Crime Brulee In: Only Human

Chapter 1 - Wicked Be You Wretches (Part 1)

“I thought you were af–I mean,” Frank caught himself before he could imply, even on accident, that his wife, the dastardly and indomitable Crime Brulee, was afraid of anything. “I thought you didn’t like to fly.” He’d never much liked it, either, which was why he’d arrived by bus when he first moved to Blackwater City all those years ago. He imagined he’d like it even less now, at almost double his original weight, thanks to Connie’s obsession with heavyset men, his own realization that self-discipline to the point of self-flagellation couldn’t hold a candle to the taste of street food and baked goods, and one very unlikely, very bizarre bargain with someone or something that may have been a demon. Thank God–or rather, thank Connie–for the Villains Association’s private jet, with its spacious seats, fully stocked bar, and complete lack of strangers to bump awkwardly up against.

“I don’t. But after spending weeks hooked up to the DreamWeaver 9000, with a tube in my vein and a catheter up my hoo-hah, the last thing I want to do is kayak across the Atlantic Ocean.” Connie sat in the leather seat across from him with her feet on the cushion, tucked under her thighs, and General George, her loyal French bulldog, lying in her lap and fulfilling his duty as a furry makeshift clipboard on which balanced her manila folder full of intel. “That’s why I have a drink.” She nodded towards the stiff cocktail in her cup holder. “Not to mention my emotional support animal. Isn’t that right, boy?” She reached underneath the folder to scratch George gently behind the ears; the dog let out a contented snort and flattened even further against her legs.

“All I’m saying is, there’s a comfier seat for you if you want it,” he offered, offering his lap by way of giving his belly a demonstrative smack, but she stayed put, still reading even as her hand shook while she raised her glass to her lips.

“I’ll take you up in a hot second,” was all she said, still analyzing the notes in front of her, pausing only to tuck a stray, obsidian curl behind her ear.

Their destination was a portside city in England, or maybe Scotland, called Ellum-on-Weir, or something? Suspicious ‘Deviantology’ clinics had started to pop up there, just like they had in a lot of cities, including Blackwater. Frank had been the one to first clue in on the suspicious nature of the Blackwater ones–the way people went in but never came out, the discrepancies in the files, the lack of employee records. His powerset–turning invisible and walking through walls being just a couple of the weapons in his arsenal–made him good at that sort of espionage. And while Connie had been busy helping Leo out with the DreamWeaver, and enduring a not insignificant coma as a result, he’d found himself something to do.

Some might have said it wasn’t his fight. After all, he’d gotten his powers in a supernatural deal. He hardly counted as a Deviant. But Connie was, and nobody threatened his wife on his watch. Still, he’d hoped she wouldn’t wake up and immediately throw herself, gung-ho, into incinerating the mysterious clinics, and then taking the fight abroad. He should have known it would be like this, though. Taking time off for recovery had never been a very Crime Brulee thing to do.

“So remind me why we have to go to like, Ellis-of-Wherever?” he asked. “I know they’ve got the same shady operations going on that B-Dubs has, but can’t they fight their own battles?”

“That’s the thing: somebody is,” explained Connie, folding the file and lifting it. “Leo printed it all off from his own research. Apparently, their news media is calling this person the Electro-cutioner. Electromancer, obviously. Basically knocking over these places the same as me.”

“Right…and he’s tagging along because…?” Trailing off, Frank jerked his head in the direction of Leo Caprisky, two seats to Connie’s left.

Leo Caprisky, boy-king of the Internet, CEO of Mybrid (the first name in social media monopoly), occasional fake ‘brother’ to Connie for purposes of espionage within the circles of high society, and a self-disassembled man who’d turned himself into a self-remade android. This was Frank’s first time actually meeting Leo. Connie had said it was fine if he wanted to stay behind and hold down B-Dubs, but after learning Leo was along for the ride, and after the mishap with the DreamWeaver, he was not letting Connie out of his sight, alone with the man who’d been with her during that disaster…and the previous one…and the one before that.

“I mean, what do you care about Deviants, right?” he continued, turning now on Leo. “Robot, and all.”

“Oh, Leo’s coming for personal business,” said Connie. Leo, meanwhile, reclined in his seat, hands folded behind his head.

“Briony Bastee,” he sighed dreamily.

“Who?”

