Chapter Text
About twenty yards of corridor separated the bridge from the rearmost starboard viewport, and that was where Gary and Sheryl (of all fucking people, Sheryl) had sent the two of them. As he’d predicted, they passed the entire trek there in utter silence, and if Nightfall wasn’t going to break it, neither was he.
When they reached the junction, he took up a post at the viewport itself, one large square of transparency in the wall of the ship. Without a word, Nightfall planted herself in the middle of the parallel corridor, facing towards the nearest airlock. Maybe they should consider developing a new method of splitting into teams. He knew he couldn’t expect to be with Gary every time, or with their son, but this was the third time in a row he’d been paired off with Nightfall. Too much time together made both of them antsy; she’d been cool in the weeks since her little dust-up with Gary, but sometimes he’d catch a glimpse of her wincing when Gary kissed him in the galley in the morning, or clenching her fists when she found them snuggled up in the screening room. Generosity said she was still hurting, needed more time to nurse her busted heart back to health. But he didn’t spend a lot of time listening to Generosity.
After nearly four minutes of semi-tense silence, Nightfall’s boots scuffed and shuffled against the pristine floor. “Ten days. Must be some kind of record.”
“Nah,” he said flatly, and his eyes traced nonsense patterns in the stars outside the window. “On the Galaxy One, we went a month without ‘em once.” Not exactly accurate. While they had gone thirty-two standard solar days without a having to shoot up a ship full of Infinity Guard goons, that was because there was a platoon following them at a safe distance, waiting for a good opportunity to pounce on them. But still. Longer than ten days.
“You know. That almost sounds like too long. I think I’d get bored!”
She was trying to joke. Mostly, he intended to joke back. But his voice came out a touch too cold when he said, “we found ways to stay occupied.”
Silence fell again, and he was tempted to ask AVA for an update. She’d been the one to proclaim the presence of Infinity Guard ships. Cloaked ones, but with actively armed weapons: an assault was due in minutes, not days. So. Where the hell were they?
But he hesitated too long, and Nightfall had started talking again. Falsely cheery, she asked, “you two didn’t have plans tonight, right? Nothing…interrupted?”
“Uh? No? What are you–we weren’t–none of your–” He gave up spluttering, and glared over his shoulder. “What are you asking?!”
“I, uh. I realized I don’t know when your anniversary is or…” She paused, coughed, and asked somewhat awkwardly, “Or if you two have like…date nights?”
He took a few deep breaths, and faced back out the viewport. She, probably, was trying to be cordial. Amicable, even. And he shouldn’t start friction with her, not when he could be in the midst of a fight to the death at any moment. Gary and Little Cato were in the cargo bay, H.U.E., Mooncake, and Sheryl were on the bridge, KVN and Fox were at the port side viewport, and Ash and Clarence were at the other starboard viewport: the two of them might have to sprint to the aid of any of the other teams, depending on where their enemies chose to attack from. So, he answered her, and managed to sound less unfriendly than he had a moment prior. “We’re mates, not…we don’t date. We spend time together, but it’s…” Now it was his turn to pause, and he shuffled his hands on the grip of his rifle before, with some trepidation, admitting “it did interrupt something, yeah. We were…we were talking about kids. And how he’s pretty sure he wants more.” After a second, he added, “which is cool. Great, honestly. I. I want more too. So, we’re probably gonna have more.”
70%, he decided. It felt 70% okay to tell her that. Given that this was quite possibly Quinn’s future that was being discussed, as well as his and Gary’s.
“Quinn doesn’t want children.” Nightfall said it so abruptly she seemed to surprise herself as much as she surprised him. Blinking at his own imperfect reflection in the viewport’s curved surface, he craned his neck to snatch a look at her, and caught her eye for a moment. Then she was facing down the corridor again.
“Uh. You sure? I’m only askin’ because you’re not…you’re not this Gary’s Quinn from the future. You’re…uh. You were a different Quinn…so–”
“None of the Quinns I’ve encountered had any interest in being a mother,” Nightfall insisted, and Avocato felt a few sparks of anger stirring under his ribs. She didn’t add or step-mother, but he felt it there, hanging off the period of that sentence like a vestigial limb.
“If she doesn’t want any of her own,” he said as evenly as possible, “she doesn’t have to have any. Obviously. We can have ours, and she doesn’t have to be that involved in raising them if she doesn’t have the knack for it.” Hell, his own mother had, two weeks after his birth, simply handed him to his father and bowed out of his life, no hard feelings. Didn’t make his father care for her any less, didn’t make him, when he grew old enough to understand, respect her any less as an officer. Quinn deserved the same choice.
“I don’t think you should do that.”
Acid burned his throat, and he ground his teeth together. He gripped his rifle tighter, tried to ground himself with its familiar shape. Heavy and half-warm in his hands, it was finally starting to show its age through the dozen or so nicks and weld marks and burns decorating the barrel and the stock. He traced their edges with his eyes and asked, with forced ease, “do what, Nightfall?” Sometimes the plasma well stuck when he tried to swap it out, and replacement parts were getting harder and harder to find. But it had been with him since before he’d left Ventrexia to lead the Lord Commander's army, and his people had a tendency to develop an attachment to their guns.
