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On any other night, Soul Punk might have found the view before him stunning. City lights and stars echo each other, dazzling and sparkling and spinning in time with the never-ending bustle of commuters and tourists and those in search of one more escape before midnight strikes. If he listens closely, he tells himself he can hear the rush of cars and city folk; if he holds his breath, he can dream all is well.
Yes. On any other night, it would be stunning.
Tonight, though, the stars only seem so brilliant because he’d followed a lead on the city’s most notorious villain— a man known to the public as Clandestine, a man known to Soul Punk as an arch nemesis. It was a lead which led him right where Clandestine wants him, alone on a cliff as if Soul Punk had any help to call.
Tonight, he hears the city so vividly because it’s easy to pretend the blood rushing through his ears is just the cacophony of distant laughter and far off life.
Tonight, the only stunning image is the gun held in Clandestine’s hand.
Soul Punk’s eyes turn from the sky around him and back towards the weapon. When he began his crusade as Soul Punk years ago— a time he can’t think about, a time he won’t allow himself to remember— he’d flinch at the sight of creations so much worse than nature could concoct. Swords which flamed at the slightest touch. Rays that left nothing but ash in their wake.
And Clandestine’s gun. Sparking and spitting particles of blue-white-golden light Soul Punk can't take the time to name. It doesn't matter what the gun's made of, though.
What matters is what it does.
“Drop your weapon.” Through the voice modulator, Soul Punk sounds braver than he feels. “We don’t need to fight like this.”
“I’m not a villain,” Clandestine cries. His own voice modulator— strapped to his throat haphazardly, so unlike the professional wiring Soul Punk has done directly into his golden suit— cracks in unfamiliar tones, pitches rising and dropping like an orchestra playing blindly. It’s easy for Soul Punk to grasp the awkward sounds, to play them in his own mind as a reminder of the lies spewing from Clandestine’s painted lips— black and white, teeth and fangs and pain. “You don’t understand. You could never understand.”
Soul Punk tells himself that he agrees, that this is the one truth Clandestine will grant him. He doesn’t understand the reason Clandestine wreaks havoc in the city, why he tears through it and claims despair as his disciple. He doesn’t comprehend the satisfaction one must gain from earning tears and hatred and spite. He doesn’t understand, he thinks. He doesn’t want to understand.
And, yet, he does. Though Clandestine is his foe, the hurt in his eyes— framed by a mask but not hidden, never hidden— is familiar. Soul Punk’s no stranger to pain and loss; he’s no outsider to tears and torment.
Still, Clandestine is an enemy and Soul Punk’s learned to keep his emotions far from the battlefield.
He adjusts his mask and runs a hand through his hair— bleached and sticking to his head in the heat of such a summer night. Chasing Clandestine had been no easy task but Soul Punk is known as the city’s greatest hero for a reason; he’s the only one willing to put a stop to his reign of terror.
Clandestine’s lips are still moving and, faintly, Soul Punk can hear his monologue of desperation, the claims that the city hurt him first and he shall be avenged. He speaks of the loss Soul Punk had related to; he waxes poetic of loved ones left behind.
“ —and because of vigilantes like you, the man I love was lost! He was taken from me and I will never have him back!” Clandestine cries, swinging his gun in a manner that makes Soul Punk’s heart race. Sparks fly and Soul Punk can’t keep an eye on all of them. “I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing this for him .”
And Soul Punk’s eyes snap up at Clandestine’s as those words sink in, as they permeate the night air like the bombs planted across the city. His eyes widen behind his mask and keeping his expression neutral is more difficult than it should be, his bottom lip twitching as if those emotions he banished have returned.
Clandestine has never spoken of him so blatantly; he’s never lost his cool so easily. If Soul Punk were a more suspicious man, he’d expect this to be a ploy to throw him off-guard.
But he knows Clandestine and this isn’t a distraction; it’s a last hurrah.
Soul Punk already knows about Clandestine's hidden bombs. Hell, that’s what brought him here in the first place! But Clandestine has tried that trick before— he’s done worse in the past few months— so why is he speaking like this is his last chance to say these words? Why is he so certain he will win?
Soul Punk looks to the gun once more. He can no longer tell what color the sparks are.
“Drop your weapon,” he says again. “Tell me how to defuse your bombs. Tell me… Tell me what else you have planned.” Clandestine sneers and Soul Punk’s jaw tightens. “This man you lost, is this what he would want? To watch the city destroyed? To let you cross a line you can never turn back from? Is that what you want?”
