Love for the Cold-Blooded. Or

by Alex Gabriel

  Nick did as instructed, filling the room with the mouth-watering scent of eggs and chives. Maybe Pat should wait until Nick and Ay were finished with cooking breakfast. After all, there was a real danger of burnt omelets, and nobody wanted that, right?

  “Allow the omelet to set for two to three minutes, when its consistency will have gained sufficient structural integrity for flipping.”

  But no… Ay would never let burnt omelets become a thing that happened. Pat was just looking for an excuse to delay his confession, which was stupid, because it wasn’t like this was going to get easier after breakfast. No. He’d do it now, without further delay, before he chickened out or Butterfly turned them to stone for their bad fashion sense or anything else happened to prevent him from finally doing this.

  Show time. “Nick, there’s something I…” Stop! What was he saying? Nothing that started with the words ‘there’s something I have to tell you’ ever went well! Thank gods he’d caught that in time.

  “Hey, remember when I told you about minion duty?” Much more the thing, yeah. Except that when Pat tried to go on, he ran out of air and ended up wheezing like some moron who couldn’t coordinate breathing and talking. Fuck. At least Nick wasn’t looking at him.

  Needless to say, the moment in which Pat thought to be grateful for that particular small mercy was the same moment Nick chose to abandon his omelet in favor of turning in Pat’s hold, careful not to bump into the frying pan. His hair was still wet from the shower he’d taken earlier, falling into his face in a casual, effortlessly sexy manner normal people needed a team of stylists to achieve. He was stupidly, unfairly attractive, and also zeroed in on Pat like a laser targeting device.

  “Uhm,” Pat said intelligently.

  Hang on. He’d prepared for this. What was it he’d been about to say, exactly?

  But Nick wasn’t listening, anyway. “I heard from Nexus this morning,” he said gravely. “Serpentissima’s back. She’s been sighted by extremely reliable sources.” Pat’s heart jumped into his throat, but he couldn’t read anything in Nick’s expression except the same kind of seriousness the omelet had warranted. “She hasn’t made a move yet, and so far none of our sources have been able to provide additional information. So I’m afraid I won’t be able to stay beyond breakfast — I have to investigate.”

  “Uhm,” said Pat, less intelligently. What the hell, Mom hadn’t even begun to put her plans into motion yet. How could this be starting already?

  Nick’s hands settled on Pat’s hips, thumbs stroking absently over the strip of bare skin above Pat’s sweatpants. “I’m going to be very busy for a while, Pat.”

  “Why does it have to be you?” The question burst out with an almost vicious bite as he stepped back, shaking off Nick’s touch. Nick’s hands hovered briefly in midair before lowering; Pat’s pang of regret was drowned out by the frustration rising at the back of his throat. “You’re not the only superhero in the city. Can’t the others step up to the plate for once?”

  The worst part was that Nick and Pat’s mom were a perfect match — the fierce, dedicated and brilliant science-based superhero and the wild, primal challenger powered by ancient serpent magic. Before his mind’s eye, Pat watched it play out with perfect inevitability: The two of them would be battling it out for weeks or months, growing increasingly obsessed all the while, and end up swearing heartfelt oaths of vengeance. Mom had been looking for a worthy nemesis ever since she’d lost Vindicator, and a hero of Silver Paladin’s stature was long overdue a proper nemesis of his own.

  Not Pat’s mom of all people, though. Pat didn’t want to end up a footnote in the annals of the epic struggle between Serpentissima and Silver Paladin.

  Nick was frowning at him, brow furrowed in puzzlement. “Every member of the Hero Corps will do their part to foil Serpentissima’s nefarious plot, including me. We all share in the responsibility to keep the city and its citizens safe.”

  Yeah, right. Like Star Knight kept the city and its citizens safe by tearing down half a block every time he sneezed. With protectors like that, who needed an invasion of extraterrestrial battle droids.

  “Pat.” Now Nick was leaning close, alight with intensity. “It’s Serpentissima. Even if every hero in the world were on hand to fight her, and I was completely superfluous — even if Star Knight were not helpless against her magic, and there were three dozen hyper-intelligent clones of him. Even then I would need to be a part of this. Pat, it’s Serpentissima.”

