Cluing The Family In
You miss Eddie pulling the symbiote back under his skin for the simple reason that he does it in that small window where Dave's slipping out the door; by the time you look back at him he's normal again, just a guy who needs to get dressed and maybe brush his hair crouched on the floor in front of you, head down and one hand absently combing through that messy hair. When you slide down off the chair to sit criss-cross-applesauce on the floor next to him, you see that he's got his eyes closed, with that telltale REM flicker that means he's gone deep in his own head, talking to his symbiote.
This time, you bite your tongue (not literally. Okay, maybe a little literally) and just wait for him to get done. It only takes a couple seconds this time, anyway. Barely enough time for you to get bored enough to even want to interrupt.
Then Eddie raises his head and blinks like he only kind of remembers where he is, focusing on you after maybe a second. "Shit."
"Shit?"
"We fucked that up. Like, we really fucked that up, Wade." The hand that's combing through Eddie's hair tightens down, tugging enough that he tips his head to that side a bit. Does he realize he's doing that? You doubt it. "Start to fucking finish, we're so sorry, that poor kid—"
"Eddie? Hello, earth to Eddie. Come in, Eddie. Or should that be come in, Venom? I'm thinking it's Venom. The whole we thing, that usually means you're not totally—"
"Earth to Wade, you're going to just keep talking unless we make you stop." He rolls his eyes and rolls back, just barely missing kicking you in the face as he rearranges from crouching to laying flat on his back on the floor. "I'm not totally sure I should make you stop."
"You need some background noise, huh?" Leaning over to touch him could totally get you clawed open, if his mind's still as welded to the symbiote's as it was a couple minutes ago. That goo knows exactly how much of a threat you can be to it and its host, and it reacts accordingly—as in, if you make a move toward Eddie when he's in a certain mindset, he literally can't help but knock you across the room. You know this, and you lean over and put one hand on his shoulder anyway.
Hey, like you told him: you're bulletproof and probably Venom-proof, by virtue of accelerated healing. He's not going to kill you. Probably. There's like a point zero zero zero one percent chance that his first automatic smack would do the job. You're really bad at math, but those sound like okay odds, right?
The point's moot, anyway. Eddie just huffs out a breath and closes his eyes, relaxing under your hand. "You shouldn't leave your kid out in the car alone."
"He's thirteen and he knows how to start the car, I think he's okay, Eddie." Wait, there was something in there you should contest. "Also he's not my kid."
"Really."
"Really." Eddie makes that fucking noncommittal but dubious sound that doesn't need words to be maddening, and you sit back from him and cross your arms. He's still got his eyes closed, but you bet he can feel the death glare you're treating him to right now. "He's not! I killed his brother. His dad. Whatever the fuck, I killed the guy and I'm taking him to his uncle."
"Where you'll just drop the kid on his doorstep and go home."
"...no."
Eddie opens one eye, giving you a loopy smile that suggests the symbiote's gotten concerned enough about the aftermath of a Dave-sparked panic attack to trip his endorphin switches. "He's your kid."
Can you really argue? No. No you cannot. "He's my kid."
"Go get your kid, you dumb fuck."
Again, can't really argue. You nod, give him one more reassuring pat on the center of his chest, and hop back up to your feet.
Dave has, in fact, started the car, so he's not sitting out here freezing to death. What he is doing is still concerning as fuck, though; there's not really any way that you can spin the way that he's sitting in the passenger seat and shaking like he's just about to hit hypothermia as anything other than a bad thing. The fact that he's staring at his (turned-off) phone just makes it worse.
"Kid?" You should really shut the door before you get any further. Fuck, that makes him flinch but not look up at you, at least not that you can tell behind his shades. "Hey. Dave. You okay, kiddo?"
From the way his teeth sink into his lower lip, you're going to guess that that was another stupid question. He still answers it, with a smaller tremor in his voice than you really expected.
