Nathan and Angelo, Friday evening

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Angelo stops by the gym where Nathan is doing his physio to let him know that he's finished a report, prior to heading out for the evening. A great many other things are discussed, most of them highly significant.


He wasn't spending quite enough time getting his arm back into shape this week; Amelia would be giving him dark looks. Not that he was afraid of her. No, he was down here getting some quality therapy time in for the simple fact that his wife had gotten wind of it and threatened to make him sleep on the couch unless he made the time "on a daily basis, Nathan."

He loved it when Moira made it so clear that she didn't need their psi-link.

Concentrating on the exercises - lifting weights, even small ones, with that arm hurt after far too short a period of time - Nathan would have missed, yet again, the arrival of someone else in the gym if that someone else hadn't discreetly cleared his throat.

"Oh, good," he said, glancing at Angelo. "You can vouch for me with Moira that I'm down here doing this."

"Sure, if you need me to," Angelo said easily. "She won't believe you?"

"I suppose she would. Can't hurt to reinforce it, though." Ow. Ow, ow, ow, ow. He was turning into a big baby, he really was. "Off for the evening?" he asked, donning an entirely put-upon innocent look.

"Yep!" Angelo said cheerfully, ignoring the blatantly false innocence. "Finished the report, though - 's what I was comin' down here to tell you before I head out."

"Good boy. And you're going to turn your cell phone off this evening, right? I'd hate to be going over that report after dinner, find some scrambled statistics, and have to call and interrupt you in the middle of anything." Oh, he was going to hell, he really was.

Angelo eyed him, then just grinned. "I think if my cellphone rings in the middle of anythin', Sarah'd smash it. An' I need it unbroken. So, yeah. it'll be turned off."

"Young people and their energy," Nathan said, in blithe disregard of the fact that he and Moira could probably give any of the youthful couples around here a run for the money. Not that anyone was keeping score. "You don't need to rush back, by the way. If I find you in the office on Saturday again, I'm going to throw you in the lake." He grimaced at his arm. "I only need one good arm to do that."

"But the office's the only place I can get stuff done," Angelo protested. "Nothin' against Bobby, but the suite wouldn't be the best place to work even if I had it to myself."

"It's a holiday weekend," Nathan pointed out, and the set of his jaw reinforced the tone of his voice. "This means, shock upon shocks, that all sane people take a holiday. I'm sure you and the others can get up to something fun this weekend."

"...well, Amanda was talkin' about a group trip to Silver," he conceded. "So there's that."

"Group debauchery. Always a good option," Nathan said and set the weight down, wiping beads of sweat from his forehead with his good hand. His arm was a solid mass of pain from his shoulder to the tips of his fingers. There was a reason he'd been avoiding doing this as often as he should. I've had a little too much physio in my life if something this minor is getting to me...

"Next week," he said, bending it back and forth, willing the muscles to relax a little, "we're going to open an official file on what's going on in Prague, I think. I know it's outside our usual stomping grounds, but I've looked into it a little this week and it probably is something that wouldn't hurt us to monitor."

"The... thing with the fightin' every night?" Angelo remembered, eyeing Nathan's arm a little worriedly. "Is that still not gettin' any better?"

"Not appreciably, no. I just..." He shrugged with the shoulder that didn't hurt. "I know, we're still busy, shifting stuff to Tel Aviv or not, but this has been nagging at me. We don't have that many examples in the world of places where mutants have openly integrated. Smichov's not the same magnitude of example as Hungary, obviously-" One was a neighborhood in a city, the other was a country, after all. "-but from what I've been able to find out, it's been very slowly and gradually turning into a model community of sorts over the last few years." When non-mutants were willingly moving into the neighborhood, that said something.

"Yeah, it's... maybe not such a good sign if there's this much conflict happenin' there. People don't want it to be a model community, maybe."

"I don't know. To me it looks spontaneous..." Really, he didn't know why he was this taken by something Dom had turned up by chance. The Czech Republic was hardly a disadvantaged nation any longer, and right now this looked like a law-and-order issue, not anything Elpis could help.

