by Nicole Field
Holiday Jones had seen it too. That lovely face had registered a split second's worth of shock. Of realization. Of knowing, maybe for the first time, that a boy and his mother could die together here and now, visible and undeniable, and it'd be his fault—
He'd flung a hand out. Yanked at some invisible thread. Propelled the boy toward himself. Away from the fiery crash.
A shot had hit him, then.
Not from one of the heroes. A stray bullet. Some military officer's panicked reaction. Holly hadn't been reserving enough energy for his own shields. The impact plunged right through his stomach.
Ryan, trying to absorb dazzling electricity from snapping power lines and also watch John's back during the rescue of kids from a school bus, had blurted out, "No—!" involuntarily.
It'd been like watching artwork die. Like watching a symphony fall to both knees when it'd only just learned that it didn't really want to hurt children.
The boy Holly'd been trying to save hadn't moved. Fire scorched the sky. The moon creaked lower, blotting out day.
John had sized up the danger, had bolted that way, had made a dive into flames for the kid's limp form. Holiday Jones, on both knees, pressed a hand to his stomach. The hand turned red.
He could heal; Ryan knew he could. The entire Jones family could.
Captain Justice, no longer encumbered by the defensive perimeter, was busy wading in. Fists and feet. Heroics in action.
Arachne Jones had shouted Help us! to her son.
Holly, hands wet with blood, had half-turned and half-fallen, collapsing to the ground.
We need your power! she'd demanded. Your strength added to ours! Now!
Holly, eyes stunned, face ghost-white, had stared back. His lips had moved; Ryan hadn't been able to read them, but could guess. If Holiday stopped using his power on himself he'd die. Surely his mother couldn't want that.
She'd shouted words. An honor. Your duty. Your sacrifice. The glorious new beginning.
John, stumbling and fire-singed, had run out of smoke with the boy in his arms. Had found the very human mother, who wept and clutched her son, who was breathing and alive.
Holiday had seen that too.
Primrose and celadon light had blossomed around him. With a last gasp of strength, he'd let himself fall through the portal, into wherever he'd opened it, with as much strength as he had.
Arachne had shrieked. The foundations of the world had frozen, broken rubble astounded mid-fall: everyone and everything caught out of time, abandoned and furious.
Arachne and Horatius Jones had chosen to die together. To immolate themselves and their plans in a bloody tower of flame, rather than be captured by the world's superheroes. No one knew what they might've said to their son; their bodies had been found entwined as the fires ebbed.
Slowly, crumbled block by crumbled block, the world's superheroes had all gotten on with reassembling and defending London and the rest of the world. Ryan and John had worked shoulder to shoulder with rescue crews, aching and sore, helping where they could.
At night, during the nights, they'd had a different project. They hadn't even paused to debate it. They'd both seen Holiday's face.
John had been the one who'd found him, after three days of painstaking triangulation, tracking of mystic amulet signatures, and combat-honed estimation of how far he'd make it. Holiday had in fact landed in an old derelict sheep-farmer's cottage, someplace that'd been emptied out for a good century at Ryan's best guess. His parents' amulets and rings had all landed with him, following the heir to the family power; with this mystical help, he was still alive, but only barely. He hadn't eaten or bathed or possibly even moved for seventy-two hours. Feverish and kitten-weak, he remained the most breathtaking person Ryan had ever seen, that black hair falling like a sword-slash across his face.
Holly had whispered, Did he make it?
Ryan and John had traded glances. John had asked whether this meant Holiday's father.
No, Holly had said, blood-splashed and shivering. The boy. The one you went back for—the one I tried to—I didn't mean—is he safe? Or if—is there anything I can do, please tell me, is he all right, can I try to help?
Two years later, Ryan thought maybe he'd fallen in love with Holiday Fortune Lyndsay Jones right then. Maybe both he and John had.
They hadn't turned Holly in. They'd taken him home. To Clifftop. Their home.
And now they sent him into danger. Over and over. Never mind that Holly volunteered; it'd been his own idea. A way of making amends. Making use of expectations.
*~*~*
John sat up, gulped down half his beer, held Ryan's hand. "He'll need tea. When he gets here. And maybe more food. I know we're having dinner, but I could make that banana-walnut bread. He likes that one."
