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Fic: No Heroics (Doom, John/Samantha)
Title: No Heroics
Fandom: Doom
Pairing(s): John/Samantha
Word Count: 3887
Rating: PG-13
Summary: John and Sam try to cover up his new-found abilities. It goes about as well as you'd expect.
Notes: Set post-movie. Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
slipshod for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
yuletide.
John is stuck in debriefing while Sam gets rushed to the infirmary, and he tries not to let himself be distracted while he's asked what seems like an endless series of questions. They ask him what happened to his team, to the facility, to the eighty-six UAC employees they were sent to evacuate. Nobody questions why he returned here after it was all over; it's standard operating procedure, after all, and he's a good soldier.
They have no idea.
He tells them the bare minimum; some kind of accident, spreading infection, Sarge's orders to contain the threat. He fudges some of the details, like how Sarge stayed behind to disable the ark, like the fact that he's covered in blood but has no marks to show for it. They seems more interested in the few mutated, mangles corpses than in the dozens of apparently human bodies cowering behind closed doors, and he really shouldn't be surprised; Sarge's orders had to come from somewhere.
He's given a routine physical, pronounced in good health, and quarantined as if it's a kind of afterthought. Updates on Sam's condition are sporadic but reassuring, and he's released a day before she is, given orders to return after his scheduled leave and an ad hoc promotion to sergeant. He doesn't want any of it.
-
"They want you to go back?"
"They're promoting me to squad leader, Sam," he says, his voice weary. She's curled up beside him on the hard leather couch that barely fits the two of them, not unlike the rest of the apartment. His RRTS-assigned housing is designated for single occupancy, but there was no way he was letting her go home alone, not when her home isn't even here any more. "They need me."
"They nearly got you killed," she says, and he fixes her with a stare that's too tired to be challenging.
"Are you going back to UAC?"
She looks away, and he knows he doesn't have to press the issue, but part of him can't resist.
"Then we're in the same position," he says. "My job wasn't the only one that got people killed."
He expects her to challenge him on that, and he has an argument ready, the same one they've been over too many times to count. Instead, she curls up a little closer, and he slings an arm around her shoulder.
"It won't be easy," she says softly. He shrugs, and feels her shift against him.
"What could possibly go wrong?"
-
He finds out his first day back, when an over-eager recruit hits him hard across the cheek during a training exercise. John reaches up to wipe away the faint trickle of blood, and his fingers slide across smooth, uncut skin.
"Five minutes," he says, fixing the recruit with a look that's as even as he can manage. "Go over the exercises, and we'll pick this up later."
He cleans himself up in the head, fixes a bandage over the area where the cut should have been. He'll have to keep it on for a few days, but he figures that as long as nobody looks too closely, it should pass muster.
He's going to have to be more careful. He could have easily dodged the blow, but that would have raised its own set of questions; until the team gets a few more weeks of training in them, he's going to have to watch his step.
He ducks his head to avoid scrutiny when he returns, pairs the soldiers up with each other as he watches from the sidelines. It's an easy fix for the situation, and he shakes his head to clear his thoughts of Sam's warning. He's a soldier. He's trained to think on his feet.
He's pretty sure he can handle this.
-
It gets trickier when they try to call him in for another round of testing. The people in charge have apparently decided that it was okay to let him wander around for a month when they didn't know the finer details of what happened at Olduvai, but now that he's back on active duty, they need to take precautions.
He isn't expecting Sam to come to his rescue, but he probably should have been. He doesn't like to think about what he would have done if he'd had to handle it on his own.
"I'm the only one who knows about Dr Carmack's research," she points out, not unreasonably. "I know what it did to the people there."
The commander looks from her to John, and John tries to keep his face impassive, like he has no personal stake in the outcome. Like it's just another round of tests - boring, routine, and not threatening to expose him as some sort of superhuman being.
Yeah, that still sounds weird.
Eventually, the commander gives in. John's not sure how much he knows about what went down, but Sam's protests make sense, and maybe he's decided it's better to keep this thing as confined as possible. John glances at her as they're led toward the lab, and she's shaking, just a little; not enough to give them away, not enough that anyone but him would likely notice. He squeezes her hand briefly, and she rewards him with a tight smile.
The inside of the lab is mostly familiar, similar to the setup at Olduvai. They're not alone, and they don't talk much by some unspoken agreement, communicating via gestures and stolen glances while Sam sneaks occasional looks at the guard who isn't a guard to test how closely he's watching them. After a while he seems to get bored, his posture relaxing bit by bit, and Sam tilts her head at a blood storage unit; it only takes a second for John to liberate a sample, and when the guard looks around at the noise, he's already sitting back in his chair across from Sam.
