[Fanfic] "Coming to at Dawn" -- Dominic
Author: kelly1_watxm
Title: Coming to at Dawn
Summary: Dominic trims his moustache and beard. Angsty. (No...seriously.) Copious abuse of pre-BOM Dominikos flashbacks. (For andthexmen’s Off-Season Fic Off #5--Backstory)
Rating: M for language and themes.
Character: Avalanche/Dominic centric. Others mentioned.
Pairing: Dominic/Pietro, Dominic/Helen.
Warnings: Mildly slashy. Possibly triggering stuff. Relatively dark.
Thanks: To manikaitwing for mollifying my Sue fears.
Disclaimer: Marvel owns everybody and everything.
A/N: Rampant Villain Obsession, meet Fiction. Fic, this is Villain Obsession. Oh, look, Crackship showed up to the party too. Oh no, my OTP is showing! :: whispers :: How embarrassing.
A little Dom/Pie heavy at the beginning and end, because I mostly can’t help it. Helen is actually a Marvel character, though she’s mentioned in the handbook ... like twice, and has never appeared on panel. I thought this might make sense for Dominic, because I’d peg him around late twenties/early thirties probably. ::shrugs:: Total crack for WatXM, but I like exploring what makes people join “the bad guys.”
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“Coffee’s on.” Pietro’s reflection glared at him from the mirror, standing cross-armed in the doorway of the bathroom, backlit by the dawn creeping through the hall window. Pietro was not a morning person, and on every other day of the week he slept late. It was a familiar repeat of every Wednesday since Dominic had joined the Brotherhood, and he found himself taking comfort in the routine of Pietro’s nosy, ill-disguised hostility. Dominic carefully rinsed the straight razor under the tap.
“Thank you, Pie.” He drew the fine blade over the curve of his cheek, removing the thick shadow of stubble that the disposables he used for quick clean ups during the week missed. The whole process took him about an hour--first the razor, then scissors to carefully trim the moustache and beard.
“Don’t fucking ‘Pie’ me.” It was hard to take him seriously when he was yawning. “I don’t know why you don’t just shave the whole damn ugly thing off.” Pietro had made it very clear on more than one occasion that he hated Dominic’s facial hair... and Wednesdays. Dominic still wasn’t sure how he felt. Angry. Devastated. Nauseous. Those were a few.
“Because it is my beard, not yours.” That was not the whole truth, it wasn’t really just Dominic’s beard either, but he and Pietro rarely dealt in complete honesty with each other. It was easier for the both of them that way.
“I don’t suppose this week you’re going to tell me where you’re going.” After he finished shaving, Dominic would leave the Brotherhood for about six hours. He went completely off the radar. No cell phone, no GPS tracker, nothing.
“You could always follow me.” Dominic wasn't stupid. He travelled by public transit, and Pietro could've easily found out where he went if he really wanted to. Dominic held the suspicion that he was afraid to find out though, and that kept the speedster at bay.
Pietro narrowed his eyes. "I shouldn't have to." A gust. Cupboards slammed noisily in the kitchen and Dominic wondered what he’d have to do to make up for his trip this week. Pietro’s insecurities could be trying at times. Though a heaping amount of the blame for this fell onto Magneto’s shoulders, Dominic supposed part of it was his fault. He loved Pietro, but he could never show it as much as he should have.
Dominic sighed, working up a lather with the ancient brush. Today wasn’t about Pietro, it was about her. The razor made a sound like sandpaper as he drew it up his neck. She was why he carefully groomed his beard every Wednesday, and she was why he could never be easy with his affection with Pietro. He was still in love with her.
He'd been nineteen, though the ID in his wallet said 23. He was Mike Miller, from upstate. Having a fake licence had been so frivolous then, not pertinent to any other mission than being drunk and young and stupid. Dominic longed to go back to that moment, when everything was simple, several years before the Brotherhood, several minutes before he met her. If he could've done it again, would he have ignored the junker haphazardly pulled over on the road, smoke seeping out of its hood, would he have walked right past to another convenience store? It was hard to say. Some days, emphatically yes; others, he couldn't even bear to hypothetically do that to her.
To be honest, he had walked right by her at first, in a hurry because he was already late to meet some of the guys from work for a drink or twelve. She was nothing special--the girl standing over the engine when he'd popped into the store to buy some cigarettes --one of the million plain fish in New York City's giant sea. Blonde, curve-less, thick framed glasses and a sour expression. He wouldn’t have spared her a second glance had he not seen her struggling to open the pressure cap on her clearly still hot radiator, knee on the front bumper, using the hem of her half hiked-up skirt as a rag.
Professional pride and a modicum of teenage cockiness had made him step in. He’d been apprenticing at Aldephos’ shop, and he was only four months away now from earning his full mechanic’s licence. Despite being nearly ten years his senior, his cousin Adelphos was like a brother to him. Dominikos was nine when he came to America to live with his mother’s sister and her husband and their son, when the family in Crete had become too much for his own mother to provide for alone. His father had just walked out one night and hadn’t returned.
Dominikos was the youngest, and he had been volunteered; his older siblings already on their way to supporting themselves. His mother had only done it because she thought it would be better for him in the end. He understood, even at that age, but it hadn’t made it any less terrifying. Adelphos had always been there for him, right from teaching him English to helping him pay for his technical diploma to giving him his first apprenticeship. Dominikos had no doubt in his mind that all he ever wanted to do in life was fix cars for Adelphos. Cars were easy to figure out, at least for him. Clearly not for the girl who was swearing and sweating with equal proficiency now as she threw her weight against the cap.
“I would not do that if I were you.”
"I know what I'm doing." She shoved a damp strand of hair out of her eyes and glared hard at him before turning back to the smoking radiator. "Think that just because you have a penis..." The rest of her sentence trailed off into a vaguely murderous grumble.
"You obviously do not need my help at the moment. But I will leave my card so you can call me if you do." He set it face up on the battery. He was so proud he had business cards, five hundred of them to be exact. Adelphos had gotten them printed his first week. So far, Dominikos had only given them out to his friends. He didn’t exactly do a lot of networking.
"Yeah, I'll get right on that."
"If you open that rad cap, it will be a number you will be glad to have. Unfortunately, I do not have one for the burn ward of the hospital. Perhaps I should look it up before I go, yes? Or would that be too much help?"
That was enough to make her stop. She lifted her head, reading aloud, "'Dominikos I. Petros, Automotive Service Technician.'" She started kneading her forehead with her hand. "Of course you are."
