Who: Diego & Shane Where: Seaview When: After meeting Mal
After meeting with Mal, Shane stopped by the library to see if he could catch Neil Wainscott for a little chat. The man was easy to find as the library wasn't terribly big and the staff there was helpful but he wasn't easy to talk to at all. He didn't recognize Shane right away but once he realized who he was he kind of slumped into some sort of a dejected state with a lot of sighing, pursing of his lips and worried glances as if he thought Shane might set the library on fire. Jane hadn't been exaggerating about him being uptight, Shane thought he probably needed to get laid to dislodge whatever stick was stuck up his ass. It was amusing for a little while and then Neil flounced off because he needed to work and Shane was taking up too much of his time.
His next stop was Seaview. He would have preferred to find Diego somewhere public but this was the only information he had on him. Seaview really was a miserable little place, especially compared to the gigantic house he himself was renting, just a bunch of mobile homes and shitty yards though he supposed some of them could be described as charming where people actually put in the effort. He found Diego's address and wondered if he'd be meeting the adopted daughter today. He was very curious about her, her gift seemed so strange and fascinating, how could he not be? He parked out front, wondered idly if anyone was even home since there was no car out front, but knocked anyway. Not everyone had a car or two to their name and he cringed a little at how easily he could have ended up in a place like this, or worse. Probably worse.
Diego had gotten used to having Haisley around, so when she went out to spend the day with friends and Oliver was working at the same time, he got a little lonely. It was amazing how quickly one could get used to company. Diego would’ve thought he would never be lonely again, considering how he’d spent the first part of his life -- and a lot of the years after, really, moving so often was isolating. In any case, he always found ways to spend his alone time. He wanted to work on a garden in the tiny yard eventually, but today was just about reading. He was sprawled on the living room floor, holding a book hands-free above his face when a knock came at the door. It startled him enough that the book dropped, but he caught it with his mind and set it aside. Diego got up and went to the door, smoothing his hands over his unruly wavy hair before he opened it. He hadn’t really expected anyone, but definitely not a total stranger, and Diego quirked a brow at the handsome man on their stoop. “Hello,” he said, a question in the word.
Jane had not shown Diego's face to Shane during her little dreamtimes introductions so this could be anyone for all he knew but something about him definitely fit the 'gay dad' vibe he was looking for, something tangibly sweet and his expression was refreshingly open somehow, at least after dealing with Mal and Neil. "I'm looking for Diego," he told him, well aware this could be the other gay dad whose name was slipping his mind. He felt like he stuck out like a sore thumb in this place - a rich dick in the wrong neighborhood - and if this was a place in the city he'd definitely worry about coming out to find his rental sports car vandalized but small towns were probably - hopefully - kinder.
Ordinarily, a stranger turning up at the door knowing his name would spark up rampant paranoia in Diego, and he would start lying through his teeth. Then he and Oliver would likely be packing and running the first chance they got, but ... that part of their lives was over now. Diego hoped so, anyway. He glanced over the younger, handsome man, his power tingling in the back of his mind, at the ready to defend him if he needed it. He could blow the guy off of the porch or root him to the spot or crush him to the ground, but hopefully he wouldn’t have to do that. “And you are?” Diego asked evenly. Jane had said another AIR victim was coming, someone else who had been in this facility with them, and he was wondering now if this was that guy.
"I'm Shane Warren," Shane replied and he couldn't really blame the guy for being cagey; he himself wouldn't be loving it if he was in his shoes, having a random stranger knocking on his door. "I'm Jane's friend," he added, pretty sure that told this guy all he needed to know and then they could get past this paranoid part because he was pretty sure this was in fact Diego. "I would've called first but I didn't have your number. Plus I'm not great at phones in general, face to face is always nicer, right?" He grinned, keeping his distance and idly looking around the small house's porch.
It was entirely possible that it was a lie and this guy was an AIR agent sent to fetch him or kill him ... but Diego doubted it. He was alone, for one, and name-dropping Jane was enough to make Diego smile. “Always nicer,” he agreed, opening the door wider. He gestured for Shane to come in, finally noting that the car in the driveway looked expensive. Once the door was shut again, he smiled brighter at the other man. “I’m Diego, like you already figured out,” he said, automatically moving toward the kitchen. Learning social niceties had taken him a while, but now he operated under the assumption that every guest was thirsty. “Glad you made it here. Do you want a drink? We have some beer ...”
"I'd love a beer," Shane said empathically. Apparently meeting dry people was thirsty work and Mal and Neil had both been a lot less friendly than Diego seemed to be so this was refreshing. "So it's you and your partner and your adopted daughter, right?" he asked as he looked around the quaint little home. It wasn't bad, it was just small but it was pretty cozy. Shane supposed it was easier to forget they were living in a crappy neighborhood if the inside of the house was nice enough and they'd done a good job of making it comfortable. He still knew he'd go a little stir crazy living in a cramped space like this, he needed to be able to roam, even inside.
Diego fished a couple of beer cans out of the fridge and offered one to Shane. It wasn’t the most expensive stuff at the market, but it wasn’t the ‘American piss beer’ as Oliver liked to call it. He cracked his own open and took a sip, nodding a bit to Shane’s question. “Me and Oliver and Haisley, yeah,” he answered, gesturing for Shane to sit at the kitchen table while he went to do the same. This felt like it would be a kitchen table conversation for some reason. “She’s like us,” Diego continued. “She’s from somewhere more out west, she wasn’t even sure where. You’re ah ... you do fire, right? That’s what Jane said.”
"Yeah," Shane said and tried to recall what Jane had told him. "Said you were both from somewhere out west, the girl was maybe from Michigan. She didn't tell me what you can do." He hadn't thought to ask either for some reason that now struck him as odd. Maybe he'd been too focused on the gay dads part of it. There was a lot of common ground there, AIR and their sexuality, though Shane had a hard time imagining ever adopting someone. Maybe it was different because Haisley was a teenager who'd been through the same shit. He'd be the worst kind of 'dad' but he wouldn't have kicked her out if he'd been the one to find her. It would probably have been hilarious and disastrous on all accounts so this was definitely a preferable situation.
Jane had told Diego about Shane’s power but not his orientation, so as far as he knew AIR was the only thing they had in common. That was still okay by him, the more time he spent around the other survivors, the more they felt like family to him. “Yeah, we came from Washington,” he said before taking a sip of his beer. “But that was years ago. We’ve been a lot of places since then. But uh ... gravity is my thing.” Diego gave a lopsided little smile as he lightened the pull of gravity under Shane’s chair to let him feel a bit floaty for a moment. It was tempting to really show off, but that probably wouldn’t be cool to do this early in knowing the man. Plus, it wasn’t like Shane could give much of a return demonstration inside, even if Diego was curious to see it.
