Heart of the Storm (Part 15)
Title: Heart of the Storm
Authors: lizynob and lorafantastory
Pairings: Oscar/Block as the Anna/Hans dynamic
Characters: Oscar Schlumper, Wayne Schlumper, Dr. Block, Dr. Tease, minor mentions of Party Mania characters
Word Count: 47,002
Warnings: Descriptions of anxiety, some bullying, angst, references to death
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Epilogue, Bonus Content
A Chance to Change
Oscar slept deeply and without dreams, and he woke up with no sense of how much time had passed since the events of earlier. However, he quickly realized that it must have been hours since what light was still coming through the window was dim. Wayne was not next to him, he observed next. The chair his brother had been sitting in was pushed off to the side, leaving an empty space next to the bed.
He stretched as best he could, trying to take care not to move his left arm that much, and propped himself back up against the headboard. He couldn’t help but wonder where Wayne was, if he’d gone back to his own room or was in the kitchen. It was actually a tad lonely without him right there.
All at once, his heart sunk with the realization that Wayne might not be there anymore. He might have been forced to leave sooner than they had thought.
Oscar squeezed his eyes shut, forcing himself to breathe calmly and not get his heart rate up. The last thing he needed was to pass out all over again. If Wayne really had left, surely he would have at least scribbled a note real quick or something. Opening his eyes, Oscar took a look over at his nightstand and saw nothing out of the ordinary. He did however, hear the sound of someone breathing and he scooted closer to the edge of the bed to look down.
Wayne was laying on the floor next to him, flat on his back and fast asleep. He didn’t have so much as a pillow under his head. He was just lying there on the bare carpet. Despite that, he looked fairly content. Oscar smiled, relieved to see Wayne still with him and glad to see him getting some rest as well. He certainly didn’t want to wake him, so Oscar resolved to just lay back down.
That had been his intention anyway, but somehow his elbow ended up knocking into the cup still on the nightstand and rattling the dishes that had been left there.
Wayne’s forehead creased into a frown as he was tugged rudely from sleep and he cracked open one eye to find the source of the clatter. His brother faded into view above him, looking guilty but not at all alarmed, so Wayne took that as a sign that nothing terrible had gone wrong yet.
He groaned and massaged his eyes as awareness started to creep back to him. “What time is it?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Oscar answered. “The sun’s gone down a ways, but it isn’t quite night yet. It is pretty late, though. Sorry for waking you.”
Wayne mumbled something unintelligible and let his head fall back to the floor. The muscles surrounding his spine had cramped up and he winced as he tried to stretch his back out. “Ow…”
Oscar rolled his eyes, still tired himself but not nearly enough to keep him from sarcasm. “Let me guess, sleeping flat on the floor is not all that comfortable. For heaven’s sake, Wayne, you couldn’t have taken ten seconds to run down the hall and grab yourself a pillow?”
“You’ll forgive me if I was a bit scatterbrained this morning. I had a few things on my mind other than bedding.” The older brother yawned, trying valiantly to wake himself up. His body was begging him to go back to sleep, but there were problems he needed to face.
“I guess I really am going to have to look after you more.” Oscar turned slightly to grab one of his own pillows and threw it down at Wayne. Specifically, at his brother’s face. “There,” he proclaimed with teasing glee.
Wayne shoved the pillow off and opened his mouth to fire back a sarcastic comment, but didn’t manage to get a word out before he dissolved into a fit of unexpected laughter. It was such a little thing, having Oscar toss a pillow at his head, but it was a relaxed kind of intimacy that had been rare between them for the last two decades. Handing him a pillow would have been perfectly acceptable, or even dropping it next to him. Throwing it at his face was such a brother thing to do. Perhaps it wouldn’t be as hard as he’d thought to get back to that bond. “You know, Oscar?” he giggled, stuffing the pillow behind his shoulders and settling down into it for a moment. “I think we’re going to be all right, you and I.
Hearing Wayne laugh lightened Oscar’s spirits more than he thought possible. “I think so too,” he said happily. Another idea came to him and he cracked up at the thought. “Would you like a blanket too?” he asked, imagining Wayne muffling under a wad of fabric being thrown at him.
“Not if you’re going to throw it at-” Wayne didn’t even get to finish his sentence before a microfiber throw dropped into a pile on his face, and he struggled to get out of it as Oscar cackled at him.
He was wadding it into a ball and preparing to toss it back when the sudden ring of the doorbell silenced both of them, and the blanket fell forgotten to the floor.
The air turned tense and Oscar felt a cold dread well up within him. He looked at Wayne, honestly not knowing what his brother might do. He swallowed hard, trying to make words form.
“Wayne?” was all he managed to get out in a feeble tone.
“We don’t know who it is,” Wayne murmured, half to himself. “It could be one of the neighbors or a Jehovah’s Witness or something. Maybe they’ll go away.”
They were still for another few moments, then the ring came again.
The older brother took a deep breath, determined not to panic at least until he knew for sure there was something to panic about. Oscar’s eyes were wide with apprehension. His little brother still needed looking after. Hell if Wayne was going to let someone pull him away from Oscar now. “I’ll take care of it.” He did his best to keep his voice even as he stood and headed for the door. “I am not leaving, Oscar,” he promised. “Not to run, and sure as hell not in handcuffs.”
He swiftly walked over to the front door, his mind made up that nothing on the other side would separate him from his brother. And with a firm twist of the handle, he opened it.
