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”Talked to Roguie. Don’t have to worry about her.”
Pietro drew in a slow breath and cast a glance towards the cockpit. There, Anna had her face stuck to her phone screen, and she was, from what he understood, still busy dealing with a Deadpool-shaped problem of her own.
He’d been staring at Remy’s text and trying, really hard, not to get angry. Success rate falling by the second. ”I didn’t ask you to do that” he settled on as a response, and hit send before he could overthink it.
Multiple dots. Nothing. Dots. Nothing. Dots. He watched the play on his screen, feeling his spark of anger subside into something a little more soul-weary.
“Just wanted to clear things up.”
He exhaled loudly and put his phone on standby. “Remy says he talked to you,” he said, breaking the silence.
“Hm? Oh,” Anna said, still typing. That done, she released a sigh and pocketed her phone. “Yeah, we spoke. Been a while, so it was nice catching up.”
That sigh sounded a little concerning. Instead of the apology he meant to say, Pietro found himself asking, “Everything all right with Wade?”
“Kinda.” She took a quick glance at the monitors before swiveling her chair around to face the jet’s interior. “Not sure if he’s just insecure, or yankin’ mah chain, is all.”
“That’s...a big difference.”
She hummed in agreement, tapping her fingers on the chair’s armrest as she spoke. “He gave me this silly thing—notebook with a cute skunk on the cover, y’know, hair jokes, ha-ha. I did love it, but think he got it in his head that maybe I didn’t. Now, I'm gettin’ the vaguest feelin’ that he’s about to do something stupid about it.”
Oddly enough, that did sound like Wade. Or at least, Pietro could easily imagine it.
“Season for silly gifts, ain’t it?” Anna continued, with a wry, knowing smile.
Pietro released a soft snort. “Bit of overlap there, yeah.” Granted he thought his had simply been a plain ring until very recently, but still. “Special occasion then, with the notebook? I realize I don’t even know your birthday.”
“And it’s stayin’ that way,” she said, with a mock-pointed glare. Pietro chuckled. “Nah, it wasn’t anything. Hooligan even chucked it at my head when I wasn’t looking. Almost hit me in the face.” She fell silent for a moment. “Think that’s what’s got into Wade’s head, maybe. That I can’t possibly be satisfied with anything that wasn’t elaborate or fancy. But how’d ya tell a man that’s part of what ya maybe like about him, right?”
“Can you really blame him, though?” Pietro mused aloud. “Considering past relations.”
Anna seemed to give that a moment’s thought. Then she burst out laughing. Pietro frowned and urged her to clue him in. She did so with a light blush. “Lord. It’s just...past history, and all that. You, me, Remy, Erik...it all kinda feels a bit, y’know...”
Realizing what she meant, he chuckled along. “Yes. Yes, it does.” He shook his head—millions of powered beings, and yet their communities felt so small most of the time. Enough to form this Gordian Knot of a relationship tangle, anyway. “I try not to think about it, really.”
“Wise,” Anna remarked. “That in mind...can’t really blame him, then.” After a moment, her focus went from introspective straight back to Pietro. “I don’t even have ta ask if that thing there came with an entire night planned out, do I?”
The discomfort that crept into him with the question felt almost like a physical ache. Pietro isn’t sure what expression he wore, but it shook the playfulness from Anna’s voice. “Oh sorry, sugah. Not a good memory?”
“No, it—it was. It was.” Partially. He wished he didn’t sound like he was trying to convince himself. Clearing his throat, he clarified, “Just...not much to say about it. Uneventful.”
Wrong thing to say considering the company, Pietro realized belatedly, watching Anna’s look turn extremely skeptical.
She would know, wouldn't she? Of all people, she would know.
After an awkward silence, her smile turned just this side of polite as she tentatively said, “It’s fine if ya don’t wanna talk ‘bout it.”
The slight coolness in her voice made him internally wince. Hot on the heels of that was his conscience telling him that this was rather unfair, and she was probably feeling a little vulnerable after sharing a bit of herself with someone who wasn’t willing to do the same.
Embarassment clouded his expression. If he were being honest, he was surprised she didn’t know already, with how close she and Remy always were. “He booked an evening, yes,” he admitted, anxiety creeping up his spine as he thought back to that night.
Her polite smile gained a wistful edge. “Romantic?” she asked. Safe, gentle, as much or as little detail as he’d like to share.
“As slow, as fast as ya want. I ain’t the one at the wheels here, Speedster. Jus’ keep drivin’, a’right?”
Fucking Remy, and Remy’s friends, and Remy’s exes reminding him of Remy all. The fucking. Time.
“Very,” he breathed out. Fuck it. “Reserved an entire floor at the Swan’s. Privacy, discreet staff, beautiful music, stellar view, amazing food, flowers, candlelit fucking everything.” He took a moment to breathe. “Or so I hear. I wasn’t there.”
He watched Anna try and fail to puzzle that out. “...So…where—”
“I stood him up.”
It was nearly comical, how Anna’s eyebrows shot up. He’d laugh if he wasn’t feeling so raw at the moment.
Pietro made a face and covered his eyes with his hand. The sheer memory of that evening... "I thought he was going to break up with me."
“Hon.”
Remaining seated for this suddenly felt far too stifling. He shot up from his chair and began to pace. "What the hell was I supposed to think? We hadn't seen each other in two months, and before that...he wanted me to spend time with his dad, and I wasn't ready for something like that, and we...I..." He could still remember the way Remy had said it, far from a casual hi-how-are-you and more like there were capital letters mixed in, and he'd looked so hopeful and eager and happy, but all Pietro could think of was how dads didn't like him as a rule. Ever. And despite having already met the man, he knew next to nothing about Jean-Luc LeBeau. And fuck Remy for springing things like that on him when he knew damn well he still had a lot of other shit he was having trouble coping with.
