Work Text:
Eugene is waiting when Varian gets home from school that afternoon. He wanted to do this the second he got home, but it was almost four in the morning by the time he was done with the Weasel, and he'd needed to sleep before he could manage any kind of a coherent conversation.
He's plenty coherent now. He has notecards, and those notecards have talking points. He is honestly crushing this guardianship thing. He's going to be so mature, and not-mad-but-disappointed, and ground Varian for an appropriate amount of time (which he thinks is about a week; he couldn't find anything on the parenting blogs about how to punish your kid for attempted superheroics). Varian will be understanding and apologetic and say something like “Yes, Eugene, you're making so many good points, and I understand that I should go to therapy instead of listening to the police scanner. I'm very sorry for scaring you shitless last night and I promise from now on I'll be a regular teenager who doesn't try to stop robberies when he's supposed to be in bed.”
It's a nice fantasy, so of course it goes up in flames as soon as the front door opens.
“Gene, you home?” Varian calls, followed by the sound of his backpack hitting the ground with a disproportionate thud. Eugene used to joke about how many textbooks he must be toting around every day, but now he knows that there's actually a mechanized supersuit and weapons in there.
At that thought, he slams his stack of carefully written notecards on his bedside table and storms out of his bedroom and into the living room, crossing his arms and scowling at his delinquent cousin.
Varian, halfway through removing his coat, blinks at Eugene like he has no idea why Eugene could possibly look so murderous. “Um, hi?”
“You,” Eugene snaps, pointing a finger at Varian, “are grounded for the rest of fucking ever. What the hell were you thinking last night?”
Varian’s face twists into the expression he wears when he thinks Eugene has lost his mind but is trying to be polite about it. “Mostly I was thinking about my chemistry homework,” he says slowly, removing his jacket and hanging it over the back of the armchair he's claimed as his own since moving in. “Why am I grounded?”
“You're grounded for an extra two weeks for lying to me right now,” Eugene says flatly. Varian raises his eyebrows.
“Two weeks more than ‘for the rest of fucking ever?’” he asks sardonically. He actually does finger quotes, the little shit. Eugene is so glad he's okay. He's also going to murder him.
“Another week for the sarcasm,” he says. “I meant what were you thinking when you tried to stop a jewelry store robbery?”
That finally gets an actual expression out of Varian; he looks like a deer in the headlights for half a second before his expression goes carefully neutral.
“I have no idea what you're talking about,” he says. “Are you feeling okay? Are you sick?”
“I'm not sick,” Eugene snaps. “Don't lie to me, Alchemist, I'm not an idiot!”
He gets a full body wince at the name, and the half-satisfying, half-horrible sensation of watching the color drain from Varian’s face.
“W-wait,” Varian says. “How do you– I don't know what you're talking about, what's a, uh, did you say chemist?”
His voice spirals into such a high pitch it's a wonder Eugene can hear it. He only quirks an eyebrow in response, not wanting to dignify that with a response.
Varian’s shoulders slump. “I thought you were at work last night,” he mumbles, hanging his head. “How'd you find out?”
And then, because Eugene has been on a terrible adrenaline high for nearly twenty-four hours now and his brain isn't working, he says the worst thing he possibly could.
“Flynn Rider, obviously.”
Varian’s head snaps up, eyes wide. “You– what? What?”
“I mean,” Eugene says, mind spinning as he frantically tries to backtrack, “he, you know, he told me. Flynn Rider told me that he saw you at the jewelry store last night.”
“Flynn Rider told you,” Varian says skeptically. “The Flynn Rider told you, a guy he doesn't know, that he saw me, a guy he also doesn't know, stop a robbery last night.”
“I know Flynn Rider,” Eugene protests, more offended than he should be, then realizes that oh god, now he has to explain that. “He and I are… gym… buddies. We go to the… gym. Look, it doesn't matter, the point is that I cannot believe you're trying to do this stuff at your age! You're in high school, Varian! You have homework!”
“I finished it all before I left last night,” Varian says.
