g h o s t (testytesty) wrote in instithreads, @ 2016-02-29 12:28:00 |
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Tessa had worked her ass off to get into this place. It had been a pain in the ass, and she’d even had to dig up her real identity, instead of going with one of the many aliases she tended to give. But this place had to go and be all legitimate. Dicks. But she’d gone through the trouble because it was where they’d dropped off Quinn, and where he went, so went her nation. When she was finally in the doors, had been handed they key to her dorm, and let loose, her very first order of business was to find Quinn. She’d neglected to tell him that she was following his ass like a deranged stalker. It wasn’t by design, it was because she tended to forget that shit when it came to him. She assumed he would assume that she’d find a way to be around. Boundaries - they were something that happened to other people when it came to the two of them, something she proved by waltzing into his dorm room unannounced. So, maybe she’d had to pick the lock - whatever she was pretty good at that. She stood over him as he slept, and she crossed her arms, smirking to herself. She almost hated to wake him up. Almost. Instead, she whipped out her butterfly knife, and was on him in a second, straddling his back and sticking the blade to the back of his neck, leaning far down to growl in his ear. “One false move, and you’re just gonna be a pretty head on a stick, Divine.” The Institute sounded like a really, really bad idea, but the asshole that had reported him had really had it out for him. Quinn was still sort of pissed off about it, too, because he hadn’t actually broken into the man’s house and he had been with Tessa at that time. Physically, anyway. He wasn’t going to forget that face or that name anytime soon, but making his move right then would just bring unnecessary heat down around his ears. So he was going to lay low and wait it out. He was good at waiting. Life would be so much better with a Fast Forward button. That, and a Ctrl-Z. Quinn couldn’t remember the last time he had had a fixed address but at least he’d managed to keep several of his hideouts a secret. The place itself was weird, and Quinn was starting to have flashbacks of the orphanage. He probably should have acted on the paranoia that aroused, because if he had, he wouldn’t be in the position he was right then. “I told you not to call me that, Testy,” Quinn’s voice came out muffled and groggy. He had always been a heavy sleeper, despite all his efforts to sleep more lightly. If he needed to be alert, he just didn’t sleep. It was a strange sort of logic, but very little of Quinn’s life could be based on it. He remained on his stomach, under the sheets. He took her threat seriously because there really was a knife at his throat. He could feel it every time he swallowed. The fog of sleep cleared a little more and Quinn startled, because what was Tessa doing in the Institute? “Why the hell are you here? And get off me!” She rolled her eyes and snorted, pushing herself up to a sitting position, gazing down at him. She gestured at him with the blade. “What the hell kind of a greeting is that?” she snapped, though her tone held the undercurrent of amusement, not actual irritation. Nevermind she'd greeted him with a knife. That was hardly the point. “Don't pretend you aren't glad I'm here, Quinn. Soon as the blood flow redirects from the little brain to the big one, you're going to be fucking ecstatic that I'm here.” She didn't get off of him. “Now let's try this again, shall we? 'Tessa! You're here! Fucking awesome! How I've missed you and was terribly concerned about when we'd see each other next!'” she coached. “You can do it, boyo. Then I'll think about getting off of you.” Not that he couldn't just roll and knock her off of him. In fact, she half expected him to do just that, and was braced for it just in case. It wouldn't be the first time one of them got dumped on the floor like that. He was glad to see her. He was very happy to know that she was still around. He would hug her and kiss her and call her stupid names. Maybe. Maybe not. But Quinn rarely ever did what he really wanted to do where Tessa was concerned and he just heaved a world-weary sigh, his face thudding on the pillow again. “Can I please go back to sleep now, Princess? Just… five more minutes? Then maybe my brain will be able to come up with something pretty just for you.” It was highly doubtful any of that made it through as anything but unintelligible mumbling. Quinn went limp under her. Maybe he could actually sleep with her sitting on his back. He’d managed with the night terrors and the sleepwalking when he was a kid, hadn’t he? Her weight seemed to sink in more and more with every new breath he took, and when he couldn’t take it anymore, he turned over and wrestled Tessa on the narrow bed. It was a miracle neither of them had slammed into the wall or fallen off the bed. The sheets were tangled around them and Quinn had her pinned, though he did end up with a face full of hair and sheets. At some point, he had started laughing and couldn’t seem to stop. Tessa swatted the back of his shoulder for the 'princess' nickname. It was half a front, though. He did it to annoy her, just like she'd called him Divine to annoy him. But sometimes? She didn't actually mind all that much. Sometimes, it was