Gravity pt. 3
Set a couple of weeks after the Astonishing X-Men Breakworld arc, Beast joins S.W.O.R.D. only to find that he and Special Agent Brand don't get along. PG-13, romance. Beast/Brand.
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It was always night in space. The thought only occurred to Henry as he woke up, sensing blurrily that he overslept. Even if there had been windows in his room, he wouldn’t have the sun to wake him, or the rolling hills below the mansion to greet him out his old window. He rubbed his eyes and checked the bedside clock. Two hours past when he said he’d be in the S.W.O.R.D. control room to learn the ropes. Why didn’t Brand send him a call? Did his refusal of her passes make her avoid him completely? Henry shook the thought from his head-she wasn’t like that.
He picked up yesterday’s pants from where they hung on the back of a chair, fishing out his S.W.O.R.D.-issue mobile phone. He scrolled through the pre-loaded list of contacts. Brand’s name was near the top. It rang five times before she picked up. “Br-Abigail? Is something going on? Why didn’t you call me when I was late?”
Her tone was curt. “Something came up. Thought you’d appreciate a little extra beauty sleep.”
He wondered if he would have time to shower. He peeked his head into his bathroom, and was disappointed by what he saw. The shower stall was tiny-he wouldn’t be able to move. “What happened?”
“Let’s meet somewhere and I could explain. How about the medbay? I haven’t shown you around there yet.”
Henry cleared his throat. “Actually… how big is your shower?” He waited for her to turn it into something lewd, but nothing came. “I’m not-I mean-it’s just-“
“Yeah, I get it.” Her tone was even more brittle than before. “I’ll get you some towels.”
Her door was open when he arrived, but Henry still felt compelled to knock. “Come in.” Brand sat on her bed with her back to him, taking off her kneepads and boots. She was right about the size of the rooms-in fact, hers was identical to his. For someone who rose through the ranks of S.W.O.R.D. to the top, who must have spent years there, the room was strangely depersonalized. She didn’t look up from what she was doing, but pointed to the end of the bed. “You can bring those towels back to your room when you’re done with the shower. They’re yours now.”
“Thanks.” He picked them up, but couldn’t help glancing out the sides of his eyes to see that the lines under Brand’s eyes had deepened. “You didn’t happen to get any sleep last night, did you.”
She swung her legs up on the bed and leaned against the headboard, closing her eyes. “There was a scuffle down in customs, an alien freaked out when we found contraband on his ship. Set off a minor bioweapon and holed himself up in the brig.”
“You should have called me. What happened?”
Brand shook her head. “You’re not officially part of the team yet. I’m not putting you in danger until you know what you’re doing.”
“I’m an X-Man! I’ve handled these kinds of situations before!”
Brand opened her eyes to fix him with a tired stare. “You signed on to work under me. I made the decision not to bring you in this time. Deal with it.”
Henry gritted his teeth. “Next time….”
“Yeah, maybe next time.” She picked up a box from her bedside stand and offered it to him.
He took it from her and opened it, revealing two syringes. “You made it sound like the bioweapon was contained.”
Brand fiddled with the zipper at her back. “It was, but we’re not taking any chances.” She bared a shoulder. Seeing the look on his face, she rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry, I’m not about to throw myself at you. I’m good with guns, but not needles.” Henry took a syringe out of the box, considering. “So would you be a gentleman and inoculate me?”
He sat on the bed beside her and opened one of the single squares of alcohol from its sterile wrapper. Peeling her uniform a little farther down her shoulder, he swabbed, then stopped. His fingers pried at the sleeve, curious. “Who’s Anna?”
Brand’s lips tightened, and her fingers fought with his to pull the sleeve back up over her tattoo. “It’s personal.”
Henry nodded knowingly. “And I assume if I’d asked last night, you would have told me.” He readied the needle. “You’re going to feel a pinch.”
Brand’s eyes met his. Behind the exhaustion was a mingling of emotions that just barely registered. Disappointment. Hurt. And… trust. “If you were in a position to see me with enough of my clothes off that you could see my tattoos? Yeah, maybe I would’ve been in a more sharing mood.”
He inserted the needle. Brand didn’t blink. “You have more than one?”
