In which Joe brings home a friend, fights with people he really shouldn't fight with (again) and, according to Kevin, Nick is doing it wrong.
He had no idea how they'd even reached this point. Not a clue as to how, when or where.
Somewhere along the line Joe and Nick had become a team, partners. They could be considered friends. Very good friends.
And yet, he had no idea how to handle himself with the person he'd been getting to know for weeks now.
No idea how he convinced Coler to do this. No idea how something— someone like Nick could fit in so easily, going completely unnoticed.
He had no idea how they ended up on the streets, on their way home.
Home.
That did it. "You're reaching absolutely nothing with those pointless tests!" Joe yelled, feeling a restriction in his chest he'd never felt before, seemingly familiar all the while, "Do you even know what you're doing to him. With him? What he's fucking designed for!"
The image of Nick flashed before his eyes. He was not unobservant; he was going to be there for Nick.
Joe didn't know when he'd reverted to cursing, knowing his mother would bow her head in shame. Then again, his mother didn't know there was another boy that shared her DNA, he felt it was righty to yell over Nick.
He looked over to the Humanoid, taking in the unfamiliar expression of joy on his face. He seemed happy, curious. He wasn't anxious in the slightest, not like Joe.
Joe felt like all ground had been kicked from beneath him, holding his breath every corner they took.
Joe felt like he was spiralling down in the unknown, while he was entirely aware of where he was, at the same time.
He'd gotten Nick out of the labs. They'd walked through the endless hallways together, past the reception and a very confused Abby ("Where the hell did the other kid come from?") and through the exit.
Surprisingly, and maybe luckily, Joe'd been the one casting attention towards himself with his jittery behaviour; he was death-scared something would happen. That Coler would be proven right.
But he hadn't.
Nick fitted here; he was designed for humans, to fit in with them. He was meant to please, comfort, help.
He smiled, reaching out and touching Nick's shoulder, making the boy look at him with a questioning gaze. The sun sparkled off his teeth and his eyes re-focussed on Joe with the familiar separate buzzes. Nobody would notice he wasn't human if they didn't come too close. Nobody paid attention to Nick like Joe did.
He merely smiled back at Nick, who resumed his bemused observation of the street.
"Where is Dr. Misa, then? She knew what she was doing, she never hurt him!" Joe longed for the easy-going woman and her gentle hands on Nick.
Those hands he trusted, not the hands holding the cane.
"She's recovering from the attack," Coler told him, unmoving in his chair behind the desk, watching Joe pace back and forth in front of him, slight irritation on his face, "there's indeed a lot that we don't know, without her, but—"
Joe turned towards him, "You don't know anything."
"That's why we have you…"
"Yeah, because I'm doing such an awful lot. No-one will even listen to me!" Joe fumed, crossing his arms. His fingers tightening in his jeans, palming at them as he turned on his heels, staring at the president of the N.I.L. with a half hysterical, half livid expression on his normally so peaceful face.
Coler merely sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, "you're young, inexperienced."
"So are you."
"Don't test my patience, kid!"
He was leading Nick through the outskirts of town, having hoped it would attract less attention to the two of them, but it had shown to be unnecessary; there wasn't as much as a second look taken at the Humanoid.
He never ceased to amaze Joe, curiously gazing at the humans, normal humans, more then he'd ever experienced. Humans without lab-coats. Taking it so well.
"I am programmed to observe them," He'd given as an explanation, "They are normal to my scans and database."
"Well, it's not like Nick has any experience, either!" Joe said, wringing his hands against each other, as if trying to lift some of the tension that hung between the two males and over the oversized desk. Coler's face was even more detached then it normally was, expression cold and emotionless.
"I'm not quite sure how this went from guns to experience," Coler coldly commented, frowning at a point behind Joe's right shoulder, before focussing on his face.
Joe gulped, feeling cornered like an animal, like Nick in that gym, like the repulsed Humanoid shooting perfect gun-shots at targets that resembled the very thing he was made to protect.
The curtains behind the desk billowed like his anger. The circular room closing in around him.
"What's the point in making him shoot things, fight people, when he doesn't even know the 'dangerous' world out there? What is the point in testing him in a laboratory? It's so damn pointless!"
There was no need to test him; Nick was absolutely perfect to Joe's eyes. A little quiet, way too smart, but a good kid. He truly was like a brother and locking him up like this would do no good. Not to either of them and certainly not to the rest of the world.
Joe Lucas wasn't exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, or the brightest bulb in the box, but he knew that Nick was the most important scientific break-through in decades.
He felt uncomfortable, threatened in the presence of the CEO, but he wanted to stand his ground, stop the pointless torture they were putting Nick through.