Behind him, he heard the sounds of her own gun being fiddled with, felt her restless gaze on his back. “Treat a future with Gary as a given.”
As much as he wanted to start throwing punches immediately, he’d made Gary a promise. So he played dumb, hoping she’d just take the out. “Ha. Trust me, you don’t need to lecture me about death. I know any of us could go at any time, and that some of us aren’t going home; I just wanna have some hope, plan for what we’ll have if we do survive.” Because they would have it. Him and Gary and Little Cato and–if she was willing to share and play nice–Quinn, and any children she had with Gary or anyone else. All of them, if they survived, were going to have a disgustingly happy future, even if it broke every bone in his body to give it to them.
Maybe it was the viewport’s semi-reflective surface distorting her face, but Nightfall seemed more sorry than nasty, which was always worse. Almost softly, she said, “you know that isn’t what I mean,” and he bristled from head to toe.
Thought we were past this, man. “Say what you mean, then!” He should be keeping his eyes on the viewport: the Infinity Guard could move in at any moment, given that Team Squad had no idea why they were hesitating in the first place. But he couldn’t stand her eyes on him when he couldn’t see her clearly, so he kept turning his head as much he could to steal glances at her.
Silence. Like maybe she’d thought better of it. But, no such luck. “There are other ways to lose somebody, Avocato, and–”
“Didn’t you two talk about this?” Voice deliberately flat, he still couldn’t stop himself from twisting the knife. “See, the way he told it, you saw us swapping spit and got allllll worked up about it, and when he set you straight, you said you were cool with us!” She flinched, drew back from him, he could see it in the viewport’s smeary reflection. “What, that kick to the head two weeks ago erase six months of memories? You back to square one?” Shut up, you jerk, don’t give her the satisfaction–
“I’m not saying that you’re not important to him,” she said carefully, and his claws were trying to dig into the bottom of his boots as he stared out the window, as though he could will a distraction into existence. “I know how happy you make him, and how happy he makes you.” Don’t be fucking reasonable, he thought viciously. Come on, if you’re gonna pick a fight, pick it out loud. “That’s why I…I wanted to–” She cringed, and he was losing the battle to abandon watch to get in her face. Cornered, that’s how he felt: as soon as he put a word to it, it got worse. He felt cornered and thrown: she’d been…she’d been cool, for weeks and weeks, she’d been warm to his son and had shown him the same respect Quinn had, in the early days of the trip. Now this. He felt like he’d stumbled into another timeslip, and she was back to fumbling with her words.
“I know you hate it when I play the I’m From The Future card, but. I am. And, I’m sort of. The Gary expert–” Tension lashed across his shoulders and his lips pulled back; something rocky and defensive was sitting heavy in his chest as he fought past the impulses triggered by that particular unit of bullshit. “But I am. Things aren’t going to be like this forever. As soon as he has Quinn back–”
“If you think I can’t handle an adjustment period, you know nothing about me, or my culture, frankly.” For instance, she probably had no idea that Ventrexians were, as a people, prone to turning their dead war heroes into gods. Some gave you patience or luck or wisdom; others answered prayers for rage or vengeance or strength. But, seeing as he was a traitor, guilty of regicide and treason, he doubted they would respond with anything other than a curse upon him and his allies until the end of time. That left him with nothing but the patience and wisdom he had naturally, which was never much.
“Listen to me! I know you’d try, you’ve made that clear. You have always been willing to put up with Quinn, I can give you that.” Hopefully, his exaggerated snort conveyed how not-easy that had often been. Irritation coloring her words, she tried again. “Please, believe me, you are not going to be the one who…” Spit. It. Out. Instead, she started over. Again. “I don’t want to see you hurt. You need to be prepared for what happens when Gary gets Quinn back. Things will change and–”
Seething, Avocato spun around, rifle aimed at the floor. “Oh, he’ll what? Abandon our son? Abandon our family to run off with her?” Putting his back to the viewport was dumb. If any of the Glorified were inclined to help him out, they’d do so by nudging their circling enemies into action as way of cutting this shit short. Very few of his gods were meant to give you people skills, and none of them gave you honors for talking things out.
Nightfall’s voice was firm and her fists were balled, side-arm back in its holster, and it took a lot of effort to not chew her out for it. “In a word? Yes.” Blood somehow equal parts hot and cold, Avocato’s hackles went up, but she barreled ahead before he could actually answer. “Not, abandon, but–he and Quinn? They’re meant to be together, they’re destined to be together!” She turned away to grab her helmet off the bench she’d set it on, and began punching in commands on its hidden back screen. Ignoring the hostility boiling off of him, she turned back around, and the helmet's red eye began projecting onto the opposite wall. He refused to look, in no mood to see her voyeuristic slideshow of other Garys and their other Quinns. Still, the multicolored light danced in his peripheral vision, daring him to peek. “In every timeline, they meet, and fall in love. In every timeline, Gary sacrifices himself for Quinn–”
“For you, you mean?” He asked flatly, and her full-body cringe made the images on the wall jostle and shake.
