Fierce

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Craig and I became boyfriends, so on the down-low that even ants could’ve stepped over us. Billings, after all, isn’t San Francisco. Billings isn’t even San Jose. Billings is more like San Quentin: a prison. Add to the fact that we were still in high school, and prison was more akin to solitary confinement. All that is to say, we weren’t proudly waving our gay flags up and down Main Street.

Still, whereas before I was super and alone, now I was super and part of a pair—a dynamic duo, if you will. I was Fierce. He was The Brain. He came up with that nifty, little moniker. In fact, he came up with it long before we became friends. It seemed I wasn’t the only one with press-grabbing aspirations.

Fierce and The Brain. It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? Saturday morning cartoons reeked of titles like that. Craig and I thought of such things when we sat alone in my room, when we sat alone in his room, in between when we sat alone kissing until are lips were raw, until our d***s hurt from spurting.

Yes, we dreamed of being heroes. We dreamed of being heroes with Saturday morning cartoons named after us. Because, fine, the only things bigger than my d**k and bigger than his d**k—two appendages that were also quite super, by the way—were our egos. The Sears Tower dreamed of being so big, in fact. The Empire State Building cowered at our monstrously massive egos. We were eighteen-year-olds with egos far older than our years.

“Just think of all the good we can do,” he said, over and over again, usually after we’d come. In between when we came again. Which was generally a fifteen-minute window of opportunity.

“We could catch vandals, pick-pockets, jay-walkers,” I said.

“Nuclear arms dealers, war mercenaries, foreign spies,” he amended with.

Seems like some of us had higher aspirations. I was thinking Billings; he was thinking Brussels.

“Um, maybe wait until we’re old enough for a drink then,” I said. “Sounds like we’re going to need one.” Or several.

He laughed. I loved his laugh. I loved him, too, maybe. Still, it’s one thing to tell someone you’re gay, to lay out your very soul to them; it’s quite another to lay out your heart. I could live without a soul, I supposed, but I couldn’t live without my heart. How could I love him then? And how could I not love him and still live? And yes, that’s how eighteen-year-olds talk when they’re in love. Especially ones with coursing hormones and super powers and massive egos. Though mostly that first thing.

I was lying in his bed, by his side, and on my side, facing him. It was still the summer. Our senior year was fast approaching. He was planning on going to Harvard. Or maybe Yale, if Harvard fell through. That’s where brainiacs went, after all. Me, I was thinking of Montana State, home of the Bobcats. Bobcats, as an FYI, taste just like housecats. That is to say, just like chicken. God, it seemed, had rather mundane taste buds, or perhaps was simply too busy with those tricky humans at the time to bother with variety. I wondered if elephants tasted like chicken, too. In any case, and again, I was lying in his bed on my side. He was naked. I was naked. His parents, suffice it to say, were at work. Yippy for summer break!

My hand was on his tight, hairless chest. I never grew tired of exploring his body, which was so different from mine that he might as well have been an entirely different species. Then again, considering my theoretical genetic makeup, he might actually have been one. Or, that is, I might have been. Either way, my hand was like Christopher Columbus, exploring uncharted territories, conquering exotic lands, all in the name of the queen—namely me.

“God, you’re beautiful,” I said.

He grinned. “I thought that was my line.” He turned my way. Butterflies took wing inside my belly as our eyes met.

“There’s no better word for it,” I replied.

He squinted, seemingly thinking it over. “Gorgeous, stunning, dazzling,” he ticked off before grabbing his mast of a prick. “Bountiful.”

I took hold of it. It throbbed in my grip. Here too we were so different. d***s, I surmised, were like snowflakes: no two were alike and they felt wonderful when stuck to your tongue. “All those adjectives and more,” I said. “But your ego is already sufficiently massive, so we’ll stick with beautiful.”

He reached across the gap and took hold of my own eighth wonder of the world. “Pot, kettle, black,” he said.