"Now, I would not make the assumption you are not a skilled world-class mechanic." He leaned easily against the hood, fanning smoke with his hand. "I am still working on my apprenticeship, however. It would be very beneficial if I could tell you what I would do in a situation such as this, and then you could tell me if it was correct."
"I suppose." He thought he caught a hint of a smile.
"I would say that there is probably a leak in one of the radiator lines and you have lost the fluid. The best plan would be to let the engine cool for an hour, maybe two. Have a drink and something to eat at that pub on the corner--apprentice buys, of course, in appreciation of the lesson. Then you would fill the reserve with water and drive home, presuming it is not too far. Tomorrow, you would bring the car by the shop after five, and let me find and fix the line with the problem. Training for me. Very good for my professional development."
"Mmm." She nodded sagely. "Bonus question time. If it was radiator fluid--and I'm not saying you're right here, just so you know--would that have been a giant green puddle under my car when I pulled out of the parking spot?"
"Tricky." It wasn't a hard question at all, but Dominikos tapped his chin thoughtfully all the same. "I am going to go with 'yes.' So what do you think?"
"It's my professional opinion that you have a bright future in the automotive repair industry, Dominikos."
"I meant about the drink, uh...?"
"Helen." The name should have made Dominikos think ‘of Troy’, but with a temper like that, the first thing that popped into his mind was the volcano. It was her turn to look thoughtful. "Do you have a quarter?"
"I am already buying you dinner."
"Funny." She rolled her eyes. "I need to call my roommate."
Dominikos dutifully dug some change out of his pocket. She plucked the coin from his open palm and went to use the pay phone outside the convenience store.
"Hey it's me... Terrible. Totally stood me up... Yeah. Waited for an hour. I didn't shave my legs to put up with that kind of bullshit.... pff, I don't care if you’re busy saving babies and puppies from burning airplanes that are about to crash into a pit of venomous snakes, you call the restaurant. That's just common courtesy...The best part of my night, the crapmobile decides to explode on me on the way home... Nah, some mechanic stopped and is randomly buying me dinner... I dunno. Probably a serial killer or something. Get a pen...Dominikos Petros, of Kritikos Auto and Truck Service Center. If he murders me, avenge my death. It'll give you an excuse to wear those tights you bought." She glanced over at him, and Dominikos tried to look as un-eavesdropping as possible. He stared gravely at the engine in faux concentration. "Yeah, he's kinda cute. Not really my type...Well, it can't get much worse, right?... Fuck off. Since when was I the optimist in this friendship? ...You too, hun. Bye."
Dominikos shut the hood as she walked back over. "Ready?"
"Mhrm. You know, next time, I'll just conference you in on the call. Wouldn't want you to snap your neck straining to listen to private conversations." Dominikos blanched, but she kept right on walking to the pub and he jogged to keep up.
"So you know, I would never murder a girl before the third date."
She grinned genuinely at him, and the effect produced such a change in her features that he wanted nothing more at that moment than to keep that look on her face. "Good. I'm not some loose being-murdered woman, giving up my living all over town."
"I would never suggest such a thing."
She took a seat opposite him in the booth. Dominikos was pleasantly surprised when she ordered a beer and a burger. He was sick of the martini and salad crowd that frequented the clubs the guys from work always wanted to go to. The waitress scrutinized his ID, making him spell 'his' last name and cite 'his' zip code before she would serve him. Helen raised an eyebrow after she walked away from the table. "Somehow I don't think Petros is spelt M-I-L-L-E-R."
"The Greeks, we play very fast and loose with our spelling. Sometimes I even throw in a 'Z.'"
Her face locked in the same expression Dominikos had hoped was only reserved for exploding car parts. “So, here’s what I’m thinking. One, you’re actually legitimately a serial killer, in which case, I’m ordering the biggest dessert on the menu. My life is definitely worth a--” She flipped open the menu. “Cocoa Caramel Ice Cream Brownie Explosion sized dent in your wallet. Or two, you’re actually some freakishly brawny sixteen year old and this is the portion of my evening where cops descend on the table. Because who else has a fake ID but underagers?”
“Secret agents?” He liked making her smile.
Helen was twenty-two, and had just graduated from university. She was working her first career job as a biological archivist in bowels of the American Museum of Natural History and, on weekends, as a cashier at a grocery store. She liked moths--which Dominikos would discover was an understatement months later, when she finally invited him up to her apartment, and dozens of spotless glass cases filled with winged, pinned specimens hung from the walls of her bedroom: “Don’t give me that look, Dom, it’s no different than all those vintage hubcaps you keep under your bed...”--ice cream, and B-horror movies; she hated cyclists who thought they owned the road, grocery carts with broken wheels, and cooked, but not raw, green peppers.
Helen only brought her car into him after that night. First for the radiator, but then it was the valve cover gasket, and the shock bushings, and a million other small things he found as he worked. Dominikos would have almost accused her of breaking parts on purpose if her car hadn't been such a beater. He did it after hours and never charged her for the labour. Adelphos didn’t mind leaving him to lock up. Sometimes she brought pizza and beer, and once, she jokingly referred to their nights together as dates. He didn’t see her for almost a month after she said that.
Dominikos was never happier in his life that Atlanta lost the 1999 World Series to New York, which was saying a lot. He loved the Braves, and Adelphos was a diehard Yankees fan. They had a bet going that involved a lot of oil pan cleaning, gloating rights, and the loser not shaving for two weeks. One thing the men in their family were exceptionally good at was growing a prolific amount of hair, and he was twelve days into an itchy, bushy mess when Helen came in again-- the flywheel on her starter.
She stroked her own chin, sitting on the low red cabinet as Dominikos set out the tools he needed, trying to look unembarrassed when the last of his co-workers whistled at them as he left for the day. “So, this is...new.”
“I am well aware that I look ridiculous. There is no need to rub it in.” He spun the wrench in his hand, leaning next to her. “I lost a bet.”
“No, I like it. You definitely need a trim, but it makes you look less... what’s the word I’m looking for here... jailbait-y?”
That was the night they’d first kissed. Two years before a breathless, “Yes! Finally,” outside the convenience store where they’d met. He barely remembered the wedding, all heady words that did nothing but amplify the joy in his chest, in his bones. Open bar. All that had mattered was that she was his now. Everything else was unimportant.
