Chapter Text
I thought sparring was the ticket. It covered the whole spectrum. It let Barnaby be angry, vulnerable, strong, and loose all at the same time, and all the while I thought he couldn’t tell what I actually wanted. When we started play-fighting, everything else stopped requiring so much effort. I didn’t have to drag him, kicking, to go out with me—we’d go out less, but he’d go more willingly. Casual things like coffee and lunch. I’d flirt, usually just calling him out for being the gorgeous man that he knows he is. Something about his eyes, face, body, I don’t even have to embellish. Barnaby is just that beautiful. Barnaby wouldn’t meet my eye, but he’d look away and he’d grin, this sly little smirk, and then he’d say some witty line, “Wait, are we on camera? Quick, look friendly.”
And we were friendly. I thought he was flirting back. But there were so many signs—signs I should have seen. I was only interested in the signs I wanted to see.
We had one day where everything was going right. We had a pretty fun interview in the morning, the paperwork was light—Schneider’s told me damage fines have plummeted—and we had a good workout, both independently and together. By now, we know each other’s moves so well that sparring is more like dancing. There’s not much we can do to surprise each other anymore, though that’s just an excuse to get inventive.
Barnaby isn’t angry with me anymore. Even if he still is, it’s not a feeling he dwells on. I don’t feel resentment or tension, and even as we exchanged blows, I felt so… wanted. Like he wanted me to be there. Like he’d rather be with me than anyone else. Me. And I felt more in love with him than ever.
That day, our sparring went longer than usual, and the both of us were panting and breathless as we changed back to civilian clothes. Barnaby looked so content, too, as happy as a man can look while tugging on shoes and pulling up zippers. So I thought I’d be direct for once—there’s no way to say this kind of stuff without sounding at least a little bit stupid, but with such a good atmosphere between us, if I took my chance now, at least I wouldn’t sound afraid.
“Hey, Barnaby,” I ventured.
“What is it?” Formal diction with a familiar tone. A good mood for Barnaby Brooks Jr.
“There’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while,” I told him. I had my clothes, boots, and bangles on, so I shut my locker and turned to him. Barnaby was sitting on a bench and sliding on his shoes, with his jacket folded beside him. His tight, red-black shirt looked so good on him. “About being a hero, and being your partner, and the work we do together.”
“What have you been thinking?” He wasn’t meeting my eye again, just staring at his shoes as he perfectly aligned his foot with the hole. And those pants, damn, his legs stretched forever in those pants. I took a seat beside him, close. Very close. I felt this swelling in my chest, confidence and power, and this certainty that everything was about to go my way, like destiny. Things always go my way. Even if there’s a hiccup or two along the way, I get what I want or better.
“I think you know,” I stalled a little bit. “But I’m willing to explain if you don’t.”
“I don’t think I know what you mean,” Barnaby finished with his shoes and looked my way. I saw him—the curve of his jaw, the shape of his eyes, the curl of his bangs—and before he could play coy and look away again, I leaned forward and I kissed him. Nothing scandalous, just my lips against his, so it was less of a kiss and more of a message: “I find you attractive. I want to be closer to you. There’s more where that came from.”
Barnaby pulled away fast, and his hand flew even faster. Then his hand struck my cheek and I wasn’t staring at Barnaby’s face anymore. I gingerly touched the stinging skin and marveled at the speed of the strike—at least as fast as his legs, maybe faster, and damn it hurt but I should be fine with a forearm block—and then the significance settled in. Barnaby slapped me. Barnaby got my message loud and clear and then responded in kind. He rejected me. Rejected! Me!
I blinked the smarting pain from my eyes and looked around. In two seconds flat, Barnaby disappeared from sight, and the metal clang of the room door told me he had escaped, his jacket abandoned on the bench.
I could nurse my wounds later. Right then, I needed to catch Barnaby before he got away. The sense of destiny crumbled as I realized that making my move might have just destroyed everything—that tenuous friendship, the all-or-nothing field work, my entire job. This one moment could decide the rest of my future with Barnaby, and mean the difference between a gentle rejection and a fight that tore any hope of an ‘us’ to shreds.
I wasn’t about to let him tear ‘us’ to shreds before ‘us’ even happened.
