I do not own Static Shock and I only take credit for any characters not from the series. This is for my entertainment only, that and hopefully a few other people's. Reviews are helpful, guys, but flames will not be tolerated. No like-y, no read-y, got it? Good. Pats readers on head

Enjoy!

Richie felt something close around him, pinning his arms to his sides and immobilizing him. He turned his head wildly to see his attacker, but the afternoon had somehow become darker. If only Backpack were here, instead of back in his locker at school!

"Static! Help!" Richie tried to call, but to his surprise, nothing more than a whimper came out. He opened his mouth and strained, trying desperately to push sound from his throat, but it seemed blocked. Try as he might, he could not shout. His analytical mind whirled in rapid thought, but could not find any rational explanation for this forced silence.

"Help…" he croaked as the hold on him got tighter and he felt the world spinning away.

--==OOO==--

Richie gasped for air as he flung himself upward, only to find himself tangled in somewhat damp sheets. He coughed and sputtered and tried to get his breathing under control. He looked around wildly, slowly calming down at the sight of Virgil's vary familiar room, and his very familiar body asleep in the bed next to him.

It was a dream, he told himself over and over, just a dream. Forget it. Come on, let it go. Just a dream! But somehow, he didn't feel better. Rather than trying to go back to sleep, he sat up and stretched, feeling the cool night air wash some of the dream away.

For as long as he could remember, Richie's nightmares had always had one thing in common: an inability to call for help. Whenever he dreamed of danger or trouble, and the dream turned from something resembling a B-hero movie to a more sinister experience, his ability to cry out, to summon attention and help, disappeared right along with the high of heroism. He became helpless, a gagged child, and something about that inexplicable gag bothered him to his core. He had dreamed this fear again and again for years, and he was no closer to solving the mystery of the silence.

What is it that makes me feel like I can't call for help in my dreams? Richie wondered as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and padded down the hallway to the Hawkins' bathroom. He knew their house so well after all this time, and was practically another member of the family. Ever since his father had lost his job, Richie's home life had gone from bad to worse. Mr. Hawkins had long ago stopped asking for reasons why Virgil insisted his best friend spend the night so often, and Richie knew there was a very strong probability the shrewd social worker knew the real story of his home life. But they all shared an unspoken pact: Richie didn't bring it up unless he needed real help and no one asked him to explain. It had worked so far.

Looking at himself in the cheerfully lit bathroom, Richie grimaced a bit. His face was pale and his eyes looked haggard, a consequence of extreme exhaustion and sudden terror colliding with the way his muscles controlled the regions around his cheeks. He splashed some water on his face and took a sip from the faucet, remembering someone who had once said bad dreams were a sign of dehydration in the night.

That's bogus, Richie though. They just say that so kids will have something to do when they're scared in the night. It takes their minds off of their dreams and allows their brains to go back to reality peacefully, instead of dragging them along in the memory of whatever is causing the dream. For good measure, Richie splashed some more water on his hair and neck. Not that it can't hurt. My brain is so full anyway, maybe this time it will relax and take a rest.

Deep down, Richie knew that was one of his secret fears about his super-brain, that he would never again know peace in himself. He found his thoughts jumped all over the place, from metaphysics to politics, science to sociology, math to mechanics, never at rest and very rarely going in the same direction at once. When he was busy, either talking, playing video games, or focusing on dealing with Bang Babies, it was better, as the babble inside quieted down and focused on the task at hand. But it was the times when he was alone with his thoughts that his mind ran like an electric train with Static giving it all the power he could. And with about as much precision, jumping from one thought to another and back again in a continuously changing pattern. For while his inherent intelligence had increased exponentially, so had the actual workings of his mind, making him more likely to come up with random things and making them fit together than taking a single problem and working solely on it for a time. On the one hand, it made him imminently more flexible in his thinking, more able to deal with the unexpected in a creative and sometimes downright brilliant manner. But on the other hand, it kept him up nights and days, interrupted peaceful times with Virgil, and generally made him feel like he had an anthill in his mind, the thoughts running about gathering data and taking it back to the queen for consumption, with a single goal, but different paths and erratic behavior. He sighed.

Bed now, he thought hard, trying to think only of the comfort of sleep as he headed back to Virgil's room. Bed, which is rest and also a term used for the back of a pick-up truck or a garden-patch…Bed! Where I sleep! he shouted in his mind before his brain really got going. Standing in the doorway to the room, he smiled and felt the ants all go to sleep inside. Bed with Virgil.

That was the one thing that really made his life bearable. Virgil. Richie smiled as he watched the boy curl up tightly in the blankets, trying to inch his way closer to where Richie should have been. Virgil's normally crazy hair was even wackier when he was asleep, as sometimes his own dreams would kick off little bursts of his power and make his head into an octopus with a life of its own. But he did sleep soundly, Richie knew, as he crawled back into the bed.

If the Bang Babies ever attacked in the night, he thought fondly, we would be screwed because I wouldn't be able to wake Static in time. Or at all! Man, V, you sleep like concrete and it would still react faster than you!