“For EVERY Quinn!” Her voice sounded a bit thicker, defensive and sulky, but she kept glaring back at him. “Their love is a lot bigger than either of us–”
Instead of smacking the helmet out of her hands, he got into her space and jabbed one finger into her chest. Throat muscles tensed enough to pitch his voice to a growl, he drowned out the rest of that manipulative as fuck sentence. “Stop talking about this like you’re a neutral observer or something! You ARE Quinn, a Quinn, at least! A Quinn who has a history of mixing up my Gary with her Gary!”
Now, part of the slideshow was splashed across his torso, and Nightfall hugged the helmet tighter. “That is not true!”
“Uh, yes, it is! But whatever, I don’t care what fantasy world you want to live in, just stay out of my family’s business.” Any grip he had on his temper was slipping fast. Weren’t they fucking past this? Wasn’t he done proving he had a right to be here? “Gary is my mate. He is a father to my son, and the fact that you think he would ever forget about Little Cato for some woman that doesn’t love him half as much as he loves her? Proves my entire point: you don’t give a fuck what he wants, or what’s good for him!”
Metal clanged on metal as the helmet crashed to the ground between them. It bounced and landed on the toe of his boot, but he ignored it as Nightfall’s face twisted into blind rage. “How dare you–” She tried to get in his face, tried to force him back, but he shoved her away instead. “Gary is everything to me! And he's everything to Quinn!”
Camera pointed at the ceiling, the helmet was projecting a brilliant cone of white light between the two of them, and Avocato shuffled to the side to see around it. He was met with Nightfall’s seething, wounded face. “Uh, no. Way I see it, all you’ve done since you got here is chase the life you lost, which keeps ruining his! Now you wanna ruin this too?!”
“I am NOT ruining ANYTHING, Avocato, I am TRYING to get you prepared for the inevitable! Humans aren’t like Ventrexians–”
“Don’t!” He rubbed one paw over his face, and grimaced at the pressure building up at his temples. “Do not give me some goddamn lecture on…on…” He found it, the word he wanted, the one that would translate correctly here. “On monogamy, like I just don’t understand it! I do understand it, which is why I know that Gary is not abandoning our family for anything!” Before he could think better of it, he added, with a sharp edge to the words, “if Quinn tries to get territorial, I have no fears over who he’ll choose!”
He drew no blood, and she didn’t back down. “She will get territorial,” Nightfall said, and he wasn’t sure if he was imagining the smugness or not, but either way, his grip on the rifle tightened. “If I am Quinn, you should believe me when I say, she is not the sort of person who shares a partner. You should also believe me when I say, Gary will choose her. This doesn’t end any other way.” Before he could cobble together a proper retort, she added, “no matter how much he loves you right now, eventually, he’s going to find out who you really are. Do you expect him to still want you after he learns the truth?”
Memories crowded their way into his head, blood-soaked and full of screams and fire. “About what? My countless, countless crimes?” Dead shamans on Mystauna, their bodies dumped into unmarked pits; burned schools and gutted hospitals on Tajac, the first phase in his systematic collapse of their infrastructure; poisoned rivers on Isanesa, made rancid and biting by the tanks upon tanks of chemical death his troops had poured into them. If he thought about that last one too much, his nose and his mouth would start to burn, like they had when he’d stood on the banks and watched the water grow cloudy with malice. To Nightfall, he rasped, “we covered that a long time ago. He’s over it!” Gary was over it, he’d told Avocato that himself. And his mate didn’t lie to him. So no matter what Nightfall said, he was over it.
“Oh?” Neither one of them was paying attention to the viewport as they circled each other, his fur poofing and her shoulders squaring. His first ever brawl was also against a girl. He’d been nine and she’d been ten, and they’d had a shoving match in the exercise yard. Shoving escalated to claws and he’d relieved her of several of her teeth. Honey Mew had been reprimanded for failing to adequately wound him in return. In the present, Nightfall kept trying to start something she likely couldn’t finish. “Gary knows everything? Absolutely everything?”
As much as he’d cared to know. Hadn’t asked for many details, or for an exact body count–could I have even given one? Can I ever know the exact number?–but he knew what Avocato was, what he’d done and what he was trying to be redeemed from. “Enough to make an informed decision, and he decided he wants me!”
“So you already told him that you aren’t Little Cato’s birth father?”
For a moment, his brain insisted that he’d heard her wrong, or completely imagined the statement. But her face said otherwise, the white project light illuminating cold anger and something that might have been genuine hatred. No more heat. His blood was on the verge of freezing solid as he took a step back, then another one. “You–you–” Shock and horror made his mouth clumsy, and it took a few tries before he got out, “how the fuck do you know about that?!”
With an angry scoff, she tried to close the distance between them again, but stopped short when he hissed, more from tension than rage. Their shadows twisted on the wall behind her, the disturbed light of the helmet’s projector stretching them out like wads of string. “The same way I know about EVERYTHING! You think this the only timeline where you end up a monster? Ha, no. This is pretty much standard issue for you!” Part of him wanted to sprint past her; part of him wanted to deck her across the jaw and settle this like they always had at the Officers’ Academy. Both impulses throttled, he remained rooted in place. “How much do you think Gary can forgive? Asking him to co-parent with a fuck buddy is one thing, but when the kid isn’t even yours either–”
Something heavy and slimy puddled in the bottom of his gut, and he felt his eyes go wide. “What did you just call me?” It came out in a thick whisper, and the ugliest edges of her expression faded, malice replaced by something frailer and more tired.
