"The moment her head jerked back ever so slightly he was sure that he'd messed up, but it still took him far longer than it should have to pull his hands away from her shoulders. Even as his hands slowly dropped back to his sides, he couldn't look away from her eyes staring into his. They really were a startling shade of green. He was sure that he'd never seen such gorgeous and memorable eyes in his whole life."

The vibrant streak of blood on the toe of her shoe turned his stomach, but Drew couldn't bring himself to look at anything else as he stumbled along beside Shea who was very nearly carrying him after his knees had suddenly buckled underneath his weight. He'd vaguely heard her saying something about "shock" when she caught him before he could fall. Her grip still tight on his arm was the only thing that stopped him from curling into a ball in the middle of the stairwell.

Her hands were warm.

And she still smelled good.

And, although he couldn't make out what she was saying, her voice was nice to listen to.

But he couldn't stop staring at the streak of blood on her shoe.

He'd never seen something so ruthless in his life. Or at least, he'd never seen someone do something so ruthless on his behalf. It wasn't shock, he thought, that had his head spinning. At least, not about how effortlessly she'd won a fight against a man twice her size - one who was armed, at that. It was that when she'd turned to look at him - or rather not look at him - she'd looked more nervous about… him than she had about a man she accused of threatening to kill him.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he couldn't help but note that she hadn't even broken out her glowing green fire to help her. That thought was beaten down by the realization that bile was rising in his throat.

Choking it down he gasped out, "Your shoes," just as Shea unlocked the door to their apartment. She hummed curiously in response and, nearly begging, he elaborated, "Off. Take them off," hoping he wouldn't upchuck what little food was in his stomach.

Pulling out of her grasp, he stumbled over and collapsed on the couch while she kicked her shoes off at the door. He'd all but forgotten the strawberries clutched in his arms until she walked over and plucked them from him. A faint smile formed on his lips as he watched her eat one like she was sneaking candy before putting the rest of the carton into the fridge.

"Are you okay now?" she muttered, sitting curled into a ball on the chair beside him. It was obvious that she was still avoiding making eye contact with him even if she tried to look relaxed, fiddling with the sleeve of the borrowed hoodie.

Nodding, he closed his eyes to focus on taking a deep breath before trying to speak again. If he wasn't expecting to blurt out what he said next he could only begin to imagine how much more surprised she must have been. Still, at least his offhanded question, "Have you ever seen a robot fight?" finally got her to look at him.

"Sure," she answered after a moment. "Um… this lady, Electronique, has sent robots after us a few times. Doesn't work very well, but she keeps trying."

Drew blinked. Then blinked again. Despite the fact that he knew he ought to be scared of making her mad, he threw his head back and let out a laugh upon realizing what she meant.

"That's not the kind of robot fight I'm talking about," he told her when his worryingly manic (even to his own ears) laughter died down. "I mean a– a robot fight. It's… sorta a competition. Teams build robots then, well, make them fight."

"Oh," she muttered, her cheeks flushing. His own face warmed up at the thought that when she blushed like that, with the hood of his sweatshirt still pulled up over her head, she turned so green that she looked a bit like a turtle hiding its head inside its shell. A cute… A turtle. Just a turtle. Turtles are not cute."Then… no. I didn't even know that was a thing."

"Would you - only if you wanted, of course - but I um… Would you want to join my team? Well, it's not my team. I mean, the team was my idea and all, but James and Bobby and Kashwin are all–"

"Drew?" Shea mercifully interrupted his ramblings, raising an eyebrow at him. He gulped as he fell silent, and hoped that his nod showed her he was listening. "Not that I'm… saying no but I don't know the first thing about building robots."

Grinning, he shook his head. "You wouldn't have to worry about that. We'll build the robot." He felt his grin grow wider as he thought about how merciless she'd been fighting a real person - he was sure that a robot would get even less pity from her. "But I think you'd be the perfect person to operate it."

"Why?"

