2007-08-24: Don't Look At Me Like That

Starring:

Church_icon.gif Felix_icon.gif

Summary: Lawrence Church makes a fool of himself. This is nothing new.

Date It Happened: August 24th, 2007

Don't Look At Me Like That


Hospital Wing, Primatech Paper, Hartsdale, NY

Felix is sitting on the edge of the bed in his hospital room, hands in his lap, still looking like twenty miles of bad road. But his expression is calm, even resolute, as he waits for Church to appear. Apparently he's done with all this.

Lawrence's appearances seem to herald less and less; today is similar in that he eventually does pop up in the doorway to this particular part of the wing, looking a bit on-edge and like he's been stockpiling coffee. "Konnichiwa, bitches!" With a smile on his face, of course. Some nameless fellow on the end of the room groans from behind a bandage around his face. "Afternoon, Felix!" No newspaper this time, nor folders; in fact, Church is looking rather disheveled compared to usual, with his shirt untucked and his hair uncombed.

Felix doesn't smile in return. Without preamble, he says, calmly, "Salonga tells me you have a blood test or something like for markers of supposed Evolution. Is this true? And have I been tested?" He glances patiently up at Church.

Church suddenly recalls only half mentioning that test. Maybe he should have gone into it more. Oh well. "Salonga did, huh?" He busies himself with straightening his collar and using a hand to comb his hair instead. "It's true. Your blood has been going through the system while you have been here-" The older man seems to settle down a little now, but his left heel is tapping every once in awhile. "-hence our knowledge of your drug levels, your DNA regarding little Sasha, and our knowing that you are not a normal man. So, yes. You have."

"Very well," Felix says, eyeing him sidelong. "My abilities have been manifest for about thirty years," he says, utterly offhand, eyes lazily half-lidded as if he hadn't been lying like a damn rug for the past five days. "I don't know how to name them, precisely. It's not telekinesis. I can't move things by will alone. It's not apportation, either. The best way I can describe it is that I can affect objects in motion."

Church looks like a little boy on Christmas morning, eyebrows lifted and a grin wide enough to eclipse the sun. He is suddenly over by the bed, teetering on a heel before stopping to sit down on the end of it, leaving at least a man's space between himself and Felix. "I see." He'd like to know about the change of heart, too, but maybe later. "So a distortion of momentum? Or do you think it may be more along the lines of affecting gravitation?" All business. Sort of. Now we're having fun, see?

Felix's face is set, eyes cold. He's just resigned, tired, slouching a little. "Momentum," he says, after a moment's thought. "Take me to a firing range, and I'll demonstrate."

"So it is some manner of rhythm distortion. Oooh." At least Lawrence is having a good time. "Have you only worked with bullets and men? Or just solids? I think a firing range has potential for demonstration, but so does throwing beanbags or something." The man's left hand lifts thoughtfully to his face, other arm crossing his chest to tuck under the other elbow. Wasting bullets isn't the best idea.

"I can affect any solid object. I have stopped bullets, though that ability is not without fail," he says, tone sardonic, as he touches the puckered scars on his chest. "Gases and flame are too ephemeral for me. Yes. Throw something at me," he says, simply, looking for something convenient.

Lawrence's foot taps on the floor below a few times before he speaks. "You sure? Alright. Nothing hard. Gimme your pillow there-" Without even waiting, the agent leans just behind Felix to grab at the man's flat hospital pillow.

Felix obediently hands over the pillow. Damn thing's too hard as it is. He props himself lazily against the wall left exposed by moving the pillow, and eyes Church expectantly.

Church pops off of the bed with the pillow in his hand, strutting a few steps away from Felix and turning around. Whoof! The Pillow flies! DEATH APPROACHES.

Not quite. It simply slows, then drops out of the air as if it'd hit an invisible wall, as Felix eyes it. Done.

Church cackles with glee, which is a bit sudden and makes the sleepy man at the end of the wing jump in surprise and suspicion under his covers. "Oho! Yo, Fel, Can I do it again?"

Felix makes a little gesture with one hand. Go on.

Church practically skips over to pick up the pillow again, and then he's standing back once more. In a few seconds of tongue-in-teeth concentration, the pillow is thrown a bit harder.

