Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Since he was a small child being ignored by his entire family, everyone Brett Hand met had waxed poetic about the phenomenon of soulmates. That one someone who was meant for you and you alone. Your perfect match in this universe. To Brett it sounded like a built-in best friend and he had been desperate to meet his one and only for as long as he could remember. To feel the tingling burn of their first words to him burning into his skin as soon as they met. He prayed for it every night and thought about it every waking minute of the day.

Brett didn’t get lucky like both of his brothers and meet his soulmate in elementary school. They also weren’t waiting to make his acquaintance in the hallways of his highschool like his only sister. He had tried to branch out; joined every extra curricular, been part of every social group in an attempt to meet as many people as he could in the hopes one of them would be her , but no dice. In college Brett had opened himself up to the idea that his soulmate may actually be a male and so pledged every frat. Thirty-eight Hell Weeks and still no words appeared anywhere on Brett’s body. He checked every night.

By twenty-two Brett was starting to think his parents may have been right that he was simply not meant to have a soulmate. By twenty-six he was positive of it. By thirty he had given up all hope of ever meeting someone who would actually be interested in sharing their life with him. Still, Brett continued to throw himself into social interactions. He went to birthdays and bars and barbeques in the hopes of filling the hole in his heart with fair weather friends. That’s how he’d met JR and JR was how he met Reagan.

It had been scary enough, being snatched from some random backyard and having a bag thrown over his head, but having the bag removed and being met with the withering glare of a gorgeous woman was even scarier. Reagan had looked annoyed and tired and like she wanted to rip Brett’s head from his body with her bare hands. He’d been dazzled immediately and had thrust his hand towards her with his usual plastic smile.

“Brett Hand,” he’d introduced. “Thrilled to be serving whoever gives me approval!”

“What the hell?!”

There was a stinging itch all around his right wrist and Brett had missed whatever was said next between JR and Reagan. While the apparent mad scientist chased after his new boss, already decked out in his golf gear, Brett had stayed behind and rushed to yank up the sleeve of his suit and dress shirt. It felt like he’d been burned and as he rolled his cuff out of the way he’d realized he was feeling hope for something he hadn’t dared to hope for in over five years. He’d watched, breath caught in his throat, as ever so slowly a line of text started to stain into the skin around his wrist. The script was tiny and cramped; barely legible.

What the hell...

Reagan Ridley was his soulmate. 

That one someone who was meant for Brett and Brett alone. 

His perfect match in this universe. 

His one and only built-in best friend.

And she hated him.

Reagan was beyond suspicious of him and Brett couldn’t blame her. He had spent the majority of his life just trying to make himself palatable to everyone around him. Now he laid awake at night not even sure what his favorite color was. He had no special qualities, no unique interests, no personality. It was obvious Reagan thought he was some sort of sleeper agent created in a lab by Abercrombie to steal her job. She hadn’t even mentioned her soulmark appearing. Still, Brett had been determined to make her like him. 

So he’d brought bagels to the big day of her robot reveal. Had shown her his Pitbull posters and played her ‘ Crash Into Me ’. He had even tried to give her a cute work nickname, but Reagan was having none of it. Instead she spiraled on and on about how he was nothing and no one and couldn’t be trusted. She’d thrown his resumes and test scores and social media accounts up on a giant screen and Brett had been transfixed by the fire in her exhausted eyes. But then JR was firing her and it was all his fault. He’d wanted to chase after his soulmate as she was escorted from the building, but then JR was telling him to prepare ROBOTUS for Airforce One and that he was in charge now.

“You’re not some flighty genius that’s gonna crack under pressure,” the older man had said, a smile in his voice even as the figurative walls started to close in on his newest employee. “You’re Brett!”

And what had being Brett ever gotten him?

Within a few hours of Reagan leaving, the robot she had declared her life’s work was announcing some sort of weird cube that would go around the entire country and the office was literally on fire. It felt like the end of the world order and Brett had done the first thing that came to mind and called his soulmate, begging for her to come back and fix the mess he just knew was somehow his fault. She’d agreed and Brett had wanted to ask her then; ask her why she hadn’t admitted they were soulmates. Why she hadn’t come to talk with him about the words somewhere on her body. He wanted to ask her if she was embarrassed of him, but it hadn’t seemed like the right time.

Then he was jogging up the stairs with her on his back and that hadn’t seemed like the right time.

Then they were fighting a killer robot in a helicopter and that hadn’t seemed like the right time.

Then JR was giving Reagan her job back and that hadn’t seemed like the right time either.

The right time never came and Brett eventually figured he just needed to leave the ball in Reagan’s court. Even without spending a large amount of time with her, he could tell the scientist needed to feel like she was in control. From the way her father seemed to taint every aspect of her life to the obvious dismissal of her intelligence by JR, Reagan Ridley didn’t seem to get a lot of respect and choice where her life was concerned. Brett made a personal vow to give her both of those things in spades for as long as they were cosmically linked which really meant forever. Because soulmates were forever. His parents had said so.

So instead of pressuring her about starting their life together, Brett committed himself to being Reagan’s friend first and foremost. He helped her interact with their odd team and tried to lend a hand wherever he could. Not that Reagan needed it. For all her lack of social emotional skills, the woman really was a genius. If that wasn’t clear after she’d succeeded in stopping a Cronenburg type JFK monster from escaping Cognito, it was definitely obvious after she’d managed to win a trial against the Reptoid courts. While making some deep personal growth at the same time!

Brett Hand took the time to learn as much as he could about Reagan Ridley. Like the fact that she wasn’t actually a scientist, but a robotics engineer! Watching her experiment with a robot boyfriend and then having the whole thing turn into an ex-machina situation hadn’t been his favorite, but Brett didn’t judge. His soulmate needed time and space to grow and feel comfortable and he was totally comfortable giving that to her. If he still went out of his way to impress her with things like the drone throne and ensuring he was rated a perfect ten on Right Swipe’s attractiveness scoring, that was his own business. He was just biding his time until Reagan felt comfortable enough to bring up the whole ‘destined to be together forever’ thing.

Brett probably should have realized it would only be a matter of time before someone else brought the subject up first. Soulmates were a pretty hot topic after all and he was honestly surprised it had taken the others so long to ask after his. Their team was a collection of interesting soulmate stories without him though. Myc, being from Hollow Earth as well as a mushroom, didn’t have one and found the whole idea of soulmates to be ‘dumb as shit’. Gigi and Andre were a marked pair, but apparently kept their situation casual and open, neither of them ready to be together forever just yet. Glenn’s soulmate had been his wife before his surgery, but once he became half dolphin the words had slowly faded away. Brett didn’t think he’d ever heard something so sad.

“What about you, hot stuff?” Gigi had prompted, elbow deep in a box full of 80’s paraphernalia. “Where’s the Barbie to your Ken?”

Brett had glanced towards the front of the jet, but Reagan hadn’t reacted to their coworker’s question, eyes still focused on the sky ahead of them. They were headed towards Still Valley, Wyoming, dozens of canisters of Nostalgia Max taking up the rear storage unit. She hadn’t offered up any information about her own soulmate or soulmark during the conversation and didn’t seem like she was about to. Brett had shrugged. 

“I have my words,” he’d said vaguely, keeping his eyes on the box of scented markers he’d just found. He’d wished Cosmic Berry Blast would take him away from the discussion. “But she’s a bit…shy?”

“She?! Damn. I owe Grassy Noel fifty bucks,” Myc had complained, mushroom cap glowing irately as he tossed about leg warmers and parachute pants haphazardly. 

Gigi had asked to see his words, but Brett had deflected, saying they were in an embarrassing place and trying not to pick too obviously at the sleeve of his letterman jacket. He’d comforted himself with the fact that even if it pulled up, his Casio watch would hide the scribble scrabble of words around his wrist. He’d looked towards the front again. Maybe…?

“What about you, Reagan?” he’d asked, voice cracking half way through the question so that he’d had to clear his throat. “Soulmate?”

The rest of their work team had burst into rude and raucous laughter and Reagan had waved it off like she did so much of their jeering, but Brett had been confused. Gigi was the first to regain her composure and she’d smiled up at him with her too-pretty-to-be-natural face. She’d said, “Come on, Brett. You seriously think that woman has met her one and only?”

“Or even has one to begin with?” Andre agreed, flipping a Rubix cube quickly between his slender fingers.

“She probably doesn't have one for the same reason I don’t have one,” Myc had added on, tilting his tall stem thoughtfully, a tentacle poised where Brett had always imagined a mouth would be. “I haven’t ruled out her just being a very ugly mushroom.”

“Oh fuck off, you guys,” Reagan snapped, shoulders stiff in the way Brett had come to realize meant they’d struck a nerve. Like when they called her difficult or criticized her hugs. “I have a soulmate, it’s just…complicated.”

“Sure, Jan,” Glenn had huffed from the co-pilot seat.

Brett had still been confused.

“So…you’ve met your soulmate?” he’d prompted, head feeling like it was full of cotton as he stared a hole into the back of Reagan’s head. “You have a soulmark?”

“Yeah,” she replied with a forced casualness, “I actually met them when I was really young, it just…didn’t work out. Plus my dad would have gone so crazy if he knew, so absolutely none of you can tell-!”

