Happy Holidays, mrsachid!
See Part 1 for headers and author's notes.
Part 1
MIDDLEMAN HQ
SEVEN MONTHS AND FIFTEEN DAYS BEFORE DELIVERY
It was an unusually peaceful morning at HQ. No threats had been sent in for investigation, and so Archie had deemed it a great day to do maintenance. He assigned David to run diagnostics on their small firearms while he did inventory on the rest of their weapons, gadgets and things.
David was immersed in comparing a schematic of a positron blaster with the pile of funnily-shaped metal bits he'd spread out on his desk when his concentration was broken by a large wooden crate going BANG! as it was set down beside him. "Jesus fuck, Ida! Warn a guy!" he yelped.
He was spared a scathing remark about his intelligence, musicality or facial hair by Archie wandering into the room and saying, "I thought we weren't supposed to get anything from the higher-ups until next week, Ida."
Ida pointed out the red URGENT stamped across the crate's side. "Special delivery from O2STK for the Middleman," she said.
"Huh," replied Archie and pried the lid off. David stood up and moved to stand beside him to see what shiny new weapon/gadget/thing the Organization Too Secret To Know had sent them.
After clearing out the layers of packing hay, the two of them lifted out what resembled a tabletop aquarium, if the aquarium was filled with some kind of viscous translucent liquid that glowed softly instead of water and tropical fish.
David took the enclosed user manual and read, "Cross-dimensional Resonance Amplifying Displacement and Long-Range Excubator. CRADLE. Catchy. I don't think 'excubator' is even a word." He flipped through the pages, eyebrows raised. "This is- whoa, unnecessarily graphic illustrations are unnecessary. Someone pass me the brain bleach." He handed it back to Archie with a grimace.
"Singing in the rain! Apparently, this device 'translocates targeted biomatter while retaining normal feedback mechanisms'," Archie quoted, eyes widening even as they scanned through the manual.
"In humanities-major-English, please."
"The CRADLE can temporarily transfer the physical mass of my, uh, baby while still maintaining all other physiological connections."
David tried to parse that into freshman humanities-major-English. "What for?"
Ida rolled her eyes at him. "Catch up, you hippie. When was the last time a villain didn't try to shoot, stab, punch, kick or otherwise maim or try to kill a Middleman?"
He stared at Archie, noticing how the glow from the CRADLE seemed to highlight the pallid cast of his skin. David wasn't slow on the uptake (despite what Ida always insisted), had known rationally the exponential increase of the danger involved once a hypothetical helpless third person was included in the work of Middlemen, but it hadn't been a terrifyingly real, terrifyingly concrete possibility until Ida had said it out loud. It isn't a matter of if something goes wrong, he thought. It's a matter of when.
Archie had pressed his thumb on the panel and was watching the liquid go completely opaque. He then removed his thumb, looked at something in the manual and said, "It's done. Now to put it in storage." Before David could even think of opening his mouth to say- something, he wasn't sure what, Archie took the CRADLE in his arms and smiled at him and Ida. "Please hold the fort while I find someplace cool, dark and mold-free where we can keep this."
"Not the second basement. I moved the xenobiological samples there," Ida advised.
David watched his retreating back for a few seconds before returning his attention to his discarded blaster. He tried to figure out how he ended up with seven screws despite the schematic only indicating three, before giving it up for a lost cause and setting after Archie.
He found him in the changing room, sliding the CRADLE into place on a high shelf in one of the unused cabinets. "David!" Archie said, surprised. "Is something wrong?"
"Besides my latest diagnostic? Everything's fine," David replied, then frowned. "No, let me correct that. Not everything's fine. Not with you."
Archie blinked at him. "But I'm-"
David raised a hand, palm up. "Please don't. Don't- tell me that it's all fine. You're- we've been through a lot together, and I know you're my boss, but I'm also your partner and-"
Like a puppet with its strings cut, Archie crumpled, sitting abruptly down on the nearest bench. "I was so afraid that O2STK was going to make me forcibly retire," he whispered, staring down at his shoes.
David sat next to him. "Why? Was that a possibility?" He had to admit some of the finer points of the Middle-Lore were fuzzy to him, but he was pretty sure that maternity leave never killed a Middleman's career (undetected parasites, on the other hand…).
Archie shook his head and, as if thinking along the same lines as David, said, "It's not the pregnancy, precisely. It's the whole-" he waved a hand vaguely "-set of circumstances that surrounds it."
"Oh, god, are they punishing you because of something I inadvertently did? But I was the one who fucked up, not you!"
"No, no one's getting punished for that," Archie said firmly, and looked David in the eye. "I told you, I'm glad you shot at the plasma ray. Ida analyzed the blueprints and if I'd turned into a whatever, there's no way to reverse it."
"Then what is it?" David asked gently, bunching his fists on the fabric of his pants to keep them from grabbing Archie's in a very ill-timed gesture of otherwise well-meaning support.
Archie rubbed his arms briskly. "You know how I told you when I recruited you that being a Middleman opens your mind to the many possibilities of this universe and other universes?"
"Yeah?"
"I don't- I try to not have expectations about the job. What happens, happens, you know? It could be aliens today, and then the next-"
"-a succubus that preys on unsuspecting tax collectors?"
"Something like that. There's no point in dwelling about what could happen," explained Archie, his tongue flickering out to touch the corner of his lip. David closed his eyes briefly, glad that Archie had returned to staring at his regulation polished-to-a-mirror-shine shoes. "But despite having dealt with doppelgangers and mad scientists with mind-control helmets, I never thought I'd have to deal with my body doing… this."
"So why didn't you say yes when Ida offered to-"
"There are only two ways to stop being a Middleman," Archie interrupted in a hollow tone. "You either retire or die, and retirement very rarely ever happens. This isn't just a job. It's everything - your name, your history, your identity, all your flaws and faults - you have to give them all up to fight evil and pursue justice."
"And this is something that you don't want to let go of, no matter what the consequences might be," David realized.
Archie's shoulders slumped. "It's selfish of me, huh."
"No," David replied. "It's brave." Archie shook his head, disbelieving, so David elbowed him lightly. "I'm not kidding. You heard what Ida said. We've got great medical benefits, and I now know more about the many things that want to take over the world than I ever wanted to, but you have to admit that this job sucks."
The edges of Archie's mouth lifted almost unwillingly. "Thankless and unacknowledged heroism does get wearisome over time."
David nodded sagely. "Sure, the recruitment speech is fantastic, but imagine how many potential apprentices you might have driven off if you told them taking part means basically having the job take over your entire life. Not many people appreciate having their dates interrupted by a summons to fight a mutated sea serpent, you know."
"Like you," Archie said.
Because the person I want to date is fighting the mutated sea serpent beside me, David thought. Out loud, he merely said, "Like me. Yes, because my psych report says I'm a glutton for punishment. And people like you, because you're the most selfless person I know. No contradicting me here, Archie."
Archie was smiling now, a real smile that reached his eyes. "I'm not about to contradict your own experiences."
"That's right. Bow to my superior firsthand knowledge of my acquaintances," David joked, before saying, "Seriously, you know I'm here for you, right? Every step of the way, no matter what happens. Ida would say the same thing, but that's mostly because she's stuck here in HQ and can’t say otherwise."
Archie didn't reply, but his knee bumped gently against David's and stayed there, a point of warmth and human contact between them, and David knew everything he didn't say.
A FLASHBACK
THREE MONTHS, THREE DAYS AND SIXTEEN HOURS AGO
It wasn't a very starry night, light pollution managing to obscure anything of interest in the sky. Not that David was looking upwards, not when he had a wonderful being at his side, humming cheerfully as they walked to where the Middlemobile was parked, at the end of the quiet side street.
When they reached it, David abruptly realized that the tune Archie was humming was the same one David had been singing that morning in HQ, a tricky scrap of melody that he'd been working on that week. Without thinking, David turned his head and kissed Archie close-mouthed, almost chaste except for how he crowded Archie against the car.
Archie was still despite allowing David to push him back, and David was ready to pull away, when he made a strangled sound in his throat that reverberated all the way down to David's toes, wrapping his arms around David's neck and returning the kiss.
It was clumsy and exhilarating in ways even David's most feverish dreams hadn't managed to make up - his mind couldn't have possibly conjured up details like Archie's fingernails digging into his nape, or slickness of David's tongue teasing Archie's bottom lip, or the way Archie had to tilt his head back to meet David's mouth. It was glorious. David never wanted it to stop, only wanted to kiss away the raw yearning aching inside him, wanted to kiss Archie until he was moaning and wrecked in ways only David could make him.
He was about to tentatively explore the line of Archie's jaw, when something started whooping into his ear. It was part of a script he'd learned from heart from jerking awake, frustrated and annoyed, that he instantly broke away, snatching his hands from where they'd been gripping Archie in place.
"If this is a dream-" David groaned, at the same time Archie said breathlessly, "I should get this."
David reluctantly put a few inches of space between them. Cockblocked by a cranky robot, he thought glumly. What a life.