So he stared into the pale blue eyes, his fists quivering as they rested on the armrests, his jaw set as he watched him polish his glasses. He was quiet, too quiet. Joe felt like there was some kind of time-bomb he wasn't aware of hidden in the room.
Nick laughed, loud and heartily at Joe when the elder nearly had a heart-attack because of the little girl approaching them, informing Nick that his eyes were behaving strangely and he should see an optician, like her little brother had.
Joe had frozen, completely stunned that the girl, barely five years old and pigtailed, would notice such a mere detail about Nick.
Nick had crouched down immediately, a perfect pose of friendly intensions, like a parent would approach child. He was the image of child-care as he spoke, softly, to the little girl.
Joe didn't quite catch what he said, still trembling with fear, but he caught something along the lines of 'tired eyes' and 'they should really learn to behave themselves'
The girl had scurried off to tell her mother, which was waiting for her with tired eyes, two more kids and heavy grocery-bags on her arms.
"Aren't you scared she's going to tell?" Joe asked Nick, when he was done laughing at him.
"Of course she's going to tell," Nick explained fondly, gazing after the little girl as she jumped around her mother, "but she's a human child, a near infant to even your standards. It's a pity adults don't see the beauty in their innocence, the truth she speaks and the beauty of her mind. Her baby-fantasies will protect us, for no-one will ever believe her."
"I'm not a child!"
Coler merely gave him a 'really?' expression, before he turned around again to stare at the window. His eyes flashing behind his glasses as he traced the city's skyline. His shoulders were tense, as he put his hand against the cool glass in front of him.
"Yes you are. You're a baby. You know nothing," he said, "You are not the supervisor of this project, you're not the one who has invested a lot of money into this project, you're not the one that needs this to work to save his company. You're not the one who made the plans, who has done everything in his power to make sure people do what they are ordered to do. You have no idea of everything going on behind your happy little humanoid bubble."
Joe fell back into the chair behind him, shaking his head in denial at the harsh words. Macy had never voiced these worries when she was still in charge. He wasn't so stupid that he wouldn't notice that!
Or did he really know that little, was he really that unobservant?
"I'm very, very disappointed in you and what you did today; you don't seem to understand the importance of the situation. I need to know its capabilities. You don't seem to grasp that he is not human, Joseph."
"I'm— He's just a…"
"Humanoid. We need to know everything before we present him to the public and send him on his mission to better the earth. It's not done with a snap of your fingers; he's weak and useless if we don't know what our possibilities are. He's not going to go out there and make world peace. We need to test him."
"That's where I live," Joe said, smiling brightly as he pointed out the fire-house to Nick, his fingers nervously wrapping around the joint of Nick's wrist, feeling the sharp metal on the palm of his hand, "my home. I can't wait for you to meet my family!"
He still didn't know how he'd accomplished this. How he'd finally gotten Nick out of that hell-hole of a testing lab. One moment, Coler had been screaming at him, the other…
Now Nick was here, out in the open and completely safe, walking around like he'd done this with Joe every day of his not-quite-so-long- life. He was out here, with Joe, finally tasting the world the way he should.
He was wearing a T-shirt and a jacket. Jeans and boots. His eyes now covered with Joe's sunglasses.
He looked like the average teenage boy on Saturday; slightly ruffled (not like he'd just come out of a full-out fight at all) and happy with the prospect of two days without school.
Not that he needed school, of course, because he was a genius.
Joe felt euphoric because of this, but extremely protective of the Humanoid as well.
All his worried were proven wrong by the amazing normalness of Nick. He walked besides Joe, their shoulders touching and he felt the warmth of Nick's skin through the fabric of both their jackets.
He couldn't even tell the difference from real skin and he knew what Nick was.
Nick looked like an average person, like a random friend of Joe Lucas. A relative, most likely, for it was obvious they looked alike and were synced with each other like they'd known each other their whole lives.
A nephew.
A long lost brother.
Joe swallowed back his tears as Coler pulled him into the office.
"What were you trying back there?" He hissed at Joe, his eyes blazing with rage. His fingers were folded around Joe's upper arm, bruising his skin and making Joe wince away from him. He'd never seen the CEO this mad.
"You were forcing him to do things he didn't want to do!" he snapped back, the tears welling up in his eyes. Feeling them burn in his throat, his nose, his mouth.
"You are not to undermine my authority, do you understand? I'm letting you stay, because I feel like you are honestly interested," Coler's voice was low and even more frightening then the whispered yells, "but I will kick you out and into the gutter if you ever try to pull something like that again. He doesn't have a will. He's a machine!"
