Electrostimulation Therapy and Both The Lalondes
Okay, so you were wrong. Getting hugged by Dirk doesn't feel exactly like being hugged by Hal; god, you can't believe you've been away from him for long enough that you forgot how cautious he is with every-fucking-thing, how hugging him feels a hell of a lot like the process of holding a crow that barely knows you well enough to trust you. It's been so fucking long.
Pulling away from him to make sure Wade's gonna come back from his lil' talk with D is—it's almost scary. What if you turn back to Dirk and he just doesn't want to touch you anymore? Like on some level that's a stupid thought, he's not gonna withdraw just because you were the one to jerk back from him first, but what if he does, what if he thinks you're pulling away because you blame him or you want to punish him or—
"Dave," Dirk says, one hand coming down on your shoulder to gently pull you around as Wade slips out of the room, letting you see the rare unguarded happiness on his face. "Fuck, Dave."
"Yeah, man, me—" Oh god you sound like a fucking idiot, but the look on Dirk's face is highkey fucking you up. He probably doesn't hug you again just to shut you up, but it works that way anyway. You're actually kind of relieved that you can escape having to come up with words by just letting your cousin wrap his arms around you and hang on tight.
(And yeah, you're hugging him back. Of fucking course you are.)
"Hal." You almost pull back again when Dirk says that, just 'cause it feels like you're gonna be in the way if he's talking to his brother, but he doesn't loosen up even a lil' bit. "You're going to text Roxy to bring Rose over, right?"
"Shit, I should probably do that. Our room?"
"Yeah, you go get them. We might as well not freak Dave out any more than he already is—"
"Hey." Okay, now you pull back. Enough to give Dirk a kind of blurry glare, anyway. "I'm right here, dumbass."
And he just gives you one of those uncertain grins back, like you're not halfheartedly trying to murder him with your eyes right now. "We're trying to spring shit on you slowly, bro."
"You didn't do so well finding out Dirk and I were mutants, after all." Hal points this out the same way that you've heard Bro's hookups point out shit like there's a knife stuck in the door, babe. Or maybe your blender has a puppet in it, hot stuff. Like, something resembling that level of mildly incredulity that the person he's addressing hasn't noticed the shit he's pointing out.
Of course, the only fucking reason you haven't noticed some shit is because A) you just got here and B) no one tells you anything. Probably because they know you'll somehow end up letting Bro know.
You would end up letting him know.
Not will. Would.
Great, now you're feeling hella displaced and it's definitely not because you're manipulating your passage through time. To distract yourself from the mental whiplash shit, you shake your head and ask, "Are you saying Rose and Roxy're fuckin' mutants too?"
"Roxy is," Hal agrees.
Dirk picks up from there. "Rose isn't. Neither is Reaux, or D—everyone else in our family shows signs of mutation."
"Sixty-three percent positive still suggests that the gene was present in our grandparents rather than random mutation or each of us being individually exposed to a mutagenic factor, though." Hal grins, glancing up from his phone for a second. "I mean, your grandparents. I think D's technically my grandpa, depending on your definition of that shit."
Dirk groans and completely lets go of you so he can facepalm, shoving his shades up enough that he doesn't end up poking himself with one of the corners. "Hal. No."
"No? As in, don't call you father?"
"No."
"How about spawner? Dad? Daddy?"
"I'm going to end you, Hal."
"I'd like to see you try, pussy." You almost flinch when Dirk responds to that taunt by following through on his threat with a lunge; Hal just sidesteps and switches his phone from one hand to the other so he can give Dirk a shove that adds to his momentum and nearly sends him into the wall. His tone doesn't change a bit with his next sentence. "Come on, Dave. You might as well see what she can do now instead of later."
There's two beds in the room Dirk and Hal share; the first thing Dirk does is shove one of them (his, you're guessing; the blanket's orange, and that always was his favorite color) up next to the other one (black sheets with green numbers covering like the whole area; you didn't know they made Matrix bedding.) He spends a couple seconds scooting the two beds back and forth by inches, apparently checking their position against a sparkly duct tape X on the ceiling, then looks over at Hal for confirmation.
Hal, who's put his shades back on and is staring intensely at that X, gives him a thumb's-up. At that, Dirk retreats to where you're standing, halfway through the doorway.
