Adventures of Matt Parkman, Chapter 12: New Family
They pulled in the gangplank or whatever it was called and folded up the steps before getting the ship underway. Beers were distributed all around. Matt smiled to himself and leaned against the railing, feeling the intermittent cold spray of the water as they headed across the gunmetal grey waters. It was fairly smooth here in the bay.
Jay sent the ship along slowly and carefully. He was very comfortable with his vessel. Parkman picked through his mind casually, struggling from time to time with the normally simple task when waves rocked them. Most days the man took tourists out on fishing expeditions. Since the recession hit two years ago and tourists became scarce, he'd looked for another way to keep his ship on the water. He'd hit on this after the ship Elliott had been using before was confiscated by the Coast Guard. That had ruined El's last partner, who hadn't prepared himself for the eventuality.
Jay had thought, at first, he'd just do two or three runs and then retire, but the money was so easy and so much that he soon decided to keep at it until they caught him. Then he'd do what the smart ones in the business did and flee the country. It wasn't hard to do if you had enough money set by and you weren't stupid enough to do something that made it tough for your lawyer to get you out on bail.
He'd been at this for quite a while now, having already purchased a place in the Baja and set aside money for his three kids in trust funds, where it couldn't be touched if he was convicted (in absentia, of course). His wife had left him some time ago, about the time when he'd finally scraped together the money to invest in his dream: the New Sun. Maybe she left because he frittered away their life savings on this hole in the water. Or maybe he bought the New Sun to get away from her constant nagging. He didn't know or really care at this stage. He loved what he did now, which was more than he could say when he was an auditor.
They left the bay and began to hit the swells of the ocean. Matt's concentration, his ability to read the thoughts of others, began to falter even more as his stomach turned and lurched with each crest they wallowed through. He'd intended to go through every person on the ship, but clearly that was not to be. He tried to keep his composure, but the little ship rolled and rocked through every wave. Every wave brought another surge of seasickness until they were coming one on top of another and he could hardly see for the nausea. No one else seemed nearly as discomfited as he. Brandon came over and clapped him on the back, expressing his amusement with Matt's situation and suggesting various unlikely and disgusting cures. Matt lost it over the side of the boat and set his beer aside. There was no way he was finishing it anytime soon. He was weak and trembling and sweating, knotted and bent with cramps and dry heaves.
Ryan came over and hovered around uncertainly, compelled to help him but having no idea how. Brandon waited until Matt was entirely incapacitated before trying to talk Ryan into tossing Matt overboard as a joke. Matt couldn't tell if he was serious or not, but he recalled with a sinking feeling that he hadn't finished with his commands to Brandon. Ryan appeared genuinely tempted by the idea of pranking Matt in some vicious, but ultimately harmless fashion. Matt couldn't bring his ability together enough to defend himself. He couldn't even talk without heaving and the agitation of realizing Brandon might be about to kill him, cheerfully, was roiling his stomach even worse.
"Come on," Brandon said, grabbing Matt's arm almost playfully. Almost. Matt tried to struggle free of him, but Brandon was much stronger than he was. His fingers dug painfully into Matt's bicep.
Parkman finally got a breath to speak and demanded, "Stop it - let me go."
Brandon did, dropping him casually and heavily onto the bench. He glanced back at Jay and El, who were standing together on the foremast, facing forward, discussing their course or whatever it was that was absorbing their attention. Patty was sitting on the opposite side of the ship, legs curled under herself. She watched without judgment, waiting to see how things would turn out.
Brandon offered Parkman his beer again and Matt pushed it away in annoyance, his head down, trying to master himself. The other man handed the drink off to Ryan, who turned to put it down somewhere that the pitching motion of the ship wouldn't capsize it. When he turned back, Brandon had his hand over Matt's mouth and was jerking him to his feet.
For what seemed like a very long time Ryan did nothing, but as Brandon started to pull Matt towards the back of the ship, he grabbed Matt's other arm and said, "Stop it! Stop!" He hesitated as the other man rounded on him. Even Matt looked surprised. "Don't… You can't. It's not a joke anymore. Maybe… Maybe he just needs to lay down."
Brandon looked Ryan over as the young man tried to move him towards the cabin. His eyes flicked past him to the two older men. In a rare flash of intelligence, Ryan said, "You can't keep both of us quiet."
Brandon tilted his head slightly and then shrugged. "I was just joking, kid." They hauled Matt into the bedroom beyond the cabin, supplying him with a bucket in the unlikely event his stomach found something new to purge. Brandon laughed at him, saying, "Hey, you'll get over it eventually. Get your sea legs under you. Hahaha." He shouldered Ryan aside and leaned close to Matt's ear, whispering, "We'll be further out from shore later. Stay away from my girl or I'll kill you." Matt felt a surge of hate at his retreating back, but he was impotent, unable to lash out at him as he wanted at the moment. Brandon left.
