Running From Himself 3-5

“So, so, so, Nubia, just a heads-up…”

Reggie held himself still against the edge of the craft services table as Ashley Barrett Ashley-ed her way through her job again, words just flying out like the redhead was getting paid by the syllable. The buzz of so much machinery and people milling around beat down against the back of his neck with a new kind of heat for a New York Fall. It wasn’t too surprising, considering all the equipment and work was definitely doing something to the ozone layer all on its own, what with the clouds of hairspray and burning dust blown around by too many fans.

“I’m loving the energy, first of all. Did I tell you that, Nubia?” The woman in the navy blue pantsuit nodded her head so fast the rest of her almost vibrated. “I… I don’t know if I told you that yet, but I just have to tell you that.”

She had told her that, already.

Five times in the last five minutes, too, because he’d counted. 

“Now, Nubia, like I was saying,” Ashley tripled back to the actual point with another nod, the woman making far too much eye contact and almost refusing to blink as the words stacked on top of each other in a desperate little pile, “But Bourke is thinking — and I agree, totally, a little bit, obviously, right? — that we just need to push the, you know, the visibility of the unity a little harder.”

“...what do you mean?” If Nubia could throw ice instead of lightning, Reggie didn’t have a doubt in him that the whole craft table would be five layers deep in permafrost.

“I’m just saying… and nothing about your performance, of course, because that… that was amazing and honestly, I can see it being featured on the Blu-Ray, but uhh…” Ashley tilted her head a little, dry lips working silently for a moment. “Well, the whole Storm Sister moment was highly planned and it’s meant to be a major feature in the film’s third act, so we really want… we need it to pop, Nubia. So, just…” Ashley’s smile widened as the woman finally allowed herself a blink. “A bit more warmth? Maybe a smile before the back-to-back moment?”

“Ashley.” Nubia stood perfectly still, the woman breathing slow through her nose.

“...yes?”

Somebody kill me. Reggie forced himself to groan as Ashley’s voice found a new pitch, his teeth working hard on the inside of his cheek. Please, kill me now. It was all he could do to keep the laugh from busting out of him and pulling all the attention his way.

“I smiled.” The expression on Nubia’s face now was not that at all. “I held her hand. I said the line. I gave you warmth on take five. I did Vought’s little Ebony and Ivory routine, Ashley, so what more do you want from me?”

“Right!” Ashley’s laugh was as Nubia’s words were cold, the sound dying halfway out of her throat. Reggie could almost feel the panic attack edging closer. “Right, no, of course. And take five was great, Nubia! Incredible, even. But we just need a, like a teensy little redo for take seven where you don’t look…”

“Look?” Nubia sent a single eyebrow high.

“...angry?” Ashley pursed her lips, silver Voughtpad raised high like a shield with her knuckles white.

Reggie’s eyes slid shut again as he let out a breath through his nose. Oh, Ashley. We barely knew ye. The speedster in all blue-and-white bit down harder on his cheek, a bottle of cold water raised to his lips to hide the massive grin threatening to split his face.

“Reg…”

“Bia?” He opened his eyes again, bottle lowering back to the table as he swallowed his mouthful.

“Cover her ears.”

“Uh-huh.” Ignoring the small “Hey!” from a certain nine-year-old eyeing another cupcake to add to her half-filled plate, Reggie’s hands cupped the little girl’s ears as he tilted his head back at Nubia. “Go for it.”

“Ashley.”

“...uh-huh?”

Nubia leaned down to eye the shorter woman across the craft table. “You are going to get the fuuuck out of my face with this bullshit right now before I figure out exactly what voltage I need to stop your heart for an open-casket, we clear?”

“O-o-okay, great!” Ashley Barrett immediately spun on her expensive heels. “Love that passion, Nubia! We’ll just… uh, we’ll review the footage, do some rewrites maybe. Great job today!” By the time the last word left her, the woman was practically sprinting away, fingers tapping at her tablet.

As the redhead finally scurried around a trailer and out of sight, Reggie allowed that snort to finally punch its way out of his nose. 

Nubia raised her head from where she’d been glaring into a plastic bowl of assorted fruits right next to an Edible Arrangement, the woman not even looking as she kept plopping green grapes onto a paper plate.

“Mr. A-Train!”