almost cute. It just didn't fit in with her world view, period, so she rejected it out of hand, of course. Her head had tilted to the side when she felt him relax beneath her, and she was about to poke him in the back to see if he actually had fallen back to sleep when all of a sudden he was turning the tables on her. Tessa burst out laughing too, a rich little giggle that was a sound that not that many people in the world got to hear. He got to, though, because he just had that level of trust earned. She fought against him, but just enough to make it fun, she didn't actually want to win. Instead, she wound up grinning, gazing up at him. She leaned up as much as she could, rubbing the end of her nose against his just a tiny bit. “Missed you,” she told him, everything about her ringing with mischief and affection all rolled into one. Quinn had a very long list of nicknames all for Tessa. Some of them were ones he regularly tossed at her just to annoy her, especially the saccharine, gag-worthy ones just to poke fun at how they sometimes pretended they were a couple when it got them out of a bad situation. Some of them were names Quinn had never actually told Tessa, but he had been secretly using in his head all these years. She had been a constant and steady presence in his life for quite some time now and Quinn wouldn’t have had it any other way. And all that shone through at times. Right in that moment, he let his happiness show, and the sound of her laughter just made his smile broaden into a boyish grin that he really didn’t sport all that often. He played along, batting her hand away when she raised it to smack him, shifting around so he didn’t get kneed in delicate places, and he knew exactly how to settle on top of her without crushing her. It was familiar and as easy as breathing. “I was wondering when you’d turn up and you never disappoint.” He squirmed and then ended up on his side next to her. He tugged at her earlobe playfully, just generally being irritating. “Was it easy to break in or did you just walk in? I swear, people here are so weird.” She realized she felt better. Just being there with him had her feeling less tense, and she hadn't even really realized that she'd been tense in the first place. She'd acknowledged that she felt irritated as shit, because this whole circumstance was bullshit in her opinion, but she hadn't understood that she'd actually been upset about it. Upset enough to be tense, anyway, but it was easing out of her frame fast. And she would sooner bite the end of her tongue off than tell him that, so she just ignore the hell out of it, which was how Tessa dealt with a lot of things in life. When he shifted to her side, she did too, scooting up on the bed a little, so she could put one arm around his shoulder. She flicked his hand when he tugged at her ear, though she didn't do it hard. Then she forcibly pushed his head down onto her stomach. Then she dove both sets of fingers into his thick curly hair to play with it, because she always liked that. He did too, she figured, even if they hadn't ever discussed it, and likely never would. “Of course I don't disappoint. I'm the perfect stalker,” she told him. “And no, dickbrain, I registered. I actually enrolled, or whatever. And you owe me one hell of an apology for that shit, because I knew I didn't have an ID that would hold up that long so I had to use my real one.” Then she paused. “...unless you mean this room, in which case I picked the lock.” Quinn grumbled when Tessa pushed him around but he made no attempt to resist. Besides, he had a very nice view with his head pillowed on her stomach and looking up at her face. He untangled the sheets from his arm and his torso to reveal the colourful tattoos standing out starkly on his pale skin. He sighed and relaxed into the fingers kneading against his scalp. He hadn’t been entirely joking earlier about wanting to go back to sleep, but he would valiantly stay awake just for her. It would just be more of an effort with her playing with his hair - it never failed to soothe him. The last decade or so had been peppered with countless nights like that, when he had woken up from some horrific nightmare. It had been the only thing that that had calmed him down enough to enable him to sleep again. She was more fun in the flesh than in her crazy acid trip dreams, anyway. “I need to get around to getting that restraining order.” Quinn scoffed a little at his own words. The need to talk about boundaries had come and gone years and years ago. Talking about it now just seemed redundant, when his brain automatically cleared a Tessa-shaped space in every place he settled in for any amount of time. Quinn frowned up at Tessa, “Why the fuck would you do that? Jesus. Now you’re stuck here in this crazy house, too? You bloody idiot!” Disquiet bubbled up in his stomach, but he curbed the urge to spring to his feet and usher her out of the Institute. She had already checked herself in. He just hoped that the place wasn’t as bad as he assumed he was - he wasn’t a pessimist, he was a realist. The idea of a place that collected people with freakish abilities could not lead anywhere good. “I was just going to lay low here until the fuckhead who reported me forgot about me. If this blows up in our faces, I will be so pissed off at you, Testy.” She smirked when he mentioned the restraining order. “Best of luck with that,” she