Fic - "The Masochism Tango"
Title: The Masochism Tango
Authors: colonel_bastard & junosunderland
Characters/Fandom: Hal Stewart, Hot Flash. Megamind.
Word Count: 7,865
Rating: R
Summary: It takes two to tango, but when both partners try to lead they just wind up going in circles.
Warnings: Gratuitous language, violence of all sorts, a lover's brawl to bring down the house.
Notes: A long-overdue collaboration between me and my dear friend Juno! We set up an arena, then she brought her fiercest Hot Flash and I brought my nastiest Hal. Fight fight fight! Set in a post-movie world where HF has broken Hal out of prison, given him back his powers, and they've ended up in the kind of relationship that blurs the line between passion and poison. Also they're probably going to murder each other. No blow is too low, no trick is too dirty--- they're playing to win, they're playing for keeps, and at the end of the day the only thing that matters is who's in control. Title taken from the excellent Tom Lehrer song.
It was musty here - as usual. Hot Flash wrinkled her nose. The disdain that she felt from time to time in Hal Stewart's presence was already threatening to rear its ugly head. She busied herself checking the small duffel bag she had slung over her shoulder - tights, cape, shorts. It was all there. She didn't dare leave the spandex with Hal - she was certain it wouldn't last a single afternoon.
"Hal!" She called the name, striding openly into where he kept his own hideout. There was an undefinable sense of his presence here - though he was clearly occupying the space at the moment, it seemed so much more than just him. Maybe it was that level of superpower, that it seemed almost palpable.
"I want to go out - here, put this on." She tossed the contents of the duffel bag unceremoniously at him, and waited, hands on hips.
"Jesus!" Hal jumped when the suit landed in his lap, his awareness so wholly devoted to Assassin's Creed that he hadn't even noticed her entering his lair. He fumbled frantically to untangle his hands from the wadded spandex. Onscreen, Ezio pinwheeled around in erratic circles.
"Don't you ever knock?" The redhead growled in frustration.
Freeing the controller at last, he slung the costume onto the vacant couch cushion beside him, returning his attention to the game.
"Forget it," he said over his shoulder. "I'm busy."
Hot Flash spared a glance at the large screen - she rolled her eyes. Some video game. Of course. This was entirely too reminiscent of her own bratty children.
"Busy doing what?" She moved to stand directly between Hal and the television, glaring down at him. "Some game or whatever? Why waste your time on this when we can go out there and do the real thing?" She placed her hands firmly on her hips again, her stance aggressive. She hated it when he was a child like this.
As she came into his field of vision he leaned instinctively to maintain his view of the TV, but when she planted herself squarely in front of him he had no choice but to rock back to his centered position and glare up at her, his expression annoyed.
“You know, you’d make a better door than a window.”
Before she could have a chance to respond, he heaved an exaggerated sigh of irritation and jammed his thumb against the start button, pausing the game until he could return to it properly--- which, if he had any say in things, would be sooner rather than later.
“Look,” he said testily. “I don’t know what part of ‘forget it’ could be so difficult to understand, so I’ll just make sure you heard me.” Leaning up towards her, he enunciated carefully, “Forget. It.”
This was already becoming a trial. Of course. As he talked back to her, she had to resist the 'motherly' instinct to pop him one in the mouth for being such an insufferable little fuck. Instead, she settled for talking down to him.
"Jesus Christ, isn't anything easy with you? Just put on the fucking spandex and let's go! See, you paused your game - clearly it is not going anywhere." Hot Flash kept her ground, sneering down at Hal. It had been a little while since they'd gone out together, and she was determined to not be denied.
"So get your ass up and let's go."
In an attempt to startle her, Hal sprang up from the couch as quickly as he could, popping up to his full, intimidating height in the blink of an eye. He leaned slightly towards her to remind her of his physical advantage, pressing into her space just long enough to potentially cause discomfort before spinning lazily on his heel and sauntering towards the fridge where he kept his beer.
“Where do you wanna go, anyway?” He tugged the door open and browsed among the bottles, his voice taking on a whining tone. “Didn’t we just rob the bank? Gimme a fucking break already.”
"I - the liquor store. Let's go knock one over." Hot Flash cursed herself internally - she had retreated several hasty steps when Hal had sprang at her like that. She stared stonily at his back before making her way to where he was hunched, rummaging through his fridge.
"Whatever you want, we'll get it there - and don't fucking whine like that, it's irritating." She had thrust an arm between him and the bottles within the fridge - if he was going to invade her space, then she would force her way into his.
Infuriated by both her words and her actions, he grabbed her impulsively by the wrist of the arm blocking his path, remembering at the last fucking second not to use his full strength as he closed his hand. One more heartbeat of pressure and her bones would have snapped like twigs in his grip--- that was a close one. He loosened his hold by a tiny fraction, but it lost none of its threat as he twisted to face her, displaying her hand trapped between them like a trophy.
“Hey, you know what else is irritating?” he sneered. “When you get in my way.”
It wasn’t quite a shove, but he definitely urged her away from him as he released her. Hot Flash writhed, clutching her wrist as she stumbled backwards. Her hair flared, and she could feel her eyes grow wide. It was far from the first (and certainly wouldn’t be the last) time he was physical with her, but it never failed to get a reaction.
"You little fucking prick!" The words came out in an low, angry hiss - her wrist throbbed, and she could feel her vision blinking in and out of focus in her rage.
Ignoring her, he snatched a beer defiantly out of the fridge, cracking the cap off with his bare hand and taking a substantial swig. Then, with the bottleneck hooked between middle finger and thumb, he jabbed his index finger towards the pile of spandex on the couch.
“And you know I fucking hate that suit.”
"I don't give a flying fuck!"
The words came out shrilly, and with her good hand she lobbed a fireball at the bottle he had just opened - it burst, showering beer and glass all over the place. Although there was no way it could hurt him, he still automatically flinched away from the flying shards of glass, one arm thrown up to shield his face from the nonexistent danger.
Hot Flash huffed angrily and clenched her hand around her wrist again, feeling the beginnings of a bruise forming. By the next breath Hal’s shock had already turned into anger.
“God!” he barked. “What is your problem?”
He flapped his hand, scattering droplets of beer into the air. It made him even angrier to see her nursing her wrist like that, like some kind of goddamn martyr. He’d barely touched her and she’d thrown a fucking fireball at him. The injustice of it spurred him towards nastiness.
“You know, that’s always bugged me about you, Flash,” he jeered. “You always act like you’re on the goddamn rag even though that ship has fucking sailed.”
Keeping a vice-like grip on her wrist, Hot Flash stared at Hal hatefully. The pain in her wrist was slowly being phased out by anger. She had seen how he flinched away from the broken glass, and it disgusted her.
"You're so pathetic! You have to resort to digs about my age? Is that the best you can really come up with? Brilliant, Hal, really fucking genius there! Why, with comebacks like that, I don't know how Megamind survived! Let me just cry a fucking river here, since I'm just so overcome with emotion!" Her tone was nasty and condescending. Fighting Hal felt so much like fighting a teenager who thought they were infinitely cleverer than they actually were.
"You might as well stick with trying to rip people's hands off, you're a lot better at that than your lame fucking insults."
Hal saw red. At first he wasn’t even sure if it was his powers or just the sheer force of his rising temper that stained his vision an ugly crimson, but the color was soon joined by that now-familiar sensation of heat and pressure, the lasers preparing to fire. He blinked furiously, almost like someone might blink back tears--- but it was nothing so sentimental. He was just trying to stop himself from shooting the bitch point blank in the face.
She treated him like a kid, like a stupid fucking kid. Even with all his powers, with all his strength and speed and flight, she could still get under his skin, make him feel weak and young and ignorant. Her mocking dismissal of his attempt to wound her was the worst kind of blow to his pride. He’d already let one woman make a fool out of him. He wasn’t going to let it happen again.
“Oh yeah?” he wondered darkly.
And he charged towards her, seizing her upper arms and driving her backwards until she collided with the wall. There he pinned her like a butterfly to a board, a captured prize, a creature entirely at his mercy. His voice was little more than a snarl.
“How about I rip your fucking head off instead?”