Mr. “As slow, as fast as ya want” himself. What a fucking joke.
"I don't know. I don’t know what I'm doing," he muttered, rubbing his face with his hands. It should be easy, shouldn't it? To do all the little things couples do, the family rituals, the effortless affection. What did it say when simple gestures felt like pulling teeth?
How long before Remy felt he was too much work to bother with and eventually end things?
He'd contemplated doing it himself, several times, whenever they fought, whenever anything about them suddenly involved other people and Pietro needed a full stop and Remy would wear this expression on his face, this "Why are you making this so hard?" look. The one that always left him with a sense of dread in its wake ("Is this it...?" "How long before...?"). If he were being a bit more honest with himself, he couldn't really see this relationship going anywhere but south.
No use prolonging. No one could accuse him of ever being a patient man.
“Yeah, you mentioned somethin’ like that,” he heard Anna say, her voice a bit smaller and sounding far more overwhelmed. “Maybe start from the top, sugah?”
He relented, the story bursting from him like a shaken soda can. The date had been for 8 pm, and Remy had waited until midnight, gotten half-drunk, then hauled what he could fit of the warmed food and the decor and whatever else he could remove from the walls into a bag made out of three tablecloths while his people nervously watched, and then fucked off to break into Pietro's room at the Avengers mansion without somehow tripping a single goddamn alarm, still wearing his Tom Ford suit and all.
Pietro had been awake, of course. Stewing in his own thoughts, fears, regrets. When he’d seen the utter nonsense that was a crazed suit-wearing Santa Claus with the huge sack of stuff he was hauling like it was a body that needed disposing, his first numb thought had been, He has no right to look that good in a three-piece suit.
The second, which had taken a single-handed grip on his aching heart and threatened to squeeze, had been, My god, he was serious about the date.
That had been at the tip of his tongue, and he’d been about to say it, with an apology attached, maybe beg if he had to. But Remy just had to look at him with this angry, accusing expression and greet him with “What is your damage now?” and Pietro had lost it.
He activated his room’s privacy shielding and what followed was something he didn’t like to remember if he could help it. It went on for longer than their usual spats. More vicious, more targeted. He would wonder often after that why he’d felt so angry.
It was Remy’s sudden silence that made him pause—and as he did, he realized that if he’d done so earlier, for just a moment, maybe he’d noticed things sooner—how Remy’s eyes and skin made it difficult to see when he was crying, for example. Or how his own hands felt like they were freezing and trembled when they were still.
“Y’ looking for an out, mon chéri?” Remy said into the silence, his eyes searching, his voice raw.
Am I? He became breathless with the sheer strength of the two gut reactions he felt—“Don’t you fucking dare leave me”, a lump stuck in his throat, and “Any more of this and I’ll break” deep inside his stomach.
What came out was “I don’t know.” An exhaustion-fueled, honest answer.
That elicited a bitter laugh from his slumped guest on the floor. Pietro sank down on his bed and leaned on his knees, burying his hands in his hair.
A moment later, he heard rustling. "Well," Remy said, approaching him. Polished, evening lace-up shoes entering his line of sight. "Ya let m'know, a'right?"
Pietro didn't trust himself to speak, so he didn't. He felt a weight being slipped around his neck. “Jus’ wanted to give you this tonight. Y'can throw it out if y'don't want it.”
He'd seen one of those shoes taking a step back and his hand had shot out, grabbing a fistful of velvet and hauling the warm body back before his brain could catch up.
Breathe, he reminded himself, while he pressed his face against rumpled fabric. A while later, he felt the body in his arms pulling away again and he struggled against it—but Remy was just kneeling on the floor, and then Pietro was being kissed.
"I'm sorry," he'd whispered after they broke apart, their foreheads mashed together, noses touching. He smelled salt. "I'm sorry this is so difficult."
"Jus'...don't do that to me again." He felt fingers card through his hair, across the back of his neck. Then, in a lighter tone, "And I promise not t’ use a two-hundred-thousand-dollar dinner reservation t’ break up with you. How's that sound?"
“Yeah, fuck. Send a text or something,” Pietro answered, breathing a relieved laugh of his own.
The rest of the night had gone well after that, or as well as could be expected. They ate some of the food Remy had brought from the Swan (along with a slew of other items—“I wasn’t thinkin’ straight, gimme a break” he’d whined, when Pietro poked him about the stanchion, wired floor light, and the wilting garlands), made love, then Remy slipped out before anyone else in the mansion could wake up.
(He’d spent an embarassingly long time trying to remember how the fuck he got in in the first place so he could go out the same way, though Pietro found it prudent to leave that out. The King of Thieves, everyone.)
“You’re not though, are ya?” Anna asked, drawing Pietro back to the present. At his questioning look, she clarified, “Lookin’ for an out.”
He spared a moment to think that over, finding that, yes, she spoke the truth, and wondered if she read that somewhere on his face, or if any of his recent actions betrayed him. “I guess not,” he agreed, and reveled in the lack of apprehension he felt with the question.
“If it makes ya feel any better, I think Jean-Luc will love ya. Might tease ya a little, but he’s loosened up in the past year.” Her smile turned into a telling smirk when she added, her voice conspiring, “Tell ya the truth, always thought he’s a teensy bit more dashing than Remy.”
That startled an amused snort from Pietro. “Maybe you just have a thing for much older men.”
“I’ll tell Wade you said that,” Anna threatened with a grin.
- Fin