Reggie blinked down at the little girl who still had his hands as earmuffs — Maya Nubian swimming in her ridiculously big yellow hoodie with a plate piled with the worst nutritional choices available.

“Sorry ‘bout that, princess bun-buns.” Standing back up straight, hands free of her ears, he paid her back with a smile and turned his attention back to her mom. “So… Girls Get It Done, huh?”

“Stop.”

Reggie had no intentions to, eyebrows wagging up and down. “Storm Sisters Together, I mean… y’all looked real cozy up there in front of the cameras.”

Nubia’s head whipped to face him, grapes forgotten along with the white chocolate as she aimed pure hostility his way. “Don’t you start right now, Blu Boy. Don’t even.”

“Just sayin’, Bia. The chemistry? Off the charts. I could feel the sparks from here.” Reggie chuckled, well aware that had nothing to do with how much they liked each other. More the opposite, probably; considering Nubia charged up faster and harder the more of a mood she was in. “Y’all gonna get an Oscar for that. Least an MTV Movie Award. They got a Best Fake Friends category yet?”

“Boy, please.” A pair of metal tongs slammed back into the overladen bowl of fruit as Nubia growled out the last word. “Like, I ain’t see the scene Bourke had you do with Shockwave yesterday. What was the direction?” A gold-painted finger poked her bottom lip as Nubia jutted it out as innocently as she could. “Oh yeah, ‘dap him up like he’s one of the homies from round the way?’ How’d that taste?”

Battery acid over motor oil, pretty much. Reggie didn’t say that, though. Instead, he just tossed his head back, a sigh spilling out. “Least I could keep a straight face, Bee. You were out there chewing on glass and ready to spit blood, c’mon.”

That same glass-munching expression came back at the reminder. “...don’t remind me.”

Reggie let the laugh spill free in full force, a bark of sound that spilled across the chaos of the soundstage. Shaking his head, he let his eyes drop back down; the whole movie set out in front of him. From the grips hauling thick cables and PAs shouting into headsets all the way to the green scr-

Reggie blinked, his attention pulled as he noticed someone else staring back. The fuck she want?

The ugliest undercut he’d ever seen stared back at him as Stormfront stood at a distance with her arms crossed, her fake-sweet smile tightening for all of a second before she looked away like she hadn’t been watching.

…evil bitch.

"You are not eating all that.”

He blinked back, attention pulled over to the table again as Nubia snapped with a finger pointed down.

Maya Nubian hummed a song under her breath — something too hyper and poppy to be anything but straight from TikTok — as she stacked a greasy slider next to two chicken tenders buried under a thick scoop of neon yellow mac & cheese. A handful of green grapes sat on top for balance, crowning the whole unstable mess as garnish for a cupcake; an oversized Homelander-blue frosted cupcake with a white V made out of nothing but the thickest fondant money could buy.

Well… Reggie tilted his head. Least she’s not a picky eater, right?

“Maya Regina Nubian, if you don’t put that cupcake back where you got it from…” Nubia was still pointing, eyes narrowed down at her daughter.

“But mooo~oom, I need the energy.” Maya shot back, sounding almost like a sweeter, smaller Disney Channel-raised version of the recently-divorced Nubia King. “Seriously, growing bodies need calories!”

“Only thing you require is a vegetable.”

“Mac and cheese is a vegetable.”

“In…” Reggie snorted out loud again, grinning wide. “In what universe?”

“The universe where I'm hungry!" Maya spun around with a huff, sneakers lighting up as she marched away from the table. The nine-year-old made it all of four steps before her foot caught the thick housing of a power cable snaking across the floor.

Her ankle rolled, mouth falling open as the girl in the yellow hoodie pinwheeled, grapes scattering like green marbles and the Homelander cupcake rotating on a direct path aimed at the dirty floor.

Reggie winced as the world dropped into blue, the ambient roar of the set dying as he pushed off the craft table. His right hand snapped out, fingers closing around the buckling paper plate as it hung in the air; left hand blurring as he caught the slider separating from its bun, the chicken tenders, and the clump of mac. Grapes were plucked from dead air one by one, each of them dropped back onto the white plate before he caught the cupcake inches from disaster, blue frosting sugaring up his thumb.

