Pillow Biting

Pillow Biting

BL Jones

“ W e should’ve kidnapped Mei and brought her with us,” I tell Caleb, looking around the large, open-plan bed shop in mild dismay. “She would know what togs are, and why there’s a rating system for them.”

There are at least two dozen beds lined up on either side of us, in varying sizes and designs, gated off by thick ropes like we’re at a car show or a very boring zoo, where the exhibits are made up of fabric and foam.

Caleb shrugs, although he seems equally overwhelmed by the vast number of beds to choose from. “It’s a duvet thing.”

We moved into our new flat last week and got away with sleeping on the floor with a mix of blankets and pillows stolen from the agency’s barracks… until Mei found out and almost died from sheer exasperation. She ordered us to put on our big-boy pants and go get proper beds like the adults the law mistakenly declares us to be.

If it weren’t for the weird tension still floating around between Mei and Caleb, she’d have probably marched us straight into town and harangued us into buying all our furniture at once. She would’ve drawn up a list and checked each item off one by one, leading her two pet idiots from shop to shop.

In another life, I’d be living in a new flat meant for four people rather than two.

It was always the plan for us to all move in together: Caleb, Mei, Rex, and me. But then Caleb and Mei had their final— this is it, this is the big one, fuck you, and goodbye— breakup, and Rex is gone, with no determined date as to when he’ll be back, if ever.

No. He will come back, he has to. Caleb needs him. We all do.

“Du vet ? What the fuck is a du vet .” I shoot Caleb a dubious look. “Now you’re just making up words. You’re as bad as Tim the clipboard king over there, with his bloody togs and his bloody thread-counting, or whatever the fuck.” I jerk my thumb at a short, alabaster-skinned man with a pencil moustache, wearing a cheap suit and a name tag. He’s hovering nearby, waiting to swoop in and try to hock the shop’s overpriced, foamy merchandise.

“What are you on about?” Caleb frowns, slapping at my raised arm. “Stop pointing aggressively at Tim, or he’s gonna call security, and I am not getting banned from another big shop because of you, mate. I refuse. It took us years to shred that rep last time. We only just got our mall privileges back after the water fountain-seagull incident.”

“Because of me?” I scoff, offended by the insinuation. “Bollocks.” I whack his chest with the back of my hand. “You’re the delinquent who goes around punching mannequins and stealing beads.”

Caleb makes an indignant squawking noise of protest. “Okay, hold on, I didn’t steal beads , you pushed me into a ‘make your own jewellery’ display, and some accidentally fell into my hoodie.” He grabs at his hood for emphasis, like he’s going to tip a load of beads out of it and recreate the consequences of my betrayal, which is bullshit. It wasn’t entirely my fault. We were shoving each other, and I just accidentally pushed him into that display. He’s the drama llama who chased me out of the shop in a mad need for vengeance before checking that he didn’t have beads in his hood. Him getting tackled by the jewellery-shop police was a situation of his own making, and quite frankly, I will not be blamed for his negligence.

“But you did punch a mannequin that one time,” I point out, mostly just to see Caleb go off.

“You threw it at me!” Caleb accuses.

“I was testing your reaction time,” I say blithely. “That’s what fellow vigilantes do for each other.” I cross my arms, grinning at him. “You are welcome .”

Caleb grumbles irately. “Keep talking and I’ll smother you with the next hefty winter duvet that I see.”

He’s stupidly easy to poke sometimes; it’s ridiculous. He’s a ridiculous man. I love him so much it hurts to look at him, all grumpy and gorgeous as he is. I want to kiss that scowl off his face, just so I can keep putting it back there and taking it away, over and over again. But I’m used to suppressing those needs after so many years of practice.

“Again with the fake word,” I scoff. “Du vet is not a thing, Cal.”

Caleb strides over to a bed, stepping over the rope—absolute bloody rebel that he is—and all but punches the edge of a queen-sized bed, decorated in a plumage of blue-and-white pillows. “What’s this, then?” he demands, like he’s a detective and this is the final piece of vital evidence that wins him his career-making murder case.

“That’s a duvet,” I say guilelessly.

Caleb pulls an exasperated face. “Yeah, T, that’s literally what I just said.”

“No, you said doo-vet,” I argue. “It’s pronounced doo-vay. A doo-vay is a cover sheet on a bed. A doo-vet is a lie.”

“Nah,” Caleb says, obstinate. “It’s doo-vet, mate. That’s how you say it.”

“I mean, you’re very wrong, but okay.”

Caleb gets immediately and hilariously defensive. “Piss off, I’m not wrong, I’m?—”

I clutch at my chest, smirking. “You’re so wrong, you don’t want to be right?”

“What’re you on ?” Caleb punches the innocent bed again. “That doesn’t even make sense ?—”

Like a magician at a children’s party, Tim suddenly appears in front of us, clipboard held tightly to his chest as if it’s his one and only shield against bickering shoppers. He slaps on a frighteningly wide smile and says, “Hello, can I assist you two with anything today?” He has a very strong Midwestern-American accent, which is jarring. Danger is a pretty multicultural city, by England’s standards anyway, but I haven’t met that many Americans who aren’t tourists.

I exchange a look with Caleb, me excited to have a new person to drag, kicking and screaming, into our business, Caleb horrified by the future events he can probably see unfolding.

“Here, Tim,” I say, stepping up closer to him, “help us settle something important. What is this?” I gesture at the bed Caleb assaulted.

“Important?” Caleb mutters in disbelief. “Really? Is that the right word?”

I hold a finger up in the universal “hold on, shut up” signal, keeping my attention on Tim. Caleb huffs in the background, but he doesn’t say anything else.

Tim clutches his clipboard a little tighter and visibly resists the urge to step away from me. I sigh inwardly and back up, having no desire to make the man feel genuinely intimidated. Sometimes I forget how big I am. I’ve always been the tallest and broadest in the room, even when I was a kid, and people tend to react to my size with instinctive discomfort or occasionally outright fear. My tendency to be loud and physically expressive probably doesn’t help although that’s mostly unconscious so it’s not like I can stop that any more than I could stop myself from growing bigger and taller than anyone else.

With the space between us re-established, Tim manages to get out a response to my question, eyes darting between me and the duvet. “Uh, it’s a …. comforter?”

Interesting.

“Huh?” Caleb shoots the duvet a squinty-eyed look as if he suspects it of camouflage or some other such duplicity.