Her head banged loudly against the wall, and for a moment Hot Flash swore she could see stars. The room seemed to spin before Hal's snarling face loomed before her, taking up her entire range of vision. She could barely make out the words he was saying, though the gist seemed perfectly clear. A low moan escaped from her clenched teeth.
"You... fucking..." There seemed to be no insult fitting for the ringing that was filling her head, the sharp pains in her arms. She felt dizzy, slow, groggy. But she was trying her best to fight it back. It was hard, with her arms pinned uncomfortably against the wall behind her, but she would do her best.
So she spat in his face.
"How about that?" The words were slightly slurred, but determined.
“Agh!”
He reared back in disgust, releasing one of her arms in order to scrub frantically at the smear of saliva with the back of his hand.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he spluttered. “Did you just spit on me?”
He grabbed her again, held her fast, struggled against the urge to shake her like a ragdoll. She was driving him crazy.
“What do you even want?” he demanded, searching her face. “Do you really wanna go out or do you just wanna fight? ‘Cause if you wanna fight then let’s fight but man you have got to stop playing these fucking games with me, Flash, I am fucking sick of these games.”
Her head jerked uncomfortably when Hal seized her again, but otherwise Hot Flash was recovering quickly. She stared angrily back at him, suddenly feeling small.
"Yeah I fucking wanted to go out, why the fuck do you think I came here in the first place? For your charming company? For you to try to break my goddamn wrist? For you to slam me against the wall like a fucking toy?!" Her voice rose higher with each accusation. She struggled hard against his hands, trying to free herself.
"I just wanted to go out and have a nice fucking time! I'm sorry you can't be bothered to do anything but sit here in your pathetic man cave all day!" She struggled again, but this time the pain in her head caught back up to her, and she winced.
"If you're suddenly going to not try to decapitate me, can you at least let me go? This really fucking hurts."
So he dropped her like a hot potato, both hands going up in a signal of truce as he stepped carefully away from her, his glare hooded. Her accusations made him feel guiltier than he could ever afford to let her know.
“Fine,” he muttered. “You wanna go out? Let’s go out. Will that get you off my goddamn back for a while?”
Hot Flash rubbed her arms, staring at Hal moodily. Somewhere inside, she felt like she ought to be lucky to still be standing here - but at the same time she had confidence that he would never really hurt her. He might get rough, but she had a handle on him. Feeling a little bit better, she managed a weak grin in his direction.
"Yeah, let's go out. But first - put on the suit." She jerked her head (painfully, as she immediately regretted) at the crumpled wad of spandex. "Please."
He had already been drawing in a breath to protest, but at that last word he released it in a frustrated huff. She was even trying to smile. Goddamn it.
When he chanced a quick look at the couch, the familiar red and orange caught his eye like a beacon. He shifted uneasily. He wasn't lying when he said he hated reminders.
"I keep telling you," he hedged. "I want a new one."
Hot Flash made to cross her arms again, but found that they were still a bit too sore to do that. She settled for a dissatisfied look instead, her brows creasing together.
"And where are you going to get a new one? Just wear this one." She made her way over to the couch and held the spandex outfit up enticingly - like you might try to tempt an irate child with a sucker at the doctor's office.
"Besides - it fits you. And I like it - it's so fiery."
Hal raised his eyebrows at her tone, at her choice of words. It almost sounded like she was flirting with him. She must be flirting with him. The moment of confusion was soon eclipsed by a surge of pleasure. Of course she was flirting with him. The thing is, he'd spent so long feeling so wretchedly undesirable that it still came as a surprise when anyone showed the slightest bit of interest in him, let alone a woman like Hot Flash. Women like that -- smart, successful, powerful -- weren't exactly known to give him the time of the day. Women like that tended to look right through him.
Hot Flash was looking right at him.
There was an undeniable swagger in his step as he closed the distance between them, coming near enough to appreciate how very small she was in his shadow. She had to look up if she wanted to look him in the eye. He rolled his shoulders lazily, savoring his superiority.
"Okay," he said coolly. "Fine."
Then he reached behind him to grab his t-shirt by the back of the collar, pulling the whole thing up over his head and down his arms in one smooth gesture that ended with him tossing the garment away like a total badass.
Smirking, he held out an expectant hand for the suit.
Hot Flash had to work to suppress the shiver of pleasure she felt - she learned young to never let a man think he had too much of an upper hand. All the same - there was something about those sleek muscles, the sheer masculinity of him... It drew her back to Hal again and again. His childishness infuriated her, but when he was like this, she thought she might stick around forever. If they didn't kill each other first.
"Here." The word came out breathy, and she tilted her head to look into his face as she handed him the suit. He looked smug, confident. Just the way she liked him best.
Hot Flash felt tempted to leave, to give him privacy - but a wicked corner of her brain wanted to stay, right here in his personal space. She wanted to push him some more, if a bit more delicately this time, and see what he would do.
His brows rose even further. He hadn’t exactly expected her to surrender the garment and make a run for it, but he had not expected her to just stand there with that look on her face. That look. Half the time -- most of the time -- he really did want to rip her head off. But when she looked at him like that, well...
She looked so expectant. Oh God. Oh fuck. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what she wanted him to do. He hesitated, scrambling desperately for something cool and sexy to say. She was waiting for him to do something. He had to do something.
"So, uh," he said, trying to sound nonchalant. “Are you just gonna stand there or do you wanna gimme a hand with this?”
He jutted his hips towards her, offering the button of his jeans.
And just like that - it was like the air being let out from a tire. Hot Flash felt deflated - Hal's momentary trip, that weakness... It reminded her that his confidence was all an illusion, try as she might to hold on to it, to do her best to inflate it.
She stepped backwards, pulling away from him. Her stare, that had been almost misty, was now growing increasingly cool. Hot Flash looked at the proffered button, then back to Hal's expectant face.
"I think you know how to undress yourself."
It was almost exactly like being kicked in the balls. There was the same plummeting sensation, the same total horror, and the distinct realization that his manhood had just taken a critical hit. His shoulders sagged, and he suddenly felt very naked and stupid and self-conscious. That fucking bitch. Setting him up just to shoot him down. Again. Again!
“Whatever,” he scoffed hastily. “Your loss.”
He turned his back on her, mortified, fumbling with his zipper. Now he just wanted to get it over with, get dressed and get out there and get in trouble so he could pretend this had never happened. He hated himself for letting her do this to him.
Just as he was about to shove his jeans down to the floor, he paused, his thumbs still hooked in the waistband. He glared back over his shoulder.
“You can wait outside.”
God dammit! A child! The same as ever!
"Outside?" She broke off, snorting. "Like hell I will! Jesus, just because I didn't want to help you, now you're all wounded. You're so touchy!"
She tried so hard to build him up, she really did. She wanted him to be the man he wanted to be, the man who was actually thrilling to be around. But as usual... When he had turned his back to her, she could have screamed in frustration. His ego was as easily popped as the most delicate balloon.
"Jesus..." she murmured under her breath. "Strongest man in the world, most fragile ego in the universe."
The mutter landed like an atom bomb on his sensitive hearing. Any lingering feelings of insecurity evaporated in a white-hot blaze of outrage, his eyes going wide and his hands clenching violently, instantaneously into fists. Forgetting that he was only half-dressed, he rounded on her with his teeth bared, his head thrust low like a bull about to charge.
"What did you just say?"
Super hearing - part of her wanted to tell herself that she had forgotten he had it. A much more honest part of her admitted that she wanted him to hear her, to be wounded, to maybe man up for a fucking second and stop being a baby about everything. So much for that one. Though given his reaction to what she had just muttered, she was secretly glad that mind reading wasn't a part of the long list of things he was capable of.
"I think you know damn well what I just said." Hot Flash spoke up loudly - her anger was beginning to run away with her again, and it was like the few moments of peace had never happened. She was beginning to grow as visibly angered as Hal - the flames on her head licking ever higher, and her own hands balled into tight fists.
"But in case you missed it - 'strongest man in the world, most fragile fucking ego in the goddamn universe! How can you be this fucking insecure? If Metro Man were still alive, I bet you could kick his ass, and yet you still act like an angry little kid at the slightest fucking thing!"