I ran after him, predicting his most likely path. He had most of his clothes on, so he could go just about anywhere he wanted. He was panicked. He was upset. He wouldn’t go to the office, he didn’t leave any necessary personal items there, and returning to the gym would mean meeting the heroes and having to explain his mood, which is not something Barnaby enjoyed. He was running—running away. To the ground floor, then. Barnaby wasn’t waiting at the elevator bank, so he was either already in one or had taken the stairs. I chose the stairs, leaping entire flights on my way down. I remember my heart thudding in my chest, thinking about how quickly it had all gone wrong. I gambled, and I lost. I thought over every time Barnaby resisted me, redirected me, cataloging and categorizing signals I had missed in my thoughtless daze, and with hindsight I realized I had done the absolute worst thing possible.
All the while, I couldn’t stop thinking, I’m better than this. I don’t make mistakes like this. This isn’t me. The way Barnaby made me into someone I’m not… Well, he could only do that because I let him. I searched so hard for the flaws in Barnaby’s armor that he found the chinks in mine, and something about him dug in, dug hard. There’s a new variable in my own self that I haven’t properly accounted for. I’ve changed and I didn’t even notice. Rookie mistake.
The gym is nearer the bottom of the tower than the top, so I made it to the ground floor soon enough. The vaulting Apollon lobby stretched the entire area of a city block, stuffed with people walking to and from offices and a few people waiting. I scanned the crowd for blonde hair and a red shirt. I wished I had my suit. Or a visor that did the same thing. Seriously, why are the heroes on such a tight leash when it comes to using our gear off the show? Couldn’t that engineer develop something to help?
It turned out I didn’t need the engineer. I caught sight of Barnaby beyond the security gates, walking as if he could punch holes in the ground with his feet. So I started running too, through the baby gates and into the main atrium. I wanted to shout his name, but if I drew the crowd’s attention to his presence, we wouldn’t get the chance to talk. I didn’t even know what I wanted to say to him yet. It all boiled down to a contest of speed—which I would win, because Barnaby didn’t know I was pursuing him.
But then Barnaby picked up the pace. He had spotted something, someone, and started running properly. And Barnaby is damn fast, which is perfect because I don’t have to wait for him to catch up to me in the field, but right at that moment, it was the worst. There were too many people moving in every direction, and I only got within fifty feet before Barnaby reached his ‘target.’ It was a someone: a man with brown hair and a goatee. Barnaby flung his arms around this man’s neck, buried his face in his shoulder, and clung to him like a castaway to driftwood. The man’s eyes went wide and his eyebrows sprang up under his bangs as his hands settled on Barnaby’s back.
The man saw me. With Barnaby hugging so tight, Wild Tiger had no choice but to survey the scene behind his old partner’s back. He put two and two together pretty easily: Barnaby, distraught and running to his arms, with me behind him, looking like—I don’t even know what I looked like, probably not good. He knew something went wrong, and if he could look any more shocked, he would have. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, to fix this. I could have called to Barnaby, or even called to Tiger, since I hadn’t met the guy face-to-face so I could fake the need for an introduction. That would at least force everyone—or Barnaby and me—to be civil. But I didn’t want to talk to Tiger, ever if I could avoid it. I wanted Barnaby alone.
And then… things got worse. Barnaby lifted his face from the crook of Tiger’s neck and turned toward him. I’ve never seen Barnaby look so fluid, so natural, following muscle memory. With just a twist of his head, his lips met Tiger’s. And unlike when I kissed Barnaby, Tiger didn’t pull away. This wasn’t a shock to him. He accepted it; expected it.
They couldn’t have spelled it out for me any clearer if they tried. I didn’t stick around to watch. I turned and ran back the way I came, vaulting the security gate and still running until I was back in the stairwell, just behind the door.
Barnaby was in love. He was probably in love before we even met. He had fallen for the wonderful Wild Tiger. And as much as I hated Barnaby for hiding this from me, when he could have just waved the metaphorical ring finger and stopped me before I made an idiot of myself, I couldn’t stop feeling like… like…
Okay. I’ll say it. I’m fucking pissed. I’m pissed that I’m supposed to fill the hole Mangy Tiger left, like a replacement gear from a mail-order catalogue. I’m pissed that I got burdened with so many of his hand-me-downs, his motorcycle, his desk, his armor station. It’s not the oldness I’m against, it’s the way I can’t form my own identity. Schneider keeps shoving me into the box they used to keep that washed-up clown.
