Power Swap: Keep Calm and Get Me A Drink (Sean)

[Stefan Spencer]

It had taken Stefan a while to notice that something was up. He'd woken up on the first day of September with a sore jaw, but hadn't thought too much about it. He figured the pain was either from a tussle in a bar the previous night or from just bumping into something as he had stumbled home. It wasn't anything unusual enough for him to worry.

The pain had kept with him as he left for work that morning and throughout the day. Still it hadn't been till that evening that he'd realized something was way off. He couldn't pick up anything off of anyone's body language at the bar. And while he'd been chatting with a lovely young woman, she'd suddenly screamed and pointed at his mouth. He had grown a pair of fangs mid-sentence.

As a few days passed, it appeared that he wasn't he only meta suffering in Pilot Ridge from some sort of cosmic joke. His journalism side had taken over and he'd started interviewing everyone he could thing of trying to find the answers.

The only problem was that suddenly talking to people was...hard. Without any clues to help him guide the conversation he felt lost and awkward. So he'd started drinking more than usual before doing any interviews. Or even before he left the house in the morning. It was the only way he'd found to keep away the anxiety that human interaction brought him now.

Which is why as he walked down the street on his way from the coffeehouse to his next interview he was having so much trouble keeping steady. It was barley 9AM and Stefan was already plastered.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

By contrast, Sean had realized that something was amiss early the morning of the power loss. It was inevitable, because of how profoundly his telepathy affected his daily life. Even with the unconscious information that he proceeded from it, he was always aware of it. Either was he devoting mental energy to shielding, and he noticed that focus, or he was not, and he could hear everything within his impressive range.

He had reacted as most able-bodied people did to a sudden and jarring incident that resulted in a disability – combined with confusion about how it had happened. Fortunately, the loss day had been a federal holiday, so he had not shirked any duties. The next day, he had returned to Hammel, where the problem had extended far beyond one middle-aged man and his telepathy.

Over the next few days, he had fought migraines, more severe than when he overextended himself, although not quite as severe as the ones that he had experienced as an untrained student at Hammel. He took Excedrin, carefully monitored their emergence, and hoped that this was an indication that his powers would return soon.

That small focus kept him together, as he met with other students and adults experiencing similar problems. Some were happy about the development, while others displayed (almost) as much distress as he did about the loss of their respective abilities.

That morning, Josh had had an early meeting, and Sean had opted not to have coffee and breakfast at home. However, before being able to stop off, he had been pulled into an emergency meeting with a student, receiving notification on his call line. When that ended, he decided to take half an hour and go to a café.

On his way inside, he spied a familiar form, stumbling down the street. While he could not sense him on the same level as with his telepathy, Sean still recognized Stefan Spender through any manner of other observational abilities.

And he was already drunk.

The former telepath glanced down at his watch and then shook his head to himself. “Hello, Stefan.”

[Stefan Spencer]

Stefan also felt as if he'd suddenly gained some form of disability. He had found it so hard to engage in conversation that he had skilled going out to bars for the first few nights after he lost his ability. Not that he had skipped drinking, just that he had confined it to the comforts of his own living room. It was hard because he had still felt lonely, but his anxiety kept him from leaving.

So he drank. And drank more. He wasn't even sure which bars he'd been kicked out of this week for walking in the door and getting into arguments with bartenders who refused to serve him because he was already wasted.

His day to day interactions were suffering as much as his evening ones. Not only because of his drinking, but also because of the anxiety that overwhelmed him. He constantly second guessed himself when talking and was under the constant assumption that everyone either hated him, was hiding something from him, or both.

So he kept his head down as he walked. First off to keep his feet semi-steady as he stumbled along. And secondly to avoid having to look anyone else in the eye.

So when he heard someone speak his name, he jumped a bit from the surprise. It was harder to recognize friend when all you saw was their shoes.

"Sean?" Stefan looked up and tried to focus on the other man. "Um...hi? How are you my...sweet...uh...friend?"

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Stefan looked about as bad as Sean felt, which led him to assume that the other man had been affected by whatever had taken the powers of so many other residents of Pilot Ridge. He knew that the other man’s power was sensory, and he could only assume that Stefan felt a similar sense of impairment with the loss of such an ability.

Hammel’s Research Department had yet to discover the cause for this. Instead, all of those affected stumbled along, doing their best to cope.

