Chapter Text
“Five.”
“Three.”
“But I need five.” Ryan argued. Ray readjusted his ear piece as Gavin let out a chuckle beside him.
“Do you need five or do you want five.” Gavin taunted.
“Vav, I will strangle you with your small intestine unless you shut your mouth.” Ryan warned, voice oddly calm despite the gruesome threat. Gavin let out a distressed noise beside him and Ray clucked his tongue.
“Oh no, shouldn’t have said that.” Ray spoke in a disapproving manner, like a parent scolding a child. “Now the offer’s down to two.”
Ray and Gavin stood side by side on the rooftop of their apartment decked in their super suits. Communication headsets were fixed in their ears, matching ones in Ryan’s ear from wherever in the city he had chosen to sit back and observe.
It had been a solid few months since the…incident. They didn’t really have a name for what happened, they didn’t like talking about it anyway. That’s not to say they didn’t acknowledge what had happened, as much as Ray thought that was a pretty nice plan in the beginning. Ignoring the past meant you were just doomed to repeat it.
“Rose.” It was Ryan’s turn to sound distressed and Ray chuckled at hearing the normally composed adult complain like a teenager.
“Are we seriously discussing this right now?” Hilda cut in, safely stationed back at the lab.
“How about four?” Ryan ignored her and tried again.
“I’ll make you a deal.” Ray offered, a quiet ‘what the fuck X-Ray’ coming from Hilda through the earpiece. “Three and you do the dishes tonight.”
“Deal.” The word like a nail driving into a coffin was the accent to three simultaneous explosions in different parts of the city. Ray and Gavin watched the smoke rise and heard the distant shouts of panicked citizens. Ryan was giggling through the earpiece, high off of the destruction he had created as he cooed about how beautiful the screams sounded.
They had a system now. It was easier for Ryan to keep the Mad King at bay when he was allowed another outlet for the mania. It took a bit of convincing for Hilda to come around but eventually they figured something out. Ryan would try his best to avoid casualties. All he really wanted was the panic and hysteria, bloodshed certainly wasn’t a necessity. Any sort of damage he caused would be taken care of by X-Ray and Vav. Hilda had developed direct communication lines so they could all listen in on one another during an episode.
“Doing the dishes was seriously worth an extra explosive?” Gavin asked, reaching down to power on the propulsion plates in his boots. Ray shrugged and began to do makeshift stretches as they awaited a status report from Hilda.
“Listen, it’s taco Tuesday and the dishes fucking pile up when we make tacos.” Ray reasoned. A quiet gasp of happiness came from Gavin as his eyes lit up.
“I forgot about the tacos.” The Brit said, voice giddy.
“Meg will be there.” Ryan reminded him through the earpiece, eliciting another squeak of glee from the hero. Gavin and Meg had thankfully kept seeing each other after what had happened, Ryan assuring Meg that the relationship was acceptable even in her position. But despite dating for so long, the mere mention of Meg would send Gavin into a love-struck trance.
Ray chuckled at his friend’s excitement as he touched a finger to his headset. “Hilda?”
“Alright so we’ve got disturbance reports from the golf course of the country club in west village.” The engineer began, the muffled typing of computer keys filtering in from the background. “A farm on the southern outskirts lost its fencing and now the livestock are roaming free. And a supermarket in city center has quite a few shaken shoppers.” Ray let out a tired sigh.
“Care to share your justifications?” He asked, the question directed towards Ryan.
“I hate golf and the cows deserve to wreak havoc.” He could practically hear the villain’s smile.
“And the supermarket?”
“I set it up when I was getting taco supplies.” A small laugh escaped Ray’s lips as he turned towards Gavin.
“I’ll take west district. Vav, you take south and round up the cows and-”
“I’ll take city center.” A blurred form shot past their building on the streets below heading in the direction of the supermarket.
“Griffon?” Ray asked, surprised at the blonde hero’s sudden appearance.
“Hello.” Griffon greeted cheerfully. She pulled up to the parking lot of the targeted supermarket, roller skates folding seamlessly into combat boots as she approached the crumbling building. Civilians ran past her to their cars, carts and shopping bags abandoned on the ground.