“Wait,” Brett had interrupted, pinching the bridge of his nose as he felt a headache start to bleed behind his eyes. What was she saying? “You didn’t meet your soulmate, like…recently?”

The gang had followed this wild line of questioning like a tennis match and so whipped their heads around to look at Reagan in anticipation of her response. Brett noticed how she'd shifted about awkwardly in the pilot’s seat, one arm coming down to wrap around her middle in some sad semblance of a hug. She’d muttered, “No, dude, I met them almost two decades ago. What’s the big deal?”

Brett’s world had tipped; Brett’s world had spun . Because his soulmate, the one someone who was meant for Brett and Brett alone, his perfect match in this universe, his one and only built-in best friend…wasn’t his soulmate? Or maybe she was his…but he wasn’t hers? Was that a thing? Brett had never heard of anything so disgustingly lonely and if he had he would have done everything he could to avoid it, but now it was too late. Reagan had already met the person she was meant to spend the rest of her life with and even if it hadn’t worked out…it was never going to be him. At that moment Brett had wanted to talk to Reagan about his soulmark, but then they were dropping the Nostalgia Max and Myc out of the back of the jet and it hadn’t seemed like the right time.

Then Reagan was breaking his heart and tearing down The Growing Years and that hadn’t seemed like the right time either.

Then he’d been turned into some sort of nostalgia monster and the fact that he’d lost his soulmate before he’d even met her wasn’t even a blip on his radical radar.

Then Reagan was pulling him out from the depths of some truly awful childhood memories and calling them real BFFs and suddenly it didn’t matter. She was part of his business family forever so maybe…he didn’t have to be her soulmate. She’d hugged him, really hugged him, for the first time and Brett made a new personal vow to be whatever Reagan needed him to be. Even if being her friend never turned into being her soulmate. He just wanted to be in Reagan’s life because she was still his soulmate and he was going to take care of her as much as she would let him. He was definitely going to need a therapist after all the nostalgia trauma anyway so he figured two birds, one stone.

Life carried on.

Mostly things stayed the same, but some things changed too.

Brett and Reagan still worked together, but now they also had movie nights and lunch hangs. He helped her plan her mother’s wedding to herself because he of course had tons of hookups for any and all party scenes. Going dress shopping and cake testing with her became one of Brett’s favorite pastimes. She became his emergency contact. He bought her a ticket to Bora-Bora for her birthday which absolutely everyone else, including her parents, forgot about. In return Reagn taught him how to tie a bow tie.

Things were good. 

Even after Tamiko’s wedding was hijacked by flat-earthers and Reagan hooked up with the super spy that saved them, things were good. Even after said super spy became obsessed with Reagan and forced her into hiding and then into a super villain persona, things were good. Even when they all almost died in a sex cult on the moon, things were good. It was absolutely amazing what his therapist could coach him through. Brett made sure to keep up to date with his audio journal so that he could work through the complicated array of emotions that he was constantly experiencing. It wasn’t easy trying to be the best soulmate to his not-soulmate.

Things were good.

Until the mole.

Brett had been so proud of Reagan for finally getting her dream job and so excited to be working for her alongside the gang. He really hadn’t seen any way working for his best friend and the woman he was secretly in love with could be complicated at all. Reagan was smart and ethical and she gave them jackets with their faces on them. She was going to create Cognito 2.0; a Deep State they could trust, but then the security breach had gone and ruined everything on her very first day. The Unspoken File was gone, the gang were all turning on each other, and then Rand Ridley had fallen through the ceiling and made everything ten times worse.

Brett wasn’t proud of the way he had immediately turned on his soulmate’s father, but the stress of the day was really tearing at him and he couldn’t stand the fact that Reagan had turned away from them. From him. Climbing onto Bear-O’s back with her alcoholic dad, she’d run away from everything they’d built and Brett felt his world tipping and spinning all over again. He’d wanted to tell her then. Tell her that she was his soulmate and he would do anything, anything for her if she’d just stay with him but then they were fighting a giant, indestructible Terminator bear and it hadn’t seemed like the right time.

Then Reagan was being lowered into a giant tank of (...ew) Myc’s fluids and that hadn’t seemed like the right time either.

Then Brett was falling into that same tank and…and…

Chapter Text

He was inside Reagan’s mind. 

Brett was positive of that as soon as he opened his eyes because he was immediately met with miles upon miles of giant conspiracy boards. Red yarn draped over enormous push pins and life sized snapshots of Reagan’s life were scattered across walls of cork. Off to his left and a ways above his head there was a Polaroid the size of a set of double doors that read, ‘ FIELD TRIP 1996 ’. To the right and ahead of him was another labeled, ‘ X-MAS ‘99 ’. There were also miscellaneous items like letters to Santa and even an old Blockbuster Video membership card. 

All around, pieces of Reagan Ridley's life were laid out for Brett Hand to examine and all at once he felt intensely curious and extremely guilty. These were his soulmate’s private thoughts and memories and he had no right to be snooping around in them. Brett hadn’t meant to fall in, but he was happy to notice all the recent memories of him scattered throughout the boards. There was Reagan riding on his back back in November, and the two of them smiling in the office after the Still Valley mission. He was present, and even if he wasn’t featured as much as old math equations, it was still something.

The former frat boy was pulled from his musings when he noticed Reagan and Rand stepping out of a Polaroid on the cork wall directly across from him. 

“Oh, crap!” Brett panicked, turning all around as he tried to find somewhere to hide from his hot headed soulmate and her enraging enabler of a father. “Oh, crap, they can’t see me in here!”

Before he could find a wall to hide behind or a memory to disappear into, Brett tripped backwards over what he could only assume was a piece of yarn. He tipped and fell into one of the pictures with a pained cry of, ‘Not again!’. He was tossed out into a particularly unforgiving shrub, leaves and twigs immediately invading every nook and cranny of his suit. It was nighttime wherever or whenever he was and Brett pushed himself painfully up onto his hands and knees as he heard a gruff voice from somewhere nearby.

“Ha!” it called, “Aren’t you a little overdressed for the science lab, dork?”

Another, female voice joined in just as Brett finally righted himself and was able to peek out from the bush he was hidden in. “Why don’t you go to Homecoming with a book?”

“Literacy burn. Nice!”

There was a group of teenagers dressed to the nines and standing on the sidewalk in front of the house Brett had landed beside. On the front porch steps, barely an arm’s length away, was a little girl in a sparkly blue dress and black Converse. She had messy brown hair brushed back into a ponytail and shrewd, slanted eyes that looked angry and sad at teasing. She held what to him looked like a high tech calculator in her hand and Brett realized all at once this was a younger version of his soulmate. A younger version of Reagan.

“Oh my God, she’s so weird.”

The group of young bullies sauntered away and Brett felt compelled to go comfort the little girl in the blue dress. He wasn’t sure how interacting with a memory would go, wasn’t sure if Reagan would even be able to see him, but he couldn’t just stand by and watch her be so dejected. He wrestled his way up out of the bush, head popping up first, probably covered in dirt. The sound of the rustling leaves drew Reagan’s attention and she turned sharp eyes to look at the stranger who had just appeared out of nowhere.

“Hey, don’t worry about them, little Reagan,” he comforted, before realizing a grown man knowing a random child’s name and popping out of her bushes at night may seem a little suspicious. “I mean girl!”

Reagan looked up at him with eyes wide with confusion and what Brett figured was a little bit of fear, but he sincerely hoped was just shock. She shivered where she sat, suddenly wrapping her arms around her middle in a tight hug. A tiny squeak broke the night air and while it sounded like it could be caused from pain, Brett didn’t see anything wrong with his soulmate and so guessed it was probably just a nervous tick. He waited a few moments for her to settle down before moving or talking again. He pulled himself free of the shrub and told her someday she’d have a Homecoming too. Little Reagan looked annoyed at the observation. 

“This is my Homecoming,” she said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. She seemed fine now. “I’m a high school senior.”

“Oh, right!” Brett recalled as he swung around to stand in front of her, still trying to come off as friendly rather than creepy as she glanced up at him. “You’re a genius.”

Brett had meant it as a simple fact and not really a compliment, but he still noticed how the girl blushed, tiny shoulders going tense for a moment as she went back to fiddling with her funny little device. Brett was beginning to think it wasn’t a calculator. “Thank God someone finally said it,” she grouched, voice small. “Too bad no one will go with me…”

Brett Hand was struck, not for the first time, with how incredibly lonely his soulmate’s life must have been. Distant, neglectful parents and supposedly no friends to speak of. Not that any of her classmates would have been able to keep up with her. Even Brett struggled with it sometimes and he had apparently been made for her. It made the man wish he had met Reagan earlier; had been around through her formative years so that she always had someone who was going to be on her team no matter what. It was technically too late to do that for his Reagan back in reality, but maybe…

“Um, I know I probably shouldn’t interact with your memories…”

“My what now?”

“But I could take you to the dance,” Brett carried on, undeterred and digging around in his suit pockets. He pulled out the bowtie he’d worn to Tamiko’s wedding. The same one Reagan had taught him how to tie them with. “Good thing I always keep a bowtie on hand for dance-mergencies!”

The little girl in the blue dress eyed him suspiciously, but still stored away her mysterious gizmo into a too-big-to-be-hers purse. “Sure. I guess you seem harmless enough for a guy that appeared in my bushes,” she mused, standing. “Name’s Reagan.”

