i can calm you in over seven hundred ways

Richard knows every important person there is to know: he has shaken hands with them, taken their money, their conditions, their conniving speeches.

This person doesn’t have the face of any of those people, so who the hell are they to talk at him like this. He glowers at them.

Then wrestles his face muscles into a more casual, neutral expression because he really wants to know:

          “Who are you?”

   “Why?”

He makes a face.

That face. Right at them. For them. To them. There’s no way he’d be acting like this if his conscience weren’t stuffed away in his pants pocket right now (he keeps the earpiece on in low-stakes situations such as these; he likes the idea of his conscience hearing him but not being able to stop him).

Apropos the ‘bad attitude’ comment:

          “Thank you.”

He does not give a fuck about that guy. What he does give a fuck about (half offended, half accusitive):

          “Do I look like the kind of guy who needs to walk around in a trench coat to get people to look at his dick?”

There’s nothing to like about the man, not one thing. It’s a rare honesty. Not admirable by any means, but fascinating, like the ugliest bugs are. He’s somehow even lost a base level of handsomeness from sheer mean spirit -- incredible, Ken has time to realize in a blinking flinch from his dick comment, that ordinary people can change their appearance in an instant too.

❛ it’s not like you could have kept me company… ❜ he shrugs, his wings jump as well. the next sentence he offers is full of pauses as if the words had to be forcefully yanked from him:  ❛ i will always be… begrudgingly grateful… to you… for helping me in my… most vulnerable state. but i’m a BIG BUG now… and i do not require protection anymore. ❜ 

the foxman ( accepting )

the foxman ( accepting )

   “I’m only looking for a book I think I left here, then I’m done.” Emphatically, Ken rises from their searching behind the sofa to pat a small, but reasonably well-packed box on the seat cushion. Various knick-knacks and things they’ve loaned to various Avengers, or just left behind while visiting. This looks like the end of a thorough search. Kennedy is cleaning themself out of these headquarters for good.

the foxman ( accepting )

They feel sorry for Heidi McCourt. More than John, by a long shot. It’s taken him good time to open up about why he’s… the way he is, you know, and they had to assume someone was gonna get a bullet in the head sooner or later in this story. That doesn’t make it any easier to finally hear how it happened. The sound of it bursts in their head the moment he says through the eye – Ken winces, shies their face, like they were personally staring down the barrel of a gun.

   Still turned away, they shake their head in silence, combing a hand through their hair as loose strands come undone from their bun. And she was how old? A girl, he said, not that it means much. People throw the word around like it’s nothing. What would it matter if she was a child or an old woman anyway, she still died for no good reason, and no matter her age John would still sit be sitting here with his hat in his hands and his heart sunk through the floor.

   They don’t feel so bad for him; in their silent, most spiteful place, they’re glad he saw something that’s got him this shook up years later. He shouldn’t have gotten away guilt free. Even if he’s good now, for penance, he should be haunted by Heidi. Not just the image of her erupting skull, but how helpless he was to stop it. But dead is dead, and so is Heidi. And it won’t get them anywhere to save their sympathy for someone who’ll never need it.

   “That’s sad, John.” they murmur, voice croaking and dry after a period of silence. “Suppose I wish you hadn’t been with that kind of a man, but I guess he always would have found someone to take on that ferry. Better it was someone who’d know to regret it after. Better it was you.”

the foxman ( accepting )

Kennedy’s arms are still soapy and wet from the elbow down when they come to see what’s the matter with Joey, and she’s lucky they have just enough composure not to put their dishwashing hands all over her cut. On the way back inside they call over their shoulder “God, I thought I was giving you an easy job with putting up the trellis!”, running their mouth just to keep busy while they fish antibiotics from a cabinet and paper towels from the kitchen counter. There are no bandages in the house yet; the boxes are still unpacked, and it didn’t seem like something you’d need so soon after moving in.

   Presently they have her sleeve rolled up, elaborately raising and lowering Joey’s arm so they can wrap sellotape around it, affixing paper towels to her cut. “The nails and screws on that thing are all new, so you shouldn’t get tetanus, I think,” they conclude, slumping back in a garden chair the two of them built in the early afternoon. The garden is minuscule, but it’s room enough to rest in. "Looks good,” Ken nods to the trellis.

the foxman ( accepting )

It’s been a long day, there are never short ones with Willy here, and there’s not a bone left in their body willing to protest. The room seems filled with warm setting sunlight even if they can’t spot a window above, the chocolate stream churns idly by at the foot of a small green hill, and Kennedy is taking their time savouring a kind of peppermint they thought went out of production in the sixties. Why be modest, or caustic, or funny, or lie at all? They would like to spend the night. Perhaps even longer. But they can decide in the morning how dangerous that thought is. For now, they’ll allow one practical notion to bookend the day’s magic:

the foxman ( accepting )

By polite instinct, Kennedy steps back to allow a little space between them and gets halfway through reading the time off their phone before they register who asked. Their double take is comical, something double takes in the movies are modeled on.

They’ll never shake that first instinct of it couldn’t be when Marty shows up, because most of the time, it really can’t be. But if they’re both in the right place at the right time – they grab him to be sure, in the tightest bear hug advisable before anybody’s bones start to strain. “Christ! Look at you! You’re so – grown up! I don’t know how long it’s been for you, with all your, your messing around and what have you, but I feel like I haven’t seen you in –”

the foxman ( accepting )

The painting must be of a field out East, someplace like Kennedy has seen before. They can’t figure where it is, nor when they were there, but the painted waves of green dotted in red flowers stir something fond and warm in Ken’s stomach. It rises up their spine nicely, like someone had run a finger over their back, up between the shoulderblades.