She took his hand, kissing his knuckles. Ernest hummed low in his chest. He stretched, squeezing her hand back.
It was such a gentle squeeze, too. Whenever he touched her like that, she wondered how much restraint it took on his behalf. With his strength, tenderness was almost profound. Restraint had to have been a conscious effort, but nobody would have ever guessed it. Ernest was just so gentle, it was easy to forget that his default grip dented steel.
He was always thinking about other people. That was why June loved him. It was also why she wanted to punch him sometimes, but mostly, she like-liked him for all of his worrywarts.
“Mm...” he mumbled, squinting at her. “Didja need something, Junebug?”
“Just preying on your myopia, my nearsighted stud muffin,” June said, kissing him. His mouth was soft with surprise, pliant. She had to coax him into the kiss, but it didn’t take long for him to get the picture. Ernest wrapped his arms around her, dragging her close to him. The needy, grumbling whine in his chest warmed June’s stomach. She sucked her lower lip between her teeth. It was an embarrassing sound for a teenage guy to make, but she liked it.
“Gosh,” he said, a little breathlessly. “Attacking when my defenses are down? That’s dirty tactics.”
“I’d say that I’m sorry, but I think we both know better,” June whispered, giving the tip of his nose a peck. They had to mind their volume, since neither of them wanted to wake up the rest of the house.
She could hear Mr. Wright in the kitchen, his whistling barely audible over the grease-sputter sizzle of frying eggs. He would be cooking for a full house, since everyone had crashed in the Wright family living room.
They all had ended up going back to Foundation early. After the Queen had heard about the reunion between Mal and his bugnuts brother, she’d insisted that they return to the school. She wasn’t a panic-prone lady, so everybody had trooped to the airport and gotten on the next flight. Rather than waking up their roommates and/or parents when they’d gotten in, they’d raided the linen closet and the camping supplies and gotten cozy in the Wrights’ living room.
Ernest could have slept in his own bed, but he’d opted to share the couch with June. He had an arm around her, hugging her close. His chest made a surprisingly comfy pillow. Remembering the letter she hadn’t gotten a chance to send, she pushed herself up on her elbows.
“Hey, did I tell you about my tutoring next year?”
“No?” Ernest blinked, reaching for his glasses. “I don’t recall you mentioning that you needed any.”
“Need is a strong word. The Queen asked me to start meeting with her for my free periods and my elective slot.”
“Sh-she’s doing what now?” His voice squeaked at the end. It was a little alarming. “Auntie Amira doesn’t even have time to hold office hours.”
“So, uh. I’m gathering that meeting with her for three hours every day is kind of a big deal.”
“Three hours a day?” Ernest whisper-shouted. “Holy cats!”
June pressed her hand over his mouth. One of the lumps on the floor shifted.
“Okay. We’ve established that this is a big deal. Moving on.”
When she pulled her fingers back, Ernest gave her a concerned look.
“D’you know why Auntie Amira wants to be your mentor?”
“She said that she’s going to show me how to be to you what she has been for your dad. Kind of a...June, the Great and Powerful setup.” She said, trying for levity and mostly succeeding. “But before I jump into what will almost certainly be the tutoring from hell, you have to level with me. Is this what you want? Are you okay with being the knight in shining armor to my widely-respected warrior queen? As well as my handsome boyfriend, I mean.”
“I think that putting you in charge of the plans is the best plan I’ve ever come up with,” Ernest said, giving her a smile so packed full of sunshine and, well, earnestness, she couldn’t help but believe him.
“I can’t take this anymore. Get a room!” Rosario burst out from the floor, throwing a pillow at them.
“We’re in a room. His living room,” June pointed out, throwing the pillow back. The throwing of things was not her forte, so she hit Jack in the back on the head instead. He jerked awake with a snort, his bare feet twitching.
“We under attack?” Jack mumbled, rolling over to look blearily at his partner.
“Yeah. It’s an air raid,” Rosario informed him, slowly shaking her head. “Love is in the air, and it’s disgusting.”
