RP Only A Lad

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Kallie tried not to flinch when he said records. She had been debating whether he was telling her she should have expected something like that to happen with his blood, or whether he was telling himself that when the word records passed his lips. She took a slow, deep breath like Alvis had told her to do and then returned her attention to the weights for a moment. They were balanced almost exactly at 70 kilograms, which made her eyes flick up to his face again. That was… light.

She stepped away and tested the syringe again, only to find it still radiating heat. At least the blood wouldn’t get thick while they were waiting. She sighed silently before she replied, her voice a little strained.[font color=purple] “Well, I actually am a Johnny Cash person. I’m also really fond of The Handsome Family and Lynyrd Skynyrd. I wouldn’t call myself an oldies person just yet. Though I have been known to listen to some Presley at times. Feel wrong enough for you to enjoy it?”[/font color]

She cleared away all of the trash and the used medical equipment and pulled out a few new items. An otoscope made an appearance as did an ophthalmoscope. She set them both on the counter with precision before she turned back to him. He was either going to have to come down to her, or she was going to have to go up to him. Or maybe both. She pulled her stool out from the corner and moved it toward the center of the room.[font color=purple] “Sit on this. I need to reach your ears and eyes.”[/font color]

She also pulled forward a step stool again. She might have been a relatively normal height, even if she was on the low end of it, but he was unusually tall. She would need the step stool. She stepped onto it and waited for Hal to sit.

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[div style="background-color:lightsteelblue;border-top:lightgreen 4px outset;border-left:lightgreen 4px inset;border-right:lightsteelblue 4px outset;border-bottom:lightsteelblue 4px inset;"][div style="border-top:lightsteelblue 4px inset;border-left:lightsteelblue 4px outset;border-right:lightgreen 4px inset;border-bottom:lightgreen 4px outset;"][div style="background-color:white;color:black;padding:15px;font-family:courier new;"]Kallie flinched. She tried not to, which was why Hal had noticed. He’d struck a nerve. He hadn’t meant to strike any nerves, but he didn’t apologize for it. It was interesting, to watch her try to recover with the good old deep-breath-and-redirect method. Like it wasn’t her usual method. She noted the weights on the scale, and then turned back to what she’d been doing before.

She tried to talk about something else, something more relevant, but he wasn’t listening to her words so much as the tone. Strained. She was still distracting herself. Her question did manage to distract him enough to laugh, but he didn’t say anything to it. He let the silence sit uncomfortably, because silence, like sound, had its place in the grand scheme of a well-directed conversation. He followed her directions, and maintained the slouch, too. He’d adjust his height, and that of the stool, as directed, but he seemed to be thinking.

When he spoke, he had decided to change the subject. Or maybe stay on topic, when she’d tried to direct away.

[font color="lightsteelblue"]"Ya seem like a nice gal, Kallie,"[/font] he said, feeling for the words without a moment of searching hesitation. [font color="lightgreen"]"How the hell’d you end up in all this? Don’t seem like somethin’ normal folks stumble into."[/font]
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Kallie couldn’t help the way she froze in place, the otoscope raised in her hand. She turned back to Hal and her gaze was more harsh than before. She thought for a moment. Hal was clearly trying to press because of her flinching. Maybe she hadn’t concealed it as well as she had hoped. She looked at him for a long time before saying, in a soft voice,[font color=purple] “Do you really want to know? Or do you want to make me uncomfortable?”[/font color]

She moved over to where he sat and hopped up on the stool next to him. It made her just about even with his height, so she lifted the device and inserted it carefully into his ear, moving it around in order to get a better look. Everything appeared normal, so she withdrew the device and walked over to the trash can depositing the tip.

[font color=purple] “I’ll tell you anyway, regardless of your why. I was in an incident with an anomaly. That anomaly ended up being very dangerous. It killed my husband. I ended up here. Simple as that, really.”[/font color] She very slowly and deliberately put down the otoscope on the counter and picked up the ophthalmoscope. She turned it over in her hands, thoughtful but trying to appear as though she was just inspecting it.

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[div style="background-color:lightsteelblue;border-top:lightgreen 4px outset;border-left:lightgreen 4px inset;border-right:lightsteelblue 4px outset;border-bottom:lightsteelblue 4px inset;"][div style="border-top:lightsteelblue 4px inset;border-left:lightsteelblue 4px outset;border-right:lightgreen 4px inset;border-bottom:lightgreen 4px outset;"][div style="background-color:white;color:black;padding:15px;font-family:courier new;"][font color="lightsteelblue"]"Mhm,[/font] [font color="lightgreen"]mhm."[/font]

The neutral sound would be wrong, coming from Hal’s throat, and he knew it. He had reigned in the smile to a broad, toothless smirk under Kallie’s more withering gaze, as if she’d cowed him. She hadn’t, and he was sure she knew that, but when she’d turned she’d found him sitting hunched with his feet tucked in under the stool to create the imitation of a too-thin vulture, perched and ready.

