Dyfi

When you wake in the morning, room still spinning, organs both begging and daring you to move, insecurity seeps in. Call it good old hangxiety, but it feels silly to treat the mere act of your going out as revolutionary. It’s not as if sleeping with someone you now cannot remember the name of is some grand rebellion. You practice your reasoning each time you hunt for your clothes strewn across whoever’s room it is this time. You are not trying to be rebellious, per se. You are trying to be human. You are trying to dismount the horse you’ve been sat on, stood atop a hill looking down on the rest of your peers, whether intentional or not. You are trying to allow yourself to be greedy, to indulge in your desires and for once, not feel bad about it.

You don’t want to think. You want to turn off your brain and try feeling instead. Whether you are succeeding or not is debatable.

You’ve chosen a new subject for tonight. The house party of a friend of a friend always provided the perfect pool of candidates; a decent enough peer review and enough distance not to cause too much drama. He gave you his name ten minutes ago, but seeing as he won’t be getting your number you haven’t catalogued that bit of information. He’s broad, tattooed, a classic tall-dark-handsome. You’d hoped to find some brooding there too, but so far he’s all sunshine and rainbows. You are putting him through all the usual tests; leaned against a wall, shoulders back, face tilted up, lashes low. The flush in your cheeks in only on account of the alcohol and you keep your lips persistently upturned as he speaks. He is responsive; blushes easy, laughs awkward but endearing, scratches at the back of his neck when you compliment him. He’s accidentally charming, talks a lot, eager, and yet he doesn’t encroach on your personal space no matter how much you invite him to. Polite. Too polite. You can tell it’s not because he doesn’t want to. He’s nervous, you make him nervous, but it’s more of a boost to the ego than it is enticing.

You could get him to come home with you, you had a feeling he’d go willingly as long as you lead the way. It’s easy to imagine how he’d feel under you, whispering into his ear how sweet and easy he is and all the things you’d like him to do to you. He’d stutter and blush no doubt. You’d have to convince him you weren’t made of glass though and likely field a thousand ‘are you sure?’s with increasingly impatient yeses. It would require thinking, not an insignificant amount. It’s not that you mind being the one to call the shots, but tonight you wanted someone to put all the right words in all the right places. Crudely into your ear, or perhaps in the crease of your groin, you wanted someone to make you blush all over, someone to render you speechless because they found a spot that made your eyes roll back, someone to tell you how sweet and easy and good you were, and all the things they’d like to do to you.

So as lovely as Tall Dark and Handsome is, you will nod idly and be polite and half-listen to his tipsy ramblings on invasive but edible alliums while you scan the crowd for your next candidate.

The fibres of your shirt catch on the matte paint of the pillar behind you, a gentle scratching sensation as you press your back against it. It’s steadfast in the sea of moving bodies. While everyone else finds satisfaction flitting between here and there, you find comfort in staying exactly where you are. You let your candidates come to you when they give into the luring feeling of someone’s eyes on them. And if you want an out, you have Jayce and Mel in your sights too, just one excuse away. The pillar has a perfect view of the door, no new faces could walk in without you noticing. And, oh, how you notice when the next late-comer arrives.

Lucky, lucky you.

Viktor is fashionably late. Being that he is not a candidate, that should be all you notice. He looks good though, unfairly so, and he looks tired. Not the kind of tired you get from late nights at the library, but the kind of tired that you yourself have been carrying all semester; last night’s booze still kicking about in the liver, purple bags under the eyes, wincing at the music till you adjust and tonight’s booze hits you. Even without having visited your old library haunt in months, you know he’s been avoiding it too.

If he was coming here with someone, they should have walked through the door by now. If he’d been dragged along by Jayce and Mel, he would already have been here when you arrived. If he didn’t intend to do more than just drop by, he wouldn’t have put in more effort than just changing his clothes. The only other reason for his being here alone, then, is that he wanted to be. Tall Dark and Handsome’s voice has disappeared into the background as you make your observations.

Then your stomach drops, because Viktor’s gaze has locked onto you too.

Tunnel vision is one of Viktor’s strengths, though he’d rather not admit it. He would like to think, sometimes, that he is good at seeing the bigger picture, that he is as good at compartmentalising as you seem to be, and that he does not apply the scientific method to dating. He has tried other people. He has fucked other people, he has even dared to date them. But you are his control group. He looks for you in the gaps between teeth, beneath layers of cotton and polyester, in the crook of an armpit. He looks for you in locks of hair, a crown tucked under his chin, as if you are a piece of fuzz he could groom from the head of another, as if his looking is enough to make your existence come true. Hell, he has even tried to find you in the touch of a man, imagining the lips wrapped around him as yours and expecting to hear some muffled quip about how much he’s enjoying this. The man had said something along those lines and Viktor had laughed — actually laughed — when he couldn’t match the cadence to yours and realised his own ridiculousness. Unfortunately, the man didn’t share your fondness for laughing during sex. So Viktor had finished himself off in the bathroom, looked for you, as he most often did, in the palm of his hand. He hasn’t decided whether he wants to replicate results or find evidence against the theory that men never get over their first love. Either way, his findings are not promising.