Thanks to Reza, Shane was getting a little more used to having his senses fucked with and he let out a little laugh at the sudden change, arching his brows at Diego. "That is badass," he drawled, flicking his wrist to let fire dance briefly over his fingers. It wasn't so much showing off as it was to show solidarity, that he really was who he said he was. It just felt right. "I think we'll make a formidable team," he murmured. "Jane says your girl is something of a sin-amplifier? Is Oliver also like us?" He didn't think he was, but he was at least in the know if Shane had understood that correctly. That was more than Reza who at this point Shane really should have sent home but... The 'war' hadn't started and he knew he'd get bored out of his mind if he was here alone.
Diego let Shane’s chair sit naturally again and his eyes widened at the tiny display of fire fingers. His own power could be showy with the right objects to act on, but it definitely wasn’t as visual as fire. He was already thinking of how he could take Shane’s fire and spread it through gravity-free space, which made him grin. A formidable team, indeed. “Oliver’s not like us, no,” he answered first, shaking his head a bit. Diego knew he was, in the opposite sort of sense -- he dampened things, muted these types of powers, and back in the day it had been the only thing keeping Diego’s powers from going randomly haywire. He’d learned more control in the years since then, but Diego didn’t want to disclose much about Oliver to this new family quite yet. “But yes, Haisley’s ability seems to be to take our natural inclination toward ‘sin’ --” Diego used finger quotes and rolled his eyes at that word, he just didn’t know what else to call it, “-- and make it stronger. Then she feeds off of the energy from it. The girl hardly eats, she gets most of what she needs through her power.”
"A sin vampire," Shane speculated with a delighted grin. "Aww man that sounds cool. I wish I was a sin vampire." He was of course of the opinion that what most people considered sinful was everything that made life worth living. Even anger had its place, it was protective, sometimes it was even love in its rawest form. It was pretty telling that super religious and 'pious' people were bland and boring as shit. "She'd honestly feel pretty sated around me, I think, without flexing." His grin turned crooked and he was probably oversharing but he had a feeling Diego didn't mind. He was giving off such different vibes from the others and those finger quotes were promising.
‘Sin vampire’ was a pretty good term for her, and it made Diego laugh a bit. He thought Haisley would appreciate that, too. She had a fun sense of humor about most things, he’d found. Diego chuckled again, his expression turning smirky. “She gets fed pretty well around here, with me and Oliver,” he said, unmindful that he might be oversharing himself. It was a reference to their sex life, of course, but a darker thought flashed through his mind that there had been plenty of anger on the menu for Haisley too lately. He didn’t want to think about all their arguments at the moment though, not when he had company. “She’s found a group of teenage friends too, so I’m sure she’s doing well in that department.”
"I've never really known a lot of teenagers," Shane said. "But I hear they have boundary issues so she should be feeling a little bloated by now." Admitting this obviously made him think of the reason why he hadn't been around other teens when he was one and he gave Diego a curious glance. "How long were you, you know. Isolated from the world and experimented on like a monkey." It was dry, snarky maybe, but it wasn't exactly an easy thing to talk about and Shane tended to lean heavily into both snark and dry humor when he had to go into uncomfortable subjects. He didn't strictly have to know, but he was curious since Diego wasn't part of his AIR group and that made him, Mal, and Haisley a big unknown part of the equation to him. "Did they... sell you too?"
Diego hadn’t known many teenagers either, even though he’d technically still been one when Oliver had freed him. He hadn’t been making high school friends everywhere they went, that was for sure, they’d been overly cautious in those first years, terrified that AIR was right around the corner, hunting them down. Shane’s phrasing made him smile crookedly before he shook his head. “No ... I escaped,” he said. “They had me for years though, from about five until eighteen. I think, I’m not actually positive of my birth date.” He huffed a little and shrugged. “I caused them a lot of trouble, they kept me really locked down and under control. I think they couldn’t sell me, I was too wild and destructive. They were probably gonna kill me soon.” He knew for a fact that was true, but he was keeping Oliver’s involvement a secret for now. He probably couldn’t do it forever, but he didn’t want to reveal that Oliver had worked for AIR until the time was right ... or he had to. “What about you? How young were you?”
"Ten when they took me, sixteen when I got out," Shane replied and it was hard to keep a happy face after what Diego just told him because shit, that was a long time and his suspicions were pretty damn dark. Shane had been good at playing docile for the last few months but he didn't know if it was only because he saw a light at the end of the tunnel. Then again he wasn't sure which sounded worse in hindsight, getting killed or being sold off. He wasn't even sure what that really entailed but it didn't exactly conjure good images in his head. "How did you get out? And Haisley? You weren't in the same place, right?" he asked and his own escape was common knowledge by now if he wasn't mistaken so it didn't feel too intrusive to ask.
No age was a good age to get kidnapped and turned into a science experiment, but at least Shane had been old enough to remember his parents. Maybe he’d even returned to them after those six years. Diego didn’t want to ask. “I just finally got an opportunity to overpower them and I took it,” he said, slipping into the lie he’d decided on that omitted Oliver from the first part of the story. “I killed a couple of them and got away, Oliver found me on the road. Haisley came from somewhere else, I’m pretty sure. I was all the way in Washington. They were transporting her somewhere and somebody t-boned the van she was in, so she got away.” His own escape hadn’t actually been that dramatic, he and Oliver had gotten out without killing anyone, but that would’ve been harder if he’d been alone.
Shane felt like he could see a slightly harder edge in Diego's face when he said he'd killed people but he knew damn well killers didn't have a certain look. Diego looked sweet, like he wouldn't hurt anyone on purpose but how many killers had been described as perfectly harmless by people who knew them? So many, and killing because you had to was a whole other ballgame. "You did what you had to do," he said easily and that was how he viewed his own list of casualties, it wasn't like they gave him a choice. "And Haisley sounds like a tough kid," he smiled a bit as he pictured the scene like something out of a Hollywood movie, a lone teenage girl standing among the wreckage. It probably hadn't been quite so dramatic but it made for nice visuals in his mind. "Guess we all had to be tough, given what they put us through."