A uniformed officer looked back at him. Wayne’s gaze shifted past her and he realized that there was no SWAT team surrounding him, just a single police car parked at the edge of the street.
“Hello, my name is, Liz. I’m from the county sheriff’s department. Am I speaking to either Wayne or Oscar Schlumper?”
“Er, Wayne,” he answered warily, unsure what exactly she might be planning. Or was she planning anything? He braced himself, doing his best to act as casual as he could while silently calculating how fast he could smash her radio or disable her car if it came to that.
“And is Mr. Oscar home?”
“Doctor,” Wayne corrected automatically. “And yes. He’s...been under the weather today.”
It wasn’t a lie exactly, but the officer’s brow furrowed. She reached for her hip and Wayne tensed, but she merely pulled forth a small notepad. After a few flips, she looked back up. “Mr. Wayne, I need to ask you some questions about the events of two days ago,” she said seriously. “You and your brother were both in attendance at the Northwest Physics Conference, correct?”
“Doctor,” he corrected again, more to grasp at some semblance of normality than anything else, but his heart was quickly sinking with dread. There was no sense in lying. Dozens of people had known they had been invited and dozens of people had seen him up on the stage, not to mention the incident with the carpet and the chandeliers. He wondered how much of her questioning might count as an official interrogation. “We were, yes.”
She knew. God knew why she wasn’t taking more precautions around him, but he was certain that she already knew. Did he have Miranda rights if he hadn’t technically been arrested yet? His fingers began to tingle and he clasped his hands tightly behind his back. If she saw him sparking, she’d take it as a threat and call for backup and maybe there was already backup waiting for him just out of sight-
“Dr. Wayne, at some point during the events of the conference, two female scientists exposed the majority of attendees to a hallucinogenic agent. At any point during the conference, did you or your brother experience any unnatural or out of the ordinary physical sensations? Sudden dizziness, nausea, or fuzzy vision? Or did you experience any kind of strange mental perceptions that would be out of the ordinary such as seeing or experiencing events that were seemingly unable to be real, or things which seemed real at the time that later you realized could or should not be possible?”
She looked up from her notepad. “From what we know and have gathered, the drug doesn’t stay in the body’s system for an extended period of time, so if your brother is still experiencing symptoms, I would say that it is imperative that he go to the hospital and seek medical attention.”
The nervous electricity died instantly as he tried to make sense of what she was saying. “Wait, what?” he asked in genuine confusion. Wasn’t she there to arrest him? What was she talking about?
His reaction was met with another look of concern. “Dr. Wayne, how clearly do you remember the events of what happened?”
Wayne’s heart went from his shoes to his throat as he tried to think of how to answer her. She had completely thrown him off with her remarks and he wasn’t sure how to go about navigating them.
“It, ah, might be a little fuzzy.” It wasn’t an outright lie. “I - I was expected to give a speech, and stage fright can be a hell of a thing…” Not an outright lie either. “Uh, could you explain a bit more about that hallucinatory thing?” When she’d said it had been caused by two female scientists, he knew exactly who she was talking about. But of all the stunts they had pulled that night, he hadn’t had a clue about that one.
“We’ve had a wide-range of reported symptoms and experiences,” Officer Liz stated. “We’ve had people say monster-like creatures broke walls. A few have said objects dissolved into bugs. Some reported that a man burst into lightning. Many thought the room was changing size. Some thought they were the ones changing size, or color, or species.”
“Y-you don’t say,” Wayne managed weakly. He could scarcely believe what he was hearing. “Bursting into lightning, imagine that…”
She was giving him an expectant, somewhat impatient look, and Wayne forced himself to think fast. Nobody actually knew? It couldn’t really be true, could it? Somebody had to believe their eyes. But then they would also have to believe in the wall-destroying monsters and objects dissolving into bugs. He’d been the cause of everything, but all of a sudden he was being thought of as the victim of some sort of attack. He realized that she thought he’d been gassed and that Oscar was still sick from it.
Wayne took a deep breath as a way out appeared in his mind.
“Nothing like that happened to me, or Oscar,” he told her. “I had a brief experience of feeling dizzy, but that was while I had to give that speech and I was fine a few minutes afterwards once I was off the stage. We didn’t stay for long after that. Oscar wasn’t feeling very well so we went home early. Not with any sort of crazy visions or anything, just a cold. He’d already had it a couple of days before the conference and thought he was over the worst of it, but I ended up driving him home that night.”
There was just enough truth sprinkled in for Wayne to be able to pull off saying it with a straight face, and he managed to remember one other thing.
“I’m glad we left when we did though since I heard there was a horrible traffic jam on the bridge later that same night. It sounded...terribly dangerous. I hope no one was seriously hurt?”
The woman shook her head. “Surprisingly, no. It was bad enough to block off the whole road, but no one was critically injured, just a whole lot of fender benders.” She let out a sigh. “It was certainly a crazy night. We’ve heard it was a freak electrical accident, or a small lightning storm, some say perhaps some secondary device the two scientists implemented. A lot of eyewitnesses say someone ran out in the road and it might be one of the conference attendees who didn’t realize where they were in their altered state, but a transformer was blown and no street camera device was able to record the event.”
She then straightened back up and went back to her notepad. “A couple more quick questions, Dr. Wayne,” she said, resuming her original tone of professionalism. “Do you know anything about the individuals going by the names Cochren Block and Coquette Tease?”
Wayne forced his expression to go as blank as he could get it. “Never heard of them. Were they invited to the conference? I admit I’m not familiar with a lot of the people on the guest list.”
