#futzthis

It was no surprise that the Young Avengers had ended in tears. Most things did, if you stuck around long enough. America’s life philosophy had always been to avoid this by leaving before shit got bad, but... There had been a certain draw to the Young Avengers. For the first time since she’d left the Utopian Parallel, she’d belonged someplace. And that had felt good. 

Until it didn’t.

The thing about belonging was that, when it ended, it hurt so much more than never belonging in the first place would have. Belonging meant having more to lose. America had learned that at six, but apparently she’d needed a repeat of the lesson. So things ended, and it sucked, and she disappeared for a while. But she was back now... and she wasn’t the only one.

Grinning at Kate’s statement, she raised a brow. “Well,” she said, “I guess somebody has to be. Don’t think there’s been much of a team lately.” Her voice was light, as if it didn’t mean anything. As if there was no grief there. America had always been good at pretending.

There was an arrow sticking out of the tire of a cop car, and it was really hard not to laugh at that. Peter was doing a terrible job trying, stifling giggles behind his hand as the person who’d shot said arrow rounded the corner after him. He had no real defense for the situation. When she’d asked him which way the guy she was chasing went, Peter had given her one at random, curiosity driving him to tag along for her mission. He hadn’t known where the arrow would land, of course, but this? This was better than anything he could have planned.

“What? He really did go that way!” Peter lied again, grinning too wide to sell it. “Hey, you should shoot another one! Take out more of his tires. Then he won’t be able to chase you for shooting his tires out.” There was a shout in the distance, and Peter turned to see a very angry looking New York police officer pointing to the arrow in what was presumably his tire. “Or you could run. Actually, maybe we both should try that.” What happened if he got arrested on this planet? Peter was pretty sure it wouldn’t end well!

The very idea that Peter would have anything close to bad vibes was about as bad of an insult as he could get. Even more especially when he had been grooving to the music on his Zune just a moment before. Had he been playing the music too loud? And if he had...gasp...was she saying she did not like it? "Whoa, hold up right there!" Quickly he took his headphones off and put his hands on his hips. "First off, I am the least bad-vibing person in the entire universe! I only ever have excellent vibes! And secondly, you better not be saying that my music is giving you bad vibes! Because if you are, oh man, those are so totally fighting words!"

They were on the same stupid stakeout. 

There was no reason for them both to be there. They had two different clients, but the end goal was the same. They could have easily split up and shared information, could have trusted one another to give them a head’s up regarding the meat of the case, but their shared competitive nature prevented either of them from being secure enough to be the first to walk away. So Rictor and Kate were camped out on the same tiny fire escape, stubbornly glaring at a window across the alley.

At least, that was how it started.

But the thing about stakeouts? They were boring as hell. After an hour, Rictor’s legs went numb. After two, his hands itched. After three, he couldn’t stop himself from breaking the silence. Now, nearly four hours in, the air was... pleasant, almost? Kate was going on about some rich person party, the kind of thing that sucked more when you had to go to it, and no matter how much their weird stakeout had evolved, he was still shocked when she floated the idea of him going to the party with her. “Uh, putting aside the fact that you’re... really not anything close to my type on account of the whole...” He trailed off, gesturing vaguely to his chest because that was more socially acceptable than saying boobs out loud on a stakeout. “You know these kind of parties are probably, like, the worst place for me to be, right? I mean, I’m --- the term ‘natural disaster’ has been used as a descriptor in a very unironic kind of way. You get that, right? It would be a mess.” The realization struck him, and he blinked. “...And you want it to be a mess. Are you using me for my messy personality, Bishop? Is that what this is?” He didn’t sound offended. If anything, he sounded pleased.

He’d kicked cigarettes when he was twenty-three. They were expensive to buy, left him without enough to buy enough food for both him and Gabe, kept his stomach empty and his chest tight. Quitting, he remembered, hadn’t been as hard as he’d thought it’d be. His hands shook for a little while, and his mouth went dry every time the other guys went out for a smoke and he declined the invitation to join them, but kicking the habit only took a few weeks. Robbie’d never much thought of himself as someone who couldn’t quit something when he wanted to, but his tendency to fall off the face of the goddamn earth? That seemed a little harder to get rid of.

People called him out on it sometimes. Canelo, in a way that might have been playful if he hadn’t been his boss. Gabe, with concern in his tone. Daisy, sounding a little terrified. There was no patch for this, no gum, no letting his hands tremble through the craving. This wasn’t even a habit he got anything from, not a deep inhalation of smoke and ash that made the world a little clearer for a fraction of a moment, not a thing he wanted to be. It was something that came with the Rider, he supposed, a part of the deal he’d made. And people could call him out, they could berate him and question him, but he didn’t know how to stop.

There were people he could talk about that with. Kate Bishop wasn’t one of them.

She didn’t know about the Rider. She didn’t know about Hell, about Eli, about any of it. She knew about Robbie’s job at Canelo’s, knew he’d dropped off the face of the earth, knew it wasn’t the first time or the last. From her perspective, he figured, he was little more than a sketchy guy who occasionally faked his death. Figured she’d have the balls to call him on it. “I’m not off the map,” he replied dryly, not looking up from the engine in front of him. “I’m smack dab in the middle of the map. Just took a vacation, that’s all.” Right. His mind or soul or whatever it was that made him him had a quick spa visit to Hell while his body ran around with a goddamn maniac at the helm. That was all. “Your shitbag car break down again, or are you just here to hassle me?”