Diego nodded -- even though he hadn’t actually killed anyone, he’d been prepared to, and maybe even a little eager to, and he would’ve thought the same thing as Shane. It had to be done. Most of those people were evil, and now that he had his freedom, he would fight to the death to keep it. “She is a tough kid,” he agreed with a lopsided smile. Diego took another swig of his beer. “She’s coping with being out and navigating the world a hell of a lot better than I did when I first got out, too. I was clueless about everything, didn’t know how money worked or how to drive or what to tell people about myself. My power was erratic, I was upset all the time. I would’ve probably been locked up so fast if I hadn’t found Oliver. I got lucky. And now Haisley found us, so I’m trying to help her with everything. She’s much smarter than I was.”
Shane wondered how his life might have turned out different if he'd run into a gay daddy who kept him out of trouble. Oliver probably hadn't been a gay daddy type back then of course, unless he was a lot older, and Shane had met some people who'd kind of wanted to take care of him but they'd all given him a really bad vibe - or at least a creepy one. "I did remember money," he said with a little smirk. "I just didn't have a great grasp on how exactly they worked and just how much everything costs." His first bathroom blowjob had gotten him a meal and a ride and while that had felt incredibly unbalanced, he'd been desperate. "Have you met everyone yet?" he asked, not really wanting to linger on that topic. "It's a pretty ragtag crew."
He gave scoff of agreement and rolled his eyes a bit. “Everything’s so fucking expensive, it’s crazy,” he said. That had stuck out to Diego a lot in the beginning, and he remembered exasperating Oliver with deeper-than-he-realized questions about why that was. Wrapping his mind around those bigger societal constructs had taken a while. “I’ve met most of them, but not all, I don’t think,” he said. “But I met Mal, Jane, Neil, and now you ... and Haisley, of course.” He quirked a tiny smile. “Have you? How long have you been in town?”
"A few weeks now," Shane replied, sipping his beer and grinning with sympathy at not understanding money. God could he relate to that, still did but this time for happier reasons. He had enough of it so he probably tended to overpay for things he could get cheaper. "I've been making the rounds today," he added. "Met Mal and Neil before I came here, gonna find Toby either today or tomorrow. I just like meeting people in person. Your boyfriend sounds like he's involved so I look forward to seeing him and Haisley too. Think they'll be around at all today?" Not that he wanted to stay for too long, but it could be handy if he could just run into them and not have to come back soon.
It was kind of nice to hear that he wasn’t the last one on the list, even though Shane didn’t know him at all and it wouldn’t have mattered one way or another. Diego hadn’t been sure what to make of Neil and he still wasn’t, so he was curious about Shane’s opinion of him. “Toby’s the one I haven’t met either,” he said. “What’d you think of Neil? Oliver -- my boyfriend -- is working late today, so that’ll probably have to be later ... he’s only, ah ... slightly involved, anyway. He disapproves of all this.” Diego waved a hand vaguely. It was true, and Oliver was bad at hiding his emotions, so it would be obviously true when they met, so he might as well say it up front. “Haisley’s out with friends, so I’m not sure when she’ll be back. We should all meet up soon, now that you’re here.”
"Neil is incredibly neurotic," Shane said with a little grin. "Jane told me he was uptight but that was an understatement." She had put it in a far more vulgar way but Shane thought he'd spare Diego those details for now. "I tried to get him to show me what he can do and I thought his head would explode. Maybe he was worried about setting his books on fire." It felt a little weird talking to so many people in such a short time, people he had something this deep in common with, people who knew his secrets. Shane wondered if they all felt the same way, a little overwhelmed, excited, worried. "And technically I've met Toby before but that was almost two decades ago and we didn't have time to chat."
Diego had to chuckle over that description of Neil, because it was spot on to how he’d felt about the guy too. Maybe it was all the electricity inside of him, but he seemed to almost vibrate with tension. He’d been a bit curt too, but Diego could forgive him for that. They were all maladjusted and under stress. “I look forward to meeting him,” he said in regard to Toby, nodding slightly. “And seeing you all together. Jane didn’t tell me much about the details of your escape really, but what I did hear sounded incredibly brave.” He gave Shane a little smile. They’d all been younger than he had been when Oliver had freed him, and they’d done it all without an inside man. It was admirable. “I think we can all make a good team. Do you know what Toby does?”
"You know," Shane said slowly, frowning as he thought about it. "Not in the terms of what brought us together, I just know he's a nurse. Maybe he's got healing hands." He snorted softly, figuring that was probably too on the nose but hell, he might be right. He felt weird about the compliment, both pleased by the flattery of it but also somewhat undeserving. He wasn't sure it had been bravery, it had felt more like a desperate creature gnawing off a leg once an possible exit was in sight. He hadn't been a hero for the other kids, he hadn't even come up with the plan, he'd just set everything on fire to save himself. There were plenty of things he was proud of, this wasn't necessarily one of the things that bolstered his ego. "I do know the guy who got this ball rolling was some kind of psychic who went missing, but I don't know how. A lot of people have gone missing, there were more of us back in the day."
Diego knew there had probably been victims who had frozen instead of fought, who had just gone along with everything hoping they would someday be released, instead of looking for a way out. That had been a lot of his own childhood, before puberty and anger had really started to mix into the force that made him rebellious and unmanageable. And still he hadn’t gone so far as to gnaw his own leg off, even metaphorically, so he had respect for all of these people as kids. He weirdly appreciated that Shane didn’t know Toby’s power, like he wasn’t completely the clueless odd man out. “That seems pretty common around here, from what I understand,” he replied a bit grimly. “People going missing. AIR stays busy. Or ... something else does, I don’t know.” Diego was still skeptical of a lot of things that he’d heard about this town.
"Jane said something about how they might be influencing the whole town but I don't really know what she meant by that," Shane said with a little shrug. "But if they had people like us locked away and managed to sell Mal, who knows what else they've got up their sleeve. Those fucking nulls or zeroes or whatever you wanna call them are probably just the tip of the iceberg." Which was why they weren't going in guns blazing, they had no idea what they might run into. "Has Jane talked to you about Haisley making friends with the enemy?"
He had no doubt that AIR had some tricky shit they could pull at any time. Diego didn’t know what Jane meant either, but he kept thinking that if they knew about all of their former guinea pigs being in town, they would do something about it, especially since some of them had killed AIR staff during their escape. But maybe not, maybe they were waiting for the victims to strike first ... one could drive himself crazy asking all those ‘what if’ questions, so Diego tried to stop. “Yes, she did,” he answered Shane’s question. “And I pitched it to Haisley and she’s agreeable to do it. She was happy to help, really. I just hope this Ethan kid isn’t dangerous on his own. Just by association.”
