#marvel comicverse

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Two days after he turns twenty years old, Flash receives a text:

Happy bday. Miss u.

And it’s a totally ordinary text, nothing offensive about it except for the fact that it had been sent at all, but it sends Flash down a spiral that Peter doesn’t understand. Which is fair, in its own way. How could he when Flash has gone to great lengths to make sure that he never had enough of the pieces to put that particular puzzle together?

Still, he finds himself unfairly annoyed when Peter tries to chip in with his incomplete knowledge of the situation. “He’s your dad,” Peter insists, stretched out across the couch as he speaks through a mouthful of pizza. “I know you guys don’t, like, get along but of course he was going to text you on your birthday.”

But even that much isn’t right because Flash's father didn’t send him a text for his birthday. He sent him a text two days after his birthday and Flash knows that’s because his father doesn’t actually know when his birthday is, but he doesn’t tell Peter that. He doesn’t tell him that his father has never really acknowledged his birthday before now, either. What he does tell him is, “I don’t want to talk about this,” and it’s as true as any of the dozens of things he doesn’t say so he takes some measure of satisfaction in the fact that at least he’s not lying.

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Flash doesn’t answer but the texts continue—one on Thanksgiving, two on Christmas. Each time, Flash’s mood sours instantly and for days, but when he receives a text on Father’s Day Flash is so angry he nearly breaks his phone in two (no happy fathers day?, the fucking dick) and it’s then that Peter suggests in a nervous voice, “You could try blocking him?”

It’s the obvious solution, Flash knows, but he mumbles out, "What if there's an emergency?" nonetheless. This time he knows he’s lying.

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Flash joins the military not long after he turns twenty-one even though Peter tries to talk him out of it. He has a list of reasons why it’s a bad idea, some based in anti-war sentiments, some based in concern for Flash’s well-being, but none that feel even remotely convincing coming from someone who spends his nights beating street criminals to a pulp because he can.

So Flash enlists despite Peter’s concerns and he’s gone for bootcamp by the time his next birthday rolls around. His father doesn’t text him this year, not on time, not late, not at all, and Flash is so busy doing drills that he almost doesn’t notice. When it does occur to him, he isn’t sure what to think about it. He’s not disappointed, but not really relieved either–he thinks he must be feeling the void, the weight of something that should be there but isn’t. He doesn’t want the texts, but he doesn’t want the silence their absence has left him with either. Mostly he wishes the handful of scattered messages had never existed in the first place.

Peter doesn’t understand this either. When Flash mentions the radio silence a few days later, Peter texts back, that’s good isnt it?

And Flash doesn’t have it in him to explain, doesn’t think he has the words to do so anyway so he just types out, yea, and focuses on his training.

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It’s easy to forget about the texts and the cramped, suffocating house he grew up in amidst the explosions and ricochets of combat. It’s harder to forget about the empty bottles of whiskey that littered his childhood home, though, when they start to take up residence in his barracks.

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Flash returns to New York after a couple of deployments with two more years behind him and two fewer legs beneath him. As with so many other things, he doesn’t tell Peter about this either, but it’s probably the only time he feels guilty about it because Peter finds out when he comes to pick Flash up from the airport. He gazes around the crowd, looking for Flash, only laying eyes on him when he looks down to see Flash in a wheelchair, his legs missing below the knees.

For once he’s lost for words, and all Flash can bring himself to do is quirk his lips uncomfortably and say, “Hey, Petey.”

Peter opens his mouth to greet Flash back then shuts it again.

Flash huffs. “Yeah, sorry,” he says, rubbing at the back of his neck. “It’s probably not the best surprise you’ve ever gotten.”

When Peter finally thinks of something to say, it’s a stammered out, “I mean, are you okay?” and it’s just an absolutely absurd question and there’s no right way to answer it. No, he’s not fine, but the fact that he never really has been kind of makes it all seem like he might be, in a weird, numbed out kind of way, but Flash knows that isn’t fine. That’s just having learned to tolerate it.

So he says, “I mean, I could go for a shot right now,” and even that is a lie in its own way because he says it like a joke, knowing Peter hasn’t seen the way he gets with alcohol these days. But then again, Flash fully intends for Peter to never see the way he gets with alcohol these days.

