LOG: Haroun and Alison - Coming Home

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Haroun finally walks on his own from Medlab back to his room. Fun with Therapeutic Baths ensues.



Haroun very carefully walked from Medlab up to the suite he shared with Alison. But he did it - no walker, no cane, no assists from anyone, nothing. If he was careful and visualized each move before he made it, he could get around tolerably well. The shorts they had given him to wear felt oddly abrasive - they were an old pair, true, but not that old. Eventually, so the doctors had assured him, the new MMI would adapt itself to his ways of movement, adapt to his thought as naturally as if he were born with it. But right now, they were both engaged in a learning process.

"Honey, I'm home!" he called out with a grin. As he spoke he stepped over the threshold of the suite - but without picking his feet up far enough from the ground. Toes, meet doorjamb. Haroun, meet floor. He collapsed, barely strangling a scream of agony as a fire of new sensations ripped from his new legs straight to his brain. He had never felt such pain in his life, and now it was as if his foot were on fire.

The only reason she'd agreed to wait up in the suite was because it had become such a point of pride for him. She'd even managed to resist asking someone (anyone) to keep an eye on his progress and keep her updated. That was why his greeted had her hopping from her desk chair with a grin of glee, and the subsequent strangled sound of pain had her scrambling out the bedroom and for the living room so quickly the door bounced off the wall.

"Haroun!" There was no blood in sight, no obvious wound but with the new hardware it could be anything even though she'd been assured everything was running fine now, every program tested and implemented successfully.

Which didn't account for the obviously very unhappy man curled up on the floor...

...holding his foot.

Kneeling down beside him, Alison rested a hand on his shoulder and then other on his hip, talking lowly. She'd gone past being prone to panic sometime in the hours of listening to doctors' reports on how long he had left to live without new hardware but it didn't mean seeing him in pain was any more tolerable. "Haroun? Is something wrong with the 'ware?" His MMI would be screaming details at him now if so. "Or did you hit something?"

Haroun strangled another cry and blinked back tears out of his eyes. "It hurts." he whimpered. "I think I kicked the doorframe." Merciful Allah, this was insane. It never should have hurt this badly! Amidst the fire of sensation from his foot, he made a mental note. Pick your damned feet up, you Moor!

"Stubbed toe?" Relief hit first, and then comprehension. "Oh. OH. Oh no." Going from kneeling to sitting down, Alison patted his shoulder lightly, wincing in sympathy. "Yeah, those aren't fun at all. Take a few deep breaths, it'll pass..." And with him feeling everything for the first time in years, exponentially so compared to how it had been before. She'd heard that explanation more than once, as well. "I can get some ice if you want to numb things later if it doesn't settle down but it'll be cold..."

Haroun shook his head, unashamed at the least to be this weak in front of Alison. X-Men training had beat that out of him - at least, his first performance review did. "Yes please." he said, sitting down on his butt and cradling his poor abused foot. The 'ware didn't look broken, or even dented - he know it logically, but given the amount of pain he was in at the moment, he wouldn't have been surprised. "This is so stupid." he said, embarrassed, cheeks flaming red under his dark skin. "You would think I was Miles' age the way I carry on."

"Miles is very good about offering me band-aids when I stub my foot," was the solemn reply. She eyed his foot pensively once he'd removed both shoe and sock, giving the injured toe a careful once over. "I don't turn him down most of the time. At least wondering what band-aid he'll pick and if it'll be the glow in the dark ones keeps my mind off the stubbed toe." It had happened all of three times so far, and amused her immensely each time. "And it's not stupid. You're feeling things for the first time in years. Of course everything will be stronger than anything you remember." She paused, wondering how ticklish he'd be. "I can actually make out that blush. It's cute." She patted his cheek lightly, repressed most of the mistiness from her smile and then rose to her feet. "Want help to the couch? I can get you some ice after."

Haroun shook his head, and made his way at a very slow dignified shuffle over to the couch. He flopped into it gracelessly then winced as his new lower half let him know that he could feel that, thank you very much, and to please not do that anymore. "This sucks. I almost want to go back to the way it was." he grumbled.

"No, you don't," Alison managed to say with a completely straight face despite the way every single motion seemed to be reminding him that the entire lower portion of his body now had a say in matters. A small ziplock back was fetched, along with ice from the freezer portion of the small refrigerator in the kitchenette. A bit of water added to things made for something that wouldn't be all edges and a small towel meant it wouldn't be insta-freeze as well. Sitting at the other end of the couch, Alison motioned for him to prop his feet in her lap.

Haroun whipped his feet up, very nearly caving in Alison's nose with the ball of his foot. "Sorry." he muttered as he settled his feet down in her lap as lightly as he could. Which wasn't very, judging by her wince. "Still getting used to the new system." he said. He eyed the ice and towel with suspicion and relief mingled together. "Docs say there will be an adjustment period. But the more I use it, the faster it will adapt."

