Archive of Our Own

Carter’s wings were mechanical, they were a device, but they hooked into his nervous system all the same – good for flying, it made operating the wings as second nature as opening and closing his fist, as if they truly were flesh and blood wings he’d been born with.

Very, very bad when something went wrong though, because all those miraculous nervous system connections registered pain just the way they would were the wings flesh and blood, too.

It was robots today, and on a certain level Carter liked those missions – there was a simplicity to beating on some out of control killbots, no need to hold back the way he would need to if he were fighting people. The downside though was that it was a lot of motherfuckin’ robots; he and Kent had been getting swarmed all afternoon, he really hoped Waller and her field team managed to find whatever lair was spawning these things and turn off the faucet. He realized he’d lost track of Kent and took a second to look around, letting out a quick breath of relief at seeing him safe on the ground, sigils surrounding him as he cast a spell that sliced through all the bots around him like panes of golden glass raining down from the sky. Carter climbed higher, trying to draw some more off Kent and give him room to maneuver; he was both faster and more agile that the robot swarm, although that only helped so much against lasers. He cut his wings into a sharp dive, luring a few to crash into each other, then swooped around behind the next bunch. Weak spot was the neck, they were long spindly things supporting clear heads displaying circuitry and what Carter desperately hoped was not actually real human brains. Okay, five more down.

“Waller, give me some good news,” Carter said into his earpiece.

There was a moment of static, then he heard Amanda Waller’s cold as ice voice. “Site is secured. You and Fate can mop up at your leisure.”

Carter let out a long breath. Finally. “Fate!” Carter shouted, waiting for the featureless front of that mask to turn toward him. “Waller’s people finally broke through, we just have to finish up here.”

He heard Dr. Fate respond both in his head and somehow also at the edge of his hearing, Kent’s voice and not his voice. Understood. He saw a complicated pentagram form on the ground beneath Kent’s feet and left him to whatever this was now, climbing again to better pick off the remaining bots one by one.

Which was a great plan until Carter caught just enough of an updraft to throw his timing off and a laser blast hit him square in the chest.

The Nth metal breastplate absorbed the brunt of the force but Carter still felt all of the breath slam out of his chest as the world went dark.

Carter. Wake up.

Carter startled to consciousness spiraling through the air; he’d been out for maybe a second but that was plenty long enough. He spread his wings, managing to stop the fall maybe twenty feet from the ground; he tried to catch his breath but didn’t get the chance, one of the robots grabbed him by both wings. Nth was strong but so were these things, and Carter couldn’t choke back a scream as he felt something in the wings crunch. He swung his mace but couldn’t get a good angle, after several flailing tries just managing to slam one of the spikes right into the thing’s single rotating eye. The robot let him go and fell to the ground; Carter tried to get some more air but something was wrong, it suddenly felt like he was flying through water instead of air. Another bot came up and punched him right in the face; the helmet took most of it but that was it for staying airborne and he went pinwheeling down to the ground below. Carter screamed again when he slammed into the ground, his left wing bending and snapping under his weight, then he rolled with the momentum and felt another stab of pain when something gave in the right one too. It felt like white hot spikes being shoved into the base of his skull; he lay on the ground and tried to breathe through it, tried to remind his body it wasn’t actually hurt, but even the tiniest movement sent a spasm of pain up his spine and through every nerve. A robot landed next to him and picked him up by the scruff of his neck, slamming him back into the grass so hard his head bounced. It hurt too much to scream now, too much to move; three more robots landed around him, the first one grabbing him by his head like it was going to wrench it right off his shoulders.

And then Carter took a breath and the pain was gone.

It took a second for him to realize he could move again, but then he kicked the robot in front as hard as he could, sending a piece of its faceplate flying, then twisted his way out of the grip of the one grabbing him, leaving it just holding his helmet. Maybe he couldn’t fly but he was still plenty strong; he wrapped his arms around the robot’s long neck and twisted, throwing off its balance just long enough for him to stagger over to his dropped mace.

That evened the odds up pretty quick. A handful of seconds later Carter was surrounded by a ring of sparking and smashed robots, trying to catch his breath after what had been a very close call. He reached back and undid his harness, letting the mangled wings drop to the ground, his stomach twisting at how much work it was going to be to get them back in repair. He’d damaged them before, sometimes it couldn’t be helped, but never enough to undo the neural link.

Then he noticed the white light in the panel that pressed against his spine when he hooked them on was still active. So he hadn’t broken the link after all.

Something else had.

Someone else had.

“Kent!” Carter called out, desperately scanning the field, a tight ball of ice forming in his gut. The fight was over, Kent should be here with his hand on Carter’s shoulder giving him shit about letting robots into his blind spot. Something inexplicable had happened and Kent Nelson wasn’t where he should be, those were two things were always a bad combination.

Carter saw a quick flash of liquid gold move in the breeze and raced toward it, cursing how slow he was on foot. He found Kent facedown in grass trying to ease his helmet off with shaking hands, and as relieved as Carter wanted to be at finding him alive and moving he was rooted to the ground for a moment because erupting from Kent’s shoulders and tearing through the blue of his suit was a pair of enormous white wings, just as twisted and mangled as his metal ones. “Kent, what did you do?” he said, crouching beside him.

Kent looked up at him and Carter could see all that shocking, white-hot pain that had almost killed him in Kent’s too wide blue eyes. “Carter. Oh, good. It worked.”

*
Carter would never consider himself a religious man but he let out a quiet little thank God when he heard Kent stir on the bed above him. “You took any longer to wake up I was going to have to tell Waller you were asleep on the job,” he said, making an effort to keep the concern out of his voice because if Kent was going to scare him like this, Carter was going to give him at least a little shit about it.

Kent blinked at him, like he was trying to piece together what had happened between him passing out in that field and now. “How long?” Kent whispered, his voice rough.

