"Be really careful with this stuff, okay? It's top of the line and costs a fortune, I had it shipped internationally which was a pain in the ass because I don't have a last name. Do you know how hard it is to do, like … anything without a last name? 'Of the Wyvern clan' doesn't really cut it for Amazon. Please, please be careful with this equipment, it's brand new - here, smell. Smell that? Still smells like the bubble wrap it came in."
"Lex, dude. Breathe."
Prying his hands from his precious merchandise, Lexington steps back and allows the stage crew to carry his speakers and soundbars into the club, his jaw sore from grinding his teeth so hard together. He can't help it - all those buttons and wires are like his babies.
"I know they're your babies," Cyclops says from the van where she sits in the open back door, enjoying her final cigarette before the show begins. "They'll take care of it, man. They always do."
Cringing when one of the crew nearly smacks the delicate case holding his laptop into the side of the door, Lex sighs, turning over his shoulder to look at his friend and manager. One brown eye watches him through a cloud of smoke and the other glows a ring of violet. Her smile is fond and knowing, and while Lex is wound like a spring, she is loose and relaxed with long legs spread and arms draped around the tattered denim of her knees.
Even without the bionic eye, Cyclops demands attention; her rich, dark skin is tattooed from her neck to her feet, a mosaic of seemingly disconnected images that somehow flow perfectly across the canvas of her body - there's flowers on one arm and a sailing ship on the other, portraits of family members he's never met next to profiles of Frankenstein and his wife, a crescent moon behind her ear and 'hope' and 'love' across her knuckles - his personal favorite is the little tombstone on her ankle that reads 'gender roles are dead' - Lex hasn't seen half of them, he's sure. Long purple dreads are secured away from her sharp, angular face with a band that glows green in the dark.
Lex clenches his empty hands together. "I could carry my own stuff in and set up, you know."
The end of Cyclops' cigarette burns orange between her fingers. "You could," she says, blowing two pillars of smoke out of her double pierced nostrils. "But does Skrillex set up for his own shows? Or - or Cher?"
"Cher?" A smile catches at the corner of Lex's mouth.
"Ah," Cyclops says, satisfied. "There it is. And don't sound so condescending. Cher is amazing." She slaps the empty space beside her. "Come on. Sit. Chill."
Grumbling, Lex obliges, sitting stiffly beside her and declining the offered cigarette with a shake of his head. He draws his black poncho more tightly around his torso.
"I'm trying to quit," he says, sounding very much like a person who does not actually want to quit. His eyes watch the cigarette moving in her hand like a dog waiting for their human to drop a piece of food.
"Is that why you're so wound up tonight?"
Silence stretches for a long time. Lex tongues the ring at the corner of his mouth.
"Oh." Cyclops' tone is knowing. "It's Brooklyn."
Lexington pulls his legs toward his chest and shrinks. After a moment he extends a hand silently and Cyclops places the cigarette delicately between his talons. He takes a long, slow drag, eyes closing as the toxic fumes fill his lungs and bloodstream, and then lets it out slowly through his nose.
"He wasn't at the last show."
"That doesn't mean anything." Cyclops speaks too quickly and like she's certain it absolutely does mean something. "He could be busy."
"Doing what?" Lex's voice is sharp. He glances sidelong at her and softens, apologetic. "I'm sorry."
Cyclops raises her hands, several rings clicking together. "Don't be. I understand."
Lex hands the cigarette back to her and Cyclops takes the final drag. She pinches the butt between her fingers, rolling it back and forth until the red cherry ember falls onto the pavement. When she smears her boot across it the ash spreads like glitter and burns for a second longer, and then it's gone.
Lex entertains the possibility that Brooklyn is innocently busy and feels like a hopeful child sitting before their chimney on Christmas Eve: naive and pitiful and stupid.
He knows exactly what Brooklyn is doing, can even think of a few people he might be doing it with, and knows the next time he sees him that Brooklyn will give the same exhausted speech all over again, and Lex will believe it all over again, and the cycle will start anew.
And every time there is Cyclops, his friend of five years and manager for three, trying to reassure him that Brooklyn is maybe not out there getting high.