“He’s American,” I say when Caleb glances back up at me, “it doesn’t count. They have a vendetta against Us and therefore cannot be trusted with vernacular-based opinions.”

Tim doesn’t look like he knows whether to be offended or not. He opens and closes his mouth a few times before saying, “I’m not sure if that’s a fair?—”

Caleb swoops in like the hero he is and tries to save the shop assistant from himself. “Just walk away, Tim,” he encourages. “Don’t let yourself be dragged down to our level.”

Tim peers at Caleb with admirably surreptitious appreciation. He’s been trying not to let his gaze catch and linger on Caleb too much. I understand the need, and I’m more than used to watching people struggle to hide their very obvious attraction to Caleb.

Caleb is the level of gorgeous that draws just about everyone’s attention. He has those classically handsome features and the artfully messy, dark-brown hair. Over six foot and impressively muscled, although more the sleek-and-compact type rather than bulky. My favourite thing about him is his storm-cloud grey eyes. As with all Liquid Onyx survivors, there’s a distinct other ness to them, the iris one solid colour rather than a mix, and an internal fire that makes them almost appear to be glowing from the inside.

There’s a broken-boy sadness to Caleb as well, in the soft downturn of his full mouth and the heavy aura of cynicism he emanates, the life-weary grit to his jaw, and the haunted look in his eyes when he sketches. These days, he rips up and throws away every bit of art he creates. He’s quite literally that damaged-but-beautiful artist archetype come to life. People can’t help but be drawn to Caleb’s specific brand of magnificent destruction, like those storm chasers who are always running full speed towards the danger.

But none of them know where that pain comes from like I do. I was there when all that despair was born inside him. I saw it grow from his heart and branch out through his body, a corrosive weed, until he carried the weight of it all like a thick layer of lead coating his bones. They don’t know what it takes to alleviate that pain if only temporarily. Not like me. I know Caleb, better than my own heart can sometimes take.

“You don’t need help?” Tim asks, his gaze thoughtful as it darts between Caleb and me.

“From a professional therapist?” Caleb responds, wry and quick. “Yeah, probably, but you don’t need to concern yourself with that right now.”

Feeling bad at the deflated slump of Tim’s shoulders, I raise my hand to get his attention. “Do you have any race-car beds?” I ask him. “Or ones with a slide?” I make an excited noise and click my fingers. “Or with a secret cupboard underneath?” I grin at him. “I like my furniture to have the potential for secrets.”

Captain Buzzkill steps in to ruin my bonding moment with Tim. “We are not getting a race-car bed, T,” Caleb says. He sounds so sure, and I can’t have that. Gotta keep things interesting around here.

“Oh, come on,” I wheedle. “I’ll let you have the first go in it.”

“I don’t want ‘a go’ in a race-car bed!” Caleb huffs. Liar .

“I mean. Seriously,” I say, aghast. “Who even are you if that’s true?”

Caleb gifts me with the great-grandmother of all scowls. “I’m a twenty-one-year-old man, that’s who, and twenty-one-year-old men don’t sleep in race-car beds.”

He’s being so fake right now, it’s unacceptable.

“I don’t remember you signing a contract on your twenty-first birthday saying you would, from that moment forward, become a boring weirdo who doesn’t like race cars anymore,” I say, scrunching up my nose at him.

Caleb opens his mouth to retort, then pauses as if considering something. “Who would have delivered that contract, do you think?”

I shrug, then think it over for a second before offering, “Some kind of uptight pigeon with low career goals?”

Most people might be stumped by that, but not Caleb. We’re both too well-versed in the bizarre back-and-forth after growing up in the same family as the chaotic-nonsense machine himself, Rex Nova.

“Can pigeons be career orientated?” Caleb ponders.

“Well, yeah, I think so. Like, some of them went to war,” I reason.

“ Did they, though?” Caleb asks doubtfully.

“’Course,” I say, defending my pigeon knowledge. Which I definitely have. “Like, back in the 40s, they were heroes and shit.”

“This feels like an animated film you watched one time,” Caleb says, brows furrowing. “You really need to stop basing your animal information on Pixar shit, mate.”

“Okay, if you’re gonna be a hater about my pigeon intel, different idea.” I hold up my hands in a wait, listen to this gesture. “How about a fairy in a teeny-tiny grey suit?”

“Nope,” Caleb says pensively. “I don’t think you can say ‘fairy.’ I read a thing that says it’s still offensive to some people.”

“You need to stop deep diving Reddit posts,” I tell him. “Besides, I already asked, and Rex said I could.”

“Rex doesn’t get to decide everything just because he’s gay,” Caleb says dryly. “He’s not their king .”

“Well, Rex means ‘king’ in Latin, so,” I counter. Brilliantly. “Plus, if there was gonna be a king of the gays, I think our Rex would be a strong contender.” I raise my hand and tick points off on my fingers. “He’s tough as nails. He’s snarky and mean. He’s got good decision-making skills when it doesn’t include talking. He’s well-liked by the gay populace?—”

“How do you know he’s well-liked?” Caleb questions, bewildered.

“Come on, you’ve seen how many messages he gets on dating apps. And how many blokes make eyes at him when we go out.” Because as much as Caleb has people staring at him, Rex is just as bad for that kind of shit, especially in any queer club or bar.

I’d never be into him like that, because he’s my little brother in every way but blood, but I have eyes, I get it. Rex is the very epitome of pretty-boy twink , paired with the confidence of a pissed-off badger and a mouth that gets him in trouble every two seconds of his life. If Rex didn’t have superhuman strength and the combat training of a SAS solider, I’d be worried about leaving him wandering around alone.

“Okay, first of all, ‘make eyes’?” Caleb demands, sounding highly disturbed. “What the fuck? Please never say that again. Also, why are you noticing how many random men ‘make eyes’ at our pseudo little brother? That’s strange.” He narrows his eyes at me. “You’re strange right now.”

“It’s called being observant, Cal,” I say reproachfully, making a show out of looking disappointed in his inability to understand basic deduction. “Check yourself before you wreck yourself, please.”

“That’s not even what that means!” Caleb fumes, losing his cool again quite terrifically, a thing that I will never not find immensely entertaining.

He climbs back over the bed-zoo rope just so he can be close enough to get up in my face, like almost no one else in my life has the balls to do. “And I stand by what I said,” he affirms. “It’s a dodgy word, whatever Rex decreed .”

I raise my eyebrows at that, sceptical, and he rushes to argue because that’s his default setting.