He released Joe's arm, pushing him towards his desk while he angrily paced around his it to stare out of the massive window that reached from floor to ceiling. Angry air wheezing through his nose. In and out like an angered bull.
A bull with really powerful horns.
"I just, I just don't understand." Joe said, feeling something unknown build in his chest, "I don't understand why?"
"That's because you're a child!"
He wondered what they would do, what they would think of Nick. He wondered if his mother would accept him like all the friends he'd ever brought home, or if it was going to be different after all the lying he'd been doing
He wondered if his dad would shake Nick's hand, like an equal, like a boy of his own race. Or if he would be suspicious. Would he notice, would he figure something was wrong with Nick?
He wondered if Stella would like Nick. He really wanted her to; he prayed they would like each other, even though they were as different as could be.
How could they not like each other when Joe loved both of them so much?
How would Kevin react when he came face to face with his clone? Would he feel it like Joe had done, back then, when Nick had still rested within the tube? Would they get along, would they have that brotherly bond or something even more? Would they be like twins, sharing the exact same DNA?
Joe didn't know and he was equally eager to find out as he was hesitating. But it was a step forward.
A step for Nick, out of the lab. A step for Joe, back to honesty with those he loved.
"You're right."
"… come again?" Joe's mouth fell open when the man who'd been yelling at him mere minutes ago was suddenly staring at him with a very serious expression.
Coler smiled, either at Joe's puzzled look or his next words, "He is inexperienced. If you think that he's ready, we should see how he copes with the real world. I say we take that risk, on your authority, of course."
Joe gulped, the words hung in the air like a threat, bringing back the tension that had momentarily left.
Would it be worth it? What if he was proven wrong? What if something went wrong? What if Nick got hurt?
"He's ready; he's been ready for ages." He heard himself say, shocked at his own words.
It was for Nick's good. That would be worth it. Right?
"I'm home!" Joe yelled, making Nick look at him in a brief moment of wonder, before he went back to thoroughly examining the room they'd just entered. His eyes focussing on all the details. The couch he fainted on when he'd kissed Stella (cough, yeah…), the large kitchen counter Kevin had nearly blown up last year, the three fire poles. One too many for the two occupants of the upper floor and the fire-helmets on the wall.
Joe could almost see the numbers and observations roll behind his eyes and on his… well yeah; he probably had a hard-disk.
"Oh, honey, you're early!" His mother's voice spoke happily from the doorway behind the three fire poles, "To what do we owe this… Oh."
Joe smiled at Nick, who was curiously prodding at the apples in the fruit bowl, before turning to his mom. "I want you to meet someone, mom," he said, "Nick, this is my mother. Mom, this is Nick, he's a… friend."
"Good afternoon, Mrs. Lucas," if Nick was surprised to see Sandy, who was technically the mother of his DNA, he didn't show it, "it's very nice to meet you; Joe has told me so much about you."
It sounded like he'd rehearsed it and acted it out perfectly. It was nothing Joe hadn't heard him do before, so he merely pulled the pear from Nick's too strong hands before he squished it. Not that he would, but Joe didn't want to take the risk. Normal people didn't squish pears, or splinter woods, or crush stone…
His mother, however, was slightly taken back at Nick's formal manner of speech, making Elvis bark at her as he ran up from behind her, but halting at the tension.
Smart dog, Joe mused.
His mom gaped at Nick for a moment, looked back at Joe and returned to Nick before she seemed to snap to her senses, ignoring his stretched-out hand and pulling him into a hug.
"It's very nice to meet you."
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The frustrating thing was that the Lucas boy had been right.
That and the fact that he had once again been forced to play nice with the boy. He hated leaving all the kid's whims and moral disagreements unpunished and he was quite fed up with his pointless rants and feelings. Putting up with the teenage angst was not something he keenly wanted to waste his time with.
But the boy was vital. The project couldn't be completed without him. His DNA was too valuable.
And if Coler's instincts were correct, and most of the time they were, Joe held another important link to his goal.
He just needed to find it. He was missing that one link Misa's granddaughter hadn't told him about.
"Are you sure it was a good idea to leave the only working Humanoid we have with the kid?"
"He's barely older then you are," Coler said, brushing his fingers over the cheek of a Humanoid female, down her chin and to the hollow of her neck. He knew this one; she'd been one of the first, her DNA extracted from a persistently capable source. Scandinavian, if he remembered correctly.
"And he's an incompetent idiot," Coler's companion snorted. His lean figure standing with his back towards the room of exposed human-machines.
Coler had been looking forward to this day, when the improved Humanoids were proven stable enough to survive out of the test-tubes. Seeing them lying silently on their tables, however, proved equally depressing to watching them float behind glass.