Griffon and Geoff had made good on the sit down talk that they had promised. A couple of days after the confrontation with Hilda, Ryan and Ray had sat side by side on the couch in Ryan’s apartment with Geoff pacing back and forth as Griffon calmly asked them question after question. Gavin had been there too, a silent presence off to the side observing and occasionally chiming in. The talk was mostly to make sure Ryan and Ray weren’t going to be stuck in any sort of cycle of abuse with one another. They loved each other, sure. But even people who love each other could hurt each other.
“How the hell did you get on this comm frequency?” Hilda asked, slightly offended that someone had managed to intercept what she had thought was a fairly secure line when she designed it.
“Don’t worry about that.” Griffon brushed off the question as she unhooked the handle of her chainsaw from her belt, plates and teeth shifting out and clicking together to form her massive weapon. She swung it with a practiced grace to slice cleanly through a support beam blocking the entrance and made her way inside. “Now, did I hear something about tacos?”
“Taco Tuesday!” Gavin chirped happily. X-Ray and Vav departed from the rooftop, going their separate ways as they jumped from building to building with ease thanks to Hilda’s newest propulsion modifications to their boots.
“Hell yeah, we’re inviting ourselves over.” Griffon declared, helping disoriented shoppers off of the floor and directing them towards the entrance.
“I already told him.”
“Geoff?” All three heroes exclaimed simultaneously at the sound of the corporate leader entering the communication stream. Ray paused on the roof he just jumped onto and looked up in time to see Geoff fly past him from above, dark green suit shining in the midday sun.
“Hey.” The villain greeted, flying over to hover above Ryan. The gents observed the city’s panic from their spot on top of the city’s largest sky scraper.
“Geoff was bored.” Ryan offered in explanation.
“Paperwork fucking sucks man.” Geoff complained, reaching up to his yellow tactical visor to focus in on Ray as he jumped across rooftops before moving to watch his wife as she guided civilians to their cars. “I need to let out some steam too.”
The supposedly retired hero and villain had become surprisingly protective of Ray and Ryan. The Ramseys usually oversaw the little episodes Ryan was allotted like this one but it wasn’t often they made their presence known, let alone became involved in the process.
“You don’t turn into a bloody psychopath without one or two weekly explosions though.” Gavin pointed out. The lad finally reached the southern outskirts, greeted by a flustered farmer and his workers as they ran around trying to herd in the escaped cows. Gavin began slowing the animals down one by one with his gloves, giving the farmhands enough time to tether them to supports while a makeshift fence was built.
“But I’m booooooored.” Geoff drawled out. “And now I’m craving tacos.” The villain scanned the area for a moment before abandoning his place above Ryan and flying down to the storefronts below.
“We’re negotiating with criminals and talking about tacos.” Hilda murmured in disbelief, cradling her head in her hands. Ray laughed at how puzzled she sounded. “How is this my life?”
“Hey, what’s-her-face?” Hilda let out a sigh.
“What is it Haywood?” She asked, voice tired but mostly free of malice. Thankfully she’d moved past calling Ryan by his villain alias all the time but she wasn’t quite comfortable calling him by his first name yet. It was too personal for her so she just stuck with the last name, even though it often drew looks from fellow researchers when she threw around such an informal title for their CEO.
“Do you enjoy tacos?” Hilda blinked as her mind processed what he was asking her.
“Yeah, Hilda you should come tonight!” Gavin called out. The cows were finally all tethered so the lad had moved on to helping build a new fence. The farmhands shot him questioning glances for his sudden outburst but quickly understood when they spotted the headset in his ear.
“I…wait, seriously?” Hilda was still trying to grasp the fact that she was being invited to have dinner with her boss. To have tacos with her boss. Seriously, what had her life become.
“Yeah, it’ll be great.” Ray promised. Arriving at the golf course he found the biggest problem would be welding broken pipes. The irrigation system that ran along the course beneath the dirt bringing water to the sprinklers and ornate fountains was currently flooded grounds. Or maybe the biggest problem would be ignoring the grumpy patrons of the country club complaining about their course being under water.
“Uh, sure.” Hilda accepted after a moment, still a bit hesitant. But other people would be there including Ray and Gavin, it couldn’t be that bad.
