Who: Adam and Maddie K When: Around the beginning of the weekish Where: Hospital of No Questions What: Adam breaks Maddie K out of the hospital Warning: talk of violence, nothing crazy.
Adam still couldn’t believe he was playing the role of the worried, overworked boyfriend. The circumstances were extreme, as they had always been, but he was so used to caring from afar. So used to pulling bullets out of allies and telling them everything was going to be okay. It wasn’t just the distance he felt more comfortable in, it was that he used to be the person that could fix everything. And now, nothing would ever make Adam capable of saving MK, not from Alex or from herself. It wore him out, made him give his time to the recovering but still a complete mess of a man that was Hank Pym. Made him feel as though no amount of lives saved at the clinic would ever be enough. MK was the only one that really mattered anymore and it made him a little sick to the stomach.
But, nothing was going to stop him from caring about her. No amount of personal failure could keep him from haunting the halls of the hospital she was staying at, waiting for the doctors to let him see her and take her home. It helped that he was one of them and many of the doctors respected him for working exclusively in a free clinic where problems were severe and supplies were scarce. Adam wished he could take their praise to heart. Nothing could make him feel like a success. That sensation died in him back in Seattle. The only way he could feel anything besides self loathing was being with MK and that was already asking too much of her.
Finally, they let him into her room and after checking his appearance in the reflection of a window once or twice. “Maddie K.” Adam said softly when he entered, moving quickly to her bedside and took a seat in a chair next to her.
When Adam came in, MK was sitting up, idly flipping through a tiny book of poetry with music playing through the white buds in her ears. Hospitals always made her stir-crazy, but cabin fever was setting in with a wallop this time around. She had visitors, of course, from the people who knew what actually happened, from the people who mattered most, but it didn’t really matter. At the end of the day, when the lights in the hallways dimmed and the night nurses wandered into rooms, she was left alone to her pain and her thoughts. Even days later, Alexander haunted her every moment, hung on every breath, stung every wound. And she knew they cast a shadow in her green eyes, and she knew that Adam would be able to see it.
“Hi,” she said with a tiny lift of the corner of her lip, marking her spot in the book before closing it and shifting slightly to face him. She tugged the earbuds out and placed them next to her on the bed. Certainly, she was in better shape than when Simon first brought her in. A little more color in her cheeks, and she wasn’t dehydrated anymore, and she recovered from most of the bloodloss. But, she still looked terrible, in her opinion, with the bruises and marks over her arms and face. The casts around her ankles peeked out of the blanket, even as she shimmied closer to Adam.
“There aren’t as many cute med students at this hospital,” MK teased, harking back to the her hospital visit a few months prior. Having him here quelled the thoughts of Alexander brewing in her mind at least for the moment. She was happy to see him, elated even after the last time they saw each other turned so sour.
“For now.” Adam realized he didn’t bring anything for her. No flowers, no card. It seemed unnecessary the more he thought about it, especially when he planned to leave this place with her. “You’d be surprised how easy it is to scare away hopeful doctors with horror stories about all the different things people tend to get stuck inside of themselves in Las Vegas.” Adam leaned in to kiss her face and then her lips gently.
“Couldn’t wait to see you. Know you like to pretend to be vain sometimes, but couldn’t play along this time.” He teased lightly and sat back down, his hand resting on hers as if it were the natural place for it. Adam tried his best not to calculate the amount of help she’d need to get out of this. Physical trauma was one thing, but the psychological horrors she was forced through would break most people. He was just glad it hadn’t managed to completely crumble her, yet. “Want to tell you something, but you’ll laugh.”
“You’re a just a terrible person, then. Totally screwing the whole city over.” The kisses did exactly what they were supposed to do. MK’s face lit up a little, an easy smile crawling on her face. She missed him, even before Alexander took her, even before Simon’s party. Pym was taking too much time, she thought, and now, maybe she was allowed to be selfish for a little bit. Maybe she could keep Adam on this side for a while.
She entwined their fingers and squeezed lightly, the whole thing feeling just natural and right. Him being here, the easy affection. Alexander couldn’t take that away from her, at least for now. If she was completely honest with herself, she knew that it hadn’t all settled in. Reality was outside those doors, outside the hospital, where people didn’t know what actually happened to her. But for now, she was in the room with him, and she could avoid the problem for the moment. “Oh, yeah?” she asked, quirking an eyebrow. “That sounds real bad. You’ve totally got to tell me now.”
