Long period of not-updating, and finally, here's the update. Thanks to everyone for your acceptance of the OC, I really appreciate it. I'm slating this, theoretically (very theoretically) to go for about another four chapters, making this thing ten chapters long.
Chapter 6
Dr. Anderson tapped Kid Flash on the shoulder and said, "Your girlfriend remains the same basket-case I remember dealing with at HIVE."
Kid Flash stopped himself just in time from snapping the doctor's finger off his hand. "Which means what?"
"She's a wreck. And unless I'm reading too deep, she's lost her virginity. Always thought she'd lose it soon. There weren't many girls at that school."
Kid Flash frowned. "I didn't need to know that."
Dr. Anderson shrugged. "Just wanted you to know what you are dealing with." He consulted his clipboard, and Kid Flash couldn't help but notice that not a single thing had been written upon it. "Anyway, she's anorexic, which I already knew, and messed up psychologically, which I also already knew. I'm not sure exactly why you brought her here."
"She's not sick in any other way?" Kid Flash asked pointedly.
"No. Well, that's a lie. I learned something else; she's a hypochondriac," Dr. Anderson sniffed. "It's not very developed, and she's not very good at expressing it--"
"Hypo-what?"
Dr. Anderson gave him a pitying glance. "She is convinced that she is sick. She wanted me to tell her what condition she has, and when I couldn't come up with anything, she became angry with me."
"I'm sure you did something else to provoke that," said Kid Flash.
"Possibly. Anyway, she's depressed and possibly suicidal, and she's having a mid-adolescent crisis because she doesn't know what to do with herself. And she's on the brink of having a melt-down in there, so I'd give her a minute before going in there. And when I say a minute, I do mean a minute in normal time, not your time," Dr. Anderson winked at him. "Just hold your horses, lover-boy. She'll come to you when she's ready."
"What can I do for her in the meantime?" Kid Flash gritted through his teeth.
Dr. Anderson snorted. "Hell if I know. Get her to eat if you can. Best case for everybody would be if you just let her crawl back to the gutter, but I'm sure you have other ideas. Just don't bring her back unless you absolutely have to." He caught Kid Flash's angry look and said quietly, "I mean it. I value my physical health, and that of the people in this building. One more visit like that and this whole place could go
toppling to the ground. She has no control." He tugged at his white lab coat. "Not to mention they'd take the damages out of my pay."
"Because that's what it's all about, isn't it?" Kid Flash said bitterly.
"Isn't it? Don't play hero with me, kid. You're out for a reward same as me. Doctors, kids in suits, we're all the same here. We can play saint all day, but I still get my thirty grand at the end of the week, and you still get your face plastered in every magazine." Dr. Anderson shook his head. "There are no heroes in this business anymore. We're all in it for the money."
"Speak for yourself," Kid Flash snapped, brushing past the doctor so he could get back into the office.
As losing control went, it hadn't gone so badly. There was a significant dent in the wall of Dr. Anderson's portion of the office, but Jinx couldn't honestly say she felt badly about it. In fact, she generally felt better, especially when she realized it had been quite a few days since she had done anything meta-human.
Kid Flash had greeted her with a worried smile. When they were out of the office, he asked, "Was he a complete and total ass?"
"Oh, you don't like him?" Jinx laughed. "You're a protector of the peace. You're supposed to like everybody."
"I'm supposed to protect everybody," Kid Flash corrected her. "Personal preference is unprofessional."
Jinx rolled her eyes. "Heard that one before."
"Other heroes?"
"One of the teachers at HIVE. Something about sentimentality being the death of you."
Kid Flash frowned. "That's not quite how I meant it."
Jinx shrugged. "It's the same difference, isn't it? No souls allowed in the professional world." She sighed. "So, what did Tony say?"
"You call him Tony?"
"What did he say?"
Kid Flash shrugged. "That you have an eating disorder, and need to work on it."
"Kid Flash, I can't look at a full plate of food without thinking that I'm going to throw up. That's just how I am."
"Well, who said anything about full plates?" said Kid Flash. "We'll try smaller portions. A snack every two hours. As long as you get the calories at some point, it's the same difference."