“She’s a celebrity chef,” said Connie. “She works in Ellum, all her restaurants are there, and Leo wants to meet her. And since he was so kind as to pay for our jet fuel and let us stay in his vacation home–”

“Connie, please!” interrupted Leo. “The beguiling Briony Bastee is no mere chef! Her every entree is a lust-letter to gluttony itself, her every dessert a plated monument! Chef Bastee is feederism in human form, four hundred and fifty plus pounds of sensuality in a sauce-kissed coat! I’d give my RAM, ROM, and my CPU for one chance to dine at just one of her establishments–”

“But you don’t eat,” Frank reminded him. “Anyway, how do you know if she’s even into feed–oh, that’s right, you read everyone’s emails. How could I forget?”

“And,” Leo went on, “to have the privilege of taking her home and sliding my finely-tuned instrument between the plush, luxuriant rolls of her–”

“Jesus Christ on a motorbike, Leo, I’m trying to concentrate!” snapped Connie.

Leo slumped in his seat, arms crossed like a petulant child.

Frank looked at Connie. “Anything interesting in that file?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Connie. “It seems our demolition artist leaves a lot behind when they blow these houses down. Valuables. Electronics. Money. My hope is that they’ll have what it takes to join the Association, so we can officially take our crook club international. And maybe they just forgot about the whole robbery angle. Maybe they’re new at this. But my fear is that we’re gonna have come all this way just for me to meet them and find out that they’re trying to do…”

She gagged before the next word left her mouth: “Good.”

***

It was a good thing Connie was comfortable doing the ordering for both Frank and herself, because when they stopped for dinner at a quaint diner on their way to Leo’s coastal estate after landing, he barely said a word, glaring across the table all the while at the cybernetic startup chief and stabbing at his meal with his fork like it screwed his mother and owed him money.

Later on that night, Connie padded into Leo’s kitchen, which more resembled a lab than anything else, full of stainless-steel, ominously quiet appliances under fluorescent lights. The faint, acrid tang of gasoline lingered in the air–obviously, Leo had done more than fill up the tank of the rental car at their last gas stop.

And there he was in the corner, sipping it out of a shortball glass as if that was the most normal thing in the world to be doing at midnight. Then again, it was hardly normal for Connie to walk around dressed in nothing but a sheer nightgown in the European chill, but that was a symptom left over from that time she was poisoned repeatedly in a dungeon under a luxury retreat for the eccentric aristocrats she’d been caught attempting to steal from: she’d never made a total recovery, and anymore, her internal fire burned too hot for comfort. But she wasn’t worried about Leo looking at her with immodest eyes. He didn’t like thin women.

“You know, if you’re going to set yourself on fire before breakfast, I’m not the one to help put out your exploding engine,” she said from the kitchen doorway. “We should have brought Whirlpool along.”

“I assure you, I can hold my Super Premium,” quipped Leo. “Although, if you’re here to fix your husband a late-night snack, you’d better make it snappy before he starts to suspect I’ve spirited you off into imminent danger.”

She let the jab land, then walked over to the island and pulled herself onto a barstool with a sigh. “Actually, I came looking for you.”

That got his attention. He set the glass down and regarded her with interest. “Should I be flattered or terrified?”

“I want your help,” she said.

“With…?”

“With Frank, duh. Try and keep up.”

Leo blinked. “Connie. I'm an inventor. Not a couple’s therapist. Not even a good friend most days.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You’re not NOT my friend.”

He gestured vaguely. “Debatable.”

“Please, cut the bullshit,” she said, her tone dropping into something both more snappish and more earnest. “He’s been giving you the stink-eye since takeoff, and you know why. All he sees are the times you got me in trouble. And it’s because he cares about me, but it blinds him. He only remembers how broken I was when I came back from the Horizons retreat, and not about how if you hadn’t been there to watch my six, I’d have been eaten alive, literally! He only thinks about how long I was gone, hooked up to the DreamWeaver, and not about how I wanted to be there, to help Rose–and, on that subject, don’t think I don’t know that your little obsession with Chef Bastee isn’t a convenient distraction from her.”

“Rose is–Rose doesn’t–” Leo stammered, seeming, for a moment, impossibly human, before his composure returned, eyes flashing electric yellow. “Rose spent years stuck in a simulation. She deserves to dance and drink her way across Blackwater City, hopping from one feeder’s lap to the next. As for me, I have all the time in the world, so I don’t see why I shouldn’t fill it with my own dalliances. And Frank? Frank is a big boy; he can decide for himself who and who not to trust. And if he won’t trust me? I have the maturity not to be offended.”

