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Nicholas Chen felt his wards go off at two in the morning. Just the alarms, not the strong countermeasures that would go into effect for an attack, so he shoved the mental warning aside, pushed his hair behind his ear, and kept writing his experiment notes.
Then the doorbell rang.
That was enough of a surprise to actually break his concentration. The wards had registered one person, and now that he thought about it he might have heard something like an engine. But he hadn’t ordered anything, and he definitely hadn’t invited anyone over. So who the heck was at the door?
He called up the Armor of Shadows as he went downstairs. Glancing out the window on the way he saw a motorcycle in the driveway—just one, as far as he could tell in the dark. The peephole in the door showed him one person—short, dark haired, and hunched over, so he couldn’t see their face.
Nick considered. If it was just some biker whose phone had run out of battery, he could answer it quickly, or he could leave them outside and they’d eventually go away. If it was law enforcement or someone else who knew who he was, they had come alone, and they wouldn’t just leave, and it would probably be better to hear them out quickly. He opened the door, spells ready in his mind.
The man looked up. For a second Nick wasn’t sure why he was so familiar, and then—
“Sunbeam?” he said, incredulous.
He wasn’t wearing the blue-and-gold costume. In fact his clothes were about as far away from that as possible, a black leather jacket and cargo pants. But it was definitely Sunbeam—or, Geoffrey Something, if he was out of uniform. Nick didn’t bother memorizing the name and personal information of every member of Natural Force.
“Not any more,” Geoffrey said. Nick remembered seeing the news reports a few weeks ago that he was taking a break from the team. He did have to pay some attention to Natural Force, since they’d invaded his home last year. “Can I come in?”
“Why are you here?” Nick asked. He checked behind Geoffrey, but there was no sign of anyone else in his yard, and nothing magical stood out to his Unseen senses either. That seemed odd somehow, but it was a good sign.
“I’m being followed,” Geoffrey said. “By the Jagged Sages. So can I come in?”
Nick swore. “What did you do? Why here? Yes, all right, come in.” It wouldn’t be pleasant outside once the Jagged Sages hit the wards at the property line. Also, Sunbeam had visited him a few times, before Nick had escaped custody; Nick didn’t object to his presence.
“Thanks,” Geoffrey said as Nick stood back a little to let him pass. He took two steps in and sat down hard on the shoe rack.
Nick closed the door and turned around, about to make a sarcastic remark, when he realized that Geoffrey looked very pale.
“What is it?” Nick asked. Geoffrey shoved at his jacket, and one side fell away from his shoulder to reveal a dark stain on his ripped black t-shirt. Dark and wet and—
“Fuck, you should be in a hospital.” Nick’s fingertips came away impossibly red. He hadn’t realized he’d reached out.
“No,” Geoffrey said firmly. “Like I said, Jagged Sages.”
Nick swore again. “Let me get the first aid kit. Apply pressure to that.”
“It’s bandaged,” Geoffrey assured him. Nick ignored that.
When Nick came back with the medical kit Geoffrey was still slumped against the wall. Nick crouched in front of him and opened the kit. “Can you take your shirt off?”
“Yes, please,” Geoffrey said. Confusion was a sign of blood loss, Nick thought. But Geoffrey did start taking off his shirt.
Suddenly redness covered Nick’s vision. “Ow—shit.” Nick put a hand to his temple.
“What is it?” Geoffrey asked, starting to move. Nick pushed him down heavily and tried to concentrate.
The pain in his head sorted itself into a location, images, magical presence. He accepted the information and called the Unseen to remove the perceptions. The pain faded away, and Nick heard the howling winds outside that meant the defenses were working.
Geoffrey was staying still, now, but looked worried. “That was the Jagged Sages hitting the property line,” Nick said. Geoffrey had been telling the truth, probably. “The wards will take care of them.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.” Geoffrey looked doubtful, but Nick didn’t care.
“And it doesn’t worry you, having the Unseen literally in your head? Or that you’re thinning the barriers of reality and probably eventually destroying the universe? Maybe starting in your head?”
“It’s not going to destroy the universe,” Nick retorted with irritation. “‘Thinning the barriers of reality’ is a completely meaningless phrase. We don’t know what the Unseen is, which is why I’m researching it.” Geoffrey made a vague noise that might have been argument. “Anyway, you shoot lasers out of your eyes.”
“...Right,” Geoffrey said, subdued for some reason. Was it guilt for invading Nick’s home last year? Surely not. “Well, that’s why I had to come here. I couldn’t go anywhere else—I’d only lead them to innocents.”
“But of course you were perfectly fine leading them here.”
“I knew you could handle them.”
“Oh.”
“Also I knew you had a lot of medical supplies, since, uh, we kind of raided your stash back when, you know.”
“Yeah, I noticed.” Nick remembered Sunbeam’s face frowning in concentration as he’d held Nick’s head still, his fingers along Nick’s neck. He shook his head to knock the memories away. He’d been concussed. That was why everything from that time seemed dreamy and emotional.