"You okay?" he asks under his breath, keeping his eyes on Hal instead of you.
Wow, that's a question with a messy fucking answer. "I don't have a goddamn clue what the fuck's going on, Dirk."
"Do you want me to—"
"No."
"Do you want Hal to—"
"Dude, the problem is with the fact that if you tell me shit, I have to process it. Not with who's doing the talking. And no offense, but there's no fucking way you're gonna be able to talk fast enough to clear up all the shit I have a problem wi—holy fuck!"
Dirk inhales sharply as you grab his arm; you're probably hurting him at least a lil' bit. You can't help it, though—in the center of the glittery X on the ceiling, a dot the size of a quarter and the color of a bruise just faded into existence, seeming to hesitate for a moment before rapidly getting both bigger and darker. Two seconds—probably less if you looked at a watch, honestly, but it seems like two seconds to you—and it's deeply, impossibly black, perfectly circular and maybe four feet across. There's no trace of the duct tape. Or of the ceiling. The circle might as well be a hole into the fucking void.
"Dave," Dirk murmurs, and reaches up to gingerly try to pry your fingers off his bicep. "It's Roxy. Just Roxy. It's okay. It's okay, Dave. Breathe."
Oh, shit. Breathing. You're not doing that right now, huh.
You force the hand that's clamped down around Dirk's arm to relax. You take a deep breath, hold it for a couple heartbeats, and then let it out so you can get in another. You don't take your eyes off that fucking hole.
Which is good, because that means you see your cousin fall through it. Roxy plummets the six feet or so straight down, lands on the bed and gets her feet under her on the first bounce. Somehow, she doesn't get tangled up in the long pink scarf she's got wrapped around her neck, and neither do the wireless cat-ear headphones on her head come off during this process. In all fairness, though, the headphones have been pretty heavily modified; you kind of think that the extra bits are supposed to look like the power scouter from one of the animes Bro left playing sometimes, except, like...pink. And attached to fucking cat-ear headphones.
You're really stuck on those headphones and the transparent pink plastic panel covering one of Roxy's eyes. Like, what the fuck? What the fuck? Did she fall out of a goddamn anime? Did you fall into a goddamn anime? What the fuck?
Roxy looks up into the utter darkness that she's just fallen out of, and tosses what looks like a completely normal tennis ball up into it. While you're still trying to figure out what the purpose of that lil' action was, she jumps down off the bed and basically tackles you.
Like, really. It knocks you two steps back, almost takes you down; she's a head taller than you, maybe half again your size if you go by mass. At least her hug doesn't pin your arms, because you would lose your shit if that happened.
"Davey!"
"Holy shit, Rox—" You mean to ask her when the fuck she learned how to do that, but she forestalls your question by tightening her grip around you and lifting you right the fuck off the ground, swinging you around twice and dragging you back into Dirk and Hal's room.
The second that she lets you have your feet back on the ground, the other Lalonde tackles you. This time you don't actually stagger, since Roxy hasn't actually let go. Rox's support is the only thing that keeps you on your feet, though; Rose somehow manages to have just as much kinetic energy despite being a hell of a lot closer to your size than Rox's.
She also manages to apply all of it squarely on your right side. Your right arm, specifically, or at least it feels like that. Something about the angle that Rose's body pins that arm at strains the bone or muscle or nerves or whatever the fuck is messed up. Whatever it is, it hurts to the point where you lose your memory of how to move or talk or breathe.
"Give him some space," Hal snaps. As soon as the words are out of his mouth both of the girls take a step back, and you figure out that removing the pressure actually makes things worse. The only reason you don't just end up on the floor is that the wall is close enough to just step over to and lean on. "Dave? What happened?"
"Nothing." Okay, so you do actually remember how to talk. Dammit, trying to hold your bad arm steady with your good hand only works if you're not shaking. You're really not doing great with playing it cool right now.
"David, I know what 'nothing' looks like, and this really isn't it." Hal touches your shoulder (the left one, thank god) then, when you don't even twitch away from him, gets ahold of your good arm and guides you over to sit down on the bed. His bed. "Physical or mental?"
"I—I don't know what the fuck you're talking about." Right, because playing dumb is always a good idea.
He stays patient, though. "What kind of distress you're in. 'Both' is an acceptable answer. You look like it's both."
