Gah, always late. I'm a broken record. But you could say that we have some forward motion with this chapter, eh? Ehhhhh? Maybe not. Whatevs.

Special thanks to cobaltqueen, analiarvb, icefrozenover, washingtonstub, notatroll7, Enmuse, Yin, a-taller-tale, and TGnat on ffnet, AO3 and tumblr for the wonderful feed back! I truly appreciate it more than you know.

Double Time
Chapter Seventeen: The Balancing Act

Back before things became public and Wash felt himself on call twenty-four-seven, he and Tucker had devised a communication of sticky notes that, to some, would seem archaic in nature at that point. Items needed from the store. Times to meet the following day. And who was going to be babysitting Junior if/when Wash needed to pick him up.

Downright domesticated sort of things that Washington had taken for granted at the time.

Of course, right around the time he was beginning to miss those simplicities, he was met with a giant, pink sticky note on the window of his apartment — his strangely closed window — that read simply 'Your Locked Out : ("

Wash pulled the note from the window and leered at it for a moment. "He could've at least gotten the right you're," he said before cupping a hand over his visor and peering into the window for any sign of life on the other side.

He was really too tired to go all the way around the apartment building, up the stairs, and go through the lengthy process of identification through the new security system that Church had fashioned them with.

There was also the (fairly large) chance that Church was being a chucklefuck and never put him in the new system to begin with. That was something that would have been right up the robot's alley.

Fortunately for Wash, that was an answer still left for another time, as instead there was a clacking noise from the window a few feet away from his own that got Wash's attention. He looked that way just before the window came open and Junior's long neck stuck out, his head looking in Wash's way as he honked.

"You're going to let me in the easy way?" Wash asked, dexterously leaping from one seal to the other. "Your father might consider that treason at this point. And I don't even know what made him mad this time."

The alien child stopped and looked Wash in the face at that statement. He then let out a low growl and slammed the window shut right in front of Wash.

Wash blinked in surprise.

After a few moments of hanging from Junior's window, utterly stunned, Washington began to feel the strain on his hands from his hold and began glancing back and forth from his own bedroom window to the child's bedroom window. He was going to have to make a snap judgment, eventually, on where to go forward.

Still, he decided to press his luck and knock on Junior's window instead.

Fortunately, Junior responded immediately by opening the window again.

"Sometimes adults get confused and things that should seem pretty obvious aren't so obvious to them. We get kind of dumb like that when we're old," he informed the younger, want-to-be hero. "So I didn't mean to make it sound like it was your dad who was being ridiculous by being mad. I — the grown man in full spandex hanging from a window — am the one who is ridiculous. And I'm sorry I wasn't clearer about that."

Junior swiftly let out an appreciable, cooing noise and widened the window before stepping back and giving Wash room to enter his apartment.

Their apartment, Wash quickly corrected himself before slipping in.

"Thank you," Wash said gently before rubbing his wrists and palms tenderly as he took a good, long look around the room. It seemed like no matter how often he stepped within it, he found himself surprised by the amount of hero worship that Junior still had. The posters, the piles of well loved comics. Merchandise, t-shirts thrown about the room. The lines between fictional tales and the real super heroics of their world was worn fairly thin there.

It did not help that the most common among the heroes featured in the room had increasingly become Wash himself.

Junior stared at him, mandibles clicking in a suspicious manner that Washington only partially caught onto the meaning of after a few long moments of awkward.

"You're actually still mad at me… or your father's still mad at me," Wash surmised from the glares he was receiving.

Less than impressed, Junior leaped from the floor to his bed and bounced toward his alarm clock, pointing out the hour.

"I'm… not spending enough time with you both?" Wash tried to extrapolate.

With another roll of his eyes and a bounce that landed him into a sitting position on the edge of the bed, Junior reached for just beneath his mattress and produced the self-made cape that he commonly wore at training sessions.

Training sessions which Wash had mostly not been heading himself anymore sense 'diversifying' his responsibilities.

"I can't imagine that's something that would upset your father," Wash pointed out. "Tucker's worried when I take you out for training in… well, public. So I get why you're upset, but you're not helping with why he is."

For a moment, Junior's mandibles clicked and quivered in thought before he snapped his fingers and reached for the rest of his costume — which was suspiciously easily on hand — and began to pull the costume completely together. He then stood beside Wash, hands on his hips, proudly posing.

Scratching at his scruff, Wash wondered when he was going to be as good at reading Junior's meaning as Tucker was. If ever.

Junior growled and then pointed adamantly toward the window, tugging on Washington's glove as he did so.

"What? You'll… tell me why your dad's mad if we patrol together?" Wash tried, furrowing his brows. "That's not much of a trade off."

He meant his words, but as they came tumbling out, Wash could see the glint in Junior's eyes. Perhaps, to the child, spending a one-on-one patrol with his personal hero, with his for-all-intents-and-purposes stepfather, was worth the leverage of solving a current spat.

"Okay," Wash conceded. "But we're going to be careful, and we're going to be sneaky about it, alright? Because no matter what I did to get Tucker angry, it will not be worth the anger I'm going to be getting from him the second he learns I took a four year old with me to punch some bad guys."

The child didn't seem to mind any of the words except for punch some bad guys at which point he began bouncing around and excitedly honking.

Alarmed, Washington rushed forward and partially covered Junior's mouth, getting a good chomp from the rows of teeth in response. But once Junior noticed what Wash was doing he nodded excitedly and squirmed out of the hero's grips. He began climbing onto the window seal sloppily and Washington nearly had a heart attack at that alone and ran forward to grab Junior by the cape and hold him steady.