“Half the day,” Carter said, keeping his voice casual as if he hadn’t been out of his mind for most of that – Kent had passed out after fights before, but always for a clearly magical reason, drained maintaining a spell, that kind of thing, and never for this long.

Although he guessed this time counted as a magical reason, too. Carter put down his tools and shifted himself away from his half-disembled wings spread all over the floor, keeping a careful eye on Kent as he tried to prop himself up on his elbows, the weight of his own wings clearly making that harder than Kent had expected. “Easy, easy,” Carter said, putting one hand on Kent’s shoulder. “I didn’t want to lay you out on your back, it looked like it would hurt.”

Kent nodded, reaching one hand out to brace himself against Carter’s shoulder. “I’m not sure that can be avoided.”

Carter helped Kent turn over onto his back, wincing when Kent hissed in pain as Carter just accidentally brushed against a wing. Carter propped some pillows behind Kent’s back and crouched back down, his arms resting on the edge of the bed. “The hell did you do, Kent?”

He thought Kent almost looked a smidge rueful. “I cast a contingency spell on you.”

Carter groaned. “Kent....”

Kent raised one hand. “It’s intended....” He winced again and Carter adjusted the pillows. “It’s intended so that if you’re ever incapacitated by pain in combat, I would take it instead.”

Carter massaged his knuckles into his forehead. “Why would you do that?”

“Because if you’re incapacitated by pain it’s usually because someone is in the middle of trying to stab you.”

Carter really couldn’t deny that, as much as he would like to. “Like you’re not usually in the same boat.”

Kent shook his head. “Even if I should be in pain, I’m usually not…aware of it, when I’m wearing the helmet,” Kent said, his brows furrowed the way they always did when he tried to put what wearing that helmet felt like into words. “It’s something far away. Normally, anyway,” he said, sighing as he looked at the twisted, painful wings stubbornly still attached to his shoulders.

“So what happened this time?”

Kent looked thoughtful. “The previous times....”

This was not helping Carter’s headache. “Previous times?”

Kent cocked one eyebrow, a clear will you let me finish? look if Carter had ever seen one. “The previous times,” he repeated, “the effect passed once the danger had, once it was safer for you.” He could see those calculations going in Kent’s head, Carter always enjoyed watching those gears turning.

“I’m not in danger now.”

“True. But magic can be very literal – the time you shattered your shoulder---”

“Oh, fuck, Kent, I thought that was just adrenaline.”

“...the time you shattered your shoulder, I felt it in my shoulder. When you broke your ribs, I likewise felt it in my ribs.”

Carter was starting to see those pieces fit together. “But this time it was my wings I busted, so....”

“If I was going to absorb the pain, then I would also need wings. And because they were created wholesale from magic, they still seem to be connected to yours.”

“But I can take mine off and you can’t, yeah, I’m getting it.” Carter dragged one hand through his hair, taking in the mess Kent was in. “When finish this repair job,” he said, nodding toward the mess of metal parts all over the floor, “will it fix you up too?”

Kent nodded slowly. “I believe so.”

Carter had suspected it – he’d started on the major breaks while Kent was out cold and he’d noticed the analogous breaks in Kent’s wings had healed at the same time – but it was good to have confirmation from the expert when magic was involved. “Guess that means I should get back to it.”

“If it eases your conscience at all, the spell wouldn’t work if the injury would be immediately fatal.”

“Well…yeah, actually, it does.” He let out a long, heavy sigh. “Promise you won’t use this again.”

Kent just let out a pained laugh. “I will promise no such thing.” He frowned, looking around as if he’d just taken notice of his surroundings. “Is this your room?”

Carter smiled. “Yeah. I know you have your own rooms when you’re here at the Estate but I wanted to keep an eye on you while I worked on all this, plus I have a California king. It’s still not big enough for….” he made a those big damn wings gesture. ”But I thought you might be more comfortable.”

“”I’m...I’m sorry I’ve taken your bed.”

“Nah, you’re welcome to it, I won’t be getting much sleep until this is done anyway.”

He followed Kent’s sightline and saw him looking at his framed map of the Valley of the Kings. Kent caught his eye and then looked back at it. “Are those the digs you led?” Kent asked, nodded toward the xs on the map.

“Yeah,” Carter said. “Managed to get a few of them under my belt. Feels like ten lifetimes ago now.”

“I had a notebook to keep track of mine,” Kent said. “I would draw the sites day by day, to show the progression. I lost track of it sometime in the…fifties, I think.”

Carter made a note to see if Waller’s pet hacker could scour some auction sites and museum collections for him. “That’s a shame, I’d love to see it.”

“So would I. I wonder how much I would remember.”

“Trust me, you take one look and it would all come rushing back, doesn’t matter how long. No matter how many mutants and aliens and robots I fight half my nightmares are still about grad school.” He touched Kent’s arm. “Okay, I’m gonna get back to it. You’re not cold, are you? I had to cut all your shirt and waistcoat and stuff once the Doctor Fate suit faded out, it was tangling around the wings and it was all pretty mangled anyway.”

“I’m fine.” Kent looked faintly embarrassed at realizing he was half naked in Carter’s bed and Carter regretted saying anything. “Thank you for looking after me.”

“You never have to thank me for that, Kent. Especially since you’re in this mess because of me.” He tapped Kent’s arm again. “Okay, now back to it for real.” Carter settled back on the floor and sighed, trying to figure out where to start.

“I’d thought those were self-repairing?”

Carter let out a scoffing laugh. “Yeah, I guess they are technically, but the way your bones are self-repairing, you know? If a bone gets broken and it doesn’t get set, it might repair itself but it still won’t be right. Minor dents and scratches take care of themselves, but anything major needs help. It’s…fiddly,” he said with another sigh. “There’s a lot of little moving pieces in these things and they all have to fit together just right.” He noticed he had two of the top joint halves didn’t quite match and searched until he found the right ones to swap them with, then he smiled over his shoulder at Kent. “Truth be told I don’t mind so much, I kind of find it relaxing. Gives me something to focus on. This is a bigger mess than I’m used to though, have to admit.”