That wasn’t the point, anyway. Geoffrey must be in pain and Nick should stop arguing with him and start helping. He leaned in closer, pushing his hair back, and looked at the bandage on Geoffrey’s ribs. It was very badly bandaged, which was probably why the blood had soaked through, so the wound might not be as bad as he’d thought at first. He started to pull the bandage off.
“Did you clean it before bandaging it?” he asked.
“Uh, no. Didn’t think of it.”
And then it occurred to Nick why this entire visit felt so wrong.
“Wait, you have enhanced healing,” he said, leaning back. “I know you have enhanced healing. All Naturals do. I saw you shrug off getting thrown into a wall. What happened? What is this?” He backed away half a step, standing up, in case this was some kind of trap, but—
“Had,” Geoffrey said. “Not anymore. That’s why I left Natural Force.”
“You can’t—how do you stop being a Natural?”
“Look, Nick? Can I call you Nick? Or Nicholas? I swear this isn’t a trap or something, I don’t know what you’re afraid of, but can you at least give me a Tylenol before the interrogation? And maybe do something about the stab wound, I don’t know? It feels serious. I can talk while you’re stitching it up or whatever.”
Nick rubbed his temple, and then reached for his Unseen senses. There wasn’t any magic on Geoffrey, not even the aura he should have had—had had, the last time Nick had seen him. There was no one and nothing near the wards outside except the remains of the Jagged Sages. It really was just him and Geoffrey here, with no magic except Nick’s own.
And Sunbeam wasn’t a Natural anymore. What the unseen hell.
“Come into the kitchen,” Nick said, picking up the first aid kit. Geoffrey started to stand up, and Nick belatedly held out a hand. Geoffrey hesitated, but took it as he got to his feet. He didn’t need help walking down the hall after Nick, though, which was … good.
Nick kicked a chair out, put the first aid kit on the table, and got out the painkillers. Then he went to get a glass of water and a towel while he figured out what he was doing here.
He didn’t know what he was doing here. But at minimum he was going to find out something almost completely unknown about the Unseen. That was enough to start with. He tied his hair back, rolled up his sweater sleeves, and put on nitrile gloves.
Geoffrey took two pills with the water as Nick came back over to the table. “They’re not going to kick in immediately,” Nick warned him, as he realized that Geoffrey might not know that. “Hold your arm up and try to stay still.”
“Oh, I like the manbun, very wuxia,” Geoffrey said. “Ow, fuck.”
“Tell me what happened to stop you being a Natural,” Nick said, examining the wound. A knife seemed to have glanced across Geoffrey’s ribs—it was a long cut, but no internal organs seemed to be damaged. He got out the saline solution to irrigate it.
“Um, fuck. Ow. You know the anti-magic gun?”
Nick froze, then deliberately started moving again. “Yes.” He’d heard about that, all right, right before he’d strengthened all the wards.
“Yeah, well. That.”
“I didn’t know it worked on Naturals.”
“Well, no one did. They hadn’t tested it on us—which makes sense, actually, because it’s not like there’d be a lot of Naturals lining up to try it. Ow. Uh, so yeah, Trident was using it in a fight and there was a mirror and it bounced off and hit me. That’s all.”
“What did it do?” Nick asked with morbid curiosity. He knew what it was supposed to do—break the connections between the target and the Unseen—but there weren’t any first-person narratives from its victims.
“Uh, it hurt a lot. Knocked me out for a while. Apparently by the time I woke up my vital signs were completely normal. I mean, regular human normal. And no one knows how to change me back, so, you know, I had to leave the team after that. I mean, I wanted to leave. They didn’t make me—anyway.”
“Well,” Nick said, putting aside the blood-stained gauze, “I guess that settles the question of whether Naturals are caused by the Unseen.”
“Yeah, turns out we’re Unnaturals after all,” Geoffrey said bitterly.
Nick felt like he should say something sympathetic, but he didn’t know what, given that Geoffrey’s statement was simply true. “It’s not so bad, in my experience,” he tried.
Geoffrey almost laughed. “Ow.”
“I said hold still. Are you allergic to any medications?”
“Uh, I don’t think so. I wouldn’t know.”
“Fair enough.” Nick hesitated, holding the antibiotic cream. “This really probably should have stitches. Are you sure you don’t want to go to a hospital?”
“I really fucking don’t,” Geoffrey said. “I guess you couldn’t do it?”
Nick sighed and got out the package of sutures. “This is going to hurt,” he said. “I don’t have any topical anesthetic.”
“That’s fine, pain isn’t new,” Geoffrey said. “Just, you know, I’m not used to it lasting.”
“Mm.” Nick crouched next to Geoffrey’s chair and set up the sutures on the chair he’d been sitting on. “You’re medically identical to a standard human now?” he asked.