For a second — and it is quite unfortunate that it’s within the first minute of his arrival — tunnel vision kicks in and the room narrows to you.

What he had failed to account for in his collecting of evidence is that he might see you. And that you might not be alone. You might, for instance, be leaned against a pillar in the middle of the room where everyone could see you, and you might be flirting with an objectively attractive man, showing him off like a shiny trophy. Look what I can do, he imagines you’re thinking. It is even worse that you’ve chosen to look back at him, forcing him to keep whatever curses he wants to mutter to himself until you finally decide he’s not worth looking at anymore.

Black cotton and tour dates stare back at Viktor as he tries to bore a hole through the man with his eyes, if only to get a proper look at you. You're showing off, it seems, and he'd like to get a look at how you're taking your victory.

He hears his name called out from across the room, warm and bright, accompanied by Jayce's enthusiastic wave beckoning him over. His inquiry will have to wait.

“Hey, Vik! Thought you might bail on us after last night,” Jayce greets with a firm clap to his shoulder.

Viktor pretends that Jayce's hand landed too heavy and mocks an unsteady sway. “I am no weakling, Jayce. I can handle a few nights out in a row.”

He watches Mel trace his eye line, throwing a glance over her shoulder in your direction. She seems unsurprised by your current situation.

So, this wasn't new for you then.

"It's good to see you," Mel says with her la bise. "We could've given you a heads up."

"It's fine," Viktor replies too quickly.

It should be fine. It should provide him with some closure. You were both moving on, as you both should. Mel eyes him with a level of scepticism possessed only by someone who knows too much, but does not push.

"Jayce was just telling me that you've moved up from teaching assistant to associate lecturer. Congrats, you deserve it," she continues.

Viktor smiles awkwardly, accepting the pat on the back with a small nod. He is about to say something about how the increase in workload is necessary evil of this development when Jayce swoops in and saves him from downplaying his achievements. Or really having to make any conversation at all.

Which is good, because conversation is proving nearly impossible.

Because Viktor cannot stop looking at you. He cannot stop watching you, he cannot help himself but to study the way you try and coax this other man out of his shell. He cannot help but notice how you hide your frustration at the man's inaction behind an unmoving smile. There is part of Viktor that feels bad for the guy, because he is either a fucking idiot who can't read your fuck-me eyes, or he just can't handle being on the receiving end of them. Neither option will end in you having a good time. The other part of Viktor wants to show the man how it's done. If it was him over there, he'd have you a blushing mess in seconds. In fact, Viktor's positive he'd have dragged you away from that pillar you're clinging to and bent you over the bathroom sink. He'd fuck you from behind, make you look at yourself in the mirror while he tells you to be quiet, and how pretty you are, and you good you are, and how you plague him, and how he cannot stop thinking about you and how he almost hates you for it.

A head's up would have been nice, actually. That way he might not be stood here, staring at you half-hard, while Jayce blathers on about- Viktor realises he has no clue what Jayce is talking about because he hasn't been listening. And he cannot listen because you are driving him insane from all the way across the room without having so much as looked at him in the last five far-too-long minutes. There must be something, something divine, something supernatural, anything that explains why he cannot help but be drawn to you whether he should be or not. He is convinced you must be putting out some kind of siren call designed specifically to torment him and him alone.

Your eyes seem too trained on the man, as if you are trying not to look back at Viktor. He knows if he looks for too long you will give in and return eye contact, and he's not sure that's what he wants but he doesn't get a choice when he proves himself right.

You look. He stiffens, grip tightening on his cane, holding his breath.

Your stare is blank. And in spite of himself, he thinks you are beautiful.

“And so then- what are you looking at?” Jayce furrows his brow and looks over his shoulder. “Oh,” he pauses, and Jayce's looking causes you to look away. “You should go talk to her.”

“Jayce,” Mel warns gently, a hand on his back.

Viktor finally comes back to conversation. “No it’s okay, she’s busy.”

“Hah, busy is one word for it,” Jayce jokes, good-natured yet poorly placed.

“Jayce” Mel warns again with a quelling look.

Viktor's eyes flick to Jayce and his brow twitches slightly. “My point is proven, then.” When he looks back at you, your eyes are fixed on the floor and you fiddle with your necklace.

"She's going through a phase," Mel offers as some flimsy explanation for Jayce's joke.

