," Firecracker muttered, her media-trained composure cracking just slightly.
Kevin immediately hit the emergency button. Nothing. He hit it again. Still nothing. He pressed every other button on the panel in rapid succession, as if sheer quantity of button-pressing might override whatever mechanical failure had just occurred.
"That's not going to—" Firecracker started.
"I know what I'm doing," he snapped, then immediately regretted his tone. "I mean, I've been in situations like this before. High-pressure situations. I'm trained for this."
"It's a stuck elevator, not a hostage crisis."
"Still. Training applies."
She pulled out her phone, frowned at the screen, then held it up toward the ceiling like she was making an offering to an indifferent god. "No signal. Perfect. This is perfect."
Kevin tried his own phone. Same result. He looked at Firecracker, who was now staring at the mirrored walls with an expression that suggested she was mentally calculating exactly how much this would damage her carefully maintained schedule.
"So," he said, his voice too loud in the confined space. "This is... cosy."
Firecracker's smile returned, sharp as broken glass. “Ain’t it just?”
The elevator settled into an ominous silence, broken only by the faint hum of emergency lighting and the sound of Kevin's increasingly anxious breathing.
This is fine, he told himself. This is totally fine.
It was not fine.
Five minutes passed. Then ten. Kevin had tried the emergency phone three times, but it just rang into the void—probably connected to some maintenance office where nobody gave enough of a shit to answer. He'd examined every corner of the elevator ceiling, looking for an escape hatch like in the movies, but there was nothing except smooth metal and recessed lighting.
Firecracker had settled into one corner, arms crossed, radiating the kind of aggressive patience that suggested she was mentally composing increasingly hostile tweets about Vought's building maintenance.
"You know," Kevin said, because silence was somehow worse than talking, "they'll probably have us out of here soon. These things happen all the time. It's really not a big deal."
"Mm-hmm."
"I mean, statistically, elevators are one of the safest forms of—"
"Deep." She looked at him with the exhausted expression of someone who'd reached the absolute limit of their tolerance. "Please. Just... don't."
He nodded, chastened, and slid down to sit on the floor, his back against the mirrored wall. After a moment, Firecracker sighed and did the same, positioning herself on the opposite side of the elevator. They sat facing each other, knees drawn up, like two kids in timeout.
The silence stretched out again, thick and uncomfortable.
"I had a meeting," Kevin said quietly. "With Ashley. It was important."
"I had three meetings. And a live stream scheduled for noon." Firecracker checked her watch. "Which is in twenty minutes. My audience is going to think I'm blowing them off."
"Can't you just... I don't know, reschedule?"
Her laugh was bitter. "You don't reschedule with an audience that has the attention span of a goldfish. You miss one stream, they move on to someone else. Someone younger, someone hotter, someone who actually shows up when they say they will." She caught herself, seemed to realise she'd revealed too much, and added with forced brightness, "Not that I'm worried. My numbers are solid."
Kevin recognised that tone. He'd used it himself a thousand times. Everything's fine. I'm fine. My career isn't hanging by a thread.
"Yeah," he said. "Numbers are good. Numbers are... important."
Another silence. Kevin picked at a loose thread on his suit, then worried that looked nervous, so he stopped. He could see Firecracker in the mirror behind her, and himself in the mirror behind that, and suddenly the elevator felt like a hall of mirrors at a carnival—infinite reflections of two people pretending to be something they weren't.
"Can I ask you something?" he said.
Firecracker's eyes narrowed. "Depends on the question."
"Do you ever feel like..." He struggled for the words. "Like you're always one fuckup away from losing everything? Like everyone's just waiting for you to screw up so they can replace you with someone better?"
She stared at him for a long moment. He expected mockery, another cutting remark, but instead her expression softened into something almost like recognition.
"Every single day," she said quietly.
The admission hung in the air between them.
"I thought it would get easier," Kevin continued, the words spilling out now that he'd started. "After I got back into the Seven. I thought if I just worked hard enough, if I just proved myself, eventually I'd feel... secure. But it never happens. There's always someone else. Someone more powerful, someone Homelander likes better, someone who doesn't have a fucking viral video of them crying at an aquarium."
"You were actually crying?"
