Madame Science Draft 2 Chap 1

Hey guys! So I've been hard at work on Madame Science all this time! I'm into draft two and thought you'd like to see what will (probably) be the first chapter! It needs another round of editing, but I'm happy with the tone this sets for the rest of the book.

Enjoy!

------

Chapter One

It’s a bad night for Scott. The type of night where he’s up and pacing, footsteps so fast and light in the other room that they’re white noise. No louder than the drone of cars outside of our apartment or the hum of streetlights and air conditioners working all up and down our block. If I didn’t know the sound of his footsteps as well as I did, they’d probably have faded out of my awareness within seconds. Just another wall of noise in a city that keeps on talking.

But I do know the sound of his footsteps like the rush of blood in my own veins. I know that the brief break--a shot of silence in the droning--is him tripping over the coffee table as he finally (finally) wears himself out.

I blink at the ceiling. I’ve been waiting for that hitch in his gait. It’s time to go in.

I swing my legs out of bed. It’s a myth that Los Angeles never gets cold; Los Angeles is a desert and deserts get cold at night. The chill in the floor works its way quickly through my thin socks, sinking into my skin, and encroaching on my bones. I shiver, arms rubbing over my the long sleeves of my nightshirt, and pad to the door.

It’s closed, of course, which means I was right to stay in bed for as long as I did. Scott only closes the door when he really doesn’t want me to hear him wearing a track in our living room rug. There’s a soft tapestry thrown over the wood--a pretty impressionist print of falling leaves--and I pretend it’s there for decoration most of the time. Really it’s just another of Scott’s barriers that he can reach for at any moment. Cloth dampens sound and it’s probably as close to soundproof he thinks he can get without tipping me off.

Alright, maybe I read into the tapestry too much. I probably read into a lot of Scott’s behavior too much. Part of it is that I love him. Part of it is that I’ve got my own problems. 

I’d say sue me, but my problems aren’t the problem tonight. Scott’s are.

The living room isn’t just the living room--it’s also the dining room and a good portion of the foyer. Scott and I aren’t hurting for money--not by a long shot--but neither of us feel the need for the sort of sprawling houses we could find in the suburbs. We find comfort in our space, in the heart of the city, where people may notice our comings and goings, but certainly don’t remember them.

The living room is deceptively empty. There’s our brown leather couch, the one with a rainbow of throw pillows because Scott and I argued the whole way through Ikea about color schemes. There’s the little black coffee table stacked high with papers Scott’s yet to grade and the red rug I laid in the center of the room without ever asking Scott if he found the atomic designs on it unpalatable. There’s our kitchen table, light oak, still bearing dinner dishes. They never quite make it into the dishwasher until the morning when Scott’s heading out for work and deep enough into “teacher mode” that cleaning up messes is more reflex than anything.

Something flashes next to the large, bay window overlooking the street. Yellow light is filtering through the blinds, constant and steady, but I’m practiced enough that I catch the next flash easily. On bad nights, it takes Scott conscious effort to slow down enough to pass for a regular civilian. On bad nights, Scott doesn’t have a lot of energy to dedicate to that effort. On bad nights, he knows better than try and pretend for me.

I don’t say anything as I step fully into the room. I don’t try to look for him again; the only thing I’ll be able to see is him flashing by even if I try. Instead, I walk calmly to the couch, sit down, and draw my feet up under me to protect them from the cold. The leather heats up quickly, thank god. Sometimes I wish I’d negotiated harder for my old couch. It had butt warmers.

Scott flashes in front of me and stops, vibrating on the spot. His green eyes are shadowed by the early hour and his brown hair is swept back from the wind generated by his speed. He’s not breathing hard, but at one point he was. I can see rings of sweat under his arms, along his collar, turning his light green t-shirt black. It makes the material stick to his muscles in interesting ways and it says a lot about the status of my heart that I find sweat interesting instead of gross.

“I,” Scott says, his voice devoid of any inflection, “don’t want to talk about it, Christine.”

Two months ago, that might have hurt, but I’ve learned a lot since then. So I say, “Good, neither do I, it’s probably too depressing for three am,” and wait.

Scott stares at me. He doesn’t have the classic superhero jawline--thank god--but I can still see the sharpness of his bone structure when the muscles in his jaw flex. He...flickers, for lack of a better word. I hear wind all around me, pushing my blonde hair against my cheek before disappearing, and fight not to tense. Scott’s not racing around me to blindside me. He’s pacing, trying to wrestle with something that I can’t see. He stops in front of me again, this time without the coffee table between us. It puts his shins pretty close to where my knees are poking over the edge of the seat, forcing me to look up to meet his eyes.

“Do you…” Scott breaks off. He struggles for a moment, worrying at his lip. It always looks so painful when he tries to open up. Like rust scraping up his throat. He asks, “Do you ever forget the screams?”

Oooh, we’re going there tonight. I’ve been told that categorizing people isn’t a good habit, but I’d argue that I’m not categorizing Scott when I recognize this as a bad hero night. Totally different from a bad teacher night or a bad night in general.

It’s my least favorite type of night, to be honest, because it’s exactly the sort of thing I’m not equipped to handle.

“Whose screams are you thinking about?” I ask instead of answering. The long answer has too much to do with my issues; the short one is the wrong one. 

Scott’s eyes flutter and he takes such a huge breath that it rocks him. When he exhales, his answer is almost lost in the sound of air hissing out between his teeth. “Theboyinthebus.” He falls silent, waiting. He starts vibrating again, head blurring as he looks out the window, back to me, then at his feet. 

