ax_main | Tommy and Shen

It includes dunking, and some revelations.

There were few things for which Shen would drop her wings these days, but swimming? Definitely one of them. Wet feathers were the worst, and wings were aerodynamically great in the air, but more of a hindrance than anything else in the water. So she was wingless, in a green one-piece suit, as she did laps back and forth, trying to find some peace in the repetitive movements. Flying usually did that for her these days, allowed her to clear her head and find her balance, but too much had been going on lately and she was all out of whack. Might as well try the old-fashioned method that had worked for her before she got her wings.

Restless, bored and annoyed -- so, usual status-quo -- Tommy ditched the gym in a sweaty huff. Really, what was the point? Nothing motorized went fast enough to keep up with him as it was, and there was only so often a guy could pick up heavy things before it destroyed all of his brain cells from sheer tedium. Shower, then what? He'd checked in on Kitty already, Tamara was always busy these days, and now all of Billy's time was being taken up making schmoopy-faces at his roommate. He could go annoy Inu-Yasha. He hadn't done that (deliberately) in a while.

He heard something as he headed past the pool, and he stuck his head in to check. Someone was actually using it? That had to be a first. It took him a second to recognize the shape cutting through the water, but when he did, he headed in. Shen in a bathing suit? That could be worth sticking around for.

Tommy sped in and climbed the diving board ladder, sitting himself down on the end of it. He was settled and kicking his feet into the air about six feet above the water before the door had finished closing loudly behind him.

Shen switched out of her front crawl at the loud noise of the door, looking over towards the door - only to notice Tommy on the diving board. "I don't even wanna think of the splashes superspeed would make in a pool."

"Too bad I'm taking chem this year instead of physics," Tommy replied cheerfully. "I could make a project out of it. I didn't know anyone actually came in here." Ignoring the fact that they both were, her in her bathing suit and him in sweaty gym shorts and an old tank top.

"Yeah? I was pretty surprised I was alone in here," Shen admitted, switching to a languid backstroke to keep watching him without having to work to hover. "If it wasn't for the whole flying thing, I'd be here a lot."

Tommy swung his feet faster, curling his fingers around the edges of the diving board to steady himself. "What's flying like?" he asked with a certain amount of envy. "Not that I don't like my powers, but I wouldn't mind trading with one of the Beaubiers for a day or two. Just to try it out."

Shen tore his gaze away from his feet, and back up at him. "It's the best, really." She was just far enough away that switching to an easy breaststroke made sense, so she'd be coming back his way before she had to shout to make herself heard. "I don't even know if I have the words to describe it. What's running like?" Superspeed running, obviously.

He frowned. "It's like running. I don't feel any different, other than the wind. It's the rest of the world that stops." He'd tried to put it into words once before, during powers training, but he hadn't gotten it quite right then, either. "Like I'm freezing time, but I can move through it at normal speed. It just looks fast on the outside."

"Hmm." Shen took a few seconds to think it over. "Is it freeing at all? That's what flying feels like. Like freedom. Unadulterated freedom."

"I wouldn't call it that, exactly." Lonely. He ignored his inner voice, because it sucked. "But I suppose it's as good a word as any. I need to get Billy to zap me with his magic whatsis and give me flight powers. I wonder if he could do that without blowing me up."

"Please don't try that," Shen blurted out, and switched to her back so she could splash some water at him with a kick of her feet. "I like you unexploded."

Tommy flipped onto his back and laid down on the diving board, hanging his head upside down off the end to watch her go by. He swatted at her toes as she went by underneath, missing her by a good four feet. "Aw, thanks. I'm all a-flutter," he added, grinning. "It's nice to know I'd be missed."

"Hey," Shen asked him all too conversationally, as she switched around to head back his way, "you got your phone on you?" He was in his gym clothes, so maybe not. It wasn't as if she had any chance whatsoever to catch him off guard, what with his superspeed, but right then, she really wanted to grab him and pull him into the water. Just because.

He frowned at her, watching her come back along the pool lane, rolled over onto his chest and slid forward to hang his arms off the end of the board. "No, why? It's back in my room." What was with that topic change?

Shen was the first one surprised when she actually managed to grab his wrists, and pull hard enough to make him slide off the board. Superstrength was the best, although she was careful not to use too much either. She didn't want to accidentally dislocate his shoulders.