“Uh. Damn it. What’s the word? Friend you’re having sex with!” She did her best approximation of the actual Ventrexian word, but it was still the wrong one. Before he could correct her, remind her that he was Gary’s mate, she flapped a hand and continued, feigning calmness. “Gary is a human, and, like all humans–”
“Most humans,” AVA corrected, and they both jumped a foot. “Oh? Forget I was listening? That’s on you, organics. I’m always listening, which is why I’m cutting in to remind Nightfall that plenty of humans don’t need, or even experience, that particular brand of neurochemical bonding response.”
Nightfall cringed, and he saw color rising in her cheeks. “Whatever!” She squared her shoulders again and tried to glare him down, despite the wavering in her eyes. “Gary does need love, real love, with someone who deserves him.” Might as well have physically slapped him, that’s how much that stung, and she wasn’t done yet. “These secrets are going to come out, and I want you to ask yourself if he can really forgive you for all of them.”
“Why…why are you…being like this–” His voice was threatening to crack, and Nightfall looked away from him. Stooping, she finally shut-off the helmet’s projector and scooped it up. “What the fuck did I ever do to you?!”
Her eyes flashed and she nearly snarled her response. “You didn’t have to do anything to me! I know what you’re capable of, and who you really are! Weren’t you listening? This isn’t the only universe I’ve encountered you in! I want you to be prepared, I want you to be realistic, so you don’t go all trigger-happy when he inevitably chooses Quinn, and you lose him. Just like you’ll probably lose Little Cato.”
“Go. To. Hell.” Hands shaking, he turned back to the viewport, stalked away from her, tried not to spiral. Instead of comforting, the rifle’s weight felt nearly accusatory. If he glanced down at it, distorted faces stared back from the barrel’s polished surface. Ghosts trapped in the metal, following wherever he went, haunting any life he might try to build.
“I’ll consider that!” Nightfall’s voice was restrained but not fooling him at all; either he’d hurt her feelings, or she’d hurt her own somehow. Not that he cared. He wanted her out of his sight before one of them made this worse. “If you consider this: I think you should go back to Artex.”
That wasn’t even a slap so much as a punch to the back of the head. Over his shoulder, her reflection rippled and stretched across the surface of the viewport, like she was yet another ghost haunting the halls of the Crimson Light. “Don’t,” he said thickly, trying his damnedest to not think of melting gold and crashing ships and the Lord Commander telekinetically hurling Artex against the ceiling a dozen times over. “Don’t talk about them!” Because, okay, yeah. Gary didn’t know much about the Artex thing. Didn’t even really know what they’d meant to him, how much he missed them, how much they’d loved Little Cato–
“I’m just saying, of the, what, ten timelines I’ve seen you in? You serve the Lord Commander in all of them, but you were only happy in four. And in those four? You were with ArtexSang.” He wanted to scream at her, god, screaming at her would feel good, but he couldn’t find it in him to open his mouth. Couldn’t find the words to explain how thoroughly he’d screwed that whole thing up, how his last encounter with Artex ended in a homicide attempt and a vow for revenge. What would be the use? She either knew that and didn’t give a shit, or he’d be handing her another live grenade to toss into his family. “It’s not…personal. I know it feels personal, but it’s not. I don’t want you to misunderstand your position here, or underestimate what you’re up against. When Quinn makes him choose, which she will, Gary will not choose you. You, you need to be ready for that.”
What, exactly, was he supposed to say to that? After a few seconds of debate, he found the safest option. “Get out. I’ll guard this spot myself.” Nightfall hovered in the doorway, and he realized his mouth was still talking, entirely without his sign-off. “He’s not your Gary, and he’s not like other Garys.” He’s my Gary, he’s special and different and mine. Throat hot and itchy with jealously and hurt, he added in a snap, “stop trying to ruin this!”
“I’m not trying to ruin anything, I–”
“I said get out!” The smear of color making up her reflection vanished from the observation window, and he slammed his fist into the spot it had occupied. “He’s my mate,” he said, to the stars, to himself, even as his paw throbbed at the end of his wrist. “He’s my MATE, he’s not gonna…he’s not gonna leave me for–” Lights moved outside the window and his gaze snapped to them. Ships, not comets. Infinity Guard forces, finally uncloaking and moving in. Good, he’d get to shoot something. Or several somethings.
The rifle needed two hands, so he tried to flex some strength and feeling back into the aching one. Nightfall had no idea what she was talking about. Gary would never leave Little Cato, no matter how much–
Something struck the side of the ship, and AVA complained loudly. Around the nearest bend in the corridor, he could hear the sounds of an airlock being forced open: they’d be boarding soon. Later. He’d talk to Gary later, ask for some reassurance, ask for…
Shadows crowded around the corner and into his line of fire, and he was blasting them apart before he was consciously aware of it.