He had a point. He had my d**k. He had my heart. He also had something else, hidden under the bed.

“I have something to show you,” he said so sheepishly that he could’ve tacked a baa on to the end of it. Oh yeah, sheep, chicken, yada, yada, yada.

In any case, he was already naked. If he was hiding something, he was doing a bang-up job of it. I thought to look up his asshole, but I pretty much always thought of doing that. Craig, you see, had a stunning asshole, pink and puckered and perfect. I could spend weeks up his asshole and be utterly content. But I digress. “Do tell,” I said. “Or, you know, show.”

He paused. He released his grip on my pole. Said pole stood at rapt attention, eager it seemed to raise some sort of flag. Maybe a Polish one. Seemed apt. “You can tell me if you hate it,” he said, the standard blush racing like wildfire across his pale, smooth cheeks and down his neck. “I wouldn’t be upset. Mostly. Maybe a little. But you can be honest. I mean, if you hate it.”

I grinned all the while. Craig was a genius, but Craig was also eighteen. Eighteen-year-old geniuses can also be insecure, even ones with monstrously huge egos and even bigger d***s. “I’ll love it,” I said. “I’ll love it because…well, because it came from you.” I almost slipped. I almost told him. I should’ve told him. But I was eighteen as well. What if he didn’t say it back?

“Wait here,” he said.

I shrugged and stared down at my nudity and flag-raising prick. “Where am I going to go like this?” Apart from up his ass. Though far be it from me to state the obvious.

He hopped up, d**k swaying back and forth, creating a bit of a minor breeze in its pendulous wake. He ran out of the room. I listened to his footsteps as they raced down the hall. In my head, I mapped where he wound up based on how many steps he took. He was in his mother’s sewing room. She knitted kaftans and shawls in her spare time. No one in her family ever had cold shoulders.

A minute later, he was back. His d**k never flagged. I chalked it up to his age, mainly because mine was still perpendicular with a slight slant to the right. He was holding something behind his back. I couldn’t see through him. That wasn’t one of my powers. Maybe if my wolf mom had raised me around a nuclear power plant, but alas, all I could see were hints of colored fabric as they swayed behind him.

“Your mom already knitted me a kaftan, Craig,” I said. “Please tell me you don’t have the matching shawl to go along with it.”

He shook his head. I could hear his heart pounding, both in his chest and in his d**k. It was a strange power to have. Cool, but strange. “I thought maybe we could use these someday.” And then he moved the fabric from behind him to the front. They were onesies, the larger one with hues of dark purple, hints of lavender. The smaller one was festooned with tubes of a sort, like lengths of intestines. I squinted at them. I hadn’t a clue what they were. And then…“Wait, is that an F on the chest of the purple one and a B on the smaller one?” I hopped up. In an instant, I knew what he was holding, what he’d made for us. “These are superhero outfits, Craig. Yours is designed like a giant brain.”

“Given that I’m The Brain, it seemed fitting.” He grinned as he blushed. “Too much? Not enough? The capes are in progress. I ran out of purple fabric.” He turned them inside out. “Bulletproof. I broke into a military database. Copied the design. Thin mesh, insanely strong. Easy enough to create, though. If you have a few weeks and can locate the materials.”

“And if you can break into a military database.”

He shrugged. “Well, yeah. But that only took a minute or two. The fabric, like I said, took several weeks. Hard to get the purple just right. The orange was easier.”

“Of course.”

He nodded. “Yeah, of course.” He eyed me suspiciously. “Wait, are you being flippant?”

Again I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not sure what the word means, let alone if I’m being it.”

“Glib. It means glib. Facetious.”

And still I shrugged. “If you say so.” I was still lost.

He sighed. “Jerky, then. You’re being a jerk.”

“Ah,” I ahhed. “Then yes, I’m being a jerk. Mainly because you casually slipped into a conversation about sewing that you broke into a military database. I tend to think that the military frowns on such things, especially when you’re stealing their secrets. Even if it is to create nothing more than a couple of onesies.”