Yeah, he should have seen that one coming. He could have vanished in the time it took her to close her hands around his wrists, but what the hell. He'd just been grumbling about being bored and this was the opposite of boring. Tommy yelped as he got hauled forward and off surprisingly easily -- why hadn't he realized she was that strong? -- and was momentarily airborne.

One thing he did have plenty of time for was tucking his knees in and his head down before he hit the water. "Cannonball!" And the water swallowed him.

Shen couldn't help but laugh as he hit the water, which meant that she got a mouthful of it. She was still laughing - and spluttering - by the time he resurfaced. "You were asking for it," she told him, completely shameless, and still coughing a bit. Small price to pay for managing to actually pull that on him.

Tommy shook his head at her, spraying water everywhere. Wet white hair flopped in front of his eyes and he shoved his bangs back off his face while he tread water. "Shen, I'm shocked and appalled." He put on a decent approximation of an offended face. "What if I can't swim?"

"Obviously, I'd be saving you from drowning right this second," Shen replied, grinning and pushing her own hair out of her eyes. (She needed a haircut some time soon.) "Though you could probably run out of the water, couldn't you? Please don't try it, I'm not looking forward to a concussion." Which she figured she would get if he tried that and she got caught in the crossfire.

Tommy actually considered the question for a second, but didn't actually feel like trying it out. "Nah, I'm good," he replied, his smile wide. "I spent a lot of summers at the beach." And he dove under the surface. A few quick strokes took him down under Shen's feet. He tugged her down just hard enough for her head to go under before he let her go again, and resurfaced hopefully just out of arm's reach.

Shen had just enough good sense to see it coming - but not enough to prevent it. She took a breath right as she was tugged under, and resurfaced with minimal spluttering after Tommy let her go. She, very maturely, splashed some water at him immediately, laughing as she did so.

So maybe this was exactly what she'd needed, without realizing it.

Water got in his eyes and he blinked it out again, the chlorine stinging in a way that salt water didn't. "You wanna go?" he challenged her, his eyes alight and his voice rich with laughter. "Let's go." He swept his arm in front of him, lifting just the surface of the water in a wave of spray. A tiny nudge, one tenth of the poke he'd given the beer bottle at the party, and some of the water droplets... evaporated into a fine mist that mostly just made the rest of the splash kind of foggy. Oh well. Live and learn.

Shen blinked as the spray hit her, and then burst out laughing. What could she say? She'd expected something speedster-violent, like a mini-tsunami, and here she was, getting finely sprayed. "That was horrible!" she told him, laughing, and splashed at him again.

"Yeah, yeah," he grumbled good-naturedly. "Didn't I already say that I haven't taken physics yet?" Under the water, then, rather than the surface - He tried to envision a small pocket, under them at the bottom of the deep end. Tommy pushed - energy into the pocket, and himself back and away. That exploded, the water above it erupting into a water spout that came raining down all over Shen.

Shen laughed as it splashed back down all over her, then slicked her hair back all over again. "Way better!"

He took the praise as his due, inclining his head as regally as he could muster while treading water int he deep end of the pool in his gym clothes. "Thank you. Thank you very much." Tommy flipped and kicked off toward the side of the pool, only needing a couple of strong front crawl strokes to get there. He didn't get out, though, just peeled off the gross wet tank top and chucked it up onto the pool deck. If Shen didn't want to see his chest, she shouldn't have dropped him in the water.

Shen wasn't thinking much about his chest at this stage; with a soaked, clinging tank top or without was pretty much the same as far as she was concerned. What she was thinking about was that she had no idea whether she could spring her wings quickly enough, and then beat them in the water efficiently enough, to take him by surprise (again, somehow) and drag him back down under. So she settled down, switching back to a backstroke. "Seriously, I don't know why everyone isn't making the most of this place."

Tommy parked his elbows on the edge of the pool and let his feet drift up to the surface, floating in place. "Their loss. Some of it's for the best. Chuck Billy in here the way you did me and he'd electrify the place. Some powers are just not compatible with pools. Add a hot tub, mind you," he considered aloud, "and the place might see more action."