Brand raised her eyebrows. Taunting. “You’ll never know, will you.”
He withdrew the needle. “I suppose I could always look it up in your file.”
“What a boring way of finding out.”
Henry frowned at her shoulder as he applied a band-aid. “Abigail, I understand that what I said was not what you wanted. You’ve had about ten hours to mull it over now, and I’m sure the lack of sleep combined with yesterday’s concussion isn’t helping your mood. But it takes two willing parties to make something like that work, and I’m just not comfortable with… not with you, but with….” Thinking about it now, he couldn’t come up with a legitimate reason to resist her so strongly. “I’m just not comfortable.” He helped her back into her uniform. “But I would like it if we could be friends.” He put the syringe back in the box and went to pat her knee consolingly, but stopped. Would she take it the wrong way? He thought he was being very clear about how he felt… still, he had to be so careful around her. “I agree with what you said about us working as a team. Would I have joined you at S.W.O.R.D. if I didn’t enjoy being around you?” His words and his thoughts did not match up. The eighteen hours he had been at S.W.O.R.D. had been uncomfortable and, at times, embarrassing. He and Brand fought over every little thing. Yet there was a sincerity in his words that he found even himself believing. Maybe it wasn’t all bad.
“Sure,” Brand said. What little energy she had left was gone from her voice. “Friends.”
She looked so small, then, with her head turned and her hands uselessly in her lap. Surrounded by a room that was no more of a home to her than the day she moved in. The silence was suffocating. Did she even have any other friends? Considering the way she and her crew treated each other, probably not. So then it was just him that all of the responsibility fell on, the man she invited into her organization expecting to become her lover, but who instead held her at arm’s length for reasons that even he could not put into words.
He stood up, taking the towels with him. He couldn’t sit there, watching her close in on herself, seeing the doubt and self-consciousness he inflicted on her, the same feelings he went through every day. “I think I’m going to shower now.” He hated himself for saying it. If being friends wasn’t just an excuse to get her off his back about being more than friends, he would have stayed to comfort her, talk her through it. “Do you have-“
“You can lock the door if you think I’m still going to come after you.” Her voice became more controlled as she spoke. The emotions disappeared out of her eyes. She was back to business as usual.
“That’s not what I was going to ask.” It was, however, what he was thinking. He felt sheepish for even considering it. “I just wanted to know if you had any extra shampoo. I tend to use a lot of it.”
“I’ll make sure we order it in bulk from now on.” She went to a drawer and withdrew a black tank top. “Why don’t you get that bathroom door between us so I can change?”
Henry nodded. He had dismissed her, now she was dismissing him. It didn’t feel right when it was the other way around, though. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk?”
She regarded him coolly. “About what?”
Henry opened his mouth, but couldn’t find the right words. For someone as eloquent as himself, this was a great failing. “I just thought... I mean, I know this must be difficult for you.”
“Oh, please.” Revulsion crossed her features. That was an expression he was used to seeing on women. “You’re not the last man on Earth, McCoy. Or off it.” She picked out a pair of pants. “I’m a big girl. I can handle it.” She turned her back on him, spreading the clothes out on her bed.
Henry closed the bathroom door behind him, clutching the towels to his chest. The guilt came in waves, strengthening every time he allowed himself to form thoughts. He looked to the mirror to try and get a better sense of himself, only to find the door of the medicine cabinet to be opaque. He thought back to Brand’s room-identical to his own, except for the bureau. His had a large mirror over it, but hers… had she dismantled that, too? Stepping into the much roomier bathtub and letting the water rain onto his fur until he could feel it seep into the skin beneath, he distracted himself from his guilt by pondering the mystery of the mirrors. She certainly did well without them, but even if she didn’t need a mirror to keep her looks appealing, why go to the effort of dismantling them?
Shower finished, Henry left the bathroom with the intention of asking her about the missing mirrors. At first he didn’t see her-had she left the room?-but then spotted an arm protruding from the pile of blankets on her bed. Walking around to the bedside stand to retrieve his own syringe, he ventured a glance in her direction. Her breathing was slow and even. Fast asleep. He would ask her about the mirrors later.