Oh, we’ve already met. In your thirties!

Hey, Reagan, I’m your future soulmate!

Nice to meet you! I’m in love with a much older version of you!

Brett didn’t say any of those things, instead just putting out his hand and saying, “Hi, Reagan, I’m Brett!”

Then Reagan was bidding her parents goodbye. Rand and Tamiko didn’t even come out to see the stranger in his thirties that would be accompanying their daughter to her high school dance, but Brett figured it was for the best. Sad, but ultimately less trouble than having to explain himself to parents that actually cared what happened to their child. Reagan seemed used to the dismissal and only frowned a little as she led her future soulmate around the side of the house to her ride. After all these months of getting to know her, Brett wasn’t surprised to learn Little Reagan had crafted her own working hoverboard. He was surprised to find out she had gotten the idea from Back to the Future .

“I thought you hated eighties movies,” he pondered, stepping onto the board behind her. He placed his hands on her waist, but then felt weird and moved them up to her shoulders instead.

“We just met tonight,” Reagan scoffed, powering on the tiny vehicle and sending them hovering a few inches off the ground. “How would you know?”

“You just…don’t seem like a big movie buff,” Brett covered with a nervous laugh, tightening his grip on her as they sped off down the road.

“From what I hear the eighties were a garbage decade and all the movies either featured homophobic slurs, racist ideologies, or some sex crime thinly veiled as a bad joke,” the girl in the blue dress recited over her shoulder, eyes straight ahead as she shrugged. “But Back to the Future was…less awful. Plus it had cool tech ideas. Sue me.”

“I’ll leave that to Universal,” Brett chuckled, thinking how he couldn’t wait to relay all of this to his Reagan on their next movie night.

If they had another movie night.

If she wasn’t too mad at him.

Before long they were cruising up to the front steps of Reagan’s high school, a ‘ Homecoming 02 ’ banner and tin foil balloons greeting them. Brett realized he was technically back in time and suddenly got the urge to indulge in some early 2000s nostalgia. He wanted to go see Spider-Man for the first time in theaters again and dig up his old iPod. He wondered if Kelly Clarkson had won American Idol yet…

“So, why are you taking a kid to Homecoming?” Little Reagan asked, moving to park her hovercraft off near the school’s bike rack. Brett hopped off and smiled at her, still not truly believing he was getting a chance to see his soulmate this way. It made his heart ache for the Reagan he’d left behind.

“Let’s just say I let a friend down, and this is my way of making it up to you-I mean, her!”

“Sir, do you have brain damage?”

“That doctors are not sure.”

Inside the gymnasium, everything looked just how Brett had remembered highschool dances looking. There were streamers and balloons and a snack table that was probably serving spiked punch. ‘ U Got it Bad ’ was blasting through the speakers and there were wall to wall teenangers in outfits that were hip now but they would cringe looking back on later. It honestly felt a bit like coming home to Brett who had spent all of his adolescence haunting these events in search of the little girl who was now hanging off of his arm. Granted she wouldn’t have been this little, or rather, Brett would have also been little, or…? It didn’t matter, this was going to be great, he was sure of it!

Then the taunts started. 

“Ew!” someone called as soon as they stepped foot inside, “The gifted kid’s here with her dad!”

Brett’s correction that he wasn’t her dad, but rather her best friend that she had met on the side of the road, didn’t go over as well as he thought it would. The laughter and the pointing fingers put him back in his frat days and before he knew it, Reagan was comforting him with a solo cup of aforementioned spiked punch and a tiny hand on his shoulder. She told him his heart was in the right place and brushed off his apologies for bringing her to a place where she was clearly only going to be ridiculed.

“I was coming anyway,” she assured, small face brightened with a smile. Brett could almost see his Reagan behind that expression, but she wasn’t much of a smiler.

He pondered, “But I thought you didn’t have a date?”

Suddenly the weird thingamabob she’d been tinkering with on the steps was back and she was getting to her feet with a flourish. “Oh, I’ve got a date all right. With justice!”

Then there was blood being dumped on the Homecoming king and queen’s heads and his Reagan was there in this little girl's maniacal laughter and her liberal use of the word ‘dickheads’. After that there was blood on the dancefloor, literally everywhere, and young people slipping and sliding in all directions trying to escape his soulmate's wrath. Apparently gross, excessive violence was alright if it was featured in a seventies movie.

“Oh my God,” Brett breathed, more than glad he hadn’t been in the splash zone as the last few victims staggered out of the doors they had just walked through. “Wait, did you just reverse Carrie your entire highschool?” 

She nodded

“Wow. You are one resourceful, terrifying little girl.”

And you’re going to grow up to be my soulmate.

And I already love you more than anything.

And I hope you never turn all this terror on me even when I screw up big time.

Brett didn’t say any of those things. Reagan came and sat beside him again, telling him that was the nicest thing anybody had ever said to her. It made him sad for the little girl all over again, but then he was distracted by her diary. Any other twelve year old girl in 2002 would have probably been happy with a Password Journal, but his soulmate had what looked like a high tech version of a PalmPilot, all glittery and pink. He knew she had likely designed it herself and fell in love all over again as he watched her type in her password.

ORRIN

An odd jumble of letters, but Brett made sure to tuck the information away for later. This little misadventure hadn’t totally distracted him from the fact that a giant, killer robot bear was handing his friend’s their asses out in the real world, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Until someone pulled him out of Myc’s goo, he was stuck and he figured he may as well just make the most of his time. With this Reagan or any others he may come across.

“Hey,” he said once she’d tucked her diary away again, “Wanna dance?”

Little Reagan raised an incredulous eyebrow at him. She glanced pointedly around the destroyed gymnasium and up to the deserted DJ booth. She noted, “There’s no music.”

“I used to make all the playlists for the State Department workout sessions,” Brett boasted, getting up and starting out across the wet and sticky floor towards the speakers. “I think I can handle some cassettes.”

“No one uses cassettes anymore!” the little girl called at his back

When Brett got to the booth it was a tad more complicated than he’d expected. He’d been to dances in the early 2000s, but he’d never spun the discs for them and that’s all that was piled atop the fold out table; compact disks. The one that had been playing when Reagan overturned all the buckets was still spinning, but blood had leaked through the player’s lid and it was caught on a clot. Enrique Iglesias’ voice skipped through the empty gym, asking them to let him be their hero-ero-ero-ero. Brett took it out and started flipping through a giant CD binder that had been closed and so saved from the blood shed. It was alphabetized, thank God, so he flipped to the ‘N’s and found what he was looking for almost immediately. Another few minutes and a smooth voice was crooning through the speakers and Brett was jogging back across the gym towards Reagan.

When the visions around you
Bring tears to your eyes
And all that surrounds you
Are secrets and lies

“Come on, Reagan!” He grabbed her hand, ready to pull her out onto the empty dance floor, but she dragged her feet, face twisted up into a pathetically cute scowl. She was surprisingly strong for someone so scrawny.

“These are my nicest shoes, mister,” she warned, small voice a growl as she kept her All Stars from smearing into the ever expanding puddle of blood on the ground.

I'll be your strength
I'll give you hope
Keeping your faith when it's gone
The one you should call
Was standing here all along

“I gotcha,” Brett assured, leaning down and hooking one arm around her tiny waist. Reagan let out a surprised yelp as he hoisted her up near onto his hip and walked them out to the middle of the gym. The buckets of blood hadn’t obscured the disco ball and tiny beads of light were still being thrown all around them. He lowered her down so that she was standing on top of his own shoes, stretched up on her tiptoes. “How’s this?”

And I will take you in my arms
And hold you right where you belong
'Til the day my life is through
This I promise you
This I promise you

“Um, fine,” she croaked, face turned down and away, skinny fingers digging into his elbows. Brett got the feeling she was blushing, but said nothing. He took a small step to the side. Reagan wobbled and nearly slipped off. Brett held her tighter.

“Put your arms around me.”

She hesitated a moment, face still hidden, then hugged him round the middle.

I've loved you forever
In lifetimes before
And I promise you never
Will you hurt anymore

Brett swayed them slowly side to side, feet hardly moving. Reagan only came up to the middle of his tie and the weight of her on top of his feet barely registered. Brett kept her steady with one hand between her shoulders and the other on the back of her head. The last thing he wanted to do was drop her into the mess at their feet. She shifted about a bit and Brett could feel her cheek was pressed to his chest.

I give you my word
I give you my heart
This is a battle we've won
And with this vow
Forever has now begun

“How did you know I like NSYNC?” she asked.

“Just a lucky guess.”

Just close your eyes each loving day
And know this feeling won't go away
'Til the day my life is through
This I promise you
This I promise you

Reagan’s grip was fluctuating between carefully loose and bone-crushingly tight. Like she couldn’t decide if she wanted him to be there or not. Like she thought he would run away if she let him, but maybe that was a good thing. Brett made sure to keep his own hold soft but steady, never shifting or faltering in the least. Something told him his soulmate was having a hard time with this interaction and not for the usual reason of being an absolutely abysmal hugger. Whatever was going on in Little Reagan’s head, he wanted her to know he was there for her, even if it was just for now.

