Chapter Text
Hunter wanders around the base aimlessly. He’s bored. Bobbi is off with Gonzales doing who knows what and he has no idea where the rest of the team are; there’s no one in the kitchen or common area. Normally he’d take a couple six-packs to his room and drink his boredom away, but for once he’s not in the mood for alcohol.
He can’t stop thinking about something Coulson had told him while they were holed up in that cabin. The man had admitted that he finds comfort in taking care of people and that he sometimes takes care of Skye and Fitz and Simmons doing this thing called age play. It’s all completely non-sexual; he’d been quick to assure Hunter. That’s a relief because the only experience Hunter has with this sort of thing is an ex who liked to call him Daddy in bed. It was a real turn off for him. They didn’t last long.
Coulson had then told him that he thought maybe Hunter was little like Skye and Fitz and Simmons. The man claimed he had a knack for knowing things like that. Hunter hadn’t known what to think. He’d quickly changed the subject and Coulson let it drop.
Hunter had done some googling later and most of it was nothing he’d be interested in: nappies and dressing up and all that. But there was another aspect of it where the age players aged down to primary school age and played with toys or watched telly from when they really were that age. That was something Hunter thought he could get behind. He hadn’t had much of a real childhood, not with his father running the house like Lance and his brothers were soldiers instead of sons.
He notices Fitz go into his bedroom and shut the door. He makes an impulsive decision and heads over, knocking four times. “Come in,” he hears Fitz say.
Hunter opens the door and enters. Fitz is sitting on his bed, in the middle of taking his shoes off, and he stares at Hunter as the man enters. “Hey,” Hunter says. “Er—” Shit. Now what does he say? He closes the door behind him and blurts it all out. “Coulson told me that he takes care of you and Simmons and Skye and I was just wondering what is it like?”
“Coulson told you?” Fitz asks, frowning as he pulls off his right shoe.
“Yeah,” Hunter confirms. Fitz looks really annoyed now and he tosses his shoe to the floor a bit harder than he needs to. “Coulson said he thinks I’m little too,” he admits. Fitz’s expression changes to surprise.
“Really?”
“Yeah, so I was just wondering what is it like?”
“Confusing,” Fitz tells him. He scoots back on the bed so that he’s more toward the head and gestures for Hunter to have a seat at the foot. “Really bloody confusing.” Hunter sits with a slight wince as the wound in his side protests at the movement and waits for Fitz to continue.
“I shouldn’t like it as much as I do. I’m 27-years-old, I shouldn’t need to be coddled. But I like it too much to stop.” He rubs his fingers against his lips, gathering his thoughts. “I had to grow up . . . er . . . fast. Mum had to work two sometimes three jobs just to make ends meet, so I learnt to take care of myself early on. Mum tried her hardest to give me a normal childhood, but when you’re as clever as I am, a normal childhood isn’t really possible. So for me, being little is about letting go and letting someone else make decisions and take responsibility for a while. I don’t have to be Agent Fitz the engineering genius, I can just . . . be Leo.”
It sounds nice. Hunter’s not always the best at making good decisions, so allowing someone else have that responsibility is something he’d be okay with. “What do you do when you’re little?”
“Watch TV or play games, usually, or we eat together as a family. Sometimes May or Coulson reads to us; I like when they do that.”
“May?” Hunter asks, surprised.
“Yeah,” Fitz says. “She’s like the Mum and Coulson’s like the Da. They take care of us together, or if one isn’t available, the other’ll take charge. May’s definitely the strict parent though, so don’t get on her bad side.”
“Too late,” Hunter mutters and Fitz grins at him. “D’you call them Mum and Dad?”
“Jemma and Skye call them Mommy and Daddy. I just call them May and Coulson. And they call us by our first names, well Jemma and me anyway. Skye is always Skye. But it’s like a signal; when they call me Leo instead of Fitz I know I can be little.”
“Oh,” Hunter says. “Guess that means I’m Lance.”
“Do you not like Lance?”
“It’s all right,” he says with a shrug. “I haven’t been called Lance since I was 16. I’ve been Hunter ever since I joined the army; and you have to admit Hunter sounds a lot cooler than Lance.”
“Lance isn’t bad,” Fitz says. “It’s a weapon. I much prefer Leo to Leopold, though.”
“Your mum called you Leopold?” Hunter asks incredulously. How was he just now learning this?
“Yeah, no idea what she was thinking,” Fitz says, shaking his head.
“At least you can get Leo out of it. You can’t get any good nicknames from Lance.”
They’re quiet for a moment and then Fitz’s demeanor changes. He looks at Hunter with a shy, anxious expression. “Do you wanna watch something? Try it out?”
“Yeah,” Hunter agrees, suddenly feeling nervous.
“’Kay. What do you want to watch?”
“Do you have Danger Mouse?” He hadn’t been allowed to watch a lot of telly growing up, but Danger Mouse was always his first choice when he and his brothers went to their grandparents and he was allowed to control the remote.
