Men of Steel

by Ryan Loveless

  Our network, unfortunately, hadn’t been the first to pick up the story because someone had held out on telling me, which explained why our producer was pissed at me, and consequently, why Victor was currently on my shit list.

  “Steve, not this again.”

  I rolled my eyes at his tired sigh, more than willing to use the ongoing battle as a distraction from my sorry love life. “Yes, this again. Your mother asked me personally to look into the reports of Central American migrant workers being subjected to slave-like conditions out in the border states. She thinks the whole situation has ties to the drug wars, the marijuana growers using desperate immigrants to do their dirty work under inhumane conditions. She didn’t ask you because she knows how busy you’ve been containing those man-eating things.”

  Victor was shaking his head before I could even finish talking. “No, it’s too dangerous. Those drug jerks have assault rifles and machine guns.” Leave it to the intergalactic choir boy to call the drug lords who had been terrorizing those living along the Mexican-American border for so long “jerks.”

  “I have a bulletproof vest—”

  “But you’re not bulletproof!”

  The group sitting at the next table looked over at Victor’s outburst but turned back toward their own meal when neither of us acknowledged them. An adorable blush flamed across Victor’s sharp cheekbones, and he took a bite of his burger, obviously considering the conversation over. He was right, of course. While he was impervious to all earthly weapons, a well-aimed bullet would end my life right quick. But it rankled that he thought he needed to protect me from the more dangerous aspects of our work. I had been a reporter nearly ten years longer than the boy wonder and had faced plenty a hairy situation before he’d waltzed his cute, taut ass into the news room. Investigating compelling news stories was my life. I had dreamed of being a reporter since I was a kid, having spent hours listening to my grandfather reminisce about his time in the print news bullpen. Journalism was in my blood, and though I knew Victor’s overly large heart was in the right place, I’d be damned if I let his smothering protectiveness keep me from doing my job.

  The strength of our mutual feelings had only exacerbated the problem, compelling Victor to encase me ever tighter in virtual bubble wrap. I could think of other vastly more pleasant things in which I wanted to be encased, but since that was impossible, my frustration with the whole situation was slowly approaching critical mass. Our arguments had increased as of late, and we didn’t even have the option of releasing our tension with a long, hard bout of mind-blowing sex. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how much longer I could go on like this. But since I still loved the big lug, I was nowhere near ready to walk away.

  We finished our lunch in silence before heading back to the office, unaware of the unseen peril that was literally hanging over our heads.

  I COLLAPSED on my sofa, watching between barely open eyelids as Victor settled into his favorite chair. He spent more time in my condo than he did in his own rather crappy apartment, rightfully deeming my place to be the more comfortable choice. Contacts safely removed and stored for the evening, he whipped his laptop out of its case and started right where he’d left off on a story about a local politician who was in bed, literally, with a powerful anti-environmental lobbyist to his constituents’ detriment. Since Victor spent so much time flying through the air, he’d made keeping it as contaminant-free as possible his personal crusade. I had work to do too, but was far less eager to get to it. My eyes drifted shut as I thought back to the humiliation that had been waiting for me when we’d returned to work after our lunch break.

  Johnson! Ramirez! In my office yesterday!

  Victor and I had thusly been summoned by our esteemed producer, Terry Brown. Terry had been in a right snit, but his ire hadn’t been spread equally. Oh no. Victor was Terry’s golden boy, the one who could do no wrong. As for me, on the other hand….

  Five times. Five times El Magnifico has saved a city from those damned aliens, and not once have we gotten the scoop! Johnson, didn’t you swear to me that you would be all over El Magnifico’s ass like a middle-aged loser on a stripper?

  I may not have used that exact expression, but I had probably mentioned something about our favorite superhero’s ass. Of course, I had been staring at Victor’s at the time, so I could be forgiven for the metaphor.

  Since you can’t seem to find a story with a GPS locator, I’m giving one to you in a nice, pretty bow. Merry fucking Christmas.