Something went snap right between his eyes, a spike of anger so intense that he felt it like a jab from a cattle prod. His vision narrowed down into a tunnel, a telescope pointed right at her face, at her fucking face, at her vicious sneer and her spiteful eyes.
Kid. She still thought he was a kid. In moments like this it became almost unbearably obvious that she would never take him seriously, that she thought of him as little more than an overgrown ankle-biter, a super-sized brat whose only claim to fame was a citywide temper tantrum. Not even his awesome powers could improve his miserable standing in her eyes, and that was an echo too bitter to endure.
“You bitch!”
He was on top of her before he’d even realized he’d moved, his hands clamped on her shoulders and already creeping towards her throat. He dragged her towards him, lifting her up to her toes to bring her face closer to his.
“You think I’m fragile?” he roared. “I could break you in half like a fucking toothpick! You’re nothing compared to me, nothing, so you better start showing me some goddamn respect!”
Hal had managed to successfully unnerve Hot Flash a handful of times - but this was the first time she felt a stab of fear. He had moved so quickly she had barely seen him - and before she knew it he had lifted her from her feet and was screaming in her face.
She whipped her head to the side, her eyes squeezing shut. Her hands were still curled up, but now it was from the vice-like grip he had on her shoulders. Pain was shooting up and down her arms and she kicked out, trying to hit him anywhere she could, her fight or flight instinct kicking in.
"F-FUCK!" She choked on the word, taking several deep swallows - it struck her that he might actually try to strangle her. She flailed all the harder, striking him with her fists as well as her feet now.
Her attempts to dislodge him were so utterly and absolutely worthless. He was getting drunk off of it, intoxicated by her helplessness. God it felt good to make her squirm, to prove how much stronger he was, how much bigger and better than she could ever hope to be. She could mock him all she wanted, call him stupid and lazy and a million other things. This was all the proof he needed to know that she was wrong.
“Aww, is that all you got?” he heckled, loving every futile punch, every useless kick. “Is that the best you can do? Come on!”
His hands finally reached her neck. It was so small in comparison, so easy to wind his fingers around. His grip became something like a boa constrictor slowly tightening its coils. He hated her. He hated her so fucking much. She had no right to make him feel so inadequate. She had no right.
“Come on!” he urged, his tone suddenly ugly. “Stop me! I fucking dare you to stop me!”
Through the ice of fear, Hot Flash felt a pang of anger - this was just like that stupid broadcast he had done, when he had that reporter, Roxanne Ritchi, tied to Metro Tower. Thinking he was so fucking big and bad as he taunted her.
In lieu of punching him, she dragged the tips of her gloved fingers down his forearms - it accomplished nothing, but it felt good, and somehow more productive, than her equally futile punches and kicks.
Fire ignited in her hands as she clawed at him, and she hissed angrily through the fist around her neck.
"Do you - feel like a - fucking MAN now?!"
He laughed cruelly at the blazing trails of fire left by her curled fingers--- the flames against his naked skin didn’t even itch. She was giving it all she had and she still couldn’t touch him, not even after he had defied her to do her worst. All she could do was hiss and spit and swing at him like an angry cat. Then she had the gall to throw that question at him like it was some kind of challenge? Talk about a no-brainer. He brought his face close enough to hers that she’d be able to feel the heat of his breath.
“Fuck yeah I do.”
His hands jumped from her neck to her head, her enraged face framed in his grasp. He could have popped her skull like a water balloon. Instead, because he had to show her just how much of a man he was--- also because she’d made him feel like such an idiot when he tried to do it her way--- but most of all because he knew it would piss her off--- he kissed her. There was no tenderness in it. He roughly crushed his mouth against hers, his hands engulfed by her crown of flames, his flesh defiantly unburned.
A wild tangle of noise tried to escape from Hot Flash's lips, her crushed lips that she could already feel becoming inflamed. She immediately ceased clawing at him and instead pounded the heels of her palms against whatever part of his face she could reach. It hurt like hell, it was like striking the hardest steel imaginable, and she knew her hands would be covered in nasty bruises, but she couldn't stop.
Hot Flash couldn't recall ever being so angry in her life. Through her screwed up eyelids she saw an intense angry red - maybe it was her own anger, or maybe it was Hal. The fingers that he had buried into her skull were searing her, and she felt what it was like to burn, her hands felt like they were burning as she struck as hard as she could, trying to dig her fingers into Hal's eyeballs.
"Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you FUCK YOU!" She screamed mentally at Hal, hating him with every fiber of her body, knowing that some how, some way, if it were the last thing she ever did, she would get him for this, she would exact some sort of revenge.
Her blows landed on his face like a drumming of fingertips. It was almost like standing out in the rain. He smiled vindictively against her trapped mouth, and with his hands still on her head he forced her backwards, steering her into the wall again. This time her skull was cushioned from impact by the cage of his fingers. It didn’t remain so for long. Breaking the kiss, he released her head in order to seize her by the wrists instead, catching one and then the other as she flailed--- it reminded him, weirdly, of grabbing snakes by the back of the neck. Then he pinned them against the wall over her head, chuckling meanly as she struggled.
“Whoa there, tiger, settle down!”
His teasing grin was gone in the next instant, as he jammed one of his knees against the wall between her legs, the top of his thigh now pressed into her groin. He crossed her wrists so that he could keep them restrained with one hand, leaving his other hand free to paw at one of her breasts, kneading roughly.
“Whassa matter, Flash?” he leered. “Never had a real man before?”
If she thought she was seeing red before, it was nothing compared to the livid scarlet that was now tainting her vision. Hal's condescending tone was maddening her, and she snarled. There was nothing vaguely fetching about her features - an animal rage had overcome her and she writhed that much more, trying desperately to escape.
Her hands flapped uselessly in his unbreakable grip, the pressure between her legs creating an awful combination of enraged heat, and a bizarre hint of satisfaction of having pushed him to this point.
His clumsy handling of her breast made her sneer, however. "You fucking wish! A man wouldn't have to resort to pinning me down and groping me with all the finesse of a hormonal teenage boy!" She punctuated her insults by twisting her legs in a series of ungainly kicks, striking weakly at the backs of his legs.
"So you'd better back the fuck off right now, Hal! I made you into a fucking god again, into something fucking worthwhile, and I know how to take it back!" She screeched furiously at him, her eyes blazing with hate. She had never before resorted to mentioning his re-creation as a powerful demi-god - and she hoped it fucking stung. She wanted to sear the stupid goddamn smirk off his face, destroy that self-satisfaction.
It gave him a moment of pause, to be reminded so abruptly and after all this time just how this whole shitshow had gotten started in the first place. He hated to remember it, did everything he could not to think about it--- about how weak and stupid and worthless he’d felt in that prison cell, and how she’d come for him and forced him kicking and screaming back into this body even though he’d already known that it wouldn’t make him feel any better. Big surprise: it didn't.
The thing is, he never asked for it, not the first time and definitely not this time, but there he was with the power of a god again. That had to mean something, right? If the universe was going to insist upon it, who was he to say no?
He’d had this argument with himself so many times--- and reached the same conclusion so many times--- that her threat only made him snort impatiently, and he flung out his arm in a gesture of open challenge.
“So do it already! I’m asking you to stop me, you’re saying you can stop me, so stop me!” He gave her pinned wrists a quick jerk to emphasize her inability to do so. “Oh, what, you can’t right now? Well that’s too bad, because right now, that is all that matters, baby. This isn’t about---” he made a puppet of his hand, flapping its mouth and pitching his voice to a falsetto. “---oh, I gave you those powers, I can take them away, I made you, I can unmake you!” The puppet vanished in a dismissive wave. “Bullshit. It doesn’t matter where I got the powers or if I’ll even have them an hour from now. Right here, right now, the only thing that matters---”
He shoved his knee further up along the wall, putting more and more of her own weight onto the pressure between her legs. She’d had this coming for a good long time. Little girls who play with fire deserve to get burned.
“---is that I’m stronger than you.”