Ryan stood over him with one hand resting casually on a cabinet. He swayed comfortably with the motions of the vessel, untroubled even though he'd never been on the ocean. It was like a very slow, gentle roller coaster ride to him - hardly anything to lose your lunch over. He had no idea why Matt was so sick, but it didn't prey on his mind much. At the current point, he was amusing himself imagining what would have happened if he'd let Brandon do what he wanted. The thought of Parkman wet, cold and indignant made him smile slightly. Matt lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, only barely aware of even Ryan's linked mind. What he was aware of, though, was not thinking helpful thoughts about him and was entirely unbothered by the sea.
Matt turned his head to regard the young man, feeling the usual surge of fear as soon as his attention lighted on him. Ryan didn't like Matt looking at him. Matt didn't care. "Come here."
The man looked around uneasily. He was already there. He didn't know where Matt meant.
Parkman clarified, "Get down here where I can touch you. Get down on your knees."
An expression of revulsion passed over Ryan's face, but he knelt next to Matt. Parkman rolled over and put his hands on either side of Ryan's face, telling him, "Hold still."
He tried to take the man's body. He knew it would be difficult, but he hadn't known how much. Ryan didn't fight him - his consciousness retreated as soon as Matt's began to form in his mind. It was Matt's own body that resisted him, that was causing him problems.
All the churning sensations of movement disrupted him, but he exerted himself, bringing all of his power to bear on the transfer. He burned Ryan out, a large part of him, in the process, like channeling too high a current through a wire. He knew it, but forced it through anyway. It wasn't a fast process. He could have stopped when he saw how much it was doing to the other man, but he wasn't going to spend the trip feeling like this - not when he had an alternative right in front of him. He couldn't rely on Ryan protecting him, especially not against the sort of people he was now trapped on the boat with. The next inventive dodge they figured out around his commands might be the last and Matt was painfully aware he'd done nothing to stop Patricia from simply shooting him.
Ryan's body twitched, blood coming from his nose, eyes and ears by the time Matt was done and he lifted Ryan's hands, aware in his body. The body was still alive, with enough function for Matt to use him competently. He wasn't sure what was left of the man's mind, though. He could find snatches of it, but it was fragmented something like when he'd torn apart Sylar a few months ago. In Sylar's case, all of the pieces were still there even if disordered and they had put themselves back together. Now it seemed there were portions missing of the young man, portions crushed so much by the power Matt had brought to bear that they couldn't recover.
Matt sighed, wondering how extensive the damage was. He stood up, rolling his own body over and covering it with a blanket to make it look like he'd fallen asleep. He was not seasick in Ryan's body. His left hand and right shoulder didn't hurt. His awareness, his ability, was functioning again now that he was in a form unbothered by the sensations of the ocean travel. Well, it wasn't like I cared much about Ryan anyway. I'll just have to see if I can fix him later, when I'm done. Or maybe this was just his time. It's not like I haven't been feeling that since I painted that grave. It was him or me - Brandon made that much clear.
He shrugged his shoulders and stood taller. He found some tissues and cleaned his face. He ran his hands down himself. It wasn't a bad body, though his ribs and arms didn't feel quite right. Matt probed at them. There were knots here and there, uneven bones that had been broken and healed without medical attention, poorly set if at all. Given his age and that everything was long healed, Matt could only conclude Ryan had been beaten so badly as a child that it was a wonder he was even alive. No wonder he didn't bother to try to get his fingers looked at. Or… try to get away from me.
Matt ran his hands across his new face. Ryan wasn't anything special to look at, but he was lean, with hardly an ounce of fat on him. It was something Matt could appreciate, just as he appreciated the relative grace and speed of youth. Despite Ryan's background, he was fairly athletic. Matt put on a confident smile and walked out, shutting the door behind him. Now he would enjoy the voyage for real.
For a moment he was put off by the cool reception he got as he reclaimed his beer, or rather, Matt's beer. He drank it anyway. He wouldn't touch it as Matt after he'd put Ryan's lips on it, but he didn't care much what he did with Ryan's body. He looked around at the suspicious, sidelong glances he was getting from everyone. Oh yeah, they don't think I'm Matt.