  The steady tap-tap-tap of Victor typing on his laptop grated against my nerves like Chinese water torture. I opened my eyes and turned toward him to say something rude, but my gaze fell directly on the primary source of my irritation. Brown’s idiotic assignment. It was so humiliating that it made Victor’s cock-blocking me on that migrant worker story seem like a minor irritation. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Victor glance up at me, his natural, chocolate gaze full of annoying sympathy.

  “I’m sure it won’t be that bad. It might even be fun. Just think of all of those adorable—”

  “Dogs. Dogs!” I picked up the flyer that Terry had tossed onto his desk and flung it toward Victor’s head. The single sheet of paper waylaid my tantrum by fluttering sedately to the carpet, the incriminatingly cheery text landing face up as though the damn thing was mocking me.

  Join Us In Celebrating The Best Of The Best At The

  140th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show!

  “Aaaarggghhh!” I vigorously applied my stockinged foot to the offending announcement, crushing the flyer into the carpet. As Victor watched me vent, he at least had the decency to look apologetic. Since it was entirely his fault I was in our producer’s dog house—pun fully intended—I returned his brown-eyed regard with narrowed, gray anger. “You know,” I growled, my tone dripping with menace, “you could have told me about that nest you went to clean out in Manitoba before you flew up there instead of letting me hear about it from another news outlet.”

  Victor stared at me silently for a long moment, knowing that if he waited, I wouldn’t be able to resist filling the silence. This is the way arguments between us always went. For all that he was invincible, he hated being confrontational with those he cared about.

  “I refuse to accept this bullshit!” This bullshit being, of course, the long-standing bone of contention that was Victor’s fear for my safety. “I am a grown goddamn man, Victor. I do not need a fucking baby-sitter. I don’t care that you can juggle Navy battleships with your bare hands.” I popped up from the sofa as I warmed to my topic, ignoring the increasingly wounded look that my partner was giving me. “You know, I got along just fine before you and your seventeen-inch biceps walked into my life, and I will get along just peachy after you’ve decided that you’re tired of playing human and fly off to save fluffy dogs on planet K-9!”

  I knew that I wasn’t making any sense, but I was pissed and I was suffering from a three-year case of blue balls. Logic didn’t enter into it. Still, the hurt that shone from Victor’s Godiva-dark eyes finally reached through the red haze.

  “You think I would leave you?”

  Shit. There I was intending to defend my journalistic honor, and instead, I had let slip my darkest fear. Yes, I thought he would leave me some day. In fact, I knew he would. He was El Magnifico, the savior of billions. And what was I? A cable television field reporter who was swiftly approaching the wrong side of forty. What did I have that could possibly entice him to stay when the whole galaxy was his oyster? Hell, I couldn’t even woo him with my moves in the sack because we could never go there. He was the ultimate forbidden fruit, and just like the proverbial fox, I felt compelled to spurn what I knew I couldn’t have.

  “Well, aren’t you?” Feeling exposed, I bristled at his too-perceptive accusation. “What else am I supposed to think when you won’t ever tell me anything?”

  Victor had the most luscious pair of lips that I had ever seen on a man, and when the lower one started to quiver with emotion, I knew I had lost. I
collapsed back onto the couch and buried my face in my hands to keep from torturing myself with the sight of him pouting at me.

  “You’re supposed to believe that I love you. You’re supposed to realize that I could never let you put yourself in danger. If anything were to happen to you, I don’t know what I would do.” His heavy sigh buffeted against me and knocked one of the pillows off the sofa and onto the floor. The uncharacteristic lack of control over his powers told me just how upset he was. “I care for mis padres more than I can say, but for you, I would gather up the very stars in the sky and string them up in the heavens as a testament to my feelings.”