Phase. Right. Viktor couldn't say he didn't know what you were doing. It was obvious, for one. He'd heard talk that you had broken out of your usual goody-two-shoes routine. This was merely confirmation. And it was written all over your face when you saw him. Guilty, yes, but for once you didn't look like you were going to throw up about it. It almost suited you.

Viktor clears his throat. "I got that."

Jayce and Mel give him sheepish, apologetic looks that Viktor decides he can't bear. "I need a drink," he tells them before slipping past them.

The drinks are in the kitchen. To get to the kitchen, he has to walk past you. He could give you a wide berth and slip right by you, but where would be the fun in that? No, you have been setting him adrift since he got here and it was unfair that he be the only one affected.

Viktor calculates his trajectory. A bump to your shoulder, not hard enough to hurt, but enough to hopefully dislodge you from that goddamn pillar you clung to like a barnacle.

Your poker face has never been one of your strengths, but you muster up everything you have to give away as little as possible as you stare back at Viktor. You wish sometimes that you didn't say as much with your face as you did. It had gotten you in trouble on more than one occasion, catching you out in a lie or revealing your amusement in what is supposed to be a serious situation. God forbid Viktor saw you were affected at all by his being here. Getting over someone in theory is one thing, but seeing them in person tends to feel like picking at a scabbed over wound. You had done a decently good job of avoiding him; between the last time and now, all you'd seen of him was a glimpse in university hallways and cafes. Other than that, your self-experimentation went on without disruption. You just hadn't found what you were looking for yet, whatever that was.

Viktor should have no choice but to believe that you feel fine about him being here. You were both free to do whatever you liked. It wasn't that you felt bad for flirting with someone else in front of him, you thought, but that it was simply awkward to see you ex like this. Yes, that was it, that was the queasiness that had come over you. That or the mixing liquors in your stomach.

The self-experimentation was about you, and you could take constructive criticism. 'You think too much and talk even more'. Viktor hadn't been wrong. There was no harm in trying something different, something out of your comfort zone, something to push you.

You put your blinders on as you decide that ignoring Viktor is the best course of action for tonight. But Viktor's stare is piercing and unbearable, and you'd like to use it to your advantage and put on a show for him he'd hate. Tall Dark and Handsome will do for now, because even though he might be more effort than you're usually willing to put in, he comes with the added benefit of pissing Viktor off. You play the part of interested, bare your teeth in your smiles, get touchier, make it look like you're going to do more than get this man to walk you to a taxi rank so you're seen leaving together.

The only reason you look back over at Viktor is to check whether it's working. Though he is still staring back unwaveringly, there's very little you can see in the way of a reaction. Maybe you should give it up. Maybe this is more effort than it's worth. When Jayce joins in with the looking it's your cue to put the blinders back on. This time you actually try to listen to what the man before you is saying.

And then it happens, the glorious catharsis of being right, of winning. Viktor's shoulder collides with you, sending you a stumbling step to the left. Never in your life have you been so delighted to be pissed off.

The triumph is short-lived, lasting as long as the dull ghost of him at your shoulder. It is replaced by a phantom on the back of your hand. Barely there, so faint it might not have been real. You could've sworn you felt the graze of his knuckles. And if you did, it must've been accidental, he wouldn't have done that on purpose-

Tall Dark and Handsome puts out a hand to steady you and says your name as he waits for you to answer him.

"Sorry, zoned out there for a minute," you reply, trying to shake Viktor off and attach yourself back to the pillar. He was just bumping you in retaliation, what else could it have been?

"Oh, you alright? Need some water?" Tall Dark and Handsome checks, bless his heart.

"Yeah, I'm okay." When you look up, he is watching Viktor go, and it's not with the mild annoyance you expect, but intrigue. The poor boy obviously thinks it was an accident.

You put your smile back to steal his attention back to you. "What were you saying?"

You don't get to find out what it is Tall Dark and Handsome was saying, not for lack of trying, but he may as well be talking gibberish because that's all you can hear. He talks enough that your hums and nods and yeahs sound like active listening as you finally relinquish the idea of sleeping with him.

He must finally have realised he'll get nothing from you, because at some point he'd left. You don't remember when, but you notice that he hasn't come back. Some sweet girl that must've seen the whole thing comes to check on on you, pressing a glass of water into your hand, making small talk, attempting to pull you out of the shell you've retreated back into.

You have been set adrift, the pillar doing little to anchor you now. The sensation of Viktor's knuckles against yours haunts you. You're still not convinced it was real, and still not convinced it was on purpose. Because what reason would he have for doing it on purpose? It's not like he wanted anything from you. He probably just wanted a reaction. That is, if it was on purpose, he probably just wanted you to feel bad for flirting in front of him. And, if that was the case, he really shouldn't have come to a party. People flirt at parties, he'd have to get over it since he was the one who didn't have time for you. Yes, a reaction, that's what he wanted. Because if he didn't want a reaction, if he wanted something else, that was a whole other kettle of fish. Maybe he wanted to shake that guy off you, but then he shouldn't have bumped you. He might've wanted you to follow him, but follow him for what?

