Kennedy Associates

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The temporary site offices of Kennedy Associates, Architects and Designers were located in some fairly modern industrial units on the outskirts of town. There were six staff who had come down from various other offices and were working out of the place including Lars - three architects, one salesman and a lone secretary. Lars had been assigned as Project Manager and had a small office of his own.

The rest of the unit was open plan, well air-conditioned and very clean and new. There was a small kitchen area where they could make coffee and tea, and a microwave.

When he wasn't recovering from a hangover, Lars was always the first in, and this morning was no exception. He'd rolled in at 7.30am and was catching up on yesterday's messages.

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Lee had made a point to be On Time for her first day of what would hopefully become a full-time job to help bring in extra money for Rogue's Place. Therefore, at 7:55am she drove up to the building Lars had given her dirrections to and parked her car next to the one she already recognized as his.

Knocking on the door to announce herself before she let herself in, she looked around the open space with a large smile, excited at the prospect of not having to do dishes or garden today. While not having a job was great for relaxing, it did become rather boring. And it was nice to get back out into the world of the not abnormally depressed again.

"Hello? Lars?"

Curious, she started peeking at the drawings and photographs pinned up on the walls or scattered on the desks.

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"Hello."

He appeared rather suddenly behind her, a steaming mug of coffee in his hand, a big grin on his face. He wasn't wearing his sunglasses, but he was wearing a rather fetching pair of regular glasses that suited the shape of his face.

She suspected that the lenses weren't prescription, but that they were purely a fashion item.

"I was just doing the most important job of the day," he said, holding up the mug. "Want one?"

He took her back across to show her where the kitchen was, explaining how they all chipped in a couple of dollars for the coffee and milk, adding that because she was only there on a temporary contract, they wouldn't expect her to pay anything, but she was welcome to help herself. He showed her the dull, health and safety things like the fire exits and the bathroom, then he showed her the basics of the computer system.

"It's all pretty standard stuff," he said, cheerily. "Annette, the secretary, she does the best she can, but us architects are pretty disorganised guys for the most part. You'll probably start out helping her out. You'll like her, she's one of life's good girls." He flashed Lee one of his killer smiles. He was wearing suit trousers and a shirt of the very palest lemon that suited his blond colouring right to the ground.

"I hope you won't be too bored," he said, glancing up at the clock. "We've got a project update meeting at 8.45am, and if you don't mind making coffee for us..." He sounded almost apologetic. "That sounds terrible, doesn't it?"

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"That's what I'm here for," Lee grinned excitedly, not worried about what they asked her to do, but only happy that she was finally able to do something. "But I've never made coffee before," she added, blushing. Lee had mostly stuck to Starbucks frappuccinos when she was in Charleston, the major point of them being that they didn't actually taste like coffee, and once she'd moved to the mansion, and then in with Marie, no one really bothered to make coffee. You could always find a suitable mutant to give you a boost in the case of the mansion, and the coffee maker had broken at Rogue's Place (just another thing on a long list of broken down junk that they owned). "If you show me I can do it from now on though. I'll get here early and everything. Is there sugar?"

She proceeded to find and pour quite a bit of sugar into a mug, before filling it with coffee and cream. A tiny sip produced the desired effect of enough sweet to drown out the sour, and she smiled again cheerily. She didn't need the coffee in the least this morning.

"I really like your glasses," she said before taking another sip. For herself she'd gone with a plain white button down blouse (borrowed from Marie) and some black pants. Nothing fancy, not wanting to startle them all with her normal wardrobe of bright colors, but looking properly buisness-like.

"So, where do you want me?"

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"I really like your glasses."

"Thanks." He grinned at her. "They're slightly tinted. Stops reflection off the computer screen and I forget to take them off when I'm wandering about." He pushed them up his nose and topped up his own coffee mug.

"So, where do you want me?"

Lars considered for a few minutes. "Well, the desk opposite Annette will be your normal home, but the computer's not hooked into the network yet. Tony will sort that out when he gets in. Maybe you might want to sit and read the phone manual. I'm damned if I can work out how to transfer people or put them on hold." He showed her to the desk, which had been hastily tidied of diagrams and drawings. There was a small pot plant on the desk with a little note attached. The note read Good luck on your first day, Lars.

His mobile phone took that opportunity to ring and he excused himself to his office. She heard his voice rise in pitch as he apparently argued with the caller.

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Lee tried very hard to hold in a little squeal of excitement at the plant, but a rahter high-pitched giggle still escaped. Luckily, Lars had a phone call to take, and no one else was in yet, so no one really heard the unprofessional sound. She could hear him arguing with someone, and not wanting to seem nosy picked up the phone manual that was on her desk.