It’s dark but Soul Punk can see the way Clandestine’s head tilts to the side, more than considering but less than thoughtful. Blood is still rushing through his ears but he can hear the shift in Clandestine’s breath.
Simple. Aching. Pained.
It’s the breath of someone seconds from breaking down.
“What good does it do what he wants? He’s gone and your people took him. You Supers with your powers and fucking elitism. The way you have no regard for the damage done in battles you bring through our neighborhoods. You’re the criminals but everyone’s just so damn happy letting you destroy everything just because you’re fucking gifted .” Clandestine’s words break like bones in a battle but he carries on, the way he always does. “But only if the gift suits them, right? If I could fly or teleport or shoot lasers from my eyes, I’d be all over the fucking newspaper as another god of the city. But the man you took from me? He was gifted in ways you’d never fucking comprehend. But he wasn’t a Super so I guess that made him expendable.” Clandestine looks up and his eyes are blazing, burning with the light of a man who’s been burned. “Your people were supposed to save him! So what right do you have to your powers if you couldn’t protect the one person who mattered?”
Clandestine’s gun sparks again and Soul Punk’s eyes widen. He blinks and he sees golden lights, lasting long enough to burn into his retinas. Inside his mind, sirens wail and people scream and buildings fall but never reach the ground.
Through it all, someone is screaming his name.
When he opens his eyes, Clandestine’s still glaring at him and everything makes sense in every way it shouldn’t.
“Clandestine,” he says as he steps forward, hating the way the name sounds in his throat. The voice modulator garbles the sound into something less painful to speak, something that doesn’t sound like him. “Clandestine, listen to me. You… Those bombs aren’t meant to hurt the citizens, are they? You’ve put something else inside them.”
He wants to be right but, god, he also wants to be wrong.
Sirens and screams and crashing bricks around him until he can’t breathe, god, he can’t breathe and—
“You wish you knew,” Clandestine spits. “You wish you could stop this.”
Another truth Soul Punk doesn’t need to ignore. He steps closer once again, slow, and holds his hands out as if approaching a frightened animal.
“You can’t detonate those bombs,” he says. “You can’t… You don’t know what they will do to the city.”
“I invented them, I’m pretty damn sure I know.”
“But you don't know them.” It’s dangerous ground. It’s showing his hand, it’s too close to the edge of a tightrope. “You didn’t perfect them.”
Clandestine’s eyes flash and the gun is aimed at Soul Punk’s head again.
“And what on earth makes you say that?”
“I think I figured out the formula you gave to me. You had a few calculations off but it should work now.”
“You always were a genius, Trick. I knew you’d figure it out.”
Voices swim through Soul Punk’s head in a current distracting him from the problem at hand. He fights away the feeling of blueprints against his palm and waves off the sensation of lips against his temple.
That was a long time ago and he’s better off forgetting it.
“You can’t do this,” he tries, left to tactics of pleading and begging. He can’t fight Clandestine while the detonator’s unknown and he can’t risk that gun firing. If it hits him, if even a spark brushes his skin, then Clandestine will know that… he’ll know… “For god’s sake, Clandestine, you can’t do this!”
“You can’t!”
“I have!”
It’s a cry that causes Clandestine to flinch, a shout that brings them both to a time neither will acknowledge. Soul Punk bites down hard on his tongue, the flavor of his split lip still strong from the fight they’d had before.
“You don’t even know what it does.” Clandestine doesn’t sound as sure as before.
Soul Punk sounds more certain than ever. “Trust me, I do.”
Clandestine’s eyes narrow.
“It’s a bluff. You’ve pulled this before, Punk. You’re bluffing and hoping I waver but I’m not falling for your tricks this time.”
Cards hide deep in Soul Punk’s sleeves; secrets nestle comfortably beneath his tongue. They all form words better kept locked away, confessions better left in unmarked graves.
They’re words Soul Punk threw out the second he donned this mask for the first time. They’re truths he’s refused to claim as his own.