***
Avocato wasn’t chatty. Strong and somewhat-silent, that was his default setting. But this was extra-quiet. Barely ten words in the hours between the Infinity Dorks being sent packing and the two of them going back to their room. Said hours included dinner, and post-dinner games with Little Cato, and still, very, very few words from his bestest bro. Nightfall had been off, too. Hadn’t eaten in the galley. Instead, she’d slunk off to her room to eat alone, which then got Ash all touchy, so then Little Cato was glum during their special gaming-bonding hour. As usual, it was up to Gary to get this mystery solved.
Little Cato went off to bed, bickering with Fox the whole way, and Mooncake was thrilled to accept Gary’s suggestion of taking himself on a space walk. He’d been taking more and more of those lately, like he was stretching his independence, and Gary was trying to be as un-anxious about it as possible. Babies were growing up all over the place. But he’d get all raw and real about that some other time.
Door locked behind them, he sat down on their bed and watched Avocato strip off his armor piece by piece. “You good, bro?” Instead of answering, Avocato dropped his holsters and ammo belt onto the metal “dresser” anchored to one wall. “Avo? Come on, you okay, dude?” He grunted in response, non-committal and wordless, and Gary frowned at the rumpled double-coat of his teal-black fur. “Barely touched your din,” he tried again. “And your healthy appetite is one of the like, 300,00 things I find crazy hot about you–”
“Do you love me?”
Question dying on his lips, Gary stared at him. Avocato didn’t turn around. Just planted his paws on the dresser and waited, body visibly tense. “Of…of course I…” Hesitantly, Gary stood up, and approached him one step at a time. “You’re my best friend. Best I ever had, ever! Like, not to play the Broke Time To Get You Back card, but uh, I broke time and fought Invictus and stuff to save you. So, yeah! I love you. What–what is going on?” As gently as possible, he touched Avocato’s shoulder, but didn’t pull him around. Just leaned in close and tried to sound comforting. “Do I, um. Not say it enough, or…” He strained his brain, strained it good, like it was a pot of spaghetti he was making to convince an angry mob boss to spare his pathetic life. “Oh, oh! Am I using the wrong word? Like…what’s the right word for…you know, our, thing?”
Avocato told him, and Gary fumbled his way through the pronunciation. Ventrexians didn’t, as a rule, do stuff like “dating” and “monogamy” and “marriage for anything other than political purposes”. Most of their words for “partner” were a variation of friend. Friend I’m having sex with. Friend I choose to live with. Friend I raise my children with. Friend who knows my secrets. Friend I share my life with was the translation given by AVA’s digital dictionary; the translator microbes simplified it to mate.
“And if I wanna say that I love you, like that?” Both of his arms were around Avocato’s waist, and his chin on his warm, fluffy shoulder. Now that he’d noticed it, he couldn’t believe his own obliviousness: Avocato was practically covered in frowny-face stickers, had been on his sad boy shit all evening. That was okay. He knew now, and they were alone, and he was going to kiss it all better. “How do I say that? Cuz I do. You know how happy you make me, right?”
Avocato was silent for a few seconds. Gary took a step back to frantically pull up AVA’s digital phrasebook for Ventrexian (Homeworld + Aristocratic dialect), but Avocato huffed a truly bitter laugh, and finally turned his head. One eye on Gary, he said the phrase, then said it slower, then tried to give his best approximation of it in English. “You’re my favorite person. You’re my best friend. I want to share my life with you.”
Gary tried it a dozen times, until he and the microbes figured something out. “Avocato, you are the best friend I’ve ever had, and I am gonna spend the rest of my life with you.” He tried to resume the bear-hug, but Avocato shrugged him off, then side-stepped him.
“Your friend from the future doesn’t really seem to think so.” As though he didn’t see the hurt in Gary’s face, Avocato went to their bed and fell onto it with a cushioned thump. Once again, his back was turned: he was curling in on himself, like he thought he could hide from Gary’s wounded stare. “She was on my case about it today. Basically told me to start packing, that Quinn just existing means we’ve got an expiration date–”
At that point, Gary’s brain caught up with what his friend was actually saying, and he shot across the modest space of their room to scramble onto the bed. “Bro,” he said, and felt a surge of relief when Avocato let him cuddle against his back to kiss the base of one twitchy, pointy ear. “Bro, are you talking about Nightfall?”
“Yeah,” Avocato said flatly. “She said Quinn’s gonna make you pick, and you’ll…that I’m gonna lose you. So. That was a fun convo.”
Bile bubbled in his gut, and he suddenly felt twice as tired. Deja vu was one of his least favorite feelings. It was like having to work a double shift where the same stuff went wrong but you couldn’t solve it the way you did before. “AVA, kill the lights,” he said, and their cabin fell into darkness. Avocato remained still and silent beside him, but let out a soft sigh when Gary kissed his ear again. “She has no clue what she’s talking about,” he whispered, and sat up to peel off his clothes. One he was stripped to his boxers, he wiggled under the covers with Avocato, who accepted his offer to be the big-spoon. “I’ll chew her out like CRAZY tomorrow, promise. I am never, ever gonna leave you.”
“She said…other stuff.” He fell silent, and Gary didn’t press. Try as he might, Nightfall and Avocato did not get along. Probably never would: Avocato didn’t fully trust her; Nightfall seemed to have a whole host of problems with him. But active antagonism was supposed to be off-limits. Crazy alternate dimension grief or no grief, she had no right messing with his bro’s head.