"There was a sea turtle with a plastic straw stuck in its nose! It was upsetting!"
Despite herself, Firecracker's mouth twitched. Almost a smile. "That's actually kind of..."
"Pathetic?"
"I was going to say 'human,' but sure, we can go with pathetic."
Kevin laughed, a short, sharp sound that was more pain than humour. "Story of my life."
Firecracker drew her knees up closer to her chest. "You want to know what's pathetic? I spent three hours yesterday arguing with teenagers on Twitter. Teenagers. Because one of them said my last video was 'mid' and it got two hundred likes, and I couldn't let it go. I had to prove I was still relevant. I had to win an argument with someone who probably isn't old enough to vote."
"Did you win?"
"I got ratio'd."
"Ouch."
"Yeah." She rubbed her eyes. "The thing is, I know what I'm doin’. I know I'm manipulatin’ people, playin’ to their fears and anger, sayin’ whatever gets the most engagement. And I tell myself it's strategy, it's smart, it's how you build a platform. But sometimes I wonder if anyone actually gives a shit about me, or if they just like watching me perform."
Kevin nodded slowly. "I know exactly what you mean. Every time Homelander talks to me, I can't tell if he actually values me or if he just likes having someone around who makes him feel superior."
"It's definitely the second one."
"Yeah." He leaned his head back against the mirror. "But I keep showing up anyway. Keep trying to prove myself. Because what else am I going to do? This is all I have. This is all I am."
Firecracker was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was softer, almost vulnerable. "Do you ever think about what you'd be if you weren't... this? If you weren't The Deep?"
"All the time," he admitted. "And it terrifies me, because I have no fucking idea. I've been playing this role for so long, I don't know what's real anymore."
She met his eyes, and for a brief, startling moment, there was something like understanding between them. Two people trapped in more ways than one, both desperately clinging to personas that were slowly suffocating them.
Then Firecracker's phone buzzed.
She grabbed it, hope flashing across her face. "Signal! I've got—" She looked at the screen, and her expression curdled. "It's a notification. Someone tagged me in a tweet askin’ if I died."
"Jesus."
"It's been thirty minutes." She shoved the phone back in her pocket, the brief moment of vulnerability slamming shut like a door. "Thirty fuckin’ minutes and they're already writing’ my obituary."
The walls went back up. Kevin could see it happening, could see her retreating back into the armour of calculated confidence and media-trained responses. He felt himself doing the same thing, the instinct to protect himself overriding the strange, uncomfortable intimacy that had briefly existed between them.
"Well," he said, his voice artificially bright, "at least people are thinking about you. That's engagement, right?"
Her smile was all teeth. "Right. That's what matters. Engagement."
They lapsed back into hostile silence, the moment of connection already feeling like something that had happened to different people. Kevin stared at the elevator doors, willing them to open, to release him from this claustrophobic space where he'd revealed too much to someone who would probably use it against him the first chance she got.
Why did I say any of that? he thought miserably. Why can't I just keep my mouth shut?
But he knew why. Because for just a few minutes, someone had understood. Someone had seen him and hadn't immediately looked away in disgust.
Even if that someone was Firecracker.
Even if it wouldn't last.
Another five minutes crawled by. Kevin shifted his weight, his ass falling asleep against the cold floor, and accidentally kicked Firecracker's foot.
"Jesus, watch it," she snapped, pulling her legs in tighter.
"Sorry. It's not like there's a lot of room in here."
"There'd be more room if you weren't taking up half the elevator with your... your whole situation." She gestured vaguely at him, at his posture, at his existence.
"My situation?" Kevin felt something hot flare in his chest. "What the fuck does that mean?"
"You know what it means. You're sitting there like a kicked puppy, taking up space, radiating this desperate need for everyone to feel sorry for you."
"I'm not—" He stopped himself, jaw clenched. "You know what? At least I'm honest about it. At least I don't pretend to be something I'm not."
Firecracker's laugh was sharp enough to cut. "Oh, that's rich. That's really rich comin’ from you. You're nothin’ but pretend. The whole 'hero of the seas' thing? The environmental activism? It's all performance. You don't give a shit about the ocean—you just want people to like you."