She’d answered his question, after all. Even with her little objection – although the sparkle in his eyes might’ve given her the wrong idea about which it was – she’d answered him. Very vaguely, which didn’t satisfy his curiosity very well. He had a dozen more questions, but he sat still, still waiting. When she didn’t expand, he tilted his head and looked bemused. Bemused was a hard look to get right, not quite a-mused and not muse-ing, either, and definitely not mus-ic, which was way too far off.

Or was it?

[font color="lightgreen"]"The anomaly was a record, o’ some sort,"[/font] he said, slowly, like he was testing the statement. It didn’t fit right, but that was alright. People tended to instinctively fill in the blanks when something was all wrong, or at least partly wrong, if only to be correct. [font color="lightsteelblue"]"Music’s hard ta get right. I didn’t think it’d get wrong enough ta kill someone. Not the normal kinda music, anywho. But I guess if it’s an anomaly it ain’t normal, an’ if the Eldritch can get it wrong, so can other things."[/font]

He didn’t sound like he knew, though. He sounded like he was still asking questions, without asking them, because to pressure her directly might trigger something and he could have deniability if he triggered something and the written record showed he’d clearly come to his own conclusions. The wrong ones. Saying the right ones wasn’t nearly as fun, after all.
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He seemed almost like he was reigning himself in as she talked about ACF-327. She sighed and leaned back against the counter, crossing her arms. She still had the ophthalmoscope in one hand and played with it while she listened to him. After he had finished, she shook her head slightly.[font color=purple] “It wasn’t the music. Not a record. It was an old turntable. One of the first models. I bought it for his collection and thought it might make a good peace offering. No, there’s a malevolent entity connected to it. That’s what killed him.”[/font color]

Talking about his death didn’t hurt, not this many years on. But that didn’t mean her PTSD had suddenly disappeared. She closed her eyes to try and block out the vision of blood splattering her shoes and stockings. She could practically feel the warmth of it on her palms from when she had finally dropped to her knees and the blood had seeped all the way to her hands.

No, it didn’t hurt to talk about him. But it sure as hell hurt to feel like she was suffocating on the spot.

She opened her eyes back up and gave Hal a look as she caught the glimmer in his eyes. She wasn’t sure whether that was because she was now uncomfortable, or because he had learned what he wanted to know. Either way, she didn’t really care. She just wanted to stop talking about it. She stood up straight and sighed, passing the device in her hands back and forth.[font color=purple] “That’s enough of that. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It makes me extremely uncomfortable.”[/font color]

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Hal’s head tilted, which only increased his similarities to a scavenger bird, but he didn’t say anything as Kallie explained. The smile did reappear to break his face in half, but he listened, because he wasn’t a monster who caused hurt without purpose. He was the kind of monster who didn’t pay any mind to other people’s pain while it was benefitting him.

He noticed Kallie’s, though. One of his people – gone now, lost in that backlash – got attacks like that. Like asthma, but not in her lungs. Phantom pain and shortness of breath, all in her head. He was surprised to find himself thinking about Jodie when he hadn’t shed a tear for any of them. He still knew them all by name, but it was funny, thinking about her like a real person. He’d made sure not to think about any of them that way, even while they were alive.

That kind of attachment, like Kallie’s attachment to her husband, was a weakness. He’d exploit it in a heartbeat if he saw it in someone else who had something he wanted. But he never, ever showed that weakness himself.

He didn’t say anything. She probably had professionals saying things all the time. Ground yourself, deep breaths, all the same crap he’d spouted at Jodie. It’d worked for Jodie, but it hadn’t fixed her. Just gotten her through the moment. Given that Jodie’s originated in her mind attempting to comprehend the incomprehensible, not even magic could put her back together right.

"Shore." He drawled the word, dragged it out to fill the negative space left behind her confession. He debated whether to leave it at that, but he didn’t want to give her the wrong impression, so instead he went back to looking mildly interested and tipped his chin up. "How’d ya deal with that? Didn’t see no breathin’ exercises or nothin’. Seems like you could just put it away. Rare talent, that."
 

