#esh au

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So, they talk, argue, Maddie ends up drawing a weapon and pointing it at Danny as he turns to Phantom to get away in reflex. Firing.

The beam goes over his shoulder and hits some ghost vultures.

"Mom?" He sounds skeptical, afraid.

Afraid. As Phantom, not Danny. Afraid of Maddie. This wasn't Phantom, it was Danny.

"I'm so sorry." She dropped the gun immediately and hugged her son. "I so sorry." She repeats, hugging her son as she starts crying. "How- how did this..?"

"I know, Mom." Danny wiped the tears from his eyes. "I'm so sorry I had to keep this a secret." He then sighs. "It.. was the ghost portal. I don't think the on button was hit before you two plugged it in."

"On button.." her eyes widened. "You went inside the Portal! Oh, nonono! That portal was never- oh, Danny!" She touches his face. "I told your father- I should have known better!"

"Mom-"

"I'm your mother! I never should have egged on those ripping apart molecule by molecule rants! I shouldn't have-" her eyes were heartbroken. "Danny, oh Danny, tell me I can do anything to make it up to you!"

"For a start? We could leave because those animals look like their starting to get bored of Vlad."

"Good call. I didn't find a phone, but I did find a helicopter."

Their house was destroyed. Who would destroy their house? What was the point? 

His and Jimmy's clothes were there. Jimmy's nice sweatshirt that smelled like him. The one that Scott would wear sometimes when he rolled out of bed in the morning, not wanting to part from his boyfriend but resolved to make breakfast for him.

And all their other stuff, but right now it's the clothes that grasp Scott's attention and he wants to cry.

"Hey—uh, it's okay," Joel says hurriedly, scooching his chair closer and awkwardly patting Scott's knee after hovering over his injured arm. "Jimmy's safe, he's okay. He just can't be here right now. Do you want to call him?"

Why can’t Jimmy be here? Scott really wants him here, wants to hold his hand and kiss his lips and feel better.

But that's right, Scott recalls, Jimmy can’t be in hospitals. "He has trauma," he informs Joel.

Joel bursts out laughing. "We've all got trauma."

Scott doesn't know how to respond to that, so he just kind of stares at Joel until the man continues speaking.

Joel sobers quickly. "Right. Er, do you know what you said to the EMTs?"

Scott doesn't remember saying anything. He shakes his head.

Joel sighs again. "Well, remember all that stuff that we did to make sure the public believed that Solidarity was dead?"

Scott nods. He remembers that, it was a whole thing.

"Right. And we don't blame you, but apparently you said some stuff that . . . made everyone think that Solidarity's still alive."

Oh.

Oh no.

Scott sniffles, thinking of exactly what that means—no Jimmy cheering him on in public, no Jimmy going out at all, no picking him up from work no dates no big wedding—

"Okay, you're crying again. Hey, hey, it's okay. It was an accident; we all know you didn’t mean to."

It's still his fault. Now he's going to have to have press conferences about it, and pretend to hate Jimmy, and he doesn’t want that.

Some rational part of him realizes that he's definitely being overemotional about this. Normally, he would buck up grimly and do what has to be done. Normally, he would never cry in front of Joel.

"It's the drugs," he croaks, trying to explain why he's having such a strong outward reaction. "Sorry."

"Don’t apologize," Joel says quietly. "You're going through a lot right now."

"It's my fault," Scott says mournfully, wiping at his nose with the arm that isn't injured. "I said something, I—"

"It's okay," Joel tells him, still awkwardly patting his knee. "You were going into shock, apparently. It's fine."

It's not fine, but Scott can't figure out what to say about it, so he just cries a little bit.

He sits there and sniffles until the doctor comes in, when he wipes his eyes and does his best to appear like the strong hero Major.

-

Joel and Lizzie, unlike any of the other heroes, still actively live in their house in the hero district. Most everyone else has it set up as their office, so to speak—Scott uses his as storage and a place to hold official meetings. He knows that Gem uses hers for meetings with her weird alliance.

But Lizzie and Joel together are recognizable, more so than many of the other heroes out of costume, and therefore rarely get the opportunity to spend time together in public unmasked. According to Joel, it's just easier to have one identity in public, and that identity includes where they live.

Scott does miss living in the hero neighborhood. It had been nice to have all of his neighbors understand his secrecy and his work without having to hide anything except for his face.

And now, as Joel pulls into his garage, Scott wonders if maybe they all oughtn't have moved after all.

Had that woman attacked his house while in the hero neighborhood, there would have been plenty of people to help him keep Jimmy secret. There would have been funds and materials set aside to get his house fixed immediately. There would have been heroes at his side to help take down the woman before Scott even realized she was there.

It had seemed like a safety concern when they moved out one by one. Every villain in the city had their address and could track them down simply by putting a few words into a search bar. Of course it made sense to move, adopt a more secret location.

But there had been no one nearby to help fight the mystery woman. There had been too much confusion, too much distress. And she had dared to attack in the first place, knowing that there wouldn't be other heroes around.

Why is it that every option has pros and cons? Why can't there be a perfect solution?

Perhaps more importantly, how did she find him?

Joel opens the passenger side door for him, which is entirely unnecessary because it was his left arm that got shot and the door is on his right side, but Scott lets it happen, too tired to argue in any way.

And Jimmy still isn't there.

He's at work, because apparently Scott had slept through the night at the hospital. Lizzie's also out, patrolling as the Ocean Queen. And Joel needs to leave to patrol soon, which means Scott will be alone.

Not alone, exactly, because as Joel shows him to the guest room, Elle weaves past his legs and Norman hops up on the bed.

That warms his heart a little. He'd been worried about the cats, and it's good to actually see them safe rather than having to just believe Joel’s word.

"Just call me or Lizzie if you need anything," Joel says, and then he leaves.

Scott, instead of sleeping and then taking more of the heavy-duty painkillers he was prescribed, flops onto the guest bed and pulls up five different news stations on his phone.

Aeor had always preached against checking the news right after a fight. No need to go mad trying to figure out everything he did wrong, overanalyzing himself for hours.

But sometimes, such as after fights where one wakes up in the hospital with only blurry memories of what occurred, the news is a necessary tool.

All five of them have him on the front page.

Three of them have helicopter footage of his anonymous house, and Scott's never been so glad that he signed on the lease with a pseudonym.

All of them have blurry photos of Jimmy (blurry enough that they can’t reliably determine many features, thankfully) standing over Scott, hair and clothes whipped around as if by some awful winds that Scott can vaguely recall happening.

And Jimmy isn't wearing a mask in those blurry photos.

They all additionally have a photo of Jimmy leaning over Scott, wearing a mask but clearly the same person.

That's not good at all. That's far worse than Joel led Scott to believe.

And Scott can't do anything about it.

Is Solidarity Still Alive? What the Government Isn’t Telling You, one of the articles reads. Scott closes it immediately, his stomach turning.

He just wants to cry, and curl up in a little ball, and pretend like the world doesn't exist.

He's ruined everything. He got Jimmy found out, and lost their house, and got hurt so now Joel has to take care of him while Jimmy tries to keep working even though he's one of the most wanted people in the city right now.

Why did this all have to happen?

Why is it so hard to handle?

Maybe it's the drugs talking, but Scott does the thing that had once been instinctual in times of distress.

He calls Shelby.

Shelby picks up on the second ring, answering with a quick, "Major, how are you doing?"

Scott blinks. Right. He's not Scott right now, he can't be Scott. He left his Scott phone at the now-destroyed house, and Shelby doesn't know that he's Scott and Major, and—

"Hi, Shubble," Scott says in his very best Major impression. "Um, I was just calling about—"

"Solidarity?" Shelby guesses. Scott nods, then remembers that she can't see him, and mutters an answer in the affirmative.

"There's nothing I can do," Shelby says shortly. "I've been trying all night to keep those pictures out of the news, and it's just making the tabloids suspicious. I mean, at your house, Major? What was Solidarity even doing there after you gave up conservatorship?"

Scott doesn't answer that. He hadn't thought it would ever become relevant to the mayor that he and the man once known as the supervillain Solidarity had become romantically involved.

Shelby sighs, long and distorted by the phone.

"So, how are you doing? How quickly do you think you can get out there?"

Scott looks down at himself, at his t-shirt that had taken a painful ten minutes to put on over his injured arm, at the sling holding said arm to his chest.

"Um, I got shot in the arm," he says, rather stupidly. "The, uh, the Mad King said that I went into shock, so they had to keep me overnight."

"Right, but how long?"

Scott's too emotionally exhausted for this.

"I don't know?" he says, voice wavering dangerously. "Call me later and we'll see, okay?"

"Right," Shelby says after a moment. "Sorry. I'm very stressed right now. Take some time to recover. Goodbye, Major."

Then she hangs up.

Scott stares at his feet for a long time before he sets down his phone.

He just wanted to talk to a friend. A friend who had more than once pulled him out of several depressive episodes, who always knew the right thing to say.

Scott has never felt so alone in his life.

And yes, he's being overdramatic about that, because he's felt alone for most of his life so there's no way this is the worst it's ever been.

It still really, really hurts though.

-

The first time Scott gets to see Jimmy again is the day after his first day in Joel and Lizzie's house.

Jimmy comes in through the basement, because for some inexplicable reason Joel has secret tunnels under his house. He comes in through the basement, and when Scott, sulking on the couch, turns to see him, his breath is stolen from his chest.

That's the man he's going to marry someday. From his scuffed brown work boots to his messy golden hair, that's the most perfect man in the world.

Jimmy shoots him a tired smile, and Scott rolls off the couch to meet him in a hug. It jostles his arm painfully, but Scott really doesn't care. He just wants Jimmy. He just wants to squeeze his arms around him until Jimmy laughs breathlessly and kisses him on the cheek, but with only one functional arm it's proving to be a little difficult.

Jimmy's hugging him back just as tightly, anyways.