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Peter resents the distance Flash keeps between them. Flash knows because Peter sometimes tells him he’s too secretive with accusation in his eyes and he sometimes grows frustrated when Flash discusses his parents in only the vaguest terms he can. He resents that Flash didn’t tell him about his legs when it happened, too, and that’s even more fair than the rest of it.

It’s not that Flash doesn’t feel bad about it—Peter is Peter and Flash isn’t so stupid that he doesn’t realize he’s lucky to have him, but that’s really the problem, isn’t it? What happens when Peter doesn’t like the jagged edges that Flash has worked so hard to keep hidden from him? What happens when Peter realizes how fucked up Flash actually is? What happens when he decides it’s too much for him?

Peter saves enough lives as it is. He doesn’t need to be responsible for Flash’s too.

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He makes it a couple of months, at least, before Peter sees Flash really drunk. He begins to understand why they call it ‘wasted’ after that because that’s how it feels: like he’s lost himself in the bottle, traded in his life for the next sip; they call it ‘trashed’ because that’s what it is, throwing pieces of himself into the waste bin with each fresh shot, but then Flash looks down at the stubs of his knees and remembers that it wasn’t the liquor that wasted him, was it? It wasn’t even the war. He was wasted long before any of that, nothing more than the flotsam left behind from a crash he had no fault in.

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The texts keep coming, sporadic and unpredictable, and Flash keeps ignoring them.

“You don’t think he misses you?” his therapist asks one day as Flash scowls down at his phone, a woman the military appointed for him, with kind eyes and sympathetic smiles who Flash can’t bring himself to talk to about anything of significance. He’s thought about it, sure, but it never feels like the right time to drop that bomb on her. If he says it too casually, will she believe him? If he says it too emotionally, will she think he’s putting on an act?

He keeps his silence.

“No, I’m sure he does,” Flash answers honestly. “I mean, he does care.” And he means it when he says it, he knows it’s true somewhere in his gut, because the thing is that he still remembers when he was eleven years old how his father had tried to stop drinking. It didn’t last long, maybe a month at best, but when he fell off the wagon again and downed half a bottle in one night, he had sat on the couch and sobbed broken apologies into Flash’s hair, incoherently drunk. It wasn’t the only time he had tried and failed to overcome his demons, but it was the only time Flash had ever seen him cry.

Harrison Thompson, he knows, cares for his son. He just cares for the liquor more.

“Do you maybe feel guilty for not answering him?” she presses, a probing question designed to gauge what the relationship was like.

This, too, he answers honestly, a dismissive shrug and a, “Not really,” and he lets her extrapolate from that what she will.

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It’s complicated, he’ll never say, because the thing is that fucked up people raise fucked up people raise fucked up people, and Flash knows that his father didn’t have it easy as a kid either. It used to be enough for Flash to feel sorry for him, back when he could see the misery etched into every line of his drunken expressions. He knows better now–consciously, at least–but even though he no longer lets his sympathy justify his father, he still lets it humanize him.

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The day before his twenty-fourth birthday, Flash receives another text but this one is different. It’s long, for starters, and far more pathetic than any of his previous messages have been and it starts with, i know u dont wanna talk 2 me but i want u 2 kno i’m not doing well, and ends with, if u wanna visit or somethin i want 2 see u again at some point.

“Are you gonna visit?” Peter asks him when he relays the rough message to him.

Flash scoffs. “No,” he spits before tossing his phone onto the couch.

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It takes three months and two failed attempts, including one where he slammed on his brakes in the middle of the street, two blocks away from the hospital, and fought desperately to stave off a panic attack, but in the end Flash does go. He hates himself for it, but he does go.

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"They think I have a month, at best," Harrison says to him.

Flash hasn't seen him in close to five years. Maybe that's why it's so easy to notice how much weight he's lost since then. His father was never obese, but he used to have a bulk to him, half-muscle, half-fat buildup from a slowing metabolism. His illness has diminished him down to nothing, hollowed out his cheekbones. He looks brittle, like a thin layer of frost that gives way beneath his windshield wipers in the early winter, like any pressure would cause his entire being to collapse. It’s strange, because Flash has spent most of his life under the weight of the fear that the thought of his father’s presence elicits in him; now, there’s not much of his father left to be afraid of.

