Young Avengers: Oh, Just Go Nameless
Title: Oh, Just Go Nameless
Author:
mad_maudlin
Fandom: Young Avengers (Marvel-616)
Pairing: Kate/Noh-Varr
Warnings: Teenagers have seeeex omg end of the world.
Spoilers: Nothing but the first two pages of YA #1, vol. 2 (and a non-spoilery allusion to Hawkeye #8-9).
Summary: "We have got to stop waking up like this," Kate mumbled into the pillows.
A/N: For Trope Bingo: accidental marriage. Though it turned into more of a Kate/Noh ship manifesto on my end, which incidentally subverts the trope entirely. Title from "Celebrity Skin" by Hole.
Oh, Just Go Nameless
Mad Maudlin
The sun was in her eyes again (again?) hardly muted at all by the full-length curtains. Whose curtains? Her apartment didn't have curtains. But was she at her apartment?
Breathing at her six. A dip in the plane of the mattress. Right. "We have got to stop waking up like this," Kate mumbled into the pillows.
After a few minutes, it occurred to her that at this point in the dance, Noh-Varr was usually already awake, hogging the shower or gone in search of breakfast food. It also occurred to her that they had done this often enough to have a defined usually and that it was possibly getting kind of ridiculous. Never again, she thought, from now on we are sticking to the dates that don't end up with either of us hung over and lost.
(Well, she was usually hung-over; Kree apparently didn't get hangovers, or else Noh was a fantastic actor.)
Kate dared to open her eyes; they weren't at her place, all right, and they definitely weren't at Noh-Varr's, unless he'd gone on a redecorating binge since the last time she'd been by. Everything was a nauseating shade of neon-yellow-verging-on-green, except for the parts that were muddy-grey-brown-purple; there was a sort of couch-bench-thing under the window that looked simultaneously too low and too deep to be comfortable for sitting. And the sunlight ramming its way through the curtains formed not one, not two, but three separate halos on the heavy fabric.
"Oh, god damn it," Kate announced, and forced herself upright despite her throbbing head. The bed was triangular, and Noh-Varr was asleep on his stomach, one leg hanging off the edge. "Yo, Earth to Marvel Boy. Where the hell are we?"
He let out a small, pathetic squeak, one which in spite of the circumstances was actually kind of cute. "Nom'rv'lbuh," he declared, and pulled a pillow over his head.
Kate stole it from him and bopped him with it. "Noh. Seriously. What planet is this and where is my bra?"
He opened one eye, possibly enticed by the bra comment; then the other. He looked around the hideous room, cringing when he turned towards the light. "Oh. Ugh. Hello."
"Yes. You Noh-Varr, me Kate." Now she was actually starting to get worried; wasn't he supposed to be able to digest anything? Or had he just been bullshitting when he told her that? "What did we have to drink last night?"
"Oh." His eyes snapped wide. "Ooooh."
"Ooooh yes?" she coaxed. "Or ooooh no? Give me something to work with here."
Instead he curled up on his side, one hand pressed to his stomach. "Normally I would suspect that I am dying," he said glumly. "But since you appear to be freakishly chipper this morning, I am forced to conclude this is an overhang."
"Hang-over," she corrected automatically. "And you have a funny definition of chipper, babe."
He made another little whimper. "Irrelevant. I'm more concerned to discover a substance in this galaxy that affects Kree more adversely than humans. Whatever it is, we must destroy it at once."
She bopped him on the head with the pillow again. "Pretty sure that's not what you were saying last night." But he did look rather sad, curled up like that, and if this was his first hangover...well, it wasn't like he hadn't taken his turn bringing her coffee and toast, during previous rounds of the Where The Hell Did We Wake Up? game. She climbed off the bed-like the bench-couch-thing, it was awkwardly low to the ground-and automatically reached for the first article of clothing to hand, just to throw something on. Wandering naked around a space hotel seemed like an invitation for some kind of disaster...though again, that was also part of the formula more often than not.
(Party, sex, amnesia, optional ass-kicking. Yeah, definitely changing up the date format from now on.)
She reached for the first thing she could wear and came up with a...thing, a gauzy, tie-dyed looking thing with rather too many ill-defined appendage-holes. "Is....this yours?" she asked warily, because she didn't remember him wearing anything fitting this description last night (the parts of it she could remember) and she sure as hell didn't own anything quite this...radially symmetric.
Noh-Varr made another grumpy noise that did not quite achieve word status. Then he jumped bolt upright, albeit still clutching his stomach. "Oh. That is...oh."
"Noh-Varr, use your words, please," Kate said warily.
He swallowed, eyes darting between her face and the thing and a corner of the ceiling. "That...ah...unless I am mistaken, that is a wedding robe."