Gods bless her, he thinks, watching her profile for a moment. Cyclops was the first human other than Elisa that he trusted fully - he'd made other acquaintances before her, mostly through Brooklyn, but the wound left behind by the Pack's betrayal never truly healed and he found himself always acting with a shield in front of him at all times. When the trio first started branching out and assimilating into human society, Lexington was the last to make friends of his own. Broadway had his work and Brooklyn had his parties and that left Lexington the task of trailing after his second in command to make sure Brooklyn didn't get so wasted that he hurt himself or turned to stone somewhere dangerous.
It was at one of those parties in some forgotten hole in the wall nightclub that he met Cyclops - she still wore an eyepatch then and went by a different name - tucked in a corner by herself, fiddling with a drone. He offered to help.
She stared at him and he waited for her to freak out over his gargoyle status or insist on taking a selfie with him like nearly everyone else in that club and every other club had done already, but instead she said, "I bet you can take some sick aerial shots of Manhattan and you don't even need a drone."
(She took credit for his successful Instagram he started a few weeks later, and he didn't mind at all.)
He owes a lot to Cyclops for where he is now; he got into music because of her, they started doing gigs together, she even came up with his DJ name - eLextrick - and when Broadway got sucked neck deep into his work and Brooklyn disappeared for days at time and going home was too painful, he knew that he could turn to stone in Cyclops' apartment and be safe.
None of his plans as a young gargoyle, even after waking up in Manhattan, ever included becoming a DJ. His interest in music up until the turn of the century was passive. It was Brooklyn who introduced him to electronica, dubstep, and music as a technological art. Meeting Cyclops was just the push over the edge.
Together they garnered decent local fame in the club scene. In the beginning, Lexington chalked up their surge in popularity to his species; the early shows left Lex feeling more like an exhibit being viewed at a zoo than an actual performer. But in the last couple years the novelty seemed to be wearing off, especially with the stories of what Cyclops would do to people if they got too weird about Lexington being a gargoyle.
More than one person had left his show with a Cyclops original custom bruise to the left eye. "It's like my brand," she'd say.
Cyclops clicks her tongue ring against the back of her teeth in thought. "I could try to talk to him," she suggests, but Lexington shakes his head.
"He doesn't want to listen." He crosses his arms. "I don't know what he wants."
"He's sick, Lex. Addiction is a disease." She sighs and wraps long fingers around the wrist of the opposite hand. "The problem is, when I was sick? I went to rehab. But there isn't really rehab for gargoyles. He'd get turned into a science experiment the minute he walked through the door." She releases her wrist. "Maybe he'd listen to me, one former addict to a current addict. I know a thing or two about what living in that world can cause you to lose." There is a pause. Cyclops is staring at one of her tattoos, one of the portraits of someone Lex had never met. Her fingertip traces the outline of the face before slipping away. With a deep breath, she meets Lex's gaze again."You could build him a new eye -" she nudges Lex with her elbow and winks a purple iris, "-but people? Can't rebuild those."
Lex smiles weakly at her. The eye was originally intended for Hudson many years before to replace the one damaged by the Archmage. But Hudson refused, and by the time he lost sight in his remaining eye he was too fragile to undergo any kind of surgery to try and gain it back. The eye sat untouched for more than a year after Lexington met Cyclops. By then she'd grown into her new name and he was almost afraid to mention it but ultimately was glad that he did; Cyclops was eager to try a functional body mod.
Alexander Xanatos performed the surgery for her, free of charge, simply for the publicity. He bought the patent from Lexington for a large sum, money that Lexington still hasn't touched. The eye has yet to give Cyclops any problems - while her vision isn't perfect, she can see, and she can change the color of the iris. That was a big selling point for her.
"I know I don't know Brooklyn as well as you do but I do know what it's like to be addicted, I know why I started in the first place … he's afraid of something, or ashamed, or something happened that he can't deal with. And what I needed when I was in the thick of it was someone to listen and not judge me for how I was trying to cope." Her fingers trace circles in the ditch of her elbow, across old track marks. "I know it sucks to be on this side, but imagine what it's like on his end. He's in so much pain that he gets fucked up just so he doesn't have to think about it."
Lexington tries not to think of it that way, of Brooklyn trying to drown his own pain, because it makes him feel like he failed Brooklyn, even if logically he understands that there was nothing more that he could have done. Broadway told him that plenty of times. No amount of begging or pleading or following Brooklyn around was going to keep him from fitting in and being as human as he possibly could be, and especially after Goliath stripped him of his rank … it was like rolling down a steep hill with no brakes. The crash at the bottom was inevitable.