They had a perfect year after that, living in a beat up apartment downtown, sleeping on a futon mattress on the floor. A few stupid fights that newlyweds always had... God, if he had known, he would’ve cleaned up every single beard hair he left on the counter, picked up every sock that made it near but not quite into the hamper. But he couldn’t have possibly known, and that first year had still been absolutely wonderful. He was thankful for that, even now.
Things began to change. Dominikos had had to cope with migraines since he was fifteen-- blinding, throbbing pain that would come up unexpectedly and incapacitate him for hours or days at a time--he'd just never had anyone to worry about them before. Adelphos knew, of course; he'd had to take off time from work because of them, but he'd managed to keep it a secret from Helen. He would make up some excuse about being tired and apologize profusely for cancelling plans the next day, and for about two weeks after that. Helen could be a bit stubborn when it came to forgiving him. The headaches only happened once or twice a year and he didn’t want to make her anxious unnecessarily. He was managing. Until the day he couldn’t.
It had been a disaster of an anniversary. Dominikos had made the reservations weeks before, somewhere swank and uptown and entirely not their usual style. Adelphos had officered him partnership in the business, and he’d been saving up the news and the money for the night. He had wanted to surprise Helen, impress her still now, even though she’d seen him at his worst and nothing was a mystery between them anymore. He’d wanted to make everything special for her.
Helen had been in the bathroom doing... whatever it was she did in there that took half an hour, while he flicked through channels on the sofa. The headache arrived swift and vicious and worse than Dominikos had ever remembered. All he wanted was to lie down in the dark, but she’d come out then, slightly awkward in the dress and heels she seldom wore, and he just didn’t have the heart. “You are as lovely as the day I married you, Mrs. Petros.”
A blush, but a wry grin. “I’m definitely not going to let myself go until we hit the five year mark, make sure you’re really locked in. Then it’s all chocolate ice cream, all the time. That’s what I want for our fifth anniversary, by the way. Industrial sized freezer.” She kissed him softly on the nose, and Dominikos did his best to smile.
“Trust me. I am locked in.” He cupped her face in his hands, kissing her in earnest. “I will just use the bathroom, and then we will go, yes?” The four Advils he dry swallowed from the medicine cabinet carried him halfway through their entrees, when a woman at the next table scraped her knife across her plate and Dominikos was sure he was going to die. The moan had slipped out, anguished and loud enough to earn the curious stares of their fellow diners, and the maitre d’ had asked them to leave, assuming Dominikos had perhaps had a bit too much champagne. They spent three hours in the E.R. waiting room, Dominikos trying not to cry from the pain while Helen rubbed his back in small circles and told him to stop apologizing.
Everything started to get worse after that night, the migraines coming more severe and more frequent. Dominikos didn't understand it, and neither did anyone else. The MRIs and CAT Scans and doctors and specialists Helen made him go to turned up nothing but bills and debt. He had to give up smoking and drinking. He limited his sodium, his sugar, his red meat, and anything else that made him happy. He was living like an old man at twenty-three, and still the headaches kept coming. There would be whole weeks he would have to miss work. Dominikos was racked with guilt and eventually backed out of the partnership in spite of Adelphos’ protests, returning to just being a mechanic. Then the doctors took that away from him too, in case the trigger was the fumes from the garage.
Helen had actually guessed it, once. She was always too smart for him. He’d gone a few weeks without a headache, and they’d been joking about it at the dinner table. Despite everything, there were still good times. They were so happy together. She had read an article in one of her biology journals about the possibility of humans evolving.
“So really,” she had said around a mouthful of macaroni and cheese, “maybe it’s because you have super powers or something. You could be a total hero and take out bad guys.”
“By lying down and moaning?”
“It’s very intimidating. I don’t know, this Dr. McCoy was taking about concussive eye beams and wings and reading people’s minds and stuff. It was crazy.” Of course, they had laughed it off and he didn’t think about it until almost a year later, when the man in the helmet was standing over his hospital bed.
Helen had been nothing short of amazing. She took extra shifts at the museum to keep them afloat, since any new job he tried to get inevitably fired him the first time he had to take a week’s worth of sick leave after only working there a short while. She brought him ice packs for his neck and Advil and sat with him in the dark bedroom for hours. She did her best to keep him from getting down on himself, which was the hardest part. He just felt so useless and so frustrated at his own body for betraying him. He tried to help out around the house as best he could, but it was never enough for everything she did for him.
And then his world had ended.
It had been a Wednesday night. Helen was working late again and Dominikos had been folding socks in the early evening when he felt the familiar crushing pressure begin to build behind his eyes. He’d abandoned the laundry immediately and gone to lie down in hopes that, maybe just this once, it would pass. Later, he would look back and wonder if he actually fell asleep, or if the hours just blended together from the ache. He relived that night too many times in the months and years that followed.
Dominikos swallowed the bile in his throat, trying to separate the ringing in his ears from the ringing of the phone on the bedside table. The digital display of the clock read 10:43. The floor pitched dangerously as he sat up. It would be Helen. She had left him the car that day so he could get groceries, and he was supposed to pick her up when she had finished work. He managed a fairly normal sounding "Mm?" into the receiver.
"Hey, it's me. I'll be done in half an hour, you ready to come get me?"
He focussed, trying his best to keep the pain out of his voice. "Yes."
It was amazing how well Helen knew him, to gather so much from the single syllable. "Dom, go back to bed. I'll take the subway. You know the doctor doesn't want you to drive when you get a migraine."
"The doctor does not want me to do anything!" Dominikos heard Helen sigh on the end of the line and instantly felt bad about snapping. “I am sorry.” Though she never let on, he knew she had to be just as frustrated as he was, about everything. “I just do not like you to be out this late alone."
"No, I know." Her voice was sad. “Don’t worry, okay? I’ll be fine; you just take care of you. Lie down and I’ll be home in no time, alright? Love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Pinned against a building--that's what the police officers had said when they knocked on the apartment door. Dominikos couldn't help but stare at all her moths, dead and run through with metal in their glass cases. He had been pacing the floor for hours, the headache throbbing but secondary to the pit of worry making him sick to his stomach. When the buzzer finally rang, he’d been hoping she had just forgotten her keys again. The breaks on a BMW had failed and skidded over the sidewalk. Helen had never even made it to the subway station.
Ten months in a haze-- grief blurring and dragging and speeding up the time. He barely remembered the funeral, all empty words that did nothing to dull the ache in his chest, in his bones. Closed casket. All that mattered was that she was gone now. Everything else was unimportant.