"Why?" Drew repeated, scoffing before he remembered that not everyone's minds worked the same way his did. "Sorry," he apologized, although she didn't look particularly offended. "Well, it's just that you… You didn't flinch. And that was a real fight, Shea! We could use someone as… as cutthroat as you."

He was fairly certain cutthroat didn't mean… actually cutting someone's throat. Could robots have throats? He supposed they could. Humanoid ones at least. Although animals had throats too, so if they built a robot that looked like a dog or a… a lion or something then it could sort of have a throat, right?

Shaking his head, he forced himself to focus on the actual conversation he was having.

"Of course I didn't flinch," Shea was mumbling, as he turned his attention back to her. "Flinch and people die." Her voice was high and mocking, he presumed in mimicry of some lesson that had been drilled into her during her time as a superhero. But there was a more serious undercurrent to it too, something angry and sad and a little scared.

Looking at her just then, the thought he'd been trying to avoid infiltrated his mind and wouldn't get out. It must be terrible to be her. She really was just… a scared little— well, she wasn't a little kid at all, but she was just a scared teenager. Sure, he knew he'd been the one to get so startled during that awful movie she'd made him watch that he fell off the couch and that she was the one who'd found it more entertaining than anything else. He also knew that never in his life had he met someone who seemed so on edge. And how could he blame her? How could anyone blame her?

"What was it like?" he blurted, letting the question stray from his thoughts before he could stop it. "To be a superhero, I mean? Were you ever scared?"

"No," Shea scoffed and then started to fidget, shooting a frown in his direction. "I mean, I guess when I was little it was…" Her voice trailed off and she shook her head, then shrugged. "Training was always worse than the real thing. By the time we actually had to face down people who wanted to hurt us, it… didn't seem all that bad."

"What about your little brothers? Don't they get scared?"

Shea scoffed again, though any trace of amusement was gone from her voice. He watched as she curled up into a ball once more, resting her chin on her knees. Her eyes turned glassy as she stared absently ahead of her.

"Of course they don't get scared," she muttered. "They still think it's a game. They're barely even ten. They don't know that they should be scared."

"I would be terrified," he declared, only realizing the truth in the statement as he said it. "Even with your powers - don't you ever think that someone will—"

"Drew," she snapped, pointedly cutting him off. He blinked stupidly at her and immediately began to feel guilty for blabbering about a subject she clearly didn't want to talk about. "If some horrible awful thing exists I promise you someone's already tried to do it to us. There's nothing anyone could throw at us that we haven't already faced at least once." Adding in a mutter that he wasn't sure he was meant to hear, she all but spat, "Or I haven't faced, at least."

Although "shut up" went unspoken, it was clear enough that's what she wanted him to do. He bit his tongue to stop from asking her more about what her life was like.

"I guess I wouldn't want to talk much about it either," he relented apologetically. "After all, I'm sure you didn't just run away on a whim, did you?"

From the way she frowned at the floor, he suspected that hadn't been the best thing to say. Maybe she had run away on a whim, he didn't know. He didn't know much of anything about her, really.

"I should make dinner," he announced for a change of subject. "Do you… want to help?"

She shook her head and after spending a moment too long watching her in the hopes she might change her mind, he decided to just let her be, retreating into the safety of the kitchen to prepare the chili mac he'd planned. It wasn't his most impressive recipe - to be honest, he wasn't particularly fond of it -but he hoped she wouldn't mind. Given that her eating habits seemed so far to consist of nibbling on fruit when she wasn't forgetting to eat, he couldn't see why she would. Besides, it was a little late in the evening to be cooking anything more time-inducing as it was.

He had just about finished prepping the ingredients he would need - only digging through to the back of the cabinet for his last unopened box of macaroni noodles - when he heard her shuffle into the kitchen, though hearing her didn't stop him from jumping when he turned to see her sitting on the counter. She still had yet to pull the hood off her head and he was increasingly tempted to push it down himself.

