Pretend To Be Nice (5)

Science! Girl & Chained Lightning #5: confessions, obfuscations, mortal peril, and not a truth serum, actually, but does anyone ever listen to me?

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Science! Girl & Chained Lightning is a spinoff of Radiance; both stories take place around 2013 in a world where atypical abilities have become increasingly common, with the storyline following a group of minor-league superheroes based in Washington, DC. This one is all about belligerent not-quite-a-couple Dr. Marissa Cotlin and her favorite (former) test subject Baz Grimes, who clearly adore each other but keep finding new and interesting ways to avoid getting the point across.

Previously, Marissa seemed to be coming around, before losing her nerve. This time, she tries to explain—but things take a sudden, dangerous turn…

<#4 || Directory || #6>

If Sebastian hadn’t been holding onto her hand, Marissa was sure she would have bolted. Forget everything she’d thought she wanted; this was too much. She wasn’t entirely sober. She’d messed up so much already. Of all the embarrassments he’d caused or witnessed, even the ones just from this weekend, this was bound to be the worst.

Her steps shortened as the cold outside air hit her, and she fought the fear, knowing there was no good way out now. Just accept it, you’re done for.

Maybe she shouldn’t have let him take away that third drink. They were pretty small, but it might have killed off all the thinking and put her over the line into a more passive mood. There was always time later to hate herself for it.

“What is it?” Sebastian said, and she realized she’d been standing wordlessly for too long.

“I don’t know what to think,” she blurted. “Sorry. I know—but I mean—it’s always like this.”

His hand settled warm on the side of her neck. “Slow down. I’m not followin’ you.”

Marissa wanted to cry, but she’d done too much of that already today. She felt ashamed to have feelings at all when he was standing there so collected. “Just as soon as I think we’re good and I know what to expect, you go and do something like this. I, I mean, it’s not that I mind. Well. Wait, I—”

“Slow down.” The other hand, heavy on her exposed shoulder, thumb burning a line down her collarbone.

She took a slow breath, realizing she was shaking. Sebastian was steady, and she raised her hands to his waist to try to absorb some of that assurance. She’d never wanted to rely on him, but she did trust him, at least in the important things. Things like touching her throat with fingers that could kill her. And more…oh, far more.

To hell with it. Cards on the table.

“I love you,” she said, forcing the words out, still staring into his chest. “I’ve loved you for a long time, Sebastian, and I—I guess I hoped you didn’t know. I thought it was better the way things were, because I was happy just to have you notice me, and there was no way…just no way that I could see it working out. Maybe once. But not now.”

His hands had gone still. He was leaning in; she could feel a hesitant breath on her forehead. “Why not? That’s what I don’t get, Rissa. I keep thinking I got this figured out, but you just keep shootin’ me down. Why not now?”

Why not now? He had a brain, or so Marissa’d thought; what was he using it for? She wanted to be a snarky bitch about it, too, but she’d set her hands in the wrong place for that. His muscles were tensing under them, and she could feel it through his shirt. She looked up quickly, hoping for a distraction from the insistent desire to take this in a very different direction, and got it. It was only a flash, just before Sebastian tightened his expression again, but she saw the pain.

She froze now, still unable to answer. It hadn’t occurred to her that she could hurt him—not seriously, anyway. Not like this. It’d never seemed that he cared enough about anything to let himself get hurt.

What a heel she was, to have gone all this time and not realized that he really had changed. Some lover she would make, if he did want her. She opened and shut her mouth helplessly, unable to imagine how any words could fix this. “You…I mean, I…it’s not you.” Marissa swallowed anxiously, grabbing at the fabric under her hands as he took his own hands back, like she could really stop him from pulling away. “I’m a mess. You know I am.”

“I’m not any better,” he said.

“You are.” Her whole chest hurt now. Idiot. Idiot. “I’m the oblivious dumbass who can’t tell when you’re teasing me and when you’re serious.”