“Which are bulletproof. And dagger-proof,” he added, proudly. “I think it might block radiation, too, but only as a side benefit.”

“Icing on the cake.”

He touched fingertip to button nose. “Exactly.” He squinted my way. “Wait, jerky again?”

I exhaled. I inhaled. I counted to ten, twice. Craig sometimes had thin skin. Maybe that’s why he made the onesies, I reasoned. But why one for me then? “I’m guessing it’s a major federal crime of some sort to break into a military database, Craig. You want a onesie, they have plenty in prison.” Plus, as far as I was concerned, superheroes didn’t break the law. Why was it so easy for him to make the justification?

He grimaced. “You hate them.”

I closed the gap between us. I stood a foot away from him. “I don’t hate them, Craig,” I told him. “I simply don’t understand their purpose. This some sort of s*x thing? Like those guys who dress up in furry animal costumes and f**k each other?” I grabbed the wiry hairs that sprouted from my shoulders. “Because, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m already wearing a furry animal costume.”

“They’re superhero outfits, Lucas,” he said.

“So I gathered.”

“Now we can fight crime without being recognized.” He held up a pair of matching eye masks I hadn’t noticed. “See.”

I nodded. I continued nodding. I couldn’t stop nodding. “Huh.”

His sigh repeated. “I thought we were done with that routine.”

“Oldie, but a goodie,” I countered with.

“You have powers, Lucas,” he said. “I have powers, too. It would be a shame to waste them, a crime to waste them.”

“A crime,” I said. “Like breaking into a military database.”

He dropped the costumes onto the floor. He moved to the bed. He sat down and stared at the heap of fabric. “I know that was wrong, but I also know what we have here. In those getups, you and I are unstoppable.” He was pointing to the outfits, pointing and frowning. Though behind his eyes, I could still detect a glimmer, a spark of excitement. I didn’t need special powers to see that.

I sighed and bent down. I took the purple one in hand. It was smooth to the touch, yet felt strong just the same, like steel, though considerably thinner. I turned it around. I slipped into it. It fit like a glove. It also looked snazzy as all hell. I stared at the large lump in the center. “I need a cup. You can tell my religion in this thing.”

He reached beneath the bed and threw a codpiece my way. “One step ahead of you.” He grinned. “It’s an extra-large.”

He knew me so well. He also knew my ego so well. And yes, he was stroking it rather adeptly. In any case, I slipped the codpiece inside the costume. It held me in place. At least better than my Speedo did. I moved to the mirror behind his door. I smiled as I slipped on the eye mask. I looked crazy sexy and equally crazy gay. Mainly because the large F plastered across my chest was done in vivid purple surrounded by lavender.

He eyed me expectantly. “Well?”

To recap, I was eighteen, standing there in a bulletproof purple onesie, talking about stopping crime with my teenage boyfriend, who had recently broken into a military database. You can’t make that s**t up. Still, what did he want me to say? Teenagers don’t fight crime, after all. Do they? And do they do it while running through the streets in a onesie? Nope, I hadn’t a clue, but he was adorable standing there with that hopeful look in his eyes, and so I diverted with, “Um, let’s see yours on.”

He grinned. He melted my heart. He made my codpiece shiver and shake. Then he got dressed in his brain-bedecked outfit, a matching eye mask added a moment later. He looked like a standing bit of large intestine. I hoped the downtrodden didn’t confuse him for Captain Digestion.

“Well?” he asked.

I laughed as I further closed the gap between us. “You look very brainy,” I replied as I kissed him, our masks rubbing against one another. I had a feeling that not once in the whole history of mankind did this scene ever before play out. If we had been in Vegas—and I had been of age—I would’ve made a rather large bet on that.

Our mouths meshed in perfect flush synchronicity. My hands roamed his back. The material felt like silk beneath my fingers. I cupped his tiny ass in my hands. He moaned into my mouth. I relished the sound of it, of him.