said. “Just don't come crying to me when you realize that your life is completely devoid of awesomeness without me within fifty feet,” she teased. She knew he didn't mean it. Just like she knew if she'd been carted off somewhere, he'd have tracked her down too. When he yelled at her for it, she rolled her eyes. “Shut the fuck up,” she said. “What the hell else was I supposed to do?” she posed. “Hang around the outskirts of Stepford Manor here? I mean, don't get me wrong, sneaking around is always fun, and pretty hot, but who knows how long you'll be here. But I didn't really feel like turning tricks to stay in the area. It was more practical to just join, since I actually do have something going on,” she made a vague gesture toward her temple, indicating her remote viewing deal. Which was apparently what it was called, which she hadn't known before. “If it blows up in our faces, you can take a fucking number on who gets to be pissed first,” she told him. All the while, she continued to play with his hair, gently getting knots out of it as she did so. Tessa’s comment earned an exaggerated grimace from Quinn. “No one would take me seriously after violating my own restraining order.” He would have pulled strings to hunt her down if she did disappear. If she wanted him out of her life, she would have to tell him to his face. Anything less and Quinn would assume that something bad had happened and it was his turn to go save her sorry hide. He turned onto his side and draped his arm over her side, shooting her a glare. Even the fingers in his hair couldn’t wipe it off his face. “I’m calling it right now. They want freaks like us all in one place for a reason and I don’t buy this research and training spiel.” Was it better than Tessa having to turn tricks? Maybe. Quinn wasn’t sure yet. He was curious about what they thought Tessa could do, though. They ran with a little group filled with people who could do unnatural things but they had never really tried to research it beyond some half-assed online thing. “So what do they think you can do? Mine has a fancy schmancy name.” “Don't look at me like that,” Tessa snapped at him. She also rolled her eyes when he started in about the place essentially being evil. “Obviously,” she said. She wasn't bluffing on that part either, her mind was just as bent toward paranoia at times as the people she kept company with, so it had definitely occurred to her that people gathering psychics and training them to get better could possibly not be on the up and up. “We'll just have to have a contingency plan for if the shit hits the fan while we're still here,” she told him. “And work out safe words,” she added. They'd done it before. Worked out words or phrases that they could slip into conversation in front of other people that really meant 'shit is not fine, time to bail'. She didn't spell that out, though, knowing he'd know what she was getting at. “Maybe they want to keep us all for some big score,” she said. “And mine's called 'remote viewing', which sounds like the lamest mutant power imaginable. What do they call yours?” she asked, curious. A healthy dose of paranoia and an extremely low opinion of basic human nature were all that kept them safe at times. It was no wonder that Quinn was liable to look at things in the most pessimistic light and he knew it wasn’t much different for Tessa. It wasn’t different for any of the people they hung out with. “We’re their little lab rats and we all know what happens to those sorry little critters.” “If it comes to that, our first priority is getting out, of course.” They would have to look out for each other and make sure that neither got left behind. This was not familiar territory without throwing in the craziness of everyone essentially being mutants. “I don’t want to get involved in any Weapon X shit and you aren’t either.” They would have to work out safe words, even though Quinn was sure that he could read her eyes and the quirk of her lips perfectly by now. He reached up and curled a hand over her wrist, the one with the tattoo that was a companion to his own. He didn’t even need to look to see where it was anymore. His thumb traced over it briefly, like caressing a touchstone, and then he dropped his arm again. “It’s exactly what it says on the tin,” Quinn snickered. Tessa’s ability did have the worst name of the ones he had heard so far. He made a derisive sound, “Eh. Mine is astral-projection, I don’t remember the definition, but I like to think that I’m just sleepwalking in a way I can control.” She was quiet, contemplative, as he spoke, and she thought things over. It wasn't something she did often, since her entire personality could be described accurately with the words 'knee jerk'. She was reactionary by nature. But she was really thinking about things here, so she fell into an uncharacteristic silence. Her fingers still drifted through his hair as she did so with her free hand, not having resisted when he was tracing over her tattoo. “What if they make us more powerful?” she asked, voice oddly distant as her mind chugged over it all. “I mean, I know we'd rather jump off a building than be used by anyone like that, but what if there is better...I don't know. Control? Anything?” Her mind then drifted elsewhere. “What if they work out a way to shut it down?” she posed. “I don't know. I don't trust this place as far as I can throw it, but we're here. So