“You know he’s a bad gay anyway.” Caleb pulls a face, his pretty little nose scrunching up, making him not one iota less attractive, the fucker. “Like, edgy. He wears straight-boy baggy jeans, and he was great at maths in school, and he almost blinded himself the one time he tried to use eyeliner. We can’t trust his stance on gay morals.”

I’m almost positive that’s insane, but okay. I’m nowhere near plugged into the … pulse of the queer community enough to know what’s considered “edgy” by the community at large. I do, however, think that I’m going to be making a T-shirt for Rex’s next birthday that has the words #1 Bad Gay printed on it. Possibly in glitter. Yep. That’s definitely happening. Rex would wear that shit all day long.

I’m getting flashbacks to all those times in my teens when I googled “am I gay?”, only to be bombarded with quizzes and random information to the point where I struggled to discern joke from honest speculation. I mean, obviously I don’t think being shit at maths means anything about a person’s sexuality, and neither does Caleb; for the record, he’s just being an argumentative weirdo, like always. But when you’re a fourteen-year-old who’s confused as hell, you grasp at anything to explain your own feelings, or in some cases, the lack of them.

I was afraid to ask Rex, who came out super early, which was very typically brave of him but also second-hand terrifying for me. I didn’t want him to think I was being stupid for not knowing, when he seemed to know from minute one exactly who he was.

Plus, growing up in a little English town as one of the very few Black kids around meant I already felt singled out so much of the time, I wasn’t eager to add another layer of ‘different’ for people to get potentially weird about.

For a young queer kid trying to figure themselves out, the internet is good, but also bad, but also reassuring, but also scary, but also great, but also terrible. I’m honestly unsure if I would recommend it, because I think mostly all I did was give myself imposter syndrome and anxiety about the whole thing.

Even now, at twenty-one, I still don’t feel comfortable slapping on a label.

“Okay, lets outsource this.” I turn my attention back to Tim, who looks frightened and intrigued to be once again included, which is either very silly of him or very courageous. “Tim, if I were to ask you?—”

“Oh my fuck.” Caleb whacks my arm, cutting off my attempt at democracy. “Don’t bring Tim into this again.” He shoots our American friend a vaguely exasperated frown. “Tim, why haven’t you run away yet? I told you to save yourself. Where are your survival instincts?”

Tim’s eyes bounce between us like a trapped bunny rabbit. “Uh, well, I?—”

“Great!” Caleb interrupts, hitting my arm again, turning a scowl on me. “Now you’re making Tim uncomfortable. Well done.”

“ I’m making Tim uncomfortable!” I say, outraged by the implication. How dare he. Tim is my ally, my most-trusted collaborator. “Are you joking, mate?”

Tim seems to have found the end of his rope—frayed and possibly on fire. “I really don’t know what’s happening anymore.” He sounds lost, like an ugly baby swan or a blue koala alien. Very upsetting.

“That’s okay.” Caleb sighs, giving Tim a sympathetic pat on the arm. Too hard, by the wince on Tim’s face. He really needs to learn that not everyone appreciates affection through mild physical violence like our family does. “We hardly ever know either,” he says, like he’s trying to be reassuring and missing by about thirty miles. “It’ll be over soon, probably.”

Sensing a need for a topic change, I offer up another friendly grin to Tim and ask, “Can I use your clipboard?”

Tim, although initially startled by the non-sequitur, rallies with impressive speed. “Uh, what for?” His fingers tighten protectively on the clipboard.

“Yeah,” Caleb says narrowly, squinting at me with a deep and undeserved suspicion, “what the fuck for?”

I shrug one shoulder. “I’ve never held a clipboard before. I want to see how it feels. Does it make you feel empowered?” I ask Tim. “I think I would feel empowered by it.”

Caleb, sensing trouble born from ingrained wariness due to our past interactions with anyone outside our family, warns, “Tim, whatever happens from here on out, don’t give him the clipboard.”

I shoot a look of absolute betrayal at Caleb. “Why are you constantly trying to crush my hopes and dreams, Cal?”

“You only started wanting to hold a clipboard five seconds ago!” Caleb huffs irately.

“Says who?” I demand. “Maybe I’ve wanted to do that for years. You don’t know me, you don’t know my life!”

“Yes, I bloody do,” Caleb says, looking up at me with one of those rueful half smiles on his face that never fails to catch me right in the chest. “I have literally known you since we were six.”

That’s true. First time I met Caleb Moon was just after my parents and I moved to Colbie, the tiny seaside town my friends and I grew up in. My parents wanted to get away from the city, and their friends, Mei’s parents, who were also looking to move somewhere quieter, told them about a couple of cottages for sale in Colbie.

Before I was stolen by the ultimate-evil corporation Obsidian Inc. and experimented on with the superhuman drug called Liquid Onyx, my parents were city people through and through. But after they got me back, they were afraid of it, of all the people they couldn’t trust surrounding them all the time.

Colbie gave them the chance to start over someplace where they knew absolutely everyone. It was where we found and built our new, much larger, much more bizarre family, with people who knew exactly what they went through because their children were exactly like me. Liquid Onyx survivors. Kids who had our DNA mutated by one of OI’s scientists in an experiment that turned us into superhumans with enhancements and powers that made us dangerous to the outside world.

I met Caleb on Colbie beach when I ran away from my new house to escape being forced to unpack boxes. Caleb was kicking a football around on his own, having snuck out of his house after an argument with his dad, one of many to come.

Caleb kicked the ball at me without warning, and my shield powers reacted on instinct when I raised my arms to block it. A bright-orange shield materialised in the path of the football. It bounced off the shield, and I dropped my arms, horrified at what I’d just revealed to a complete stranger. I might have been only six years old, but I understood better than anyone the consequences of my secret getting out to people I couldn’t trust not to react badly.

But Caleb ran right up to me that day without any trace of fear and told me, in a rush of excitement, that I didn’t need to be afraid, and wasn’t this brilliant because I was just like him. We were the same kind of different. Superhuman. Special. Survivors .

I was so relieved that he didn’t run away from me screaming that I let myself be dragged to Rex’s house, where Caleb introduced me to his best friend, who he said was one of us too. They told me about their powers, Caleb’s complex empath abilities and Rex’s terrifying ability to combust matter with his mind. Later, I took them to meet Mei, and I watched them be extremely impressed by her ice powers.

It was improbable that the four of us would wind up in the same small town the way we did, and I don’t have much belief in the idea of fate, but if the universe did have some hand in bringing us together, I’ll be grateful for it for as long as I live.

