Hello everyone! NEVERMORE comes out the day after tomorrow! The day after tomorrow! I am very impatiently waiting and a story came out as a result. This is an idea that's been in my head for awhile but the plot structure has been tricky. I finally gave up on perfecting it and just wrote the thing, so I hope it doesn't feel too rough. The action scene with the monster is very short because let's be real, that's not why any of us are really here ;) There is plenty of brotherly affection and discipline though, so stay tuned if that's what you're looking for. Hope this can help tide you over until Tuesday.

Helmets, Christ. It's not like we hadn't done jobs in caves, subway tunnels and god knows how many other potential craniotomy one-stop-shops, and we'd never bothered with helmets before. Goodfellow had whined and whined about it on the phone—he must have told me seven times not to forget the helmets. He'd even dictated exactly which store I should go to buy them, as if it makes a difference where you buy your training wheels. His shop was, of course, in a ritzy neighborhood several blocks further than I had any intention of walking to. I stopped at the bodega/hardware store/pharmacy at the corner of my third favorite hot dog stand and got the two most expensive helmets they sold—made it off the block for less than forty bucks, quick lunch included. I hailed a cab, stopped to get Nik from NYU, and was at Riverside Park in no time. Robin had also bitched and bitched about me needing to be more punctual, and here I was, a bright shining punctual star.

Niko, cynical bastard that he is, seemed more suspicious than impressed when I'd picked him up on time. "You followed Robin's instructions correctly, right?" he asked, eyes narrowed as he joined me in the cab.

"He said buy helmets; I bought helmets. He said bring Nik; I'm bringing Nik. I'm an A-plus student, Cyrano."

Niko raised an eyebrow at that. "Funny how I don't remember ever giving you an A-plus for any assignment, ever."

I shrugged and wiped the lingering chili grease from my fingers onto my jeans. "Don't know what to tell you, big brother."

Niko handed me a napkin that he pulled out of thin air and glared at me until I used it. He was feeling testy, I knew, because he hadn't had a chance to do any research on what we were facing, and he knew very little about it to begin with. Robin had called me an hour earlier to let us know that there was a…pyrreho? Purite? Pietreo? Something pyro-sounding, and it was running loose around the riverbank, having apparently emerged from the Hudson, presumably tired of bathing in a putrid swamp of fish (and non-fish) carcasses and rotting garbage. "What else did Robin say about the situation?"

Nik was also mad because he'd been teaching when Robin had called and so he didn't get to talk to him on the phone and press him for every possible tiny detail. That was left to me, and I apparently had not done a satisfactory job of it. Big surprise. "Exactly what I told you, Nik. He said ole Pyro is most easily taken down by being suffocated because he can regenerate whatever you cut off and in the meantime the missing body part will turn into some kind of stone and he'll whirl it at your head. He loves heads. Particularly loves crushing them. So, helmets."

"We've certainly faced creatures who have similar inclinations in the past but Robin hasn't recommended head gear before," Nik pointed out.

"That's what I said!"

"And what was Robin's response?"

I rolled my eyes. "He just rattled off the address for some overpriced place that sells diamond-encrusted helmets for the fashionable bike-commuter and hung up on me."

The cab pulled up to Riverside Drive and we got out. I let Nik pay. I'd bought the helmets after all. He didn't let the issue go though. "Cal, think hard. There is no other information pertinent to the situation?"

I handed him his helmet and fastened mine on, feeling like a preteen about to zoom around the block on a trusty Schwinn. "That's it, Nik. Swear."

He held my gaze as he put on his helmet. "Okay. I'm going to trust you."

"Your support is overwhelming, really," I said as we spotted Robin, outfitted with some kind of ridiculous black helmet that covered his skull, forehead, and most of his neck. It looked like it weighed about twenty pounds and it definitely did not go with his outfit. I prepared myself to deal with an hour of complaints about helmet hair after all this was over, but was distracted by a sharp pinch to my shoulder.

"Why is he wearing that?" Niko hissed as we approached.

"Ow! Jesus. How should I know?"

Robin answered before Nik could. "You idiotic, lazy, foolish imbecile. Are you completely incapable of listening?"

The puck was pissed. Maybe there had been some other reason he'd wanted me to go to that specific shop? Any further pondering on the issue would have to wait because a flaming tree dropped to the ground right behind Robin. He leapt out of the way and refocused his glare from me to the monster. The thing was about the size of a basketball player, and looked kind of like a charred revenant. In other words, gross but not especially intimidating. That is, until it made a tree explode just by looking at it.

