Tethered

AN: The usual, I'm not native, there's probably odd or off phrasing yadda yadda yadda.

Enjoy the chapter. I pumped it out in one go.

If you permit, I'm going to pass out.

2008, November. Two days after the shootout, Saturday.

The first thing that came back was her hearing, accompanied by a soft, repetitive sound - beep, beep - that wouldn't stop. It was irritating her, so she tried to flail her arms around and found them just above completely unresponsive, the only thing they did when given the order to move was a pitiful twitch.

She felt a hand slowly slide across her cheek, cupping it softly, an action that was followed by her body growing more responsive by the moment. In just a couple of seconds, she could distinguish the sound of cloth rasping across itself and soft breathing at her right, practically on top of her.

She raised her hand to meet the other one, patting it slightly across the skin that she could feel, and somewhat recognizing the texture.

"Amy?"

She could feel her thumb making a criss-cross pattern across her cheekbone. "Yes Tay, it's me. Just give me a minute and you'll be up in no time, okay?"

She hm'd agreeably while leaning into Amelia's hand. They were always soft and warm, not like her father's. Those were always ice-cold, and he used that to his advantage when tickling her.

When he did. Which is… Never, not since mom's death.

That reminded her of why she was - she supposed she was - at the hospital. She remembered the gunshots, hiding somewhere, trying to run, that gangbanger aiming at Amy.

Her breath hitched at that last part, her body tensing all around and looking frantically at her friend now that her vision had come back. Amy noticed this instantly and shushed her, the hand on her face applying a little more pressure while she felt her body uncoil and relax without her input.

"None of that, now"

She still looked out for injuries or anything similar in her but found nothing with those white and red robes hampering her search.

Wait, robes?

"Why are you wearing that?" She stared at her from top to bottom, trying to not separate from her touch - so soft - but at the same time get the most details. It was hard.

"It looks like a… Costume," dread washed over her in a mixed wave of oily, roiling emotions. She opened her eyes wide, her mouth hanging open in horror.

Amy made a sour face while looking at the perfectly white cloth. "Yeah, it… It is. I was, uhm. I was healing you."

"You… Triggered? In the alley?"

She nodded, locking her eyes with me.

A whisper laced in an undercurrent of self-hatred was the only thing that came out in the deafening silence. "I made you Trigger…"

Her breath hitched, a knot of anger twisting and turning at the back of her throat, constricting and suffocating.

"I. I'm so. I'm so sorr-y…"

She leaned away from her touch - didn't deserve it - and tried to curl on herself, placing the palm of her hands on top of her eyelids and pressuring as much as she could, trying to stem and hold the tide of saltwater that threatened to spill out.

She felt Amelia lean away from her, which only made the pressure in her eyes increase. She almost missed the door closing - alone, again - but she did miss the almost inaudible click that the latch of the door made. She flinched when she noticed a small body climbing on her bed, a pair of arms she knew as well as her own circling around Taylor and giving her a warm, firm hug.

"You absolute dork." Amy bumped her head with her own in a not-so-softly manner, getting a wince out of her. "You didn't make me Trigger. I triggered for you."

She stopped covering her eyes and looked at Amy, arms shyly reciprocating the hug.

"I'm still sorry that, that you had to go through that. I'm… I'm sorry." She wanted to ask for her Power - she did say it had something to do with healing - but it felt wrong on so so many levels that the idea was snuffed out before it formed fully.

"Well, don't be," she said with a smile. "Nobody died," "The gangsters got away?" "nobody important died, and I'm here to pick you up and get you home with Danny - who I already called, by the way."

She checked her phone, looking at the clock on-screen, it read something northwards of two in the morning.

Amy gave her another quick squeeze before sliding out of her bed. "You have fresh clothes in the bathroom, and Danny will probably be at the door when you finish dressing and cleaning up a little. I'll wait here, okay?"

She nodded, quickly getting dressed and her face cleaned with fresh - cold, brr - water.

A thought occurred to her while she was drying her face with the towel, so shortly after she got out of the bathroom and saw Amy playing something on her phone she approached her. She booped the top of her head with a finger to get her attention. At that, Amy grunted and looked up at her, making her freckles stand out - she wanted to kiss them. She hid her blush behind a hand. She already had red eyes, so some other form of redness on her face wouldn't be noticeable, would it?