“Oh, well that's good,” Eugene says, pleased despite himself. “Proud of you for that. Did you have any trouble with your– no, not the point, the point is that you put yourself in danger for no reason!”
“Of course there was a reason!” Varian protests. “I helped people! They were gonna take all that stuff, and they had the security guard tied up, they were threatening him–”
Eugene is across the room in half a second, bending down and gripping Varian’s shoulders. He only realizes belatedly that he shouldn't have moved so quickly. Maybe Varian won't notice.
“Those men had guns, kid,” he says desperately. “You could have died, do you get that?”
Varian’s eyes are wide and startled. He didn't react this way when Eugene was yelling at him just a minute ago. Anger, apparently, he can deal with. Concern, not so much.
Maybe Eugene isn't doing so great at this guardianship thing after all.
“My suit is bulletproof,” Varian says weakly. “I stopped them, didn't I? I had it handled. Why're you so upset?”
“Because you could have been killed,” Eugene says, not letting go. “Because we're the only family either of us has got, and I couldn't live with myself if something happened to you.”
His voice breaks, and Varian’s pale face goes blurry for a moment before Eugene blinks away his tears.
“It is not worth it,” he says, giving his stupid, brave little cousin a gentle shake. “Let the cops and the fucking sunshine squad handle things like that, okay? Please, Varian?”
“I–” Varian’s face twists, obviously conflicted, but he doesn't pull away. “But I can help, though,” he says finally. “I'm… what's the point of being as smart as I am if I'm not doing something good with it?”
“Staying in school is good,” Eugene says. “Saying alive is good.”
Varian snorts. “Flynn said the same–”
He cuts himself off, eyes growing wide. His jaw drops, and Eugene lets go of his shoulders like he's been burned. He can almost hear the pieces clicking together in Varian's head.
“Oh my god,” Varian breathes. “Are you–”
“No.”
“You're–”
“I'm not!”
“You fucking hypocrite!”
Varian plants both hands on Eugene's chest and shoves him away, scowling.
“Yelling at me about one robbery when you've been Flynn Rider for– wait, since I was five! So you were also in high school when you started!”
“No I wasn't, you know perfectly well I dropped out junior year,” Eugene says. “Which is not something you're gonna do, by the way. You're gonna graduate top of your class and go to college and have a normal life with no super shenanigans.”
“I'm the smartest person in my school by a mile, including the teachers,” Varian says flatly. “Graduating top of my class is inevitable. I can do that and do ‘super shenanigans,’ no problem.”
“No, you can't,” Eugene says. “Because I wasn't kidding, you're grounded forever.”
“You can't do that,” Varian cries. “How come you get to do it, but I can't?”
“Uh, because you're not in charge of me?” Eugene asks. “Because I've already been doing it for over a decade, and I know what I'm doing? Why do you even want to? You're the only kid I've ever met who didn't want to be a superhero when he grew up!”
Varian falters at that; he looks like Eugene just slapped him. Eugene pauses, feeling an almost tangible shift in the air as Varian swallows loudly.
“I couldn't– I couldn't do anything,” he says faintly. “When Moonstone broke in, I couldn't do anything.”
Eugene closes his eyes. It's easy to forget, when Varian has been fitting so seamlessly into Eugene’s life the last few months, what kind of nightmare brought him there.
He forces his eyes open again so he can look at Varian, who's staring miserably at his feet with his arms wrapped around his middle. Eugene crouches in front of him so he can look up at him, placing a hand on Varian's elbow as gently as he can.
“That wasn't your fault,” he says. “Kid, look at me. That was not your fault. Moonstone is a monster, and they've been targeting our family for a long time. You did do something. You got out. Your survived, and that's a fucking miracle.”
“Yeah,” Varian says. “I survived.”
He sounds so tired. For just a second, Eugene finds himself looking at the shell of a boy who first moved in with him a few months ago, screaming himself awake every night and refusing to talk at all during the day. He thought, because he's an idiot, that Varian was doing better.
“Quirin’s gonna be okay,” he says softly. “He's in the best hospital in the world, he's got round the clock care. He's–”
“He won't wake up,” Varian interrupts, voice breaking. “I– I keep seeing it. He hits the wall and he doesn't get up and I just leave him there.”
