TORY:
TORY: Alex’s hair was perfect, springy curls that shone in the dappled sunlight broken up by the tree. He chewed his soft bottom lip when he focused, his eyes taking on a certain shine that Tory didn’t think a photograph could capture. He brushed his curls out of his face and continued reading his sheet music, marking the accidentals and making notes on the measures he was having trouble with.
Then he sat back against the tree and strummed his guitar for a couple of measures, the zipper of his unzipped gray hoodie sliding across the steel strings before he could arrange the hoodie to rest in a better place. The dappled sun carved out new shapes in his face, highlighting his fine cheekbones.
This particular tree was their squad’s favorite meeting place during lunch time. It was adjacent to the soccer field, a view he found bittersweet.
There was nothing special about the tree—it looked almost identical to the rest nearby. Justice High was made up of a main tower of classrooms and spiraling planes of grassy turf that were connected by interconnecting glass elevators and transparent walkways. Each tree that dotted the soccer field’s plane was a perfectly patterned interruption to the flawlessly flat landscape. Tory supposed that what made this tree so special was that they had chosen it, and nothing more.
Tory still preferred taking his car and heading to Super Shake to grab something with them so that he didn’t have to be near the field, but Alex wanted to practice during lunch, and Tory had to catch up on work. Or at least pretend to.
He also, notably, was not currently allowed to leave campus. His mother’s security had been hanging around all day, following Tory from classroom to classroom. They looked like teachers to other folks, but Tory could recognize Natalie and the others a mile away. He couldn’t find them now, which was mildly unsettling.
Alex sighed, turning his attention to Tory. “Are you going to do homework at all, or are you just going to spend lunch staring at me?”
“The last one,” Tory confessed. His take-home multiple choice quiz for History sat in his lap, untouched.
“Is it the zit I have on my nose?”
“Huh?”
“Do you want to play my guitar?”
“No, Al. You’re fine.”
Baffled, Alex turned back to his guitar, practicing an arpeggio that tugged on Tory’s heartstrings.
Tory often wanted to touch Alex’s guitar for the novelty of it, but he didn’t want to disrupt Alex more than he already had. His focus was sharp and pointed and gorgeous, like watching a carpenter hone in on his sculpture, or a painter dive deep into a portrait.
And now, Tory knew that beneath all of that focus, Alex had skills that he had kept a secret from everyone in the school, including him.
Did he wear hoodies and relaxed t-shirts all of the time to hide his ability to kick ass? Did he have biceps that Tory was not aware of? These were all very important questions. What secrets did he keep in his muscles?
Did he have a superpower?
He said he didn’t.
He must have trained with the Paragon Guild. If his parents were the legendary Revamp and Golden Blade, then he would have been enrolled automatically. If a pair of supers had a child, the likelihood that their child would have a power similar to one of theirs was pretty much a given, so they were put into training as soon as possible, even if no power had yet manifested.
That was a fact ingrained into Tory’s being. His power, after all, was nearly identical to his dad’s.
Was it possible that Alex didn’t have a power even though he was the child of Revamp and Golden Blade?
Alex was seventeen, now. A few months away from eighteen. Powers tended to develop in the preteen years, eight at the earliest and sixteen at the very latest. Had he been in training for eight years before realizing he’d never get a power?
He sat back, the realization hitting him like a rogue hover car.
He turned to Alex, and for the second time that week, he saw him in an entirely new way.
Alex’s eyes flicked up at him from his sheet music. “What is it? You look like a kicked puppy.”
Tory reassembled his expression into something relaxed and playful. “I just remembered that you still haven’t been to a real high school party. We’ll have to take care of that.”
“We can take care of it when you aren’t behind in school,” he said dryly.
“Goody two shoes.”
Tory wanted to rage. He wanted to protest that the world wasn’t fair. He wanted to know if Alex had wanted to be a hero—if that was why he never really enjoyed the topic of superheroes as much as Marisol and Delaney did. As much as Tory used to. Had their conversations been painful for him?
Alex had insisted he wasn’t a hero, and then he’d decided to go on patrol with Tory to help Wild Blossom and Vent. There had been hunger in his eyes. That deep copper focus that he reserved only for music practice.
He’d wanted to. But he’d been told he was inadequate without powers.
That had to be devastating.
He pulled his homework into his lap and stared holes into it, trying to keep the storm in his head contained under a relaxed demeanor.
Marisol and Delaney joined them with lunch trays a few minutes later, chatting. Marisol plopped down on the grass and immediately drew the both of them into conversation.