“Tell Uncle John that I won’t be eating breakfast. I fear my appetite may never return,” Underwood said, muffled by the pile of blankets he’d burrowed himself into. There was a cat sitting on top of the pile, grooming itself contentedly.
“Quit it, you two,” Zip said, wrestling a quilt away from Underwood’s stockpile. “They’re sweet!”
“Hear that? Officially dating for less than six hours, and we’re already that one gross couple in every group of friends. High-five.” June grinned, holding her hand up. Ernest slapped her a high five, then threaded their fingers together.
ISSUE #8
“You should really think about changing your moniker,” Marshal said, squeezing the bony round of the Leak’s shoulder with one hand as he passed. “I know that ‘the Middleman’ was taken and all, but you’ve got to see how problematic the Leak is going to be for you in the long run.”
He paced a leisurely circuit around the man cuffed to his chair. With his hands zip-tied behind him and a strip of duct tape sealing his yap-hole shut, the Leak couldn’t say anything. He could only follow Marshal with his wide, white-rimmed eyes.
“Like, let’s say that I kill you right now. You know what I would tell my friends? I’d tell them that I took a Leak. Or maybe even that I plugged the Leak. Is that the kind of legacy that you want to leave behind?”
Judging by the way the guy was squirming and sweating, this was his first time being interrogated. Marshal would have been touched to have been the first to break him, but he was a serious sweater. He was literally dripping. The Leak stank, and that was the only thing saving him from a more hands-on examination.
“You know me, friend. You know who I am, and what I do,” Marshal said, resuming his pacing. “And I thought that I knew you, too. Heck, I thought we had an understanding. Nothing moves through my territory without my permission. Everyone knows this.”
Marshal leaned back on his heels, giving them both a chance to breathe.
“I asked around about you. You’re airtight. Professional. The best courier out there, they said. You’ve got a sweaty, pasty face they can trust.”
The Leak’s career as a glorified delivery boy hinged on the idea that he could be trusted. And it was an idea, really. It was an intangible mantle, a certificate of authenticity delivered through word of mouth. He could be trusted, but only because everyone knew that he could be trusted.
Trust was like a broken bone. If cared for, it’d heal, but it’d never be exactly the same. A break was a break. If anyone found out that the Leak’s delivery had been compromised, he’d never get work again. Depending on who he was involved in the sending and receiving of said package, it might be curtains for more than Mr. the Leak’s career.
“You’ve got something in this envelope that’s too sensitive for digital transmission. Someone is paying you mad money to get this from point A to point B.” Marshal said, rolling up the envelope and tapping it against his palm like a baton. “What that tells me is that whatever is in this envelope is worth ruining your lucrative career over. Maybe even losing your life over, since you had to have known that I keep an ear to the ground.”
The Leak went several shades of pastier, sweatier white.
“Ohh, I do love me a good mystery. Let’s take a peek, shall we?”
Muffled by the thick swatch of duct tape slapped over his mouth, the Leak made a noise like a wounded animal. He jerked at the cuffs, but all it did was threaten to topple the chair over with him still in it.<
br />
“What’s that? The deal’s off if there’s any evidence of tampering?” Flipping his switchblade, Marshal sliced open the side of the envelope. “Tough luck, buddy. Maybe that’ll teach you to not take shortcuts through the woods on your way to grandmother’s house.”
There was a single photo tucked inside. It was a snapshot, taken with film and developed by hand. Closing his eyes, Marshal inhaled deeply. He could smell cornstarch and nitrile rubber, faint, but still there. The photographer had taken off their gloves over the photo. Home-developed. Seriously old school. Possible latex allergy. Cataloging the chemicals he recognized would be a waste of time, but trying to pick up trace scents off the photo was easier than looking at it.
Because when he looked at it, it was instantly obvious to Marshal why the Leak had been willing to risk incurring his wrath. The photographer had captured a tableau of an affair about to explode. It showed a man and a woman in the middle of a heated argument. The woman was pushing him away, both hands planted on the man’s broad chest. She would have had better luck shoving a mountain, though. John Wright wasn’t an easy man to push around, and the woman was so much smaller than he was.
