1
Coffee.If there wasn’t a cup on the table in three seconds, today would be the day I destroy mankind. Let the countdown to supervillainy begin. One. Twenty-four hours of ensuring the city’s heroes didn’t die had taken its toll. Two. Our so-called saviors were no help as they destroyed everything in their path. Three?—
“One cup of liquid death for you.” Griffin set the cup on the table. “And it looks like it couldn’t come soon enough.”
To this day, I have no idea why we started coming to the HideOut as part of our morning ritual. The coffee shop served as a hub for the community. While not exclusively gay clientele, the owner, Chad, and his husband didn’t hide their relationship, and other gay men took notice. Now you couldn’t throw an espresso cup without hitting a gay hipster on a coffee date.
Alejandro bit into his avocado toast, but that didn’t prevent him from speaking. “He did that thing again.”
“What thing?” I asked, knowing full well I wouldn’t like the answer. Three sets of eyes fixated on me.
Bernard leaned forward, placing one of his massive paws over my hand. “Xander, were you plotting the destruction of mankind again?”
“No.” The coffee burned, almost stinging my tongue, but I didn’t care. After a night of keeping patients from crossing the threshold to death, it had worn me raw. It would probably have been smart to skip breakfast with the guys and head home, but they’d all agree—sometimes I’m too stubborn for my own good.
“Definitely destruction of the world,” Alejandro said as he shoved the last bite into his mouth. “Is there a coffee equivalent to being hangry? Congry?”
As usual, Alejandro rambled, no longer taking part in the actual conversation. He could be flighty, but he was also one of the funniest people I had ever met. Give him a minute and he’ll come back to the conversation with something outlandish that would cause everybody to pause and chuckle.
Bernard, on the other hand, didn’t have a humorous bone in his body. The man woke up serious, as if the guilt of the world rested solely on his shoulders. It was part of why we never made it to a second date. It also didn’t help that when it came time for one of us to mount the other, werealized that tops make terrible bottoms. Thankfully, a night of awkward sex didn’t diminish a long-standing friendship.
“Rough night?” Griffin asked.
And then there was Griffin, the newest acquisition to the group. Geek extraordinaire, and overly nice guy. Everybody at the table would agree that I had a bit of a temper issue. I liked to think of Griffin as the counter to that. He was generally mellow, and the only things that ever got him excited were art and comics. Oh, and supers.
“The Doctors of Disaster struck the financial district.” There was no way to hide rolling my eyes, so I let those whites shine brightly. “Third-tier villains who somehow scored a shipment of vaporizing tech from the B’Nethian aliens. It was chaos.”
“Huffee,” Alejandro blurted out. “He’s huffee.”
Bernard spat his coffee into his cup. Griffin’s lips curled as he fought off a laugh. Even as I shot daggers at each of them, they burst out laughing. Okay, I had to admit, maybe, once in a great while, I got “huffee.” It came with seeing the worst mankind had to offer. This was the reason I came to breakfast with these three every morning. They served as a reset, a reminder that not all of the universe burned in a horrible train wreck.
“As you were saying.” Bernard hid his smirk with a cup of coffee.
“It started at the banks. At that hour they’re closed andonly have electronic security, no big deal for me. But then they moved on to some research labs on the east side. There were night crews working and things got messy.”
“Who saved the day?”
I admired Griffin’s naïveté, no lie. He truly believed that superheroes flew in, saved the day, and the world went back to normal. It wasn’t just him. Most of the normal people thought the heroes were these godlike saviors. No, for those of us on the front lines dealing with the fallout, we knew the truth. Superheroes were just as bad as the villains they fought.
“You mean, which superhero used his flame abilities and left a man with second-degree burns? Or which set of laser eyes caused a floor to collapse, trapping three inside?”
Griffin leaned back in his chair, painfully aware he had struck a nerve. I didn’thatesuperheroes, though he might argue that fact with how I spoke about them. I hated that they came in, beat up a bad guy, took a few photos, offered a few quotes for the magazines, and then left. Behind them, death, destruction, and paramedics like me see to the victims after each battle.
I ground my teeth at the thought. Ishouldsee to the victims, but as part of the Supers Emergency Medical Services, the only patients I could treat were the supposed heroes who saved the day. Bitter? Who me?
“Sorry, apparently I’mhuffee.”
“I don’t want to harp on your personal hygiene.”Alejandro grabbed one of my hands, holding my fingers upright. “But what have we told you about blood at the breakfast table?”
Normally I’d wait till I got home to scrub away the filth, but a rebar spike had impaled Heron. His wings or forearm blades were no match for hemorrhaging and blood loss. This is where my team came in. The Hero Brigade. Somebody in the government thought the lives of heroes were more important than that burn victim or the people under the rubble. Instead of saving average humans, I was tasked with saving people with abilities.
“Like I said, it was a long night.” I stared at the red under my nails. I didn’t need to check the HeroApp™ to know there was a big black shield next to Heron’s name. He hadn’t survived the ride to the hospital.
“Topic switch.” No medic enjoyed talking about a call where they lost the patient. “So, Griffin, getting railed regularly?”
Alejandro’s eyes lit up. Leave it to our resident sexpert to jump at the opportunity. “Is Sebastian a post-sex cuddle covered in cum kind of guy, or does he instantly need a shower?”
Now it was Griffin giving me a death glare. Nothing swapped topics faster than bad dates and horrible sex. But when those weren’t available, talking about Griffin’s hunky boyfriend was a good filler.
