Chapter Text
We had lunch in my room. Homelander was very complimentary of the ten – yes, ten – in-house restaurants at Vought Tower. There was an abundance of menus that he had an assistant bring in. Pizzeria Vought, a Mister Smoo-V, and on and on and on. Jesus Christ.
“What are you getting?”
Homelander hadn’t considered it, apparently. Did he eat?
“We have a Vought-A-Burger concept restaurant right now. Burger and a large shake.”
“Party. Chicken strips and a Diet Coke.”
In the roughly ten minutes it took to have the food brought up, we didn’t say a single word to each other. It would have been easier if I’d blacked out, but I was not that lucky.
Was he afraid? That seemed possible. Homelander kept looking at me when he thought I wasn’t looking. He probably didn’t know how these interactions were supposed to be, unless he watched a lot of soaps.
Once we had food, I started the conversation. It created a barrier between us. A thing we could do to not talk.
“So, Homelander.” He looked startled. Very expressive eyes. “What do you want me to call you?”
“I, what do you mean?”
Give me something to work with.
“What’s your name? I’m Richard Shuster, you can call me Rick if you want, and you are…”
“...John. I don’t really go by it anymore. I’m a superhero full-time.”
“Well, John, it’s nice to meet you. I can talk your ear off, but do you, uh, want to ask me anything?”
He took a bite out of his burger. Thinking.
“You said you had a family?”
Yes. They didn’t exist here, probably. Or maybe they did, and I did. That would be pretty fucked up.
“Yeah. They, uh. My powers.”
I don’t elaborate. I let him fill in the blanks about why my powers would be relevant.
“Oh. What were they like?”
“I have pictures. Wanna see?”
The nod was tentative, and I pulled out my phone.
I still didn’t feel attached to them, but Richard had two Instagram accounts. One for his portfolio, he did design work, and a private personal account that went back years. There was a Facebook too. That went back even further. His parents had accounts there. I scrolled back a few weeks in his IG.
“These are my parents, David and Lisa Shuster. Just… It’s coming back to me, but it’s been slow.”
From their Facebook pages, David was older by a fair bit. There were scanned photos of his dad on Richard’s phone from before smartphones. Some kind of blue-collar worker at a plant or a factory.
He kept looking at my phone. Was he glaring? Maybe a little. I tried to power through, swiping out and scrolling down.
“This is from when I graduated from–”
“I know him.”
Huh?
“Huh?”
“Your father. I’ve seen his face before.”
If I was Homelander’s brother, that meant I was probably related to Soldier Boy. Soldier Boy disappeared in the 80s, and then I was born. Logically, I wasn’t old enough to be an illegitimate child. I had to be a test tube baby.
“From where?”
He didn’t respond. I had assumed it was a jealousy thing. It didn’t have to be.
“John?”
“Sorry. It’s, uh, it’s nothing. Got him mixed up.”
Liar.
I leaned over a bit, trying to make him look me in the eyes.
“Okay. Do you, uh, want to keep going? We can talk about something else.”
He smiled. It was a nice smile. Picture perfect.
“Of course. What do you do for work?”
This was a topic I felt a bit more comfortable with. Richard had been a designer. I had a marketing degree, and I’d taken a lot of graphic design classes. I showed him Richard’s portfolio. It wasn’t my work, but I needed something.
He was really scarfing down that burger all of a sudden.
“So, you do superhero work full-time, you said?”
He was mostly done with his meal by that point.
“The Seven is a full-time job. It would be nice to have some help I could trust, but you know how it is.”
Real classy. I was going to leave that little present alone.
“It seems like a big responsibility. I know it’s… uh… you, Black Noir, Queen Maeve, the Deep, A-Train…”
“Translucent and Lamplighter. Lamplighter is, well.” He sort of moved his eyebrows in a way that seemed like he was implying something. “We’re going to have a slot open up soon.”
Was he going to kill Lamplighter?
“Well, Black Noir is like a legacy hero, right? It’s good that you have someone you can rely on.”
“It is.”
They had a backstory, I was sure. It was kind of a dead end, though, and I shouldn’t try to get too immersed right away. It felt inappropriate. Cruel, yes, but also too fast.
He stood up before I could think of something else.
“Welp. I… this was nice.”
He wasn’t that tall, but boy did he fill up a room. The actor was definitely not that buff, right? It would take some getting used to. Homelander wiped his gloves off with a napkin.
“I have a few things to work on. But I’ll come back tomorrow. Okay?”
Hm.
“Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow, John.”
“...Bye.”