"A we--?" The words knocked around inside Kate's throbbing head for a couple of minutes, refusing to resolve because hell no. "Oh my god, Noh-Varr, did we get space-married?"
He flinched; maybe that had been a little loud. "I...do not remember?" She glared at him, and he sighed. "It appears to be the most likely explanation."
Kate flopped back down on the be and covered her face with the...the wedding robe. "Great. Just great. A couple of drinks and suddenly I'm honeymooning on Tatooine. Fuck my life."
Noh-Varr didn't say anything; for the moment they just laid in silence on opposite sides of the weird-shaped bed, and Kate, for her part, contemplated her life choices. Not that she felt guilty about having a few drinks, or even more than a few drinks-it wasn't like she was being irresponsible about it. Most of the time, at least. The times that hadn't involved waking up married on an alien planet.
Maybe more to the point, she'd spent so much time being responsible-maid of honor, team leader, first chair, superhero-when the rest of the girls in her class were having their first hangovers and first pregnancy scares, Kate had been saving the world. And she didn't resent that or anything, but as the same time she sometimes wished she could switch off whatever part of her brain kept her worrying about her dad and Susan and Clint and Billy and Teddy and everyone; sometimes she just wanted to, well, cut loose. And Noh-Varr was a very easy guy to cut loose around. He didn't have Eli's intensity or Tommy's unpredictable humor, but he was...he could...
He was safe. She felt safe around him, safe enough to do dumb things. Safe, knowing somebody was there to catch her, instead of her doing the catching for everyone else. Maybe it wasn't exactly angel choirs and epic romance, but it worked for them, and-
She glanced over at him, stabbed suddenly with guilt. It wasn't like this was his fault, he'd been space-drunk at the time, and she didn't want him to assume her annoyance was directed at him. He had drawn his knees up to his chest and was staring at the pointed end of the bed. "Um, Noh-Varr, look," Kate tried to say. "I..."
"I do not wish to be married to you," he said quietly, but firmly. He only briefly glanced at her before turning his attention back to the sheets. "Does that upset you?"
"Hell, no," she said, relieved, and a little of the tension went out of his shoulders as well. "Not that I-look, I don't wish to be married to anyone right now. I don't know that I ever will be, to be honest. I like you a lot, but..."
"I like you as well, Kate Bishop," he said, keeping his attention on his feet instead of her. "And I enjoy your planet. But...but I have a complex relationship with Earth. And the thought of marrying a human...complicates it more."
She reached out and nudged his leg. "And I totally respect that. I'm not looking for a happily-ever-after here, Noh."
He nodded. "I wasn't sure. You call me your boyfriend and..."
"And you thought that meant I wanted to marry you?" She blinked at him.
He sighed loudly and rubbed his temples. "I don't know how you humans think!"
"Don't...argh, look." She grabbed his hand and tugged on its so he'd look at her. "Nobody has to bring species into this. Here's the deal: I like you. I have fun going out with you. The sex is pretty awesome, too. That's it, and that's fine by me. Work for you?"
"The sex is quite awesome," he said, looking thoughtful.
"You're damn right it's awesome."
He bit his lip for a moment. "What happens if this stops working, Kate? For either of us?"
"Then...it stops?" She shrugged. "Look, if you've got a problem with 'boyfriend,' that's fine, but you're still a friend. Who is a boy. A...friend-boy." Oh, Jesus, she was starting to sound like Clint. "Look, I'm sorry if I'm not as serious about this as you apparently are..."
"No, no," he said quickly. "I am not serious about this at all."
They stared at each other for a moment.
"That didn't come out quite how I meant it."
"Sure didn't."
He squeezed her hand, then let it go so he could scratch at his tangled hair. "There's no real reason to argue, is there? I think we agree exactly on what we want."
"Which, right now, is an annulment," she said. "Any idea where Mos Eisley City Hall is?"
"I doubt the ceremony would be considered legally binding on your planet," he pointed out. "And it is completely forbidden among the Kree."
"Really?"
"Mmm." He slid back down into the blankets. "Punishable by death."
"You people really don't do things by halves, do you?" She spotted her purse, finally-under the bench-thing-and got up to dig her phone out of it; it was barely eight on Saturday, Earth time, which meant they could totally put off the Got Laid Parade another couple hours. "Incidentally, please tell me you remember where you parked your spaceship."
"It will be easy enough to find," he said, way too confidently, from under a pillow. "And if there is no more need for serious conversation I would like to continue suffering in silence."
"Baby," she muttered, but he did have a point; she kicked away the wedding robe and burrowed back under the covers, facing him instead of the window. "Drink some water, it'll help your head."
"...I think it might have been the water that caused this."
"Oh. Huh."
"Yeah."
The muffled suns moved outside the window, and Kate dozed off for a little while, listening to Noh-Varr breathe.
