xp_logs | LOG: Alison and Haroun

x-jetstream.livejournal.com posting in

Haroun comes to again - this time, it looks like it may be on a more permanent basis. He still feels like crap, but he's got his sense of humor.

Haroun groaned into his oxygen mask as he slowly swam back up towards consciousness. He felt awful - he was running a high fever by the feel of things, his 'ware was offline - he knew it without even checking - and he was covered in some sort of chilly slime. All in all, not his favorite way to wake up. He opened his eyes, and could only see the vague outlines of some sort of tank, as he was apparently submerged completely in the goo. But he did hear a very familiar set of sounds - a heart rate and EKG meter going berserk.

A familiar, scratchy sound followed, the voice coming over the comm. sounding a touch unsteady. "Haroun? It's all right. Stay calm," Alison subvocalized, glad they'd thought of setting him up with a comm to be able to communicate through to him even while in the gel. The readings weren't in the 'warn someone asap' range yet, though Alison did her best to keep an eye on both the monitors and the shape in the tank, despite the suit's less than ideal visibility.

Haroun nodded, or at least tried to as best he could with the heavy mask strapped to his head. The goo had neutral buoyancy - he wasn't sinking, and he wasn't floating. He couldn't quite move his head enough to see if the top of the tank was capped or not, but as some of the mental cobwebs faded he realized that if he was in a tank like this it was probably because his power had gone well and truly berserk.

"You can subvocalise through the comm as well. We set you up with one..." The readings were going back towards the norm - or at least what was the norm for Haroun right now - and Alison settled back a bit in her chair, one gloved hand pressed on the tank's cool surface. He was awake. He didn't seem out of it like the first time he'd briefly woken up, having immediately responded to her words, and Alison held her breath, waiting for his reply.

Haroun came to some very important realizations. One, he felt gross. Two, he had hair - on his head and on his face. He'd been in here a while. Three, he had a headache that not even Excedrin would cure. For a second, he wondered if he'd developed a psi mutation or been psionically attacked or something. Experimentally, he tried subvocalizing. "Hey." he said in English, slowly. "I feel terrible."

"You look terrible too," Alison couldn't help but reply, biting down on her lip the second afterward. "M'sorry. Hey, you..." A faint click resonated through the liquid as Alison leaned her forehead on the tank though the suit's clear faceplate. "But the sound of your voice is the sweetest thing I've heard in ages." She paused, then smiled a bit. "Have I told you, today?"

"No you're not. I do look terrible. I have HAIR! If I wanted hair, I wouldn't shave." he said with as close to a grin as he could muster. "And no, nobody's told me shit in a long time." he said.

"Mm. Love you, handsome." Somehow, the comm managed to convey amusement through clearly, despite the way it went staticky at times, the sound scratchy and fuzzy every now and then. After a quick glance at the readings, Alison returned her attention to Haroun once more. "Quick update. They're flushing the spores from your system, while the new 'ware is being prepped. You've still got a while in here, though." She had a feeling he wouldn't be surfacing long or often though, from the way his own words seemed to slur through the comm now and then and from the exhaustion radiating from him now that he was aware.

Haroun gave her a thumb's up, but the gesture seemed to sap a lot of strength out of him. "We got him out, right?" he asked fuzzily. It was hard to think, hard to remember. He was still very sick, and he hated being suck. But his anger wasn't enough to cut through the illness and the drugs and the inactivity.

"In the end, yes. Though he did as much of the getting us out as we did the getting him out," she added. Haroun would find a way to climb out of the tank and whap her but good too, if she apologized for sending him in - so she wouldn't. She'd think it, but she'd never say it. "Don't move, huh? Just take it easy and rest up, okay?"

"Not like I have a lot of choice. Want to go for a swim?" he asked, trying his best to leer at her. She sounded awful, and he just wanted to cheer her up a little. "Come on in, the slime's fine." he said tiredly.

She couldn't help it, laughing at that - relief at the seeing him carry on a coherent conversation and simple joy at the small joke. "If it weren't for that small contamination detail, I'd take you up on the slime bath in a heartbeat."

"Love me, love my bugs?" he said with another thumb's up, then he sagged against the glass. "Sorry, babe. Tired, and my head feels like Nathan just showed me what he goes through on a weekly basis."

A faint snort, which he couldn't possibly heard through the comm answer his joke. "Your bugs don't love me much back, sadly. Unappreciative of them, don'tcha think?" Alison knew she didn't even have to mention the headache to the medlab folks - they had probably anticipated he'd have the mother of all headaches upon waking up and already made plans for it. "No apologies. None. It's okay."

"Think I'm gonna go take a nap." he said, trying to yawn around his mask. "See you when I wake up?" he asked, and then he let his eyes flutter closed to return back to a regular - as close to regular as he could get, anyway - sleep.

"I'll be here. Right here," she murmured, patting the side of the tank carefully as she spoke. As he drifted into sleep, she thumbed the warning signal which had been set up, to let the others know Haroun had woken up, if only for a moment.