Happiness in Numbers

by Nicole Field

  Barefoot, still damp, Ryan put arms around him. Kissed him until they were both breathless and gleeful, leaning into each other, getting tangled in blanket-folds and roaming hands. They didn't match in height or breadth or expertise the way John and Robbie once had, but that was okay; neither Ryan nor Holly could be Robbie Rivers, and John didn't need them to be.

  John just needed them. And, nuzzling water-drops from Ryan's throat, said, "Holly?"

  "Yes, John," Holly said, a little too quietly for their comfort. Both Clifftop and the Mysterium were linked into the communications array; he could hear them from anywhere. The fire danced in the common room's fireplace, nestled into stone and stalwart, warding off the storm.

  "You warm enough, over there? Taking care of yourself?"

  "I'm fine."

  This time Ryan said, "Are you sure?" He could picture Holiday on the other end of the communications link, and did: their youngest partner, standing alone in the water-cool gleaming light of the Mysterium, framed by black hair and glinting artifacts and rare jewels and focus-stones. "Everything okay?"

  "I'm not the one who can't avoid raindrops. I only…"

  "Wish you were here instead," Ryan filled in for him. "We do, too. What if you didn't bother heading in, tonight?"

  "I have to," Holly said, "to keep up appearances. To check in with my supposed fellow conquerors. Otherwise today's performance might be wasted. You'll just have to fuss over John for me, until I get there."

  "You really don't," John tried, but halfheartedly.

  "I would anyway," Ryan agreed. "Anything we can do from here?"

  "Nothing we've not already set up. Go and have lasagna. I'll be there soon as I can, I promise."

  "The lasagna'll keep," John said. "We'll wait for you."

  "We will?" Ryan said. John laughed.

  Of course they would, though; that'd been teasing. He twined fingers into John's, holding on, and said to Holly, "Of course we will. I need to change, anyway. And shower. You dumped half a ton of water on my head and tried to drop me into a hole."

  "Verisimilitude," Holly said right back, mischievous and adorable, affection clear as sunbeams underwater, illuminating stories and stones.

  "Ridiculous supervillain," Ryan said, with fondness. "Don't go off and play spy until I get back, I want to talk to you, okay?" and went to shower and change. He did not want John to get more wet as a result of his own rain-drenched suit; those lungs were still recovering.

  *~*~*

  The shower felt incredible. Massaging heat. Pebbled floors. Icy rainwater sluicing away down the drain. Holly's ludicrously expensive apple-scented body wash and John's ocean-spray cleanness. His own shampoo, light and woodsy and familiar.

  He turned his hair into foamy spikes just because. Pondered how he'd look with a new haircut to go with a proposed new name. Caught sight of their collection of shower lube, bottles arranged in tidy formation because they'd each independently remembered to buy more and had come home with three different new brands and John had shrugged and said, "Why not test them all and compare?"

  Shampoo sliding into one eye, Ryan thought about his partners. He thought about the crinkles at the corners of John's eyes and the welcome in that kiss. He thought about Holly's shyly playful sense of humor, which had emerged gradually over the last two years, as if astonished at its own existence.

  Holiday Fortune Lyndsay Jones, at the age of twelve, and under his parents' tutelage, had learned to channel and direct metaphysical energy toward any goal they desired. He had leveled his own boarding school, which he'd had painful reasons to resent—when Ryan and John had heard those stories, John had put a fist through solid rock—and later on a few skyscrapers, while Arachne and Horatius Jones applauded proudly.

  At fifteen, wearing only two of the legendary family focus-stones, Holiday had brought down the United World Headquarters building.

  He'd been thin and clumsily graceful as a half-grown foal, a boy growing into his limbs, long arms outstretched. He'd walked through rubble, dust billowing away from coltish legs, looked up at his mother and smiled, and she'd taken his hand.

  Ryan had seen the video footage. John had been there. Boots on the ground. Combining forces with the Fantastic League and the Sky-Men and everybody else. They'd stopped the Sinister Sorcerers from tearing the world apart, but the family'd gotten away.

  Two years after that, they'd returned.

  Two years after that, Holly was here. With Ryan, and John, and their future.