He hadn’t said what superheroes did most of the time. Surely he wasn’t both so busy he had to finish his lunch that quickly, and also so available that he could plan his days around me. I grabbed another chicken strip. Even the fries were still warm. Fast food didn’t keep that long, so I ate quickly.
Homelander wasn’t as crazy as I expected. It would have been easier if he were. As it stood, he was a pleasant if awkward guy.
Maybe nothing had happened yet. Homelander attacked, or would attack Becca Butcher, and that made Billy Butcher set on a mission to kill the supe. Plenty of media was set in a near future, so maybe 2019 was early.
I had a list of names. Hughie Campbell, Billy Butcher. It was not a long list. Then there was Mother’s Milk, Frenchie, and Kimiko, but those weren’t very searchable.
Thankfully, Instagram gave me answers. Hughie Campbell had an account, and the profile picture was a gingery guy with curly hair, so maybe. Private account, and technopathy did not give me access. I had been pretty specific, and account access was probably happening on a server and not on my phone. A follow request would be a mistake.
LinkedIn was a bit better. There were several Hugh Campbells, including one who worked at a tech store called Bryman Audio. Gingery, with curly hair. He matched the actor pretty well, and he lived in New York. All I had to do was get out. Which I couldn’t. So, dead end, actually.
William Butcher and Billy Butcher both turned up nothing relevant. Rebecca Butcher gave me a Facebook page that hadn’t been used in years. Not a good sign. There were wedding pictures. A brown-haired woman smiling next to a clean-shaven man, surrounded by friends. They seemed happy. All postings stopped in 2012.
Okay. I would speculate. William Butcher was alive somewhere. So was Rebecca. Rebecca had a son. If he were born in 2012, he might be turning seven this year. The specifics could be wrong, but the outline was solid. If he were any older, then he’d be with Homelander, because I’d seen clips of him with a kid.
The next day, I was feeling much better. I blacked out twice that we knew of, but if things were still good, we could talk about getting a release on the first of the month, which was in a few days.
Homelander came by at around the same time. He tried to order the same thing again, but this time I went for pizza. It meant that the food would take longer.
“John, what can you tell me about your family?”
It didn’t get a reaction on the level I had worried about. He didn’t just run out or hit me or anything. He didn’t cry either. Homelander didn’t seem like much of a crier.
“Oh, yeah, no. I… we’re pretty similar, I think. I have no clue about our birth parents.”
That felt like a misdirection.
“I mean your adoptive parents. I…” I could let it slip a little. “Can we talk about how you grew up? You had powers for most of your life. What was that like?”
There wasn’t anything to buffer the pauses. So he was just quiet as he looked out the window instead of at me. I was maybe pushing too hard, but closeness would mean being uncomfortable.
“I… I had a lot of accidents growing up. I didn’t really have, well.” He gestured towards my phone. The meaning seemed pretty clear. “They were afraid of me.”
There had to be more.
“Your parents?”
I needed him to say it.
“The people who raised me.”
I felt a little gross, then. I let it sit for a while, the feeling and the words.
“I think my mom would have liked you.”
Not Lisa. I didn’t know her. My mom. I wasn’t sure if it was true, but my mother was a friendly woman. Hospitable in a way that Americans usually weren’t. Even if she didn’t like him, she wouldn’t say it.
“I wish I could have met her.”
“So do I.”
Things were quiet until the food arrived. We started eating. I hadn’t had pizza in… I didn’t know how long. I had missed cheese. It was only a slice, though.
“I’m thinking of going flying.” I swallowed the last bit of the bit I’d been having. Covering my mouth with my hand. “Once the doctor clears me, I mean. You, uh, I’d like you to come with me. I could use a teacher.”
I didn’t need one. It didn’t take much to figure out the cold breath a few days ago, and Technopathy was almost passive. But I didn’t want to crash if I blacked out, and it was a bonding moment.
“...When?”
“Maybe Friday or Saturday? Depends on whether Doctor Reed clears me or not.”
“I’m happy to help. I’ll set something up for you. Is flight your only power?”
“Uh, no. I haven’t even used it yet, so I don’t really know how it’ll work, but I can… breathe out ice, or something, too. It’s what I’ve figured out so far.”
He nodded, taking the information in. John went quiet after that, though things did not feel cold.
The next day, Madelyn dropped by to leave me some clothes and see how I was doing. Apparently, they had bought me new clothes since mine were unavailable. Nobody had explained why the phone and laptop were easy to get, but Richard’s clothes weren’t. It didn’t matter enough to make a fuss. It looked like nice stuff. Mostly red and white shirts, some underwear, and a pair of jeans. No obvious branding, and no tags either. T-shirt blanks. There was only one piece of Homelander merch, a shirt with a collage print of several comic book panels. I decided to wear that to go flying over the weekend. Let him feel good about the gift.