"Do we have bananas? Also, you're resting. Worrying about baked goods isn't resting."
"We have bananas. I am resting." But he let Ryan scoop him up from the bar stool and steer him over to couch-cushions despite this. They flopped down together, feet up, letting the sofa take some weight. Ryan pointedly dropped the inhaler on John's chest. John made a face at him. Coughed. Used it.
By unspoken agreement, they knew they'd wait for Holly for dinner. John flipped on the television. Some sort of home renovation show. Remodeling a century-old farmhouse. Taking down walls. Some kind of metaphor, Ryan thought, for freedom: for the decision they might've just made.
He said, aloud, "We could totally start a home remodeling company. Super-strength, installing electricity, disposing of hazardous materials. Holly can be the charming salesperson who actually talks to clients. You know, whenever we finally quit the hero business."
"I was thinking about bookshelves," John said. "Built-ins, I mean, floor to ceiling, on the wall over there. He's got all those books, and if he's going to officially openly move in, the books'll move too."
"We can manage bookshelves. We're heroes. Just tell me what to do, Colonel Trent, sir."
John snorted. Elbowed him in the side. "I was out of the Army before I'd ever met you, and that promotion was honorary even before that. And you don't take orders from me."
"Not that you didn't deserve the honors." Ryan knocked a foot against his. "But yeah, kinda over taking orders from people. Unless it's you and you know more about bookshelves than I do. Are they putting in a skylight? Can we do that?"
"Um…maybe. That's a lot of rock to get through, overhead. And it might be conspicuous. And—oh, come on, that's the world's ugliest wallpaper, why would they pick that?"
"Why is that tile pink?"
The fire danced, contented and coruscating. Rock walls caught light and glowed darkly. Italian spice and cheese suffused the air. Rain pattered down across the tall lookout windows, ribboning over glass, mingling with ocean. John's muscles felt nice to lean into, strong and present and alive. Ryan nursed his own beer, thought distantly about bookshelves and surprises for Holly, tried not to fret about time and lateness. John would be having those thoughts too.
Neither of them could do anything. They had to wait. They had to trust that Holiday would turn up, smiling and real. He always did; he would again, this time, this last time, because it needed to be the last time, or at least close to that. If anything outright apocalyptic was brewing they might need him inside. But if not, if not, he could come home. He could stay.
They all needed that.
After a while John got up to do something enigmatic involving garlic bread and his mother's seasoning. Ryan got up too, got out Holly's teakettle, regarded it hopefully. Maybe, if he made tea, Holly would be summoned back. Conjured up through the storm. Beckoned by flavors of bergamot and orange.
John finished communing with the garlic bread, adjusted the timer, turned. "He should be back by now."
"It'll take as long as it takes. And he'll be talking to people. Finding out plans. Whatever they'll tell him." Ryan was thinking the same, though. The not knowing ate into his heart. Acid on his bones and his soul. "You know he'l
l try to pick up as much as he can."
"He always tries—" John's hands clenched briefly around the counter's edge, and let go. "I think we need—if he's up for it, I want to put him back on his knees. Or get out the cane. Or something. I don't know yet. But—"
"So he can feel it," Ryan said. "So we can feel it. That he's here, and this is real, and he's—"
Pale gold light iridesced into a portal. Aureate streamers flared and faded. The television became a backdrop as Holiday arrived out of thin air.
Clifftop's mystical protections let him in without concern and with welcome; Holly, employing that well-honed magical art, had reinforced them. He'd offered, back then, to lock himself out. To require approval from one of the resident heroes.
John had dropped a kiss on his forehead and said, "No, sorry, kid, we want you here."
Ryan had said, "Bring that up again and we'll, um, not spank you, you like that too much. Put you on your knees in the corner all night, maybe. Because no, you idiot, we trust you."
Holly's smile had started small and shaky, but had become more certain of itself, taking this in.
In the present Holiday was smiling too, but tiredly. He'd left on just two of those mystic focus-stone rings and had changed out of melodramatic robes, having dropped back into his erstwhile lair to shake any pursuit; he'd thrown on an oversized knit sweater in pale sunrise hues and soft-looking loose pants, because Holiday Jones had in part spent the last two years discovering a bashful enjoyment of gentle colors and comfort and a lack of sharp edges.