She hoped.

"So, uh. Does carol know you are here so late, or…?"

Amy snorted. Quite forcefully, at that. "Fuck no. I just sneaked out at night." At her panicked look, Amelia elaborated, "Okay, no, I didn't sneak sneak. Mark knows that I went out and where I am, and I told him where I would probably spend the night."

Taylor still looked dubious. She didn't want Amy to get in trouble for her - she wasn't worth it - she flinched at the thought, but her stand was clear.

At this, Amy just rolled her eyes while standing up, casually poking Taylor in the ribs and getting an undignified squawk out of her.

"I texted Sarah too you know, and she said that it was okay, so it is. Stop. Worrying."

The last two words were accentuated by more poking, all efforts in Taylor's part being rendered nil - it was as if Amy knew exactly where to poke her. She didn't even know she had that sensitive spot on her hip!

Bony as it was, anyway.

That was how Danny found them on the entrance lobby, poking at each other and laughing like the teens they were.

Danny drove them home with a smile. Even if everything hadn't been fine yesterday, they didn't need to be reminded of it. He would let them be, and that was that.

Tethered

Danny was asleep, so Taylor and Amy were on the bed of the former, trying and failing to get some sleep.

Of course, Danny had prepared a sleeping bag for his guest, given that Taylor's bed was only suitable for one body.

Amy, promptly, ignored the sleeping bag. She shot it a face of contempt - it bordered on a sneer, really - and crawled into bed with Taylor, pushing her friend's back slightly against the wall.

Taylor reacted without thinking, offering an arm for Amy to use as a pillow. She then rolled her eyes good-naturedly, exclaiming with the thickest accent she could manage. "Don't you have a perfectly prim and proper sleeping bag there, Miss? Must you invade my domain in such a way?"

Amy snorted, snuggling close to the heat source her body detected. "Shuddup'. You're comfy and that's that."

Taylor patted her own body absentmindedly, making a face each time she touched a bone that almost poked through her skin. "Yeah, I don't know how comfy can a bag of bones be…"

There was silence for quite a while, until Amy got an arm from beneath her, and poked her in the nose.

That poke made her react with a full-body shiver, a strange sensation of pins and needles waving across all of her. Not painful, nor unpleasant, just - new, strange.

"What was that?"

"That's my Power, dummy." She poked her again, this time it was nicer. Relaxing, even. "I can manipulate biology. Any biomass that I touch, I can change."

Taylor blew her eyes wide. "That is amazing! The number of things you could do with that… Crops that harvest faster and don't wilt, livestock that doesn't get sick, a cure for incurable diseases…"

With each thing she mentioned, Taylor got out of her rambling more and more, looking worriedly at the almost-painful frown Amy was sporting.

"...can't."

"What? I, I didn't quite hear you Am."

Amy rubbed her eyes - her suddenly reddened eyes. "I said that, that I can't do any of that. I would need parental permission to do anything like that - or power testing, for that matter - and everything I would want to do would have to cross Carol's desk, and she doesn't want me to do any of that. She even-" at this point, she flailed her arms upwards, careful of not hitting Taylor. "-want's me to only heal, and that I say that that's the only thing I can do!"

She huffed a breath, bringing her arms down. Taylor hugged her closer, getting a better grip and trying to comfort her friend with the slow circles in her back she was making.

"And it's not! I could do so much more, but just because my Power is scary, I have to limit myself to only healing." Her hands twitched. "And, and the worst thing - the worst of all, is these - these urges I have been getting these past couple of days."

Taylor nodded in support, changing from doing circles in her back to scratching Amy's scalp in slow, lazy arcs. It seemed to keep the worst of her tension away, but there was still a lot of it.

"What urges, Amy?" She asked softly.

"I just, I see somebody with lung cancer or a smoker, and I think 'yeah, I could upgrade his respiratory system if I tweaked this or that, or improve his heart if I made another change…' and I'm not supposed to do that! I have to ask for permission to heal a fucking scratch! It's infuriating and has been driving me nuts between yesterday and today."

She sniffed, burrowing her face in Taylor's chest. "I don't know how much of this Carol pretends me to endure, but I will snap someday. And it will be her fault."

