Work Text:
'Men in Black' Style
It was a weird sensation, but one that W was now used to. He couldn't call it darkness, because without sensatory systems he wasn't able to differentiate between light and lack of it. He shouldn't be able to feel and hear either, but somehow, during the multiple times he had been into The Tank, a new sense had manifested itself.
The first times it had been … an itch, maybe. A prickle he couldn't scratch, not that he wanted to: somehow, he knew it was related to H's presence. With time it evolved into what probably should be called prescience, but it was linked to H only. He had an idea of what H was feeling, and he had known the other agent long enough to interpret it into the man's usual speech patterns.
It didn't work with the rest of the MIB.
Take a break, agent L.
On The Tank, W perked up. He knew H would not have used those words, favoring more insulting ones. But being unable to feel agent L reactions made H interactions with others feel weird from his perspective.
A short pause followed, one during which W could picture H hobbling on his direction while eyeing the thick substance into The Tank with clinical eye.
I don't care how much you insist: you obviously enjoy being turned into mush.
Well, that was something they had discussed more than enough. W had thought he had been clear as to how displeasing the whole process was; but H, apparently, seemed to think he knew better.
How would you explain all the time you spend into that jar, otherwise?
W had his own theory, one related to H's tendency to infuriate angry aliens with access to multiple technologies that, weirdly enough, always ended turning one of them into a hard-to-scratch-from-the-floor substance. That the 'one of them' always happened to be W wasn't weird, thought; after all, he was the one whose mobility wasn't compromised.
I've asked Z to discharge you from service.
Wait, what?!
But he said I wouldn't last a day without you. As if.
W felt himself relax, but the startle should have somehow manifested on the reforming substance that passed now as his body, as H did something he had never done before: he touched The Tank. An electric impulse jumped from H's palm to the glass, then to W, making him shudder.
Don't be stupid, W. One of these days we are going to face Alien instead of ET, and being human marmalade will be the last of your worries. And if you get hurt, really hurt, I …
W was uneasy. Of course he was aware of the danger. Every time he jumped between H and a weapon he had half a second to wonder if this would be it, his last stupid decision. Yet he always woke up with his multiple cells painfully combined into a single, giant one, and then spent a couple weeks being painfully reformed into his old self. But it was not a subject they ever talked about.
I'm not worth it.
H left after that, leaving W alone in that darkness-quite-not-like darkness. He hoped H didn't do something stupid until he was ready to return.