xp_logs | Nathan and Kyle, Sunday afternoon (Reply)

Nathan finally stops in to see Kyle. He gives him a few explanations and more in the way of reassurance.

Buying clothes had been interesting. Admittedly, snarling at the security guard about his lack of shoes had been annoying, but now that he thought on it, it was kind of funny. And he hadn't had to wear shoes, so it all worked out well.

But putting clothes -away-? That wasn't fun at all. Boring, dull, dull, and also, boring. And he was out of words that meant boring, so he decided it was really, really boring. And everything smelled like dust - well, the room smelled like dust. He smelled like himself, thank God, and he was never, ever taking hot showers for granted again.

Ever.

Ignoring the task ahead of him, and the folded pairs of jeans (and one pair of dress slacks and one pair of khakis that has determined to never wear) on the bed, Kyle flopped down on the floor. Because he -could-. And also because he was bored.

His boredom was remedied, at least in brief, by a knock on his door. He perked. If he was really lucky, it would be that doctor who had done his checkup. He -liked- her. "It's open. Cause I can't figure out how to make it lock!" he called.

Nathan, outside, took a deep, slightly shaky breath, then opened the door. "Uhh... hey," he said, his voice a bit hoarse with weariness as he saw the kid - Kyle, he reminded himself - sprawled on the floor. He stayed right where he was in the doorway, so as not to crowd him. Given that he wasn't quite sure what Kyle's reaction would be.

Kyle frowned for a minute. He recognized that voice. Oh. That's right. But ... He scrunched up his face, thinking. "If scary guy's here, then he's not .. " He clapped a hand over his mouth. ~Shit. ~

Nathan bit his lip. Part of him wanted to apologize... part of him wanted to smile. It was a strange feeling. "Actually," he said, very lightly, still staying in the doorway, "you can call me Nathan. Or Nate. Or even 'Hey, you!' if you want."

Kyle very slowly uncovered his mouth. "I.." He started... "Am a giant -dork-." He looked around at the room, and the desk and its chair and the computer they said was -his- to use, and the mess on his bed. "Um. Nate. Okay. I can do that... " He shook his head, trying to remember... why did he think this guy was so frightening again?

Nathan came in, but just a step, leaning back against the wall beside the door and sliding down to sit on the floor. Putting himself on more of a level with Kyle, quite deliberately. "Good," he said with a faint smile. "Because 'hey, you' always sounds so confrontational." He studied the boy for a long moment, trying to assess what he was seeing. The fatigue and the stress of Foley's extraction was definitely getting to him, though, because he really wasn't getting a clear telepathic read. "How are you feeling?"

"Very, very confused." Kyle said, a little flatly. "One, trying to figure out why everyone here is so damn nice, and two - New York? I was in -Montana-! I've never left Montana and now I'm in New York?" He looked over his shoulder out the window. "And all I really remember is that you are apparently scary, and that Sam? Doesn't taste very good."

"I got told what happened, I just... " He shrugged. "It doesn't feel real."

Flat. Detached. It fit, for eight weeks into the conditioning. Nathan smiled, very tiredly. "It's like something out of a Tom Clancy novel, or so people keep telling me. Trust me, it doesn't feel particularly real even when you've been living it for twenty-five years like I have."

"Tom Clancy? " Kyle frowned. "Oh. My -dad- reads that. Hunt for Red October. Very cool movie." He sat up, leaning against his bedframe and fidgeted with his now-trimmed claws. And he really needed to find out who did that and thank them because he wasn't scatching up his shoulders and neck when he itched now. Unless he'd done it and just didn't remember. "You.. . were ... wait, are you with the people who had me in the annoying white room, or with these people, because now? So confused."

Nathan thought about his answer for a long moment. "Twenty-five years ago," he said slowly, "I was you. A kid - just about your age, actually - being held in one of those white cells." He smiled a bit bitterly. No one had come to rescue him, though. "I got away from them, a long time later. Now I try--well, my team was trying to get you out of there."

"They were doing that shit twenty five years ago?" Kyle said in disbelief. "And your team?" Eventually, he thought, they would stop him from asking so many questions. Hopefully not before someone explained just what the hell was going on though. Because he was still confused.

Nathan nodded. "I was one of the first," he explained, his voice low, his tone as calm and undemanding as he could make it. "And my team... friends, and people who feel the same way I do about the people who had you."

"Where do I sign up?" Then Kyle smacked himself on the side of the head for being an idiot, and rolled his eyes. "You know, I never said this much stupid shit before the annoying white room and the scary no-faces in my head. " And if he blamed the people who had it, maybe he'd have time to figure out how to engage his brain before his mouth turned itself on before he ended up with no friends. Again.