"-might need a flamethrower and industrial-strength bleach," Archie was instructing Ida. David watched him as he spoke, trying and failing to not imagine his dark hair mussed, preferably against a backdrop of David's pillows in his bed.
When Archie disconnected the call, he moved forward again, trying to lower his voice into a growl as he asked, "Now where were we?"
He was stopped by Archie shaking his head. Some of the warm fuzziness clouding David's mind receded and he went cold in the balmy night. He tugged uselessly at the hem of his jacket.
"I'm sorry about surprising you,” he blurted out. “It's not something I normally do, but you looked so, well-" he gestured towards the whole of Archie "-you that I just had to kiss you."
Archie shifted his weight, and with a sinking feeling, David watched as his eyebrows knit together, his gaze fixed on a point just below David's chin (David wasn't flattering himself into assuming he was distracted in a good way by it). He replied, "I know. It's just that I can't do this."
"Why not?" David asked. He knew for a fact that Archie didn't have anyone, never had in the whole time David had known him, never once had anybody wander to the Jolly Fats front office with tickets to some thing or a lunch-date (as David had, in the first month before he realized how terrible dating could be when one was a nine-to-five superhero). He also knew - and again he wasn't being unnecessarily vain - that the speculative glances Archie sometimes shot him weren't always to assess his physical or mental preparedness.
Archie spread his hands beseechingly. "We barely know each other."
"We could go out if you'd like," David offered, only half-jokingly. "A completely mundane date to, to a Thai restaurant? Or a G-rated musical comedy film festival, if there's any coming up soon. I could look it up online."
"I don't-" Archie inhaled deeply and seemed to brace himself. "I can't ever, not with anyone, but especially not with you. If- if anything goes wrong and this falls apart, there's a lot more at stake than-"
Something shockingly painful surged through David at Archie's unbearably earnest features. "But why not? You told me, 'When true love comes knocking and you turn it away, it's on you, not the job or anything else.'" It was as if a dam had burst inside him. "You told me that a Middleman's ultimate sacrifice is to not be loved. You told me that a Middleman isn't a coward. What happened to that?"
He didn't look to see the way Archie flinched as though struck by a violent force; predictably, his own eyes were burning. Hoarsely, he continued, the anger in his voice giving way to bleak desperation, "I don't know anything about you, but I'd like to try."
For the first time since a strange young man upset an otherwise-ordinary life with the promise of heroism for its own rewards, Archie looked… lost, the edges of his mouth still pink from both David's lips and David's beard. "'True love'?" he parroted back.
Suddenly, David felt like he'd been the one hit very hard somewhere soft and vulnerable. He wanted to double over, or beat his head against a convenient wall, or both at the same time.
"Motherfucker. Shit." He scrubbed agitatedly through his hair. "Look, I was seriously out of control and I didn't mean to call you a coward-"
"You're in lo-"
"-and I really do like being your sidekick or trainee or whatever you call it-"
"Middle-Apprentice."
"…I should have guessed. Where was I? Yes. OK. It was a moment of weakness (and dating dry-spell frustration) for which I take responsibility and which, I hope, isn't a one-way ticket out of HQ."
"No, of course it isn't!" Archie interjected, panicked.
"Good, because this job is the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me and I'd hate myself forever if some kiss in a deserted alleyway ruined that." He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, trying to focus on the twinge of pain rather than the sickening burn of humiliation and anger coursing through his veins. "I know this is probably the worst time to ask for a favor, but can we pretend that none of this happened? Please."
He watched the light bursting behind his eyelids and didn't trust himself to move until he heard Archie's quiet, "All right," and the beep of the Middlemobile's alarm deactivating.
When they got back to HQ after the world's most uncomfortable car ride, Ida took one look at the sorry pair of them and said, dispassionate as always, "Code 86 disables the Real-Time Situation Recording Archive during personal time like, say, an outtake from a telenovela during sweeps week. This is your friendly administrative reminder."
David dropped the atomic demolecularizer he was carrying. "What? You were watching us?"
"It's my job to monitor the real-time situation, Justin Timberlake. You think I enjoy-"
"As much as I enjoy the banter," Archie interrupted firmly, "we've still got post-mission reports to do." He glanced at David, not quite meeting his eyes. "I'll take care of the recording, don't worry."
THE STATIONERY STORE IN DAVID'S NEIGHBORHOOD
SEVEN MONTHS BEFORE DELIVERY
It was David’s rare day off.
(Technically, evil never slept and the Middle-Watch meant he was on-call 24/7, so “day off” was shorthand for “a freak occurrence where absolutely nothing required saving or defeating, plus his boss had no pressing tasks for him to accomplish, so he was gloriously free… until the watch acted up.” As can be imagined, days off very rarely happened for members of the Middleorganization.)
Usually on his days off, David hung out with Neal and his other buddies, working on the album that mostly existed as a wistful dream since their college days. In fact, David had made plans to meet in some guy’s garage for an afternoon with the band, and he was already running late. But first, he had an errand to run.
The calendar-publishing community must be booming, he mused as he took in the display in front of him. He had his pick of colors, shapes, sizes and designs. He randomly plucked two from a shelf, which turned out to be A Farmer’s Calendar of Grain Crops of South America and a frilly one with baby ducks. He briefly contemplated the ducks, then returned them both. No, what he needed was something a little more-
He crouched and after some quick excavation work, he pulled out a blank white calendar. The plastic label boasted of Swiss typographical influence, but David was more interested in its dimensions roughly equalling that of the empty space on his bedside table.
Almost entirely by itself, David’s hand drifted to the pocket where he kept his wallet. Even without taking it out, he could perfectly imagine the slip of paper - much folded and creased - he’d tucked in between his driver’s license and a childhood family photo.
Two months down, seven more to endure. He stood up and walked over to the counter, calendar in hand.
A BOILER ROOM IN A MANOR SUMMER COTTAGE
7:00 P.M.
While investigating reports of a cursed guillotine stolen by Count Featherstonehaugh ("wow, no wonder he turned to the dark side," David had said when Archie corrected his pronunciation), they'd been spotted by the count's goons sneaking around his manor summer cottage. Overpowered by sheer numbers, they were taken to a pitch-dark boiler room and chained to the pipes, awaiting execution by decapitation at sunrise. Since it was only seven p.m., Archie and David settled down to regain their strength.
"Archie?" David said after a few minutes of amiable silence.
Heavy chains clanked and scraped as Archie turned to face him. "Yes, David?"
"Can I ask a personal question?"
"Nothing in the Constitution is stopping you," Archie replied.
"I was wondering about, uh, the procedure for the, you know, birth."
"That's pretty easy. We'll use the Singularity Scalpel. It can cut through four dimensions while simultaneously cauterizing blood vessels and blocking pain receptors. Ida will operate and I'll stay awake to supervise."
"Huh. Good. That's very tidy. There's no chance of chest-bursting xenomorphs or- gory inhuman clawing happening, then."
"…clawing?"
David was very thankful that both their expressions were shrouded in darkness. "Let's not discuss my bountiful knowledge of popular depictions of vampiric lore, shall we?"
"My hand's loose," Archie announced suddenly. "Let me retrieve my pocket laser cutter and we'll be free and destroying that guillotine before the sun appears over the horizon."
"Cool." He squinted against the sudden burst of light as Archie activated the cutter. When the chains broke, he rubbed briskly at his chafed wrists and asked, striving for a casual, breezy tone, "Can I be there with you when it happens?"
The cutting blade vanished, leaving them yet again in the dark. "No."
David froze, then nearly smacked his forehead against a low-hanging pipe. "Sorry," he said hurriedly. "I know how private you are-" He was stopped by a light touch on his arm, fleeting and barely there.
"It's not that. The Singularity Scalpel might accidentally target you and cut through your four dimensions right into your liver. You can watch from the observation room. But thank you. For offering."
THE ILLEGAL SUBLET THAT DAVID SHARES WITH ANOTHER YOUNG, LACONIC MUSICIAN
FIVE MONTHS AND FOURTEEN DAYS BEFORE DELIVERY
"I told you, it's OK for you to drive back to HQ. I'm fine," Archie protested for what seemed like the thousandth time.
David paused in the midst of pulling up the elevator cage's gate to shoot him a disbelieving look. "No matter what Ida tells you, I do not enjoy cleaning up ectoplasm from the upholstery of the Middlemobile. I'm sure I'll enjoy cleaning up your vomit any better." Noticing how Archie was paling rapidly and starting to sway on his feet, he softened his tone. "C'mon, you can puke in my bathroom just as easily as you can in HQ."
"Please don't use the word 'puke'," muttered Archie, but allowed himself to be led down the short length of hallway into the (thankfully Neal-less) sublet and steered towards the couch. In the kitchen, David found a plastic basin filled with, huh, about thirty guitar picks (what was up with that?) and emptied it, filling it instead with tap water with one hand while the other found the least-stained wash cloth from the towel rack by the sink. These he set on the coffee table by Archie's knees. Archie was unfolding a paper bag with deliberate care, and then was very carefully sick in it.
