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A hard brick wall. Damp concrete floor. There’s a spatter of blood on Tide’s hands; there’s a ringing in his ears. It’s supposed to be his day off; somehow, he’s still managed to find himself caught in the middle of something. Tide peers out of the alley he’d instinctively jumped in for cover, wincing as his scraped palms make contact with the wall he’s leaning against.
It seems to have been a fairly typical explosion- well, as typical as they can be. There’s few people around, given that it’s just after six in the evening and this side of town is mostly industrial. Tide breathes a sigh of relief seeing no apparent injured civilians, giving himself a once-over before he heads out to take a proper look.
Scraped hands, check. Concussion? Probably not, he landed on his aforementioned scraped hands. His jeans now sport a rip on the knee that youths would probably deem fashionable, but other than that Tide is fine. He takes a step out of the alleyway entrance, only to find himself unceremoniously shoved right back in.
“Hey!” Tide shouts, “Let go of me!”
It’s a quick decision, almost reflexive, for Tide to not fight back. This person could be a civilian pushing him into safety, or an unpowered criminal that couldn’t survive an immediate onslaught of his powers.
Unfortunately for Tide, he finds himself face-to-face with one very familiar masked villain. Wavelength has Tide pinned against the wall by the shoulders, and he puts a finger to where his lips would be under his mask to signal for Tide to be quiet.
“Wavelength, let go-” Tide protests.
In response, Wavelength slaps a hand over Tide’s mouth, which loosens his hold on Tide’s shoulders, but Tide doesn’t try to move. He doesn’t know why.
“Tide,” Wavelength’s voice is hushed and distorted by his modulator, “There are several very powerful individuals robbing that warehouse, and if you want to live, I suggest you shut the fuck up. ”
Tide nods, giving a thumbs-up to demonstrate his understanding. Wavelength removes his hands, but Tide still finds himself making no attempt to get away.
“ Fuck, ” Wavelength swears, “I’m gonna get us both fuckin’ killed.”
“Please don’t,” Tide murmurs, “I’m having dinner with my brothers tomorrow.”
Wavelength makes a sound that Tide could almost have thought was a laugh, “ That’s what you’re thinkin’ about, huh? Dinner? In the middle of an active fuckin’ crime and you’re thinkin’ about stroganoff?”
“How do you know-”
“I’m a telepath,” Wavelength interrupts, “But only through physical contact.”
Tide’s eyes widen at this, desperately trying to clear his thoughts. Beef stroganoff. Hamburger Helper. The new show he’s been watching. Dreams of kissing someone, rough hands on his shoulders, blond hair, a low voice in his ear.
Crap.
“Okay, now you’ve shut up,” Wavelength cuts off TIde’s train of thought, “We need to get you the fuck out of here. There’s a warehouse at the end of this alley, you’re gonna run through there, and you’re gonna fuckin’ stay out of sight, got it? They see you, they kill you. They see me helping you, they kill me. So follow me, and do it quickly. ”
“Wh- Who even is it?” Tide stammers, trying to ignore his instinct to follow orders, to believe Wavelength .
“I ain’t tellin’ you shit, Waterboy.” Wavelength glances at a communicator on his wrist. “I’m on civilian clearing duty. Threats, bribes, whatever. Can’t risk it.”
“Then why help me?”
“It’s confidential.” There’s something in Wavelength’s voice that Tide almost recognises, some emotion that he can almost pretend he’s familiar with.
Pressed this close together, Tide wonders why he’s not scared.
“Okay,” Tide says, voice low, “Show me where I’m going. I’ll do it without question, on one condition.”
“You’ve already asked questions, fishsticks.”
“No more, then.”
A beep sounds from Wavelength’s communicator, and he starts dragging Tide towards the back of the alleyway. His grip on Tide’s wrist is firm, but not hard enough to leave a bruise, thumb pressing over his pulse point.