"I missed you," Jimmy whispers in his ear.

Scott just clutches him tighter.

"Geez, get a room," Joel calls from the kitchen. "It's been, like, two days. Wait until he’s sound of mind, at least."

Jimmy pulls back, much to Scott's dismay. "Is he not sound of mind?" he asks, sounding a bit worried, but a little more put-out.

"Your man is still on percocet for the next two days," Joel informs him. "That's what he gets for being shot."

"I'm sound of mind," Scott argues, pulling a bit at Jimmy's shirt to get him closer again. "I missed you."

Jimmy, thankfully, does not detach himself. "It's okay. Joel grabbed your meds from the house, have you been taking them?"

Scott nods. "Yours?"

"Yep." Jimmy gently leads Scott back to the couch and sits down with him. "Look, babe, I love you, but I need to go change. Is that okay?"

It's really not okay, but Scott reluctantly releases Jimmy and watches him head off down the hall, already pulling off his shirt.

Once Jimmy's gone, Scott can't help but feel a bit cold. His arm aches—currently free from the sling so he can stretch it a bit, but not from the bandages. He's got another appointment to check on it in a couple of days, and if all looks good, he's set to start on physical therapy. He's hoping to get permission from the doctor to fight crime while it heals if he takes it easy. Then he could get back out there without causing any more worry to the people.

And, as if his mind is being read (always a possibility with Joel in the room), his phone starts buzzing with an incoming call.

It's the mayor.

Scott sets his jaw, then answers the phone.

"Major, how are we looking?"

"I have a check-up on the 22nd," Scott reports. "Then physical therapy."

"Any idea when you'll be back?"

"No. Um, maybe . . . maybe I can see if, at the appointment, they'll let me start while doing the physical therapy? Um, or—"

"He's on pain drugs," Joel says loudly, suddenly right behind Scott.

"Is that the Mad King?" Shelby asks, tinny and distant in Scott's ear. Scott, meanwhile, tries to regulate the adrenaline now shooting through his system (and causing his arm to throb) from Joel just appearing behind him.

"Go on, put her on speakerphone," Joel says, and before Scott can respond, the phone is yanked out of his hands and set down on the coffee table.

"Hi, Shubble," says Joel, leaning close to the phone. "Major's a little bit loopy right now, he's on percocet for the next couple of days. Anything I can do?"

"Sorry, why are you here?" Shelby asks after a moment.

"Somebody's gotta take care of Major."

"I'm not a child," Scott puts in, a little petulantly.

"What's going on?" Jimmy asks, wandering into the room, toweling off his face, now wearing sweatpants and a white t-shirt.

"Major, how many people are there with you?"

"He won't be back in the fight for a while," Joel says before Scott can even open his mouth. "What can we do instead?"

Shelby sighs. "Right. Well, it isn't looking good," she says. "Things aren't blowing over the way we hoped they would. The media legitimately thinks that Solidarity killed you, and they're publishing all those old stories about how the Canary was most likely Solidarity."

Jimmy blanches, freezing where he stands.

"Didn’t you say I'm alive?" Scott asks, bewildered. Why on earth would everyone think he's dead?

"I released the standard!" insists Shelby. "It's not enough this time. Apparently, despite there being several eyewitnesses, nobody remembers the villain you were fighting."

"It was a woman," Jimmy jumps in, stepping close to the phone. "A woman with blond hair, and really cool goggles? Also a gun."

Silence. A long, long silence during which Joel, for some reason, glares at Jimmy.

"Major," Shelby says eventually, "please tell me that you don't have Solidarity in your house right now."

Ah.

"Well," Scott says thoughtfully, "it isn't my house."

"Major."

"Hi, Mayor Shubble," Jimmy says sheepishly. "How are things going?"

Shelby sighs again. She does that a lot, Scott notices.

"This may as well happen," Scott thinks he hears her mutter, before she clicks her tongue and launches into a spiel.

"Okay, so Major isn't going to be ready to return to the scene for a while, but we can still do some damage control. Solidarity, if you publicly appear—we can make up some story about you working undercover for the government for the past couple of years—and we can rewrite their version from you attacking him to you defending him."

Scott starts to speak up, explain that Jimmy doesn't ever want to fight again, but Jimmy speaks first, leaning closer to the phone.

"If you think it'll help, I can do that," he says resolutely. "Just get those pictures with my face out of the news."

"They can't tell it's you, really," Joel says. "It's pretty blurry."

"I don't want my face attached to any of this," Jimmy states. "I don't care how blurry it is."

"Done," Shelby says, before Scott can make any of his protests known. "Press conference with Solidarity, tomorrow. They already know that you're the Canary, too, so I think we'd better admit that right off the bat. Do you have a number I can call you at?"

"Just Major's phone is fine, or the King's," Jimmy says. "I don't have an anonymous number."

"I'll call you in a couple of hours with your script. Thank you."

Click.

Silence.

Scott barely even got to say anything, even though it was his phone call.

And Jimmy. . . .

"Now why," Joel asks slowly, "on this great blummin' earth, would you do that?"

Jimmy shrugs, tossing the towel onto his shoulder. "I just . . . don't you ever get tired of hiding?"

Scott shakes his head.

"I love hiding," Joel admits.

Jimmy rolls his eyes. "Whatever. I'm just . . . for a long time, I was a really visible person. It was impossible for me to hide. I tried and I tried, right, but it never worked out. Someone always found me."

As if he doesn't notice, Jimmy's fingers fall to the back of his neck, brushing the scar there.

"It's been a great two years," he says, voice shaking just the slightest bit, "but it always felt like borrowed time."

That, somehow, hurts. It feels like giving up, like a walk to death, like an acceptance of a terrible fate.

Jimmy deserves so much better.

He deserves to be happy, and live a normal life, and forget that he ever hurt anyone or anyone ever hurt him. He deserves worlds of safety and comfort.

Scott can take care of this somehow. Can't he? This can’t be the only option. Maybe he can make a public appearance, say something about how it was his bodyguard, not Solidarity. Not Jimmy.

But they already know it was Jimmy, don't they? They already have pictures of his face. They already have witnesses that identified Jimmy as being involved. They basically already have Scott’s own testimony.

Scott wants to talk more about it. He wants to argue his point, and help Jimmy feel safe, and so much more that he can't verbalize.

-

"Eggs are done!" Jimmy, once known as Solidarity, declares as he clicks off the stove.

Scott, also known as Major, Primary Protector of Empires City, finishes the final stretch of his routine before groaning his way to his feet and padding into the kitchen.

"I'm getting too old for this," grumbles Scott, who isn't even thirty, as he pulls a couple of plates out of the cabinet. "Why'd I choose to be a superhero? I could've been an architect, Jimmy. Instead of getting ready to save the world, I could be designing buildings to replace the ones that Mythics destroys."

"Yeah, right," Jimmy scoffs, scooping some eggs onto the plates. "Gays can't do math, there's no way you would've been able to design buildings."

"I literally passed my senior trig class with a C, thank you very much, and Cs get degrees."

Jimmy laughs, handing Scott the plates. Scott sets them down on the counter beside the toaster, into which he slots four pieces of toast.

It's domestic and warm in the kitchen—the stove has just been clicked off, still radiating a gentle heat, which is nice when there's ice in the air and snow on the ground.

Not that Scott minds either of those things. Despite his complaints, he's eager to patrol today. He always feels more energetic when surrounded by the make of his power. And maybe he feels a bit more . . . in control, he supposes. Bigger. More powerful. Almost like he can command the skies—a thought best left for his dreams, far beyond the reach of his power as it is.

It’s a lovely day. Crisp and cold, warm and homey, and Scott can’t fight a smile as he moves toward the table and clicks on the overhead light.

"Nope—" Jimmy cries out behind him, and Scott turns just in time to see the oven window shatter, pieces of tinted glass scattering across the kitchen tiles.

"Sorry, sorry, burned my finger on the stove," Jimmy explains, holding said finger in his other hand. "Took me by surprise, sorry."

"Hand under cold water," Scott instructs, pointing to the sink. As Jimmy hurries over, he continues, "and what's another oven window? Don't cut yourself on the glass, honey, let me get you your shoes—"

Scott heads back into the living room, kicking his yoga mat aside, to find Jimmy's velcro tennis shoes sticking out from under the couch. They have a tray for shoes by the front door, but Jimmy, for some reason, just leaves his shoes strewn about the living room carpet.

"Think the landlord is going to get concerned? This is, like, the fifth oven door we need replaced," Jimmy calls from the kitchen. Scott laughs.

"Well, if you'd stop burning yourself, we wouldn't need five oven doors, would we?"

"At least one of those times I cut my finger, so I'm not sure that the burning is the problem," Jimmy jokes back. "And remember when we had to replace the whole oven because you froze it and it broke? That's arguably worse."

"We really should have been kicked out by now," Scott comments as he reenters the kitchen, shoes in hand.

"Good thing you're rich."

"Good thing you're a gold digger."

The toast pops at the exact same time as Jimmy turns off the sink. Scott hands him his shoes, then steps around him to wash his hands before getting the toast.

"Have you got work today?" Scott asks. Jimmy shakes his head.

"Nah, it's still not doing well," he says. "Jerry has us working fewer hours, trying to make ends meet. He's hoping for a bit of a boom in business with this weather."

"I guess we'll see," Scott says. He sets the plates down on the table with the butter, one right in front of where Jimmy is sitting in his chair, strapping on his shoes, and the other in front of the chair beside it. He sits there, scraping a bit of butter across his toast before tossing back his antidepressants with a bit of water.

Jimmy does the same when he's done with his shoes, then spreads jam onto his toast before loading it up with eggs and shoving it into his mouth. Scott makes a pointed expression of disgust before resolutely ignoring the sin before him.