“He told you to run,” Eugene insists. “You did exactly what you were supposed to do.”
Varian finally meets Eugene's eyes, expression unexpectedly fierce. “Doing what I'm supposed to do landed my dad in a coma,” he says. “I'm doing what I have to do now.”
God, it's like looking at himself ten years ago. Eugene can almost smell the smoke, hear Lance screaming for him, feel the new energy crackling under his skin. He'd done what he had to do, too, and it had nearly killed him and a lot of other people.
“Don't do it alone,” he says, straightening up. Varian looks up at him, eyes wide and surprised. “If you're gonna do this– and you're gonna do this, aren't you?”
“Yeah,” Varian admits, still sniffling a little. “You're not home a lot. I'd have plenty of time to sneak out and fight crime.”
“Right,” Eugene says. “Well, you don't have to sneak out to do it. You can come on patrol with me, and I'll show you the ropes.”
Varian’s jaw drops. “Wait, really?”
“Yes, really,” Eugene says. “You're stubborn enough to do this no matter what I say, so I might as well make sure you're being safe. It's a hell of a learning curve.”
There's something childlike in Varian’s grin, even though his eyes are still red and his cheeks are splotchy. “I'm gonna go on patrol with Flynn Rider,” he says, almost gleeful. “This is so cool.”
“Take it seriously, please?”
“This is seriously cool.”
Eugene huffs out a laugh. “Sure. Not tonight, though, okay? It's still a school night. We're gonna have to figure out some sort of schedule for this. God, I should look up child labor laws.”
Varian, finally, doesn't argue. Eugene doesn't doubt he'll start pushing sooner rather than later, but at least he's learning to pick his battles.
“Do you have homework tonight?” he asks, and Varian shakes his head.
“Just some reading.”
“Okay. So we're not going out, but I can look over your stuff, give you some pointers, run you through what it is I actually do most nights. Come on.”
Varian is almost bouncing as he follows Eugene into his bedroom. “Do you know a lot of other superheroes?” he asks eagerly. “Wait, do I know other superheroes?”
“In this city, statistically likely,” Eugene says, popping into his closet and retrieving a box off the top shelf. “Corona is a weird super-magnet. We've got me, and now you, the sunshine squad, the Baron and his crew, who knows how many others, I swear people just pop up with superpowers every other day–”
He upends the box on his bed, spilling out his suit and mask, a handful of useful gadgets, and a single notebook. Varian doesn't ask for permission before he starts rifling through Eugene's things, examining his lockpicks and the treads on his boots with a critical eye.
“What are these made of?” he asks, tapping one shoe thoughtfully. Eugene shrugs.
“No clue. Got ‘em as a gift. They explained it to me, but it all went over my head. Something-something-science-something. You'd probably get it.”
Varian hums thoughtfully and sets the boot down in favor of picking up the notebook. “What's this?”
Eugene plucks it out of his hand, earning himself a glare. “All my notes on the city, especially the Baron and his movements. This is why I don't want you out there by yourself. You never know when a simple robbery is tied to his business, and sometimes once you find out you're already on his radar.”
“Was the Baron behind the robbery last night?” Varian asks, alarmed, and Eugene shakes his head quickly.
“No, no, those were just some largely incompetent thieves who probably just needed some quick cash.”
Varian rolls his eyes. “Then why were you so worked up about me fighting them?”
“Because incompetent people with guns are much more dangerous than competent ones,” Eugene says seriously. “Keep that in mind. You're a lot more likely to get killed by a scared idiot than a professional shooter.”
Varian nods, eyes wide. “Okay. I'll remember.”
“It's not all bad,” Eugene says, softening. “Parts of this are fun. I just don't want you to get so caught up in it that you lose your head.”
“I'll be careful,” Varian promises. “And you'll teach me, right?”
“Are you gonna keep sneaking out if I don't?”
“Yep.”
Eugene holds out a hand to shake, and Varian takes it. “Well then, kid, welcome to the Flynn Rider School of Vigilante Justice.”