"We're teenagers, a swimming pool really should be enough," Shen replied, swimming back his way. Since she was still backstroking, it meant pushing her voice so he'd hear her, and being completely open to a further attack, but she was fine with that. These attacks were fun.

"You'd think." He shrugged, ignoring the fact that she probably wouldn't see the gesture. "There are a lot of 'shoulds' that don't go that way in a place like this. They should have the pool door locked without a lifeguard on duty," he added, grinning. "They should not be dumping teenagers into a holographic Mortal Kombat room to train battle skills. But hey -- we're all still alive so far." Kitty and Billy a hell of a lot closer to being the exceptions to that one than he liked to consider, so he stopped thinking about it.

"Different kinds of should's by far," Shen remarked, finally reaching his side, and leaning an elbow on the side of the pool, facing him. "Way different." It was impossible to stop thinking about how different exactly, and she didn't know how to even try, as the earlier light-headed mood seemed to evaporate.

Tommy shrugged again. "Once you go through the looking glass, does the degree really matter? You've just gotta roll with knowing nothing's ever going to be like you expect." She was within arm's reach now and 3-2-1- he went for it, popping up out of the water to dunk her head and shoulders under, careful not to let her bang her elbow on the way down.

That fucker! It didn't matter that Shen hadn't had time to take a breath in beforehand, she still reacted instinctively and wrapped her arms and legs around him to drag him under with her, dammit. Not that she was really irritated; she was loving the simpleness of this. It was just so easy! It was a nice change from everything.

He'd forgotten about the extra strength she was packing, and vanished under the water with her. There was a moment, his ears underwater and everything muffled and still, when it almost felt like he was using his powers. He hung there in the silence, the bubbles drifting up so slowly towards the light. Then it vanished and he got free from her hold, kicking up to break the surface again with a gasp for air.

Shen broke the surface a couple of seconds after him, and she sputtered out some water, laughing, before she accused him, "You asshole!" Still laughing, and ready to get a hold of him again if he was going to pull this off again.

Tommy didn't laugh much. He snickered, sure, and occasionally, very occasionally, he might chuckle a bit. But the moment had disarmed him so completely that when he laughed this time, breathless and wet, it sounded real -- and made him feel lighter. "Yeah, that's me," he flashed a grin at her, catching his breath. "Through and through."

Shen liked him a whole lot better for it. Real laughter was the best, okay. And it made her feel like she wasn't the only one in this moment, whatever that meant. "But you're my kind of asshole." She splashed a hand lazily in the water, not any kind of challenge this time, more like a punctuation.

He put a hand out to ward off the water, or at least to keep it out of his eyes. "Two compliments in ten minutes, I must have done something right." He arched an eyebrow. "That or you want something," he teased, pretty sure Shen wasn't the sort of person to try buttering him up. Not like that, anyway.

"I'd just ask," Shen pointed out, her smile easy, finally beginning to feel relaxed. "Nah, I just - I needed this, I think. Getting dunked. Whatever." She rolled her eyes at herself.

"Always happy to oblige." Treading water was easier than standing or sitting, the need to keep moving - or sink - more relaxing than trying to keep himself still long enough for conversation. "Something bugging you?" he asked after a beat, "or is it more a 'life-in-general' thing?"

I feel like a terrible person who can't hold on to anyone? Fortunately, there was more to her restlessness than that, and some of it was actually easy to address, with Tommy. "Kitty told me everything. About - everything."

He didn't miss a beat with his arms, but he did flip himself over backwards and do a lazy underwater somersault before resurfacing in the same spot. The obvious assumption was that she was talking about the Right's medical files, which - yeah, he'd pretty much expected that to get around eventually. Maybe not in full and gory detail, but eventually.

Kitty'd been crazy-careful about it though, and of all people on campus she was one of the ones least likely to gossip about heavy shit or get hacked... which might mean that Shen was talking about something else. "If this has something to do with her and Bobby's sex life, man, I'm out," Tommy joked easily, but his gaze on her was more controlled, careful. "There are some things a guy just doesn't need to know about his friends."

Shen rolled her eyes. "I mean the files Magneto gave her - and her recent stay in Limbo." Two very good reasons for Shen's mind to be all over the place.

Okay, so he'd been right the first time. Tommy considered it, and decided he didn't actually mind Shen knowing. Not like there was much he could do to change it -- either 'it' -- now anyway.