Over and over I thought
When I hear you call
Without you in my life, baby
I just wouldn't be living at all “

“Hey, Brett?” she said after a time, voice barely audible over JC’s. “Does life…get better? Or is it always…like this?”

“Oh, it gets loads better, Reagan, don’t worry,” Brett assured, looking down at the top of the girl’s head. She was so small. “Especially for you.”

And I will take you in my arms
And hold you right where you belong
'Til the day my life is through
This I promise you

“You really think so?”

“I know so.”

“How?”

“Just trust me.”

“...Okay.”

Just close your eyes each loving day
And know this feeling won't go away
Every word I say is true
This I promise you
Oh, I promise you

Brett wasn’t sure when he’d closed his eyes, but when he opened them again Reagan and the gym were gone and he was back between the conspiracy boards.

Chapter Text

Reagan and Rand were climbing down from a memory, their backs to Brett but not for long. He looked around for another snapshot to escape into, trying to ignore the way there was now a picture of him sitting beside Little Reagan at her senior Homecoming. Not too far down the hall there was a Polaroid with no date or label that simply showed a busy street during the daytime. Brett raced for it and dove in head first hoping something softer than a bush would break his fall this time. A feeling like doing a somersault underwater suspended his body for a brief moment and then he was being spat out onto harsh pavement.

Brett crashed bodily into what he assumed were metal trash cans and cried out in alarm, his elbows and knees scraping the ground. He coughed and wheezed and tried to right himself when someone called out to him. He was in an alley he thought, but the voice came from above. “Hey! It’s three in the goddamn afternoon and some of us are trying to sleep in here, you bum!”

Brett craned his neck back, squinting up along the side of the building he had landed beside. A head of messy brown hair blocked out half the sun. He recognized that ponytail…”Reagan?”

Silence.

And then…

“Holy shit!”

She was gone then and Brett got an eyeful of the sun beating down on him and winced. The fall had left him with a massive headache and he felt like one big bruise as he waited to see where his soulmate had gotten off to. Within a moment, footsteps sounded from around the corner and then Reagan was there. Not his Reagan, but another version of her. This one looked like she was in her early twenties and definitely not working full time at Cognito yet. She lacked his soulmate’s signature eye bags and her pants were fully intact. She came to squat beside him, propped up against her apartment building, and frowned.

“Brett?” she tested, looking dubious at his sudden appearance. He smiled, the motion hurting more than it probably should have. He had landed on his face.

“The one and only!” he enthused, moving to stand only for his knees to buckle underneath him. Young Reagan rushed to catch him, shoving her slender shoulder under his arm and hoisting him up with a grunt.

“Jesus, dude, what the fuck happened to you?”

“It’s kind of a long story.”

She helped him around the building and up the short few steps to her brownstone, the front door still hanging open from when she had rushed out to check on him. Brett had been in his soulmate’s apartment before, but he’d never seen the place quite like this. It was missing about ten years of mess and clutter and all clues that her father was lurking around the corner were absent. No Cheeto dust handprints on the arm of the couch. No booze bottles piled by the trash. It actually looked like she had just moved in recently, half unpacked boxes scattered around the room and absolutely nothing plugged in.

“Nice place,” he grunted as she dropped him onto what must have been her couch when it was brand new. “Homey.”

“Yeah, thanks, where the hell did you come from?” Reagan started in on him immediately. She was wearing an MIT sweatshirt and no shoes and Brett wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her look so soft before. He smiled up into her face, honestly just happy to be around her, and she snapped her fingers under his nose. “Are you concussed?”

“No,” he assured, moving to shake his head and then feeling a wave of nausea that told him it was a bad idea. “...Maybe.”

“Christ, wait here,” she groaned, turning to stomp up the stairs, leaving him alone in her little living room. 

Brett eyed up all her new furniture and half shelved books. He and his soulmate switched off who hosted movie night every week so he’d been in this space quite a few times already. He’d even gotten her an extremely late housewarming gift in the form of a standing mirror the first time he had come over. Some stuff here now he could recognize from his time, but a lot of it he figured Reagan or Rand must have thrown out a long time ago. Brett wondered again where the angry old man had gotten off to. When Reagan returned, she was holding a bottle of pills and much to Brett’s shock, it wasn’t Adderall.

“Here,” the young woman sighed, shaking two tablets into her palm and passing them to her future soulmate slouched back against the couch. “This’ll help with your head.”

“Thanks, Rea-dawg,” he swooned, swallowing the pills down dry, and making room for her on the couch. He was equally pleased and surprised when she accepted the invitation and perched herself on the other side of the cushions. “Hey, where’s Rand?”

“At his house, where he lives,” his soulmate intoned, Brett’s favorite suspicious squint going strong on her youthful, well rested face. “With my mom.”

Oh right.

Rand and Tamiko weren’t going to get divorced for at least another five years.

“Oh.”

“Alright, seriously man, what the hell?” Reagan grouched, leaning away from him with her arms crossed over her chest. “I haven’t seen you in like…ten years and now you just show up between my trash bins looking exactly the same as you did back then? What gives?”

Brett hadn’t really thought about the fact that an entire decade had gone by for Reagan. Ten seconds for him was ten years for her and while she had gone from a little girl to a young woman, he hadn’t aged a day. How was he meant to explain that? What were the ethical optics on telling a memory she was a memory? Would she have a mental breakdown? Was she even capable of that? Was Brett willing to risk it? Definitely not.

“Sorry, Reagan, top secret stuff,” he floundered, attempting to throw out words he had heard around the office in a way that made sense. “Full Cognito clearance and all that!”

“You came from Cognito?” Her eyes were cold. Betrayed? “Did my dad send you? I swear to God if you’re a fucking android again -”

“What?! No, no, Reagan!” He reached out and grabbed her hands in his, trying to reassure her even as she got to her feet. She looked like she was ready to punch a headache right back into him. “I don’t work for Rand! It’s just…really complicated!”

His soulmate still looked suspicious but she let him drag her back down to the couch. He sat her closer to him than she had been before; one whole cushion closer. Brett had a sneaking suspicion his Reagan would have never allowed this early into their acquaintance. However, young Reagan had memories of him taking her to a high school dance and so maybe that was playing in his favor. He was suddenly extremely grateful for the existence of NSYNC and made a new personal vow to play ‘ This I Promise You ’ for his soulmate everyday as soon as he got back.

If he ever got back,

If she wasn’t too mad at him.

“Look, I can’t tell you everything right now,” he soothed, valiantly chasing her gaze as her aversion to eye contact tried to spoil this moment for them, “But I promise I don’t work for your dad and I wouldn’t ever hurt you!”

“I don’t know why I trust you,” she grumbled, addressing his left earlobe before briefly glancing directly into his eyes. Brett was momentarily stunned. She yanked her hands from his and hugged herself around the middle. “But fine, okay.”

“Awesome!” Brett enthused, slapping his hands on his thighs as he stood up. His knees creaked and cracked as he went, but soon he was standing. He put his fists on his hips and looked around the cozy walkup. “So what can I help with? Did you just move in today?”

“Uh, two months ago, actually,” she murmured, also getting up to start picking around the boxes shoved into every corner. “Just been a bit busy at work.”

“Same old Reagan,” he complimented, feeling a warmth spread all the way down to his toes when he noticed a blush dusting her cheeks. “Well, let's get it all done today! More hands make less work!”

His soulmate shot him a skeptical look from off near the bookshelves. She was hunched in on herself, lacking some of the self assured cockiness Brett had grown to love in their time together. She shrugged, moving to place a decorative statue. “I’m pretty sure you're a time traveler. Isn’t there anything else you’d rather do than help me unpack?”

Brett was behind her then, reaching around her to movie the statue one shelf higher than where she had it originally. “That’s where you like it,” he said with a smile, “And there’s nothing else I’d rather do than be here with you, Rea.”

She didn’t need any more convincing.

Just like Brett could have predicted, the two of them were a great team and made quick work of turning Reagan’s house into a home. Her team leading skills were already starting to manifest and she was quick to assign him tasks that seemed more suited to her tall, strong soulmate. He hung artwork and moved heavy furniture, and placed the nice dishes up into the higher cabinets. Reagan took charge of organizing the book and records shelves. Brett was surprised to learn the young woman had a love of vinyls; she claimed the sound was warmer. They built her corner desk and mounted the TV together and then flopped back onto the couch exhausted. The sun was starting to set outside the window.

They talked for some time about this and that; what few topics Brett felt comfortable discussing. This Reagan had only just recently started working at Cognito, her doctorate still hot off the presses. She didn’t seem particularly fond of either of her parents, but Brett could still spot an insistent little need to impress them that his Reagan had long since abandoned. He told her a bit about his own family. How his brothers were hardly ever seen out of uniform; both military and prison. How his sister had met her soulmate at sixteen and basically set up shop in that family ever since. How he wasn’t really sure if his parents were a marked pair or just stuck together because neither of them had the patience to keep searching.

“I’ve never even seen their marks,” he concluded, scratching bashfully at the back of his neck as Reagan scrutinized him. Shockingly enough her parents were a marked pair. “They always said someone's words were sacred and private, but…maybe they just didn’t have any to show.”

“Do you have words?” the young woman prompted then, eyebrow quirked and face oddly impassive when her unexpected guest blinked at her in surprise

“Yeah,” he said slowly, eyes flitting all over her face as he attempted a casual shrug. From the way Reagan flinched back, it came off as more of an involuntary spasm. “I got them back in November.”