He'd pulled the explosion of his hair into a messy over-one-shoulder braid that was promptly undoing itself. When he took a step out of magic and into the common room, he winced; when he turned the smile their way, Ryan's heart skipped several beats.
He dropped his near-empty beer bottle onto the counter. Ran.
"I'm fine," Holly said, but too weakly to be a good denial. "It's already healing—"
"Did I do any of this?" He hadn't thought so. He'd believed Holly about the lack of actual harm, earlier. But red lay in a vicious line across that aristocratic cheek, splitting fair skin, starting just beneath that wide left eye. More red peeked out at the edge of his collarbone: another thin cruel slash.
Holiday Jones, the only Sinister Sorcerer left alive, did possess a gift for swift self-repair, and the cuts were closing themselves as he watched. But they remained present. Which meant they'd been bad.
"I didn't mean to," Ryan tried, hoping that'd be an apology, hoping Holly'd tell him. Anything else would be a bad sign. "How bad is it?"
John came over too, bringing a medical kit and better equilibrium. "It wasn't you. That's a blade, not a burn. How serious is it, kid? Anyplace that hurts worse than others, or feels numb, or like it shouldn't?"
"No. Or—well—it hurts quite a lot, and there're holes in that costume now, but it's only—ow—the usual affection from my colleagues." Holly's chin trembled a fraction, though. Ryan found himself forcibly reminded of the years between them, in a way he mostly wasn't.
Of course, Holiday Jones had never been precisely young. Or if so, only in age. Not in terms of experience. Not in terms of innocence. Not with that upbringing.
Ryan shoved down the familiar spike of anger—at Holly's twisted and manipulative parents, at the casual brutality of the other Masters of Terror, at himself and John for allowing Holiday to do this at all—and heaped mental bars atop it. Now wasn't the time, not when their youngest partner needed care and cherishing and affection. "What happened?"
"Killblade." Holly held willingly still. Let Ryan's fingers trace the edges of the cut across that cheek: trusting him to cause no further harm. "Those, er, blades. I can never figure out whether he's attempting to threaten me or seduce me. I know he thinks I'm pretty but incompetent. All of them do."
"Well, they're idiots," John said reasonably, and offered bandages and curative salve when Ryan held out a hand for them. "You're better than everyone in that room. Hell, you're a better hero than we are. I got benched today and Ryan got to come home and have a beer and you went over there and put on a show for a room full of monsters. You're the best of us, kid."
Ryan, trying not to feel extra-guilty—him knocking Holly over on the bridge earlier likely hadn't helped—nodded in agreement. Smoothed tender green salve across that wounded cheek.
"I know you think so." Holly shut both eyes, flinched as the motion pulled at injuries, reopened them. A smudge of unremoved theatrical eyeliner lurked around the left one. He did not look at either John or Ryan, focusing somewhere around John's right foot, or possibly the tangle of lines beyond that, where Clifftop's rock wall made friends with the floor. "I know you tell me so. I just… I'm sorry. I wish I could do more. I wish I could be… If I'd known about Doctor Dread beforehand, you'd not've been hurt, and I… but they won't tell me everything if I've not earned it, and I can't earn it if I don't do something that genuinely hurts people, and I know I'm not doing enough for you…"
Ryan and John exchanged glances. More serious than they'd thought; not physical, but emotional. Internal bleeding. Old heart-deep stab-wounds, opened up and leaving chasms.
"They brought up your parents," John said gently, putting an arm around him, drawing him over to the sofa, "didn't they? No, lie down, let us look at these, I know you're healing but we want to help."
"Blade," Holly said, "and Glitterbomb, and a few others. They said—they said my parents would be so disappointed in me. That I'm a disgrace. I'm not worthy of—and I know, I know, my parents destroyed a whole city and nearly the moon, not precisely a good standard to live up to, but—but if I can't be that, but then I can't help you enough, either, and—"
"What the hell kind of supervillain name is Glitterbomb, anyway," Ryan said, hands coming to rest over pale exposed skin, next to a new bandage, below Holly's pushed-up sweater. His fingers wore smears of salve, mint-green and cool, kind as leaves and aloe and sweet grass. "Anywhere else? Did anyone touch you? Anything we should know?" Holly'd said seduce, about Blade. "Anything at all."