“May I watch you work?”

“’Course. I talk to myself though, so word of warning there.”

“As long as you don’t mind my responding.”

“You can say whatever you like Kent, you know that. Go ahead and heckle me if you want.” Carter looked over the mess and found where he’d left off. He waited for the tip of the Thanagarian torch tool to heat up white, spot welding Nth metal was a world of difference from regular steel. He lined up the two cracked points just before the big joint and touched the tip of the seal torch to the seam.

Kent screamed. Carter jerked his hand back and almost fumbled the torch; he was relieved when he caught it at the last second, he knew from embarrassing experience that thing could burn through the floor in seconds. “Fuck, Kent, did you feel that?”

Kent nodded. “Oh yes,” he said, sweat already dotting his brow.

Carter swore under his breath. “I thought you were just still feeling the damage, you should have told me you could feel it when I touched mine.”

“There seemed little point, there didn’t seem to be anything to be done about it.”

Carter supposed that made a certain amount of sense. “This is gonna get bad, Kent, do you want me to give you something? There’s hard stuff kept in the med wing, I have the clearance for that.”

Kent just shook his head. “None of that works on me. You would have to knock me out, and I would rather you not. I’ll be fine.”

“You say that now,” Carter muttered. It was true that Kent had a truly impressive pain tolerance, Carter had seen that more than once, but he did not like the idea of putting it to test like this at all.

“I will be fine,” Kent said again, putting that no arguments tone to his voice, but it would be a lot more convincing if he wasn’t still obviously trying to breathe through pain. “I was…I was just caught off guard. It’s…actually an interesting sensation, feeling them spread apart the way they are now. I had expected more of that.”

Carter worried at his lip but he genuinely didn’t see what alternatives they had. “Okay. If it does get too much, promise you’ll tell me.”

“It won’t.” Carter let out a soft sigh that at least Kent wasn’t lying to him.

“How hooked in are you?” He shifted over to a section of mostly undamaged pin feathers, the delicate metal gleaming in the light, and drew a fingertip just along its edge. “Did you feel that?”

“Yes,” Kent breathed. “Are they ordinarily this…tactile?”

“Oh yeah, definitely.”

“I hadn’t realized,” Kent murmured, and there was something…thoughtful about the way Kent said that zapped right to Carter’s spine.

“You want a drink?” he blurted out. “I know that works on you. I’ve got some good stuff in here.”

“I think I would.”

Carter was relieved, because he desperately needed one himself, that tone in Kent’s voice combined with him being half naked in Carter’s bed had suddenly combined in ways Carter needed to get control of, he could not be thinking like this with Kent actually in the room, especially not right now. He took the good Irish whiskey and poured a double shot for Kent and then a single for himself. The burn gave him a little clarity, let him get his thoughts in order, even if Kent knocking his shot back like an old pro was distracting as hell.

He retook his spot on the floor, laughing quietly at himself. Get your shit together, Carter. “Okay, Kent, back to it.” Kent didn’t scream again, but only because Carter could tell he was choking it back. “Talk to me, Kent, talk through it.”

“What...what about?” Kent said very gamely, groaning between words.

“Tell me about....” Carter smiled. “Tell me the stupidest thing that ever happened to you at a dig.”

Carter felt accomplished when that managed to drag a laugh out of Kent, even if a pained one. “Oh. I’ll have to think about that one.”

“Anything. Doesn’t have to be true, even.”

“There...there was a fellow with us in Tunisia. Oxbridge man,” Kent said, and Carter laughed at the venom Kent put into that word.

“Weren’t you one of those, too?”

“I think you know what I mean,” Kent said, whimpering softly as Kent dug some grit out of a wing joint.

“Yeah, I do, I’m just giving you shit.”

“He resented that he wasn’t put in charge of the dig. His father was a lord, you know.”

Kent put an extra posh accent on that sentence that painted a whole picture by itself. “Oh, I bet you heard about that a lot.”

“A baron. He ordered us all to refer to him as Honorable, as was his right after all.”

“Ooh boy, that stuff does not work when you’re covered in dust and sleeping in tents.”

“It certainly does not. And even aside from that our leader was a Scot, and he had quite enough of that after the first day.”

“So what did Sir Honorable whatever do?”

It took a few seconds for Kent to get his breath. “Our guides had scouted out a path to the site, it was the wet season and we had to be cautious. He, of course, objected to how circuitous it was and declared that we were wasting too much time.”

“Ooh, I bet I know where this is going.”

“MacArthur, our dig leader, had enough of the whinging and told him he was welcome to prove his point any time he might like.”

“Tell me he was never seen again.”

“Very close to it. After two days of peace one of the guides led us to him sunk up to flare of his jodhpurs in a mud flat.”

“Why the fuck was he wearing jodhpurs on a dig? Was he waiting for a polo match to break out?”

“Remember, this was quite a few decades ago, much of the terrain was too rough for the cars we had so we still used horses and donkeys quite a bit. Of course he had to represent his barony if he was going to ride.”

“Brace,” Carter said softly, snapping a stubborn panel back into place. Carter reached back and let Kent squeeze his hand until the worst of that pain passed. “What’d you all do then?”

“We had to tie ropes around him and use the ponies to drag him out. Apparently the local children had devised a game where they would try to throw little rocks onto the brim of his hat, they were very disappointed.”

“Poor kids.”

“Indeed. He found a very convenient excuse to flee back to London after that.” He let out a soft breath. “Oh, I haven’t thought about any of that in years.”

“We got through some rough parts there, you’re doing real good.”

“I believe it’s your turn.”