But Rollins kept telling him he had good instincts. And his instincts were telling him to watch Prague. Just watch. That was hardly an undue expenditure of his limited resources, was it?

"Next week," he said, wincing as he picked up the weight again. "We can set up that newsfeed-monitoring program Gar sent us to catch any references to Prague. Simple enough."

"...now, that's a useful little thing," Angelo said, grin widening. He'd been quite taken with it, when it first showed up.

"I imagine Forge - or Doug - could have done the same thing if we'd asked. But Gar is my techie," Nathan said with a brief smile. "Might as well make use of the one whose salary I pay. He keeps telling me I need to come over and see everything he's done at the Tel Aviv office," he said, an odd weariness creeping into his voice. It was a tempting thought, really. Head off to Tel Aviv, see Dom and the others - and his namesake. "I could do with some sun," he muttered aloud.

Angelo shot him a sideways look, nodding to himself. "You should go. Hell, I wouldn't say no to a trip out there."

"Not a chance in hell, this month. I'm still not ready for the start of term - this weekend's my catching-up time for that." He wasn't that far behind, really. All the important paperwork was done. He just needed to do the rest of it, now. Lesson plans. If he really pushed it, he imagined he could get all of September's lesson plans done this weekend. Moira was heading back to Muir with Rachel tonight, so it wasn't as if he wouldn't have the quiet time...

"Are you still tryin' to work three jobs?" Angelo muttered, not really a question so much as rhetorical. "Or is it only two an' a half, now?"

If he hadn't been in quite so much pain just now - this was the last set of exercises he was doing today, seriously - he would have stuck his tongue out at Angelo. What slipped out instead was a weary, aggravated sigh.

"Angelo, you've been watching me like a mother hen. You know I've whittled my own schedule down to a manageable level. I'm just tired these days..."

"Yeah, manageable if you weren't tired," Angelo pointed out, trying not to snap. "But you're not back up to speed yet, or you wouldn't be down here."

"Neither my classes nor Elpis require me to punch people," Nathan said, striving for a cheerful tone and not quite managing it. Oh, how he wished that Elpis occasionally required him to punch people. Would make life so much simpler. He set the weight back down carefully, suppressing the wince. Enough of that. He was starting to feel light-headed.

"Elpis has done," Angelo commented, trying to lighten the tone. "Remember Afghanistan?"

"I didn't actually punch anyone. My horse did that." The absolute insanity of the statement hit him as soon as the words were out of his mouth, and Nathan lowered his head into his good hand, trying not to snicker. Resting his head in his hand felt awfully good for some reason. Really, very nice...

He was teetering, and when he teetered just that little bit too far, he fell right off the bench. It all happened too quickly to break his fall, and as he hit the mat - not hard, the bench was low enough that it wasn't much harder than sitting on a bed and toppling sideways - something else happened. Every piece of equipment in the gym swayed under the sudden push of TK. A couple of the machines went right over with a crash.

Angelo yelped as he saw Nathan fall, darting forward too late to catch him, then stared wide-eyed at the machines. "...Nathan? You conscious?"

"... of course I'm conscious," was the muttered reply from the floor. Nice cool mats. He'd just stay right here, especially since his stomach was acting like it wanted to depart his body for greener pastures. "I'm getting tired of that," Nathan sighed, turning over onto his back and staring up at the ceiling. "I wish it would stop. Shit or get off the pot, as the saying goes."

"Tired of which part?" Angelo asked dryly, now the alarm was passed. "Fallin' off benches for no apparent reason, or the TK fits?"

"That would be the first time I've fallen off a bench, smartass." Although he'd fallen out of bed more than once. "Apparently last night," he said, looking up at Angelo, who had moved into his field of vision, "I was actually levitating above the bed. For an hour. Moira timed me."

"...they don't usually last that long, do they?"

"No." Nathan raised a hand, rubbed at his eyes. "They're coming back, I think." He smiled faintly, then slowly sat up. "I wish I could be more excited," he said.

"I kind of thought you would be," Angelo admitted quietly. "I mean, I know you've hated not bein' able to do stuff..."

