Chapter Fourteen

That was obvious.

"Am I?" Mat's brows drew together, and his lips tightened fractionally. "Not as good as you think, because I was perfectly ready to help you get rid of those bags of body parts in that church parking lot." Somewhere in the background a clock ticked loudly.

Body parts? What was he... "Marshmallows!" CC corrected. "Bags of marshmallows. I can't really control this thing, you know? I was so nervous about coming over here...being with you, that..." At a loss for words, he just shrugged. "Marshmallows happen when emotion overwhelms me." That was simplifying it, but how could he explain more when he didn't really understand it himself?

Mat's eyes widened, his lips twitched. "Well...um. Then I guess maybe I'm making too much of this."

Panic struck. "What?" CC bolted out of his chair, knocking the table, tipping over his soda. He hadn't just confessed his deepest, darkest secret to a man who was about to drop him like a hot potato, had he?

"Sex." Mat growled. His fists clenched at his sides.

"Great idea!" CC tried to sound enthusiastic...and part of him felt a very genuine enthusiasm...but mostly he was thrown off balance by the single word.

"No. It just occurred to me..." Mat's face turned a deep red and his gaze skittered away. "Well..."

Seeing Mat awkward and out of his element, shook CC. "Mat?" His gut clenched in alarm, the tips of his fingers tingled, his palms warmed. Terrific. Nothing like a heavy-handed demonstration to underline just how freakish he really was.

"I care about you, CC." Deep blue eyes stared at him, intent, meaningful. "A lot."

"Uhm...okay. So, sex?"

"No! No marshmallows during sex." Mat glared. "So, I guess your emotions aren't as involved as mine."

What the fuck? "Mat..." CC's voice faded away as he realized he didn't have any sort of explanation for that phenomenon. Why weren't there marshmallows during sex? "I don't know. I..."

"I love you, CC. Hell, I was willing to break the law for you. And you don't even feel strongly enough about me to make it rain marshmallows when we have sex?"

Blinking furiously, CC processed the whole situation rapidly. Mat was...jealous? Insecure? "You want marshmallows during sex?"

"No. I want you to feel as out of control and emotional during sex as I do. You said marshmallows happen when emotions overwhelm you. I want...that." There was a forlorn quality to Mat's voice that pinged at CC's consciousness, made him want to make things better.

"You want me to be overwhelmed." CC spoke slowly, testing the idea. In the back of his mind, he scrambled for a why... Why didn't he produce mountains of marshmallows during sex? "Mat... I don't understand how I do this. I don't know where the marshmallows come from. For all I know, they're being swiped from factories in China."

"What has that got to do with anything?"

"It means I don't know anything about this condition. I've been studying everything I could think of for years, trying to make sense of it. Physics, anatomy, biology, you name it, I've tried it. Short of turning myself in to some government lab and letting them dissect me, that is."

"CC...what I'm trying to say is...I don't want to be just another guy. I love you. For whatever reason, however, I love you. I realize it hasn't been that long, but I hoped you felt the same. If not, then I think it's kinder...better..."

"No!" CC's heart lurched, hammered at his chest. Plop. The tingle in his fingers became a burn, his guts tightened painfully. Plop. Plop. Plop. The rapid patter of the marshmallows beat on the floor. Fear sent icy shards of pain through him.

Fear.

"Fear." The patter of sound stopped, the tingle...the burn eased. Fear. That was it. It wasn't just any feeling...it was fear. "When I ran into that bathroom...trying to get away from Thorn and his buddies, I was terrified. When I was in that bank..." Fear. He marveled at the revelation. It was true. When the car fire happened, he'd produced marshmallows in panic... Every single time he'd been afraid of something, fire, exposure, death. Losing Mat.

Bracing himself, he confessed. "I love you too, Mat." Ruefully he looked at the small pile of marshmallows on the floor. "I don't want to lose you."

Mat flashed a brilliant smile. "So...those marshmallows are for me?"

Choking back a laugh, CC nodded. "Sort of."

He could see Mat thinking, see acceptance in his eyes, humor returning to the full lips. "You were afraid of losing me?"

"You threatened to break up with me, and I hadn't even hardly begun to think of us as a couple yet!" He protested, reaching forward to pick up the now empty soda can. Mat noted what he was doing and retrieved a roll of paper towels. He tossed it to CC, who caught it awkwardly.