He addressed that with a simple command for them to treat him they would treat Matt, again exempting Patricia. There was nothing artificial in her reactions and he wanted to keep it that way. He liked it. He sat near her and asked her about herself, scanning through her mind and enjoying Brandon's mounting uneasiness with him sitting next to the man's girlfriend. He was suspicious, not sure why Matt's skinny, punk friend was now macking on his girl just as Matt had. It was a small revenge for his intentions earlier. Matt intended to get a larger one fairly soon.
She told him lies. He saw through them, but he didn't mention it. She'd gone to college as an art student, hoping to be a graphic designer. She still did, in a way, but her ambitions were changing and she was considering getting involved with television or the movie industry now that she had developed better connections. She was ambitious, far more so than she implied with her words. She told him she was the illegitimate daughter of a big-name producer. He smiled agreeably and nodded. Her real father was an auto mechanic and owned his own shop.
Patty had become involved in the drug business through her boyfriend Nick, a stoner and an idiot, not much better than Ryan for making wise decisions with his life. The smartest thing he did was to start bringing Patty along with him on runs. She was a better read of people than he was and didn't hesitate to put her foot down when they claimed they were short of money or would pay them later. She wasn't intimidated by threats, thinking foolishly that Nick would handle anything physical that happened.
She was wrong and things got out of hand once. It only took the once for her to learn her lesson and learn it well. Nick ran, leaving her to the three men who wanted their dope without having to pay for it. Once one of them looked out the window to see that Nick hadn't gone to his car for a gun, but to drive away, they had her too. They weren't as rough as they could have been, but she didn't fight with them much either. Three against one were bad odds and they weren't taking no for an answer. She retained as much dignity as she could.
She put a knife to Nick when she got back, but he ran again and kept running until he got to Colorado, where his mother lived. Patty took up his business after that, carrying a gun she didn't know how to use and a knife that was more dangerous to her than anyone else. It still put her ahead of many of her customers and made the rest wary.
Her supplier, Kyle, thought she was cute, amusing. He'd been in the business long enough to tell she had no idea what she was doing with her weapons. He introduced her to his supplier, El, with the intention of gaining the man's approval. Kyle had seen her as disposable - some leftover tits and ass from Nick. El didn't see her that way. He showed her how to use what she had, took her to the firing range, gave her lessons on self-defense. He turned her down when she finally propositioned him, having been confused as to why he'd never made a move on her.
El hooked her up with Brandon, who took her as his "date" to various movie industry parties where they catered to a more expensive customer base than she'd had at the university. Brandon sold drugs and sometimes he sold her too. She cultivated contacts and built trust, something Brandon had never been able to do. To her, it was clear El was grooming her as a replacement for the muscular man she was with, so she played the hand she'd been dealt. She mixed. Today she was mixing with her mentor El and with Jay, the ship captain, her first time of being trusted to see how the shipments were picked up. El was having her learn every step of Brandon's business and it wasn't lost on her why this was.
Matt took an interest in the shipments. He'd heard about this while he was a cop, but it was never part of his jurisdiction. The ship went out to the designated GPS coordinates, then dropped anchor and turned on a homing beacon. Then they broke out fishing poles, another round of beers and some shrimp and snacks they'd packed in the ice chest. They talked and laughed as they sat around the deck, waiting for the submersible to find them. They fished a little, but nothing was biting today and their coordinates were intentionally away from the usual runs for the schools.
Brandon made jokes that weren't really jokes about cutting Ryan up for bait. El and Jay fell silent, letting Brandon laugh alone. After a bit they walked into the cabin together and Ryan rose to follow them, worried about letting them be alone with his body in the next room. Brandon grabbed his arm. "No. You ain't going in there, you skinny little fuck." He yanked him off-balance and backwards, getting his other hand into Ryan's hair and jerking his head back faster than he could react. Matt yelled, but he was entirely off-balance and too shaken to stop him. He heard Patricia call out to El before he was falling.
The water closed above him with a splash. He was in the ocean and it was freezing, far colder than he'd expected. It stole his breath. He tried to breathe at the wrong moment and got a lungful of water. The world tilted crazily. He struggled to find "up", finally got his bearings and broke the surface. He coughed, spitting and fighting to get air as waves slapped his face. On the boat, Brandon was laughing at him. Jay and El had come back out and were looking at him. After a frighteningly long pause, as the ship got further and further away from him with each passing second, Jay picked up a life preserver with a rope and tossed it out to him. He had another moment of panic as Jay tossed the end of the rope into the water as well and went up to the bridge without a backwards glance. But he turned the ship back and El hooked the rope with a pole as they came around and killed their momentum. The two older men pulled him in silently. Brandon chortled off to the side.