Sebastian smiled a little as he stepped out of her grasp. Same old heartless smile that didn’t even go to his eyes. “Be fair to yourself. I’m usually teasin’ you.”

“Just give me a chance,” she said, going after him because this seemed like the time to do something stupid, if anything was. “I know I’m not good enough for you, but I can try.”

He turned back sharply. “Who said you’re not good enough for me?”

Marissa looked up at him, surprised by the undercurrent of anger. Faceless teenagers on the internet seemed like a less than adequate answer, especially given how little convincing she’d needed. She’d done this to herself. “I did,” she said quietly, leaning back on the railing.

“Well, you’re right.” Sebastian put a hand down on either side of her, trapping her where she was. “You are a dumbass.”

She tried to laugh, from nerves if nothing else, but only half managed it before his open mouth covered hers again. The kiss was fierce—still almost angry—perfect. She twisted her hands into his shirt to pull herself further into it, and he shifted an arm to curl around her waist for support.

Just as she was getting into it, he broke off and glared down for a moment. “Is that all this was? Really?”

Marissa smiled sheepishly, or tried to. It didn’t really go with the fact that she’d just been biting his lip. “We already agreed I’m oblivious, all right? If I’d known this was how you felt…”

“Oh, no, don’t you put this on me.”

She straightened his tie a little and decided she felt like living dangerously. “I’ll put what I like on you. What are you going to do about it?”

…two drinks had obviously been too much for her. Any doubts about that were answered by the dimensions, if not the sheer wickedness, of the smirk that came across Sebastian’s face.

Marissa was pressed into the wall so hard she could feel the texture of the bricks on her shoulders, sinking through a deepening and murky pool of lust while attempting to wordlessly negotiate just how far up her skirt he was allowed to put his hands, when he froze and pulled just slightly away.

She frowned into the bare space between their lips, grateful for the breath but concerned by the sudden change. “Baz—”

His hand materialized over her mouth. “Inside. Now.”

She nodded, wide-eyed, and dropped an inch or two to the deck as he pulled away. It took a second to get her footing again and remember which way the door was, but she managed, and almost made it there. She was reaching for the handle, surprised by how messy her reflection looked in the glass, when cold hands took her from behind.

🧪💕⚡

Fifteen seconds after deciding to find out what his asshole mental narrative meant by get her out of here, Baz was moving on muscle memory. It wasn’t that drastic of a change, since Marissa had been kind enough to switch off most of his rational thought processes already. All the input he needed was the outline of a pistol in the dark mass of advancing shapes, and the rest were gone. The man he used to be still knew what to do.

Lead target, 1 meter and closing. Close enough to rush and throw him into the next guy. Hands to shoulders, knee to thigh, shove and sweep.

One flat, one reeling. He brought down all his weight on #1’s neck with one heavy step and pushed forward to grab #2 by the shoulder, turn him halfway, knife suddenly in his hand and already rotating to rip back through the protesting tissues of the throat. Two down. The gush of dark blood punched into the face of the next figure in line, blinding, dripping, disorienting.

Nice. Stronger, aren’tcha. Use it.

He shoved #2’s body into the knot of targets about to emerge from the top of the stairs, knocking the entire mass back down to the landing under its velocity. #3 was still stumbling nearby.

Throat strike. Pivot. Secure the chokepoint.

Done. How many were on the stairs was still uncertain, but they couldn’t easily come up more than two at a time. There were #4 and #5 stepping over their comrade’s body now.

Where’d that gun go?

Uncertain. He crouched partway down the upper section of the stairs, observing the enemy’s uncoordinated but steady ascent towards death. Neither seemed to be armed.

Too tight for them to maneuver. Go for it.

He jumped and planted both feet into the chest of…whatever number this was, for no reason at all except that, somehow, he knew that he damn well could. Bones went crunch and then snap as the landing rushed up to meet them, crushing the ribcage in between. A limb emerged from the gloom, and he grabbed for it. On the other side, another slammed into his wrist from nowhere and knocked the knife away. It went spinning over the rail, blade flashing, then was gone.