Sirens and screams a nd crumbling buildings and pains and g od so mu ch pain and screaming and sirens and destruction and
“It steals powers.” The words are simple but speaking it is not. Not even the voice modulator, fashioned with careful hands and tested thousands of times, can hide the trembling in his throat. “The formula in it connects with Supers and strips their DNA clean of any anomalies, anything that might even register as inhuman.” Breath is hard to find and Soul Punk’s frozen where he stands. “But it’s a painful process, as painful as it is long. And Supers can lose control when they’re tortured, Clandestine. They can try anything to make that torment go away and their powers will turn on the people. You won’t be making humans out of Supers; you’ll be creating monsters.”
Clandestine’s shaking as much as Soul Punk is and his eyes are wide enough for pools of whiskey-gold-brown-perfect to be seen.
Soul Punk turns his gaze to the gun. The gun sparking with the same blue-white-golden fire he knows will be found in those bombs.
The bombs meant to destroy the Supers; the bombs that will do so much worse than just that.
“How do you know?” Clandestine breathes and his voice is more a piece of wind. He trembles and twitches and his hold on the gun tightens. “How the fuck do you know all that?”
He’s aiming the gun at Soul Punk’s throat, at the glowing tech constructed to make it look powerful or dangerous. He’s shaking and he’s trembling but he’s aiming and he never misses.
Soul Punk still can’t breathe.
Isn’t he supposed to be a hero? Where is his calm, his cool? Where’s his will to save the city over all else?
In the face of another blue-white-golden glow, all these traits seem to disappear.
“The attack. Three years ago.” His voice is only heard because the modulator amplifies it. Still, it sounds no less broken or afraid. “The one at the small club concert. I researched it. I traced it back to you.”
“What…”
Soul Punk’s eyes are shut as he speaks, spewing words to buy time and calm and anything else he can steal from this night. Let him be a villain for once, let him be a thief. Let him be selfish and cold and calculating because that’s the only choice he has left in the face of these intruding emotions and memories.
“You used your poison on a Super and it… it caused him to attack. He was in the crowd and he lost control and he couldn’t stop himself.”
“Soul Punk, how do you—”
“And no one knows what his power was but his defense kicked in and he lashed out. He brought the building down, the entire damn building.”
“It wasn’t his— He asked for— I didn’t—!”
“And it turned everyone on Supers for months, nearly a year, but it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t ask for those powers, he didn’t ask for that pain, he didn’t ask for them to be taken away!” Soul Punk’s eyes fly open to see Clandestine staring at him, jaw dropped but gun still raised. “And can’t you see that’s what will happen if you do this? Can’t you see all the lives that will be lost to your useless revenge?”
“You shouldn’t know all that,” Clandestine says. “You shouldn’t… How do you know all that?”
Soul Punk’s eyes widen and his hands fly up to his hair, pulling at the blond strands as he screams. “Are you even listening to me? Do you even know what you’ll do?”
“I know what my plan is,” Clandestine says, though he seems unsure. “I’ve known it for three years.”
“Three years, right.” Soul Punk scoffs, laughing lightly because it’s the only thing to do when faced with a madman. “Right, because this is all to make up for a mistake you made three years ago.”
Clandestine’s eyes harden; his confidence returns. “I didn’t make that mistake.”
“You did, though,” Soul Punk spits. “It’s your fault that that Super lost control.”
“Shut up.”
“It’s your fault those people were hurt.”
“I—”
“It’s your fault you lost everything and—”
“One more word, Punk, and I’ll—”
“It’s your fault Patrick died!”
BOOM
The words are punctuated by gunfire. A bullet of static and flame and light strikes Soul Punk’s throat.
And everything goes blue-white-golden once again.
Soul Punk screams as he falls, the poison tracing through the wires powering his suit and into his skin, into his veins. It tears through tendon and muscle and bone, seeping into his very DNA and searching with barbed wire hooks for a power.
“I told you to stop,” Clandestine says, coming to stand over him, the gun smoking and dropped to the ground. “I warned you to stop.”
Soul Punk can’t speak, can barely breathe, as Clandestine’s formula races through him like venom. His nails dig into the dirt and rocks, searching for something to grasp, something to keep him grounded as darkness closes in on his vision.
“I don’t know how you know about Patrick,” Clandestine says, choking on the name. “But I do know that your information was wrong. He wasn’t a Super; he never wanted to be a Super. He hid his power— a skill with his voice, a cry that could shatter glass or call others to him, depending on how he used to— for years. He never sang, he never lifted his voice above a soft murmur. And we were happy.” Clandestine stops before Soul Punk, looking down at him with something that could be disgust or pity. “But then the laws wanted those with powers to register their talents. Wanted to fucking draft them like soldiers— pick and choose their Superheroes. Patrick was usually honest but this? This was too far. This was too much.”