“Yeah. Medically and—ow. Fuck. Medically and everything else. I can’t—well, I can’t do anything, honestly. I mean, I guess I’m still athletic, it’s not like I forgot ten years of jujitsu lessons, but it feels like I can’t do anything.”
He was definitely still athletic. Nick had a very good view of his abs right now. Still…
“If you can’t do anything, why were the Jagged Sages after you?”
“Oh, that. Yeah. Ow.”
Nick waited, placing another stitch, then said, “Well?”
“Well, I’m not going to sit around doing nothing,” Geoffrey said defensively. “So, I, you know, I have a Narcan kit, I look around my neighbourhood and stuff like that, and make sure everything’s okay…” He paused, twitching a little as Nick’s suturing pulled at the skin over his ribs. “And I thought something was going on in this abandoned storefront, and I was right. Just, more than I thought. Ow. Aren’t you done yet?”
“Nearly.” Nick tied off the last stitch and got out more gauze. He wanted to know what exactly had been going on, but it wasn’t urgent; the Jagged Sages who had followed Geoffrey here wouldn’t be summoning anything else.
“Where’d you learn that, anyway?” Geoffrey asked as Nick finished taping on the bandage.
“I did a year of medical school,” Nick said absently, repacking the first aid kit.
“Asian parents, huh?”
Nick blinked in surprise that he’d been talking about himself, but that at least was obvious. “Yeah. You?”
“My mom. She still thinks I should have gone to business school.” He paused. “Actually, maybe she was right. So, you should be Doctor Shadow, then?”
Nick winced. The media called him Master Shadow for some stupid reason. “No.”
“Nick, then. You can call me Geoff.” Geoffrey grinned irrepressibly. Nick blinked at him, baffled, then went back to cleaning off his kitchen table.
“Yes. Those are absorbable sutures, so you don’t need to have them taken out later. Change the bandage every day. Watch for signs of infection—redness, swelling, localized warmth, pus. Actually, you should get a tetanus shot, too.”
“Got it. They gave me all my vaccinations right after, you know, that.”
“Good.” Nick threw out the trash and washed his hands, then turned back to Geoff. “Uh.” He realized suddenly that he had no idea what to do now. He’d been thinking about Geoff’s injury and the Jagged Sages and the anti-magic gun, and he hadn’t thought about what he’d do after he was done treating the wound and still had an injured superhero in his house. Ex-superhero.
Geoff was a guest, right? Kind of a guest. The closest thing to a guest Nick had had since—not the point. “Have you eaten?” Nick asked.
“Actually, I’m really thirsty,” Geoff said. Nick poured him a glass of water and set the stove to preheat.
“I’ll put a frozen pizza in.”
“Cool.” Geoff stood up, holding on to his chair. Nick watched to make sure he wouldn’t fall, but he seemed to be steady. Geoff came right up to him, and Nick froze, not used to people being that close. Geoff hadn’t put his shirt back on.
“Hey,” Geoff said, resting his hands on Nick’s shoulders, “thanks. You didn’t have to do this. I get the feeling you don’t have a lot of visitors.”
Nick couldn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure he could still breathe.
“I am wiped,” Geoff said, “but can I…” He leaned up a little, and Nick leaned in too, somehow, and then they were kissing.
After a second of astonishment Nick closed his eyes and fell into it. Geoff’s lips pressed firmly against his, confident but sweet. He tipped his head and opened his mouth slightly against Nick’s.
Geoff pulled away after … some amount of time, and Nick stared at him, speechless. Geoff patted his shoulder. “So, I wish we could keep going but, do you have a couch?”
Nick waved a hand at the door to the living room. Geoff backed away a few steps, watching him, then turned and went out the door. Nick stood in the kitchen, stupefied.
Eventually the stove beeped, so he got a pizza out of the freezer and put in it the oven, working on autopilot. Then he sat down at the table—in the chair Geoff had sat in—and thought some more.
Maybe thought was the wrong word. The kiss just repeated itself in his head for twenty minutes. By the time the stove timer went off, it occurred to him that maybe that was a conclusion in itself.
He took the pizza out and brought plates into the living room, intending to apologize for being awkward and suggest they try again.
Geoff was asleep on the couch. He hadn’t even turned the lights on—it looked like he’d just taken off his motorcycle boots and lain down immediately. Nick blinked at his still, square-jawed face in the dim room, and then took the plates back in to the kitchen.
He ate half the pizza, put the rest in the fridge, and scribbled a note to leave in the living room. He stood next to the couch for a while, hoping Geoff would wake up, but he was clearly exhausted. Nick covered him with the blanket from the back of the couch and went upstairs.
Nick intended to go back to his experiment notes, but it occurred to him that it was almost four in the morning and he was kind of tired as well. He might as well try to get some sleep, and if he was still awake in an hour, as he expected to be, he could get up and work on his notes then.
Instead, about thirty seconds after his head hit the pillow he was unconscious.