Word Count: 3020

Lovely didn't know how to go about searching for a missing person.

He sat at his desk on his computer, idly searching through news articles about recent fatalities, occasionally checking his phone to make absolutely sure that Ilian hadn't texted him back. It was a useless effort. The articles offered no help and his phone screen almost always showed up blank. There was no sign of Ilian anywhere, just an unused bike in a bike rack and a darkened apartment.

There was a knock on his bedroom door, and his brother Dorian appeared in the doorway.

“What are you doing?” Dorian asked.

“Nothing,” Lovely responded testily.

Dorian frowned but chose not to speak of Lovely's attitude for the time being. “Dinner's ready,” he said.

Lovely heaved a sigh and picked himself up out of his chair, leaving his room and heading downstairs. He sat at the table in the breakfast nook of the kitchen (the only place they ever ate; the dining room just sat there collecting dust) and waited for Dorian to set his plate in front of him before picking at his food.

“What's wrong?” Dorian asked as he sat down across from Lovely.

“Nothing,” Lovely said again. He pushed his green beans around, took a bite, then went back to fiddling with them with his fork.

Dorian was quiet for a moment before he tried again. “You've been in a really bad mood lately.”

Lovely shrugged and glared down at his plate. “So?”

“Something happening at school?”

Lovely scoffed. He took another bite of green beans. “As if I give a s**t about anyone in that s**t hole.”

Dorian frowned and tried again. “You still fighting it out with ******** off.”

“You haven't hung out with him at all this week.”

“As if you care.”

Lovely was completely aware that his brother was wary about his friendship with Ilian. After the whole “mugging” incident, Dorian seemed to be of the opinion that Ilian had become a bad influence. He lived alone in a s**t part of town, worked at some shitty burger joint to pay his bills, and attended a s**t school with one of the worst reputations in the city. It didn't matter that Ilian was friendly and polite around Dorian whenever he was over. Dorian's opinion was already firmly set.

“Don't pretend like you're not glad he hasn't been around,” Lovely said.

Dorian sighed. “He's the one who sneaks through my backyard to get into my house instead of using the front door.”

“Well, maybe if you weren't such a d**k he wouldn't feel like he had to sneak around.”

“I haven't been a d**k.”

“Right, because all those suspicious looks are totally welcoming.”

“I wasn't under the impression that you cared,” Dorian said.

Lovely glared at him from across the table. Then he looked down at his plate again and viciously stabbed at a piece of meat.

“Maybe you should go back to France and live with ******** you,” Lovely swore.

“You didn't get into any trouble there,” Dorian said.

“I'm not getting into any trouble here.”

“You were mugged and stabbed.”

“That was one time,” Lovely said.

Dorian eyed him critically. “How do you explain all the bruises?”

“What bruises?”

Dorian said nothing, just looked at him levelly.

“So I bump into s**t, so what?”

“With your face?”

Lovely knew exactly what Dorian was talking about. He'd had a bruise on his cheek just the other week from an unfortunate night of interrupted energy draining. Any higher and it probably would have resulted in a black eye.

“I got shoved against a locker at school,” Lovely said.

“You didn't have the bruise when you came home from school. You had it when you came home after going out with Ilian.”

Lovely rolled his eyes and went back to attacking his plate.

“Do you two fight?” Dorian asked.

“Of course we fight,” Lovely said. “Why the hell do you think he isn't talking to me?”

“I meant physically.”

“No.”

“Really?” Dorian said. His brow raised and his voice sounded disbelieving.

“What the ******** do you even have against him?” Lovely demanded.

“Why are you getting so defensive?”

“I'm not getting defensive! You're the one bitching about Ilian like he's dragging me down into the seedy pits of hell!”

“Maybe he is,” Dorian said.

Lovely stood from his chair and slammed his palms against the table. He looked right across and speared Dorian with a death ********. You,” he said.

He stalked away from the table without finishing his dinner.

Back in his room, Lovely lowered himself into his computer chair and spun it around a few times, tipping his head back to glare at the ceiling like it had done him some grave offense.

He didn't know why he cared so much about what Dorian thought. It wasn't even like Dorian was far off the mark. Lovely never would have been involved in any of this Negaverse s**t if it wasn't for Ilian. Now he was going out at night to drain the energy from hapless civilians and fight a bunch of magical people he wouldn't give two shits about otherwise. He got nothing but bumps, bruises, and cuts for his troubles, and some lame promotion that had come too late to truly satisfy him.

Now Ilian was missing and Lovely was stuck dealing with Negaverse s**t without him. Except he hadn't powered up at all in the last few days because there didn't seem to be any point in it. He was only doing it because of Ilian. Without Ilian there, he had no reason to bother.