She didn't mind - there wasn't much to touch there, anyway, and it seemed that head scratches calmed Amy.

"So why don't you practice with… I dunno, plants or some other thing you can hide or undo quickly?"

"Already did," she mumbled. "Carol found a plant I forgot about with mismatched leaves and went completely ballistic on me…"

Taylor hm'd, letting the silence stretch and stretch while she kept administering scritches. Amy's breath evened out eventually, uncoiling completely and slumping against her body - she was more her bed than the bed, really. It was that small.

"So…" She started. Amy moved her head a couple of inches, locking eyes with her. Taylor brushed a strand of wild hair out of her face. "Why don't you try and experiment on me?"

Her head snapped up to her so fast Taylor swore she heard the crack of a vertebra.

There was a poignant silence, accentuated only by their breathing and the look of almost hunger Amelia was sending her, and that made her blush to the neck. "You… You would?"

She nodded, rolling her eyes. "Yes, Amy, I would. I took a bullet for you, remember?"

Amy flinched at that, drawing a wince out of Taylor. "I'm sorr-"

"Don't be" was the response, shutting her up with a finger to her lips. She wanted her to bite it. Just a little.

"Um, it would be… Small changes, small things, really. Like, changing eye color, changing skin tone, poking at some nerves, or things like that. Small stuff."

She thought it for a moment, then shrugged. "Okay. I don't care that you make some changes, it isn't as if you couldn't actually undo it, right?" A nod. "Then it's all peachy. You get to experiment and not drive yourself up the wall, and I get those sexy purple eyes I always wanted. Really, a Win-Win."

Amy snorted and touched her nose. A tingling sensation made itself known at the back of her eyes, but it disappeared slightly thereafter.

Why was everything blurry?

She palmed at her face, catching her glasses and taking them out, and wow.

Everything was so much more alive, so much more vibrant even in the washed-out colors of the streetlight that managed to filtrate itself across her window. And now she could see Amy's freckles in all her glory, each and every single one of them looked glorious.

And very lickable.

Her friend giggled, taking out her phone and showing her the screen camera. She now had tri-colored eyes. A rim of purple at the edge and middle, with a hint of gold-red at the center.

"I love it. What more can you do?" She suddenly was as giddy with excitement as Amy, and she was the one getting worked over!

She blushed.

Again.

"Hmmh…" She made that sound with a mischievous grin, nothing good could come out of that. "What if I made… This?"

And there was a slight prod at her shoulder, even if Amy was poking her nose again. That was weird, and she said as much.

"Okay… This?"

Another poke, that one felt weird too, like being underwater or snuggled from all around by a really tight blanket. "That one was weird too, but not bad. Like an all-around hug."

Amy touched her nose again - what was her fixation with that? It wasn't even pretty - but did… Apparently nothing. But she could see thanks to her improved vision how red she was getting.

…And her finger was really close to her mouth.

She kissed it with a giggle, and Amy got even redder.

"And… What If I poke it like this?"

At that moment there was a strange sensation around her chest, a tingly, warm gooey feeling that made her gasp a little.

"That one… Felt good. Really good."

Now that feeling encompassed all of her body, all at once.

She gasped, closing her eyes and crushing her friend into a bear hug. "That, that felt," she swallowed some of the salivae that had pooled in her mouth "really nice…"

Amelia's blush now encompassed the entirety of her face and neck, and that look of absolute hunger had come back in full force. Taylor became acutely aware of how her body heat was rising, and how appetizing those freckles looked.

She licked one.

Amelia shivered from head to toe and looked her directly in the eyes.

"I can't take this shit anymore."

She took Taylor's face in her hands and smashed her lips against hers, resulting in a sloppy, frantic kiss once Taylor recovered from the surprise, and started corresponding as best as she could.

"You,"

She could feel how everything felt good and warm every time she corresponded. She could feel a sudden, complete desire to be completely pinned against the bed by Amelia, which made her body heat up a lot more.

"are,"

Once separated for lack of air more than anything and with a small bridge of spit between the two, Amy sat on Taylor's midsection and lowered her face to her ear, nibbling on the earlobe and causing Taylor to gasp and writhe while she felt another wave of pure goodness spread across her body, all the while Amelia whispered on her ear.

"mine."