“They’re persons of interest in this case. Do you have any information regarding the events of that night that took place in or around the conference building?”
“No,” Wayne said, trying his best to sound innocent of anything to do with anything. “Like I said, we left early and by the sounds of everything, I’m glad we did.”
“And do you have any information about the structure at the Graystone’s Auto Yard lot?”
They knew about the fortress already. Dammit dammit dammit. “Structure? You mean that old scrapyard place all the way up the ridge?” Wayne asked, trying to sound like he only vaguely had heard of it. “What does that have to do with the conference?”
“We have reasons to believe our persons of interest may have been the using the area as a base.”
Their persons of interest? Block and her partner were the ones being suspected of making it?
“No, I don’t know anything about it,” Wayne said. “Sorry I haven’t been any help.” He internally begged that she would leave before he lost the strength to keep up his ruse and to his amazement, she shut her notebook.
Officer Liz then reached into one of the pockets of her uniform and pulled out a business card. “If you remember anything, or if your brother has any information, please let me know. This is a very serious investigation of terrorist level criminal activity.” She held the card out. “Otherwise, I would like to advise you once again that any persisting symptoms that seem out of the ordinary should be looked at by a health professional.”
“Yes, of course.” He jammed the card in his pocket before he could burn it. “Thank you for the information. I think I really should be getting back to my brother.”
“Thank you for your time and cooperation, sir,” she said before heading back over to her vehicle.
The moment her back was turned, Wayne stumbled backwards into the house and shoved the door closed. He stood there for several long seconds, listening to the patrol car engine start up, then fade away into the distance.
The future that had been so brutally cut short was starting to unfold once again in front of him. Nobody knew. Given the mess he’d caused, it was nothing short of miraculous.
Nobody knew. Nobody but Oscar.
He made his way back to his brother’s room in yet another haze of mild shock, which was becoming far too common a state for his liking.
Oscar was just as tense with apprehension as he’d been when Wayne left, and he didn’t look as if he’d even moved at all, like he’d just been frozen in place the whole time Wayne was out there. And he didn’t seem to take his brother’s wide-eyed look of disbelief and uncertainty very well.
“Wayne?” Oscar questioned tentatively. “What happened? Who was it? Are you okay? Are...are they okay?”
“It was a police officer.” Oscar paled slightly but Wayne shook his head before his brother could voice the obvious question. “I...I’m okay. She’s okay. I didn’t hurt anyone.” He sat carefully down on the edge of the bed, not trusting his legs at the moment. “Oscar, nobody knows. She wasn’t here for me, she was here to make sure we were all right. There was...some kind of incident at the conference just after we left. Block and Tease set it off. People were hallucinating all kinds of things and everyone assumes my lightning was part of it.” He looked down at his hands, which were quiet for the moment. “I...I don’t think I have to run.”
“Wait...how is that even possible?” Oscar asked, finding his voice and beginning to fire off questions. “What about the street wreck? What about the actual burns and the crashed chandeliers? You made a metal fortress and a giant robot thing! What about those? Is she going to come back? Is there going to be a follow up investigation? I don’t-”
“Oscar, calm down.” Wayne made a settling gesture with his hands, trying to cut off the flow of questions before his brother could get too worked up. “She...I don’t think she’ll be back. Not unless we try to file charges or anything. The carpet and the chandeliers in the hall, well, it sounds like things got rather out of hand after we left the conference, what with everyone hallucinating different things. I’d imagine there’d be a fair amount of damage and those will just be counted with the rest.” He ticked the questions off on his fingers as he answered them. “As for the cars, no one was killed in the wreck - thank God, I didn’t kill anybody - and they’re blaming it on an electrical surge or freak lightning strike or something. I dismantled Neutro - the robot - kind of spur-of-the-moment. The fortress…so far they’re blaming that on Block and Tease too.” His eyes widened and he buried his face in one hand. “Oh crap, I’d taken my gloves off. My fingerprints have got to be all over-” Wayne paused, lifting his head up again. “My fingerprints aren’t on it. I built the whole thing with lightning; I didn’t touch any of it. Even if they don’t pin it on Block and Tease, I don’t think it can be traced back to me.”
Oscar stared at Wayne. “So…I mean….” He struggled to spit something out. “...that’s it? It’s all just...over? No leaving town? No getting kicked out of the scientific community? No handcuffs or getting dragged into a testimony hearing? We’re just going to be left alone?” It was his turn to look disbelieving. “Everything’s….really going to be all right?”
“I...I think it is.” Wayne could scarcely believe the words coming out of his own mouth. “I mean, there are a lot of variables: your recovery, whether or not I can keep all this from happening again, but...for the moment...yes. I - I think it’s going to be all right.” He blinked slowly, as though making sure the world around him was real. “No one’s dead. I can...can ground myself under the right circumstances. No one’s going to come after me. I think...I think I just got my life back.”
“This isn’t going to happen again,” Oscar swore. “Because from now on, we’re going to work on things together. We’re not going back to our old lives. We have the chance to have something better.” He rubbed at the bandages on his chest. “This isn’t going to last forever. I’m going to be okay. And so are you.” Oscar smiled warmly. “You’re going to be okay.”
Wayne stared at Oscar, back down at his still-quiet hands, then back at Oscar. His brother had told him that so many times over the last few days, and so many times it had seemed such a far-off notion. Now, for the first time, he could actually bring himself to believe it.
Slowly, hesitantly, he reached out and wrapped his brother in an awkward hug. “Thank you. Oscar, thank you.”
