NOTES:
After his first bout into madness, it was later revealed that Maximus had been mind-controlling Pietro. His teammates must have come to know of this (God on high, he'd conspired to murder his friends!) since he went on to rejoin the Avengers shortly afterwards, but it was never really discussed on panel.
This fic should probably be considered an 'AU' standalone from the regular Moonlighter 'verse, but makes a nice companion piece to 'Just Take Me Already' - because evidently I secretly ship this pairing now, who knew.

OLD TIMES

It was just like old times, except only in the most superficial and loveless sense.

Quicksilver was back. The team was together again. Cap's Kooky Quartet. The scattered pieces gathered into a different picture than the familiar smiling one hanging framed in the hall. The same warm bodies but without a beating heart: the noise but not the music.

Quicksilver was back, or was he really?

They had spoken only briefly, always professional, always business. He had helped the team to save his sister, showing up in the nick of time – he was better at that than anyone. He even managed to deceive Magneto in his ploy to get close enough to rescue her. (This was rare proof of his most secret and underutilized talent: to be persuasive and cunning, to seem as good or as bad as someone expected him to be.)

Steve could tell Wanda was the only thing he had managed to save lately.

.

"She will never forgive me. She will never forget." Steve overheard him admit to her one night. "Who can blame her? I never will."

Pietro stared out of the window, tense and stoic as a preying hawk, and he would not let his sister comfort him even if she wanted to. Wanda sat in the center of the sofa surrounded by her own demons, and they might as well have been on separate planets.

Pietro didn't speak to Steve about his wife, or his daughter, or much of anything else. Although neither of them had the option to avoid discussing Official Matters.

"I assure you, Captain, Maximus' influence over me is broken." Pietro stared straight ahead at the two-way mirror. They were in the interview room for this. It was mandatory. It was being recorded. It was business. It was painful.

"Can the Inhumans' doctors, or scientists, or… whoever treated you in Attilan. Can they attest to that?" Steve had to ask – he had to.

A shadow of emotion crossed the speedster's face. He was a handsome man but underweight now, and very tired. Pietro testified in his own defense, pleading innocent by reason of insanity, "Yes they can, and they will if you require it."

What would happen to him if the Avengers didn't take him back? "It's required." Steve added for the record, for the jury and the judge, "I'm sorry. Red tape, you know how it is."

Pietro just nodded, like he was applying for a work visa and nothing more. "I'll make a call."

.

As far as Steve knew, Pietro exercised nonstop when he wasn't on shift and the team had no other call to duty. He got thinner, harder, quieter, and more tired. One night Steve found him standing still, a rare reprieve from his punishing training or tireless busywork. He stared out of the window at some demon in the distance – at the long empty road ahead.

"I'm fine," he said without being asked, without turning or blinking.

Steve told him, "I'm glad you're back."

"Me too, me too. I'm glad it all worked out." That secret weapon of persuasion perverted his tone with the beginning of a lie, just in case.

The days went on and on like that, until one night Steve found him in his own bedroom, completely honest.

"I don't know what I'm doing here," Pietro said. 'Here' could mean anywhere.

Steve remembered the first time they stole away together for a passionate encounter in this room. (It was so good too. Damn. Damn!) Everything had changed.

He was staring at the door when Steve walked in and he kept on staring after it was closed and Steve sat down on the bed beside him.

"It's okay." What a stupid thing to say. Not even his place to say. And nowhere close to true. "It's okay to feel that way," he said, trying to salvage the conversation.

"Thank you for taking me back." Pietro flinched. "I mean, back on the team."

What would happen to him if he went off alone tonight? "I'm glad you're here. I really am." Steve reached out, rested his hand on the speedster's back.

Pietro opened his mouth but nothing came out, not even breath.

"Hey. Hey. How can I help? I'm here for you. Just tell me." The place between his shoulder blades that Steve rubbed his thumb in circles was a gnarly thicket of knotted muscles.

"You cannot help. No one can. It cannot be fixed. What a nightmare… Some days I think it could not be any worse."

"Then it can only get better. Right? Just hang in there. You'll get through this. I promise. Okay?"

Pietro moved his head, bewildered, exhausted, and dropped his chin so quickly and so completely that it bounced against his chest. "I'm tired, Cap." Suddenly he was almost crying, his face contorting to break free from the emotionless mask that held it still all this time. "I'm so tired."