“I can find it.” Leo picks up his tablet and swipes it on. Lance uses the time he’s searching to take off his shoes and make himself more comfortable on the bed.
“Are you hungry? I’m hungry,” Leo asks after he’s found the show. He lays the tablet aside and leans over the side of the bed, rummaging around underneath. He starts handing up plastic jars filled with snacks. There’s one full of Oreos, another stuffed with bags of jelly babies and wine gums, another with Jammie Dodgers, another with crisps, and another with pretzels.
Lance stares at the spread in surprise and Leo gives him a sheepish look as he sits back up. “Mum didn’t like me eating sugar—it made me hyper—so I’d hide sweets and snacks under my bed and I guess I never got out of the habit,” he explains. He picks up the tablet and shifts so that he’s sitting next to Lance on his non-wounded side, resting the tablet on both their legs. “Which do you want?” he asks, indicating the snacks.
“Jammie Dodgers,” Lance says, and Leo passes over the container. He chooses pretzels for himself and presses play on the screen once they’re both ready.
It’s been ages since Lance watched Danger Mouse. He’d forgotten how much he had enjoyed watching the secret agent mouse and his bumbling assistant Penfold. He finds himself relaxing as they watch more episodes. Leo is relaxing too. He leans against Lance’s side and then immediately tenses, pulling away. Lance wraps an arm around his shoulders, pulling him back. He’s always enjoyed cuddling and cuddling with Leo is no different than when he cuddled his little brothers.
They finish watching all eleven episodes in the first series and Leo turns the tablet off with a yawn. There’s an old, well-loved monkey in his lap and he has the tail wrapped around his hand. “What d’you think then?” Leo asks, cuddling the monkey close to him.
“It’s nice,” Lance answers after thinking it over. “It was like bein’ back at me Gran’s and watchin’ telly with me brothers. ” He helps Leo close the jars of snacks and hands them to him as Leo puts them back under the bed. “Where’d the monkey come from?” he asks once all the snacks are hidden away.
“Oh,” Leo looks at the monkey, his face turning red. “He’s mine from when I was wee. My Nana gave him to me for my first Christmas. I’ve slept with him ever since.”
“What’s he called?”
“Henry.”
“Nice,” Lance comments. “I had a bear called Louis but me dad threw him out when I was eight, said I was too old for cuddly toys.”
Leo looks at him, shocked. “That’s horrible.”
Lance shrugs. “Yeah, well, Dad took Mum’s death hard. He started treating me and my brothers like we were soldiers. You know The Sound of Music?” Leo nods. “It was kinda like that, only we didn’t have a governess teach us how to sing.”
Leo picks up the Tyrannosaurus Rex from his bedside table and gives it to Lance. “Here,” he says as he thrusts the toy into Lance’s lap. “You can have my dinosaur.”
“Oh, no—” Lance starts, but Leo cuts him off.
“Take him. I have Henry and you don’t have anything. It’s nice to have something to cuddle when you’re little. Trust me.”
Lance looks down at the green dinosaur, feeling overwhelmed. “Cheers, mate,” he manages to get out. Leo shrugs and cuddles Henry close to his chest. “Does he have a name?”
“I called him Rory, but you can call him something else if you want.”
Lance nods and gives the dinosaur a hug. It is nice to have something to cuddle. Leo lets out another yawn and Lance figures that’s his cue to leave. He stands up slowly, careful of his wound, and grabs his shoes from the floor. “Thanks for this,” he says, smiling at Leo.
Leo smiles back. “Stop by anytime. It was fun.”
“Yeah,” Lance agrees. He leaves and makes his way back to his room. Thankfully he doesn’t meet anyone along the short distance. He doesn’t really feel like explaining why he’s carrying his shoes and a toy dinosaur.
Later, he lies in bed trying to think of the right name for his new dinosaur. It should start with a T of course. T the Tyrannosaurus Rex is nice and alliterative. T Dinosaur also has a nice ring to it. Tim? No, it needs to be at least two syllables. Timothy? That’s a possibility. Lance adds it to his mental list of possible names. Thomas? Eh, not his favorite. Terry? Yeah, that sounds good. He adds that to his list. Toby? Yes! Tobias Dinosaur, the Tyrannosaurus Rex, called Toby for short. Perfect! He sends Leo a text to let him know. Leo sends back a smiley face emoji.
Lance puts his phone away and cuddles Toby. It had been nice to relive his childhood a bit tonight, especially with Leo there to take the place of his little brothers. They’d always been around until he joined the army at 16 where he had left Lance The Big Brother behind and turned into Hunter The Soldier. He likes being Lance The Big Brother again.
I like taking care of people Coulson had told him. May’s like the Mum and Coulson’s like the Da Leo had said. Lance starts to wonder about that aspect of this age play thing. What would it be like to be Lance The Son? He’s not sure, but he thinks he’d be okay finding out.