i believe i can fly

[self_composed]

Alice eventually goes home for the evening.

Bella goes up and sits in her room.

She has five hexes.

Five.

That's rather a lot of hexes.

She gets out her notebook, with the lists, and she makes some wishes.

And then she goes to bed, grinning.

In the morning it will be time to make plans.

Comments

[self_composed]

"Using a triangle to save yourself the trouble of waiting four minutes would be slightly frivolous," Bella remarks. "You could make some more hexes. That's probably a good stress test of my ability to handle what your brain does."

[edgeofyourseat]

"But" (honey, sweetheart) "Bella, I like being frivolous," he says, leaning over slightly and turning a knob.

[self_composed]

Bella decides she cannot very well chide him for thinking unapproved endearments. "Well, if you like it," she says, "by all means carry on, I suppose."

[edgeofyourseat]

Laughing, he expends a triangle. The wish is simple: knowledge of the difference between a cool and a hot stove element (attached: a very relevant memory of yesterday), and the desire that the one he just turned on become the latter instead of the former.

It works.

Alice grins at the result in fond (and decidedly sexual) anticipation. His left hand flexes, remembering burns.

[self_composed]

Bella watches brightly white affect-background colors trail all these thoughts with vague interest. Hearing him talk about how he likes what he likes is one thing; watching it pace past her vision encoded the way she'd just wished for is another.

She closes her eyes and watches his thoughts.

[edgeofyourseat]

With only one stove element on, he can't lay his arm across two, so he drags it over the one. Slowly. Pentagon, pentagon, pentagon, hex. He puts his other hand up to touch the new coins, feeling the angle of a corner on each; by now that's enough to tell the difference.

It hurts like hell, and it is turning him the fuck on, and the fact that he can tell she's watching gives him a thrill that's part affection, part arousal. (And part that other thing—a feeling of vulnerability; the desire to be vulnerable, to her specifically, because he loves her.)

He lays his hand flat against the element and digs the fingers of his other hand into the deep, fresh burn on his wrist, and although most of his attention is taken up by pain, there's enough left over to feel each new coin as it appears.

[self_composed]

Bella very carefully does not open the lightning bolt signs that mean "pain" - she doesn't actually know if opening his nocioception would hurt, and would rather test that with something smaller - but she does watch the revolving blobs of color-coded emotion in fascination, and the string of mostly not sentence-ordered words in their colors.

[edgeofyourseat]

When the weight of the necklace around his neck has definitely, noticeably increased, he takes his hand away.

There are now thirteen pentagons and ten hexes on his necklace, and Bella's stove looks and smells like a small animal was cremated on it.

Make that fourteen pentagons, and then fifteen, both accumulated in the time it takes his arm to heal. He lifts up his necklace and looks at it, counting (one, three, four, and two is ten) the coins he cares about.

"That enough, you think?"

[self_composed]

"Ah, yeah," Bella says. "I don't have that long a list. Your regeneration power hurts all by itself? Why did you do it that way?" She wishes away the gunk on the stove and the smoke in the air with a pair of triangles.

[edgeofyourseat]

"I didn't do it like that on purpose, but I'm fucked if I'm gonna complain," he says cheerfully. "You can take 'em all, if you want." All his hexes, all his pentagons, hell, all his squares and triangles too if she feels like it. Being wishcoiny makes life so easy.

[self_composed]

"You realize you're not going to have time to make anything big in a time-critical emergency, should one occur," Bella points out. She leaves him two each of the hexes and pentagons, and all his squares and triangles because she has lots of those too, but she takes the rest, smiling like a satisfied cat.

[edgeofyourseat]

"Someday when we're not near anything obvious like the stove, remind me, and you can tell me to make a hex and time how long it takes," he says, idly considering methods (square up a jar of lye is the first to come to mind, although it might be too obvious if he had to do something fast with people around, but if he had to do something fast he might not care...) and echoing her smile because fuck, does he love that smile on her. "Bet it won't be that long. Like, a minute maybe."

(The thought of her reminding him of things reminds him of his semi-promise to find her another friend, which he hasn't yet remembered to do. Oh, well. He'll have lots of time while she is fake convalescing.)

[self_composed]

"I didn't have a minute when I saw Tyler's van go out of control," Bella says. "If I'd been a little less stunned-rabbit about it, I would have had time to make a wish, but not to make a coin and then make a wish."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Yeah, I guess." He shrugs. "But I'd like getting hit by a van."

(He didn't like watching Bella get hit by a van. He the opposite of liked it. He remembers the whole event clearly: the sight of her getting hit, the sound; air biting his lungs as he ran, cold asphalt under his knees and his hands buried in his hair; the feeling like something had been ripped out of him, the frantic gnawing ache of knowing he could fix it if only he could get to her if only if only.)

[self_composed]

"The van could have killed me. It could kill you if one shows up and hits you. I don't think hex regen powers will revive you from instant death-on-impact. A star might, but I am very wary of my star."

And... she pokes at some of those thoughts.

She notes that she is kinda self-centered. She's noted this before, so it's not surprising.

[edgeofyourseat]

Alice shivers happily. The thoughts aren't pleasant, but knowing that she's reading them is.

"Okay," he concedes. "So I'll keep a few around."

Not that he really intensely desires not to die. He wouldn't like to, especially not now that he gets to watch Bella take over the world (love, love), but for a long time now he has been operating on the assumption that it is going to happen, and probably not that far in the future, and he might as well be okay with that because there's not much he can do to change it. Getting hit by a van sounds like a pretty nice way to go.

[self_composed]

"Y'know," Bella says, "when I take over the world? Mortality is so on my hit list."

[edgeofyourseat]

...He hugs himself and loves her very much.

[self_composed]

Bella closes her eyes again and pokes that and basks. She doesn't know how to purr, but she's thinking it.

She notes that she is selfish. She made peace with that awhile ago.

[edgeofyourseat]

He looks at her.

He wonders if that is her reading him loving her and concludes that it really obviously is.

He loves her very much some more, and is also completely delighted.

[self_composed]

"Well," Bella says. "That certainly has the potential to bog us both down for hours in a feedback loop."

[edgeofyourseat]

"But an awesome one," he says happily.

[self_composed]

"A pleasant one, but we've got plans to make," Bella says briskly. She unpokes the thought, but keeps up the cursory scan for communication-facilitation purposes. "About your dad."

[edgeofyourseat]

Ooh, watch the love and joy drain out of him.

Literally, watch that happen, because it does.

"Yeah," he sighs. "Okay. ...You know, hell, I'm almost tempted to tell your dad now that I know he doesn't suck? Would that work, you think?"

[self_composed]

"That's... a maybe," Bella admits, deflating somewhat now that she has nothing to actively bask in. "My dad can make an arrest, press charges, get it to trial - and maybe yours can bribe the jury or the judge. Or get a ridiculously good lawyer and get actually not-convicted. The evidence boils down to you turning up at a hospital in November with injuries. Would Theo say where he picked you up from? What would your mom do - she can't be compelled to testify against her husband, but would she? Does Hilary know anything?"