Oscar’s eyes widened as Wayne reached out and put his arms around him. It was a loose hug, they weren’t pressed too much against each other, and Wayne’s touch was light and uncertain as if he wasn’t entirely sure he knew what to do.
He probably didn’t.
Oscar gently slid his arms around Wayne and hugged him back, closing the awkward gap between them and turning the embrace into something secure. He didn’t think he had anything he could say that wouldn’t ruin the moment, so he just stayed silent until it seemed the right time to break away. There were so many years to make up for and try to repair the damage done, but they had already managed to cross some of the biggest hurdles.
Hoping he wasn’t pushing things too far after that, Oscar rested his hand over Wayne’s. He didn’t try to hold it, just let his fingers settle trustingly over his brother’s.
“Yeah, I think you and I are going to be just fine,” he told Wayne softly.
Wayne smiled down at their fingers, enjoying the contact but grateful that Oscar was taking it slow with the whole touch thing.
“I wish I could keep it like this,” he admitted. “It would be nice to be able to touch things more often without worrying about burning them. When I’m calm the lightning’s calm too, but that’s not the case as often as I’d like it to be. I’m just an anxious person, it seems.”
“I don’t think it’s quite that simple,” Oscar said. “From what I’ve seen, you’re always scared you’re going to hurt someone, but the more you fixate on that and stress out, the more lightning you give off. So of course, you get even more afraid and then things get even worse. It’s like a cycle.”
Wayne sighed. “It is a cycle, you’re right. But once I get into it I can’t break it. I’ve never been able to and believe me, I’ve tried. Getting away from people is the only way I know of to shut it down, and even that takes some time.” He shook his head. “I’m so tired of being alone, and I’m even more tired of being afraid. I just don’t know how to be anything else if I can’t control it.”
Oscar thought for a few moments. “You say you can’t control it, but you made all sorts of things using it. So you have to be able to control it to some degree, right?”
“Well, yes, or at least I’m learning to.” He held a hand over the not-mangled fork that was still sitting on the nightstand, raising it a few inches off the plate. “When I’m not afraid, at least. If I start panicking all bets are off.”
Oscar stared in fascination at the hovering piece of silverware before managing to tear his attention back to the task at hand. “But the point is that it’s not impossible. And if it’s not impossible to control it, I’d bet it’s not impossible to break the cycle.” He leaned back against a pillow as he pondered through what he knew so far. “It’s electricity, and it works like normal electricity pretty much. It can be grounded.” He paused. “Even if you can’t entirely control it, maybe what you need most is to just be able to channel it. If there was always some way to channel it off of you, do you think that would help? For now, I guess you can just stick a fork in a socket, but what if there were other ways to deal with it?”
Wayne leaned forward in thought as possibilities began to open up to him. “Other ways to ground it… Aside from just touching the ground, of course. That wouldn’t work indoors, but if I could find something connected to the ground…” He glanced over at Oscar. “Or make something to connect to the ground…”
“Like a grounding rod?” Oscar broke into a grin. “We could do that. At least here in the house. That wouldn’t be a portable thing, but it’s a step in the right direction. Installing one down through the house foundation might be a hassle, but it’s definitely an option.”
“I have options,” Wayne repeated, mystified. “This is going to take some getting used to.”
“Here, I’ve got a notepad in the nightstand.” Oscar pulled paper and a pen from the drawer next to him. “We can jot down ideas. I’m sure there are other things we can do to help.” He pushed the dishes out of the way so he’d have space to write, revealing the blackened palm print on the wood beneath them.
Wayne froze at the sight of it. “Was that...from me? Oh no. Oscar, I’m sorry. “
Oscar followed his brother’s gaze back down to the burn mark on the nightstand. “What, that? It’s no big deal.”
Wayne shook his head unhappily. “I didn’t mean to do that. I’m sorry. I - I owe you a new nightstand. And a new lamp. And a new fork.” He sighed heavily. “And a new life…”
Oscar’s mouth quirked into a grin. “Actually, I kinda like it.” He rubbed a hand along the scorched wood. “You were mad on my behalf. It’s sort of like a nice reminder of that.” He looked up at Wayne. “You’re not getting rid of it. It’s my nightstand and I like it the way it is. And don’t worry about one stupid fork, we have a whole silverware drawer full of them. As for a new life, we’re already working on that so don’t stress.” He then made his expression as overly serious as he could possibly manage. “You do owe me a new lamp, though. I can forgive everything else, but you owe me that lamp.”
His brother burst out laughing, making it impossible for Oscar to keep a straight face. “It seems I don’t have any choice. Anything I can do to make up for such a horrible transgression as frying your desk lamp, I’ll do it, just please, please forgive me.” He couldn’t help but smile at how natural it was to joke with his brother. That fact gave him more hope than he’d had in a long time. He let himself move a tiny bit closer on the bed so that he could see the notepad as well. It had been so long since he’d allowed himself to be so close to Oscar. It unnerved him a little, but he was still within arm’s reach of the destroyed fork and if the lightning did rise up too far again, there was an electrical outlet right beside him. As unconventional as it was, he had a safety net. And thanks to that fact alone, he wasn’t quite so nervous.
Oscar chuckled and settled himself back against the headboard, wincing a little as he jostled his shoulder. “I’ll hold you to that promise. Though I’m sure you’ll figure out how to keep from frying any more of our appliances. I’d like to help you, if you’ll let me.”
Wayne’s smile softened. “I’d like that too,” he replied quietly. “I’d like that very much.”