"We make a good team," he says, keeping his voice low, and she smiles.
"Maybe we should get you a cape," she says, barely above a whisper. And then, in a louder voice, "All done."
The next week, he's back on active duty, and he makes a mental note to get her a gift or something.
-
When it almost comes undone, his squad is running a combat simulation, and he really only has himself to blame.
He isn't as careful as he should be; he doesn't need to be, most of the time, his heightened reflexes giving him an edge that's becoming so familiar he barely thinks about it. They're about halfway through the simulation when he heads to the makeshift arms locker, keeping his pace slower than he knows he's capable of, and he's almost finished reloading his gun when he hears a noise behind him.
He's so focused on not reacting too quickly that he moves too slowly, instead, and he's standing without cover when the blast hits him squarely in the chest.
They're only using training weapons, but they still pack a hell of a punch. He goes stumbling back into the shelves, hard enough to send them crashing down on him, pinning him beneath their weight while one of the sharpened edges slices into his midsection. He forces himself to wait, trapped, while the others work to lift the debris off him. Slowly. It isn't often that the forced inaction of their subterfuge weighs on him - mostly, it's his way of pretending, even to himself, he's still nothing more than human - but this is definitely one of those times.
"I'm all right," he insists as they help him up, clutching a hand over the healed wound on his stomach. "Keep going, I'm fine."
"Do you want -" Kilner starts, and John holds up a hand to silence him.
"No," he says, too quickly, and then takes a breath, slows down. "Just a few scratches. I'll be fine."
Some of the men look unconvinced. John angles himself away from them, keeps his hand firmly covering his stomach, and tries to look like he feels at least a little bit of pain.
This one might be a little harder to explain.
-
"What happened to you?" Sam asks as soon as he gets home, and he grimaces, settling onto the couch.
"Training accident," he says, and she looks only slightly more concerned than she does amused.
"I told you to be careful," she says, but there's no real rebuke in it.
"I was," he says. "That's what got me into this mess."
She sits down beside him, her hand on his arm, subtly checking him over for injuries even though she must know she won't find any. He doesn't complain, much, but he does shoot her a look that's roughly equal parts fondness and exasperation.
"I'm fine," he reminds her, and she backs off a little, though her hand stays on his arm.
"Fine," she says. She runs a hand down his shirt, her fingers catching in the bloody tear. "But your clothes aren't. You look like a mess."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," he says.
"And you could probably use a shower," she says, and wrinkles her nose for emphasis.
"Nice," he says, but he stands up, discarding his shirt on the floor. He'll have to throw it out later, but for now, at least it tells him where his wounds are supposed to be.
-
He stays in the shower for longer than he needs to, standing under the spray until the water starts to run cold. When he gets out, Sam is still in the living room, staring idly at his shirt.
"You were lucky," she says.
"It wasn't that deep." A lie, and she probably knows it. "And it wasn't luck."
Her expression darkens for a second at that, but then she sets the shirt aside and looks up at him. "They'll expect you to be injured, you know."
He shrugs. "I can put off going back for a couple of days."
"And after that?" she asks. "Bruises don't heal that fast."
She leaves the rest unsaid; not for anyone but you.
"I'll think of something."
She goes quiet for a minute, and there's a look in her eyes that always used to scare him when they were kids. It was the same look she got right before the time she decided it would be fine for them to experiment in their father's lab; a month later, they'd still been doing chores.
"What?" he asks, and he can hear the trepidation in his own voice.
"I could help you with that," she says slowly.
"What, you're going to try beating me up?"
"No," she says simply. Like she's already made up her mind, and him agreeing to whatever she's decided is just a formality. "I'm going to give you a makeover."
He snorts. "Very funny."
She doesn't say anything, and he takes a step back.
"You can't be serious."
"You need to simulate bruises somehow," she says, as if it's the most reasonable idea in the world. "And since we can't give you real ones -"
"I'm a soldier," he says. He realises his stance has become wary, as if he's fending off danger, and he tries to relax. "I can't wear makeup on the base."
"John -"
"Sam." He gives her a long, level look. "If anyone takes a good look at me -"
"Then don't let them," she says. "Besides, who's going to be looking at you that closely?"
Her jaw is set, determined, and there's a part of John that knows he's already lost. He never was able to win an argument against her.
A few minutes later, he follows her up to the bedroom.