My life would be so much less without them. Without Caleb. He was the one who first took the fear out of what we are, who made it something exciting and good rather than a reminder of the pain and horror we went through at the hands of Obsidian Inc.

I don’t realise how Caleb and I have been staring at each other, bubbled off in our own little world for what has probably been a weird amount of time, until Tim clears his throat to get our attention.

“So, like, how old were you when you got together, then?” he asks, like that’s a perfectly reasonable question that doesn’t make all the synapses in my brain fire off at once in a cacophony of sheer, bloody panic.

“Not now, Tim,” I say, holding out a hand in front of his face and ignoring how mine is burning with the embarrassment over having been caught practically gazing at Caleb like a lovelorn romantic hero from a romcom. “We’re having an argument about … wait, what are we arguing about again?”

“You know what? I don’t even remember.” Caleb ducks his head, taking a very deliberate step back from me, which I’m not sure whether to thank him for or be annoyingly hurt by.

I never know how to feel when Caleb pulls away from any intimacy we share these days. There was a time when we were freer in how we touched and acted towards each other, but things have undeniably changed between us since his breakup with Mei, and there’s only so much pretending we can do before it gets stupid or genuinely harmful.

“Uh, well,” Tim says, tilting his head like he’s actually trying to remember how this bullshit kicked off. “I think it started with you wanting a race-car bed, and your boyfriend saying he doesn’t want a race-car bed, because he became of legal drinking age or something, maybe.” He doesn’t sound sure or happy about any of that, which is fair.

“Tim, he became of legal drinking age three years ago, come on,” I scold. “If you’re going to live here, learn our laws. At least the important ones. Also, he’s not my boyfriend. If he were my boyfriend”—I throw Caleb a pointed look—“he would let me get a race-car bed.”

“Holy shit, fine, get the race-car bed,” Caleb says, exasperated. He glares at me, warning, “But I’m not sleeping in it.”

“Why would you sleep in it?” I ask before I can stop myself. “We’re not boyfriends yet.” Triumph is singing too loudly in my veins to realise how that’s going to sound.

“Not yet?” Tim prods, coming very close to smirking for someone who was afraid of me ten minutes ago.

Caleb is just doing the slack-jawed, did you really just say that thing he usually reserves for Rex and the oftentimes insane results of our brother’s faulty brain-to-mouth filter.

“Shut up. I just meant … metaphorically,” I say, trying unsuccessfully to blag it out.

Caleb laughs at that, pushing any emotional confusion aside enough to take the piss as is our way of life. “Explain your metaphor, please.”

“No, thank you,” I say, rapid fire, rising to meet the challenge in Caleb’s eyes. “If you can’t understand a basic utilisation of figurative language, Cal, there’s nothing I can do for you. Should have paid more attention in our English lessons.”

“You fell asleep in our English lessons!” Caleb accuses.

I cross my arms, looking down those two inches of height difference between us. “That’s because I already knew what a metaphor is.”

“Only because Mei told you,” Caleb huffs.

“She would have told you too if she thought you deserved it,” I say without sympathy. “But you threw a pen at her that day, so.” I shrug. “You reap what you sow, Cal.”

Tim, possibly sensing the pin he’s just taken out of a very specific grenade, finally does the sensible thing and tries to bow out. “Uh, I think I should leave …”

Talking is a mistake, though, and only dooms him further.

Caleb serves Tim with a face full of judgement. “I think you should have left five minutes ago, Tim, if I’m being honest. Don’t blame me for your bad life choices.”

“He did try to warn you, to be fair, mate,” I offer, just to be a prick.

Tim looks about ready to make a run for it and take his chances we won’t follow, which I would actively encourage at this point although I can’t promise the latter if the mood strikes us to give chase. Or he’s possibly considering moving to back to America. I would not encourage that one. It’s scary over there. During my time as an international superhero, I’ve been shot six times. Four of those were in America. Four. And I’ve been to several different countries overrun by insanely violent, gun-toting rogue militias.

But before Tim can leg it, he’s saved from us and plunged into far greater physical danger by the arrival of The Maker, a supervillain who until two seconds ago I thought was still locked up in one of England’s most secure prisons.

In typical supervillain dramatics, The Maker blows out the far wall of the bed shop with a blast of his weird, blue magic. Bricks and mortar explode into the shop, spraying molten debris at all the nearby civilians. Some of them are thrown backwards by the sudden pressure, their vulnerable bodies scattering across various beds and the hard marble floor.

Screams and shouts of panic crescendo through the shop as civilians scramble to escape a danger that they don’t fully understand the scope of.

Caleb and I are far enough away from the explosion that we’re able to stay on our feet and avoid taking any injury from the debris. Tim, less sturdy than us with our enhanced strength and endurance, is thrown to the ground by the initial blast that shakes the building to its foundations.

The Maker steps into the gaping hole he’s left behind in the wall, his trademark silver staff held aloft in one hand. His usual robes and cape are absent, which, when paired with his long grey hair and scraggly beard, always make him look like a bad Lord of the Rings cosplayer. Today he’s dressed in a grey prison uniform instead, so at least his breakout was presumably recent and he hasn’t been traipsing around the city being a nightmare for too long.

I drop down next to Tim on the ground, yanking Caleb with me so we’re partially hidden by one of the beds.

“You alright, mate?” I ask Tim, helping him up from his sprawl so that he’s kneeling beside me.

Tim nods jerkily. “Yeah, I’m okay.” He looks at me with wide, terrified eyes, which I can’t blame him for.

“It’s going to be fine,” I tell him confidently. “We’ll get you out of here, I promise.”

“Got yours?” Caleb asks, nudging me as he takes a silver domino mask out of his jeans pocket.

I stuff my hand into my own pocket and produce a similarly shaped black mask with a dark-orange stripe through the middle.

Tim stares at us in absolute shock, a mix of incredulity and hope, when Caleb and I don our vigilante masks.

It isn’t practical for us to wear our suits everywhere, but we make it a habit to take our masks out with us at all times, just in case of situations like this one.

“You’re Barricade and Crescent!” Tim hisses at us, with an almost accusatory tone.

“Not a fan?” I ask, amused at his outrage despite everything.

Tim snorts. “I might be if you stop me from getting murdered by the blue wizard.”

Speaking of, a quick glance back over at The Maker shows him prowling through the shop, stepping over bricks still flaming blue from his magic. Once he’s standing in the middle of the room, he takes his staff into both hands and raises it above his head. Inwardly, I groan, knowing what’s about to happen and not looking forward to it one bit.

