#kit;mack

i.

To Kit, the worst part about getting punched was never the initial shock of pain or the bruises that followed. He knew how to tough those out and focus on the next move. It was never broken bones or bleeding noses. To Kit, the worst part about getting punched was losing breath. 

Kit had always had a very rational, very sound fear of drowning. He would venture an educated guess that it started when he was left outside of a firehouse in the rain as a newborn, exposed and trapped in a slowly flooding bassinet as he screamed for help and coughed against the droplets filling his tiny pink mouth. Just the idea of the deep ocean or the vast vacuum of space, places where he could never hope to take in even a moment of a breath, left him feeling nauseous and dizzy. The reason he lasted the longest in the pool during the water treading portion of training wasn’t because he had the most resolve or because he was exceptionally dedicated to becoming a field agent; he relaxed into an hour and a half of fight or flight. Ben had to push him halfway to the edge of the pool before he even realized he had been called back to line up. 

Agent Hughes said he would never make a good fighter because he protected his stomach too diligently, leaving his face completely open. It was a raw, instinctual habit he could never quite break, no matter how hard Hughes pushed him. The first time he’d gotten the wind knocked out of him, he was ten-years-old going into year eleven. It was rash, childhood malevolence, a swift jab from a boy in his year, three times his size, just to watch him crumple. He never expected it would feel like that, like every molecule of air had been violently sucked out of his body. He fell to the floor and, instead of gripping the agonizing heat emanating from his stomach, he clawed at his throat, desperately trying to draw in even a single gasp. It felt like years before he finally could, like the sun rose and set millions of times over before he found the strength to release his clenched gut and breathe. He hugged himself on the floor as tears fell in hot, terrified rivers, coughing and gagging and sobbing at the relief. 

Kit couldn’t bear to feel like that ever again. 

So when he spotted another fist coming at his side, he brought his elbows down quickly and flexed every muscle in his body, hoping it would protect his diaphragm. Too quickly, another fist rained down on his brow with a crack and another spattering of blood whipped against the concrete floor, just like Agent Hughes warned, countless times.

Kit staggered back, the blood hot and stinging as it flowed from his forehead into his eye. Everything was blood. For hours, now. Mostly not his until just recently. He tasted it with every breath, sharp and metallic, as it coated his teeth and poured from his nose. He was in a bad way, and he knew that, but there were always more to help, more patients to tend to. 

And, selfishly, he considered this one patient especially important.  

He spat as he collected himself and promised the ringing in his ears he’d get back to it later. After finding his feet again--and taking a fraction of a second to congratulate himself for not going down after a hit like that--he raised his fists up to his temples again. He tracked the man in front of him with one good eye, the hot pride of a good soldier coursing through his body and filling him with the adrenaline to keep going. The man, large and imposing in a nondescript black shirt and leather jacket, tipped his head to the side with a revolting pop before shaking his shoulders out. Kit would be damned if a literal comic book villain was going to stand in the way of him getting where he needed to go.

“Didn’t your father ever teach you to pick your fights, boy?” he taunted.

Kit grinned, “No, but the nuns did.” 

The man rushed him and Kit leaped up to the ceiling to grab an exposed pipe. With nearly effortless speed, he wrapped his legs around the man’s head and twisted his entire body, cantilevering the man’s own weight against him until he crashed down to the concrete with a sickening snap. Kit landed on his feet above him, taking a moment to look down at the destruction he’d caused. The man was out cold, possibly dead. He almost got lost in it, his hand already reaching for the small med-pack strapped to his thigh. He didn’t see any blood, but--

Voices started to echo from down the dimly lit hall. 

No time. Kit bent down to the man--whom he chose to believe would survive--and swiped his key-card from his belt before scrambling to Mack’s limp body he had hidden behind a few wooden crates. With a great heave that called attention to all of the welts on his body slowly swelling under his armor, he dragged Mack to the large metal door formerly protected by the hulking leather jacket man. He swiped the man’s card quickly and dragged Mack through with a pained groan. 

Kit cleared Mack’s feet through the door just as more men rushed into the large, open warehouse space, shouting in a language he was too exhausted to recognize. 

Untrue, it was Lithuanian. 

“Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks,” he hissed, over and over as he yanked the protective plastic case off the keypad on the inside of the door. The voices grew nearer and he began to lose track of the wires he was working on. Frustrated, he wiped the blood from his eye and squinted before pulling a scalpel from his med-pack and stabbing it through the green circuit board. Tiny sparks flew out of it before the metal door slammed shut, sealing two very lost SHIELD agents inside. 

