Mmm, Bacon

[Anita Stern]

Anita slinked back into the comfort of her seat, checking to make sure that she didn't get and ketchup or anything on her shirt. Thankful that she was still clean, Anita sipped at her iced tea.

"Mmhmm. I did. And I managed to assert some control over the whole process. It was a different experience. I'm usually flooded with the content of whatever I come into contact with until I break that contact. I guess...I guess knowing I can trust someone helps bolster my confidence in doing things like that. Oh, and to answer your little quest, it was Michael the Archangel, St. Jerome and St. Catherine of Alexandria."

She put down the tall glass (now half-empty) of iced tea, and crossed her arms, smiling a little.

"So...how did I do?"

[Stern]

"You did very well."

Stern stifled a belch caused no doubt by the jalapenos in his hashbrowns. He gulped down a little water and wiped his mouth again.

"For a long time I had an icon of St. Raphael over my bed during my mutation. My parents knew my eyes were mutating, but they thought it was an eye disease."

He scraped together some loose bits of hashbrowns onto his fork. "St. Raphael is an angel, and the patron saint of eye diseases. He helps cure Tobit's cataracts in the book by the same name. Poor Tobit. He got his cataracts from bird poop."

Stern laughed.

"I didn't have cataracts, but my eyes got more and more sensitive to light. After a while I had to keep the lights off, which triggered my achluophobia."

Stern held his hand out again. "Well, it's hard to describe. It might be better if you saw for yourself."

[Anita Stern]

Anita nibbled at her food some more, and took another small sip of her drink. Then she dabbed at one corner of her mouth with a napkin where some ketchup had decided to rebel before looking to Stern again, and yet another instance of offered hand.

"Well...hmm, ok. Try thinking about it a bit, focus on the thing. It will help me get a better picture if you do, and should reduce unrelated details."

She took a calm breath in and out, relaxed herself as best she could, then reached out her hand once again. Closing her eyes, she grasped his hand and held on.

[Stern]

Stern felt her small, soft hand touch his and he paused in his eating to focus on the event.

Suddenly it flashed in his mind.

A younger version of himself, hair brown at the tips, but clear at the roots panicking in his dark room. The lights were off, the door was closed, the shades were drawn. His bed was entirely turned over. The mattress stood against one of the windows in his room, blocking out the sun. The other window was half covered over by a large sheet of plywood.

The teen Stern took a nail out of his mouth that he had been chewing on in his angst and kept the plywood straight with his shoulder. He held the nail in one hand and the hammer in the other. In three strokes the nail held the plywood in place, blocking out all the light.

Total darkness covered the room for a moment before he was already tearing the plywood down from its spot. As soon as the nail came out the plywood slipped. Light flooded the room and Stern recoiled in pain as the sunlight assaulted his rapidly dilating eyes. He flung his arm up to cover his eyes and set the plywood back up.

He was crying from pain and crying from panic. There was no rest, no solution. That is, until his mother unlocked the door and held him down. Cradling her son in her arms, she helped to calm him while his father placed the tinted goggles over his eyes.

"We had these special made by the optometrist," his mother explained. "Is that better?"

Stern opened his eyes and cringed--half out of fear of pain and the other half out of fear of darkness. The world was good. The light was light, but the tint kept it very easy on his eyes. Mostly things were shades of grey, but there were colors where it was bright enough.

The boy gasped and breath and blew his nose on a tissue his dad gave him.

"Yeah, that's good."

Stern's dad gave him a pat on the shoulder. "I can't begin to imagine what it's like for you to have to go through this. I'm proud of you."

Stern didn't feel brave, but he still managed to smile. "Yeah. Thanks."

Suddenly the image changed from that to hashbrowns as the college student took an idle mouthful of his food.

[Anita Stern]

Seeing the scene moment for moment really helped put things into perspective. It gave her a solid understanding of how a grown man could be afraid of something as silly as the dark. Anita herself had never been afraid of the dark, so without seeing that memory, she might not have understood in entirety. When it switched from the memory to the image of hashbrowns, she giggled a little and released his hand. While he ate the hashbrowns, she took another bite or two of bacon.

"It's good that your parents cared enough to help you like that."

Her father (well, adopted. Her mother's second husband) - as she found out when her gift was just starting to develop - was a total letch and the way he thought of her even when she was just barely sixteen (and graduating from high school early) made her shudder. Her mother...well, her mother was distant. Ever since his death. Anita looked up from her food.

"I wish I could share with you in the same way that I'm able to take from you. I'm positive that it may be possible for my gift to work as a two-way street, but I don't think it would be as easy as what I've attempted tonight."

[Stern]

Stern shrugged. The plate was nearly empty. "Well, if you care to try tonight, we can. Or if you would like to later, we can manage that too."

Francine brought the bill to the table. "Take your time."

The old woman went back to busing tables.

"What she said."

He chuckled. "Well, I got to say, I had a good set of parents. Not much else went well after that. I was home-schooled, didn't go to prom, never had any dates. Lost a track and field scholarship because I was a mutant."

He chuckled. "There's no social networking for mutants. People would only use it to hunt us down or invade it to leave hate messages or set up events that would end up in violence or something."

He paused and looked out at Anita's car. "This is a nice change of pace for me."

[Anita Stern]

Anita was pretty well finished with her plate as well, and only had one-third of a glass of iced tea remaining. She felt much better having eaten something, and even better than that having made a new acquaintance. And a nice one at that. How exactly she felt that she could trust this man she barely knew with her vulnerabilities was beyond her. He had an honesty about him that set her at ease. Anita sipped quietly at her iced tea as she thought.