"She sounds like she can hold her own," Shane said with a grin even if he'd voiced much the same concern to Jane. There was no reason to make her gay dads worry more than they doubtlessly already did. "She'll sloth the shit out of him if he starts acting funny." He paused, furrowing his brows in thought. "Does she only invoke what's already in you? Or can she just pick and choose a feeling to amp up?" That latter was somehow worse, having a sudden onset of unfamiliar feelings sounded miserable but far more powerful than the former. What if she amped up that kid's feelings and he had nothing but rage and pride? Yeah, he kind of hoped she could pick and choose, as long as she didn't try it on Shane.
The phrase ‘sloth the shit out of him’ made Diego laugh, and he absolutely hoped that was the case, that Haisley could just put that boy on his ass if he tried anything. The question was one he’d already asked Haisley in the past, so he was nodding before Shane was even done asking it. “She says it’s easier to enhance what’s already there. She can make those impulses the strongest. But she can also call up whatever she needs in you and amplify it. We’ve all got tendencies toward all of them, you know? Just some more than others. So yes, she can defend herself with sloth if she needs to.” He grinned a little, proud of her in a dad way that months ago he never would have anticipated.
Shane finished his beer and set the bottle down on the table. He felt at ease here and it was good to know that Jane wasn't the only one of his allies he could actually get along with. Of course he hadn't met Toby yet but if he was anything like Mal or Neil... Diego's pride was easy to spot and it was endearing. "How old are you anyway? Must be weird to be a dad suddenly." The gay 'daddy' joke came back to mind and he bit back a grin, glad Diego didn't have Mal's gift because he definitely would have picked up on that. Diego's age was hard to guess, he looked to be about Shane's age and at the same time a lot younger but also a lot older somehow. Shane supposed growing up weird like they had messed up some of the cornerstones of growing up or something so they might never fully fit in anywhere, not even with their age.
Diego scrunched up his face and bobbed his head back and forth for a second. “Eh ... I don’t know exactly,” he admitted, giving Shane a faint smile. “My best estimate is around thirty-six. The men who grabbed me first, took me when I was five or six. I was eighteen to twenty when I escaped from AIR. I lost track of the years, so give or take a few. I might just keep pushing back forty as long as possible.” He grinned easily again. Diego’s young life had been a horrific nightmare, but he’d had a lot of good years to distance himself from it now. It felt easier to tell Shane these things than it had telling anyone else through the years. Very few got the truth, but a handful. “It is weird, though. I never expected to have any children, with how we lived. Definitely no natural ones.” He chuckled and drained the last of his own beer. “But it’s good. She’s a wonderful girl and I believe she found us for a reason. I’ll care for her as long as she’ll allow.”
"Stay thirty-six as long as you wanna," Shane drawled with a dismissive wave of his hand. "That's not a bad idea, actually. It's a good age. I'll be thirty-four in August and fuck I don't feel like a grown-up at all. Forty is like... Nah. Not for me." He was still so certain he wouldn't live that long but he kept exceeding his own expectations so who the hell knew. Forty seemed like a big number though, it didn't sound right for him at all. Maybe most people felt like that but it was especially hard for a gay playboy to come to terms with. Six more years. It felt like an eternity and yet not long enough at all. Of course there was always the certainty that he wouldn't make it even one and while he didn't want to die, it was hard to see anything ahead. "You don't have any papers? Fake ID?" That could spell trouble, it certainly made it hard to deal with shit like getting sick and the like, the aforementioned grown-up shit Shane hated thinking about. "I could probably hook you up with a new identity if you need one."
“Oh no, I do,” Diego said with a delighted sort of laugh. Objectively, after this many years it sounded like such a strange offer, but then again made perfect sense for their situation. “Oliver found someone to take care of that a long time ago. I’m thirty-six on paper, just not sure if that’s perfectly accurate or not. Thank you though ... you’ve got those kinds of connections?” That indication took a second to sink in, and it lifted Diego’s eyebrows, though there was nothing judgy in his expression. He and Oliver had had to do illegal things to survive through the years before too, and Diego happened to think true morality and the law didn’t cross paths very often. He had no idea what Shane did for a living, but he was driving a pretty fancy car.
"Yeah," Shane said with a dismissive shrug and a lopsided grin. "But they're kinda assholes so it's probably good you already got it sorted." He didn't love asking them for help but he also knew living without papers could go bad pretty fast. Thankfully he had been able to access his own after he turned legal and shortly thereafter changed his last name legally, no new information to learn, not a whole lot of complications. He still had family out there he probably should have contacted but it didn't feel right for some reason. "Did you get to choose your own birthday? Or did you know that at least?"
Even though Shane was casual about it, it was kind of intriguing. Did that mean he was friends with gangsters? Had he turned to crime after escaping AIR? He and Oliver had done mildly illegal things to survive themselves, including getting a new identity for Diego, but they’d mostly kept their noses clean. The other side of that coin interested him, but he wasn’t going to ask Shane for any details yet. Maybe if they ended up getting closer, he would see. “I didn’t remember it,” he answered with a small, sad smile. “So I picked July fourteenth. I like the summer, and it just seemed like a good day. ... I know some of the others went back home after the fire. Were you reunited with family?”
"Nope, was on my own," Shane replied, not really wanting to get into the sob story of how his parents were dead and he didn't feel like he had anywhere to go after all those years at AIR. It was what it was and it was in the past. "You never tried to find your family?" he asked, preferring to turn it around on Diego. He might not remember his childhood but digging through old news might turn something up. Shane didn't blame him one bit if he didn't want to do that though, it was somewhat mortifying to imagine meeting up with people who felt obliged to care about him just because they were related by blood. He'd felt like he was in the way when he got shipped to Point Pleasant to live with his uncle and going back just hadn't felt like an option.
Diego was curious about the details, of course, but he picked up on the fact that Shane didn’t want to give them, so he wasn’t going to pry. He was keeping a secret of his own about the past, after all. “I looked some, on the internet,” he answered with a slight nod. “But I was taken from them in El Salvador, by the people who trafficked me. AIR found me later. My memory of them is so fuzzy now, I barely remember any full names, much less faces, not even positive which part of the coast I came from ... I wasn’t able to find anything.” He and Oliver had discussed going down there before, to look in person. It was a small country, and even if his parents were dead, Diego thought there might be siblings or cousins still around ... but the idea had never come to fruition. He was nervous to fly on a fake passport, especially to such a risky part of the world. And maybe he was a little afraid to actually find someone, like it might change everything.