He's got an hour before his patrol shift properly begins, so that's probably enough time to sweep up the kitchen or wash the dishes. Not that either of those activities take him an hour to complete, but who can blame him for wanting to head out early? He's just itching to get out in the cold, in what is literally his element. It's the first snow of the season, and he's expected to stay inside?

Jimmy, as always, notices. He lays his free hand on Scott's knee (his touch always so gentle) and gives him a smile somehow made cuter by the crumbs on his lips. "You can head out early, if you want. I can—"

BANG!

The whole house rattles. Jimmy's hand tightens on Scott's knee, and for a second Scott feels a hum of power thrum through the air—more intense in his partner than in anyone else that he's ever known—before there's a high-pitched whining and all the lights in the house shut down, the refrigerator's hum whirring to a stop.

They sit there, for a moment, in silence, Jimmy's hand still on Scott's knee, the aftershocks of his power still pulsing from him.

Scott forgets, sometimes, that Jimmy has such magnitudes of power, that he isn't just shattered oven doors and broken dishes. That without even lifting a finger, Jimmy could collapse a building or take the life right out of a person's body.

Then he'll get a wake-up call like this, a reminder that Scott isn't the only (or even the most) dangerous person in the house.

Scott glances over to the microwave to check—never mind, the microwave is dead, no green numbers lit up to tell the time.

The time isn't really important, though.

What on earth could've caused that sound?

Scott's first thought is a gunshot, and he knows Jimmy's is too, by the apprehensive shine of fear in his eyes that Scott can see even through the darkness of their house. A gunshot that loud would have to have come from nearby, of course. . . .

Quickly, quietly, Scott steals to his feet and creeps to the front window in the living room, peering out carefully without disturbing the blinds.

Nothing. No signs of trouble, no screams, no bodies in the street. Just various neighbors poking their heads out their doors, looking around and calling greetings to each other.

Through the window (Scott had cracked it open while stretching to let in the frosty breeze), Scott hears one of them faintly call.

"Did you lot lose power, too?"

Scott grimaces. Jimmy's not going to like that. Sure, Scott can keep their fridge and freezer going until the power gets back on, and Jimmy can bundle up until then, but everyone else is without electricity while their freezers melt and there's nothing they can do about it. As far as he can tell, none of the houses along the street have power—and if the whole street is down, that means the neighborhood is too.

Unfortunately, it is Jimmy's fault, and he's going to want to do what he can to fix it.

Which, as far as Scott can tell, is nothing. So maybe he can just not tell him about it. Maybe he won't notice that the entire grid is out.

"All clear," Scott calls back to the dining room. "Any idea what that was?"

Silence from the dining room. After a moment, Jimmy calls, voice shaking,

"Sorry. Um, no."

Scott frowns. "Jimmy? You okay?"

Another moment of silence, followed by a shuddering sigh. "Yeah," Jimmy says unconvincingly. "I'm good."

Scott pulls the window shut, blinds clanking against the glass, then returns to the dining table.

Jimmy's still sitting where he left him, hands clenched around his trouser legs. He's staring resolutely at a spot on the table, eyes just the slightest bit wet.

"Jimmy? Baby?" Scott tries, sitting down beside him and taking his hand. Jimmy looks over at him, face pale, eyes resolute.

"I'm good," Jimmy says again, squeezing his hand. "Thank you."

He's not good, that's easy to see. But he's okay, and some days, that's all Scott can ask for.

It's been over two years since Xornoth was killed, and Jimmy will never be entirely better. He'll likely always need his hip brace or cane, he'll always need his medication, he'll always have trauma responses. But Scott isn't ever going to judge him for any of it.

That's who Jimmy is. And Scott loves him for it.

And as he sits there, holding Jimmy's left hand, he finds his mind wandering to where it so often does as he gazes at the fourth finger on Jimmy's hand.

Scott doesn't even have a ring yet, so he pushes the thought out of his mind with a little reluctance. First he has to discuss the idea of marriage with Jimmy, then he has to follow up with Lizzie, and then he has to subtly get Jimmy's ring size. . . .

Well. Baby steps, and all that.

They finish eating like that, Jimmy leaning just slightly into Scott's shoulder. Right as they finish, the refrigerator starts humming and the lights flick back on, suddenly enough that Scott has to blink a couple of times to clear the floating clouds of color in front of his vision. The various clocks in the kitchen appliances flash a bright 12:00.

"Power's back," Scott says, less as an actual observation and more as just something to say, and gets up to carry their dishes to the sink, skirting around the glass on the floor. "Okay for me to head out?"

"Yeah, I've got Norman. Don't worry about me," Jimmy says, standing as well. He retrieves the broom from where it leans in the corner of the kitchen. "Speaking of Norman, I'd better get this glass cleaned up before he runs his little feet through it. Have a good day at work!"

"I'll save the world as usual," says Scott. He kisses Jimmy on his way by (Jimmy hums contentedly, all signs of his prior distress gone but for a wrinkle between his eyebrows), grabs his backpack at the door, and heads out into the frigid air of the first snow of the season.

Where the loud noise originated from is not far from where Scott exits his home, just two streets away. Not that he even thinks to go over there, instead heading for the main section of the city, assuming it would be at the hub of most activity. That's where most unidentified sounds originate from, after all.

And as Scott's day continues, he forgets about the sound, just as most others do.

Two streets away from Major's house, popular villain Mythics flees, eyes wild and breath gasping, a swirling portal crackling behind him.

-

It's possibly the best day of the year so far, weather-wise. The snow is actively falling, the streets are sparkling with ice, and Scott has never felt better.

Well, he's probably felt better. It snows every winter, after all.

But it feels so good after summer to finally return to what he is. This is the stuff Scott's made of, this is what gives him life.

It's glorious.

Scott lets out a little whoop as he slides part-way up the side of a building, the ice that already frosts its windows spreading spontaneously to the walls to give him the slipperiness he needs.

The people love it, too. Lizzie takes particular delight in sending him video compilations of his greatest tricks and most impressive fights, and the comments are always full of adoration for his skills and admiration of his power and creations.

So maybe, as he skates down a frozen sidewalk of his own creation (which he unfreezes behind him, because he knows not everyone has the skill to navigate such a path and would probably prefer a normal sidewalk), he adds a couple of flourishes to his act.

There's a group of kids at recess by Empires North Elementary School, and Scott stops to start a snowball fight before continuing on, frosting the windows of every classroom with beautiful little fractals.

He signs his name in frost as intricately as possible on the hood of someone's car, gives them a cheery wave when they run out of the store to take a picture.

He makes tiny snowmen to line the bus stop with just a couple of waves of his hand, then can't stop laughing when a little girl at the stop with her father cheers for 'Elsa'.

Maybe all of the villains of the city took one look out their windows and decided no, thank you, because there’s zero disturbances all morning. Scott doesn’t mind. He doesn’t think he could ever get bored in weather like this.

By the time it hits lunchtime, Scott's cheeks are red from the wind and hurt from smiling. He slides into a small deli and picks out a sandwich and a drink, the latter of which freezes over in his hands quite nicely.

"Major!" the deliman (and owner of the deli, if his nametag is true) exclaims, adding lettuce to his sandwich. "Keeping us all safe?"

"As best I can," Scott smiles. "How are you doing, Felix?"

Felix, the owner, chuckles, going a bit red in the face. "Never better, Major. You can have this free, all right?"

Scott chuckles as well, setting the drink on the counter and digging out his wallet. "I want to pay, don't even worry about it."

"No, no, nothing for you!"

"Come on, Felix, I'm—"

BANG!

Scott follows his first instinct—protection. Within milliseconds, there's an ice wall surrounding Felix, and another one shoots up in front of the large deli windows and door. It's instant, and Scott's never moved so fast in his life but the ice is there and time itself seems to freeze.

Everything is still for a timeless moment, snowflakes slowly swirling around Scott's masked face.

And somehow, he's the ice that lines the streets and the pipes below that travel all the way through the city and the icicles hanging from every roof and the frost paving windshields, and Scott knows that something has gone very wrong.

He's never felt this powerful in his life—nor this overwhelmed. There's so much stimulus, so many far away nerves jangling and he can't focus on the snowflake in front of him when he can see every fractal of it—

"Major!"

With a herculean effort, Scott manages to pull himself back into his body from where the tendrils of his mind have reached all the way across the city. He blinks, looks around.

The entire deli is frozen over.

Two customers are frantically trying to scrape some ice off the shelves, another is kicking at ice on the door, and Felix—

Scott can't even see Felix, a thick wall of ice surrounding him.

Scott panics. He can’t help it—his breathing quickens, his mind races, he starts feeling distantly dizzy at the idea that he might've hurt people, he might've broken something—and he notices, as his frozen fingers shake, that the frost is growing with every moment, slowly spreading to the floor and up the walls.

He hasn't been this out of control since—since he was a teenager, since before he was trained, even, since before he was a hero—

He can fix this. He knows how to fix it. Scott shuts the panic and fear out of his head as best he can and thinks back to his early days of training, back to when Aeor had taught him how to properly channel his emotions for incidents like this.

He hasn't had to consciously control himself in years.

He's never felt like this before.

He takes a slow, deep breath, letting the frenetic energy travel from his brain and heart and out through his finger tips, where frost grows into icicles. Then, with all the control and might that he can muster, Scott pulls, reeling it all back with a steady grip.

Slower than he would've liked, the ice and frost recede, all pulled back into thin air bit by bit. Scott breathes with it, in and out, until the ice walls crack and slide apart and the frost is entirely gone.

He breathes, and with it, his mind begins to settle. He’s all right. Everything’s all right.

Each of the other customers thanks Scott, casting glances both confused and a little fearful in his direction. Felix, luckily, is fine, if a little shocked. Scott subtly slides more than triple the worth of the sandwich into his hand, apologizes for the disruption, and heads out, slightly soggy lunch under his arm.

And again, he can't find the source of such a loud sound—because he remembers, suddenly, that the reason he'd headed out from his house so early this morning wasn't to see the snow, but to find the source of that first sound.