"I dated one boy in high school, in my graduation year, and that ended shortly after my powers developed and I discovered by touch just how much of a - oh, there really isn't a better word - jerk he was. It was eight years before I dated anyone else again, and in the end, he just disappeared. I suppose you're lucky in a way to have not experienced that."

She paused a moment, then continued on, sipping at the iced tea amongst her words until it was done.

"As for social networking for mutants...well, I'm not a registered mutant. So far, the overall harmlessness of my power has allowed me to slip under the radar. I saw no need to declare myself if I wasn't dangerous at all. Though really, no one, not even myself, has any clue what the full extent of my powers would be."

Her eyes followed the line of his gaze to her car. Suddenly getting a thought, she dug into her shoulder bag and pulled out a pen and a small pad of paper - after a minute or two. Women's bags are notoriously bottomless.

"I was thinking..." She started, placing the pad on the tabletop, and starting to scribble out something with the pen "...that I would like to remain in contact with you, so..."

She slid the small pad of paper - with her email and name on it - and the pen towards Stern.

"...here's my email. Least I can do for someone who's helped me figure that I still have a courageous bone in my body."

She smiled.

[Stern]

Stern returned the smile warmly.

"I think that would be wonderful."

He took the pad and pen. He glanced over the e-mail address before removing the sheet from the pad and placing it in his pocket.

"And my information is here." He gave her the one for school, and his second one. "I check at least one of these with regular frequency. You should be able to get a hold of me no matter what."

Then as an after thought he gave her his cell number. "There's that in case you have an emergency or just plain need to hear a human voice."

He slid the pad and pen back to her. "Now for the food bill."

He stood up and went to the counter to pay, giving Anita a gentle squeeze on his shoulder as he passed by her.

He paid Francine, waved to his favorite short-order cook, and returned to the table. "Come on, let's go."

He smiled at her again and held out his hand to help her out of her seat.

[Anita Stern]

When he gave the pad and pen back, she looked over what he had written, then put the items back in her bag. When he passed her on the way to paying the bill and squeezed her shoulder, she froze at the gesture...not at it being uncomfortable - no, that wasn't it- but at the fact that the way it felt was hard to place, like a faint memory. Or the assumed memory of what was merely a vivid dream. It was strange.

"Come on, let's go."

Again, for the last time that night, Anita snapped out of whatever little world she'd situated herself in, and looked at Stern, seeing the offered hand. The discomfort threatened to curdle in her gut - the times over their meal, touch had been for the purpose of an exercise. This, however, was not that. She could appreciate the gesture for what it was, and (swallowing the discomfort of a situation she'd avoided for so long), she hung her bag on her shoulder, and turning to get out of her seat, took his hand, smiling again.

"Yes, let's."

[Stern]

Stern smiled at her soft touch and easily lifted her out of the seat.

"Thanks for letting me in."

He released her hand and walked with her out of the restaurant, holding the doors for her as they stepped out into the late night air.

"You're really an incredible person, Anita. Thanks for letting me take you for food."

He paused a moment outside the car and watched her walk to the driver's side to unlock it.

[Anita Stern]

At that, she blushed.

"Thank you. I could say the same."

And she pulled the door open, and climbed in, shutting the door behind her and pulling the seatbelt across herself, then leaning over the passenger seat to look at Michael through the window, opening it with the main power controls she had at her disposal.

"Are you getting in, or am I just leaving you alone in the dark?" Anita asked, with a slight bit of amusement. She laughed.

[Stern]

"Sorry. Please don't leave me. I don't quite like the dark."

Stern climbed in and buckled up real fast.

He was glowing again, and the light increased a watt or two. "But it's not so bad when I have someone close by."

The drive back to campus was kind of quiet. Stern was mostly in his own head, replaying the events from dinner in his head and every so often looking over to take a quick glance at the beautiful woman he met by happenstance.

Once they entered the campus itself, Stern directed her to his dormitory.

The car came to a stop by the sidewalk just outside the entrance.

Stern sighed. "This is it." He turned and looked Anita full in the eyes. "If you need me for anything at all, get in touch with me."

He reached over and squeezed her hand. "You're going to be great. I think you;ll get a handle on all this quicker than you think. And if things start to get out of hand, call me. I'll come running as fast as I can. I promise."

[Anita Stern]

"I'll be sure to do that."

Her response to his 'if you need me for anything'. A typical response that most people would give. Somehow that wasn't quite right here. Then he squeezed her hand, speaking again, and there was nothing but a dose of warmth and care that hit her when he did. She tried not to show any reaction to any thoughts he might have. When he let go, he easily exited the car. Anita watched after him a moment, hesitated, then called out.

"Michael?" That was the first time she'd called him by name all night. He paused and turned, looking at her again, only a few feet from the Mini.

"The same to you. I'm here at least once or twice a week dealing with the library, so don't hesitate to run into me."

She smiled at the words she chose, then based on that, spoke a few more.

"Just try not to spill my books all over the place next time, okay?"

[Stern]

Stern nodded. "You bet. I'll see you later, Anita."

Stern walked over to the door to his building, sliding his student ID through the card reader. It beeped to let him in and in he went, thinking over his offer. He'd have to send her an e-mail soon and see how she was.

She was a nice person. He'd definitely be trying to run into her again.