Authors: lizynob and lorafantastory
Pairings: Oscar/Block as the Anna/Hans dynamic
Characters: Oscar Schlumper, Wayne Schlumper, Dr. Block, Dr. Tease, minor mentions of Party Mania characters
Word Count: 47,002
Warnings: Descriptions of anxiety, some bullying, angst, references to death
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Epilogue, Bonus Content
A Chance to Change
Oscar slept deeply and without dreams, and he woke up with no sense of how much time had passed since the events of earlier. However, he quickly realized that it must have been hours since what light was still coming through the window was dim. Wayne was not next to him, he observed next. The chair his brother had been sitting in was pushed off to the side, leaving an empty space next to the bed.
He stretched as best he could, trying to take care not to move his left arm that much, and propped himself back up against the headboard. He couldn’t help but wonder where Wayne was, if he’d gone back to his own room or was in the kitchen. It was actually a tad lonely without him right there.
All at once, his heart sunk with the realization that Wayne might not be there anymore. He might have been forced to leave sooner than they had thought.
Oscar squeezed his eyes shut, forcing himself to breathe calmly and not get his heart rate up. The last thing he needed was to pass out all over again. If Wayne really had left, surely he would have at least scribbled a note real quick or something. Opening his eyes, Oscar took a look over at his nightstand and saw nothing out of the ordinary. He did however, hear the sound of someone breathing and he scooted closer to the edge of the bed to look down.
Wayne was laying on the floor next to him, flat on his back and fast asleep. He didn’t have so much as a pillow under his head. He was just lying there on the bare carpet. Despite that, he looked fairly content. Oscar smiled, relieved to see Wayne still with him and glad to see him getting some rest as well. He certainly didn’t want to wake him, so Oscar resolved to just lay back down.
That had been his intention anyway, but somehow his elbow ended up knocking into the cup still on the nightstand and rattling the dishes that had been left there.
Wayne’s forehead creased into a frown as he was tugged rudely from sleep and he cracked open one eye to find the source of the clatter. His brother faded into view above him, looking guilty but not at all alarmed, so Wayne took that as a sign that nothing terrible had gone wrong yet.
He groaned and massaged his eyes as awareness started to creep back to him. “What time is it?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Oscar answered. “The sun’s gone down a ways, but it isn’t quite night yet. It is pretty late, though. Sorry for waking you.”
Wayne mumbled something unintelligible and let his head fall back to the floor. The muscles surrounding his spine had cramped up and he winced as he tried to stretch his back out. “Ow…”
Oscar rolled his eyes, still tired himself but not nearly enough to keep him from sarcasm. “Let me guess, sleeping flat on the floor is not all that comfortable. For heaven’s sake, Wayne, you couldn’t have taken ten seconds to run down the hall and grab yourself a pillow?”
“You’ll forgive me if I was a bit scatterbrained this morning. I had a few things on my mind other than bedding.” The older brother yawned, trying valiantly to wake himself up. His body was begging him to go back to sleep, but there were problems he needed to face.
“I guess I really am going to have to look after you more.” Oscar turned slightly to grab one of his own pillows and threw it down at Wayne. Specifically, at his brother’s face. “There,” he proclaimed with teasing glee.
Wayne shoved the pillow off and opened his mouth to fire back a sarcastic comment, but didn’t manage to get a word out before he dissolved into a fit of unexpected laughter. It was such a little thing, having Oscar toss a pillow at his head, but it was a relaxed kind of intimacy that had been rare between them for the last two decades. Handing him a pillow would have been perfectly acceptable, or even dropping it next to him. Throwing it at his face was such a brother thing to do. Perhaps it wouldn’t be as hard as he’d thought to get back to that bond. “You know, Oscar?” he giggled, stuffing the pillow behind his shoulders and settling down into it for a moment. “I think we’re going to be all right, you and I.
Hearing Wayne laugh lightened Oscar’s spirits more than he thought possible. “I think so too,” he said happily. Another idea came to him and he cracked up at the thought. “Would you like a blanket too?” he asked, imagining Wayne muffling under a wad of fabric being thrown at him.
“Not if you’re going to throw it at-” Wayne didn’t even get to finish his sentence before a microfiber throw dropped into a pile on his face, and he struggled to get out of it as Oscar cackled at him.
He was wadding it into a ball and preparing to toss it back when the sudden ring of the doorbell silenced both of them, and the blanket fell forgotten to the floor.
The air turned tense and Oscar felt a cold dread well up within him. He looked at Wayne, honestly not knowing what his brother might do. He swallowed hard, trying to make words form.
“Wayne?” was all he managed to get out in a feeble tone.
“We don’t know who it is,” Wayne murmured, half to himself. “It could be one of the neighbors or a Jehovah’s Witness or something. Maybe they’ll go away.”
They were still for another few moments, then the ring came again.
The older brother took a deep breath, determined not to panic at least until he knew for sure there was something to panic about. Oscar’s eyes were wide with apprehension. His little brother still needed looking after. Hell if Wayne was going to let someone pull him away from Oscar now. “I’ll take care of it.” He did his best to keep his voice even as he stood and headed for the door. “I am not leaving, Oscar,” he promised. “Not to run, and sure as hell not in handcuffs.”
He swiftly walked over to the front door, his mind made up that nothing on the other side would separate him from his brother. And with a firm twist of the handle, he opened it.
A uniformed officer looked back at him. Wayne’s gaze shifted past her and he realized that there was no SWAT team surrounding him, just a single police car parked at the edge of the street.
