"Hawkins."

Virgil started abruptly at the gruff voice and spun around, a scowl immediately taking his features at the sight of one of his most hated enemies standing behind him. "Hotstreak," he found himself growling, "what are you-"

"Relax, Hawkins," the redhead frowned at him, crossing his arms over his chest in a gesture of passiveness (at the moment, at least). "I'm not here to beat you up or nothing."

"Sure," the electrically-charged teenager scoffed, "and I'm a pan-dimensional hell hound from the rings of Saturn!"

Francis took this sarcastic statement in stride and assured, "I'd probably believe that; in fact, I'm willing to bet it runs in the family considering your sister's one, too."

Virgil almost laughed.

Almost.

"Look, Hostreak," he said, "what do you want from me? I don't believe for a second that anger-management counseling actually worked."

"It didn't," the man admitted with a smirk, "but believe it or not, it did straighten me out a little bit; made me think about some stuff I never wanted to and wouldn't have otherwise. All that psychobabble B.S."

"And what's that got to do with me, exactly?" Virgil skeptically wondered. "Where do I fit in with whatever's up with you?"

"You're gonna help me," Francis decided for him, "in a way only you can."

For a brief moment, the teen felt a thrill of fear that the pyrokinetic psycho had somehow managed to discover his secret identity through being 'straightened out a little bit' and was intending on blackmailing him into helping him rob a bank.

Nevertheless, he kept his cool and, sounding sincerely confused, asked, "What are you talking about, Francis?"

"Don't call me that," the redhead demanded before informing, "and I'm talking about your nerd-buddy."

"Richie?" Virgil gaped, relieved that his identity had not been discovered but now a whole different kind of anxious. "What do you want with him?"

"The counseling didn't help my anger-issues any," Francis told him casually by way of vague explanation, "but I did manage to figure out I'm not all that big a fan of pussy."

Virgil Hawkins was a smart kid: the deeper meaning of such a statement was in no way lost on him. "Holy crap," he murmured, "you're...you're gay?"

Hotstreak gave him a condescending grin that made the covert hero feel somehow dumb for not having guessed it before, despite the fact that there was little to no evidence for such a conclusion. "You got it," the man said blankly, as if it were really no big deal, "and that's what Foley's got to do with what I need you for."

Brown eyes went wide. "You want me to trick Rich into meeting you so you can rape him!" he wildly accused.

Francis scoffed in disgust. "Way off, Hawkins," he promised, "I don't do that shit; guy's gotta have some standards, y'know? What I need you for," he explained, "is to give him this."

Virgil stared openly at the slip of paper that was shoved into his hands. "Is this..." he began incredulously, his brain feeling particularly broken at the moment, "Is this your phone number?" The redhead nodded. "What's Richie supposed to do with this?"

"Duh, Hawkins," the metahuman snorted, "he's supposed to call me with it; if he wants. I'm pretty sure that's the whole reason phones were invented."

"And why would he want to?" the electrically-charged teenager asked, having a feeling that this was about where he came into this whole thing.

"You're gonna tell him some things for me," Francis announced. "You're gonna tell him that I'm a fag. You're gonna tell him that I've always sort of thought he was cute but since I was so deep in the fucking closet I was finding Christmas presents and majorly homophobic, I decided to beat up on him to keep from thinking about it. You're gonna tell him that I'm a fuckin' psycho and a convicted felon who likes to burn shit and that I know that's not exactly boyfriend material."

The man sighed briefly, his dark green eyes glancing to the row of lockers to the other side of them before returning to the teenager he was intimidating. "Tell him I wanna try anyways; start over, maybe even actually hook up. Tell him...he doesn't have to do nothing he don't wanna, but if he's willing to give it a shot, he can call me."

"And why aren't you telling him this?" Virgil warily demanded.

"Like he'll trust me at face-value after all the shit I've done to him," the redhead scoffed. "I know if I were him, I wouldn't believe me! But he'll know I'm on the up-and-up with this and not punking him or anything if you tell him you trust me: you're BFFs."

"But I don't trust you," the black teen protested with a scowl. "Why would I lie to my 'BFF' for you?"

"Oh," Hotstreak shrugged, "I don't know, Hawkins...maybe 'cause if you don't, I'm gonna tell everybody I can find about your superhero moonlighting?"

Chocolate eyes flew wide open at the statement, calling back the earlier fear of being discovered and Virgil visibly blanched. His head immediately darted from side to side to see if anyone in the hallway had heard that.

No one had. It was a lunch period and all of the hallways, including this one, were relatively empty. "How'd you-"

"Doesn't matter how," the pyro reminded, "but really, I'm not completely dumb. What matters more than how I figured your obvious self out is that I do know. So, what's it gonna be, Hawkins? You gonna make one little white lie and vouch for me to Foley, or would you rather out yourself to everybody in the whole city in a matter of hours?"

The youth cursed silently to himself: he hated the thought of lying to Richie, especially about something that so intimately involved their longtime bully and currently his arch-nemesis, but...

…His hands were pretty much tied.

--

Hotstreak was idly lounging on the dilapidated bed of a cheaply rented apartment in one of the seediest districts of the city (about a week after being permanently expelled from Dakota Union High for his lapse of 'mental curedness' and escaping the police that had tailed him after he'd duked it out with Static) when his phone abruptly rang in his pocket.

Nobody else ever called him. Nobody else even knew his number.

He answered it immediately. "Yeah?”

Silence on the other end for awhile, then, "...Virgil told me."

"Did he, now?" the man found himself smirking at the blond's pleasant voice, obviously laced with apprehension and nervousness as it drifted through the line. "And?"

"I...I thought about it," the teen told him, "what you said; I thought about it for a long time. I feel like to total loon for even considering this, but...I'm thinking...I might wanna give...us a shot." The redhead was quiet at that, prompting Richie to wonder, "Hotstreak?"

"No, Rich," the metahuman smirked to himself, "call me Francis..."