Unmessing said head took priority over getting her shit straightened out, so he canned up his anger and tenderly stroked and tugged the fur on Avocato’s bare belly. “I love you,” he whispered, and Avocato let out a long, shuddering breath. “I do! Seriously, man, I really, really do. You’re my best friend, you are my family, I am not going anywhere.”
Finally, Avocato rolled over to look at him. Face still defensive, he hooked the claws of one paw into the waistband of Gary’s underwear. “Even though she’s your…destiny, or whatever?”
Anger knotted in Gary’s chest, and he pulled Avocato in closer. “...Oh my god. Was she…was she going on about that timeline, destiny, true love bullshit again?!” Avocato nodded, and Gary snarled into the fur between his ears. “Great! Just, great. We have to have this fucking conversation again?” Four weeks. She had made it four freaking weeks since the last time he’d read her the riot act over that particular guilt trip. And dragging somebody besides him along on said guilt trip? Not okay! After a few deep breaths, he pressed his forehead against Avocato’s. “No, the destiny shit, or whatever, doesn’t make me love you less! I don’t even see what that has to do with it. If me and Quinn are destined to be together, like, how could us being together stop that?”
Wrong thing to say. Completely wrong thing to say, as evidenced by the fury flashing in Avocato’s eyes. Muscles tensed, he started to pull back. “Right! Not like I’m significant enough to be an obstacle!” He shoved Gary’s arm away, got to his feet, and Gary tried to pull him back. Even as he did so, Avocato was stumbling away from him, and AVA put the lights on without being asked. “Let me go!” Avocato had never shed his brown twill pants, which were open at the fly, and he was trying to close them with one paw.
“Avocato, no, that’s not what I meant–”
“I know what you fucking meant, Gary! Do you know what I mean?” He paced in the space between their bed and the door, while Gary sat on the edge of the mattress and reached for him, uselessly. “When I say, you’re it for me, do you get that? When I say, I don’t want anyone else raising my kid, do you understand–” His paws squeezed and flexed randomly, and Gary knew he was fighting to keep his claws in. According to the two dozen or so documentaries he’d watched on Ventrexian biology, most adults found it harder to stay calm once their claws came out.
“I understand!” Gary insisted, “and I feel the same freaking way. I swear, I’ll swear on anything you want me to, I feel the same way. Stupid destiny is not enough to pry me away from you, and therefore, is obviously not enough to pull me away from Spider Cat!”
“So you’d pick us?!” Fast enough to make his toe-claws screech on the dark gray floor of their room, Avocato rounded on him, pupils huge, shoulders heaving. “If she, if she told you it was us, or her–”
“I would never choose Nightfall over–”
“Not THAT her! Quinn, your Quinn! If she comes back and jumps into your arms and begs you to run away with her–” With a harsh breath, he cut himself off and rubbed the heels of his forepaws into his eyes.
Gary stared at him. Trying to retrace their steps to figure out how the fuck they got here. Maybe they could double back, take a different turn. “Avocato, what the fuck are you asking me?” Avocato didn’t answer. Just glared back at him, body language almost as hostile as it had been the day they met. “Wow! Are you seriously asking me if I’m going to disown our son if the girl I like asks me out?!” Even as he said it, he felt weird about it. Felt like it was half a lie, and apparently it was audible in his voice, because Avocato thrashed his one angry arm at him and tried to turn towards the door. Metal hand threatening to wig out from his rising blood pressure, Gary threw himself to his feet. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, stop hiding from me!” For once not caring if his friend got a bruise from his left hand, he seized him by both shoulders to twist him back around.
Scowl masking whatever hurt he had in his chest, Avocato shook him off and backed away, far enough to smack into the desk they used exclusively to hold potted plants and souvenier rocks and stuff. A few chunks of glittery crystal rattled in place, and the basil plant shed some of its leaves. “Don’t!” He spat, and Gary crossed his arms, barely resisting the urge to scoff at him. “Don’t fucking–Gary, you do not like her. You’re in love with her!”
Now it was Gary’s turn to back away, eyes sparking dangerously, mouth twisting. Pressure had built up between his temples and behind his heart, and it vented itself out of his angry mouth. “Don’t say it like that!” He knew he was starting to shout, but he barely cared. If the rest of them listened, fine. Just meant he could wallop any of them that dared to bring it up the next day. “Don’t say it like it’s–” He stopped, and tried to yank his spiraling thoughts back together. Nope. Not having that argument. They were busy having a different argument. Voice as steady as he could get it, he said, “my feelings for her have nothing to do with–”
“Gary!” Those words were flavored with more despair than anger, and Avocato looked at him with an expression of genuine pain. Wincing hard, Gary reached for him, but Avocato waved him off, still hurt, still defensive. “They have everything to do with this! If I can’t count on you–”
“Why do you think you can’t? Why? Because somebody else said so–”
“Well her argument was pretty goddamn convincing!”
A laugh punched its way out of his mouth before he could smother it, and he gestured wildly as Avocato glared at him. “What combination of words do you need to hear to BELIEVE ME? Cuz I’ve said every sentence I can think of–” He stopped, and felt himself grinning in a way he hadn’t in years. Hard and mirthless and unkind, and Avocato growled in response. “Okay. It’s late, and I’m tired, so, I give up. I cannot help it if you are paranoid–”
That growl morphed into something longer and more aggressive, and Avocato clawed at him. Gary dodged him fairly easily, but the message was received. “Do not–Gary, do not ever fucking talk to me like I’m fucking crazy!”