"I believe you," Nathan said quietly. "The things they did, while they were in your head... it's not surprising that you'd be having some trouble."

"Is this the part of the movie where you tell me about all those horrible things and then we go off to put people in jail?" Kyle asked, not -entirely- seriously. "Or is this the part where I have -- " he paused, made a face, and snarled. "Algebra on Monday and you get to put people in jail?"

Nathan laughed gently. "Probably the latter," he said, and then sighed. "Or not quite. The problem with putting these people in jail is that you have to find them, first."

"But definitly Algebra or whatever else I have to take." He really had no idea, but Algebra sounded as craptastic as it came. Since he hadn't managed to pass it the first time. "But if you do find them, then they get jail, or ... " a faint memory of Nate, and he was quite sure it -was- Nate and a lot of blood came to his thoughts. "Or doing whatever it was that makes you really goddamn scary? Because now? Not scary." Actually, Kyle though. Nate looked kinda ... tired. And old. And definitly -tired-.

Nathan gazed at him for another long moment. "If we find them," he said slowly, picking his words very carefully, "it depends on whether they've got more kids like you with them. If they do, that's the priority. Once the kids are safe--" No. Level tone, no change in his expression, because if there was one thing he knew with absolute certainty, it was that Kyle couldn't be allowed to know about the others from the Vermont safehouse. Not now. Very possibly not ever. "--then we can worry about what to do about the people behind it all."

"This. Sucks." Kyle growled. "I get two -fucking- months in a white padded cell, and they get to get off and shove more people in those cells?" He clentched his fists, and then unclentched them just as rapidly as he dug into his palms with his claws. "Fuck." he muttered. That had -hurt-. And then he slumped back against his bedframe and shut his eyes. "Sorry. About the swearing. "

"You don't know me yet," Nathan said, his voice wry but still gentle, "but you'll figure out really quickly that I have no problems with swearing." He leaned forward a little. "Did you cut your hands?" he asked very softly. Recognizing the flash of temper, all too well.

Kyle forced his hands open and looked at them, poking experimentally at the pinkish marks on his hands. "Don't think so. Someone trimmed these.. " He held up on hand, fingers up. "Guess while I was asleep, or something." Because they'd certainly been sharp before. "I dunno who did though, or else I'd've thanked them."

"Madelyn, maybe, or Moira." Nathan smiled. "You've met both of them by now, right?" He knew the answer to the question, but he wanted to see the boy's reaction anyway.

Kyle blinked. Oh -that- was what that was. "Dr. Madelyn was who let me out of the little hospital down there. And Dr. Moira... " He sniffed cautiously, and grinned. "Trick question, she's your wife or something, right? You smell a little like her."

Nathan smiled back a little more broadly. "Fiance, actually." The point about smelling Moira on him hit home, though, and Nathan nodded slowly, convinced he'd done the right thing by getting in touch with Anika now. Not just for Mick, but for Kyle as well. "I know you're probably still trying to cope with all the new people, on top of everything you've been through," Nathan said casually, "but someone should be here in a couple of days who... well, I think you'll really want to meet her. She's like us--or like me, rather, because she didn't get away from them for years. But like you, too... she's got a feral mutation, like yours."

Kyle made a slightly distressed face, and squirmed. "With the claws and fangs and more claws?" God, he couldn't decide if that sounded totally fucking scary, or the oh-my-god hottest thing he could think of. ~Settle down, dumbass~ He thought. "That'd be cool." He said, after firmly informing his libedo to leave him the hell alone, thanks.

"Anika's not got quite as much in the way of visible mutation as you do," Nathan said, trying not to smile at the thoughts that Kyle was projecting. Fuck, when he actually met Ani--well, maybe a small dose of raging hormones would do the boy good. "She's got the enhanced senses and agility, and she could probably pick up a small car if she got angry enough first."

Definitly the hottest thing ever. Kyle stifled a groan and tried desperatly to subtely adjust the way he was sitting. "I guess so about agility. I got a whole bunch more flexible once I stopped hurting like I'd been beaten with a baseball bat though. Before those assholes took me off to whereever that was, I actually made it to a rec period at the juvie center." He grinned, entirely pleased with himself. "One on one b-ball's a hell of a lot easier now. First time I ever even came close to winning."

"You and I should try sometime," Nathan said with a quick smile. "Basketball, I mean. See if you can beat this old man..."