Wincing at the sound, David swapped the bag for the damp cloth and disposed of it, not coincidentally giving Archie a few second to compose himself. He took a quick mental inventory of what was in his cabinets, decided that he really should go grocery-shopping and went back to Archie with two Dixie cups of water. He rubbed soothing circles over Archie's back while he rinsed out his mouth and drank.
"Better?" he asked.
"Still nauseated, but there's nothing left in my stomach to vomit out," Archie admitted.
David sat next to him on the couch and rummaged through a nearby pile of papers and assorted junk until he found the battered cookie tin that he'd stashed there some weeks ago. As he pried the top off, he explained, "I called my mom - and believe me, that was not an experience I ever wish to repeat - and she told me ginger candies can lessen your nausea. I bought some just in case."
Archie peered at the handful of foil-wrapped chews David held out and took a piece. "Oh, thank you. If I may ask, what did your mom say?"
"What moms usually say when you call them asking for pregnancy advice. Did I get my girlfriend pregnant, was I sure I didn't, I'm your mother and you can tell me anything." David shuddered theatrically. "After the thirty-minute inquiry into my use of contraceptives I was ready to ask Neal to garrote me with a guitar string, put me out of my misery."
"But you did get me pregnant, sort of." Archie was smiling as he said it, so David felt no compunction in punching his arm lightly.
"Yeah, cue an hour-long speech about firearms and proper employer-employee etiquette. Forget Neal's garrote, I'll go straight for merciful defenestration."
"Nevertheless, I appreciate you calling your mom for me." Archie pressed the cloth briefly to his face and sighed deeply. "I think the candy's working."
"My mom will be pleased." Something else occurred to him, more of his mom's advice, or perhaps from the printouts he'd gotten off his early-morning Google searches. "Hey, you need a foot rub? Or a back rub?"
The look on Archie's face was priceless. Unfortunately (or fortunately; he certainly didn't need more fodder for his frustration), before he could answer David, Archie paled and lunged for the basin.
WHAT? WHERE AM I? WHAT'S GOING ON?
WHAT TIME IS IT?
It was dark. David opened his eyes. He still couldn’t see a thing, so he tried to touch his eyelids to see if there were where he thought they were, except he couldn't move his hands.
Time for a situation assessment.
1. He was lying on something hard and itchy. Definitely a floor, probably concrete blanketed with hay from the maddening itch on his cheek. Other than that, he had no idea where he was. He could only hear his own harsh breathing resonate in his ears and smell nothing but dirt and traces of decaying organic matter (ugh).
2. He was tied up in at least three places, judging from his sudden lack of kinetic motion. Said places were his hands (behind his back), his legs (to prevent him from kicking out) and his ankles (to make sure). He couldn’t be sure what material the ropes were made of, but - he gingerly tested the give against his wrists - they were tough, and whoever did the knots wasn’t taking any chances.
3. There was some kind of gag over his mouth. He prodded at it with the tip of his tongue - cloth of some kind. Fuck, the marks would be mocking fodder for his friends for days.
In summary: bound and gagged in some undisclosed location? Kidnapped. Definitely kidnapped.
David tried to ignore this quickening pulse and focused on mentally retracing his steps, as the Middle-Manual Official So You've Been Kidnapped! flowchart had advised.
(When Archie had given him his own copy of the manual, the page on which the flowchart was printed had been bookmarked with a friendly note that read, "MEMORIZE THIS :)". He’d stared at Archie: you have got to be kidding me. Archie had stared resolutely back: no. That very afternoon, David had been ambushed, held hostage and rescued all in the span of 30 minutes. David reviewed the real-time footage of his ordeal afterward and had realized Archie had followed every single step on the diagram. Three kidnappings later, David was seriously considering tattooing the entire thing on his stomach.)
He and Archie'd been on the trail of alien transmitters that had found their way into people’s teeth and were seriously annoying the High Magistrate of Matron Cofelia (who were unsurprisingly threatening intergalactic payback). They’d found out that the victims were all patients of a small-town dentist with a surprisingly specific fetish, but his secretary at the clinic had said he was on vacation. So they’d tracked him down to his family farm where-
-oh.
David sneezed. As his mouth had been forced shut, it was not a very fun experience. After he blinked back the involuntary tears and swallowed several times, he pictured the stupid flowchart again. Is your partner with you? it asked. He strained to see anything beyond the pitch-black nothing or hear anything beyond the roar of his body panicking - nothing. He decided to assume that the answer was No (because the alternative couldn't bear imagining) and moved on.
The next question, Are you still wearing your Middle-Watch?, was trickier, as he could barely see the end of his nose, let alone his hands which were trapped behind him. As he was contemplating the best strategy to confirm by touch (aka "bang his wrists against the floor and hope to God he could hear a metallic bang and yet not destroy his watch's delicate internal mechanisms"), he was distracted by a loud boom and his vision was rapidly overwhelmed by piercing painful light.
Once his vision cleared, he could see a fuzzy shape resolve itself inches from his nose. Then, gentle hands cradled his face and a blessedly welcome voice said, "David! Are you OK?"
Like clockwork. Archie was a marvel in uniform.
He grunted an affirmative and wiggled around the floor to show, (a) he was uninjured, and (b) set me free now.
"Yes, of course. Let me just-" Fingers prodded at the edges of the gag then Archie moved out of David’s line of sight, presumably to look at his arms and feet. Something 'snicked', and the pressure on David's shoulders released, causing him to moan in his throat as blood painfully rushed back to his hands. He felt a fleeting touch, apology and comfort, on his chafed wrist before his legs, too, were freed efficiently. Rolling onto his back, he blinked up at- were those wooden beams on the ceiling rafters? he’d been stashed in a barn? One look at Archie’s face told him it was so not the time to sit up to attempt to spare his uniform jacket any more humiliation. Finally, the gag was sliced through and he could open his mouth, only to curl up into himself as he coughed dryly.
Archie patted his back, gingerly at first, then more confidently. His hand was a wonderful counterpoint to the hard and grit-spattered floor; David tried not to lean in too obviously into his touch. After the hacking fit subsided, he sat up, and to his surprise, Archie's hand remained where it was.
"What happened?" he asked, carefully stretching his jaw muscles. "Last thing I remember, we'd split up to investigate the dentist's farm and-" He shook his head in frustration. "I got jumped, didn't I?"
The hand curled in minutely, as if Archie had to consciously stop making a fist. David winced inwardly; not a paean of Middle-Apprentice competence, he was. But Archie, being Archie, only said, "Yes, I think so. I called, but you didn't respond to your Middle-Watch, so I activated your tracker and found you here."
And had blown a massive hole through the barn wall while he was at it, David noticed. He also didn't fail to see that Archie had brought along the large neutrino hyper-particle canon (quickly renamed "Big Fucking Gun" by David, when he first laid eyes on it), which explained the size of said hole.
"Thanks," David muttered. He tried to rub away stray grit that had gotten into his eyes and flinched when his skin, rubbed raw to the point of bleeding, pulled uncomfortably.
"We should get your wrists-" Archie started to say, but was interrupted by a bullet striking the ground inches from his feet. Before David could even begin to think about cursing, Archie managed to yank them both behind one of the barn stalls.
Peering over the stall, David caught a glimpse of the dentist they'd been looking for, semiautomatic in hand, before Archie tugged him down and another shot was fired, hitting the wall behind them. He yelled out, "There's two of us and one of you! You think you can get away with this?' and was answered by a bullet and a cry of, "My alien overlords will protect me!"
David rolled his eyes. Your alien overlords will destroy the Earth if you don't stop bothering them, he thought sourly. He turned to Archie. "What's the plan, boss? My right leg’s still asleep, but I can distract him while you do the disarming."
In response, Archie hefted the BFG on his shoulder, stood up and pulled the trigger. There was no return fire.
David blinked. He opened his mouth. Closed it again. Poked at a blossoming bruise near his elbow to make sure he hadn’t just hallucinated what he’d witnessed. Blinked again, this time at the hand Archie was offering to help him to his feet. Took the hand, swayed slightly at the change in orientation and blinked for a third time when he felt Archie of his own volition slide an arm around David’s waist in support. The BFG dangled casually at Archie’s other side.
"Let’s get you back to the car," Archie said, as though he didn’t just blast a xenophilic dentist into oblivion without any sort of preliminary warning or signal.
THE OUTSKIRTS OF THE XENOPHILIC (EX-)DENTIST’S FAMILY FARM
THREE MINUTES LATER
David stared ruefully down at his wrists as Archie wrapped them neatly in gauze. "The guys will be insufferable when they see these," he couldn’t help saying.
Archie tilted his head. "Why?"
There had been a time when David would have thought nothing of waggling his eyebrows and remarking on the tensile strength of his headboard just to see the full meaning of the innuendo dawn slowly over Archie’s face, but that time had long passed by. His brain, he also had to admit, was stuck on the utter surety with which Archie fired the BFG, like it had been nothing at all to blast a person into smithereens. "Won’t be much use with a guitar," he told Archie.
Regret pinched the edges of Archie’s eyes. "I'm sorry for not finding you sooner."
