A/N: Hellboy, as a teen and young adult, had held little to no hope of experiencing the depth of love that could come his way – until Liz. A one-shot type chapter addition. Reviews are very appreciated!

Hellboy:

When I was, let's see - maybe sixteen, I had to drag my tail into Pop's office for a refresher on the subject of females being a hands-off issue. Pop was the soul of that example; most maybe he'd just given up on having a lady, a long time ago. But I knew already he wouldn't have it for me to be dosed with anything to dry me up. I'd never gone buckwild anywhere I was deployed, running around with the short arm in my fist, like some higher-ups were afraid of. More to the point, I wanted a woman for me, sometime in my future – but I saw the complications. I love Pop, and he must have known plenty about the way I was feeling, sometime in his younger life. I couldn't ask him about that. He's never had a lady around, not while I've been here. He buried that part of his life under a pile of research, investigations and keeping me with him, to wherever the BPRD moved. I hope he didn't do it all because of me. I would have learned from that, seeing him happy with someone of his own. Maybe she could have accepted that Pop was raising me, been sort of a mother. No point in thinking about missing that. Maybe she would have wanted me to go away. Do I want to know that he stayed alone just to give me a life?

But right then, Pop stuck with his old instructions. Nothing I could live with, anymore. Sure, I treat all women with respect, like he taught me, and the same goes for anybody else who deserves it. Maybe I'm not always the best judge of that. I hardly ever hold back when it comes to flat-out jerks. But it couldn't be the way Pop wanted me to accept. Dammit, (sorry, Sir) it's a long, long life sentence.

The lecture was the same as what he gave me after I was official and ready to go to work. How was anybody, including me, going to know how I might react to my kid impulses? Pop was afraid that I might take it to the limit, get myself in a real dump of trouble with civilian law. And my limits can go pretty far, maybe out of sight. Exact same reason the Bureau lets me loose to smash down whatever the paranormal regions throw at me. I'm the only one who can do it. Too much of an only one, in other ways.

. . .

Pop would have been really pissed if he'd got wind of how some older agents had me under their wing, were teaching me everything he wanted to avoid. It wasn't about if they were right or wrong. It was the late 1950's, and they were pulling me into their world, and whatever they told me, there was no way I'd pass it by him to ask if it was real and true.

Like when our teams were on flights to missions, I listened, but I didn't ask any questions. Some of the guys weren't short on complaints about their women, even insulting. I was most probably never going to meet those women, but was this the way their guys were supposed to talk about them? I couldn't see that being right for me to do anytime, if I had a girl. And I heard bragging, yeah, about their pieces on the side and the details, descriptions of lady parts and how they slobbered all over them. When it got all around the circle, they looked at me. I was a lot bigger than every one of them, so I guess they mostly forgot. Except Cooper, who hollered out, "You perverts, give your head a shake! Red's only fourteen!" Good save. I had nothing to say, and I didn't even know how to get started for making anything up.

It wasn't like they helped a damned thing when it came to how I was feeling. Just that it happened to all of them, too, and they understood me – that was something. Seems that all Pop ever repeated to me for a lot of years was, "Don't. Never." He couldn't stop me from getting my own ideas. I still knew when and how to be good. I could look at one of our nurses when she walked by me, and think about her putting her soft hands on me. Didn't show it, though. No point in thinking about touching and being touched. But she was in my dreams. Wet dreams. Not something I ever asked about, but I heard somebody say it once, and put it together. I listened. I learned stuff, a little at a time.

And I worked out. Man, did I work out! Snotty, I guess, to keep going when Pop showed up to try to talk me into slowing down. 'Neurotic sublimation', he said to me. I didn't even stop to ask him what that meant. If Pop thought I was getting too ripped and bulky for my age, tough! He wasn't taking that away from me, too. And the rest of the guys hanging around the weight stations understood about that.

. . .

I didn't mind that the guys kind of made me their project. One night, they snuck me out to a stag party in the hangar. Now that I think about it, my friends were doing me a back-handed favour. Not because there was a lot of booze and smoke around. I liked to drink a little, and I grabbed a cigar or cigarette whenever I could get one. So we talked shop and some trash, got a little or a lot drunk, and had lots of laughs, like always.

Then Eldridge set up a projector and pulled down a rolled-up white screen, and everybody dragged their chairs up close, bugging Eldridge to get the reel started. I guess it was supposed to be more of my education, because Sanger beside me gave me a funny look, told me to pay attention, and punched my arm.

They were porn movies, all right – maybe twenty in a row, but short, in black and white, some with no sound and lousy focus. I listened and watched around to how almost everybody reacted with blowing razz and a lot of pretend puking, but I was quiet. I knew better, in case I looked stupid. It was amateur night – every poke looked sad and ugly, and the garbage dog-style action made me sorry for all those women backed up on their knees.

Finally, when the show was all shut down, I hoped for nothing said, but no such luck.