Voices, distant and close all at once, echo through Soul Punk’s mind like stars and city lights.
“I don’t want to fight but I will if they ask me. I have to, you know that. And it’s for the city. It’s for people like you.”
“But I won’t let them take you away, my love. You’ll never have to see this city as a battlefield, I swear.”
“But how would you…”
“Trust me.”
“We worked together to create something that would take his powers from him. It was small and it worked, at first. It sunk into his DNA easily and tests proved that it was working. His… His powers were fading.” Another pause, another shaky breath shared by both men. “That night, I took him to a show to celebrate. A stupid concert at a stupid club. He… Well, I guess you know the rest, don’t you, Punk? The poison he created, it turned on him. And he screamed and it brought the building down. It was… beautiful .”
“His poison,” Soul Punk chokes out, strength slowly returning to his limbs but burning as it does. “So you blame him for this?”
Clandestine’s boot lands on his back, pushing him down into the dirt. “I blame the Supers who arrived at the scene. You weren’t a Super yet, Punk, so I can’t blame you. But your friends… They saw him as the bad guy. They treated him like the villain. They took him away and the city painted him as a rogue Super— just to make it sound more exciting. Later, they told us he had died in custody but I know what happened. I know that they killed him!”
Soul Punk turns his head as far as he can, staring up at the man the city calls Clandestine. “You know nothing. Everything you said… Those are lies. They’re stories you came up with to comfort yourself.”
For once, Clandestine doesn’t seem shaken by Soul Punk’s claim. He shrugs and glances down at his wrist, typing into the device he has attached there. “That may be so but we all need comforts, my Punk. And who will comfort you when you realize your powers are gone?”
Soul Punk’s stomach turns to ice, his breath catching in his throat. “Clandestine, I—”
“Hush.” It’s more a taunt than a command but Soul Punk obeys regardless, words a lost cause to him anyhow. “You’ve never truly shown your power to me and I’ve always been curious. It’s a shame I have to learn after you’ve already lost it but I am eager to see what scans the microbots in the poison will show. I wonder how powerful you really are, to be coming after me so often and so boldly.”
Soul Punk shuts his eyes as Clandestine waits for his results. He imagines he can feel the scans occurring now, casting across his being with lasers and more blue-white-golden lights. He imagines he can stay in this moment forever, a moment where he’s only Soul Punk and this is only Clandestine and—
Clandestine’s breath hitches. “That can’t be right.”
Eyes still shut, Soul Punk speaks. “What does it say?”
Somehow, someway, Clandestine answers.
“It says you didn’t have any. That you already… That something was stripped before and that you're immune because—” Clandestine cuts off, his boot leaving Soul Punk’s back as he does so. Soul Punk’s just pushed himself up to his knees, unsure of what he plans to do but certain he has to do something, when his head’s pulled back by his hair and Clandestine’s eyes are all he sees.
Clandestine, and then a gloved hand ripping Soul Punk’s mask away.
The night air crosses his cheeks with a soft caress and he imagines the stars illuminate him more dramatically than they should. Nothing, though, compares with the way Clandestine’s looking at him.
“Patrick?”
His voice is softer than a supervillain's should be, panic and awe and hope. He sounds like he may start screaming, like Soul Punk’s waltzed into his mind and is holding every secret Clandestine’s kept locked away.
And he knows Clandestine has his secrets, he knows he's kept his emotions in a cage for three horrible years.
Just like Soul Punk’s done.
Just like Patrick’s done.
Because the man before him is a villain. He’s a man known to the public as Clandestine; he’s a man known to Soul Punk— to Patrick, to whoever the hell the world’s cast him as now— as Pete.
His Pete.
“Oh, my… my dear Patrick,” Clandestine— Pete, villain, lover— mutters, hands fluttering and breaths catching. “My Patrick, my Patrick … What have they done to you now?”
Soul Punk’s gaze snaps up from where it’s fallen to his hands— feeble and weak, how had he ever planned on being a hero? Clandestine— and he refuses to think of him as any other being, refuses to recall kisses and late nights and the way he once smiled like Patrick was his world— could be talking about the way his rusted red hair has been stripped to a golden-blonde. He could be questioning the vibrancy of blue in Soul Punk’s eyes, the lack of anything other than such a deep and swirling shade. He could be commenting on the way Patrick’s gone pale and thin, no reddened cheeks in the face of his past-lover and none of the comforting chub said lover used to hold and kiss.