The shadows were longer down here, the light suddenly tinted an unpleasant green. He’d worry about that part later. Tactics shift, first.

Just don’t break your fingers.

Yeah, he figured, shit. He slammed the base of a fist into the nearest thing that looked like a face, rewarded with the feeling of bird-thin bone shattering into sinuses. Unexpectedly thin, but he would take it. It staggered and gave him enough space to—

No, it didn’t. Something else had him by the jacket. Too experienced to panic, he widened his stance and twisted hard, aiming to dislodge. No luck. Another limb reaching to lock him into place. Elbow strike—narrow up—the seams popped as he pulled free of the fabric. Surge back while he had the cover. One form and then a second went over the railing in various states of injury; he was no longer consciously keeping up with anything but immediate threats. Something metal hit him across the side of the face, driving him back a step or two. The other guy didn’t have enough room for a really good swing, but it was still hard enough to set him breathing through the pain. Too dark down here. No second set of eyes on his back. Stupid.

And he couldn’t shake the feeling he was forgetting something.

It hit him again, and this time the metal sparked, illuminating the highlights of an array of identical thin faces, far more than he’d expected, all trying to crowd him into a corner.

Clones. Clones, fragile but mindlessly persistent. The One-Winged Army. Hades, their dark master. The old Baz had nothing to do with any of that. It lifted enough of the numbness to let him realize that he wasn’t shivering from adrenaline, but with voltage raging to be released—because, damn it, he was Chained Lightning.

He wrenched an arm free and swung it out in the direction of attack, intercepting the bar this time and grinning in the dark despite the physical jolt as it landed against his hand.

Poor bastard holding the other end probably never felt what happened next. Awfully kind of the rest of them to clump up so close together, too. After two or three good arcs and an electrified chunk of rebar to anything still moving, it was over—up here, at least. Chained Lightning moved carefully across the landing, glass from a broken lightbulb crunching under his shoes as he stepped around the bodies, and then lunged back into the light. Anyone left at the bottom of the stairs didn’t need a static target.

One left. Oh, and there was the gun. Three shots went past him as he dived and then popped up to smack the clone across the back of the head, dropping him hard. He picked up the pistol, almost more from habit than anything else, and looked around.

The open walkway to the parking lot was empty, as was the remaining space under the deck. On the other side, the creak of a slightly swinging gate grated over the sounds of his breath and pounding heart. He’d guess it led out to a service driveway and the dumpsters. The fencing at the top was bent, like somebody’d climbed over. To the side, a large padlock lay on the blacktop with its shackle cut through.

He straightened himself up, stepped over to the gate, and pushed through. Even out here the city lights were dim and green-filtered, but it clearly was a service driveway, roughly outlined in gravel and white concrete. A van was parked ten, fifteen meters out from his position with the back doors hanging open. Seven heads, in and out of the vehicle. Six clones. One far more familiar face. Three were holding onto Marissa, too close to risk his putting any current through them.

The gun was already in his firing hand, the rebar falling so he could raise the other to stabilize his aim. Reflexes did the rest.

forehead

forehead

eye

nose

forehead

click—

Eight-round magazine. Only had the five left in it.

The empty gun fell through a holster that wasn’t there, straight to the ground as he moved past it. The sixth man was frozen still, seemingly unaware that he was still alive, and only started to react too late. Baz was already dragging him out by the throat and slamming him shoulders-first into the brick wall.

A shuddering cough rose through the clone’s body, and the mouth distorted itself to disgorge a river of acrid bile down his arm. It was soaking through his sleeve and running down to his shoulder, black and hot and foul-smelling, and it wasn’t bile. Not exactly. Although he usually stayed far back enough from these guys that it wasn’t his problem, his guess was that the next few minutes were not going to be pleasant. Whatever came next, even worse.