"That'd be cool...." Kyle wasn't -entirely- sure why Nate was being so nice, but it wasn't like he was complaining. And besides, the guy had pretty much saved his ass from the no-face-people and the white cell and he thought, maybe it was a good idea he didn't know more, because he wasn't sure he wanted to know how Nate had turned all those people into ex-people.

Nathan sensed the direction Kyle's thoughts were going in and decided, all at once, to take a step he hadn't been planning to take in this first conversation. "Do you know where you want to put all this?" he asked, waving at the fruits of Kyle's shopping trip with Alison.

"Nope." Kyle shook his head. "I was thinking, 'the dresser', but I hadn't gotten past that." He frowned at the dress slacks. He was -so- never wearing those and looking like a total dork like that kid with the books in the kitchen the other day. "Or, you know, for some of them, the back of the dresser never to be seen again."

Nathan looked at Kyle thoughtfully, then nodded. "Don't be startled," he said quietly, then turned his attention to the clothes. Dresser drawers pulled themselves over and the clothes floated off the bed and into the drawers in a steady stream, some of them refolding themselves in mid-air to fit more efficiently into the drawers.

"Not startled." Kyle said, eeping. "Okay, that wins for coolest thing ever." Some of the folks who had introduced themselves came close. "Ever. Completely." Kyle, in short, was in awe.

"It's called telekinesis," Nathan said, once the clothes were all safely stowed in the drawers, which slid back closed again. "My mutant ability--or one of them, rather. I'm a telepath, too, which is how I knew where to look for you in the house on Wednesday night." More or less true, even if he'd homed in on the empath rather than Kyle.

Kyle didn't care what it was called, it was just -cool-. Though, it sounded a heck of a lot less stupid than "avatistic whatever the doctor had said." And he would have whistled in appriciation, but remembered whistling and fangs generally equaled his tongue being in pain in some manner. He'd tried, in the cell. More than once. "That has to make laundry a heck of a lot easier." He said, not sure what else do say. How do you tell a guy "Hey, you saved my life, thanks." .. Kyle winced. He hadn't said -that- outloud, had he?

"You're welcome," Nathan said steadily, getting up. "If you need anything before the next time I see you, Kyle, I live up on the third floor. Suite 316. You can come knock on my door anytime. Or just think my name really loudly and I'll hear you."

Wasn't there something about pink elephants, Kyle thought. Because now he was trying not to wonder how to think loudly, and how to get the mental image of thinking about shouting "Nate!" at the top of his lungs out of his head. "Thanks. Again. Um. " Kyle said, awkwardly.

"Kyle..." Nathan smiled, tiredly but more warmly than he thought he'd be capable of after the events of the week. "It's going to be okay. Maybe not right away, but it will be."

Kyle let out a kind-of-sigh. More like a little grunt. "I hope so, because right now it just all feels really fucked up, and if I get to the point where I'm missing algebra homework to make it normal again? I'm gonna hide under there.. " He pointed to the bed. "and not come out for a while."

"First piece of honest-to-God advice you get from me," Nathan said after a moment. "You've got to get used to the idea that normal isn't quite what it used to be."

"I'm starting to get that." I just.. I dunno, when does it stop feeling so .. " Kyle shrugged, ran a hand through his hair and frowned. "I really feel like I should want to go home or something, and I guess I kinda do. Kinda. Sometimes."

"Home will still be there," Nathan said quietly. "Here, though... it's a good place for you for a while at least, after what you've been through. And it isn't actually a bad place to be, either, Algebra or no Algebra. Lots of interesting people, too."

"I guess. " Kyle shrugged. "Its gonna take getting used to. Shit, I think half my high school were card-carrying FOH members, and we had all of -one- black guy in my entire grade, and now... hey, green and purple people. Its a lot to try to think is 'normal' ." He stretched out a leg and wiggled his toes. "Not even counting this. This? I still don't expect to see those when I look down."

Nathan leaned back against the wall, choosing his next words carefully. "I was living on the streets when my powers manifested," he said. "Woke up one morning and I could hear people thinking. It took a lot of getting used to. But you've got time." Now, he had time.

Kyle tried to smile and probably managed something like one. "I'm trying to look at the good side of this." He paused. "Like the basketball, and maaaan, I don't know who was making bread this morning but bread never, -ever- smelled that good." He'd laid around just smelling it for about fifteen minutes.

Nathan chuckled. "You need to meet Lorna," he said. "She's responsible for most of the really good smells around here."

Oh boy. More girls. Kyle gave himself a mental smack. "If they're anything like bread this morning, I'd love to. Because... wow. " He wasn't entirely sure the bread made up for what the -bathroom- smelled like, but it was close.