"I'll be glad when they do," Nathan said, and paused to reflect on the fact that he'd just said 'when' without feeling like he was trying to put a good face on things. "But... when they do, I don't know if I'll have the same level of control over them. Or if I'll have six months or more of retraining to do. It'll be good," he said, more softly, "to be able to touch Ray and Moira's minds again. But for the rest of it... we'll see."

"So..." he said hesitantly, "you won't be goin' straight back into the team stuff? When they come back?"

"It depends." He'd been waiting for this particular matter to come up, once the subject had. "If I can, I probably will. We're in bad shape these days, Angelo. If I'm capable, I'm needed."

"...right." The tone was flat, for all he tried to make it less so. "Course you are."

Nathan smiled a bit. "If," he said again. "And even if I am..." His eyes shifted away from Angelo's for a moment, unfocusing slightly. "I don't know," he said, more to himself than to the younger man. "I wouldn't object to staying out of the thick of things and playing switchboard."

Angelo looked up sharply, something more hopeful showing in his eyes. "Yeah? If the telepathy comes back?"

"I don't know..." Nathan said again, a bit troubled by his own sense of ambiguity on the subject. "I want to, but on the other hand... it's been a hell of a summer. And I remember..." He shrugged, this time almost irritably. "I remember the beach, now. Had some progress this week, on that. I remember being absolutely sure that I was going to die, and the only thing I regretted right that moment was not being able to say goodbye... I don't really like that," Nathan said with a sigh. The surrender bothered him. The idea of peaceably leaving Moira and Rachel bothered him. It had been... a rather unique moment, but still.

"Yeah, well," the younger man observed would-be flippantly. "I didn't really like thinkin' I'd just seen you die live on air."

"On the other hand," Nathan said, his eyes flickering to Angelo and lingering on the younger man wryly for a moment, "I can't say I wouldn't do the same thing if you turned back time two months and dropped me right back on that beach. I could feel," he said more softly, lost in that freshly regained memory, "the city behind me. All of those terrified people, after the earthquake..." Scared, hurting people. "And there I was, watching worse coming."

"That was two months ago," Angelo said more seriously. "'s done, now, an' everybody came out of it alive. Guess the question is if you'd do the same thing again now."

"If I'd do something I knew was likely to kill me on the slim chance I might be able to pull it off and save lives?"

"Exactly."

"It would depend," Nathan said, after a very long pause. "On how many lives, and how likely it was to kill me." He looked up at Angelo again before the younger man could respond. "I can't sit here and tell you I wouldn't. That would be dishonest. But there are different levels of risk, and different levels of need." Nathan took a deep breath and let it out on a sigh, rubbing his sore shoulder. "Doing what you can doesn't necessarily mean not saving anything for the swim back."

There were several things Angelo could have said to that. But almost all of them would have sounded like emotional blackmail, however sincere he was about it, and he would not do that. Finally, then, he settled for, "Guess we'll have to see what happens, then. But don't expect me not to try an' take any of the load, if it comes to that."

Nathan opened his mouth - and then closed it again, blinking at Angelo. "And by that you mean...?" he asked uncertainly, wishing for a moment of telepathy right there.

"Nate... I know I'm not team. I know I'm not trained, or a a telepath, or a telekinetic, or even with powers that really make much difference 'cept for the aftermath. But... that doesn't mean I won't follow you."

Nathan looked down. "I think you sell yourself short," he said quietly. "I think you always have, when it comes to that... but it's your choice, and I've always respected it."

"...when it comes to what?" came the equally quiet response, after a moment. "My powers? Sure, they're good for hand to hand, an' I got some use out of them in San Diego when the dust settled, but..."

"But what? Not everyone on the team has the super-strong versatile powers like me or Lorna. Scott blows things up. Shiro makes fires, or explosions..." Funny that he'd picked the two who weren't on active duty right now and probably wouldn't be for the foreseeable future. "What you can do... you'd actually be more versatile than some of our serving X-Men, I think. All you'd need is to learn how to be creative under pressure..."

