It is a day off. Lung grants one per year, which is enough. The sun begins to rise. Its light warms the skin and the path to the apartment.
Four rooms in total. A bedroom, small, with a twin mattress and plain sheets. Enough to sleep on, not enough to soften. An armory, where my equipment rests. A bathroom, containing unscented hair products and soap. The smallest things matter when trying to kill the more dangerous Thinkers.
My kitchen, well furnished and well stocked, with a small stone tablet. I run my fingers over it before I do anything else.
A twist in my heart, unpleasant and bitter, but a true feeling.
First is the chocolate. 72% cacao, diced. Darker than most can stand. Four ounces for the recipe, four for the cook. I bite into a piece.
Something familiar stirs within me.
Half a cup of heavy cream for the recipe. Three servings of umeshu for the chef in the first hour, another one every hour afterwards. The sweet/sour flavor burns the first time, as well as the second. On the last I remember to breathe out while drinking and the liquor hits my stomach, a line of not-quite warmth.
It's not the alcohol moving the thing within me. It's the taste.
The cream goes into a saucepan to heat. Once scalded, it is whisked with the chocolate until smooth. I add vanilla to soften the flavor, the scent filling the otherwise empty room.
Something moves. Warmth.
The molds come out, twelve different flowers. Each is filled, and at the end I swallow the unpoured mixture.
More of something. Light.
Each treat gets a unique topping. The spider lily gets cherries, the hydrangea a blueberry, the daffodil a coconut curl, color to color.
The faint memory of laughter, mocking in a kind way. Lightness, gossamer thin.
The chocolates are left to cool in the refrigerator. It is eight oh seven. Two fifteen and this place will be empty.
Clean the knives and guns. Check the pins on the grenades. Wash. Dress, passing over the costume for a black suit, expensive but not ostentatiously so. Steel cufflinks, white shirt. A stiletto in one sleeve, a small pistol and one additional clip of ammunition under one arm. Simple black shoes. Unremarkable overall save for the wide and worn orange tie, faint pink butterflies crossing up and to the right. I knot it carefully, gentle with the fabric.
The corner of a smile. The flash of something bright. Warmth.
The rest of the time is spent waiting and thinking of nothing in particular, and I drink a glass of liquor every hour, warmed up enough to savor it. I eat the plum once the bottle is empty.
With every swallow, a twinge. On and off. It escapes before it can be examined. The plum tastes like guilt.
At two the chocolates come out. The next fifteen minutes are spent packaging them into a wooden box, three by four, small enough to be carried in one hand. The stone tablet goes under the other arm, opposite the gun.
A trip to the florist's shop. An arrangement of cypress and roses join the chocolates. A quick call to the gang and a car comes by ten minutes later, stops to take its passenger, and leaves for the shrine.
It is small, barely more than an archway and a hut. It is enough. The keeper accepts the bills with silent thanks and places a sign over the boundary.
Inside, I light incense and kneel. I place the tablet on the altar, next to the chocolates and another bottle of plum liquor. I open my wallet, take out a photo and leave it standing against the bottle.
The strongest twist of the day. Something wet falls down my face. I taste salt. More twists.
I eat the chocolates, one by one, savoring the flavor of each before washing my mouth with a sip of water to cleanse my palate.
With every taste, the twist straightens out.
By the end I almost remember the face in the photo.
Almost.
Sometimes I can't believe my husband is an adult.
"Ethan... why?" I ask, staring at the wicker basket. Inside is a dog roughly the size of two fists. I think most people would find it adorable.
"Because if you hold still and I do this," he says, picking up the dog and placing it on my shoulder, "I get to see a puppy on Puppy." He smiles at that, big and dumb and goofy.
I look him in the eye, studiously ignoring the warm little licks at my ear. "Do you actually want a pet or did you just want to make that terrible pun?" I can't tell if he's serious yet.
He nods, still smiling. "Do you want a pet?" No, it's a joke.
I grab the dog off my shoulder and put it back in the basket. "As nice as this is, I don't really want to take care of a dog." Full-time heroes in a city with an unreasonable number of aggressive capes don't have enough hours in the day to take care of pets. A shame, honestly. I like dogs.
Ethan shrugs. "Good, I borrowed it from Michael. Would hate to have to ask the super-secret black-ops agents that we're not supposed to know about to 'disappear' him." As we walk out the front of the Protectorate HQ he leaves the basket on the counter with a small envelope attached. "Make sure Michael gets his dog back!" he yells as the door closes. I roll my eyes as I fish for our car keys. And find them missing.
"Damn, do you have my keys Ethan?" I ask, looking up at him. He pats at his pockets, face going from hopeful to concerned to disappointed.
"I do not," he says, carefully enunciating each word. I resist the urge to slap him. He lost his own keys a week ago and we've been carpooling ever since. Saves on gas, but this is the natural consequence of entrusting small objects to a man who used to crash cars for a living.
"We'll have to borrow a car from the lot until the keys turn up," I mutter, heading back to the building. A short explanation later and we're perusing our options.