There's almost nobody out on the street, no gun or powered individual or blown transformer that could've caused it. In fact, the only other people outside are people who have stepped out of offices and shops to look around.

Scott gives them a cheery wave when they turn to him, one woman shouting a question in Spanish. "Nothing to worry about," he calls, assuming she'd asked about the sound. "Have a good one!"

"Hey, Major!" a young man waves. "How's your day been?"

"It’s been great!" Scott smiles his best winning smile. "Gotta go—heard about something on the other side of town!"

He didn't hear about anything, and he usually feels pretty good about talking to citizens, but he does feel kind of awkward standing in front of a place he just froze, like a guilty child fleeing the scene of a mess. And he doesn't even have a dog to blame it on.

What had even happened back there?

Scott had—he'd been scared. He'd thrown up normal protections, in case someone was trying to shoot up the deli and had somehow missed the bright blue superhero standing there, and then—

Then he'd felt so much.

Scott's not entirely sure what happened—one moment he'd been fine, totally in control of himself and his actions, and the next he was frost crunching under a pedestrian's foot and an icicle dripping from a gutter and the tiniest snowflake blown about by the wind.

It was nothing like he'd ever felt before.

It was terrifying.

It was exhilarating.

It was—oh, look, there's Joel!

"King!"

Scott spots Joel from across the intersection that he's currently sliding through, and pulls up a ridge of ice to give himself a sharp turn. He slides up to where Joel is leaning against the walk sign pole, waiting to cross the road.

Joel nods to him, eyes looking somewhat preoccupied behind his mask. "Hey, Major. When's your shift end?"

Scott shrugs, pulling his sandwich from where it's tucked under his arm. He ought to eat it sooner rather than later. "Dunno. I was hoping to stay out all day, if possible."

Joel raises a brow. "In the doghouse?"

"Of course not, the weather's just nice."

Joel chuckles. "Yeah, I'd guess so. You and Jimmy never fight, do you?"

"Well, do you and Lizzie?" asks Scott.

"Nope," Joel says proudly. "That's why we got married. We never fight."

Which is a lie, of course. Just last week, when he and Jimmy went over to Lizzie and Joel's apartment for dinner, Lizzie had thrown rolls at Joel all evening and Joel had implied some rather unkind things about her pet rabbit.

Scott doesn't bother calling him out on the lie. Joel's right about one thing—he and Jimmy almost never fight, and when they do, they resolve it quickly and schedule a couple's therapy appointment to make sure there are no lingering issues.

They're perfect for each other.

And once again, Scott's mind turns to the rather pleasant idea of a gold band around Jimmy's finger.

"You two really ought to tie the knot soon," Joel says casually, and Scott can't help but sputter.

"I—were you reading my mind?" he accuses.

"No?" Joel says, voice turning from confused to gleeful in that one syllable. "I—ooooh! You're thinking about it, that means it's practically official! So—are you thinking something big, whole city invited, those nice ice sculpture things like in movies—"

"Sorry, Major? Mad King? Can we get a picture?"

Joel shuts up—thankfully, otherwise Scott would've frozen his tongue in his mouth—and gestures for the two women to stand between him and Scott.

Scott smiles into the phone, and can't help but notice that there's frost on his own cheeks.

That's . . . that's a little odd. He isn't usually radiating cold, not unless he's angry. Maybe it's the high spirits he's in from the weather. That explains it, doesn't it?

Still, when the women leave, Scott scrubs at his face, hoping to warm his cheeks up enough that none of his frigidity can find a home there.

"Yeah, noticed you looked a little chillier than normal," Joel comments. "All good?"

Well, he did sort of lose control during some strange out of body experience earlier. But that's kind of embarrassing, and it was a one-off, so Scott doesn't mention it. He doesn't need Joel to tease him about it, nor tell every hero who'll listen.

He just nods, shrugs, and takes a bite of his sandwich.

-

Jimmy's alone in the house when it happens again, curled up on the couch with his blanket over his shoulders and his LinkedIn profile pulled up on his phone.

He doesn't really know what happens.

All he knows is that there's a loud noise and he doesn’t do well with loud noises, but luckily he manages to keep a hold on his powers this time.

Or, he thinks he does.

Because in the same moment as the BANG, Jimmy feels so much.

That’s enough for Jimmy to shut the door and run back to the table, grabbing his cell phone. Then he returns, pulling it open again. Blossom is still there, looking a little surprised.

Jimmy pulls up his contacts, clicks on the one labeled ‘scott :) - super’ and hits call.

“You’ve reached Major, I’m probably winning a battle right now. Send me a text and I’ll get back to you when I have a moment.”

Straight to voicemail.

That can’t be good.

“Try the Mad King,” Jimmy tells her. “I’m still working until four, but keep me updated. Do you have my number?”

But Blossom never texts him any news.

And Joel tells him, that night, that Scott’s officially missing, and they’re moving Jimmy to a safehouse.

So it isn’t even 8pm when Jimmy finds himself in a small apartment downtown, the dim light of the setting sun half-illuminating the single room.

And Jimmy stays there all night, staring at his phone, as his worry crescendos over and over again, blowing out lightbulbs and spoiling food can by can.

They still haven’t found him in the morning.

Jimmy can do nothing but sit, alone, in this cheap, unused apartment of Joel’s, waiting for some message that his boyfriend has been found.

But there’s nothing, and Jimmy isn’t going to wait around doing nothing when Scott could be getting tortured right now.

Because that’s it, really. When Jimmy went missing, it was because some horrid, insane villain kidnapped him and ran experiments on him and treated him like an animal—

One of the blades on the floor fan comes off, crashing to the bottom of the fan cage.

Jimmy takes a deep breath.

He can’t continue to sit here on the ragged carpet (because there’s no furniture other than a single folding chair and a mattress) while Scott could be going through the exact same things that he had been subjected to.

Or worse, he thinks, pushing back a sickening memory.

So Jimmy packs up his little backpack that he hasn’t actually unpacked yet except to get his toothbrush, grabs the mask he’d left on the kitchen counter (which he balls up and shoves in the pocket of his jeans), and leaves, ready to find Scott.

Where does Scott usually go first?

He covers all of the city, but rarely ventures away from the most densely populated areas. Downtown is one of his favorites to frequent, as well as the pier.

Good thing Jimmy knows downtown like the back of his hand.

He catches the bus like it’s second nature, the schedule practically tattooed on the inside of his eyelids (despite the fact that he rarely rode the bus for fear of causing an accident. He learned it in case anyone ever asked him the bus schedule). He hasn’t spent much time out and about on his own, but he can get around and he’s lived with Lizzie long enough to know how to go somewhere by himself. That doesn’t mean he isn’t careful: he sits at the back of the bus with his back pressed against the window and watches everyone, careful to sort them into threat categories and keep tabs on everyone.

It’s exhausting. It always is.

It isn’t long at all before he leaves the bus at one of Scott’s favorite places—right across the way from the elementary school. Scott heads here first thing most mornings, keeping an eye on the children as they arrive at school.

The mask is scrunched uncomfortably in Jimmy’s pocket. He wishes he could put it on. He hates going out in public—not without at least a baseball cap.

It feels like everyone at this park is watching him.

Any of them could be in league with whoever took Scott. Any of them could have been one of the thugs that worked for Xornoth. Any of them could be someone he hurt in the past.

Every time someone walks past him, Jimmy automatically tenses. That woman could attack him. That man could crush his skull. That child could be a distraction. That man could grab him and pull him into an alley.

Jimmy shoves his hands in his hoodie’s pocket so that he doesn’t have to look at how they tremble. This is why he doesn’t go places alone. This is why he works from home right now.

This is why people need to not get kidnapped. Specifically the people that can help him not panic about being kidnapped.

Right, now, does he usually patrol around the school? Or just wait out front and watch the kids go in?

If he was Scott, what would he do?

Scott would probably patrol. He likes to be moving, likes to show off his skills.

So Jimmy hikes out of the park and crosses the road to the school, following the sidewalk all around the building.

On one side is an alley between some run-down apartments, and Jimmy passes through, keeping a close eye on anything out of place. Any knocked-over trash cans, any smears of dirt or dried blood on buildings, anything that could be the signs of a struggle.

He feels more and more anxious the further down he goes, swallowing back the thrumming of his power within him, the scar at the base of his skull burning.

He can’t cause an accident here. He's next to an elementary school, he can’t risk it.

Can he?

What accidents can he cause here?

Jimmy’s never really reached out with his powers before on purpose—not in a long time, not in a searching way.

But his powers can cause terrible things to happen, things as far away as inside the school, and if his power can know that there’s things that far away to ruin, then can’t he know, too?

So he reaches out into the surrounding buildings.

There are a lot of people here.

That’s the first thing he feels.

There’s hundreds of children in the school, and one of these buildings is an apartment complex, and Jimmy can’t see them or even really sense them? He just . . . knows that they’re there, in some kind of . . . sixth sense?

There are so many other things that he knows are there, but can’t verbalize. He simply knows, to an overwhelming degree, the contents of everything around and maybe there’s a reason he’s never done this before because he thinks he’s going to be sick—

“TJ!”

Jimmy flinches, hears something crash in the distance. He wheels around—this could be it this is the moment he’s kidnapped—, only to find fWhip standing at the mouth of the alley.

“Why are you out and about?” fWhip asks, moseying over, hands in his pockets. “Don’t you usually stay home from the cool parties?”

Right. He knows fWhip. Kind of. fWhip is nice, right? He helped save him.

Jimmy isn’t wearing his mask. Which is fine. It’s fine to not be wearing it, because fWhip recognized him anyways and his secret identity isn’t contingent on a mask anymore.

“Um, I’m looking for Major,” he says, head still spinning a bit. “He usually goes here every morning, and nobody saw him for his whole shift, so if he got kidnapped it was probably near—”

“Wait, Major’s missing?”