"'Sorry'?" David briefly wondered if the dentist had managed to open up a wormhole and dump him in some crazy alternate universe. There wasn’t any space in the kidnapping flowchart for a sorry-that-I-didn’t-rescue-you-on-time moment. In fact, after a rare situation when Archie had been the one who needed rescuing, he’d explicitly forbidden David to apologize for not doing enough to prevent his capture. "But I thought Middlemen didn’t have regrets. Only 'experiences'," making airquotes that grazed the backs of Archie’s hands.
Archie shivered, mouth dipping unhappily. "I know." He didn’t say anything else, but David could see him trembling ever-so-slightly as he smoothed the tape over the gauze’s edge.
Do you regret killing the guy? Was it the first time you did that? thought David, his feeling of helplessness nearly physical. The words wouldn’t come out, though. They never did, he admitted bitterly. Not when it’s important.
Clearing his throat, he decided to lighten the oppressive mood. "I know how you can make it up to me," he said, forcing a grin as Archie looked up from his dispirited repacking of the first-aid kit. "Let me drive the Middlemobile?"
"I- yes." And shouldn’t David be more pleased at the weight of the keys as they were placed in his palm without protest?
With an unspoken assent, the two of them got into the car and David drove them away, being extra careful with turns and signals even on the deserted back roads miles away from civilization. Archie stared out the window at the passing countryside.
As they reached the freeway and eased into the late-afternoon traffic jam back into the city, David suddenly heard a strangely familiar sound. He glanced to his right.
His boss was giggling. His boss - who used the BFG when his standard blaster would have done, who vaporized a man without negotiating for a peaceful resolution first, who was utterly unlike the one David had come to know and depend on - had one hand on his belly and the other in a fist pressed over his mouth, as though to stifle the merriment spilling from inside him. It wasn't working very well. David must have looked dumbstruck, because Archie lowered both hands and laced them primly on his lap. His cheeks were very pink. "Er, David? What- what seems to be the matter? And, um, eyes on the road, please?"
"Right," David said, adjusting his aching hands on the steering wheel and staring blankly at the station wagon in front of them. "Nothing. I was just. Driving."
An awkward silence filled the Middlemobile.
"It was the baby," Archie offered at last. "It kicked."
David was grateful they were stuck in traffic. If the car had been moving in any way at all, he'd have them stuck in a roadside ditch right about now. Circumstances being what they were, he jerked around to stare at Archie, his elbow managing to strike the horn and cause a brief but awful racket that made both of them jump in their seats.
"Oops," he muttered. "But you did? Wow. That's amazing. Was this the first time?"
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Archie's hand straying towards his midsection. Not for the first time, David was impressed despite himself with the CRADLE and its hologram generator - if he didn't know any better, he'd think that there wasn't anything different about Archie. He wondered how Archie was dealing with what had to be the world's freakiest mindfuck.
"It's happened before. A couple of times, actually. Once while I was in the Middle-Jet."
"Was that when the plane dropped twenty feet in the air?" David had a sudden vision of that movie with the tannis root and raw meat cravings, which he hastily pushed to the back of his mind.
The tips of Archie's ears reddened. "I wasn't expecting it."
"Neither was I. Those tacos I had for lunch didn't taste so good when they're already partially-digested. You know, you gotta tell me these things."
Archie frowned. "I don't think even Ida can come up with an accurate way to predict when my baby will kick, David."
"No, I don't mean that, that's just silly," David said. He gestured vaguely at Archie's direction. "I mean, I'm," he hesitated, then decided to get the creepy-and-embarrassing bit over and done with, "cataloging the whole thing. Not like what you and Ida do with the nutrients and hormone levels and cranial development and whatever - I leave those things to the experts. But stuff like kicks and heartbeats-I, I record them, OK? So we can look back and, well, not laugh, but- it's dorky, I know."
"It's not." David was startled at Archie's vehemence. "It's, that's cool, actually. I mean, my- my mom showed me my baby book once. There was a photograph of my ultrasound in it."
Clearing his throat, David busied himself with adjusting his seat belt strap as he tried to come up with a reply that wasn't wholly, "Tell me more about your family, I need to know," and didn't ache with everything he felt about what Archie had just confessed. He settled on, "Mine too."
As he drove and Archie tried and failed to stay awake beside him, David reasoned that he shouldn't have been that surprised about how his boss handled the situation at the farm. The dentist was obviously unstable and shooting wildly, and if anything happened to Archie and his kid- his grip on the wheel tightened, and he welcomed the twinge of lancing pain- the BFG wouldn't even be enough.
THE ILLEGAL SUBLET THAT DAVID SHARES WITH ANOTHER YOUNG, LACONIC MUSICIAN
THREE MONTHS AND TWENTY-ONE DAYS BEFORE DELIVERY
It was Zombie Movie Night at the sublet, and due to Duane Jones fighting off the undead at maximum volume, David didn't notice his Middle-Watch whooping until Kyle stuck his hand under a pile of magazines, pulled the flashing watch out and tossed it to David without looking away from the TV. Throwing a handful of popcorn back, David hurried to the bathroom, studiously ignoring Andy and Neal's significant looks at each other.
"Archie?"
"Good evening, David. I hope I wasn't intruding into your night."
David shook his head, surreptitiously wiping down his butter-y fingers on his jeans. "Zombie Movie Night isn't very exciting once I experienced the real thing."
"Oh," Archie said. "Zombie Movie Night?"
"Just a thing I have with my friends," David explained as he settled down on the toilet, propping his elbow on the sink. "Rent crappy z-movies, mix them up with some classics to cleanse the palate, just add beer and popcorn and, one memorable evening, realistic fake eyeballs in Andy's drink."
He saw Archie nod, more out of politeness than any real comprehension. For the nth time, David wondered what kind of fun social things Archie did before he became the Middleman, who his friends were and if he still talked to them, or thought about them.
"Anyway," he continued, "do I need to don my Middle-Gear and dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?" He hoped his guilty eagerness wouldn't be so noticeable over the watch's speakers.
"No, you don't have to," Archie replied. "I really didn't mean to interrupt. It's just that-" he glanced at something off-screen- was he still at HQ? David peered at the screen. Yes, he could see the HEYDAR behind Archie, and look, Ida's hair in a corner. It was Friday night, almost midnight if the battered clock tied to a string on the towel rod was correct, and his boss was still in the office. How come he hadn't noticed that before? "-I have some new information about my, um, baby that you might like to know?"
"That is a perfectly legitimate reason to take me away from Zombie Movie Night," David declared, feeling weirdly pleased. "Tell me the good news."
"She's a girl. I know I said I didn't, like, want to know, or really, that I don't care," said Archie all in a rush, "but Ida was crazily insistent about ultrasounds because of something she read on Cochrane, and, um, here we are."
God bless Ida and her interest in reading medical databases, David thought. Out loud, he said, "Does this mean I should get off my butt and bid on that Astrophysicist Barbie I saw on eBay?"
There was a small lull as Archie processed the statement's sarcastic qualities. David was pleased to note that those silences were shrinking over time due to prolonged exposure to him.
"Um, no? This- this is good news, right?" asked Archie, and now David heard the anxiety in his voice. He hastened to reassure him.
"Yes, it is. Well, we'd have to make sure that she'll have female presences in her life other than Ida. Who knows what garish polyester monstrosities she'll end up wearing." He wished he could drive over to HQ and be at Archie's side; unfortunately, he'd already drunk a few bottles of Heineken and Archie would not appreciate inebriated driving. "You'll still be the best parent there ever will be, I promise."
Whatever Archie was going to reply with was interrupted by someone banging on the door. "Stop sexting, I need to use the bathroom!"
"…sexting?"
"Shut the fuck up and hold it in, asshole! Er, sorry, boss."
A FLASHBACK
SIX MONTHS, FIFTEEN DAYS AND ONE HOUR AGO
"That your boss?"
"Yup."
"Huh."
"Ow. What is this- am I putting cold jello on my face?"
"We don't have bags of frozen vegetables in the fridge."
"Ugh. What? Don't look at me like that. It was a workplace accident, could have happened to anybody."
"While you're being a temp."
"What, like you've never had a shitty time at work."
"Black eyes. Sprained wrist. Cracked ribs. All just from this week."
"Concerned?"
"About the fucking rent, yeah."
"Thanks for the concern. It's not gonna happen again, mom."
"…"
"He- my boss tried to stop a runaway car from driving across a busy runway by blocking its path."
"Your boss."
"He was trying to, ow, 'negotiate a peaceful compromise' which involved reasoning with the maniac behind the wheel. God, that hurt."
"Your boss is fucking nuts."
"Tell me about it. He told me off for being too aggressive when I hauled the driver out and tried to punch him."
"Huh."
"You know what the fucked up thing was? The driver actually stopped. I don't know, man. Insane, but it worked. Fuck knows how."
"…"
"…"
"He's cute."
"What did you just say? I'm sorry, I think my head hitting tarmac just damaged my hearing."
"You didn't notice?"
"He's. My. Boss."
"Still cute."
"Never ever say that out loud in his presence."
"Wasn't planning to. Beer?"