Kevin scrambled to his feet, the sudden movement making him dizzy in the confined space. "And what about you? You think anyone actually believes your whole 'voice of the people' act? You're just as fake as I am, except you're too fucking delusional to admit it."
She stood too, and suddenly they were face to face, the elevator feeling even smaller. "I'm not delusional. I'm strategic. There's a difference."
"Strategic," he repeated, his voice dripping with contempt. "Is that what you call lying to millions of people? Feeding them conspiracy theories and rage-bait because it gets you clicks?"
"At least I have an audience that actually cares! At least I'm not beggin’ Homelander for scraps like some pathetic—"
"Don't." His voice went low, dangerous. "Don't you fucking dare."
"Why not? It's true. Everyone knows it. You follow him around like a lost dog, doin’ whatever he says, hopin’ he'll throw you a bone. It's embarrassing."
"And you're any better?" Kevin's hands were shaking now, adrenaline and rage making his voice crack. "You sold out every principle you might have ever had for a seat at the table. You parrot whatever talking points they feed you, you attack whoever they tell you to attack, and you smile for the camera like it's all your idea."
Firecracker's face flushed red. "Fuck you. You don't know anythin’ about me."
"I know enough. I know you're terrified. I can see it. You're scared that if you stop for even one second, they'll realise you're not special. That you're replaceable."
"Oh, and you're not?" She stepped closer, her voice rising. "You think you're irreplaceable? You got kicked out of the Seven for bein’ a sexual predator, Kevin. They only let you back in because you're useful. Because you're so desperate for approval that you'll do literally anythin’ they ask."
The words hit like a physical blow. Kevin's breath caught in his throat, and for a moment he couldn't speak. When he did, his voice was barely above a whisper.
"At least I know what I am."
"Do you?" Firecracker's eyes were bright with anger—or maybe tears, he couldn't tell. "Do you really? Because from where I'm standin’, you're just as lost as I am. You're just as fake. You're just as fuckin’ terrified that one day everyone's gonna see through the bullshit and realise there's nothin’ underneath."
"There's nothing underneath you either!" The words exploded out of him. "You're all surface! You don't even know who you are without the cameras and the audience and the constant validation!"
"Neither do you!"
They were both breathing hard now, faces inches apart in the cramped space. Kevin could see his own reflection in the mirror behind Firecracker's head—wild-eyed, desperate, pathetic. He could see his reflection behind her, and he looked exactly the same.
The fight drained out of him all at once.
"No," he said quietly. "I don't."
Firecracker's shoulders sagged. She turned away, pressing her forehead against the cool metal of the elevator wall. "Fuck."
"Yeah."
"I didn't mean—" She stopped, laughed bitterly. "No, I did mean it. I meant all of it."
"So did I."
They stood in silence for a moment, the anger dissipating into something heavier, sadder.
"The worst part," Firecracker said, her voice muffled against the wall, "is that you're right. About all of it. I don't know who I am anymore. I've been playin’ this character for so long that I can't remember what I actually believe. If I ever believed anythin’ at all."
Kevin slid back down to the floor, suddenly exhausted. "I tell myself stories. About who I am, what I'm doing, why it matters. But they're just stories. And every time I look in the mirror, I see someone I don't recognise. Someone I'm not sure I even like."
Firecracker turned around, leaning back against the wall. "Do you think it's too late? To be... something else?"
"I don't know." He looked up at her, and for once, there was no performance in his expression, no calculated vulnerability. Just honesty. "I think maybe we're too far gone. I think maybe we've compromised ourselves so many times that there's nothing left to salvage."
"That's depressing as hell."
"Yeah."
She slid back down to sit across from him again, and this time there was no hostility in the gesture. Just two people, exhausted and honest and trapped.
"For what it's worth," she said, "I get it. Why you do what you do. The constant need to prove yourself, to matter, to be seen. I get it."
"I know you do." Kevin's voice was soft. "That's why I hate you."
"I hate you too."
It should have been an insult, but somehow it wasn't. It was just the truth, spoken plainly between two people who understood each other too well.
They sat in the broken silence, surrounded by mirrors that reflected nothing but their own hollow performances, and waited for rescue that might never come.
The elevator lurched.