  Speaking Spanish was a low blow. He knew how much it turned me on. Before I could react to that or his awful bit of poetic nonsense by either laughing in his face or tackling him to the rug, a deep rumbling sound cut through the emotion-laden atmosphere. An earthquake? In New York City? When I looked over at him with an eyebrow arched in question, he blinked back at me sheepishly as he placed his hand over the culprit: his stomach. He looked so cute right then that I could hardly stand it. My anger vanished in an instant, and with an amused shake of my head, I acknowledged my defeat. Not that the outcome of our argument had ever been in doubt. No one could tick me off faster—or make me forgive him as quickly—than Victor “El Magnifico” Ramirez.

  “Hungry?” My lips quirked as he blushed in response. Of course he was hungry. His alien metabolism ran at hyper-speed, and it wasn’t unusual for him to need to eat eight or nine times a day. Pushing myself from the couch with far more decorum than the last time I’d done so, I ambled over to him. I braced my hands against the arms of his chair and bent toward him, leaning in as close as I dared. “I’m sorry I was an ass. I shouldn’t have taken this thing with Terry out on you.”

  Victor opened his mouth, clearly ready to accept his share of the blame for the downward spiral of my career. But I was already over it, knowing full well that his concern was completely sincere. After all, when you could put a hole through a bank vault door with your pinky finger, how weak and helpless must an ordinary human seem? I wasn’t going to convince him today that I could take care of myself without super-assistance, and frankly, I had better things to do with my evening. Such as pressing my right index finger to my lips and then transferring the digit to the beautiful upper bow of Victor’s. He started at the unexpected contact, but I merely patted his cheek fondly before straightening up.

  “You keep working on that story. After all, it’s an election year, and you wouldn’t want that sleaze ball to get reelected, would you?” Tossing him a saucy grin—so what if I was turning thirty-nine next month; I could do saucy—I turned and headed for the kitchen. “I’ll go and make myself useful. How about that ham and potato casserole I made before? Seemed like you enjoyed it.” If going from a full pan of the stuff to a few traces of decimated potato in five minutes flat indicated enjoyment, then he had loved it.

  “Sure!”

  Chuckling at his enthusiasm, I went to rustle up some grub for my man. And if I just so happened to sneak a few pieces of spinach into the mix, who’s to say?

  IT WAS about two hours later when all hell broke loose. I had borrowed Victor’s laptop and was looking up anything I could find about the dog show that was to be the bane of my existence for the next few weeks. My partner was lounging in front of the TV, his story all tidied up and put to bed. Victor’s ability to type at nearly two hundred words a minute was just another reason for me to hate him. Of course, I was just as desperate to experience what those magic fingers could do to my neglected body. Putting the kibosh on that unproductive line of thought, I clicked on yet another picture of an overly pampered Pekinese, trying to figure out why people did such horrible things to their pets. I was squinting at the screen, looking for the dog under all that teased-out fur, when I heard Victor gasp.

  “What’s wro—?”

  That’s all I managed to get out before he was planted in front of one of my floor-to-ceiling windows, staring fixedly up at the sky with such intense focus that I thought he might accidently burn a hole through the glass with his heat vision. An instant later, the blare of air-raid sirens filled the air. The warning systems had recently been installed in every jurisdiction of the country that could afford them, but it wasn’t enemy aircraft that officials feared. Or, at least, not the conventional kind.

  “Victor! Is it them?” I rushed over to where he stood and pressed myself to his side, staring up to dark expanse of night as though hoping I could see what he did. When he didn’t respond, I shot him a frightened glance. “Victor? Tell me, what do you see?”

  “—thing—”

  “What?” For a moment, I thought he’d forgotten that I didn’t have the ability to hear at sub-audible levels.

  “Nothing more than you can,” he said, speaking over the noise.

  “What?” Suddenly I wished I hadn’t heard him at all, not that I could comprehend what he was telling me. “What do you mean?” My pitch shot up on the last word, and I would have been embarrassed at doing my best impression of a fourteen-year-old victim of puberty if my mind hadn’t been consumed with trying to figure out what Victor was telling me.