"I don't think I'd have actually been able to go through with that." Mat took the can from him and pitched it across the room to an open trash can. "I haven't been able to stay away from you since you shut me down so thoroughly at the store that time."

"Good," CC muttered, ripping wads of paper towels off the roll and soaking up the spill on the wood tabletop. He was too embarrassed to meet Mat's eyes, but no longer afraid. "Because you're like..." His imagination failed him and he stumbled to a halt. Glancing up, sticky wet towels clutched in his hand, he met Mat's eyes. "You're like gravity." Oh, ugh. Really? Gravity? Dammit. "Er... Okay, I'm very, very bad at this. Would you be offended if I fell back on you're Lois Lane to my Superman?"

"Lois Lane?" Mat's lips twitched before he burst into laughter. CC smiled politely, but the humor was contagious, and it wasn't long before he too was overwhelmed with the urge to laugh. Finally, Mat sobered. "I would like to point out, that Superman rescues Lois Lane. You"—he Pointed at CC—"have yet to rescue me. I however, have saved you from thugs, fire, and—"

"Loneliness," CC interrupted him. "Myself. You're my hero, Mathias Giraud."

Mat immediately embraced him, crushing the soda-soaked towels between them. The kiss he pressed on CC's lips was brief and heady. "You're the hero, CC. You saved those people at the bank, and you saved yourself."

The soggy towels hit the floor with a wet squelch. CC stared at it for a minute. Have to clean that up later. Didn't want Mat thinking he was in a relationship with a slob. Inane. Blinking in a daze, feeling like maybe his neurons were misfiring, CC tried to refocus on Mat's face. "What? I didn't save anyone, Mat. It was a stupid senior prank. There never was any danger."

"But you didn't know that. No one in that bank knew that."

Bravery in the face of danger. One of the things he himself had often admired about those superheroes on the silver screen. "An airsoft gun and a paintball gun. I was terrified," he confessed. "I thought for sure someone was going to die and that that someone was going to be me. I thought I'd die without getting the chance to tell you...how I felt."

"When I reached the scene and saw your car... CC, I panicked. I made Dillon drive me right to the hospital to find you."

He soaked in that for a while. "I'm sorry. I should have called you or something. Not used to the whole relationship thing."

"I owe you an apology, too."

He thought Mat would apologize for laughing or for making fun of his talent, or something. Instead, Mat opened up a can of worms CC would have been happy to leave sealed.

"I didn't know that Thorn was one of the people who bullied you in high school, CC." Mat's lashes lowered, hiding his expressive eyes. "I should have, I guess. I was so busy proving that I wasn't gay...I thought not being a part of the problem was enough. I should have stepped in, stepped up, been a man. I should have protected you then."

Yeah, why didn't you?

Oh shut up, you.

"Mat, don't tear yourself up over high school. Everyone deals with their own devils, and—" Once again he was scrambling for words in Mat's presence, but this time, it was because he wanted to set Mat's troubled mind at ease. "It's over, done. Let the past be. You never teased or assaulted me. Your cousin and I... We made our peace. He gave me some damned good advice as it turns out, and I think I actually feel kind of sorry for him."

"I will never let anyone hurt you again, CC."

"Oh, Mat..." He cupped the rugged jaw in his palm, gazed up into solemn eyes. "If there's one thing I've learned in all my studies, Mat, it's that we're all human and we make mistakes. I don't want you atoning for what you see as a past mistake for the rest of our lives. I forgive you. You need to forgive you."

"I... That's harder to do than it is to say, Collin Crane. I became a cop because I wanted to make a difference, in part I guess for the guilt of doing nothing. But...my family teases me about my hero complex. I do want to save the world, CC. Protecting and serving is in my blood."

CC leaned back, secure with Mat's arms an iron band across his back. "Okay." He remembered Thorn's weird little green flame. Was Mat hiding some quirky talent of his own? "What aren't you telling me?"

"My family settled this region. We carved this community out of the wilderness back when Daniel Boone was looking for elbow room and Davy Crocket was throwing bowie knives at bears. With our bare hands, we dug and cut and built. We fended off the wildlife, the interlopers, the US government when necessary, and we did it because of that. It's our superpower."

Confused, awed, CC whispered, "What is your superpower?"

"Love."

The End