Don't Read in the Closet: Volume Four (18 page)

our comms to the electromagnetic spectrum. Our messages routed

through living psychic cells to a Krevan Superior Intellect: A

hyperintelligent, telepathic computing organism. A big, blue, blobby

jell-o head that supposedly loved humanity and wanted to keep us

from offing ourselves out of sheer stupidity.

God help us all if the bad guys had a backdoor into that system.

And how the fuck do you save that many people in an eyeblink,

running them down that many flights of stairs without burning them

up?

****

AS PHOTON and Blue Streak, we tangled off and on over the

next few months. He led me on a merry chase through Italy, which

ended when I found a blue rose at the
Fontanina degli Innamorati
.

How chaste, right? Then he showed up just long enough to goose my

ass during a battle against the Murder Moguls in L.A. Later, in Hong

Kong, when Mengjing trapped me in one of her eternal fantasies, Blue

Don’t Read in the Closet – volume four 102

Streak invaded it and set me free – but not before whispering lewd

promises in my helpless dream-self’s ear.

He just wouldn’t stop twisting the knife.

After that, the next time we tangled was at dawn in Denver. I

tripped him and he did a sweet faceplant into the side of an ugly-ass

statue. Blue Streak, one; Blue Horse, nada.

Pulverizing the statue didn’t even bloody his nose, but he was

pretty surprised, and that gave me an opening to straddle him. An

electric tingle shot through my balls and ass as I sat on his groin, but it

didn’t distract me from the issue at hand.

I clicked off my comm so it wouldn’t have to be destroyed or lost

this time. “How?”

“Um… Sorry, what?”

“You said you saved those people in New York. How?”

He laughed. “You might have noticed, I’m pretty fast,
mijito
.”

“Don’t be cute. You were right. I could never save that many so

fast. So how did you, and why?”

Through his eyepieces I could see his brow scrunch. “I don’t get it.

You mean if you went for the people first, you still couldn’t have got

them out?”

“Not without killing them.
How
, dammit?”

“Oh.” He smiled. “I got lots of stuff to teach you, Scar. I’d love to,

if you’d spend the time with me to learn.”

A rush of heat went through my body. I’d be a fool to consort with

a criminal, but I wanted it. Oh, how he made me want it.

“We made promises four years ago,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“But you took off. I thought you were dead.”

Don’t Read in the Closet – volume four 103

His insouciant look faded. “I’m… Can we talk? Go somewhere and

really talk?”

“What do you mean?”

“Not like this! Not hero and villain. I wanna see your face, Oscar.

Can we forget our jobs for five minutes? They won’t send out the big

guns after you if you’re only gone a few minutes, right?”

It was crazy, what he wanted. Like I would purposely let him up

and just see what he’d do. But he sounded serious. As serious as me

on that day I risked coming out to him. I was so afraid back then of

how terrible it would be if he answered wrong or got mad.

But he didn’t answer wrong.

So I stood and helped the super-villain to his feet and followed

him as he ran to the Gulf of Mexico and then across the water to Isla

Enamorada.

****

VACATIONS ARE cheap when you can still sleep at home.

Cheaper when you only plan to stay for five minutes.

We found a cliff overlooking the Atlantic. It seemed Dano was

completely serious about setting aside our public selves, because

before he sat down on a sun-baked stone, he pulled off his uniform

and stuffed it into a crack in the rocks. Removing the protective suit

was an incredibly stupid thing to do, but the thought of being skin to

skin, even just touching elbows, made my guts scrunch up with desire.

I decided to take the risk too.

We sat there in our underoos, side by side, to let the sun warm us.

“You’re more beautiful than I ever dreamed,” he said.

“Yeah, like you didn’t look in the showers.” I nudged him. Skin to

skin, you know.

He traced a hand down my back and I shivered. “Maybe I peeked.

I’m sorry we didn’t get to go on leave together.”

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“Me too. I was wrecked when I thought you were dead. I mean

wrecked, Dano. You hurt me a whole lot, letting me believe that.”

He nodded. “You think that’s what happened? That I hid from you

personally?”

“You tell me.”

He took the hand away, locked his arms around his knees, and told

me.

“I looked for you. Maybe you don’t believe me, but I did. The

government disappeared you. I staked out the base and never saw you

again.”

“They took me for training in Juneau.”

“I put computer traces on your family members, but the Feds told

them you died.”

Yeah. Adonis said it would be unsafe for anyone who knew who I

was. No more former life. No more family.

“I mourned you, Oscar. I didn’t believe it at first. If I survived, you

had to as well, right? But I tried everything I could think of and never

found you.” His voice squeaked when he said, “I felt like such a traitor

to be the one who lived.”

I put my arm around his shoulders. “I’m so sorry, Dano.”

It all made sense. Adonis and Miracle Maiden were the public

faces of Liberty and Justice, cos they were so fuckin perfect. Superego

was noticeable because of his giant damn head. Dudes’ eyes popped

out looking at Swiss Miss, and Hardlight was so flashy….