“Okay, here’s what’s gonna happen. You run through that warehouse, out the far door. You don’t tell anyone this happened, capiche? It’ll get me killed, and I know neither of us want that. And then, you’re gonna get your ass back here at eleven tonight, and we’re gonna figure this shit out, alright?”
“I- yes, alright.” Tide agrees easily, Wavelength’s request to meet up later an echo of what his own request would have been.
Wavelength pulls something out of his pocket- a tissue, and a small bottle. He roughly wipes the blood off Tide’s hands, then pours the clear liquid onto his palms. It stings- hand sanitiser. Tide stands and tries not to stare as the man he knows only as an enemy tends to Tide’s scrapes and bruises, his steady grip deceptively caring despite the pain in Tide’s palms.
It’s easier than it should be to trust this man, swearing and gruff, Tide’s blood on his gloves. His modulated voice sends shivers down Tide’s spine- almost familiar, like deja-vu, or the precursor to a memory he’s going to have soon. Wavelength turns to leave, gloved hand lingering on Tide’s for just a second. Tide can’t help but watch as his own hand raises in an attempt to follow Wavelength’s retreating figure, indents from the seams of Wavelength’s glove on his wrist.
Tide shouldn’t be here. It’s cold, and it’s dark, and he had to sneak past at least three police officers. It’s five to eleven, and Wavelength is nowhere in sight. It’s unlikely he’d be easy to find at a time like this, the area crawling with law enforcement and cleanup for the debris of the earlier explosions. Somehow, despite the frantic nature of their earlier interaction, Tide manages to gather his thoughts enough to find the same alley as earlier. He makes his way down carefully, trying to seem as inconspicuous as possible as he does so.
“You’re shit at pretending to be casual,” A voice calls out from just behind Tide.
Tide spins around, locs flying with the force of his movement.
“Wavelength?” Tide asks, although he already knows the answer.
“The fuck you think?”
“I don’t know what I think,” Tide answers honestly.
Wavelength steps away from where he’s been leaning, half-obscured by shadows, against the wall. “Well I hope you think I’m Wavelength, or we might have a bigger problem on our hands.”
“Why wouldn’t I think that? And what do you mean, bigger problem?”
“The fuckin’ problem, Waterboy, is I’m outta my usual supplies. See, here is where I’d like to wipe that pretty little brain of yours of the past six or so hours, dump you in a lake, and keep pretending we both fuckin’ hate each other.”
So that’s why Tide keeps waking up in a lake. It’s been becoming increasingly frequent over the past few months, seven times total so far. Wavelength was the one leaving him with messily bandaged injuries, and painkillers in his system, at the bottom of that lake. Tide says the only thing he can think of.
“How do you know my brain is pretty?”
Wavelength scoffs, running a hand through his hair, “Shit, Tide, that’s what you got from that?”
Tide shakes his head, “No. I’m just… processing. Is that how you knew I liked beef stroganoff earlier? You’re not psychic?”
“Not psychic, no,” Wavelength steps closer, “Just an asshole.”
“I think you’re better than you give yourself credit for. You’ve protected me all those times.”
“It was for selfish fuckin’ reasons, every single time. Y’know, you’ve tried to convince me to quit smoking every one of those times? Didn’t fuckin’ listen, ‘cause you never remember. I tell you exactly why I do this, every time, and you don’t remember, so I figure it can’t be that important.”
“Wavelength-”
“No, no no. Let me have my shitty villain monologue.” Wavelength says, stepping forward and matching Tide’s every reflexive step backwards.
Tide’s back hits the wall, and he does feel scared this time. The bricks are cold, hard against his back, rough against the exposed, freshly-healed skin of his hands.
“This time,” Wavelength continues, “I’m outta the shit I’d usually use to wipe your memory, cause I had to stop the fucker that saw me letting you go. I should just fuckin’ kill you, get outta town, change my name, but I can’t. I’m stuck here ‘cause I got someone relying on me, get it? It’s your fuckin’ fault I’m in this mess, and I fuckin’ hate you for it.”