"Great. I'm f-fucking great." The kid takes a fast, deep breath, crosses his arms carefully over his chest—oh, Neet's still in his coat, he's being gentle for her—and adds, "I think I'm fucking dying."
Shit? "Okay...can I get a little more info there, Dave."
"Can't breathe, can't think, my heartrate's over four hundred bpm—"
"Wait wait wait." There is absolutely no way that's right. "How exactly are you getting that number?"
Dave shrugs and hits the button to wake his phone up, tilting the screen so you can see that he's got it open to a health site, complete with a handy heart rate calculator. With a stopwatch that's almost certainly linked to a satellite or a server or something out of the probably-tiny range of Dave's timebending.
"Okay," you tell him, "you're not dying."
He cocks his head just enough to give you a dirty look over the top of his shades. "You know I can count, right? Just 'cause I'm fuckin' homeschooled doesn't make me an idiot."
"Oh, you can definitely count. The problem here is that there's more than one minute in a minute for you."
"What. What the actual fuck does that mean?"
"Remember why we came here in the first place?" Dave just looks blank at that question, so you keep rolling without giving him a space to try and answer. "The whole point of having the symbiote do a quick bond with you—which was a horrible idea actually, zero out of ten would not recommend for you again—the point was to let them absorb info about your powers—"
"Don't have any."
"Are we still on this? Really? After an actual alien popped into your head and definitely confirmed that you have a weak healing factor and some weird time-bending shit as a defense mechanism? Look, this explains why you and your shithead brother never realized he was a speedster; he went fast, you got scared and altered your passage through time without realizing it, everything cancelled itself out. Mostly."
"I don't have fucking time shit."
"Explain the numbers you got when you tried to check your heartrate then." You're being an ass. You know you're being an ass, but you seriously can't think of another way to get this through the kid's head. But you do make an effort to drop the flippancy for your next sentence, though. "It's not a bad thing, Dave."
"Yeah it is." He hunches down a bit more, then flinches and starts fumbling for the zipper as Neet lets out a muffled caw from somewhere in his coat. "I didn't ask for this shit, okay? Don't tell me it's not bad, it's fuckin' awful."
...he's not going to budge on this, is he. God, do you want to smack your own head against the steering wheel right now.
That would be a really stupid thing to do, though. You'll leave it as a possible option for later.
"Okay."
"Okay? Okay what?" Dave gives you a purely exasperated look, which is somewhat mitigated by the fact that Neet hops out of his unzipped coat and onto his lap.
"Okay, I'm not going to tell you that again."
"...damn, I can't believe I shut you up."
"Oh, you didn't." You put the car back in drive and very carefully pull back out onto the road. "Well, you did. But for maybe...twenty minutes. I figure I can find us somewhere to sit and eat and talk this over with the rest of your family by then, right?"
deadPool [DP] created the memo "What the fuck do you mean title?" !
deadPool addedturntechGodhead,technicolorGladiator,artificialIntellect, andtimaeusTestifiedto the memo!
TT: ...not sure what this is about, but you probably need Roxy and Rose here too. tipsyGnostalgic and tentacleTherapist.
AI: I got it.
artificialIntellectaddedtentacleTherapistandtipsyGnostalgicto the memo!
AI: Also.
artificialIntellectrenamed the memo "Something to do with Dave, probably" !
DP: (is he actually allowed to do that??)
TT: No.
TG: no
TG: lol nope
AI: By the rules of pesterchum programming? No. But we all just saw me do it.
DP: Good point!
deadPool renamed the memo "Yes, this is about Dave. Also you're a smartass." !
artificialIntellectrenamed the memo "I'm a smartass? Fuck you?" !
deadPool renamed the memo "Yeah, you're a smartass!" !
tipsyGnostalgicrenamed the memo "neither of you get to touch the fukcing title anymore" !
tipsyGnostalgiclocked the memo title!
DP: Ooh. Does that actually work?
TG: it does when i do it!!
