eleven

Growing up in Malibu, Brooke always wanted to live on the beachside. She loved the houses on the stilts, with the vehicles parked underneath and the sand tracked up the driveways. The mailboxes painted to match the house; teal, lime green, sky blue, sunset orange, yellow. Outlandish colors. Colors that did not pass in small towns in the middle of the country. Colors that earned second glances in small towns.

It was her dream to live in a sky blue stilted house, with a mailbox to match, with her car parked underneath it and a back porch that looked out on the pinks and oranges over the sunset on the oceanic horizon.

When she graduated from Godolkin and was sent to Malibu again, she made it her reality. She had the money to spare. Why wouldn't she?

Except the dream wasn't so dreamlike now that she could live it. It wasn't so magical when she was hardly home, her life spent out on the streets, keeping people safe and drowning in it. When she graduated, Brooke thought that all people born with powers wanted to use them to be actual superheroes. That was the entire point of it – at least the entire point of Godolkin.

So why, pray tell, was she fighting people off in the streets so often? Why were half of those people power-ridden? And why in God's name was she the only one, the only one, actually doing it?

The only exception was Soldier Boy, and even that made her do a double take, because she sincerely thought that man could only fight green screen technology.

She had a police scanner set up in her kitchen window, set out facing civilization for a better signal. It was always on so she always knew when people were in trouble.

That night, Brooke turned it off. That night, Brooke sat with her head in her hands and elbows propped on her wooden island countertop. The sun was setting. She was not sitting on her back porch to watch it dawn on the ocean's surface.

She was wallowing. Absolutely wallowing on herself. Drowning without a drop of water on herself.

It'd been months since she started hooking up with Soldier Boy. Yes. Started. It was ongoing. She was mad about it, too. Months, and nothing changed in the world. The only thing that changed was her mindset.

Brooke was working so hard at something that no one else in the world was.

Brooke was trying. Everyone else was not.

So she was going to try not trying, just for tonight.

It was almost 1983. The new year was just around the corner, beckoning her forward, in its palm a new dosage of crime and scandal for her to deal with. And she was so, so exhausted that for that moment, she wished she could freeze time right then.

So, she did.

Turned off the radio.

Listened to the faint echo of waves crashing on the shoreline through her shut patio doors.

And she cried.

Oh, she cried a lot. It's embarrassing, actually, how many tears fall when you finally stop holding them behind the thick barriers of your walls.

How could she do so much and feel so little?

Brooke tries to not let the sadness swallow her alive, but it is. She can feel its teeth on her skin, eating at her. She let it have a taste and now it wants the whole meal, all four courses.

The sun has set now. And she is alone. Truly alone. And what legacy does she leave behind except a blip on the map? One hero out of thousands? One that doesn't matter because she avoids the press like the plague, so what does her identity matter to those vultures? She does not offer her life and her identity to them, so they cast her aside, meanwhile she's killing herself trying to keep their sisters and daughters safe in the city they call home. She calls home.

There's a faint, subtle knock on her door. Three little pounds on the wood. Then two. She wants to roll her eyes, but it's endearing, how he's built this secret knock to let her know that it's him.

It's also terrifying, that she felt safe enough to let him see her home.

Terrifying that she feels endeared to his quirks.

Soldier Boy does not even wait for her to invite him in, he just walks in. He was a bag with grease staining the brown paper bottom clutched in his one fist, and two milkshakes with melting whipped cream and cherries sliding off the top in one of those paper mache drink carriers in his other hand.

He's crossing through her darkened living room and into the darkened kitchen, setting the stuff down on her island countertop before he even starts to look around for her. His eyes find her quickly. Her heartbeat is in tune with his, isn't it? At this point? Even in the dark, he could spot her.

His jaw clenches immediately. She watches it flex, watches his eyes steel over.

"What's wrong?"

She wipes the remaining tearstreaks from her cheeks. Embarrassing. Utterly embarrassing. They've kept their real names quiet from each other, kept as anonymous as they could minus their hero identities, and crying in front of him feels like a step past that line they've made.

Brooke steels her face just as she watched his eyes a moment ago. "Did you get fries?"

"Rose," his voice is deep and guttural, a warning before the storm, "what happened?"

"Something does not have to happen for someone to cry," she says, walking around the counter. She shoves her hand into the bag and, aha, a loose bag fry. She pops it into her mouth, speaks around the chewing. "Sometimes, you just cry. I know. It's foreign to you."

"So tell me what's wrong."

And how fun it is to be demanded of by a man, sticking a red and white striped straw into a strawberry milkshake. Angry squinted eyebrows, narrowed eyes zeroed in on her, his mouth puckered like a fish around the straw as he sucks up the ice cream.

"Don't you ever just feel like this is useless?" She asks, tilting her head to the side. His lips come off of the straw with a pop, dry. No lingering milkshake clinging to them. Must be thick. She should get spoons.

Brooke starts rummaging through her silverware drawer to avoid looking at him as she continues. "I'm sure you don't. You pose for cameras, you have people who love you for breathing, people who watch every segment you feature in on television. But I just feel so..."

"Yes," Soldier Boy says, and Brooke's rifling stops. Her fingers are closed around two spoons, but she can't get them out. Her hand is stuck in the drawer, her head is downturned, staring at her assortment, but she can't get them out. Can't look at him. "I do."

"Why do we do this?" Her voice is so soft. Her ceiling fan is squeaky, always left running, and Brooke is never home to remember to turn it off or get it fixed. She hardly hears herself over that squeaking. "What do we do this for?"

Soldier Boy is at her side. His presence is so commanding. He's been inside of her, and yet this is the most intimate she's felt they've been, with him at her side, his eyes boring hers. "I can tell you why I do it." She won't answer. It feels like too much to answer him, and at the same time, somehow too ridiculous. He's holding a milkshake. She's holding two spoons, her hand stuck in a drawer because she's frozen. Frozen in place, frozen in time, frozen in her life. "I do it because of you, ironically."

Her eyes dart up to him. Then roll. "God. Don't lie. I don't need a fake, inspirational speel–"

"Rose," his voice is as soft as hers was, that stupid fan threatening to overpower their conversation, "why do you think I came to Malibu?"

Brooke nods toward the beachview. It's why she came back. Why she didn't protest it. Her sky blue house with the matching mailbox, her car parked underneath.

"No." And his tone is so gentle, his fingers so soft as they close around hers and pull them out of the drawer. "Because I heard of a girl who graduated from Godolkin and demanded Vought give her a job. A real job. A girl who saw that, back at HQ, they don't do jackshit but pose as like show ponies and parade us around. I heard of a girl who ran this city like the fucking mayor could only dream of."

Brooke has not once kissed Soldier Boy. It is, by far, the last step sealing their fate. It makes it too serious. It turns the not after today into not more than this into what are we and she cannot, for the life of her, face that question.

She's been okay with standing firmly behind that line.

This singular moment is the first time she's considered kissing him.

She's even leaning up, right on her toes, about to do it, when his breath grazes her lips. When he says, "Plus, I heard she was smoking hot. A real maneater."

The back of her hand juts out before she can stop it, colliding with the firm muscle of his chest. Soldier Boy laughs, and they're still so close.

His eyes track down her features and land on her mouth.

And that's when he kisses her.

It's softer than she ever expected it to be, though his lips are chapped and a little bit raw on the inside from that stupid straw. He holds her chin between his thumb and his index finger, tilting her head up into it. She almost doesn't kiss back. She's almost convinced she's incapable of it.

She does.

It breaks her heart.

Because now she is going to have to ask for his name.