“That’s not fair Kent, that story didn’t happen to you. And besides, I was a perfect grad student, not once did I accidentally glue myself to pottery and anyone who says I did is lying.”

“Oh, I remember a mishap like that. Young woman, very bright, she....” Carter looked back to see Kent frowning. “Do people still touch things with to their tongues or their teeth to tell rocks from fossils?”

Carter laughed. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen paleos do that.”

“You would think they’d have found a better way by now.”

“Eh, if it works, it works.”

“She was doing that, and one of the porters dropped a load a tools right behind her.”

“Oh no,” Carter said, knowing exactly what was coming and feeling intense empathy for this woman who had probably been dead fifty years already. “Tell me she didn’t swallow it.”

“She did,” Kent said, Carter groaning in sympathy. “She begged me not to tell anyone what had happened, it was very hard for women to find field placements and she was terrified it would discredit her.”

Carter desperately wanted to pry further – Kent so rarely talked about his life before becoming Dr. Fate, or the people he’d known then – but something wistful in Kent’s voice warned him off. “You were a good man to look out for her.”

“Oh, she returned the favor less than a week later.” Kent hissed in a breath as Carter starting working on a tricky spot.

“I know, I know, I’ll be done with this bit soon. Keep talking, tell me all about it.”

*

Carter leaned back against the bed, flexing a cramp out of his hand. He needed a break and more importantly, Kent needed a break. “Kent, can I ask you a personal question?”

“You can ask me any question.”

Oh, he sounded so tired. “Why did you join the Justice Society?”

Kent made a soft hm sound. “That’s the question I asked you the day we met.”

“Yeah, but you were a little…angrier when you asked me.”

He looked up to see Kent nod. “I was. Very. But not at you, Amanda Waller had no right to use that name.”

“She’d been after you for years to come back to the fold...”

“I was never in her fold.”

“Okay, okay,” Carter said, conceding the point. “But I always wondered what swayed you. Now seems as good a time to ask as any.”

“Well as I remember, you refused to leave my home until I agreed.”

Carter smiled. “Pretty sure you could’ve made me leave. Hell, I don’t know why you let me in the door.”

Kent was quiet for a handful of seconds. “I’d recognized you. I’d...seen you before,” he said, gesturing at his eyes for a moment.

Carter felt a little flutter of concern that he hoped didn’t show in his face, Kent didn’t usually see very nice things. “I didn’t know that.”

“I never told you.”

“Did...whatever you saw, did it happen yet?”

Kent was quiet for a few moments. “Not yet. And it may not, what I see doesn’t always. How was my name even brought up to you?” he asked, the mood snapping back like a switch being flipped

Carter laughed and took Kent’s cue. “Oh, that was old Al Pratt. He hadn’t retired yet, he was still consulting, and while we were going over mission details he slammed his hand on the table and went, “Oh, oh, you know who we need for this? We need Dr. Fate.’” Carter said, doing his best impression. “Now I had no idea who that was, obviously, and Waller told him it was nonstarter, but he said that dimensional magic shit we were looking at, you were great at it. That it would never work without you.”

“I supposed you were told that I had been approached before.”

“Oh yeah, in detail. One guy claimed you literally turned someone into a newt once.” Carter waited but Kent didn’t refute it and Carter smiled. “The Wall swore up and down that you would not have it.”

“And you came to my door anyway.”

Carter shrugged, remembering that long ago day. “Pratt was right. We needed magic, nothing would work without a big gun. I had nothing to lose. I thought…maybe if you saw my face, talked to me personally, it would be harder to say no.”

“I suppose Al Pratt had also tried to dissuade you from that.”

Carter laughed. “Pretty sure he’d started planning my funeral, yeah.” Carter, he’s a Lord of Order, you can’t just walk up to the front door of someone like that!

But Carter had, and Kent had let him in, wearing an immaculate three piece suit and staring Carter down the entire time with those intense eyes. “You weren’t what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“Pratt said he’d never seen your face.”

He saw Kent’s brows draw together, as if he was trying to figure out if that could possibly be true. “Perhaps,” he said slowly. “We weren’t teammates very long, all things considered. I was...not at my best, when he’d known me.”

Al Pratt had said some other things, too. You said you haven’t seen this Dr. Fate in twenty years, Al, how do you even know he’s still alive?

Oh, I don’t think that helmet of his would let him die.

Carter had never worked up the nerve to ask Kent if that was true. “You were so pissed off I was there.”

“You have to recall, I was part of the original Justice Society. We all built that name together and I’m the last of them left, to have Amanda Waller take it....”

“You asked me how I could work for ‘that butcher.’”

“I wasn’t incorrect.”

“I am not arguing you were. Or are.” He looked up at Kent. “What the hell did I say to bring you around?”

Kent let out a soft sigh, his eyes far away. “I hadn’t actually expected an answer to my question. But you made a very impassioned speech about needing to matter. About needing to do something with your ife that would make Carter Hall having lived matter.” Kent met his eyes. “And you told me that you understood my anger over the Justice Society name, and promised me that as long as you were a part of it you would make sure it mattered as well.” He smiled. “And you’ve kept that promise.”

“I meant it.”

Kent nodded. “I knew you’d meant it. You were so afraid,” he said softly. “Not of me, but of what you were facing. Not of dying, but of failing those who’d put their faith in you. I wanted to know who you were.”

“Okay, that’s why you came along that first time. Why did you stay? Because it was definitely a while before got the feeling you actually liked me, that whole first year every time I talked to you it felt like I was defending my dissertation all over again.”

“I don’t remember being quite that hard on you,” Kent said, with a quirk to his lips that said that he wasn’t all that sorry about it. The expression faded into something quiet and sad. “You were among wolves. I wanted to help you keep your promise.” He was quiet long enough that Carter thought he might have fallen asleep. “And because you asked me to.”

*

Carter realized Kent had been quiet for a little too long. “Kent? You good?” No answer; Carter very carefully put the section he’d been mending back on the floor and pushed himself up. “Kent?”