And again, it utterly fails to reach its target. It's as if Felix merely staring disdainfully is enough to discourage it.

"Right, right. I think I'm getting this…" Lawrence moves over to grab the pillow again, but instead of stepping back where he was this time, he just lifts it to bop Felix in the shoulder with it.

It's like Church is three times his age. The blow doesn't really entirely land. "Satisfied?"

Church feels even weaker all of a sudden, but it is the process of testing! Yeah. He plucks up the pillow in both hands and lands it back where it belongs. "Partly. Have you tried ephemeral yet, or is that untested? What about liquids?"

"I have," Felix says, gravely. "I can't grip them. No gasses, no flame, no liquid. I can affect objects floating in liquid, though."

Church pauses in his thoughts, mostly to collect them again. "Mmmhmmm." This drawn out hum precedes more little questions, and a look over the room. "What about really small things? And bigger things? Is a whole man your limit, or can you take more?"

"You need to start rephrasing things around me, because that sounded more like a homosexual pass than it did questions about my abilities," Felix points out, voice gone very dry. "I may be queer, but you really aren't my type. Smallest I've ever dealt with was a ball bearing. Largest I've ever diverted was an SUV, and that was almost beyond my reach."

I. Uh. Uh. What. Lawrence stares back at Felix, eyes a bit wide. "…..wha-" There is a pause, and Felix can probably hear the crickets in the agent's head. Church chokes on a frustrated hiss of air for a moment, shaking his head and lifting both hands in a naturally defensive pose, one palm brushing over his face. "I'm sorry. That…I…very, very obviously came out /totally/ wrong. Small cars as a limit, maybe?"

"A limit of what I can deal with with certainty, yes," Felix says, arching a brow. "I really do fluster you, don't I? I suppose I should be flattered." He's obviously intensely amused, behind the cool facade.

Church is not here right now. He has his face in his hands. He is invisible. BRB, AFK, BIAB. In a few moments of breathing hand-air, he looks up again, clearing his throat in the process. "I…had some coffee before I came in here. Someone left the sugar out, and-" He clears his throat again. "What about weight and distribution? Lightest you've done, heaviest, thinnest, wides—Okay. I mean. Well. I'm not going to say it. You know what I mean, damnit." He swears at the air, not at Felix

And now Felix is just grinning at him, in a very vulpine manner. "You are a pervert, aren't you?" he says, cheerfully. "I'll be open about my powers, but we're not discussing my past. Gentlemen don't kiss and tell. Lightest - feathers, mostly. Gravel. Any solid object, Church."

Church is trying to be serious. Really. But now he just starts pitifully laughing and almost groaning at the same time. He makes a point of not looking Felix in the eyes, but that smiling is making his face beet red. The agent stands up and steps a bit away from the edge of the bed. "I am most certainly not a pervert, mister Ivanov. I am simply bad with metabolizing energy when I've built it up. It makes my attention span shorter, my common sense disappears, and my inner monologue gets all sorts of thrown off." Church finally is able to look Felix seriously in the face now, throat clearing one final time. A-hem. "Don't smile at me like that, either…stop that. -So-. if a billboard was falling down, could you stop it, or just stop where it was centered over you?"

Felix's grin remains feral, amused, even as he answers the question in all apparent seriousness. "A billboard - if it remained whole, and didn't tear, would probably crush me, though I might be able to divert it sufficiently."

"Like flipping it over, maybe? Ah." See. Church is alright now. Yep. "Can you affect your own momentum?"

The Agent, battered as he is, looks like a cat beneath a suspiciously empty canary cage. "I can," he says, letting his eyes drift shut again. "I can take a fall from stories up without suffering any harm."

Church looks interested in that, but not out of a violent motive. It's just cool. He seems fine again, back to his usual spry self, examining Felix's expression with a squint, but then a jaunty smirk. Fine. Look at me like that if you please, but you'll never remember. "Can you speed momentum, or just slow it?"

Allow him his one little moment of feeling like he has some sort of advantage, considering. And no, he won't remember. "I can accelerate things, yes. Like you, the other evening." This is delivered in a perfectly arch monotone.