“Oh! Okay! Then how about you don’t talk to me like I’m some fucking–” Deadbeat. Flight risk. Like I don’t mean what I say. Outloud, he half-shouted, “when have I ever, ever given you a reason to doubt me? Tell me when I betrayed you?” Two steps closer, one accusing finger in the air between them, heart going too fast to slow his mouth down. “Like, seriously, since when am I the liar here?” And yeah, Great Grandor’s Glove and Bolo’s Blue Butt, did he regret that immediately, and he was too horrified at himself to find a way to take it back. Avocato stared at him for five straight seconds before shoving past him to throw himself back on the bed. “Avo–”
“Get the fuck out.”
Turning around to face the bed took him a few seconds. When he did, Avocato had shoved Gary’s pillow to the floor, along with the clothes he’d left piled on the foot of the bed. His red shirt lay on top of his boots and jeans, and the intensity with which the carelessness burned him was surprising. Not like it was first or fifth or twentieth time someone had thrown his clothes at him and thrown him out in the middle of the night. Just the first time it was Avocato doing the throwing. Weakly, Gary tried to protest. “Bro. Come on, be fucking serious. You are not kicking me out of–”
Words shrill in a way Gary had only heard a few times before, Avocato snapped at him without looking at him. “Yeah, I am! I am being serious, Gary, get dressed and get the fuck out!”
Yeah. That was fair. So Gary got dressed in silence and grabbed his pillow and his screen and his gun and left, half-wishing he could slam the door behind him, half-glad he couldn’t. He heard the lights click off behind him, and heard Avocato throw something against the closed door. Whatever it was broke, and he walked faster to reduce his temptation to take the bait. Avocato liked to fight as much as he liked to fuck, and Gary knew better than to risk mixing the two just then. AVA lit up the hallway’s floor-lights for him as he walked towards the empty bunkroom that was tucked into a corner in the back of the ship. Perfectly fine beds and functioning air vents. But it had a weird smell, and no matter what fixes they applied, the lights stayed dim as shit.
“Was Nightfall picking on him?” He asked, nearly barking the question as he locked the door behind him. Only one set of bunks in here, and they took up most of the space; he fell onto the bottom one without bothering to undress again.
“Hmm. Define picking on?”
“Saying shit to hurt his feelings, on purpose, like, like a jealous…jealous person!” He rubbed one hand over his mouth, only to realize said hand hadn’t stopped shaking yet. “Then again, not just her fault! Like, CHRIST, he keeps getting jealous too! He swore he wouldn’t get jealous–” But, hissed a cranky, selfish, isolated piece of himself. As we said earlier, Avocato is a fucking liar! “Damn it, god fucking–” He sat up too fast and bashed his head on the underside of the top bunk, then lay whimpering in the dark as his forehead throbbed. When he felt non-dizzy again, he thrashed out of his bunk and stood seething in the dark. “Nope. No way. No fucking way, I am NOT the guy that loses his shit and–and–”
Sets people’s shit on fire. Keys their car, and like, really, really keys it. Chucks a brick through their window. Calls in random, weird bomb threats to their work. Says mean shit just because he feels cornered and frustrated. “Anymore!” He shouted at the empty room, and at Avocato, and Darla too, and Smithie and Dane and Lily for good measure. “I am not that fucking guy anymore!”
And he was right. He wasn’t that guy anymore, so, he stopped himself. Stopped the thoughts, stopped the words, and with great effort, choked down the rest of the rant trying to crawl out of his throat. Teeth gritted, he sucked in breath after breath, each one soothing the violent pace his heart had set back in their room. As hard as it was to remember, Avocato was just as psychiatrically mained as he was. Trust wasn’t exactly his home turf: while he hadn’t ever been forthcoming with stories about previous “friends”, Gary had sensed a long, long pattern of grief and hurt and broken promises.
“Need a sedative, Goodspeed?” AVA asked dryly, and Gary barked a haggard laugh at her.
“Nah, AVA, just–Christ. Christ, I have no idea what I need–” A drink, maybe, or twelve, but, he was also trying to not be that guy either. Experience told him that drinking his feelings away made everything worse, every time.
Vents hummed in the room’s cramped quarters: AVA’s thinking noise. “You know, say the word, and I can crank the temp in either of their bunks down to absolute zero.”
“Very, very sweet of you to offer to commit flat-out homicide for me, AVA, but, no thank you.” After a very intense, very private talk, Gary and AVA had mutually agreed that it was wise to not tell Clarence that, in light of his recent bout of coo-coo bananas shitbaggery, the Crimson Light’s primary user had been reassigned. To Gary. And she could get aggressive when she felt it called for. “Just. Can you, uh. Could you put on my playlist?”
“Do you mean your Avocato and I are fighting and I’m having mega emotions about it playlist, Goodspeed?”
“Yes, AVA, the very same.”
“Gary, all of this music is very lame.”