  And lasagna. And cuddling on their heroically sized couch. And movie nights and popcorn. And spectacular mind-blowing sex. With all the lube.

  Ryan tipped his head back, rinsed foam out of his hair, ran a hand idly over his stomach and lower—kind of half-aroused, no plans to do anything about it—and got on with the end of his shower. His partners would be waiting.

  He threw on a faded university-logo shirt—UC Berkeley, because his parents and Tim had collectively insisted that genetic quirk-of-fate superpowers were no reason to avoid college—and unearthed a not quite matching pair of pajama pants and didn't bother doing anything with the hair. John liked it messy, anyway.

  More or less dressed, he followed the sound of his partners' voices down the hallway. That sound made him smile. They always did. Every time.

  John had wandered back to the kitchen and was sitting on a bar stool in deference to weak lungs. He was saying, "—no, look, the point of a garden is to grow our own bell peppers, if you like them—"

  "Yes," Holly said from the Mysterium, "but why wouldn't I just buy them? Or sort of…pay someone else to grow them? Isn't that how money works?"

  "You don't know how money works," Ryan put in, opening the fridge, getting out a beer. Two. "I handle our finances. Because you're both hopeless." This was an exaggeration, but not by much. Only one of the three of them possessed an actual business degree, and that one was neither of his partners.

  Holiday, the product of depressingly blue-blooded supervillain aristocracy, generally regarded money as something that existed when or if needed, simply lying around. John had the opposite problem. Ryan had never figured out how anyone could lose track of an entire savings account, nor why, having done so, John had simply shrugged and given up and economized.

  To be fair, that situation had involved a tangle of government funds and military benefits and Robbie's will and a messy rat's nest of economic red tape. Hadn't been insurmountable, though, and Ryan had been determined by the time he'd gotten his hands on it. John had quite a lot of money, these days. Not as much as Holly, but then that was an astronomical amount; in any case it didn't matter. The three of them were a team.

  Ryan had ended up taking over the finances for a few other superheroes, once word got out. He'd started charging for those services, because why the hell not. Might as well have an income.

  "We're not hopeless," John said. "We know when to listen to someone else's expertise. We're good at that." His inhaler lay on the countertop, a sleek futuristic coil of healing technology. Repairing those lungs.

  "But you want to grow vegetables," Holly said. "Doesn't that require… I don't know, dirt? Seeds? Someone to sort of watch over them and feed them?"

  "They're tomatoes, not babies! What do you think vegetables actually do?"

  "Get eaten!"

  "I take it back, you are hopeless—" John smothered a cough in the last sip of his tea. "Ryan, help. He doesn't know what gardens are."

  "Don't look at me." Ryan plopped onto the bar stool next to his. "I have, like, the opposite of a green thumb. Black. Black and poisonous. I electrocute things."

  "I know what gardens are," Holly protested. "The grounds around the Lyndsay Estate have roses, I think, and footpaths, and one or two lily-ponds, and you can go and walk in them, I mean the footpaths not the ponds. At least, I think you can, although I've not been there in ages and I said yes to opening up the house to tourists so who knows what's going on—"

  "That's not a garden! That's historical t
rivia!"

  "Are you charging an entrance fee for the tourists?" Ryan said. "Because if you are I need to know. Income. Records. Are you?"

  "Ah…I can find out? The property manager must know. I'll ask."

  Ryan pressed the beer bottle against the bridge of his nose for a second. Nice and cool. "Do that, please, and let me know. Consider it an order."

  John patted his shoulder.

  "I will," Holly said. "Sorry, Ryan. I'm trying to get used to this, I really am. I don't mind us having a garden. I could try to help with, er, feeding it."

  "I don't think I trust you near my vegetables," John said. "I mean that in a nice way, kid."

  "But what if I used magic to—"

  "You don't get to use magic on my zucchini!"

  "One of you wants to do magic things to a zucchini," Ryan said, leaning elbows on the counter, "and one of you somehow doesn't want to. Why does everyone think I'm the dick on this team?" This came out more plaintive than he'd meant it to; he didn't exactly mind the public perception. He knew his own reputation, and the people who mattered knew it wasn't justified.