"Well that wont be too hard," she said to herself, "its just like the one Mo..." her brain balked at the thought and she shied away from the phone, putting down the manual. The phone was the same that her mother's office had had, and during the summer that Lee had worked with her she became quite familiar with it. She put the manual down on the desk, biting her lip and trying to push thoughts of her mother from her mind.

As the door opened behind her, signaling the arrival of another employee, Lee put on her best smile (a little forced this time) and greeted them.

"Hello, I'm Oralee Beacon, the new girl, nice to meet you."

(I'll let you NPC whoever else works here. We should skip to lunch - Lee likes eating )

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The morning passed pretty uneventfully. Lee discovered that architects didn't really seem to notice the world around them much. The three who worked here were called, in no specific order, Steve, Bob and Nick. The salesman, when he rolled in about ten thirty was a slimy piece of work called Kent. Annette, the secretary, as Lars had promised, was lovely. She was in her late forties and mothered the lot of them, Lee included.

Lars spent much of the morning in his office on the phone. Occasionally he'd look over at her and smile.

The general atmosphere in the office was postively electric. Everyone seemed to be a near-permanent good mood and there were suitable pauses for telling one another jokes. Twelve thirty came around and it was declared (by Kent) that surely a lovely young woman like Lee would love to come out for lunch with him and see how a building firm salesman plied his trade.

Lars was still in his office, still on the phone, this time talking very fast in Swedish.

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Lee absolutely loved the job - it beat out being a cashier at the Piggly Wiggly ten to one, if not more. Everyone seemed super nice, the whole office was abuz with friendly banter, and they all commented on her plant. All in all, the wide grin didn't leave her face all morning.

Until Kent asked her out to lunch. Lee shot a quick look at Lars, who was on the phone using a language she couldn't understand, and tried to think of a suitable excuse not to go. Really, she was hoping to spend her lunch talking with the hot sweede. Or just gazing dreamily into his eyes - she had already decided that talking was not necessary.

"Um, well, I uh... I was hoping to talk to Mr. Anderssen. Ask him some questions I had about the job, and make sure I'm doing everything correctly." She didn't want to be rude to one of the employees, and it would be interesting to learn about his job, but he was slightly creepy in a I'm-your-fathers-age-doesn't-that-make-me-sexy kinda way... that was completely not sexy.

Throwing one more, almost pleading, look to Lars, Lee tried willing him to look her way. I wish...

She wished her wishes still worked. They would be very convienient right about now.

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Perhaps it was coincidence.

Perhaps it was not.

But whether or not it was, Lars wrapped up his conversation and moved from his chair to the door. "Sorry to bother you Lee, I can see you were about to go to dinner, but I really need your help with something, could I detain you for a few more minutes? You go on though, Kent."

He flashed one of his smiles at Kent and the atmosphere, which for the briefest of moments had been very tense, lightened up again. The salesman smiled back. "You've only had her here a day, Lars," he said, cheerfully. "Don't work her into the ground the same way as you do the rest of us. We'll do lunch later in the week, Lee, huh?"

With that, the salesman left the office, leaving only Lars and Lee there.

"Let me know if he bothers you," said Lars, coolly. "He's a decent guy but he can lay it on a little thick at times. Come into my office. I DO actually have something I want you to help me with. I've written this report and re-read it so many times that all the words are blurring into one. Would you mind proofing it for me? I sort of don't want the others in the office to read it."

His mood blackened slightly just for the briefest of moments, then lifted again.

The report was about recommendations for his project team once the project finished, for their redeployment elsewhere in the organisation. It was, she realised, a voluntary redundancy suggestion. He was offering to cut himself out of the loop to save the organisation money so that they could stay in business.

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With a smile and a nod, Lee watched Kent leave the office and sighed a mental sigh of relief. As the door shut behind the salesman, Lee turned her smile instead to Lars with a heartfelt "thank you."

"I'm not exactally an english major or anything," Lee said preemptively as she followed him in. Hell, she wasn't even a high school graduate, unless you counted Mutant High as an actual high school. "But yeah, I'll proof it for you." She had always gotten good grades in English afterall.

Lee took the seat behind the desk and started reading across the screen, her face neutral as she looked for run-on sentances, until she realized exactally what she was reading, and her eyes widdened in disbelief. "But..." she looked up at him and didn't know what to say for once in her life. "The company is going out of buisness?"

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"The company is going out of business?"

