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Everybody knew that the best person to go on night patrol with was Boomer. The guy talked but not nearly as much as Bubbles, who could probably talk herself through an earthquake and never even notice. He wasn’t a micromanager like Blossom or a straight-up jerk like Brick. And he definitely was not even half as annoying as Butch could be.
“You ever wonder what the fuck is up with Monster Island?”
Butch sat next to Buttercup on the Millennium Tower, the tallest building in Townsville, with their feet dangling over the edge and the city lights at their feet. She narrowed her eyes at him. “No.”
He ignored her. “You know, ‘cause that place is what, three? Four square miles? And the monsters just keep coming.”
“What’s your point?” Buttercup said, not really caring. Her watch read a quarter past midnight. She should’ve been in bed an hour ago.
Butch suddenly leaned in close, and Buttercup leaned back away from him. He looked very serious, and that almost always meant he was about to say something mad dumb—
“Giant beast orgies.”
Buttercup groaned. It was going to be a long night.
“For real! They must be going at it 24/7 poppin’ out tentacle monsters and dino hybrids and flaming squirrels at the rate we fight ‘em. How does that even work? Like, are they all just fucking and it’s Baby Roulette to see what’s gonna come out?”
“Dude, gross. I don’t want to think about that shit.”
“Pssh, don’t lie.”
“I’m really not.”
“You’re not even a little bit curious about what kinda Stranger Things shit is going down right over the bay?” Butch pointed southwest toward Citiesville’s Golden Bay, where the aptly named Monster Island sat a few miles off the coast. “Like the Booger Monster we fought before the Reds fucked off to Snob College. How does that even work?”
He made a crude gesture with this fist and forefinger and then pantomimed picking his nose. Buttercup shoved him off the edge of the building.
“Cut it out, Butch. I said I don’t want to talk about that shit.” She grabbed the backpack he’d brought and pulled out a bag of chips. “Besides, there’s nothing to talk about. It’s just weird monster biology, end of story.”
Butch floated one hundred stories above the ground and grinned at her. “So you have wondered about it.”
“Clearly not as much as you, Horny Darwin.”
He threw back his head and laughed from his gut. Buttercup scowled and stuffed some chips in her mouth. The crunch helped her focus, but her eyes were drooping and her head felt a bit fuzzy.
“Hey, you okay?” Butch was no longer laughing as he hovered close and peered at Buttercup. “You look tired.”
Buttercup cast the chips aside. They weren’t really helping, and she wasn’t hungry, anyway. She ran a hand through her shoulder-length hair. “Yeah, I woke up at 4 a.m. today.”
“Why the hell would you wake up that early on a patrol night?”
“Because I wasn’t supposed to be patrolling tonight, you were.”
“Oh, right. I forgot.”
Not surprising. Butch tended to tune out shit that didn’t directly concern him, especially if it was coming from Blossom. She’d called Buttercup at four in the goddamned morning ranting about some giant hairball monster that had attacked Ivy University campus and how Brick had been so sleep deprived that they’d both nearly suffocated to death and she had to help him to bed and somehow all of this was now Buttercup’s problem because Blossom knew they were patrolling alone for only a few hours to get out of it but no one should be patrolling alone in case of giant hairballs attacking. Buttercup pointed out that the likelihood of another giant hairball attacking Townsville, which was clear across the country from Blossom and Brick’s college, was pretty low. Blossom told her to cut the attitude and make sure Butch didn’t patrol alone tonight. She did not have time to argue when she had to go convince the administration to change Brick’s finals schedule so he could actually get some sleep.
And since Boomer and Bubbles were currently out of town at a music festival until tomorrow, Buttercup had no choice but to be here tonight.
“Ugh, whatever. Did you bring any of those energy shots? I’m about to pass out,” Buttercup said.
Butch sat back down next to her and pulled his bag onto his lap. “You know that shit’s basically radioactive rat piss.”
“This from the guy who scarfed three bacon double cheeseburgers on the flight over here.”
He grinned wolfishly and flexed his bicep at her. “Hey, this hot bod doesn’t get by on yogurt and protein shakes alone. A man needs red meat.”
“A man needs less cholesterol in his diet if he wants to live past 40.”
“See, this is why it’d never work between us. Sorry doll, I gotta lead with my stomach.”
Buttercup snapped at that awful pet name he’d taken to calling her lately and swung around to punch him in the stomach. He caught her fist just as it made contact, absorbing the brunt of her force, and met her eyes. The son of a bitch was still grinning.
“Don’t fucking call me that,” she hissed. Her fist shook and sparked with green energy as she tried to finish her punch, but he held on.
Halfway under her as she threw her weight behind her stalled punch, Butch’s smile relaxed into something softer but just as dangerous as he looked up at her through his messy bangs. “You kinda like it.”
Buttercup dug her knee into his thigh right over the femoral artery, and he shuddered. “Yeah, this is me liking it.”
She applied more pressure, and he gasped. His other hand grabbed her shoulder and threw her off him, but Buttercup rolled and landed on her hands and feet in a crouch. Butch matched her guerrilla stance and they faced off on top of the world with the stars at their backs and thunder in their veins.
“Still gonna pass out?” he asked.
“What?”
“You said you were about to pass out. Is this any better?”
Buttercup frowned. He’d provoked her on purpose to distract her from her sleepiness? That was almost…
He got up and stretched like a cat, and Buttercup couldn’t help but notice the subtle ridges of his abs when his dark shirt ran up for just a moment. Clearly he was excelling at that gym trainer job he’d been at full-time since they graduated high school.
Not that that mattered at all.
