Chapter Text
That bed looks so good right now. It looks like naked Ryan Gosling, all it needs is me on it. I have to finish this issue though, if it doesn’t go to print on time I’m out of a whack but still much needed advance. I think the Speed Freak books are picking up steam, they even outsold Action Girl and Dr. Damage last month, but mine was a special double issue featuring the Return of Ice Biotch.
I think Barry’s a little more used to the idea of being the face of Speed Freak (although I’m not going to lie, there’s a little Gosling from the neck down, he is on my list of three guys I’m allowed to cheat on Barry with, after all). I know he saw right through it when I showed him the first issue. The Comic’s about Brady Niell, a crippled guy from the sticks who decides to fight crime when a superdrug gives him speed powers. There are some key differences though.
Brady was a cop before his car accident.
Barry was a track star before the MS. And he kind of hates cops, although he says Brady’s one of the good ones.
Brady has a nice mom and dad.
Barry never knew his parents, we both grew up in foster care. he and I were in the same home for four years starting in Elementary school, we clicked and stayed clicked ever since.
Brady’s drug of choice is Velocity 9
Barry’s drug of choice is all the weed.
Brady’s girlfriend Violet is an awesome guerilla reporter.
I'm a struggling comic book author. But I won’t be struggling for long. My dream is to get us out of this hole once and for all. Not to the ‘burbs or anything lame like that, but maybe a cool city, with an art scene and some clubs, the ones that play good music, not that trance crap. We’d live in a place with a view of something other than hookers and puking crackheads.
I can’t quite get Barry’s face right on this panel. I think it’s because he needs to come home already. Pictures don’t do it. I hate that he has to work such late hours. He’ll have his degree soon though, it’s taken him nine years and some change having to work full time. And with all of the doctor’s appointments, sex, pot and sex, I’m beginning to suspect he actually is a speedster.
I perk up when I hear the first of 4 locks being turned from the other side of the door. I set my pencil down and scramble up to greet him.
“Hey babe,” he says, walking in on his forearm crutches. He doesn't need them all the time yet. “Still up?”
“The new issue’s due for inking tomorrow night,” I say, my expression falling. I glance over at the clock on my drawing table, it reads 12:56. “Make that tonight.”
He stands over the table and looks down at the new panel. It’s just after Ice Biotch has hurled a flurry of frozen shrapnel at Speed Freak.
“What, you were expecting an ice pun first? Sorry babe I don’t talk dirty, I play dirty,” it says in her word bubble.
“That’s sick West,” Barry says with a smile in his tired voice, he kisses me firmly on the temple. “But you look beat as shit, maybe come to bed awhile?”
“I promise I will after I’m done with this splash page,” I say.
“Suit yourself.” He shrugs and makes his way over to the bed. He sets his crutches against the wall and starts to take off his faded plaid shirt, his gray wife beater, shoes, socks, jeans… boxers.
Oh that’s just mean.
He spreads out on the bed, situated in the corner of our studio apartment, and he reaches over to the nightstand to grab the joint he rolled before work and his red lighter. He lights it and takes a slow drag.
“Let me know if you want any of this,” he says behind the thick white cloud, his voice slightly high pitched and raspy with smoke. He nods down at his junk “or, you know, any of this.”
“You’re an asshole,” I say.
“You love me,” he quips back.
I have two pages left, each one takes me about five hours or so depending on the amount of detail involved. If I get up at four I can finish by two, giving me more than enough time to get it to Kyle’s studio by five for inking. I can relax, I'm just not a huge fan of relaxing. Barry does look really good naked though.
“What the hell,” I say, putting my pencil down. I walk to the bed in three long strides and straddle his naked lap.
“Why hello, so good of you to join me,” he says, passing the joint to me. “It’s a sativa blend, genetically modified it myself.”
“Science geek,” I take a drag and keep it in as I go to kiss him.
“How was work?” I continue as I come up for air.
“Long,” he answers. Him and Cisco, his hetero life mate from college, run a small cyber security firm together, they do well enough considering they only have two regular clients. Their major competition is Smoak and Mirrors Security one town over. He says they do so much better because the chick who runs it has degrees coming out of her ass.
“People trust you if you have the right piece of paper on your wall,” Barry had said when he told me he was going for his Master’s, but I don’t think that’s true. I think he just really likes to learn, he always has. If he hadn’t been suspended so many times in high school he could have been valedictorian. Also, I know his passion isn’t cyber security. He’ll never admit it, but I think he’s always seen himself in one of those big chem labs, with goggles and beakers and shit. I don’t know much about all that, I only know about the made up kind of science, but he was always doing little experiments when he was a kid, staring at stuff under his cheap microscope, growing gross things in petri dishes, building smoke bombs, usually to fuck with the asshole neighborhood kids
He was forced into track sophomore year, they said he needed structure and sports were good for that, and they all noticed how fast he tended to run from people trying to kick his ass for one reason or another, usually for being one of the only white kids in school, and a skinny one at that. He hated it at first, it was hard to be on a team when you pretty much only trusted one person (i.e. me), but he grew to love it after a while, especially with me there to cheer him on from the bleachers. I know he misses it, that some days he wishes he could just get out and run, but I like to think he still has more than enough to make him happy.
I trace the tattoo on his ribs with my fingers while I take another drag. The one on his ribs is an iris. The one on my tit is a strawberry. I comb a bit of my blue streaked hair behind the six rings in my ear and kiss him again.
“You ever think we got married too soon?” I say.
“Love you too babe,” Barry says sarcastically, taking the glowing joint from me.
“I’m serious, you ever think that maybe we’re like, prematurely old now? Wouldn’t it have been cooler of us to live in sin like a couple of anti-establishment badasses?”
“First of all, anyone with fourteen different cookbooks just for desserts is not a badass,” I cross my arms and glare at him in faux-offense. “Second of all…"
He grabs my ass and I let out a little squeal.
“I’d marry you again in a hot second West.”
“You know, I think I’d marry you again too, unless I met Ryan Gosling first.”
“You and your creepy obsession with Gosling.”
“What can I say, guitarists do it for me almost as much as science geeks.”
I grab the joint, take a final drag and stub out the butt in the ashtray. His skin already feels softer under my fingers, his eyes already look greener under the soft light. He’s gone hard under me and I strip off my top. I’m not wearing a bra and he looks grateful for that fact. I feel the coldness of his ring against my nipple as he cups my tits.
“Wait,” I say. I reach over for his cell phone and set the alarm for four am. “So I don’t get my ass reamed by my inker.”
I collapse down onto him again, tasting his lips, feeling his scratchy stubble, thinking I’d marry him again in a hot second too. Maybe on another world we'd be different; we'd have more money, smoother edges, family besides each other. But I know one thing, if I couldn't have him, I'd say screw that other world.
That's all folks! (maybe)