"That," Robin yelled as we scrambled to avoid the flying, flaming debris, "is what he would most like to do to your brains. Although Caliban, perhaps that's something you don't need to worry about as you obviously do not posses so much as a neuron inside your skull!"

Right, maybe he'd said "exploding skulls" not "crushing skulls." That subtlety had not seemed very important until now…

"I presume these plastic helmets will do nothing to prevent that?" Niko asked in a scarily calm voice as he dodged a branch.

"Obviously all of the family beauty and brains went solely to you, Niko," Robin said in way of affirmation.

Niko pulled his helmet off his head and ran behind the monster, which was now making trashcans explode. Flaming debris flew around Niko, but he dodged it like the ninja he is and got a slice out of the thing's leg. It paused for about two seconds before leaping away and leaving burning trees in its wake, trapping Niko behind the flames. He could run around them and back into the action, but it would take at least a few minutes to scale around the fiery mess. At least his brain wasn't a part of the burning mulch.

I was running up to try to get a jump on Pyro when it suddenly noticed me and fixed me with an intense glare. I felt like I was getting a fever and started sweating. My eardrums just began to pound when Robin tackled me down, and a bush behind us exploded instead of my head. "You. Imbecile. If we survive this…" his threat trailed off as Pyro turned his back to us and started toward Niko again. Robin gave me another shove and then he as up and running, pulling his belt out of the loops as he went. I barely had time to wonder what he was thinking when he jumped onto Pyro's back and headbutted the back of the monster's head with as much as force as a guy could hope for when wearing a fucking iron helmet. The jolt seemed to disorient the monster long enough for Goodfellow to wrap the belt around its neck and pull tight. Boulders exploded as Pyro tried to get free by destroying everything in range. I saw Niko dive to avoid more burning shrapnel and I did the same and then suddenly it was over.

Panting, I stood up and watched as the remnants of Pyro's body crumbled into ash. The flaming trees and trashcans did too, which was super weird but I was glad as hell that we wouldn't have to worry about firefighters any time soon. Robin had deftly landed back on the ground and was pulling his iron helmet off and lobbing it at me, dropping his belt-garrote in the process. I probably deserved that. It's pretty easy to dodge a twenty-pound hunk of metal, but I sidestepped my way right into a solid wall of my brother, who was not so easy to dodge. Unforgiving fingers locked around my upper arm as Niko frog-marched me a few yards away from Robin and the ash.

"Look, Nik, all's well that ends well, right?" I began in my most pacifying voice, which evidently was not at all effective as my brother's only response was to shove me face-first toward the stone levee that kept the Hudson from overflowing into Manhattan during storms. I tried to stand back up but Niko had my arm pinned against my back and was holding it there with unrelenting force, keeping me bent over, my upper body pinned flat against the stone. "Niko," I huffed, but was cut off by an explosion of pain on my ass. I jerked my head backward and saw that Niko had Robin's belt in his hand and had apparently just spanked me with it. The bastard must have picked it up without me noticing. "Nik!" I started, but again, was cut off by my big brother whacking my ass with the belt.

"You want to act like a stupid" –SMACK—"stupid"—SMACK—"stupid"—SMACK!—"child"—SMACK—"then I have no problem"—SMACK—"treating you like one." Niko's voice was low and measured, and my mind raced to think of anything to say to appease him, but as usual, I came up with nothing. Then, just as quickly as he'd pushed me down, he yanked me back up by the arm he'd never relinquished his hold on, and spun me around to face him, pushing Robin's belt into my chest. "We will finish this conversation at home, little brother. Go return this and apologize to Robin. Now." He finally let go of my arm, and if my hand shook when I brought it up to close around the belt, he didn't say anything. Heat flooded my face and there was nothing I could do to hide the acute embarrassment of having just been spanked somewhat publicly by my big brother.

Nik walked away from me as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened, leaving me alone to find Robin—predictably—leaning against one of the few trees that escaped Pryo's wrath, arms folded, one eyebrow raised. He had definitely seen everything that had just happened, and I couldn't tell if he looked sympathetic or just amused. I slowly—and, okay, stiffly—walked over to him and held out the belt, trying to get this humiliating exchange over with as quickly as possible. The puck, of course, did not immediately put it back on, but instead stretched it out with both hands to inspect it. "This is fine Italian leather, Caliban. Tell your brother that a switch cut from a tree branch can be just as effective a disciplinary tool without the potential for collateral damage that one risks by using a belt."

"I don't think my ass did any more damage to your precious belt than Pyro's throat did," I grumbled in an attempt at a retort as my face flushed even more than I'd previously thought was possible.