He’s nothing but a blue-white-golden spark in the all-consuming darkness of night, meant to fade away like gunfire in the wind. Maybe Clandestine is asking about that.
But Clandestine continues, his voice wavering with a peculiar rage. “What have they turned you into?”
And Soul Punk’s hands form fists. He can’t push himself to his feet, not yet— the poison may have nothing to strip from him but that doesn’t mean it won’t try— and his voice trembles when he speaks.
“You did this,” he spits. “You and your poison did this to me, Clandestine.”
Without the voice modulator, broken and shattered from the power of the blast, Soul Punk’s voice is… different. Not weaker, not softer, but it carries a cadence it hadn’t before. It’s light and it’s airy but it’s also demanding and pained.
It’s enough for Clandestine to stumble back, eyes wide.
“Don’t call me that,” he says, still hiding behind his mask and still cowering beneath his own voice modulator. “Not in your voice, don’t… You've never treated me as a villain before. Don’t make me hear you start now. Patrick, please—”
“And you don’t call me that!” Soul Punk— Patrick, Soul Punk, who is he tonight?— screams, eyes as hard as the stars above them. “Not in that voice.”
Clandestine falls silent and, this time, his silence is no wonder.
Patri- Soul Punk— goddamnit, he’s Soul Punk— shuts his eyes. He doesn’t feel safe around Clandestine but the poison in his body makes it hard to remember why he should care, why he shouldn’t give in to a few moments of rest.
“I never treated you as a villain because you never gave me a reason,” he says, soft and gentle and everything he hasn’t felt in years. “Not until you forced your supposed cure into me. Not until we were together at that show and you shoved me against the wall, when you admitted to bringing me into public so I couldn’t stop you from stealing something so precious.” He lifts a hand, resting it against his throat. If he breathes deeply, he can still feel the pain that tore through his vocal chords the second he inhaled the poison from the cloth shoved against his face. “You said you were saving me, protecting me, changing me for the better. But it only felt like you were murdering me. And, Clandestine, perhaps you had.”
Slowly, Soul Punk opens his eyes and stands. Clandestine remains frozen.
The gun behind him is still smoking.
“I didn’t care that you wanted to keep me from joining the Supers— hell, I didn’t really want to join the Supers, to begin with! But you stole my power and… and you didn’t stop, didn’t try to help, even as I was screaming. When the building came down and so many… so many died…” He takes a shaking breath, sirens and screams flooding his mind in a manner he knows will never leave. “I hurt those people but you’re the one who stood by and said it was beautiful.” He meets Clandestine’s eyes; he can’t tell whether the tears his mind registers are Clandestine’s or his own. “Beautiful? You call death beautiful?”
Clandestine’s breath hitches. “Only when it’s brought by you. Everything you did… Everything you do is lovely.”
Soul Punk shakes his head, Clandestine’s words terrorizing his thoughts. How had he never seen this madness? How had he never stopped such insanity?
“They aren’t the same person, Soul Punk and Patrick. Patrick died the night the Supers retrieved him from the rubble. Because I- he couldn’t go back to his life. He wanted— needed— to hide from what he’d done and, most importantly, he needed to hide from you,” he says. “Because you may have succeeded in taking his power but you could never stop him from being a hero if the world needed it. And, when you became a villain? That’s when the world needed it.”
“I’m not a villain. And you were never meant to become a hero.”
Soul Punk laughs and it almost sounds worse than even the sirens and screams still trapped in his head. “Look at us! I don’t have powers but I still know to fight for the safety of those more afraid than I am! And, you… You’ve got being a villain down to an art. A desire to destroy the city and harm even the innocent? Labs and tech and gadgets that could do good but are only employed for evil? Hell, you even have the misguided notion that your backstory’s tragic! Revenge and a sad past as motives, could you be any more cliche?”
“You think those are my motives?” Clandestine cries out, tearing off the voice modulation at last. His voice breaks into something human as he speaks, something that brings a knot to Soul Punk’s throat. “Revenge? Tragedy? Patrick, I’m not doing this just because of that, I know I fucked up when I gave you that… that poison . I’m terrified, Trick. I’m… I lost you once because of Supers and powers and I don’t want to lose anyone else. I can’t… I can’t let them take anyone else.”
