2019-07-25 - Beware Punks Armed With Glimmer and Beer Bottles

<<She'll be fine,>> August assures Itzhak. He's a bit dizzy and disoriented, now that there's injuries (his own and someone else's), and oh boy is his head going to hurt until Finch can get a look at it.

He hadn't, of course, meant to set the young woman's equilibrium off quite that hard, but it makes for a nice distraction. The guys have been rocked off their power highs. And maybe he can make a point to her, now.

He reaches to the chaos he created and calms it, setting it back to rights. Otoconia re-oriented, ear fluid normalized. Mostly; she could stand to be dizzy and nauseated, considering. He has to fight his own nausea in the process--no mean feat--but manages amidst the guys all panicking.

<<They don't need to know that.>> Itzhak's mental voice is amped, ringing like a bell in August's head.

The guy he punched is watching the girl flail around in horror, his hand cupped over his gushing nose. One of the other guys takes off in a run towards the bonfire, there to surely panic and alarm everyone and bring them rushing over to do nobody any good whatsoever. The third guy, proving he has a candlewatt or two to rub together, fumbles out his phone and dials 911.

As August repairs some of the damage he did, the girl sags, finally stilling. She's a mess of tears and snot and vomit, gasping in great big breaths, clinging to the ground.

Even Itzhak's menace is muted by the immediate disaster, and he realizes it. He grabs August by the arm. "C'mon."

<<There. Fixed it some.>> Who knows if the girl noticed it was August that did that; it won't matter that there's no way to tell. Not to a bunch of drunk kids partying around a bonfire.

He grunts and, with Itzhak's help, gets moving without falling over. He wills his nausea to settle down, manages to get it under control. <<Might have to use a lighter hand next time.>> The thought's vague and indistinct. Trust August to feel bad about flicking someone in the ear for nailing him in the head with a beer bottle.

Itzhak, with his newly opened channels of power, feels like he could hold up August forever, or if not forever, a darn long time. It's not a muscular strength (though he's pretty good at that), it's the glimmer singing in his bones. The sensation of him as bioluminescent waves crashing on tall, jagged rocks is hard to shake.

<<Don't worry about it.>> Itzhak gets an arm around August's waist and guides him away from the mess. <<You did good. It didn't hurt her, just make her fuckin' miserable.>>

<<Thanks. Just, not used to using it for...that.>> Injuring people. Breaking things, or even plants, sure. People, no. August isn't sure how he feels about it, given his aversion to injuries in general. He gets lost in that thought process, finds himself examining Itzhak's glimmer again. <<Boy you really did get reoriented in there, didn't you.>> He realizes the second he's thought that he's doing something he normally doesn't do, which is sense someone's glimmer without asking about it. He stops, focuses on walking instead.

<<This is kind of nice though. The not needing to actually talk.>> Not the least because it means they can move more quietly. <<My car or yours.>>

<<It is nice. Lets me kinda feel you, too.>> Itzhak kythes that thoughtlessly, not realizing all the potential meaning there. He laughs wryly, out loud but soft, as they make their way off the beach. Behind them there's rapidly growing chaos as the twenty or so other young people flood over to make everything worse. Meanwhile, two survivors slip away into the night. Well, limp away. Who's counting? <<Yours has more room.>>

August isn't exactly oblivious to the obvious reads there, but he's hurting a bit too much to be concerned by them. Anyways, no need to ruin potential benefits by cracking jokes about them.

<<Okay but you're driving. I'd better not hear you grinding my damned clutch.>> Without thinking about it he steers Itzhak that way using the link, gentle nudges and the occasional hazy image of the black Outback GT sitting under a parking lot light, alone in one corner. Is he a little more careful this late at night since their run in with manbearpig? ...maybe. (Yes.)

<<Roen, the day I grind a clutch is the day they put me in the ground.>> Itzhak's kythe flares on 'Roen', really less a name and more the feeling he assigns to August. Something spicy like pine sap, low and mournful like a cello, the flickers of fireflies. A feeling like thickly-glazed pottery, smooth and cool as ice cream under fingertips.

