Hank and Nathan, Monday evening

[x-cable.livejournal.com]

Hank comes up to get the chocolate away from the crazed precogs and finds Angie asleep and Nathan still seeing things. Nathan is a little perplexed by it all, and eventually Askani steps in to separate him and Angie. Hank then steers Nathan in the direction of bed with a pithy warning or two about the evils of brownies.


Clearly, the chocolate had to be removed. Before someone got hysterical. (Bundle of joy? What bundle of joy? And why would Remy think he had one?) Hank didn't bother knocking, just leaned around the door and... oh dear. Their heads WERE glowing. That was never ever a good sign. "Nathan," he said reproachfully, "have you been meddling in things that no man... or teenage girl... ought to wot of?" He looked over at the couch, and shook his head. Marie-Ange was asleep, and still grinning. "And you got a student stoned. On chocolate. Tut tut."

Nathan, typing busily away at the laptop, looked up only briefly. "Oh, good. Hank. You're not a cat yet. Don't do that, okay? You don't like it." He turned his attention back to the keyboard, one hand darting out to take a still-warm brownie off the plate. They were much better than the batter. Really.

Hank confiscated the platter, holding it out of reach. "No more of these for you," he said sternly. "You've had quite enough, by the look of you. And really, I thought I was the only one who made a habit of getting the students high on sweets." He paused. "And what do you mean, a cat? Would this feature me somehow acquiring Catseye's power?"

"I..." Nathan stopped, blinking as the patterns in his mind spun and twisted, and projected themselves outwards, blue and gold dancing in the air around his head. He didn't notice Angie's, which were red and gold, and that was sort of odd, pulse brighter in response. "Not a real cat," he muttered. "Just cat-like. But don't do it anyway."

"I assure you, I have no intention of meddling with my mutation any more than I already have." Hank ate a brownie absently. "These are very good, by the way. Although you still can't have any more." He looked from one to the other. "And I think you need to come down to the medlab," he said, a little concerned. "Your heads are glowing. I've never yet known that to be a good sign."

"Blue!" chirped Bella from where she was curled up by Angie. "Blue, blue, blue..."

"Hello, pretty bird," Hank said, smiling at her. "Now, I'm sure you agree with me that Nathan's being silly just now." He reached out to smooth her chest-feathers gently. "You always know when he's being silly, don't you?"

"I just need to get the rest of this down," Nathan said, focusing on typing. "I don't know, but I think this might be..." He trailed off, blinking at another cascade of images. "Useful? Maybe... if it's real. Because it's both sides of it..."

"I suppose." Hank kept smoothing Bella's feathers. "Bundle of Joy, Nathan?" he asked, the tiniest bit wistfully. "Definitely not mine, then?"

"I don't..." Nathan winced, rubbing at his eyes. "Yours but not yours? Maybe? It's all so confused. Sometimes you're a cat, and sometimes there's a little blue girl, and sometimes you're black and kind of alarming-looking... with no shirt."

Hank blinked. "All... right. I'll try to avoid the cat thing... although I won't promise to start wearing a shirt. It makes my fur matted."

"The sheer... amount of it all..." Nathan trailed off again, shaking his head. "Centuries of it. Only it's hurting to try and focus on it. I'm glad Angie fell asleep."

"Try not to strain yourself," Hank said worriedly, taking a look at Nathan's pupils. A little wider than normal, perhaps, but not fixed or uneven, thank goodness. "And next time you two try... whatever it is you're trying... perhaps you could do it down in the medlab where I can keep an eye on you?"

"We didn't mean to do it, Hank. I was showing her a new meditative exercise, and it's like we got stuck..." Nathan laughed a bit unsteadily. "I don't know what to make of the euphoria. I don't really think it's all due to the brownies..."

"It depends on what you put IN the brownies," Hank muttered, sniffing one. Nope, no foreign substances. An awful lot of chocolate, though. "Exactly how many of these have you eaten? You do know that there's caffiene as well as sugar in chocolate, right?"

Nathan stopped, blinking. "Didn't Moira tell Angie that caffeine was good? For precogs, I mean... I remember something about that. I think."