Kevin's entire body jerked as the car shuddered violently, then hummed back to life with a mechanical groan. The lights flickered from dim emergency mode to full, harsh fluorescence that made him squint. The floor numbers started ticking upward.
Forty-two. Forty-three.
Firecracker scrambled to her feet, and Kevin saw the panic flash across her face—the same panic currently clawing up his throat. They'd said things. Too many things. Things that couldn't be unsaid.
Forty-four. Forty-five.
Her hands flew to her hair, fingers working frantically to smooth down the mess. She straightened her jacket with sharp, jerky movements, rolled her shoulders back. Kevin watched the transformation happen in real-time: the vulnerable woman who'd admitted she didn't know who she was anymore disappeared, replaced by the polished media personality with all the right answers.
Kevin lurched to his feet, tugging at his suit, his own hands shaking as he tried to fix his hair. Shoulders back. Chin up. You're The Deep. Act like it.
Forty-six. Forty-seven.
The elevator chimed, bright and cheerful, like nothing had happened at all.
The doors slid open.
Ashley stood there, phone in one hand, the other pressed to her temple like she was fighting off a migraine. A maintenance worker in a Vought uniform hovered behind her, looking uncomfortable. But it was Ashley's face that made Kevin's stomach drop—her eyes went wide as she took them both in, her mouth falling open in an expression of pure, unadulterated horror.
"Oh my god," she breathed.
Kevin became suddenly, painfully aware of how he must look. His hair was a mess, sticking up at odd angles from where he'd been running his hands through it. His face felt hot, flushed. His suit was rumpled from sitting on the floor. And Firecracker—Firecracker's lipstick was smudged, her hair dishevelled despite her attempts to fix it, her cheeks pink.
They looked exactly like two people who'd been doing something they shouldn't.
"Ashley, it's not—" Kevin started.
"What happened?" Ashley's voice climbed an octave. Her eyes darted between them, landing on Firecracker's messed-up hair, Kevin's wrinkled suit, back to Firecracker's flushed face. "What—oh my god. Oh my god. You didn't. Please tell me you didn't."
"We didn't—" Firecracker began, but Ashley was already spiralling.
"Forty-five minutes. You were stuck in there for forty-five minutes, and you—" She pressed both hands to her face, her phone dangling precariously from her fingers. "Okay. Okay. This is fine. This is manageable. We can spin this. We can absolutely spin this."
"Ashley—" Kevin tried again.
"Was anyone else in the elevator? Did anyone see you go in together?" Ashley was already pacing, her mind clearly racing through damage control scenarios. "Security footage—we need to get ahead of the security footage. If this leaks before we have a statement ready—"
"Nothing happened," Firecracker said, her voice sharp and controlled, but Kevin caught the slight tremor underneath.
Ashley's laugh was slightly unhinged. "Nothing happened? Nothing happened? You both look like—" She gestured wildly at them. "Your hair is a mess, you're both flushed, you can barely look at each other—"
Kevin's eyes flicked to Firecracker despite himself. She was staring determinedly at the wall behind Ashley's head, her jaw tight, but for just a second, their gazes met. Something passed between them; recognition, resignation, a shared understanding of how completely their truth had been misunderstood.
"Actually," Ashley said, her tone shifting as her PR brain clearly kicked into a higher gear, "actually, this might not be terrible. This might be...” She pointed at them, her expression transforming from panic to calculation. "You two. Together. It's unexpected, but it could work. The bad boy trying to redeem himself, the conservative firecracker. No pun intended—it's got a Romeo and Juliet thing. Star-crossed lovers from different worlds."
"We're not—" Kevin started, but his voice came out weak.
"The media will eat this up," Ashley continued, warming to her narrative. "Secret elevator tryst. Forbidden attraction. We can leak it strategically, control the story. Maybe get you both on a talk show, do the whole 'we tried to fight it but couldn't resist' angle." She was typing furiously on her phone now. "This is good. This is actually good. Homelander might even like it—shows team unity, humanises you both—"
"Ashley." Firecracker's voice cut through the spiral like a knife. "Stop."
Ashley looked up, blinking. "What?"
"Just stop." Firecracker's hands were clenched at her sides. "We're not doin’ a media tour about a fake relationship."