It was going to be a long patrol.

In a combination of his own exhaustion and attempting to make pace easier for Junior's shorter stride, Washington made their rooftop journey around the block last a touch longer than was the norm for him. He partially agreed to the arrangement because of the very little likelihood that they would run into any trouble at four thirty in the morning, the sun due to rise sooner than later.

He also agreed to it because even if things did go pear shaped, at the very least they were going to do so at a pace where Wash could quickly disengage from Junior's side and keep the child clear of real danger.

Junior kept up with Wash at a speed that was genuinely surprising at first. Washington hesitated before quickening their strides just a bit. He apparently had underestimated the speed and agility that Junior had gained already under his training and the limited teamwork training there had been between Junior and the teenagers Kimball and Doyle had saddled him with.

"Your form has improved amazingly," he said out loud finally, earning a pleased coo from Junior. "Do you think the others have nearly as much potential as you?"

At that, the child let out a snort and shook his head before shrugging. Then he got cocky and began doing some fancy footwork on the ledge of the building they were currently on.

"Alright, easy now," Wash said warmly, grabbing Junior by the cape and pulling him more toward the center after an uncomfortable lurch had set in his stomach. "No need to make more trouble for your dad."

The thought of that made a laugh for Junior and he pulled away from Wash's grip before leaping to the distant ledge overlooking the roads of Blood Gulch. He then sat on his haunches, looking over like a gargoyle.

A true natural at the pose, really.

Washington strolled over to Junior's side and looked with him over the city, arms crossed, when he noticed a few posters he could have sworn were not there a week before. Large cut outs with cheesy stars and stripes, big thumbs up — and two familiar superhero cutouts just behind it.

Narrowing his eyes, Wash dropped his arms from their crossed position and squinted at it all. "Are those…" he said lowly while Junior cackled below him. "Those are three life sized cut outs of me, Felix, and Mayor-elect Kimball. She's using us for advertisements. I didn't agree to that!"

Junior continued to cackle beside him, earning a look of ire.

"Just laugh it up, see who gets an allowance when they're older," Wash threatened only half-heartedly before tapping the kid's shoulder. "Stay here, I'll be right back with something for your collection."

At that notion, Junior nearly leaped up and called out in excitement. But Wash wasn't watching him, instead leaping down and, as always, landing on his feet as he reached the pavement below. He could hear Junior clapping.

"Sarcasm at four," Wash muttered, crossing the road to where the cut outs were. "We're going to have a problem when he's a teenager." He stopped on the sidewalk and took a deep breath. His heart was pounding and he had to truly think back on his words before realizing why.

It had slipped out so easily, but it was such a huge thing and it could not have been dignified with such a lackadaisical musing.

He said we and he meant them and suddenly Wash remembered what their fight was about.

"Fuck," Wash said, running his hand through his hair. "My personal life and my hero life are too messy, I've not made any lines. Tucker and I are never talking about the same things because everything bleeds over and I think maybe my value systems are circling the drain. Fuck. I had a more honest conversation with Church than I had with the man I'm sleeping with." He paused, then again, for good measure, "Fuck."

When Wash gathered his thoughts up enough to look in front of him again, he was met by his own smiling face standing supportively behind Kimball. He couldn't help the natural glare.

"What are you smiling about? You don't have your shit together either," he told the cut out before grabbing it and yanking it forcefully from the display.

Turning around, Wash was ready to cross the street back to where Junior should have been up on the rooftop, but instead he was met by the sight of Junior already down on the ground level, waving at him.

Flustered and surprised, Wash looked up, then back down, then up and then back at Junior. "How did you—"

Junior blarghed and leaped higher than possible for any four year old human and landed squarely on his feet.

"Well, why? You're just going to have to get up on the rooftop again when I come over," Wash scolded before Junior honked and pointed behind Wash. "What? I don't get what you…" He then glanced over his shoulder and saw the Felix cut out. "Oh. Of course you want them both."

Looking back across the street Wash rubbed at his neck with his free hand. He knew Junior wasn't fully aware of the situation from the park the other day but it was still awkward as hell to think there would be a life size cut out of Felix in the apartment. "Junior, are you sure you want—"

Before Washington could fully finish his words, however, he saw that Junior was crossing the street bounding toward him. At four to five in the morning, that normally would not have been much cause for alarm, but for that moment, Wash's cat-like senses bristled him from head to toe and he could hear zooming in from the distance a car.

"Junior!" he screamed out before diving after his stepson, shielding him with a bear hug just before his shoulder blade hit the corner of the car.

He was obscenely familiar with how these things usually worked out and was ready to tuck into a roll that would protect Junior and shield his own vitals as they rolled over the hood of the vehicle. But it never really came.

Washington felt the catch of his suit being grabbed by the neckline and his whole body being sent in a whirl of motion toward the other side of the street.

Before he could even blink, Wash was rolling with Junior into the remaining cut outs, breaking Felix's in half.

Groaning, Wash rubbed at his head and looked up — noticing the wisp of red hair just before flinching at the screeching of car tires and someone laying on the horn.

"Tex, you have either the best or the worst timing. Ever. Of all…" he stopped mid sentence as he finally got a full look at the person before them. "You're not Tex."

The woman adjusted her goggles. "What? Surely some time travel didn't make everyone forget Carolina, Washington. I was only you team leader, after all."