Once on board, Matt glared at Brandon in between racking coughs and spitting out the last of the seawater from his lungs. The moment he was able to, he fully intended to return the favor, except he'd make the other three leave Brandon to die. Jay collared Ryan's body and fairly drug him into the cabin. "Come on, you." Matt stood tensely, trying to read Jay's intentions. He wanted Ryan to stay put inside the cabin. This was important. Jay handed him a towel. Matt began to dry himself off, still digging for answers. He didn't feel he was in any danger. Outside, there was a smack, a howl and a whine of anguish from the deck. Matt jerked around and stared past Jay, who was blocking him. "Dry off," Jay said evenly.
Matt's lips moved slightly, then he did as directed. He could read that Jay and El had gone in the cabin to discuss that Brandon was getting out of hand with him, not to do anything to Matt. There had been too many minds to keep track of for Matt to have followed their thoughts as well. Now they were going to punish Brandon for his stunt. Somehow seeing someone else enact revenge quelled Matt's own desire for it. He could tell what El performed on Brandon with brutal efficiency, able to sense the strongly projected thoughts as clearly as Brandon's increasingly muffled sounds of pain.
Matt sat down and after a beat, Jay walked out. There was silence after that. They protected me. Just like Ryan did. He had a tremendous feeling of déjà vu, like he belonged here with these people. After a few minutes, El came to the door and said, "Come on out here. No one's going to toss you in the drink. You'll dry off faster in the sun."
He came out. Brandon's bruised face smiled at him with a strange, fawning sincerity. He genuinely hoped he hadn't pissed Matt off too much. That put Matt off.
"Hey, um…" Brandon brought him a beer. "Sorry about that. Really. I was just joking. You know that, right?" He moved awkwardly, holding himself oddly. "It's okay, right?" Brandon looked past Matt to Jay and El, who were watching silently for Matt's reaction. Parkman realized they were waiting for him to pass judgment. Brandon knew that too.
He swallowed and accepted the beer, taking a seat next to Patricia and daring Brandon to do anything about it. She didn't move away from him like he expected. He looked at the muscular man who had thrown him off the ship. Brandon smiled almost painfully and went to sit on the opposite side of the deck, trying and failing to look at ease. Matt put an arm around the man's girlfriend, who leaned into him agreeably. Brandon looked away. Matt gloated for a few minutes, drinking his beer and feeling the woman next to him. Finally he said clearly and loudly, "It's okay." He didn't look at Brandon then - he looked at the two men in charge. They nodded and went back to business.
The woman curled her legs under herself. She felt nice against him, a warm body against his chill, damp skin. She started talking to him again about her interests, since he'd listened to her raptly earlier. He did so again, watching as Brandon alternately steamed about it and was grateful he was still alive. Matt grinned. He was probably stupid to feel safe, but he felt that way anyway. His future didn't include any further danger here. He could sense it. Jay and El came back on deck a little later and struck up idle, entertaining conversation about some of their adventures in the military. Things relaxed and everyone had a few more to drink.
When they finally picked up the submersible's signal, they started wrapping up the reminiscence. They dropped over the magnet and charged it up. The little machine came right to them. They pulled it up, emptied the contents, closed it and sent it back after El tinkered with the electronics a bit and changed out the batteries. They tossed over most of the ice from the ice chest and packed their new cargo underneath what was left of the beer. They enjoyed another round of conversation, packed away the fishing poles, then got underway again. Even Brandon seemed to have cheered up, but maybe that was because they were clearly taking him with them as they left.
They arrived back at the docks without incident. Jay's ship went out frequently on obvious and well-known legitimate business. Most of why he took people with him to the pickups was so it would appear he had paying customers. The Coast Guard was unlikely to target him, though it was always a possibility. It would happen eventually, he knew. Matt's arrival, claiming to be LAPD, had given the captain quite a scare even if he was an old friend. Parkman mentally nudged him not to care about that, not to be bothered about it.
After closing up the ship, Jay and El off-loaded the ice chest. Brandon lifted his own much smaller ice chest that carried his preferred brand of alcoholic beverage and carried it off to his car, intending to return after taking a moment to talk to Jay and El privately. Patricia said she wanted to check on Matt. Unlike the others, Matt had been reluctant to warn her off mentally. The rest were unconcerned the older man had stayed in the cabin the whole trip. Patty was genuinely concerned he might have died or had some serious problem. It was sweet.
He caught her as she came out of the cabin, having slipped past him while he was seeing people off. She was flustered and said, "I can't wake him up! I can't wake him up! There's something wrong!"
