Braided Lives (5 page)

"Surprises the hell out of me. I keep expecting to drop the stupid thing when it jerks so hard," she said.

His hands hadn't moved, they were still pushing down on her shoulders. She pulled the trigger and the heavy gun jumped in her hands again. The shot hit the edge of the black portion of the target, about where the shoulder of the silhouette was.

"That's a little better," commented Valentine. "Try again." He reached forward and wrapped his hands around hers. They were much bigger. She flinched a little. Training in this place took "hands-on" to a whole new level.

Psychically talented people were quite frequently pathologically shy of touch, or so the staff of Division P

had told her. The extra sensory input could be so overwhelming. This tended to give the general public the impression that those people were cold, aloof and distant. In here, it was so incredibly different. There was full acknowledgement that touching was difficult, with the flip side being there was lots of intentional contact to help the psi learn better coping skills. Jennifer still hadn't decided how she felt about the whole concept.

"Relax," Valentine murmured. "Aim. Squeeze."

Yeah, and the loud report made her flinch again, only this time the solid wall of male fingers around her own buffered her motion. The hole in the target this time was a little closer to the middle of the outline.

The shooting range lesson went on for another half hour. Jennifer got almost used to Valentine's poking and prodding of her body as he corrected her stance, her grip, her aim and basically every facet of her performance. Half the time he was practically pressed against her back, the other half he was three feet to one side, with that analytical look on his face.

She used up two full boxes of bullets. In the span of that time she did manage to get so she was generally hitting the black silhouette of the target most of the time.

"Am I done?" she asked pulling off the ear protection and safety glasses.

"For today. You're improving some."

"Yeah. I can hit a barn at ten paces. God, I still think this is an utter waste of my time," Jennifer replied.

"You can think anything you like. It's part of the program. The longer Division P is in operation, the more widely varied the things we're called to do."

Jennifer was heading for the door when he called after her. "I'll see you in a week or two for the hand to hand intro." She rolled her eyes as she left. Great, I'm going to get pounded into the floor by Thor the barbarian, she thought.

***

Feisty, sarcastic, and uncoordinated. Danny Valentine decided all of the above applied to Ms.

Jennifer Sebastiano as he watched her leave the shooting range. She was about average height, slightly round in that squishy "I don't exercise much" female way, with dark brown hair that probably fell all the way to her butt when it wasn't pulled back into a braid. She'd be wicked fun in an argument he'd bet. He could almost visualize her in a full on temper tantrum. She'd probably be the type to scream and throw things.

***

All work and no play… yadda, yadda, yadda. The Virginia Beach Amphitheater held some fairly awesome concerts and Danny was a fan of Nickelback. He had bought some tickets to their concert for Peter and himself. It turned out to be moderately crowded, with something like twenty thousand people there.

Danny walked back up the hill toward where Peter was lounging on the grass above the main reserved seating area. He'd decided to go to the concert on the cheap and bought lawn tickets instead of seats. Danny had to concentrate to put one foot in front of the other and he was sure anybody who saw him thought he was drunk off his ass. Yup, drunk as a skunk, 'cept not on beer, on the emotions of twenty thousand charged up people. It was a good concert and he was high as a kite.

***

As the finale deafened the crowd and crackled the speakers, Peter watched Danny jumping up and down and pumping his fist in the air. There was something just plain off about the way the guy was behaving. When the music ended, Danny went staggering off in the direction of the crowd flow. Peter yelled after him, but Danny seemed oblivious. All Peter could really do was try to follow him.

Five minutes later he found Danny halfway up a massive chain link fence hollering at a couple of women on the other side.

"Fuck it, Danny! Get off the fence! You're going to get arrested!" Peter yelled at him. Danny gave him a bleary squint. One of the women on the other side was hiking up her shirt and flashing him her tits. Unh…

yeah. Danny fumbled his way down and landed on his ass.

Peter hauled him to his feet and slung one of Danny's arms over his shoulder, half-guiding, half dragging Danny in the direction of the gate to the parking lot.