The voices on the other side of the door shouted and Kit could hear them trying multiple cards against a now defunct locking system. 

You’d think big bads would invest in a security system a little more advanced, but Kit had learned from a very young age you don’t look God in the mouth when he blesses you, so he made a quick mental note to light a candle when they got home before returning to Mack. 

He knelt down to him with a little laugh before pressing his fingers to Mack’s neck. “See? Told you I had it handled,” he whispered, relieved to feel a very strong, defiant heartbeat beneath Mack’s skin. Granted, he had no room to be smug when the entire facility was littered with bodies Mack had dropped with his bare hands and a loose piece of rebar, but Kit was content to claim one of them for himself. 

Kit took half a second to note how peaceful Mack looked in that moment, even covered in his own collection of scrapes and bruises. He clicked his tongue, shaking his head at how incredibly handsome this boy was and how absolutely moronic it was to be admiring that in a time like this. 

“Okay,” he sighed, before forcing himself back up. Kit languished a bit in the popping joints and aching muscles before stiffly approaching one of the many routers scattered amongst the mess of wires and LED lights twinkling in the server room--the right server room, if Kit hadn’t gone panic-blind and forgotten the blueprint he had committed to memory. After studying one he deemed fit enough, he popped the lid open to expose the blinking lights and wiring inside. He reached into his back pocket for the satellite phone they had long since lost connection to and slid the back panel off it as well. With a few good minutes of fiddling, moving wires around and crudely soldering things together with the pellets of a shotgun shell he’d picked up off the ground and medical tape, he was able to get a dial tone. 

“Kitty?!”

Kit practically wept at the sound of Jake’s voice, “Oh, thank God.”

“Are they alright?” Kit heard Ben, just a bit away from the receiver. 

“Where are you?!” Jake barked. It sounded like they were already on the move. 

“We’re still here,” Kit said quickly, “This line isn’t secure, so listen. We made it to the east server room. There’s a flood drain in here that I am praying we can fit through. If we can, we’ll be headed into the underground transport tunnels to the southeast opening.”

“Copy,” Jake replied and the line went dead. 

The silence was deafening for a moment before Mackenzie shot up and gasped, fists already clenched and poised for war. Little shit scared the ever-living soul out of Kit, who grabbed the red and white cross on his chest with a yelp.

When he finally convinced himself he wasn’t going into cardiac arrest, he rushed over and knelt down again, pulling the glove off his hand with his teeth before running his fingers through Mack’s hair to check the long gash at his hairline. “We’re okay, we’re safe for now.” Kit had remembered the nylon material their tactical gear was made of could be incredibly grating to Mack’s senses. 

“What happened?” Mack choked, trying to regain his breath.

“Oh, you would have loved it, I grabbed control of a gigantic machine gun and just went to town on a bunch of Lithuanians. Rambo-style,” Kit cooed, satisfied that the last packet of clotting powder had worked as well as he had designed it to. 

“You’re bleeding,” Mack said, obviously not in the mood for very good jokes. He reached out for Kit’s face and Kit flinched back instinctively, which he immediately felt incredibly ashamed of. He just--he wasn’t ready. He felt like everything, all of what balanced so delicately between them--if anything was in the balance at all--did so on the precipice of what it would be like the first time Mack felt his face and knew what he looked like. It was vain and childish and he knew that, but, instead, Kit knit his fingers with Mack’s and squeezed his hand. 

“It’s alright, I’m fine,” he said with a smile, “Can you walk?”

Mack nodded before even checking himself, but Kit really, really needed Mack’s stubbornness to work for them right now. He helped Mack to his feet before scanning the floor of the room. For a moment, he was terrified he’d picked the wrong room and had cornered them in a closet-sized slaughterhouse, but his steel-trap mind was not to be trifled with and, sure enough, under a tangle of wires, was a drainage grate only about as wide as Mack’s shoulders. 

He struggled to lift the heavy metal away from the floor and Mack had to bend down to help him. When they finally slid it away, Kit stood up, desperate for a breath of air before exhaling hard. Kit settled, clenching his jaw and steeling himself against what he knew was the sound of moving water of an unknown depth down there. He was grateful Mack did not comment on his thundering heartbeat; if he could hear it in his ears, he was certain Mack could, too. 

“Alright,” he finally said, after a long, meditative beat, about the length of a Hail Mary, “After you, Agent Mackenzie.” 

ii.

Kit had made a habit of passing by Mackenzie’s room when he had the chance, especially throughout the night. When they were together, Mack slept without issue, but Kit knew he struggled to sleep on his own. He had begun to suspect it wasn’t even entirely due to his blindness; Mackenzie never really knew when he needed to stop fighting. 