“You guys know how in Gray America, the children and spouses of the president of the United States would be called like, First Lady, First Gentleman, First Son...why isn’t that a thing now? What about the mayor's son?”
Tory grimaced. “Yikes.”
“I think that’s an excellent idea,” Alex said.
Hearing that, Tory tried to transition what was going on in his head into funny mode. Right. He could react to them joking around accordingly.
“Mayor….huh. Like, Gale City’s First Son?” Delaney twirled her pasta neatly on her fork and lifted it to her face. “The mayor is pretty much the president here, anyway. She’s way closer to that than to a Gray mayor in terms of power and general duties.”
“Yeah, but First Son is...dry,” Alex said. “It’s been done.”
“Mayor’s Main Boy. The Biggest Boy of Gale City,” Marisol suggested.
“Huh. The Biggest Boy of Gale City is very good.” Tory templed his fingers against his forehead, brainstorming all of the possibilities. It was hard. He was still thinking about devastation.
“Mayorette,” Delaney suggested.
“Wow,” Tory blinked slowly. “Delaney, congratulations, you found the worst one. That’s actually the worst possible thing I could be called.”
Marisol clapped. “We found it! Mayorette it is.”
“As The Biggest Boy of Gale City, I’m calling that homophobic. You will be charged with a hate crime and your reputation will be soured,” Tory declared loftily, with all of the airs of a prince.
“You can’t accuse me of being homophobic,” Marisol scoffed. “Have you seen my outfit? No one would believe you.”
“Fair enough,” Tory conceded.
Marisol chewed thoughtfully on their pasta. “Have we properly explored the possibilities of Mayorito?”
“We have not.” Alex shook his head gravely. “Because that does sound like a burrito filled with mayonnaise.”
“Which pretty much describes our dear Victor’s complexion,” Marisol said.
Delaney laughed abruptly and covered her mouth, Alex almost dropped his guitar, and Tory’s jaw dropped open.
“Oh my gosh. I literally prefer Mayorette now. My Mayorette ban has been lifted and then placed once again on Mayorito.”
“Jokes on you, that was my plot this entire time,” Marisol said, grinning.
Tory pushed their face away. “You villain.”
“Your mom,” Marisol retorted, muffled by his hand, and Alex snorted. Tory shoved Marisol, and they elbowed him and picked up their water bottle. They sprayed his face with it.
“Can we not have one nice lunch without someone getting wet?” Delaney protested.
“No,” Marisol and Tory chimed.
“You two are the worst,” Alex said primly. Tory scrubbed the wet off of his face and touched the back of Alex’s neck, making him yelp.
Tory’s attention was pulled to the soccer field they were sitting next to. Some of his old teammates—Martin’s current teammates—were gathered around, talking. Some of them were messing around, but most seemed to be talking about something seriously.
Considering Martin’s replacement, maybe? Would they kick him off the team for having a villain for a dad?
Tory tore his gaze away and stared at his homework.
They couldn’t do that. They wouldn’t.
Martin was an amazing player. He was practically a professional at playing on a team and communicating with the others, particularly Tory, who had had a bit of a streak of forgetting other people were there to pass the ball to when he was swamped by opposition, back when he played.
When Martin did drills, he did them well, leaning into them, as if he would have done them anyway without the coach telling him to. Tory was the opposite. The more demanding the coach was, the more he resisted by completing drills half-heartedly.
Martin had a sharp focus that reminded him of Alex playing his music. It was passion, but honed in and intense, backed up by years of training and pure grit. Like a professional musician practicing the same line of measures until their hands hurt. For a guy who was pretty relaxed most of the time, he met his passions with an admirable intensity.
He didn’t realize he was standing up until Alex was grabbing his hand and pulling him back down.
“What are you doing?” He asked.
“They can’t kick him out,” Tory said. “Martin’s good, and he likes playing.”
Alex stared at him like he’d just spoken a different language. “What?”
“They…” He looked at the group again and realized that they had scattered into their own cliques, some playing soccer, some eating, and others laying on the ground and tearing up grass. “They just looked really serious. I thought they were talking about kicking Martin out.”
Alex’s eyebrows met, sadness creeping into his expression. “Tory, that’s a huge logical leap. And even if they did...you can’t stop them.”
“You’re not on the team anymore, remember?” Marisol said gently, which was a bit out of character for them.
His heart cracked a little. Of course he remembered. Continued in next episode.
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