"Well shit," Shane muttered because it sounded like Diego's hell had started well before AIR got their hands on him. He would have related strongly to the uncertainty of whether he actually wanted to find them but they were both keeping quiet about that for now, maybe on some level they could both sense it in the other, their trauma was fairly similar. "I don't know anything about El Salvador, is it even a tourist friendly place?" He smiled. "They didn't give me a whole lot of history lessons while they were busy torturing me, so I'm pretty useless when it comes to geography and everything. I've been to some European countries though. Isn't El Salvador in South America? Or something?"
It was the hell of his young years that had led to AIR finding him in the first place, when his power struck back at his tormentors. While he’d still been in the facility, sometimes Diego had wished that those men had ended up killing him instead, but Oliver had changed all of that. Now he was more grateful to be alive and free than he could express. Shane’s ignorance of his home country didn’t surprise him -- Diego hadn’t known much about it either until adulthood. He’d missed out on his education for the same reasons. He gave the other man an understanding smile. “Central America,” he answered. “And it is not tourist-friendly, no. There is a lot of gang and drug crime there. Another reason I haven’t been. Oliver has this vested interest in keeping me alive.” Diego chuckled and rubbed his fingers over his facial hair. “We’re both brown and speak Spanish fluently, but ... in a place like that, we would probably still stick out as Americanos, you know?”
"You could probably hire someone to look into it for you," Shane said as he considered the options there because going to a place like that was a resounding No. "But yeah, it's risky either way. I wouldn't bother but then I don't feel attached to my past at all. None of it feels mine, you know? So I'm not so sure whatever opinion I might have is applicable here." Diego didn't need advice, maybe he felt exactly like Shane did. The past was the past, it didn't feel like it was a part of him, too much water under the bridge, too many issues he didn't feel like dealing with. "And you've got Haisley now, doesn't sound like a place you wanna bring a teenage girl." It occurred to him he didn't know if Haisley was white or not; the majority of the kids in his group had been so he'd just assumed so.
Diego had more or less given up on going to El Salvador a long time ago, and it had never occurred to him to take Haisley, so he shook his head emphatically on that idea. Sometimes he still thought about trying to track some of his family down, but he never did. What Shane said rang pretty true for him too, that past didn’t feel like his. “We’ve never had much money to spare,” he added, not feeling any shame in that. Oliver worked hard and they got by, that was just how it was. “But it’s been so long and there’s so much about my life I couldn’t explain to them even if I did find them ...” Diego shrugged, then gave a wan smile. “I remember being dragged to church all the time too, so I don’t think they would approve of Oliver.”
"Shit, you remember that?" Shane asked with brows raised. "I barely remember anything. I don't think my parents were religious, kinda feels like they were wiped from my memory." Diego had been so much younger, Shane was somewhat impressed. Then again he sometimes wondered if he'd willingly forgotten everything to protect himself and he still didn't know which came first, the fire or his affinity for it - it wasn't something he wanted to look into too deeply either, killing people who'd tortured him for years was one thing but his parents? No, he liked to believe the fire came first. "I remember dumb shit like the color of my favorite glass and some cartoons I watched." He wouldn't ever know if his parents would have been cool with him being gay, or anything else about them. "But hey, who needs a homophobic family anyway."
There wasn’t a lot that Diego remembered, most of it fragments of memories -- sounds and smells, the ghost of a sensation of being scooped up and hugged -- but he did remember not liking church all that much, and getting his ears tugged when he squalled about it. He didn’t know for sure that they wouldn’t have accepted who he was and who he loved, but coming from a conservative mostly-Catholic country, he couldn’t assume they would. Diego wasn’t sure he agreed with the last part, because a family was still a family, but he wasn’t going to argue. Everybody felt different about that kind of thing. “Seems like you made something of yourself, at least,” he murmured, quirking a small smile at Shane. “Unless you’re just living out of that car out there.”
Shane laughed a bit at that even though he knew plenty of homeless people didn't look the part, keeping themselves clean and fed through various means. A car was a shelter, it didn't have to be a disgusting one. "Nah, I run a nightclub in Chicago," he drawled. "So I'm doing pretty damn well for myself these days." He owed that to friends in low places and his gift. Insurance fraud was a whole lot easier when there was no way to prove arson and his 'friends' - if he could call them that - appreciated it. "My partner's not loving the fact he's running it alone right now but who knows how long we're here for. I kinda wish it was so simple we could just burn the place down and be done with it but it's like a fucking infestation."
Diego hummed an impressed sort of sound and nodded. Running a nightclub in a big city was pretty impressive, really. It was much more than he and Oliver had done, career wise. He was okay with that though, Diego had always loved the life they led. They always had enough. He chuckled faintly at the comment about Shane’s partner and nodded a bit to the rest. “If only things were that simple,” he agreed. “I wouldn’t mind flattening it to the ground with all inside, but ...” He half-smiled and gave a little shrug. Diego knew that wasn’t strategic, there weren’t enough of them with offensive enough powers to just storm the Facility and think they would get anywhere. That was Diego’s impression, anyway. “I have a feeling you and I will end up being the muscle no matter what,” he added. “And maybe Mal with his telepathy ... which is pretty fucking creepy if you ask me.”
"It is fucking creepy," Shane agreed eagerly, his eyebrows shooting up and his lips curling up in an almost delighted smile. "Surrounded by us sinners." Mal had handwaved that away but it still amused Shane that a Man of God walked among them and so far so many of them were sinful as fuck. Haisley might not be sinful herself but she invoked it while Diego and Shane were absolute abominations to most churches. "He made a deal with Jane to stay out of her head if she stays out of his but I'm worried the rest of us don't have that kind of leverage but yeah, we're the big guns. Can you imagine the kind of crazy shit you and me could do if we combined our powers?" It was probably overkill but he was somewhat itching to try it. He just had no idea where they could do that without drawing attention and destroying everything in sight.