“Oh, fuck,” Caleb mutters, also recognising the theatrical gesture from our past altercations with The Maker.

He’s too far away to stop it, so all we can do is watch as The Maker brings his staff down hard, cracking it against the floor like he’s spearing a sword into stone.

A rush of pale-blue magic erupts in a torrent of expelled power from where he struck the floor. The magic shoots upwards like a wave until it hits the ceiling with an almighty crash and collapses back down. It spreads through the room in a swirling flood of blue energy.

Every mattress and pillow it touches hums with magic. The blue power pulses and whirrs, glowing ominously around them as they shudder to life like still hearts shot up with electricity.

“What. The. Actual. Fuck , though?” Tim exclaims, incredulous, from where he’s just barely peeking out from over the top of the bed we’re crouching behind.

Yeah, there’s not enough therapy or suspension of disbelief in the world to help with this gold-standard level of fucking weird. Better to not even try to understand, just accept it and do your best to suppress the knowledge that we live in a world where shit like this happens on the regular.

Before anyone can react in any other way to the madness going on around us, The Maker raises both his hands again and calls out in a brash, commanding voice, “Today you are alive, and I am your maker!”

Jesus Christ, this man needs to get a grip; it is just not cute.

There are still far too many civilians in here who stopped trying to escape when all the magic crap started happening. If curiosity killed the cat, then supervillain-related FOMO snuffs out more civilians every year than smoking.

I turn to Caleb, his profile partially blocked by the hood he’s thrown up to further obscure his identity. “I’ll go after the wizard wanker,” I say, “you get all the civilians out.”

Caleb dips his head in a quick nod and holds up a fist for me to knock mine against. “Don’t get dead, babe,” he says.

I flash him a quick grin in response before lifting my own hood and standing up to vault over the bed and commit to a mad dash in The Maker’s direction.

There are flying, pissed-off pillows with teeth—why do they have teeth, why ?— zooming around the room that are apparently compelled via zombie logic to attack any nearby civilians and try to eat them. I’m more worried about the mattresses, which also seem to have developed mouths, round and packed with sharp little teeth on their undersides like sting rays. They float through the room, collapsing down on top of stray civilians.

I snatch one pillow out of the air before it can chomp down on a screaming civilian who is scrambling along the shop floor to escape ,and lob it at the wall as hard as I can. The living pillow growls when I throw it because of course it does, what the fuck, but it bounces off the wall only to drop to the ground. Unconscious? Dead? Don’t care as long as it stays down.

Another mattress is about to settle on two more civilians to my left, so I create a bright-orange shield between them to block the attack. I hold the shield steady until Caleb charges in to grab the civilians and practically carry them off to safety.

Trusting Caleb to corral everyone he can towards the nearest exit, I focus all my attention on taking out The Maker, who is still having a good old time shouting at his pillow army between bouts of maniacal laughter.

In the past, The Maker’s been subdued by separating him from his staff, which is the source of all his power. As soon as he has that silver stick taken from him, he’ll be easy enough to bag up. It’s just getting it from the idiot in the first place that’ll prove a challenge.

For the second time today, I wish we’d thought to bring Mei with us on this shopping trip. With her ice powers, kicking The Maker’s arse would be far easier. She could just freeze him to the bloody wall and snatch that staff right out of his hands.

Thankfully, The Maker is one of those supervillains who gets too wrapped up in their own evil joy to pay much attention to their surroundings, allowing me to get close before he notices me coming for him.

He must recognise my mask because he moves into an immediate defensive stance on sight, gripping his staff tightly and bellowing at me with the enthusiasm and stage presence of a town crier, “Barricade, my dastardly foe! Halt or die !”

Don’t ask me why he talks like that. The man’s a schoolteacher from Devon who walked into a cave on a school trip and accidentally got possessed by some sort of cave demon … thingy. We aren’t completely sure about that. I’ve got even less clue why the demon makes him speak like a medieval villain. Maybe because it’s super old, maybe because it’s taking the piss, who’s to know, who’s to say? Arguably, that’s above my pay grade.

The Maker spins his staff in an arc and brings the top end of it down, pointing it at me. Blue energy balloons out of it like blown glass, shining with pale light. I draw up a shield just in time to avoid getting a blast of magic to the face. His magic explodes against the shield, crackles of blue spreading across the orange surface, fracturing it like the rapidly splintering glass of a windowpane after a badly aimed kick of a lead ball.

Still, my shield holds, and eventually the magic dissipates, allowing me to drop it and move forward again.

The Maker growls out a string of obscenities and spins his staff around twice, building up more energy this time and blasting a comet of blue at me. I have to really brace myself against this one, setting my feet apart and throwing up a shield to catch the full brunt of all that power. The blue energy explodes over my orange shield, the impact strong enough to push me backwards a few steps, and I have to grit my teeth to stave off the wave of rippling pain that travels through my body.

It takes longer for the blue to fade away, which gives The Maker enough time to build up a third blast of energy and fire it at me as I’m still recovering from the second one. His third blast throws me off my feet, sending me sprawling backwards and sliding across the marble floor, crashing into an upturned bedframe.

“Is that all you’ve got, Barricade?” The Maker laughs uproariously at me, still spinning his staff in elaborate arcs. “Pathetic!”

Ignoring The Maker’s stock-villain dialogue, I scan the room for Caleb, looking up just in time to see Caleb punch a giant pillow in the face to prevent it from chewing out Tim’s jugular. It disturbs me on a fundamental level that a pillow could ever have a face. It’s just not right, is it?

From what I can tell, it seems like Caleb has managed to get most of the civilians out, and the ones remaining are far enough away that I don’t have to worry about The Maker attacking them directly.

I get to my feet whilst The Maker is still busy mwah ha ha-ing over his short-lived victory and turn to pick up a large metal bedframe sitting behind me that thankfully has not been brought to life via magic. Inspired by Caleb, I throw the bedframe at The Maker’s stupid, bearded face. He seems to realise it’s happening in slow motion and barely manages to bring up his staff in time to prevent himself from getting brained by a large hunk of metal.

Using his distraction to my advantage, I start sprinting in his direction again. Unfortunately, since there are fewer civilians around to distract them, the zombie pillows and mattresses have more time for me, and I’m almost immediately besieged by snarling puffs of wool and gaping, foamy maws.