  “I-I can’t see anything except the sky. I know they’re out there—I can feel it in my bones—but I can’t see them. I can’t hear them.” Victor looked down at his hand for a timeless second, his long fingers curving into a fist that could normally smash diamonds. When he finally glanced over at me, the forlorn expression in his dark gaze filled my stomach with shards of ice. “Steve, my powers… they’re gone.”

  Gone? How was that possible? His abilities were as much a part of him as the sexy mop of ink-black hair that was constantly falling into his eyes, making my fingers twitch with the desire to play with it. He’d explained that his powers were derived from the Oort Cloud that encircled the solar system with a ring of comets. As long as he stayed within its encompassing radius, he was indestructible. So, how in the hell could he suddenly lose his abilities while practically standing on good old terra firma?

  Fuck!

  It hit me all at once, like a ton of bricks loaded with bone-crushing guilt. Even as I reeled beneath the realization of what I’d done, the sky began to brighten as a gigantic spaceship descended from above to hover menacingly over The City That Never Sleeps. It was difficult to tell where the ship began and ended, the dark hull making the vessel blend into the night. Straining to see, I could barely discern a vaguely oblong shape that tapered abruptly at the ends, making it look like a giant eye was peering down onto the frightened populace. The craft moved slowly, lumbering like a bloated whale as it maneuvered into position until it filled up every square inch of sky that was visible amongst the towering buildings, giving the very real impression that there was no escape.

  As I worked up the courage to own up to my culpability, the first barrage of laser fire arced from the ship and slammed into the ground, striking into the heart of midtown Manhattan and killing untold numbers of people in one deadly blow. The words tried to stick in my throat and remain unspoken, but I forced them out, willing to accept the righteous wrath I so richly deserved.

  “I put spinach in the casserole.” I glanced up at him, unable to stop myself from admiring the line of his jaw as the muscles defining it clenched fretfully.

  I felt the weight of his silence as he continued to stare out of the window. It was as though he couldn’t even bear to look at me. I wished I could shun myself so easily. Even on the fifteenth floor, my commonplace ears could hear the screams of those below.

  I inhaled on a sob, tears stinging my eyes as much from the flash of the laser weapon as from the self-loathing that threatened to buckle my knees. “I thought you just didn’t like it. How could I have known that you avoided it for a reason?” Hysteria rose in me as I grabbed his muscular arm. I needed him to look at me. I needed to know he didn’t hate me for what I had done. “I’m so sorry, Victor. How could I have known?”

  All of a sudden we were on
the floor, thrown there as the building shook around us. The alien ship had honed in on our location, almost as though they knew their mortal enemy waited helplessly within. The booming whine of the laser fire was deafening, but through it all I pleaded my case at the top of my lungs.

  “I’m sorry!” I yelled for the hundredth time. “I didn’t know—!”

  A hard slap to my face brought me to my senses at the same time that it reinforced the desperateness of the situation. Even pulling his strength, a smack from Victor would normally have knocked me into the next zip code. But all I felt was the smarting of the very normal impact from a fit man’s hand.

  “Steve, calm down!” He stared at me for a timeless instant before hanging his head on a deep sigh. “I didn’t know either, but you’re right. I must have instinctively avoided it.” He looked back up at me, his brown gaze dark with disappointment. “You shouldn’t have tricked me like that, but now isn’t the time for placing blame. We need to know how bad it is.”

  I would have thought that was fairly obvious, what with the huge spaceship raining down amplified-light death on the populace of New York City. But Victor had always been the calmer of the two us under pressure, and not just because he knew nothing could truly harm him. He’d inherited his steadiness from his unflappable parents, who’d survived the sort of harrowing life working on countless farms and fields that most Americans couldn’t even imagine. He left me lying on the floor as he crawled on hands and knees over to the TV set. Amazingly, it came on when he pushed the power button, and the first thing we heard was the anxious voice of our colleague, Gail Turner, as she reported on the tragedy that was unfolding.