He studied her face. Even sleeping, the deep lines of concern etched themselves into her brow and under her eyes. The pull of the subconscious meant she couldn’t shroud her emotions; he could see shadows of stress and anger pass across her expression, anchored by a deep undercurrent of sorrow. Guilt welled into his stomach. Was he the cause of all that turmoil? She rolled over, turning her back to him and exposing the delicate hairs at the nape of her neck. He could see a second tattoo, the companion to the one on her arm that read ANNA-this one said GRACE. Henry wondered if these were the names of people who had affected Brand’s life so deeply that she got the tattoos as a tribute. If he had submitted to her advances and things worked out between them, would she get a tattoo of his name as well?
Sensing he overstayed his welcome, Henry returned to his own room and got to work on the files she gave him. His first priority was to gut his own file, but he found himself flipping through the papers and pictures with nostalgia. There were accounts of his first days as an X-Man, photos of him back when his hair was still brown, a disc of the archived scientific papers he wrote… it was all there. And the girls. He was stunned by how many women he had forced himself to forget. Vera and Linda… how long was it since either had crossed his mind? Of course, the majority of the women in the photographs were accompanied by a version of himself who was neither blue nor furred. The only woman who showed interest in him after that development was Trish-but no, he corrected himself, she was no longer the only woman. He wondered how closely Brand studied his past affairs, what she thought of the women he once loved. His gaze wandered to the other file. Was there just as much intimate information on her?
Opening the folder to the first page, he found a rundown of the first eighteen years of Brand’s life. He was surprised by her birthdate-she was younger than him, only 28. He thought for sure she was older. Born in South Jersey to a single mother; no father’s name was listed on the copy of her birth certificate. There was a photo of a sullen girl with a green crewcut sitting on the steps of a trailer, trash littered in the dust at her feet. A woman stood behind her in the open doorway, identical to the Brand of today except in hair color. They both wore ill-fitting clothes that were mended several times over. Though the older woman looked down at her daughter with affection, the younger Brand hardly took notice. She was alone even back then.
Henry turned the photo over to check the date against Brand’s early-life resume. She would have been seventeen in the photo, which meant it was taken just before she was recruited by S.W.O.R.D. Going through the long list of schools she attended, some for no more than a couple months, Henry wondered what caught S.W.O.R.D.’s eye about her. From the report on her early life, she was completely unremarkable if not a problem child. Was her sole reason for recruitment her alien heritage? He flipped through a few more papers. As soon as she joined S.W.O.R.D., it seemed, Brand shaped up into the perfect operative. There were pages and pages of commendations and awards from her superiors, echoing her competence in the field and saying how far she would go. But nothing about friends. There were, however, lists of trips she made to other star systems. Factoring in the travel time, they were all very short-the longest had her staying on-planet for a week. The shortest was under twelve hours. Henry couldn’t imagine Brand making a good ambassador, even then. He shrugged it off as sight-seeing.
There were other photos, many of them with Brand and other aliens. In a few she wore a plain black dress-Henry was amused, he didn’t think she owned any dresses-and a drinks bar could be seen in the background. They must have been taken at the annual dinner party for ambassadors that the Peak played host to. As Brand had informed him when he first agreed to work with her, the next one would be taking place at the end of the week. As she explained it, there would be many aliens who knew of the Breakworld and would be curious about the recent troubles there. Brand was not the people person that Henry was, and needed someone more courteous than herself to explain what happened. Looking closer at the dinner party photos, Brand did not seem to have any trouble communicating with the aliens she spoke to. Several of the photos made it look like she was having intense one-on-one conversations with the visitors, and in about three of those she had a predatory gleam in her eyes that he recognized. Frowning, he checked the back of the photos, then the list of planets she visited. Out of the three photos he singled out, she had visited two of the home planets of the aliens to whom she spoke with such interest. He swallowed hard. Working with aliens was one thing, but the thought of her approaching them with the same propositions she offered him…. He tried to clear his head of the images that were forming. It was none of his business. She was half-alien, after all, so what right did he have to assume that her tastes ran towards mankind? Still, something about it disturbed him. Did S.W.O.R.D. pressure her into playing the perfect hostess down to offering her ambassadors the novelty of being with a human, or was it her own decision? He put the photos down and closed the file with a heavy hand. He was getting entirely too invested in something he didn’t know for sure.