"Hmm, perhaps, perhaps," he intoned, finally sliding the leather back through his belt loops and looking up at me again, no doubt noticing the redness that lingered in my face. "Oh, don't be so embarrassed, cub. I've spanked you myself more times than I can count."

I groaned. "Okay, that does not make me feel better. And past lives don't count for making things less humiliating now."

Both eyebrows went up then. "Are you here to argue with me or to apologize?" he asked, making me feel about two inches tall as I remembered that he'd just gone into a violent situation with basically zero backup because of me.

"Fuck, to apologize. Sorry. I'm sorry, Robin. I was an idiot and I wasn't listening to you and I screwed everything up. I'm sorry."

Robin smirked, though not unkindly. "Thank you, Cal. You can make it up to me next week. The weapons that I don't regularly use are growing dusty and they need cleaning. I was going to hire someone but now you can do it for me."

The puck had been around for god knew how many thousands of years. I didn't want to think about how many weapons he must have acquired in that time. "Okay. But I'm not wearing a maid outfit."

"We'll see about that. There is one thing I want to know though, Cal: why didn't you just go to the shop I told you about?"

I rubbed the back of my neck, embarrassed, again. "The bike shop was just closer. I thought you were showing off that you have connections everywhere. I didn't think it mattered." I exhaled. "I'm sorry. You're my friend and I should have listened to you."

"Alright," Robin said, nodding slowly. "But listen to me now. When I'm giving you information about a job, it's important. I thought you knew that, but evidently it bears repeating. So hear me when I say that if you ever do something this lazy or idiotic while preparing to face something dangerous again, you can count on the fact that you will have to answer to me once Niko is done with you." He leaned in closer. "And I'm not as nice as your brother. I only punish bare asses."

Fuck. I believed him, too. I gulped and said, "I hear you. It won't happen again."

"Good. Now, let us leave this place. I have a peri and two undead cats to attend to."

Robin ordered a limo when we reached Nik back at the main road, but my brother refused the puck's offer to give us a ride. Apparently Niko wanted to have a long, awkward ride on the subway back to St. Mark's. He sat without speaking; I stood, trying not to squirm. Let me tell you, standing freshly punished in a crowded train car on the way home to probably be spanked some more is not very fun. Maybe this was Niko's practical equivalent of making me stand in a corner and think about what I'd done. I got that I'd been stupid and a kind of shitty friend to Robin for not listening to him, but the fight had been so quick and Robin obviously could and did handle it without much assistance…I was confused about why Niko was this thoroughly pissed off. On the surface, he was acting normal, sure, but he wasn't lecturing me about the monster we'd just killed, and that was weird. Plus, he'd literally just spanked me, which, while not totally out of character, was definitely not a normal adult Niko response to adult Cal fuckups. None of these observations were things I could ask about right now though, unless I wanted to yell over the subway noise to talk about my spanking in front of a bunch of strangers. That was an experience I could live without.

Finally—or maybe all too soon—the train pulled into our stop, and we climbed back above ground and walked in continued silence the few blocks to our apartment. It was only after Niko had locked the door behind us that he turned to me and caught my gaze.

"Go change. We're going to spar," he said.

Well that was both better and worse than what I'd been imagining, but I was still confused. "I'm not trying to sound like an asshole, Nik, but why are you so upset?"

Niko raised two threatening eyebrows. "Go change," he repeated in a tightly controlled tone.

I sighed, defeated easily. "Okay, okay." I did as I was told. Apparently I had been demoted to small child status. I went to my room and carefully slid off my pants. My ass was somehow simultaneously stinging and throbbing and was much more tender than I would've expected since I'd been wearing jeans. Niko had never used a belt before though, so I guess I just hadn't known the potential pain I'd been missing in all of his previous spankings. I pulled off my boxers too with a hiss and changed into the baggiest pair of sweatpants I owned, hoping to cut down on as much unwanted fabric rubbing as possible. I pulled on a t-shirt that was already dirty and went out to face my brother.

"Nik, for what it's worth, I'm already going to be feeling this for the rest of the week," I said, feeling pretty ridiculous talking about it but it's not like there's a protocol for how to handle getting spanked in your twenties. "I mean, I'm not sure what you're going for with this punishment but on a scale from one to never being able to sit down again, I think I'm at an eight. Just FYI."

"Yes, you're obviously feeling very repentant," he said dryly, motioning me over to the mats he'd laid out.

