Heartbeats

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

The cool metal touched the skin of his palm, before Lynn laughed and changed it back to its original form, pulling away.
“Nothing personal, Russ, you understand: but if the innuendo is as inescapable as you say, I'm not going to throw fuel on the fire by leaving my hand at your magnetic mercy with my friend's beady eyes watching us from the other side of the room. And that very long and complicated sentence should prove how serious I am."
Russ laughed, glancing over at the girl on the treadmill across the room, who was looking in the opposite direction to them. “Would those beady eyes happen to be in the back of her head, by any chance?”
… on second thoughts, that wasn’t so much of a joke. Over here, it probably wouldn’t surprise him much if she did have eyes on the wrong side of her skull. Nothing was impossible in this school, apparently. There was a guy in his chemistry class that could make friggin' functioning limbs grow out of anywhere on his body, including the back of his head. Eyes were nothing compared to that, really.

[The Delaney Twins]

"Well, no," she admitted. "But she could look around at any moment! And she wouldn't be impressed by innuendo. My Jamie's quite the little feminist, there, so I have to watch my inappropriate mouth around her."
She conveniently ignored the fact that her mouth usually was nowhere near as inappropriate as it had been that time in the gym. Aside from that, there was only when she and Kennedy were teasing people, and even then, she did, of course, have to hold back. Fun though Kennedy could be, he was still her brother, and there was only so much you could say around your brother without scarring him for life.
And if he heard of her Vegas comments...
Well, it would be interesting, anyway.
" 'Course, then again, there's only so much avoidance that one girl is capable of. And she's semi-telepathic, so I guess there's little point in avoiding it when she's there if she can see it when she's not. Still, though." She grinned up at him. "I'm afraid, Mr Ford, that I don't have a lot of friends who would be capable of stomaching a repeat of our display in the arena, prudes that they are."

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

“I may have to agree with you on that one, Miss Delaney”, he smirked. “Madeleine just about shít a brick when she heard about it. And she didn’t even hear all of it.”
He’d tried to leave it at “it started to explode”, but apparently, it didn’t explain the disgusted looks from the people surrounding the area, so he’d went into a bit more detail.
Just a bit, of course.
It still resulted with a “for f-” and a roll of the eyes, followed by a “just… just clean it up, Russ.”
You could always count on Madeleine for an eloquent response. Some people just had a way with words.
“And your friend Ari the Asbe- shít, sorry - Arihant didn’t seem too thrilled by the ‘display’. Did he lecture you on your way to the hospital wing, by any chance?” he asked, before flexing his fingers and ending the current that was still running through his hand.

[The Delaney Twins]

She laughed. "I don't think Ari-face would dare to lecture me properly, actually. Maybe he wanted to, I don't know. I think he more or less took the opinion that I was driven out of my mind by the handsome stranger and that what happened there was a temporary fit of insanity."
...OK, so she'd just called him handsome. That was stupid. Obviously he was and obviously he knew that he was, but there was no need to go saying it out loud. That was practically flirting, and that was the sort of behaviour that she was not supposed to be advocating right now.
So she'd have to distract him.
"And Russ, if the words that were about to come out of your mouth there were Ari the Asbestos - well, I can't deny that that's brilliant, obviously, but I'd refrain from saying it in front of him. Ari gets... touchy about the touching."
A second later, something occured to her, "Dàmn, I make my friends sound downright neurotic, don't I?"

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

“Not at all,” he laughed. “If I were him, I’d probably be a bit neurotic about it too.”
Hell, would he. It must be crap, not being able to touch anything living without… well, killing them. Still, it had to be handed to “Ari-face” – it could have been so easy for him to isolate himself, but he was trying to live a normal life.
It was dangerous, and probably caused the school staff a couple of coronaries, but at least he was making the effort – and no one had been hurt. Yet.
Russ grimaced slightly, rubbing the leather bracelet on his wrist subconsciously before looking back down at Lynn – not intentionally, but she was a fair bit shorter than him. She wasn’t laughing any more, but the remains of the grin were still on her face, giving it a look of impishness – something he hadn’t actually seen her without, come to think of it.
“Now, I know I don’t know you very well, so I shouldn’t judge, but, er – temporary insanity?”