The girl checking on you is saying something about how guys suck while you're thinking yourself into an early grave. Viktor's laugh puts the final nail in the coffin.

Viktor is standing in front of none other than Tall Dark and Handsome, who is leaning against the wall while Viktor twirls his cane idly. Viktor has him blushing deeper than you ever managed for the forty-five minutes you had him, and he looks more at ease somehow despite how heavy you know Viktor's gaze is. Maybe the he finds the weight of it comforting. You always did. Viktor had this uncanny ability to make a person feel seen just by looking at them. It was less like being looked at and more like being disassembled to see how you work, then put back together.

You realise you have not won. No, Viktor's reaction was a consolation prize, a distraction so that he could do this. Confusion spoils, turns ugly and boils over.

"Sorry, I think I see someone I know," you tell the girl who is still trying to reassure you.

You're moving before you can even think about it.

Bas, as Viktor had learned the man's name was, was far too sweet to be used as bait in this game of who-will-break-first. Admittedly, Viktor had first approached him to find out what you'd seen in him. He'd been right to think that Bas couldn't handle your fuck-me eyes, evident now that he was positively melting under Viktor's. It was cute, really, Viktor felt a little bad that Bas had been lured in and caught up in all this nonsense between you. Viktor could hardly blame him, you were not easy to resist by his account. None of this had been Bas's fault, and it had turned out a bit too much hassle for Viktor too. Perhaps it would be welcome if Viktor made it worth both their whiles.

There is a hand on Viktor's shoulder. And then you are looking up at him with a saccharine smile. Bas is giving you an awkward but polite nod in lieu of acknowledging he ditched you. And Viktor cannot think of what you'd possibly want now other than payback for displacing you earlier.

"Can I steal him from you for a minute?" you ask Bas, but Viktor knows it is not really a question.

A stuttered 'sure' is hardly out of Bas's mouth before Viktor is being dragged away. He doesn't have time to protest the matter. You have pulled him away from the party, into the darkened hallway reserved for chatting while you wait for the bathroom or making out.

His back hits the wall with a thud, but there are no needy lips on his. Instead, you are pointing a finger at him and demanding answers from him like he's committed a crime.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Am I not allowed to talk to people?”

“You’re stepping on my toes, you’re doing it on purpose.” Ah, so you have decided what he is doing for him.

“You weren't exactly having the best time with him,” he points out.

You snarl. “Oh, I see, you’re jealous.”

Viktor has to admit, he is amused at all the hoops you are jumping through to blame this entirely on him. “Yes, I’m the one that’s jealous,” he mocks.

It sets you off. The words come spilling out of your mouth, hot and venomous and bitter and mean. Viktor should be upset at the interruption, worried about causing a scene, shocked and angry that you'd say anything as nasty as what you're spewing. He is impressed by the sheer volume of it, and none of it lands close to hurting him. He is too focussed on the way your lips curl around every jab, the way your teeth gnash at the air and pierce vowels. Consonants cutting, scarlet creeping up your neck, and a line between your brows he wants to lick flat. Viktor has never seen you like this, not with anyone. He knew it was there, simmering underneath your skin, waiting to be seen. So many times he had asked you to show it to him, tried to provoke it. So many times all he had wanted was to see you free from the vice grip your strange morality had on you, and have you show him how you felt instead of packaging the feelings all pretty with an apology note attached.

A glob of saliva flies from your mouth in your rage and lands on his shirt. Right now, you are so angry, and you are so free. And somehow, it makes you more beautiful than you already were.

"You think you’re so clever, you think you know me so well, don’t you? Well guess what? I’m different now, you don’t know anything about me-”

Viktor kisses you. It's not a smart decision by any measure. He gets the angle wrong, lips meeting your teeth instead, resulting in a blooming, bruising pain. He half expects you to bite down and draw blood, push him off you and call him an asshole and tell him to stay away from you.

You correct the course. Shift into him, use his shirt to press him further into the wall as you lean your weight forward. Viktor opens his mouth to accept your barbed tongue, sucks on it gently and swallows all that venom down for you and relishes the bitterness. He grabs at your hips, pulling you against him by the belt loops.

The hands fisted into his shirt drag him towards a bedroom, and Viktor goes without resistance. He would follow you anywhere, and if it meant he could continue receiving your wrath he'd let you trawl him along the ocean floor. If he had known this is what your ire looked like, he might have tried harder to provoke it. He offers up his lip for you to gnaw on as he backs you up to the bed, cane abandoned by the door, and falls down with you.

