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Hank coughs up the first petal in his lab at Grayburn and thinks it must be a mistake. Maybe it fell into his lunch and he was too busy going over his latest set of results to notice. Maybe he breathed it in while yawning. He sighs, sets it aside, and keeps working.
Jan sweeps in about five minutes later, jostles him from his notes by throwing her arms around him. The heat of her pressed against his back is…
“J-Jan? What are you doing here?” he asks, trying subtly to extricate himself from her hold.
He doesn’t want to hurt her feelings, obviously, he’s just. Not. Prepared for physical contact, right now at this particular moment. Jan just gives a loud sigh and releases him.
“You know, Hank, I might have like three other jobs—”
“Being an Avenger is not a job—”
“But! I am still your assistant, you know,” she says, steamrolling over his protests. “What, am I not allowed in the lab anymore?”
He swallows, somehow feeling wrongfooted even while sitting down. Standing up to face her doesn’t really help. It just reminds him how small and delicate she looks, even with so much power lurking inside her. They’re uncomfortable thoughts to be thinking about a colleague and friend. Hank clears his throat.
“No, I’m. Of course you’re allowed here, Jan, I just.” Silently, he bemoans the way his words seem to vanish whenever she looks at him with such focus. “Weren’t you. Wasn’t there a fashion show? Or, or something?”
A delighted smile spreads across her face. Looking at it, Hank can’t help but smile himself.
“You remembered! Yeah, that was this morning, it went great,” Jan tells him, pumping her arm in a victory pose. “I really think the spring line is going to be a winner.”
She tells him about her show for the next hour, all while finding the files he needs and organizing his… Admittedly cluttered workspace. Most of the fashion terminology goes over his head, but he enjoys hearing her talk about it anyway. She has her expertise, just as he has his.
“—and then, right as we were wrapping up, one of the photographers asks me if I want to go to dinner with him! I mean really.”
Something in Hank’s chest tightens uncomfortably. He swallows.
“What did you tell him?”
“No, obviously,” answers Jan. “I said I already had plans.”
Plans? Like… Date plans? No, no, maybe she’s just gunning for another Avengers team meal night. Usually those have to be set up a few days in advance so they can accommodate the Hulk’s appetite, though, and Jan’s pretty open about telling everyone not to miss them, so…
“Oh, you… You do?”
Jan presses a hand to her forehead.
“Hank. I was lying.”
“Oh.” He nods. “Uh, right.”
“Right,” repeats Jan. “So. I’m perfectly free tonight. No obligations or anything.”
Her tone is leading. Where it’s attempting to lead him, well, Hank’s not really comfortable assuming.
“That’s… Good?” he offers.
Jan stares at him, unblinking, for a good three seconds. Her blue eyes, so often sharp and clever like her mind, are soft now. Expectant. Hank has a feeling he’s about to royally screw up.
“So… There’s nothing you want to ask me?” Jan checks after the silence stretches a good half a minute.
Hank has no idea what to do with his hands. Why does he have no idea what to do with his hands? They’ve literally been attached to the ends of his arms since birth. He settles for stuffing them in the pockets of his lab coat.
“… No?”
Jan sighs, dropping her head.
“Yeah, I figured not,” she mutters under her breath.
“Uh.”
“Nevermind.” Her voice is immediately back to cheery brightness. “Carol just owes me a twenty, that’s all. I guess my dinner’s on her tonight. Now promise me you’ll head home before the janitors start the night shift, ok? I mean it. Scott told me you about gave one of the new guys a heart attack last week.”
She’s halfway out the door without giving him a place to fit a word in edgewise – her most successful method for shutting down arguments about exactly how much time is necessary for rest and food versus how much is necessary for science. All Hank can really do is nod and agree.
Jan pauses in the door, a thoughtful expression on her face.
“Hank, I…”
“Yes?” he asks when she doesn’t continue, taking a step forward.
But Jan just shakes her head.
“No, it’s fine. I’ll see you later, ok?”
The lab’s door closes behind her with a click.
A few hours after Jan’s departure, Hank’s still mulling over where he misstepped in their conversation. He’s almost forgotten about the petal entirely when he chokes on a second one as he gets up to refill his coffee. That one he can’t quite dismiss as easily. Worse, there’s a third when he packs up for the evening to return to Avengers Mansion – before the lights go out on campus, just like Jan asked.
By the time Hank reaches the block the mansion is on, he’s left a good half-dozen petals on the sidewalk behind him.
“Welcome home,” he murmurs to himself at the gates, fishing his ID card from his pocket to scan in.
The reluctance he feels as he enters the cavernous front hall makes him feel a bit guilty, but he can’t quite shake it.
The mansion is certainly an enviable place to live, in terms of amenities. And Tony’s letting the Avengers stay there for free. Those are the reasons Hank would give anyone if they asked why he stayed. That he likes his solitude, but that he’s willing to put up with the rowdiness of the rest of the team in exchange for the comforts of the mansion.
That’s not really the reason, though; he prefers his shabby apartment and quiet comforts.
No, the truth, if he’s being honest with himself — and he might as well be — is he stays because Jan’s there. No other comfort or accommodation that Tony could possibly provide rivals proximity to her.
Which is probably a little pathetic, when he thinks about it like that.