"Shit's fucked," Lex mumbles.
Cyclops nods. "Shit is most definitely fucked, dude."
"Shouldn't you guys be putting on a show?"
Lex and Cyclops both jump and turn in the direction of the voice. Lex sees him standing half in shadow with hands deep in the pockets of his black trousers and his mouth in a crooked grin and Lex's heart leaps in his chest.
"Broadway," Lex says, like a breath of fresh air in this smog filled city.
Lex drops from the back of the van and hits the ground running; Broadway is all smiles and open arms by the time Lex meets him, launching off the pavement to be caught against his chest. Broadway's chuckle is warm and familiar in his ear.
There are few places as comforting as Broadway's embrace.
"I missed you, too." Broadway's hold is tight around Lexington's slim waist. Lex's feet dangle off the ground. "Hey, Cy."
"Hey, dude." Cyclops is standing too, grinning at them, swinging one leg toward the back door of the club. "I'll see you inside, Lex."
"Okay," Lex says, still wound around Broadway, and once she's disappeared he pulls back to look Broadway fully in the eyes. They're sad even with his lips still in a pleased smile, so Lex kisses him on the mouth before it goes away, tasting it, catching Broadway's surprise on his tongue.
"Mm, Lex-" Broadway's attempt is muffled by another kiss and Lexington's eager claws in his shirtfront.
"Whatever it is, it can wait," Lexington says, his breathing already heavy and hard. "I haven't seen you in weeks and I'm stressed and I'm horny so just shut up and kiss me-"
A warm hand slips under his poncho to sear across the flesh of Lexington's back. When Lex's mouth drops open in a gasp Broadway claims it with his own and walks to the open doors of the van. Both relieved and disturbed by Broadway's lack of usual mature sensibilities, Lex studies his face again when Broadway slowly lowers him to the car's floor. There is a moment caught in the orange glow of a streetlight where Broadway's face makes Lex's heart stop; he looks so worn with exhaustion and heavy with something he wants to say and torn between saying it and wanting to continue kissing Lexington until it's forgotten.
Lexington doesn't give him a moment to consider - he grabs Broadway by the collar and pulls him down on top of him. Broadway is a wall of firm muscle and being pinned beneath him is like being surrounded by rock; Lex curses their human clothes, aches for times when all of that delicious skin was much more accessible.
"We need to stop waiting this long to see each other," Broadway says. His tail wraps around the handle of one of the van doors and pulls it shut. Lexington's heart jumps in his throat. "Sexting really isn't cutting it for me."
An ache is beginning to coil in Lex's gut - a terrible, wonderful ache. "Maybe I'm just really bad at sexting then, because I could read your smut poetry all night."
Broadway rolls his eyes. "It's not poetry."
" 'Your body is an emerald forest under my blue waves'," Lexington quotes. " 'I hope I quench your thirst.' "
"Well," Broadway says, eyes heavy lidded as his tail whips the other door closed. "Do I?"
Lexington moans. "You are so fucking sexy right now," he says, breathing already labored, and he means it; Broadway in a button up and tie should be illegal. "Get down here and do something about it."
The van is too small to accommodate Broadway's form and wings comfortably, forcing him to crouch over Lexington the whole time, but neither are complaining. They're close and panting and grinding, and Broadway's tongue is in his mouth, on his neck. Sharp incisors drag across the skin of his jugular and large hands wrap around Lexington's tiny waist while Lex's deft hands make quick word of Broadway's belt buckle.
"Lex," Broadway says, and Lex immediately pauses, waiting. "Isn't this Cy's van?"
"Yeah." Lexington resists the urge to whimper impatiently. "And?"
"And … don't you think she'd oppose to us … doing … this … in her van?"
"Believe me, Broadway, Cyclops will be relieved that I got laid." Lex extends a hand and cups Broadway's cheek. "I know you came here with bad news. Let's just pretend it's not real for a little while longer, okay?"
Broadway's sad eyes watch him for a long, quiet moment, until his hand reaches up to cover Lex's at his cheek. He turns his mouth into the green palm and kisses the skin there, breathes the word, "Okay."