Soul Punk’s quiet.
When he speaks, he feels like Patrick again. “Do you have anyone else, Cl- Pete?”
Clandestine— Pete, Pete, Pete — chokes on his breath. “I have you back. Doesn’t that count?”
Soul Punk— Patrick, Patrick, Patrick — steps back, eyes wide and glistening. “You don’t have me. You never had me. You know I’m alive and… But that doesn’t mean I’m yours.”
Pete’s eyes darken the way they did when he promised to keep Patrick away from the battlefield. His breaths become harsh— the way they did when he brought that cursed cloth up to Patrick’s face.
He smiles the way he does when he’s Clandestine.
“They’ve brainwashed you,” he says, sounding anything but sane. “But it’s okay. I’ll take you back and we can stop this nonsense. No more Clandestine and Soul Punk. We can be Pete and Patrick again and we can be happy. We’ll be alright.” He grins but he doesn’t look pleased; he laughs but it sounds more like a sob.
When he starts to bend towards the ground, Patrick realizes he’s going for the gun once more.
“No!”
Patrick launches himself forward, crying out in a way which would have broken bones years ago. Pete’s fumbling for the gun and Patrick’s screaming, fighting for it because the gun won’t kill him but a second shot— so close to the first, while his body’s still recovering— will leave him helpless. Stunned and still, defenseless to whatever Pete has planned next. Bombs or kidnap or death or hostages, Patrick can’t afford to find out.
When Patrick reaches Pete, the force of his attack knocks them both to the ground. His hands at Pete’s shoulders and Pete’s at Patrick’s arms, two pairs of widened eyes and nothing but gasping breaths... it’s a position Patrick recalls too vividly. Back when they were together, happy. Back when they were normal.
But they aren’t together, anymore, and they certainly aren’t happy or normal. Patrick twists from Pete’s grasp and buries a fist in his gut, turning from the responding punch towards his side. He lands beside Pete, hands braced near his head and legs kicking out at Pete’s shins. Something must connect because Pete cries out and Patrick takes the time to push himself up. He scans the area for the gun, for the weapon Pete had been ready to fire mere seconds before.
He finds it, tossed a few feet away. Away from Pete’s grasp but, also, too far from his own.
Pete never said he’d take away his bombs. He never promised the safety of the city.
Hands tear and tug at him as he scrambles halfway to his feet, running or possibly crawling towards the gun. Pete screams and shouts and wails for Patrick to just listen, to try and understand.
As the blue-white-golden sparks sink into Patrick’s skin, as cool metal warms in his hand, all he can hear are the sirens in his mind.
“Patrick, please!” Pete screams, screams, screams
When the gun fires, it sounds like a building collapsing.
Blue. White. Golden.
Light fills the area around them, wrapping around Pete’s frame and bringing him to the ground with a blood-curdling cry. It’s not a weapon meant to be shot at such a short distance.
And it wasn’t meant to be used on humans, either.
While the sparks and fire and fury sank into Patrick’s DNA like salt into a wound, Pete’s human DNA rejects it immediately. It screams that there are no differences to be stripped away, there’s nothing to be changed.
The sparks.
The fire.
The fury.
They all turn on him anyway. If they can’t have his DNA, they’ll slip into his blood, instead. They’ll work into his heart and circulate through his body with a sting like needles in his veins. Because this poison, this formula, wasn’t touched by Pete’s hands, alone.
“I think I figured out the formula you gave to me. You had a few calculations off but it should work now.”
Patrick had seen what Pete was planning— even if he didn’t plan on being the one it was used on.
“You always were a genius, Trick. I knew you’d figure it out.”
What he did plan, however, was that the Supers wouldn’t go down alone.
Pete’s screams have reduced to whimpers by the time Patrick has the sense to drop the gun burning into his hand, to escape the smoke tingling across his skin.
When he falls to his knees beside his enemy— an enemy in pain, an enemy he loved— he blames it on exhaustion.
“It won’t kill you,” he promises softly, running his hands through Pete’s darkened hair, coarse from the years thrown towards revenge. “I wouldn’t make something to kill someone but you won’t be the same, either. Just like how I feel that pain in my throat, how I miss what made me special, you will do the same. This pain will never leave you. When you sleep, when you dream, when you scream and cry and shout… This pain will still be there until it takes your mind and finally drives you mad.”
