Don't Read in the Closet: Volume Four (17 page)

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “Your code name’s Blue Streak, right?

Keep fucking with me and they’ll have to change it to Skid Mark.”

Something in his eyes, the way they absorbed the blue of the sky.

Not scared. Not angry. He was kinda smiling and he looked at me like

he was really looking, y’know?

“Hey, Scar,” he said. “Got your braces off.” His gloves were

fingerless. He actually touched my chin. “You look really good.”

This could
not
be happening. Shock made me forget my training

and I froze up.

So of course that’s when Dano clocked me.

****

I WOKE on the dirty, tiled floor of a dark and empty hall. My

cowl was off, which meant no earpiece, no comm. A nearby electric

lantern shed enough light for me to see the way the wall curved to

become the ceiling, like in a subway station – an idea reinforced by

rumblings and muffled metallic squeals in the distance. At the edge of

the lantern’s light, a sign said, “Charing Cross.”

My arms and legs were bound with some kind of thick, plasticky

stuff that didn’t release me when I tried to vibrate through it. Who

would know better than another speedster how to trap me?

And then he was there.

“Thought I heard you trying to get loose.” He had removed his

cowl, and as he knelt over me, the gorgeous red hair I once dreamt of

touching tumbled around Dano’s face. He was still white as snow with

a smattering of freckles. Only his eyes were different, no longer the

green they’d been when I stood a post with him.

“What’s the plan, Dano? Torture, murder, or recruitment?”

He nodded as if I had said a line on cue. “Believe it or not, none of

the above. You were out six minutes, by the way. Fight’s over now.

Your guys won.”

“Those grenades I dropped when you tackled me –”

Don’t Read in the Closet – volume four 96

“Nobody got hurt. Your reputation is safe, I promise.”

Thank God. I sure hoped he was telling the truth.

“So what now?” I asked.

“Now we talk, that’s all. I haven’t seen you in four years. Maybe I

want to catch up.” He seated himself on the floor next to me.

On the opposite side from where he sat, I began to occasionally

vibrate my elbow against the floor. Except for that, I relaxed and

avoided speeding so that in my perception, time would flow normally.

If Dano wanted to talk, he’d have to relax too. I wanted this

conversation to take place at an ordinary human pace.

“I thought the lightning killed you,” I said.

“Nope. I woke up naked in Nevada. Don’t ask how I got there or

why the army didn’t track me, cos I don’t know. I reckon my clothes

and stuff got burned off, but I can’t tell you for sure.”

“That’s stupid! They said you were dead. They wouldn’t have

made that mistake.”

“It’s only a mistake if
they
believed what they told you. Doesn’t

matter to me. All I know is, I escaped.”

He escaped. I was just eighteen-year-old Private Gutierrez when

the army’s experiments called down that lighting. I woke up in the

base infirmary, surrounded by doctors who talked the way molasses

drips. They told me I fled when the blast hit, that I crossed the base in

between frames of the video security feed and only fell when the first

door I touched blew up in my face. They needed to understand, they

said. For my protection, they said.

And when they found out how fast I could move, they called in

Liberty and Justice to recruit me. That’s a lot like being called to the

principal’s office…in a school where the principal is actually God.

Imagine how I shook, standing small before Adonis that day as he

explained to me about the Department of Metahuman Affairs and their

“destabilizing powers” hit list.

Don’t Read in the Closet – volume four 97

Signing up seemed like a better deal.

“Some getaway,” I said. “Now we know you’re working with the

Injustifiers. You’ll have to run fast and keep running forever.”

“Maybe. You gonna give them my real name?”

I held his gaze for a moment of defiance, but I thought about what

the Department might do to get their hands on him. What might

happen to his family, the little brothers whose pictures and letters

Dano had shared with me so long ago. He would know my answer. I

couldn’t lie to him about something like that, not even as a bluff.

“No.”

“No. I remember what a good guy you were. I’m glad to see you

still are.”

Yeah. I wish I’d never learned he was a bad guy. Because I cared

about Dano and his family, I had to warn him. “They’ll be here any

moment.”

“I know. Vibrating a subsonic message through the floor was

smart. Lots of surveillance in this city. M.I.5 will have decoded it.”

“You’re just going to let them come for me?”

“It’ll take a few minutes for the U.S. to get permission to run an op

here. Or for the Brits to send Union Flag or the Three Lions to get

you.”

“What are you up to?”

He leaned over and brought his face close to mine. The shape and

fullness of his lips captured my gaze. “Don’t ask, Private. Don’t tell,”

he said.

Closer. Four years ago, when we slept two bunks apart, I died

inside so many times wishing he would kiss me with those lips.

Closer. Moving slowly enough to torture me now, because I didn’t

want it, and because I wanted it more than anything. I closed my eyes.

Warm breath brushed over my face. The scent of mint, sweat, the

rubber of his suit. Closer –

Don’t Read in the Closet – volume four 98

A crash of crumbling stone in the distance. I opened my eyes and

he was gone.

A crimson-skinned bruiser flew in. His oversized fists were big as

Volkswagens. I imagined how undignified it would be to wiggle away

from him at mach one if he decided to pound me into the deck with

those meathooks, but his words were friendly enough. “Oright,

sunshine, what say we see about getting you ‘ome?”