He laughed a bit, relieved that someone else in the group thought Mal’s powers were creepy. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but being religious didn’t automatically make him Good, no matter what some people thought, and Diego had silently thought the others were a bit too accepting of a man who could control their thoughts if he wanted to. Diego didn’t feel tampered with, but he had a secret to keep and being around a telepath was a little unsettling. Thinking about what he and Shane could do together was much more fun, so he focused there for the moment. Diego grinned crookedly. “You know that fire just spreads and spreads in zero gravity?” he asked. “It doesn’t need to attach to anything. Neverending fireball, if there’s enough oxygen.” Yes, it was something he’d already looked up, and he didn’t feel weird about that in the slightest. They were at war now, there were going to be flames.
A neverending fireball was both an overwhelming and fascinating thought and Shane went a bit starry eyed as he considered it. He always wanted to have more control over his gift so it honestly scared him a little but there was still a part of him that sometimes wanted to let it all run free, like it was a sentient being, his own unruly and destructive lover. "I did not know that," he said, eyes a little wide as he imagined it happening. "I don't think I could control that." It wouldn't hurt him but he'd have no way of protecting Diego if they went that far - or anyone else who happened to be close by. Of course Diego might have more control, he could choose where the lack of gravity was located. "It'd just be a bomb that went off and the rest is up to you." It was hypothetical still so he let out a little laugh of amazement because in theory? It was fucking awesome.
It gave Diego a little thrill to see that look on Shane’s face. He didn’t often get to awe men other than Oliver, especially not handsome ones ... and he wasn’t above noticing how good looking Shane was. How could he not? There seemed to be a high concentration of good looking queers in this group, it made him wonder vaguely about predilections toward psychic powers in the gay genes or whatever. “I bet I could, to some degree,” Diego said, a touch eagerly due to Shane’s reaction to it. “We could practice. Keep it small at first, see how it goes. Somewhere less flammable ... maybe out over the water..” He knew his control of gravity could get very precise if he wanted it to, and he could keep it moving, but he wasn’t sure yet how hard fire would be to pen in and direct. Hell, maybe at that point they wouldn’t need control, just destruction. It gave Diego some of his own little tingles to think about. His real escape had been quiet and quick and violence-free, but Diego couldn’t deny there was a part of him that wanted to see what he could really do.
Out over the water was a reasonable and smart idea but it made Shane cringe a little just thinking about it and his smile faded almost instantly into something more of a grimace. "Wind might be a problem," he muttered. "I bet I can find somewhere... Concrete basement. There's a bunch of safety shit we can come up with, anti-flammable materials . Hell, if there's nothing like that around here I can have it built." He wasn't articulating it as well as he could have, half his thoughts still out on that water, so much fucking water everywhere and thoughts of falling in against all odds, falling and sinking and sinking. It was a good thing Diego couldn't read thoughts like Mal could and Shane tried to school his expression. "Fireproof door you can duck behind if it all goes wrong."
Diego’s brows lifted at the idea of having a place built just to accommodate their need for practice -- how lucrative was it to own a nightclub? Damn. He could tell that his idea about doing it on the water made Shane uncomfortable, but Diego was chalking it up to the risk of being seen more than anything else. It didn’t occur to him that a firestarter would be averse to water. “We’ll figure something out, I’m sure,” Diego said, hoping to smooth that worry off of Shane’s face. “I can sense Oliver going gray just from us talking about it, but he’ll deal with it.” Diego gave him a crooked smile.
Shane wasn't really thinking through just how much hassle it would be to build something, he was thinking of something very rudimentary, a hollow block of concrete really. Maybe even just a modified shipping container. "How hard was it to tell him about all this?" he asked, grinning again at the thought of gay daddy #2 going gray over something as simple as practicing when there was so much more on the line. Did he even know about the plans for Haisley yet? "I'm here with a friend, he doesn't know anything about AIR and I'm not planning on telling him, so... If you see me out in public just keep it cool, alright?" He quirked a brow and gave Diego a crooked smile but his first question still lingered in the air. He wasn't sure why he'd asked it when he did not want to tell Reza anything, why did it matter if it was hard? He was just curious about Diego's relationship with Oliver, that was all. It couldn't have been an easy thing to bring up in the first place.
Any situation that put Diego at risk made Oliver stress out, he knew that, and he was pretty sure his partner would worry over Diego quite literally playing with fire. But it was better to practice than to go in blind, wasn’t it? And God knew he really just wanted to stretch his legs, so to speak. Keeping his power constantly in check and only using it in small ways to entertain himself made him feel so constipated sometimes. He wanted to let it out, try things, experiment. And now he had a good excuse to do that. Shane’s questions gave him a moments’ pause, but he wasn’t completely unprepared for them. He’d considered what to say to people if they asked stuff like that. “I will, yeah of course,” Diego said first, nodding. He was obviously good at keeping secrets, that wasn’t a concern. “But uh ... yeah, it wasn’t easy.” He gave a wan smile. “It’s all kind of hard to swallow, but my ability’s at least easy to demonstrate, so I made him into a believer pretty fast. When he saw how clueless I was about the world and had no papers or anything, he believed the rest of it, about AIR. I’m lucky he’s soft-hearted, probably. Your friend is ... just a friend? Or a friend it’s harder to keep secrets from?”
"Hard to keep secrets from," Shane replied with a little grin because that was an easier way to summarize whatever Reza was to him. "Way too smart to just be a boy toy," he added with a touch of humor though it was true. Reza was just supposed to be a one night stand, two night stand, three night stand, two week stand... It had completely gotten out of control and Shane didn't even know where the fucking Off button was at this point. "I only brought him along because I figured a small town like this was like a gay desert and I was going to die from boredom." He quirked a brow because obviously it wasn't. He already knew of the gay dads, he'd seen some hints that there were more people there and nobody was really staring at him like an alien when he held Reza's hand. So this town was far more progressive than he gave it credit for and he probably could have hooked up with someone already. That didn't mean he regretted bringing Reza along, though he kind of wished he did.
That made Diego laugh heartily. A gay desert. He could see why Shane would’ve thought that, and honestly Diego had worried about the same thing when they’d arrived. Not about getting laid, obviously, but that the people in this small-ass mostly-rural town would reject them if they acted like a couple in public. Perhaps reject them violently. But he and Oliver hadn’t run into any trouble of that kind so far, and he would’ve agreed that Point Pleasant seemed to be fairly progressive. “Those smart ones will get you in trouble,” he said to Shane, still grinning. As if he knew. He didn’t, he’d never voluntarily been with anyone but Oliver, but he’d talked to plenty of people in his life. “Good luck though. I think ... I dunno, I think I wouldn’t have survived long without Oliver, emotionally speaking. It’s a lot to carry, and it helps to have someone share the burden with you, someone who understands as much as they’re able without living through it, you know?” He shrugged casually -- he wasn’t trying to give Shane advice, he was just talking. “Is he a hot boy toy at least? You got a picture?” Diego grinned a bit.