“Yes, AVA, it is. None of it is ironic. Except, uh, the, uh, time travel themed one. Uh, that one is, well. We added that cuz, obviously.” He blushed, remembering their bodies tangled together in Primus Dahlia’s ridiculous bed, Gary’s screen clutched in one hand as they updated his mopey little playlist together. Avocato’s gentle teeth on his neck and his big, warm paw on Gary’s bare stomach: it had felt so good to hold him again, to get back all the time the Lord Commander had stolen.
“But most of these choices are completely sincere?” Gary tried to launch into an explanation for each of his song choices, which he had, of course, agonized over. He had, indeed, been dancing with a broken heart when Avocato was gone; he had metaphorically run up a hill to metaphorically make a deal with God to (sort of) swap their places; he was absolutely not too proud to beg Avocato to pretty please come back to him– “My,” AVA said dryly, and he cut himself off with a blush. “You must be truly smitten.”
“More smitten than a kitten in a mitten that Nana is still knit-EN, AVA!” He gestured dramatically to the dark ceiling, wishing he had some sort of long, flat couch upon which to collapse. Preferably with a hand to his forehead, all Jane Austen side-character-esque. Doing so on the bed seemed anti-climatic. Plus, he’d probably just bash his head on the top bunk again. “I had a friend-crush on him from the very second he was scowling at me with a gun in my face. Like, AVA, I was full on squishing, and like, I know that no one’s used that in like 300 years–”
“Squish remained common in the English-speaking Aromantic community until roughly 40 years ago–”
“But what I felt was PRIMAL friendship! I was harboring a full-on squish from the fucking JUMP, AVA! Because, when our eyes met for the very first time? I could see into his SOUL, AVA, and do you know what I saw?”
“A man who has taken so many lives he can never be held to account for all of them?”
“Not until later, no, but hey. We all have faults, AVA. We all have PASTS. I used to be the, like, fifth worst ex-boyfriend on Earth. Or, bare minimum, top ten worst. He…destroyed countless lives.” Careful to avoid another mini-concussion, he returned to his cold, narrow bunk. Part of him was tempted to go crawling back, scratch and whine at the door until his mate let him in, but he resisted. This fight had sucked for both of them; his bro deserved some space. Didn’t make this stanky little room any less lonely. So, he kept talking to AVA, since she was listening and all. “What I saw was a guy who needed a pal. And. I wanted to be that pal. He was there like, right after Mooncake showed up. I figured he was destiny too, or something. But. Nah, he’s better. He was luck.”
“He seems like a handful. A handful that bites.”
Heart in a vice roughly the size and shape of Avocato’s paw, he groaned and grabbed his pillow to slam it over his head. “God, don’t bring up the biting. I love the biting, AVA! The biting is one of the 300 MILLION things I find ridiculously hot about him!” With a chuckle, AVA finally put on his 100% lame as hell playlist, and he settled in to fall asleep to it. Hearing said playlist always made Avocato avert his gaze and dip his chin, the way most Ventrexians did when embarrassed or flustered. Cuz of course he knew about it. Had walked in on Gary making it during the first fight they’d had after adding sex to the roster of hobbies they shared. He’d guilted Avocato into giving input, and they made up as they finished it together.
“Fuck, you’re lame,” Avocato had murmured, as the finished product played in the background. “You know I’m not your boyfriend, right?” He’d said it so tenderly, like it was meant as reassurance.
Warm fur brushed Gary’s back as he pressed closer to Avocato’s chest, and craned his neck to catch his eye. “You’re lame too, Mister Used-A-Literal-Ruby-To-Apologize!” He’d jabbed a metal finger at the glossy red-black rock that Avocato had apparently bribed KVN into pulling out of an actual asteroid. It had been hidden behind his back when he’d opened Gary’s door, letting the strains of music escape the room and bounce down the hallway. “By the way? Not getting it yourself? Extra lame!”
Avocato had chuckled and begun lapping at the hair behind Gary’s ear, making him shiver. “It’s the size of your fist! Give me some credit!” When he’d set the thing in Gary’s lap and asked what he was listening to, he’d seemed almost shy, and he hadn’t been able to meet Gary’s eyes when he’d mumbled his apologies. Gary had melted like microwaved Ben n’ Jerethulian’s ice cream, and then all the naked stuff had started.
“Bro. Bro, what am I gonna do with a ruby?”
He was not surprised that Avocato didn’t have an answer. “I…sell it? Uh. I didn’t really…Humans like gemstones! I don’t know, I felt…bad.”
“Do you see the lameness? The impulsivity and emotional dumb-assery you displayed?” Later, Gary would start looking up Ventrexian Stuff, and would quickly learn that gift-giving was a nearly universal behaviour for their species, and they did it for a wide array of reasons: apologizing, affection, in an attempt to comfort.
Avocato had twisted Gary around to bonk their foreheads together, eyes squinted contentedly, every muscle loose. “What can I say, baby. You make me crazy.”
In the present, Gary swallowed hard. Was this fight brutal? Yes. Had they hurt each other’s feelings, badly? Obviously. But it would take so, so much more than this to break them completely. He drifted off to the sound of the playlist’s familiar melodies, and tried not to think about what bullshit he might wake up to tomorrow.