Author:
mad_maudlin
Fandom: Young Avengers (Marvel-616)
Pairing: Kate/Noh-Varr
Warnings: Teenagers have seeeex omg end of the world.
Spoilers: Nothing but the first two pages of YA #1, vol. 2 (and a non-spoilery allusion to Hawkeye #8-9).
Summary: "We have got to stop waking up like this," Kate mumbled into the pillows.
A/N: For Trope Bingo: accidental marriage. Though it turned into more of a Kate/Noh ship manifesto on my end, which incidentally subverts the trope entirely. Title from "Celebrity Skin" by Hole.
Oh, Just Go Nameless
Mad Maudlin
The sun was in her eyes again (again?) hardly muted at all by the full-length curtains. Whose curtains? Her apartment didn't have curtains. But was she at her apartment?
Breathing at her six. A dip in the plane of the mattress. Right. "We have got to stop waking up like this," Kate mumbled into the pillows.
After a few minutes, it occurred to her that at this point in the dance, Noh-Varr was usually already awake, hogging the shower or gone in search of breakfast food. It also occurred to her that they had done this often enough to have a defined usually and that it was possibly getting kind of ridiculous. Never again, she thought, from now on we are sticking to the dates that don't end up with either of us hung over and lost.
(Well, she was usually hung-over; Kree apparently didn't get hangovers, or else Noh was a fantastic actor.)
Kate dared to open her eyes; they weren't at her place, all right, and they definitely weren't at Noh-Varr's, unless he'd gone on a redecorating binge since the last time she'd been by. Everything was a nauseating shade of neon-yellow-verging-on-green, except for the parts that were muddy-grey-brown-purple; there was a sort of couch-bench-thing under the window that looked simultaneously too low and too deep to be comfortable for sitting. And the sunlight ramming its way through the curtains formed not one, not two, but three separate halos on the heavy fabric.
"Oh, god damn it," Kate announced, and forced herself upright despite her throbbing head. The bed was triangular, and Noh-Varr was asleep on his stomach, one leg hanging off the edge. "Yo, Earth to Marvel Boy. Where the hell are we?"
He let out a small, pathetic squeak, one which in spite of the circumstances was actually kind of cute. "Nom'rv'lbuh," he declared, and pulled a pillow over his head.
Kate stole it from him and bopped him with it. "Noh. Seriously. What planet is this and where is my bra?"
He opened one eye, possibly enticed by the bra comment; then the other. He looked around the hideous room, cringing when he turned towards the light. "Oh. Ugh. Hello."
"Yes. You Noh-Varr, me Kate." Now she was actually starting to get worried; wasn't he supposed to be able to digest anything? Or had he just been bullshitting when he told her that? "What did we have to drink last night?"
"Oh." His eyes snapped wide. "Ooooh."
"Ooooh yes?" she coaxed. "Or ooooh no? Give me something to work with here."
Instead he curled up on his side, one hand pressed to his stomach. "Normally I would suspect that I am dying," he said glumly. "But since you appear to be freakishly chipper this morning, I am forced to conclude this is an overhang."
"Hang-over," she corrected automatically. "And you have a funny definition of chipper, babe."
He made another little whimper. "Irrelevant. I'm more concerned to discover a substance in this galaxy that affects Kree more adversely than humans. Whatever it is, we must destroy it at once."
She bopped him on the head with the pillow again. "Pretty sure that's not what you were saying last night." But he did look rather sad, curled up like that, and if this was his first hangover...well, it wasn't like he hadn't taken his turn bringing her coffee and toast, during previous rounds of the Where The Hell Did We Wake Up? game. She climbed off the bed-like the bench-couch-thing, it was awkwardly low to the ground-and automatically reached for the first article of clothing to hand, just to throw something on. Wandering naked around a space hotel seemed like an invitation for some kind of disaster...though again, that was also part of the formula more often than not.
(Party, sex, amnesia, optional ass-kicking. Yeah, definitely changing up the date format from now on.)
She reached for the first thing she could wear and came up with a...thing, a gauzy, tie-dyed looking thing with rather too many ill-defined appendage-holes. "Is....this yours?" she asked warily, because she didn't remember him wearing anything fitting this description last night (the parts of it she could remember) and she sure as hell didn't own anything quite this...radially symmetric.
Noh-Varr made another grumpy noise that did not quite achieve word status. Then he jumped bolt upright, albeit still clutching his stomach. "Oh. That is...oh."
"Noh-Varr, use your words, please," Kate said warily.
He swallowed, eyes darting between her face and the thing and a corner of the ceiling. "That...ah...unless I am mistaken, that is a wedding robe."
