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Grian shushed Hotguy sharply when he groaned, so of course that was when he stiffened and tried to get away, even though the guards didn’t change shifts for another ten minutes and some of them were headed towards their hallway. Grian elbowed him lightly in the gut, more of a reminder elbowing if you asked Grian, and Hotguy elbowed him back hard.
Not hard enough to wind him, though, so that could mean something. Grian hoped it meant Hotguy recognized him as an ally or was biding his time, because the alternative was that Hotguy wasn’t strong enough to escape the grip of a poor little freelancer who spent his spare time gazing into space, and that would be a rubbish situation for both of them.
He felt jittery, overwhelmed with adrenaline and sour fear. It was a head rush, not like he’d expected being the boots on the ground to feel like at all, and it proved him entirely right about staying out of heroism. He was finished after this. He’d made a good faith effort, done his very best, gotten a new hoodie and a gun and all those heroic things, and he’d found out it wasn’t for him.
No one could say he hadn’t tried. Hotguy’s presence beside him was proof he’d tried much more than your average man off the street.
Grian’s legs shook. It was musty in the storage room where he’d hidden them, dark and reeking of bleach, and the lip of a mop bucket was digging into his leg below his hip holster.
He knew the cameras in this hallway didn’t work well because he could see the frayed wire in the walls, and he knew the patrol schedules because he watched this villain base pretty often— they had hilarious drama, it wasn’t weird if it was like a soap opera, it was practically made for him— but absolutely none of that would help him not get shot in the face. That was the downside of passive psychic abilities, for those viewing at home: they were indetectable, but they were lame. Grian, who’d lived with them his whole life and found them most useful for avoiding road closures, endorsed this message.
“Sc– Hotguy, stop moving,” he risked whispering, heart slamming against his ribs. “Look, you know me, Xisuma hired me to find that senator. My name is Grian, I’m a private investigator, and you are super lucky I was looking into this place, dude. Massively lucky. You should win a medal for that luck, and I should win one for being great at rescuing people.”
All under his breath, a steady whisper. Covering himself for if Scar— no, not Scar, Hotguy— remembered this and asked questions, and he could go back and mess around with his computer later so it looked like he’d always had intel on these villains ready to go, an investigation he’d been about to bring to the authorities– no one would dig too deeply once he had a paper trail, they never did. Grian would have been living in much less luxury if anyone with authority ever had.
“Are we waiting for something?” Hotguy murmured. There was too much blood outside of his body, and not nearly enough still coursing around where it was supposed to be. It smeared Grian’s palms and the insides of his wrists, his knees, the soles of his shoes; it’d stained a lot of Hotguy’s medical gown, but he wasn’t hemorrhaging anymore, and the antidote Grian had hunted down for the power blockers seemed to be working. If it hadn’t been, Hotguy wouldn’t have been lucid at all: his healing factor wouldn't have fixed enough to allow it.
“Security,” Grian whispered back. “I’ll expect my usual rates for this rescue, by the way. I don’t know what my tax money goes to if you keep getting captured like this, so you may as well hand it back.”
Hotguy’s chest spasmed in what Grian hoped was a laugh. He made a pained noise just after, and Grian added, listening desperately for the guards, “I’ve got you. I gave you an antidote, and you’re not alone. Do you recognize me?”
“You’re Grian,” Hotguy rasped. They were so close together that Grian felt his chest vibrate. “With, um— the bin— with the—“
“Yeah, that’s me, with the binoculars,” Grian sighed. “I have a personality, you know. It’s very objectifying, being identified by a single possession.”
Granted, that was the point of the overblown nosy investigator act, since making a fuss about how much he pried into secret information means people assume he got his data manually, and okay, maybe Grian was nosy, and maybe he did actually work as an investigator, but it was still an act. He was playing. He was doing a bit, he was not invested, and this rescue attempt was both out of the ordinary and never to be repeated. He wasn’t supposed to know Hotguy’s real name.
“Aw, I wouldn’t say that,” Hotguy mumbled. He leaned away from Grian, against the shelves. “I mean, I have abs. And a calendar. You can see my ten-pack on it.”
“Your ten-pack?”
“As a hero,” Hotguy said, “it is my solemn duty to go above and beyond.”