***

Danny's head was spinning and walking was a serious challenge. What the fuck? Why did he feel this way? Danny struggled to stay on his feet. When he stumbled, only Peter's grip kept him from taking a header straight into the gravel of the parking lot. There were just too many damn people and the sheer noise of so many minds was a blur of nauseating pain. He continued to shuffle along, trusting Peter to have some clue where they were going. Car. There was a car involved. People walking faster flowed around them.

The motion made it harder to figure out where the hell he was putting his feet.

***

Jesus God, there was the car. Peter finally saw it in the middle of a line of others. It figured they'd had to park in "outer Mongolia" for a concert this big. Right now his main concern was to get Danny back to the car and away from the main bulk of the crowd. At least it had thinned out some as they walked. Actually, staggered was a more appropriate term for Danny. Peter knew that people who saw them assumed Danny was trashed out of his mind. Whatever.

Peter leaned Danny against the car and groped in his pocket for his keys. As he was about to unlock the door, Danny's hand clutched weakly at Peter's shirt.

"Gonna puke," he slurred and fell to his hands and knees, vomiting in the grass. Peter hastily wrapped an arm around Danny's body and cupped a hand under his forehead. As hard as Danny's muscles were shaking, Peter could tell he was fighting against passing out.

Once the puking had dwindled to gagging, Peter exerted his talent and shut the rest of the nausea down. He eased Danny back to sit against the car.

"Try to breathe slow and easy," Peter said. He kept one hand curled against Danny's neck and the other hand he placed on Danny's chest. The man's pulse was thundering and his skin was slicked with sweat. Skull cracking head pain was beginning to flare and Peter intercepted that, too. They sat for a number of minutes with Peter not quite holding Danny up as he leaned on the car, until Danny's pulse had slowed to something closer to normal. Peter probably could have hurried things along a little, but that would have taken more focus than he was willing to give up sitting in the semi-dark parking lot of the amphitheater.

"Let's get you in the car, and head for home, okay?"

Peter said.

Danny nodded, body still shaking slightly. Peter helped him to his feet and into the seat, tilting it back a little and buckling his partner in. Danny's hands went to his head. "Fucking God… it hurts."

Peter clasped his hands gently against the sides of Danny's head. The pain had shot up again as soon as Peter had actively stopped suppressing it.

"Once I manage to get us out of the parking lot and on the road, I'll block it for you, but you're going to have to tough it out for a few minutes."

Danny grimaced and nodded, curling a little tighter in the seat.

***

At the Division P complex outside of Suffolk Virginia, Danny half blindly followed Peter toward his quarters. Peter was damping down the freaking awful pain in his head, but he still felt near incoherent. It just didn't track. He had felt so insanely good, and then so insanely bad. There was a common word there. Insane.

Man, he really did feel like he was losing it. This was worse than a hangover.

"Lie down," Peter ordered and Danny stretched out on the bed.

That actually helped a little, so he felt less like he was going to fall on his face. Peter settled onto the bed next to him and rubbed gentle fingers down the side of his chest

"What the fuck is wrong with me?" asked Danny.

"At a guess, ten thousand rowdy concert goers overwhelmed your empathic talents. One minute you're climbing the fence, literally. Five minutes later, you're barfing your guts up and about to pass out." Peter's hands traced lightly through Danny's hair and made soothing little circles on his temples.

"Climbing the fence? I don't remember that."

"Somehow, I'm not surprised. I think you were pretty out of it at that point."

"God, I feel like shit. This is worse than last year when that thing happened at the airport with all the canceled flights. I nearly put my fist through a wall, but I least I remembered that."

"Yeah but that was a few hundred people, and this was thousands. Open your eyes and follow my finger,"

said Peter.

Danny pried open his eyes and tried to obey. His eyes didn't seem to want to focus in some spots. That was just so weird, and what he wanted most was to sleep.

"Danny, stay awake for just a few more minutes.

Hold out your hands and squeeze my fingers." Danny felt uncoordinated as he did this.

"My fingers feel funky."

"You're exhibiting seizure-like symptoms," Peter replied.

"Huh? That's bad isn't it?"