  Yeah, Pat got that, much as he would have liked to pretend he didn’t. Some challengers were a bigger deal than others, the same way heavy-hitting hoagies like Star Knight, Silver Paladin and Nexus were bigger deals than wannabes like Mariachi or The Commander. Silver Paladin couldn’t pass this up… no hoagie would. It was the same the other way around. Serpentissima wouldn’t want to pass up a chance to tangle with Silver Paladin, either.

  “This is going to be a fucking disaster.” Pat could see his future now, stretched out before him like an endless show of horrors. He’d end up an emotional wreck with neither his boyfriend nor his parents ever speaking to him again, cast out by his family as well as the community of challengers…

  Well, probably not the latter. After all, Pat was hardly the first to dally with a superhero. There’d been talk about Doc Destiny and Ariadne for years. Even Cassiopeia was rumored to have had the odd weak moment around Mr. Liberty. Things got weird when you were forced to join forces with your nemesis to fight a common threat, as inevitably happened from time to time. Plus, some heroes were fucking hot, okay? Mr. Liberty was kind of a douche, but he wasn’t bad to look at if you were into the corn-fed and wholesome thing.

  Of course, that nobody held Cassiopeia’s indiscretions against her might also have had to do with the fact she could spin light into any shape she wanted, including (say) a net to crush you and your wagging tongue, or a spear to lodge in your unsympathetic heart. But mostly it was sympathy and the undeniable hotness of certain heroes, Pat was pretty sure.

  Ay interrupted with an announcement that the omelet needed to be turned. Pat watched glumly as Nick went to work, following Ay’s surprisingly technical step-by-step instructions. He was so out of sorts that he wasn’t even tempted to needle Nick about the way he’d obviously programmed his AI to teach him to cook, like a giant loser.

  “It’s going to be fine.” Nick glanced back at him over one shoulder, clearly trying to be reassuring. “I’ve fought a lot of villains, Pat. You don’t need to worry about me.”

  Luckily, Nick had to turn up the heat just then and shake the pan a bit to prevent the omelet from sticking. Then it was time to sprinkle the thing with cheese and herbs (none of which had been in Pat’s apartment last he’d checked), fold it in half, and deposit it in the oven to keep warm while Nick and Ay heated more oil for the second omelet.

  “What did you want to tell me earlier?”

  “Oh, uhm. Yeah, that.” Pat opened his mouth, hesitated, and then closed it again when the words wouldn’t come. Another moment of silence later, he stepped in close to wrap both arms around Nick, hiding his face against his shoulder for a long, calming moment before raising his head to speak. “My parents want to meet you.”

  Great. He’d known he would do this. He’d chickened out again. Although, of course, if Nick did meet his parents for coffee or something, it would be immediately apparent that his mom was Serpentissima. So…

  In his arms, Nick had turned to motionless stone.

  “Test the proper heat of the oil by introducing a drop of water into the pan,” said Ay.

  Nick did nothing. It was as though he hadn’t heard the instruction, though Pat couldn’t imagine how he might have missed it.

  He jostled Nick slightly. “Dude, no snoozing on the job. Oil, water, pan. You know the drill.”

  “I think,” said Nick, and paused. “I do not think I’ll have the time to meet your parents, Patrick. Certainly not while Serpentissima is ascending.”

  He still hadn’t
added the drop of water to the pan. Even if his words hadn’t come out oddly stilted, that tardiness was so out of character Pat would have known something was wrong. “No way. Are you stressing about meeting my parents?”

  “No,” Nick denied immediately. He then immediately proved himself a liar by entirely skipping the oil test to pour the rest of the omelet mixture in the frying pan. He even turned down the heat without waiting for Ay’s instruction.

  Pat waited, saying nothing, until Nick took a deep breath, relaxing into a more natural stance against Pat. “Not stressing, no. I was merely surprised. First impressions are extremely important. It’s a challenging situation.”

  Meeting the parents was a challenging situation? Well, sure, maybe if it was Pat, who might have had a little trouble presenting himself as a guy you wouldn’t mind your kid dating. But Nick, everybody’s dream candidate for a son-in-law? (Okay, not Mom’s, but almost everybody’s.) Not to mention that this was a guy who thought nothing of flinging himself from rooftops with only his force fields to keep him aloft, who’d taken down the combined forces of Crimson Ranger and Dark Star without breaking a sweat. Who’d jumped at the chance to pit himself against the Dread Serpent herself.