I guess the real question becomes – how much do we cooperate?” Her eyes cleared and she found his again. “Do we roll with this as long as we can, see what we can do, push our limits, and bail when we smell smoke?” Then she smiled. “Astral projection? Sounds new-agey. Like you need to start hanging out with a bunch of crystals 'n shit.” On one hand, Quinn really didn’t trust what they were selling at the Institute. On the other hand, it was in his nature to get the most out of every situation and to take advantage where he could. Who knew when they would ever get this sort of chance again. “If they can even do what they claim to. It’s regular rules, then. Learn as much as we can and try not to get too entrenched here. Keep our eyes peeled for anything fishy.” He watched her: the way her eyes changed, the way her voice got all distant and her mouth quirked up in concentration. He couldn’t get enough. He looked away. “At least we know we have each other’s back. Maybe it’ll be enough for us to keep our questionable sanity,” he smirked. It did sound New Age-y. His nose wrinkled as if he’d smelled something bad. “Of course. I’ll get out my Tarot deck and a crystal ball, too. No need to get the incense since you’ve got an endless stock of it, right?” He narrowed his eyes and scrutinised Tessa’s face, “I can see it now. You’ll be all dressed up as a fortune teller and tell middle-aged women how their spouses are cheating on them right then, paint them a pretty picture of the broad. Hey, maybe that’s really what the Institute wants.” Tessa nodded to his assessment of business as usual. That sounded like the way to go, at least until they had a better idea of how everything operated. Until then, they'd work it out. And yes, they had each other's backs, so she didn't have concerns there. They had trust. A lot of trust, and it was one of the few things she didn't question, or get anxious over. She snorted a laugh when he talked about crystal balls, then the rest of it had her laughing again, practically curling around him as she did so. “God! Could you imagine that? Because I shockingly can. That's it. That's our new life goal. Set up some fortune teller place, and just go to town. Leave our card all around town... we'll call it 'Leaves and Lies', and our specialty can be telling people the 'ugly' truth, instead of those fluffy fortune places that only tell people good shit. You know we'd make a mint. People always want bad news.” Trustworthy people were hard to come by. Instead of waiting all his life for people like that, Quinn kept people at arm’s length until he was sure it was worth his time to take a chance of them, and then he would see if it was true. He and Tessa were so close now that he couldn’t remember a time where he didn’t trust her to have his back and she had never given him any cause to doubt her loyalty. Sometimes, it was all that kept him sane as he floated on the day to day grind. The grumpy look he habitually wore on his face dissolved into amused laughter and he ended up with his arms around her middle, half-curled on his side from how hard she was shaking from laughter. “I’ll start writing our scripts, get ready a list of shit we can tell customers.” Quinn was very good at making up stories and he refined them as people reacted to them. Half of them had some kernel of truth buried in them, even if it might not necessarily have happened to him, but the other half of them were bits of hearsay and urban legends cobbled together, dressed up with a healthy dose of dark imagination. When the laughter passed, his cheeks hurt. It wasn’t that Quinn didn’t laugh much, but he certainly didn’t lapse into a laughing fit like that. His eyes were still shining with mirth as he chucked Tessa under the chin annoyingly, “I’m glad you popped up to be the title act of our little freak show.” What would he do without her? Tessa laughed with him, glad that things felt better now. Like she knew what to do with herself, even if she didn't quite know what that was. It was possibly more that she felt like she had the peace of mind to figure out what the next step was, instead of throwing her full concentration into 'Find Quinn, Get Into The Institute With Him'. Now that she was there, she could relax, and whatever happened, happened. “You do that. Make sure to add in affairs with gorgeous, black haired beauties,” she said, making a point to thread her fingers through his hair again. “Torrid affairs that leave people breathless if confused. Shit like that.” She gave a pleasant sigh, tapping her finger to the end of his nose. It was great to see him so happy. “Me too,” she said. “The world is right again. Now let's figure out a way to tip it off it's axis again, in our favor,” she teased, giving a wicked grin. Quinn scrunched his nose up at her. “Nah, I think affairs with fiery redheads who don’t know when to shut up are a lot more exciting. It would be the perfect combination of adventure and spice.” His hand shot out and pinched at her nose just to annoy her. Tessa’s wicked grin was a twin to the one Quinn was wearing. His eyes narrowed as he thought about all the things they could get up to in a house full of people with volatile gifts. What could that get them? It merited some thought. They were stuck here for a while, anyway, so they might as well make the best of the time. “No other way to wait out this little stint in the nuthouse.” |