"Limbo's a shitshow," he agreed, nodding and his sharp smile gone. "I got some of the rundown from Billy." It hadn't come as much of a surprise, mind you... Yana's story combined with Billy and Kitty's personalities in general had probably made the entire thing a foregone conclusion. And he was the last person on the planet to have the right to bitch about someone else's impulsive decision-making.

It didn't mean he was happy about any of it. Or likely to let Billy off the hook for being a moron any time soon.

"The lab," he let that trail off some. "Different kind of shitshow, but yeah. At least the local one's just rubble now." It didn't stop them - wouldn't stop them at all - from setting up again elsewhere, and there was no way of knowing how many other facilities they still had running in other places... But he was supposed to be making Shen feel better, not getting them both more stressed out.

"Yeah, I'm really glad you blew that place up," Shen confirmed, with feeling. She reached back for the edge of the pool and pulled herself up to sit on it, feet still in the water. "But we've gotta shut them down for good."

He stayed in, the water rippling against his skin oddly soothing. "It's not gonna be that easy. As good as it felt to finally see that place blow, there were at least two more I know of running different projects at the same time. And those are just the ones where other survivors escaped to talk about it. It's going to take years to weed all those greasy bastards out of their ratholes." Not that he intended to let them go. Once he had more of a handle on his powers- yeah, that was one way to make his mark on the world.

Shen's heart missed a beat when she realized what Tommy was saying. Shit. He was the one, and she'd been talking about it like a total insensitive jackass, like she would to someone who hadn't been held in one of those places. What did she say now? Sorry, I didn't know it was you? She realized she'd been quiet for a little too long and winced. "Sorry, I - Kitty didn't tell me who... I wouldn't have brought it up like that."

And now she wanted to hug him, which, knowing Tommy, wouldn't exactly be welcome, which meant she wanted to hug him for her own sake rather than his. But since this wasn't about her, she wasn't going to even entertain the idea. She'd tensed up, though, fingers curled a little tightly over the edge of the pool, shoulders set.

Tommy swam the couple of strokes needed to get himself to the side of the pool and boosted himself out to sit beside her, pool water sheeting off him. "You said she showed you 'everything,' I figured that meant the medical reports as well. I haven't even read that shit. I probably won't." He glanced over her, at the set of her shoulders, the way she was all but white-knuckling the ledge. "Don't go all weird on me now," he said gently. She might anyway. Not much he could do about that, either.

The hug would have been for her; this was what he needed. For her not to go weird on him. She could do that. She nodded slightly, then breathed out, relaxing her frame as she did - and only just resisting the urge to grow her wings at the same time. "She just said there were mutants here who were in those files. She didn't say who. I didn't mean to trick you into - sorry."

He gave her a skeptical look, but at least she looked like she was unclenching. "You didn't trick me into anything. Everyone who was on the mission to the lab with me knows some of the story." He flipped his arms over, inner elbows exposed. A frown flitted over his face at the sight of his scars, and then it was gone. "The rest of the school probably thinks I was a junkie," he finished, as uncaring and light as he could make it sound. "If they think about me at all."

Shen had reached out before she'd thought any better, laying her fingertips on his forearm as she looked at the scars. She pulled her hand back after a beat, looking up at him. "Am I being weird if I say I wanna punch their faces in?" Because she really, really did, even more than before.

The gentle touch on his arm was a little weird - maybe just 'cause he wasn't used to it, at least not in more than an incidental kind of way. But he didn't flinch which was saying something. Pam had owned her scars. He should do the same. "Assuming you mean the Right, not our classmates," he joked, resting his arms on his knees and kicking his feet in the water, "go for it. There are any number of them I'd love to see on the wrong end of a fist."

Or an explosion. How fast do I have to make your cells accelerate before you explode, doc? When the crunch came down he hadn't done it. He'd just run, leaving them to move on and start again. There was no changing that, but there was making sure he didn't make the same mistakes again.

All of this anger was really, really not zen of her, but Shen couldn't bring herself to care. Tommy had scars. Physical ones, but also psychological ones, because it would be impossible not to have those. "We've gotta find a lead on those assholes." This was all so frustrating! And it had to be worse for him.