I bring up a shield that curves around my body like a dome, protecting myself from the creatures’ hungry mouths, their serrated teeth scraping uselessly against it. I’m just about able to keep moving towards my target, barrelling through the creatures as they batter themselves against my shield although it’s hard work and takes too long.

The Maker regains his composure before I can reach him. He snarls at me furiously, his beard in complete disarray, making him look extra ridiculous. When he raises his staff again, I have to stop and brace myself for the next impact, building up my shield so it’s strong enough to withstand another blow.

But rather than blasting me with more blue energy, The Maker brings his staff down, cracking the end of it against the marble floor. Large silver sparks spray up around the staff, and the ground shudders as if hit by an actual earthquake. The marble floor splits open, a jagged splinter moving through it like the creation of a slim canyon.

I have just enough time to register what he’s doing before the marble directly beneath my feet is torn apart. I throw myself violently to the side to avoid dropping down into the crack and getting trapped by the two pieces of earth. It happens so fast that my shield barely holds as I go skidding across the floor until I hit the nearest wall, my back smacking up against it hard enough to knock the wind out of me.

Whether it’s due to the limits of The Maker’s power or his own choice, the fast-moving crack stops before it can go beyond the shop. Plenty of innocent bed frames have been swallowed up by the gaping split, some having dropped out of sight while others are only half consumed, one half still stuck out.

I push off the floor quickly, lungs screaming with the effort to breathe, shoving at the horde of pillows that are still determinedly trying to get at me through my shield. With them gathered around me, it’s harder to see what’s happening with The Maker.

I scan the room for Caleb again, but he seems to have disappeared somewhere. It looks like all the civilians have been evacuated, though, so at least there’s that.

Panic threatens to rise when I can’t find Caleb, but I have to smother it back down. I can’t let myself worry about him during a fight. If I did that, I’d be fucking scared out of my mind every time we go up against a supervillain, and then what use would I be to him or anyone else?

Maintaining my shield is beginning to feel like a struggle, with all the pressure being exerted to gain entry, but I push on anyway, forcing my way through the attacking creatures in pursuit of their creator.

The Maker goes apoplectic when he realises that his little earth-splitting trick didn’t finish me off, and I take extreme gratification from his stupid scream of rageful frustration. He looks about two seconds away from stamping his foot. I hope that he does, and I hope he catches his foot in that crack he just made and falls over like the twatbiscuit he is.

When The Maker spins his staff again, I reinforce my shield, more than prepared to take whatever energy blast he can summon. But when his power is nearing the end of its buildup, a high-pitched shriek pierces the air from behind me. I turn my head, catching sight of a child maybe six or seven years old, who has his leg caught in the cracked floor. He must have been hiding under a bedframe or something, and Caleb missed him when he was ushering everyone out.

I wish he’d stayed hiding because now The Maker has the kid on his radar, and he doesn’t hesitate to use the opportunity against me. He points his staff at the boy and sends a charge of blue energy right at him. Caught as he is, the boy won’t even be able to run away.

Since I can’t hold more than one shield at a time, I drop the one from around me and recreate it so the kid is protected. The Maker’s blast of energy explodes across the shield, and the boy screams in terror as all that lethal power crackles in front of him, barely a foot away from his face.

Without my shield, I’m vulnerable to attacks from The Maker’s creatures. They come for me with a vengeance, snapping their sharp teeth and snarling in my face. I have to shift all my attention to beating them away so I won’t wind up torn to shreds by fanged bedding.

True fact, punching a pillow in the face feels just as weird and wrong doing it myself as it did watching Caleb do it.

I’m fully expecting The Maker to take advantage of my distraction, but he doesn’t get the chance to build up another blast, because Caleb decides to make a sudden appearance in as suitably dramatic a fashion as always.

When Caleb drops down from the ceiling and lands on The Maker, crushing him to the floor with his much larger body, I can’t help the boisterous laugh that erupts from my mouth at the sight. I dart a glance up, noting the metal beams holding up the roof, realising he must have climbed up there at some point during the chaos and jumped his way over to stand twenty feet above The Maker, waiting for his moment to strike.

I’m not sure why I’m at all shocked. I really should have expected Caleb to go for the most unconventional, reckless tactic for taking down The Maker.

Caleb catches The Maker so off guard that he collapses like a deck chair, with a decidedly loud yelp of surprise, his eyes widening comically in the precious seconds between Caleb colliding with him and both of them going down to the floor in a heap of limbs.

The Maker loses his grip on his staff and it flies out of his hands, clattering across the floor until it’s too far away for him to grasp without first getting away from Caleb, a feat that will prove impossible. Caleb is, at heart, a close-combat fighter. He likes pushing into someone’s space, attacking them with fast, high-impact hits and full-body holds.

Caleb wraps himself around The Maker, restraining his arms behind his back and locking up his legs. With Caleb’s superhuman strength, keeping The Maker pinned against him is nothing.

Without his staff, the supervillain is basically defenceless, which is his one redeeming feature.

Now that I don’t have to worry about getting blasted all to hell by blue energy, it’s easier to fight off the mattresses and pillows enough to get to the staff. I snatch it up, ignoring the teeth sinking into my shoulder, and hold it with both hands. Grunting from a mixture of pain as more teeth plunge into my skin and the exertion it takes to bend the staff, I eventually manage to snap the fucking thing in half.

As soon as the staff is broken in two, there’s a shrill and incredibly chilling cacophony of screams that fill the room as each and every mattress and pillow lights up with a blinding blue glow. When the light vanishes, whatever was sustaining the creatures disappears too, and they drop to the ground, inanimate once more.

Police sirens start blaring from somewhere outside. They’re only mostly too late this time.

Panting, Caleb and I lock eyes, silently communicating the fact that we need to get out of here before the police swarm the building.

Caleb waits until The Maker finally stops struggling like a fish on a hook, slumping in defeat, and shifts his hold, wrapping an arm around his throat and pressing down on his windpipe. The Maker starts thrashing again, but it’s too late, and within seconds, he loses consciousness.

I offer Caleb my hand and he takes it, but when I pull him to his feet, my shoulder shrieks in protest, sharp pangs of agony shooting through it from where those fucking pillows chomped down on it.

Caleb scowls at the pain creasing my features and grabs my arm, turning me around forcefully so he can inspect the damage. He sucks in a harsh breath at whatever it is he sees, which means it has to be pretty bad, considering the number of injuries we’ve gotten over the years.

“Fuck,” Caleb says, his scowl deepening into a real anger. “We need to get home and sort this shit out, B.”