He gets them both to the Outback as an ambulance races wailing into the parking lot. Itzhak flinches, hand going to his ear. The kythe twinges with aural overload.

August is puzzling over the way his name comes across when the ambulance shows up. Between its siren and Itzhak's reaction, his left ear registers its own complaint and sets to ringing loudly. He takes a deep, shuddering breath, sets a hand on Itzhak's arm.

<<It's fine. It's fine. Don't listen to it. Listen to something else. Hear that? The ocean.>> The ocean they'd been listening to right before getting jumped.

No, another ocean. Cape Perpetua, high, craggy rocks and forest headland sticking out into the Pacific. Hemlock, fir, and spruce a dark, heady green carpet. You could put a hand on one of those trees and look back ages, he suspects, if you were strong enough. The Silent Sentinel is there, ageless giant, maybe 500 years old at the high end. The water roaring in and out of Thor's Well, draining into who knew where--the Veil, maybe. What a thought...what did Thor's Well look like where Itzhak had been?

<<Just listen to the ocean,>> he repeats. He hadn't been down there in a while. He needed to go again. But first, they needed to get in his car, and leave.

Itzhak grits his teeth. The kythe mostly statics out, except for a little aperture through which August can keep feeding those memories. He gets them both in the car as fire engines and police cars show up. Itzhak ferociously ignores them, all the shrieking sirens and flashing lights, so he can start the Subaru and get them out of there.

He does not send the car into a burnout, only from an effort of will.

August just keeps up along those lines until they're well out of the parking lot. He was six when Mt. St. Helens erupted. He remembers the ash, falling for days and days, the sky looking like the end of the world had come. Sometimes he thinks he felt it. He couldn't have, of course. How could that be. But he'll wake up from a dream with his heart hammering and the sight of the mountain collapsing and then exploding into rock and mud and steam and ash burned into the back of his mind. He wasn't there, and his powers aren't so strong as to feel a volcano erupt from fifty miles away. Are they?

Three decades later he was assigned to it as a ranger. It was surreal, the remaining devastation alongside new life punching through the remains of what had been. The new dome forming in the grave of the old volcano. She wasn't asleep, she was just taking her rest. She'd be back for more, in her own time.

It becomes like a litany, these memories, until they're out on the empty roads. No one's going to pay attention to a ten year old Outback with a bog standard Washington license plate, even a fancier one like August's. <<How you doing,>> he sends after his ear's done with its business.

Itzhak doesn't go too far. With August's soothing kythe in his head, he follows his nose, turning off on a little-used side road that dips into the trees. He pulls over and parks. The advantages of being in a town this small is that there aren't houses everywhere. They may as well be alone in the forest.

He kills the engine. Without that sound, the silence of the forested night closes in. Silent at first--then after a moment, peepers and crickets and the entire night chorus start back up.

"Sorry," he rasps, shoving the heels of his hands against his eyes.

August reaches into the glove box, pulls out a handful of Kleenex to hold against the nice, long split in his head. "It's fine," he says, breathless against the pain in his head. Can't let himself doze off now, not like this. God what a night it's going to keep being. What a week. He sighs.

"Thanks. For getting us out of there." He sighs, leans back in the seat. "We can go back and get your car in a bit. Just need to let the craziness settle down." He winces, checks the Kleenex. "Feel like driving us to the shop? At least there's drinks and somewhere quiet to sit."

Itzhak answers in a long low growl, both through his throat and through the kythe. He sucks in a breath and holds it. "...Hope nobody puts a rock through my windshield," he says after a moment, his voice hoarse.

He drops his hands, looks at August. Reaches out, slow, to touch his head. "Maybe I can..."

Nothing happens.

"Maybe I can't."

"I can take care of it if they do," August says. Well, as long as they don't remove the whole windshield, but he doesn't say that. No need to will more bad shit into happening. The world has it on lockdown right now.

He pauses, waiting, nods when nothing happens. "It's okay. I don't think you're that strong with it yet." He considers Itzhak a second. "We could try something, though. There's a way people like Finch and I can make someone stronger. Might try that. If you want." He sighs, thinking over how things have been going. Maybe it's not a good idea, of course. He briefly wonders if they reverse is possible.