But it was the one peaceful thing in his life, Richie knew. Being with Virgil, either as Gear and Static or as best friends, the very presence of this one person made all the crazy things and pieces in his life seem to fall together or fall away. And even though things were definitely weird between them, everything was starting to settle out. And no one could take away the private joy Richie still held in his friend, not even Virgil himself. Friendship, his brain murmured quietly as it slowly shut down his consciousness to rest, may be a two-way street, but it can still be a beautiful parkway even when there aren't any other cars coming to meet me. And he isn't coming, but he doesn't have to. All I need is to know he's out there somewhere. It will be enough.

--==OOO==--

Looking back on it, Richie still didn't know if he was gay because he was in love with Virgil or if he was in love with Virgil because he was gay. Both seemed equally true, in their own ways. All he knew, all he had known for a long time, was that he was complete with Virgil in a way no girl had ever made him feel. In his heart, words like "soulmate" fit like a glove to the way he felt about his best friend, chagrined as he was to use such tired clichés. But his best friend was so busy chasing Daisy, it didn't seem to matter. Not that Virgil ever neglected Richie for his girl. Between crime-fighting, the almost nightly sleepovers, and the fact that they had spent most of their lives learning, knowing, and living each other's schedules, it was a fact that Daisy had more trouble finding time with Virgil than Richie had. But there were still things that pricked him every day. Virgil passing a note to Daisy in class. Virgil sitting next to Daisy with his arm pressed against hers. Virgil taking Daisy to concerts and things. And Virgil doodling Daisy's name when he thought no one was looking. All those things made Richie sigh inwardly, feeling hopeless that what he felt, that what he wanted, could ever come to fruition.

And then, one day, Virgil just out and asked him the thing he'd been worrying about.

"Hey, Rich, do you think, if I asked Daisy to marry me, she'd say yes?"

It was something he didn't want to answer. He really didn't want to answer that question. So he pretended to think about it for a while, trying not to notice the intense curiosity starting to blossom in his friend's face. He tried to come up with some sort of suitable answer, something along the lines of "Well, I don't know, aren't we a little young to be thinking about that, V?" but that isn't want he blurted out at the last minute.

What came out was, "I hope not."

The shocked look on Virgil's face was a mirror of Richie's own. It was not what either of them had expected him to say. But his mouth betrayed him and it was out there. And no matter how Richie wanted to take the words back, he couldn't. So as Virgil sputtered for an explanation, eyes wide with confusion and betrayal, Richie looked down and prepared himself. He hadn't wanted it to come out this way. He hadn't wanted it to come out at all, come to think of it. But there was no going back now.

"Wha-what do you mean, you hope not? What are you talkin' about, man?" Virgil said, surprise, more than anger, coloring his words.

"I love you, Virg."

Silence.

Then, "You don't mean…you're not sayin'…are you? Rich?" Virgil's voice turning from incredulity to anxiety, worry, and maybe fear?

"Yeah, V. Like that. I love you. I-I didn't want you to know," Richie said, ducking his head even lower. "I can't help how I feel, but I always wanted to stay your best friend. Always. I would never have told you, I don't think. It doesn't matter."

"What do you think, it doesn't matter? Of course it matters! Richie," and this time Virgil's face was much softer, "you are my best friend and you always will be. Hey, I don't have to understand it. It's kind of flattering, really," he said, smiling a bit. Virgil put a cautious hand on Richie's shoulder, causing the blonde boy to look up, eyes sorry and with more despair that Virgil liked seeing in his friend.

"Look, we'll just let it go, all right? I know it's there and I won't make you stop it, okay? And you do whatever you need to, alright?" There was hope in Virgil's voice. Nervous hope.

"All right. We can just forget I said anything."

Wrong.

--==OOO==--

They had let it go between them for a while after that. Virgil didn't bring it up, and Richie tried hard not to focus on it, either on his feelings or on the fact that he had actually admitted them in the open. Things seemed cool between them on the outside, but somehow they both felt nervous where there hadn't been nerves before, not that that was possible, Richie's mind reminded him periodically. Sometimes in the middle of a conversation they would just stop and look at each other almost fearfully. Laughter would cut out as suddenly as it could begin. And while sometimes their spontaneous hugs or signs of brotherly affection went as before, other times they seemed forced, even fake. Even Daisy noticed it. Richie came upon her talking with Virgil in a quiet, concerned way, but when she saw him coming, she quickly shushed Virgil and smiled brightly. The all-too cheerful questions about "are you really okay?" and statements like "you know you can talk to me if you need to" told him all he needed to know about Daisy's opinions on the friendship that was wilting between them.

And that was the worst of it. Richie felt that his time with Virgil was running out, that before long, where a wonderful bond had been, there would only be strangers, no longer trusting or understanding each other. He could see barriers where there hadn't been any before, and he knew Virgil was keeping secrets. Sometimes Virgil would look at Richie with a troubled expression, but when Richie questioned him about it, V always dismissed it as nothing. And then he would look again.