Jan’s an independent woman; he can’t imagine her eschewing her comfort to chase after any particular person. Hank on the other hand, despite being notoriously less sociable than Jan and equally as stubborn, is willing to sacrifice other things to stay by her side. He doesn’t want to tell her that — why would he? It would be pressure, plain and simple. An added and unnecessary complication to their relationship. How often has she bemoaned the neediness of her fans, her boyfriends?
It’s better to—
He coughs. Another petal, triangular and purple like the others. Whatever’s happening to him clearly isn’t going away on its own.
The coughing fits get progressively worse after he arrives at the mansion; for that reason, Hank decides to take his laptop and retreat to the basement lab. The walls of the mansion are thick, but Jan’s room is right next to his and he doesn’t want to risk worrying her.
Search results for ‘coughing up flowers’ are sparse and mostly unhelpful, and Hank spends most of the next few hours wading through articles about the ingestion of poisonous plants. He knows what’s happening to him is strange, but surely it can’t be strange enough that no one’s ever heard of it before. Why—
There’s a knock on the metal of the lab’s doorway that makes Hank jump. It also makes him cough again. When he turns, he catches sight of T’Challa, unmasked and looking concerned.
“Are you well, Dr. Pym?”
Trying for a smile, Hank nods.
“Yes. It, it’s nothing—”
“This,” says T’Challa, gesturing at the petals scattered all over Hank’s workbench, “is not nothing.”
His expression is unimpressed, and Hank wilts slightly beneath it. Kingly disappointment is a very powerful thing.
“I’ve ah. This afternoon, I started coughing flower petals. Which sounds ridiculous, I know.”
Scrubbing his hands over his face, Hank sighs.
“It is not ridiculous.” T’Challa studies the petals with a frown. “Just… Not very common.”
“Wait, you— you’ve heard of something like this before?”
“I have,” says T’Challa, glancing at Hank from the corner of his eye. “In Wakanda, we call it the Secret-Keeping Sickness.”
Hank freezes in place.
“Is there a cure?”
Wakanda has technological advances the rest of the world can scarcely dream of. Surely if they know of this sickness they must also have a way to treat it.
“Yes,” T’Challa tells him, confirming Hank’s hopes. “There is a way. The sickness is caused by repressing and attempting to deny your feelings — to cure it, you must express that which you are currently burying.”
Express what you’re burying… Hank doesn’t bury things, though. Not really. He prides himself on being honest and straightforward. There’s not anything he—
Hank coughs.
Nothing that he—
He coughs again. And twice more. Eventually T’Challa gives him a firm pat on the back and a full flower spills into Hank’s cupped palm.
“Thank you, T’Challa. Uh. For that and, and for the advice,” he rasps out, because it’s only polite, even if the solution he’s been presented with is a difficult one.
“You are welcome, my friend.” After several seconds of silence, T’Challa nods, like he’s figured something out. “The cure to your ailment can be a bitter one; I will let you have some time alone to contemplate.”
Only after T’Challa leaves does Hank risk unfurling his fingers to take a look at what’s in his hand. He recognizes it immediately.
It’s an Ophrys apifera, commonly known as the bee orchid, because of course it is. Magic, technology, biology — they all have their little games. Jokes played on the kind of people with hubris enough to attempt to marshal them.
This is a Jan Thing, the universe is telling him in no uncertain terms. The universe, Hank decides, can go screw itself.
Surprise surprise, Hank does not follow T’Challa’s well-intentioned advice. He instead spends the rest of the night reading about Secret-Keeping Sickness, which is apparently also called Hanahaki — the results are certainly interesting, and much more informative than any of his previous attempts to research his symptoms. To keep his hands busy, he works on an Ultron that’s been malfunctioning.
Talking to Jan can’t be the only way out of this.
He’s a scientist, he tells himself firmly, and he’ll find a way to fix his problems with science. Logic must win out over feelings here — especially since feelings are what caused this whole mess in the first place.
“Life must be so much easier for you,” Hank tells the Ultron head he’s rewiring. “Nothing but data and numbers and calculations.”
He almost wishes aloud that he could be the same way, but deep down he knows he doesn’t want that. If he was unfeeling, just a robot extrapolating from lines of code, he’d never be able to feel the warmth of Jan’s body as she hooked her arms over his shoulders to ask what he was doing. He wouldn’t have a ridiculous human heart that lost its rhythm whenever she smiled. He wouldn’t—
Alone in his lab, he admits it to himself: he wouldn’t be in love with her.
Maybe he should listen to T’Challa and just tell Jan the truth. What’s the worst that could happen, really? Jan’s used to people confessing their love to her. It happens all the time — as much as Hank wishes it didn’t. And it’s not as though it’s completely unthinkable that she’d say yes to a relationship with him. He can’t have completely imagined that the way she looks at him is different than how she looks at other people.
Except… Regardless of her response, it would change everything between them. And that… It scares him. He doesn’t want to try and press forward just because some, some illness for god’s sake, thinks that he should. If he’s going to tell Jan how he feels, it has to be meticulous. Planned. He can’t let himself screw it up out of desperation.
So Hank buries the clumsy and fragile words of affection he longs to put into Jan’s hands. Instead, he continues researching. He’s still got time.