"Fuck yes."
Part 3
Part 1
MIDDLEMAN HQ
SEVEN MONTHS AND FIFTEEN DAYS BEFORE DELIVERY
It was an unusually peaceful morning at HQ. No threats had been sent in for investigation, and so Archie had deemed it a great day to do maintenance. He assigned David to run diagnostics on their small firearms while he did inventory on the rest of their weapons, gadgets and things.
David was immersed in comparing a schematic of a positron blaster with the pile of funnily-shaped metal bits he'd spread out on his desk when his concentration was broken by a large wooden crate going BANG! as it was set down beside him. "Jesus fuck, Ida! Warn a guy!" he yelped.
He was spared a scathing remark about his intelligence, musicality or facial hair by Archie wandering into the room and saying, "I thought we weren't supposed to get anything from the higher-ups until next week, Ida."
Ida pointed out the red URGENT stamped across the crate's side. "Special delivery from O2STK for the Middleman," she said.
"Huh," replied Archie and pried the lid off. David stood up and moved to stand beside him to see what shiny new weapon/gadget/thing the Organization Too Secret To Know had sent them.
After clearing out the layers of packing hay, the two of them lifted out what resembled a tabletop aquarium, if the aquarium was filled with some kind of viscous translucent liquid that glowed softly instead of water and tropical fish.
David took the enclosed user manual and read, "Cross-dimensional Resonance Amplifying Displacement and Long-Range Excubator. CRADLE. Catchy. I don't think 'excubator' is even a word." He flipped through the pages, eyebrows raised. "This is- whoa, unnecessarily graphic illustrations are unnecessary. Someone pass me the brain bleach." He handed it back to Archie with a grimace.
"Singing in the rain! Apparently, this device 'translocates targeted biomatter while retaining normal feedback mechanisms'," Archie quoted, eyes widening even as they scanned through the manual.
"In humanities-major-English, please."
"The CRADLE can temporarily transfer the physical mass of my, uh, baby while still maintaining all other physiological connections."
David tried to parse that into freshman humanities-major-English. "What for?"
Ida rolled her eyes at him. "Catch up, you hippie. When was the last time a villain didn't try to shoot, stab, punch, kick or otherwise maim or try to kill a Middleman?"
He stared at Archie, noticing how the glow from the CRADLE seemed to highlight the pallid cast of his skin. David wasn't slow on the uptake (despite what Ida always insisted), had known rationally the exponential increase of the danger involved once a hypothetical helpless third person was included in the work of Middlemen, but it hadn't been a terrifyingly real, terrifyingly concrete possibility until Ida had said it out loud. It isn't a matter of if something goes wrong, he thought. It's a matter of when.
Archie had pressed his thumb on the panel and was watching the liquid go completely opaque. He then removed his thumb, looked at something in the manual and said, "It's done. Now to put it in storage." Before David could even think of opening his mouth to say- something, he wasn't sure what, Archie took the CRADLE in his arms and smiled at him and Ida. "Please hold the fort while I find someplace cool, dark and mold-free where we can keep this."
"Not the second basement. I moved the xenobiological samples there," Ida advised.
David watched his retreating back for a few seconds before returning his attention to his discarded blaster. He tried to figure out how he ended up with seven screws despite the schematic only indicating three, before giving it up for a lost cause and setting after Archie.
He found him in the changing room, sliding the CRADLE into place on a high shelf in one of the unused cabinets. "David!" Archie said, surprised. "Is something wrong?"
"Besides my latest diagnostic? Everything's fine," David replied, then frowned. "No, let me correct that. Not everything's fine. Not with you."
Archie blinked at him. "But I'm-"
David raised a hand, palm up. "Please don't. Don't- tell me that it's all fine. You're- we've been through a lot together, and I know you're my boss, but I'm also your partner and-"
Like a puppet with its strings cut, Archie crumpled, sitting abruptly down on the nearest bench. "I was so afraid that O2STK was going to make me forcibly retire," he whispered, staring down at his shoes.
David sat next to him. "Why? Was that a possibility?" He had to admit some of the finer points of the Middle-Lore were fuzzy to him, but he was pretty sure that maternity leave never killed a Middleman's career (undetected parasites, on the other hand…).
Archie shook his head and, as if thinking along the same lines as David, said, "It's not the pregnancy, precisely. It's the whole-" he waved a hand vaguely "-set of circumstances that surrounds it."
"Oh, god, are they punishing you because of something I inadvertently did? But I was the one who fucked up, not you!"
"No, no one's getting punished for that," Archie said firmly, and looked David in the eye. "I told you, I'm glad you shot at the plasma ray. Ida analyzed the blueprints and if I'd turned into a whatever, there's no way to reverse it."
"Then what is it?" David asked gently, bunching his fists on the fabric of his pants to keep them from grabbing Archie's in a very ill-timed gesture of otherwise well-meaning support.
Archie rubbed his arms briskly. "You know how I told you when I recruited you that being a Middleman opens your mind to the many possibilities of this universe and other universes?"
"Yeah?"
"I don't- I try to not have expectations about the job. What happens, happens, you know? It could be aliens today, and then the next-"
"-a succubus that preys on unsuspecting tax collectors?"
"Something like that. There's no point in dwelling about what could happen," explained Archie, his tongue flickering out to touch the corner of his lip. David closed his eyes briefly, glad that Archie had returned to staring at his regulation polished-to-a-mirror-shine shoes. "But despite having dealt with doppelgangers and mad scientists with mind-control helmets, I never thought I'd have to deal with my body doing… this."
"So why didn't you say yes when Ida offered to-"
"There are only two ways to stop being a Middleman," Archie interrupted in a hollow tone. "You either retire or die, and retirement very rarely ever happens. This isn't just a job. It's everything - your name, your history, your identity, all your flaws and faults - you have to give them all up to fight evil and pursue justice."
"And this is something that you don't want to let go of, no matter what the consequences might be," David realized.
Archie's shoulders slumped. "It's selfish of me, huh."
"No," David replied. "It's brave." Archie shook his head, disbelieving, so David elbowed him lightly. "I'm not kidding. You heard what Ida said. We've got great medical benefits, and I now know more about the many things that want to take over the world than I ever wanted to, but you have to admit that this job sucks."
The edges of Archie's mouth lifted almost unwillingly. "Thankless and unacknowledged heroism does get wearisome over time."
David nodded sagely. "Sure, the recruitment speech is fantastic, but imagine how many potential apprentices you might have driven off if you told them taking part means basically having the job take over your entire life. Not many people appreciate having their dates interrupted by a summons to fight a mutated sea serpent, you know."
"Like you," Archie said.
Because the person I want to date is fighting the mutated sea serpent beside me, David thought. Out loud, he merely said, "Like me. Yes, because my psych report says I'm a glutton for punishment. And people like you, because you're the most selfless person I know. No contradicting me here, Archie."
Archie was smiling now, a real smile that reached his eyes. "I'm not about to contradict your own experiences."
"That's right. Bow to my superior firsthand knowledge of my acquaintances," David joked, before saying, "Seriously, you know I'm here for you, right? Every step of the way, no matter what happens. Ida would say the same thing, but that's mostly because she's stuck here in HQ and can’t say otherwise."
Archie didn't reply, but his knee bumped gently against David's and stayed there, a point of warmth and human contact between them, and David knew everything he didn't say.
A FLASHBACK
THREE MONTHS, THREE DAYS AND SIXTEEN HOURS AGO
It wasn't a very starry night, light pollution managing to obscure anything of interest in the sky. Not that David was looking upwards, not when he had a wonderful being at his side, humming cheerfully as they walked to where the Middlemobile was parked, at the end of the quiet side street.
When they reached it, David abruptly realized that the tune Archie was humming was the same one David had been singing that morning in HQ, a tricky scrap of melody that he'd been working on that week. Without thinking, David turned his head and kissed Archie close-mouthed, almost chaste except for how he crowded Archie against the car.
Archie was still despite allowing David to push him back, and David was ready to pull away, when he made a strangled sound in his throat that reverberated all the way down to David's toes, wrapping his arms around David's neck and returning the kiss.
It was clumsy and exhilarating in ways even David's most feverish dreams hadn't managed to make up - his mind couldn't have possibly conjured up details like Archie's fingernails digging into his nape, or slickness of David's tongue teasing Archie's bottom lip, or the way Archie had to tilt his head back to meet David's mouth. It was glorious. David never wanted it to stop, only wanted to kiss away the raw yearning aching inside him, wanted to kiss Archie until he was moaning and wrecked in ways only David could make him.
He was about to tentatively explore the line of Archie's jaw, when something started whooping into his ear. It was part of a script he'd learned from heart from jerking awake, frustrated and annoyed, that he instantly broke away, snatching his hands from where they'd been gripping Archie in place.
"If this is a dream-" David groaned, at the same time Archie said breathlessly, "I should get this."
David reluctantly put a few inches of space between them. Cockblocked by a cranky robot, he thought glumly. What a life.