The information hits Tide like a sledgehammer to a chipboard wall- he knows now he never stood a chance. He tries to tell himself that Wavelength is the worst kind of man, selfish and uncaring, but all he can think of is the fact that Wavelength chose- is still choosing - to let Tide live every time, choosing Tide over himself.
“Do you?” Tide asks, voice shaky.
“Do I what?” Wavelength spits, modulator and mask unable to hide the tremor in his voice.
“Hate me.”
Wavelength steps closer, so they’re almost chest-to-chest, bringing a hand up to Tide’s throat. Involuntarily, Tide gasps, flinching back but finding nowhere to move. The grip isn’t hard enough to bruise, but the fingers on Tide’s jugular feel like something that could leave a lasting mark in the back of his mind.
Tide has a feeling he’s had that thought before.
“I want to kick your ass so hard you never fuckin’ come back,” Wavelength says, quieter now, “I want to plant a fuckin’ bomb in your house, watch as you realise that nobody fuckin’ cares if you’re not useful to the system, make you just as miserable as I am. Every time we fight, I hope it leaves a scar that doesn’t heal this time, so you can’t forget that at every fuckin’ turn, your lot have failed me. I’ve watched countless people die, and heroes don’t give a shit ‘til it’s too late. How the fuck do you think I could not hate everything you stand for?”
The grip on Tide’s neck loosens slightly, gloved hand now just resting there, right above his collarbones. Tide wonders for just a moment if the layers of fabric between them hide his racing pulse, or his blush.
“But do you hate me?” Tide implores, “Would you do all of that if you truly hated me that much?”
“Shit, Tide. I don’t fuckin’ know, would I have you pinned against an alley wall, a minute away from choking you out, if I didn’t?”
Tide huffs, “Probably, yeah. Isn’t that what villains do? Capture a hostage?”
“I wish we never met. You make me want to have a moral compass, and I fucking hate it.”
“But you don’t hate me,” Tide says, bringing his hands up to Wavelength’s hand wrapped around his neck, “I don’t think you hate me at all.”
In lieu of a response, Wavelength brings his free hand to cover Tide’s eyes, and Tide realises he must have taken off his glove at some point as he feels a callused palm and fingers against his skin. There’s a clattering as something falls to the floor, metallic and tinny in the alley, although somehow muffled.
“Why are you here?” Wavelength asks, voice unmodulated, “Why did you come?”
“Is- is curiosity not reason enough alone?”
“No.”
Steeling himself, Tide braces for a hit as he responds with a statement as truthful as it is jarring. “I wanted to see you, I think. No- I know. You let me go, saved me when you didn’t have to. I think there’s more to you than meets the eye, Wavelength.”
The hit Tide was bracing himself for never comes. Instead, Tide feels chapped lips brush against his own, breath fanning across his face.
“Do you want this?” Wavelength asks, “Tell me to leave, and I’ll go. We can stop this.”
Tide gasps, a shiver running down his spine as the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. “Yes. I want this. Don’t go, not yet.”
Yet. The entire basis of the situation- the expectation that somehow, some way, all of this is going to end. Still Wavelength helps Tide every time, and they choose to save one another over and over again, to both of their detriments. It’s a flip of a coin with tails on both sides, it’s a weighted die, it’s cards being counted at every turn.
Wavelength makes a small, almost pained noise, and he leans in, and kisses Tide.
Tide echoes the sound as their lips touch, one of Wavelength’s hands still covering his eyes, the other still gloved and making its way from Tide’s throat to cup his jaw. Wavelength’s lips are rough, and his stubble scrapes at Tide’s face, and Tide’s head spins. He brings his hands to Wavelength’s shoulders, pulling him closer, Tide tilting his head slightly as they kiss.
The kiss is slow, and almost gentle enough to feel loving, and Tide feels like he’s sinking to the bottom of a lake again, and again, and again. As they kiss, Tide knows that he knows this man more than he can remember, something pulling at the back of his mind as spit-slick lips move together for the final first time.