-
Sam's touch is soft, steady and familiar, almost enough to make up for the tickling sensation of the brush on his skin. John deliberately doesn't look at their reflection in the mirror, glances down instead at the half-open tubs of powder sitting on the bed.
"Don't move," Sam says irritably, and cups his chin in her hand, turning him back to face her. Her expression is serious, focused, the kind she used to wear when they were studying. He can't help but laugh.
"I can't do this if you keep moving," she says, but he can tell he's broken her concentration. She lets her hand drop, and he almost misses it.
"You really need all this stuff?" he asks, nodding toward the bed.
She rolls her eyes. "Not all of us are as pretty as you."
He should probably say something there, tell her she's beautiful, she's gorgeous, that she's perfect. Instead, he takes a step back. "Are we done yet?"
In response, she puts her hands on his shoulders and turns him so he's facing the mirror. He takes a step forward, raising a hand to his cheek, and stares for a minute at the fairly convincing bruise below his eye.
"Not bad," he says finally. "Where'd you learn to do this stuff, anyway?"
She shrugs. "I do have a life outside of work, you know."
He's not sure if that surprises him, but he tries not to let it show, either way. Instead, what he says is, "Thanks."
"You're welcome," she says, already clearing the makeup off the bed. "But you're cooking dinner tonight."
-
"That smells good," Sam says, and he gives her a flat look.
"It isn't."
She frowns, leaning against the counter so that he has to brush past her to get by in the narrow space. She smells good, not like the antiseptic of the labs or the chemical smells of the base, all gun oil and recruits who don't know when to lay off the cologne, and he shakes his head.
"So," she says, as he reaches in to pull out what must be half the meager contents of his refrigerator. "I was thinking you should probably limp."
He raises an eyebrow at that. "Limp?"
"You said you got knocked back pretty hard," she says. "Not all your injuries would be external."
"I'm not going to limp," he says, and after a minute, he looks up to see her almost smiling. "You're messing with me."
"Only a little," she says. She's smiling more openly now, and he runs his hand under the dripping faucet, flicking water at her.
She looks surprised for a minute, and then leans forward, grabbing a bag of flour. Before he can protest, she dips her hand in and flings a handful at him, covering his shirt in a thin layer of white powder.
"So that's how it's going to be, is it?" he asks. She opens her mouth to reply, and he rushes forward, standing behind her before she's finished speaking.
"How -" she starts, and turns around. "That's cheating."
"I'm just using all the weapons in my arsenal."
"How very military of you," she says dryly.
"Jealous?"
"Not since you beat me in that science test when we were ten."
The one and only time he ever beat her, he wants to say, but that's not entirely fair. After a certain point, he stopped trying.
He settles for grabbing the bag of flour from her, instead.
She looks at him for a second, and then turns, searching the cupboards for what he assumes is more ammunition. When she reaches the second one, she stops, and he steps forward warily.
She turns around, holding a bottle out in front of her.
"You're not going to throw corn syrup on me," he says, mostly convinced that he's right.
She shakes her head. "Not that."
She moves toward him, still holding the bottle, and he tenses when she reaches for his shirt, pulling it up over his ribs. She smears a little of the syrup on her hands, and then on his stomach, sticky and cool.
"What was that for?" he asks, and she looks up. His heart starts beating a little faster.
"Blood," she says simply.
"So now you want me to start wearing food, too?"
She shrugs. "It looks pretty real, from a distance."
"Sam -"
"What are you afraid of?"
"I'm afraid," he says, wiping the corn syrup off with his shirt, "that somebody's going to try to lick me."
She's still looking up at him, a speculative look in her eyes, and for a second, he almost thinks she's going to try it. And then the moment passes, and he tells himself he was probably imagining things. That he isn't disappointed.
"If you really think that's a problem," she says, "then you have bigger things to worry about than not getting injured."
Boy, does he know it.
She reaches up to put the bottle back in the cupboard, and he reaches up to help her, even though she really doesn't need it. She turns around as he closes the door, her face close to his, and almost without thinking about it, he reaches out to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
"John," she says, and he can feel her breath on his lips. "Something's burning."
-
Dinner is a mess, dry and nearly burned to a crisp, but Sam insists that it's fine. They eat in silence, forcing down what John's not even sure can be called food any more, and he tells himself that's what's causing his stomach to churn.
"Admit it," she says, and he freezes, fork halfway to his mouth. "You did this on purpose."
For a minute, he's not quite sure how to answer her, what they're even talking about, and she rolls her eyes and continues without him.