"There's this one guy," Shea began, her voice quiet. "His name's Magnus. Literally, Magnus Tism. And you'll never guess - the guy's obsessed with magnets. Well, sorta. He's convinced he can control metal. Or, at least, he seems convinced. We all thought he could at first too, before we found out that he had some weird super-powerful magnets hidden in this ridiculous costume that he wears."

She paused a moment, staring into space as he silently added his ground beef and onions into the skillet on the stove and began to stir. He almost said something to encourage her to keep speaking, but then she sighed and continued as if she'd never lost focus at all.

"The first time we fought him was a month after we got out of– a month after we officially became heroes. You know what he wanted? What he demanded so he wouldn't bring down every building in the city? He wanted metal so that he could use his superpowers to make a sculpture. He didn't even want a lot. But we couldn't just help him get some metal. Oh, no. We had to fight him and throw him in jail even though all he'd done by then was make empty threats."

She brought her hands up, closer to her face then, and started lighting her hands and letting the flames die over and over, plasma bouncing between her fingertips like a ping-pong ball made of light. He couldn't stop himself from staring at her borderline-hypnotic idle habit, even as he continued cooking.

"He didn't even know we existed. He didn't want to hurt us. He didn't want to hurt anyone. And then Heath - Hego - punched him halfway down the street. After that, he decided he was going to kill all of us. We spent half an hour dodging cars that the two idiots were throwing at each other. But you know what the worst part about it was?"

Shea paused for a moment, long enough that he eventually realized she was genuinely looking for an answer, and he hummed questioningly in response.

"All I could think the whole time was that at least cars were easier to see than knives. Easier to dodge, too. After dealing with that in training, having some mad-man with a magnet try and obliterate us didn't seem that bad."

There was a part of him, a large enough part that it took more effort to keep it silent than it should have, that could only think that the story she'd told would make a fantastic comic book. If it weren't for the fact that he'd seen her glow - and now seen her fight as well - he might have called her a liar and assumed she'd gotten it from one in the first place. He very nearly asked if there were comic books about her, but decided against doing so, remembering how upset she'd been that he knew something as basic as her hero name. It seemed best to let her tell him what she wanted when she wanted. Even if he was undeniably curious.

He didn't know how long he stood there in silence, trying to piece together some response. It wasn't as if he had any experience with superheroes outside of reading about and watching their adventures. And until a few days ago, he'd thought they must all be entirely make-believe.

"Huh," he managed to utter when her foot - when had he lent her a pair of his socks? - pushed against his hip. "I um… Did he change his name or did it always sound like the word 'magnetism'?" It wasn't what he meant to say, not that he knew what he did mean to say. But it served to make her snort and push him back another step.

"Far as we know, it is his real name," she answered with an amused (or at least he hoped) roll of her eyes.

There was another silence then, and finally, he confessed, "I'm sorry, I really don't know what I should say."

"I don't know what you should say either," she said. He couldn't tell if she was joking or not and he felt himself nervously staring at her until her eyebrows furrowed and she glanced away, making him realize what he was doing.

"Sorry," he mumbled, glancing away as well to turn his focus intently on starting to add in his other ingredients.

After a long moment, Shea spoke again. "Do you… want any help?" She sounded unsure of the offer, even as she said it.

"You?" Drew asked, immediately starting to tease her without thinking about it. "You actually want to help cook dinner?"

She turned to glare at him, and he grinned back at her, more amused than scared. "Forget I asked," she grouched. The small smile fixed on her lips detracted from how annoyed her crossed arms made her look. "Get stirring or whatever, oh king of dorks."

It was his turn to glare, though he didn't think he did a much better job at looking annoyed than she did."You could measure out two cups of the macaroni for me," he suggested, realizing that, distracted by her story, he'd completely forgotten to do so himself.

"After you tried to burn me alive yesterday?" Shea snorted.

"Nngh! I did not try and– And your hands are fine, anyway!"