"Of course he's hot," Shane replied with a feigned frown and a scoff. Boy toys were in their very nature hot, that was a rule - perhaps even a written one. He tilted his head as he considered, then pulled out his phone. He had a few pictures of Reza by now which was already a warning sign in itself, and he found one fairly quickly since he hadn't been taking a whole lot of pictures during this 'vacation'. "Do you have a picture of Oliver?" he asked as he held it up for Diego to see. It was more relevant for him to know Oliver's face than it was for Diego to know Reza's but it was still weirdly fun to show off his 'boy toy' to someone who might appreciate him without threatening to harass him through dreams.
Never having had a boy toy himself, Diego wasn’t sure of the rules, but he supposed it made sense that an attractive guy like Shane would be with someone equally so. He leaned in a bit to peer at Shane’s phone screen while he slipped his own out of his pocket. The man in Shane’s photo definitely wasn’t what he was expecting, more fey and angular and not-white than Diego had been picturing. That was a good thing though, and Diego made a small sound of appreciation as he smiled. “I only have a million pictures of Oliver,” he murmured with a chuckle, turning his attention to his own screen to find a good one to show Shane. It wasn’t hard, and he displayed his man with pride he couldn’t quite keep off of his face. “That’s him. He works at the hospital.”
"Ooh, a looker," Shane said with his own sound of appreciation. "I don't blame you for having a million pictures. What does he do in the hospital?" He didn't think he was a doctor because didn't doctors make a little better money than this place suggested? Shane wasn't exactly wise in the way of paychecks but he did know that if he'd had a hot doctor the last time he woke up in a hospital he might have hated it there a little less. No, he wasn't so sure about that. It had reminded him too much of AIR and he hadn't exactly been at his best at the time so a pretty face might not have stopped him from freaking out. It couldn't have made it worse though. All that aside, it could be useful to have contacts at Mercy, especially if either Oliver or Toby could try to get into some patient files for people currently working for AIR. Who knew what could be useful in the future.
Diego knew Oliver was beautiful, but it was always enjoyable to see other people recognize that too. It had made him jealous in the past, in his younger years, but there was a certain security that came from being in love with someone for so long. He set his phone down, still smiling, and wondered vaguely what Shane’s boy toy would think of all this, if he’d be just as against it all as Oliver was. “He’s just a tech,” Diego answered. “Like a nurse’s assistant. He could be doing so much more, but we’ve moved around too often for him to get anywhere with more training. Maybe after all of this ...” It was probably pie in the sky hopeful dreaming, but sometimes that was warranted, wasn’t it? “What does your boy toy do? Something that allows him to just take off for a while, obviously. That must be nice.”
Shane was rich enough to be careless, rich enough to go on fake 'vacations' for weeks at a time and rent ridiculously huge houses. Most of it was the fact he wasn't trying to save up for his old age but he was well off, at least for the time being. Talking to Diego made him wish he was filthy rich, to the point where he could just wave a hand and help people out at random. It certainly wasn't the first time he felt that way, he tipped well and he gave to the homeless but that was because he knew how much it meant, having been on the other side of it. He could easily imagine being a cool benefactor who could just buy a place and fix up identities for his fellow AIR people, let them settle down, let them go study whatever they wanted to study, become what they could have become if they hadn't been kidnapped and tortured for years. Some of them were doing just fine but Diego was the most like him; he'd been a teenager when he escaped, he'd been lost in the world with no family to go back to. He laughed again when Diego asked what Reza - what his boy toy - did for a living, unsure why it was funny to hear someone else refer to him that way. Reza wouldn't like it, Shane was pretty sure, but it suited him as much as it didn't. His pretty, pretty Egyptian boy toy who was far too smart for his own good. "He's an agent, musicians. That's how we met. He was at my club promoting a DJ. He does a lot of that stuff online lately, I should send him home though." He wrinkled his nose, a telltale sign that he did not want to do that.
Shane hadn’t told Diego his name, so ‘boy toy’ was all he had to go on, and he was glad that it amused Shane to hear it back, instead of insulting him somehow. People were strange, especially about their partners, he’d found. The last part was the most interesting, of course, and Diego lifted his eyebrows. “Yeah? How come?” he asked. Everybody needed support, and Shane seemed to have brought his along with him, so why send him back if he didn’t have to go? Unless Shane’s realization that this wasn’t a gay desert had something to do with it, then he could find ‘support’ elsewhere, he supposed.
"I don't want him to get involved," Shane muttered. "Things are calm now but we're essentially going to war, right? Get the civilians out of the way before it gets bloody." It sounded like it was too late for Oliver who was probably a ride or die at this point but this thing with Reza was casual. Was supposed to be casual. Even if it wasn't, Shane hated the idea of him getting hurt or found out. Of course his abilities could come in handy and Jane would probably want to rip Shane's head off if she ever found out what Reza could do and that Shane wasn't utilizing it but damn, Reza wasn't part of this. "I don't think anyone is expecting this to end well, you know?" he added quietly and while he was still faintly smiling, it didn't reach his eyes this time.
Diego felt his stomach give an uncomfortable little dip, and his own mouth pressed into a tighter line. Did any of them expect this to end well? Probably not, in spite of the way they spoke about it. Maybe Haisley did, with her youthful optimism. If Shane cared about this guy, and he seemed to, at least to some degree, Diego understood the desire to get him clear before the more dangerous things started happening. They were all already in plenty of danger, but it would ramp up soon, and they all knew it. “Oliver wanted us to run,” he said seriously, his tone dropping as well. “He still does. He wants to pack up us and Haisley and move across the country again. He’s desperate to keep us safe, we keep fighting about it.” Diego paused and sighed, shaking his head gently. “I just ... don’t think I can do that anymore. It’s all come together -- we’re all here -- for a reason.”
Shane hadn't meant to bring the mood down, he was used to thinking about his demise in a disconnected and humorous way and of course not everyone approached it like that. He'd be kicking and screaming by the time death came for him but talking about it in the abstract had never been hard. He clucked his tongue and gave Diego a crooked smile. "Tell you what. If we don't win but we get out alive I'll charter us all a plane to Colombia or wherever the hell people go to disappear. Worst comes to worst, right?" He didn't want to see everyone die or end up locked up again but it was unrealistic to think they were going to really do something about AIR and not make some sacrifices in doing so. "Not El Salvador if it's as bad as you say. Some tropical island somewhere? Fuck, I don't know."