Numbness swept over Hot Flash, and in hindsight, it seemed incredibly stupid that she would use her greatest weapon against Hal now, of all times. Even if the gun were in her pinned hands, what could she do?
The realization sent a ice chill straight through the middle of the numbness. What could she do, really? She didn't want his powers to be gone - he was infinitely more useful to her like this than he had been as a pathetic inmate of Metro City Prison. But if the situation were different, if she were on her own two feet (rather than all of her weight being squashed onto her groin, which was becoming painful at this point), the gun firmly in hand, her finger depressing the trigger...
What could she do? In a bitter flash of understanding, she saw the entire time she had spent with him since his repowering. She saw her own memories of debating whether or not to do it, to use Hal, to manipulate him into being the Doom Syndicate's pet, her pet. But she could never fully control him. He could dart across the room, break the gun and her neck, be done in a second, perhaps even less. It was a weird sort of betrayal - a dog who whips around and bites the hand that feeds it. She also felt that she had betrayed herself - being so stupid, so arrogant, that she thought she could ever control him.
For every time she had made him feel inferior, intentionally or not, the weight of it seemed to hit her. She was now the one made to feel young, childish and stupid.
Hot Flash stared balefully at Hal, the pregnant pause of her musings hanging between them. That thought alone, that she was inferior, incensed her more than his mocking, than his aggressive advances. Her stare grew harder, and she spat at him, her tone acidic.
"Fine. You win."
He froze, too stunned to even reach up and wipe the spit off his face. Slowly, almost without thinking, he lowered his foot back down to the floor, allowing her to stand on her own again.
Was that--- was that really it? Did she mean it? She sure as hell looked like she meant it, with that thousand-yard stare and the apparent cessation of her struggles. Under his sensitive palms, however, he could feel her muscles coiled like springs. Her fight was not concluded. It was merely contained.
Narrowing his eyes, he wiped away her spiteful mark with the heel of his hand. Her heartbeat, doubled at the wrists, was still hammering in his grasp. There was only one way to test her surrender.
“Say that again.”
She had caught him - it wasn't exactly anywhere near the upper hand again, but it was better than a few moments ago. She matched his narrow eyes, practically seeing the cogs spinning and whirring away inside his skull as he mulled it over. She was doing some thinking of her own.
Fine. You win.
She couldn't determine how much of the short sentence was truth, and how much was her desire to maintain some level of control, and her sense of self preservation.
But that was stupid. Of course he had won, really. How could he not? He was right - he was stronger than her.
But that's not right, she thought. He might have the physical upper hand, forever and always. But emotionally he was as weak as a sickly kitten. His insistence on hearing that precious validation, the affirmation of 'yes, I am a man!', it gave her every scrap of ammunition she might ever need against him. She was better than him, and she would be an even greater idiot for forgetting it.
"No." She paused, her pulse speeding up. Part of her brain was telling her to back down, a small, yet significant flashing red light. She ignored it.
"Why can't once be good enough for you? I know you heard me."
He bared his teeth in indignation. She couldn’t even admit just one fucking time that maybe he might be right about something. That maybe he might be better than her, even just this once. He grabbed her swiftly by the chin, his fingers curling unpleasantly around her jaw. He wasn’t going to let her get away with it. Not this time.
“Because,” he hissed. “I don’t just want you to say it. I want you to mean it.”
The fingers grasping her jaw seemed to refresh the other, more intense pains in her body. Hot Flash winced, though she tried not to. Her head, arms, and groin all seemed to ache at once, and she set her jaw, squinting at Hal with irritation. Though she was at fault for pressing him further, she suddenly felt very sick of all this.
"You should know damn well that I mean it! You're a man, you win, there, I fucking said it, is that good enough?”
“No!” He pulled back her wrists just to slam them against the wall again. “Say it again!”
“Fuck you!” She screeched in his face. “I could say it a million goddamn times and it still won’t be enough! I know it won't be, will never fucking be, Hal! You’re never going to fucking hear it! You’re never going to grow up!”
Sirens exploded in his head. There it was again there it was again she was going for the jugular she was coming after him again. He was just a goddamn voodoo doll to her, and she had an endless supply of pins that she never seemed to tire of sticking into him. That one just barely missed his heart.
“Shut up,” he growled, his voice dangerously low.
But she charged on, her words coming out in a torrential rush that only increased in volume as he attempted to silence her.
“I don't know what kind of goddamn validation you want. A certificate? A medal? How about I get it engraved on a plaque: Hal Stewart, Officially a Man!”
“Shut up!”
“Maybe I just can't give it to you. Maybe no one can. No one but her.”
There. Hal’s eyes shot wide as the pain suddenly cut too deep for him to hide. It was like spotting the missing scale on the belly of a dragon. He’d shown his weakness, and without a moment of hesitation, Hot Flash took aim and fired the shot.
“Well I'm sorry I'm not Roxanne fucking Ritchi, because apparently only she could make you finally feel like you're worth something!"
“I said shut up!”
Crack.
Hal punctuated the final command with a vicious backhand blow to her face, releasing his grip on her wrists so that the impact sent her flying. Spots burst behind Hot Flash's eyes, and she was on the floor before she could register much else. He’d hit her as hard as he could, hit her without thinking, hit her just so he wouldn’t crush her instead. The mention of Roxanne’s name sent his blood boiling up like magma, his brain sizzling out to white noise, his ears actually ringing with the sound of his own thundering heart. His stomach lurched upwards as though he were falling. Genuinely blind with rage, he pointed wildly in what he hoped was Hot Flash’s direction.
“Don’t you ever say that bitch’s name to me again! I don’t want to hear that fucking name, do you understand me?”
She didn't understand; the pain was too much of a distraction. The side of her face hurt so much that it seemed to alternate between hot and icy. She gingerly touched her jaw with her fingertip and cried out. She didn't know if it was broken, but it was certainly a level of pain she had never felt before. Tears, hot and painful and angry, sprang into the corners of her eyes and she blinked furiously, loathe to show any sign of weakness. But she couldn't stop. It just fucking hurt.
He knew he was getting hysterical, he knew he sounded like he was totally losing it, but, well, he was totally losing it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so angry. It caused him physical pain, like it used to feel when he held his breath for too long, like if he didn’t let go of this pressure then it would actually make him explode. His hands were shaking. He was shaking. With a savage roar of frustration, he turned and buried his fists into the wall.
And just like that, just like a tsunami wave, his temper crested, crashed, and finally began to recede.
Breathing hard, he watched the cracks on the wall swim back into focus. Hot Flash didn’t answer. Thank God she didn’t answer. It gave him one goddamn second to just breathe.
He squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to think about her. Which her? It didn’t matter, both of them, all of them, all of the hers who had ever left him stranded and bleeding. He leaned hard into the wall, felt his own weight supported on his hands, feel that, feel how fucking big you are, you’re huge, and tried to anchor himself in it. It didn’t quite work. The body didn’t quite fit.
At a loss, he yanked his fists out of the craters they had just created. He felt jittery, like he was having a heart attack. He rounded on Hot Flash, his game face on, ready to meet the next barrage of abuse.
Then he saw her crumpled on the floor.
“Jesus,” he grimaced.
He twisted away again so he couldn’t see her anymore, already trying to convince himself that she didn’t look as fucked up as she did. He refused to accept what he’d just done. It wasn’t that bad. It couldn’t be. He coughed to clear the lump of guilt from his throat.
“Get up. Come on, get up. You’re fine.”
Hot Flash was angry, but she didn't have even a tenth of the energy she'd need to sustain it. She could hear the cowardice in his voice as he ordered her to get up. She hated him for it, a sick hot surge of hatred.
Don't dish it out if you can't take it.
Don't play rough if you're going to be weak about it.
God, I fucking hate you.
These thoughts all spun through her brain, but she couldn't say any of them. It wasn't worth it. She had been hit before - she had taken her fair share of solid hits, from men and women alike. She reasoned that if she was going to fight like a man - and she thought she did - that she ought to be able to stand up and be hit back like one too.
But this was different. Somehow. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe she was just angry that she lost, that there were twin streams of hot tears slicked down her face, giving away just how fucking much her jaw hurt, hell, her entire body hurt.
But she did, at least, have the last word.