Viktor kisses down your front, pulling your jeans down with him. He buries his nose against the dampened cotton of your underwear and takes a deep inhale there, breathing in the sweet musk that heaven must smell like. He could die happy here between your thighs, nose pressed to your clothed cunt, your hand loosely in his hair. He would live here if you let him. He licks you through the fabric, his taste buds catching on cotton. He knows the most you’ll feel is the heat of his flat tongue, that you’ll think he’s taking his sweet time just to drive you crazy. But it’s not for you, it’s for him. He needs literally anything to pace himself right now, to not come in his pants like a teenager from just the taste of you. You’d find it hot, no doubt, might even let him fuck you because of it.

“Vik, your leg-” you protest. The nickname is not new by any means but he files it away for later regardless, along with your brief moment of concern.

“Is fine,” he assures, but his knee argues. “Throw me a pillow.”

He peels your panties off so they joins your jeans at your ankles. Finally, he can kiss lips that do not claim to hate him. Viktor is measured at first, gentle as he licks from opening to clit. He slides a hand under your shirt to brace both you and himself as he settles back into the feeling of you.

The little gasp you let out spurs Viktor on. He is pleased you are not angry with him anymore, unfiltered fury bleeding out of you as you soften, tense, pull his head further into your crotch. He licks it up, fucks you with his tongue first and his hips rut into the bed frame.

When you whine, he knows you want more. He gives you his fingers, because he would give you anything, pumping them inside you as he flicks his tongue over your clit steadily. Your thighs tighten around his head and make it harder to breathe, though this is less of a problem than how it muffles the sound of your voice. Every whimper, every moan of his name, every plea is kept from him by the very flesh he reveres.

He listens to your body instead; the scrape of your nails against his scalp, the way you pry his hand off your stomach and interlace your fingers there and squeeze. Your hips cant into his face. He hums into you to answer the question your body is asking him. Then you are coming around his fingers, and he is lapping at you to savour every moment he has of you like this.

Viktor catches his breath against your thigh. He presses a kiss there tentatively, and you are either too boneless to brush him off, or — if he lets himself hope — you like it as much as he does. He chances at another, then another at your hip, another at your navel, then your sternum through your shirt, collar bone, neck-

His nose traces the shell of your ear, he can smell your perfume emanating from where you tucked it under your jaw.

"Lásko…" he breathes.

The next kiss he places lands on thin air.

Viktor opens his eyes to find yours averted, your whole face turned away from him. The hope he had just barely nurtured withers. Somehow, somewhere, he has made a mistake, and you are angry again. This time it is the kind that you bite back and swallow down for fear of anyone seeing it. He wants to rest his forehead to yours, make you look at him. He would take it if you started shouting at him again, but you are already squirming out from under him.

He lets you go because he doesn't know how to stop you without making this worse. He doesn't even really know what he did wrong. The door slams behind you and Viktor collapses into the hollow you left in the sheets. He wants them to smell of your sweat but they only smells of whosever room this is.

Yours and Robert’s paths had crossed some time in elementary school. Your dad, a surgeon, was busy at the best of times, and your mom treated hero shit like it was the only thing she had going on in her life. Independent as you might be, it was no good to leave a child home alone like that. Your mom knew a guy who knew a guy who was a hero with a kid around your age who also needed babysitting. So that was that, two birds one stone.

Robert was easy to make friends with; a good kid with a good heart who knew what it was like to feel lonely. And god, you needed a friend. Kids in school had always thought you were weird, and you’d have been fine with that if only they liked to hang out with you. You thought maybe they’d find it cool, but no one wanted to play with the girl who knew what happened next, and could somehow step into the moment. You won all the games, apart from the ones left to chance, didn’t have friends in your Aikido class because you won every fight, interrupted people when they spoke, were the definition of a know it all in class. Weird kid, no fun. Other kids were sore losers, your mom always said, and you were a winner. If only you felt like one.

But Robert didn’t treat you like your being weird was a bad thing. He didn’t mind that you always won. Instead, he made up games where he didn’t tell you the rules so you had to figure them out, that way you both had a shot of winning. He didn’t complain when you interrupted him and finished his sentences, just replied with an enthusiastic “exactly!” He didn’t mind that you weren’t always here and now, didn’t care if you were totally switched off or two minutes ahead, as long as you let him catch up, and you always did.

Going to Robert’s quickly became the best part of your week, several times a weak. Asides from having a friend in Robert, Chase was a certifiably cool babysitter. Taught you all the cool swear words, let you watch movies you parents would never let you, treated going to the store like a gimmick and bought you both anything you wanted as long as your parents were paying for it. More than that it provided a respite. Home, for as long as you could remember, sounded like refrigerator hums and shitty reality TV, or important phone calls with a hand waved your way, or a duet of angry voices through the floorboards. So really, you should’ve seen it a mile off, when at thirteen your parents sat you down and told you they were getting divorced.