“Hello, my name is, Liz. I’m from the county sheriff’s department. Am I speaking to either Wayne or Oscar Schlumper?”
“Er, Wayne,” he answered warily, unsure what exactly she might be planning. Or was she planning anything? He braced himself, doing his best to act as casual as he could while silently calculating how fast he could smash her radio or disable her car if it came to that.
“And is Mr. Oscar home?”
“Doctor,” Wayne corrected automatically. “And yes. He’s...been under the weather today.”
It wasn’t a lie exactly, but the officer’s brow furrowed. She reached for her hip and Wayne tensed, but she merely pulled forth a small notepad. After a few flips, she looked back up. “Mr. Wayne, I need to ask you some questions about the events of two days ago,” she said seriously. “You and your brother were both in attendance at the Northwest Physics Conference, correct?”
“Doctor,” he corrected again, more to grasp at some semblance of normality than anything else, but his heart was quickly sinking with dread. There was no sense in lying. Dozens of people had known they had been invited and dozens of people had seen him up on the stage, not to mention the incident with the carpet and the chandeliers. He wondered how much of her questioning might count as an official interrogation. “We were, yes.”
She knew. God knew why she wasn’t taking more precautions around him, but he was certain that she already knew. Did he have Miranda rights if he hadn’t technically been arrested yet? His fingers began to tingle and he clasped his hands tightly behind his back. If she saw him sparking, she’d take it as a threat and call for backup and maybe there was already backup waiting for him just out of sight-
“Dr. Wayne, at some point during the events of the conference, two female scientists exposed the majority of attendees to a hallucinogenic agent. At any point during the conference, did you or your brother experience any unnatural or out of the ordinary physical sensations? Sudden dizziness, nausea, or fuzzy vision? Or did you experience any kind of strange mental perceptions that would be out of the ordinary such as seeing or experiencing events that were seemingly unable to be real, or things which seemed real at the time that later you realized could or should not be possible?”
She looked up from her notepad. “From what we know and have gathered, the drug doesn’t stay in the body’s system for an extended period of time, so if your brother is still experiencing symptoms, I would say that it is imperative that he go to the hospital and seek medical attention.”
The nervous electricity died instantly as he tried to make sense of what she was saying. “Wait, what?” he asked in genuine confusion. Wasn’t she there to arrest him? What was she talking about?
His reaction was met with another look of concern. “Dr. Wayne, how clearly do you remember the events of what happened?”
Wayne’s heart went from his shoes to his throat as he tried to think of how to answer her. She had completely thrown him off with her remarks and he wasn’t sure how to go about navigating them.
“It, ah, might be a little fuzzy.” It wasn’t an outright lie. “I - I was expected to give a speech, and stage fright can be a hell of a thing…” Not an outright lie either. “Uh, could you explain a bit more about that hallucinatory thing?” When she’d said it had been caused by two female scientists, he knew exactly who she was talking about. But of all the stunts they had pulled that night, he hadn’t had a clue about that one.
“We’ve had a wide-range of reported symptoms and experiences,” Officer Liz stated. “We’ve had people say monster-like creatures broke walls. A few have said objects dissolved into bugs. Some reported that a man burst into lightning. Many thought the room was changing size. Some thought they were the ones changing size, or color, or species.”
“Y-you don’t say,” Wayne managed weakly. He could scarcely believe what he was hearing. “Bursting into lightning, imagine that…”
She was giving him an expectant, somewhat impatient look, and Wayne forced himself to think fast. Nobody actually knew? It couldn’t really be true, could it? Somebody had to believe their eyes. But then they would also have to believe in the wall-destroying monsters and objects dissolving into bugs. He’d been the cause of everything, but all of a sudden he was being thought of as the victim of some sort of attack. He realized that she thought he’d been gassed and that Oscar was still sick from it.
Wayne took a deep breath as a way out appeared in his mind.
“Nothing like that happened to me, or Oscar,” he told her. “I had a brief experience of feeling dizzy, but that was while I had to give that speech and I was fine a few minutes afterwards once I was off the stage. We didn’t stay for long after that. Oscar wasn’t feeling very well so we went home early. Not with any sort of crazy visions or anything, just a cold. He’d already had it a couple of days before the conference and thought he was over the worst of it, but I ended up driving him home that night.”
There was just enough truth sprinkled in for Wayne to be able to pull off saying it with a straight face, and he managed to remember one other thing.
“I’m glad we left when we did though since I heard there was a horrible traffic jam on the bridge later that same night. It sounded...terribly dangerous. I hope no one was seriously hurt?”
The woman shook her head. “Surprisingly, no. It was bad enough to block off the whole road, but no one was critically injured, just a whole lot of fender benders.” She let out a sigh. “It was certainly a crazy night. We’ve heard it was a freak electrical accident, or a small lightning storm, some say perhaps some secondary device the two scientists implemented. A lot of eyewitnesses say someone ran out in the road and it might be one of the conference attendees who didn’t realize where they were in their altered state, but a transformer was blown and no street camera device was able to record the event.”
She then straightened back up and went back to her notepad. “A couple more quick questions, Dr. Wayne,” she said, resuming her original tone of professionalism. “Do you know anything about the individuals going by the names Cochren Block and Coquette Tease?”
Wayne forced his expression to go as blank as he could get it. “Never heard of them. Were they invited to the conference? I admit I’m not familiar with a lot of the people on the guest list.”