The floor of the van smells like smoke. Ripped wires and fast food straws and what he's pretty sure is a crayon are flattened under his back, and he's not sure when he lost the poncho but it's draped over the passenger seat of the van, and Broadway inside of him feels like becoming whole again.
The van rocks. It's too small and too fragile for every beautiful inch of Broadway, too weak under his force, and Lexington feels wonderfully pliable within his hands. It's crowded and rushed and there isn't time or space to draw it out, to really relish in the moment, but Broadway comes with Lexington's name in his mouth, and then replaces it with Lexington's length.
Lex can't see the sky but there are stars in his eyes nonetheless.
Once they catch their breath, Broadway opens the van doors again and they gulp in the night air. Lexington slips the black poncho over his head and climbs into the front seat, rummaging in the glovebox for a cigarette and a lighter.
"I thought you were quitting." Broadway's voice isn't accusing or condescending, just curious, watching Lex with fond eyes as the smaller gargoyle curls up next to him. Broadway winds one arm around his waist and holds him close against the building chill.
"There's nothing quite like a post coital cigarette, babe." Lexington cracks his thumb over the lighter's wheel and flames spark to life, throwing jagged shadows over his face. His free hand fishes into his vibrating pocket and withdraws his phone, giggling at what he sees.
"What?"
Lexington flicks the screen dark again. "Cyclops wanted to know if we made a mess in her van."
A pink blush rises in Broadway's blue cheeks. "Oh no. Gods. I'm so embarrassed. I don't know what came over me."
"Hey, big guy, it's fine. Honestly. Did you know one time last year she wrapped me up in Christmas lights when I was stone? Because she was 'feeling festive', she said. Consider us even now." Lexington cups Broadway's knee. "But you're right. Something did come over you."
Broadway shrugs. He picks at imaginary lint on his pant leg. "I just miss you."
His face says much more than that. Lex leans into Broadway's chest and nuzzles him with his bald head in a gargoyle gesture of affection, a long buried in instinct.
"I miss you, too."
There is a loud silence full of words Broadway doesn't want to say and questions Lexington doesn't want to ask. Lex's phone vibrates again, and this time the message is asking if he's going to come inside, that people are waiting for him to 'throw down those sick beats'.
Broadway's wings flex behind him. "Have you … have you seen Brooklyn lately?"
An involuntary flinch moves through Lex's wiry form.
"No." It's an angry, curt word on his tongue that Lexington swallows with his cigarette smoke. "Not in a couple weeks, anyway. Last I saw him, he was going on about quitting cold turkey. Again. And how he really meant it this time, and he was going to go to just one more party with his friends, one last time so he could go out with a bang or whatever, and of course I ate it all up because I always do." One hand raises to his head and smooths over the bald globe, shivering, his mouth crooked. "I don't know where my beanie is," he mumbles as an afterthought, looking down and away to scowl at the ground, like he'd find it there.
This conversation is an old and weary one, like a worn tape played too many times. A long time ago, Lexington defended Brooklyn every chance he could, even after Brooklyn was stripped of his rank, but the excuses dried up, and every feeling he had left was bruised.
Brooklyn isn't a violent addict or even an unfaithful one. He's the distant kind. The self hating kind. The kind that Lexington doesn't want to be angry with but is anyway, because Brooklyn consistently chooses substances over him and Broadway and the rest of their clan.
There have been too many nights when Lexington didn't know where Brooklyn was. Couldn't reach him by phone. Nowhere to be found. No one had seen him. There are too many panic attacks in Lexington's memory, calling Broadway crying, convinced Brooklyn is smashed up somewhere, or face down in an alley, overdosed to the moon. Lexington has found Brooklyn too many times on soiled mattresses in abandoned apartment complexes with the rubber band still tight around his arm, or lying alongside his own vomit, body pale and trembling, so close to death that he smells like it.
He can't remember how many promises Brooklyn had made to get better. Lex believed every one of them.
But Brooklyn's promises are as empty as his eyes when he's high.
Lex has known Cyclops long enough to understand that Brooklyn has a lot of demons that even he and Broadway don't know about, that people don't just turn to a life like that for no reason. There is something deeply broken in Brooklyn that neither they nor the others have been able to mend but it's not been for lack of trying, and Lexington feels both like a failure and like Brooklyn failed all of them.