He went through the motions. He barely left their apartment, his apartment, no, their apartment. If he had just... there were a million scenarios that filled in that blank, but none of them mattered because she was never going to walk through that door again. Her clothes still hung in the closet. He slept on the couch. He couldn't face the bed. He couldn't face anything.
The headaches had stopped. Probably. Maybe he was just numb to them that ten months, numb to everything but the consumptive loss. He didn't know. And he was tying his tie. And he was sitting in a courtroom and time was clicking back to him in sharp reality as some slick lawyer--Kelly, was it?--talked a judge out of justice for his wife.
Dominikos loathed the man who sat in the defendant’s chair. He’d seen the type come into the garage so many times, trying to bribe their way through the safety inspection. They bought a fifty thousand dollar vehicle and then drove it into the ground, taking shortcuts with repairs because they couldn’t really afford it in the first place.
Dominikos had called in favours around the city in the weeks after Helen’s death, obsessively checking junkyards until he found the BMW. The brake rotors had been turned. That couldn’t be done on imports; they had to be replaced at the same time as the pads because the metal wasn’t as thick as it was on American cars. Any mechanic knew that, but sometimes they turned the other way if the payoff was good enough. The man clearly thought that Helen’s life had been worth it to save the eleven hundred dollars. He didn’t even look genuinely sorry. Two bailiffs had had to drag Dominikos out when the judge had let him off. Not even a fine.
He was kicked out of the cab when he threw up on the ride home, the migraine bringing waves of nausea and sobbing with it. Dominikos didn’t know how he made it back to the apartment. Days lying on couch in blinding, torturous agony. There would be knocking on his door, but Dominikos couldn’t bring himself to move, to do anything.
The phone woke him up, his head still throbbing behind his eyes, but dulled just enough that he could think for the first time in a week. The answering machine clicked to life after the sixth ring, and Dominikos clenched his stomach, bracing himself on the sofa cushions. He always wanted to hear her voice. He always couldn't bear to hear her voice. "Hi, you've reached Helen and Dominikos! We're not in right now...um, obviously, I guess." She was always so awkward on the phone. His breath hitched in his throat. "But we'll give you a call back as soon as we can. Take care!"
Adelphos' voice next, hesitant, with a note of pleading. "’Nikos, pick up, I know you're there. We're all worried about you, man. We...listen, I'm going to drop by again after work, okay? Just please answer the door this time." There was a pause. "You don't have to do this alone."
But he was alone, because she was gone. The apartment was so empty, everything, everything was so empty without her and he couldn’t stand it for another second. No one understood. Nothing would make anything right anymore. All he had was the pain in his head and the pain in his heart, and neither of them would go away, and he didn’t know which one was going to kill him first but he prayed that it would be soon.
He was standing on the sidewalk outside the address he had found in the glove box of the BMW months before, shaking with rage and desperation. People were looking at him. He didn’t give a damn. He hadn’t even locked the apartment behind him when he’d left. Dominikos didn’t know what he was going to do. Something. Something to make him pay. Something to make the pain go away.
He dropped to his knees as a fresh surge of agony rolled in with the anger. A blonde woman with dark framed glasses had stopped and asked if he was alright. But he wasn’t. His head was ripping apart. The ground began to shake around him and instinctually Dominikos knew he was causing it, that this was tied to the migraines that had plagued him since puberty, but he didn’t stop the waves he was sure were pouring out from his own two hands. It seemed insane. Maybe he had lost it. There was so much screaming and he should have been running with the rest of the crowd but all he could do was smile as the building collapsed in front of him, on top of him, and the pressure in his head finally released.
He was just another victim when they pulled him from the rubble. He had no ID on him, and he gave the paramedics a fake name as they loaded him into the ambulance, something he could remember if they asked for it again. Dominic. He didn’t want Helen, Adelphos, anyone but him to be tied to this when people eventually found out he was the cause of the disaster. If he was the cause. The whole thing seemed outlandish and unbelievable and he couldn’t help but think that the stress of everything had finally gotten to him.
“Two hundred and twelve confirmed fatalities in a bizarre earthquake that devastated a lower eastside neighbourhood earlier this evening.” He was lying in the hospital bed, left leg full of pins and rods and suspended in traction, watching the news. He felt oddly detached, satisfied even. Two hundred and twelve families sharing his loss. It helped knowing that the man who killed Helen was probably dead. Or maybe he wasn’t. But maybe someone he loved was. Maybe he was still alive and he finally knew the pain he had caused Dominic. That would be better. Helen had told him once he could be a hero, but he didn’t think he could be, not without her. She would have been so disappointed in him for thinking like that. He was disappointed in himself, but he couldn’t stop the hatred now anymore than he could the migraines before. It was consuming him. “Rescue crews continue to search for survivors. Geologists are baffled by the quake, which registered a 6.1 on the Richter Magnitude Scale, unprecedented for this area. More updates as we continue to receive them. In other news, local attorney Robert Kelly announced his intention to run for Senator in the upcoming election yesterday afternoon.” The lawyer from the trial. “His platform includes a strong agenda agai--”
There was a brilliant flash of purple, and a strange looking girl and an older man were suddenly in his room. Of course he had accepted the position with the Brotherhood when he had been offered that night; Dominic had nothing to go back to. An empty apartment. Overdue bills. The pitying stares of Adelphos and the rest of his family. Erik had promised to help him harness his new found power-it was a power, a latent mutation; he wasn’t going crazy-to give Dominic the means to make things right for what had happened to Helen. It had been the easy decision of a desperate, confused man, and he didn’t regret it for one instant.
He carefully wiped the scissors on the face cloth, setting them on the edge of the sink to dry. Pietro’s flurry in the kitchen had lost a bit of its steam and Dominic determined it was safe to get a cup of coffee. He straightened his tie in the mirror. He liked to look nice on his weekly visit to Helen’s grave, impress her still now, even though she’d seen him at his worst and nothing could ever be a mystery between them anymore. He wanted to make everything special for her.
Pietro perceptibly ignored him, practically staring a hole into the front page of the paper when he entered but not lifting his eyes to acknowledge Dominic’s presence. There was a cup with two sugars set out next to the pot for him and the simple gesture sent him leaning onto the counter for support. Dominic was so stupid. He sighed. Pietro looked up finally, scowling at him.