The storage room was dark, but Grian didn’t need much light. Just as easily as using his physical senses, he could scan the wiring in the walls, the major components of Hotguy’s body, the rooms of this underground base and the rural highway above them. He could note the license plate of a car, and judge the driver for watching videos while he was going twenty over, and hear the radio wafting from a nearby window.
He could see the Hermits scouring the city for their missing member, calling up old contacts, trying to ring Grian’s phone where he’d left it at his apartment to give himself an alibi. Encrypted text messages that wouldn’t show up on a locked screen: he flashed his senses over to Gem’s phone, watched her type them out before she sent them. Questions about whether he’d been hiding out on a nearby rooftop when Hotguy was taken, or if he’d heard rumors while he pursued his latest lead.
“He could know something,” Gem argued, and Grian tracked her at the same time he tracked the guards on their rounds. He caught Cleo’s snarl as another lead came up blank and skimmed past Jimmy halfway across the city.
He could have called Jimmy. He could have called the Hermits and bluffed them into not questioning him, or at least not turning him in– Mumbo would’ve understood, he could have argued his case to Mumbo, he’d been born with his senses, it wasn’t fair– “It’s Grian, seriously, when does he not know stuff he shouldn’t? Private investigator, it’s in the name, he’d make phone calls or something. He could tell us if anyone’s seen Scar since Thursday,” Gem was insisting. “He always knows where Scar is!”
“Gem, buddy, I get what you’re saying, but I dunno if asking paparazzi is really the best move—“
“That was one time and I said I was sorry,” Grian hissed under his breath, forgetting himself, and Hotguy flinched a tiny bit, kept his own gaze on the closet door. He could hear the guards’ voices, their footsteps, hear them wondering which doctor’s passcodes had been used, why Hotguy had been transferred then. Grian eavesdropped like he was lingering behind them, at their heels. “Hotguy, I don’t know if you can hear them, but we’ve got two guards headed our direction and I don’t know if I mopped up all your blood. I hacked their system, so they shouldn’t be too suspicious, but it’ll– we’ll probably get caught sooner rather than later. I didn’t think they’d change their schedule like this!”
“Quite the improvement on my cell, though,” Hotguy murmured. “By the way, is that a pistol in your pocket, or-"
“Don’t finish that sentence, and yes, it is,” Grian whispered, and Hotguy grinned at him. “And I can fire it—“
It was in Hotguy’s hand now. Grian glared— he hated Hotguy’s reflexes, a healing factor was overpowered enough already— but he just chambered a round and waited, preternaturally steady.
As long as Grian kept his gaze on at least three separate things, the shakiness in his body couldn’t reach his thoughts. Everything felt safe and distant, like the fights he used his power to watch from his office.
He wasn't trained for this. He wasn't supposed to be here, he wasn't supposed to be doing this, he'd hidden his powers so he'd never have to do this but here he was after all-
“Grian, hey,” Hotguy whispered, and Grian looked at him from a few different angles. It was getting hard to focus on anything but the people they would have to fight. He'd watched some of them spar before. He'd seen how well they aimed. “This is good intel for you, right? Hero’s eye view?”
“Yeah,” Grian rasped. “Right up close.”
“They told me it wasn’t possible to trace me,” Scar said, and Grian’s blood ran even colder. “Did you know that? They have a technopath, and she messed up my tracker, she messed with city surveillance cameras, everything. Cub can’t find me. No one could. She would have noticed a hacker as soon as he tried to touch her systems.”
The guards were closer. Grian opened his mouth, struggling to think of a response, and the guards’ voices entered their hallway. Scar went quiet and raised the pistol.
“I’ve got my sources,” Grian managed, tight with fear, and Scar smiled at him through his split lip, something knowing in his eyes. Like fighting off armed guards was the easy part, and Grian's blatant lie didn't bother him at all. Which it shouldn't have, because Scar lied all the time. He would have lied about his powers too, if he'd ended up with something as inconvenient as Grian had.
Grian couldn't stop shaking. Surveillance powers were in high demand. They were always, always in high demand, and if this went wrong, he'd have delivered himself right into a supervillain's hands. He hissed, "And I'll tell you where to turn, just- you're the hero, just don't let me get shot."
"I will do my very best," Scar promised, budging him so he was a little further behind Scar. Grian pulled his senses back in so he wouldn't be overstimulated by the gunshots and covered his ears.
When the guards kicked the door open, Scar put a bullet through both of their skulls. Then he grabbed Grian’s hand and broke into a run.