"You win."
________end.
Authors: colonel_bastard & junosunderland
Characters/Fandom: Hal Stewart, Hot Flash. Megamind.
Word Count: 7,865
Rating: R
Summary: It takes two to tango, but when both partners try to lead they just wind up going in circles.
Warnings: Gratuitous language, violence of all sorts, a lover's brawl to bring down the house.
Notes: A long-overdue collaboration between me and my dear friend Juno! We set up an arena, then she brought her fiercest Hot Flash and I brought my nastiest Hal. Fight fight fight! Set in a post-movie world where HF has broken Hal out of prison, given him back his powers, and they've ended up in the kind of relationship that blurs the line between passion and poison. Also they're probably going to murder each other. No blow is too low, no trick is too dirty--- they're playing to win, they're playing for keeps, and at the end of the day the only thing that matters is who's in control. Title taken from the excellent Tom Lehrer song.
It was musty here - as usual. Hot Flash wrinkled her nose. The disdain that she felt from time to time in Hal Stewart's presence was already threatening to rear its ugly head. She busied herself checking the small duffel bag she had slung over her shoulder - tights, cape, shorts. It was all there. She didn't dare leave the spandex with Hal - she was certain it wouldn't last a single afternoon.
"Hal!" She called the name, striding openly into where he kept his own hideout. There was an undefinable sense of his presence here - though he was clearly occupying the space at the moment, it seemed so much more than just him. Maybe it was that level of superpower, that it seemed almost palpable.
"I want to go out - here, put this on." She tossed the contents of the duffel bag unceremoniously at him, and waited, hands on hips.
"Jesus!" Hal jumped when the suit landed in his lap, his awareness so wholly devoted to Assassin's Creed that he hadn't even noticed her entering his lair. He fumbled frantically to untangle his hands from the wadded spandex. Onscreen, Ezio pinwheeled around in erratic circles.
"Don't you ever knock?" The redhead growled in frustration.
Freeing the controller at last, he slung the costume onto the vacant couch cushion beside him, returning his attention to the game.
"Forget it," he said over his shoulder. "I'm busy."
Hot Flash spared a glance at the large screen - she rolled her eyes. Some video game. Of course. This was entirely too reminiscent of her own bratty children.
"Busy doing what?" She moved to stand directly between Hal and the television, glaring down at him. "Some game or whatever? Why waste your time on this when we can go out there and do the real thing?" She placed her hands firmly on her hips again, her stance aggressive. She hated it when he was a child like this.
As she came into his field of vision he leaned instinctively to maintain his view of the TV, but when she planted herself squarely in front of him he had no choice but to rock back to his centered position and glare up at her, his expression annoyed.
“You know, you’d make a better door than a window.”
Before she could have a chance to respond, he heaved an exaggerated sigh of irritation and jammed his thumb against the start button, pausing the game until he could return to it properly--- which, if he had any say in things, would be sooner rather than later.
“Look,” he said testily. “I don’t know what part of ‘forget it’ could be so difficult to understand, so I’ll just make sure you heard me.” Leaning up towards her, he enunciated carefully, “Forget. It.”
This was already becoming a trial. Of course. As he talked back to her, she had to resist the 'motherly' instinct to pop him one in the mouth for being such an insufferable little fuck. Instead, she settled for talking down to him.
"Jesus Christ, isn't anything easy with you? Just put on the fucking spandex and let's go! See, you paused your game - clearly it is not going anywhere." Hot Flash kept her ground, sneering down at Hal. It had been a little while since they'd gone out together, and she was determined to not be denied.
"So get your ass up and let's go."
In an attempt to startle her, Hal sprang up from the couch as quickly as he could, popping up to his full, intimidating height in the blink of an eye. He leaned slightly towards her to remind her of his physical advantage, pressing into her space just long enough to potentially cause discomfort before spinning lazily on his heel and sauntering towards the fridge where he kept his beer.
“Where do you wanna go, anyway?” He tugged the door open and browsed among the bottles, his voice taking on a whining tone. “Didn’t we just rob the bank? Gimme a fucking break already.”
"I - the liquor store. Let's go knock one over." Hot Flash cursed herself internally - she had retreated several hasty steps when Hal had sprang at her like that. She stared stonily at his back before making her way to where he was hunched, rummaging through his fridge.
"Whatever you want, we'll get it there - and don't fucking whine like that, it's irritating." She had thrust an arm between him and the bottles within the fridge - if he was going to invade her space, then she would force her way into his.
Infuriated by both her words and her actions, he grabbed her impulsively by the wrist of the arm blocking his path, remembering at the last fucking second not to use his full strength as he closed his hand. One more heartbeat of pressure and her bones would have snapped like twigs in his grip--- that was a close one. He loosened his hold by a tiny fraction, but it lost none of its threat as he twisted to face her, displaying her hand trapped between them like a trophy.
“Hey, you know what else is irritating?” he sneered. “When you get in my way.”
It wasn’t quite a shove, but he definitely urged her away from him as he released her. Hot Flash writhed, clutching her wrist as she stumbled backwards. Her hair flared, and she could feel her eyes grow wide. It was far from the first (and certainly wouldn’t be the last) time he was physical with her, but it never failed to get a reaction.
"You little fucking prick!" The words came out in an low, angry hiss - her wrist throbbed, and she could feel her vision blinking in and out of focus in her rage.
Ignoring her, he snatched a beer defiantly out of the fridge, cracking the cap off with his bare hand and taking a substantial swig. Then, with the bottleneck hooked between middle finger and thumb, he jabbed his index finger towards the pile of spandex on the couch.
“And you know I fucking hate that suit.”
"I don't give a flying fuck!"
The words came out shrilly, and with her good hand she lobbed a fireball at the bottle he had just opened - it burst, showering beer and glass all over the place. Although there was no way it could hurt him, he still automatically flinched away from the flying shards of glass, one arm thrown up to shield his face from the nonexistent danger.
Hot Flash huffed angrily and clenched her hand around her wrist again, feeling the beginnings of a bruise forming. By the next breath Hal’s shock had already turned into anger.
“God!” he barked. “What is your problem?”
He flapped his hand, scattering droplets of beer into the air. It made him even angrier to see her nursing her wrist like that, like some kind of goddamn martyr. He’d barely touched her and she’d thrown a fucking fireball at him. The injustice of it spurred him towards nastiness.
“You know, that’s always bugged me about you, Flash,” he jeered. “You always act like you’re on the goddamn rag even though that ship has fucking sailed.”
Keeping a vice-like grip on her wrist, Hot Flash stared at Hal hatefully. The pain in her wrist was slowly being phased out by anger. She had seen how he flinched away from the broken glass, and it disgusted her.
"You're so pathetic! You have to resort to digs about my age? Is that the best you can really come up with? Brilliant, Hal, really fucking genius there! Why, with comebacks like that, I don't know how Megamind survived! Let me just cry a fucking river here, since I'm just so overcome with emotion!" Her tone was nasty and condescending. Fighting Hal felt so much like fighting a teenager who thought they were infinitely cleverer than they actually were.
"You might as well stick with trying to rip people's hands off, you're a lot better at that than your lame fucking insults."
Hal saw red. At first he wasn’t even sure if it was his powers or just the sheer force of his rising temper that stained his vision an ugly crimson, but the color was soon joined by that now-familiar sensation of heat and pressure, the lasers preparing to fire. He blinked furiously, almost like someone might blink back tears--- but it was nothing so sentimental. He was just trying to stop himself from shooting the bitch point blank in the face.
She treated him like a kid, like a stupid fucking kid. Even with all his powers, with all his strength and speed and flight, she could still get under his skin, make him feel weak and young and ignorant. Her mocking dismissal of his attempt to wound her was the worst kind of blow to his pride. He’d already let one woman make a fool out of him. He wasn’t going to let it happen again.
“Oh yeah?” he wondered darkly.
And he charged towards her, seizing her upper arms and driving her backwards until she collided with the wall. There he pinned her like a butterfly to a board, a captured prize, a creature entirely at his mercy. His voice was little more than a snarl.
“How about I rip your fucking head off instead?”
