Moons Don’t Quit

MOONS DON'T QUIT

N one of them know what to make of me.

Mutant. Hero. Agent. Broken thing. Nightmare. Orphan.

Technically speaking, I'm all those things, although that last one bites the deepest, the fangs of loss sinking down to the bone, tearing up flesh and leaving scars that still ache when I'm forced to look at them.

When most FISA agents look at me, they see a boy whose parents were murdered by a supervillain. They see the remnants of a tragic story that no one really wants to think about, a reminder that pulses across the surface of our agency's past like an infected wound, like skin ripped open, red, raw and burning hot to the touch. I'm the infection that won't allow that wound to heal, something that needs to be cut out or burned away so it can finally stop hurting everything around it.

Some of them don't know how to look at me, so they don't. They keep their heads down and their eyes averted, either too afraid or too weak to deal with who and what I represent, who and what I am. Even when we're sent on missions together, they treat me like I'm a ghost haunting their team, invisible and barely believed in.

There's only one FISA agent who never has a problem looking at me, and when he does, it isn't with pity or fear or disdain.

Agent Jamie Moon is a strange case. Young, almost as young as me but not quite. That type of imperfectly gorgeous, with just enough flaws—a scar curving around his left eyebrow, nose broken one too many times, freckles spattered across his face like flecks of artfully flicked paint, crooked right incisor—to make him look interesting rather than blandly handsome. Clever enough and skilled enough to have passed through the FISA academy in barely six months, to have been sent on his first solo mission at the age of nineteen.

Everyone says that Jamie will become the youngest team leader in FISA history, walking in the footsteps of his parents, both legendary agents, one dead in the field, the other in a very senior position within the agency.

"You wanna go?" Jamie holds up a roll of boxing tape, his gaze steady as ever. But after years of working with him, I've come to recognise when there's a storm brewing, snapping at the heels of all that calm he cloaks himself in.

I've been waiting for him to start something ever since he walked into the agency gym although I tried to hide the fact that I was anticipating a confrontation by busying myself with a punching bag. There aren't many agents who will spar with me anymore, and there are even fewer who I would consider a genuine challenge. Jamie Moon is one of them if not the one.

I drop my chin in a short nod, silently acquiescing despite the fact I know better than to engage with someone when they're spoiling for a fight, especially when the person they want to fight is me. But it's not like I wasn't expecting this at some point, his impending reaction flashing bright and ominous in my mind like a bomb countdown.

Jamie is slow to anger, a man whose temper is very much the opposite to his younger brother's. Caleb will explode at the barest provocation,his rage more like a firework, tremendous to behold in the moment but also quick to fizzle out. Jamie's anger is a slow build to absolute destruction, a star that has to absorb enough matter before it goes supernova.

I wait for Jamie on the mat and get myself into a prefight stance, surreptitiously watching him while he wraps his hands, my own hands already taped for the punching bag. There might have been a time when I could have asked whether he wanted me to wrap them for him, but if that time ever did exist, it's certainly one that we've both passed far beyond.

In some ways, maybe it was inevitable that we'd end up here. Inevitable from the moment I set eyes on Rex for the first time in almost fifteen years, and I realised the son of the monster who killed my parents grew up to be the most beautiful man I'd ever seen. Or maybe that wasn't it, because no matter how intoxicatingly gorgeous he is, Rex is still a Nova, and that truth should have doused me in a bucket of ice-cold reality. But then he opened his mouth, and a stream of nonsense came out that left me bizarrely transfixed by the utter absurdity of it.

Over the months I spent patrolling with him, it became increasingly astounding to me that a man with a power as potentially devastating as Rex's could be both so chaotically endearing and viciously kind-hearted.

Jamie finishes wrapping his hands and throws the tape down on a nearby bench. He prowls across the room like the predator he was trained most of his life to be, all loose, rolling muscles and undeniable threat, his steps deathly silent as befits an agent of his level.

Once we're in position, there's a minute, barely a hundred heartbeats, where we lock eyes. But within that minute, a whole other fight is instigated, a different brand of conflict to the one we're about to engage in physically, full of half-formed accusations and a distinct lack of apologies.

There's tension, thick and thunderous, in the air between us, ratcheting up like pressure in the atmosphere from an incoming hurricane.

Jamie is also one of the few men who matches me in both height and muscle mass, so when he comes at me, full charge, no holds barred, it's like being run over by an incredibly determined truck. He hits me with a flurry of punches and kicks, one after the other in quick succession, each well-aimed attack fast and mean, meant to hurt .

In head-to-head combat, I'd bet on myself as the victor most days, but if it came down to a hunt, out there in the dark, Jamie's killer instincts would become an asset I'd be naive to underestimate.

This isn't most days, because unlike other times we've done this, Jamie is beyond pissed, which makes him twice as dangerous as he'd otherwise be. Anger can make some people slow, easy to throw off their stride and deflect hits meant to do real damage by blunting them into something harmless. But Jamie isn't like that, because his anger doesn't blaze, it freezes. His fury is an ice age, not an inferno. It makes his violence more focused, awake and alive with purpose.