Vaguely he wondered why he even gave a damn. If it had been anyone else, he wouldn't have cared if they'd gone missing. (Except for his family, but that was completely different.) Yet here he was stressing about Ilian's whereabouts and trying in vain to defend Ilian against his older brother. It was weird. Which just made it even more frustrating, because he shouldn't give a damn. Ilian was just another person in a piece of s**t world. Why should what happened to him even matter?

Lovely didn't want to care. It was exhausting. He wasn't used to caring about anyone but himself. He found people endlessly boring. He couldn't give a s**t about their problems, and the closer they tried to get to him the more he just wanted to shove them away. By all accounts, Ilian should be the same as anyone else. Worse, even. He was all the things about life that made Lovely uncomfortable—parentless, poor, probably deviant in some way. He certainly got off on causing as much pain as he possibly could.

It was creepy, though there was a certain thrill to it. Ilian was starkly different from him in every way, and Lovely—loathed as he was to admit it—kind of liked it. It made life a little less boring. Lovely figured that was worth something.

Eventually he got tired of spinning around in his chair. He stood up, shrugged on a coat, grabbed his keys, and marched down the stairs. He could hear the sounds of water running and dishes clattering in the kitchen, so he knew Dorian was sufficiently distracted for the time being. Lovely went straight to his car, climbed in, turned it on, opened the garage, and peeled out before Dorian was even aware that he'd left his room.

He drove to Ilian's side of town, running a few red lights because he couldn't be assed to slow down when they turned yellow. He parked in Ilian's spot, checked to make sure Ilian's bike was still there (it was), and trudged up to Ilian's door with purpose.

Lovely tried the doorknob but of course it didn't give way. He was temped to break the front window and climb in that way, but Ilian would only b***h at him if he did that, so Lovely stopped looking around for something to throw at it. Eventually he took out his phone and pulled up Google.

'How to pick a lock.'

This brought up a variety of results, but most of them required objects he didn't have on him at the moment. He considered calling Jericho (Lovely was of the mind that people of Jericho and Ilian's social class were well versed in such things), but he didn't because he didn't feel like waiting around for him.

So Lovely tried again.

'How to pick a lock with a credit card.'

This produced a nice four-step aid. Lovely took one of his credit cards out of his wallet and followed along.

Ilian's annoying neighbor came out onto the landing again to smoke.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

Lovely glared at him and struggled to align the card up properly.

“You trying to break in?”

“No, I'm just doing this for my health,” Lovely shot back.

“I should call the cops on you,” the man ******** off.”

“What, are you his boyfriend or something?”

Lovely sputtered and nearly dropped his card. He glared again. His face was red with what he would claim was rage, but underneath that there was a fair bit of embarrassment.

“Ew, no,” he said.

The guy didn't look like he believed him.

“I have a girlfriend,” Lovely lied.

“Sure,” the man said. He blew out a cloud of acrid smoke.

Lovely coughed and glared at him again. After a moment of silence, he went back to trying to pick the lock.

Five frustrating minutes went by. Lovely was aware of the man's eyes on him the entire time. It made him feel unsafe and self-conscious, which just made him angrier because he wouldn't even be in this s**t part of town if it wasn't for Ilian. His mood did not help his fumbling. He read the directions over again but couldn't figure out what he was doing wrong.

After a while, Ilian's neighbor snickered at ******** you,” Lovely spat. “Why don't you do it?”

“What makes you think I know how to pick a lock?”

“You're poor,” Lovely ******** you, man.”

“You're not any help just standing there.”

“Well, now I'm definitely not helping you, jackass,” the man said. He flicked the butt of his cigarette at Lovely.

Lovely scowled and dodged.

“Don't know what a nice kid like Ilian's doing ******** around with you.”

“For ******** sake, we are not ******** around!”

“Sure. Why else would your snob a** hang around here? You get off on slumming it?”

“You are ******** dead if you don't shut the ******** up,” Lovely said.

“You got a foul mouth for a pretty boy.”

“Know your ******** place, pleb.”

The man actually had the audacity to laugh at him. Riled, Lovely turned back to the door and shoved his credit card into the jamb again. He wiggled it around violently and muttered a string of curses. Not two seconds later, his shriek of rage split through the winter air when his credit card snapped in ********,” Ilian's neighbor said.

“Seriously, <******** off!”

“Nah, it's fun harassing you. You make it so easy.”

“Do you not care at all that you haven't seen Ilian since last week?”

The man shrugged. “I didn't say I didn't.”

“He could be dead in there.”

“Now you're just being dramatic.”

“He could have been murdered by one of you people!”

“What? Nah, we all like Ilian.”

“Then maybe he overdosed or something.”

It was a stretch and completely unlikely, but it's not like he could say he expected to find Ilian dead after bleeding out from a wound caused by one of the city's notorious terrorists.