"The flaw to every plan is underestimating your enemy, son, never forget that," he lectured the boy, "I would've liked him a lot more better if he'd been actually stupid, but he isn't a complete moron. I could live without the constant questions and it would mean less obnoxious talking, but he's the brother to a source, he's got the brain cells."
"I'm just saying it's dangerous, dad," the young man said, shifting uncomfortably as he faced his father.
"Has it ever not been?" Robert Lincoln Coler ran his hand through the hair of another Humanoid, much like he'd done with the first, the only one alive up until now, when he hadn't been activated yet. Only this one was fair and female, his fingers ran over the Chinese sign none of his people had been able to translate yet. Three lines, crossed with one.
He sighed, "how to activate you, my beauty, how?"
Somehow, he knew the boy was the key.
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"Your mother seems to really love you," Nick commented, as he followed Joe up the stairs, his fingers never even inching towards the banister.
He'd just been thoroughly hugged by Joe's mom, which had seemed to surprise Nick more then the gush of first fresh air into his face.
"She does," Joe told him over his shoulder, jump-running up the last few steps, "and I love her."
He was silent for a few seconds, as he looked into his room, passing the empty space behind the poles without thinking twice, but finding Nick staring at it has he turned around in the middle of the room.
"I love them all, they're my family," he finished. Nick nodded, walking towards him at a slow pace.
"Listen, about what happened…" Nick pressed his finger against Joe's mouth, immediately shutting the lean boy up as he pointed towards the stairs.
Joe stared with wide eyes and not moments later, Kevin walked into the room, halting as he spotted Joe and the boy he didn't know.
"Hi, Joe, you're home early," his sentence was slow as he confusedly stared at Nick, "I… Joe— who's this?"
Nick and Kevin stared at each other, brown meeting brown, completely frozen in their tracks and not listening to Joe's 'this is a friend of mine…' and downright ignoring him. They took in the other's features, knowing or sensing something about the other that wasn't supposed to be there.
Joe looked between them, but felt as if he was looking through a tainted window, seeing them, but not quite clearly.
He felt kicked out of the bubble, for a second, before he realised.
"Oh…" he breathed, backing away from the two men, towards his bed.
They were completely still, Joe was pretty sure Nick wasn't breathing, and frozen staring at each other. Something, something unknown, hanging between them.
It had never happened before, that a Humanoid met its source. That a clone met its DNA-drain.
Not that there had been many clones or Humanoids, but something inside them knew that the person in front of them was very, very important.
Joe sat back on his bed, trying to shoo away the swirling jealousy in his stomach. He watched when they, as if on cue, walked towards each other, stopping mere inches from touching each other. Nick stared up into Kevin's face, analysing every detail, every angle, every skin-tone. Kevin stared down at the strange boy, seeing the similarities, fighting with himself in his head, because it just wasn't possible.
He watched as they raised their hands simultaneously and two versions of the exact same being, one human, one not very so, touched.
It was so similar to the way he and Nick greeted each other, acknowledging the other's presence, but so different that it made Joe turn around, he couldn't watch.
He reminded himself that they were, indeed, like twins. He shouldn't be surprised they reacted to each other like this. Hadn't he and Nick done exactly the same, even when he was still inside the tube?
His fingers blindly grabbed for something to toy with, to get his mind to let go and wander, focus on something else.
This was good; this was what he'd wanted. Nick was Kevin's clone, not his. He had no supernatural claim on Nick.
Wasn't he the one that had so persistently said Nick was allowed to make his own choices, had his own will. He wasn't a toy, he wasn't exclusively Joe's.
Even though Joe had begun to think of him as his. A little.
He fingered the thing in his hands, looking down to confirm it was metal. His mind didn't realise it didn't belong here, but he was so used to it his mind didn't think it important enough to register.
He looked up from it as a hand came to rest on his shoulder and he was looking up into Nick's face. Finding it smiling at him and holding up his hand to touch Joe's, extracting an immediate reaction from Joe; he didn't even have to ask.
They had the movement synchronised.
Joe smiled. Nick wasn't his, Nick wasn't Kevin's. He was Nick, his brother.
He threw the object back on the bed, not seeing the strange metal, not feeling the coldness of it, when it should've been warmed in his hands. He didn't see the three lines, crossed with one.
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"Penny?"
"I've found the sign!"
"Where, where did you find it? What does it mean?"
"It doesn't mean anything—"
"But what…?"
"It's a key; the boy has a key with the sign on it!"
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Joe snickered at Kevin's face, not caring that he'd been wearing the exact same expression before. Heck, he still wore it at moments, when Nick surprised him again with unexpected skills. He lazily petted Elvis's ears as he re-adjusted himself comfortably on the floor before the TV.