“Oh.” Her face did something funny and Brett leaned in to study it closer. “So…you met them recently?”

“Kinda.” He’d met Reagan in November but then again in 2002 and now again in who knew what year this was. “It’s complicated.”

“Can I see your words?”

Brett’s mouth was open, already ready to politely tell her no. He was so used to turning people down, but then he paused and really thought about it. This Reagan had no memory of their first meeting at Cognito. She wouldn’t recognize the phrase for its significance and…he wasn’t her soulmate so what did it really matter? This whole thing between them was completely one-sided as far as Brett was concerned and it would honestly feel nice to have Reagan finally see his soulmark. Even if she wasn’t really his Reagan. He closed his mouth and scooted closer across the couch.

He’d already peeled off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves when they’d been unpacking, but the words around his wrist were still hidden by his Casio. Reagan had laughed when she saw the retro piece of technology, fully convinced he was a time traveler, but he’d just said the watch had sentimental value. And it did! He’d been wearing it since their mission in Still Valley to hide his soulmark, but also to remind him of the first time Reagan had called them a business family. The first time she had hugged him. He really only ever took it off to shower so as he peeled it off for twenty-something Reagan to examine his wrist, he felt oddly naked. 

What the hell…

It wasn’t as if Brett had expected the words to be gone, but it was still weird seeing them sometimes. Even weirder when there was another person in the room. Young Reagan twisted his arm this way and that to see how the script curled all the way around. She looked intently and then suddenly placed his hand down as if it had burned her, curling in on herself on the couch cushion. She did that odd little move where she hugged herself and Brett wondered if it were a tick she had grown out of by the time he met her. Her face was doing something funny again, but by now the sun was gone and it was too dim for him to study it closely. They scooted apart and Brett slapped his Casio back on.

“Well, that’s…interesting,” Reagan said after a time, sounding like the words physically pained her. Brett could understand the feeling. He forced a laugh.

“Yeah, it’s neat…what about you? Your words must have shown up a while ago, huh?”

“How did you-? You know what, I don’t wanna know,” the robotics engineer sighed, dragging a hand down her face with an air of exhaustion. “Yeah. I got my words when I was twelve.”

Brett must have just been too early…or too late.

“So where’s the lucky guy?” he prompted. Then corrected, “Or gal?”

“I don’t think it’s gonna work out,” she said at length, dark eyes trained up at the ceiling. Cars passed out on the street and threw random flashes of light across them both. Brett mirrored her pose, leaned back against the couch.

“Why not?” 

 “He just…never seemed that interested.”

“You mean when you guys were twelve?”

“He wasn’t- That doesn’t-...” Reagan floundered, her tone irritated but her face stricken. Brett wanted to reach out and comfort her but this wasn’t his Reagan and she wasn’t twelve anymore. “Whatever. Nevermind! What about you? You never drop into my life with a soulmate; where is she? Or he?”

Brett huffed an ironic little laugh, feeling like he was just this side of a mental breakdown. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been in the tank, but it felt like weeks and he just wanted out. Being trapped inside his soulmate’s mind while she bemoaned how her soulmate wanted nothing to do with her was a special kind of torture he didn’t think even JR could come up with. “I don’t think she’s very interested either.”

“Well, that fuckin’ sucks,” Reagan grouched beside him, sounding offended on his behalf. Brett laughed again. More genuine this time but still tinged with sadness at the edges. “Her loss.”

“It’s really not,” he assured, eyes dry and itchy from glaring at the ceiling for so long. He was not going to cry in front of his twenty-something year old soulmate about her not wanting him when she had her own shit to deal with. Someone out there apparently didn’t want her either. What an idiot! “I’m sure yours will come around though.”

“I hope so.”

It was strange hearing Reagan Ridley express hope for something that wasn’t centered around science or world domination or running the Deep State. It was nice too, though, to be reminded that she was a human just like the rest of them (minus Myc). She had thoughts and feelings and dreams that spanned beyond the walls of Cognito and maybe even beyond Cognito 2.0. She had someone she wanted to want her and Brett wished suddenly he could go back to 2002 again and get whatever snot nosed brat that wasn’t interested in his soulmate to take a second look. Because Reagan was perfect! She was smart and she was resourceful and caring and…

And she was kissing him.

It took an embarrassingly long amount of time for that information to finish processing in his brain.

Reagan Ridley was kissing him.

And Brett Hand was just sitting there.

“WOAH!”

The way he flung himself off the couch could have very easily wounded them both, but he was quick to shoot hands out to keep his soulmate from falling face first onto the coffee table. Then he was just as quick to step around that coffee table so that they had at least three feet of free thinking space between them. He put his arms up at his side as if surrendering to her and waited, heart jackhammering in his chest, for her to right herself back in her seat before saying anything else. She looked about as shocked as he felt, but Brett really wasn’t sure how that was possible.

“What’re you doing?!”

Reagan blinked up at him, whole face a shade of red her future coworker wasn’t sure was strictly healthy. Her mouth opened and closed like a suffocating fish and her arms gestured helplessly around her. “Well…I just thought…because…you said-!”

“Reagan,” Brett breathed, trying to calm down as wave after wave of guilt crashed over him. It was stupid, but kissing this memory of Reagan felt like cheating on his version of her. Even if the Reagan he knew would never want him or even know this had happened and even though this was still technically Reagan…it felt wrong. “I think this is a bad idea.”

“But…our soulmates don’t want us.”

She sounded so small.

“She doesn’t want me ,” Brett conceded, rolling his sleeves down. He wanted more coverage around his soulmark. He wanted to protect the only proof that something between them was meant to be. “But I still want her and…and I think you still want him. Whoever he is.”

The young woman blinked at him and then sat back. She folded in on herself, arms squeezing her middle in that sad ghost of a hug again. Brett would have normally gone to her but it didn’t feel right anymore. The room was still dark beside light streaming in from the street, and he was glad because he was pretty sure Reagan was crying. Tiny sniffles floated through the room and Brett wanted to start the memory all over again to avoid hurting her like this. He’d do anything…

“Um, yeah,” her voice came at last, scratchy and wet. A big sniff. “You’re totally right, but uh…Could you go now? Like, I don’t know how this whole thing works, but…could you go and maybe give me some warning the next time you’re gonna drop in after ten fucking years?”

She turned away from him then, curling herself up onto the couch and Brett grabbed his jacket. He was already reaching for the front door when the sound of sincere crying reached his ears and ripped him up from the inside. He wasn’t sure how this worked either, but he knew staying would only make things worse and so he pulled the door open ready to be anywhere else but here. Luckily the door opened, he blinked, and he was back in front of the conspiracy theories.

It wasn’t as if the projection of Reagan’s mind had any sort of AC unit running, but Brett swore he could feel a cool breeze making the tear tracks on his face sting like knives. He wiped them away with frustration. Somewhere in the distance, where his soulmate's memories seemed to grow dark and grim, he could hear Reagan and Rand arguing, apparently no closer to finding the password than they had been when Brett had fallen into the vat. Part of him wanted to just go and reveal himself; certainly three heads was better than two even if one of them was his. But then he remembered younger Reagan asking him to leave and didn’t think he could stand to face the real her again just yet.

He staggered back the way he had come, trying to find some memory he could disappear into without totally ruining it. Anything with an especially young Reagan was out of the question. He passed her high school graduation and her third grade picture day without stopping and then very suddenly he was looking at Reagan. His Reagan; over exaggerated eye bags and all. The Polaroid was just her in her lab at Cognito, looking tired and annoyed. It was labeled ‘ 09/04 ’. Two months before they had met for real.

Well…

She’d said she wanted a warning…

Chapter Text

The Ridley Lab looked much the same as Brett had become familiar with it looking. There were project blueprints pinned over every wall and robotic scraps tossed about with no apparent rhyme or reason. He’d never seen it at night though and the long shadows were intercut with tiny blinking lights from machines and the glaring screens of idle monitors. In the center of it all, Reagan was hunched over her desk, an empty pill bottle and frigid cup of coffee forgotten at her side. She looked like she was still working on some of the finer points of ROBOTUS and Brett tried to think of some way to casually insert himself into her night. For her, it’d been years since she’d kicked him out of her house, but for him it was only a few minutes and he didn’t think he could stomach another harsh dismissal so soon.

“Myc,” his soulmate rasped, not turning to face him immediately, “I told you I’m not interested in fucking you, so why don’t you just-”

“Hey, Reagan.”

Her shoulders went so rigid Brett was sure he could have cracked a boulder over them. He watched, tense and ready to spring out of the way of some hastily assembled ray gun, as she turned slowly in her desk chair. She looked beyond exhausted when her eyes finally landed on him, the bags she was sporting on their way to being designer. Reagan blinked at him slowly, as if not positive she was really seeing him, before letting out a long suffering groan and rubbing roughly at her cheeks. It was all at once a greeting Brett hadn’t expected and yet no less than what he thought he deserved.

“Are you really here?” she questioned, getting to her feet with a symphony of creaks and cracks, “Or am I just dreaming you like always?”

Brett somehow managed to say, “I’m here,” rather than, ‘You dream about me?’.

