xp_logs | LOG: [Angelo, Haller] After hours (Reply)

3am in the kitchen after a difficult call.

Rather unsurprisingly, Angelo had found he couldn't sleep, and rather than wake Amanda, he'd slipped out to the main kitchen. He was still there 45 minutes later, not eating, just sitting on one of the stools with an unlit cigarette between his fingers, mulling things over.

"You know, the porch is just a couple feet away."

The newcomer was wearing just sweats and a t-shirt, both unrumpled; despite the hour, clearly the passage through the kitchen was before bed rather than in spite of it. Jim gave the look on Angelo's face a questioning look as he drew up to the counter, his own lighter and packet of cigarettes in one hand.

"What's up?" Jim asked. "More nightmares?"

"Not exactly", Angelo said, looking up at him with a shrug. "Couldn't sleep... got a phone call earlier that kind of killed the chances of that tonight."

Jim took a seat at the counter, frowning. "Was it another 'somebody's hurt' phonecall?" It couldn't be to do with the team if nobody else was getting alerts yet, but that didn't rule out Elpis. 2007 had had too many of those calls already.

"Not yet", he said quietly. "An' it's nobody anybody here knows. The call was from an old... friend. His sister's in trouble, an' apparently I'm the only one he knows who can help."

Studying the younger man's grey face, Jim nodded slowly. "Trouble. Okay. Guess you wouldn't be lucky enough for it to be the kind where a call to someone who knows someone or an emergency wire-transfer of a couple hundred dollars would hack it, huh."

Angelo smiled wryly. "How often do we ever get that lucky? No, this is the kind of trouble that needs a mutant he can trust who knows the area. Trouble is, I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him without powers, these days."

Jim raised an eyebrow. "'These days'?"

"He used to be my best friend", Angelo admitted. "But that was back when we thought I was baseline."

"Oh. One of those." Jim exhaled slowly and slid one hand over the lighter and cigarettes left on the countertop, fingers crackling the wrap. He looked up at Angelo, the question simple. "What did he do to you?"

"A lot of things", Angelo said flatly, then put down his own cigarettes to hold up his hands, burn-scarred palms outward. "Gave me these. Or most of them."

Jim looked at the discolored scars that rippled the grey skin, mismatched eyes steady. "Yeah," he said quietly. "I've had friends like that." Muscles in his forearm corded, marred by almost-faded bruises and the old scars of Cyndi's wrath. He extracted a cigarette from the pack. "You talked to him since?"

"Once. I went back with Nathan an' Paige... three years ago, now, must be. Not since then, until he called." He grinned crookedly, fleetingly. "Kind of came as a shock."

An eyebrow lifted as Jim raised the unlit cigarette to his mouth. "I assume last time wasn't a great visit."

"Could've been worse. Nobody was tryin' to kill anybody. But if I'd ever had any doubt I wasn't welcome 'round there anymore..."

"So it's probably pretty serious if you got a call." Jim rolled the cigarette between his fingers thoughtfully. "What're you going to do?"

"Oh, yeah, it's serious. He only called me because he wants his sister brought home before the real trouble starts. An'... I'm gonna go." He shrugged, a little helplessly. "I don't have a lot of choice."

The rolling stopped, punctuated by another cocked eyebrow. "For everyone's sake I hope this doesn't have anything to do with blackmail."

"No", Angelo said quickly. "Just... if it was him in trouble, I might say no. But his sister never did anythin' to me. An' it sounds like her mutation's screwed her life up a hell of a lot more than mine did."

"And so . . . what's the conflict?"

Angelo shrugged. "Been years since I went back, an' the first time - not the one with Nathan an' Paige, the one before that with Amanda - didn't end so well. Right around this time of year, actually. An'... I don't think it's anythin' but what it looks like, but I can't be 100% this isn't Miguel tryin' to finish the job very late."

Jim slipped the unlit cigarette into his mouth and gave the younger man a sidelong look. "Okay, so you can't know for sure the intentions. So, really you're just looking at one question. Even with all this shit between you and him, the history and the unknown quantity -- would you forgive yourself it you didn't take the risk?"

"...no." It was admitted ruefully, with a quirked grin. "An' that's why I'm not really thinkin' about not goin'. I can't not. It's just... can't sleep tonight, either."

"Understandable. Since whether or not you're walking into something you're going to regret for the rest of your life isn't going to be clear until it's, well, the rest of your life."

The young man's posture was slumped, almost desolate. Jim knew it well. It was the kind that came from conflicting loyalties -- and more, that special pull of the life you were trying to live now and the one you had finally given up trying to reconcile and had settled on hoping would just remain the hell behind you. The situation pegged something from him, a part that had never come from David. For whatever reason, Angelo always had.

Well, okay. We know the reason.

Cigarette still held in his mouth, the counselor took his lighter and cigarettes and rose from the stool. He glanced down at Angelo. "So. Movie?"

Angelo looked up at Jim for a moment, then, slowly, smiled. It wasn't much of one, but it was there. "Movie sounds good."

Jim nodded. "Don't know about you, but I'm in the mood for Kevin Smith."