"You kiddin'?" There go the eyebrows hoisting upwards. "You can make me stronger?" He considers. "Part of me wants to say maybe we shouldn't fuck with it. The rest of me says, put the pedal to the metal and see where she bottoms out." A flicker of a grin crosses Itzhak's narrow face. "C'mon, do me, chief."

"I think we're going to have to, me and Finch, if we want to get that Murray House cleaned up. We need to get Minerva and Mickey strong enough to do that thing they wanted to try. This is probably the best way. And in order for Finch and I to do it reliably, we need to try on other people first." Like Ignacio and Itzhak. People they know well enough to gauge if it's worked.

August laughs at Itzhak's decision, winces as it makes his head throb. "Okay. Here goes nothing." He rests a hand on Itzhak's arm, stares at a spot on the dashboard. That same sensation from earlier in the day steals over Itzhak, like the places where his power dwells are being checked. If August is being honest with himself, it probably does feel like being felt up, but there is no way he's asking Finch to try on him so he can find out. (Once she and Ignacio are done being mad about him knowing they slept together he can tell her to try with Ignacio.)

This time, though, when August comes to one of Itzhak's lesser powers, he gives it a nice solid push. To Itzhak, it's a little like taking a drink from a particularly strong cup of coffee. Among other things.

This ability of Itzhak's is like a sapling just setting root on the shore of his main power. Like a year-old volunteer maple, maybe. He probably thinks of it in some car analogy, but that's what it feels like to August.

His arm is all tendon and hard, lean muscle and the sparkplug tattoo on his upper arm, with the two wrenches crossed below it like a mechanic's Jolly Roger. Itzhak twitches a little, then breathes out slow. There's a real sensation that he's letting August in--which has unavoidable parallels with certain other lettings-in. Even the way he's breathing is like he's focusing on relaxing for a very specific penetration.

The nodes of his power light up one by one as August investigates them. Growing tension makes Itzhak shift around in the driver's seat. He drapes his other hand over August's where it rests on his arm. ('DOWN' on that one.) He lets his head loll against the headrest.

Then, August pushes. Itzhak gasps. Within, that sapling grows 5 or so years. Without, Itzhak looks at August, dazed, licking his bottom lip. His fingers tighten on August's, and...the tinnitus recedes. The nausea settles, the vertigo lightens. The cut in his scalp scabs over.

"That's, uh." Itzhak swallows, dry. "A helluva thing."

August isn't particularly surprised at what the entire process feels like. Well, he'd been expecting this. It was why he wanted to try things out with the three of them first, to see if they could sort a way for it to be a little less intimate. But at least it's Itzhak he's confirming this with, and not Finch (talk about awkward on so many levels) or Ignacio (awkward doesn't begin to cover it).

He's distracted from the everything as the pain recedes, and sighs heavily with relief. The injuries heal up enough that he won't need to spend the entire damned night awake and bleeding. It'll be less work for Finch to finish up in the morning. "Thanks," he says. It takes him a second to realize Itzhak's holding his hand.

This is awkward in a very different way, considering he has another date with Eleanor. Still, he gives Itzhak's hand a squeeze. "You okay?" he asks, unable to keep the amusement out of his voice.

Itzhak blushes. He grunts, and looks away, ears bright red. "Yeah. Except now you know how hard up I am." He snorts in reluctant laughter and unwinds his hand from August's. "Sorry, buddy. Wouldn't want that to get awkward or anything. Okay, to the shop."

Before he turns the engine over, though, he slides August a sidelong admiring look. "You must have to fend 'em off with a stick."

August snorts, laughs. "Look, don't think you're the only guy feeling that way." On the other hand, his isolation's self-inflicted. Or, had been, except then someone asked him out and he said yes. "But also I'm kind of in the middle of something, so." He shrugs. It's almost an apology.

He smiles in response to that look, more than a little smug. "I have no idea what you mean, I'm just an old, glorified landscaper who lives in the woods," he says, faux innocent in the extreme.