The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

Her breath caught.

"I’m also the guy who is currently standing in your room in his underwear while you yell at me about another woman’s perfume." I kissed her nose because I couldn’t resist. "So maybe give me a little credit for not running away screaming."

"You can’t run. I’d catch you."

"That’s true. Your cardio is better than mine."

"My everything is better than yours."

"Also true. And yet here you are, getting possessive over a guy whose entire wardrobe consists of four identical hoodies."

She laughed despite herself. A short, sharp sound that escaped before she could stop it. Her hands pressed flat against my stomach, fingers spreading across my abs with the familiarity of someone who had mapped this territory multiple times.

"I hate that you’re good at this."

"Good at what?"

"Making me feel better when I’m trying very hard to stay mad at you."

"It’s a gift."

"It’s annoying."

"Those aren’t mutually exclusive."

She shoved me toward the bathroom door. I went willingly because the alternative was having this conversation while standing in her room in nothing but boxer briefs and that seemed like a suboptimal negotiating position.

The bathroom was small but functional. Standard dorm issue with the addition of approximately forty-seven skincare products arranged on the counter in an order that probably made sense to Sloane and looked like chaos to anyone else. The shower stall was glass-enclosed and larger than the one in my building, which tracked given that 1-A got better everything as a matter of institutional policy.

Sloane followed me in and closed the door behind her. The space immediately felt smaller with both of us in it.

"Strip."

"I’m almost there."

"Faster."

I dropped my boxers because arguing with her when she was in this mood was pointless. She watched me do it with an expression that combined possessive satisfaction and lingering irritation in a way that only Sloane could manage.

"Happy now?"

"Getting there." She reached past me and turned on the shower, adjusting the temperature with the ease of someone who had already calibrated it to her preferences. Steam began to fill the small space almost immediately. "Get in."

I stepped into the shower. The water was hot enough to sting, which was exactly how Sloane liked it. She always ran warm, her Aspect generating ambient heat that made her comfortable at temperatures that would have most people reaching for the cold tap.

She stripped efficiently while I stood under the spray, pulling off her crop top and sports bra in one motion, shimmying out of her fitted jeans and underwear with the casual confidence of someone who had stopped being shy about her body around me approximately six weeks ago. Her figure was all muscle and curves, athletic definition layered over proportions that would have been impressive even without the constant training. Her skin was flushed from the steam and from whatever emotions were still churning behind those blue eyes.

She stepped into the shower behind me and pressed her body against my back. Her arms wrapped around my waist and her cheek pressed against my shoulder blade.

"This is mine," she said into my skin. Her hands splayed across my stomach, possessive and warm. "All of this. Every part of you that other women look at and want. It belongs to me."

"I know."

"Do you though? Because sometimes I watch you interact with people and I wonder if you actually understand what you’re doing to them." Her fingers traced patterns on my wet skin. "Rina looks at you like you hung the moon because you told her that her Aspect was useful. Felicity talks about you like you’re some kind of hero because you pulled her out of rubble once. Percy probably has a shrine to you in his closet because you walked a route with him and didn’t call him weird."

"Percy’s not a woman."

"Percy’s not the point. The point is that you collect people. You make them feel important and then they orbit around you like you’re the sun and they’re just. Planets. Waiting for you to shine on them again."

I turned in her arms. The water ran down between us, hot and relentless. Her pink hair was already darkening from the moisture, strands plastering against her neck and shoulders.

"You’re jealous of Felicity because she hugged me."

"I’m jealous of Felicity because she got to touch you and I wasn’t there to see it happen." Sloane’s hands found my hips, fingernails digging in just slightly. Not enough to hurt. Enough to make her point. "I’m jealous because for twenty minutes you were in her room helping her unpack and I was in my room imagining what that looked like and driving myself insane."

"Nothing happened."

"I know nothing happened. You’re too honorable to let something happen this fast, which is somehow more annoying because it means my jealousy is completely irrational and I can’t even be properly mad at you for it."

"You’re doing a pretty good job of being mad at me anyway."

"I’m talented."

I kissed her because it was the only way to shut her up and also because she looked beautiful when she was angry. All fire and passion and barely contained energy that could level a city block if she stopped holding back. Her lips parted under mine and her nails raked down my back as she pressed closer, deeper, desperate in a way that made my chest ache.

The kiss went on for longer than I intended. Her body fit against mine like it had been designed to do exactly that, all soft curves and hard muscle and the particular kind of heat that had nothing to do with water temperature. When we finally broke apart we were both breathing hard and her eyes were slightly glazed in a way that suggested coherent thought had temporarily vacated the premises.

"You’re supposed to be washing off her perfume," she said. Her voice came out rougher than usual.

"Hard to do that when you keep distracting me."

"I’m not distracting you. I’m supervising."

"Is that what this is called?"