“Bring your robot.” Ryan ordered. The villain had taken his own set of high powered binoculars out and was watching Ray as the hero worked to weld pipes shut with his x-ray specs.
“Why?” Hilda was immediately defensive, immediately distrusting with anything involving ORF and Ryan. Old habits die hard after all.
“So EDGAR can have a friend.” Ryan explained cheerfully.
“Who the fuck is-”
“Geoff, I can see you from here.” Griffon snapped, interrupting Hilda. “Stop robbing that liquor store.” Geoff froze on the street, bottles clutched tightly in his hands as he looked around for signs of his wife.
“But I grabbed wine for tonight.” He argued, shooting up into the air and flying back towards Ryan. “I was being a polite guest.”
“I clearly saw two bottles of scotch in your hands.”
“No you didn’t.”
Hours later Ray found himself in Ryan’s kitchen full of a people fighting over taco ingredients and arguing about the current topic of the night—it was vigilantism—and he would honestly say he couldn’t be happier in that moment. It was hard to believe that a few months ago it had seemed like the whole world was pushing in around him, like walls closing in. He could have lost so much.
Ryan.
Hilda.
Maybe even Gavin if that boy hadn’t been the saint that he was. Speak of the devil, Ray watched as the Brit glanced up briefly from his conversation with Meg to look at his partner. Meg’s hair was a dark brown now, curling around her petite face as she laughed, and Ryan had poked fun that she did it to match Gavin. Ray and Gavin looked at each other for a moment, a smile on each of their faces as they shared a silent conversation between them. A conversation that could really be summarized as “How did we get so lucky?”
Not everything had been immediately fixed after the incident, that much was clear. For a while Ryan refused to touch Ray in any manner more than innocent for fear of triggering something. For a while Ray had nightmares of losing Ryan to the Mad King taking over completely. And for a while the people around them were left to watch as the hero and the villain tried to rebuild what had been broken.
But they were getting there.
Days like this helped. Wake up in the morning, usually with Ryan by his side, before they go their separate ways. Ray and Gavin usually patrolled the city while Ryan…well Ryan sort of had a company to run so he would go and do that. Occasionally Ryan would bring up a weapon he wanted to test or a building he wanted to detonate and X-Ray and Vav, with help from Hilda of course, would make plans to clean up the damage. By nightfall everyone would have fallen back into their civilian ways. They’d have dinner, go on double or triple dates, or just stay at home and play mindless videogames. By all means it wasn’t the most normal life but Ray wouldn’t give it up for anything.
Gavin winked before returning to his conversation with Meg. Ray looked up at Ryan as he felt the arm around his waist tighten. The villain was smiling down at him and Ray grinned back, blushing when Ryan dropped a kiss to the top of his head. Ryan turned back to Griffon who was standing on his other side attempting to facilitate conversation between ORF and EDGAR.
Ryan’s AI was displayed on the screen set up in his kitchen, visual equalizers moving up and down as it spoke. ORF hovered in front of the screen, buzzing about with a digital smile and asking the AI enthusiastic questions. Two robots talking to each other, each with free range to massive databases of information, occasionally brought up inexplicable subjects so that’s where Griffon and Ryan came in. The two would pipe up to either explain away a topic as “comprehensible for humans only” or order away the thought altogether.
Ray looked around the kitchen until his eyes landed on Hilda who was currently trapped in a conversation with Geoff. The man was gesturing wildly with his arms, pointing back and forth between his watch and ORF. Ray could hear him praising ORF from across the kitchen, gushing about the robot and complaining about how Ryan refused to create an AI for him. The hero remembered Geoff had mentioned wanting to install some kind of AI interface in his suit but couldn’t quite get the coding right. Hilda was blushing from the praise, partially hiding her face behind a bottle of beer in her hands. She looked up to catch Ray watching and immediately widened her eyes in a silent plea for help. Ray chuckled and shook his head at her, watching as the engineer groaned and turned to give Geoff a weak smile.
Ray let out a sigh and felt his eyes slip shut for a second as the sounds of his friends enveloped him, cheerful voices drowning out any other thought. The weight of Ryan’s arm around his waist grounded him as he just stopped and took in the moment.
Oh yes.
He could get used to this.