Eldridge was grinning straight at me, along with everybody else. "Well, young Red, did you learn something?"

I was the only, and biggest damned virgin in the house. I flicked ashes off my cigar to buy a little time. "Did you see me taking notes? If that's what they are, those actors are really out of shape," I said, "and it looks dumb that the guy in all of them, takes off everything but his socks and his watch."

I didn't believe it ever had to be like that, cheap and sleazy. There had to be a lot better to being with a woman. I did learn a lot that night. I went back to my own room, laid down, and made my own movie. I had to close my eyes to bring her.

First, she had a great face and long hair. Her skin was red like mine, then changed through every colour, same as her hair. She had intelligent eyes that looked right at me, not afraid, not shocked. She smiled like an angel and touched my mouth with those lips. And that was something good. She wanted to lie skin to skin with me, all the way down. My stone arm was okay to her, so I hugged her real gentle, protective-like. I must have been drunk enough to be talking to myself, but I was saying it to her.

"Stay. Please stay."

And she answered me, all warm and happy, "Red, I'm here. Only for you. Kiss me."

I knew I had something better to give, nothing like I'd seen in those lousy movies. She was everything good. And my imagination kept going until I went volcano. The downer was opening my eyes.

. . .

It's not great to remember, but it happened. I was maybe twenty, and a continent away from home, so nobody would care that I took up an offer that chased me hard for a whole hour. It was at a rough bar I'd picked that night, and she looked the part – kind of a giant bodybuilder woman. Someone I couldn't hurt. Right up front, she said she'd had it with guys who didn't come near her size. No bills changed hands, and she got a room and showed up with her 'roided girlfriend. Looked like twins. I was jaded enough to figure that they only wanted to see what I felt like, or maybe had a bet going. It was just plain better than nothing, and then I was gone.

. . .

After I'd lived long enough to get old and smarter, and resigned to being alone, I fell hard for Liz Sherman. And I gave up the strain of trying to make it work. It felt hopeless, anyway. She was a mixed-up kid, running from herself and the Bureau and returning so many times, I never knew where in the world she would end up. Maybe both of us really grew up at the same time, and when I got the chance, I finally knew the right thing to say to her. And she came to me, to stay. I waited a long time to give her the best of what I learned. If it's not enough, I'll try harder.

I'll always remember the old agents for making me search for what's real and true.

Liz:

Red really meant it last night, asking me to get him down off the ceiling. Considering his way of giving compliments, that one was pretty high praise. Making love is one thing he just won't take for granted, because most of his life was a desert when it came to that. He was so willing to be taught what pleased me, and never once asked how I learned any of it. Or for how I pleased him. A smart woman knows that her man really doesn't want that information. He should know that, too.

It feels right to make him happy, feels good that just my hand on his face can begin to smooth over a nasty day. My tough guy needs me to hold him when he comes home, like nobody outside would ever suspect. He needs me to love touching him. When he looks at me a certain way, or grabs me tight, I can feel him thinking how he might never have had this. I have the Red who was ready to nest. And what he gives back, is just as one of a kind as he is.

He lived a long time without any source of true comfort and empathy, and I don't count the exclusively male agents of his early BPRD years. They wouldn't have been long on those qualities, through the dictates of the times. I'm glad Red didn't absorb the existing double standard when it came to women. But I can't blame him for valuing that attachment. When I became an orphan, I needed somebody, too.

I really believe that the prospect of never being touched, loved or wanted can ultimately crush down a human spirit, and it had to be true for Red. It's the next thing to losing all hope. Being Hellboy would have made him look like nothing but a brute fighter who needed only to win.

So few people living around Red for the past fifty years had given much thought that such a physical rock could want a tender relationship with a mate. And those who did, decided that it had to be left entirely to him. How could any of them help, really? There was nobody else like Red, except in the hell region where he was born...not that, never!

In the early years when we hung out a lot together, just as friends, I was too much of a kid to notice. But now I know how Red became mature enough later, to hide his loneliness from me. I still looked for his company when I was older, and more like a woman, I began to read how much he needed to be wanted. So did I, but I was too afraid to cross the line and let our friendship get weird. After just a little while watching TV at his side, I would find that I had to look up at him, and his eyes warmed on me like he was seeing something precious. I must have given him so many mixed messages in those years, yanked his heart around and hurt him pretty often, without meaning to. Whenever I turned up at his door, he let his gruff shell fall away, and I thought he would always be there for me, no matter what I did. I let him wait and wait, and after all, he never did give up on me.

When we lost ourselves and each other to dark powers, we left all their corpses behind when we fought for our way back. Making a life together, now...I won't let myself think of what could get in our way. The love, the desire, everything we need, is here. We take it everywhere we go. He'll be an 'only one' forever, but until then, he's mine. Red can be the biggest teddy bear, and the biggest pain in the ass, but for me, his heart is bigger than all of that. I'll only ever get stronger for loving him.