"Oh…um, the Legion of Destruction is planning to kidnap the President at his speech next week and hold him hostage until everyone on their list of supervillain detainees is released. There's going to be a coordinated series of international bank robberies sometime soon, once they all agree on the dates. And Killblade has plans to attack Captain Justice at the commemorative statue unveiling—"
"That's not what I meant." Ryan cleaned off salve on Holly's hip—might as well try to help with that fading bruise, which achingly hinted at last time's push into a door—and found Holly's hand to hold in his. He himself had ended up kneeling on the floor; Holly'd obediently lain down and accepted care, head in John's lap. John was playing with his hair, unweaving the clumsy braid, letting dark waves fall free.
"And Tim can handle himself. We'll give him the heads-up, and he'll get all earnest and grateful and say thank you, but." Ryan squeezed that hand. Hard. "I meant anything about you."
"Glitterbomb is a perfect supervillain name," John threw in, "I mean, I'd hate it, wouldn't you?" and tapped Holly's nose with a finger. "You know we meant you, kid. You'd tell us if—if someone really hurt you, yeah?"
"I—" Holly said. "I don't know why you—yes, I mean, yes. I would. I think I would. I only—I feel—you're already hurt and I—"
"It's my own damn fault for not getting out of there quick enough." John sighed. "Holiday, kid, we'll tell you again. As many times as you need. We love you. It'll hurt us if you get hurt. Even more if you don't tell us. We're here for you. Like you're here for us. Let us be here."
"There's nothing you can say," Ryan said, "that'll scare us away. We swear. Come on, we know you don't know how to do laundry without turning everyone's socks pink, and we've seen you before you've had tea in the morning, and your hair gets into the shower drain, and we love you anyway."
"I can try to learn to do laundry," Holly said, but he looked happier.
"I like doing laundry," John sai
d. "You both think I'm the weird one, I know. But it's relaxing. Don't tell me you don't like clean towels. Holly—"
"I'm okay," Holly said. "I promise. If they—if anything else happened I'd tell you. I know you'd want to know. And I—I'd want to. To tell you. I love you. I'm only a bit… off-balance, I think. Is that—can we—can I ask for—?"
"Of course you can. You can ask for anything. Tonight, or any time." John took the hand out of his hair, touched his cheek, slid the hand lower: until big combat-trained fingers and palm rested over Holly's throat, loosely encircling. Not a threat, but a weight and a reminder, a firmness and control. "We would've anyway. For you, for us, what you need, what we want. You're still ours, kid."
Holly shut both eyes again. Opened them. Gazed up at John, over at Ryan. His voice, when he answered, came out more hushed, grateful to be understood, already half-dreaming. "I want to be yours. Please."
"That's right," Ryan said. "Good." Those blasphemous slices of pink were dwindling. Holly wouldn't have scars; he never did. "You feel up to food, or you want us to take care of you first?"
Holly found a smile, which meant he was feeling better. "I get a choice?"
"You always do."
"I know," Holly said. "You waited for me, didn't you? For dinner. You didn't have to. You both need energy."
"We're fine." John rubbed a thumb over his throat, small circles, emphasis. "You could use that, too. Putting yourself back together. Come on, we'll feed you, and you can think about what we're going to do to you after."
"Oh," Holly said. "Yes, please. I do like you making me wait."
"We know," Ryan agreed, and kept a hand around his wrist, getting up. Holly's lips parted, an inaudible breath.
*~*~*
They hadn't fallen into the dynamic of dominance and submission immediately. But the undercurrents had been present from the start: drifting unremarked, coaxing them on.
Holiday had spent the first few weeks recovering, after they'd brought him home; once he'd been up and gingerly mobile, they'd found out that under all the arrogance and the unthinking privilege hid a boy who loved Shakespeare and strawberry jam. Someone who offered tentatively to help with the dishes and to monitor communications when Ryan and John got called to handle the Snake Charmer's ophidian minions. Who, not yet eighteen and faced with the loss of his parents and every belief he'd once held about their love and their cause, swallowed hard and picked up broken pieces and kept on trying to fit them back together, to learn, to figure out how to be good.