Man, he doesn't know how easy he is to read, he thought to himself, noting with meticulous accuracy the slight widening and narrowing of the eyes, the jumpy fingers, the tight shoulders, and the smile that did not quite extend up the cheeks to the corners of Virgil's eyes. He says he's fine, but "fine" is defined as…never mind! Not what he is! That's what "fine" is, the opposite of that! he shouted at his brain.

That was another, equally, if not more worrying problem. Richie's mind was starting to really bother him. Well, it had always been a bit annoying, although wonderful, being a genius, but there were some things he just didn't want to know about, like what is really in hot dogs and how exactly his best friend's digestive system reacted to beans. But that wasn't the thing that kept Richie worried beyond his strained friendship with Virgil. It seemed like lately his thinking had become more and more chaotic. During the day, the ants in his brain seemed to be getting ready for war, moving more frantically than ever and in increasingly chaotic patterns. He used to be able to keep a handle on it, but now the only time Richie could really control the chaos was by out-shouting it, mentally of course, periodically. The only peace he found was when Virgil was asleep, as he was when Richie had nightmares. Something about the quiet of the evening helped keep it at bay a bit, gave him back his control for a time. But if he didn't keep it in check, it ran wherever it wanted to, which is why he got in so much trouble in math class.

Math was not a struggle for Richie. It never had been, but since becoming a genius, it was even less of a struggle. In fact, math wasn't even interesting anymore, not at the high school level. Maybe really advanced physics or the theory of the unprovable equations, but not basic geometry and calculus. So Richie's mind tended to wander farther than usual in math. Other classes might trigger thoughts or provide facts he didn't have yet, but when it came to math, it was all over. So when he was called upon, he tended to make himself look like a fool.

Example:

"Mr. Foley, since you seem so relaxed in the back row," says his teacher, walking menacingly down the aisle toward the drifting Richie, "perhaps you can tell us what the derivative of cos(x) is?"

Richie, paying no attention to his mind, is unable to call it back from wherever it goes quickly enough and pops out with "Shakespeare's The Tempest." In actuality, his mind had been using advanced calculus to take the anti-derivative of a much more complex problem to calculate the exact probability of one money typing out the famous work in its entirety with no errors, unless you counted those bits of English grammar and spelling that have changed over time, in which case you have two different scenarios, but the probability should only change a minute amount, based upon the number of letters eliminated by the modern usage. But either way, before his mind could even come up with a possible escape route from the situation, he was, as he said later, fully and royally screwed when it came to math class.

And it was happening more and more. This distracting maze that had developed in his mind was now a full-blown, 3-D visual illusion and Richie the person was wandering up and down flights of stairs in it hoping that he was standing straight up instead of at a 90 degree angle. It bothered Richie because it was becoming increasingly harder for him to control this chaos, or even to break out of it. More than once, Virgil had had to literally shock him to get his attention, although Richie just passed it off as "working on a problem." But it was a problem and a big one.

"Maybe this is why they all go insane," he muttered to himself as he flew out on patrol with Static one evening after a particularly bad episode at home involving his mind running out and leaving him to his father's anger. "Not because they are emotionally unstable or evil, but because they can't help it. Maybe this is what it's like to go truly and fully mad." The full and complete text of Alice in Wonderland ran quickly through his head, making analytical comparisons between himself and every character in the novel until he established that he was only 38 similar in behavior and mannerism to the Mad Hatter, even at his worst, but this was somehow not comforting. He sighed.

"What's the matter, bro?" Static called, having heard Gear's sigh.

"Oh, nothing, just working on a problem," Gear called back, trying to make his voice the light, capable tone it usually was. The tone that came out, however, was much more tired that he would have wanted.

"Must be a big problem," Static pointed out. "You've been stuck on it for days and you're barely comprehensible when you're thinking about it? Why don't you talk about it? Maybe I can throw a monkey wrench into that crazy brain of yours and slow it down some?" The hero smiled at his partner.

"I wish you could," Gear began, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to go into the long difficulty of explaining losing one's mind to one's best friend. Before coming out to Virgil, he would have tried to tell him as soon as he noticed the odd lack of control coming over him, but now, now that things were different between them, he couldn't bring himself to. It wasn't fair, he knew that, but if Static couldn't tell him what was wrong either, then at least they were being equally unfair to each other. Some friendship. The only time we still really work on the friendship-level is when we're apart or asleep.

"Look, Gear, if you'd just…" Static stopped in mid sentence and turned towards the west. "Hear that?" Gear listened, all the while having backpack analyze the sounds, identifying them as indeed, some kind of large public disturbance.

"Sounds like trouble, Static," he said, glad that his brain could focus on the task at hand, although he couldn't seem to stop the part of him that was working on comparing the style and composition quality of Beethoven's 8th and 9th symphonies.

"Let's go!" Static called, turning his board to fly into the face of whatever danger lay ahead. Gear, beside him, saw the confident, heroic look on his partner's face. He had a bad feeling about the fight and wished Static wasn't so, so…cowboy heroic all the time! This could be real trouble.

And when they got there, Gear was right. It was real trouble, of a very unusual kind.