He winced when he sat on the bed and got a good look at Kent; he was soaked in cold sweat and breathing too fast, edging way closer to shock than Carter liked. “Kent?” he said softly, touching the back of his hand to Kent’s cheek. Kent’s eyes startled half open and Carter let out a sharp, relieved breath. “You told me you’d let me know when it got too much.”

Kent groaned, rubbing one shaking hand over his face. “I said nothing of the sort.” Carter shook his head and got up to grab a damp towel, pressing it to the side of Kent’s neck when he sat back down on the bed. “I was trying to meditate.”

“Yeah, doesn’t look like that was working.”

“No,” Kent said, a little ruefully. “I just need a moment, I’ll be fine.”

“We can take a little longer than that.” This close Carter could see the evidence of Kent’s decades of work, a faint patchwork of old scars crisscrossing his torso. “Hope you’ve gotten better at dodging over the years.”

Kent made that rueful Mm sound again. “I suppose I’ve accumulated my share.”

“Like I’m much better, got a new one on my back from yesterday.”

“Did you?”

Carter shook his head. “Yeah, didn’t get back to the ship soon enough.” He hiked up his shirt to show where one of the broken feathers had caught him. The ship had done what it could and it was healed to just a thin raised line. “Didn’t even feel it.” He felt Kent’s fingertips trace it and willed himself not to shiver. “Doesn’t hurt.”

“I could erase it, if you like.”

“Nah, it’s good. And you don’t look like you could get rid of pencil with an actual eraser right now.” The corners of Kent’s lips tipped up because it was undeniably true. He pressed the cool towel to Kent’s chest, liking that some of the pain lines eased from his face. He felt bad but in a way Carter was almost glad for the scars, seeing Kent out of uniform, out of the suits, it was doing Carter’s head in a bit. He was having a hard time not staring, and at least the scars gave him an excuse. “Someone really messed up your stitches here,” he said, indicating a jagged scar just above Kent’s hip, careful not to touch him.

“Ah, that someone would be me,” Kent said, with a sigh. “I was in the Himalayas in search of an artifact, but Mordru got there first.” Carter knew that name, had even been face to face with the…Carter decided thing was the most accurate term. “We’d dueled, and I won, but before then he stabbed me with an enchanted blade. I could generate the needle and the sutures from magic but not the expertise, unfortunately.”

Carter didn’t like the image of Kent alone in a cave somewhere, trying to stitch up his own stab wound before he passed out. “You didn’t have anyone you could call?”

Kent’s eyes were soft and sad. “Not then.”

Carter tapped Kent’s arm. “You’re not going to be stuck in that position again. You know that, right?” Carter sighed, taking in the wings still stubbornly attached to Kent’s shoulders. “They look like they feel a little better, at least.”

“Yes. Much,” Kent said, craning his neck to have a look himself.

Carter would have thought Kent’s magical wings would have been a match for his, but they weren’t now that he had a good look; instead of the wide wings of a raptor they were longer and narrower, coming to a sharp, tapered tip. Like one of those long lived seabirds that could fly across a whole ocean. “Almost too bad you can’t keep them,” Carter said. “I might like them better than mine.”

“They won’t look as striking in the sun as yours do.”

“Trade offs. Can you move them?”

Kent carefully stretched them out; Carter watched his face and was glad not to see too much pain. “They’re heavy.”

“Yeah, flesh and blood instead of Nth would be.” He hovered his hand over the sea of white feathers. “May I?”

Kent looked amused that Carter had asked. “Of course.”

Carter was glad to have permission because the temptation had been driving him nuts. Kent sighed when Carter sank his hand into the feathers and Carter froze. “That hurt?”

“No,” Kent said. “It’s…no.”

Carter drew just his fingertips along the top of the wing, making note of the spots that made Kent flinch. “I thought they were all white but I like the dark feathers along the top here, that’s sharp.”

“My hair was dark when I was young,” Kent said, sounding thoughtful, and yeah, Carter could see that, there was even still a little pepper mixed in with the gray and silver. “I was considered very handsome then, you know”

Carter chuckled. “Modest too, I bet.”

“Oh, not at all. But it was true, I heads would turn when I walked into a room then. I was on a Cambridge Journal cover.”

“Ooh, cover boy. I never got that.”

“That was...just a few months before I found the helmet,” Kent said, his expression turning thoughful. “We hadn’t been allowed access to any Ur sites in quite a while, photographers were at that final dig, documenting it.”

“Do you regret it?” Kent met his eyes, like he hadn’t expected the question. “Finding the helmet. You didn’t get a feature just because you look nice, you had credentials. You should’ve had a nice career for yourself.”

Kent let out a long breath. “That’s hard to answer,” he said, his brow furrowed. “I can’t say that I regret it, because it wasn’t something I sought. Nabu found me. But I did resent it, for quite a long time.” Kent had never talked about the helmet like this and Carter stayed quiet, letting him find his words. “I hadn’t...understood, at first. How much room it would take in my life. And I fought against that, for years. When I failed find a balance, it embittered me.”

“That what you meant when you said old Al Pratt didn’t know you at your best?”

“Yes. Then and after.”

“And now?”

The hard twist to his lips as he’d been talking about the helmet faded. “It hasn’t gotten easier,” he admitted, “but I’ve begun to appreciate some of the gifts it’s given me. I wouldn’t have lived near this long if I had never found it. And we would never have met,” he said, placing his hand on Carter’s arm. “So I began to see the purpose in it.”

Kent was so visibly exhausted that his words were running together, his eyes barely staying open. “I always love hearing you complimenting me Kent, but you need to rest.”

“So do you.”

“Nah, nah, I couldn’t if I wanted to. I want to get this done. I think we’re through most of the hard part, you might be able to sleep through the rest.”