I jerk my chin in agreement, in no mood to protest, feeling like I’ve been bashed around and gnawed on by a shark.

Caleb keeps hold of my arm, tugging me along as we go to leave, only stopping briefly to free the kid who was trapped in the floor. He picks the boy up, and the kid freely grabs onto Caleb and lets himself be carried out, his face wet with tears.

I force a smile onto my face for the boy, catching his eyes over Caleb’s shoulder and smoothing my voice out into something reassuring. “You’re safe now, little man, we got you.”

Despite how upset he must be, the boy offers a wobbly smile back. “Thanks for saving me, Barricade,” he says, voice raspy from crying.

It makes my heart clench, thinking of how badly this could have gone if Caleb and I hadn’t been here. If this boy had been on his own, he might have been killed. A furious rush of anger at The Maker hits me, and I have to try very hard to keep it off my face so I won’t scare the boy.

I ball my hand into a fist and bump it against his much smaller hand where he’s grasping onto the back of Caleb’s hoodie. “Any time, little man.”

After we find the kid’s mum, who was going half hysterical outside over not being able to find her son, and she all but collapses under the weight of her relief when we put him back in her arms, Caleb ushers me home with all the worried clucking of a mother hen that is angry at one of her chicks for wandering off.

Dodging the police, not to mention the swarm of reporters who showed up in the interim, proves a challenge, but we’ve got a lot of experience with it, so we’re able to avoid trouble from either group.

We pocket our masks halfway home, once we’re sure no one is following us, and get inside our flat without being spied by one of our neighbours.

The block of flats we moved into are ancient by Danger’s standards, considering how often shit gets torn down by the antics of supervillains. It was built back in the early 1800s, made up of centuries-old, crumbling brick and wood barely holding onto its threadbare lifeline.

Caleb wanted to move somewhere modern, or at least not falling apart quite so dramatically, but I have a real love for old buildings. I appreciate the architecture, the years and years of history that mark and scar every wall and floor, the stories told in crevices and grooves of the people who inhabited them long before I was even alive.

Plus, we have large bay windows in our living room that look out over the city. It’s a great view, and in my opinion, well worth the extra rent.

Caleb looks just as gorgeous bathed in golden morning light—sleepy and bed headed—as he does in the stark noir lighting of Danger City nights, gritty and windswept from patrol. Sometimes it takes real effort not to stare at him in the confines of our flat, when we’re sprawled out on the sofa eating a hastily thrown-together breakfast or drinking beer on a rare evening off. I have so many pictures of Caleb on my phone at this point that he has his own folder, some taken outright and others more discreetly.

I’d feel weird about it if I hadn’t seen the innumerable sketches Caleb’s done of me.

Caleb pushes me down on our second-hand sofa, a bit scraggly around the edges but comfortable, and goes into the bathroom to retrieve the med kit from under the sink. He comes back out with it and orders me to take off my hoodie and T-shirt so he can deal with my wounds.

Used to being in various states of undress with Caleb, I don’t hesitate to strip out of my clothes as instructed.

Caleb sits down next to me on the sofa and opens up the med kit on the coffee table in front of him, also second-hand, with nicks on the edges and a couple of ring stains on the flat surface. He takes out a pack of butterfly bandages and some antiseptic wipes, then swivels his finger, indicating I should turn so he can better check out my shoulder.

“How deep is it?” I ask after a handful of seconds of Caleb inspecting the pillow bite.

“Could be worse,” Caleb answers, exhaling in relief, the air from his lungs brushing over my damaged skin with devastating consequences and an uncontrollable shudder rolling through me so fast and harsh that it takes real effort not to gasp. Caleb does me the great favour of ignoring my unmistakable reaction. He can be kind like that, sometimes.

“There’s no point in stitches,” he says instead. “You’ll heal too fast, but taping the skin together might be worth it?”

It’s a real question. One thing you need to learn as a Liquid Onyx survivor is how to read your own body because our physiology is so different from an ordinary person’s. There’s not enough data on how ours works for us to base it on much more than experiences we’ve had in the past with similar injuries.

I dip my head in agreement, wincing at the sudden slice of pain that action causes. “Yeah, okay, tape me up.”

“I’ll clean the bite first, yeah?” Caleb offers, holding up the antiseptic wipes, and I nod in silent permission. That’s important, too, the asking and the giving. Something all Liquid Onyx survivors understand is the value of making decisions about what people do to your body. We know what it feels like to have that power taken away.

Caleb pulls out an antiseptic wipe and goes to work at cleaning up the wounds on my back and shoulder. It stings like hell, but Caleb has careful, steady hands. An artist’s hands. For about the millionth time in my life, I imagine him using those hands on me in less innocent ways. Fisting my hair until it hurts. Clutching my hips hard enough to bruise. Tightening his fingers around my aching cock, sure in his right to touch me and possessive about that right too.

I shove those images down as far as they’ll go, smothering them in the dark recesses of my mind, but that only gives way for softer thoughts to rise up and claim space front and centre. Images of Caleb’s nail-bitten thumb brushing over my cheek when he cups my jaw. His pencil-smudged fingers running over my pecs, my thighs, my back, kneading out the muscle there. His hand grasping my neck and tugging me forwards into a mind-melting kiss, a secret want I’ve been dreaming about for half my life.

“Hey, you okay?” Caleb asks, concern in his voice. “You’re tensing up. Are you hurt worse than?—”

“Nah,” I interrupt, too loud and rapid-fire, a flush spreading up my chest. I scramble for an excuse before Caleb can start prodding further. “Just thinking about how Mei is gonna lose her shit over us getting into it with a supervillain without her.”

“Yeah,” Caleb sighs. He takes out another antiseptic wipe and starts cleaning up the other bite that feels like it’s somewhere at the base of my neck. “She’s gonna rip us a new one for not calling in for backup, as if we can’t take out an idiot like The Maker by ourselves.”

It’s not so much that Mei thinks we can’t handle fights with supervillains on our own as much as she worries about us getting hurt in a way she could have prevented if she were there to have our backs. We’ve always worked best as a team, and any time we’re split up, there’s a level of anxiety that lingers for whoever got left behind.

But Caleb sometimes has trouble understanding Mei’s true feelings about things like that, which considering the fact that his empath abilities allow him to literally read her emotions , it’s almost impressively ridiculous how often he misjudges her intent.

All Caleb tends to hear when Mei gets upset about him getting into trouble is that she’s angry and disappointed in him, not that she cares so deeply and is terrified of losing him.