I worked with L&J for quite a while before the world even noticed

me. The government didn’t call attention to me so that I could remain

their secret weapon. I simply ran around too fast to see, making

people think they just happened to be missed by the bullets and

rayguns, or maybe they were moved around by Superego’s mental

powers. If only I didn’t have to limit my speed so much around

civilians, I’d go so fast nobody would have ever known I was there.

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But Bosozoku caught on one day, and his four crazed, hypercycle-

riding, katana-wielding selves chased me through the crowds in

Harajuku. I couldn’t let him/them run the people down. When I turned

to surrender, he cut my thigh open. I fell on the street in front of

everybody. Cell phone video appeared on digi-kami.co.jp at about the

same time as Hardlight scooped up Bosozoku and Adonis flew me to

the hospital. Hello, world.

Even just standing still, I was trained to vibrate, to blur myself and

keep myself so dense that nobody could knock me out of the fight

before it got going. Dano and I were both doing that right there on the

rocks, so we could look in any direction we pleased without having to

worry about satellites with face recognition software.

Dano continued. “I caught on when you were a second-stringer.

Somebody else like me existed in the world. I even dared hope it was

really you. Problem was, our careers didn’t quite mesh, and I would’ve

got you into trouble by coming after you.”

Once I was public, I started getting fan mail all the time, just like

the others. Parents thanking me for saving their kids, inmates begging

me to find the proof they were wrongly imprisoned, chicks proposing

marriage cos they thought my black-and-gold blur looked really hot.

Tons of mail from total strangers. Thinking about it, the only people

in the world guaranteed never to be able to contact me were the ones I

loved before the lightning.

“It wasn’t till that day in Boston that I could bump into you. To

make sure it was really you. I’m so glad I could help you save those

people. I’m so glad, I can’t tell you –”

“Me too. If you were all bad, I’d hate myself for wanting to kiss

you so much.”

He put his head down on his forearms, turned so he could look at

me with his new, blue eyes. “Oh no, I’m not all bad.”

“Well, are you any good?” That came out in kind of a throaty

voice, cos I was finding it hard to breathe.

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“Jesus, I hope so. Can we finally try it now?”

We scooted to intertwine our legs as best we could on the rock

where we sat, put our arms around one another, and leaned in to kiss.

We carefully synchronized the vibrations of our bodies so the kiss

could be soft and tender, instead of, like,
bzzzzt!
in yer face.

And soft, it was. His lips were like silk, hot silk that he slowly

rubbed across mine. We were neither of us new to this party, having

dated other people back in high school, but it had been so long that

this was just like the first time for me. Well, without all the

embarrassing awkwardness.

He put his tongue against my lips, and it was wet and even hotter

and softer. I closed my eyes and let out a shaky breath as he slowly

probed and tasted my lips. Then he pushed and I opened. Pressure on

my teeth. Our tongues met, and it was sweet.

Dano’s hands roamed over my back and down my sides, over my

abs and up to my chest. He spread his fingers and altered their

vibrations a little.

“Ungh,” I said into his mouth. Smooth and slick, our tongues

caressed, more slow and more gentle than I could believe, while he

did a kind of “magic fingers” trick, drawing slow vibey circles around

the defined curves of my pecs.

He tilted his head and reached in farther, to lick the roof of my

mouth and explore my teeth as I did the same to him. He drew longer

lines on my body now, down my ribs and over my six-pack. I

should’ve reciprocated, but it tickled and aroused and melted me, and

really all I could do was hold onto his shoulders and beg for more by

making little strangled noises like “gkh” and “gngh” that he

swallowed as soon as I made them.

I shivered as his hands flowed a wave of pleasure down my sides

to my hips.

Warm winds slowly washed over us, in what must have been a

mighty strong gust to be detected at all.

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Back up my abs, until four fingers of each hand touched my

nipples.

“Uhk, ah, gahd!” I lost the ability to completely control my vibes.

He breathed heavily into me. “Mmmmm.”

Longer, slower strokes, into my armpits and back over my

shoulder blades. Up to my clavicle and down to where his thighs

crossed over mine.

I wanted to thank him or beg him or both, but I couldn’t bear to

stop kissing him.

He closed his lips around my tongue and fellated it, sucked on it,

ravished it. His vibrating fingers traced down my back, almost to the

crack of my ass, and I wanted them there desperately. Vibrating or

not, I wanted to feel his fingers stroke down over my tailbone, so I

moved in, crushing my groin into him, getting as close as possible so

he could reach me.

My bursting cock touched his, separated by thin cotton. My vibes

weren’t right so the
bzzzt
happened. A different kind of lightning

slammed through where my cock head contacted his hardness. Shot

through my spine. I crushed myself into his body, threw my head

back, and screamed as I came and came.

When I could see straight, I looked back down to find Dano

grinning at me with his beautiful face. “Damn, buddy,” he said. “You

do everything fast, don’t you?”

“Shut up, you fucker, it’s been a while!”

“Yeah.”

He gentled his vibrations to match mine and stroked me tenderly

as I caught my breath.

Once I recovered, I tried vibrating my own fingers.

“Let me know if this hurts.” I gingerly touched his nuts, through

his underwear now streaked with my cum.

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“Ohhh.” He leaned back on his hands and spread his legs for me.

I slid my hand on down, cupping his balls, feeling through the