Uncrossing her eyes and eyeing the feet now in her lap, Alison decided he was being very obliging about the 'ware and his adaptation process to it being exactly as they'd been told it would. And boy was that a loaded statement he'd just handed her. She cooled the palm of her hand with the cooled towel first to get his skin used to the sensation, and then carefully applied the towel, making sure there would be no mad flailing in the process though there were no guarantees about any howls of protest at the temperature. "Well, the Tai Chi should help there and you'll be the one setting the pace." He looked... slightly slimmer somehow in the midsection and she kept returning to that, even though she knew why it was so.

Haroun still almost jumped when the cold towel+ice combination hit his feet. Hissing, he kept his feet as still as he could. Then he felt the coldness intermingled with the pain, and blinked at the strangeness of it all. "I don't think the artificial nerve receptors will go numb when exposed to cold." he said dubiously.

"They're supposed to follow the baseline norm of human reactions," Alison murmured absently, fascinated by the way he was reacting. She was going to have to be careful that night. Leg tangling in her sleep might be normal for her, but it'd probably wake him up every single time now. "Nerve receptors tell the MMI about the cold, MMI sorts out if it's normal every day stuff or combat stuff, sensation gets relegated to ignore or sent to…" she trailed off, smiling down at his foot with a slightly silly grin. "Still hurting or more like just cold now?" Looking up at him, she fought down, yet again, the near overwhelming desire to tickle. Just to see if he'd react.

Haroun paused to evaluate exactly how he was feeling. "I think it's just cold at this point." he said, wiggling his toes against the rough towel. "I'm going to be very hard to live with for a while." he said honestly. "I'm probably going to over-stimulate a whole lot until I get used to this whole deal. Sort of like you, early on." he said, blushing.

Wiggling toes. So cute! Alison bit down on a laugh of sheer delight. "I remember how that was for me. Ups and downs all the time." She nodded, lifting the ice away for a moment to eye the entire foot. It was a nice foot. With toes that wiggled up at her. "I expect we'll be doing a lot of cuddling for one thing, until you're settled into things. And we can bump proof the suite too." Being direct about things was for the best, no doubt there, and would help to settle worries and concerns quickly. "I did you get you a surprise, though. I think you might like it."

Haroun nodded and was very careful to smile and be pleasant, but inwardly he raged. Bump-proof? He wasn't a toddler! He would be damned and in HELL before he let her do any such thing! "What sort of a gift?" he asked pleasantly, pushing his darker impulses back to concentrate on the positive. Concentrate on her.

"Well, a few," she admitted, not even considering looking sheepish about it. "Some of them are silly and will make you look at me funny, I bet. Some of the stuff is in the bathroom." A wise nod accompanied that pronouncement, Alison trying not to look too smug as she continued. "And well, I got new bed sheets. I'd been thinking about it for a while anyway and well, this seemed like the perfect occasion to go a little wild." With that, she lifted one to rest it on his shin, pausing a moment before actual contact happened.

Haroun decided in that instant that he really, really hated the hesitancy that she was showing him. Sure, it was for a good reason, and sure, it's not like she'd never been hypersensitive before, but it galled him. He looked at her hand, and then nodded slightly at her. The pat felt - good? Yes, that was it. Good. He stood up slowly, testing his poor abused foot gently before putting significant weight on it. "Once I recover from my current state, I'll have a surprise for you too." he said with a cocky leer.

Laughter greeted that, Alison letting her head fall back on the back of the couch before pushing herself up as well with a radiant smile. The ice and towel were throw into the sink, landing with a thunk and with a cheerful grin Alison danced around him to enter the bedroom first, re-opening the door on her way in. "And I look forward to that 'surprise' very much," she answered, stopping a few feet into the other room and waiting for him expectantly. "But in the meantime... I sort of bought a few things." A few. Maybe he'd believe that one. For all of two seconds.

"Right." he said. "I disbelieve!" he said, displaying that he'd been spending _far_ too much time around the trainees. Experimentally, he shifted his midsection around in the first two moves of a very half-remembered bellydancing routine, and then grinned at the complete lack of pain. He then leaned up against the wall and grinned at Alison. "So - you want to show me these few things you bought?"

"Yes, oh person who makes interesting moves like that and then looks oh so smug. Was that what I think it was?" She'd seen that move somewhere before. "Hrm. Some of the stuff is hanging behind the door but we'll go look at the bath things first." Small, silly and mundane things. And they could do them and not worry and it was simple and easy and reassuring on a basic level she wasn't even about to try and explain. "I got a lot of bath things?" she added, opening the door and peeking inside.