  "Perhaps because you've got a chip on your shoulder the exact size and shape of Captain Justice?" Holly observed, over the communications link.

  "Holiday," John said, not quite a scolding.

  "Ah, Tim's not a problem." Ryan popped the cap off his beer, then reached over and opened John's too. "I mean, we're better off on opposite sides of the country and separate teams, and he forgets I'm not thirteen anymore, but he was a good teacher, and he's a decent guy. It's mostly the media. The whole narrative. Once a kid sidekick—"

  "'Always a kid sidekick'," his partners finished in unison. They'd heard that one before. Not just from Ryan, either. From other former kid partners. And the aforementioned media.

  John added, "And everyone thinks you're a dick because of days like today," and clinked his beer against Ryan's, amused. "You save people, yeah, but you just zip away. No stopping to say hi to kids, take photos, shake hands. Friendly local hero. All that."

  "I have you for that," Ryan grumbled. "When you're not half-dead. Holly, you're lucky. No one expects a supervillain to kiss babies."

  "I don't mind babies," Holly said, amid sounds that suggested he'd begun conjuring a portal. "Not that I'd know what to do with one, but in theory. They're rather cute. I'm off to the Terrible Tower, since I can't put it off much longer. They'll be wondering why I've not shown up to sulk at my defeat and have witnesses for a temper-tantrum. Don't wait for me as far as the lasagna, I've no idea how late I'll be, and you know I'll have to pop back to the Mysterium first in case anyone's feeling paranoid and tries to follow me home. Take care of John and feed each other."

  "Wait—" Ryan said, right as John started, "Holly—"

  "You first—"

  "No, go ahead—"

  Magical sizzling quivered in the distance; Holiday waited patiently for his partners to sort themselves out.

  "Before you go all radio silent," Ryan said, "you are okay, right? I didn't hurt you with that last blast or anything?"

  The Terrible Tower had every kind of anti-interference protection—technological, mystical, lethal—that the world's most powerful supervillains could devise. Even Holiday had never been able to transmit anything from inside.

  This meant that Holly, being Holly, worried about not being useful enough. Ryan and John worried more about him getting caught or being injured or overexerting his powers, alone among enemies and in pain. They wouldn't know. They wouldn't know until too late.

  "No, you were marvelous," Holly said, weary but cheerful. "Not even bruises. Though you can cause some of those later if you'd like. Do you recall that time about a month ago, with the cane and also your electric—"

  "We'll see," John said firmly, an effect only mildly interrupted by the cough. "After you're home and safe and you've had a chance to eat."

  "We'll talk about it when you're here," Ryan said. "And we'll talk about your phrasing, too. We can do things to you? Really, kid?"

  "Oh," Holly said. "Ah…sorry, Ryan. And John." His tone wasn't, though. Hopeful, instead. "I love you?"

  "We love you," Ryan told him. "Even when you're a brat on purpose. We'll decide what you 'can' have. And you'll take it. And you'll enjoy it."

  "Absolutely yes," Holly agreed. "I'll try to make this quick. Especially with that to look forward to. Take care of John first, though—" Magic sang through the evening. Gobbled up his last syllable. Cut off the link. Dead air.

  No. Not dead. Holly would be fine. Holiday Jones carried legendary family amulets and wielded sorcerous enchantment and winsome charm like polished blades: graceful, glamorous, powerful. Even out of contact with anyone, even young and recently apparently defeated, even among a nest of criminals and villains and warped minds, Holly could protect himself.

  He'd grown up in that nest, after all.

  Ryan nevertheless reached out to hold John's hand. John held his right back. Their partner, their other third, their matching balance-point, had stepped into danger. Every atom of both their hearts screamed to follow.

  "He'll be okay," John said.

  "I know."

  "He always is."

  "I know."

  "He'll be…"

  "Yeah." Ryan looked up, found John looking at him. Their eyes met. "I know."

  "I hate this," John said, and scrubbed his other hand over his face. "I hate it."

  "I know," Ryan said again, and slid off his own bar stool and put arms around him. "Me too."