She eyed him. "We?"
"Sure. You're welcome to stay with me as long as you like." He turned and saw his offer had not pleased her at all. "What?"
"What is this to you, anyway?" She asked him. "A charity case? I'm not interested in being your little project."
Kid Flash sighed. "Is this going to be another one of those things where you pick a fight with me, I don't rise to the occasion, and you snap? I'm not interested, Jinx. Can't we just get along?"
"Can't you grow a spine?"
"Why do I need a spine to talk to you?"
"How can you live without a spine?"
"I don't need a spine to live!"
"Well, then, you must be very miserable!" Jinx snapped.
"You're the one who's miserable!" Kid Flash cried. "Why do you think you're sick?"
"Because I am!"
"No, you're not! You're just making yourself sick! Would you…" He trailed off hopelessly, and muttered, "Could we not argue about this in the street?"
Jinx looked around her. About two families and five couples were staring at them. She heard one girl lean into her boy and say, "Remember when we used to fight like that?" Jinx sent a withering glance in their direction, and they scurried away, laughing. The other people saw this and dispersed.
"I need to get something to eat," Kid Flash announced. "I'm sorry, but I just lose it when I'm this hungry."
"Emotional eater?" Jinx mumbled.
"Come with me," said Kid Flash. "So we can talk about this calmly. I really want to help you. I don't know how many more times I can say it."
Jinx looked him squarely in the eye. "Don't you think you might help me just by leaving me alone?"
"No, I don't. I think if I left you alone, you'd just sulk and let yourself get worse, and you wouldn't get anything resolved."
"Who says I can't resolve anything by myself?" Jinx demanded. "Maybe what I need is space so I can clear my head. You just confuse me."
"You don't seem very confused to me," said Kid Flash. "Just mad. And sad too." He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Look, it may seem really corny, but I always feel better after I talk about something that's bothering me."
Jinx shook her head. "There's nothing in particular that's bothering me except for you."
"Look, there's a La Bou across the street, and I'm starving. Let me get something, for both of us, so we can just sit for a minute. I haven't had a real conversation with you since the other day. I wanted to go for something like that again. You know, sitting? And talking? All we do lately is argue."
She tilted her chin and said coolly, "But if we weren't arguing, then it would be boring for you, wouldn't it?"
There was a reaction in there, however small. Jinx saw it in the way his cheek twitched. "No, it wouldn't. I'm interested in you."
"I'm flattered," She said icily.
Kid Flash rubbed his eyes. "I don't know what else to tell you! This doesn't happen to me!"
"What, you're not typically interested in anybody besides yourself?"
He winced. "I wouldn't put it like that, but…yeah."
She gaped at him. He held up his hands pleadingly. "Not in the street. Just in La Bou. Give me a minute to get things together, and then we can talk?"
'Getting things together' involved ordering five sandwiches, a large drink, and three bags of chips and arranging them artistically around her and himself in the furthest table in the furthest corner of the La Bou.
She glared at his spread. "If I had anything in my stomach to throw up, I would."
Kid Flash grinned at her. "Help yourself to whatever you like."
She set her chin in her hands. "I thought we were going to talk about me?"
He nodded, and picked out the first sandwich. "Sure. Go for it."
"No, you were going to talk about me. And about how you're a selfish ass who doesn't think about anybody besides himself."
He knew better, by then, than to rise to the insult. "It's not so much that I don't think about anybody else. I do. I don't answer the calls and save people just because I want to make their problems all about me." She snorted, but the calories were warming his feelings towards her. "I answer them because I want to help, and I can."
"With great power comes great responsibility," Jinx said in a deep, mocking monotone.
"Exactly." He started on the second sandwich. "And I like people. But…people are very slow compared to me."
"The average person isn't good enough," Jinx nodded. "I agree."
He frowned. "I'll admit it, I've got something really…look, you have no idea what going at super-speed is like! I mean, can I even tell you the rate of endorphins I get compared to everybody else? It's like an acid trip, only healthier, and I'm the only one. Other people just can't keep up, and it's not like I've got anything against them for it, but it's so tempting just to--"
"Turn around and bitch-smack them right through their dreariness?" Jinx said hopefully.