"If you really didn't want to cook, you could have just said so."
"I'll have you know," he says, relaxing now they're back on familiar ground, suddenly feeling the need to prove himself, "this was hardly my best work."
"Really," she says, clearly unconvinced. He has to admit, the evidence is against him. "Is that one of your new superpowers?"
"Could be," he says. "I haven't tried them all out yet."
He's not quite sure when he resigned himself to joking about it, but Sam's got this way of making everything seem better, like injecting C24 is no worse than some burnt pasta.
"Let me know when you do," she says, and there's a look in her eyes that makes him have to turn away.
There are a couple he can think of that would come in really handy right about now.
-
"So?" Sam asks, almost before he's in the front door.
"Fine," he says. "It worked. Happy?"
His first day back since the accident, and nobody looked twice at the fake bruises on his face except to comment that he had a hell of a black eye. Not that it doesn't still make him nervous - faking injuries, walking around base with makeup covering half his face - but without Sam, he'd probably be stuck keeping his head down and hoping nobody noticed how fast he'd healed. Really not the best idea, especially now the recruits are a little less green and a lot less stupid than he'd initially given them credit for.
"Yes," she says. Happy, but obviously not surprised. Which isn't anything new; she always did think she knew best. "I'm happy that you're safe."
"I'm about as safe as it gets," he says, even though he knows what she means.
"That doesn't mean you shouldn't still be careful," she says.
"I am careful," he says, even though -
Well. Clearly he isn't careful enough.
-
It isn't anything major. More than anything, he's pretty sure it's meant as a joke, and if he'd come out of Olduvai unscathed and unenhanced, he wouldn't bat an eye at it. Only he didn't, and he does.
There are minor repairs around the base, regular maintenance work. It's not their job, strictly speaking, but if they take it up the line to HQ it's going to be months before something gets done about it, and it's more of a hassle to leave it alone than it is to fix it. And he's not even thinking about it, not when it's the same stuff he's done a hundred times before, so he doesn't even realise he's lifting a metal beam twice as heavy as he is until someone points it out.
"Guess that protein paste they serve us really is good for you," he says, brushes it off. Nobody calls him on it, and he pushes it out of his mind.
Until the next day, when there's a stack of canned protein paste sitting in personal quarters, three feet deep and twice as thick.
"Funny," he says, and if he were anyone else, he'd probably think it was. But it's good for morale, good for team building, so he lets them have their fun, laughs like it's funny along with everyone else.
Like he doesn't have anything to hide.
-
Sam laughs, too, when he tells her, which definitely isn't what he expected.
"Protein paste?" she asks. She touches him lightly, her hand on his chest.
"They were just making fun of me," he says. There are worse ways to be treated of by your squad, he supposes. He's pretty sure any of them would be preferable.
"Because they think you have superpowers."
"Something like that."
"You know," she says. Her fingers trace idle circles on his chest; every one feels like an electric shock, even through the fabric of his shirt. "We still haven't tested exactly what your powers are."
"Sam," he says. Tries to sound exasperated, though he's not sure if he quite pulls it off. "I'm not one of your experiments."
"No?"
"No," he says, but it's an empty bluff. He is whatever she wants him to be, and they both know it. "I thought you wanted me to hide my powers. Not test them."
She hesitates. Closer to him, now, though he could swear her feet haven't moved. "I want a lot of things."
He steps closer. He can see the flecks of green around her pupils (dilated), hear her heartbeat (speeding up). Her lips are parted, her breathing slightly uneven; her hand, where it touches him, is fever-hot.
So are her lips, when he kisses her; pulls her flush against him, feels the rise and fall of her chest, the way her muscles tighten and contract. He has no idea what he's doing; not until she kisses him back, and then he does. He thinks maybe he's always known.
"Sam -" he says. He's not sure what's supposed to come next; I'm sorry? Nice sentiment, but he isn't.
She's always been the smarter twin. She kisses him again.
He backs her towards the counter, lifts her up onto it. It's effortless; he thinks it would be even without super strength. Her legs close around his waist, and he moves one hand from her waist, slides it underneath her skirt. Traces his fingers up her thigh, and feels her shudder against him, hears her breath hitch in the back of her throat. Runs his tongue along her neck, tasting her.
"This is crazy," he says. He can hear the rough edge to his own voice, knows what he really means.
"No," she says. "We're field testing your powers. This is science."
-
John turned his back on science long ago. Looking back, he thinks maybe that decision was a little premature.