"I'm not sure. I'm going to be really overcautious and sit here with you for a few hours while you sleep. I think your nervous system tripped a few breakers."

Danny decided this sounded bad but he couldn't get his head around how bad, or if Peter was protecting him from something worse.

Peter stretched out on the bed beside him and pulled Danny tightly against his body. "It's okay. I'll take care of you," he whispered.

Danny buried his face in Peter's shoulder and let himself slide into sleep.

***

Fourteen hours was a pretty damn long time to sleep.

Peter was relieved when Danny finally woke and stumbled off to the bathroom. Danny came back and sat on the edge of the bed and ran his fingers through his hair.

"Damn, it looks like afternoon. How long was I out?"

Danny asked.

"Nearly fourteen hours. You still tired?"

"Um, yeah. Shit, I haven't felt this wiped out after being up for forty-eight hours. If I wasn't starving I'd think about crawling back in bed."

"Then do so, but strip first. I want to test your reflexes head to toes. While you undress I'll go grab you some food from the cafeteria," Peter said. Despite the fact he'd played watchdog over Danny while he slept, Peter was still concerned. CNS problems were sometimes very hard to fix. A brutal vision of watching his father die by inches from ALS tore through Peter's head. The memory shook him and he was hard pressed not to grab Danny and hold him very tightly.

"I think I can manage to walk to the other end of the building. You can do the reflex thing after we grab some food," Danny objected.

"No. I want you in bed. I watched you walk to the bathroom and back. Your coordination sucks big time. It may just be postictal to the episode yesterday; I'm trying to figure it out."

"Post-ictal? That makes me sound like a dead fish,"

replied Danny and he rolled his eyes.

Peter cupped his hands around Danny's face. "That's

'ichthy'. Please. Humor me. I'm worried." He kissed Danny softly.

***

All the neurological tests were normal. Danny ate the sandwich and salad that Peter brought him. It satisfied the hunger, but he still felt dead tired. It just made no sense that he could sleep that long and still feel exhausted. He was stretched out in the bed again, this time buck naked under the sheets. He could feel the concern seeping from Peter, and that bothered him.

"Wake me up in about a week," he teased, trying to lighten the tension a little.

"Crap. Don't joke about that. I keep wondering if I missed something," said Peter. "Fuck it. Scoot over. I'm going to be your shadow until I'm sure you're okay." He ditched all his clothes on the floor beside the bed and slid in next to Danny. Peter wrapped an arm across Danny's chest. "Go to sleep."

Danny brushed a finger across his lover's lips. "Talk to me. Tell me why you're so bent out shape. I've seen you with your hands inside people guts, holding back death until they can get to surgery. Why is this wigging you out so badly?" He rolled over enough to place a careful kiss on Peter's mouth. This wasn't like Peter to be so close to distraught.

"My dad died of a really aggressive form of ALS. I watched him die, day by day. Every night I poured every ounce of energy I had left into him, trying to stop it, trying to fix him, trying just to slow it down. I made every mistake in the book and ended up unconscious of the floor of my math class. I was in a coma for three days. And during those three days, my father died.

Whatever I was doing for him was all that was holding him on this side of the veil. The problem was I nearly killed myself trying to save him."

Danny's heart hurt with the grief of Peter's admission.

"How old were you?" he asked.

"Sixteen."

Danny didn't know what to say. There weren't any words to solace the pain Peter had been through. He squirmed around to a position where he could pull Peter's body against his own, wrapping both arms and one leg around his lover. He rained gentle kisses down the side of Peter's face.

Early June

One of Division P's finders, a Navy pilot named Cameron Bradshaw, had been critically injured in a motorcycle accident. Danny Valentine had been to the hospital to check on his status. Thankfully, the man appeared to be reasonably stable, even if he was in the ICU. Still, Danny worried, something about the accident didn't feel right. Bradshaw had been tapped for a potential assignment from Division P for Naval Intelligence, but then the assignment had been put on hold.

Danny had called the hospital this morning to make sure Bradshaw was still improving. Apparently so, since the man had been moved from ICU to a standard room.