Good story. Great character descriptions and setting. Ideal place for a Hero Villian tryst...you did well with this one. I enjoyed the snapshot of a moment, it did leave one wondering more about both those characters.
I liked how you worked in the background of both, without being extremely elaborate.
Kudos, scribe! Well done.
Just the kind of mushy romantic morning-after story I like.
"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."
Thank you both! 
Abhorrent's player has a story too, that's a basic summary of how the two first met. 
The title comes from the song "Can't Stay Away" by Velvet Chain, which rather fits.
Miss Nox is my CoH main. The toon 'Abhorrent' is the CoV main of a friend of mine.
---
Bloody Bay had a strange smell. It was something of a mixture of fire-- not smoke, but fire itself-- and slightly stale water, of incense and static and unwashed bodies, and crumbling brick. Really, all one had to do was add the smell of freshly tilled earth and it could perhaps be somewhere in Croatoa...except, of course, for the faint red glow on the horizon. That, she knew from personal experience, was the Bay's Arachnos base. All nice and ominous, that.
Of course, all of it was dimmed when viewed through a somewhat dusty window. It said something that Bloody Bay was better when viewed through a years-old layer of dirt on a pane of glass that'd likely never be cleaned; it made the outside world a little less urgent and real. Besides, the room had curtains, such as they were, and surprisingly there were no bugs. Couldn't ask for more than that, right?
She leaned against the windowframe, elbow resting on the worn wood. Her forehead brushed the back of her hand before strands of red hair-- red this week, anyhow-- obscured her sight. One hand reached behind her to absently scratch her bare backside a moment. She could hear a faint snoring behind her, barely heard over the sounds outside; sounds that told her she should be out there, not inside here. Out being Miss Nox, putting the common criminals and wandering Arachnos agents, among other villainous sorts, away after a nice, satisfying round of beating the everliving crap out of them...not looking out a dirty window while someone who was himself a villainous sort slept nearby.
She turned, looking over her shoulder at the massive back that dented the already strained double bed. Scars crisscrossing oddly fair skin gave testament to occasional battles that edged past his normal invulnerability; she was pretty sure one of them was her doing, even. The blanket had slipped down to where it rested right at his hips...those hips that even with his abnormally great height were still a good size for her legs to--
Gah. Stop thinking about that. This is all sorts of freakin' WRONG...but damn it, there's just something about him...
Of course, a couple of empty wine bottles and countless bottles of stronger stuff spoke of other indulgences of the previous night. At least...well, at least his being with her kept him from doing worse things, right? There, she'd just keep telling herself that, make her feel a little better about this whole deal. So he was a villain and she was a hero. He was eight feet tall and she stood five foot three in her socks. She was classified as a Scrapper and he was a Brute.
And damnit, maybe it was corny to think it, but it was sort of nice to have just the occasional night where she wasn't Miss Nox and he wasn't Abhorrent. They were just Jessica and Frank. It sounded so weirdly suburban. Probably best they chose Bloody Bay...no one could imagine themselves in suburbia while here. She stepped back from the window, drawing the curtains closed and moving back to the bed.
"Hey," she said, shaking his shoulder slightly. "Wake up."
He muttered something mostly incoherent before resuming his snoring.
"Damnit, wake up." She punched his shoulder. Sometimes when dealing with a Brute you had to speak in a language they understood. (The same could, of course, be said for Tankers.) He responded in language that'd make that statue of Atlas drop the world, before turning over to eye her a bit angrily. Her response was just a smirk, as she reached up to touch his face, right under one of his eyes. There was still a faint bruise there, that made her grin at him.
"Really socked you good, didn't I?" she asked, still grinning down at him.
"Are you always this perky when you wake up?" came the question, asked most irritably. His voice was more gravelly than normal.
She pretended she didn't have a pensive moment just minutes ago, the grin turning to a bright-- and yes, perky-- smile. "Not always," she replied. "Just when there's still wine left, and a hot guy in my bed who I got to beat up not long ago--"
"I'm not the one who got knocked flat on my back three times."
"--And it was a total draw, I agree. Besides, this is much more fun, don't you think?" She beamed, just because she knew it made him twitchy when she did so, and wormed her way under his arm to drape an arm and a leg over his torso. "And I promise I won't steal your underwear this time...or try to run it up a flagpole at the Longbow base..."
He just gave her an odd look. "It ever occur to you that you'd get your $#@ kicked by other heroes for all this? I could get congratulated for this, probably get asked when I was gonna kill you in your sleep or turn you toward us, but you'd get your $#@ handed to you." Ironic that the violence-addicted brute would be the voice of reason, wasn't it?
"I know. It's part of the thrill." Besides, as she'd noted before...when he was here with her it meant he wasn't out being all villainous and stuff. He wasn't hurting people, but he also wasn't getting hunted by other heroes. She didn't want to admit to that worry; after all, though he was pretty damned formidable, there were still others, particularly among the heroes, who had greater experience.
So, yeah. She worried. But she wasn't about to tell him...he'd get twitchy. Again. And for the wrong reasons.
He mumbled something about her being kinky or whatever-- she wasn't sure, she wasn't really listening anymore. Instead nestled up against his back, his hand having moved to rest on her thigh as her leg curled over one of his hips. Funny, all of this. Everything she'd done so far in her life coming up to this exact moment. Was that what they meant by karma? Everything that happens in life is a result of what was done up to that moment?
She'd never asked to be a hero, and she knew he hadn't really asked to be a criminal. She'd just been Jessica Knox, a lower middle-class girl from Kings Row who, with the help of scholarship funds, went on to become a student of Theoretical Physics at PCU-- graduating with her Bachelor of Science and with highest honors, then going on to work for her Master's degree. Perhaps she'd even work toward a PhD someday. She was someone who earned her powers through a lab accident with an eccentric professor searching for a new source of energy, then had felt obligated to do something with those weird "negative energy" powers, and...hey, they meshed well with the kickboxing she'd been doing for years...
All things considered, she didn't really know a whole lot about his background, but more than most ordinary heroes tended to learn about a criminal sort. She knew some basics-- he'd once been a prison guard at the Zig. He hadn't been really criminal in mind, just sort of-- well, he'd been kind of a hater, she supposed. From what he said. Mainly when it came to the criminals, and he didn't seem to have any problem getting what he could out of them with the intent of saving up some money someday.
Then stuff happened, he almost died but got changed by some sort of toxic stuff, and now he was the Abhorrent she knew and...something. Not loved, maybe liked, lusted? That kind of worked. Psychotic Brute and fantastic kisser. Sigh.
Her cheek rubbed against the slightly rough skin of his back, a movement he'd likely only barely feel. He seemed to have the same sort of invulnerability that a Tanker she'd taken home one time had. She turned her head, planting kisses and bites along his shoulderblade, which he did feel...and she was rewarded with a slight squeeze of her thigh, then his hand travelling further up her leg and around to her rear. With, of course, another squeeze.
"Merry Christmas," she whispered in his ear.
His response was to turn over in the bed, then kiss her.