He's going to have to try really hard to make up for that.
Fandom: Doom
Pairing(s): John/Samantha
Word Count: 3887
Rating: PG-13
Summary: John and Sam try to cover up his new-found abilities. It goes about as well as you'd expect.
Notes: Set post-movie. Written for
slipshod for yuletide.John is stuck in debriefing while Sam gets rushed to the infirmary, and he tries not to let himself be distracted while he's asked what seems like an endless series of questions. They ask him what happened to his team, to the facility, to the eighty-six UAC employees they were sent to evacuate. Nobody questions why he returned here after it was all over; it's standard operating procedure, after all, and he's a good soldier.
They have no idea.
He tells them the bare minimum; some kind of accident, spreading infection, Sarge's orders to contain the threat. He fudges some of the details, like how Sarge stayed behind to disable the ark, like the fact that he's covered in blood but has no marks to show for it. They seems more interested in the few mutated, mangles corpses than in the dozens of apparently human bodies cowering behind closed doors, and he really shouldn't be surprised; Sarge's orders had to come from somewhere.
He's given a routine physical, pronounced in good health, and quarantined as if it's a kind of afterthought. Updates on Sam's condition are sporadic but reassuring, and he's released a day before she is, given orders to return after his scheduled leave and an ad hoc promotion to sergeant. He doesn't want any of it.
-
"They want you to go back?"
"They're promoting me to squad leader, Sam," he says, his voice weary. She's curled up beside him on the hard leather couch that barely fits the two of them, not unlike the rest of the apartment. His RRTS-assigned housing is designated for single occupancy, but there was no way he was letting her go home alone, not when her home isn't even here any more. "They need me."
"They nearly got you killed," she says, and he fixes her with a stare that's too tired to be challenging.
"Are you going back to UAC?"
She looks away, and he knows he doesn't have to press the issue, but part of him can't resist.
"Then we're in the same position," he says. "My job wasn't the only one that got people killed."
He expects her to challenge him on that, and he has an argument ready, the same one they've been over too many times to count. Instead, she curls up a little closer, and he slings an arm around her shoulder.
"It won't be easy," she says softly. He shrugs, and feels her shift against him.
"What could possibly go wrong?"
-
He finds out his first day back, when an over-eager recruit hits him hard across the cheek during a training exercise. John reaches up to wipe away the faint trickle of blood, and his fingers slide across smooth, uncut skin.
"Five minutes," he says, fixing the recruit with a look that's as even as he can manage. "Go over the exercises, and we'll pick this up later."
He cleans himself up in the head, fixes a bandage over the area where the cut should have been. He'll have to keep it on for a few days, but he figures that as long as nobody looks too closely, it should pass muster.
He's going to have to be more careful. He could have easily dodged the blow, but that would have raised its own set of questions; until the team gets a few more weeks of training in them, he's going to have to watch his step.
He ducks his head to avoid scrutiny when he returns, pairs the soldiers up with each other as he watches from the sidelines. It's an easy fix for the situation, and he shakes his head to clear his thoughts of Sam's warning. He's a soldier. He's trained to think on his feet.
He's pretty sure he can handle this.
-
It gets trickier when they try to call him in for another round of testing. The people in charge have apparently decided that it was okay to let him wander around for a month when they didn't know the finer details of what happened at Olduvai, but now that he's back on active duty, they need to take precautions.
He isn't expecting Sam to come to his rescue, but he probably should have been. He doesn't like to think about what he would have done if he'd had to handle it on his own.
"I'm the only one who knows about Dr Carmack's research," she points out, not unreasonably. "I know what it did to the people there."
The commander looks from her to John, and John tries to keep his face impassive, like he has no personal stake in the outcome. Like it's just another round of tests - boring, routine, and not threatening to expose him as some sort of superhuman being.
Yeah, that still sounds weird.
Eventually, the commander gives in. John's not sure how much he knows about what went down, but Sam's protests make sense, and maybe he's decided it's better to keep this thing as confined as possible. John glances at her as they're led toward the lab, and she's shaking, just a little; not enough to give them away, not enough that anyone but him would likely notice. He squeezes her hand briefly, and she rewards him with a tight smile.
The inside of the lab is mostly familiar, similar to the setup at Olduvai. They're not alone, and they don't talk much by some unspoken agreement, communicating via gestures and stolen glances while Sam sneaks occasional looks at the guard who isn't a guard to test how closely he's watching them. After a while he seems to get bored, his posture relaxing bit by bit, and Sam tilts her head at a blood storage unit; it only takes a second for John to liberate a sample, and when the guard looks around at the noise, he's already sitting back in his chair across from Sam.