Still, the relish was short-lived.

That is to say, another sound was drowning it out from somewhere off in the distance. I heard it loud and clear, though I knew it was quite a bit away, even farther away than I normally could hear.

“Huh,” I said, breaking the kiss, however reluctantly.

“Maybe I should’ve sewed a giant letter H into your costume instead of an F, Lucas.”

I shook my head. “I mean, huh, I’m hearing things I shouldn’t be hearing.”

He smiled so brightly that I wished the costume came with sunglasses. “It’s your mask,” he said. “Where it covers your ears, I put in miniature hearing aids. They amplify your already spectacular auditory abilities. Neat, right?”

I didn’t answer him. And I wasn’t smiling either. “Someone’s in trouble,” I said.

His grin promptly flew south for the winter. “Where?”

I moved my head left to right. I shut my eyes. I could hear it clearly. It was someone struggling, someone asking for help, begging for it. I didn’t know how far away, but I knew the exact direction. With the mask on, I was more homing pigeon than wolf. “Toward our school,” I replied. “Southwest of here. No more than a mile away.”

He sucked in his breath. “You can hear that far away now?”

I shrugged. “Seems so. If I concentrate hard enough, I mean.” I popped my eyes open again. “What should we do?” My heart was racing. This was a crossroads. I felt it as sure as I heard the cry for help. Did I go left at the fork? Did I go right at the fork? Or did I shuck the costume and simply spoon with Craig instead.

I was contemplating Option C, when he replied, “What would a superhero do?”

I sighed. My shoulders slumped. “We’re not superheroes, Craig; we’re eighteen-year-olds in shiny suits. You don’t even drive yet. You failed your driver’s test, in fact.”

He scowled. “That parallel parking is a bitch.” He pointed at his wrist, at a nonexistent watch. “Make up your mind, Lucas. Someone’s in trouble. We don’t have much time.”

He was right. I heard it in the voice of the woman crying for help. Which is why I found myself running down the street not a minute later. I’m sure I must’ve looked like a purple blur. I ran faster than I’d ever run before. The onesie was padded. My feet didn’t even feel the pavement. Leave it to Craig to think of everything.

I reached her in no time flat. I was barely out of breath, though my heart was beating a mile a minute—not out of fear, not out of exertion, but out of pure excitement. There was adrenaline rush, in fact, and then there was this.

“Please, help me,” she cried.

My eyes locked in on her. She was behind the wheel of a car. The car had jumped the curb and rammed into a tree. The car was a mess. She looked far worse. Blood was dripping down her forehead. I could smell it, could hear her heart as it pounded in her chest, could see the fear in her eyes. She had reason to be afraid: the car was steaming something awful. It was coming from the engine.

I didn’t think; I reacted. I’d been standing there one second, I was pushing the car away from the tree a moment later. It screeched as the metal twisted this way and that. The car was heavy, but it was no match for me, for the rescuer in purple and lavender. And no, this wasn’t ego; this was destiny. You know, mostly.

I yanked the car door clean off its hinges. “Are you okay?” I asked. She nodded, weakly. “Can you wiggle your fingers and toes?” She paused. She seemed to check. She nodded again, and so, I figured, I could safely move her.

I scooped her up in my arms. She seemed to weigh nothing. She looked confused as she took me in. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m here to help.”

She gulped and nodded. I ran us down the street and gently placed her on the grass.

The car groaned and exploded a mere second later, belching smoke and fire up into the sky as the fire department and police began to arrive. She stared at me in amazement. I stared down at my outfit and knew I couldn’t stay a moment longer.

“You’ll be okay, ma’am,” I said, pointing to the advancing ambulance.

She forced a smile on her bloody face. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you…”

I stood up. I smiled and puffed out my chest. “Fierce, ma’am,” I said, proudly. “My name is Fierce.”