Gallows humor didn’t go over too well in Diego’s household, Oliver tended to take things even more seriously than he did. Diego didn’t think Colombia was much safer than El Salvador, but he didn’t bother to say so since Shane had no idea where to go either. He gave a lopsided smile and murmured an agreeable, “Worst comes to worst.” The worst would of course be that all of them died terrible deaths from this endeavor, or were re-captured by AIR, but Diego had to believe that wouldn’t happen. He didn’t think he was being naive, he knew it was possible they would suffer casualties ... he just hoped it wasn’t him, like any normal person would. “I’ll hold you to that. If we need to escape, you’re footing the bill to our new beachfront home.” He and Oliver had often talked about wanting to live near the beach again anyway, why not as a semi-fugitive in another country?
"I can do that, it'll be a little commune of gifted fugitives," Shane said with a little grin and that was far easier to think about than dying or withering away in an AIR facility, that was for sure. He had already finished his beer and while he liked Diego he felt like he should be moving on to try to find Toby. He didn't want to overstay his welcome or run out of things to talk about. "Before I go," he said, narrowing his eyes as he speculated his own question. "Can you manipulate gravity through glass and such? Or do you have to, you know, have unrestricted access.” He knew he could set things on fire pretty much anywhere nearby, as long as he wasn't submerged in water but that he wasn't going to assume Diego's gift worked the same way.
While he understood that Shane needed to go soon, and this visit was already pretty long for a first meeting, Diego felt a tiny letdown that he was leaving. It was just still so novel to be able to talk to someone who really understood him and what he’d been through, from personal experience. Oliver knew a lot, but he hadn’t been through it for half a lifetime like they had. Diego just reminded himself that this was the first conversation of many, and he didn’t need to turn people off by being clingy. Shane’s question was an interesting one and he smiled. “I can do it through glass, yeah,” he said. “I just have to be able to see the surface I’m drawing toward or pushing away from. So like ...” He leaned a bit to peer out the kitchen window, then pointed at the garbage can they put on the street every week. Diego made the lid lift halfway up and down a couple of times so Shane could see. “If I can’t see it, I can’t affect it. Unfortunately.”
Shane let out a delighted laugh at that and drummed excitedly on his legs before beaming at Diego. "We can start with something small, like... I don't know. Aquarium or old microwave or something." He did really want to see what fire did in zero gravity, even if it was on a miniature level and it was nice to have something to look forward to. "I've never actually done a science project," he added cheekily and he knew Diego would relate, it wasn't like those bastards at AIR had given them any sort of proper education, just enough for them to be functional for the inevitable time when they were apparently to be sold. It still made his mind reel, that someone could just own him and control him because... How? Or maybe they would have killed him and Diego because they couldn't be controlled. As much as he hated the idea it was still strangely comforting on some very twisted level.
He hadn’t made the connection to them experimenting together until Shane said something, and then Diego grinned too. It was exciting on its own, but also delightful because Shane looked so stoked. He loved to make people happy like that. He laughed a bit and nodded, definitely able to relate. “I’ll start looking for an old fish tank or something,” he said. Diego finished off the last of his beer and set the bottle aside before he stood. Shane seemed ready to go and even though the house was small, it was still polite to see him out. “Maybe we can record the results to show the others ... if it all goes well. Let them see what we can accomplish together.” He was eager to prove himself, and they’d all already seen what Shane could do. Most of them, anyway, up close and personal.
Recording it was probably a terrible idea in the age of The Internet but a little showy part of Shane still lit up at the prospect. "Isn't that what makes random crazy shit into science?" he mused as he got to his feet. "Documenting? That's what they say on Mythbusters. Write it down!" It was probably a good idea to just practice and then show the others in person when they had a good handle on it but filming it had its appeal, not just for showing off but possibly to analyze to see where they went wrong if anywhere. "I should warn you, I'm good at redirecting fire and creating fire but then it has a life of its own so we'll need to take a lot of precautions."
Diego certainly didn’t plan to post the video on social media or anything, he was just thinking of getting it on tape to show the others, an easy way for them to demonstrate their combined abilities ... hopefully easy, anyway. Diego knew there were plenty of potential dangers, but if they thought it through and had a fire extinguisher handy and weren’t inside or too close to any buildings, he thought they could make it work. He started to lead the way to the door, chuckling a bit. “We will,” he answered. “And we’ll keep it small and as contained as possible.” He knew he tended to be overly optimistic, but Diego felt good about it, he thought it would end up awesome and fun, even though it would be dangerous. They were dangerous, and that was what made them valuable. At the door, he clapped Shane on the shoulder, already feeling closer to the other man than just a parting handshake. “I’m glad you came by. We’ll be in touch real soon, I’m sure.”
This visit had gone so much better than Shane had thought, he'd certainly not had his hopes up that any of these visits would be fun after meeting Mal and Neil, but he instantly liked Diego and that good vibe was only enhanced by their plans of combining forces. Because how cool was that! "I'm off to meet Toby next, I'll tell him you said hi," he said cheekily. "And definitely ask him what the hell he can do." He felt weirdly reluctant to leave and kind of wanted to go hunt down an old oven or aquarium right fucking now. He'd never done well at pacing himself or denying himself things but this time he managed, figuring they'd want a whole day for it and not just a fleeting afternoon. "Look forward to seeing the others, you say hi from me."
He wasn’t the only one eager to start experimenting, but Diego knew it would take some prep, and they both had other things to do. On his end, he had to convince Oliver that they wouldn’t blow themselves up. “Good luck, hope he’s as cool as I am,” he said with a cheeky grin. He hadn’t met Toby yet, but from what little Jane had said about him, Diego got a good vibe about him. That didn’t always mean much, though. “I’ll pass it along to the hubby and kid,” he added with a chuckle. “They’ll be sorry they missed you. Take care, okay?”
"They should be sorry," Shane said cheerfully and flashed Diego another smile. It was nice to actually feel good about some aspect of this whole mess and maybe it wouldn't last but it was a nice high to ride for now. They'd get to do crazy not-quite-science shit before it all came to head and that was at least something to look forward to. "Be safe out there, Diego," he added over his shoulder as he headed to the car and it was funny how mood could change things because Seaview didn't look quite as shabby to him as it had when he first arrived.