"We make a good team," he says, keeping his voice low, and she smiles.
"Maybe we should get you a cape," she says, barely above a whisper. And then, in a louder voice, "All done."
The next week, he's back on active duty, and he makes a mental note to get her a gift or something.
-
When it almost comes undone, his squad is running a combat simulation, and he really only has himself to blame.
He isn't as careful as he should be; he doesn't need to be, most of the time, his heightened reflexes giving him an edge that's becoming so familiar he barely thinks about it. They're about halfway through the simulation when he heads to the makeshift arms locker, keeping his pace slower than he knows he's capable of, and he's almost finished reloading his gun when he hears a noise behind him.
He's so focused on not reacting too quickly that he moves too slowly, instead, and he's standing without cover when the blast hits him squarely in the chest.
They're only using training weapons, but they still pack a hell of a punch. He goes stumbling back into the shelves, hard enough to send them crashing down on him, pinning him beneath their weight while one of the sharpened edges slices into his midsection. He forces himself to wait, trapped, while the others work to lift the debris off him. Slowly. It isn't often that the forced inaction of their subterfuge weighs on him - mostly, it's his way of pretending, even to himself, he's still nothing more than human - but this is definitely one of those times.
"I'm all right," he insists as they help him up, clutching a hand over the healed wound on his stomach. "Keep going, I'm fine."
"Do you want -" Kilner starts, and John holds up a hand to silence him.
"No," he says, too quickly, and then takes a breath, slows down. "Just a few scratches. I'll be fine."
Some of the men look unconvinced. John angles himself away from them, keeps his hand firmly covering his stomach, and tries to look like he feels at least a little bit of pain.
This one might be a little harder to explain.
-
"What happened to you?" Sam asks as soon as he gets home, and he grimaces, settling onto the couch.
"Training accident," he says, and she looks only slightly more concerned than she does amused.
"I told you to be careful," she says, but there's no real rebuke in it.
"I was," he says. "That's what got me into this mess."
She sits down beside him, her hand on his arm, subtly checking him over for injuries even though she must know she won't find any. He doesn't complain, much, but he does shoot her a look that's roughly equal parts fondness and exasperation.
"I'm fine," he reminds her, and she backs off a little, though her hand stays on his arm.
"Fine," she says. She runs a hand down his shirt, her fingers catching in the bloody tear. "But your clothes aren't. You look like a mess."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," he says.
"And you could probably use a shower," she says, and wrinkles her nose for emphasis.
"Nice," he says, but he stands up, discarding his shirt on the floor. He'll have to throw it out later, but for now, at least it tells him where his wounds are supposed to be.
-
He stays in the shower for longer than he needs to, standing under the spray until the water starts to run cold. When he gets out, Sam is still in the living room, staring idly at his shirt.
"You were lucky," she says.
"It wasn't that deep." A lie, and she probably knows it. "And it wasn't luck."
Her expression darkens for a second at that, but then she sets the shirt aside and looks up at him. "They'll expect you to be injured, you know."
He shrugs. "I can put off going back for a couple of days."
"And after that?" she asks. "Bruises don't heal that fast."
She leaves the rest unsaid; not for anyone but you.
"I'll think of something."
She goes quiet for a minute, and there's a look in her eyes that always used to scare him when they were kids. It was the same look she got right before the time she decided it would be fine for them to experiment in their father's lab; a month later, they'd still been doing chores.
"What?" he asks, and he can hear the trepidation in his own voice.
"I could help you with that," she says slowly.
"What, you're going to try beating me up?"
"No," she says simply. Like she's already made up her mind, and him agreeing to whatever she's decided is just a formality. "I'm going to give you a makeover."
He snorts. "Very funny."
She doesn't say anything, and he takes a step back.
"You can't be serious."
"You need to simulate bruises somehow," she says, as if it's the most reasonable idea in the world. "And since we can't give you real ones -"
"I'm a soldier," he says. He realises his stance has become wary, as if he's fending off danger, and he tries to relax. "I can't wear makeup on the base."
"John -"
"Sam." He gives her a long, level look. "If anyone takes a good look at me -"
"Then don't let them," she says. "Besides, who's going to be looking at you that closely?"
Her jaw is set, determined, and there's a part of John that knows he's already lost. He never was able to win an argument against her.
A few minutes later, he follows her up to the bedroom.