The vehemence of her reply startled him, but really it shouldn't have. For someone who didn't eat fluffy animals, she had a whole lot of what Frank would have called 'spit'n'vinegar' bottled up inside. Tommy flashed a grin, even though the topic was too serious for that. "Working on it. They're connected to those dopes from Central Park - the 'Friends of Humanity,' - and they're buying property everywhere, so that means paper trails. Kitty's got her fingers in all the electronics." He waggled his own fingers as punctuation.

"The Brotherhood's on it as well," he added after a beat to consider his options. "They've got a couple of the others over there. They weren't being held at the same place as me, but it was a similar deal. That one's gone too," he added with immense satisfaction. "And I don't know if the Arizona one's rubbled yet, but their research sure as hell is." If he believed Laura, which he did. Getting the address out of her to go check for himself was a harder sell.

Shen rubbed at the back of her neck, glaring moodily at the water. "Who knows how many mutants they might have right now? This is fucked up." She rarely swore, but not because she was all that prim and proper. When she cursed, she meant it. "What's the one in Arizona?"

"Cloning lab." He put a hand up before she could ask. "Not me and Billy, I promise; that's a whole different fucked-up thing. There's one survivor from there that I know of, and they're safe." He didn't really feel like blowing Laura's cover, even if she wasn't particularly closed-mouthed about her past. It was still her story to tell, not his. "So are the Brotherhood guys, for that matter. We've been keeping an eye out for each other. It's stupid, but it helps.

"As far as I can tell, they're setting up different facilities for different experiments. I was grabbed for power enhancement. Drug tests and 'compliance conditioning,' those massive morons." He laughed, a hard-edged sound. "Obviously thatworked super-well. The Brotherhood guys were similar -- DNA rescrambling, mostly. A whole lot of kids died there, so weird as it sounds, I was pretty lucky." He kicked at the water again, sending a spray across the room.

His kick into the water saved him from Shen reaching out to take his hand, reminding her that this was Tommy - and that he didn't want her to go all weird on him, right. "I can't even imagine," she said honestly. What else was there to say? They had to do something, and a lead could not come soon enough. "Thanks for telling me all this." He hadn't had to, even after their misunderstanding. "But, and this isn't me being weird, if you ever need to talk, whenever," even middle of the night whenever, "you know where to find me."

She was sure he had other people he would turn to first, but it mattered that he knew he had one more person in his corner, the way she saw it.

And that was a brush-off if he'd ever heard one. He'd started out trying to help by explaining, reassuring her that things were being dealt with, and tipped over into overshare land. He shook his head at her, a wry smile on his face. "This is me talking. This is as good as it gets, kid. If you have any more questions ask 'em now, 'cause this window's closing in, oh-" he looked at his bare wrist as though he were checking an imaginary watch. "Five seconds. Go."

"Tommy," Shen said, looking him straight in the eye. "If you think being experimented on by assholes means you get to call me kid, you've got another thing coming." Poking fun at herself, calling him in on that, and assuring him she wasn't freaking out all in one sweet package, check. She gave him a small smile, then shook her head. "I don't actually expect you to ever come talk to me. But on the off chance - my window's never closing. And I'm not gonna play twenty questions with you about your traumatic experience, seriously." She jostled him gently with her shoulder on that last word, friendly punctuation.

She was too careful, too detached, too fake-caring, and it was all too much like the speeches from the totally useless social workers or group sessions that he'd had to sit through a million times while his world burned down around him. He'd been too still for too long, and his options were either go bigger until he could get another honest reaction out of her, or bail out. Door number two it was. "Bzzzzzt, sorry," he shook his head, the tight smile never leaving his face. "Time's up." He pushed himself off the ledge and plummeted back down into the pool, toes down and his arms out wide. He sank down into the cool water, and let the surface close back up over his head.

That was about the reaction she'd expected from him, yeah. It still hurt a bit, but that was hurt born from being self-centered, so Shen wasn't going to focus on it. She wanted to give flying another try, but she wasn't sure it would work any better now than it had before, and she really didn't want to walk away from him right then.

There was only one thing for it, despite the weight pressing in on her heart, or maybe because of it.

She pushed up to her feet, backed up a couple of steps for momentum, then ran at the pool to jump in the air and curl up with a "Cannonball!" shout of her own.