Pete could be laughing; he could be crying. When he turns his head, there are tears on his cheeks and a rueful smile on his twisted lips.
“You were always special, Patrick. Even without that power… I always knew you’d be special without it.”
They’re words from a villain and Patrick shouldn’t feel them so intensely in his heart. But when Pete pushes away, when he moves to his knees and shakes before him, something in his chest snaps in two.
“You’ll take me in, then?” Pete asks, wrapping his arms around himself. Patrick remembers the heat which filled his body when he first encountered the poison; is it possible that Pete’s gone cold? “Proclaim your victory? Save the day? I won’t last in there, Patrick. You know I won’t.”
And Patrick does. He’s seen the cells they throw their villains in, the ones too dangerous to safely remain in an actual jail. He’s heard the wails from down there, how the isolation and darkness and utter nothingness leaves even the most hardened criminals as empty husks.
With nothing but pain in his system, how long would his Pete remain?
He shuts his eyes; he refuses to think of an answer.
“Don’t… Don’t make me take you in.” Soul Punk would never plead so weakly, would never beg with tears in his voice. But he isn’t Soul Punk tonight and Clandestine isn’t before him anymore. “Please, just… Just shut off your damn bombs, Pete. That would be enough.”
There’s silence and then a small shuffling sound, a sound which has Patrick opening his eyes.
He watches as Pete undoes the first few buttons of his suit, reaching inside the jacket to pull out a small metal disc with a red button on top. It’s a cliche villainous looking object but Patrick’s eyes still widen as he looks up into Pete’s.
“Is that—”
“I can give you this. The detonator. I don’t have another, I swear. You can reverse-engineer it— I know how good you’ve been with that kind of stuff. But you should know--" He pauses, cradling the device carefully in his hands. “I can still set it off, though, right now. You’re close but you’re not close enough to stop it. So, if you want it… Can I… Can I kiss you, one last time? I never… I never got to kiss you goodbye or let you know that I love you and… I just want to kiss you again.”
Pete’s wrong, Patrick knows. He is close enough to take the detonator from his hand without a problem and he’s quick enough to steal it from him before he even thinks of pressing the button. Pete’s in pain and Patrick’s healing but…
But he nods, anyway. He leans forward and he nods.
Love is a funny thing, he thinks, when Pete’s face contorts into gratitude and shock as if he ever believed Patrick could say no. He should hate the man before him, should remember the pain and death he brought. He should turn away and find another way to stop this.
But, when Pete leans towards him and presses a hand to his cheek— gloved and unfamiliar, too damn unfamiliar— Patrick feels as if he might be blushing. When Pete’s breath brushes across his lips, he feels as if Soul Punk and Clandestine never existed and that the past three years have been nothing but a bad dream.
When Pete’s lips press against his own— familiar, for once, with no lies or truths between them— he realizes just how much he's missed him.
It’s a chaste kiss and it’s quick but Patrick swears it lasts a lifetime. Pete’s trembling against him and tears are running down Patrick’s cheeks but he feels safe and right and good. He feels like he could run away from this life, like he might understand why Pete was so intent on getting this feeling— this love and warmth and purity— back.
After all these years, they still fit together. That has to mean something, right?
Pete pulls away first and Patrick nearly follows. His lips are still tingling and he’s still in that world Pete wants to create. No Supers or powers or Soul Punk or Clandestine.
Just Pete and Patrick.
He doesn’t move or open his eyes, not even when he hears Pete grunting and standing— not even when he feels a cool metal disc pressed into his palm.
Seconds or hours or another three years pass. And Patrick sits there, holding the detonator Pete promised would bring them together.
Slowly, he opens his eyes.
On any other night, Soul Punk might have found the view before him stunning. City lights and stars echo each other like enemies and lovers, dazzling and sparkling and spinning in time with the confusions and certainties in his mind. If he listens closely, he can hear the rush of cars and city folk; if he holds his breath, nothing seems out of place.
If it were any other night, it'd be stunning.
Tonight, though, the stars seem dim in comparison to the sparks that had burst before him mere moments ago-- be it the gun or the fireworks behind his eyes when Pete's lips had been on his.
Tonight, the city sounds are dulled by the never-ending screams and sirens and crashing buildings. And even those are muted by the memory of Pete whispering his name.
Tonight?
The only stunning image is the detonator held in Patrick's hands.