It occurs to Lexington after several long moments of silence that Broadway hasn't said anything and when he twists to look at him again Broadway's eyes are staring hard at the ground. Tension has collected in his broad shoulders, bringing them nearly to his ears, hands twisting anxiously in his lap.
"Did something happen to Brooklyn?" Lexington's throat suddenly feels like it's closing. His hand whips out and strangles Broadway's wrist. A thousand images flash in his mind, none of them pleasant, and there is already a labored effect in his breathing.
Broadway shushes Lex's panic before it can rightfully come to form. "No. At least, I don't think so. I haven't seen him. But we have to find him. And you guys, both of you, have to come home."
"Why?" The hairless muscles over Lex's eyes struggle to meet over his nose.
Sharp teeth appear to bite at Broadway's lower lip. Lexington thinks about how those teeth were biting on his neck just a few minutes prior. That moment of bliss already seems like a lifetime ago, like the second they opened the van doors it slipped away into the night, absorbed by the sky and leaving only darkness. He reaches up, a green hand scratching at his jugular, trying to capture the ghost of a good feeling, but it's long gone.
Broadways speaks. But the words don't make sense. They can't make sense. Lexington shakes his head. Looks into his empty hands. The cigarette fell, half smoked, smoldering forgotten on the damp cement under his feet.
"What?" Lexington says the word out loud but his mouth feels numb and the sounds - the music thundering from inside the club and distant honks and sirens from the streets around them and their breathing and his heart in his ears - seem very far away.
Broadway takes a deep breath. He holds his hands together to keep them from shaking.
"Hudson is dying."
The words don't seem any more real the second time.
"I just saw him," Lexington says, coming back to his body, feeling the weight of his own bones again but it's foreign, too heavy. "Just, just a few weeks ago, and he was … he's old, he forgets things, but he's not, he isn't -"
"It's been more than a month since you've been home. Nearly a year since Brooklyn visited last." Broadway's words are laced with - not anger, never anger, anger's edges are too jagged and sharp and red for soft blue Broadway, but something that feels too much like anger's cousin. Disappointment. Abandon. Broadway's shoulders sag. "Not that I'm one to talk. I didn't visit much either until Goliath came and asked me to come home. I didn't realize how bad Hudson had gotten while I was away. While we were away. Lex, he's forgetting everything." Broadway's hands unfold and he stares at his empty palms with lost, sad eyes. "He doesn't know what year it is half the time. Sometimes he's asking for Jeffery, or Brooklyn, or he's worried about the Pack attacking, or the Vikings … he's waning. Fast. There isn't … there isn't much time. And if we're not all there, together, when the time comes … we'll all regret it. I know we will."
Lexington stares at the door to the club. It is closed. He tries to imagine a future without Hudson in it. He cannot see it. It does not exist. It cannot exist.
Clan are meant to be whole. Together.
Something in his chest squeezes painfully. He grabs a fistful of poncho.
His clan has been fractured for a long time. Lexington can't remember what together feels like anymore. When was the last time they were all in the same room at the same time? He closes his eyes and he remembers - that first night in Manhattan, waking from a thousand year sleep, and seeing them, all of them, once again. He remembers thinking, I will never leave any of you again. I couldn't bear it.
When he opens his eyes again, they're damp. He reaches for Broadway's hands and blue talons fill the spaces between his green ones.
Lexington says, "I'm sorry I've been gone for so long. I didn't know it was so bad."
Broadway says, "I think we all knew but no one wanted to face it."
Lexington thinks that Broadway is probably right.
The door bursts open with a bubble of sound. Cyclops is smiling when she opens it, her mouth open to say something cocky, but then she stops, sees them, stares at their joined hands.
"Everything okay?" She meets Lex's eyes and knows that it's not. She gives a slow nod. "You go. I'll handle this."
Lexington starts to stand. "I'm sorry, Cy -"
"Hey, no apologies needed. Boyfriend emergencies, man. I totally get it."
"Cyclops." Broadway stands too, one hand on the small of Lex's back. "Do you know where Brooklyn might be?"
Cyclops runs her tongue ring loudly on the back of her teeth and sighs. "I might have an idea."