"-might need a flamethrower and industrial-strength bleach," Archie was instructing Ida. David watched him as he spoke, trying and failing to not imagine his dark hair mussed, preferably against a backdrop of David's pillows in his bed.
When Archie disconnected the call, he moved forward again, trying to lower his voice into a growl as he asked, "Now where were we?"
He was stopped by Archie shaking his head. Some of the warm fuzziness clouding David's mind receded and he went cold in the balmy night. He tugged uselessly at the hem of his jacket.
"I'm sorry about surprising you,” he blurted out. “It's not something I normally do, but you looked so, well-" he gestured towards the whole of Archie "-you that I just had to kiss you."
Archie shifted his weight, and with a sinking feeling, David watched as his eyebrows knit together, his gaze fixed on a point just below David's chin (David wasn't flattering himself into assuming he was distracted in a good way by it). He replied, "I know. It's just that I can't do this."
"Why not?" David asked. He knew for a fact that Archie didn't have anyone, never had in the whole time David had known him, never once had anybody wander to the Jolly Fats front office with tickets to some thing or a lunch-date (as David had, in the first month before he realized how terrible dating could be when one was a nine-to-five superhero). He also knew - and again he wasn't being unnecessarily vain - that the speculative glances Archie sometimes shot him weren't always to assess his physical or mental preparedness.
Archie spread his hands beseechingly. "We barely know each other."
"We could go out if you'd like," David offered, only half-jokingly. "A completely mundane date to, to a Thai restaurant? Or a G-rated musical comedy film festival, if there's any coming up soon. I could look it up online."
"I don't-" Archie inhaled deeply and seemed to brace himself. "I can't ever, not with anyone, but especially not with you. If- if anything goes wrong and this falls apart, there's a lot more at stake than-"
Something shockingly painful surged through David at Archie's unbearably earnest features. "But why not? You told me, 'When true love comes knocking and you turn it away, it's on you, not the job or anything else.'" It was as if a dam had burst inside him. "You told me that a Middleman's ultimate sacrifice is to not be loved. You told me that a Middleman isn't a coward. What happened to that?"
He didn't look to see the way Archie flinched as though struck by a violent force; predictably, his own eyes were burning. Hoarsely, he continued, the anger in his voice giving way to bleak desperation, "I don't know anything about you, but I'd like to try."
For the first time since a strange young man upset an otherwise-ordinary life with the promise of heroism for its own rewards, Archie looked… lost, the edges of his mouth still pink from both David's lips and David's beard. "'True love'?" he parroted back.
Suddenly, David felt like he'd been the one hit very hard somewhere soft and vulnerable. He wanted to double over, or beat his head against a convenient wall, or both at the same time.
"Motherfucker. Shit." He scrubbed agitatedly through his hair. "Look, I was seriously out of control and I didn't mean to call you a coward-"
"You're in lo-"
"-and I really do like being your sidekick or trainee or whatever you call it-"
"Middle-Apprentice."
"…I should have guessed. Where was I? Yes. OK. It was a moment of weakness (and dating dry-spell frustration) for which I take responsibility and which, I hope, isn't a one-way ticket out of HQ."
"No, of course it isn't!" Archie interjected, panicked.
"Good, because this job is the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me and I'd hate myself forever if some kiss in a deserted alleyway ruined that." He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, trying to focus on the twinge of pain rather than the sickening burn of humiliation and anger coursing through his veins. "I know this is probably the worst time to ask for a favor, but can we pretend that none of this happened? Please."
He watched the light bursting behind his eyelids and didn't trust himself to move until he heard Archie's quiet, "All right," and the beep of the Middlemobile's alarm deactivating.
When they got back to HQ after the world's most uncomfortable car ride, Ida took one look at the sorry pair of them and said, dispassionate as always, "Code 86 disables the Real-Time Situation Recording Archive during personal time like, say, an outtake from a telenovela during sweeps week. This is your friendly administrative reminder."
David dropped the atomic demolecularizer he was carrying. "What? You were watching us?"
"It's my job to monitor the real-time situation, Justin Timberlake. You think I enjoy-"
"As much as I enjoy the banter," Archie interrupted firmly, "we've still got post-mission reports to do." He glanced at David, not quite meeting his eyes. "I'll take care of the recording, don't worry."
THE STATIONERY STORE IN DAVID'S NEIGHBORHOOD
SEVEN MONTHS BEFORE DELIVERY
It was David’s rare day off.
(Technically, evil never slept and the Middle-Watch meant he was on-call 24/7, so “day off” was shorthand for “a freak occurrence where absolutely nothing required saving or defeating, plus his boss had no pressing tasks for him to accomplish, so he was gloriously free… until the watch acted up.” As can be imagined, days off very rarely happened for members of the Middleorganization.)
Usually on his days off, David hung out with Neal and his other buddies, working on the album that mostly existed as a wistful dream since their college days. In fact, David had made plans to meet in some guy’s garage for an afternoon with the band, and he was already running late. But first, he had an errand to run.
The calendar-publishing community must be booming, he mused as he took in the display in front of him. He had his pick of colors, shapes, sizes and designs. He randomly plucked two from a shelf, which turned out to be A Farmer’s Calendar of Grain Crops of South America and a frilly one with baby ducks. He briefly contemplated the ducks, then returned them both. No, what he needed was something a little more-
He crouched and after some quick excavation work, he pulled out a blank white calendar. The plastic label boasted of Swiss typographical influence, but David was more interested in its dimensions roughly equalling that of the empty space on his bedside table.
Almost entirely by itself, David’s hand drifted to the pocket where he kept his wallet. Even without taking it out, he could perfectly imagine the slip of paper - much folded and creased - he’d tucked in between his driver’s license and a childhood family photo.
Two months down, seven more to endure. He stood up and walked over to the counter, calendar in hand.
A BOILER ROOM IN A MANOR SUMMER COTTAGE
7:00 P.M.
While investigating reports of a cursed guillotine stolen by Count Featherstonehaugh ("wow, no wonder he turned to the dark side," David had said when Archie corrected his pronunciation), they'd been spotted by the count's goons sneaking around his manor summer cottage. Overpowered by sheer numbers, they were taken to a pitch-dark boiler room and chained to the pipes, awaiting execution by decapitation at sunrise. Since it was only seven p.m., Archie and David settled down to regain their strength.
"Archie?" David said after a few minutes of amiable silence.
Heavy chains clanked and scraped as Archie turned to face him. "Yes, David?"
"Can I ask a personal question?"
"Nothing in the Constitution is stopping you," Archie replied.
"I was wondering about, uh, the procedure for the, you know, birth."
"That's pretty easy. We'll use the Singularity Scalpel. It can cut through four dimensions while simultaneously cauterizing blood vessels and blocking pain receptors. Ida will operate and I'll stay awake to supervise."
"Huh. Good. That's very tidy. There's no chance of chest-bursting xenomorphs or- gory inhuman clawing happening, then."
"…clawing?"
David was very thankful that both their expressions were shrouded in darkness. "Let's not discuss my bountiful knowledge of popular depictions of vampiric lore, shall we?"
"My hand's loose," Archie announced suddenly. "Let me retrieve my pocket laser cutter and we'll be free and destroying that guillotine before the sun appears over the horizon."
"Cool." He squinted against the sudden burst of light as Archie activated the cutter. When the chains broke, he rubbed briskly at his chafed wrists and asked, striving for a casual, breezy tone, "Can I be there with you when it happens?"
The cutting blade vanished, leaving them yet again in the dark. "No."
David froze, then nearly smacked his forehead against a low-hanging pipe. "Sorry," he said hurriedly. "I know how private you are-" He was stopped by a light touch on his arm, fleeting and barely there.
"It's not that. The Singularity Scalpel might accidentally target you and cut through your four dimensions right into your liver. You can watch from the observation room. But thank you. For offering."
THE ILLEGAL SUBLET THAT DAVID SHARES WITH ANOTHER YOUNG, LACONIC MUSICIAN
FIVE MONTHS AND FOURTEEN DAYS BEFORE DELIVERY
"I told you, it's OK for you to drive back to HQ. I'm fine," Archie protested for what seemed like the thousandth time.
David paused in the midst of pulling up the elevator cage's gate to shoot him a disbelieving look. "No matter what Ida tells you, I do not enjoy cleaning up ectoplasm from the upholstery of the Middlemobile. I'm sure I'll enjoy cleaning up your vomit any better." Noticing how Archie was paling rapidly and starting to sway on his feet, he softened his tone. "C'mon, you can puke in my bathroom just as easily as you can in HQ."
"Please don't use the word 'puke'," muttered Archie, but allowed himself to be led down the short length of hallway into the (thankfully Neal-less) sublet and steered towards the couch. In the kitchen, David found a plastic basin filled with, huh, about thirty guitar picks (what was up with that?) and emptied it, filling it instead with tap water with one hand while the other found the least-stained wash cloth from the towel rack by the sink. These he set on the coffee table by Archie's knees. Archie was unfolding a paper bag with deliberate care, and then was very carefully sick in it.