-
Sam's touch is soft, steady and familiar, almost enough to make up for the tickling sensation of the brush on his skin. John deliberately doesn't look at their reflection in the mirror, glances down instead at the half-open tubs of powder sitting on the bed.
"Don't move," Sam says irritably, and cups his chin in her hand, turning him back to face her. Her expression is serious, focused, the kind she used to wear when they were studying. He can't help but laugh.
"I can't do this if you keep moving," she says, but he can tell he's broken her concentration. She lets her hand drop, and he almost misses it.
"You really need all this stuff?" he asks, nodding toward the bed.
She rolls her eyes. "Not all of us are as pretty as you."
He should probably say something there, tell her she's beautiful, she's gorgeous, that she's perfect. Instead, he takes a step back. "Are we done yet?"
In response, she puts her hands on his shoulders and turns him so he's facing the mirror. He takes a step forward, raising a hand to his cheek, and stares for a minute at the fairly convincing bruise below his eye.
"Not bad," he says finally. "Where'd you learn to do this stuff, anyway?"
She shrugs. "I do have a life outside of work, you know."
He's not sure if that surprises him, but he tries not to let it show, either way. Instead, what he says is, "Thanks."
"You're welcome," she says, already clearing the makeup off the bed. "But you're cooking dinner tonight."
-
"That smells good," Sam says, and he gives her a flat look.
"It isn't."
She frowns, leaning against the counter so that he has to brush past her to get by in the narrow space. She smells good, not like the antiseptic of the labs or the chemical smells of the base, all gun oil and recruits who don't know when to lay off the cologne, and he shakes his head.
"So," she says, as he reaches in to pull out what must be half the meager contents of his refrigerator. "I was thinking you should probably limp."
He raises an eyebrow at that. "Limp?"
"You said you got knocked back pretty hard," she says. "Not all your injuries would be external."
"I'm not going to limp," he says, and after a minute, he looks up to see her almost smiling. "You're messing with me."
"Only a little," she says. She's smiling more openly now, and he runs his hand under the dripping faucet, flicking water at her.
She looks surprised for a minute, and then leans forward, grabbing a bag of flour. Before he can protest, she dips her hand in and flings a handful at him, covering his shirt in a thin layer of white powder.
"So that's how it's going to be, is it?" he asks. She opens her mouth to reply, and he rushes forward, standing behind her before she's finished speaking.
"How -" she starts, and turns around. "That's cheating."
"I'm just using all the weapons in my arsenal."
"How very military of you," she says dryly.
"Jealous?"
"Not since you beat me in that science test when we were ten."
The one and only time he ever beat her, he wants to say, but that's not entirely fair. After a certain point, he stopped trying.
He settles for grabbing the bag of flour from her, instead.
She looks at him for a second, and then turns, searching the cupboards for what he assumes is more ammunition. When she reaches the second one, she stops, and he steps forward warily.
She turns around, holding a bottle out in front of her.
"You're not going to throw corn syrup on me," he says, mostly convinced that he's right.
She shakes her head. "Not that."
She moves toward him, still holding the bottle, and he tenses when she reaches for his shirt, pulling it up over his ribs. She smears a little of the syrup on her hands, and then on his stomach, sticky and cool.
"What was that for?" he asks, and she looks up. His heart starts beating a little faster.
"Blood," she says simply.
"So now you want me to start wearing food, too?"
She shrugs. "It looks pretty real, from a distance."
"Sam -"
"What are you afraid of?"
"I'm afraid," he says, wiping the corn syrup off with his shirt, "that somebody's going to try to lick me."
She's still looking up at him, a speculative look in her eyes, and for a second, he almost thinks she's going to try it. And then the moment passes, and he tells himself he was probably imagining things. That he isn't disappointed.
"If you really think that's a problem," she says, "then you have bigger things to worry about than not getting injured."
Boy, does he know it.
She reaches up to put the bottle back in the cupboard, and he reaches up to help her, even though she really doesn't need it. She turns around as he closes the door, her face close to his, and almost without thinking about it, he reaches out to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
"John," she says, and he can feel her breath on his lips. "Something's burning."
-
Dinner is a mess, dry and nearly burned to a crisp, but Sam insists that it's fine. They eat in silence, forcing down what John's not even sure can be called food any more, and he tells himself that's what's causing his stomach to churn.
"Admit it," she says, and he freezes, fork halfway to his mouth. "You did this on purpose."
For a minute, he's not quite sure how to answer her, what they're even talking about, and she rolls her eyes and continues without him.