Or rather, you did see it coming, about a minute beforehand. Something funny happened, it was like the world tilted and became an echo chamber, the words falling as gently as possible from your dad’s mouth two or three times over while your mom sat there like a statue, cold and unmoving. The phantom of a tear rolled down your cheek and your hand looked like it was skipping translucently between frames of motion. There was no wetness on your cheek when your knuckle swiped at it. Your dad had called your name twice (or maybe just once, you couldn’t be sure), his hand reaching out to cover yours and bring you back to earth.

And then relief. There would be no more pulling the covers over your head to muffle their arguing. Followed by anger, because splitting your time between refrigerator hums and reality TV, or being ignored for important phone calls, was not suddenly better just because they wouldn’t yell at each other anymore.

So you learned how to split yourself in two, how to pack a bag without thinking. You could put yourself back together at Robert’s. He’d help.

To give credit where it was due, your dad tried. But he didn’t really know what to do with a sad, superpowered teenage girl. He had to learn all over again what your interests were, and more importantly what they weren’t. He even let you invite Robert over, because your mom would never let you, and it was quite possibly the most awkward thing in the world you’d endeavoured to never do again. And he talked a lot about the future; about high school and then college and then what career you’d like to pursue. Every time, you reminded him that your path was set. You would finish school, and then you would become a hero like your mom. There wasn’t a time this wasn’t met with a furrowed brow and a patronising level of concern. You didn’t understand what it was like to be a hero, he’d tell you. He didn’t understand what it was like to be one either, you’d retort. In hindsight, you realise this must have stung. Your dad was not a hero, but he did save lives, often the lives of those caught in the crossfire between heroes and villains.

What he did not understand, fundamentally, was that there was no other path for you. You would train your whole life to follow in your mom’s footsteps. What a disappointment it would be if you changed your mind just because it was dangerous.

This was one of the few things, if not the only thing, your mom understood.

Your mom had never been a very warm or affectionate woman. Her focus had always been on whether you were doing well in school, doing well with martial arts, keeping your powers under control. She made a point to disapprove of the amount you spent with Robert. Anything new, anything rebellious you did, she blamed on him. Within three months, she’d taken to exclusively calling him ‘that boy’. The thing she blamed him most for was when you stopped letting her hug you. Conveniently, she ignored the fact that her powers let her learn whatever she wanted about a person through physical touch. Hugs were reserved for birthdays, Christmas, good grades and competition wins, so you figured when it picked up that she must be prying, she must want something. Why she couldn’t just try talking to you, you didn’t know.

It felt like the whole broken home thing was manageable for a time, until at sixteen your dad decided he wanted to move away from the LA suburbs where you grew up.

“Gilroy? The garlic place?” you’d asked incredulously.

Apparently, he wanted a quieter life, away from all the hero stuff that had surrounded him in his marriage to your mom. Away from the hospital, where heroes and villains and civilians caught up in their messes were quite often the most devasting injuries he’d operated on. And he wanted you to go with him, away from all this. So you could be normal.

“You don’t like garlic?” he tried to lighten the mood, soften the blow.

“That’s not the fucking point, Dad, I don’t wanna move to a city where their main thing is garlic. And I’m not normal, that won’t change just because I’m in fucking garlic central. My life is here.”

He sighed, heavy and tired. “Honey, don’t swear at me.”

“Sorry, Dad,” you grumbled, reluctant and passive aggressive.

“Will you think about it, at least?”

You make a face of consideration, pretending for a second that you could manage it.

“No,” you decide. And when he looks disappointed, you get ahead of his protests. “‘You didn’t even think about it’. Yeah, I did. And you said I could say no. So no.”

The last four years had been spent realising that your parents were, in fact, people who could make mistakes. People who made mistakes routinely. You didn’t expect them to be perfect, but was it really too much to ask to have a mom to go to for comfort without having to worry about her fishing around in your head? A dad who hadn’t left you with the options of dealing with her, or leaving everything you’d known and been raised for? Every fight, every cold shoulder, every half hearted apology wore you down, wore them down too. Until your therapist asked you what you aimed to achieve with all that, if every blow out argument was worth the sometimes backward progress. Would it make things better to carry on like this?

No. No, it made things worse. Threw you off kilter for a few days, only for everything to end up exactly as it was before.

So you learned to accept the parents you had, and mourn the ones you needed. Making friends with apathy smoothed everything along. Choose your battles, pick your losses.

You chose Robert. Try as he might to push everyone out, you were absolutely determined to stick around. He had no choice in the matter. You just showed up, over and over and over again, until he accepted that maybe having someone around wasn’t so bad.