Adam gave her a wary side glance, weighing his options as to whether or not he’d actually tell her. Of course he would, but it was fun to tow the line a little longer. “Oh it’s just-” His voice turned almost serious as it did when he wanted to tell her something that was the truth even if it also happened to be flattering. He was so much better at it with people he didn’t have feelings for and he was so used to those people just accepting whatever he had to say. Maddie K never wanted to believe there was anything good about her besides the charm and beauty. “When I walked in the first thing that struck me was how strong you are. Know you don’t feel that way. Know you don’t want to believe it. But, I see that part of you every time something terrible happens.”
It was a strange thing to say and Adam knew it, but he sort of liked pinpointing parts of her people didn’t see or didn’t admit to. Forget the drinking, the flirting with other men- that was all surface symptoms and momentary cures. There was a part of her that could fix everything that went wrong. Adam had to believe that was true.
She did laugh, but it wasn’t a teasing or joyful noise. More mirthless, like she didn’t believe it at all, because he was right -- she didn’t. MK never thought of herself as strong or able. She just had shit thrown at her on a constant basis, so she learned to fake it. Fake normality or functioning as well as she could, or at least that was what she thought. Nothing to do with being strong. She never felt really strong at all. “I’m not strong,” she said, glancing down at their entwined hands so she didn’t have to look at the earnest look in his eyes. Shrugging, she licked her lips and chose to look towards one of the bare white walls then. “I’m not.”
Sighing, she finally dragged her eyes away from the blank canvas and back to those blue eyes of his. “I’m not strong at all. I wanted to die there, don’t you get that? I wanted him to kill me. I didn’t care about coming home or what it would do to everyone. After everything he did-- I’m not strong at all, Adam.” Green eyes watered over with pain, and she swallowed hard before clearing her throat and rolling her eyes. “Sorry.”
“I understand. I’ve- wanted that for myself before.” Adam nearly added that Pym had, too. That death was a lot easier than facing consequences. “But, I’ve never been through what you have.” He leaned in, touching the ends of her hair with his fingertips. “And, I have treated numerous women who have been through the same- worse in some cases. You can see it in their eyes that they’ve been completely broken. That when their body heals, they still won’t be able to make breakfast for themselves. Don’t see that in you. Never have.”
MK bit down on her lip hard and looked at him with eyes full of doubt and hurt. She didn’t know where he was seeing all this strength and power; every time she looked in the mirror all she saw was a shattered mess of a woman trying to just move through the motions. Find little fixes, band-aids to cover up the wounds. “Maybe I just hide it really well,” she said quietly, and she believed it. Wasn’t that what started the whole thing between the two of them? That they were both broken things trying to fix themselves up. She reached up her other hand to rub at her stinging eyes, not allowing the tears to fall. If he wanted to believe she was strong, so be it. Maybe it would become true.
“Maybe you can even fool me.” Adam smiled. He didn’t care if she couldn’t see it, in a way she never really could, but he knew it was there. If it wasn’t, he wouldn’t waste his time with her. Pym wouldn’t allow it and honestly Adam had more important things to do than look after a fucked up super model. But, he cared for her. Believed that things had to turn out okay. It was things like that which kept people waking up in the morning, after all.
“It doesn’t matter. Right now the only thing you should be focusing on is being selfish.” Adam assured her. “And, I bet you can’t wait to get out of this hospital.”
Somehow, she knew she couldn’t hide it from him, like she knew she couldn’t hide those scars from him all those months ago in the hotel. It seemed like years, really, eons since that party and all of this started. Relieved for the change of subject, she smiled and rolled her eyes. “Actually, I’m having the time of my life here, don’t you know?” Quirking an eyebrow, she leaned in a little. “Are you going to bust me out of here, prince charming? Save me from all the mean nurses and needles and surgeries?”
Before he could respond, however, MK leaned in and pressed a kiss to his lips. “I missed you,” she whispered against his lips, all earnest and heartfelt. She thought of what Adam said that night at Simon’s party, about her not being able to love him, and she hoped it wasn’t true. She was determined to make it not true.
“Well I-” Adam started, but found himself surprisingly interrupted by her kiss and confession. It was strange to hear someone talk to him like that, with the sweet lifts of genuine affection that had always been so distant to him. He smiled at it though, sheepishly, appreciating that she would at least give him that. “I missed you, too. These past weeks have been hard. Not just with..what happened. But, with Pym. With the clinic. Forgive me for not being around? Promise to make up for it.” And, he did. Adam was carefully putting other doctors in place at the clinic to make up for his stretched hours and intended to give more to Maddie K than his job or Pym.