"If you really didn't want to cook, you could have just said so."
"I'll have you know," he says, relaxing now they're back on familiar ground, suddenly feeling the need to prove himself, "this was hardly my best work."
"Really," she says, clearly unconvinced. He has to admit, the evidence is against him. "Is that one of your new superpowers?"
"Could be," he says. "I haven't tried them all out yet."
He's not quite sure when he resigned himself to joking about it, but Sam's got this way of making everything seem better, like injecting C24 is no worse than some burnt pasta.
"Let me know when you do," she says, and there's a look in her eyes that makes him have to turn away.
There are a couple he can think of that would come in really handy right about now.
-
"So?" Sam asks, almost before he's in the front door.
"Fine," he says. "It worked. Happy?"
His first day back since the accident, and nobody looked twice at the fake bruises on his face except to comment that he had a hell of a black eye. Not that it doesn't still make him nervous - faking injuries, walking around base with makeup covering half his face - but without Sam, he'd probably be stuck keeping his head down and hoping nobody noticed how fast he'd healed. Really not the best idea, especially now the recruits are a little less green and a lot less stupid than he'd initially given them credit for.
"Yes," she says. Happy, but obviously not surprised. Which isn't anything new; she always did think she knew best. "I'm happy that you're safe."
"I'm about as safe as it gets," he says, even though he knows what she means.
"That doesn't mean you shouldn't still be careful," she says.
"I am careful," he says, even though -
Well. Clearly he isn't careful enough.
-
It isn't anything major. More than anything, he's pretty sure it's meant as a joke, and if he'd come out of Olduvai unscathed and unenhanced, he wouldn't bat an eye at it. Only he didn't, and he does.
There are minor repairs around the base, regular maintenance work. It's not their job, strictly speaking, but if they take it up the line to HQ it's going to be months before something gets done about it, and it's more of a hassle to leave it alone than it is to fix it. And he's not even thinking about it, not when it's the same stuff he's done a hundred times before, so he doesn't even realise he's lifting a metal beam twice as heavy as he is until someone points it out.
"Guess that protein paste they serve us really is good for you," he says, brushes it off. Nobody calls him on it, and he pushes it out of his mind.
Until the next day, when there's a stack of canned protein paste sitting in personal quarters, three feet deep and twice as thick.
"Funny," he says, and if he were anyone else, he'd probably think it was. But it's good for morale, good for team building, so he lets them have their fun, laughs like it's funny along with everyone else.
Like he doesn't have anything to hide.
-
Sam laughs, too, when he tells her, which definitely isn't what he expected.
"Protein paste?" she asks. She touches him lightly, her hand on his chest.
"They were just making fun of me," he says. There are worse ways to be treated of by your squad, he supposes. He's pretty sure any of them would be preferable.
"Because they think you have superpowers."
"Something like that."
"You know," she says. Her fingers trace idle circles on his chest; every one feels like an electric shock, even through the fabric of his shirt. "We still haven't tested exactly what your powers are."
"Sam," he says. Tries to sound exasperated, though he's not sure if he quite pulls it off. "I'm not one of your experiments."
"No?"
"No," he says, but it's an empty bluff. He is whatever she wants him to be, and they both know it. "I thought you wanted me to hide my powers. Not test them."
She hesitates. Closer to him, now, though he could swear her feet haven't moved. "I want a lot of things."
He steps closer. He can see the flecks of green around her pupils (dilated), hear her heartbeat (speeding up). Her lips are parted, her breathing slightly uneven; her hand, where it touches him, is fever-hot.
So are her lips, when he kisses her; pulls her flush against him, feels the rise and fall of her chest, the way her muscles tighten and contract. He has no idea what he's doing; not until she kisses him back, and then he does. He thinks maybe he's always known.
"Sam -" he says. He's not sure what's supposed to come next; I'm sorry? Nice sentiment, but he isn't.
She's always been the smarter twin. She kisses him again.
He backs her towards the counter, lifts her up onto it. It's effortless; he thinks it would be even without super strength. Her legs close around his waist, and he moves one hand from her waist, slides it underneath her skirt. Traces his fingers up her thigh, and feels her shudder against him, hears her breath hitch in the back of her throat. Runs his tongue along her neck, tasting her.
"This is crazy," he says. He can hear the rough edge to his own voice, knows what he really means.
"No," she says. "We're field testing your powers. This is science."
-
John turned his back on science long ago. Looking back, he thinks maybe that decision was a little premature.
He's going to have to try really hard to make up for that.