[Red-X] Nate, Cecilia

[x-reyes.livejournal.com]

During the Red Cross and Red-X relief efforts following Hurricane Charley, Nathan bumps into Cecilia in one of the shelters. After reuniting a boy with his father, Cecilia makes Nate sit down before he breaks his brain, which naturally involves giving him a sharp whap upside the head.



The closest shelter/first aid station was in the gym of the town's high school, according to the Jackie, the Red Cross worker he'd been paired with up until fifteen minutes ago. She was waiting for him back down by the waterfront, and Nathan stifled his impatience to get back as he carried the little boy they'd just pulled out of a collapsed store through the rain and towards the doors where the Red Cross logo was being prominently displayed. The child wasn't badly hurt, but he was clinging quite determinedly, and Jackie had suggested it might be easier just to take him to the shelter where he'd feel safe, before trying to pry him off.

The shelter was surprisingly lacking in chaotic noise, all things considered - there was the quiet thrum of conversation, most of it coming from the various Red Cross workers as they spoke with their patients, though the people taking shelter in the gym out of the workers' way were not adverse to conversing with each other.

"And.. we're done." With a careful snip, Cecilia flashed a grin to the man whose arm she'd just finished stitching up, moving her tools back off to the side. "No heavy lifting for you for a while, as sorry as your wife will be to hear that. Go. Sit. Eat. Get warmed up."

Entering the gym, Nathan spotted Cecilia and breathed a sigh of relief. "Hey," he said, striding over as he saw that she was free. "Give me a hand? He's not got anything worse than scrapes and bruises, but he won't let go."

Once she eyed her previous patient for a limp as he made his way off - good, he hadn't lied about that part - Cecilia blinked and looked up, lifting a hand to offer a faintly dazed wave as she looked between Nathan and the boy. "Well, of course he won't let go," she chided lightly, offering the pair a slight grin. "You're just that likeable." She leant over to try and see the boy's face, tilting her head curiously to one side. "You okay, honey?"

"The store fell down," the little boy said, sniffling, his arms still wrapped firmly around Nathan's neck. "Where's my dad?"

Nathan grimaced as Cecilia gave him an inquiring look. #We're not sure,# he sent.

Cecilia was too busy focusing on the task at hand to have a wiggins over somebody else talking in her head. Later. She cast a quick look towards the other people in the shelter, pursing her lips before she offered her arms towards the boy. "I'm not sure, honey.. maybe he came in here when I wasn't looking. You wanna come help me look for him?"

"Brian!" came a shout from the doors, and Nathan blinked at the cascade of relieved, joyful thoughts coming from the man who ran over to them.

"Dad!" the kid shrieked happily, and Nathan quite gladly handed over the boy as his father reached out.

"Bri... I'm so sorry, kiddo," the man babbled, clasping his son to him. "I shouldn't have left you alone, but Grandma needed me..." He looked up at Nathan, guilt in his eyes. "I thought he'd be okay. He was safely inside..."

"He's fine," Nathan said reassuringly, refraining from either criticizing the man or informing him that the building he'd left his son in was very much not fine.

With a mental shrug, Cecilia let her arms drop back to her sides, giving the boy's father a quick looking-over from her spot near Nathan. She, too, seemed to be biting her tongue, hiding it behind a smile. "There's coffee and soup in the back, if you two need to warm up," she offered, thumbing over her shoulder.

"Thank you," the man said breathlessly, beaming at both of them before carrying his son off.

"Idiot," Nathan muttered at his receding back. Cecilia raised an eyebrow, and he scowled. "If the kid hadn't ducked beneath a fairly sturdy table when the roof came down, he probably would have been killed," he said in a low voice. "Seems to have more sense than his father." He grimaced and rubbed at his eyes as his vision doubled for a moment.

"Panic keeps people from acting, you know, intelligently," Cecilia groused, though she paused as Nathan grimaced, peering at him for a moment before reaching for his arm. "You. Sit."