Jimmy frowns. “Yeah, did you not hear? He disappeared yesterday.”

fWhip checks over his shoulder, adjusts his goggles. “Okay. Not good. And if Major’s missing, why aren’t you in a safehouse?”

“Well, I was,” Jinmy says, looking down at his feet. How has he been caught already? He just barely left!

“But you couldn’t stick around when Major could be . . . being tortured?” guesses fWhip.

Jimmy shifts uncomfortably. “Yeah,” he says dejectedly. “But I can go back. The Mad King would—”

“Nah, don’t do that. I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to. Do you need help looking?”

And before Jimmy can so much as process what he’s said, fWhip is reaching up to the window in the building beside them, testing the latch and finding it open.

“Let’s check out this place,” he suggests, shoving the window open and grabbing the sill, pushing himself up and into the window in an impressive show of upper-body strength.

Jimmy blinks.

He didn’t expect to be joined in his search.

Let alone by fWhip.

“Okay, nobody’s here,” fWhip calls out the window. “You coming?”

“Is there a door?” Jimmy asks halfheartedly.

fWhip shrugs.

Jimmy sighs, grips the windowsill (a bit lower for him than it had been for fWhip), and heaves himself up, legs kicking for purchase on the wall and arms trembling under his weight.

He falls back once, arm scraping a bit against the sill, then manages to pull himself up the second time, his ribcage pressed in painfully against the windowsill, where he hangs for a moment before tipping over and landing in a heap on the other side.

“Try to roll when you come in,” fWhip advises as Jimmy picks himself up. “It’s easier. And way more cool.”

“I’ll remember that,” Jimmy grumbles, brushing the copious streaks of dust off his hoodie.

“So we’re looking at an abandoned first floor of some office building, I think,” fWhip says, flipping a switch on his goggles. “See anything?”

Jimmy looks around. It’s a fairly large space, the concrete ground scarred by the torn-up carpet (some of which still lies in an awkward heap against a wall), a single dead office chair sitting in the middle of the room. Otherwise, there’s some brightly-colored papers in a corner, and—

The front door slams open.

“TJ,” comes a suspicious and familiar voice.

The Mad King is standing in the doorway.

“Rats,” fWhip says, frowning. “Did you follow me?”

“You and Mythics are always up to no good,” Joel tells him dismissively, before turning back to Jimmy, arms crossed. “Why are you here?”

“Um . . . looking for Major?” Jimmy tries.

Joel raises an eyebrow. “With fWhip? Come on, TJ, if you were going to break house arrest it should’ve been with someone respectable.”

“Hey!”

“Come on, back to the safehouse.”

“But—”

“TJ,” Joel says firmly. “We aren’t arguing about this. I’ll keep looking for Major, yeah? You need—”

“But I, I can help!” Jimmy insists. This isn’t fair, he shouldn’t be locked up when his boyfriend could be going through the worst experiences of his life—

“Jimmy,” Joel grits out. fWhip makes a ‘yikes’ face, turns to start going through the neon papers in the corner.

“Since Major has been kidnapped, they will want to get the people he cares about the most—you,” Joel stresses. “They will want to hurt you to get him to give up whatever information they’re looking for. That’s why—”

“I know, I know, but I can defend myself,” argues Jimmy. “It’s—it’s Sc—I mean, it’s Major. I have to help. And I know—”

“You’re helping by staying safe,” says Joel. “I’m not arguing about this, okay?”

“Who would have a bake sale and then put the signs in an abandoned building?” fWhip murmurs, examining one of the said signs.

Which is stupid.

This is stupid.

How does Joel expect him to just sit there?

How can he tell Jimmy to go hide and let Scott get hurt?

But there’s no point in fighting this.

“Maybe there’s some way you can help from the apartment, okay?” Joel says placatingly, and Jimmy rolls his eyes.

“Sure. Fine, take me back, officer.”

“Don’t get an attitude with me, young man,” Joel warns, sputtering jokingly, but Jimmy’s stomach squirms just the slightest bit.

He’s not a child.

“fWhip, I’ll be back here in half an hour, okay?” Joel says. “Let me know if you find anything.”

Then he strides out the door, Jimmy reluctantly following along behind.

-

Joel finds Scott the next day.

It’s a small place, a closed mechanic shop, near the East side of the city, where this particular gang of villains decided to keep him.

Joel finds him by checking the security footage of the elementary school. He sees, in the corner of one of the cameras, a couple of neon signs hanging on the side of the building fWhip and Jimmy had broken into.

Backing it up a little bit, Joel finds the car that carried the people who hung up the signs (something they did several hours before dawn).

And when he tracks down that car, he finds Scott.

Jimmy receives the text that Scott’s been found and instantly calls Lizzie, begging her for a ride home. Lizzie agrees, and when Joel and Scott come through the front door, Jimmy is there waiting, a frozen pizza in the oven.

Jimmy drops everything, his stress releasing in a little burst of power that crashes his phone and knocks all the cushions off the sofa, hurrying toward Scott.

Scott looks absolutely exhausted. His suit is torn here and there, his hair tangled and greasy, his eyelids drooping. But he gives Jimmy a small smile and acquiesces to a gentle hug.

“Glad you’re safe,” Scott murmurs. “I was worried.”

Jimmy chuckles, pitched a little high with nerves. “You were worried? Imagine my state!”

Scott pulls away, plants a small kiss on Jimmy’s lips before tugging off his mask, mouth twisting in a grimace.

There’s a large bruise on his cheek, and a small line of them down his jaw, but he otherwise doesn’t seem to be in very bad condition. Still, Jimmy frets, hands twisting anxiously.

“Where are you hurt? Do you need to get checked out? You really should go to the hospital, just in—”

“I’m fine,” Scott cuts him off. “Just some bruises. It’s all right.”

Even so, Scott stands there patiently, as Jimmy takes in every part of him.

He seems to be telling the truth. Nothing looks broken or like it’s bleeding too badly. He’s holding himself a little gingerly, though, that could be a broken rib—

Jimmy prods at his chest and Scott steps back, hands over himself.

“It’s not broken,” Scott says, teeth gritted. “Joel already tried it. Just a deep bruise.”

“Probably the worst kidnappers I’ve ever seen,” Joel calls from the kitchen, where he’d gone after pushing past the two of them in the hall. “Didn’t even know how to torture him properly.”

Torture? “Scott, I’m so sorry—do you need anything? Should I schedule you a therapy appointment?”

Scott bursts out laughing. “Thank you, baby,” he says. “I’m fine. I promise. Just tired.”

“And an idiot,” adds Joel. “How’d you manage to get kidnapped by such an incompetent lot?”

“Their signs said homemade croissants,” Scott moans, walking into the kitchen as if nothing ever happened (though his arm is still wrapped around his ribs). “You know I love supporting small local businesses.”

“’Twas your downfall,” Joel intones, snickering. “Sorry, mate.”

Jimmy follows awkwardly, not entirely sure how to behave.

Scott’s . . . fine?

He hadn’t even considered that as an outcome. He hadn’t dared to think that Scott might return without severe injuries, without being traumatized by the torture and greatly needing help returning to the real world.

Like Jimmy had been.

He doesn’t know what he can even do.

How can he help Scott when Scott doesn’t need help?

So Jimmy just kind of hovers, near Scott, as he sits there and eats pizza and jokes a little with Joel.

Then Scott leaves to go shower, and Joel shoots Jimmy a sympathetic smile.

“He’s fine,” Joel assures him. “He may be a bit clumsy for a while—his hands were zip-tied pretty tightly together—but he’s really fine.”

It’s hard to believe him.

But Jimmy just nods and resolves to not treat Scott strangely. He’s fine, after all.

If he’s fine, then so is Jimmy.

-

That night, there’s something wrong.

Jimmy wakes up quite suddenly, the odd sixth sense that he’d probed at the other day ringing with the notice that something is off.

He doesn’t know what. He doesn’t know what’s changed in their surroundings, but he knows that it’s not quite right and he needs to be aware of it.

Jimmy blinks open his eyes, glances over to Scott to reassure himself that his partner is safely there.

And leaning over Scott, a knife gleaming in their hand and poised above Scott’s chest, is a person dressed in black.

Jimmy reacts immediately.

He dives over Scott, knocking the man’s arm just as he sinks the knife down—Scott wakes with a cry of pain, the knife carving a jagged line in his chest and up his shoulder as the man is knocked off course.

Jimmy rolls off of Scott, faces the intruder for a brief second.

The intruder spits out a curse, then barrels into Jimmy, brandishing his knife.

Jimmy moves on instinct. He grapples with the man, twists his wrist with the knife—the man slashes at him, but Jimmy twists further until his grip loosens on the hilt, and then he takes the knife.

He spent hours and days and weeks training with Xornoth in knife work and he knows exactly how to attack to injure, which spots are the most painful without being fatal. He stabs the knife into the attacker’s upper arm, then into his side when he howls and twists away, and Jimmy can’t help but show off a bit as he flips the knife to his other hand and drives it into the man’s knee.

The intruder falls to his knees, and Jimmy’s head is pounding with the adrenaline, and he can’t move his focus from taking this man out entirely because he tried to kill Scott—

Jimmy spins around to be behind the man, hands on his throat—the man grabs at his wrists, nails scrabbling against his skin—and sends a burst of power out.

Under his sweaty palms, knife still tucked between the fingers of his right hand, Jimmy feels the man’s neck break. Not just the bone: his vocal cords snap—his muscles fall loose—his throat collapses, and so does the man, falling heavily to the carpet.

Jimmy stands there, panting.

Scott wheezes in pain.

Jimmy fumbles on the bedside table, grabs Scott’s hero phone with fingers slick with blood. He presses the emergency button on the side, holds it down for a solid five seconds.

Then he drops it back on the table, opens one of the drawers to pull out Scott’s mask.