Well. Somebody had to do this kind of thing. Least he’d been here to do it.

He pushed all his remaining charge directly into the twitching minion, venting his fury without bothering to estimate what kind of current that would create. A very loud current, as it turned out. He slid down the opposite alley wall a second later, gasping for breath and blinking dizzily at the scorch marks across his palm. The black liquid was running down his body everywhere he looked, illuminated by the fiery heap of remains a few feet away.

On your feet. Where’s your weapon?

Chained Lightning had no answer for his old self this time. His vision was getting dark around the edges, the figures around him fuzzy. Even the voice in his head didn’t sound like it should.

What the fuck have you done?

This all felt wrong. That the question would even come up…

Get up. What have you done? Where’s your weapon?

What had he done? God, what had he done? He reached out for an undefined shape on the dim ground, only for his hand to go straight through and hit gravel. He couldn’t trust his eyes. If he couldn’t trust his eyes…

He stumbled onto his knees, feeling around in the gathering darkness. No thought could be permitted to expand the cavern of horror that had suddenly opened up in front of him. There was another gun on the ground, heavy enough to be loaded. He fell back again and pulled it with him, his fingers moving by themselves as static began to flood his ears, dissolving into hellish shrieking.

An unseen hand closed over his mouth.

Slowly, the shrieking quieted, and then his vision began to return. The hand moved to the side of his head, showing him a blurry set of shapes that resolved within a few seconds into a masked face—chiseled jaw under a domino mask and pointed cowl, very typical hero stuff, except for the shades-of-gray color scheme. But that was a good sign. A man in gray was much more likely than most heroes to be cool with finding this many corpses in an alley.

As Baz breathed through the suddenly-surfacing feeling of having the marrow sucked from his bones, the rest of the scene continued to settle back into more comfortably real dimensions. He was still sitting on the ground, surrounded by dead clones, and above Gray Cowl’s other hand hovered a dark and growing sphere. The stuff being removed, he presumed. He’d also removed the gun, which was likely for the best. God only knew what he’d have done with that.

The man put his hand down, and the sphere winked away.

“Thanks,” Baz said, his voice scratchy. “I, uh—I know this probably looks bad.”

“Not for you,” Gray Cowl said. The cadence sounded familiar somehow, but the voice didn’t. “Nice job. I would have stepped in sooner, but you looked like you had things under control.”

“Yeah. Under control. Very.” He looked around more obviously this time, unsure at what point his perceptions had gone off the rails. “Where…”

“Oh, the girl they had? I moved her out of the way. Either she’ll poke her head out in a minute, or I’ll go check on her.” He pointed up towards the sky, which was still oddly green. “Right now, I’ve just got us all a few steps out of phase, so this mess isn’t visible or tangible to anyone back on our usual level of the universe. We can phase back in just as soon as—”

He cut off at the sound of running footsteps in the gravel behind the van. They both looked over, tensing, but it was only Marissa who emerged. Baz fell back in relief. Nothing had gone too terribly, then. At least she was all right.

“Oh my god,” she said, dropping to the ground and ducking under the stranger’s arm to get to his side. Something was still wrong, he thought. By the way she was clinging, Marissa seemed a good bit loopier than he had left her. “Are you okay? Holy shit. Yes, I will marry you.”

“I don’t remember askin’,” he said with an attempt at a good-natured smile.

She kissed his cheek dismissively. “We’ll work that out later.”

Gray Cowl chuckled and offered him a hand to help stand up. Baz took it, pulling her with him and looking down in concern as she struggled for a firm footing. “Are you okay? I know you probably weren’t expectin’ to get shot at.”

“No, no. Noooo. You were amazing. That’s fine. I just…”

Marissa’s knees buckled, and he had to shift to take her weight. He looked to the stranger—who was this guy?—who nodded, and pointed towards some closed trash bins. “Get her sat down, and I’ll take a look.”