"You also tried to shoot me last night."

"It was a grape!" he protested, his ears warming at how whiny he sounded. "Pest," he added, grumbling under his breath. Was it really only the night before that all that had happened? It seemed like ages had passed since then. His whole body felt heavy with exhaustion suddenly.

"Uh-huh," she agreed, and it took him a moment to recognize the sarcasm in her tone. Airly commanding, "Just cook," she waved a perfectly healed hand in his general direction.

"You know, you're very demanding!"

Her laughter shouldn't have delighted him so much, and he tried to glance away before thoughts about how cute she was could infiltrate his mind. He was too late and, for a long moment, the only thought in his head was one loudly pointing out how wonderful she was - even though it was true that she was very demanding.

"Yeah," she answered, sounding almost too cheerful. "I know!" Her voice was wonderful too… and Drew desperately wished he could make the voice in his head shut up. He sternly reminded himself that she was only sixteen, feeling as if he were mentally stomping on his own foot. He nearly missed her teasing, "Like you said - I'm a pest."

Too busy fighting his own mind to give her mockery any proper response, he practically begged, "Would you at least get the cheese from the fridge?" as he took on the responsibility of measuring the pasta. He all but threw the macaroni into the skillet as if the force would work to drive the discomforting thoughts away.

Her sigh came tinged with all the drama that only a teenager could muster, which was perfect too, and he— He needed those thoughts to stop before he got so frustrated with himself that he burst into tears. Even though he was sure he would never do anything… inappropriate… with her, it was still unsettling to know that even the vaguest notions of attraction to a sixteen-year-old girl existed within him.

"Fine," she said, and he almost didn't remember what he'd asked her to do until she opened the door to the fridge.

When she popped back onto the counter, bag of shredded cheese in hand, impulsivity got the better of him. It was just after she muttered, "Here ya go, Doc," that the… frustration, or whatever it was he was feeling about her hiding her face inside the hood of his sweatshirt finally got to him. And without thinking, he reached over and pushed it off of her.

"Would you quit hiding your face?" he all but demanded. "I can hardly hear you!" It wasn't quite true but an excuse still felt needed.

The moment her head jerked back ever so slightly he was sure that he'd messed up, but it still took him far longer than it should have to pull his hands away from her shoulders. Even as his hands slowly dropped back to his sides, he couldn't look away from her eyes staring into his. They really were a startling shade of green. He was sure that he'd never seen such gorgeous and memorable eyes in his whole life. And though there was something nagging at the back of his mind, telling him he ought to look away now, he couldn't respond to the thought. He only vaguely noticed the green-tinted blush on her face, or the warmth spreading across his.

The awkward clearing of her throat finally snapped him out of it. Her mocking question of, "What are ya planning to do, kiss me?" only heaped on an extra serving of embarrassment. Especially when he couldn't resist glancing at her lips, something in him wondering what it might be like to kiss her. Would she taste like plasma? What would that even taste like? Would her lips burn his when they touched? Would— stop!

And as seemed to be his only skill, he made the humiliating situation even worse. Stumbling away from her and stammering out some sort of apology, he managed to smack the skillet straight off the stove. His only reflex was to yelp and jump away to avoid the food splattering - which he'd thought would be inevitable. Her reflexes were far superior to his and without even having to do anything more than lean down a bit, she managed to catch the skillet in her palm. Only a few bites of food spilled down the side.

"Doesn't that—?" His panicked question died on his lips and he gulped slightly at her glare. "Right," he managed. "Never mind." Of course, the heat wouldn't hurt. Still, the sight sent an unpleasant warmth into his palms, as if he were the one whose flesh was touching hot metal. "It really doesn't hurt at all?" he asked, failing to resist the urge to shake his hands as if to cool them off. Bits of chili mac went flying off the spatula he'd forgotten was still his hand as he did, and he flinched when some landed on Shea's face.