“Jimmy,” Scott gasps, sitting up, clutching his arm over the slash in his shirt. “Are—are you okay?”

Jimmy nods, then he clicks on the bedside lamp, bathing the room in low, yellow light, and surveys Scott.

There’s a sheen of sweat over Scott’s bruised face, his eyes pained and confused (and concerned, and very very worried), but Jimmy barely registers that as his eyes find the wound.

His nightshirt is soaked in blood, spreading out from the slash, and it only takes one glance at the wound for Jimmy to know that it needs a professional to take a look at it. He doesn’t know near enough about injuries to know anything other than that it looks bad.

He leans over Scott (Scott flinches back) and pulls the mask over his face, carefully holding the knife pointed away from him. His hair catches a bit in the eyeholes and Jimmy doesn’t do anything about it.

"Major?" calls a voice from below, and Jimmy spins around, knife held out, as he hears the stairs creak with running footsteps. Was there back-up? No matter. There won’t be, soon.

A pajama-clad Blossom pushes open the door from where it's half-open (Scott always closes the door when they go to bed), her hands flying to her mouth when she takes in the scene. "Oh my gosh—Major, TJ, what happened? Should I call an ambulance? I'll call one—"

"Hello? Is everything okay?"

More footsteps, then Gem appears, mask pulled over tangled hair.

"Hi, we need an ambulance—the address—"

"What happened?" Gem says, echoing Blossom's words as Blossom turns away, one hand covering the ear not pressed to her phone.

Scott pushes himself up further, grimacing. "Intruder," he manages, nodding toward the body on the floor. Gem glances at it, before her eyes fix on Jimmy.

"TJ, sit down—where are you hurt? Where do you guys keep your first aid kit?"

"It's not my blood," Jimmy says, his voice too loud in his ears. He gestures with the knife toward the motionless body, the neck appearing kind of . . . squashed. "I'm fine. Check Major."

"Shoot, the attacker," Gem mutters. "Blossom, tell them that there's two or three people that need—"

"He's dead," Jimmy interrupts. "Don't worry about him. Check Major."

Gem blinks.

Meets Jimmy's eyes.

"Okay," she says after a moment. "I'll check Major. Did you kill him?"

Jimmy swallows.

"He was attacking us," he says stiffly. "He stabbed Major. I acted in self-defense."

Gem moves around and climbs onto Jimmy's empty side of the bed, still keeping an eye on him even as she checks out Scott, pulling away his shirt and asking quiet questions (to which Scott responds, his breath shallow and words faltering).

"The ambulance should be here soon," Blossom says, moving toward the foot of the bed. "TJ, you're covered in blood—set that knife down, let me help you."

"It's not my blood," Jimmy says again. "I'm fine."

"Okay, then—"

"You help Major," Gem says, slipping off the bed and coming back over. "I'll help TJ wash up. C'mon."

Numbly, Jimmy follows her out of the room, checking over his shoulder to make sure Scott is okay. Scott waves him on with the hand that isn’t held to his chest, and Jimmy continues down the hall, into the bathroom.

"We'll have to make this quick," Gem says. "Sit down. And give me that knife."

Jimmy doesn't want to give her the knife. He pulls it back to his chest when she reaches for it, thumbs the blade protectively.

"I need the knife to give it to Major, so that when the police get here we can have a convincing story without you in it. Make sense?"

After considering, Jimmy nods. It makes sense.

And that means he needs to not be here.

He hands over the knife. "I killed him," he says. "If they ask, Major stabbed him three times. Then he fell and broke his neck."

Gem shakes her head. "Okay. Wow. Okay. You know we don't normally kill people, right? Never mind. I'll go give this to Major."

Jimmy glances in the mirror as she steps past. There's blood spattered across his face, more in splashes on his nightshirt and shorts and arms. His eyes, cold and wide, peer back at him out of his pale face.

He needs to get out of here.

Gem returns after two or three minutes, handing Jimmy a jacket (one of Scott’s, he distantly notices).

"Zip that up over the blood, rinse off your hands, and let's go," she says. "We'll head to my place. Blossom will ride with Major in the ambulance. It doesn't look too bad, so he should be okay."

Jimmy obeys, letting Gem turn on the water so he can stick his hands under the cold spray.

For a moment, he's back there—just trying to scrub the blood off his hands from his first intentional murder in the sink with the broken handle.

Then he blinks, looking down at the sink, at the red running off his hands.

"Good enough. Let's go."

-

Joel joins them in Gem's dark kitchen after about two hours, stripping off a pair of gloves. He's fully dressed in his supersuit, his hair unbrushed and his posture stooped, looking more exhausted than ever.

"Gem, you have anything caffeinated?" Joel asks, opening a cupboard.

"Yeah, there's a pot of coffee already made. Mugs are in the left cupboard."

Jimmy watches as Joel finds a mug, fills it up with coffee, and then takes a swig of it black.

"Thanks," he says, face scrunching up at the taste. Joel doesn't like black coffee. Jimmy knows that. He always adds cream and sugar.

"Major's okay," Joel informs them, pulling out a chair at the kitchen table to sit across from them.

Jimmy's been here more or less in silence for the past hour and a half, staring at the wooden table. When they'd first come in, Gem had sent him to wash his hands and arms and face better than he had before, but there's nothing they can do about his sleepclothes, so he's just been sitting here in a blood-spattered t-shirt for a while. Gem had joined him after pulling a hoodie over her pajamas and starting the coffee maker, and has since sat beside him, working on a crossword puzzle.

"Major's okay, he and Blossom are at the hospital now. The intruder was pronounced dead on site. Major identified him as one of the men who kidnapped him."

Jimmy doesn't feel anything.

No sense of satisfaction at knowing that the man truly deserved it, no fear at how close they had been to getting killed, no guilt for his actions.

Nothing.

"TJ," Joel says hesitantly, "how are you doing?"

Jimmy shrugs.

He's still covered in the blood of the man he murdered.

"They say killing is like riding a bike," Jimmy says after a long pause. "You never quite forget how to do it."

Gem sighs. Joel winces.

"Right. Well, we don't really kill people, as a general rule. It's kind of, like, against the law."

The law.

As if the law applies to heroes and villains.

Jimmy's not really sure which one he is right now.

Neither, probably. Which means the law should apply to him, even if it hasn’t stuck in the past.

"I've never really been one to follow the law," Jimmy says.

"Sure, but as a person—"

He isn't a person. If anything was to prove that fact, it would be tonight. He hadn’t thought, he’d just acted, and even now the first feeling that he can even register is the feeling of not feeling. He isn’t a person.

He's a weapon.

He's a pet.

That's the word that triggers his therapy brain.

"I'm in a bad headspace," Jimmy interrupts Joel, using words that he'd rehearsed with Nora. "I don't feel like a person right now. I might be dissociating."

"We have to talk about this," Joel insists. "We can't run away from hard conversations—"

"I promised I would never kill again," Jimmy whispers, and, ah. There’s the panic. Detached and not quite real, but panic nonetheless. "I can't escape it. I'm not—I can't. I'm a weapon, I was made to be a weapon, I—"

"Stop that right now," says Joel firmly. "You are a person, and you just saved someone from being killed. It was self-defense, not mindless."

Jimmy almost laughs, because to some extent, it was mindless. He acted entirely on instinct, following the training Xornoth had given him, whether or not it was self-defense.

He doesn't like hurting people.

He never wanted to go back to being a villain.

It's not even that he's upset about killing that specific man. Screw that man, he tried to kill his boyfriend.

He's really just afraid that now that he's killed one person, he'll keep doing it. It isn’t like anyone can stop him. Nobody can stop him, not even himself, and he wouldn’t even care if his current state has anything to say about it.

"TJ," Gem says carefully, "why did you kill that man?"

Jimmy frowns. Why? "To protect Major."

"Do you have any desire to kill people outside of defense?"

Does he?

He's never had the desire to kill.

Not even when he was getting rewarded for it. Killing was something he did to survive, to escape severe punishment, or accidentally.

And here, he killed to protect. To save his boyfriend. He didn't get any satisfaction out of it. He certainly didn't enjoy it. He doesn't want to do it again.

That cuts through the foggy panic in his mind, the fear that he might keep going, that he wouldn’t be able to stop himself.

"No," he says, then stronger, "no. I never want to kill. I hate it. I only do it when I have to."

Joel lets out a breath of relief. "Thank goodness. Okay, next issue. You and Major clearly aren't safe here. Do you want to try to stick it out, or should we start moving you two as soon as possible?"

Jimmy hadn't even thought about it.

Of course they aren't safe here—he hadn't been safe alone, when Scott was kidnapped and he had to be moved to the safehouse. Why did he think that things would magically change just because Scott was here? Every villain in the city knows where they live. The rest of the gang that kidnapped Scott could show up on their doorstep at any time, even more angry than before.

Anyone could show up at any time.

Jimmy doesn't feel as secure as he used to feel, surrounded by superheroes as they are.

"We'll move," Jimmy decides. "As soon as Major is back, we're moving. It just isn't safe here."

They’ll move.

Then he’ll deal with this numbness.

-

"Hey!" Jimmy calls, running into the kitchen. "No! You aren't allowed to lift anything more than ten pounds, put that down!"

Scott sighs with an over-dramatic roll of his eyes, sets the box back on the counter. "It's not that heavy. And it doesn't even hurt right now."

"Just because it doesn't hurt doesn't mean it isn't injured, Mister," Jimmy tells him. "You don't want to pull out your stitches."

"You haven't let me help at all. Pearl already handled the actual heavy stuff, let me do something."

Jimmy shakes his head and picks up the box. "That's your own fault for getting stabbed right before we moved."

"We're moving because I got stabbed," Scott points out. "It's not like any of this was planned."

"You should have thought about that before you got stabbed, then."

Scott groans, then reluctantly laughs. "I guess I should have. Can I at least drive?"

Jimmy lets out a very put-upon sigh. "I suppose, since I don't have a driver's license, you can be allowed to drive. But only if you behave yourself."