"I need to get back down to the waterfront," he protested as she took his arm with a surprisingly firm grip. "Half the buildings down there are just flattened..."

"You aren't the only one here," Cecilia observed firmly, attempting to steer him over to her station and carefully push him down to sit. "But you look like you're gonna fall down, so sit down for a minute. Dork."

It did feel good to sit down. "Not the only one here," he said with a sigh, rubbing at his eyes again, "but they need me down there. In fact, they need a few more of me." He smiled a bit wanly at her. "How's it going here?"

"You aren't the only telekinetic-or-equivilant in the world, either," Cecilia said gently, quieting her voice and catching one of Nathan's hand to give it a quick squeeze. "It's going. Haven't had to deal with anything too serious yet. One of the other shelters isn't having the same luck, but.. well, hurricane." She shrugged helplessly.

"Hurricane with an attitude," Nathan sighed, closing his eyes for a moment and trying to recenter himself. Shifting debris wasn't all that difficult, even when 'shifting' meant 'raising a building back into some semblance of order while not crushing anyone trapped inside'. It was the constant, simultaneous scanning he'd been doing to find people trapped in the rubble that was really wearing him down. "Don't suppose you have some aspirin around here somewhere?" he asked, opening his eyes again. "I'm feeling one hell of a headache coming on, and I'd like to stave it off for a couple more hours if I could." Still too much work to be done down at the waterfront.

Cecilia nodded, smiling wryly as she moved to rummage through her kit. "Aspirin and a bottle of water, coming up.. but if your head starts acting up, you are coming back here, and you are resting. I'm not having you break your damn fool head because you won't let the search dogs and guys with the cranes do what you can do." Smiling crookedly, she offered a pair of aspirin and a bottle of water. "Deal?"

"Sprained my brain once already this week. Not eager to do it again," Nathan said quite firmly, downing the aspirin with a swallow of water. "Besides," he said with a slight smile, "not going to give Moira any reason to stress."

"Then stop trying to sprain your brain," Cecilia chided, having the decency to let him swallow his aspirin before giving him a light whap on the back of the head. "You're still recovering from overworking yourself. You need to take it easy."

Nathan, on a whim, didn't respond. Instead, he just looked up at her with his absolute best puppy-dog eyes, just to see what sort of reaction he'd get.

Cecilia blinked once, before she rolled her eyes, grinning in amusement. "For pity's sake.. you are the second man to pull that on me since I got to your damn school, you know that?"

"Oh?" Nathan said innocently, actually grinning back. "Did he do it better than me?"

"It was Haroun," Cecilia replied lightly, shrugging her shoulders helplessly. "He was also flattering me shamelessly just before, so.. I'm afraid he did, dear."

"Ah, well," Nathan said. "Haroun is also a fair bit better-looking than I am. Natural advantage." He took another sip from the water bottle, his eyes moving longingly to the back of the gym. "I smell coffee."

"You said it, not me," Cecilia grinned. "And yes, you do smell coffee. And soup, which would likely do a better job of keeping you going, anyway. Why don't you go feed yourself before you go back out?"

Moira would forgive him for cheating, Nathan convinced himself. "Good idea," he said, pushing himself up from the chair, but taking the water bottle with him. There were more windblown people coming in, some with visible injuries, and Nathan grimaced. "You look like you're going to have your hands full," he said.

Cecilia watched Nathan as he got up, ready to plant his butt right back in the chair if he so much as wobbled, and was pleased when he didn't seem to have much in the way of trouble. "That's why I came," she replied to the last, grinning and giving him a quick pat on the back before turning to wave a hand at the new arrivals. "You go eat," she asided to Nate, with a slight grin. "Come back if your head starts bitchin' again. And let the cranes help you, alright?"

"Yes, ma'am," Nathan said, tossing off a salute. A quick cup of coffee and some soup, and then he'd go back down and meet Jackie. Still lots to be done.