It quickly became apparent that solo hero work was a behemoth task. If nothing else, you were liable to ending up knocked out on your own in a ditch somewhere, or god forbid tied up to something, when there was no one around to help you out. So you set about looking for other young folk to form a team that would keep each other from such a fate at the very least. So far you’d managed to find one other person and form a duo, and hadn’t gotten much done in the way of heroics. Days were spend planning, mapping, tracking, training, and stacking shelves at the grocery store to pay for it all.

But today? Today was just Sunday.

The August sun beats down on the sidewalk as you’re reclined on the floor of Robert’s garage. He had stayed in his parents’ house, with the mortgage paid off more than a decade ago it didn’t make sense for him to move unless he had to. He’s working on his suit — his dad’s old suit — and it’s quiet apart from the hum of the fan beside you and the occasional clink of metal on metal. You lay there in quiet company, one knee up with the other leg crossed over it and bouncing lazily. In your hand is what might be your third popsicle as you try to stay cool. The one you brought for Robert sits abandoned and melting in a cup on the workbench beside him. Most of the time, your gaze is out the open garage door, watching the odd car go by or blades of grass sway when a breeze rolls through. When it is not, it is on Robert’s back as he works.

Robert had dispensed with his shirt about an hour ago, grumbling about how it was ‘too hot to work’ or something like that. And you shouldn’t be looking. You know you shouldn’t be looking, you promised yourself you wouldn’t.

And yet you are looking anyway, praying he is too focused to feel your eyes on him. The thing about childhood best friends is that you get to see them go through puberty. The thing about superhero childhood best friends is that they’re very often hot. You got to do the ‘Do I? Don’t I? Do they? Don’t they?’ thing you assumed was fairly typical, then you got to do it on steroids because Robert was the only real friend you had until now. You got to watch him make the transition from boy to man and wonder when you started looking at him differently. You got to wonder whether he’d ever looked at you differently too.

Whatever feelings you did or didn’t have you’d resigned to writing off a long time ago. Had things been different, you might’ve fostered them and summoned the courage to tell Robert. Instead, whenever they reared their pesky, persistent head, you shove, shove, shoved them down. Before he’d lost his dad the worst he could say was no, but now, imparting friendship-altering information onto him might leave you pushed away. Not having Robert in your life would suck. Him not having anyone in his would suck more.

It wasn't something you thought you'd ever have to worry about, but the change had happened overnight. You had woken up first, Robert still curled into your side all small-looking. You wish he could have slept through the pain and woken up when it was all better, but grief didn't work like that. When he did wake with a start, he'd mumbled some apology about how close he was. You told him it didn't matter, it wasn't like you hadn't shared a bed before. But something was different, and you knew conceptually he would never be the same. Still, something was different. He had gone to sleep as Robert and woken up as someone else.

You tried not to think about it much. Besides, this was all old news, and all boring. Sitting here with your third popsicle while you said nothing and Robert said nothing was boring.

“Suit looks pretty busted,” you start lazily, attempting to cure it. “What shit you get into this time?”

“Oh, you know. Took a couple hits here and there. The usual,” he replies dryly.

You scoff from where you’re laying, pushing up from the ground to prop yourself up on your elbows as you continues to stare at his back. And then you move without moving - a clip, you’ve taken to calling it - peering through the next ten seconds to see Robert looking for a wrench that he doesn’t know the location of. You disappear from your current position and reappearing next to him, resting on your elbows on the suit, wrench in one hand, popsicle in the other. You wink, a wind up for whoever you decide is on the receiving end of your powers, most often Robert.

Robert jumps a little, taking a measured breath through his nose as he looks at you flatly.

“Ah yes, how very informative Robert, you sure know how to tell a story,” you joke.

He stays looking unimpressed by your little party trick, though it never fails to amuse you how he still isn’t quite used to it.

“Would you quit that? I thought this was supposed to be your rest day.” He makes like he’s about to take the wrench from you but steals your popsicle instead.

You scoff, mouth hanging open as Robert takes a bite from your popsicle, and you snatch it back from him. “Fucking bastard,” you scold, fingers brushing as you retreat. “You have your own damn popsicle. I brought one out for you. You could eat that instead of letting it melt and eating mine.”

It matters less that the popsicle has been in Robert’s mouth, and more so that he stole you food. Besides, you’d known each other for long enough that shared cups, food, straws, and beds when it came down to it, were all harmless really. Still, those pesky feelings remind you, immaturely, that it’s basically an indirect kiss.

You lean back on the suit after thrusting the wrench into his hands (you’d been tempted to hit him with it) and shoving those thoughts back down where they belong.

“Anyway, who are you, God? No powers on Sundays or something? Jeez,” you complain.