****

I HAD no doubt why Dano spared me.

Roughly four years ago, we were on post. The night had been a

long one. We worked together a lot and we knew all about each

others’ families, hobbies, political leanings such as they were, and pet

peeves.

I especially knew two very important things that were foremost in

my mind that night.

The first was, it was killing me to be so close to Dano, day in and

day out, and not be able to touch him.

The second was, he never truly talked about his history, you

know, in love. He talked about being interested in people back in high

school and going on dates and stuff, but he always said “they.” Never

“she.”

I had a clue there was a reason for it, and scared as I was, I finally

decided to risk everything and tell him how I adored him for his

kindness, loyalty, and sense of humor. How his body made me crazy.

How I thought I maybe kinda loved him and I hoped, God I hoped, he

felt something for me too.

I said “risk everything” because I was always for shit in school. I

was a slow learner. Now, before any fuckin “stupid chicano beaner”

jokes enter your mind, let me tell you that my sister Laura is as brown

as me, and she was the school valedictorian. Nobody is smarter than

her. I haven’t seen her in four years, cos it’s not safe, but I know she

Don’t Read in the Closet – volume four 99

works in super-science. She still ain’t pretty – I’ve seen pictures – but

she’s brilliant.

I was always the pretty one. ”
Ay, que lindo!
” the old women

always said, even when I was a teen with crooked teeth. But I was

slow. Slow in body, so I didn’t do sports; and slow in mind, so I didn’t

do grades.
Pobre de mi
, eh? Then the lightning came, and now I’m

quick, smart, and pretty, so you can suck it.

Anyway, after Basic Training nearly killed me, I was in a place

where high school grades didn’t matter so much, but I was about to

risk discharge because standing next to Pfc. Dano Alin Luca – with

his pretty eyes and beautiful red hair and dreamy smile and, god-a-

mighty, the way he smelled – was killing me worse.

So I screwed up my courage and I told him, and he put his hand

on mine right there in the guard shack and started to cry. Cos he was

hurting just as bad as me, and he was only eighteen and scared too. He

said I was all he could think about.

So we made our plans of what we were gonna do on leave and

where we were gonna go, and we even talked about developing little

signals so we could say, “hey, I’m thinking about you” from across a

field with Uncle Sam none the wiser.

And two days before we hoped to get a room in Las Cruces and

set to kissing each other’s lips off, the lightning came and he was

gone.

Ashes.

And I was trapped in a base infirmary, unable to share with the

molasses-talking doctors why I despaired for so long.

Life eventually settled into a new normal, with new training and

recruitment into Liberty and Justice. One of the first training classes

was called “Living Among Humans.” They showed me a video

entitled
Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex
to explain why I couldn’t go

out to look for love in any of the places an ordinary straight boy might

Don’t Read in the Closet – volume four 100

have tried. My options would be limited to super-women who could

handle my powers.

Not that it was what I wanted, but over the years, I considered it. I

was too chickenshit, though. I imagined that an aroused speedster

would not be the world’s greatest lover. I was afraid a woman who

tried it with me would end up complaining of chafing. And that from

her point of view, it was all over in an eyeblink. Not the kind of story

you want to get around.

So I was lonely for a long time, never knowing that the man I

dreamed of was out there somewhere with exactly the same problem.

And he worked with the bad guys, so it truly was a match made in

Hell.

****

THE NEXT time I met Dano, he worked with Demolisha and the

Homewreckers in Atlanta. Demolisha used her wrecking ball to knock

open the SunTrust building’s side, and Harridan ripped into an

“impenetrable” vault with her own two claws. Discordia provided

their protection from Superego’s mind, and of course Maggie Zeen

offered plenty of ballistic entertainment for me.

You know what, I’ll skip the fight scene. The interesting part came

when Blue Streak knocked me away to keep me from stealing

Maggie’s reloads. And before I could get up from my crash landing in

front of the aquarium, he straddled me. My cock swelled up pretty

damn fast when separated from his pubes by just a couple thin layers

of supersuit, him holding my wrists down with one hand and his nose

two inches from my own.

He touched a finger to my earpiece and it shattered. Then he

leaned on in.

I thought he was really going to kiss me this time, but he spoke.

“You couldn’t have saved all those people in New York. Think about

it.”

And he was gone again.

Don’t Read in the Closet – volume four 101

At least I got to finish the fight without having to be rescued like a

nimrod in some other country.

****

I CHECKED. The day McFly capped those terrorists in New

York, nearly three hundred people had been on the eighty-sixth floor.

And I hadn’t rescued a single one of them.

Apparently, Dano did. That meant he left his pals behind and

followed me to New York, probably matching my footsteps so I

wouldn’t see two steam wakes as I returned. While I disarmed the

bombs, Dano was up there saving three hundred lives. Blue Streak

was a hero.

That opened up a shitload of new questions, though.

The way we were whizzing around in Boston, how could he have

seen where I went? Or did he have a tap into military comms?

That should be utterly impossible. Liberty and Justice didn’t trust