Lars shrugged one shoulder. "They may be," he said. "They have to make cost cuts. Me offering myself up for redundancy will go a good way towards those savings. I earn a fairly decent salary. It's just me, I don't spend that much, so I'd be able to get by on my savings for a while." He smiled at her. "Maybe go freelance."

He was sitting on the edge of the desk and leaned over to pick up the folder next to her. His aftershave was so pleasant as to be positively indecent.

"Don't worry," he said, in his lightly accented voice. "You will have work until the end of the project - that was always the deal." He caught her eye and smiled broadly. To Lee's mind, it suddenly didn't seem like such a bad thing.

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"But that's not fair!" Lee protested, "you can't just fire yourself from your job." She was frowning heavily at the thought - if he was jobless he certainly wouldn't stick around Caldecott County, and not only would they be out of a handy-man around the house, but they'd been out of the hottest guy Lee'd ever lain eyes on. Not to mention he smelled really good. Lee silently wished she was older, because he probably found her to be a rather young, naive, teenager with raging hormones.

Not to say she wasn't a young teenager with raging hormones, but at least she wasn't naive.

Or maybe she was, because as he caught her eye it seemed all her worries vanished. She recognized it, vaguely, as the same sort of feeling from the day before, but it didn't occur to here to care. Instead she mooned up at him with a smile. "Well, I suppose you always have a job as the Rogue's Place handy-man."

"I'll have to start buying my own Cheetos though, huh?" She was on the verge of giggling and she very much hoped he wouldn't look away.

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"If I quit, the savings might save a couple more jobs," said Lars, simply. "Nobody ever said it was easy being a grown up."

He became slowly aware that he was holding her gaze in his own and that she looked damned happy. A worrying feeling of familiarity, a sense of deja vu began to creep through his system. Lars snapped his glance away from her guiltily. As if it wasn't bad enough he suspected his powers were coming back, he was trying it out on a kid for Chrissakes.

"I need to go take my shot," he said, still keeping the smile on his face and his mood as light as he could imagine. He'd read somewhere that there were more Cure injections becoming available. Maybe he should book himself on a flight there. He wasn't sure he was fully prepared to go back to his mutant ability, despite the terrible regrets he'd had since he'd had the injection the first time.

He remembered it, the Cure. He remembered that moment of transition. It can be a little jarring, they'd said.

No shit.

He'd vomited for fifteen minutes straight.

"Let me go get this shot - then let me take you out to lunch. There's a nice little place just in walking distance, does phenomenal pasta. OK by you?"

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As the eye-contact between Lee and Lars was severed, it felt like coming down from a high. Not that she'd ever been high, but she could imagine that it was somewhat like falling out of the happiest place on earth. Somewhat akin to crashing a rollercoaster at Disneyland. And she was left a bit confused and dizzy, with a headache starting to throb behind her eyes.

Lifting a hand to her forehead, she nodded, "yeah, no problem, your shot. Do you have some Tylenol?" She couldn't really remember what she'd been so concerned about before, it seemed like a dream that she had been upset at all. He tossed her a bottle of Tylenol, and she walked a little unsteadily to the kitchenette to get herself a glass of water.

As she sipped it she leaned against the counter, wondering exactally what had happened. I mean, the man was hot, but he wasn't hot enough to make her all giddy inside. Maybe she was getting sick. "Please don't let me get sick on my first day of work," she whispered to no one in general and waited for him to return from his self-vaccination.

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Lars stood in the bathroom, his head resting against the mirror. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, his mutation really was coming back. There was absolutely no doubt at all in his mind about it any more. The way he'd just affected Lee's mood, the look on her face when he'd broken eye contact with her...

His hand was shaking and he slipped several times with the needle as he tried to inject his medication. He took several deep breaths to calm himself and finally managed to get the damn stuff inside him. He put away the bottle of Factor IX and disposed of the syringe in the clinical waste bin he'd put in for that reason. If nothing else, he was at least still conscientious.

Who the HELL was he going to talk to about the problem? Lee? Maybe Marie, she seemed like she had her head screwed on right. No...the girls had problems of their own. Maybe he should just get in touch with - what had the company's name been...NovaTeX? Get himself booked in for another Cure injection.

DAMN Worthington Labs. Damn them! What kind of scientists didn't fully study the long term effects of something like that?

He could feel his own oxygen level starting to alter with the shift in his mood and, in a momentary panic, over-compensated slightly. It had been several months, after all. Too much oxygen.

He came out of the bathroom stumbling slightly, a faintly stupid grin on his face. To Lee, he looked as though he was stoned.

The moment passed quickly, however and he got himself back down to normal. "I believe I promised lunch?" he said, slipping on his sunglasses.