He took a labored breath and time snapped back from its slowed state, noise rushing back all at once. Wind displaced from his movement rattled the tablecloth and the tent itself, a stack of napkins sent flying free into the air outside.

Standing perfectly still, residual blue sparks started to die out against his dark skin as he held the fully loaded plate back out. "Here you go, Nubian Princess."

"Wow!” Maya took the plate with wide-eyes and one careful hand, the other still clutching a juice box as she stared at the perfectly rescued food. “Like, seriously? Wow!"

Nubia’s mouth hung half-open as Reggie smirked over at her, rolling his shoulder with a slick grin. “What, you never seen a runner do his thing, Bia?”

Her jaw snapped shut again, eyes darting away as her face pulled tight into a scowl. “No, I… I mean, yeah. Of course I have.”

“Yeah, I know.” Reggie grabbed a grape off Maya’s plate — “Hey!” — and tossed it into his mouth with a laugh. “Nothing crazy.”

Now, that was pretty much a lie.

And also the whole truth at the same time.

Nothing too impressive, now, and not even all that fast considering Reggie was pretty sure he’d seen Webweaver pull similar stunts. At least when he’s not tooted up shooting heroin up his hole. 

Seriously, nothing faster than ten times more than normal.

Even still, he was pretty damn sure he couldn’t have pulled that off a year back. The old he… him… A-Train. Reggie grunted, an itch in his veins everytime he thought too much about the past that wasn’t his. A-Train couldn’t have done that, not without splattering the cupcake against the wall or snapping Maya’s wrist by accident. Hell, Shockwave and Marathon couldn’t do it either.

Reggie shook out his wrist, the last of the sparks fading. All about perception.

Control, too.

Using speed like that required you remembering that it came with weight and it took… practice.

Otherwise, you were just a runaway missile.

"...powers!"

Huh? Reggie shook his head, the last of the static in his thoughts fuzzing out as he realized the little Nubian had been talking to him the entire time. “Sorry ‘bout that, princess. Hit me one more time.”

"I saaaaaiiiiid," Maya huffed, cheeks puffed out, "how come you got new powers, Mr. A-Train?"

“What… Mfff?” The speedster raised an eyebrow, blue frosted thumb in his mouth. “What new powers?”

“Lightning!” Maya pointed her own sticky finger his way. “Blue sparky stuff! You never had that before. Now you got lightning like Mom, except yours is blue and hers is yellow!”

“Gold, Maya.”

“Yellow!”

“Uhhh…” Reggie swallowed slowly as he looked over at Nubia, the woman with her arms crossed and clearly waiting for an answer he didn’t have. “It just… popped up. After the accident last year, just started happening.”

“Accident?” Maya’s head titled to the side.

"Not important."

Reggie waved a hand as Nubia snorted his way. "Right. If you say so, Boy Blu."

He couldn’t even bother with a comeback to that, the word accident heavy in his chest as the quiet clicks of EKGs sounded in his ears. The stench of cold alcohol was thick as everything else, dark red blood filling plastic vials as Vought doctors whispered to each other and refused to look him in the eyes. 

It had just been three days ago since he’d been in for testing and Vought was still being hush-hush about the lab results and that silence was almost louder than a diagnosis. For all he knew now, his heart was ticking down to zero. Enough V in me to burst into flames, huh? Or maybe explode with lightning?

Reggie forced the grin back onto his face as he clapped his hands together. "Anyway, speaking of lightning, you should have seen me save your mom last week.”

“Oooh! Oooh!” Maya’s eyes lit up. “I saw that on TikTok!”

Course you did. Reggie bit back a snort. “Anyway, I was out there catching your mom’s out the sky before she kissed the street. Basically doing all the heavy lifting while she was flying pretty like Big Bird.”

“Big Bird can’t fly!”

"Don’t call me Big Bird!" Nubia yelled over her daughter. "And I never needed help from you!"

"Oh, you definitely needed help, Bumblebee." Reggie dragged the vowels out, winking at Maya as he gave her mom a new nickname. “I was basically your mom’s knight in shining armor.”

“Oh youuuu…”

“What you gonna say now, Big Bird?”

Maya looked between the two of them, brow furrowing as she drank from her juice box. "If you guys save each other, how come you aren't friends outside of work?”

Reggie and Nubia stopped mid-sentence, both looking at each other over the little girl's head. 

“...”