Haroun shrugged. "I don't know what you're talking about. Muscle spasm, that's all." he said with a teasing wink. He was careful to keep his feet up as he walked, giving him an odd marching sort of an appearance. "Bath things?" he asked, looking at the items. "Was there something wrong with the stuff we had?"

"Was not!" she pouted at him over her shoulder but didn't press the point. "Noo. But well... I thought I'd get a few things more. Because hey, the whole therapeutic bath thing is probably going to be a whole new experience and all that. Among other things." She grinned at the overly large bath nestled in the bathroom next to the equally outsized shower. There was a reason the living room area of the suite was slightly smaller. Renovations to the bathroom had required them to be so. "And there's the new towels." Big fluffy towels that practically screamed soft. "They're nice towels."

"I liked our old towels." he said with a small pout. They were big and they had a desperate mad-on for water, absorbing small oceans of the stuff at the slightest provocation. He couldn't prove it, but he suspected the towels were so hydroscopic they were sucking moisture out of the air itself. "Therapeutic bath? I'm a guy, Alison. More of one now than I've been for years. I take showers."

"Mmm. I know. But the bath's big enough for two," she added cheerfully, before popping out of the bathroom again, careful not to step on any toes by accident as she squirmed around him to stand in the middle of the bedroom. "Present on bed. Small something. Another present in the bed. For when it's time to turn in." She eyed the clock pensively. It was still a touch early in the evening, but well, it'd hardly kill anyone to turn in early. "Hrm. You have a yen to stay up a while longer, or do we do the mad you start showering while I go tuck Miles in and then I get back here just in time to shower too and tumble to off to sleep with you thing?" It invariably involved variations to the base plan, which was made the whole thing fun of course. He'd better rethink any tickle ambushes, though.

"Go put Miles to bed and come back. I want to experience this whole therapeutic bath thing you're so keen on." And maybe some other things - after all, he had a burning curiosity to know. And he'd always been one to push his luck far beyond where rational men would have stopped.

"Lowest setting is that," she pointed at the controls, even though she knew he was well aware how it worked from the times he'd prepped the bath for her when she was still oversensitive to everything. "Be back in a bit," she paused to smile at him, and left after giving him a quick kiss.

Haroun shot her a Look before she headed out to go tuck her son in for the night. Her kiss was sweet, and tasted vaguely of peaches. Funny, that. He started the bath, habitually setting it to just-below-lobster levels of heat, and then dipped a toe in when the water had risen to the appropriate levels.

And then yanked his toe back and nearly screamed.

"HOT!"

The shout would have drawn a very amused grin from Alison if she'd been near enough to hear it and probably would have earned Haroun some light teasing along with a promise to kiss it and make it better. Instead, however she simply returned a while later, the door to the suite closing behind her loud enough to be overheard in the bedroom. "I'm back!" she called out, peeling off her socks as she headed towards the bathroom.

When Alison came into the bathroom Haroun was doing the ouchy dance, hopping up and down on one leg while trying to examine his other foot - the same one he stubbed earlier - for any injuries. "The tub's thermostat is broken." he pronounced. "The water's too hot!"

"You may want to sit down," Alison said after a moment's pause. This was so going to be an exercise of her poker face, she decided. "You fall over, you're going to hate yourself." Keeping an eye on him to make sure he didn't do just that, she checked the water. "Ha! You put it at what you usually take showers at, lobster man. It's not too hot for your upper body. It is for your lower body and my delicate skin, though." She reached out and twisted the cold water to on decisively. "There. That'll help."

Haroun sat down obediently, still fanning his not-burned-but-felt-like-it toes. "It sucks." he said petulantly, sounding for a second almost uncannily like Miles talking about girl cooties. "Can't take decently hot showers anymore. Or baths."

"You'll get used to it and be back to boiling yourself up regularly soon," she said reassuringly, lips quirking just a touch. "In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy the more moderate temperatures." She winked, dipping a hand in the water to test it. "I think this is better. Want to test it out first?"

"Is not boiling myself." he muttered. "Feels good. Or, at least, it used to." he said, dipping a finger into the water. "Brr." he said, then dipped one of his poor abused toes into the water. "Oh, that does feel better." he said, and then blinked. "Do you have any idea how weird the dichotomy is? Upper think I'm cold, lower thinks I'm fine."

"Nuhuh. I had the whole body thing going, so it was everything at once. At least it was consistent that way," she added, giving him a sympathetic look. Of course, a bath meant stripping, Alison suddenly realized. And blinked. This was, in essence, a first time. "Oh." She was such a moron. "Want to try this without turning on the bubble jet first? Or the lowest setting?"