According to Doctor Reed, things looked good, though he seemed uncomfortable as he said it. The seizures were less often than during the first few days, and while I was still losing like the better part of an hour, the gaps gave me time to recover. With any luck, medication might even make them shrink or stop them completely. I was cleared that same Friday, and Homelander was there hours early.
I chose not to try speculating.
John looked down as I stood up. A bit too long. I had the shirt on, but shoes were probably harder to get on short notice.
“Yeah, sorry. Uh… I don’t know if Madelyn mentioned, but they couldn’t get me my clothes just yet.”
“Oh, yeah, she probably did bring it up. Can’t be helped, right? We can go up to the gift shop and find something in your size.”
Somebody was in a hurry, damn.
The gift shop was, unsurprisingly, corner-to-corner and floor-to-ceiling merch for The Seven. T-shirts and sheets made sense. A Lamplighter toaster that burned his logo into your toast? A Black Noir coffee maker? Sure, fine. A tentacle-themed toilet paper holder? A mug that was supposed to be the bottom of Homelander’s face, but could be any white guy’s? None of those made any sense at all.
Inside the shoebox the clerk brought up was a pair of Homelander sneakers. Adidas high tops, which were mostly blue with large sections of red and white stripes, and sizable metallic gold sections, including the laces. They were the ugliest fucking shoes I had ever seen, and I had to put my sock down.
“Homelander? You’re my brother, and I’ll always care about you. I…” He probably cared about this a lot. I should be nice. “Those shoes look really uncomfortable. Do you mind if I pick?”
I couldn’t say it. Even the softer version seemed to sting, though.
“Sure, that’s fine.”
I went through the shoe section and picked out a different Homelander pair. No gold detailing, and slightly more discreet stripes. There was a Black Noir x Puma collab that actually looked great, but I needed to compromise.
Once we were in the elevator, I broke the silence.
“...How am I paying for these, anyway?”
“Oh, I’m comping those. I can have anything I want from any Vought business.”
A thing he didn’t even have to think about. If I was right, then he was doing a lot of that recently.
“Oh wow. I guess that’s one of the perks of being the best.”
He stood up a little straighter at that. John was proud of his work, at least how successful he was at it. Wasn’t his main deal wanting to do more? Maybe that hadn’t hit him yet, and Vought had him tied down for now. Maybe a lot of things.
“How about once we get some flying in, I give you a tour of the upper floors?
I had a vague idea of how the building was. 99 floors above ground, going by the elevator, and five basement levels. The 99th was probably the big one, for the CEO or something.
“Yeah, definitely. It’ll be nice to know what you’re doing all day.”
I tried raising my eyebrows as I said it, like I was joking. But it wasn’t a joke, really. Homelander had an entire life I didn’t see, probably. People who relied on him, and people who knew things about him. A step beyond that, I barely spoke to anyone, and there was a limit on how much time I could be on the phone.
“Sure thing. We can… one second.”
He pulled out his phone, and things were quiet after that.
It was almost the middle of the day. The wind was tugging at my shirt and really pulling on Homelander’s cape as we stepped out onto the roof. The sky was blue in every direction, but the air was crisp, even with the sun right above us.
“This is the roof. My room is just under here.”
“Oh.”
If Homelander was on the 99th floor, then we were about a thousand feet in the air. Maybe more. I swallowed. John stepped towards the edge. There was a glass railing around the roof, which he hopped over. I didn’t move.
“Come on.”
I could see a clip in my mind. Homelander, pushing a child off the roof of a house. This was… a hundred times that, maybe? I slotted in the flight power and dropped technopathy for super senses. It had been stupid not to make a durability power, but there was no time. I could fly. The flight power felt tight – efficient and simple in a way that the frost breath wasn’t.
But I still wasn’t hopping the fence.
“John, I, just… give me a second.”
He turned all the way towards me. Homelander looked like I had made a particularly bad joke.
“Are you scared of heights?”
“No! No, I just have this thing. Vertigo.”
I couldn’t see down yet, but I felt nauseous. Like my stomach was moving separately from my body. The moment I looked down, it would be worse.
“...You said you could fly. What’s the problem?” I did say that. I could fly. “Just, take your time.”
I hopped the fence.
He was right at the edge of the roof. I was maybe three paces back.
“Homelander, promise you’ll catch me.”