Church 's mouth turns into a flat frown. "…Okay, you cut that out. Seriously." The agent lifts his hand to his neck, rubbing the back of it. Hmhm. "So could you potentially speed yourself up, running-wise? Some of this is sounding like secondary things I can do, you know. Explosiveness is just primary…"

Felix shakes his head. "No. I can't speedster. Not like the Flash. My reflexes aren't fast enough. I can leap, that's true. But not run flat out. I'd trip and break my neck. Believe me, I tried."

Church snorts with a small laugh at that mental picture. "So…you can jump like some kind of cricket-man?"

"Forgive the comparison, but….did you ever see that movie called 'The Matrix'?" Felix wonders, that sly look creeping into his eyes again. One corner of his mouth has begun to quirk.

Church doesn't like it when his detainees or peers get that same look. While he likes being in control, however, he can stand some of that to a certain point. Bluntly, he crosses his arms and considers this. "No, but I know enough about pop culture to know the basis behind it. So you're sort of a living Neo?" Lawrence smiles back, as to not seem too disconcerted.

Felix retrieves the pillow, and props himself back against the wall behind the bed again. "Watch the initial chase sequence. It's more like that. No, nowhere near so superpowered."

Church nods as he paces a few steps and back. "I'll make sure to do that." He looks up at the lights, ticking off things on the mental list floating around up in his brain. "Outta curiosity. How'd you find out about it?"

He lets out a slow, tired breath. "I don't remember. I just always could. I remember playing ball with my father in the courtyard behind our apartment. I was six. I broke a neighbor's window on the fifth floor. I remember the look on his face, and the way he ushered me inside."

"So your family knew about it, then? Or just your father?" Lawrence balances his hands along the edges of his hips, brows creasing together momentarily. "What happened after that?"

Felix has lost that sly expression - it leaves his face empty, and tired, as he gazes into the middle distance, hands limp, knees drawn up. "My parents knew. My mother taught me to conceal it. She knew I'd be taken if it were obvious. She defected to prevent that happening." And then he laughs, softly. It's bitter, humorless, and ends when his broken ribs make him wince. "So much for that. Dragged me all this way, and yet here I am."

A soft blink is all that Lawrence has to respond with at first, voice speaking far more gently than it had been now. "…despite how your time with us has gone…I like to believe we're not the kind of people that she was worried about. Usually we're a godsend. Others have had a touch of trouble along the way with us, so to them we might look a bit skeevy-" The man lets out a breath he wasn't aware he was holding. "-but, we're really not, as a whole."

"You keep saying that. You, Salonga," He says, raising his gaze to Church's. There's none of the previous fury there. Just that resignation. He taps the stitches on his brow gently with a fingertip. "Unless you get a healer to erase the traces of what was done here, you won't be able to afford to let me go. You can justify it to yourself all you like, but as a whole, this isn't any better than some lab of Mengele's. You tell yourself what you need to to get to sleep at night, we both know that this isn't going to end well for me. I'm just tired of waiting."

Church smiles again, the gesture aiming more to please than to assert itself. "We'll see if we can get one in here for you, if that's what you'd like. I would have before, but only now you've given us some of that nice quid pro quo we like so much. If you still feel like we owe you, maybe we can work something out about your job. An absence from what you do calls for some good excuses, doesn't it?"

"Sure," Felix says, quietly. His tone is that of one humoring an overeager child. He still, quite obviously, does not believe Church. Or at least, whomever's pulling Church's strings.

Church looks to be content with that answer, in any case. There may be a few more questions scuttling around, but he has yet to get a grasp on any of them. "…Want me to bring you something better than hopsital wing food?" Hey, it's a superficial thing, but he thinks it considerate.

Now he just looks beat, again, head drooping. "No, thank you," he says, patiently. "If you don't have any more questions, or need more demonstrations, I'd like to sleep."

Church shrugs a bit, making a note to slip in something different for the nurse to give him, regardless. You say No, I hear Yes. "Sweet dreams, Ivanov." A spirited wave signals Lawrence's exit of the hospital room.

Felix merely turns his back on both nurse and Church, literally - he settles on to his side, facing away from the window, to lie quiet, at least, if not actually sleep.

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