Steve gathered him close, squeezing his shoulders tight. "I know. I know you are. Here, come here." He maneuvered them to lie on the mattress properly, tucked Pietro into the nook of his shoulder, and tried very hard not to rejoice in any small part of this.

Pietro had never spent the night before. He had spent an hour once lying next to Steve making him come within an inch of his life, but he had never slept beside him. Now the mutant fell asleep immediately; a bony dead weight flopped against the length of Steve's body. Ashamed, he secretly breathed in, reminded of older, better, simpler times. Of all the scents he could never place, the foreign, exotic, endangered spices that Pietro was made of. And he held his old friend, this broken young man, through the whole night.

.

At the barest light of dawn, Pietro's body began tensing just before he woke up. (It hadn't relaxed much to begin with.) His breaths climbed higher and higher in his chest, ready to act, to strike – to run. Steve moved his thumb where it rested against Pietro's arm, which broke the spell. The speedster repositioned his body, imitating the shape of ease.

"Good morning," Steve looked down, expecting to meet the other man's eyes.

That haunted stare was back – he realized it hadn't left, maybe it never would.

"Morning," Pietro told the wall.

"How did you sleep?"

Pietro directed his troubled gaze at his companion. His grey eyes were dull and barren. It reminded Steve of the moon. "I'm lost," he said, as though it was an immediate continuation of their conversation the night before. Nothing had changed. "Steve… I'm truly lost."

"No you're not." He took a chance and brushed a lock of hair off of the other man's face. If Pietro Maximoff needed a haircut, the end of the world must be nigh. Steve forced himself to smile. "You can't be lost. You're right here."

Pietro just watched, like he waited for the blank screen of a movie about to start, like he spoke in a vacuum without sound. He said, "She won't let me touch her," and his expression did not change. "I think she is actually afraid." Without any other indication of emotion, his eyes glossed over. "Did I hurt someone?"

"You don't remember?"

"Not most of it. And they won't tell me much. Plausible deniability, I guess." A few tears escaped his unblinking stare. "Is that why they hate me now? I hurt someone?"

"No." His hair was under control but Steve kept combing it anyway. "Maximus hurt someone."

Pietro uncoiled like a Slinky, stretching twice his length to reach Steve's mouth. It was everything it used to be, respect and loneliness and a little envy, and the kind of passionate sadness when you have nothing left to lose. Pietro shifted on top and bore down, still stronger than he looked (even more so given his frail state).

Steve liked that position too and tried to reverse their places to take his turn.

Pietro resisted, sat back on his thighs and began removing his shirt methodically. "You can't hold me down."

Steve mistook it for play, for Pietro's usual deadpan humor, his teasing defiance masking his unwavering loyalty that Steve missed so much. "Oh, you bet I can. Come here."

"No. You cannot because I don't like it," Pietro said, unoffended but dead serious and taking off his belt like it was part of his job. "He used to hold me down. I never got over it. It's even harder now than it used to be, somehow. Maybe because Maximus held me down too, in a way."

Steve watched speechless as Pietro moved on to unbutton his own shirt, his pants, and as soon as his brain caught up he stopped the other man's hands. "Who's he? Hey. He who?"

Pietro sat back again and looked down at him like the words made no sense. "You're such a good man…" he said, an apology in his tone. Then he bent forward and did all the things with his mouth that Steve liked, and a few new tricks as well. A little while turned into a while longer, and it if lasted forever it would end too soon.

"I don't know if I can finish," Pietro said eventually.

(Steve kept trying to reciprocate and Pietro was being uncharacteristically selfless.) He reached down, thinking the other man must be limp but he was at full mast and the opposite of soft. "You can," Steve said. "With me, you know you can."

They shifted to face one another lying on their sides while they stroked each other. Pietro was good with his left hand and got Steve off first. Steve had to remind himself to go slower than his instincts told him and Pietro came hard despite himself.

They splayed out side by side to recover.

Steve broke the silence. "That was…" why did he start saying this? "Different."

"Yes," Pietro agreed before Steve could worry over how it would be taken. "Everything is different." Some of that persuasion had returned. He was starting to lie again; to be what the people he had wronged wanted him to be.

"You're…" Steve ached to punch himself in the face, "You're different. Not bad," he added as Pietro looked at him, "just different."

"Yes," Pietro agreed again and did not seem offended. He seemed to be exactly what Steve would dare to hope for. A little more relaxed. A little more open. It might even be true.

They took turns showering and never spoke of these things again. Just like old times.

~fin~