“You turned her down,” he reminded himself. “You don’t have a right to ask about any of that now.”
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It was always night in space. The thought only occurred to Henry as he woke up, sensing blurrily that he overslept. Even if there had been windows in his room, he wouldn’t have the sun to wake him, or the rolling hills below the mansion to greet him out his old window. He rubbed his eyes and checked the bedside clock. Two hours past when he said he’d be in the S.W.O.R.D. control room to learn the ropes. Why didn’t Brand send him a call? Did his refusal of her passes make her avoid him completely? Henry shook the thought from his head-she wasn’t like that.
He picked up yesterday’s pants from where they hung on the back of a chair, fishing out his S.W.O.R.D.-issue mobile phone. He scrolled through the pre-loaded list of contacts. Brand’s name was near the top. It rang five times before she picked up. “Br-Abigail? Is something going on? Why didn’t you call me when I was late?”
Her tone was curt. “Something came up. Thought you’d appreciate a little extra beauty sleep.”
He wondered if he would have time to shower. He peeked his head into his bathroom, and was disappointed by what he saw. The shower stall was tiny-he wouldn’t be able to move. “What happened?”
“Let’s meet somewhere and I could explain. How about the medbay? I haven’t shown you around there yet.”
Henry cleared his throat. “Actually… how big is your shower?” He waited for her to turn it into something lewd, but nothing came. “I’m not-I mean-it’s just-“
“Yeah, I get it.” Her tone was even more brittle than before. “I’ll get you some towels.”
Her door was open when he arrived, but Henry still felt compelled to knock. “Come in.” Brand sat on her bed with her back to him, taking off her kneepads and boots. She was right about the size of the rooms-in fact, hers was identical to his. For someone who rose through the ranks of S.W.O.R.D. to the top, who must have spent years there, the room was strangely depersonalized. She didn’t look up from what she was doing, but pointed to the end of the bed. “You can bring those towels back to your room when you’re done with the shower. They’re yours now.”
“Thanks.” He picked them up, but couldn’t help glancing out the sides of his eyes to see that the lines under Brand’s eyes had deepened. “You didn’t happen to get any sleep last night, did you.”
She swung her legs up on the bed and leaned against the headboard, closing her eyes. “There was a scuffle down in customs, an alien freaked out when we found contraband on his ship. Set off a minor bioweapon and holed himself up in the brig.”
“You should have called me. What happened?”
Brand shook her head. “You’re not officially part of the team yet. I’m not putting you in danger until you know what you’re doing.”
“I’m an X-Man! I’ve handled these kinds of situations before!”
Brand opened her eyes to fix him with a tired stare. “You signed on to work under me. I made the decision not to bring you in this time. Deal with it.”
Henry gritted his teeth. “Next time….”
“Yeah, maybe next time.” She picked up a box from her bedside stand and offered it to him.
He took it from her and opened it, revealing two syringes. “You made it sound like the bioweapon was contained.”
Brand fiddled with the zipper at her back. “It was, but we’re not taking any chances.” She bared a shoulder. Seeing the look on his face, she rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry, I’m not about to throw myself at you. I’m good with guns, but not needles.” Henry took a syringe out of the box, considering. “So would you be a gentleman and inoculate me?”
He sat on the bed beside her and opened one of the single squares of alcohol from its sterile wrapper. Peeling her uniform a little farther down her shoulder, he swabbed, then stopped. His fingers pried at the sleeve, curious. “Who’s Anna?”
Brand’s lips tightened, and her fingers fought with his to pull the sleeve back up over her tattoo. “It’s personal.”
Henry nodded knowingly. “And I assume if I’d asked last night, you would have told me.” He readied the needle. “You’re going to feel a pinch.”
Brand’s eyes met his. Behind the exhaustion was a mingling of emotions that just barely registered. Disappointment. Hurt. And… trust. “If you were in a position to see me with enough of my clothes off that you could see my tattoos? Yeah, maybe I would’ve been in a more sharing mood.”
He inserted the needle. Brand didn’t blink. “You have more than one?”
Brand raised her eyebrows. Taunting. “You’ll never know, will you.”
He withdrew the needle. “I suppose I could always look it up in your file.”