“Well…well, maybe I don’t!” said Connie. “You keep saving my life–”

“The world would be so boring without you.”

“I just wish–”

“Careful with that. Remember what happened when you met that genie in Montana?”

Connie rolled her eyes. “You know, some would say part of maturity is being able to let your guard down.”

Leo went rummaging in his pocket. Pulled out a sealed envelope. Held it out for her to take. “Look: I’m not going to brainwash your husband into liking me, and it’s not like I haven’t got the technology to do it. But if you really want–and if your mission to find your mystery crook allows for a slight detour–then just come to the address in there, tomorrow, quarter to midnight, and we can all hang out like grown-ups.”

***

Frank and Connie had never agreed to sleep in shifts, but somehow it always tended to happen when they were out of town together. He meant to wait up for her the night they first settled in at Leo’s, but ended up passing out cuddling with the dog. He awoke sometime in the middle of the night with Connie tucked under his arm, her limbs entangled with his while, in her sleep, she gripped his side where it was softest and squeezed. He was too tired to think about Leo at that point, and too lulled into a comforted daze by her touch. Before too long, he was asleep again.

And then, all too soon, it was light outside. As he stirred awake, he didn’t realize, at first, that she’d left his side. She’d taken the time to tuck him lovingly in with the comforter, so he was still warm, despite the fact that he was, as he soon found out, butt-ass naked.

He startled at the sound of the door creaking open, but, turning over, he relaxed once more against the sheets when he realized it was just Connie, sashaying in with a tray in hand. “Did…did you take my clothes off last night?” he asked. She grinned.

“You did, actually. Phased right out of them,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I guess you must’ve been in some kind of mood, and not a bad one.” She slid under the covers, pressing herself against his bare body as she set the tray on his lap: sausages still simmering, eggs scrambled with cheese, and a whole array of tube-pastry turnovers leaking a rainbow of different jams. “All the better to feel you up while I fill you up,” she added with a smirk.

“You made all this here?”

“With a little help from Leo. I’m surprised he keeps the place stocked…then again, he does use it for having company.” She sighed and scowled as he gave her this wary look. “Oh, come on, don’t be like that. Here, I’ll eat some first, if you need proof it’s not poisoned.” She broke off part of a lopsided pastry and popped it into her mouth. “Oh, wow, Leo was right,” she said after she’d swallowed, “the lemon zest really does make all the diff–”

Her next words got lost to a choking fit, and Frank began to panic. “Connie?! Hang on–” Just as he was about to reach through her throat to dislodge Leo’s obvious sabotage, she dropped the act, her ‘distress’ giving way to wheezing laughter.

“I SO got you!”

“NOT funny, Sweets!” he said with a glare, but his expression soon softened. The adorably sly grin on her face always helped with that.

“Shut up and eat your damn breakfast.” Playfully, she shoved a pastry almost all the way past his lips. He caught her around the wrist. Her fingers splayed.

He moved her hand to his belly over the blanket, all thoughts forgotten except how much he anticipated hearing the breath leave her lungs in needy gasps as that first, big bite landed heavy in his gut under her palm.

As breakfast progressed, he couldn’t have said who came unraveled faster: Connie, watching him devour each bite from her hand with rapt fixation, or himself, melting under her ministrations. But before the sun was high in the sky, or at least there by his estimation, on the other side of the cloud cover, they lay wrapped in each other’s arms, gasping, flesh to flesh, sweat to sweat, her nightgown discarded on the end table atop the pile of his clothes that she’d folded at some point in the night. He gave her a squeeze that rewarded him with her blissful sigh as she sank into his softness.

“So, what’s on the agenda for today?” he asked her. “Right into the hunt for the Electro-cutioner, or do we have time to knock over a few banks first?”

“Actually, we can’t openly make mayhem over here until we establish an Association presence; otherwise we’re moving in on other crooks’ own, earned turf. Shoplifting’s fine, stick-ups aren’t. It’s just polite,” she explained. “But, if you were looking for something to do…” Wriggling out of his arms, she reached for a letter sitting by the clothes on the end-table and passed it to him, lying on her stomach, over her shoulder. “Leo did invite us to his party tonight.”

“Course he did,” Frank grumbled under his breath.

“We don’t have to go,” she said. “But we don’t know anyone here, and who knows how long we might be here before we meet our mark? Besides, it’s not like you have to like him.”

“Well, when you put it that way,” said Frank, “I guess I wouldn’t mind showing up, even if it’s just to drink his booze.”