“I would like if you would come with me today, Pie. I need you to meet someone.”
Title: Coming to at Dawn
Summary: Dominic trims his moustache and beard. Angsty. (No...seriously.) Copious abuse of pre-BOM Dominikos flashbacks. (For andthexmen’s Off-Season Fic Off #5--Backstory)
Rating: M for language and themes.
Character: Avalanche/Dominic centric. Others mentioned.
Pairing: Dominic/Pietro, Dominic/Helen.
Warnings: Mildly slashy. Possibly triggering stuff. Relatively dark.
Thanks: To manikaitwing for mollifying my Sue fears.
Disclaimer: Marvel owns everybody and everything.
A/N: Rampant Villain Obsession, meet Fiction. Fic, this is Villain Obsession. Oh, look, Crackship showed up to the party too. Oh no, my OTP is showing! :: whispers :: How embarrassing.
A little Dom/Pie heavy at the beginning and end, because I mostly can’t help it. Helen is actually a Marvel character, though she’s mentioned in the handbook ... like twice, and has never appeared on panel. I thought this might make sense for Dominic, because I’d peg him around late twenties/early thirties probably. ::shrugs:: Total crack for WatXM, but I like exploring what makes people join “the bad guys.”
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“Coffee’s on.” Pietro’s reflection glared at him from the mirror, standing cross-armed in the doorway of the bathroom, backlit by the dawn creeping through the hall window. Pietro was not a morning person, and on every other day of the week he slept late. It was a familiar repeat of every Wednesday since Dominic had joined the Brotherhood, and he found himself taking comfort in the routine of Pietro’s nosy, ill-disguised hostility. Dominic carefully rinsed the straight razor under the tap.
“Thank you, Pie.” He drew the fine blade over the curve of his cheek, removing the thick shadow of stubble that the disposables he used for quick clean ups during the week missed. The whole process took him about an hour--first the razor, then scissors to carefully trim the moustache and beard.
“Don’t fucking ‘Pie’ me.” It was hard to take him seriously when he was yawning. “I don’t know why you don’t just shave the whole damn ugly thing off.” Pietro had made it very clear on more than one occasion that he hated Dominic’s facial hair... and Wednesdays. Dominic still wasn’t sure how he felt. Angry. Devastated. Nauseous. Those were a few.
“Because it is my beard, not yours.” That was not the whole truth, it wasn’t really just Dominic’s beard either, but he and Pietro rarely dealt in complete honesty with each other. It was easier for the both of them that way.
“I don’t suppose this week you’re going to tell me where you’re going.” After he finished shaving, Dominic would leave the Brotherhood for about six hours. He went completely off the radar. No cell phone, no GPS tracker, nothing.
“You could always follow me.” Dominic wasn't stupid. He travelled by public transit, and Pietro could've easily found out where he went if he really wanted to. Dominic held the suspicion that he was afraid to find out though, and that kept the speedster at bay.
Pietro narrowed his eyes. "I shouldn't have to." A gust. Cupboards slammed noisily in the kitchen and Dominic wondered what he’d have to do to make up for his trip this week. Pietro’s insecurities could be trying at times. Though a heaping amount of the blame for this fell onto Magneto’s shoulders, Dominic supposed part of it was his fault. He loved Pietro, but he could never show it as much as he should have.
Dominic sighed, working up a lather with the ancient brush. Today wasn’t about Pietro, it was about her. The razor made a sound like sandpaper as he drew it up his neck. She was why he carefully groomed his beard every Wednesday, and she was why he could never be easy with his affection with Pietro. He was still in love with her.
He'd been nineteen, though the ID in his wallet said 23. He was Mike Miller, from upstate. Having a fake licence had been so frivolous then, not pertinent to any other mission than being drunk and young and stupid. Dominic longed to go back to that moment, when everything was simple, several years before the Brotherhood, several minutes before he met her. If he could've done it again, would he have ignored the junker haphazardly pulled over on the road, smoke seeping out of its hood, would he have walked right past to another convenience store? It was hard to say. Some days, emphatically yes; others, he couldn't even bear to hypothetically do that to her.
To be honest, he had walked right by her at first, in a hurry because he was already late to meet some of the guys from work for a drink or twelve. She was nothing special--the girl standing over the engine when he'd popped into the store to buy some cigarettes --one of the million plain fish in New York City's giant sea. Blonde, curve-less, thick framed glasses and a sour expression. He wouldn’t have spared her a second glance had he not seen her struggling to open the pressure cap on her clearly still hot radiator, knee on the front bumper, using the hem of her half hiked-up skirt as a rag.
Professional pride and a modicum of teenage cockiness had made him step in. He’d been apprenticing at Aldephos’ shop, and he was only four months away now from earning his full mechanic’s licence. Despite being nearly ten years his senior, his cousin Adelphos was like a brother to him. Dominikos was nine when he came to America to live with his mother’s sister and her husband and their son, when the family in Crete had become too much for his own mother to provide for alone. His father had just walked out one night and hadn’t returned.
Dominikos was the youngest, and he had been volunteered; his older siblings already on their way to supporting themselves. His mother had only done it because she thought it would be better for him in the end. He understood, even at that age, but it hadn’t made it any less terrifying. Adelphos had always been there for him, right from teaching him English to helping him pay for his technical diploma to giving him his first apprenticeship. Dominikos had no doubt in his mind that all he ever wanted to do in life was fix cars for Adelphos. Cars were easy to figure out, at least for him. Clearly not for the girl who was swearing and sweating with equal proficiency now as she threw her weight against the cap.
“I would not do that if I were you.”
"I know what I'm doing." She shoved a damp strand of hair out of her eyes and glared hard at him before turning back to the smoking radiator. "Think that just because you have a penis..." The rest of her sentence trailed off into a vaguely murderous grumble.
"You obviously do not need my help at the moment. But I will leave my card so you can call me if you do." He set it face up on the battery. He was so proud he had business cards, five hundred of them to be exact. Adelphos had gotten them printed his first week. So far, Dominikos had only given them out to his friends. He didn’t exactly do a lot of networking.
"Yeah, I'll get right on that."
"If you open that rad cap, it will be a number you will be glad to have. Unfortunately, I do not have one for the burn ward of the hospital. Perhaps I should look it up before I go, yes? Or would that be too much help?"
That was enough to make her stop. She lifted her head, reading aloud, "'Dominikos I. Petros, Automotive Service Technician.'" She started kneading her forehead with her hand. "Of course you are."