Kent’s hand went tight on his arm for a moment. “At least lie down until I’m asleep, then.”

It’s not like Carter could protest the bed wasn’t big enough, even with the wings. Kent rarely asked him for anything. “Fine,” he said, making a show of laying beside him. “Just until you’re asleep.”

*

Carter’s eyes blinked open to find the room in full darkness and groaned softly, trying to get his bearings. Kent made a soft, sleepy sound in response and Carter made sure to keep still. “Go back to sleep, Kent,” he said, keeping his voice soft. For a moment he felt Kent’s hand in his hair, his fingertips sleepily tracing between the twists, but then Kent seemed to wake up enough to catch himself, jerking his hand away. Carter closed his eyes quickly and played at having been asleep, not wanting to embarrass Kent; Kent put one hand on Carter’s shoulder, letting out an audible breath of relief when he didn’t stir. “Carter?”

Carter played at just waking up, rubbing his hands over his face. “Hey. Guess I did need that, huh?”

“How long?”

Carter looked up at the clock. “Jesus, almost six hours.”

“That long?”

Carter sounded incredulous and Carter rolled over to look at him. “We’d been up over 24, I don’t know why you’re surprised. All that time you were passed out doesn’t count as rest.”

“I can’t remember the last time I slept that long without interruption,” Kent said, and Carter…did hear him, distantly, but it took a second for his brain to register because that first look at Kent had knocked something loose in his head. He’d left the curtains open and Kent’s eyes shone in the darkness, they always did, Carter didn’t know if that was the magic in him or just something about Kent himself, but it was it was the wings that had Carter staring. The wings shone opalescent in the moonlight, the dark feathers along the top shining and shot through with color like polished obsidian. When Kent shifted position the colors in the wings shifted too, and it took a moment for Carter to remember that he should respond. “How long do you usually sleep?”

“At a stretch? Three hours, perhaps. On a good night. My mind isn’t a quiet place.”

“Maybe try for a couple more, okay?”

And Carter knew Kent must still be exhausted, because he only nodded. “Will you stay?”

Kent’s hand twitched twitched toward him when he said that, and if the answer wasn’t obviously going to be yes, that would have cinched it. “’Course. I could probably use another couple myself.” Kent’s eyes were already drifting closed when Carter lay back down; he counted the seconds until Kent’s breathing went regular again, letting out a long breath himself when he was sure Kent was asleep. He looked over the edge of the bed all the work he still had ahead of him and tried to will himself to get back to it, but it was much harder to drag himself out of bed and away from Kent now that he was here. He watched the clock and told himself he’d get up in five minutes, then it was ten minutes, then he lied himself again and said that in fifteen minutes, that was when he would definitely get up, until he started to get drowsy again himself.

Kent took in a short, sharp gasp of air that hit Carter at the base of his skull every bit as hard as that stab of pain when he’d hit the ground. At first he thought Kent might just be dreaming but when Carter looked up he saw that Kent’s eyes were wide open, staring at nothing; Carter swore under his breath and shifted so he was kneeling beside him. Guessing this is why you can’t sleep through the night, Kent. Carter bit his lip, trying to figure out his play; usually if Kent had a vision Carter would try to snap him back out of it, but even though Kent was good at hiding it coming down from a vision always left him a little shaken up. These things were disorienting enough normally, forget being shaken out of sound sleep during one.

Kent’s eyes were wet. Carter watched in mute horror as a tear slowly slid down his face, Kent’s hand clutching spasmodically at the bedsheets. “Oh, Kent, what are you seeing?” he whispered. The years of knowing Kent Nelson had turned magic into something that had once been a lifelong fascination for Carter into something he hated because all it ever seemed to do was hurt.

Carter swept his gaze over the beautiful, shining wings taking up the majority of the bed, remembering the soft way Kent had sighed when he’d touched them before. He very, very gently stroked his fingertips along the soft, dark feathers at the base of the right wing, close to where it attached to his shoulder. The way Kent’s lips parted did things to Carter, but he put that aside because this was good, this was working; Carter stroked along the length of the wing, careful to avoid the still-tender spots, and watched as first an unfocused softness banished the vacant stare from his eyes, then as his eyes slowly began to drift closed again. Bit by bit Kent relaxed, the awful tension that always came with visions retreating from his face, his breathing starting to slow. His hand grasped at the air for a moment until finding Carter’s arm, closing in a loose circle around his wrist. “That’s okay, go back to sleep, Kent. Everything’s good.” Kent let out another soft sigh before his eyes closed entirely.

Carter let out a long, long breath. He lay back down, not wanting to risk getting up with Kent still holding onto his arm, and even just that much movement was enough for Kent make a muffled, questioning sound that might have been an attempt at his name. “I said until you fell asleep and I meant it, you know how I am about my promises.” Like he was following Carter’s voice Kent rolled half over, winding up lying with his chest against Carter’s back. He could feel Kent’s heart still hammering much too fast and he lay very still until Kent’s breathing went soft and deep again. There was no risk of falling asleep himself this time, Carter felt like he might never sleep again, every nerve in his body felt like it was awake.

It felt right, Kent lying half curled around him like this. Carter tried very hard not to think about how right it felt, in fact, or that how after years of idly wondering Carter now knew what it would be like to feel Kent’s breath against the back of his neck as he slept. It turned out it felt great.

When he was sure Kent was sound asleep again Carter untangled himself and slipped out of the bed; he really did have a lot left and it would go easier on Kent like this. He worked for a few minutes, then the temptation got the better of him and he found his phone. Being in the Justice Society gave him access to everything digitized and he searched through the archives to find that journal cover. starting at the 40s and working his way back, trying to remember if Kent had ever mentioned the year the helmet had blown up his life. He finally found it in the 30’s archives, young Kent staring directly at the camera with an easy smile Carter had never seen on his Kent's face. His black hair was slicked back the way men did then, his sleeves rolled up; he looked like someone Clark Gable would play in the movie, although it would be one of the few times Hollywood wouldn’t hold up to the reality. Carter wished he could reach through time and warn him.