[The Delaney Twins]

Her grin grew wicked again. "Insane? Who, little ol' innocent Sally?"
...right, so she had just willingly referred to herself as Sally. That was interesting. And mad. And stupid. How the hell was she ever going to get people to stop calling her by it if she did it herself?
She couldn't hold up the facade of innocence for more than a couple of seconds, and gave up in accordance with her abilities.
"Nah, you're right. Apparently you know me better than he does, already, then," she laughed. "Impressive. But Arihant seems to want to believe that I couldn't dream of saying things like... well, what I said there. One of those wishful thinkers, y'know? Sees the best in everyone. Even when he catches us sexually harassing each other in front of the rest of the warriors. Apparently this is not one of my best features, and so it is the one that he chooses to believe is down to irrational thought as opposed to... Well, fun."
There, she said it. She had found it fun, despite the fact that it had been enough to severely disgust a good deal of the other warriors and, probably, her own friend as well. She'd still found it fun.
Maybe she was a little insane...

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

Sexually harassing?
Well, maybe that was what it had been. Maybe. Sexual harassment in the workplace. It made it sound a hell of a lot worse than what it had been… was that what it always looked like to people?!
Or maybe it was just Arihant. And the rest of Lynn’s friends. And half of the warriors…
Jesus. No one he’d known before had been that prudish.
Then again, the situation hadn’t quite been the same. Russ knew that if it had been any other girl in Lynn’s situation, mortification would have ensued. Or, maybe it had, but at least she was able to cover it up with a good dose of humour. Most people wouldn’t really have been able to stomach that.
“Who says it can’t be a bit of both? Life would be no fun without irrational thought,” he decided, before smirking at her. “And I might take the ‘innocent’ out of that sentence, if I were you, Sally. ‘Innocence’ and ‘sexual harassment’ usually don’t go so well together, you know.”

[The Delaney Twins]

She laughed. Again. There had been a lot of that going on over this conversation, even for a Delaney, which was impressive, really. She couldn't help it, despite the fact that it was probably making her look like an idiot. Yes, most of the time, Lynn did smile a lot, but this was verging on ridiculous. This stupid grin hadn't left her face since she'd walked in here. She must look like she had issues with her mental health.
"Well, I suppose there's not much I can say to defend myself against that... unless, of course, it was a fit of temporary insanity. Or temporary enhanced insanity. You can't rule that out, y'know? I'll go find a telepath and ask them if everything's working all right up th- Wait, hold on."
Did she just see who she'd thought she saw?
"Oh my God, look!" she said to Russ, entirely forgetting what she had been saying a moment ago. "Look, it's Josh the Carer! Since when does he come here?"
She didn't know if Russ knew Josh personally, obviously, but he had to have heard of him. Josh the Carer was infamous among Warriors. And Carers, too, if what Cass had told her was correct. There was something a little... sad about a Carer going to Warrior training. Like a poodle trying to be a lion.
He was the last person that she would have expected to see here.

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

“Josh? Here?”
Russ turned, following Lynn’s gaze – mildly amused at how quickly she jumped from topic to topic like that – to see that she was right: Josh the Carer was in the gym.
Now, there was something you didn’t expect to see every day.
“What’s he doing in here?” Russ frowned, not realising that there wasn’t really any reason why Josh shouldn’t be in the gym. He didn’t know him well, of course, but everyone knew about Josh Cole. A Carer in Warrior Training sessions? That kind of stuff was well known throughout the school, because it was so against the norm.
It’d be different if Josh was some sort of combat prodigy, but as it was…
“Carers don’t usually…” he shrugged, turning back to Lynn. “I mean, what’s really the point? Murses don’t really need to be here, do they?”
It was official, Russ was a stereotypical shít.

[The Delaney Twins]

She laughed.
So, obviously, Russ was one of those warriors... Well, that wasn't really a big surprise, was it? For a start, there was the fact that just about every single warrior guy was one of those warriors. In fact, pretty much all of them except Arihant. There was something wrong with that boy.
And then there was the fact that... Well. Somehow, she didn't think that a guy with both Russ's appearance and power would be all that accepting of the male Carers, regardless of whether he was a warrior or not.
Bugger, she wasn't used to all this group-prejudice-in-action.
But she couldn't complain. After all, her group was evidently superior. There was nothing to lose in being a little prejudiced.
"Well, there's nothing... stopping them from being here," she said diplomatically. "But you're right, it's... Hell, it's sort of sad. I mean, if Carers want to work out, why can't they... I don't know. Stroke some pigeons, or something. Needless to say, my murse would never have been caught dead in here."

