Thanksgiving dinner consisted of Laynie, Carter, Steve, Bruce, Natasha, Pepper, and Tony. Clint had somewhere to be, and Thor had gone with Jane for dinner with her family. It was loud and unorthodox, as anything is with the Avengers, but enjoyable
After having dinner, the girls retreated to their shared apartment with a couple of pieces of pumpkin pie.
Laynie plopped down on Carter's bed as Carter grabbed one of her many, photo albums. "Which one is that?"
"It's from back when we were little, when Coulson would watch us at SHIELD HQ." Carter replied, sitting next to her on the bed.
"Ah, I love that one." Laynie grinned.
Carter opened it to the first page and they were met by the smiling faces of their parents and them in front of SHIELD HQ. When Carter was younger, she developed a love of photography. Her parents would buy her disposable cameras while they were away, telling her to fill the camera with all the fun things she'd do while they were gone.
It quickly got out of control, with little Carter filling two or three disposable cameras within a one-week period. Her parents kept the best of them, while others were discreetly thrown away. When she was ten, her mom was injured and had to stay home for a while. During that time, Carter discovered a love for scrap-booking. It was one of Carter's fondest memories; uninterrupted scrap-booking with her mom for an entire week.
Carter scraped her pie plate clean while they flipped through an album from the last Christmas they'd spent with their parents.
"The holidays are hard," Laynie said softly. "I miss mom."
"I know. The holidays were some of the best times that I had with my parents." Carter chuckled, "Dad always insisted on dressing up like Santa Claus every year until the very end."
Laynie laughed. "I remember that. He was such a great dad. He always treated me like I was his kid."
"It made me so jealous when I was little," Carter said with a smile. She traced the outline of her dad's face in a photo. "But I'm glad he did it now."
Laynie sighed heavily and rubbed at her tear-filled eyes. "The real world sucks."
"Yep!" Carter shut the scrapbook and placed it on the shelf. "So what's going on with you? You've been all mopey ever since camping."
"I have not."
Carter raised an eyebrow.
"Okay, I've been a little mopey. It's just... Well I miss my mom, obviously."
"But?"
"Wade and I kinda fought a little. I don't know, it wasn't really a fight. He's just being weird."
"To be fair, Wade is always a little weird." Carter pointed out. "What did you guys fight about?"
"Well... Swear not to laugh?"
"I'll try not to, but no promises." Carter shrugged.
"He asked me to the formal. And I said no. And then I said yes. And he said no."
Carter ran a hand through her hair. "Well, you did say no first. Maybe he's going with someone else?"
She scoffed. "We're the only people Wade knows. Besides, he wouldn't be able to keep his mouth shut if he were. He was just weird about it. All dodgy and not answering my questions. He said there were a lot of reasons."
"I don't really know what to tell you, if he doesn't want to talk about it then you can't make him."
"No, but I wish he would," Laynie grumbled. "You know what? I'm going to go talk to him tomorrow. He said he didn't want to talk about it in a text message, maybe he'll be okay talking about it face to face."
"It's worth a shot." Carter smiled hopefully. "I hope he'll tell you."
Laynie took in a deep breath, raising her hand to knock on the door. Chewing on her lip, she put on her brave face and knocked.
Peter answered the door, looking puzzled. "Hey Laynie. Is everything okay?"
"Yeah! I just- uh, I wanted to talk to Wade."
"Oh yeah, yeah sure. Come in."
Laynie walked in and stood in the doorway rather awkwardly. Peter went to the bottom of the stairs and shouted for Wade, who came thundering down them a second later.
"Aunt May's at work," Peter said, halfway up the stairs. "Try not to break anything."
Laynie laughed nervously.
"Hey, what's up?"
They sat on the couch. Laynie brushed her bangs away from her forehead and pulled her feet up to sit cross-legged on the couch. "I came to talk about what happened the other day. We haven't really talked since and... I don't want to ruin our friendship."
"It's not— you didn't. It was a dumb idea."
Laynie scoffed. "What? Us dating? That's dumb?"
"Yes! I mean, no! It's not dumb that we could date, it's dumb that I thought that I could handle that."
Laynie's eyebrows furrowed together. "You can't handle dating?"
"No."
"Tell me why."
He stared at her, lost for words. "I- I can't. I have a lot of secrets and none of them are good."
"Then get them out in the open now. Please Wade, I want to make it work."
He sighed. "Peter's sitting at the top of the stairs listening."
Laynie looked toward the stairs. "How do you know?"
"I can hear him. He sometimes forgets I'm superhuman too!" He pointedly shouted the last bit, and they heard Peter scamper away from the stairs. "Laynie, I can't talk about this. I just can't."
Laynie sat back and sighed, staring hard at the floor.
"I don't want to mess up our friendship."
"Well you already have!" Laynie cried, throwing up her hands.
"Hey, you're the one that brought it up again! I was perfectly content to leave it alone!"
"But why? That's all I'm asking! What's changed since you first asked me? Were you ever serious about it in the first place?"
"Of course I was serious! I'm just— I'm serious about this too. It is not a good idea for us to date."
"Then tell me why."
Wade stopped, staring at her with his jaw set. When he opened his mouth to speak, Laynie cut him off.
"Don't you dare say you can't. I've always been open with you, you know you can trust me."
"Laynie, just drop it!" Wade shouted. "I don't want to talk about it!"
Laynie nodded slowly. "Okay, fine. I'll see you at school." She brushed past him, grabbed her bag at the door, and slammed it firmly behind her.
Peter slowly came down the stairs, peeking around the corner and seeing Wade standing in the middle of the room, watching out the window as Laynie stormed off.
"Dude, you okay?"
"Yeah."
"You... wanna talk to me about it?"
"No." Wade went upstairs to his room, leaving a very confused Peter standing in the foyer.