He carried her over, and let her lean against him as the other took her by the arm, turning it over to close his hand across the veins in her wrist with a faint glow. “Sorry for bringin’ trouble onto your turf, by the way,” Baz said.

Gray Cowl shook his head. “Hasn’t been mine in quite a while.”

Marissa gave him an ineffectual shove with her free hand. “That’s The Wizard. Babe, how do you not know The Wizard? He was our local hero before the Convention.”

He pushed her up a little straighter. “I’m not from around here, remember?” The 80s and 90s had been the Wild West for costumed crime-fighters, bookended by the boom in strange powers and the regulations of the New York Convention. He wouldn’t expect her to know his childhood heroes.

“Well, she’s not wrong. I am The Wizard…or I was, before the requirements came up for identity registration,” the stranger said. “That part’s a very long story.”

“Usually is,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna turn you in. I, ah—I don’t usually dress like this, but you can call me Chained Lightning.”

The Wizard gestured across his outfit. “You should get a good illusion. So what happened here?”

“Well, Dr. Cotlin—”

“Don’t,” Marissa interrupted sourly, slurring her words a little now. “I’ve told you, don’t introduce me like that. Dr. Cotlin is my dad. I’m just Marissa.”

This again. He couldn’t be proud of her? “All right, sorry. Dr. Marissa here has a research project that’s been targeted by these guys before. I came along just in case, but I didn’t really think they’d follow her down here. We still don’t know enough about them…as far as she’s been able to tell, they’re some kind of clone army based off a street gang from the 80s. I’m surprised to see them out without their commander.”

“The 80s? Hm. That might explain the sodium amytal in her system,” The Wizard said. “I used to see a lot of that on the street. A pretty old-fashioned sedative, and prone to interact badly with alcohol. The dosage was off, thankfully. I’m catalyzing the metabolism for both of those at the moment, so she should be out of danger soon—just very tired. And probably with quite the headache in the morning.”

Baz nodded. “Is that what you do?”

“Did…yes. Matter manipulation at the molecular level. In your case, the compound was clearly foreign matter and hadn’t dispersed too far yet, so removal was preferable.” He raised his other palm, and the black sphere popped up again above it. “What on earth is it?”

“Oh, geez. From the clones?” Marissa said. “I dunno. Bad juju. Don’t touch it. City morgue tech spilled 100 ccs and ended up with schizophrenia, so no lab short of the CIA was gonna take it after that.”

“She did some of her own analysis,” he said in her defense, since she normally would have been much more articulate about that. “She just didn’t find any matches, and Marissa said the molecular structure doesn’t make sense. Last I knew about it, she was tryin’ to code a simulation to break it down for her.”

“I see. Would you mind if I had a friend of mine take a look at this sample?”

“No, go ahead. She’s been banging her head on the wall for months.” Baz reached up to a pocket that wasn’t there, looking for his business cards, only to remember his jacket was still tangled up in some decomposing enemy limbs. The Wizard smiled a little, twisted his hand, and conjured a piece of blank paper and a pen in place of the sphere. He accepted them and held the paper up against the wall to start writing down Marissa’s work email, wincing a little at using the burnt hand.

“Seriously? I’m dying over here and you’re networking,” she said.

“You’re not dyin’ anymore,” he said, passing the pen and paper back as The Wizard let her go. “And I’m doin’ it for you, just like…just like everything else.”

“Aww. A’ight, then.” She hugged him clumsily, and he pulled her closer so she had somewhere to rest. Marissa didn’t seem badly hurt, overall, but she must have struggled; she was scratched, and he could see bruises on her arms and around a possible injection site. Her bare feet, too soft, were cut up and filthy. He screwed the lid down tightly on the part of him that wanted to go back and set all of them on fire for daring to touch her, and quietly held her up while The Wizard wandered off to start vanishing evidence. Whatever his reasons for getting involved out of the blue like this—and it seemed like he’d have to have a reason, jumping in as quickly as he had—Baz wasn’t going to complain about the help.