“They’re persons of interest in this case. Do you have any information regarding the events of that night that took place in or around the conference building?”
“No,” Wayne said, trying his best to sound innocent of anything to do with anything. “Like I said, we left early and by the sounds of everything, I’m glad we did.”
“And do you have any information about the structure at the Graystone’s Auto Yard lot?”
They knew about the fortress already. Dammit dammit dammit. “Structure? You mean that old scrapyard place all the way up the ridge?” Wayne asked, trying to sound like he only vaguely had heard of it. “What does that have to do with the conference?”
“We have reasons to believe our persons of interest may have been the using the area as a base.”
Their persons of interest? Block and her partner were the ones being suspected of making it?
“No, I don’t know anything about it,” Wayne said. “Sorry I haven’t been any help.” He internally begged that she would leave before he lost the strength to keep up his ruse and to his amazement, she shut her notebook.
Officer Liz then reached into one of the pockets of her uniform and pulled out a business card. “If you remember anything, or if your brother has any information, please let me know. This is a very serious investigation of terrorist level criminal activity.” She held the card out. “Otherwise, I would like to advise you once again that any persisting symptoms that seem out of the ordinary should be looked at by a health professional.”
“Yes, of course.” He jammed the card in his pocket before he could burn it. “Thank you for the information. I think I really should be getting back to my brother.”
“Thank you for your time and cooperation, sir,” she said before heading back over to her vehicle.
The moment her back was turned, Wayne stumbled backwards into the house and shoved the door closed. He stood there for several long seconds, listening to the patrol car engine start up, then fade away into the distance.
The future that had been so brutally cut short was starting to unfold once again in front of him. Nobody knew. Given the mess he’d caused, it was nothing short of miraculous.
Nobody knew. Nobody but Oscar.
He made his way back to his brother’s room in yet another haze of mild shock, which was becoming far too common a state for his liking.
Oscar was just as tense with apprehension as he’d been when Wayne left, and he didn’t look as if he’d even moved at all, like he’d just been frozen in place the whole time Wayne was out there. And he didn’t seem to take his brother’s wide-eyed look of disbelief and uncertainty very well.
“Wayne?” Oscar questioned tentatively. “What happened? Who was it? Are you okay? Are...are they okay?”
“It was a police officer.” Oscar paled slightly but Wayne shook his head before his brother could voice the obvious question. “I...I’m okay. She’s okay. I didn’t hurt anyone.” He sat carefully down on the edge of the bed, not trusting his legs at the moment. “Oscar, nobody knows. She wasn’t here for me, she was here to make sure we were all right. There was...some kind of incident at the conference just after we left. Block and Tease set it off. People were hallucinating all kinds of things and everyone assumes my lightning was part of it.” He looked down at his hands, which were quiet for the moment. “I...I don’t think I have to run.”
“Wait...how is that even possible?” Oscar asked, finding his voice and beginning to fire off questions. “What about the street wreck? What about the actual burns and the crashed chandeliers? You made a metal fortress and a giant robot thing! What about those? Is she going to come back? Is there going to be a follow up investigation? I don’t-”
“Oscar, calm down.” Wayne made a settling gesture with his hands, trying to cut off the flow of questions before his brother could get too worked up. “She...I don’t think she’ll be back. Not unless we try to file charges or anything. The carpet and the chandeliers in the hall, well, it sounds like things got rather out of hand after we left the conference, what with everyone hallucinating different things. I’d imagine there’d be a fair amount of damage and those will just be counted with the rest.” He ticked the questions off on his fingers as he answered them. “As for the cars, no one was killed in the wreck - thank God, I didn’t kill anybody - and they’re blaming it on an electrical surge or freak lightning strike or something. I dismantled Neutro - the robot - kind of spur-of-the-moment. The fortress…so far they’re blaming that on Block and Tease too.” His eyes widened and he buried his face in one hand. “Oh crap, I’d taken my gloves off. My fingerprints have got to be all over-” Wayne paused, lifting his head up again. “My fingerprints aren’t on it. I built the whole thing with lightning; I didn’t touch any of it. Even if they don’t pin it on Block and Tease, I don’t think it can be traced back to me.”
Oscar stared at Wayne. “So…I mean….” He struggled to spit something out. “...that’s it? It’s all just...over? No leaving town? No getting kicked out of the scientific community? No handcuffs or getting dragged into a testimony hearing? We’re just going to be left alone?” It was his turn to look disbelieving. “Everything’s….really going to be all right?”
“I...I think it is.” Wayne could scarcely believe the words coming out of his own mouth. “I mean, there are a lot of variables: your recovery, whether or not I can keep all this from happening again, but...for the moment...yes. I - I think it’s going to be all right.” He blinked slowly, as though making sure the world around him was real. “No one’s dead. I can...can ground myself under the right circumstances. No one’s going to come after me. I think...I think I just got my life back.”
“This isn’t going to happen again,” Oscar swore. “Because from now on, we’re going to work on things together. We’re not going back to our old lives. We have the chance to have something better.” He rubbed at the bandages on his chest. “This isn’t going to last forever. I’m going to be okay. And so are you.” Oscar smiled warmly. “You’re going to be okay.”
Wayne stared at Oscar, back down at his still-quiet hands, then back at Oscar. His brother had told him that so many times over the last few days, and so many times it had seemed such a far-off notion. Now, for the first time, he could actually bring himself to believe it.
Slowly, hesitantly, he reached out and wrapped his brother in an awkward hug. “Thank you. Oscar, thank you.”