Matt smiled, in Ryan's body. She cared about him, at least in some small, humanitarian way. No one else he'd run into lately gave a crap. It was very attractive. He was sure Janice would have been panicked too, but her overall fear of him loomed in his mind. Patricia wasn't afraid of him. He had a strange feeling that she never really would be. That was also very attractive. He bent down to kiss her abruptly.
She inhaled and stiffened very slightly. He put his arms around her. She was very aware that she was alone on the ship and this man, this young-looking but very confident man, had been the last one with Parkman's body. She thought maybe he'd killed him, or drugged him. She brought Ryan's, Matt's, face back to hers and kissed him more passionately. If she couldn't say no, then she'd be the one saying yes. She had no fear of what might happen. It had happened before. It was only rape if she tried to refuse.
Matt pulled away from her after a delicious, very tempting moment. "No… no… you don't have to do this. I'm sorry. I shouldn't be doing this." He let go of her and backed away slowly. The young man's body had responded faster than Matt's did. Age slowed a lot of reflexes, that one among them. Matt raised his empty hands. He hadn't intended things to go that far, that fast. He'd kissed her without thinking. Her thoughts about it were easy for him to read, but difficult to understand.
She looked at him in curiosity, intrigued that he was turning her down, especially as his body was clearly ready. She glanced back over her shoulder into the bedroom. "Did you do that to him?"
He nodded.
"Why?"
He shrugged. He shrugged because he had no answer he could really give her without explaining about abilities and even though he knew he would tell her about them, this didn't seem to be the time. Her mind leaped to conclusions in the absence of information.
"What are you going to do with him? Now?"
He felt a surge of warmth within himself at her concern. She was asking partly out of curiosity, but what appealed to him was how much she asked out of compassion. She thought he was going to dump Matt into the ocean or something. She wasn't happy about that. She'd been very unhappy about what Brandon had done to him and even happier to see the other man get hurt for it. He'd certainly hurt her enough to deserve it.
He smiled. "He'll be better later. Then I'll get him off the ship and we'll leave." He shook his head. "He couldn't handle the ocean. It's not a big deal." He walked out of the cabin and sat on one of the benches around the deck.
She followed him, thinking he meant he'd drugged Matt to keep him from seeing the pickup, which she thought was very clever, if odd and inexplicable. She walked over deliberately, putting a sway into her hips she knew he saw, and sat next to him, moving herself up against him and swinging his arm over her shoulders.
Matt hesitated at how forward she was, then relaxed into it. She wasn't coerced. She was far more casual about sex than any woman he'd ever been with. Regardless of what experiences she had had to make her feel that way, it was how she felt now. She snuggled herself next to him and waited. She thought a young man like him wouldn't be able to keep his hands off her for long. He finally decided she was willing and there was no command he'd given her that made her that way.
He thought about being in Ryan's body. Was it cheating if he did what she expected, what she wanted? He wasn't with Janice. He felt entirely separate from her. He was in his own life, she in hers. His abilities cut him off from her. Hell, he wasn't even in his own body. If anyone did find out, it would be Ryan's indiscretion, not Matt's. Or so he told himself. He wasn't sure he believed it, but one thing he believed was that he was going to be with this woman. Maybe today, maybe not - he hadn't decided yet - but he would be eventually. He'd seen it.
He stroked his fingertips over her shoulder and upper arm. Her skin was smooth and warm. Her body lay against his, ample without being too heavy. She was young, only a few years older than Ryan's apparent age. She was 23 or 24. She wanted him, to have some control or influence over him, but also the experience of human contact. She wanted him to want her. He had kissed her, showing he did want her, but then backed away, giving her space, refusing to force her. It was a turn on to have her own way.
Brandon came back, seeing them sitting together intimately from some distance. Even though he'd shared her with innumerable men at parties, he was always getting something out of it and he regarded her as his. He wasn't getting anything from Ryan. Jay and El were gone. He balled his fists. He wasn't sure what he was going to do, but he was going to do something. Matt suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. The knowledge he was effectively looking at Patricia's pimp did not help.
Go away and leave us alone, he thought to him before he ever got to the boat, with what Matt thought was remarkable restraint considering he could have told the man to drown himself. Brandon's expression smoothed. He turned and left. The woman, who had seen her 'boyfriend's' look and had been sullenly working herself up to leaving, sat up a bit.
Matt murmured to her, "I'll give you a ride later if you want." He let his lips brush against her hair, moving them lightly against her. The sensations were odd in a different body. It was fascinating. He was getting another erection. He laughed at himself, remembering when his own body had been this young, this full of life and eagerness that it responded so fast to nothing more than kissing a pretty woman's head.
She looked at him and raised a brow, then leaned in to kiss him. They made love in the cabin, only a handful of feet away from Matt's body.