"Now, I would not make the assumption you are not a skilled world-class mechanic." He leaned easily against the hood, fanning smoke with his hand. "I am still working on my apprenticeship, however. It would be very beneficial if I could tell you what I would do in a situation such as this, and then you could tell me if it was correct."
"I suppose." He thought he caught a hint of a smile.
"I would say that there is probably a leak in one of the radiator lines and you have lost the fluid. The best plan would be to let the engine cool for an hour, maybe two. Have a drink and something to eat at that pub on the corner--apprentice buys, of course, in appreciation of the lesson. Then you would fill the reserve with water and drive home, presuming it is not too far. Tomorrow, you would bring the car by the shop after five, and let me find and fix the line with the problem. Training for me. Very good for my professional development."
"Mmm." She nodded sagely. "Bonus question time. If it was radiator fluid--and I'm not saying you're right here, just so you know--would that have been a giant green puddle under my car when I pulled out of the parking spot?"
"Tricky." It wasn't a hard question at all, but Dominikos tapped his chin thoughtfully all the same. "I am going to go with 'yes.' So what do you think?"
"It's my professional opinion that you have a bright future in the automotive repair industry, Dominikos."
"I meant about the drink, uh...?"
"Helen." The name should have made Dominikos think ‘of Troy’, but with a temper like that, the first thing that popped into his mind was the volcano. It was her turn to look thoughtful. "Do you have a quarter?"
"I am already buying you dinner."
"Funny." She rolled her eyes. "I need to call my roommate."
Dominikos dutifully dug some change out of his pocket. She plucked the coin from his open palm and went to use the pay phone outside the convenience store.
"Hey it's me... Terrible. Totally stood me up... Yeah. Waited for an hour. I didn't shave my legs to put up with that kind of bullshit.... pff, I don't care if you’re busy saving babies and puppies from burning airplanes that are about to crash into a pit of venomous snakes, you call the restaurant. That's just common courtesy...The best part of my night, the crapmobile decides to explode on me on the way home... Nah, some mechanic stopped and is randomly buying me dinner... I dunno. Probably a serial killer or something. Get a pen...Dominikos Petros, of Kritikos Auto and Truck Service Center. If he murders me, avenge my death. It'll give you an excuse to wear those tights you bought." She glanced over at him, and Dominikos tried to look as un-eavesdropping as possible. He stared gravely at the engine in faux concentration. "Yeah, he's kinda cute. Not really my type...Well, it can't get much worse, right?... Fuck off. Since when was I the optimist in this friendship? ...You too, hun. Bye."
Dominikos shut the hood as she walked back over. "Ready?"
"Mhrm. You know, next time, I'll just conference you in on the call. Wouldn't want you to snap your neck straining to listen to private conversations." Dominikos blanched, but she kept right on walking to the pub and he jogged to keep up.
"So you know, I would never murder a girl before the third date."
She grinned genuinely at him, and the effect produced such a change in her features that he wanted nothing more at that moment than to keep that look on her face. "Good. I'm not some loose being-murdered woman, giving up my living all over town."
"I would never suggest such a thing."
She took a seat opposite him in the booth. Dominikos was pleasantly surprised when she ordered a beer and a burger. He was sick of the martini and salad crowd that frequented the clubs the guys from work always wanted to go to. The waitress scrutinized his ID, making him spell 'his' last name and cite 'his' zip code before she would serve him. Helen raised an eyebrow after she walked away from the table. "Somehow I don't think Petros is spelt M-I-L-L-E-R."
"The Greeks, we play very fast and loose with our spelling. Sometimes I even throw in a 'Z.'"
Her face locked in the same expression Dominikos had hoped was only reserved for exploding car parts. “So, here’s what I’m thinking. One, you’re actually legitimately a serial killer, in which case, I’m ordering the biggest dessert on the menu. My life is definitely worth a--” She flipped open the menu. “Cocoa Caramel Ice Cream Brownie Explosion sized dent in your wallet. Or two, you’re actually some freakishly brawny sixteen year old and this is the portion of my evening where cops descend on the table. Because who else has a fake ID but underagers?”
“Secret agents?” He liked making her smile.
Helen was twenty-two, and had just graduated from university. She was working her first career job as a biological archivist in bowels of the American Museum of Natural History and, on weekends, as a cashier at a grocery store. She liked moths--which Dominikos would discover was an understatement months later, when she finally invited him up to her apartment, and dozens of spotless glass cases filled with winged, pinned specimens hung from the walls of her bedroom: “Don’t give me that look, Dom, it’s no different than all those vintage hubcaps you keep under your bed...”--ice cream, and B-horror movies; she hated cyclists who thought they owned the road, grocery carts with broken wheels, and cooked, but not raw, green peppers.
Helen only brought her car into him after that night. First for the radiator, but then it was the valve cover gasket, and the shock bushings, and a million other small things he found as he worked. Dominikos would have almost accused her of breaking parts on purpose if her car hadn't been such a beater. He did it after hours and never charged her for the labour. Adelphos didn’t mind leaving him to lock up. Sometimes she brought pizza and beer, and once, she jokingly referred to their nights together as dates. He didn’t see her for almost a month after she said that.
Dominikos was never happier in his life that Atlanta lost the 1999 World Series to New York, which was saying a lot. He loved the Braves, and Adelphos was a diehard Yankees fan. They had a bet going that involved a lot of oil pan cleaning, gloating rights, and the loser not shaving for two weeks. One thing the men in their family were exceptionally good at was growing a prolific amount of hair, and he was twelve days into an itchy, bushy mess when Helen came in again-- the flywheel on her starter.
She stroked her own chin, sitting on the low red cabinet as Dominikos set out the tools he needed, trying to look unembarrassed when the last of his co-workers whistled at them as he left for the day. “So, this is...new.”
“I am well aware that I look ridiculous. There is no need to rub it in.” He spun the wrench in his hand, leaning next to her. “I lost a bet.”
“No, I like it. You definitely need a trim, but it makes you look less... what’s the word I’m looking for here... jailbait-y?”
That was the night they’d first kissed. Two years before a breathless, “Yes! Finally,” outside the convenience store where they’d met. He barely remembered the wedding, all heady words that did nothing but amplify the joy in his chest, in his bones. Open bar. All that had mattered was that she was his now. Everything else was unimportant.