Marissa broke into his thoughts with a yawn. “I wanna go home.”

He looked down at her uncertainly. “Home, like…”

“Y’know,” she said. “Home. You.”

A fierce wave of heat rolled up through him, but he pushed that down too and kept his movements gentle as he kissed her hair. “I’m workin’ on it.”

“Mm’kay.”

She’d fallen heavily asleep by the time The Wizard came back, carrying his now-clean jacket. Baz accepted it with some defensiveness at the expression on his face. “What’s that look for?”

The other hero’s pained look melted to a wry smile. “I know how young men feel about advice from old guys who’ve been there and messed up already.”

“I’m not that young. I can take it.”

“You’re new at this, though,” he said. “And you’re freelance, aren’t you?”

It didn’t exactly feel like it, but—The Wizard had a point. This was still vigilante work, not usually the realm of people who worked well with others. “Legally, yeah, I guess so. But I know how to listen.”

He nodded. “Well, tell me. Why do you do it?”

Not much debate about that. There were a lot of reasons he’d decided to stick with this, but with apologies to the rest of his friends—and Dr. Marcos—most of them were secondary. “She won’t leave the dangerous stuff alone, and she didn’t have anyone else to protect her,” he said.

“…that’s a good start. Just don’t get in any deeper.” The Wizard dropped the illusion he’d mentioned earlier, the disguise melting off as his shoulders rounded, his face softened and aged, and a pair of rimless rectangular glasses appeared.

That tone had been familiar. Baz knew him. It was Marissa’s father, David.

He decided to put off contemplating just how many ways he might be screwed right now in favor of nodding slowly, figuring that at least couldn’t make anything worse.

“Don’t get me wrong,” David said, his voice back to normal with the illusion off. He sounded as tired as he did regretful. “The world needs heroes. It’s noble work, and I think you’d be very good at it. I understand why she likes you. But it’s no job for a family man. I realized that much too late.”

Baz wished again that he could have got some real context. “How’s that?” he said carefully, still not entirely trusting that the wrong answer wouldn’t get him microwaved.

He sighed, pausing to wipe his glasses. “My father died in Korea before I was born, flying Sabres,” he said. “Mother and Rhonda and I got along all right without him. I thought it would be enough that I was still around, at least sometimes, but…I suppose the world had changed. The whole time I was doing it for them, but somehow I ended up spending twenty years making excuses.”

He shrugged a little. “You knew your dad was a hero. Your family didn't, I guess.”

He brought the illusion back up, transforming into The Wizard again. “No, it’s always been a secret. I was alone in the lab when the incident happened—there was a meteorite intercepted in the Venusian atmosphere, and evidently I mishandled it somehow. I didn’t think anything was wrong at first. Even after I realized what had happened, I thought I’d just go on as I was, not using the powers. Then, I thought it’d only be for emergencies. You understand, I imagine.”

Sebastian nodded; he knew all about that.

“It’s a tempting slope. By the time I’d really thought about what I was doing, I was in too deep to go back,” The Wizard said. “The girls were very young, and I didn’t want to risk things at home. My wife…ex-wife…you’ve met Michelle. She feels better if she thinks she has everything under control. If I’d told her, I think that would’ve ended our marriage right then. Not out of prejudice or anything, but…she was right. I’d lost track of my priorities. With a job like this, I think it’s almost inevitable.” He looked hard at Baz. “That’s what I meant.”

“…I see.”

“And, so you know, I don’t need the costume to give you chemical burns from the inside out,” he said pointedly.

“Oh, I—I understand that very well, sir.”

“Good.” The Wizard looked back to Marissa and softened again, a little. “She doesn’t need to know about this, you know.”

Baz frowned, already forgetting for a moment about the microwaving. “Don’t you think she should?”