This was a snapshot of an unfair fight— an incriminating one. Someone had caught the Commander doing something questionable. Whether or not the photo was legit was inconsequential. A leak like this one would create the possibility that the Commander wasn’t as good as it said on the boxes of his action figures, and seeds of doubt didn’t need much more than that to take root. The public expected them to screw up eventually, so upstanding men were the easiest to smear. Whether or not they admitted it to themselves, most people liked it when good guys turned out to be too good to be true. It validated their horrible lives.
“Well, would you look at that,” Marshal murmured, still staring at the picture.
Uncle Johnny had changed his diapers, once upon a time. He liked to think that he knew his uncle well enough— better than his adoring public did, at any rate. Marshal could count the times he’d seen the Commander lose his temper on one hand, with fingers to spare. The man was known for being even-keeled, so the fury screaming out of his body language was startling. He didn’t wear that kind of expression when confronting the worst members of his rogues gallery, so what had this woman done to set him off?
Something was wrong. Something was missing. It might have been both, and it might have been neither. Marshal knew that he couldn’t know the difference until he figured out what he was looking for in the first place. He forced himself to glance back up at his friend, the steadily leaking Leak.
“Unfortunately for you, I’ve got a moral objection to you cashing checks written in the blood of the Set’s rep,” Marshal said, cutting the zip ties around the Leak’s wrists with one swift pull of his switchblade. “So you’re going to give this to me, and I’m going to give you a whole hour to get the hell out of my city. I think that’s more than reasonable.”
He kicked the chair over, sending the Leak sprawling. The courier tried to catch himself with his numb hands, but he failed, smacking the bridge of his nose against the cement floor. The Leak moaned, smearing his bloody face against his forearm. The Leak was a great name for him, Marshal decided. He was, without a doubt, the moistest middleman that he’d ever had the displeasure of kicking to the curb.
Marshal didn’t let himself overthink it. He didn’t examine why he was protecting what was left of the Set, or whether or not they deserved his protection. He slipped the photo into his breast pocket, straightened out his flannel shirt, and left. The Leak’s sobbing followed him out to the hall.
°
The Swan Dive had the best biscuits and gravy in town, hands down. The original owners had been real pillars-of-the-community types, and they’d established the Dive as a warm, no-frills watering hole. When they passed away, the new owner had made the bonehead mistake of messing with a good thing.
Chuck Ferguson hadn’t been the best about giving his employees sick days. Or overtime. Or tips. Or a living wage. Basically, ol’ Chuck had exploited the fact that most of the people working for him were either undocumented, or too poor to afford to lose their job. Chuck didn’t have any good reason for holding out, since the Dive was one of the hottest brunch places in their neck of the woods— the reason he’d snatched the business up, probably. Though he raked in profit hand over fist, he still squeezed his employees for all they were worth.
Marshal liked their biscuits and gravy, almost as much as he disliked Chuck’s business practices. So he’d had a sincere heart-to-heart with Chuck. The good Mr. Ferguson had decided that he liked having his kneecaps more than he liked owning a restaurant, so Marshal had graciously taken the Dive off of his hands. His employees pretended to not know what he’d done, but it was almost a joke.
Marshal had breakfast at the Swan Dive Diner almost every day, without fail. Anyone who didn’t want to burn out had to have a self-care routine, and this one had been his for as long as he could remember. He went to the Dive, he ate a greasy meal that stuck to his ribs more than it should, and he interacted with his fan club of precocious elderly ladies.
Marshal was as much a part of the Dive’s morning routine as it was a part of his. His usual table was set for two, a cup of espresso and cream and a mug of black drip waiting for him. Some industrious waitress had turned the overhead television to one of the channels celebrating the life and death of David C. Underwood.