"I..." He trailed off, giving Nathan an uncertain look. Part of the problem was that he'd never much liked having the powers he had - or, deep down, being a mutant, for all it had given him - but rescuing the little girl in San Diego, among other things over the years, had helped with that. A little. He still was having trouble with thinking of them as truly useful, though. "Yeah?"

"Rescue," Nathan said, ticking off items on his fingers. "Getting yourself and possibly others over difficult or vertical terrain. Restraining people effectively without hurting them - and that is a huge thing, Angelo, believe me. An edge in hand-to-hand. And all of this, and the half-dozen others I'm not thinking of right now because my head is killing me, are just things your powers would let you do."

He gave Angelo a long, serious look, but part of him was wondering just what the hell he was doing. "Your hand-to-hand is already good. And more importantly, you have precisely the right sort of mindset. You're careful, you're steady, you're emotionally mature... and you genuinely want to help people. I suspect," he said with a faint smile, "that you'd find direct action just as appealing as I do, if you gave it a try. You felt good about rescuing that little girl in San Diego? Imagine rescuing a dozen children out of a school where they're being held hostage, and helping make sure that no one gets hurt. Not even the idiot hostage-takers."

There was something else, of course. Nathan was silent for a moment, then smiled again, a little uncertainly. "You said you'd follow me," he said quietly. "I'd go into any situation I've faced thus far with the X-Men with you, and feel right doing it."

Angelo sat down on the mat next to him, looking very slightly poleaxed, as if he was trying to figure out just when the conversation had turned so drastically. "Would I... have time for it, around Elpis an' college an' the rest of it?" he asked hesitantly. "I mean, there's... trainin' an' stuff." But the truth was, he'd follow Nathan into hell, and if this was a way he'd be allowed to do it...

Nathan blinked, straightening slightly where he sat. "It would be... busy," he said slowly. "You'd have to cut back on some of your Elpis work, probably. If you didn't want to wind up like me." His mouth twitched for a moment. "But training... especially for trainees, isn't a full-time job by any stretch of the imagination. You already do some of what you'd be doing on a regular basis anyway. You keep fit, and you still work on your hand-to-hand regularly..."

Angelo nodded slowly. "Thing is... Elpis is important, for me. An' I wouldn't want to cut back on it too far. But if we could figure stuff out..." He took a deep breath. "I'd think about it."

"There's a way to get a better sense of how much time and energy it would demand," Nathan said, then smiled. "Talk to Ororo," he suggested. "As for Elpis... things won't settle down after that shifting around we were doing for another week or so, while we wrap stuff up. We should wait and see on that, first of all. And then..." He shrugged, then laughed suddenly. "Joel's been suggesting that we could more than afford to hire more staff. Local research and development staff in some of our key regions of interest. He also thinks we should be recruit local volunteers."

Angelo blinked, then grinned. "We're really takin' off, huh? If we can afford to expand like that..."

"Money's never been the issue," Nathan pointed out. "If anything, we're growing faster than we're evolving support structures. Joel just pointed out that with more projects kicking off, it would be better to have them managed locally as much as possible. Frees us up for the political side of things and the research."

"An' that's got to be good", Angelo agreed. "Maybe we just go over there to get them set up, then we can leave 'em to it."

"Elpis is still a baby. We'll get the kinks ironed out - we've done a hell of a lot in... what, three months?" Nathan smiled again, then heaved himself up off the floor, swaying a little. "Help me with the mess?" he asked, heading for the first of the toppled weight machines. "And you should talk to Ororo, like I said. If I've taught you anything, I hope I've taught you the importance of research."

Angelo nodded, pushing himself to his feet to go and help right the machine. "Yeah, we're doin' good. An'... I will. No promises, but... I'll talk to her."

Comments

[x-tarot.livejournal.com]

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

[x-skin.livejournal.com]

TOTALLY UNPLANNED.

*eyes them*

[xp_daytripper]

*grins* Sometimes the unplanned things are the niftiest.

So, guess Angelo will be needing one of those leather icons, then? *looks to the clever icon people*