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Tweak says, "a great big bushy beard!"

Laura ✗ (beaweapon) wrote in thereincarnates,
@ 2018-06-07 21:07:00

Entry tags:

beckett samuels, kate moon

Who: Beckett Samuels & Kate Moon
What: Clandestine meetings after hours in a building full of P.I.'s
Where: X-Factor Investigations, M-Town (NY)
When: Thursday evening, June 7th 2018
Warnings: TBD?

It'd been over a month since Kate's episode, and Kate still didn't totally feel like herself. Mostly because when it happened, she hadn't been herself, and ever since, she'd been just a little more cagey than usual. After spending years in that institution, after the hell that Laura had been through herself, Kate wasn't exactly a fan of somebody messing around in their heads. She didn't know who or what had done it, but she knew it hadn't been a side effect of her own conditioning. She knew all too well what that felt like, but that? Even in her darkest moments in the facility, Kate had never felt anything like what she'd felt that day. The blood lust, the violence. You can't nurture rage.

The facility may have tried to make her into a weapon, but that was maybe the first time she'd actually felt like one. She didn't like it. Kate had spent enough time in a cage to know what it felt like to be constantly poked and prodded, to be manipulated and conditioned to do things she didn't want to do. What happened to her that day in the middle of M-Town felt a lot more like mind control than any conditioning she'd ever been through, there was no part of her that'd been in charge of her own body. It wasn't like when she'd first arrived in the city and happened down the wrong alley one night, that had all been in self-defense. She'd never wanted to kill for the sake of the killing.

It was pure luck that Logan had been there. Logan, whose name she learned later was actually Frankie. Eventually, Frankie had been able to subdue her enough to get her off the street and away from anyone else she might try and hurt. Kate didn't fully remember it. She only snapped out of it a few hours later, coming to in what Laura knew to be the Danger Room. Apparently while she was still out of her mind, she'd tried once or twice to physically break out of the room herself. For all the damage she'd managed to do that day, Kate didn't remember all of it once she finally came back to herself. She remembered how it felt, though, and she never wanted to feel like that again if she could help it.

Once she was deemed not an immediate danger to herself or others anymore, she was eventually allowed out of confinement, though she ended up not going very far. Kate wasn't much of a joiner and she definitely didn't trust most people, but Laura trusted Logan, and now that they knew he was around, they were reluctant to leave his side for long. Frankie was enough like Logan that they both felt comfortable around her, but there was one other person that Kate didn't want to stray too far from. Maybe the only other person she trusted right now. Beck. Even though everyone at X-Factor knew about her now after that little public incident, out of habit, Kate still knocked on the back window that she used to sneak in through most nights so she and Beck could spend some time together alone.

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ximic
2018-06-10 06:14 am UTC (link)

Beck still liked to pretend that he was being subtle, even though Adam had made a few comments about letting his visitor in through the front door... and a few things about how he could have her over when other people were awake too. Maybe it wasn't a secret anymore but Beck still liked feeling like it was. It was weird having Kate and Nikki together for some reason. Like maybe Nikki wouldn't like Kate, or Kate wouldn't like Nikki. Beck had never had anything that was just his before. Even when he was hooking up with Juno he'd known that it wasn't anything permanent or serious. When they'd had to go on the run he'd left Juno behind without thinking about it and when they'd had to lay low he'd cut contact with Juno because Nikki said to.

Not that Juno wasn't great, because she was. It had just never felt like something that Beck was going to hold on to and so he'd never tried to make it out to be something that it wasn't even to himself.

With Kate though... Kate was something that he hadn't shared with Nikki. Kate was his person and sneaking her inside in the dark with no one else awake to see them there talking felt special. Like the night belonged to just them. And sure, they might have to duck out of sight if Adam and Connor came in after a night out drinking and passed through, but Connor was usually too drunk to notice and Adam was usually too busy trying to keep Connor from falling into anything and making more drunk Connors to deal with. Beck was pretty glad that had never been his responsibility. Connor was hard enough to keep up with sober.

Beck opened the window as soon as Kate knocked, glancing behind him even though he knew that nobody was there. "Come in. They're all in bed." At least, he thought they were. If not then they'd at least be going there soon. "I saved a plate from dinner, if you're hungry." Maybe Kate had a place to stay in the mansion with all the other X-Men now, but that didn't mean that the food was any better than what they could scrounge up here. Besides... he was pretty sure that dates were supposed to have things like food and Beck hadn't actually told her that he thought about these meetings as dates sometimes but he was going to do it right anyway. That way if he ever did bring it up, she wouldn't have anything to complain about later.

Stepping out of the way, Beck offered a hand to help her through the window. She didn't need the help and he knew it. He still took advantage of the chance to maybe get her to touch his hand, just for a little bit.

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beaweapon
2018-06-27 09:42 am UTC (link)

Kate definitely didn't need help with something as effortless as climbing through a window, but she took his hand anyway. She hadn't really had too many opportunities to have this with anyone, whatever this was, so she wasn't totally used to the feeling of wanting to be near someone in a way that included physical contact for no reason. But she knew what it was when she felt it with Beck. It was instinct, and if there was one thing Kate was all too familiar with, it was instinct, and hers never lied.

Well, except for that one time in the middle of M-Town when she'd gone completely bonkers. That hadn't been her fault, though. She knew that now. Scarlett said she'd found traces of magical energy in her brain chemistry left over from the incident, what happened to her had clearly been the work of some outside forces, whatever that meant. Kate wasn't sure she wanted to know, but she also really didn't want that to happen again. The fact that she hadn't seriously hurt anyone (who didn't have a convenient healing factor anyway) was a minor miracle, and if whoever did this to her could do it again... Kate had spent the last year running from people who were trying to use her, she really didn't want to be used like that again.

Not to mention if it happened while she was with Beck. Kate didn't want to hurt anyone, but especially him. Maybe they hadn't known each other that long, but that didn't matter. He was the first person she'd met when she came to M-Town, and other than Frankie, the only person she really felt like herself with. There was more to how she felt about Beck, obviously, but when she tried to put it into words, she always ended up falling short. She just really liked his company. She... really liked him. Cared for him, in a way that she wasn't exactly used to. If something happened to him because of her, she'd never forgive herself.

Grasping his hand firmly but gently, Kate ducked and pulled herself the rest of the way through the window and hopped the short distance to the floor, landing gracefully on both feet. "Thanks." It took her a few seconds too long to realize she hadn't let go of his hand right away, only reluctantly dropping hers then and covering by raising that hand to her ear and pushing a strand of hair behind it, smiling hesitantly up at him. "i could eat." Honestly, she was never not hungry. Her metabolism was kind of nuts.

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