She got up and wiped her hands on her jeans. “A little, I guess. Still tired as shit though.”
Butch cracked his neck like he was getting ready to fight, but he wasn’t. For as long as she had known him, Buttercup had always been able to sense when he felt the urge, just as he could sense it in her. Primal, instinctual, not just a need but a desire to ruin and be ruined all for the manic joy of surviving it. She felt it less the older she got once her body stopped changing and growing, but every couple of months they would inevitably seek each other out for a row. Not even monsters could quite scratch that particular itch. If anything, they exacerbated it.
“Sweet. I got a few other ideas,” he said.
Buttercup crossed her arms. “You get ideas?”
“Ha ha, you bitch. I’m serious.”
She cracked a smile. “We’re on patrol.”
“Yeah, so let’s go patrol.”
“What’re you—”
He took off in a blaze of green, not flying but running down the side of the Millennium Tower, dodging balconies and flipping off the flagpole like some kind of insane Super gymnast. He didn’t lose momentum when he landed and took off running across the busy street toward the next building.
Buttercup was dashing after him before she could think twice about it, to hell with staying here by herself. She slid over the roofs of two cars crossing the street and leaped from balcony to balcony as she climbed the next building higher and higher. Butch had already made it to the top and paused to look back at her. His smiling challenge boiled her blood, and he took off sprinting again along the drain pipes. Buttercup flipped over the guard railing on the roof, sprinted to the other side, and leaped off the edge in a free fall.
The night wind whipped her loose hair, and she somersaulted to cushion her landing on the pedestrian sky bridge connecting this building to the next. Butch slid down the drain pipe and landed similarly a short ways ahead on the glass and metal bridge. They faced off, and she couldn’t help but grin fantastically at the sight of him winded and emanating green power, ready to run.
They didn’t speak, there was no need. He took off and she tore after him, each carving their own path leaping concrete chasms, rolling into their falls, and racing against gravity and mortality up the mirror-bright sides of skyscrapers. Buttercup cartwheeled through a narrow path between two huge AC generators and landed like a cat on the metal railing, where she spotted an enormous tower crane powered down for the night in the midst of a new construction project. It was tens of stories tall, and she wanted nothing more than to run up its mast.
Butch had the same idea and leaped like a monkey from the roof of the building next to hers and grabbed the jib. He hit it with the force of a Super, and the huge machinery whined and began to swing. Buttercup abandoned her original plan for one that would be a thousand times cooler. Moving fast, she raced along the thin railing and pedaled through her jump to get her across to the next building over. The crane groaned in protest as Butch sprinted along the length of the jib. She wouldn’t have much of a window.
With a running start, Buttercup scrambled up the wall of the roof access door and jumped high into the air just as the long, metal winch cord came swinging by. She grabbed it barely in the nick of time and went spinning.
Above, she searched for Butch and found that he wasn’t slowing his momentum even as he neared the end of the jib. Buttercup gave the winch cord a little extra boost of her power and went careening high into the air on an updraft just as Butch free-dived off the jib. The night air parted for her and the stars fell to meet her as she reached out, elated, and Butch reached back.
They joined hands at the wrists, and Buttercup moved with gravity and the momentum he’d brought with him before it could wrench her arm clean out of the socket. Together, they hurtled through the air, bounced off a radio tower pole, and landed in a two-man roll on a private rooftop golf course.
Butch was laughing when they came to a stop in a heap on the green, and Buttercup laughed with him. He had his arms around her as she hovered over him.
“That was,” he stammered, breathless.
“Amazing!” Buttercup said.
“Fucking incredible! Holy shit, when you ran for the winch cord—”
“I didn’t think I’d stick it for a second—”
“But you did and I swear I lost my goddamned mind—”
“You jumped! You fucking idiot, you’re lucky I was there to catch you.” Buttercup shoved him, but he only laughed again and held her waist tighter.
“Woman please, how could you ever resist the chance to catch this hot shit? I saw your face, you totally creamed yourself!”
“Fuck you, it was the moment and I wasn’t even looking at you!”
They could hardly breathe as they laughed, and gravity rolled them over. The grass was cool under Buttercup’s cheek, and above the stars were bright and close. Slowly, the moment subsided as they caught their breaths and watched each other through the gloom.
“I kinda knew you’d catch me,” Butch said.
Buttercup rolled her eyes. “I regret it already.”
“Sure you do.”
He was smiling, but there was no mocking or malice behind it. Strangely enough, Buttercup thought it suited him.
She pulled away before she could finish that dangerous train of thought, and he let her without making a big deal out of it. They sat up side by side and looked out over the city and the ocean beyond. Monster Island was dark, but the detection barrier surrounding it glowed a subtle blue in the starlight and city lights.
“Five and a half hours until sunrise,” Butch said, checking his watch.
Buttercup groaned. “That’s so long from now.”
He nudged her shoulder with his. “You’re gonna make it. Just stay awake.”
“Wow, genius plan.” She nudged him back.
“Hey, I got plenty more ideas where Super Parkour came from. Just say the word.”
Buttercup allowed herself a smile in the darkness. Butch could drive her crazy, but over the years she’d gotten used to his self-indulgent vulgarity. Sometimes she didn’t mind. Sometimes it was just kind of nice. Familiar. A pull she couldn’t explain or describe, except that she knew he felt it too, and he always knew exactly what she needed.
“In a few minutes,” Buttercup said, her eyes drooping a bit as sleep crept up on her little by little.
She could feel his warmth through her sleeve and his, close enough to touch, close enough.
“Yeah,” he said, and turned his gaze skyward. “Just a few more minutes.”
They had all night, after all.