They had a perfect year after that, living in a beat up apartment downtown, sleeping on a futon mattress on the floor. A few stupid fights that newlyweds always had... God, if he had known, he would’ve cleaned up every single beard hair he left on the counter, picked up every sock that made it near but not quite into the hamper. But he couldn’t have possibly known, and that first year had still been absolutely wonderful. He was thankful for that, even now.
Things began to change. Dominikos had had to cope with migraines since he was fifteen-- blinding, throbbing pain that would come up unexpectedly and incapacitate him for hours or days at a time--he'd just never had anyone to worry about them before. Adelphos knew, of course; he'd had to take off time from work because of them, but he'd managed to keep it a secret from Helen. He would make up some excuse about being tired and apologize profusely for cancelling plans the next day, and for about two weeks after that. Helen could be a bit stubborn when it came to forgiving him. The headaches only happened once or twice a year and he didn’t want to make her anxious unnecessarily. He was managing. Until the day he couldn’t.
It had been a disaster of an anniversary. Dominikos had made the reservations weeks before, somewhere swank and uptown and entirely not their usual style. Adelphos had officered him partnership in the business, and he’d been saving up the news and the money for the night. He had wanted to surprise Helen, impress her still now, even though she’d seen him at his worst and nothing was a mystery between them anymore. He’d wanted to make everything special for her.
Helen had been in the bathroom doing... whatever it was she did in there that took half an hour, while he flicked through channels on the sofa. The headache arrived swift and vicious and worse than Dominikos had ever remembered. All he wanted was to lie down in the dark, but she’d come out then, slightly awkward in the dress and heels she seldom wore, and he just didn’t have the heart. “You are as lovely as the day I married you, Mrs. Petros.”
A blush, but a wry grin. “I’m definitely not going to let myself go until we hit the five year mark, make sure you’re really locked in. Then it’s all chocolate ice cream, all the time. That’s what I want for our fifth anniversary, by the way. Industrial sized freezer.” She kissed him softly on the nose, and Dominikos did his best to smile.
“Trust me. I am locked in.” He cupped her face in his hands, kissing her in earnest. “I will just use the bathroom, and then we will go, yes?” The four Advils he dry swallowed from the medicine cabinet carried him halfway through their entrees, when a woman at the next table scraped her knife across her plate and Dominikos was sure he was going to die. The moan had slipped out, anguished and loud enough to earn the curious stares of their fellow diners, and the maitre d’ had asked them to leave, assuming Dominikos had perhaps had a bit too much champagne. They spent three hours in the E.R. waiting room, Dominikos trying not to cry from the pain while Helen rubbed his back in small circles and told him to stop apologizing.
Everything started to get worse after that night, the migraines coming more severe and more frequent. Dominikos didn't understand it, and neither did anyone else. The MRIs and CAT Scans and doctors and specialists Helen made him go to turned up nothing but bills and debt. He had to give up smoking and drinking. He limited his sodium, his sugar, his red meat, and anything else that made him happy. He was living like an old man at twenty-three, and still the headaches kept coming. There would be whole weeks he would have to miss work. Dominikos was racked with guilt and eventually backed out of the partnership in spite of Adelphos’ protests, returning to just being a mechanic. Then the doctors took that away from him too, in case the trigger was the fumes from the garage.
Helen had actually guessed it, once. She was always too smart for him. He’d gone a few weeks without a headache, and they’d been joking about it at the dinner table. Despite everything, there were still good times. They were so happy together. She had read an article in one of her biology journals about the possibility of humans evolving.
“So really,” she had said around a mouthful of macaroni and cheese, “maybe it’s because you have super powers or something. You could be a total hero and take out bad guys.”
“By lying down and moaning?”
“It’s very intimidating. I don’t know, this Dr. McCoy was taking about concussive eye beams and wings and reading people’s minds and stuff. It was crazy.” Of course, they had laughed it off and he didn’t think about it until almost a year later, when the man in the helmet was standing over his hospital bed.
Helen had been nothing short of amazing. She took extra shifts at the museum to keep them afloat, since any new job he tried to get inevitably fired him the first time he had to take a week’s worth of sick leave after only working there a short while. She brought him ice packs for his neck and Advil and sat with him in the dark bedroom for hours. She did her best to keep him from getting down on himself, which was the hardest part. He just felt so useless and so frustrated at his own body for betraying him. He tried to help out around the house as best he could, but it was never enough for everything she did for him.
And then his world had ended.
It had been a Wednesday night. Helen was working late again and Dominikos had been folding socks in the early evening when he felt the familiar crushing pressure begin to build behind his eyes. He’d abandoned the laundry immediately and gone to lie down in hopes that, maybe just this once, it would pass. Later, he would look back and wonder if he actually fell asleep, or if the hours just blended together from the ache. He relived that night too many times in the months and years that followed.
Dominikos swallowed the bile in his throat, trying to separate the ringing in his ears from the ringing of the phone on the bedside table. The digital display of the clock read 10:43. The floor pitched dangerously as he sat up. It would be Helen. She had left him the car that day so he could get groceries, and he was supposed to pick her up when she had finished work. He managed a fairly normal sounding "Mm?" into the receiver.
"Hey, it's me. I'll be done in half an hour, you ready to come get me?"
He focussed, trying his best to keep the pain out of his voice. "Yes."
It was amazing how well Helen knew him, to gather so much from the single syllable. "Dom, go back to bed. I'll take the subway. You know the doctor doesn't want you to drive when you get a migraine."
"The doctor does not want me to do anything!" Dominikos heard Helen sigh on the end of the line and instantly felt bad about snapping. “I am sorry.” Though she never let on, he knew she had to be just as frustrated as he was, about everything. “I just do not like you to be out this late alone."
"No, I know." Her voice was sad. “Don’t worry, okay? I’ll be fine; you just take care of you. Lie down and I’ll be home in no time, alright? Love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Pinned against a building--that's what the police officers had said when they knocked on the apartment door. Dominikos couldn't help but stare at all her moths, dead and run through with metal in their glass cases. He had been pacing the floor for hours, the headache throbbing but secondary to the pit of worry making him sick to his stomach. When the buzzer finally rang, he’d been hoping she had just forgotten her keys again. The breaks on a BMW had failed and skidded over the sidewalk. Helen had never even made it to the subway station.
Ten months in a haze-- grief blurring and dragging and speeding up the time. He barely remembered the funeral, all empty words that did nothing to dull the ache in his chest, in his bones. Closed casket. All that mattered was that she was gone now. Everything else was unimportant.