Her head banged loudly against the wall, and for a moment Hot Flash swore she could see stars. The room seemed to spin before Hal's snarling face loomed before her, taking up her entire range of vision. She could barely make out the words he was saying, though the gist seemed perfectly clear. A low moan escaped from her clenched teeth.
"You... fucking..." There seemed to be no insult fitting for the ringing that was filling her head, the sharp pains in her arms. She felt dizzy, slow, groggy. But she was trying her best to fight it back. It was hard, with her arms pinned uncomfortably against the wall behind her, but she would do her best.
So she spat in his face.
"How about that?" The words were slightly slurred, but determined.
“Agh!”
He reared back in disgust, releasing one of her arms in order to scrub frantically at the smear of saliva with the back of his hand.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he spluttered. “Did you just spit on me?”
He grabbed her again, held her fast, struggled against the urge to shake her like a ragdoll. She was driving him crazy.
“What do you even want?” he demanded, searching her face. “Do you really wanna go out or do you just wanna fight? ‘Cause if you wanna fight then let’s fight but man you have got to stop playing these fucking games with me, Flash, I am fucking sick of these games.”
Her head jerked uncomfortably when Hal seized her again, but otherwise Hot Flash was recovering quickly. She stared angrily back at him, suddenly feeling small.
"Yeah I fucking wanted to go out, why the fuck do you think I came here in the first place? For your charming company? For you to try to break my goddamn wrist? For you to slam me against the wall like a fucking toy?!" Her voice rose higher with each accusation. She struggled hard against his hands, trying to free herself.
"I just wanted to go out and have a nice fucking time! I'm sorry you can't be bothered to do anything but sit here in your pathetic man cave all day!" She struggled again, but this time the pain in her head caught back up to her, and she winced.
"If you're suddenly going to not try to decapitate me, can you at least let me go? This really fucking hurts."
So he dropped her like a hot potato, both hands going up in a signal of truce as he stepped carefully away from her, his glare hooded. Her accusations made him feel guiltier than he could ever afford to let her know.
“Fine,” he muttered. “You wanna go out? Let’s go out. Will that get you off my goddamn back for a while?”
Hot Flash rubbed her arms, staring at Hal moodily. Somewhere inside, she felt like she ought to be lucky to still be standing here - but at the same time she had confidence that he would never really hurt her. He might get rough, but she had a handle on him. Feeling a little bit better, she managed a weak grin in his direction.
"Yeah, let's go out. But first - put on the suit." She jerked her head (painfully, as she immediately regretted) at the crumpled wad of spandex. "Please."
He had already been drawing in a breath to protest, but at that last word he released it in a frustrated huff. She was even trying to smile. Goddamn it.
When he chanced a quick look at the couch, the familiar red and orange caught his eye like a beacon. He shifted uneasily. He wasn't lying when he said he hated reminders.
"I keep telling you," he hedged. "I want a new one."
Hot Flash made to cross her arms again, but found that they were still a bit too sore to do that. She settled for a dissatisfied look instead, her brows creasing together.
"And where are you going to get a new one? Just wear this one." She made her way over to the couch and held the spandex outfit up enticingly - like you might try to tempt an irate child with a sucker at the doctor's office.
"Besides - it fits you. And I like it - it's so fiery."
Hal raised his eyebrows at her tone, at her choice of words. It almost sounded like she was flirting with him. She must be flirting with him. The moment of confusion was soon eclipsed by a surge of pleasure. Of course she was flirting with him. The thing is, he'd spent so long feeling so wretchedly undesirable that it still came as a surprise when anyone showed the slightest bit of interest in him, let alone a woman like Hot Flash. Women like that -- smart, successful, powerful -- weren't exactly known to give him the time of the day. Women like that tended to look right through him.
Hot Flash was looking right at him.
There was an undeniable swagger in his step as he closed the distance between them, coming near enough to appreciate how very small she was in his shadow. She had to look up if she wanted to look him in the eye. He rolled his shoulders lazily, savoring his superiority.
"Okay," he said coolly. "Fine."
Then he reached behind him to grab his t-shirt by the back of the collar, pulling the whole thing up over his head and down his arms in one smooth gesture that ended with him tossing the garment away like a total badass.
Smirking, he held out an expectant hand for the suit.
Hot Flash had to work to suppress the shiver of pleasure she felt - she learned young to never let a man think he had too much of an upper hand. All the same - there was something about those sleek muscles, the sheer masculinity of him... It drew her back to Hal again and again. His childishness infuriated her, but when he was like this, she thought she might stick around forever. If they didn't kill each other first.
"Here." The word came out breathy, and she tilted her head to look into his face as she handed him the suit. He looked smug, confident. Just the way she liked him best.
Hot Flash felt tempted to leave, to give him privacy - but a wicked corner of her brain wanted to stay, right here in his personal space. She wanted to push him some more, if a bit more delicately this time, and see what he would do.
His brows rose even further. He hadn’t exactly expected her to surrender the garment and make a run for it, but he had not expected her to just stand there with that look on her face. That look. Half the time -- most of the time -- he really did want to rip her head off. But when she looked at him like that, well...
She looked so expectant. Oh God. Oh fuck. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what she wanted him to do. He hesitated, scrambling desperately for something cool and sexy to say. She was waiting for him to do something. He had to do something.
"So, uh," he said, trying to sound nonchalant. “Are you just gonna stand there or do you wanna gimme a hand with this?”
He jutted his hips towards her, offering the button of his jeans.
And just like that - it was like the air being let out from a tire. Hot Flash felt deflated - Hal's momentary trip, that weakness... It reminded her that his confidence was all an illusion, try as she might to hold on to it, to do her best to inflate it.
She stepped backwards, pulling away from him. Her stare, that had been almost misty, was now growing increasingly cool. Hot Flash looked at the proffered button, then back to Hal's expectant face.
"I think you know how to undress yourself."
It was almost exactly like being kicked in the balls. There was the same plummeting sensation, the same total horror, and the distinct realization that his manhood had just taken a critical hit. His shoulders sagged, and he suddenly felt very naked and stupid and self-conscious. That fucking bitch. Setting him up just to shoot him down. Again. Again!
“Whatever,” he scoffed hastily. “Your loss.”
He turned his back on her, mortified, fumbling with his zipper. Now he just wanted to get it over with, get dressed and get out there and get in trouble so he could pretend this had never happened. He hated himself for letting her do this to him.
Just as he was about to shove his jeans down to the floor, he paused, his thumbs still hooked in the waistband. He glared back over his shoulder.
“You can wait outside.”
God dammit! A child! The same as ever!
"Outside?" She broke off, snorting. "Like hell I will! Jesus, just because I didn't want to help you, now you're all wounded. You're so touchy!"
She tried so hard to build him up, she really did. She wanted him to be the man he wanted to be, the man who was actually thrilling to be around. But as usual... When he had turned his back to her, she could have screamed in frustration. His ego was as easily popped as the most delicate balloon.
"Jesus..." she murmured under her breath. "Strongest man in the world, most fragile ego in the universe."
The mutter landed like an atom bomb on his sensitive hearing. Any lingering feelings of insecurity evaporated in a white-hot blaze of outrage, his eyes going wide and his hands clenching violently, instantaneously into fists. Forgetting that he was only half-dressed, he rounded on her with his teeth bared, his head thrust low like a bull about to charge.
"What did you just say?"
Super hearing - part of her wanted to tell herself that she had forgotten he had it. A much more honest part of her admitted that she wanted him to hear her, to be wounded, to maybe man up for a fucking second and stop being a baby about everything. So much for that one. Though given his reaction to what she had just muttered, she was secretly glad that mind reading wasn't a part of the long list of things he was capable of.
"I think you know damn well what I just said." Hot Flash spoke up loudly - her anger was beginning to run away with her again, and it was like the few moments of peace had never happened. She was beginning to grow as visibly angered as Hal - the flames on her head licking ever higher, and her own hands balled into tight fists.
"But in case you missed it - 'strongest man in the world, most fragile fucking ego in the goddamn universe! How can you be this fucking insecure? If Metro Man were still alive, I bet you could kick his ass, and yet you still act like an angry little kid at the slightest fucking thing!"