He half-smiled, rueful. “No. I mean, what would it change now? She’s upset enough with me.”

“She can get a lot more upset with me,” he said. “On the other hand, I could put in a good word for you. Might help, you never know.”

The Wizard shook his head. “You might be right, but I should do it. I’ll…I’ll work something out. Don’t worry.”

“All right.” He supposed he couldn’t hope for better than that. “If you’re ready, we oughtta get going.”

“Almost. You can’t go like that.”

Baz realized for the first time that the singed smell hadn’t dissipated, and it was coming from his own clothes—he’d gotten spoiled with the conductive suit. Beat up as he was, of course, that was the least of his problems, and not even considering how bad Marissa looked. “True. Hadn’t thought about that.”

“Kids these days,” he sighed. He raised a hand between them and snapped his fingers rather theatrically, triggering a cascade of warmth that felt like walking through one of Lady Radiance’s thinner light shields. “That should hold for 24 hours or so. And it’s nothing special, so you might have an interesting time of it if you run into anyone true-sighted.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He turned his apparently clean and uninjured hand back and forth, surprised by how seamless the illusion was. “Thank you. Seriously.”

“I couldn’t really do nothing, could I.” He clapped Baz hard on the shoulder. “I’ll see you later, maybe. If you don’t manage anything else, you take care of her.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Wizard turned to walk back toward the street, and he leaned down and shifted Marissa into his arms. The van’s motor started up as he slipped back through the gate, and when he emerged into the parking lot, the sky’s color had returned to normal. It felt better than he’d expected, knowing all of him was back on the right plane of existence. Goddamn physics wizards. Family secrets. Rissa was so lucky she was worth it.

Marissa stirred in the lights coming on in the car interior, waking up just enough as he sat her down to paw him away and get her own seat belt buckled. She was still blinking moodily at the windshield when he got in on his side, and though he didn’t want to go anywhere near what she might or might not have slept through just now, one tangential question did jump to mind.

“Rissa,” he said, just to check how awake she was.

“Mm.”

“You never really believed I would put you first, did you?”

“Oh.” She leaned back, bitterness creeping into her smile as her eyes closed again. “You got me. No, I didn’t.”

Yeah, that tracked. A lot of things made more sense like that. She had the right, he supposed, but it stung anyway. “You know I do,” he said.

She nodded, eyelids fluttering with a last sigh.

It didn’t occur to Sebastian until he was pulling up at the hotel that the exhaustion gradually sinking into his bones felt more like sleepiness. But that wasn’t right, because he’d purposely adjusted his sleep schedule for the trip. It was too early to feel like it was 8 in the morning and he’d just got off a double shift. Come to think of it, though, it would have been nothing for The Wizard to rummage around in his brain and set it up that way. Marissa, too. Interfering son of a bitch.

There was nothing to do about that now but push through. She was too out of it now to willingly stand up, so he coaxed her into clinging onto his back and carried her up the backstairs, ignoring the occasional look they got. Where her room key might be—actually, even where her room was—was too much for him to figure out at this point, and if he was going to be knocked out for a while, he didn’t want Marissa that far away. He set her on his bed and shook her shoulder gently. “Hey. You gonna sleep like that?”

She mumbled some unconnected syllables and laid herself down heavily, dress and all, so apparently that was a ‘yes’. Baz mustered the energy to pull at least some of the covers out from under her and tuck her in, but his resolve to stay awake was slipping fast. He trudged around to sit on the other side of the bed and was able to struggle out of one shoe before slumping back onto the crumpled mass of blankets and rolling just far enough to get his head onto an empty pillow. The last thing he noticed was warmth pressing into his side and the effort required to throw his arm that way, hoping to ensure he’d know if someone tried to take her from him again.

Beyond that, only sleep.

<#4 || Directory || #6>

Thanks for reading! Science! Girl is posting weeklyish through October. Next time…the conclusion.

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