“Perfect,” Reagan spat, the sarcasm obvious as she twisted around to begin powering down her desktop. She stabbed at the keyboard with aggression that she didn’t seem to be trying to hide at all. “Guess I’m done working for tonight.”

Brett tested, “I mean…you could still-”

“Nope! Whenever you decide to drop in everything has to come to a fucking standstill, so may as well just save my code now!” his soulmate snapped over him, shoving a pile of scrap paper off her desk with a careless sweep of her arm. She turned back to him. She had a pencil stuck into her ponytail and an unidentifiable stain on her lab coat and she looked absolutely pissed. Which, honestly, Brett was used to.

“Good to see you too, Rea-dawg.”

“Why are you here, Brett?”

“You said you wanted a warning the next time I was going to pop up.”

“Yeah, and I didn’t get any damn…” she trailed off, hazy eyes assessing him in a new way, her face shifting from annoyed to confused to surprised within the span of a moment. Brett didn’t know if it was the exhaustion or the fact that she’d known him since she was twelve, but he’d never seen Reagan be quite so open with her emotions. After a time she leaned back against her desk, arms crossed loosely over her chest. “Oh…so we’re gonna meet soon…like for real?”

Brett blanched, panic shooting up his spine as he considered again all the things that could go wrong by tampering with his best friend’s mind like this. He floundered, “W-What do you-”

“I know I’m just a memory,” Reagan interrupted him, voice softer now than it had been when she’d realized who had interrupted her. She still looked tired, but in a new way now. A bone deep way.

Brett wasn’t surprised really that she’d been able to figure it out, but he was pretty weirded out that she was taking it so well. Was this the mental breakdown he’d been trying to avoid? Was this what a mental breakdown looked like for Reagan Ridley? Calmness? He tested, “How did you…?”

“The same man pops up at random points in my life, years apart, never aging at all, and always wearing the exact same generic suit,” she pointed out, lips quirked in the way that meant she was proud of how clever she was. She pushed away from the desk. “You don’t have to be a genius to figure it out.”

“You are a genius though,” Brett assured, following quickly behind as she moved to exit the lab.

“Thank God someone finally said it.”

It was a joke.

It was a good joke.

Brett didn’t laugh.

The two of them crossed through the lower level of Cognito, no one that was still hurrying about taking note of the strange man with no security clearance walking beside the robotics engineer. Brett knew enough to know that Rand had already been fired by this point and so Reagan was the only Doctor Ridley wandering the halls. Yet no one greeted her or asked after her recent projects. No one even seemed to care that she was just weeks away from cracking the code on true artificial intelligence. Brett watched his soulmate out of his peripherals, but if she was bothered by absolutely everyone’s lack of acknowledgement of her genius, she hid it well. 

Or maybe it hadn’t really been a joke.

They got to the lounge where the gang usually hung out and debriefed on missions and Reagan sank into her usual seat with a huff. She eyed the way he went to the chair right beside her and tilted her head at him. “So…when are we going to meet? Who even are you?”

“JR’s going to hire me in November,” Brett informed, avoiding her eye so that he could also hopefully avoid telling her why he was hired. “We’ll meet the same day you get your promotion.”

“I get the promotion?!” Reagan’s voice was the closest Brett had ever heard to excited, and her whole face was lit up in a smile he hadn’t seen since she was twelve years old. She tossed herself back in her seat, fists in the air. “Yes! Suck my dick!”

Brett snickered and watched her spin in her chair, looking like a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders. He knew she had been trying to prove her worth within the company ever since her father’s breakdown. Trying to prove that she wasn’t like him and could handle taking on a leadership role. The assurance that she was going to get the promotion she had skipped grades and hours of sleep to prepare for probably brought her a level of joy Brett couldn’t really understand. He hated to think about how his arrival would steal some of that joy away, but…it would all work out eventually. He had seen it and so would she. 

He indulged her in a few questions about the near future, but did his best to keep most things pretty vague. She wanted to know if the team respected her more after her promotion. Brett shook his head jovially. She wanted to know if her parent’s divorce was still going strong, no apparent desire to see them back together. Brett happily informed her about Tamiko’s me-rriage. She wanted to know if ROBOTUS was everything she had designed and more. Her soulmate tiptoed around telling her the robot president wasn’t what any of them had really expected.

“What about you and me?” At Brett’s startled look she rolled her eyes. She clarified, “What’s our deal? Why are you poking around in my memories?”

“Oh! Well, we’re best friends!” Reagan looked skeptical. “No really! We have movie nights and a daddy issues handshake and everything.”

“Alright,” the woman allowed, still looking like she didn’t really believe him but was willing to let it go for now. “That still doesn’t answer why you’re fucking around in my head.”

Brett hesitated, still not sure what was and wasn’t okay to tell her, but not really wanting her to worry over Bear-O and the gang still fighting to the death out in the real world. So he shrugged, face carved into a disingenuous smile that he knew didn’t reach his eyes. He lied, “Testing out Myc’s new tank.”

“Really?”

“Yep!”

“Okay.”

Maybe Tamiko had a point about the asbergers. 

“This won’t…mess up anything important right?” he still pondered, worry for his soulmate, floating in a vat of mutant mushroom jizz, zipping through his brain. “We haven’t been in here too long, but…”

“I have a memory of an old, crazy looking woman coming in and asking my fourth grade science partner what his name was,” Reagan explained in place of a real answer. She shrugged. “I’m pretty sure that was me and it sucks that that’s how I see myself, but it’s not like it broke the time-space continuum or anything.”

Brett froze up, because…”You’re going to remember all this?”

“I don’t know, man,” she huffed, reaching out and grabbing the Earth shaped stress ball Brett remembered crushing his first week. She twisted side to side in her chair, knees bumping his. “Maybe, maybe not. You think you’ll remember me when I meet you in two months?”

“We already met.”

“To you.”

Brett cast about for something to change the subject to because he just knew thinking too hard about this would land him with a migraine. It was too confusing, thinking about the separate but interwoven timelines where he had met Reagan seven months ago but also eighteen years ago but also two months from now. Not to mention twenty-something Reagan who he had left crying on her brand new couch in what he had to assume was either 2011 or 2012. The former frat boy wasn’t sure why his brain snagged on that as an acceptable topic change, but he suddenly couldn’t stop thinking about that version of his soulmate. The one who had kissed him and who he had turned down in return because he didn’t want her ; he wanted the her she was going to be eight years from then. Two months from now.

His head hurt.

“Hey,” he dragged out, focused on his fingers where they tapped along the table top. Reagan stopped twisting around in her chair. “About what happened back at your apartment-”

“Forget it,” Reagan said, voice firm but not cold or biting like he would have expected. Brett risked looking up at her and saw she was just staring off at the far wall, head tilted like she was deep in thought about something. “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I was just surprised!” Brett tried to excuse for some reason, hating the way he imagined she had internalized some sort of misplaced guilt about it over all these years. These last few minutes. “And you were so young-!”

“I was twenty-two, Brett,” she scoffed, finally letting her brown eyes swing around to look at him again. She was smirking a bit. “Not twelve.”

“I wouldn’t have-!”

“I know, I know,” she waved off, returning to her position staring at the wall, face going somber again. “Sorry. Bad joke.”

They lapsed into silence and Brett hated it because it wasn’t one of the companionable silences he had gotten used to sharing with Reagan. Silence that meant she wasn’t ignoring him, but was merely focused or tired and didn’t want him to leave, but also didn’t have the energy to talk to him right then. Silence that meant a movie she hadn’t seen was starting on his TV and she wanted to catch all the backstory the first few scenes afforded so he had to shush, Brett! Silence that meant she had been lulled to sleep by the smooth cruising of the jet on the way to a mission and her head was pillowed comfortably against his shoulder, her hair tickling his neck. 

This wasn’t any of those silences.

This was just awkward.

And then she reached for his wrist.

Brett tensed briefly as she grabbed at his Casio. If it were anyone else they would have been met with a friendly but firm ‘Woah, there, buddy!’, but it was Reagan. She slipped the strap off, not making any playful jabs about the 80’s relic, and stared at his soulmark. The words, her words, were still the deep black of a soulmate recently met. From what the ginger understood the text would dull over time like a tattoo, but never fade or disappear unless they suddenly were not a perfect match anymore. It was weird, Brett thought, that his words would surely always be there since Reagan would always be the one for him, but she would never have any to match. 

It made his chest ache and he wanted to put his watch back on, but when he moved to ask Reagan if she was finished looking he saw that she was crying. Rather, she was valiantly trying to avoid crying. Her eyes were welled up with tears, but she was stubbornly refusing to let them fall, her teeth digging into her bottom lip with a vengeance. Brett moved to comfort her immediately, one hand going to her shoulder as he made a distressed little hum at the back of his throat.

“Hey…”

“Sorry,” she gasped, turning her face away, the back of her hand pressed to her cheek hard. She was shaking. “Sorry! It’s…it’s stupid!”

He was quick to assure her it wasn’t, but the woman would hear none of it. It took a few minutes of coaxing, but eventually he convinced her to tell him what had upset her so much; he hated seeing Reagan upset. It was hard to understand everything through her crying, but the main points he heard loud and clear. She blabbered a bit about how he was lucky to have met his soulmate. How she remembered what he’d said about her not being interested. How he just had to keep trying because there was no way someone wouldn’t want to be with their one and only more than anything. Wouldn’t want to be with him more than anything. How some people looked and looked for years and years. 