Something went snap right between his eyes, a spike of anger so intense that he felt it like a jab from a cattle prod. His vision narrowed down into a tunnel, a telescope pointed right at her face, at her fucking face, at her vicious sneer and her spiteful eyes.
Kid. She still thought he was a kid. In moments like this it became almost unbearably obvious that she would never take him seriously, that she thought of him as little more than an overgrown ankle-biter, a super-sized brat whose only claim to fame was a citywide temper tantrum. Not even his awesome powers could improve his miserable standing in her eyes, and that was an echo too bitter to endure.
“You bitch!”
He was on top of her before he’d even realized he’d moved, his hands clamped on her shoulders and already creeping towards her throat. He dragged her towards him, lifting her up to her toes to bring her face closer to his.
“You think I’m fragile?” he roared. “I could break you in half like a fucking toothpick! You’re nothing compared to me, nothing, so you better start showing me some goddamn respect!”
Hal had managed to successfully unnerve Hot Flash a handful of times - but this was the first time she felt a stab of fear. He had moved so quickly she had barely seen him - and before she knew it he had lifted her from her feet and was screaming in her face.
She whipped her head to the side, her eyes squeezing shut. Her hands were still curled up, but now it was from the vice-like grip he had on her shoulders. Pain was shooting up and down her arms and she kicked out, trying to hit him anywhere she could, her fight or flight instinct kicking in.
"F-FUCK!" She choked on the word, taking several deep swallows - it struck her that he might actually try to strangle her. She flailed all the harder, striking him with her fists as well as her feet now.
Her attempts to dislodge him were so utterly and absolutely worthless. He was getting drunk off of it, intoxicated by her helplessness. God it felt good to make her squirm, to prove how much stronger he was, how much bigger and better than she could ever hope to be. She could mock him all she wanted, call him stupid and lazy and a million other things. This was all the proof he needed to know that she was wrong.
“Aww, is that all you got?” he heckled, loving every futile punch, every useless kick. “Is that the best you can do? Come on!”
His hands finally reached her neck. It was so small in comparison, so easy to wind his fingers around. His grip became something like a boa constrictor slowly tightening its coils. He hated her. He hated her so fucking much. She had no right to make him feel so inadequate. She had no right.
“Come on!” he urged, his tone suddenly ugly. “Stop me! I fucking dare you to stop me!”
Through the ice of fear, Hot Flash felt a pang of anger - this was just like that stupid broadcast he had done, when he had that reporter, Roxanne Ritchi, tied to Metro Tower. Thinking he was so fucking big and bad as he taunted her.
In lieu of punching him, she dragged the tips of her gloved fingers down his forearms - it accomplished nothing, but it felt good, and somehow more productive, than her equally futile punches and kicks.
Fire ignited in her hands as she clawed at him, and she hissed angrily through the fist around her neck.
"Do you - feel like a - fucking MAN now?!"
He laughed cruelly at the blazing trails of fire left by her curled fingers--- the flames against his naked skin didn’t even itch. She was giving it all she had and she still couldn’t touch him, not even after he had defied her to do her worst. All she could do was hiss and spit and swing at him like an angry cat. Then she had the gall to throw that question at him like it was some kind of challenge? Talk about a no-brainer. He brought his face close enough to hers that she’d be able to feel the heat of his breath.
“Fuck yeah I do.”
His hands jumped from her neck to her head, her enraged face framed in his grasp. He could have popped her skull like a water balloon. Instead, because he had to show her just how much of a man he was--- also because she’d made him feel like such an idiot when he tried to do it her way--- but most of all because he knew it would piss her off--- he kissed her. There was no tenderness in it. He roughly crushed his mouth against hers, his hands engulfed by her crown of flames, his flesh defiantly unburned.
A wild tangle of noise tried to escape from Hot Flash's lips, her crushed lips that she could already feel becoming inflamed. She immediately ceased clawing at him and instead pounded the heels of her palms against whatever part of his face she could reach. It hurt like hell, it was like striking the hardest steel imaginable, and she knew her hands would be covered in nasty bruises, but she couldn't stop.
Hot Flash couldn't recall ever being so angry in her life. Through her screwed up eyelids she saw an intense angry red - maybe it was her own anger, or maybe it was Hal. The fingers that he had buried into her skull were searing her, and she felt what it was like to burn, her hands felt like they were burning as she struck as hard as she could, trying to dig her fingers into Hal's eyeballs.
"Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you FUCK YOU!" She screamed mentally at Hal, hating him with every fiber of her body, knowing that some how, some way, if it were the last thing she ever did, she would get him for this, she would exact some sort of revenge.
Her blows landed on his face like a drumming of fingertips. It was almost like standing out in the rain. He smiled vindictively against her trapped mouth, and with his hands still on her head he forced her backwards, steering her into the wall again. This time her skull was cushioned from impact by the cage of his fingers. It didn’t remain so for long. Breaking the kiss, he released her head in order to seize her by the wrists instead, catching one and then the other as she flailed--- it reminded him, weirdly, of grabbing snakes by the back of the neck. Then he pinned them against the wall over her head, chuckling meanly as she struggled.
“Whoa there, tiger, settle down!”
His teasing grin was gone in the next instant, as he jammed one of his knees against the wall between her legs, the top of his thigh now pressed into her groin. He crossed her wrists so that he could keep them restrained with one hand, leaving his other hand free to paw at one of her breasts, kneading roughly.
“Whassa matter, Flash?” he leered. “Never had a real man before?”
If she thought she was seeing red before, it was nothing compared to the livid scarlet that was now tainting her vision. Hal's condescending tone was maddening her, and she snarled. There was nothing vaguely fetching about her features - an animal rage had overcome her and she writhed that much more, trying desperately to escape.
Her hands flapped uselessly in his unbreakable grip, the pressure between her legs creating an awful combination of enraged heat, and a bizarre hint of satisfaction of having pushed him to this point.
His clumsy handling of her breast made her sneer, however. "You fucking wish! A man wouldn't have to resort to pinning me down and groping me with all the finesse of a hormonal teenage boy!" She punctuated her insults by twisting her legs in a series of ungainly kicks, striking weakly at the backs of his legs.
"So you'd better back the fuck off right now, Hal! I made you into a fucking god again, into something fucking worthwhile, and I know how to take it back!" She screeched furiously at him, her eyes blazing with hate. She had never before resorted to mentioning his re-creation as a powerful demi-god - and she hoped it fucking stung. She wanted to sear the stupid goddamn smirk off his face, destroy that self-satisfaction.
It gave him a moment of pause, to be reminded so abruptly and after all this time just how this whole shitshow had gotten started in the first place. He hated to remember it, did everything he could not to think about it--- about how weak and stupid and worthless he’d felt in that prison cell, and how she’d come for him and forced him kicking and screaming back into this body even though he’d already known that it wouldn’t make him feel any better. Big surprise: it didn't.
The thing is, he never asked for it, not the first time and definitely not this time, but there he was with the power of a god again. That had to mean something, right? If the universe was going to insist upon it, who was he to say no?
He’d had this argument with himself so many times--- and reached the same conclusion so many times--- that her threat only made him snort impatiently, and he flung out his arm in a gesture of open challenge.
“So do it already! I’m asking you to stop me, you’re saying you can stop me, so stop me!” He gave her pinned wrists a quick jerk to emphasize her inability to do so. “Oh, what, you can’t right now? Well that’s too bad, because right now, that is all that matters, baby. This isn’t about---” he made a puppet of his hand, flapping its mouth and pitching his voice to a falsetto. “---oh, I gave you those powers, I can take them away, I made you, I can unmake you!” The puppet vanished in a dismissive wave. “Bullshit. It doesn’t matter where I got the powers or if I’ll even have them an hour from now. Right here, right now, the only thing that matters---”
He shoved his knee further up along the wall, putting more and more of her own weight onto the pressure between her legs. She’d had this coming for a good long time. Little girls who play with fire deserve to get burned.
“---is that I’m stronger than you.”
Numbness swept over Hot Flash, and in hindsight, it seemed incredibly stupid that she would use her greatest weapon against Hal now, of all times. Even if the gun were in her pinned hands, what could she do?
