4

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.