In that case, yes, you're in physical and mental fucking distress right now. Are you going to admit that? Hell fucking no. "I twisted my arm, is all, it's something I—"
Don't you fucking dare lie to them. Rose is just gonna correct you anyway, if you finish that sentence.
"...it's something Bro did. A while ago." You take a shaky breath and force yourself to let go of your bad arm, drop your left hand back into your lap, stretch your right arm out and make a fist. Oh, god, that hurts. "It's fine, see? No big deal—"
Neet chooses this moment to flap down from wherever the fuck she was using as a perch and land on the far superior perch that you're obviously offering just for her—as in, your bad arm. All the willpower in the world can't keep you from gasping and flinching down away from her.
"Yeah, no. Scoot, Hal." Dirk shoves his brother to one side when that command doesn't get the desired effect, plopping down next to you and frowning as he coaxes Neet off your lap and onto the bed. You're pretty sure that the only reason that works is because she's interested in the neon-green-on-black pattern. "Can I roll up your sleeve?"
"Fuck no." That comes out before you can apply a filter; you can see Rose opening her mouth out of the corner of her eye, and you immediately focus all your powers of the evil eye on her.
You don't have any powers. That has absolutely no effect. "Dave, I promise you that what Dirk has in mind will be beneficial to—"
"Who the fuck says beneficial?" Dirk's hands on your wrist are making you hella nervous; maybe you can channel that into irritation at Rose? "Are we saying I'm scared? Is that what we're doing here? Assuming I'm worried about whatever the fuck y'all have in mind for me? Like, I know it's not gonna be worse than an alien in my head, right? Because I'm gonna be honest here, if y'all have one of those too I swear to fuck I'm gone. Wade can get us both tickets to like, Disneyland or some shit, maybe a fuckin' museum, I don't fucking know. Something nice and fun and totally not about fucking mutants and aliens and goddamn Spider-Man—"
"You're kinda stuck on him, huh?"
"Yes, Roxy, I'm stuck on the one fucking mutant that Bro didn't hate being the one I tried to coldcock, thanks! Dirk, what the fuck are you doing?"
"Things." He doesn't even glance up at you; at some point during your monologue, he pushed your sleeve up to just last your elbow, put one hand on your wrist and one on your bicep, and apparently focused completely on the pale scarred skin between them.
"No, seriously, what are you doing?" You kind of want to pull away from the gently tingling feeling in that whole arm, but...it doesn't feel bad, exactly. Kind of like that sweet spot right before your entire limb dissolves into pins and needles; you're scared that if you move it'll either do that or start hurting like before. "Is this a mutant thing?"
"That tone suggests you'd have a problem with it if it were," Rose notes, climbing up on the bed and crawling past Dirk to flop down on the other side of you, wrinkling her nose as Neet takes that as an invitation to hop up onto her leg. "Hello, Nietzsche."
"She doesn't know that's her name, Rose."
"She hears the part of it that sounds like her name, doesn't she? My sweet, smart little death omen. Dave needs another one of your siblings, doesn't he? Two for joy?"
"I think that's magpies," Hal points out, reaching over to scratch under Neet's chin. "Let's get him six more, for luck."
"It's supposed to be seven swans, not crows." Roxy rolls her eyes and pulls her headphones off, jamming them down onto Hal's head over his shades; when he goes to take them off she picks up where he left off on the crow-petting front. Neet seems okay with this. "Why not get him thirteen? Like, for the irony?"
"First of all, we only need to get him twelve; he already has one—"
"Hal, you're waaaay too into details."
"Which is why my projects don't explode."
"That was one time! Two times."
"Five times."
"Whatever! Close enough!"
They're so fucking comfortable with each other. There's no malice in any of the sniping going on; like, you know what it sounds like when there's any chance whatsoever of an argument going bad, and there's just not here. It's good, it's awesome, it's making you dizzy for reasons that you can't really define right now.
"You okay?" Dirk murmurs as you close your eyes. "Your pulse is going crazy."
Oh, yeah, he's still got one hand loosely around your wrist. Makes sense he'd notice. "Yeah. 'm fine."
"You sure?"
Say it. Explain. "Time shit." Okay, that's a start.
And he seems content with that explanation, for the moment. He doesn't ask you any more questions, at least; just goes silent and lets you zone out to the sound of Roxy and Hal playfully bickering with each other.