I sighed and moved in for the beginning attack, which Niko deftly avoided, as usual. He was staying on the defensive, which I hadn't been expecting, but it was a good way to make me do all the work while he mostly just moved out of the way of my attacks. After a few minutes' warm up, he began to speak. "You don't understand why I'm upset. Why don't you give me a run-down of what happened today."

Yeah, there was no question mark at the end of that request. I continued circling him and attempted to multi-task: "Robin called me, he told me to buy a certain kind of helmet at a certain store, and I really screwed up by ignoring him," I dodged Niko's jab and countered with a kick that almost landed, but of course didn't, "but then Robin came through and defeated the thing pretty damn easily, and then you beat my ass in the park and made me ride the subway home and here we are." I went in for a tackle, but he pivoted and flipped me over his back. I landed hard on the ground. "And you're still mad."

He pulled me back up only to pull me into a headlock. I jammed an elbow into his stomach and got away as he moved to block the kick he knew I was aiming at his shins. It was the perfect moment to try out a new move he'd been teaching me over the past week, one that involved a synchronized chest blow and kick to the back of the kneecap and then to the heel, and for the first time I landed it, sending Niko crashing down the ground on his back. I should have known he let me have that one, and I shouldn't have been surprised when he utilized the momentum to topple me forward as he went backward, bringing me flopping down face-first on top of him. Before I could scramble off, he locked my legs under one of his and pinning me over his lap as he sat up.

"Ow!" I yelped as he landed the first hard swat to my already abused butt.

"Cal, you disappointed me today," Niko began, diverting my attention momentarily from the sting in my rear end to a sudden tightness in my chest at his words—words I had rarely heard him say. He continued spanking me, bringing his hand down on my ass with heavy, even swats. The sting was less than the belt had been, but the intimacy of my body over my brother's lap as he swatted me with his hand made everything feel more immediate and more poignant. There was no disassociation and no confusion as to what was happening. "Today was an opportunity for you to take responsibility," he continued, "and I know that preparing for a job is a responsibility you can handle." He paused in his lecture, and shifted his swats to my thighs. SMACK, SMACK, SMACK, his hand fell, and I let out something between a grunt and an expletive after each one. "You let me down today, and you let Robin down. You put both of us and yourself in danger for absolutely no reason."

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

"So many things have happened to us that have been so evil and so vast that scraping by alive was all we could hope to do. But this, today? Was not that." SMACK, SMACK, SMACK. "I've thought so many times that I was going to lose you, and there was little I could do to decrease that risk." Three swats fell hard in the same spot and I cried out, my yell strangled thick with emotion. "I shouldn't have had to go back to that mental place today. I shouldn't have had to face your death today, and I wouldn't have had to if you had just listened to Goodfellow, or done five minutes of reading. Do you understand how that must feel to me?" Shame overtook me and my eyes burned with hot tears. I nodded my head wordlessly and tried not to drown in the feelings of deep guilt. This was Nik, telling me that I'd hurt him. Nik. I understood then that my mistake today had seemed to him like I was spitting on everything he'd ever done to keep me safe and to teach me how to keep myself safe. And it felt like shit.

"Okay." I heard him take a deep breath and exhale slowly. The swats stopped. I wanted to apologize—needed to apologize—but I was afraid anything that came out of my mouth would just sound like a sob right now. "Okay. I want you to sit with this feeling, Cal, for awhile. This wasn't something that happened because of your Auphe genes. This was a mistake, and you're better than it."

He unpinned my legs, and I forced myself to clamber into a sitting position next to him, protesting ass be damned. "Cyrano," I said, sounding nearly as desperate as I felt, "I'm so sorry. I…I'm so damned sorry." I wanted to say a million things but "I'm sorry" was all that would come out and godamnit I was crying and apologizing and then Niko took pity on me and pulled me to him, wrapping his arms tightly around me. I shuddered as I tried to pull it together, but Niko had a way of pulling my emotions out of me and fuck if they're weren't all laid out raw right now.

"I know," he said softly, rubbing my back in the way parents know how to do. "I love you, little brother. It's alright." I calmed down after a few minutes, and Niko rested his head on top of mine briefly before letting me go.

I scrubbed a hand over my face and coughed. "Niko, this won't happen again," I promised. "I didn't think anything bad would happen, but I know it could have. I'll pay attention and double check the details in the future. I really didn't mean to make you worry or to put anyone in danger, but I know that I did."

Niko met my eyes again, and his were warm and bright this time. "It was a mistake, little brother. I know you won't repeat it. It sounds like a lesson has been learned, so let's leave it at that."

Forgiveness, just like that. I was one goddamn lucky son of a bitch.