"A we--?" The words knocked around inside Kate's throbbing head for a couple of minutes, refusing to resolve because hell no. "Oh my god, Noh-Varr, did we get space-married?"
He flinched; maybe that had been a little loud. "I...do not remember?" She glared at him, and he sighed. "It appears to be the most likely explanation."
Kate flopped back down on the be and covered her face with the...the wedding robe. "Great. Just great. A couple of drinks and suddenly I'm honeymooning on Tatooine. Fuck my life."
Noh-Varr didn't say anything; for the moment they just laid in silence on opposite sides of the weird-shaped bed, and Kate, for her part, contemplated her life choices. Not that she felt guilty about having a few drinks, or even more than a few drinks-it wasn't like she was being irresponsible about it. Most of the time, at least. The times that hadn't involved waking up married on an alien planet.
Maybe more to the point, she'd spent so much time being responsible-maid of honor, team leader, first chair, superhero-when the rest of the girls in her class were having their first hangovers and first pregnancy scares, Kate had been saving the world. And she didn't resent that or anything, but as the same time she sometimes wished she could switch off whatever part of her brain kept her worrying about her dad and Susan and Clint and Billy and Teddy and everyone; sometimes she just wanted to, well, cut loose. And Noh-Varr was a very easy guy to cut loose around. He didn't have Eli's intensity or Tommy's unpredictable humor, but he was...he could...
He was safe. She felt safe around him, safe enough to do dumb things. Safe, knowing somebody was there to catch her, instead of her doing the catching for everyone else. Maybe it wasn't exactly angel choirs and epic romance, but it worked for them, and-
She glanced over at him, stabbed suddenly with guilt. It wasn't like this was his fault, he'd been space-drunk at the time, and she didn't want him to assume her annoyance was directed at him. He had drawn his knees up to his chest and was staring at the pointed end of the bed. "Um, Noh-Varr, look," Kate tried to say. "I..."
"I do not wish to be married to you," he said quietly, but firmly. He only briefly glanced at her before turning his attention back to the sheets. "Does that upset you?"
"Hell, no," she said, relieved, and a little of the tension went out of his shoulders as well. "Not that I-look, I don't wish to be married to anyone right now. I don't know that I ever will be, to be honest. I like you a lot, but..."
"I like you as well, Kate Bishop," he said, keeping his attention on his feet instead of her. "And I enjoy your planet. But...but I have a complex relationship with Earth. And the thought of marrying a human...complicates it more."
She reached out and nudged his leg. "And I totally respect that. I'm not looking for a happily-ever-after here, Noh."
He nodded. "I wasn't sure. You call me your boyfriend and..."
"And you thought that meant I wanted to marry you?" She blinked at him.
He sighed loudly and rubbed his temples. "I don't know how you humans think!"
"Don't...argh, look." She grabbed his hand and tugged on its so he'd look at her. "Nobody has to bring species into this. Here's the deal: I like you. I have fun going out with you. The sex is pretty awesome, too. That's it, and that's fine by me. Work for you?"
"The sex is quite awesome," he said, looking thoughtful.
"You're damn right it's awesome."
He bit his lip for a moment. "What happens if this stops working, Kate? For either of us?"
"Then...it stops?" She shrugged. "Look, if you've got a problem with 'boyfriend,' that's fine, but you're still a friend. Who is a boy. A...friend-boy." Oh, Jesus, she was starting to sound like Clint. "Look, I'm sorry if I'm not as serious about this as you apparently are..."
"No, no," he said quickly. "I am not serious about this at all."
They stared at each other for a moment.
"That didn't come out quite how I meant it."
"Sure didn't."
He squeezed her hand, then let it go so he could scratch at his tangled hair. "There's no real reason to argue, is there? I think we agree exactly on what we want."
"Which, right now, is an annulment," she said. "Any idea where Mos Eisley City Hall is?"
"I doubt the ceremony would be considered legally binding on your planet," he pointed out. "And it is completely forbidden among the Kree."
"Really?"
"Mmm." He slid back down into the blankets. "Punishable by death."
"You people really don't do things by halves, do you?" She spotted her purse, finally-under the bench-thing-and got up to dig her phone out of it; it was barely eight on Saturday, Earth time, which meant they could totally put off the Got Laid Parade another couple hours. "Incidentally, please tell me you remember where you parked your spaceship."
"It will be easy enough to find," he said, way too confidently, from under a pillow. "And if there is no more need for serious conversation I would like to continue suffering in silence."
"Baby," she muttered, but he did have a point; she kicked away the wedding robe and burrowed back under the covers, facing him instead of the window. "Drink some water, it'll help your head."
"...I think it might have been the water that caused this."
"Oh. Huh."
"Yeah."
The muffled suns moved outside the window, and Kate dozed off for a little while, listening to Noh-Varr breathe.