She reached up and raked her hand through Adam’s hair before her fingers gently brushed down his cheeks. “I forgive you,” she said with a small smile to match his own. “Forgive me for everything I’ve done wrong? If I list it, we’ll be here for years.” She knew they both screwed up royally at different points, but the fact that they were both still there was a testament to them. To their relationship. She tried to ignore the sharp pain in her side from the scalpel’s stab wound as she stretched, but her face screwed up slightly. Physically, MK knew she wouldn’t be completely okay for a while; each movement and stabbing pain and ache reminded her of that. “Tell me how you’re gonna make it up to me.” Fingers made their journey again from his hair to his cheek until they rested on his collarbone. Touching him comforted her much more than she liked to admit, but it was obvious. She was visibly relaxed now, even in spite of the pain radiating from her injuries.
He closed his eyes gently when she touched him, happy to momentarily look to the future instead of dwell on everything that had gone wrong. “I think you deserve some extended bed rest. With me.” Adam opened his eyes again to look at her with a smile. “Laying around in bed, reading comic books, watching movies, doing...whatever else comes to mind.” He raised his eyebrows suggestively the smile turning into a full smirk. It was risky suggesting anything like that after what she had been through, but intimacy between them had solved so many problems before. He leaned into her touch, letting the rest of the lysol smelling hospital to fall away. “Does that sound acceptable?”
MK smiled just as he did, the idea that she was the source of that making her very happy. She hated being a source of stress to him, her thoughts briefly going back to Simon’s party again, but they seemed to be okay now. Maybe it was the fact that she had been brutally assaulted over the course of the week, maybe it was a lingering guilt on his part, or maybe it was because they were meant to work this all out. Whatever the case, she was pleased he was there, that they seemed to be okay, if only for a moment. “Acceptable,” she said with an easy grin. “More than acceptable.” She worried about being intimate with him, not knowing how she would react after everything Alex did, but she wouldn’t know until she and Adam tried. “Comic books, though...are you trying to turn me into a geek?” she asked teasingly. Her thumb traced along the line of his jaw. “I thought you liked that I wasn’t a geek. You’ll have to go easy on me, comic guru.”
Her other hand, still holding onto his, squeezed his fingers lightly. “Did they say if they’d let you sneak me out of here?” Sneaking, of course, meaning just getting her out of there. There would be no way she could sneak out of there, not in the kind of state she was in, or else she would have done it days earlier.
“Still promised to educate you. The lack of information you have on the Marvel world is astounding to me. Perfect time to change that.” He smiled, leaning in to kiss her lightly before sitting back up, only letting his hand to stay intertwined with hers. Getting her out of the hospital was tricky and covered in appealing to the right doctors and filling out the right paperwork. “I think I can do it. I’ve already spoken to a couple people and gossiped with the nurses. This hospital is very good at not asking questions and letting patients do what they want if they have the money.”
He squeezed her hand and then let go, standing up so he could pace at the foot of her bed. “Living with me for a week or so would make the transition easier, then we can decide what to do from there. Will get the necessary prescriptions and do the rest of the work for them. I’m sure they’d appreciate that.” He inhaled deeply and looked over at her. “Sure you’d like to stay with me?”
“Oh, the nurses. I like them more than yours, I think. They aren’t judgey, or at least to my face,” she teased, tongue sticking out between her teeth slightly. “I’ve learned to stay on their good side. And I totally only told them good things about you, by the way.” She’d bonded with the nurses over the past couple of days, swapping stories about love interests and other silly things that took her mind off why she was in the hospital in the first place.
She watched his progress in front of her bed, eyes trailing his pacing back and forth, back and forth. “Simon’s said it’s taken care of. And I’ve got money, too, if that’s the problem,” MK offered with a raised brow. To her, it didn’t seem like he was too keen on her staying with him. Eyebrows furrowed then, and she considered his offer in silence for a moment. “Unless you don’t want me to? I can figure something out if that’s the case.”
“My nurses aren’t judgey,” he lifted his hands to make air quotes. “They’re protective. I think you can imagine how shocked they were to find that I could be romantically involved with anyone.” Adam smiled at that. He sort of liked how his older, crankier nurses would strong arm Maddie K whenever she tried to visit him at work like some over protective aunts. Even the younger nurses were convinced that the supermodel would break his heart. And, maybe they were right on that count.
He stopped to look at her. “Want you to stay with me more than anything. Think it would do us some good. Help fix some of the problems we’ve had. Heal them, even.” Adam had other plans beyond that, but for now it was best to take one step at a time. “I’ll go talk to the doctors now. Might take a little while, but I’m sure I can get you out of here tonight.”