He went through the motions. He barely left their apartment, his apartment, no, their apartment. If he had just... there were a million scenarios that filled in that blank, but none of them mattered because she was never going to walk through that door again. Her clothes still hung in the closet. He slept on the couch. He couldn't face the bed. He couldn't face anything.
The headaches had stopped. Probably. Maybe he was just numb to them that ten months, numb to everything but the consumptive loss. He didn't know. And he was tying his tie. And he was sitting in a courtroom and time was clicking back to him in sharp reality as some slick lawyer--Kelly, was it?--talked a judge out of justice for his wife.
Dominikos loathed the man who sat in the defendant’s chair. He’d seen the type come into the garage so many times, trying to bribe their way through the safety inspection. They bought a fifty thousand dollar vehicle and then drove it into the ground, taking shortcuts with repairs because they couldn’t really afford it in the first place.
Dominikos had called in favours around the city in the weeks after Helen’s death, obsessively checking junkyards until he found the BMW. The brake rotors had been turned. That couldn’t be done on imports; they had to be replaced at the same time as the pads because the metal wasn’t as thick as it was on American cars. Any mechanic knew that, but sometimes they turned the other way if the payoff was good enough. The man clearly thought that Helen’s life had been worth it to save the eleven hundred dollars. He didn’t even look genuinely sorry. Two bailiffs had had to drag Dominikos out when the judge had let him off. Not even a fine.
He was kicked out of the cab when he threw up on the ride home, the migraine bringing waves of nausea and sobbing with it. Dominikos didn’t know how he made it back to the apartment. Days lying on couch in blinding, torturous agony. There would be knocking on his door, but Dominikos couldn’t bring himself to move, to do anything.
The phone woke him up, his head still throbbing behind his eyes, but dulled just enough that he could think for the first time in a week. The answering machine clicked to life after the sixth ring, and Dominikos clenched his stomach, bracing himself on the sofa cushions. He always wanted to hear her voice. He always couldn't bear to hear her voice. "Hi, you've reached Helen and Dominikos! We're not in right now...um, obviously, I guess." She was always so awkward on the phone. His breath hitched in his throat. "But we'll give you a call back as soon as we can. Take care!"
Adelphos' voice next, hesitant, with a note of pleading. "’Nikos, pick up, I know you're there. We're all worried about you, man. We...listen, I'm going to drop by again after work, okay? Just please answer the door this time." There was a pause. "You don't have to do this alone."
But he was alone, because she was gone. The apartment was so empty, everything, everything was so empty without her and he couldn’t stand it for another second. No one understood. Nothing would make anything right anymore. All he had was the pain in his head and the pain in his heart, and neither of them would go away, and he didn’t know which one was going to kill him first but he prayed that it would be soon.
He was standing on the sidewalk outside the address he had found in the glove box of the BMW months before, shaking with rage and desperation. People were looking at him. He didn’t give a damn. He hadn’t even locked the apartment behind him when he’d left. Dominikos didn’t know what he was going to do. Something. Something to make him pay. Something to make the pain go away.
He dropped to his knees as a fresh surge of agony rolled in with the anger. A blonde woman with dark framed glasses had stopped and asked if he was alright. But he wasn’t. His head was ripping apart. The ground began to shake around him and instinctually Dominikos knew he was causing it, that this was tied to the migraines that had plagued him since puberty, but he didn’t stop the waves he was sure were pouring out from his own two hands. It seemed insane. Maybe he had lost it. There was so much screaming and he should have been running with the rest of the crowd but all he could do was smile as the building collapsed in front of him, on top of him, and the pressure in his head finally released.
He was just another victim when they pulled him from the rubble. He had no ID on him, and he gave the paramedics a fake name as they loaded him into the ambulance, something he could remember if they asked for it again. Dominic. He didn’t want Helen, Adelphos, anyone but him to be tied to this when people eventually found out he was the cause of the disaster. If he was the cause. The whole thing seemed outlandish and unbelievable and he couldn’t help but think that the stress of everything had finally gotten to him.
“Two hundred and twelve confirmed fatalities in a bizarre earthquake that devastated a lower eastside neighbourhood earlier this evening.” He was lying in the hospital bed, left leg full of pins and rods and suspended in traction, watching the news. He felt oddly detached, satisfied even. Two hundred and twelve families sharing his loss. It helped knowing that the man who killed Helen was probably dead. Or maybe he wasn’t. But maybe someone he loved was. Maybe he was still alive and he finally knew the pain he had caused Dominic. That would be better. Helen had told him once he could be a hero, but he didn’t think he could be, not without her. She would have been so disappointed in him for thinking like that. He was disappointed in himself, but he couldn’t stop the hatred now anymore than he could the migraines before. It was consuming him. “Rescue crews continue to search for survivors. Geologists are baffled by the quake, which registered a 6.1 on the Richter Magnitude Scale, unprecedented for this area. More updates as we continue to receive them. In other news, local attorney Robert Kelly announced his intention to run for Senator in the upcoming election yesterday afternoon.” The lawyer from the trial. “His platform includes a strong agenda agai--”
There was a brilliant flash of purple, and a strange looking girl and an older man were suddenly in his room. Of course he had accepted the position with the Brotherhood when he had been offered that night; Dominic had nothing to go back to. An empty apartment. Overdue bills. The pitying stares of Adelphos and the rest of his family. Erik had promised to help him harness his new found power-it was a power, a latent mutation; he wasn’t going crazy-to give Dominic the means to make things right for what had happened to Helen. It had been the easy decision of a desperate, confused man, and he didn’t regret it for one instant.
He carefully wiped the scissors on the face cloth, setting them on the edge of the sink to dry. Pietro’s flurry in the kitchen had lost a bit of its steam and Dominic determined it was safe to get a cup of coffee. He straightened his tie in the mirror. He liked to look nice on his weekly visit to Helen’s grave, impress her still now, even though she’d seen him at his worst and nothing could ever be a mystery between them anymore. He wanted to make everything special for her.
Pietro perceptibly ignored him, practically staring a hole into the front page of the paper when he entered but not lifting his eyes to acknowledge Dominic’s presence. There was a cup with two sugars set out next to the pot for him and the simple gesture sent him leaning onto the counter for support. Dominic was so stupid. He sighed. Pietro looked up finally, scowling at him.
“I would like if you would come with me today, Pie. I need you to meet someone.”