With any other agent, I would hold back, temper my Liquid Onyx given strength and enhanced speed. But Jamie already knows exactly what I'm capable of, and he would resent me for going easy on him.

Moreover, I don't want to hold myself in check, not with Jamie, not when we're fighting over this .

I counter each of his blows with a brutally placed one of my own, forcing him to back off just so I can chase after him to land another hit. Jamie blocks my attacks but doesn't back down or dance away like most anyone else would. Every time there's space between us, it's because I put it there, which is so at odds with how things go for us in every other facet of our relationship that it's almost laughable.

Jamie is the one who needs distance. He's the one who leaves.

But when we fight, he's different. When we fight, he just keeps pushing, keeps charging forward, keeps putting himself at risk, won't give in, not even a little bit, not ever.

Moons don't quit .

Except when they do.

I get him hard in the ribs, once, when he leaves himself open, maybe by accident, maybe because he knows he can handle it. Jamie takes the pain like it fuels him rather than debilitates him as if he absorbs strength from it. It's worse when he lands a hit on me, one solid punch to the solar plexus that has me grunting and backing away. He doesn't hesitate, doesn't show mercy, just follows it up with a kick to my chest that has me gasping, breath violently knocked from my lungs.

He sees the pain on my face because I don't bother to hide it, and the glint of satisfaction, fever bright and borderline malevolent, is a stark reminder of our past. It's a reminder of who and what Jamie is. Underneath the calm, the storm rages and whirls. He takes pleasure from it so blatantly, so unapologetically, that I'm bizarrely captivated by it.

Jamie's relationship with pain has always been confusing for me to understand, his nerves like wires split open and crossed over, a tangled thing that only seems like a mess from the outside. It's another way that he and Rex are well matched although I try not to think about that.

He gives me a look, tilts his head as if to ask, " We done here, then ?"

I knock my fists together in answer—round two, ding, ding—and the grim line of Jamie's full mouth ticks upward into the approximation of a smile. I don't return it, but the sentiment is the same when I throw my first punch, catching that smile and bloodying it up nicely. Red coats my knuckles, and that smile turns into a grin, the same red smeared across his white teeth. It looks obscene. It looks violent. It makes me want to lick into his mouth and taste the sharp tang of metal that I've drawn out of him, take some part of him with me when this is all over.

Jamie must see it in my eyes, on my face, maybe even feel it in the air, the charged nature of it, trapped and contained like static electricity inside a plasma ball. We're in a bubble, where nothing else outside it exists.

He comes at me again, but this time it feels different. We fight, moving back and forth across the mat, the intensity cloying and dense like smoke. It invades my body with every inhale and fills my lungs with an extreme, hot pressure that makes it almost impossible to breathe.

When Jamie gets me with another kick to my chest, I grab his ankle before it can drop and upend him, his large body crashing to the mat. I follow him down, crushing my knee into his sternum and curling over him, using all my considerable weight to keep him pinned.

It's bullshit, really, though, because Jamie has it in him to get away. He's just choosing not to try.

I lean in close, a hand planted on one side of his head, the other pinning his bicep to the mat, my fingers digging into the rock-hard muscle there. Jamie still has one hand free, and he uses it to grab my throat, his grip punishing but not quite enough to stop me from drawing in oxygen. It's more a statement move than one meant to do damage.

When my mouth brushes his, he gasps, sudden and sharp, a responsive little inhale that has the fire burning up my gut igniting into something far bigger and more dangerous. From bonfire to forest fire in two seconds flat. It sets me ablaze from the inside, flames licking up through my stomach and singeing my throat. I can taste the molten desire for Jamie that I thought I successfully killed and buried years ago.

Jamie's eyes are wide open and staring, the dark grey irises an opaque and foreboding mass of emotion. There's rage there, still, but there are other things too, and I can't help but remember how those other things felt when they were directed solely at me. He squeezes my throat, in warning maybe, and then tilts his head up, letting his mouth brush mine again and again. It isn't a kiss; there's not enough pressure or bite for it to be that, but it's so close, close enough that I have to suppress a shudder of pure want.

"Just tell me," Jamie rasps against my mouth, "is this about us, or is it about him ?"

And by "this," I know he doesn't mean our impromptu sparring session.

Jamie might not have distanced himself from me physically, but his question has the same impact.

I tear myself away from him, dislodging his hand from my throat and getting to my feet, the urge to kiss him giving way to the stronger need to protect what's left from his indifferent assassination of all the weakness that still lives in my heart for him.

But I'm not a coward, so I look right at him when I say, "Considering you made it crystal clear a long time ago that there's no ‘us' for it to be about—"

Jamie gets to his feet with alarming speed, pushing into my space again and snarling, " Fuck you , Damon."

There's a magnetic pull to Jamie, a gravitational force that draws me in again and again, no matter how many times he cuts me loose. This is how it is with us: I get too close, and he runs. That's how it was three years ago, and I know nothing has changed despite the fact that it has. Things are different now because of Rex.