The realization sent a ice chill straight through the middle of the numbness. What could she do, really? She didn't want his powers to be gone - he was infinitely more useful to her like this than he had been as a pathetic inmate of Metro City Prison. But if the situation were different, if she were on her own two feet (rather than all of her weight being squashed onto her groin, which was becoming painful at this point), the gun firmly in hand, her finger depressing the trigger...
What could she do? In a bitter flash of understanding, she saw the entire time she had spent with him since his repowering. She saw her own memories of debating whether or not to do it, to use Hal, to manipulate him into being the Doom Syndicate's pet, her pet. But she could never fully control him. He could dart across the room, break the gun and her neck, be done in a second, perhaps even less. It was a weird sort of betrayal - a dog who whips around and bites the hand that feeds it. She also felt that she had betrayed herself - being so stupid, so arrogant, that she thought she could ever control him.
For every time she had made him feel inferior, intentionally or not, the weight of it seemed to hit her. She was now the one made to feel young, childish and stupid.
Hot Flash stared balefully at Hal, the pregnant pause of her musings hanging between them. That thought alone, that she was inferior, incensed her more than his mocking, than his aggressive advances. Her stare grew harder, and she spat at him, her tone acidic.
"Fine. You win."
He froze, too stunned to even reach up and wipe the spit off his face. Slowly, almost without thinking, he lowered his foot back down to the floor, allowing her to stand on her own again.
Was that--- was that really it? Did she mean it? She sure as hell looked like she meant it, with that thousand-yard stare and the apparent cessation of her struggles. Under his sensitive palms, however, he could feel her muscles coiled like springs. Her fight was not concluded. It was merely contained.
Narrowing his eyes, he wiped away her spiteful mark with the heel of his hand. Her heartbeat, doubled at the wrists, was still hammering in his grasp. There was only one way to test her surrender.
“Say that again.”
She had caught him - it wasn't exactly anywhere near the upper hand again, but it was better than a few moments ago. She matched his narrow eyes, practically seeing the cogs spinning and whirring away inside his skull as he mulled it over. She was doing some thinking of her own.
Fine. You win.
She couldn't determine how much of the short sentence was truth, and how much was her desire to maintain some level of control, and her sense of self preservation.
But that was stupid. Of course he had won, really. How could he not? He was right - he was stronger than her.
But that's not right, she thought. He might have the physical upper hand, forever and always. But emotionally he was as weak as a sickly kitten. His insistence on hearing that precious validation, the affirmation of 'yes, I am a man!', it gave her every scrap of ammunition she might ever need against him. She was better than him, and she would be an even greater idiot for forgetting it.
"No." She paused, her pulse speeding up. Part of her brain was telling her to back down, a small, yet significant flashing red light. She ignored it.
"Why can't once be good enough for you? I know you heard me."
He bared his teeth in indignation. She couldn’t even admit just one fucking time that maybe he might be right about something. That maybe he might be better than her, even just this once. He grabbed her swiftly by the chin, his fingers curling unpleasantly around her jaw. He wasn’t going to let her get away with it. Not this time.
“Because,” he hissed. “I don’t just want you to say it. I want you to mean it.”
The fingers grasping her jaw seemed to refresh the other, more intense pains in her body. Hot Flash winced, though she tried not to. Her head, arms, and groin all seemed to ache at once, and she set her jaw, squinting at Hal with irritation. Though she was at fault for pressing him further, she suddenly felt very sick of all this.
"You should know damn well that I mean it! You're a man, you win, there, I fucking said it, is that good enough?”
“No!” He pulled back her wrists just to slam them against the wall again. “Say it again!”
“Fuck you!” She screeched in his face. “I could say it a million goddamn times and it still won’t be enough! I know it won't be, will never fucking be, Hal! You’re never going to fucking hear it! You’re never going to grow up!”
Sirens exploded in his head. There it was again there it was again she was going for the jugular she was coming after him again. He was just a goddamn voodoo doll to her, and she had an endless supply of pins that she never seemed to tire of sticking into him. That one just barely missed his heart.
“Shut up,” he growled, his voice dangerously low.
But she charged on, her words coming out in a torrential rush that only increased in volume as he attempted to silence her.
“I don't know what kind of goddamn validation you want. A certificate? A medal? How about I get it engraved on a plaque: Hal Stewart, Officially a Man!”
“Shut up!”
“Maybe I just can't give it to you. Maybe no one can. No one but her.”
There. Hal’s eyes shot wide as the pain suddenly cut too deep for him to hide. It was like spotting the missing scale on the belly of a dragon. He’d shown his weakness, and without a moment of hesitation, Hot Flash took aim and fired the shot.
“Well I'm sorry I'm not Roxanne fucking Ritchi, because apparently only she could make you finally feel like you're worth something!"
“I said shut up!”
Crack.
Hal punctuated the final command with a vicious backhand blow to her face, releasing his grip on her wrists so that the impact sent her flying. Spots burst behind Hot Flash's eyes, and she was on the floor before she could register much else. He’d hit her as hard as he could, hit her without thinking, hit her just so he wouldn’t crush her instead. The mention of Roxanne’s name sent his blood boiling up like magma, his brain sizzling out to white noise, his ears actually ringing with the sound of his own thundering heart. His stomach lurched upwards as though he were falling. Genuinely blind with rage, he pointed wildly in what he hoped was Hot Flash’s direction.
“Don’t you ever say that bitch’s name to me again! I don’t want to hear that fucking name, do you understand me?”
She didn't understand; the pain was too much of a distraction. The side of her face hurt so much that it seemed to alternate between hot and icy. She gingerly touched her jaw with her fingertip and cried out. She didn't know if it was broken, but it was certainly a level of pain she had never felt before. Tears, hot and painful and angry, sprang into the corners of her eyes and she blinked furiously, loathe to show any sign of weakness. But she couldn't stop. It just fucking hurt.
He knew he was getting hysterical, he knew he sounded like he was totally losing it, but, well, he was totally losing it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so angry. It caused him physical pain, like it used to feel when he held his breath for too long, like if he didn’t let go of this pressure then it would actually make him explode. His hands were shaking. He was shaking. With a savage roar of frustration, he turned and buried his fists into the wall.
And just like that, just like a tsunami wave, his temper crested, crashed, and finally began to recede.
Breathing hard, he watched the cracks on the wall swim back into focus. Hot Flash didn’t answer. Thank God she didn’t answer. It gave him one goddamn second to just breathe.
He squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to think about her. Which her? It didn’t matter, both of them, all of them, all of the hers who had ever left him stranded and bleeding. He leaned hard into the wall, felt his own weight supported on his hands, feel that, feel how fucking big you are, you’re huge, and tried to anchor himself in it. It didn’t quite work. The body didn’t quite fit.
At a loss, he yanked his fists out of the craters they had just created. He felt jittery, like he was having a heart attack. He rounded on Hot Flash, his game face on, ready to meet the next barrage of abuse.
Then he saw her crumpled on the floor.
“Jesus,” he grimaced.
He twisted away again so he couldn’t see her anymore, already trying to convince himself that she didn’t look as fucked up as she did. He refused to accept what he’d just done. It wasn’t that bad. It couldn’t be. He coughed to clear the lump of guilt from his throat.
“Get up. Come on, get up. You’re fine.”
Hot Flash was angry, but she didn't have even a tenth of the energy she'd need to sustain it. She could hear the cowardice in his voice as he ordered her to get up. She hated him for it, a sick hot surge of hatred.
Don't dish it out if you can't take it.
Don't play rough if you're going to be weak about it.
God, I fucking hate you.
These thoughts all spun through her brain, but she couldn't say any of them. It wasn't worth it. She had been hit before - she had taken her fair share of solid hits, from men and women alike. She reasoned that if she was going to fight like a man - and she thought she did - that she ought to be able to stand up and be hit back like one too.
But this was different. Somehow. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe she was just angry that she lost, that there were twin streams of hot tears slicked down her face, giving away just how fucking much her jaw hurt, hell, her entire body hurt.
But she did, at least, have the last word.
"You win."
________end.