"It doesn't have to be fake," Ashley said quickly. "I mean, clearly something happened in there. The chemistry is obvious. We just need to—"
"Nothing. Happened." Kevin forced the words out, each one feeling like a lie even though it was technically true. Nothing had happened. Nothing physical, anyway. Just two people stripping away their armour and showing each other the rot underneath.
Just the most honest conversation he'd had in years.
Just nothing that mattered.
Ashley stared at them both, her expression sceptical. "So you're telling me you were stuck in an elevator together for forty-five minutes and you just... what? Stood there in silence?"
"We talked," Firecracker said flatly.
"About what?"
Kevin watched Firecracker's throat work as she swallowed. Her eyes met his again, and he saw everything in that look—the admission of fear, the confession of emptiness, the recognition that they were both drowning in their own performances. All of it, compressed into a single moment of eye contact.
"Strategy," Firecracker started, turning back to Ashley. "We talked about—"
"Whales," Kevin blurted out.
Firecracker's head whipped toward him so fast he heard her neck crack.
"What?" Ashley said.
"Whales. We talked about whales." The words were tumbling out now, unstoppable, his panic making everything worse. "And fish. Ocean stuff. You know, because I'm The Deep, and I have this connection to marine life, and Firecracker was really interested in learning about—about lobster migration patterns. And whale songs. Did you know humpback whales can communicate across entire ocean basins? It's fascinating, really, and we just got really deep into—no pun intended—into the complexities of—"
"Kevin." Firecracker's voice was deadly quiet.
"—cetacean social structures and how they relate to, um, team dynamics, actually, so it was kind of strategic if you think about it—"
"Stop. Talking." Firecracker's smile was so tight it looked painful.
Ashley stared at Kevin like he'd just grown a second head. "You... talked about whales."
"Yes," Kevin said, his voice cracking slightly. "Very educational. She learned a lot."
"I learned somethin’,” Firecracker said through gritted teeth, still smiling that horrible smile. “But not about whales.”
"We definitely talked about whales," Kevin insisted, unable to stop himself even as he watched Firecracker's eye twitch. "Remember? When I explained about how orcas are actually dolphins, not whales, and you found that so interesting—"
"I'm gonna kill you," Firecracker said pleasantly.
Ashley held up a hand, looking deeply disturbed. "Okay. You know what? I don't care. I don't want to know. This is—this is somehow worse than if you'd actually hooked up." She pressed her fingers to her temple. "Whales. Jesus Christ."
Ashley's eyes narrowed. She looked between them, clearly not buying it, but also clearly calculating whether it was worth pushing. Finally, she sighed. "Fine. Whatever. But if I see any footage of you two that suggests otherwise, I'm running with the relationship angle whether you like it or not. Understood?"
"Crystal clear," Firecracker said.
Ashley turned to the maintenance worker. "Get this elevator fixed properly. I don't want any more incidents." Then back to Kevin and Firecracker. "Deep, your meeting's been pushed to three. Firecracker, your team is waiting in conference room B. Both of you—fix yourselves up before anyone else sees you like this."
She stalked off, phone already pressed to her ear, leaving Kevin and Firecracker standing in the hallway.
The silence stretched between them, heavy with everything they couldn't say.
"Well," Firecracker said finally, her voice carefully neutral. "That was fun."
Kevin tried to laugh, but it came out wrong. "Yeah. Real fun."
She was already walking away, heels clicking against the polished floor, her posture perfect, her performance flawless. Kevin watched her go and felt something settle in his chest—something cold and final.
They'd let Ashley believe the lie. They'd let everyone believe it, if it came to that. Because the lie was easier. The lie was manageable. The lie fit into the world they'd built for themselves.
The truth—that they'd sat on an elevator floor and admitted they were hollow, that they'd recognised themselves in each other's desperation, that they'd had a moment of genuine human connection—that truth was too dangerous. Too real. Too much of a threat to the carefully constructed personas they needed to survive.
Kevin straightened his suit one more time, found his smile, and headed toward the conference room.
Behind him, the elevator doors slid shut with a soft chime, sealing away the last forty-five minutes like they'd never happened at all.