Luxury Seat
Dugan’s sitting in the captain’s chair of Howard’s yacht, a mimosa in one hand and the captain’s hat perched on his head at a very jaunty angle. It’s made even jauntier by the fact that it’s the only thing he’s wearing other than a pair of bright blue swimtrunks.
Dugan was never a big fan of the book Moby-Dick. He’d read it, unfortunately — back in the War, before he’d hooked up with the rest of his gung-ho wahoo buddies, he’d been stuck on a recon mission once with the most boring trio of self-righteous thugs he’d ever had the misfortune to clap eyes on on. Two weeks watching the delivery patterns of a supply chain that was comprised of probably the slowest, sorriest old trucks he’d ever seen in his life. Two weeks of noting down their sputtering comings and goings, once every two days if the trucks were lucky and didn’t shake off any vital components on their way down the horribly rutted old dirt road. Two weeks where the only thing he had in the way of “enterainment” on his down-time was a battered old copy of Moby Dick some happy asshole had left in the gear bag.
He’d read it. He wasn’t happy about it, and he learned a whole lot more about whale watching and about the strange shit men get up to when you leave them alone on boats together for too long (making him once again glad he hadn’t decided to join the god damn navy — though the mere thought of trying to fold the whole of him into one of the teeny tiny bunks they thought appropriate for men to sleep in was hilarious in a weird and almost French kind of absurdist way). When his nose was in that god damn book, the other jackasses didn’t try to talk to him, and even the chapters on the various kinds of whales in all their horrible glory were better than that.
One thing had stuck with him, though — and unfortunately for Old Melville, it was from the very beginning of his opus, which in Dugan’s mind says a lot about the book in question. It was the narrator talking about how, when shit on land started to get a little bit too real, things a bit too much and people a bit too bard to take, when he’d want to start wandering out into the street just knocking people’s hats off (an image Dugan, of course, had loved) he’d pick himself off and head on out to sea.
It was similar to, but not quite, what he and Howard were doing now.
It wasn’t at hat-knocking-off stage, not yet; but sometimes dealing with the petty politics of the fledgling SHIELD was a bit much for both to them. When it was, they’d have one of their boys’ weekends — a little jaunt out to Vegas, a trip to Howard’s house out in the Hamptons, or a run down into the sea on Howard’s yacht. Time to just be, without having to dance around the tenuous threads of political and military power that were trying to wrap up their fledgling organization in their webs of one-up-manship.
Time to drink and smoke the good cigars and play cards; time to just sit and be still in each others’ presence. Time for a whole lot of things that could get written out of the day planner when things were going full-tilt at the office.
"You’re wearing my hat."
Dugan doesn’t turn around at the voice behind him; his eyes stay on the view through the windows, the sea spread out before him, vast and wide and deep. “Hardly. I’m wearin’ my hat, though — so I could see how you might get yourself a bit confused.”
He finishes the last of his mimosa, setting the glass down as he hears Howard coming toward him. Dugan gives a startled little whuff as Howard lops himself down in Dugan’s lap, shaking his head and laughing as Howard grabs the hat off Howard’s head and plops it down on his own. "That’s step one," Howard says, that cocksure smile on his lips. "And now —"
"Now you can go fuck yourself," Dugan says cheerfully, bopping Howard on the tip of his nose with his forefinger. "Cause if you were gonna say what I think you were gonna say, no way in hell. This is my chair today, buddy, and I ain’t moving for anyone or anything —" The smirk gets a sassy little tilt as he looks up at Howard. "Cause I’m liking the view from here just fine."
