InsaneJournal

Who: Adam and Noelle
What: Crazy powers leading to car trouble
Where: Town
When: Afternoon
Rating: Medium

He knew it had been a mistake to go home that afternoon when his parents had phoned and asked him to drop by, feeling the way he did that morning. Restless, restrained; his sensory input had intensified, as if some powersurge had occurred in the very flow of his body. His hands almost vibrated from the nerve-endings kicking each other over again and again, tingling the way hands tingled when they started to stir from sleep.

He'd wanted to give his mother the benefit of the doubt that she'd be tolerable under these circumstances, because they had reached a relatively peaceful place with each other now he was older. But once he'd arrived there, it hadn't prevented her from bringing up the subject of his ability. The one subject that he had grown to hate talking about with his parents because of the memory of pressure it invoked in him, the feelings of isolation it had once blighted him with, the utter lack of control he'd had over himself as a child. He didn't know why she'd picked today, of all days, to sit down on the chairs outside to talk to him about it. To ask how he was managing it. To tap into that hard-to-reach anger trigger inside him. Already tense, that small moment of anger had tipped something inside him, like a lit match had been dropped onto a fuse. Unable to contain himself, he'd unleashed the energy which hadn't found release all day until then, and left a good portion of the front porch in rubble and crumbling dust.

He'd quickly left before he did anything else, not certain he could stop himself from doing much worse.

He tore his car away from the house, stabbed a finger at the radio button to fill his head with the familiar noise of his favorite station, and headed for home. He just needed to get back to his apartment, back to the place where he could properly relax, then he'd be all right. Then he'd be fine. In a moment of unconstrained frustration, he thumped the steering wheel with his palms. Shit. He thought he'd been doing so much better lately. He'd thought that the countless hours of practicing self-control with Gabby had actually been working, had actually been helping.

Maybe he was going about this all wrong. Maybe using his ability was making it worse. Making it stronger. These thoughts turned over in his mind as he drove through the outside of town. He saw a car up ahead driving toward him on the other side of the road, a monumental nova of movement and energy, feeling so heavy, so bright, so tangible. Before he could stop it, so full of awareness, his consciousness wrapped into it and anchored hard, catapulting the mass of metal and glass and molecules across the center line and toward his own car.

Holy fuc-

Adam sharply slammed into a swerve, and the other vehicle clipped the side of him as it rolled past, rocking his Ford before he managed to steady it and pull over to the side of the road.

He could feel himself forcing the other vehicle that violently collided with another one which had been driving behind him. He heard the machine's cry - the ear-rattling smash of metal against metal. A third car that had been driving behind the rolled one screeched its brakes, the high-pitched screams of squealing tires filling the air, but not in time to stop from colliding into the other two now crumpled together. Then, delicately in its wake, the tinkling echo of broken headlights.

In the dreadful silence that followed, Adam had plastered one hand over his face so that his palm was partially cupping his mouth, and his neck could have been on ball-bearings the way he was craning back over his shoulder. His conscience hit him, then, and although he was sitting still he felt as if he had just ran at full tilt into an invisible wall. He felt half-suffocated, paralyzed at what he'd just done, as if he was finally having some sort of body failure.

Fumbling at the handle, it took him three goes before he realized the door wasn't going to open. He hauled himself out the window instead, and once he'd set his feet onto the ground, he staggered and nearly fell. Assess the situation or phone for help first - he was saved from this decision by the fact that his body made it for him, his hand reaching for his phone. He dialed for an ambulance while he bolted down the street to the collision like there was no tomorrow. Who knew if there would be. It was all going to hell. Adam just prayed he hadn't killed anyone in the process.

Knowing that the emergency services were on the way, he darted around the scene. The people in the third car were shaken, but unhurt, and he told them to get to a safe distance. As for the other two, Oh, Christ- He managed to help the badly injured married couple out, but as for the man in the first car, Adam was sure he'd broken a lot of body parts in a lot of different places. Moving him wasn't an option.

He couldn't do anything more but wait for the ambulance, and when several of them arrived, he let the medics take over. When the police joined them - other officers he knew - he passed several murmurs of "Yeah, I'm fine," at one point being offered a blanket which he declined.

Despite being told to let them deal with taking names for statements, he was still obligated to stay there, so he sat down on a bench where a few people had gathered, and watched the scene as the medics did their work, feeling numb. As the minutes passed, the fury of his heartbeat slowed, but all it did was widen the mindspace in his head that was becoming very, very aware of what had just happened.