He looked up and watched Kent sleep for a few long, contented minutes, a lock of silver hair in his face. “I don’t know, Kent. I think the grey suits you.

*

The big, dramatic parts of the job were done and while on one hand it was good to be over that hump, especially for Kent’s sake, it meant what was left was the little, fiddly, detail-oriented parts, the checking thousands and thousands of Nth metal feathers to make sure none were out of alignment, that none of the interlocking panels and gears in the joints were in the wrong place, and Carter felt like he was slowly losing his mind because it was the stage of the job where he started to feel like it would never end.

Of course, that there was another big distraction wasn’t helping his concentration. He heard Kent smother a soft moan as he traced the edge of one of the big pin feathers to make sure it was lined up; bless Kent, he was trying real damn hard to pretend this was having no affect on him at all, Carter assumed out of mortification. He was glad Kent wasn’t in pain any more, that had stopped a couple hours ago, but his wings and Kent’s wings were still linked up and that link was sensitive.

Years before, when they’d finally found themselves a good rhythm Carter had...not made a pass at Kent, exactly, he hadn’t been able to work up the nerve then to be quite that direct, but had made it clear that he would definitely not be opposed to things going in that direction. Kent had very gracefully sidestepped and Carter had taken the hint, no harm no foul, and they’d gone on without missing a step. Carter wasn’t sixteen, he was more than grown enough to let go of a crush. He had let it go.

Until all this had happened, with Kent half-naked in his bed and sleeping pressed up against him and asking him to lie down next to him while he slept. He could still feel Kent’s soft breath against his neck and the way his body had felt pressed against him, like some kind of sex version of a phantom limb. Carter kept telling himself he was too damn old for this and his body kept not listening.

Kent moaned again, that soft, faintly embarrassed moan that made Carter feel like he’d just been set on fire. “I know, Kent, I know. I’m working as fast as I can.”

Kent made a needy little sound that Carter knew damn well he had not meant to let out, and he desperately wanted to hear it again. “And you’re...sure you’re not doing this on purpose?”

And the damnedest part of it all was that he really wasn’t. “I know it’s a weird situation, Kent, I’m working as fast as I can. You let me know if you need me to stop for a second.”

Kent was silent for a few seconds, the way he was shifting around on the bed slowly unraveling Carter’s senses. “I don’t want you to stop,” Kent said, barely audible.

Carter felt a bead of sweat slide down his back. There was a bright white line here Carter was trying to dance on the right side of, he wasn’t sure he could shove this particular genie back in the bottle a second time.

But Kent had asked him not to stop. Carter gradually stopped being so careful not to touch the wings more than necessary, the relieved sigh Kent let out hitting Carter like a taser. He wondered if he could get Kent to swear. He’d really love to hear Kent swear. He smoothed his hand down the metal sheen of the wings, smiling at the sharp gasp that pulled from Kent. Okay Kent, you got me, that time it was on purpose.

But Carter could only drag this out so long, both because the work really was close to done and because if he didn’t get to actually touch Kent he was going to explode. “Kent, mind if I try something?”

“What?”

Carter pushed himself back from the wings – they looked back in working order, and he hadn’t felt anything off, but well, Kent’s were still there, so obviously there was still a little work to be done. Carter boosted himself back onto the bed. “Usually at this point I have to put them on a few times to feel the little gears that are out of alignment, but there might be another option.” The words came out a little faster than Carter had wanted them too, he felt like it was so obvious what he was doing here.

Kent’s brow furrowed. “The pain is gone, what did you have in mind?”

Carter reached out one hand. “May I?” Kent’s tongue snaked out over his lips for a moment but he nodded, and Carter very gently closed his hand around the top of Kent’s wing. Kent drew in a sharp breath but not, Carter thought, a painful one. “You good?”

“Yes.” Carter carefully moved his hand down the wing until Kent jumped. “There,” Kent breathed.

“That spot is such a pain in my ass,” Carter said, reaching down for his schematics notebook from the floor to sketch a quick diagram. As self serving as this was he actually was getting useful information out of it; he very, very slowly worked his way up and down both of Kent’s wings, having to remind himself to take notes because the watching Kent Nelson – three piece pressed suits, immaculate tailored waistcoats, perfectly groomed beard Kent Nelson – slowly turn into a squirming, sweat soaked wreck was even better than Carter had always known it would be.

“Carter, you’ve stopped taking notes.”

Carter supposed he could only go over the same spot so many times before it became a little too obvious. “Yeah. I guess I have,” he said, rubbing his thumb into the sensitive spot he’d found earlier. Kent made that soft, appreciative sound again and Carter felt that part of his brain that kept him from making bad decisions finally give up. He carefully put his hand on Kent’s bare chest and watched Kent’s eyes go heavy and hooded.

“You don’t need to indulge me,” Kent said.

Carter blinked. There was a sharp tone to Kent’s voice he didn’t understand, but Kent’s hand was still tight on his arm so if he wanted Carter to stop touching him it was an odd way to ask. “I don’t get what you mean.”

A very quick flash of emotions crossed Kent’s face, the fondness in his eyes as he looked at Carter contrasting with the bitter twist to his lips. “I hadn’t guarded my emotions well enough,” he said, looking somewhere vaguely over Carter’s shoulder like he couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “You were very...kind, a few years ago. I don’t want you to feel obliged, I....” Kent closed his eyes, something pained in his expression that Carter knew had nothing to do with the wings. “I wish you could have seen me even forty years ago.”