Wincing at the sound, David swapped the bag for the damp cloth and disposed of it, not coincidentally giving Archie a few second to compose himself. He took a quick mental inventory of what was in his cabinets, decided that he really should go grocery-shopping and went back to Archie with two Dixie cups of water. He rubbed soothing circles over Archie's back while he rinsed out his mouth and drank.
"Better?" he asked.
"Still nauseated, but there's nothing left in my stomach to vomit out," Archie admitted.
David sat next to him on the couch and rummaged through a nearby pile of papers and assorted junk until he found the battered cookie tin that he'd stashed there some weeks ago. As he pried the top off, he explained, "I called my mom - and believe me, that was not an experience I ever wish to repeat - and she told me ginger candies can lessen your nausea. I bought some just in case."
Archie peered at the handful of foil-wrapped chews David held out and took a piece. "Oh, thank you. If I may ask, what did your mom say?"
"What moms usually say when you call them asking for pregnancy advice. Did I get my girlfriend pregnant, was I sure I didn't, I'm your mother and you can tell me anything." David shuddered theatrically. "After the thirty-minute inquiry into my use of contraceptives I was ready to ask Neal to garrote me with a guitar string, put me out of my misery."
"But you did get me pregnant, sort of." Archie was smiling as he said it, so David felt no compunction in punching his arm lightly.
"Yeah, cue an hour-long speech about firearms and proper employer-employee etiquette. Forget Neal's garrote, I'll go straight for merciful defenestration."
"Nevertheless, I appreciate you calling your mom for me." Archie pressed the cloth briefly to his face and sighed deeply. "I think the candy's working."
"My mom will be pleased." Something else occurred to him, more of his mom's advice, or perhaps from the printouts he'd gotten off his early-morning Google searches. "Hey, you need a foot rub? Or a back rub?"
The look on Archie's face was priceless. Unfortunately (or fortunately; he certainly didn't need more fodder for his frustration), before he could answer David, Archie paled and lunged for the basin.
WHAT? WHERE AM I? WHAT'S GOING ON?
WHAT TIME IS IT?
It was dark. David opened his eyes. He still couldn’t see a thing, so he tried to touch his eyelids to see if there were where he thought they were, except he couldn't move his hands.
Time for a situation assessment.
1. He was lying on something hard and itchy. Definitely a floor, probably concrete blanketed with hay from the maddening itch on his cheek. Other than that, he had no idea where he was. He could only hear his own harsh breathing resonate in his ears and smell nothing but dirt and traces of decaying organic matter (ugh).
2. He was tied up in at least three places, judging from his sudden lack of kinetic motion. Said places were his hands (behind his back), his legs (to prevent him from kicking out) and his ankles (to make sure). He couldn’t be sure what material the ropes were made of, but - he gingerly tested the give against his wrists - they were tough, and whoever did the knots wasn’t taking any chances.
3. There was some kind of gag over his mouth. He prodded at it with the tip of his tongue - cloth of some kind. Fuck, the marks would be mocking fodder for his friends for days.
In summary: bound and gagged in some undisclosed location? Kidnapped. Definitely kidnapped.
David tried to ignore this quickening pulse and focused on mentally retracing his steps, as the Middle-Manual Official So You've Been Kidnapped! flowchart had advised.
(When Archie had given him his own copy of the manual, the page on which the flowchart was printed had been bookmarked with a friendly note that read, "MEMORIZE THIS :)". He’d stared at Archie: you have got to be kidding me. Archie had stared resolutely back: no. That very afternoon, David had been ambushed, held hostage and rescued all in the span of 30 minutes. David reviewed the real-time footage of his ordeal afterward and had realized Archie had followed every single step on the diagram. Three kidnappings later, David was seriously considering tattooing the entire thing on his stomach.)
He and Archie'd been on the trail of alien transmitters that had found their way into people’s teeth and were seriously annoying the High Magistrate of Matron Cofelia (who were unsurprisingly threatening intergalactic payback). They’d found out that the victims were all patients of a small-town dentist with a surprisingly specific fetish, but his secretary at the clinic had said he was on vacation. So they’d tracked him down to his family farm where-
-oh.
David sneezed. As his mouth had been forced shut, it was not a very fun experience. After he blinked back the involuntary tears and swallowed several times, he pictured the stupid flowchart again. Is your partner with you? it asked. He strained to see anything beyond the pitch-black nothing or hear anything beyond the roar of his body panicking - nothing. He decided to assume that the answer was No (because the alternative couldn't bear imagining) and moved on.
The next question, Are you still wearing your Middle-Watch?, was trickier, as he could barely see the end of his nose, let alone his hands which were trapped behind him. As he was contemplating the best strategy to confirm by touch (aka "bang his wrists against the floor and hope to God he could hear a metallic bang and yet not destroy his watch's delicate internal mechanisms"), he was distracted by a loud boom and his vision was rapidly overwhelmed by piercing painful light.
Once his vision cleared, he could see a fuzzy shape resolve itself inches from his nose. Then, gentle hands cradled his face and a blessedly welcome voice said, "David! Are you OK?"
Like clockwork. Archie was a marvel in uniform.
He grunted an affirmative and wiggled around the floor to show, (a) he was uninjured, and (b) set me free now.
"Yes, of course. Let me just-" Fingers prodded at the edges of the gag then Archie moved out of David’s line of sight, presumably to look at his arms and feet. Something 'snicked', and the pressure on David's shoulders released, causing him to moan in his throat as blood painfully rushed back to his hands. He felt a fleeting touch, apology and comfort, on his chafed wrist before his legs, too, were freed efficiently. Rolling onto his back, he blinked up at- were those wooden beams on the ceiling rafters? he’d been stashed in a barn? One look at Archie’s face told him it was so not the time to sit up to attempt to spare his uniform jacket any more humiliation. Finally, the gag was sliced through and he could open his mouth, only to curl up into himself as he coughed dryly.
Archie patted his back, gingerly at first, then more confidently. His hand was a wonderful counterpoint to the hard and grit-spattered floor; David tried not to lean in too obviously into his touch. After the hacking fit subsided, he sat up, and to his surprise, Archie's hand remained where it was.
"What happened?" he asked, carefully stretching his jaw muscles. "Last thing I remember, we'd split up to investigate the dentist's farm and-" He shook his head in frustration. "I got jumped, didn't I?"
The hand curled in minutely, as if Archie had to consciously stop making a fist. David winced inwardly; not a paean of Middle-Apprentice competence, he was. But Archie, being Archie, only said, "Yes, I think so. I called, but you didn't respond to your Middle-Watch, so I activated your tracker and found you here."
And had blown a massive hole through the barn wall while he was at it, David noticed. He also didn't fail to see that Archie had brought along the large neutrino hyper-particle canon (quickly renamed "Big Fucking Gun" by David, when he first laid eyes on it), which explained the size of said hole.
"Thanks," David muttered. He tried to rub away stray grit that had gotten into his eyes and flinched when his skin, rubbed raw to the point of bleeding, pulled uncomfortably.
"We should get your wrists-" Archie started to say, but was interrupted by a bullet striking the ground inches from his feet. Before David could even begin to think about cursing, Archie managed to yank them both behind one of the barn stalls.
Peering over the stall, David caught a glimpse of the dentist they'd been looking for, semiautomatic in hand, before Archie tugged him down and another shot was fired, hitting the wall behind them. He yelled out, "There's two of us and one of you! You think you can get away with this?' and was answered by a bullet and a cry of, "My alien overlords will protect me!"
David rolled his eyes. Your alien overlords will destroy the Earth if you don't stop bothering them, he thought sourly. He turned to Archie. "What's the plan, boss? My right leg’s still asleep, but I can distract him while you do the disarming."
In response, Archie hefted the BFG on his shoulder, stood up and pulled the trigger. There was no return fire.
David blinked. He opened his mouth. Closed it again. Poked at a blossoming bruise near his elbow to make sure he hadn’t just hallucinated what he’d witnessed. Blinked again, this time at the hand Archie was offering to help him to his feet. Took the hand, swayed slightly at the change in orientation and blinked for a third time when he felt Archie of his own volition slide an arm around David’s waist in support. The BFG dangled casually at Archie’s other side.
"Let’s get you back to the car," Archie said, as though he didn’t just blast a xenophilic dentist into oblivion without any sort of preliminary warning or signal.
THE OUTSKIRTS OF THE XENOPHILIC (EX-)DENTIST’S FAMILY FARM
THREE MINUTES LATER
David stared ruefully down at his wrists as Archie wrapped them neatly in gauze. "The guys will be insufferable when they see these," he couldn’t help saying.
Archie tilted his head. "Why?"
There had been a time when David would have thought nothing of waggling his eyebrows and remarking on the tensile strength of his headboard just to see the full meaning of the innuendo dawn slowly over Archie’s face, but that time had long passed by. His brain, he also had to admit, was stuck on the utter surety with which Archie fired the BFG, like it had been nothing at all to blast a person into smithereens. "Won’t be much use with a guitar," he told Archie.
Regret pinched the edges of Archie’s eyes. "I'm sorry for not finding you sooner."