"I have no idea. Quite possibly." Hank pulled a blanket over Marie-Ange, who burbled softly in her sleep. "I still have a lot of catching up to do."

"I think I left the oven on," Nathan said abruptly, getting up, wobbling a little. "Something's burning. Can you smell it?" He stopped, shaking his head again. "No," he said very firmly, "it's not the oven. Damn overlap. It's the White House."

"The... White House." Hank blinked. "Nathan, I think you should disconnect yourself from Marie-Ange now." He wandered over to check on the oven. "And it's turned off, by the way."

"I can't," Nathan muttered, shaking his head. "I don't know how we did it in the first place..."

#That,# came a Very Aggravated telepathic voice, #will be QUITE enough!# There was a brief flash in the air around Nathan, like a flutter of blazing wings, and then both the patterns around his head and Angie's were gone, winking out.

Nathan sat down hard. "Ow."

Hank hurried back to him, giving him an anxious look. "Are you all right? Headache? Vision going again?"

Nathan shook his head, trying to clear it. "Ow... a little, yeah." Askani was muttering darkly, and he grimaced, rubbing at the back of his neck. "All right. I think she was trying to do that for a while..."

"Mhm. I think you might want to stay off the stimulants if you try that again." Hank checked on Marie-Ange... no longer glowing, but still fast asleep. Good. "And I'm still taking the brownies away, even if they weren't wholly responsible."

Nathan sighed, feeling rather hard done-by. "Damn it," he said. "I invite her up here for some brownies and a nice chat about precognitive theory, and suddenly, boom."

"Nathan, if nothing went boom around here for forty-eight hours, you'd know we'd all been replaced by robot duplicates," Hank said, amused. "And believe me, this is a relatively minor boom. When I was in college, I learned a very important lesson about brownies, the hard way."

"Ow." Nathan winced, sinking his head into his hand. "I feel like I've got a hangover and it's coming on all at once."

"Some of that is probably the sugar high wearing off." Hank went to look in the fridge, found an apple, and tossed it to him. "Leveling out your blood sugar a little will help." He paused and grinned. "And just be thankful these were ordinary brownies. When I was in college... well, I *still* have no idea what happened that evening, but we all felt wretched the next day, and learned the valuable lesson never to let the chemist prepare the brownies."

Nathan managed to catch the apple. "I've had brownies like that," he said, thinking about the time Dom and David had gotten into the baking spirit and spiced things up a little. Where had they been that time... Moscow? "These were just supposed to be brownies with as much actual chocolate in them as possible."

"I think you may have hit chocolate critical-mass." Hank grinned. "I think I'll give some of these to Madelyn. I think her head might actually explode."

"Have to save some for Moira," Nathan insisted, trying to get up and falling back down again. "Ow. Definitely hungover."

"I'll put some on her desk for her," Hank said firmly. "And you, I think, should go and lie down. Marie-Ange has the right idea, I think... go sleep it off." He looked down at the girl. "Should I move her back to her own room, do you think?"

Bella snuggled in beside Angie and growled. "Sleeeeep. Mine."

"I think that's probably your answer," Nathan said, trying to get up again. He managed it this time, tottering in the direction of the bed. "Put those..." He waved a hand at the brownies. "Somewhere? Please? I think they're evil."

Hank put them down and caught Nathan's elbow, supporting him gently as he wobbled towards the bed. "I will. And I'll let Moira know that you're sleeping them off."

"She's napping on the couch in her office. I don't know how I managed not to wake her up." Nathan gave Hank a somewhat addled smile. "I'm very talented?"

"Very talented." Since Nathan was definitely erring on the side of completely out of it, Hank helped him onto the bed, pulling a blanket over him and removing his shoes. He'd had a lot of practice at this sort of thing. "And you should follow her good example and get some sleep."

Nathan muttered something unintelligible and was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

Hank shook his head and smiled a bit. That was... weirdly cute. He went to collect the dangerous brownies again, giving Bella a gentle pat as he passed. "You guard them while they sleep, okay?" he said softly. "Look after them."