"Let's just try this straight-up first, then we can add in the bubbles and whatnot." he said, nervously shedding his shirt and the hated shorts. It was the oddest thing - he could feel the heat of the bath against the skin of his legs now. He could feel the shorts sliding off. "OK, I guess I'll go in first and then you can climb in after." he said nervously.

"Okay." She'd seen the blueprints, this whole trying not to look or stare thing was just stupid. Oh so much. So why was she doing it? She watched him step into the bath, that slightly weirded out expression still on his face, then waited until he'd settled in to give him a questioning look.

Haroun knew he was being stared it, but it made no difference to him. He was preoccupied in feeling all the new sensations - the water, the temperature, the currents as he moved his legs back and forth. And on certain areas the water felt very odd indeed. "OK, this is weird. Good, but weird. Come on in."

Well, he'd said good in there somewhere at least. "Coming in!" Sitting on the edge of the bathtub Alison peeled off her shirt and then worked off her bra, dropping the items of clothing on the floor one by one as she stripped. "Well, maybe we'll skip the whole bubble jet thing this time. Can't have you hopping right out of the bath at that, right?" She grinned at him over her shoulder after having dealt with the jeans and underwear, peeling off her socks last by catching the tip of the toe under the hell of the other foot, then pulling.

Haroun leaned back in the tub to indulge in one of his favorite hobbies - watching Alison dress or, in this case, undress. It, for some reason, never failed to amuse him and bring a smile to his face. Which it was doing in this case as well. And he let her know it with his smile.

It was That Smile. The one that never failed to make her forget about pretty much anything else and helped make the world right. The last sock was dropped to the floor and left there, Alison then carefully shifting before sliding into the bath as well, sighing softly as the water enfolded her slowly. "Mmm. Not boiling, for once," she murmured teasingly, facing him while being careful not to touch his legs with her own too suddenly.

Haroun grinned as Alison slid herself into the bath. He could kinda get into this whole "bath" thing. It had its compensations. And the grinning extremely naked blonde sitting in the tub with him was Compensation Number One. Compensation Number All Of Them, actually, but he wasn't strictly keeping track. "If you thought my showers were too hot, you could have said something." he said reproachfully.

"You kept doing the oooh aaaah thing each time," Alison replied practically, amused at the look he was giving her. Another slight shift brought her into more contact with him and taking a deep breath, Alison sunk that much deeper into the water, resting her head on the edge of the bath before letting out a long sigh, tension bleeding out slowly. She'd been a nervous wreck for far too long now and the sudden halt to the tension left her feeling vaguely like a rag doll. "You do the oooh aah thing I just tend to watch, y'know."

Haroun's eyes practically popped out of his head at the contact. "Is that what that's supposed to feel like?" he said with a slightly strangled voice. "I think I owe you an apology." he stammered.

"For always wondering why I had a thing for those leg massages you do so well?" she asked lazily, peering at him through half-lidded eyes. No, that was not what he'd meant. She flexed her calf muscles just a bit, moving her foot to stretch the tendons out a bit and causing a light ripple in the water again. "Mmm. S'okay." The smile wasn't leaving and she just beamed at him, not feeling at all ridiculous about it.

Haroun closed his eyes for a second to try to get a grip on the sensations coming up from the MMI. "Man, this still feels weird. I got used to the old one, and compared to what I've got now that thing was a complete piece of shit. You ever get an explanation for why they didn't do this during the initial install?" he asked.

"It was still only on the concept phase. You got the first experimental chassis because of the emergency, when you crashed and burned. At least that's how Doctor Ackerman explained it. You were the only one to have that particular generational model. The rest were all later models." She remembered how ill Ackerman had looked upon recognizing some of his former 'patients' among the men who had attacked the mansion just before the summer started. "...and then somehow Shaw Enterprises forgot to inform you of the upgrades," she added, looking at the faucet and her distorted reflection in the metal.

Haroun nodded. "Makes sense - I seem to only ever get upgraded if I've broken something or in case of Dire Emergency." he said. "Although Emma was always good about keeping the software up-to-date. Hell, I didn't even know they'd revved the hardware until just recently. How'd we ever get a hold of this stuff, anyway? What's the price that we paid?"

Alison focused on him once more, chewing on her lower lip a touch nervously. "Aaah... we didn't pay for it? We followed the contract procedures and applied for an emergency 'ware delivery when... we got you to the medlab. Shaw stalled and refused to send anything. Said the stocks were out, parts were missing, stuff like that. And you..." Her voice wavered but she continued. "You were dying. So I made arrangements and got the 'ware." She swallowed at that highly edited version of events and waited for his answer.

Haroun knew instantly that she was lying to him. But now was not the time, and the tub was not the place. "We'll talk more about it later." he said, trying to force himself to relax and just feel the new feelings. "Although that thing you were doing with your leg and mine -that was nice. Felt good." he said lazily.