Wavelength pulls back for just a moment, as does his gloved hand, and Tide feels the hand return bare this time, on Tide’s waist, fingers creeping under his shirt. His hands are warm, and Tide wants to bask in it. There’s a humming in Tide’s veins as Wavelength licks at his lower lip, Tide opening his mouth willingly. Tide feels Wavelength’s tongue tracing his teeth, gently touching his own, and Wavelength pushes him more firmly into the wall.
A shattering sound rings through the alleyway, and Wavelength jerks away suddenly.
“What- what was that?” Tide stammers, flustered and panting.
“A streetlight,” Wavelength responds, hand still over Tide’s eyes, “Bulb blew out.”
“How- why-”
“Yeah, that was probably me.”
Tide contemplates asking more questions, but decides after a few moments that he doesn’t care to know the answer.
“You’re awful at proving you hate someone,” Tide says, then asks: “Do you… Is this a regular thing? With heroes?”
“Just you, Waterboy,” Wavelength says, softly and quietly enough that Tide can almost convince himself he never heard anything at all.
He doesn’t have to worry about formulating a response as Wavelength leans in and kisses him again, harder this time, hand on Tide’s waist gripping hard enough that, if Tide were any regular person, he might have bruised.
There’ll be no contusions left on Tide’s skin, but this time he’ll have the memory of how that nothing came to be.
This kiss is rougher, Wavelength biting at Tide’s lips in a way that’s not quite too much. Tide runs his hands through Wavelength’s hair, wrapping the short strands around his fingers the best he can. Wavelength presses closer still, a leg slotting between Tide’s as they kiss. There’s a feeling of static in the air, and Tide can feel as his hair stands on end, locs floating around him. When Wavelength bites particularly harshly at Tide’s lower lip, Tide’s grip in Wavelength’s hair tightens, and both of them groan into the kiss.
Wavelength pulls away, breathing heavily. Tide desperately wants to see what he looks like now, flushed and panting, but he doesn’t even know what Wavelength looks like without his mask, so there’s nothing to imagine, just a space in his mind that he wants to fill.
As Tide tries to catch his breath, Wavelength trails his lips down Tide’s jaw and to the side of his throat, where he’d had his fingers pressed just moments before. He bites down gently, and when Tide nods his assent, more firmly. Tide brings one of his hands from Wavelength’s hair to his own mouth, trying to muffle the sound he makes. He feels more than hears Wavelength chuckling as he sucks a mark into the skin at the base of Tide’s throat. Wavelength tilts his head and bites at the other side of Tide’s neck, biting down even harder this time. It stings- almost, almost hurts- and Tide retaliates by pulling Wavelength’s hair harder than he had before.
In response, Wavelength pulls back, panting, and Tide can feel him staring even as one of his hands is still covering Tide’s eyes. In the gaps between Wavelength’s fingers, Tide sees the glow of the lights of a passing car, and feels the heat of the gaze of a man who claims to do nothing more than despise him.
“This is why I hate you,” Wavelength says, “Because I can never fuckin’ have you. And you’ll never get what it’s like to live like this, on the outskirts, ignored by everyone, everyone except you, ‘cause every time I’ve asked, or even if I haven’t, you’ve helped.”
“I’m sorry.”
Tide feels Wavelength pull slightly away, then feels as he snakes an arm between Tide’s back and the brick wall of the alley in an uncomfortable imitation of a hug. Without so much as a second thought, Tide wraps his arms around Wavelength, feels him shake as he breathes. He’s just a little shorter than Tide, but Tide decides now isn’t the time to bring it up.
“I’m sorry too,” Wavelength says.
“What for?”
“For the fact I’m not gonna stop. Shit, Tide, you think this changes anything? I can’t just… turn myself in, or just suddenly become good. I’m not the man you want to be.”