  But, yeah. Those were all an entirely different type of challenging situation. Nick would probably have preferred taking on an army of karmabots while armed only with a spoon to spending an hour chatting with strangers. And Pat was pretty sure this boyfriend thing was just as new for Nick as it was for him. They hadn’t talked about it in so many words, but he was positive Nick had never had anyone for whom he’d stayed the night in a crappy apartment the size of Nick’s stasis fresher. He’d never made breakfast for anyone… never been taken home to meet the parents.

  Pat guessed Nick could be forgiven for freaking out a little.

  Still. “You’re really not as bad at this as you think,” he said slowly, feeling his way. “I mean, I’m not an expert or anything but as far as I’m concerned, you’re doing an awesome job. Which is kinda the only thing that matters here, right? What I think?”

  Nick made a noncommittal sound. He was busying himself with the omelet, looking down, and the exposed curve of his neck seemed oddly and wrenchingly vulnerable. Pat felt all muddled inside, a weird surge of protectiveness clashing with his nervous apprehension. “Anyway, it’s fine if you don’t want to meet my folks. You don’t have to, if you don’t want. Not right away, at any rate. They are gonna kidnap you at some point, if you don’t show up voluntarily, but they’re real busy, so it’ll take a while.”

  Nick snorted out a laugh, evidently assuming Pat was exaggerating (he wasn’t). His shoulders had loosened, and when Ay prompted him, he immediately tested the omelet to see whether it was ready to be turned.

  Fine by Pat. It wasn’t as though he was chomping at the bit to get Nick and his parents in the same room, either. He wasn’t fooling himself, though: It was going to happen eventually. And when it did, he didn’t want there to be any dumb misunderstandings. “I’ve got to tell you some stuff about my family, though. Disclose it, like.”

  “The omelet is now ready to be flipped,” Ay chimed in, demonstrating perfect timing in interrupting important declarations.

  Nick flipped the omelet. “Disclose away, Patrick.”

  All of this omelet business was throwing Pat off stride. “Yeah, just give me a sec, okay? I’ve forgotten how I…” How had he put this earlier, in the peaceful, omelet-free haven of his bedroom, with a Nick-scented pillow his sole audience?

  “Okay,” said Nick peaceably, and busied himself with matters of higher heat, pan-shaking and sprinkling of herbs.

  “Here’s the thing.” It was right on the tip of Pat’s tongue, ready to spring forward and become solid and real, a thing that was known: My mother is Serpentissima. Pat was going to say it. He was. He’d already taken breath to speak, felt the words coalesce in his mind, taking shape to be expelled —

  The very instant before he could speak the fateful words at long last, there was a sudden pounding at his door — a pounding accompanied by a familiar bellow. “Patpat, get your lazy ass out of bed and open the door! We brought breakfast, and we’re not going away.” Zen, with Cea giggling loudly in the background, easy to make out with the apartment’s crappy (read: non-existent) sound-proofing.

  “Dude,” Pat hissed. “It’s my sisters.” They already knew about Nick, but for a moment Pat felt trapped, like he was about to be caught doing something he shouldn’t. Which was nonsense, because why on earth shouldn’t Pat be having breakfast with his awesome, hot hoagie boyfriend?

  Nick didn’t comment. Instead, he turned off the stove and put down the spatula, collected his mobile phone, and grabbed his shoes and jacket on his way to the window… the window which he then proceeded to open and begin to climb out of.

  What the fuck? “What the fuck!”

  “I’m not ready to meet your family,” said Nick, calmly slinging his shoes around his neck by the laces. “You said there was no need, if I didn’t want to. I don’t, so I’m leaving.”

  “Dude, this is not you leaving. This is you jumping out the window like a total freak. If you fall and break something, I am going to laugh and laugh.” Not true, not even a little bit, but fortunately Pat only lived on the second floor. Even more fortunately, his building featured a decorative metal trellis that ran up the facade as a projecting alcove. It supported a number of large clay flowerpots, and a second later also half the weight of an insane hoagie.