I. Am. Not. Tiger. No one believed for a second that we’re the same person. We’ve got different fighting styles, different powers, different appeal—whatever Tiger’s fans saw in him, all seven of them, they won’t ever see it in me—so why did Apollon push so hard to make me the replacement for their old-fashioned veteran? I’m too different from Tiger, and too different from Barnaby. I’m stronger than both of them. I could destroy them if I wanted to, even two-on-one. How far is Hundred Power going to get them when I increase the weight of their armor two-hundred fold? This is a waste of my talents, working for Apollon. They’re treating me like a quantified unit, like they already know the limits of my abilities. Tiger, Ryan, what’s the difference to the stockholders? There’s a big difference! There’s more difference between us than night and day! Tiger may be replaceable, but I am no one’s replacement!
…And what am I supposed to do about Barnaby? He loves his partner. The two of them are still together, even though the company broke them up. Even if I break them apart for good, that won’t help. My Gold Standard of a man will be another of Tiger’s hand-me-downs. Everything I love about him just rusts with the knowledge that Tiger loved him first, and Barnaby loved him back. Even if I can break them apart… it won’t be the same.
There’s this cute little quote that circulates around about the impracticality of breakable hearts; well, hearts only get broken if you allow other people to break them. Letting someone else hold your heart is the stupidest thing you can do, but I tricked myself into thinking this might be different. That I could win. But that’s just it, I lost before I even arrived, and all that’s left is resentment, pain, and proof that my heart is breakable.
Thanks. Thanks for that, Barnaby Brooks Jr.
I didn’t cry after I found out. I felt like it, but I didn’t. I left the stairs, called an elevator, and returned to the gym. Barnaby’s jacket still lay on the wooden bench, right where he had left it. I wondered if he’d come back upstairs to get it, but he never did. I spent a long time sitting next to it—looking, not touching—and wondering what I should do with it. I felt like I had a split personality: half of me screamed to leave the jacket, throw it in the trash, fling it off the roof, burn it, because that’s what Barnaby deserved. I could take revenge on his clothes as a symbol for how much he hurt me. But the other half of me knew Barnaby never wanted to hurt me like this. If anything, he tried his hardest to do the opposite. He wanted a distant, professional relationship, and when I kept badgering him for more, he made concessions. He let us be friends, because… I don’t know. If he had been dating Tiger all this time, I can’t think of a single reason why he would give an inch to me, the guy they hired when they fired his boyfriend. The guy who then started hitting on him and harassing him, dammit, when did I become so despicable? Barnaby was totally in the right to slap me. But I still wanted to slap him back.
I eventually chose the high road. I picked up his jacket, smoothed it over my arm, and brought it to our desks. I draped it over his chair, with the back fitting into the shoulders and the arms hanging empty. And looking at his chair and his desk, and my chair and my desk that used to be someone else’s chair and desk, in an office filled with the imprints of so many memories I’m never going to be a part of… I felt something. A little bit like nostalgia, except for a chunk of time that I would never be able to touch. Someone else’s precious memories. I wondered if I could be satisfied with being precious to Barnaby. Not necessarily his lover, or even his friend or partner, but someone he would shed tears for if he knew we would never see each other again.
Right now, Barnaby would probably smile at the idea of never seeing me again.
But what should I do, when we see each other tomorrow? Accuse him of hiding his relationship with Tiger? Pretend I didn’t ruin everything? Ask questions, and get the answers I don’t know if I want? Start a pro-con list between Tiger and myself and wait for overwhelming evidence that I am the better man to accrue? That doesn’t sound like something the better man would do.
I went home that night. I ate something, but I forget what. I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling, my head too heavy to lift.
They aren’t doing this to hurt me. I’ve been telling myself that ever since I saw them together, but it never feels true. Barnaby didn’t choose to kiss Tiger where I could see them. He didn’t know I was there. Tiger accepted, even though he knew I was watching, but that was what Barnaby needed from him right then. He needed comfort, and Tiger read that like a book. I wondered what the two of them were doing right at that moment. Judging from the timing of Tiger’s appearance in the lobby, he had to be meeting Barnaby after work. Had they made plans? A date? Were they discussing me at that moment? Would they examine me, judge me, arrive at a verdict for their behavior toward me in the future? I made myself a threat to them, ‘their love,’ whatever you want to call it.
The only thing that helped me sleep was the thought that this wasn’t over. Barnaby and I are still employed as partners. I’m going to keep seeing him. The game is still on, but the stakes have changed. I don’t even know what we’re going to fight for, and so far this contest has given me nothing but pain, but I am going to come out on top or die trying.
Your move, Tiger. Your move, Barnaby.