The prompt was if NEXT were like the Contractors from Darker Than Black. Every time a Hero uses their power, a cost must be paid.
First chapter: Fire Emblem.
Nathan hates his Remuneration: it's so against his nature, his will, and the will of anyone else, that every time he feels it he hates and fears what he's about to do.
Nathan, you see, has to kiss a girl. And not just a peck, mind you, but with tongue.
It sounds comical. When forced to share with anyone, he makes it sound comical. But when it comes down to it, it's anything but.
Because while he's flamboyant to excess, Nathan isn't attracted to women, any more than he's attracted to a toaster (or Antonio to him). To say the prospect is revolting exaggerates, but even when the Need presses hardest he remembers that what he's doing is supposed to be intimate, with someone to be cared about. Not just…
Not just anyone, familiar or stranger, willing or not. Antonio's fear comes from his younger days, when his powers were developing, when he didn't know what was going on, when he hadn't learned to hold back for a prepared safety. Back when the primary women in his life were his mother and his female friends, friends who were not prepared and did not understand or accept it and yet he still could not not.
Small blessing that his Remuneration didn't require sex. He would have been a rapist before making his first Million.
But now he is rich, and now he has learned how to put off the Need. Not indefinitely: the cost has to be paid. But now he has a Secretary who receives a substantial paycheck on the understanding of just what is required. It helps that she is a lesbian: equal opportunity policies be damned, he insisted. Caroline knows why he sometimes rushes to her out of nowhere and sweeps her off her feet in a deep french kiss, and so does her partner: besides the usual holiday cards and Christmas gifts, Nathan invites them both to dinner every week he has to use his powers. It may be a small apology, but it helps soothe his conscience.
It doesn't erase his guilt, though. Especially when Caroline is too far away, or circumstances too dire. He's only told one Hero his Remuneration, and that was only fifteen seconds before he stole Blue Rose's first kiss. She understood, bless her, but he still put together a college fund for her. Two other quick, desperate alleyway disappearances later saw her children and grandchildren also covered, even if she doesn't know that yet.
He knows he's throwing money around to allay his guilt. He knows that those who have to suffer him understand. And he knows that, all things considered, his actions as a hero do far more good than his cost, which is pretty minor.
But still, Nathan is the only Hero who feels... unclean after his Remuneration.