Oscar’s eyes widened as Wayne reached out and put his arms around him. It was a loose hug, they weren’t pressed too much against each other, and Wayne’s touch was light and uncertain as if he wasn’t entirely sure he knew what to do.
He probably didn’t.
Oscar gently slid his arms around Wayne and hugged him back, closing the awkward gap between them and turning the embrace into something secure. He didn’t think he had anything he could say that wouldn’t ruin the moment, so he just stayed silent until it seemed the right time to break away. There were so many years to make up for and try to repair the damage done, but they had already managed to cross some of the biggest hurdles.
Hoping he wasn’t pushing things too far after that, Oscar rested his hand over Wayne’s. He didn’t try to hold it, just let his fingers settle trustingly over his brother’s.
“Yeah, I think you and I are going to be just fine,” he told Wayne softly.
Wayne smiled down at their fingers, enjoying the contact but grateful that Oscar was taking it slow with the whole touch thing.
“I wish I could keep it like this,” he admitted. “It would be nice to be able to touch things more often without worrying about burning them. When I’m calm the lightning’s calm too, but that’s not the case as often as I’d like it to be. I’m just an anxious person, it seems.”
“I don’t think it’s quite that simple,” Oscar said. “From what I’ve seen, you’re always scared you’re going to hurt someone, but the more you fixate on that and stress out, the more lightning you give off. So of course, you get even more afraid and then things get even worse. It’s like a cycle.”
Wayne sighed. “It is a cycle, you’re right. But once I get into it I can’t break it. I’ve never been able to and believe me, I’ve tried. Getting away from people is the only way I know of to shut it down, and even that takes some time.” He shook his head. “I’m so tired of being alone, and I’m even more tired of being afraid. I just don’t know how to be anything else if I can’t control it.”
Oscar thought for a few moments. “You say you can’t control it, but you made all sorts of things using it. So you have to be able to control it to some degree, right?”
“Well, yes, or at least I’m learning to.” He held a hand over the not-mangled fork that was still sitting on the nightstand, raising it a few inches off the plate. “When I’m not afraid, at least. If I start panicking all bets are off.”
Oscar stared in fascination at the hovering piece of silverware before managing to tear his attention back to the task at hand. “But the point is that it’s not impossible. And if it’s not impossible to control it, I’d bet it’s not impossible to break the cycle.” He leaned back against a pillow as he pondered through what he knew so far. “It’s electricity, and it works like normal electricity pretty much. It can be grounded.” He paused. “Even if you can’t entirely control it, maybe what you need most is to just be able to channel it. If there was always some way to channel it off of you, do you think that would help? For now, I guess you can just stick a fork in a socket, but what if there were other ways to deal with it?”
Wayne leaned forward in thought as possibilities began to open up to him. “Other ways to ground it… Aside from just touching the ground, of course. That wouldn’t work indoors, but if I could find something connected to the ground…” He glanced over at Oscar. “Or make something to connect to the ground…”
“Like a grounding rod?” Oscar broke into a grin. “We could do that. At least here in the house. That wouldn’t be a portable thing, but it’s a step in the right direction. Installing one down through the house foundation might be a hassle, but it’s definitely an option.”
“I have options,” Wayne repeated, mystified. “This is going to take some getting used to.”
“Here, I’ve got a notepad in the nightstand.” Oscar pulled paper and a pen from the drawer next to him. “We can jot down ideas. I’m sure there are other things we can do to help.” He pushed the dishes out of the way so he’d have space to write, revealing the blackened palm print on the wood beneath them.
Wayne froze at the sight of it. “Was that...from me? Oh no. Oscar, I’m sorry. “
Oscar followed his brother’s gaze back down to the burn mark on the nightstand. “What, that? It’s no big deal.”
Wayne shook his head unhappily. “I didn’t mean to do that. I’m sorry. I - I owe you a new nightstand. And a new lamp. And a new fork.” He sighed heavily. “And a new life…”
Oscar’s mouth quirked into a grin. “Actually, I kinda like it.” He rubbed a hand along the scorched wood. “You were mad on my behalf. It’s sort of like a nice reminder of that.” He looked up at Wayne. “You’re not getting rid of it. It’s my nightstand and I like it the way it is. And don’t worry about one stupid fork, we have a whole silverware drawer full of them. As for a new life, we’re already working on that so don’t stress.” He then made his expression as overly serious as he could possibly manage. “You do owe me a new lamp, though. I can forgive everything else, but you owe me that lamp.”
His brother burst out laughing, making it impossible for Oscar to keep a straight face. “It seems I don’t have any choice. Anything I can do to make up for such a horrible transgression as frying your desk lamp, I’ll do it, just please, please forgive me.” He couldn’t help but smile at how natural it was to joke with his brother. That fact gave him more hope than he’d had in a long time. He let himself move a tiny bit closer on the bed so that he could see the notepad as well. It had been so long since he’d allowed himself to be so close to Oscar. It unnerved him a little, but he was still within arm’s reach of the destroyed fork and if the lightning did rise up too far again, there was an electrical outlet right beside him. As unconventional as it was, he had a safety net. And thanks to that fact alone, he wasn’t quite so nervous.
Oscar chuckled and settled himself back against the headboard, wincing a little as he jostled his shoulder. “I’ll hold you to that promise. Though I’m sure you’ll figure out how to keep from frying any more of our appliances. I’d like to help you, if you’ll let me.”
Wayne’s smile softened. “I’d like that too,” he replied quietly. “I’d like that very much.”