This time, however, it was very ironic that Nick impressed Kevin with this. Really, Joe wasn't surprised. He was convinced Nick possessed nearly every possible skill.
Including playing the guitar.
He chuckled loudly when Kevin absently shook his head in amazement, watching his brother and his brother from his position on the ground.
"You're great!" Kevin exclaimed when Nick had finished playing the unknown tune, "You're absolutely amazing!"
Nick merely shrugged, exchanging a meaningful glance with Joe and smiling at them, before starting another melody. This one was familiar to Joe, though it surprised him.
He knew he shouldn't be, really shouldn't be, but he was.
It was a song Macy had regularly played in her lab. Joe hadn't been aware Nick had been able to hear it too. Had he been able to hear them from inside the tube?
It couldn't be. He hadn't been activated yet.
Maybe it was like with unborn babies, Joe thought to himself, drawing curious lines into the carpet, didn't those hear music inside the womb.
He snorted; the tube wasn't quite the loved stomach of a woman. Far from a uterus.
"You're doing it wrong," Kevin suddenly said, snapping Joe from his thoughts.
He gazed curiously at his older brother, who had stood up to loom over Nick, who was staring at him… almost scared?
"You're playing," Kevin explained, gently taking the guitar from Nick, "but I don't hear you playing. There's no emotion, you don't feel it."
Nick looked even more confused then before as he immediately looked at Joe for answers. Joe just smiled reassuringly, leaning back, leaving this one to his brother.
The Lucas family had always been better at expressing themselves through music.
Kevin started playing, really started playing, his fingers dancing over the guitar, caressing it like it was the most precious thing in the entire world, speeding and playing, his eyes closed as he extracted the notes from the beauty in his lap.
To him, this was bliss. Everything else aside, this was what he loved.
Joe immediately recognised the song; it was one of their favourites. Very typical for Kevin to play it at a moment like this.
Feeling as happy as he was now, he didn't have a problem with a little jammin' time with his brothers.
"Gather 'round guys, it's time to start list'nin. Practice makes perfect, but perfect's not workin'." Joe stood and smiled at Nick before he belted out the next lyrics, "there's a lot more to music, than knowing when your cues gonna be. You can play all the right notes, but that don't mean you move with me!"
"Technically, it's that doesn't mean…" Nick commented, before Joe unexpectedly pulled him up from his chair, which proved to be rather difficult. He kept forgetting Nick was partially made of metal.
"But if you can jump, like David Lee Roth. Or pump your fist like your brooms the boss…"
Nick crossed his arms and frowned; "What does an old music legend have to do with this?"
"If you got a heart and soul; you can rock and roll! Rock and roll!"
Joe now laughed at Nick, who stared Joe down like he was crazy with his identical brown eyes; "Joe, I don't have a hea—"
"Shut up," Joe interrupted, "and sing!"
"That doesn't make any sense, Joseph."
Joe danced away from him, dancing along with Kevin's guitar riff, "Strummin'. Drummin'. Slide across from runnin'. The stage is your home if you learn how to own it!" He pointed at Nick, beaming at him comically –one of Joe's many talents— and nearly punched the air in joy when he saw Nick smirking, still unmoving like a statue, but it was progress.
The fact that Coler would've seriously disapproved made him sing even louder. "Like the great Stid, there's no way that you can fake it. You've got to feel the beat before you can move. Even though you're not wearing blue suede shoes…" Elvis and Nick stared at each other for a second, "Makin' mistakes, but that won't matter. If you can swagg like 'ol Mick Jagger!"
Nick chuckled at Joe's poor imitation of Mick Jagger, as Joe once again came closer to him, swinging an arm around Nick's shoulders, "If you got a heart and soul," he placed a hand Nick's chest, "You can rock and roll! You can rock and roll!"
"Joe…?" A familiar voice suddenly chimed in, making a startled Kevin nearly snap a string, his guitar going quiet with a harsh and off-key strum, "Who is this?"
Ah, Stella, don't we all love her?
Gah, I am so in love with this chapter! The last scene has been planned since the very beginning, but I wasn't sure if I was going to use it, since it would mean a lot of writing around to get it fixed, but I'm sure glad I did!
Technically, 'Heart and Soul' is not a Jonas song. Technically not written by them. So technically, it's not theirs and therefore it's okay for me to use when they're not a band. Claws up for weird logic.
Oh and Dan, the person whose been demanding a 'Kevin meets Nick'-scene, if you DARE to not like this, I will personally come and fly over to Australia and I WILL tacklepounce you!
With all the love in the world, of course.