Scott giggles again. "You're adorable," he says fondly. "You know I'm the Primary Protector of the city, right? I don't think you'd be able to stop me."

"And I killed a man last week," counters Jimmy. "I don't think you want to be on my bad side."

"Oh," Scott says after a moment. "Are we joking about this now?"

Jimmy shrugs. "We're in the laugh-or-cry stage. I'm trying to laugh about it right now."

Scott looks at him. Really, truly, looks at him.

Then he laughs. Just a little bit, but still a laugh.

"I love you," he says. "I'll help you hide the body next time."

Jimmy laughs a little, too, but Scott pauses.

"There . . . isn't going to be a next time, right?" he asks uncertainly.

"Oh, absolutely not. Not unless it's entirely necessary."

Scott nods several times. "Good," he says. “Yep. Cool.”

Jimmy turns back toward the door, box in his arms, and waits until he’s out of the house to huff, shaking his head (though a smile plays on his lips).

They’re okay.

He pushes away the numb feeling that threatens to seep into his brain and thinks and remembers and knows that they’re okay.

There isn't a bang, this time. There's no big noise, no announcement of whatever surge is about to hit.

It's just that suddenly, for the first time since the deli incident three days ago, Scott is everything.

He is the icicles hanging from the wheels of every parked car in the city, the slush on the sidewalks downtown, the great melting piles of dirty snow in parking lots that freeze more firmly and spread as he becomes them. He follows the water pipes under the ground all the way along, freezing over as they go, to a townhouse where a woman with brown hair is snapping on her sunflower-themed superhero mask—

It's just the slightest bit easier to pull himself back into his body this time than it has been in the past. Maybe seeing Pearl had shocked him just enough, or maybe it was some unknown influence, or just chance, but Scott can feel his fingers again and pulls himself out of every piece of ice in the city and returns, head reeling and bile rising in his throat.

When he can get a hold of his bearings, desperately trying not to vomit, it’s not quite the same as it was moments ago.

It's snowing.

It hadn't been snowing, but now it is snowing and Scott can't quite comprehend why.

The forecast had said no chance of snow. Not for a couple more days. Scott remembers that very distinctly because he'd complained to Jimmy about it over breakfast.

There's a dark cloud directly above him in the sky, and snowflakes swirling down around, and Scott feels. . . .

So much. 

So powerful. So unnervingly powerful.

He doesn’t like it at all.

The handful of watching bystanders and the singular reporter/cameraman pair are shivering, pressing closer to each other for warmth, snowflakes settling on their shoulders and hair.

fWhip's the same way, and he glares at Scott, arms wrapped around himself to find warmth where his thin coat can't offer any.

"Dude, what was that for?" fWhip demands. "You're hurting civilians."

Is he hurting people? Scott still isn't really sure what he did, or why it's snowing, or why he feels so dizzy, but he knows that it was his own burst of power that made the air so frigid. Of course it was. How could it have been anyone else?

Scott glances around at them. The reporter gives him a shivering thumbs-up, so Scott turns back to fWhip, ready to call a bit of a break so he can take the time to reverse this.

fWhip, however, is gone.

Scott mutters a curse under his breath. His power’s got to be teleportation, then. Maybe Scott's a little full of himself, but he thinks he would've noticed superspeed. Some little breeze as he ran or something, right?

That isn't really important, though. As much as it stings to let fWhip get away, it's even worse to accidentally hurt innocents. How could he let this happen again? How is it that he can still feel so much beyond his body, his senses present and yet far away?

No time to really contemplate that now. There's people around him, and new fights to find, so Scott returns to the moment at hand to attempt to unfreeze the civilians around him.

And as he travels home that evening, Scott can feel every arm of every snowflake in the city.

-

"We've never seen anything like this from Major. He somehow created a wall of ice that was over thirty feet high, images shown here. Observers said they felt a noticeable drop in temperature and that it even started to snow. One witness said that it got so cold that frost started forming on his shoulders. When—"

Scott shuts off the TV and flops back onto the couch. The gossip magazines had been fine. He's always on the cover of some magazine or another. Everybody knows not to trust those, that they spread rumors and lies.

But the news? Channel 9? Sure, he's been a little bit out of control lately. That doesn't deserve an entire news story. He's fine.

If he closes his eyes, he can feel every bit of ice in the neighborhood.

It's too much. It’s so much that Scott can barely keep from vomiting with how dizzy he is.

Where did this even come from?

At first—was it really only a week or two ago when this started?—, the all-encompassing connection faded after a couple of minutes, leaving a lingering sense of nausea but no other ill effects. Now it lasts for hours at a time, ready to grasp his senses if he relaxes for even a second, a far-too intense amount of power to hold back forever.

This morning, Scott had frozen his tea. His toast had frosted over in his hands. His chair still has icicles hanging from it.

And he hasn't managed to find the courage to tell anyone, either. How is he supposed to be the Primary Protector if he can't even keep a hold of his own powers?

How can he be a good husb—boyfriend if he can't stop freezing things at random?

As summoned by the thought of him, a key turns in the front lock, and four little pairs of cat feets patter to the door. Despite himself, Scott can't help but smile at Elle as she trots past him, abandoning her place on the armchair.

Jimmy enters smiling, nose pink from the cold, and Scott almost completely forgets about his worries as he stares at that smile.

Even back at the beginning, when Jimmy’s eyes had been dead and his face cloudy, he was beautiful. Watching the light and life return to his face had been like watching a butterfly tear free of its chrysalis, transformed and radiant.

Radiant. That’s a good word to describe Jimmy’s smile.

He could stare at that smile every morning for the rest of his life, Scott thinks.

"I'm so gay," he says out loud.

Jimmy snorts, leading the two cats to the kitchen. "Is this news?"

Scott doesn't dignify that with a response. Instead, he pushes himself to his feet, stretches, and follows Jimmy.

"How was your day?" Scott asks, checking the clock. It's getting close to dinnertime, he ought to get started on something. Spaghetti, probably, since he left it so late. Something quick and easy, that even he can't ruin.

"Good! Real cold, you would've loved it."

Maybe. But now Scott can't help but wonder if it was so cold because of him.

Can he actually affect the weather that much? Sure, he'd made it snow that one time, but only directly above where he was.

If he was really affecting the temperature of the city, Scott assures himself, he would've seen something on the weather. As far as the meteorologists have reported, the temperatures are accurate and expected.

"Jerry sent us all home with a couple of cookies, which was nice of him! His wife made them for the office," Jimmy continues. "I asked, and they don’t have almonds, so we can both eat them." He gestures toward a little bag of six or so cookies on the table.

Scott's heart warms a little bit. Jimmy didn’t have to do that. He never has to do anything like that, but he's always been one of the most selfless people Scott knows. It's a small act, checking for one's partner's allergens, but huge in the scheme of the relationship. He can't wait to enjoy the cookies with his boyfriend.

But dinner first.

"I was thinking of making spaghetti tonight," says Scott, once again checking the time. "Unless there's something else you want?"

Jimmy shrugs from where he's bent over, feeding each cat a treat. "Whatever you want sounds good," he says, something sappy in his tone. Then, straightening and turning to Scott with a bit of a frown, he asks, "Unrelated—were you warm, babe?"

Scott blinks. He's not, not really. He happens to have a built-in cooling system and can dust his skin with frost any time he likes. And sometimes he does turn down the house temperature, but usually only in the summer. "Uh, not particularly?"

"Oh," Jimmy laughs a little. "Well, it's kind of cold in here. What's the temperature?"

It doesn't really feel cold, but Scott heads into the hall to check the house temperature at the thermostat set on the wall, if only for Jimmy’s peace of mind.

The number he sees displayed there stops him in his tracks.

42°F.

No way.

If he's—he usually has to consciously exert energy to make an entire house cold, and here he'd done it without even noticing. That's—that just isn't possible. He can tell the differences in temperature, he knows what hot and cold feel like, he knows—

Scott bashes the button a couple of times to turn it up to 70°F, checking over his shoulder to make sure that Jimmy doesn't look at the thermostat. He doesn't want to worry him. He doesn't want Jimmy to think something's wrong, when nothing's wrong, everything's fine and normal.

"You're right, it was pretty chilly," he calls back to the kitchen. "I set it for seventy, so don't worry about it."

Scott's going to worry about it, though.

The entire house. He brought the entire house nearly down to freezing temperatures. No wonder Elle and Norman were cuddling like they rarely do.

Scott doesn't know what's wrong. Of course, nothing's wrong. This is just a slight hiccup. Nothing bad is happening.

And suddenly, it gets very intense very fast.

One moment he's there, staring stubbornly at the thermostat, telling himself that he’s in control and he needs to shape up—and the next he's all the way across the city, creeping up windows and the sides of houses and freezing water in gutters and he feels free, he feels everything, he feels like he's going to vomit—

And then there's a shout, and arms around his incorporeal waist, and it's only Scott's instinct that gives him the ability to toss up ice around himself without even seeing through his own eyes.

He's still so far away, crawling into the coffee of a worker in an office building, blowing through a vent in a high school classroom open for robotics club, curling around the ankles of pedestrians as they trudge through the slush on the sidewalk, all at once and so much more.

It's not like looking through a kaleidoscope, it's like being a kaleidoscope, spinning and fractured and put-together in new ways and new places, and Scott is remade thousands of times before he finally finds a metaphorical rock in this river that has swept him away.

That rock is a tiny bit of frost curling around the fingers of his lover, who holds Scott's unmoving body under a dome of ice.

He needs to get back to Jimmy.

Scott drags his way back to himself, expending almost a physical effort, clawing and scraping through time and space and many swirling seas of ice until he can finally see through his own eyes.

He gasps in a breath and chokes almost immediately, dust filling his lungs. His mouth and throat are dry and chalky, and he can't hold back a coughing fit even as something heavy hits his back several times and helps eject the dust from his throat.