They were meant to be, she said.

He couldn’t give up, she said. 

All Reagan’s words, mumbled into her opposite shoulder, cut like knives into Brett’s chest and the cruel irony of the situation wasn’t lost on him. Brett Hand knew he wasn’t the sharpest spoon in the drawer, but he knew what irony was and he knew it was almost laughably ironic that his soulmate, who hadn’t had words appear when they met, was telling him to never give up on winning her over. Was telling him that whoever was meant to spend their life with him was extremely lucky. Everything he wanted to say in response got stuck somewhere behind his Adam’s apple until it felt like he would choke with the need to finally, finally tell her the truth.

“They’re your words, Reagan,” he blurted when she’d paused to wipe at her face which was covered in tears and snot. She froze, one bloodshot eye turning to look at him from around her fist.

“...What?”

He brought his wrist up under her eyes, twisting it around so she could clearly read the What the hell… and tried to gather his thoughts and his courage, not sure if he would ever get another chance to say this. 

“We meet in two months and when I introduced myself to you, you say ‘what the hell’ and I immediately felt a burning on my arm. This has been there ever since…they’re your words, Reagan…you’re my soulmate.”

They lapsed into silence and Brett hated it because it wasn’t companionable and it wasn’t awkward, it was tense. It was a tense silence that felt like Brett’s life was hanging by a thread, balanced precariously like the tears that still clung to Reagan’s lashes. She was staring at his soulmark as if she expected it and him to vanish just like he had at her senior Homecoming. To just slip away and out of her arms between one breath and the next. She made about a dozen, tiny aborted movements there beside him before she climbed into his lap. Brett reeled back, trying to give her space, but also make sure she didn’t fall back onto the table. She started wrestling her lab coat off.

“Reagan!” he tried to protest, whole face going hot as she yanked at the buttons of her shirt, tearing them when they didn’t come loose immediately. He squeezed his eyes shut. “What’re you doing!?”

“Look at me,” she ordered, the sound of fabric being tossed to the ground making him shake his head furiously. “Brett! Look at me!”

“I thought we already talked about this!”

“BRETT HAND, LOOK AT ME RIGHT NOW!”

His eyes snapped open at her volume and he looked directly up into her face. She was shirtless and straddling him and he had maybe pictured this about a million different times since they met, but not like this. She still wasn’t his and this wasn’t even really her , but…but he’d waited so long. He was simultaneously unsurprised and yet still devastatingly embarrassed when he felt his own eyes starting to well up. He really, really didn’t want to cry in front of her, but she was so perfect perched there on top of him. Her usual ponytail had come loose when she’d yanked her shirt off and her hair hung free and soft around her shoulders. 

He wanted to touch it. 

He was touching it.

Without his permission, his hand had reached up and was now brushing a lock of hair away from Reagan’s neck. His eyes tracked the movement in awe and he realized his soulmate had freckles across her collar bone. He’d never known. His eyes were growing wetter by the second and one tear maybe slipped free when her tiny, calloused hand brushed across his cheek. He was still keeping his gaze firmly above her bust area and so didn’t see when she reached her free hand down to grasp his. He felt it though when she moved his hand to rest against her side, just a bit above her waist and he couldn’t resist. He wanted to see his hands on her just once.

He looked down.

And saw a scrawling line of text. Dulled with age and wrapped around her middle like a hug…

Hey, don’t worry about them, little Reagan…

The tears were falling then and Reagan was kissing him and Brett was kissing her back and he was her one and only and…and…

The world shook.

There was a loud thumping noise and when Brett opened his eyes he was back in her living room and twenty-something Reagan was looking over at him with tears on her face and there was a crack in her window that hadn’t been there before and…and…

Another thump and he was back in the gymnasium and the smell of blood was a punch in the face and little Reagan was looking up at him and she had a newly formed soulmark hidden under her sparkly blue dress and…and…

“Reagan,” he said quickly, grasping her upper arms maybe a bit too tight. He’d realized all at once he was about to be tossed out of his soulmate’s memories and thrown back into who knew what sort of chaos in the outside world. “Listen, this is important!”

She looked surprised and maybe a little freaked out, but she didn’t pull away or try to step off his shoes. *NSYNC wasn’t playing anymore. “What?”

“You have to wait for me, okay?” It was an awful, selfish, cruel thing to ask of an already very lonely twelve year old. To wait nearly two whole decades for a man she didn’t even know yet. He didn't know what else to tell her though. “I don’t have time to explain, but you have to wait for me!”

“For how long?”

“A long time.”

“Why?”

A feeling like doing a somersault underwater swept through Brett’s gut and he knew he didn’t have much longer. He pushed Reagan back, ignoring her indignant cry about getting blood on her All Stars, and knelt down in front of her. Now they both had blood on them. He looked right in her eye and went on, “You have to wait a long time because you and me are going to be best friends! You and me? We’re meant to be!”

She hugged herself awkwardly around the middle and Brett finally understood the motion. 

And it made him feel warm from head to toe. 

He smiled at her and between one blink and the next he woke up on the floor of Cognito Inc.

Chapter Text

“Orrin!” the word ripped out of him as soon as Brett was coherent enough to say it. “The password is Orrin!”

“Orrin!” Reagan gasped, still soaked from Myc’s tank and standing like a wall between Bear-O and the gang. “That’s the password! That’s what I forgot!” 

Access keys and system overrides and giant killer robots powering down into nothing more than expensive hunks of metal was honestly getting a bit old if you asked Brett. Still, the ginger rushed to his soulmate’s side along with the rest of their friends and he felt like a horrible, mind bending dream was finally coming to an end as he placed his hand on her shoulder. She felt real enough, and she looked just as she had before going into the tank, but Brett was still a little scared he’d blink and Reagan would be gone…or twelve.

“Brett!” she breathed, face lit up in a smile that was entirely new to him. She didn’t even seem to notice the rest of their team there. “You saved us!”

“ We saved us,” he corrected, feeling a tingling warmth spread all throughout his chest as they looked deeply into each other’s eyes.

Then Rand Ridley had to ruin everything. 

Again.

“Bravo, Reagan!” the old man said with a sarcastic clap as he approached. Brett took his hand off his friend’s shoulder, feeling the way she tensed, but didn’t step away. Something had apparently gone down in her memories because she looked livid.  “The way you manipulated that bear into thinking you gave a shit about your coworkers? Ha!”

“I do give a shit about them!” Reagan insisted, gesturing to the group at her back and even Brett at her side. He smiled. “What I need boundaries from is you !”

And then the two geniuses were arguing and talking about some ‘normie’ named Orrin and discussing The Incredibles for some odd reason. Brett had always known Rand Ridley was an asshole, per Reagan’s insistence, but the way he spoke down to his daughter in the ominous glow of Bear-O’s sparking wires made him look like a straight up monster. Suddenly Brett was more concerned for his soulmate than he’d ever been as he recalled how small and unsure she’d been in her memories. How even after almost twenty years, Rand apparently didn’t know Reagan had a soulmate because she’d been hiding it from him; her own father.

Needless to say, Brett wasn’t at all sad to see the former head of Cognito Inc. dragged out by a pair of robotic arms as Reagan turned her back on him once and for all. He was so proud of his soulmate, especially when she declared the next day to be her first real day as boss. He just knew she was going to do an amazing job. The gang all cheered and there was more hugging and laughing and maybe crying and then they slowly made their way back out to the main office area.

To say it was completely trashed would have still somehow managed to be an understatement and Brett felt Reagan grimace at his side as they each surveyed the destruction. All the water and the sharks trained in Krav Maga had been drained from the atrium at least, but now everything was dripping with water damage and whole departments on the lower levels had been flooded. The remains of Reagan’s ethics bot were still scattered about from its impromptu explosion and all of their offices were still in shambles from the mole hunt. Plus with all the damage from Bear-O it was…a lot.

“Yeesh, have fun with this, Reagan,” Andre said in place of farewell, some illegal substance or another already being sucked into his lungs as he walked towards the exit. Gigi gave a sympathetic little wince before following after her soulmate, nails tapping away at her phone screen. Brett recalled her applications to the Illuminati and hoped she wasn’t reaching out to their offices.

“I’d offer to help clean up but you fucks wrecked my spank tank and I don’t have thumbs,” Myc announced, slithering away, likely to see what could be salvaged of his possessions. 

Glenn merely shrugged and walked off and just like that, Brett Hand and Reagan Ridley were all alone for the first time in eighteen, ten, and less than one years. The robotics engineer seemed pretty focused on assessing what needed her immediate attention and what could be pushed off until tomorrow, but Brett was entirely focused on her. He watched her pace through the atrium, his tongue feeling suddenly as dry as sandpaper even though he’d still been gagging on the aftertaste of Myc’s goo just moments ago. He shadowed her movements, always just a half step behind her until she paused suddenly and he collided into her back. They made a wet sound and Brett felt his face flush as she turned to look at him, eyebrow quirked.

“Can I help you with something?” she mused. She didn’t step back or push him away, but merely looked up into his eyes. Brett had used to think their height difference annoyed her which was why she’d keep him at literal arm’s length, but now he wasn’t so sure.