I don’t have to worry about Caleb misinterpreting my emotions at every turn, because my shielding abilities apparently mean that he’s unable to read me at all. He says being near me is like putting on silencing headphones. He always says it like it’s a good thing, a relief rather than a frustration. I’ve never been sure what to think about that, if I should be glad or disappointed by it.

“I think she’ll be more pissed that we managed to turn a simple bed-buying mission into a real mission,” I counter sardonically, breezing over Caleb’s shit because there’s no point arguing with him about his impressions of what Mei thinks or feels about him. He’s teeth-grindingly stubborn even on his best days. If he’s going to change his mind about something, he has to come to it on his own, or it just won’t happen.

“Either way,” Caleb says, “we’re getting a smack around the head from that woman.” He still sounds fond rather than annoyed by the prospect.

“Or an ice blast to the face like last time,” I say, shuddering at the memory. She froze us to a wall once when we pissed her off during training, and Rex thought it was hilarious, so he didn’t bother freeing us for ages.

“Don’t stress it, I’ll say the whole thing was my fault and take the hit for both of us,” Caleb promises. “You know she’s already primed to blame me for shit going sideways.”

There’s a real bitterness in his voice that I don’t like or agree with at all.

“Cal, come on?—”

Caleb cuts me off, leaning over to drop the pack of antiseptic wipes down on the table harder than necessary, his temper flaring again.

“It’ll be easy, ’cause she likes you better,” he says, pretending it’s a joke when I know it isn’t. “Even when we were together, she still trusted you more, which, you know, fair enough. It’s not like I gave her a lot of reasons to think I wasn’t a complete fuck up—out in the field and in our relationship.”

Not being able to see his face is frustrating, but I know if I turn around now, it’ll come off as confrontational, and Caleb will get defensive on another level. He’s braced to see any argument against him as a war cry, and I don’t feel like indulging that insecurity right now. But if I push back without looking at him, he might be more receptive to it. Maybe. Unlikely. But I’ll give it a go anyway.

“That’s bullshit, Cal,” I say, forcing myself not to sound as vehement about it as I want to, because there’s not a single part of me that thinks Mei doesn’t respect Caleb as a vigilante. “Mei has loved you since we were all six years old, and she trusts you to have her back in the field. She knows what sort of hero you are.”

“Yeah?” Caleb challenges, already hiked up to eleven and ready to swing. “How about what kind of man?”

“Caleb—” I try again, but he talks right over me.

“Because that’s the thing, ain’t it?” he demands, practically spitting fire at my back. “Maybe she does want me as a teammate, maybe I’m a hero she can depend on. But when it comes to being a boyfriend? I fucked that. I fucked it too many times for us to come back from it.”

There’s a pause where Caleb sits behind me, furious and breathing just a little too fast. It isn’t just anger, it’s panic too. Fear. Fear that he’s right, fear that he’s wrong, I don’t know. Possibly both, knowing the tangled spiral of headphone wire that is Caleb’s mind sometimes.

“Do you still want to?” The question comes out of my mouth on impulse, and I immediately want to swallow it back down again.

“What?” Caleb asks, quiet and clearly a bit stunned by the bluntness or possibly the implication behind it.

If I tried to walk it back, Caleb would let me. But I’m not a coward, so I push forward instead.

“Come back from it?”

Once Caleb seems to accept that yes, I am genuinely asking this, he takes a handful of seconds to think it over. I can feel the tension radiating off him in steady waves, like heat from the atmosphere.

“If you’d asked me that a few months ago, I would have said yes,” he says. “But now … after everything that went down with Rex and the mages? I don’t know what I want anymore. It’s all, like, a fucking … a fucking mess up here, yeah?” He raises his hand, and I imagine him tapping his temple with two fingers. “Or maybe it’s just me.” I can hear the defeat, the self-loathing he’s gotten so bad at hiding lately. “Maybe I’m just a fucking mess that can’t, like, ever clean itself up.”

That’s too much for me to take. I can’t stand to hear the horrible pain in his voice or the vile feelings Caleb has about himself.

I turn around so that I can look him in the eyes because I need him to see, to really understand, what I’m about to tell him. He lets me grasp one of his hands and thread my fingers through his, locking them tightly together. I use my free hand to grip the back of his neck and draw him in close, really digging my fingers in and squeezing hard.

“When I look at you, I don’t see a mess, Cal. I never have,” I tell him, and if there’s a harsh crack in my voice, we both have enough respect for each other to ignore it.

I expect Caleb to resist, to pull back, but he doesn’t. He just leans in closer, seeking reassurance and comfort from me even if he isn’t consciously aware that’s what he’s after.

“Yeah?” Caleb murmurs, biting down on the bottom lip of that mouth, the one I’ve stared at and dreamt about for so long it’s awful and embarrassing to admit. He releases his lip from between his teeth and wets it with a quick swipe of his tongue. There’s some spit left behind that I desperately want to lick off, to steal some part of him and absorb it into me.

He catches me noticing, and his eyes dart to my own mouth, which is slightly parted. There are bare inches of space between us, close enough that I can feel his hot little exhales on my face. It’s impossible to miss when the thought kiss him flickers through Caleb’s mind. I inhale sharply at the flare of want: from him, from me, ready to blaze a raging, searing course through both of us.

“Then what do you see?” he asks. I can’t tell if he means to sound so husky and vulnerable, but it hits several buttons inside me that I had no idea were there to press.

It’s a difficult question to answer at any rate, not because I don’t know, but because the answers are innumerable and complex.

What do I see when I look at Caleb Moon?

One of my closest friends. One of the bravest men I know. A genuine goddamn hero. My partner in crime, literally and figuratively. Family, in all the ways that matter. Trouble, the kind you get addicted to on purpose. The boy who I’ve been in love with for years, even when I didn’t know it, even when I didn’t know it was possible to love someone like this, to love them in every shade and on every level, to the point where it doesn’t seem real that one person could mean so much.

Caleb Moon is a man worth more than he will ever believe.

But since we don’t say that kind of shit to each other, because it would be too exposing, too soft for the relationship we’ve built over the last fourteen years, there’s only one answer I can give, one that encompasses all those things.

I dig my nails into his neck like I’m trying to leave permanent marks behind because maybe I am, because maybe that’s what I’m always trying to do, to give him something he can touch and feel and hold onto. Something he can use to keep him steady when his mind shatters and quakes.

“The best thing, Cal,” I tell him. “Just the very best thing.”