It takes me a moment to decipher his words but, when I do, I have to focus on my breathing to keep him from seeing how it breaks my heart. There’s...always a lot on hero nights. It’s never about him or how he’s perceived by the public when something doesn’t go right during a mission. It’s always about his teammates or the bystanders or the victims that got caught in the crossfires.

Sometimes it’s about the ones who didn’t make it.

The-boy-in-the-bus is a fresh wound, barely two weeks old. The battle then had been short, brutal, and ugly after the chase. The telekinetic villain involved--Avalanche--had been an idiot, taking the 405 like it wouldn’t be jam-packed with civilians. He’d had a showdown with local PD for a good hour before the LA chapter of the League was able to fight their way to the location.

Avalanche had reacted with ill-grace, letting his powers flare until cars were flipping, skidding, and falling off the edge of the overpass. Scott had done his best, zipping around in his persona as Light, but he was (still is) human. He couldn’t be everywhere at once.

So when a bus lost control once its wheels hit the ground again, he wasn’t looking when it started to race towards Avalanche. He wasn’t keeping guard when Avalanche raised his fist and started to crushed the bus, front to back, like a tube of toothpaste. He wasn’t racing in to save the day when Avalanche went from annoying to lethal.

He only noticed when the boy-in-the-bus screamed for him to come and save them.

Heroes can never save them all.

I want to tell him that--tell him about all the villains in the world who’ve bragged about being faster than the hero, who have made it their goal to be faster than the hero--but that’s not what he needs. I haven’t found what he does need yet, but every bad night is another chance to get it right. 

And, yeah, our therapist says that my need to get it right isn’t healthy, either. Dr. Rubin puts all of her emphasis on working together, overcoming together, and how there’s no “right” formula for either. I try to follow her advice as much as possible, but it’s impossible on bad nights when all I want to do is fix this.

“Can you come down here?” I ask simply. I open my arms, shifting so that there’s enough room on the couch for him to sit, one of my legs on the ground between us, the other extending along the seat.  I look up at him, breathing evenly, afraid of even that setting him running. “Please?”

Scott is torn. I can see the ghost of the boy-in-the-bus pulling at him. His head twitches to the right every so often as if hearing phantom screams and his arms are whipping at his sides, unsure. A tornado in a bottle. The worst sort of pain that I’ve seen him in and it’s like this every time. Every time. Some days I don’t know what I’d do without Dr. Rubin to go to every week. Some problems I’ll never be able to fix, no matter how hard I try. But, with Scott, all I want to do is try.

Finally, finally, he gives a short, tense nod and collapses next to me. He doesn’t touch me and he’s careful to give my leg behind him enough room that I can barely feel his heat, but he’s sitting. Better than last time when he’d run himself into the ground around me.

I don’t drop my arms even though they’re starting to ache from how I’m holding them open. I don’t reach for him either. Scott’s primed right now and it needs to be his decision to introduce new stimulus to his system. If I try to grab him, I know from experience, it could trigger his fight or flight.

Or it could break him down completely.

It takes a good three minutes of silent breathing before something gives. Scott shudders, full body, and sort of leans a little towards me. He scoots back into the couch so the small of his back touches my thigh and it’s all the invitation I need. I pull him into me, arms straining around his shoulders (because those are superhero width), and coax his head onto my shoulder.  He still keeps his feet on the ground, but he’s always like that, even when we’re cuddling during a movie. He needs to feel grounded or else his power can make him feel lost at sea.

I press a kiss to the side of his head. His hair is wet and cold with sweat, but I don’t care. He’s here and he’s in my arms where I can protect him from what he’ll let me protect him from. And if I’m shaking nearly as hard as he is, heart pounding, mouth dry, that’s something only we need to know.

We come down from the bad night together. The tremors stop after who knows how long, and color comes back to his face as the sky starts getting brighter and brighter between the blinds. Scott’s got class in a few hours and I’ve got a meeting at 10, but neither of those things are important right now. The only important thing is the way the tension is leaking from Scott’s frame.

It’s when Scott’s eyes are starting to droop, more and more of his weight dropping against my chest, that I get the courage to ask, “Do you...do you want to know what I think?”

Part of me hopes that he’ll say no. It’d hurt, sure, but I’ve had people say no before. The nature of my power means that I think a lot of things, inane and jumbled and irrelevant. Scott’s never said no to me before.

“Yeah,” he says. The word comes out as mostly air. His hair tickles my chin and I can feel new tension running through him. He’s trying to hide it from me, the fear of what I might have to say, but he’s too close for me not to feel it. It’s discouraging after all the time we just spent fighting him back from the edge, but Dr. Rubin says that we need to be vulnerable together to heal.

I take the risk. 

“You save people,” I say. “You hear them all the time and they know it. They know that when they’re in trouble, someone is listening. That’s security, Scott. You give them that.”

Scott is quiet for a moment, digesting what I’ve said. When he scoffs, it’s at himself, not me. “I don’t save enough.” His voice breaks. “I’m not fast enough.”

I wish I could soften this for him, tell him that he’s fast enough.  I think so, but just because I do doesn’t mean he does. I try to keep my voice as even as possible. “That feeling? That’s your consequence. The cost of being who you are. That’s why people call for you, Scott. You care enough to bear your consequence and stay.”

But god, I think as he thinks about what I’ve said, god, I wish I could bear that consequence for you. Sometimes I think that it’s not going to be some villain that takes Scott from me. It’s going to be the malevolent guilt that grows and writhes in his chest every time somebody else is a little luckier than he is.

Scott doesn’t say anything else, but he relaxes back into my arms. I don’t think that my words have really changed anything--there will still be bad nights. But he’s limp against me, and warm, and that’s the best success I can ask for.

We watch the sun rise, rays slipping across our floor, and wait for his alarm to go off in the other room.