Kallie quirked an eyebrow, unsure what he was referring to. Then, both of her brows went up as she realized what he meant. She pushed up from the counter and walked back over to him, taking the step stool to stand in front of him again. She hopped on it and straightened his head out. Turning the device on, she held it up, looking into first his green eye, and then the blue. “What I do isn’t healthy. I don’t recommend doing it. I take what I’m feeling, and I put pressure on it until it recedes. It's called repression. Very unhealthy. I should know better as a psychiatrist, but I do it anyway because I refuse drugs for my PTSD.”

She took her time looking at his eyes. Heterochromatic eyes were sometimes caused by congenital disorders, like Ocular melanosis or Sturge-Weber syndrome, so she took special care when she examined them. She wasn’t an ophthalmologist or even an optometrist, but she could recognize issues with eyes. She had after all gotten a doctorate in internal medicine and surgery. She should be able to spot anything out of the ordinary.

But his eyes looked fine, and he showed no other signs of congenital diseases that would cause it. That meant they were likely a naturally occurring mutation, an autosomal dominant trait maybe. Either way, she turned off the device and pulled away. She went to step down, but stopped, giving the young man a hard look. “I doubt you actually care about how I repressed my emotions. You just want to know the hows, don't you? You’re the kind of person who likes to pick things apart, maybe to see how they work. That’s what I’m putting together. And you have no mental illnesses, in my professional opinion. Can’t even qualify you as a narcissist.”

She stepped off the step stool, kicking it back under the edge of the examination table. She didn’t ask for her stool back as she scribbled more notes, as well as future tests that would be needed. She reached out and gently tapped the vial of blood. It had finally cooled, so she reached over and popped it out, taping the top shut and setting it on a tray that read “FOR LABS ONLY”.

 
Kallie, e noticed, had this habit where she told him about something before she seemed to realize that she either didn’t want to talk about it, or he actually didn’t want to know. Not that the knowing was anything bad, all the more to save for later use, but she was right in guessing that his questions were more habit than concern.

He sat still as she examined his eyes, patient and unblinking as the light came in, focused where directed. He was a good listener, for all his contrarian ways. But her hard look broke his facade again, and the fissure of a smile returned under her hard glare.

"Guilty as charged," he confessed, although there was more than enough pleasure there to indicate he felt no guilt at all for the prodding. He’d have to look into – narcissism, was it? She suggested that she might have been thinking about it being part of his person, and maybe he could turn that into a persona, if he could emulate it closely enough. Wouldn’t fool Kallie, or any other psychiatrists, but could keep some of the others distracted for a while, if the nice Committee man was anyone to judge by. They seemed to like analyzing people. Throw a cue here and a clue there, and boom, curiosity disguised in plain sight.

Kallie seemed to be done with that conversation, though, and she stepped back to her notes. Without direction, Hal slipped off the stool and padded over to where she leaned over her work. Over was not hard, being more than six and a half feet, but the trick to this was always to balance peering with looming, and looming with stealth. He wanted Kallie to know he was there, but he didn’t want to be breathing down her neck, and he wanted it to be a funny feeling, not a conscious perception.

Of course, there was a lot on her sheet that he couldn’t interpret, but he looked anyway, in case he could recognize some of the words later and impress – or, preferably, distress – someone important. Besides, it was a sheet about him. It had his name on it. It was justifiable, even if the intention was something else entirely.
 

Kallie was finishing filling out the papers and writing down the necessary tests he would have to go to next week when he came up next to her. She rolled her eyes and turned to look up at him, a quip about personal space on the tip of her tongue. She stopped when she saw his dilated pupils and the way his lower eyelid was twitching. She looked at his fingers and saw them twitching as well. He was going to go down.

She quickly abandoned her paperwork and turned to Hal. She wouldn’t be able to catch him or pick him up if he went down, he was too big of a fucker for someone her size to move around. She sighed and carefully moved out of the way and over to the table. She stood next to it, crossing her arms. “You’re going to collapse. Hop up on this table, before you do. It’s going to hurt if you hit your head on the ground from that height. Come on.”

She gestured for him to walk over, then patted the seat in a possibly condescending way, although she surely didn’t mean it to appear that way. As soon as he was seated, she would hurry off to find someone who could help her get him to the actual infirmary. Maybe Jerry. Jerry was big. He could probably lift Hal over his shoulder.

She examined the young man in front of her. All in all, she thought he was probably a sleeper, someone who was going to turn out to be incredibly brilliant. He would definitely excel in the psychology department, just based on the half truths he had told her. She didn’t believe for one second he had told her the whole truth and about any of the things they had discussed, But that would probably be asking for a lot.

They were either going to be good friends, or hate each other deeply.
 
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