“No, if I was I wouldn’t need your help finding wrenches.” He reaches up to tighten something on the shoulder of the suit. “But since you’re up…”

You glare at Robert for a minute. And then you glitch. A little flicker in your position, a flicker in time around you. One of the quirks of your powers, it’s something you hadn’t quite gotten around to fully understanding yet. You just knew it happened when you felt something. Right now, you feel a whole host of things.

“Fine,” you relinquish, dropping the glare. “What do you need help with?”

“Chuck me a screwdriver,” he instructs, “and stop looking at me like that.”

You mimic him childishly, parroting back high-pitched nonsense, clipping toward the toolbox. Hands brush again when you pass him the screwdriver he asked for, and you flicker a little in response.

Robert looks down at you for a second. “You figured out those glitches yet?”

You had always had glitches. Temper tantrums as a child sent you halfway across the room by accident, nightmares saw you ejected from your bed in the blink of an eye. Cliché as it was, big emotions seemed to set your powers off balance. By now you could put your movements in time into three categories based on how they felt: clips were intentional, you’d chose a moment and go there, jumps and glitches were decidedly unintentional, but it was still difficult to tell the difference between the two outside of how they felt. Either way, they both left you feeling rather un-solid whenever something got under your skin, good or bad.

“Nope,” you reply, popping the p, watching as Robert stretches to secure the shoulder panel. “Been working on it though with Signal.”

Signal — Theo — the other half of your haphazard hero duo had you keep a log of every time your powers left you feeling un-solid. So far is was none the wiser than you were.

Robert scoffs. He’d been getting increasingly worse at hiding his dislike for Theo. “Did you know you have legs? I don’t think you have to go ghost-mode to travel three feet.” He gives the shoulder panel a shove to test it’s security. “You glitch when you get annoyed, and then some other weird hologram shit when you get excited.”

You mock salute at his instruction not to clip just to get tools. “Should be asking you to help me figure it out, you seem to know more about it than he does,” you say, half teasing, half honest. “You don’t like Theo much.”

“’Signal’ sound character straight out of a fucking spy movie, he couldn’t come up with anything else?”

“Well we don’t all come with a built in name, some of us have to be creative.” You go back to your popsicle. “Who would you be if you had to come up with your own name? Robo Robbie? The seventh Power Ranger?”

Robert snorts this time. “Y’know, Mighty Morphin’ Mecha Man has a ring to it.” He turns to face you, resting his hip against the edge of the suit. “When you’re annoyed it looks like you skip a frame, when you’re excited you look like you’re everywhere at once. I… know it takes a lot of you to get back to now when it happens, I just don’t want someone messing with that.”

You freeze, popsicle halfway to your mouth as your smile drops into something softer as you realise how much Robert has paid attention to the little anomalies in you powers. He’s been so distant, you couldn’t remember the last time you talked about anything real. He was so busy being Mecha Man after stepping into it like it was the easiest thing in the world. It was hard to tell where Mecha Man ended and Robert started these days.

“Fuck, you really should be the person helping me figure it out,” you say quietly.

Shove the pesky feelings back down into their box.

“He calls himself Signal because he’s like a psychic fucking radar,” you defend. “But you don’t need to worry about him, kid can’t take a punch to save his life. You could take him out with a dislocated shoulder.”

Robert gives you a raised brow. “So you’re choosing teammates based on what? How easy they bruise?“

“Hey! he’s my recon,” you defend again. “If you wanted to be the brawn, that spot is still wide open.”

You’d offered some time ago for Robert to join you. Wasn’t like you’d dreamed about it as kids or anything. To be a duo, or start a team. You figured it was a given, but after his dad passed, Robert insisted on going solo. Excuses, always excuses, about how he was better off that way, about how you wouldn't make sense together. Your offer was always there though.

He’d decline. He always did.

“As is the helping-me-figure-out-the-glitching spot,” you add, as if it might help your case.

“I think I’ll pass,” he says. You mouth it along with him, you didn’t even need your powers to know he’d say that. “Wouldn’t wanna crash your little psychic party.”

You glitch, and blink at Robert, expression bored. You’d heard this a thousand times, same sentiment, different joke. Always a thinly veiled attempt to keep you just far enough away from him. You were at the point of considering taking the offer off the table, but you just… didn’t want Robert to be alone. He clearly did.

“Whatever,” you say dismissively. “Stop getting pissy about Theo then, would you?”

You push off the suit, walking across the garage, noticing Robert’s entirely melted popsicle in the cup on the way. He hadn’t touched it. You flick the cup across the worktop, not hard enough for it to topple but enough to make it slide across the surface towards him.

“Can I talk to Robert when you’re done here?” Glitch. “He’s more fun than Mecha Man.”