The air felt thin and also toxic. Brian found himself taking shallow breaths. He had gone from intrigued to alarmed to outright fucking panicked in under a minute. If he struck her, would his hands go right through her? If he pushed at Elfleda with his mind, would she budge? Somehow his hands had come out of his pockets and he lifted them to her shoulders.
He saw it in his head: one, two, three, and he’d shove with the force of his power, an accompanying, “Get off me!” that shattered the relative calm of the parking lot and bounced off the battened doors of that cheap motel. Elfleda would skid away from him. She’d shriek, hiss maybe, and then disappear in a puff of swirling, black smoke, leaving him breathless and sweat-drenched but okay. He’d have to squat down or a second to get his bearings, and then he’d grab his keys, stick them in the ignition, and get the hell out of Searchlight. He’d spend the length of the trip glancing in his rearview and checking his back seat.
But he did none of it.
When his hands clenched, they sunk into flesh as pliable as putty. She wasn’t solid, not like his physical world. Brian turned his face to avoid her mouth and eyes. She was a viper in a pretty disguise and all the muscles in him had knotted up in reaction to her.
Yet something in his mind and heart was shifting. Yielding. The more he tapped into that hidden well of telekinetic strength and prepared himself to use it, the harder it seemed to be to filter her out. As if the two were connected, her power and his power, and he still didn’t know what her power was. Brian gritted his teeth and screamed a noise of frustration.
A peculiar voice in his head whispered that he could try her on, wrap himself in that ephemeral haze like a cloak.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2014-05-18 02:25 am (UTC)He saw it in his head: one, two, three, and he’d shove with the force of his power, an accompanying, “Get off me!” that shattered the relative calm of the parking lot and bounced off the battened doors of that cheap motel. Elfleda would skid away from him. She’d shriek, hiss maybe, and then disappear in a puff of swirling, black smoke, leaving him breathless and sweat-drenched but okay. He’d have to squat down or a second to get his bearings, and then he’d grab his keys, stick them in the ignition, and get the hell out of Searchlight. He’d spend the length of the trip glancing in his rearview and checking his back seat.
But he did none of it.
When his hands clenched, they sunk into flesh as pliable as putty. She wasn’t solid, not like his physical world. Brian turned his face to avoid her mouth and eyes. She was a viper in a pretty disguise and all the muscles in him had knotted up in reaction to her.
Yet something in his mind and heart was shifting. Yielding. The more he tapped into that hidden well of telekinetic strength and prepared himself to use it, the harder it seemed to be to filter her out. As if the two were connected, her power and his power, and he still didn’t know what her power was. Brian gritted his teeth and screamed a noise of frustration.
A peculiar voice in his head whispered that he could try her on, wrap himself in that ephemeral haze like a cloak.