  John leaned into him. Holding on. Head tucked down, face hidden, small and younger and scared, for all that he was years older and significantly heavier. "I don't know how much longer I can do this. I can't lose him. I can't lose you. I can't. Not—" His voice cracked; he stopped.

  Not again, Ryan thought. They both heard the unspoken words.

  He rubbed John's back through the blanket. "Yeah. Kinda how we feel when you do things like run into a room full of poison gas without calling for backup. You got accelerated healing from your secret government experiment, not instant."

  "There wasn't time—"

  "Oh, I know. We'd've done it. Well, I would've. Holly totally would've waved some enchanted amulet around and talked your gas into being harmless. Batted those eyelashes at it."

  Holly had, in fact, been secretly sabotaging Code Blue's apocalypse machine in Antarctica. No one suspected him, not as far as they knew. The Masters of Terror were convinced that he'd grown up a lovely spoiled brat with enough inherited power to be a decent villain but no gift for strategy at all.

  "He does have very persuasive eyelashes," John said into his shoulder. "All soft and long and pretty. Maybe it's another superpower."

  "It so is. Part of the whole magic sorcerer thing. Honestly, though…" Ryan pulled back enough to see John's face, to meet that emotion with his own. "If you want, we can talk to him about it. When he gets here. Stopping this whole infiltration play. I've been thinking about it too."

  "You have?" John's voice wobbled for a slightly different reason this time. Relief, a reprieve, hope. They'd found themselves thinking alike almost from the first: not exactly the same, and not on every subject, but on big ones. And this one was damn big. Massive. Boulders formed out of love.

  "It's been almost two years. He's done enough. He'll say he hasn't, but he'll listen if we say he has." And every day, every week, every month, held more chances of discovery. More potential for slip-ups, exhaustion, or simply some other villain's paranoia uncovering the person who'd been passing along information. "I think it's time."

  John nodded, coughed, grabbed the inhaler, nodded again. "Yeah."

  Two years ago they'd been in London. That'd been their first big mission together, facing a threat on a global scale. A definite jump up from pranks turned deadly and bank robbers with ice-shooting weaponry.

  He and John had been partners, in all senses of the word, for only three months. Still getting used to each other. Working out s
horthand. Learning when to look or leap.

  John had said once he'd not expected to fall in love with anyone else, never planning to, not looking. He'd been thinking about the next mission and going home alone and going out again; and then he'd locked eyes with Captain Justice's electric young former partner, all sparks and passion and a fierce need to prove himself, across the barrel of an adversary's icicle gun. That'd been that. Defenses down. Taken out.

  That'd been the year Arachne and Horatius Jones had tried to pull down the moon, to cause an extinction-level event, to preserve only their chosen people in a mystically secured safe-house. Holiday Fortune Lyndsay Jones, at seventeen years old, guarding his parents' backs, had quite possibly been the most beautiful person on the planet. He'd dressed up for the occasion in black and green, highlighting those huge hazel eyes, and he'd moved like an adder, slender and sophisticated and deadly.

  Ryan had been present, that time. Everyone had. The Fantastic League. Captain Justice and the brand-new Lightning Kid, a girl named Melissa who was literally full of bouncing energy and much younger than Ryan remembered ever being. John had been in full tactical Sundown gear. Ryan had tried not to get distracted by those shoulders and all the straps and buckles on that suit until later. Once they made it out.

  Holiday had been playing barricade, throwing buses and buildings around the middle of London's Trafalgar Square. His parents had held up their own amulets. Had murmured spells, rituals, words that shook the universe out of truth.

  Rescue efforts had diverted most of the heroes. Holiday Jones had plainly known this. He'd kept trapping people, never outright killing them. Burning buildings. Falling rubble. Exploding gas lines. Requiring more and more thinning of the heroic ranks.

  He'd been very good, but still just one boy. Captain Justice had nearly made it to his parents. Holiday, whirling that way, had flung a double-decker tour bus at him. The bus had crashed down. Rolled. Lurched toward a small civilian child. Who tripped, screamed, couldn't seem to get up.

  The child's mother had screamed too, human and anguished. Had run back, heading for flames and devastation. Would never have made it through.