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Lee looked up as Lar's opened the bathroom door and walked out, a grin spread across his face as if he were high. She frowned - perhaps when he took his shot he took a little of something else as well? But he really didn't seem the type. Still, Lee had been through enough "Drug Free is the Way to Be" classes in school that she knew just about anyone could be a druggie.

He normaled-out a bit as he walked over to her, and he seemed fine when he asked her about lunch. Maybe he'd just had a funny thought while in the bathroom, and had been smiling over that. Maybe he was honestly happy about something. Although when one was giving up his job, she couldn't imagine being honestly happy about anything.

"Uh, yeah, lunch." Suddenly Kent wasn't seeming nearly so creepy as Lee followed him out to the car.

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Lunch took place at a small Italian bistro where the waiter was a genuine Italian and where they served the most delicious food. Whatever had affected Lars seemed to have passed as he was bright, breezy and cheerful as ever over lunch, although he did, for some reason, keep his sunglasses on.

"Headache," he explained easily when she asked him why. "I get them a lot."

Well, it was only the truth.

He didn't eat an awful lot, but he did have a couple of glasses of wine which went a long way to steadying his anxiety. He looked at Lee thoughtfully across the table, looking like he was bursting to say something to her, but clearly unable to get the words out.

He'd never had this problem before. Talking to women wasn't exactly the hardest thing in the world to do.

Talking to girls? That was harder.

He'd already noticed one or two sly sideways glances from other diners at the young man with the even younger dinner companion. He sudden felt awkward in Lee's presence, that he was being perceived as something he wasn't.

He didn't like that feeling one little bit.

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Any reservations Lee might have been harboring towards Lars began slowly to dissolve during lunch, despite the fact that he wouldn't take off his sunglasses. But, she bought his lie about the headaches, having one of her own at the moment, and shrugged it off. All in all she enjoyed lunch, chatting easily about nothing important, although it did seem that he had something he wanted to ask her. She'd become a little better at reading people since moving in with Marie and helping run the Place.

So as she took a sip of sweet tea, she studied his face for a moment (damn the sunglasses, it was so much easier to tell what people were thinking when you could see their eyes) and then decided not to be tactful about it. Because, let's face it, when Lee had something on her mind she usually said it, and she expected others to do the same.

"Is there something wrong?" She lifted an eyebrow and starred at him. "Not that I really know how you normally act, but to me your acting a little weird."

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He sipped at his coffee thoughtfully and rubbed one long, elegant finger down the side of his nose, clearly making some sort of decision.

"I think the Cure's wearing off," he said, in a low undertone. And there it was. As simple as that, he'd voiced his concerns out loud. "I seem to be affecting people around me. And...er...me, as well. I don't get it. I was one of the last to get the last batch despite turning up early."

He sighed heavily and the world seemed like a faintly depressing place to be.

"I sort of want to go into a mass panic and then on the other hand I want to be really pleased. But I just don't get it."

He sounded so sad and despondent, like a little kid who'd had a favourite stuffed toy forcibly removed to go in the washer.

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"I think the Cure's wearing off,"

Lee almost wished that she hadn't ask, because that was honestly almost the last thing on earth she wanted to hear, but it didn't necessarily mean that the cure was wearing off. Right? Just last night she'd made a wish that hadn't come true... certainly it wasn't wearing off of her. Nor Marie - she could still touch people without killing them. Unless something had gone horribly wrong today.

As pictures of something going wrong at the Place assulted Lee's mind she started to feel a bit panicked, and had to tell herself repeatedly to calm down. They could deal with this - they had practically been X-men. Well, Rogue had at least, Echo hadn't quite made it that far before bolting.

"Maybe," her mind raced, trying to think of a good explination. "Maybe it was a bad batch? Like, they were in a rush to finish that one and didn't make it right? Or... um... maybe you're just such a strong mutant that it didn't have much effect on you?" She was speaking lowly, so no one else could hear, but she suddenly felt claustrophobic in the small restaurant, with all those natural humans around, most of them probably not too fond of mutants, and the cure wearing off. It was like there wasn't enough oxygen in the room and Lee squeezed her eyes shut, trying to wish the feeling away silently.

"Maybe... maybe its your shot?" It was a long-shot, and it sounded rediculous, but she was searching for any possible answer that would mean that not ALL of the cure had been bad, that some of it would still work, because if she had to go back to being a mutant...god, she'd probably kill someone else on accident.

"I think I need some air," she said and quickly pushed back her seat, walking as calmly as possible to the restroom and closing herself into one of the stalls where at least there was extra air, even if there wasn't much space.