"I, uh." Flash shifts where he stands. "That's not a lot of time."

His father shrugs, the bones of his shoulder casting sharp shadows beneath his clothes. "I guess not, no."

They stand in silence for a minute.

"Flash," his father says eventually. "I want you to know..." He clears his throat, takes a deep breath. "I guess, I know I wasn't always a great dad. I was trying to--I don't know, it doesn't matter now." He looks up at Flash with a furrowed brow and never has he sounded more honest than when he says, "I love you. I hope you know that."

Flash digs his hands into his pockets and looks down. "Yeah, I know that," he says.

He wants to say more: that doesn’t make it better, or just not enough, but he learned a long time ago to keep his mouth shut and never is he better about following that rule than when he’s faced with the man who taught him.

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 He intends for it to be the last time he ever speaks to his father, but he finds himself sitting in the chair in the corner three weeks later anyway, elbows rested on his knees, fingers interlacing, eyes heavy as he watches Harrison shrink away to nothing. Peter doesn't get why he comes, he knows, and in some ways neither does Flash. All he knows is that somehow, despite everything, he still doesn't have it in him to let Harrison Thompson die alone.

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"My dad used to tell me he wished I was more like you," Flash says after the funeral. "Not just you. Thomas, Darius, Ben. Fucking Gwen. God, he loved her."

"Yeah, your dad was kind of a dick," Peter says with the kind of force that makes Flash wonder how much he's pieced together since they were teens.

Flash feels his stomach knotting as he looks down into his glass of whiskey and he thinks of his dad sobbing apologies into his hair, thinks of every time he bragged to his fellow officers about his son, star of his school's basketball team. He thinks of laying alone in his room, clutching his side, hurting so bad he thought he might be dying and thinking that it was probably for the best if he did.

"I know," he answers, hearing his words slur and hating himself for it but not knowing how to stop, not when some not insignificant part of him doesn't really want to stop. "But he was still my dad."

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There are days when Flash wonders if Peter is aware of how lucky he is to have had May and Ben Parker for the time that he did. He tells him sometimes, and Peter nods his head in agreement and declares that they made for very good parents, but Flash still isn't sure if he really gets it. That he's not just lucky to not have an alcoholic dad or a mother who couldn't be bothered to take him with her when she left. He's not just lucky to have good parents--he's lucky to not have parents that fucked him up before he ever even had a chance, that passed on violence and a craving for something to dull the anger in his bones as his only inheritance.

The growing up is only the half of it; the damage done, Flash knows, is permanent. The effects of growing up under his father's roof haven't left him just because Harrison Thompson is buried. 

***

 The Avengers had known that accepting Namor into their ranks would not come without difficulties. He was after all not an easy man to get along with, which Captain America had very tactfully alluded to.

Since he had moved into the Avengers' Mansion there had been many a battle—the Squabble over the Damp Carpet in the Corridor (victims: one carpet, and Jarvis's sense of propriety) and the Why We Do Take Naps in Janet's Bathtub Debate (victims: the paint in the corridor) being the two most memorable, until the day Pietro decided to touch upon a subject most had considered too delicate.

The elephant in the room, as it were.

“Put some pants on,” Quicksilver said firmly.

Namor did not grace him with even a look and continued sprawling on the couch, one leg twitching to the music from the radio.

“I understand that under water clothes are useless,” Quicksilver persisted, “but my sister is a proper young lady, and should not have to view your anatomy.”

“Hey, some of us enjoy the free show!” She-Hulk interjected.

“Your suit looks practically painted on,” Namor replied, stretching lazily. “I don't see the point of wearing something like this. It looks unnatural.”

“Nobody can see my... my...” Pietro coughed several times before managing a squaky “...penis...”

“Everybody knows it's there,” Namor said with a shrug.

Pietro spluttered in silence for several seconds, and then an angel of reason descended down the stairs in the form of Captain America bearing a pair of green swimming speedos, which he placed on Namor's chest with exaggerated care. Then, without a word, he continued on his way, while Namor solemnly put on the garment.

Pietro looked around, searching for a source of understanding. She-Hulk looked disappointed, Iron Man radiated dejection. Wanda was bright red.

Then their tele-screen flicked to life, and one of the new members of the X-Men appeared, her modesty saved only by her white hair.