“What a boring way of finding out.”
Henry frowned at her shoulder as he applied a band-aid. “Abigail, I understand that what I said was not what you wanted. You’ve had about ten hours to mull it over now, and I’m sure the lack of sleep combined with yesterday’s concussion isn’t helping your mood. But it takes two willing parties to make something like that work, and I’m just not comfortable with… not with you, but with….” Thinking about it now, he couldn’t come up with a legitimate reason to resist her so strongly. “I’m just not comfortable.” He helped her back into her uniform. “But I would like it if we could be friends.” He put the syringe back in the box and went to pat her knee consolingly, but stopped. Would she take it the wrong way? He thought he was being very clear about how he felt… still, he had to be so careful around her. “I agree with what you said about us working as a team. Would I have joined you at S.W.O.R.D. if I didn’t enjoy being around you?” His words and his thoughts did not match up. The eighteen hours he had been at S.W.O.R.D. had been uncomfortable and, at times, embarrassing. He and Brand fought over every little thing. Yet there was a sincerity in his words that he found even himself believing. Maybe it wasn’t all bad.
“Sure,” Brand said. What little energy she had left was gone from her voice. “Friends.”
She looked so small, then, with her head turned and her hands uselessly in her lap. Surrounded by a room that was no more of a home to her than the day she moved in. The silence was suffocating. Did she even have any other friends? Considering the way she and her crew treated each other, probably not. So then it was just him that all of the responsibility fell on, the man she invited into her organization expecting to become her lover, but who instead held her at arm’s length for reasons that even he could not put into words.
He stood up, taking the towels with him. He couldn’t sit there, watching her close in on herself, seeing the doubt and self-consciousness he inflicted on her, the same feelings he went through every day. “I think I’m going to shower now.” He hated himself for saying it. If being friends wasn’t just an excuse to get her off his back about being more than friends, he would have stayed to comfort her, talk her through it. “Do you have-“
“You can lock the door if you think I’m still going to come after you.” Her voice became more controlled as she spoke. The emotions disappeared out of her eyes. She was back to business as usual.
“That’s not what I was going to ask.” It was, however, what he was thinking. He felt sheepish for even considering it. “I just wanted to know if you had any extra shampoo. I tend to use a lot of it.”
“I’ll make sure we order it in bulk from now on.” She went to a drawer and withdrew a black tank top. “Why don’t you get that bathroom door between us so I can change?”
Henry nodded. He had dismissed her, now she was dismissing him. It didn’t feel right when it was the other way around, though. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk?”
She regarded him coolly. “About what?”
Henry opened his mouth, but couldn’t find the right words. For someone as eloquent as himself, this was a great failing. “I just thought... I mean, I know this must be difficult for you.”
“Oh, please.” Revulsion crossed her features. That was an expression he was used to seeing on women. “You’re not the last man on Earth, McCoy. Or off it.” She picked out a pair of pants. “I’m a big girl. I can handle it.” She turned her back on him, spreading the clothes out on her bed.
Henry closed the bathroom door behind him, clutching the towels to his chest. The guilt came in waves, strengthening every time he allowed himself to form thoughts. He looked to the mirror to try and get a better sense of himself, only to find the door of the medicine cabinet to be opaque. He thought back to Brand’s room-identical to his own, except for the bureau. His had a large mirror over it, but hers… had she dismantled that, too? Stepping into the much roomier bathtub and letting the water rain onto his fur until he could feel it seep into the skin beneath, he distracted himself from his guilt by pondering the mystery of the mirrors. She certainly did well without them, but even if she didn’t need a mirror to keep her looks appealing, why go to the effort of dismantling them?
Shower finished, Henry left the bathroom with the intention of asking her about the missing mirrors. At first he didn’t see her-had she left the room?-but then spotted an arm protruding from the pile of blankets on her bed. Walking around to the bedside stand to retrieve his own syringe, he ventured a glance in her direction. Her breathing was slow and even. Fast asleep. He would ask her about the mirrors later.