When Scott can breathe again, tears streaming from his eyes, he pulls his aching body (he can feel his body, every part of it, cold and tired and nauseating and his head hurts) to his knees and blinks over at Jimmy.

Jimmy's fearful eyes peer out at him from a face white with dust, more of it powdering his hair and in almost a splash across his chest. He looks shaken, but otherwise unharmed.

"Are you okay?" Jimmy asks desperately, trembling hands finding their way to Scott's face.

Scott swallows dust, then croaks, "Yeah, I think. You?"

Jimmy nods, hands still tenderly cupped around Scott's face. One grimy thumb wipes away a tear. "Yeah. Good thinking with the ice."

Scott glances around, sees the strong little igloo that he's thrown around them.

And he's not entirely sure why.

"What happened?"

"The wall collapsed," Jimmy says shortly, dropping Scott's face to dig into his jeans pocket. "It's not good. This is why I always carry a mask—you never know when it might come in handy—"

A mask?

Scott barely even has time to process what Jimmy's saying before a mask is being snapped over his eyes, the elastic pulling funny around his hair.

Why would he need a mask? If the wall collapsed—

"Was that not . . . you?" he asks, gesturing out. It's something that would have happened years ago, before Jimmy got control of his powers. Maybe something went wrong, maybe Jimmy felt the burst of power that went through Scott (and if he releases his tight focus just the tiniest bit, he'll be swept away again into that river of power) and as a result, his own powers kicked in and the wall fell in.

The wall of their house, their things, Elle—Norman—

"It was something more than me," says Jimmy grimly. "And there's someone else here. Get ready to fight."

Isn't that nice?

So Scott dusts himself off a bit, flexes his toes (no shoes for a battle is just asking for trouble), and lets the ice melt away.

For a wild moment, he thinks that he somehow ended up outside.

Then he realizes that he’s still in the house—the front of the house is just gone.

Hanging out of their gutted house is his and Jimmy's bed, half of their shower, and their entire sofa. Books are spread across the day-old snow from where their shelf had collapsed, and their front door is lying on the doormat, the yard a mess of drywall rubble.

Almost poetically, a snowflake lands on Scott's nose. That hadn't been on the weather radar this morning.

He stands, slowly, head spinning, and takes a step off the splintered wood floor and into the yard, snow soaking his socks. He takes another step, then another, until he can see around the side of the tree in their front yard.

There's no one there. Nothing moves. The only sound is his gasping breaths.

And, like an idiot, he starts to let his guard down. He thinks maybe Jimmy was mistaken, that he had destroyed it by accident and hadn't realized.

So Scott lets his fists lower, lets his eyes turn back to the house, looking for any sign of his cats.

A shadow passes over him, followed by the sound of something rippling through the air, and Scott whirls back around.

He's just in time to see a woman land on the ground behind him.

He isn't in time to block her punch.

Her fist glances off his face—he manages to turn his head just enough that it won't be lights out but his vision does spark as pain explodes across his face—and Scott stumbles back, tripping over his own heels until he hits the ground.

For a moment, he can feel everything—and when he tries to quickly pull away from it, he pulls some of it back with him.

The light flakes of snow that have been floating down increase. The sky above begins to darken. Ice crackles down Scott's arms, coating them in the best protection he can create.

Scott pulls himself to his feet, reeling at the nausea that comes from using even a tiny bit of the power that the city has to offer. He's not sure he can do much more than defend himself right now, so ill-accustomed to trying to harness whatever this is. But he steadies himself and looks up at his attacker, properly taking her in for the first time.

She has goggles like fWhip's instead of a normal mask pulled over her eyes, her thin face framed with long, blond hair. She's tall, as tall as Scott is, and she stands more confidently than most minor villains. Her costume is somewhat uncommon for what Scott usually sees—she's dressed like a cosplayer, old-fashioned puffy shirt and breeches with tall, leather boots. Definitely not suited for the weather, but she doesn't seem to even notice it, her leather-wrapped knuckles not even shaking despite it certainly being below freezing.

Scott's never seen her before in his life.

"Major," she growls, as if he's her worst enemy.

"Who are you?" Scott gasps.

Instead of answering, she takes another swing. This one Scott manages to dodge, leaning back far enough that he barely feels the wind as it passes.

She goes for another hit (which she again misses) before rocking back on her heels and pulling from the holster around her waist that Scott has only just noticed—a gun.

A fascinating gun, one with showy gears and mechanisms that Scott only knows about because a snowflake flutters its way inside the weapon (and he sees and feels and is that snowflake), but a gun nonetheless and Scott is very much not bulletproof.

And he knows, through the little specks of frost growing on the gun, that she pulls the trigger, setting off a series of chain reactions inside the workings.

He reaches for a wall of ice—

There's a scream, to his right—Scott's head whips in that direction—a teenager has stepped out of the house next door, phone pressed to their ear as they watch the battle—

And then something hits Scott hard in the arm and he's knocked back from the force of it, stumbling backward through the snow until his foot slips and he crashes, flat on his back.

There's more screaming, and a very loud noise, and Scott looks around as if in slow motion and gets pulled beyond his body once again.

The man across the street, peering fearfully through his window as frost spreads across the glass. The teenager practically screaming for help on the emergency line as a flurry of snowflakes land in their hair. A family, hiding in their van instead of getting out and into the house, their tires icing over. A young man who had been out for a walk with his dog just staring down the street, where a familiar superhero (though in street clothes) is lying on the ground, the snow around him slowly turning red.

 And then, like whiplash, Scott is forced back into his body.

And it hurts.

"Did I get shot?" he hears himself mumble, and before he even has time to process his own words he looks down at his arm to see an awful lot of blood seeping out of his bicep. That can't be good.

The pain really amps up, then. It’s all Scott can do to not scream as more and more blood stains the snow, bathing his arm in red.

He needs to get up, needs to keep all those watching people safe, but just thinking about moving his arm makes him want to throw up. It hurts, and badly, a burning hole in his upper left arm and every breath is a gasp that tears at his throat and every movement sends pain jangling down his entire body.

The woman is standing above him. Blurrily, Scott sees her gun pointed right at his head.

"What's going on?" she demands, the words coming as if from underwater. "What has happened to us?"

Scott blinks. What's going on? He doesn't know what’s going on. All he knows is that he's feeling kind of dizzy and his arm hurts and everything smells like blood.

He blinks again, and Jimmy's there, appearing upside-down above his head. He looks pretty from this angle.

"I'll kill you," Jimmy probably says. Whatever he says is low and threatening, and defending Scott. That's nice of him.

And he probably does something. All Scott sees is that the sky gets very very dark, and a roaring sound fills his ears, and the snow gets thrown about and the grass gets torn out of the ground with the force of the wind.

And then he blinks, and the storm is dying down, and Jimmy's kneeling beside him—

Scott screams and everything comes into clarity, and a Jimmy made of a sharp edges is twisting a shirt around Scott's arm right where it hurts the worst—his world is on fire and he can't even think, it's so so so bad—

"Breathe, Scott!" Jimmy commands, cutting harshly through the echo in his ears. Scott sucks in a breath without thinking. It's cold and burns his lungs, but it feels good after screaming.

"An ambulance is coming," Jimmy tells him, clearly and carefully. He looks blurry suddenly, going in and out of focus. "I can’t come with you, but you’ll be okay. Keep your mask on, okay?"

Scott stares at him.

"Cool," Jimmy says, patting Scott's hip. "I'm going to call Lizzie to come here and look for Norman and Elle, so don't worry about that. Did you put your wallet on the bedside table?"

He usually puts his wallet there. Scott nods, then gasps when the movement of his neck pulls at his arm in some way that he didn't think was possible. It hurts. Why does it hurt so much? Surely . . . surely he's had worse. Surely a little . . . a little gunshot wound is nothing.

"Right," mutters Jimmy. He looks away, calling out to someone Scott can't see. "Hey, you! Go in the house through there, okay? Look for a thin wallet on the bedside table and bring it here."

Then he turns back to Scott, and for some strange reason, starts rubbing his hand.

The one attached to his arm. His arm that hurts.

Scott grits his teeth and tries not to scream.

He's been shot. He's been shot, and he needs to man up and deal with it. He's been through . . . like, way worse, after all. Not long ago, he broke his arm and got a concussion at the same time. He ought to at least be better put together than he was then.

Scott struggles to sit up, feels his stomach and head turn at the same time. He pushes through it—he has to get up, he has to help Jimmy fight the woman—but a hand firmly pushes him back down.

"Do not sit up," Jimmy instructs. "You're injured. Hear those sirens? They're coming for you, big man."

Now that Scott thinks about it, he can hear sirens. They probably aren't that important, though, so he focuses on Jimmy, Jimmy and his chattering teeth and his red hands and his concerned eyes.

"Are you cold?" he thinks he asks. Maybe he doesn't say anything, though, because Jimmy doesn’t reply, instead turning away.

Then he blinks again, and someone who is not Jimmy leans over him.

"Where's—" not Jimmy, don't say Jimmy, secret identities and all that— "Where's Solidarity?"

The woman frowns. "Major? We're taking you to the hospital. Do you remember what happened?"

"Where's Solidarity?" Scott asks again, as clearly as he can. He just wants his boyfriend here with him, is that too much to ask?

The woman's face grows serious, but she doesn't say anything else to him. She backs up, making room for some other people who lay a stretcher beside him.

And then there's a lot of pain as people move him and settle him and lift him, and Scott is horribly conscious of all of it, from the ground to the ambulance bed, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out.

He wants Jimmy. Why isn’t Jimmy here?

He feels so dizzy, though. So very dizzy, and sick—and someone’s snapping in his face, telling him to keep his eyes open, but his eyes are open, he’s deliberately holding them as wide as he can despite the blackness fuzzing over his vision.

He should be okay to take a little nap, though. That should be fine.