He seemed more alarmed at that.
“I know it’s stupid. I just need you to promise me that, John. I’ve never flown before.”
There was a pause. I wasn’t moving until he said it.
“Richard, I'm not going to let you fall.” He said it like it was obvious. “I know what I’m doing.”
He definitely didn’t.
“Okay.”
I didn’t step closer, more like I dragged my feet across the concrete until I was standing an arm’s reach away from Homelander. I had visualized this at times. Sometimes I’d fall in my dreams. I usually woke up the second it started.
A few breaths later, I turned to look at him.
“Push me.”
“What?”
“I can’t. You need to –”
The bitch pushed me. I closed my eyes and tensed up.
I could feel the wind rushing by my ears as I fell. My heart was going a mile a minute. I didn’t want to see it. I wanted to wake up in bed like every other time. This had been a mistake. I didn’t have any powers. All I had was the delusion that I could fix something in the way that heroes always did. Killing. Now I’d die instead.
“Richard.”
My heart wasn’t slowing down, but the world felt like it was slowing to a crawl. At some point, I’d hit the ground, and everything would stop. I didn’t want to be there. Why couldn’t I be anywhere else? Dead already, even. It would be easier.
“Richard! Fuck!”
I opened my eyes. I was up in the air, John was right next to me, but his arms were down. He looked less than happy.
“Oh.”
Yeah. Duh.
Flight had come to me without active thought. I could still see the top of the building I’d been pushed off. I hadn’t dropped more than four feet. All of the tension left me. Homelander hadn’t needed to catch me at all, so he’d watched and let me float there.
“What the fuck was that?”
But he still flew after me.
“I…”
I tried to turn myself upright, to have some dignity again, and I just kept spinning. He grabbed my shoulder, stopping my momentum, but the world was just slightly crooked.
This had to be so far beneath his skill as a flyer. He was probably Mach three. I could float in place if I clenched. I could fly, sure, but I did actually need help. Had John ever needed help? If he did, did he get it?
This would be easier if he hit me.
Homelander still looked mad.
“I think I’m kind of afraid of heights. Please help me get closer to the… the, fuck, roof.”
He already had a hand on my shoulder, so all he had to do was drag. Whatever force kept me in the air was weak enough that he could overpower it. The moment the roof was under me, I grabbed onto him. I didn’t close my eyes because this was a bad idea.
“...Why are you such a pussy?”
“I’m sorry. Thank you for helping me.” I wasn’t going to cry or anything like that, but I could feel my heart pumping way too fast. I also hadn’t touched a human being in over a week, other than getting an IV.
Eventually, after a few seconds, I felt some pressure on my back through the shirt. There was a… some kind of movement, like a hitching of breath from a laugh. If it were funny, he would have laughed, so it wasn’t that.
I ignored it.
Hugs were not my thing. Culturally, they sort of were – well into college, the girls I knew at least casually would do hugs. I didn’t get the premise. Too much Americanness or something. But I had learned to manage, and a part of me missed closeness now that I didn’t have it. Richard was gone, and he didn’t have that many friends. I could make decisions about who he was now.
She let me tap out, the few times a year we did hug. I could always tap out. It felt like an appropriate thing to do in the moment, and Homelander pulled back like I was burning him.
“I, uhm, well.”
“I think it would be better if we stayed on the roof. We can try flying for real later.”
I changed the subject. We had things to do.
“Oh, yeah, yes. Can you… try jumping into the air, and holding like that?”
A few minutes of trying, and I did figure out how to hold myself in place. It wasn’t a muscle to clench. It was maybe more of a mindset thing. I had to start from the premise that it was something I wanted to do, and it happened without any active thought. Spinning, too, and then actual propulsion. John couldn’t explain how he did it, and I couldn’t explain what I was doing.
If I really tried, then maybe, but it felt a little bit beyond any language I knew. I didn’t know how to explain the process of seeing either.
Several things became clear on that roof, before Friday afternoon. First, I was faster than a human runner, but not as fast as John. Second, I had crazy high acceleration, meaning I could turn faster than Homelander could think about turning, and I wasn’t harmed by the whiplash of going full tilt and then backwards at the same speed. Third, I wasn’t getting motion sick at all. It was all in my head.
Right before one, John checked his phone again.
“You ready for the tour? We can do lunch a bit later.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now. I’m a busy man. Every minute I’m late, a million dollars get torched.”
Showoff.
“Sure.”
He was texting a lot. I only caught one line before he put his phone away again.
ETA 2.
Obviously, it was for the tour. John wasn’t subtle. Homelander was setting something up.