TG: yo rox fist bump
TG: *hella fist bump* :)
TG: okay now that literally the only non gremlin child here shut the gremlins down
TG: is this like a "oh look something's fucked and we need to panic" memo or
TT: Shit. Hal?
artificialIntellectkickedtechnicolorGladiatorfrom the memo!
DP: Really? I didn't call in two favors to get D Strider's contact info and explain everything to him just so you could kick him off my memo. Rude.
TT: You didn't what?
deadPool addedtechnicolorGladiatorto the memo!
TG: hal for the love of fuck stop kicking me out of convos
TG: im aware you think i dont know about you n dirk hiring a hitman to kill your uncle but i totally do at this point okay
TG: me and rosie helped out with the hiring part too btw
TG: great. just great.
TG: your non gremlin status is revoked and youre all grounded once i figure out what the fuck that means for yall
AI: That's fair.
TT: I'll take the penalty, so long as Dave gets here.
TG: yeah me too and rose will too once she gets back online
TG: whys rose offline
TG: shes fuckin with one of moms girlfriends
TG: give her twenty minutes and shell be satisfied enough with her ""psychological warfare"" to check her messages
TG: ...oh my god please stop doing this
TG: gotta talk to rosie not me!
TG: hey didnt this memo have like a purpose tho
TG: like before we kinda derailed it lol
DP: Oh yeah. That.
TG: wade i dunno what youre typing out that takes that long but youre fucking killing me
TG: he just had me tested
: TT: Tested. Tested for what?
TG: uh
TG: if im a mutant
AI: Didn't we already agree that you were? You kind of have to be, if suppression collars affect you.
TG: wait fuck hold the fucking train
TG: thats how you found out? bro slapped a fucking collar on you at some point?
TG: ...kind of
TG: im gonna fucking strangle him with my bare hands
DP: I think I beat you to it, but it's the thought that counts.
DP: We did just have Dave tested for the specific way that his mutation manifests.
TT: There isn't a test for that.
DP: Technically you're right, but "I called in a favor and had a friend's alien husband crawl into Dave's brain and take a look at how he works" is a lot harder to say than "we had him tested."
TG: holy shit, u know an ALIEN?
TG: dave dave dave
TG: tell me about the alien
TG: you know the kind of slime that you can kind of hold but if you stop squishing it it just kind of drips through your fingers
TG: imagine that shit but black and also really fucking fast
TG: oh and it can get in your fucking brain
TG: O_o
TG: cool!
TG: no
DP: Roxy, right? Yeah, stop typing. He's going to have another panic attack if we keep talking about the alien, and Waffle House is /not/ the place for that, thanks.
DP: Hey, fuck? I want my italics back.
AI: Oh my god.
AI: Done.
DP: Thank you.
DP: Anyway, the entire point of this little chat was to share the results of the "test."
DP: A, Dave has a healing factor, which brings the total number of mutants I know who have that specific power up to like, twenty. Like seriously, that's the most common one. It must raise the probability of not just dying or something.
DP: B, he warps time when he's scared! Or maybe he just changes his own passage through time. There's definitely a time factor in there. Idk, I'm not a theoretical physicist. You can go find one and ask them later.
DP: C, we're never putting Dave in a position to get his mind read again.
TG: that sounds worrying
TG: its not
DP: Eh, it kind of is, but we can get into that later.
DP: (He just threw part of a pancake at me.)
TG: why did u order pancakes
TG: the whole point of waffle house is to eat waffles and also to summon demons in the restroom
DP: I thought that was Denny's.
AI: Oh, it's both. Waffle House is more likely to contain preexisting portals, whereas Denny's requires that you open your own portal, but is more likely to produce tractable hellspawn and extradimensional entities.
TG: hal i love you but what the FUCK are you talking about
turntechGodheadleft the memo!
DP: Oop, I think he's done for now.
DP: Anyway, we should be there within a week. Probably. It depends on whether I get lost purposefully, or on accident.
DP: Later!
deadPool left the memo!