Slowly, Kit leaned his body against Mack’s door until his ear was pressed to the cold wood. It nearly felt like laying in bed, his tired body succumbing to any sort of support it was offered. He listened for a bit, waiting for the sound of movement or a muffled radio, but found it incredibly silent save for the echo of the air conditioning whirring throughout the building. With a bit of effort, he finally pushed himself away from the door before continuing on to his own room a bit down the hall. 

They’d been moved to the same floor, which was a healthy step towards possibly being allowed to stay in the same quarters officially, though he understood that would be a long, long way off. Still, neither of them could be bothered with those regulations and no one really seemed to pay them any mind anyway. The only complaints came when either of them were needed and someone would have to check both rooms. 

As he rounded the corner, Kit began to pull his scrub cap off when he paused for a brief moment and watched Mackenzie come down the hall in the opposite direction, a hand cradling his ribs. He was wearing the standard-issue navy blue SHIELD gym shirt and heather grey joggers and he looked like he would be content to sleep for weeks. 

At the same moment, Mackenzie’s head tilted up as he listened and his hand fell away from his side. Kit loved the way Mackenzie tracked sounds with quick flickers of movement, he looked vaguely animalistic in that way. After a moment, a tiny, excited smile played at the corners of his mouth. Kit would never know how in the world Mackenzie did that, much less how he could ever matter so much to be worthy of attention that fine, that definitive. 

They met in front of Kit’s door and he reached out a hand for Mackenzie to take, a regular comfort and anchor between them, “Did you hurt your ribs?” Kit asked, practically requesting permission for a full physical exam in the middle of the hallway. 

“No, Doctor,” Mackenzie teased, his voice tired and gravely and just the right tone to send a shiver up Kit’s spine, “You should see the other guy.”

“No, thank you,” Kit laughed, “So everything went well today, then? You’re getting back much later than I thought.” 

“I was waiting for you,” Mackenzie answered simply. Kit’s cheeks warmed. He still wasn’t used to how plain and innocent Mack was with his affection. As much as he withheld, Mack was acutely unaware of just how easily his love flowed, or how sensitive Kit was to it. “How was surgery?” he asked. 

“Went well,” Kit sighed, as he watched Mack inch a bit closer, “All successes, minimal complications. Just, very long.”

“Mhm,” Mack agreed. Kit didn’t doubt Mack was listening, he was just distracted. Mack moved even closer, until Kit could feel the warmth of his chest through his scrubs, the softness of the hair on Mack’s arms against his. “Missed you today, though,” Mack said, only barely above a whisper. 

“I missed you, too,” Kit breathed, his hand moving up Mackenzie’s arm to his wrist, to his impossibly firm forearm, to his ever-surprisingly large bicep, an invitation. Mackenzie gratefully accepted, leaning forward to press his lips to Kit’s. It was chaste at first, perhaps a bit investigative. They stayed that way for a few luxurious seconds and Kit enjoyed the feeling of being wanted. Cared for. Missed. This is what the poets ached for, he thought, the simple joy of being known. 

But then Mack tilted his face and parted Kit’s lips and Kit gasped, the poets banished from his mind in favor of a blinding, hot, white light. Mack stole his breath and he thought, for just a moment, that drowning may be everything he’s ever wanted. His fingers curled in Mack’s shirt as he brought their bodies together. Mack’s hand wandered before Kit’s breath was taken a second time and he poured every need into a whine, “Mackenzie.”

Mack pushed even further into Kit’s lips before slamming a hand against the door and desperately feeling around for the handle. Before Kit could stop to help him, they tumbled into the room together with a few hushed giggles and strangled cries. 

iii.

Kit had never known anger like this. It was not in his nature to hold rage so deep in his bones, so hot and feral he nearly felt dead with it, as if he had no way of knowing this feeling in life. He had never been so betrayed, so hurt and disgusted and abandoned. Abandoned. Again. 

And yet, it wasn’t right. 

He raced past agents and hallways, sprinting through the gigantic base until he slammed his body against the doors to the hanger. 

He could not let this be the way it ends, he had to say good-bye. If he wasn’t going to wait for Mack to stay for him, he had to at least say good-bye. 

The quinjet engines roared with deafening noise and he panted for breath as he watched the airship’s ramp seal up tight. In the last moments, he watched wavy raven hair and a flash of scarlet glass disappear behind smoky black metal. 

He stood there, gasping for breath beneath the jet, as he watched it take off through the open roof. He saw the pilots glance at him with unreadable faces and realized, with a sharp pang of guilt, Mackenzie would never be able to look down and see that he had tried.