"'Sorry'?" David briefly wondered if the dentist had managed to open up a wormhole and dump him in some crazy alternate universe. There wasn’t any space in the kidnapping flowchart for a sorry-that-I-didn’t-rescue-you-on-time moment. In fact, after a rare situation when Archie had been the one who needed rescuing, he’d explicitly forbidden David to apologize for not doing enough to prevent his capture. "But I thought Middlemen didn’t have regrets. Only 'experiences'," making airquotes that grazed the backs of Archie’s hands.
Archie shivered, mouth dipping unhappily. "I know." He didn’t say anything else, but David could see him trembling ever-so-slightly as he smoothed the tape over the gauze’s edge.
Do you regret killing the guy? Was it the first time you did that? thought David, his feeling of helplessness nearly physical. The words wouldn’t come out, though. They never did, he admitted bitterly. Not when it’s important.
Clearing his throat, he decided to lighten the oppressive mood. "I know how you can make it up to me," he said, forcing a grin as Archie looked up from his dispirited repacking of the first-aid kit. "Let me drive the Middlemobile?"
"I- yes." And shouldn’t David be more pleased at the weight of the keys as they were placed in his palm without protest?
With an unspoken assent, the two of them got into the car and David drove them away, being extra careful with turns and signals even on the deserted back roads miles away from civilization. Archie stared out the window at the passing countryside.
As they reached the freeway and eased into the late-afternoon traffic jam back into the city, David suddenly heard a strangely familiar sound. He glanced to his right.
His boss was giggling. His boss - who used the BFG when his standard blaster would have done, who vaporized a man without negotiating for a peaceful resolution first, who was utterly unlike the one David had come to know and depend on - had one hand on his belly and the other in a fist pressed over his mouth, as though to stifle the merriment spilling from inside him. It wasn't working very well. David must have looked dumbstruck, because Archie lowered both hands and laced them primly on his lap. His cheeks were very pink. "Er, David? What- what seems to be the matter? And, um, eyes on the road, please?"
"Right," David said, adjusting his aching hands on the steering wheel and staring blankly at the station wagon in front of them. "Nothing. I was just. Driving."
An awkward silence filled the Middlemobile.
"It was the baby," Archie offered at last. "It kicked."
David was grateful they were stuck in traffic. If the car had been moving in any way at all, he'd have them stuck in a roadside ditch right about now. Circumstances being what they were, he jerked around to stare at Archie, his elbow managing to strike the horn and cause a brief but awful racket that made both of them jump in their seats.
"Oops," he muttered. "But you did? Wow. That's amazing. Was this the first time?"
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Archie's hand straying towards his midsection. Not for the first time, David was impressed despite himself with the CRADLE and its hologram generator - if he didn't know any better, he'd think that there wasn't anything different about Archie. He wondered how Archie was dealing with what had to be the world's freakiest mindfuck.
"It's happened before. A couple of times, actually. Once while I was in the Middle-Jet."
"Was that when the plane dropped twenty feet in the air?" David had a sudden vision of that movie with the tannis root and raw meat cravings, which he hastily pushed to the back of his mind.
The tips of Archie's ears reddened. "I wasn't expecting it."
"Neither was I. Those tacos I had for lunch didn't taste so good when they're already partially-digested. You know, you gotta tell me these things."
Archie frowned. "I don't think even Ida can come up with an accurate way to predict when my baby will kick, David."
"No, I don't mean that, that's just silly," David said. He gestured vaguely at Archie's direction. "I mean, I'm," he hesitated, then decided to get the creepy-and-embarrassing bit over and done with, "cataloging the whole thing. Not like what you and Ida do with the nutrients and hormone levels and cranial development and whatever - I leave those things to the experts. But stuff like kicks and heartbeats-I, I record them, OK? So we can look back and, well, not laugh, but- it's dorky, I know."
"It's not." David was startled at Archie's vehemence. "It's, that's cool, actually. I mean, my- my mom showed me my baby book once. There was a photograph of my ultrasound in it."
Clearing his throat, David busied himself with adjusting his seat belt strap as he tried to come up with a reply that wasn't wholly, "Tell me more about your family, I need to know," and didn't ache with everything he felt about what Archie had just confessed. He settled on, "Mine too."
As he drove and Archie tried and failed to stay awake beside him, David reasoned that he shouldn't have been that surprised about how his boss handled the situation at the farm. The dentist was obviously unstable and shooting wildly, and if anything happened to Archie and his kid- his grip on the wheel tightened, and he welcomed the twinge of lancing pain- the BFG wouldn't even be enough.
THE ILLEGAL SUBLET THAT DAVID SHARES WITH ANOTHER YOUNG, LACONIC MUSICIAN
THREE MONTHS AND TWENTY-ONE DAYS BEFORE DELIVERY
It was Zombie Movie Night at the sublet, and due to Duane Jones fighting off the undead at maximum volume, David didn't notice his Middle-Watch whooping until Kyle stuck his hand under a pile of magazines, pulled the flashing watch out and tossed it to David without looking away from the TV. Throwing a handful of popcorn back, David hurried to the bathroom, studiously ignoring Andy and Neal's significant looks at each other.
"Archie?"
"Good evening, David. I hope I wasn't intruding into your night."
David shook his head, surreptitiously wiping down his butter-y fingers on his jeans. "Zombie Movie Night isn't very exciting once I experienced the real thing."
"Oh," Archie said. "Zombie Movie Night?"
"Just a thing I have with my friends," David explained as he settled down on the toilet, propping his elbow on the sink. "Rent crappy z-movies, mix them up with some classics to cleanse the palate, just add beer and popcorn and, one memorable evening, realistic fake eyeballs in Andy's drink."
He saw Archie nod, more out of politeness than any real comprehension. For the nth time, David wondered what kind of fun social things Archie did before he became the Middleman, who his friends were and if he still talked to them, or thought about them.
"Anyway," he continued, "do I need to don my Middle-Gear and dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?" He hoped his guilty eagerness wouldn't be so noticeable over the watch's speakers.
"No, you don't have to," Archie replied. "I really didn't mean to interrupt. It's just that-" he glanced at something off-screen- was he still at HQ? David peered at the screen. Yes, he could see the HEYDAR behind Archie, and look, Ida's hair in a corner. It was Friday night, almost midnight if the battered clock tied to a string on the towel rod was correct, and his boss was still in the office. How come he hadn't noticed that before? "-I have some new information about my, um, baby that you might like to know?"
"That is a perfectly legitimate reason to take me away from Zombie Movie Night," David declared, feeling weirdly pleased. "Tell me the good news."
"She's a girl. I know I said I didn't, like, want to know, or really, that I don't care," said Archie all in a rush, "but Ida was crazily insistent about ultrasounds because of something she read on Cochrane, and, um, here we are."
God bless Ida and her interest in reading medical databases, David thought. Out loud, he said, "Does this mean I should get off my butt and bid on that Astrophysicist Barbie I saw on eBay?"
There was a small lull as Archie processed the statement's sarcastic qualities. David was pleased to note that those silences were shrinking over time due to prolonged exposure to him.
"Um, no? This- this is good news, right?" asked Archie, and now David heard the anxiety in his voice. He hastened to reassure him.
"Yes, it is. Well, we'd have to make sure that she'll have female presences in her life other than Ida. Who knows what garish polyester monstrosities she'll end up wearing." He wished he could drive over to HQ and be at Archie's side; unfortunately, he'd already drunk a few bottles of Heineken and Archie would not appreciate inebriated driving. "You'll still be the best parent there ever will be, I promise."
Whatever Archie was going to reply with was interrupted by someone banging on the door. "Stop sexting, I need to use the bathroom!"
"…sexting?"
"Shut the fuck up and hold it in, asshole! Er, sorry, boss."
A FLASHBACK
SIX MONTHS, FIFTEEN DAYS AND ONE HOUR AGO
"That your boss?"
"Yup."
"Huh."
"Ow. What is this- am I putting cold jello on my face?"
"We don't have bags of frozen vegetables in the fridge."
"Ugh. What? Don't look at me like that. It was a workplace accident, could have happened to anybody."
"While you're being a temp."
"What, like you've never had a shitty time at work."
"Black eyes. Sprained wrist. Cracked ribs. All just from this week."
"Concerned?"
"About the fucking rent, yeah."
"Thanks for the concern. It's not gonna happen again, mom."
"…"
"He- my boss tried to stop a runaway car from driving across a busy runway by blocking its path."
"Your boss."
"He was trying to, ow, 'negotiate a peaceful compromise' which involved reasoning with the maniac behind the wheel. God, that hurt."
"Your boss is fucking nuts."
"Tell me about it. He told me off for being too aggressive when I hauled the driver out and tried to punch him."
"Huh."
"You know what the fucked up thing was? The driver actually stopped. I don't know, man. Insane, but it worked. Fuck knows how."
"…"
"…"
"He's cute."
"What did you just say? I'm sorry, I think my head hitting tarmac just damaged my hearing."
"You didn't notice?"
"He's. My. Boss."
"Still cute."
"Never ever say that out loud in his presence."
"Wasn't planning to. Beer?"
"Fuck yes."
Part 3