Tensor

Lizzie was positively thrilled that her shirt'd been found. She really liked the way that one was coming along; it would have been so disappointing to have to try and find another one close enough to it that would produce similar enough results.

She straightened up her room a bit (she'd gotten a bit frantic there towards the end in her looking, and she'd feel too guilty to leave a mess for her roommates to see when they got back), and then headed over to Jay's room.

"Jay!" she called, in a slightly singsong voice, tapping on the door.

Kevin was lying there in the first faint light of a wintery dawn, eyes still shut and grinning like an idiot as he tried to process the fact that he wasn't just back in the same time zone with Josh, he was in the same damn building. And, oh yeah, they'd spent the entire afternoon and evening and part of the night together yesterday and they'd probably be able to spend pretty much the whole damned day together today.

As soon as he managed to not be an asshole to his roommate. Who he'd definitely been a total asshole to yesterday. Which was kind of not okay, and he definitely felt bad for, given he'd pretty much run in, dropped his stuff on what he'd assumed was his bed, said 'hi' and 'bye' almost in one breath and bolted back out the door to find Josh. He'd talked with the guy a little bit - and rock dude, how seriously cool was that? - when he'd come back in, significantly after curfew and lucky not to have been caught, but he'd been giddy and wiped and had crashed pretty quick. So now it was probably well past time to try to convince the guy he wasn't a complete douche.

Really.

As soon as he stopped lying there grinning like a loon. Yep. He totally had this whole not being an asshole thing covered. He kicked off his sheets and rolled out of bed, tugging his gloves and sleeves back into place out of habit as he did so.

"So. Hey." He smiled a bit sheepishly and waved at the guy. "I promise I'm not usually a total douche?"

Since he didn't need to sleep or eat, the powers evaluation had been almost immediately, much to Jono's relief. He wanted to figure out what happened and what was going on with his body. Optimism and hope were strong in Jono, but having your jaw blown off and burning away most of your chest cavity did not have a visible upside that he could fathom. He'd been in a daze on the plane, not awake but not asleep and hearing sounds and voices but sometimes feeling them too. Like they were stroking his hand or something. It was definitely weird. The UK branch of where they were sending him had bandaged him well and clothed him in layers that hid what was going on, so that stares were all for the strange boy in too many clothes for the weather who didn't take off his heavy coat on the nice warm plane.

In the Reyes Medical Center, Jono felt more exposed than if he'd been fully naked (which he had been at some point, but he must've started blocking things out of his memory), laying there on the table with a pair of scrubs pants barely clinging to his nonexistent hips, bare to the waist. His long fingered hands clutched handfuls of crumpled exam table paper and his psifire glowed like a cheerful campfire that just needed some weenies and mallows. Most of the gauze had been removed from the edges of burned skin but would be replaced when the exam was done. Jono certainly did not feel like he was missing his jaw and chest front, which explained why he kept trying to speak.

To be sure, the medical team had been incredibly thoughtful and respectful, to the point Jono was becoming suspicious. There was one last healer who was going to look at him, a powerful student who would be overseen by Dr. Reyes. She promised he would be bandaged back up, dressed, and feeling comfortable before he left, but he had no way of knowing if she would do so.

Throughout the exam Jono had tried to keep his eyes closed, because he didn't want to see people looking at him. Like he was different. Like he was an experiment. Like he was a freak. But a student, at the school he was going to go to... Jono scrimped an eye open. And tried that new way to talk he'd been taught.

His mindvoice was weak and reverberated rather like a bad 70s disco, but it was his voice. *A... Alright?*