Sliding into his booth, Marshal rolled his eyes. Whenever a big name hero died, the public became obsessed with their origins. Case in point: his father, the Rook. One year later, and the media was still chewing the same cud. They seemed inordinately pleased with themselves for having dug up his ‘real’ name. It didn’t matter to them that he’d legally changed his name decades before he’d died. Someone had found his birth certificate, so they were using that name in lieu of the one that he’d chosen for himself.
For the life of him, Marshal couldn’t understand why the baseliners had such a morbid fascination with his dad. Corbin Underwood had been born, had lived for forty-nine years, and had died. He’d been a father, a husband, and a hero. He’d taken the rest of who and what he’d been to his grave, but that didn’t stop panels of self-proclaimed experts from wasting countless hours of airtime dissecting the Rook.
Usually, Marshal could stomach it. The public had been slinging shit at his father since the moment he’d poked his head out of the shadows, but today they were trying— poorly— to mask their contempt with simulated expressions of sorrow.
Once upon a time, the Rook and his Little Bird had been loved. The public focused on that time period, almost at the cost of feeling like they were trying too hard to scrounge up, buff, and present what little perceivable good they could find. They used a stirring tribute to the handful of decent years the Rook had had as a public hero as a jumping off point for the real discussion: the series of bloody scandals that had pushed him over the edge.
The panel of experts discussed Marshal’s father like he was some kind of fascinating creature that’d gone extinct, too monstrous to be understood by normal humans. The so-called authorities on posthuman development and psychology were only too eager to weigh in with their opinions on what had turned the Rook bad.
Marshal tuned it out. Or tried to, at least. David Underwood was like nails on a chalkboard to him, because it was a summation of everything they thought they knew about his father. They didn’t know shit, and Marshal was doing his best to keep it that way.
Needless to say, Ellie rolling into the Dive like a tiny thundercloud was a welcome distraction.
He hated to say it, but his baby sister literally looked like something the cat had dragged in. Ellie’s wings were wet, her feathers steadily dripping. A combo of the rain, her tears, and a tap water washing had removed most of her makeup, but it’d just smeared her runny mascara around. He didn’t have to guess where she’d been since dawn. The heavy scent of wet soil had soaked into her skin. Ellie had been payin
g the respects that Marshal was unable to give.
“Hey, bir—” Marshal started to say, but she cut him off with a sharp, swift, beat of her wet wings.
“I hope you’re proud of yourself!” Ellie yelled, her wings spread and quivering.
He braced himself to roll with it if she threw a punch. In the heat of the moment, Ellie sometimes forgot that he was made of tougher stuff than the hollow bones in her small hands. He didn’t want her to hurt herself.
“Maybe?” Marshal said, testing the mend-ability of his error with a winning smile. “That depends. What’d I do this time?”
The smile bounced off of Ellie ineffectually. She scowled. The situation felt further primed for an explosion, not defused.
“What the hell were you trying to prove? You almost killed him!”
“You’re really going to have to be more specific than that,” Marshal said, stirring sugar into his cup of coffee.
Clearly, she did not think that was as funny as he did. Her voice jumped an octave and more than a few decibels.
“CONGRATULATIONS, ASSHOLE!” Ellie shrieked. “YOU’RE THE BIGGER MAN!”
The sheer force of her scream cracked Marshal’s glass of water. He winced, clapping his hands over his ears.
“You’re mad. I get it. I get that you’re mad. But could you not blow my eardrums, maybe?” He wheezed, trying to fight the instantaneous headache/nausea combo. Anywhere else, he would have been worried about people overhearing their little spat, but nothing said in the Dive left it.
His little sister’s chin wobbled.
“I hate you.”
“What— are you crying?”
Ellie was fighting a losing battle against her building waterworks. He hated seeing her like that. He hated it even more when he was the one making her cry.
“I’m a fuckstick,” Marshal said, trying his best to make it sound like a genuine apology. It was sincere, but it wasn’t what Ellie wanted to hear. Her wings sagged, damp and bedraggled.
The Posterchildren: Origins Page 40