"No Ethan, we cannot drive a PRT van with a mounted foam cannon," I state plainly, walking past him staring at the turret in awe. Men. "Come, this sedan looks nice." Nondescript and small enough that parking shouldn't be a problem.
"What about that one?" he asks, tearing his eyes away from a cross between a helicopter and a jet to point at a shadowed corner.
"What about it?" I ask, moving over to examine it. A sports car of some kind in silver and blue.
"It's a Lamborghini Murcielago," he says, eyes glazing over. "6.5 liter V-12 engine. Zero to sixty in less than three seconds. Here," he points to a small marking on the driver side mirror, "You can see the mark. That means they upgraded it with an automatic twelve gear transmission and Tinkertech materials, dramatically increasing the mileage."
"And the insurance premiums on it must be through the roof," I finish, already done looking at it. "We're taking the vehicle we can afford to wreck." What is it with men and cars? They get you from point A to point B. In costume, both of us can move faster than almost anything with four wheels. Maybe it's just about the amount of money involved.
"What, you don't trust us to keep a car intact?" he asks, dutifully walking up next to me and shortening his steps to match my pace.
"I trust that things will go wrong at some point," I answer, sliding into the driver's seat of the sedan while Ethan falls into the passenger's. "And both of us could conceivably use a car as a projectile, so I would prefer the car be one that we won't feel too bad about losing."
We're about halfway home and bickering over what to eat for dinner when Ethan's phone rings. He holds up a finger, pausing the conversation. I bring my eyes back to the road, keeping an eye out for less sensible people. No one's a good driver but some are worse than others.
"Puppy, wanna eat something nice?" he asks out of nowhere.
"Depends on how nice," I respond, turning smoothly. "Will we have to dress up?" I can't comprehend how some of the other heroes fight in heels. Yes, they may have ranged abilities. Yes, you can stab a person with one. But all of them have to have a secondary Thinker power to stay standing in the middle of a cape fight.
"Pretty nice," he answers. "Apparently Alyss and Robin changed plans last minute and decided to spend the night in. Thing is, the tickets to the show they wanted to go to are non-refundable."
"Shame," I say, mentally screaming at the fender bender in front of us. Traffic grinds to a halt and I lean back against my seat.
"Anyway, the ticket covers a three-course meal, a showing of Twelfth Night and a boat trip. You wanna try it out?" he asks, thumb poised.
I shake my head. "Nah, it's been a long day. I just want to relax and go to bed." The ABB have quieted down and the E88 haven't been as violent but that doesn't mean there isn't still the occasional clash that wrecks half a city block.
That, and getting launched through a wall by Krieg hurt.
Ethan shrugs. "Guess it's a night in for us as well then," he says, typing away a response. A whoosh heralds the message's departure and we finally get through the snarl of nearly-parked cars. Thank God.
I open up the door to the apartment to be greeted with sight of rose petals. So. Many. Rose petals. A trail of them leads to the kitchen, snakes out to the bathroom, then doubles back on itself to go to the bedroom. Some Aleph music that I don't usually listen to in public starts playing, and a pile of chocolate-covered orange peels rests in a bowl by the door next to a rather nice profile of me in costume without the mask.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and sigh mournfully. "It's the fourteenth, isn't it?"
"Yup," Ethan says, walking by me, grabbing an orange peel, and popping it into his mouth.
"I forgot," I answer, not opening my eyes. So this is what being the oblivious one feels like. "The puppy was actually for me, wasn't it?" Did he buy a dog because I might have been interested in one?
"Yeah, but Michael actually does want a dog," Ethan starts, heading over to the kitchen and pulling an apron over his head. "I promised to let him have the one I picked out if you decided not to keep the fuzzball." He pulls out a bag of meat, two pans, and bottle of wine.
"The car too?" I ask, grabbing a few candied peels of my own and sinking into an armchair facing the kitchen. Sometimes I really do underestimate him. That's usually not such a good thing. Usually.
"Loaned by the dealer, who worked with me back in the day." I begin to get up. "He's out now," Ethan assures me, and I sit back down to the sound of meat frying as a steak makes contact with hot iron. "But he didn't say no when I asked if I could borrow it to test the waters. If you didn't want it, he'd get it back at the end of the day. No real risk."
I shake my head and chew on a treat. Citrus and cocoa. Delicious.
"And the dinner?" I ask. That one might have been tempting, actually. It was also the one that would've been the most difficult to set up. A play about love on Valentine's Day? Seats would've sold like nothing else.
"Sent the tickets to Alyss and Robin, who won't be having a night in, as a matter of fact," he answers.
"When did you start planning this?" I ask.
"Last year," he answers, not missing a beat. "I am very good at planning things out."
"Yes you are," I murmur softly, looking around at the positively sickening levels of romance that surround me. "Even when it's not reciprocated."
"Eh," he shrugs. "Not the point. If you didn't want a dog, a new car, or a night on the town, so be it. We can spend it here, eating food we know is bad for us while watching shitty movies, then relax in the tub until we wrinkle into raisins." He turns away from the stove for a moment, eyes meeting mine across the room. "That sound good to you?"
I nod. "Sounds perfect."