He gulped. "It's tempting just to keep speeding always and never slow down for them at all."
She was studying him carefully, and he decided to just say it. "But it's not like that when I talk to you. You fascinate me. I could sit here all day and just stare at you, trying to guess what you're thinking."
Jinx pursed her lips. "So you're hot for me?"
"I never said that," Kid Flash munched on his fourth sandwich, the third having been consumed sometime ago.
"But I fascinate you."
"Doesn't mean I have wild sexual fantasies about you."
She snorted. "Mr. West, you are gay."
"Ms. Sandavas, you're avoiding the subject. I think you're really cool, and I want to help you."
"Because it is in your personal interest to keep me around because I fascinate you."
"Hey, look," He said, ripping open the first bag of chips. "You keep asking why I'm so interested in you. And I just answered you. Really, it's what I've been saying about you this whole time. There's something about you that's…different."
"Yeah, gray skin and pink hair. Not to mention the hexes and amazing wit," She tugged on a strand of her fly-away hair and gazed at him. "You're kind of a shallow jerk at heart."
"Maybe. But I am an honest shallow jerk."
She puffed out her cheeks like a chipmunk and squinted at him. "So, you're public image is kind of a lie."
"No, it's not," He said defensively. "I'm there to help. I'm interested in helping. Nothing in my ad campaign says I'm interested in the people personally. And it would probably only creep them out anyway." He saw her skeptical look and added, "But I do genuinely like helping people."
"Because it gives you an ego trip or whatever. Great." He was probably wrong, but now she looked genuinely disappointed in him. "If you're what the kids have to look up to, what does that say about the villains?"
He shrugged. "At least people are getting helped. What else can I do?"
She stared back at him across the table. "So you're just doing time."
He laughed. "You make it sound like I'm sitting in jail."
"It sounds like jail."
"It's a living either way." He held out his bag of chips. "Want any?"
She wrinkled her nose. "What do you think?"
"I think you do."
"I don't do pre-packaged, processed food."
"Okay." He looked back across the facility and noticed the selection of fruit on a shelf. He went to it and back at a relatively normal pace, and held out an apple to her.
She recoiled as if it were a bomb. "Are you crazy? People put razor blades in those things!"
Kid Flash laughed. "Jinx, that's just something they tell kids on Halloween."
"It happens."
He turned the apple over in his hands. "Looks okay to me. I'll take the first bite if you want." He tore a sizeable chunk out with his teeth, and held it out to her. "Go on. I'm not sick."
Casting him her withering look, Jinx took the apple and nibbled on the corner of his bite mark. She scowled at him, and he smiled encouragingly, gesturing for her to eat more.
She put the apple down carefully on the table. "I don't feel like throwing up again right now."
"Dr. Anderson was saying that's just because you haven't eaten much in so long. If you just took it in smaller portions, like I was saying earlier, it would be the same as eating three meals a day. It's just that your body isn't used to being full of food." She was losing interest rapidly, and he added quickly, "It's a dieting trick that regular people use, so they burn off the calories more easily. You wouldn't get fat or anything, if that's what you're worried about."
She rolled her eyes. "Like I care so much about looks. Not everyone in the world is as shallow as you."
He shrugged. "It'd be healthier, and it would make me--"
"Make you leave me alone?" Jinx said hopefully.
"Make me bother you less," Kid Flash amended.
"Or I could just leave so you wouldn't bother me at all," She said triumphantly.
"Or I could follow you to the ends of the earth until you listen to me," He said.
"Or I could kill you and solve everybody's problems."
"Or you could save me a lot of trouble and just try eating something. Look, I'll make you a deal," He said, leaning across the table. "You try things my way for a week. Eating, going to bed earlier, getting up earlier. If you still hate it after that, you can go off to whatever and I won't bother you anymore." She chewed her lip and he twisted the screw. "And I'll tell everybody that you told me off good, and that anybody would be an idiot to try to argue with you. I'll never, ever bother you again."
Jinx stuck her face in his and said, "I want that in writing."