"Nah." I meet him in the middle, shoving at his chest. "Fuck you for thinking I'd mess with Rex just to get a dig in at you. That really who you think I am?"

Because if it is, then nothing makes sense anymore.

Jamie winces, regret cresting over his face. "Shouldn't have said that; it was shitty." He looks at me with apologetic eyes, serious and sincere. "I know you're not that sort of man."

Relief pumps through my blood like adrenaline, and all the fight I had in me before seeps out, replaced with the honest need to make Jamie understand.

"I care about him."

Jamie surprises me by nodding. "I know, you always did." Then he hesitates before asking, "Is it serious?" He's looking at me like he both wants to know and genuinely fears the answer.

"You don't get to ask me that," I say, trying not to let my emotions become too obvious. I gesture between us. "We're not friends."

Of all the shitty things Jamie and I have been since we met, friends is definitely not one of them. Sami is Jamie's friend. Ben is my friend. Jamie and I are something inexplicably other .

"I'm Rex's friend," Jamie counters, and it's weak because that's barely true either.

I shrug. "Then ask him how serious things are."

I don't want to admit to Jamie that part of the reason why I can't answer him properly is because I don't know myself how serious my relationship with Rex is. How can I know when he and I haven't even talked about it yet? I know what I want from him mostly, I think, but that's not the same as him agreeing to give it to me.

"You know how I feel about him," Jamie says. There's a significance to how he says it that has my tongue going dry, my skin buzzing, and my fists clenching with the desire to hit him again. I wish it were as simple as jealousy because at least then I would know what to do with that emotion. I don't know what to do with any of what I'm feeling toward him, and that's been the problem I've had for three years.

"I do." My voice is unbearably tight from my attempt not to reveal anything too overt about how that knowledge hurts me. "I always have." Because he never hid it. For all the bullshit back then, there was never a time when I didn't know that Jamie Moon was in love with another man, with the one and only Rexley Nova.

"But you went after him anyway," Jamie accuses, and he seems genuinely flummoxed by it. "Tell me why," he demands.

"Same reason you never gave us a real shot. Because he's fucking incredible ," I say as if it's simultaneously as immense and as simple as that.

Jamie seems to get it, his shoulders relaxing now he has an explanation that makes sense to him. "Because he's worth it," he murmurs, nodding again.

"I don't want to fight you," I say, taking a step back and crossing my arms as a signal to him not to come after me. "But for him? I will." Jamie's eyes narrow, some of that thunder and lightning returning to them, but I ignore the warning signs, pushing on. "At least now I get it."

Jamie understands immediately, but he doesn't respond right away. He looks over my shoulder, searching for the right words or perhaps just thinking about the past. When his gaze travels back over to my face, he asks, "That make it hurt less? Now you understand why I couldn't ever … let go of him?"

He seems to mean it, which is the only reason I give him an answer at all.

"You mean that you wouldn't let yourself love me because you were already in love with someone else?" There's more bitterness in my voice than I would like. "Nah. It hurts the same."

Jamie just stands there, looking at me forlornly, like this hurts him too, which I've always known was the truth, but it doesn't make me feel any better to see the evidence of it on his face now.

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not," I say, pushing down the anger and resentment because they're useless emotions, and it doesn't really matter anymore. "You know the difference between you and Rex?"

"What?" Jamie asks warily, looking unsure about where I'm taking this.

"He's going to choose me," I say with more certainty than I feel.

Jamie blinks at me for a handful of seconds before that fight-or-die instinct kicks back in, and he levels up to me again, shoulders squared and chin tilted up, fearless and just the right side of challenging. "Oh yeah?"

I stand my ground, unflinching under his heavy stare. "Yeah, you know why?" I go in hard. "Because I'm not afraid to risk it all for the chance to be with him."

If there's one thing I know how to do, it's to keep fighting even when the odds are stacked against me. I wouldn't have lasted long as a vigilante if I was cowed by the seemingly impossible. Jamie's not the only stubborn one even if that obstinance takes different forms in both of us.

Jamie's jaw ticks in anger at the statement, but there's an acknowledgment underneath it too because he knows I'm right.

"I've known Rex for fourteen years," he says, like it's an argument, and it is, just not how he thinks.

"Exactly," I say, and it's more aggressive than I mean it to be, a sure sign that I'm losing too much ground, too much control over myself. "You missed your shot, Moon."

"Damon," Jamie says, mouth turning down, regret soaking his voice because he can see me losing it. He could always see me, which is why it hurt so much when what he saw wasn't enough. "I really am sorry."

And I believe him, but somehow, that's worse.

"Don't be," I say, tightening my arms over my chest, trying to contain all the wild, uncontrollable emotion filling it. "If I'd known Rex three years ago …" I trail off because the truth suddenly feels too cruel and complicated to express.

Jamie makes like he's going to take a step toward me, but he stops just in time, regaining his own control, which is another kick to the gut if anything.

"Let me guess," he says wryly, "you'd have chosen him too?"

I smile at him then, a brittle thing that only feels half formed. "Wouldn't have had to," I tell him like it's the final note to a conversation we've been having for years. "He'd have already been mine."