Tide sighs, “I didn’t say I wanted you to be anything.”
“Every time, you kiss me, and I tell you that this won’t work, and you try to convince me that I’m good. And I fuckin’ wish I was half the man you think I am, but I see you and the only thing I can think is how much I wanna hurt you for making me want more than I can have. Can’t even let you see my face, just in case you had to report me. What the fuck kinda- what can be built off something like that? Huh? ‘Cause I feel like I’m having one side of an argument all on my own here, and I can fuckin’ hear you thinking, and I don’t know if I wanna give you a split fuckin’ lip or kiss it better. And you’d never be like me, you’re too good, obedient, it’s in your nature, fuckin’ engineered into you. What I wouldn’t give to get into that fuckin’ system and knock some sense into you, show you how fucked this whole thing is.”
For a moment, Tide is shocked into silence. Wavelength’s ramblings feel familiar, and feel almost domestic in the half-hearted jabs and backhanded compliments. Everything is too intimate, too sudden, and Tide realises just how much Wavelength knows him. Any argument Tide would’ve made is shut down before he has the chance to speak, and he wonders if this is how it might feel to have lost something.
But Tide has survived loss before, and there is no use in mourning somebody he could have grown to be.
Wavelength had needed help, and Tide had given it, and somehow Wavelength had grown to know Tide’s every unspoken thought. Something had happened every time that had Tide committing to him, trusting him. There’s a burning in Tide’s chest, a growing resentment to every version of himself that got to live something more than being a hero for others to use.
Maybe this is what Wavelength endures; the branding of all those moments into his mind giving him the same enmity that Tide now feels. He wants to push Wavelength away, pull him closer, bite his neck and leave some remnant that Wavelength can’t brush off as easily as he’s distancing himself from Tide.
Tide wishes he had it in him to press the alarm built into his watch; he could call people here that could stop Wavelength before he tries to leave.
Instead, he speaks up. “I think I hate me, too. And if what you feel for me is hate, then that is- that’s how I feel about you. So shut the- shut the crap up, and kiss me.”
As soon as Tide gives the word, they're kissing again. Their teeth clash, and Tide can taste iron as Wavelength bites down on his lower lip. Wavelength takes his hand from behind Tide’s back and uses it to support himself against the wall, bracketing Tide in on that side. Tide pulls Wavelength in by the hips and bites him back, Wavelength retaliating by pushing his tongue into Tide’s mouth. The kiss is rough, and it’s like they’re fighting again. There’s blood in both of their mouths, and Tide hopes his fingers leave bruises on Wavelength’s hips.
No other past versions of Tide have ever done this, he knows that much. He couldn’t forget the feeling of being pressed between Wavelength’s body and a brick wall, couldn’t erase the taste of someone else’s blood from his mouth.
Tide waits for Wavelength to pull back slightly to take a breath, and takes the opportunity to tug him back in by a fist in his hair, and licks into Wavelength’s mouth. His mouth is hot, and Tide can trace his teeth, feel the shape that had been bitten into his neck earlier. Objectively, Tide knows he’s no good at this, nowhere near as practised as Wavelength, but he doesn’t care. He wants more- more than he’s had before, more than Wavelength can give him.
He wants a life where they kiss in the mornings, where they bicker while Wavelength makes coffee, where they can both be something more than this.
There’s a sound of a siren nearby, moving closer, and they both snap out of it at the same time. Wavelength pulls back completely, and even though his hand is gone, Tide doesn’t open his eyes. A mechanical clicking comes from where Wavelength is standing, and then Tide does open his eyes, seeing the familiar masked face in front of him.
They’re both panting, and neither of them says anything as Wavelength turns away. It’s not worth it- they could slip and say something they actually mean for once in their lives.
As he watches Wavelength walk away, Tide realises something- Wavelength hadn’t tasted like cigarettes, not for a single moment. For a man who claims he isn’t good enough to quit, he sure is an awful liar.