Sometimes Carter realized he could speak a language from one of his past lives, a whole new part of his brain unlocking, and realizing what was going on in Kent’s head felt just like that, the knowledge clicking into place like a switch being flipped. Carter leaned down, his lips close to Kent’s ear. “Kent, you get that you still turn heads when you enter a room, right? You sure as hell turned mine.” The blank disbelief in Kent’s eyes ached. “Kent, I have wanted you bad from the second I saw you. If I knew for sure you wanted me I would have put you up against a wall that first day, I promise you that,” he said, trailing his fingers through the white hair across Kent’s chest.

Kent let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “Carter, you must be aware of what you look like?

Carter smiled. “I do like it when you compliment me.” He shifted further down on the bed, kissing one of the faint scars on Kent’s chest, the one just shy of his heart. “I don’t want to see the Kent from forty years ago. I don’t want the one eighty years ago. I saw the picture of that guy, and you’re right he was a matinee idol son of a bitch, but I want you. Kent, I promise you, I have been thinking about the way you would look in my bed since the second you first looked at me in your fucking foyer. And you know how I am about promises.”

He could tell Kent didn’t quite believe him yet but that was okay, Carter could work on that. He licked along that jagged scar above Kent’s hip and felt his whole body jump. He palmed Kent’s erection through his trousers, watching the way that made Kent’s eyes dilate, then slid the trousers past his hips and off.

“You’re wearing too many clothes,” Kent said, his voice low and rough, and Carter had to concede he had a point. He let Kent pull his shirt off, needing to close his eyes to keep his composure when Kent trailed one hand down his chest. “How could you possibly doubt that I wanted you?”

Carter shook his head. “You play your cards too close to the vest, Kent. Remind me to never play poker with you.” He shucked off the rest of his clothes and got between Kent’s legs, stroking his hands up and down Kent’s thighs.

Kent traced his fingers through the twists in Carter’s hair, the same way he had when he thought Carter was sleeping, then curled his hand around the nape of Carter’s neck. Carter held back one more moment, wanting to savor Kent looking at him like this as long as he could, then he let Kent pull him down into the kiss he’d been wanting for so many years.

Carter raked both his hands through the soft sea of feathers beneath him and groaned when Kent arched up against him. “Now I’m doing it on purpose,” he said into Kent’s ear, loving the way that made Kent laugh. This time Kent kissed him, his fingertips trailing along Carter’s jaw, along the curve of his shoulder, down the line of his back, like he couldn’t decide where he wanted to touch Carter the most. Carter shifted position so his thigh pressed between Kent’s legs and the sound Kent made when he did that might be the best thing Carter had ever heard.

Then Kent’s whole body tensed. Carter looked up and saw that Kent’s eyes had gone vacant, his head jerking back once as a vision took him. Cock blocking alien piece of shit, Carter thought, hoping that Nabu heard every word. “Kent,” he said softly into his ear, massaging his hands along the wings the way he had before. “Come out of it. Come back to me.”

He kissed Kent very gently and Kent gasped, coming back to awareness with a start. “Easy, easy,” Carter said; Kent looked like it took a second to remember where he was. “What did you see?”

Carter shook his head, absently touching Carter’s face. “Something far off still.”

“Okay. Take a breath, I don’t like how hard you’re shaking.”

“I always liked you,” Kent said, and it took Carter a second to place what Kent was talking about. “But I fought it. I know any team I join falls apart, because the people will retire or become disillusioned. Or I will simply outlive them. The moment I care for someone is the same moment I know I will lose them.”

Carter stroked his thumb along Kent’s cheek. “You’re not gonna lose me, Kent.”

He’d never seen Kent’s eyes this intense before. “No. I will not.” Before Carter could say another word Kent pulled him into hard kiss, his hands clutching so tight onto his arms that Carter knew his nails would leave marks. Carter settled back against him, feeling the heat of Kent’s thighs against his hips, and did his best to kiss whatever awful thing Kent had seen out of his mind.

“I don’t get how you see the future and had no idea I wanted you this bad,” Carter said when he took a second to catch his breath. “Didn’t you see us doing this?”

Kent touched Carter’s face the way he had when he was coming down from the vision. “It only shows me futures I would want to change,” Kent said. "And I would never want to change this.”

Carter smiled and started to kiss his way down Kent’s neck, raking both hands through the wings until Kent groaned. “Okay then,” he said. “Sounds like I should get back to work.”

*

Carter strapped his wings on and stretched them across the length of the room; he’d known the work was done when Kent’s magic wings shimmered out of existence, but it felt good to put them on and feel it. He heard an appreciative sound behind him and turned around to see Kent fresh from the shower, wearing his bathrobe and giving him an approving up and down look at seeing him wearing just his wings. “We already at the you stealing my clothes stage?”

Kent ignored the admittedly weak bait and stroked one hand along the metal feathers. “Back in working order, I see?”

Carter suppressed a shiver. “Think you knew that the second you weren’t forty pounds too top heavy. Too bad though, I kinda liked us being a matched set.”

“Perhaps the spell will trigger again.”

“I’m serious Kent, not more of that, we got real lucky this time.”

Kent very pointedly didn’t make any promises. He stroked along Carter’s wing some more, the corners of his lips twitching up when Carter did finally shiver. “How does that feel?”

“You know damn well how that feels.”

The very satisfied smile came and went on Kent’s face so quickly that Carter almost thought he’d imagined it. “Is it uncomfortable just wearing the harness like this?”

“Without the padding, you mean? I wouldn’t want to do a whole fight like this, but it’s fine for right now. I needed to test them. Why?”

“Because you mentioned something before about putting me up against a wall.”

Carter flared his wings out again, loving the way Kent’s eyes lit up. He grabbed a fistful of robe and picked Kent off his feet like weighed nothing. Carter’s room had high ceiling for a reason; he flew Kent up and kissed him as hard as he could against the wall, Kent’s arms around his neck. He heard his on call button go off, probably Waller calling him for an update. Carter always answered his comms right away, it was part of being the Justice Society leader.

But today it would damn well wait.