“Pretty sure Ilian's not into that stuff,” the man said. He took a moment to look Lovely over, then added, “Not that I would have thought he'd be into a little b***h like you. Must be the tight a**.”

“Excuse me?”

“You're uptight. Got a serious stick up your a**. Guess that's not the only thing that's been up there.”

“Shut the ******** up! I will ******** end you!”

The man laughed at him again. It was clear he didn't think Lovely had it in him. Normally Lovely didn't, but for this guy he was sure he could drudge up the effort. It would only take a second for him to power up and go for the man's throat with his dagger.

It was oh-so-tempting, but Lovely restrained himself. He took a deep breath, let it out, glared another warning, then turned back to the door. He collected the broken pieces of his credit card and shoved them into his coat pocket, then took another card out of his wallet to try again.

“Persistent,” Ilian's neighbor said.

“How many times do I have to say '******** off' before you finally <******** off?”

“Fine. Whatever, man.”

Finally, mercifully, the annoying son of a b***h turned for the door of his apartment.

“Let me know if you ever find your boyfriend,” he said before disappearing into his (probably) run-down home.

“He's not my ******** boyfriend!” Lovely shouted after him.

He wasn't even gay, Lovely internalized. And if he was, why would anyone think he'd go for someone of Ilian's class? He had higher standards than that.

With another frustrated shriek, Lovely went back to continue his failed lock-picking attempts, which movies made look so easy but which was, in reality, a struggle. He fitted his second card into the slot, bent it like instructed, then bent it the other way. He tried this ten times before shouting in rage, grabbing the locked doorknob to give it a vicious (and ultimately useless) twist, before finally kicking at the door violently.

He kicked it once, twice, three times. When that didn't work, he rammed it with his shoulder.

No ******** son of a b***h!!!”

He kicked the door one more time for good measure, then turned around to stalk back to his car. He slammed the door shut after climbing into the driver's seat, and spent a few moments with his forehead against the wheel.

“Why the <********> do I care?” he asked absolutely no one.

Lovely didn't know how to answer that question. It pissed him off. If it had been anyone else, he wouldn't give a damn. Which was even more frustrating, because he had no idea why Ilian should even matter. He hadn't before, but then the Negaverse happened and Lovely'd been stuck with him, and somewhere along the way he'd actually begun to look at Ilian as a friend. Ilian put up with him. He and Ilian had things in common. (Okay, so just one thing, and Ilian was better at it than he was, but that wasn't the point.)

And now Ilian was gone, and Lovely had absolutely no idea where he was.

Logically he knew what his next step should be. He should file a missing person's report. If Ilian was truly gone, the police should get involved.

But something told him not to do that. In the end, the police wouldn't be able to do anything. They had no part in this magical war, which Lovely was becoming more and more convinced was the cause of Ilian's ******** idiotic piece of s**t! You weren't supposed to go out alone!”

He lifted his head to glare through the windshield at Ilian's apartment door.

Finally, he had to admit to himself that he wasn't going to accomplish anything by hanging around there. He turned his car on, backed out, and peeled out of the parking lot.

For a while he just drove around, going down random streets he wasn't familiar with simply for something to do. He ended up getting lost and had to use his GPS to get him home, where he sat in his car in the garage for a while, trying to figure out what the hell he wanted to do now.

He climbed out after half an hour and went back into the house. Dorian was waiting for him in the living room.

“Where were you?” he asked.

“None of your ******** business,” Lovely said.

Dorian frowned at him. He looked more concerned than angry. “You make up with Ilian?”

“No.”

Lovely went for the stairs.

“You want to talk about ******** no.”

Lovely heard Dorian sigh behind him as he began to make his way up to the second floor.

“Leigh,” Dorian called when Lovely was halfway up.

Lovely turned to glare down at him.

“What is wrong with you?” his brother asked.

“There's nothing wrong with me,” Lovely said.

“You're not usually this obstinate.”

“I'm a teenager. We're ******** moody as hell.”

“Don't even try to pull that s**t with ********. You're not my mom.”

“No, but I can call her,” Dorian said.

Lovely rolled his eyes. “As if that'll do anything.”

They both knew he was right. Their mother wouldn't do much more than whine and fret and make plans to come visit that she would inevitably not follow through with.

Dorian sighed again and seemed to admit defeat. He waved Lovely off and said, “Just go to bed.”

Lovely finished stomping up the stairs where he went to his room and slammed the door shut behind him. He tore off his coat and threw it onto his computer chair, then dropped onto the bed and shoved his face into one of his pillows. He felt like screaming into it, but he held back and dealt with a tightening throat and watering eyes ********,” he said.

He didn't know what the ******** he was crying for.