“Um, I actually just wanted to…” His heart lodged somewhere in his throat and he was a stupid, ridiculous coward even after all this time and so he retreated. “T-To know what happened back there? With your dad?”

Reagan’s face pinched and she turned back around, still picking her way through the desks that had been swept out into this area by all the water. In a clipped tone she told Brett about her altered and repressed memories and how Rand had been to blame for all of it. She spoke about Orrin, her best friend, and how every single piece of him she’d had had been ripped away and replaced with Bear-O of all things. Brett trailed behind her and listened and started to feel the slow creep of hatred for Rand Ridley make its way into his mind. He hadn’t hated someone in so long; maybe never! He wasn’t sure he liked it.

“I’d never had a friend before,” Reagan huffed, reaching the end of her ramblings as they came to stop where they had started. They had made a full loop around the atrium. “Orrin was everything. I remember thinking he may have been my soulmate, but the words never came.”

At the unexpected mention of soulmates, Brett tripped over a misplaced conference machine and banged his elbow on Steve’s water cooler as he fell to the ground. Reagan rushed to help him up and her coworker forced a laugh, his skin lighting up with sparks wherever her hands touched him. She wrapped her fingers around his marked wrist, right above his ruined Casio, and Brett gulped. He tried to study her face to see if he could spot any recognition there that had been missing before. Any signs that she’d known him over half her life and had taken his words to heart and waited for him. Her face was unreadable though and he pulled away, clearing his throat awkwardly.

Brett was ready to just forget everything; chalk it all up to the goo. Obviously, obviously he hadn’t been inside Reagan’s mind. It had just been some sick, weirdo fantasy of his own creation and she had absolutely no interest in him other than a friend. Perhaps not even that after the way he hadn’t had her back during the mole hunt. His head was spinning and his chest hurt and he was just about to make some lame excuse like the others to leave, but then Reagan was reaching for his wrist and he was stuck in a memory from nine months ago. From ninety minutes ago. She took off his silly watch and pushed his sleeve up and then they were both looking down at his soulmark.

What the hell…

“...I wish I’d said something nicer to you.” 

Her voice was tight, but her words unclenched something in Brett’s chest. He breathed for the first time in what felt like months and tension eased off of him leaving his shoulders slack and his smile dopey. He looked down at her, his soulmate, and was over the moon to see her looking right back. He breathed, “You remembered.”

“I remembered before you, dickhead!” she grouched, aiming a sharp poke into his arm, her frown lines not detracting from her beauty at all as far as Brett was concerned. He was obsessed with her. “I’ve been waiting months for you to remember me!”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Would you have believed me?”

“Of course!”

“No you-!” Reagan stopped, thought a moment, and corrected, “Actually, yeah, you basically believe anything.”

Brett smiled impossibly wider and wished he could somehow be even closer to her, but they were already touching. He was already well within her personal bubble, but he wanted more. Eighteen years worth of more. “You waited all this time?”

“Didn’t really have a choice.”

“You knew I had your words?”

“You told me nine months ago,” she smirked before her expression went somber. She hugged herself and Brett wanted to be the one to hug her now. “Before that it was…hard. I didn’t know when I’d see you and I knew you didn’t get a mark when I did, but I just…couldn’t move on I guess.”

“Me neither,” Brett assured, daring to lift a hand to rest on her back, elation singing through him when she relaxed back into the touch rather than shrinking away. “You never told Rand?”

“I never told anyone before that talk on the way to Still Valley,” Reagan admitted, eyebrows raised incredulously. “I didn’t want to risk my parents finding out, but on the jet I thought I could maybe shake some of your memories loose.”

It occurred to Brett then that Reagan had been feeling as lost and rejected as he had if not worse. The man she knew to be her soulmate had popped in and out of her life for nearly two decades and then two months after revealing a matching soulmark had seemingly lost all memory of her. No wonder she’d been so hell bent on getting him fired in the beginning; she’d probably thought it was some cruel power play by Rand or JR. Brett wished he could go back and redo their first week together and reassure his soulmate that he’d been waiting his entire life for her just like she’d been waiting for him, but it was impossible. Plus dangerous as hell to be honest. They had already somehow managed two first meetings; best not to risk any other mishaps by wishing to alter the past.

In place of anything better to say, Brett just murmured, “I’m sorry it took me so long.”

Reagan’s smile was suspiciously wet and she leaned into him lightly, cheek pressed to his chest. A hug. “Thanks for the warning.”

It finally felt like the right time and he told her everything then. About how he had waited and wanted and wished for her before they’d even met. About how once they’d been introduced he would stay up late into the night tracing her words with the tip of his finger. About trying to impress her with bagels and music and posters and drone throne. He talked about how he hadn’t been sure if he wanted to kill Rafe Masters or be Rafe Masters. He told her all about his experience in her memories. About how he couldn’t wait to make a million and one new ones with her starting that day and ending on his last day.

Everything

In turn Reagan told him all about what it had been like growing up thinking your soulmate was some creepy, pedophile bush stalker that somehow knew her love of *NSYNC. She talked about never swimming or changing in gym class or visiting an onsen with her mother because she never wanted anyone to see her soulmark. She told him about how she’d trashed the apartment after he’d left her there at twenty-two and about how she’d realized not too long into her work with Myc’s memory altering fluids at Cognito that her soulmate was tampering with her mind somehow. She talked about the pain of realizing immediately he had no idea who she was when JR introduced them and the constant wondering about if and when he’d ever remember her.

Everything.

They spent quite a few hours just pouring their guts out to one another and they moved from standing in the atrium, to leaning in the hallway, to sitting in the Ridley lab long after the sun had gone down. They sat side by side, but Brett was always touching her no matter where the conversation dipped and carried. His ankle hooked around hers on the floor. His pinky reached out to stroke the back of her hand. His knees pressed against hers as they sat face to face and Reagan managed to make regular, sustained eye contact. All in all, it was absolutely everything Brett had been longing for since his soulmark appeared and when his soulmate started to yawn and wilt all he could think about already was seeing her the next day. 

And the day after that. 

And the day after that.

“So?” Reagan prompted, stretching back in her chair with a groan. It was past midnight, she was still in her wetsuit from the tank, and Brett had dragged one of her feet into his lap. “What do we do now?”

“About what?” he pondered, half asleep himself, but still wanting to anchor himself to her. He rubbed at the heel of her foot, buddy humming with satisfaction when she moaned. He was obsessed with her.

“Everything,” she clarified, head thrown back and eyes closed. “What are we supposed to do about Cognito and the team and us ?”

“You’ll figure all the work stuff out, Rea-dawg,” Brett assured, confident to the point of arrogance about her capabilities. “And we can do whatever you want with us!”

His soulmate cracked an eye open to look at him suspiciously. He smiled. “Really?”

“Of course! I trust you to make the best decision for both of us!”

“You don’t want a say?”

“Not really, I trust you.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you.”

The MIT graduate probably would have flinched herself right out of the chair if not for Brett’s firm grip on her ankle. As it was, she just gave a jolt, sitting up like electricity had shot down her spine. Her tired eyes were wide and searching and Brett stared back at her, his own gaze open wholly with admiration and love. Reagan watched him for a moment longer before settling down some and pondering, “You really mean that…”

“I’ve loved you for months,” Brett clarified, not embarrassed or nervous any more now that they had shared absolutely everything. “You’re my soulmate.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t always mean…” she gestured vaguely, face pinched again, and pulled her foot from Brett’s grasp. She folded in on herself. “Andre and Gigi are soulmates and they don’t love each other.”

Brett frowned on his friends’ behalf. He reminded her there were all different types of love. She grouched that maybe they had a different type of love too. Brett beamed and assured her he didn’t, that he'd been in romantic love with her since the moment they met and would continue to be so until he died. If she didn’t feel the same that was okay, but he still wanted to be in her life in any capacity she would have him. Reagan looked stricken by the end of his impromptu speech and reached out to place a hand on his shoulder comfortingly. 

Was he crying? 

Oh no, how embarrassing!

“Chill, Brett,” his soulmate soothed, again doing a stellar job at keeping her eyes locked with his. Her eyes were brown and suddenly it was his new favorite color. “I just wanted you to be sure.”

Oh…his tears felt even sillier now. “Why?”

“Because I’ve been in love with you since I was twelve years old.”

Oh…

Sitting in the quiet, half destroyed lab it dawned on Brett he was going to have it all. Everything he had ever dreamed about as a kid and then some was sitting there with a messy ponytail and tired eyes. 

Reagan Ridley was his soulmate. 

Reagan Ridley was his everything. 

That one someone who was meant for Brett and Brett alone. 

His perfect match in this universe. 

His one and only built-in best friend.

And he was hers.

A smile as long as the Potomac spread across his face and he reached out to pull the woman towards him. She went easily enough and then they were hugging and kissing and laughing and maybe crying. Brett buried his face in her neck and swore he was never going to ever find a place so comfortable for as long as he lived. Reagan hugged him, really hugged him and it felt like all the little pieces both of them had been missing clicked into place. It didn’t matter that the office was trashed and the fate of JR was still unknown. Rand could walts right back in tomorrow and take over the whole place and Brett wouldn’t have cared in the slightest.

As long as he had Reagan life was perfect.

And he was going to have Reagan forever.