He studied her face. Even sleeping, the deep lines of concern etched themselves into her brow and under her eyes. The pull of the subconscious meant she couldn’t shroud her emotions; he could see shadows of stress and anger pass across her expression, anchored by a deep undercurrent of sorrow. Guilt welled into his stomach. Was he the cause of all that turmoil? She rolled over, turning her back to him and exposing the delicate hairs at the nape of her neck. He could see a second tattoo, the companion to the one on her arm that read ANNA-this one said GRACE. Henry wondered if these were the names of people who had affected Brand’s life so deeply that she got the tattoos as a tribute. If he had submitted to her advances and things worked out between them, would she get a tattoo of his name as well?
Sensing he overstayed his welcome, Henry returned to his own room and got to work on the files she gave him. His first priority was to gut his own file, but he found himself flipping through the papers and pictures with nostalgia. There were accounts of his first days as an X-Man, photos of him back when his hair was still brown, a disc of the archived scientific papers he wrote… it was all there. And the girls. He was stunned by how many women he had forced himself to forget. Vera and Linda… how long was it since either had crossed his mind? Of course, the majority of the women in the photographs were accompanied by a version of himself who was neither blue nor furred. The only woman who showed interest in him after that development was Trish-but no, he corrected himself, she was no longer the only woman. He wondered how closely Brand studied his past affairs, what she thought of the women he once loved. His gaze wandered to the other file. Was there just as much intimate information on her?
Opening the folder to the first page, he found a rundown of the first eighteen years of Brand’s life. He was surprised by her birthdate-she was younger than him, only 28. He thought for sure she was older. Born in South Jersey to a single mother; no father’s name was listed on the copy of her birth certificate. There was a photo of a sullen girl with a green crewcut sitting on the steps of a trailer, trash littered in the dust at her feet. A woman stood behind her in the open doorway, identical to the Brand of today except in hair color. They both wore ill-fitting clothes that were mended several times over. Though the older woman looked down at her daughter with affection, the younger Brand hardly took notice. She was alone even back then.
Henry turned the photo over to check the date against Brand’s early-life resume. She would have been seventeen in the photo, which meant it was taken just before she was recruited by S.W.O.R.D. Going through the long list of schools she attended, some for no more than a couple months, Henry wondered what caught S.W.O.R.D.’s eye about her. From the report on her early life, she was completely unremarkable if not a problem child. Was her sole reason for recruitment her alien heritage? He flipped through a few more papers. As soon as she joined S.W.O.R.D., it seemed, Brand shaped up into the perfect operative. There were pages and pages of commendations and awards from her superiors, echoing her competence in the field and saying how far she would go. But nothing about friends. There were, however, lists of trips she made to other star systems. Factoring in the travel time, they were all very short-the longest had her staying on-planet for a week. The shortest was under twelve hours. Henry couldn’t imagine Brand making a good ambassador, even then. He shrugged it off as sight-seeing.
There were other photos, many of them with Brand and other aliens. In a few she wore a plain black dress-Henry was amused, he didn’t think she owned any dresses-and a drinks bar could be seen in the background. They must have been taken at the annual dinner party for ambassadors that the Peak played host to. As Brand had informed him when he first agreed to work with her, the next one would be taking place at the end of the week. As she explained it, there would be many aliens who knew of the Breakworld and would be curious about the recent troubles there. Brand was not the people person that Henry was, and needed someone more courteous than herself to explain what happened. Looking closer at the dinner party photos, Brand did not seem to have any trouble communicating with the aliens she spoke to. Several of the photos made it look like she was having intense one-on-one conversations with the visitors, and in about three of those she had a predatory gleam in her eyes that he recognized. Frowning, he checked the back of the photos, then the list of planets she visited. Out of the three photos he singled out, she had visited two of the home planets of the aliens to whom she spoke with such interest. He swallowed hard. Working with aliens was one thing, but the thought of her approaching them with the same propositions she offered him…. He tried to clear his head of the images that were forming. It was none of his business. She was half-alien, after all, so what right did he have to assume that her tastes ran towards mankind? Still, something about it disturbed him. Did S.W.O.R.D. pressure her into playing the perfect hostess down to offering her ambassadors the novelty of being with a human, or was it her own decision? He put the photos down and closed the file with a heavy hand. He was getting entirely too invested in something he didn’t know for sure.
“You turned her down,” he reminded himself. “You don’t have a right to ask about any of that now.”