She flicked it off and shrugged. "Not really." Her gaze met his as she set the skillet back on the stove and they were both quick to glance away. "It kinda tingles, but it doesn't hurt." She sounded almost as awkward as he was feeling.

"What about when you– your plasma?" he asked - or tried to ask. Clearing his throat he tried again, managing, "Does your plasma feel the same way?"

As if the mere mention of her powers made them surface, she brought her hands up and started lighting her fingers one by one. From the corner of his eye, he saw her gaze flick to the flames and, despite himself, he stole the chance to watch her face, wishing however briefly that he could read her mind and know what she was thinking.

It took a long moment for Shea to slowly reply, "No… It's– it's more like…" She paused, and he quickly looked away as she hopped back onto the counter. "You know how you get all bundled up before going out on a cold day," she started again, "so you don't feel cold, but you can see your breath so you feel like you should feel cold?"

In the silence Drew found himself looking up at her again. "I… I guess so," he replied, already making a mental note to remember that description for the first cold morning so he could be sure he understood what she was trying to say.

"It's sorta like that," she concluded, putting out the flames and wiping her palms over her knees as if wiping off any residual plasma. "Using my glow kind of makes me feel warm, but like I shouldn't feel warm. It feels more… comfortable than anything. Nostalgic, almost? Which I know doesn't make any sense, but that's what it's like."

It did and didn't make sense at the same time. He wished he could experience the feeling, if just for a moment. "Did it always feel like that?" he wondered aloud.

The shrill ring of the timer he'd forgotten he'd set seemed to momentarily startle them both. Had he really been cooking long enough for it to go off? He wasn't sure anymore. He gave the skillet an extra moment on the stove, feeling a need to make up for the brief moment it had been knocked off, then hastily reached over Shea's head to grab bowls. Scooping a generous serving into each bowl, he refused to let himself worry about making it look fancy.

He pushed one of the bowls into her hands just as a curt, "No," left her lips - her only response to his question.

All but flinching away from her harsh tone he raised an eyebrow. "I get the feeling I shouldn't ask."

She slipped off the counter and he took that as his cue to walk to the table. "I catch on fire, Drew," she pointed out, trailing a step behind him. "I'm sure you can imagine what that felt like the first few months."

He thought he could. He didn't want to. The very idea made him cringe. "It must have hurt." She hummed in agreement, taking a bite so large he almost snapped at her to take smaller bites. Biting (heh…) his tongue, he asked instead, "Why'd you keep… using it? If it felt like that?"

"I tried to stop it," she said, sounding like she was confessing a secret.

He pushed his food around his bowl with his spoon, embarrassment still making it difficult for him to look right at her. "Yeah?" he muttered when she didn't elaborate.

A dark look, angry and sad and a little scared - just like her voice had been earlier in the evening - passed over her face. He wanted to flinch away from it, and he wanted to make sure that whatever she was feeling to give her such an expression… he hoped she would never feel that way again. He knew protecting her from feelings was probably even more difficult than protecting a superhero in general but he still desperately wished he could.

"You don't have to talk about it," he assured her and momentarily forced himself to look at her again. His eyes were immediately drawn back to her lips and he had to look away.

Despite his assurance, she told him, "It was… right after we stopped being dead. It hurt to use my glow so… I decided to stop, and just pretended I couldn't when someone asked me to. And, that worked fine for a week. Even had a few of the doctors convinced it had completely gone away." She sounded proud of that. "Then I was allowed to stand up for the first time in nearly a month. I'd barely been able to walk across the room without help and… halfway back to the bed I combusted. I don't really remember much except that I swear every cell in my body was on fire. I guess I burned the nurse that was helping me too, cause she never came back."

A worryingly frightened look crossed her face and he scarcely heard her horrified murmur of, "Oh god…"

"What?" he nervously asked, ignoring his feelings long enough to force himself to meet her petrified gaze as her eyes locked on his.

"I think I killed her."