  “Sorry about breakfast,” said Nick, sliding all the way sideways onto the trellis like a wall-climbing crab. Pat was pretty sure that move couldn’t be as easy as it looked; the trellis had always seemed impossible to get to from here.

  Below, one of Pat’s neighbors (a second-semester student of art history) stopped in the middle of unlocking her bike to stare up at them, eyes wide as saucers. Pat gave her a friendly wave and a casual smile, all ‘nothing to see here, move along’. He didn’t think she entirely bought it.

  “Patpat!” hollered Zen outside his door. “We know you’re in there, you scurrying little mammal. Open up or suffer our wrath! Resistance is futile!”

  Pat leaned out the window farther than he felt comfortable with. By the bike stand, a gaping guy in a neon-green baseball cap had joined the gaping art history student. Nick was already most of the way to the ground; he made it look as though this way down was more convenient than the stairs. Seriously, that trellis thing was a total security hazard. People could be clambering up and down it all the time. Insane hoagies, at any rate, and drunk students weren’t generally that much more responsible.

  “Nick, I really need to tell you about Mom,” Pat called to the insane hoagie climbing down his wall.

  “Tell me later.” Nick jumped the last meter or so and turned to give Pat the broadest, most ridiculously grin ever. “I’ll call you.”

  The art history student blatantly ogled Nick’s ass as he knelt to put on his shoes. She made an impressed face at Pat, giving him a thumbs-up. Good taste, that woman… of course, considering her chosen field, she had better be able to recognize a work of art when she saw one. Her reaction went a long way towards making up for green cap guy’s dumbfounded stare, anyway. What, like it was such a surprise that Pat could hook up with gorgeous dudes whenever he felt like it?

  One gorgeous dude, at any rate. One was plenty enough, provided it was Nick.

  Pat waved goodbye to Nick as he jogged off towards the parking lot, and gave art history gal a smirk and a double fistpump before he went to let his sisters in.

  ~~~~~

  “Look upon me and despair, mortal worms!” Serpentissima’s voice was like a physical blow of sheer despair, ripping through every shred of joy in the world, stripping away all hope. The lair’s cathedral-like throne room boomed with leaden echoes; two pigeons dropped from the rafters in a flutter of feathers, too stunned to navigate.

  Several dozen Serpent Minions stood in motionless awe to either side of their mistress�
�s onyx throne, where she curled like a nightmare made flesh. Her bared fangs dripped poison, and her red eyes glowed balefully. The thick, sinuous coils of her serpentine body rippled as she shifted, raising her human-shaped torso higher above the gathered onlookers.

  “I shall be the queen to end all queens.” She spread her arms and threw back her head, and the light fell on her exultantly cruel smile just right to glance menacingly off her fangs. “I am the end of time!”

  In the aftermath of the onslaught of the Dread Serpent’s voice, silence weighed on the scene with almost palpable force.

  “Pretty good, Mom,” Hell said. “I don’t understand the bit about you being the end of time, though. What does that mean?”

  Serpentissima shrugged and uncoiled a little, lowering herself into a comfortable reclining position. Sunlight from the strategically placed skylight refracted off her scales, playing over the dais in fiery sparks of bronze, silver and gold. “No idea, honey. I borrowed it from a young man I met at one of Cassiopeia’s get-togethers, once upon a time. He was a bit manic, bless his heart, but he came up with the most wonderfully portentous catch phrases. It has that certain something, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, it does, but if nobody knows what you mean… don’t you think that a threatening speech should make sense in order to live up to its full threat potential?”

  Pat rolled his eyes at his other two sisters. They rolled their eyes back. Helena always made everything complicated. Not that Pat didn’t think she had a point, in a way, but come on, it was a great finish to an awesome speech.

  One of the minions began to clap, and in short order everyone forgot about protocol and applauded the Serpent Ascendant wildly. There were plenty of whistles and whoops, too. Pat’s mom smiled as she dipped regally to acknowledge her followers’ adulation. Pat was so proud of her menacing grace he was going to burst in another sec.

  Dad stood beside the Dread Throne, one hand on the tailrest. Serpentissima straightened out her coils entirely so she could sink down to his level, and he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.