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

Russ had never met a guy who stroked pigeons. Ever. Thank God, because there was something really wrong with that. He had met one who had thought it was a brilliant idea to check if pigeons really did have metal elements in their heads by putting a magnet in front of one, but that was the exact opposite of stroking them.
But the pigeon stroking wasn’t the bit that caught his attention.
“Your murse?” Russ grinned, chuckling at Lynn’s failed attempt at diplomacy. “What are they, like pets now? Did you take him for walks on a lead?”
A Carer is for life, not just for Christmas…
Ha, now, there was a way to piss off whatshisface in his dorm.
Now, Russ honestly wasn’t big on group pride. At all. But Lynn was right, there was something quite sad about Carers in this situation. Josh should really just learn to accept that he was a Carer – a murse, as it were – and not play at being a Warrior.
Oh, Jesus. Next thing you know, he'd be at Jack to join his rugby team.

[The Delaney Twins]

"Oh, Lord - OK, no, I didn't, but you totally need to suggest that to Will. Or Madeleine. To someone. It's inspired, I can tell you that much."
She needed to stop laughing. She needed to stop laughing. This was beyond ridiculous, now. She was practically in fits at every goddam thing he said.
But then, was that really her fault? Did he really need to be so bloody funny? No one else had ever got quite as many chuckles out of her over a mere half-hour period before. So really, if he thought that she was insane - properly insane - by the end of this, he only had himself to blame. Wasn't her problem. Nuh-uh. Not at all.
"But I'm afraid, as I said, that I haven't done it. I mean, not that it's not tempting, or anything, but I think that - sadly - it's frowned upon in some societies to keep your boyfriend on a leash."

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

This girl laughed a lot.
But it was sincere laughter. Russ liked it. It wasn’t the idiotic giggling that most girls their age seemed to do all of the time, and it wasn’t forced. She meant it when she laughed.
And she seemed to laugh a lot.
“Well, I guess it depends on whether or not you’re into that kind of thing, doesn’t it?” he asked, with a smirk.
Lynn dated a Carer. A male Carer. So, he hadn’t been in the school for that long, but there were certain… inter-group relationships that were against social norms. A male Warrior and a female Academic, for example – the male couldn’t cope with having a girlfriend whose IQ was that much higher than his. Female Warriors and any Academic, Spy, or Carer male, for the obvious reasons.
But the big one from that section was a male Carer and a female Warrior – because, well, no male should be able to cope with the emasculation of having a girlfriend who is actually acknowledged as being physically stronger than you. If you’re a male Carer dating a female Warrior – you will always look like a wuss.
Hold on – she could still well be dating him. For some God knows why reason, Russ felt a twitch of annoyance at that.
“So I take it you don’t keep your boyfriend as a pet, then? I can’t see the teachers liking that one to, be honest,” he grinned.

[The Delaney Twins]

She grinned. "Somehow, I can't see that one being too popular, either. Kind of goes against the whole equality thing, no?"
She wondered, for a moment, whether she should tell him or not. Well, obviously, she'd have to tell him a couple of things, but she wondered just how much she should tell him about Cass. After all, she barely knew Russ, and, well, it was kind of personal...
But then, Lynn wasn't one to keep all these things bottled up, was she?
"But even if I did, it's not all that relevant anymore, I guess. Cass - his name is Caspar, but we all call him Cass - and I went out for nine months or so, but unfortunately, we were tragically forced apart" - her tone was growing more theatrical, now; though she didn't realise it, she was acting more like her brother than she could ever have imagined - "this May, 'cause he had to go back to Holland. Family troubles."
It wasn't really her place to tell Russ - or, indeed, anyone - precisely what those family troubles had been. Those weren't her secrets, they were Cass's, and she was going to protect them.
"And yes," she said. "I know what it sounds like, me dating a male Carer. From Amsterdam. Called Cass. But surprisingly enough, there were no issues of... well, that nature."
Look at her, trying to be subtle. It didn't really work.
"Of course, I don't expect people to believe me when I tell them that," she finished, smirking.

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

“… but, surprisingly enough, there were no issues of… well, that nature.”
Well, it was pretty safe to say that Russ hadn’t been expecting that to come out of Lynn’s mouth.
“Of course, I don’t expect people to believe me when I tell them that,” she added, with a smile that was too pretty to follow what she had just said.
Still, he smirked back at her. “I’m not sure I really needed to know that, Sally – but, have you been with anyone other than a Carer from Amsterdam? Because, you know, there is a reason why people don’t believe you when you tell them that,” he finished, with a chuckle.
She was right. A male Carer. Called Cass. From Amsterdam, of all places. The girl had probably gotten the urine extracted one hell of a lot.
Or maybe not. If ‘Cass’ had left in May, he and Sally would have been dating for the first two months of Russ’s time in Orchid, and if she was getting fun made of her for that in the Warrior circle, he would have heard it.
He could bet that Cass got a new one ripped for him every so often, though…