The former telepath could tell that Stefan was out of sorts when the younger man barely managed to focus. His attempt at flirtation fell so flat that it went beyond uncharacteristic to downright pitiful. While Sean preferred the lack of flirtation, he wanted that to be because Stefan had learned boundaries, not because he could not muster the energy.

“I was going to get a cup of coffee,” he announced, gesturing over his shoulder at the café behind him. “I think you could use a cup too. I’m buying.”

If nothing else, that would help to mask the aroma of alcohol that wafted from the journalist’s clothing. Sadly, some things never changed, even if Sean empathized with why Stefan might feel a greater need to drink now than he had before.

[Stefan Spencer]

Stefan had been to see the Research Department at Hammel. And called. And left drunken phone messages in the wee hours of the morning. But he couldn't help but hope that they would be the ones to find a cause and more importantly a cure for all of this.

Stefan looked towards where Sean gestured. His first instinct was to turn away from the invite, even though he had been headed towards the same coffee house. But even with the prospect of his friend offering to buy him a drink, he couldn't help but think maybe he should find a place where he could sit alone in the corner somewhere. Still Sean had always been a good friend to him. Surely it would be okay? He had enough liquor to make it through a cup of coffee, right?

Because he really was aching for some company.

"That'd be...nice," Stefan said, looking back to Sean. "How could I say no?...to a swell looking guy?...like you?"

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Although Sean lacked his telepathy, and thus lacked the ability to connect himself into the goings-on of the town and the school as he once had done, he still understood the machinations of the human mind. He understood empathy. He understood daily life. Given how addled he was, he could imagine how others felt. He did not envy the pressures facing the Hammel Research Department at this moment. Everyone relied on them to find a cause, and, through that, a way to reverse what had occurred. He could only imagine how inundated they were with emails and telephone calls, from meta-humans and their non-powered loved ones who wanted answers or a timetable.

“Good.” The former telepath had not given much thought to what he would do if Stefan refused. Such musings proved unnecessary, and so he turned but waited for the other man to fall into step with him before he started in the direction of the café.

“Now really isn’t the time for compliments or flirting,” he said, although his tone lacked bite. Just as he had noticed that Stefan’s heart was not in the flirtation. Still, he wanted to maintain boundaries. Without any other ability to control himself or to exert control over the situation, his personal boundaries became all the more important.

[Stefan Spencer]

Walking slowly to maintain his balance Stefan followed behind Stefan, but keep his head down to avoid looking at the other man. It was just too depressing to look at someone and not 'see' as he had used to. It was like he'd been watching a 3-D movie and now someone had switched it to something black and white...and grainy.

"I'm just....sorry," Stefan said, pitifully. What was the use? He didn't have the energy to claim it was only the truth and therefore not a flirt. Or that compliments were nice. Or any of this other usual comebacks.

He stumbled a bit on an uneven part in the sidewalk, but didn't think Sean noticed. Like most drunks, he always thought he looked better and more sober than he actually did.

"So...how are you...doing?" Stefan asked, grasping at a normal conversation.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

There was a saying that Sean found true: “A drunk never looks more drunk than when he pretends to be sober.” Such was the case with Stefan, who managed to stumble when he walked, and, even allowing for the massive, life-altering event of a power loss or power shift, looked disheveled as part of a twilight state, far from sobriety.

Although, in one sense, the psychiatrist understood the impulse, he also knew that in such moments, clarity became all the more important. If the journalist had lost his abilities, then he could not function in an inebriated haze, just as Sean could not combat the silence of his mind by diving into a bottle or crawling into bed never to emerge.

That was something to discuss inside, if at all.

Soon enough, the former telepath had reached the café, and he crossed the threshold. From the inside, he held open the door for the other man, so that Stefan could join him. While waiting, he took the moment to glance around to see how crowded it was, as he no longer had an internal system for making such assessments.

Only a few people were scattered around, which would give them privacy. Good. Sean did not want an audience.

To the other man, he answered, “About as well as can be expected.”

[Stefan Spencer]

It was true Stefan’s inebriated haze was making it harder to adjust to life without his ability. But like most addicts, he dealt with all problems by turning to his addiction. He lived under the assumption that more drinking was the solution to any problem. More and more drinking.

He stumbled across the threshold, tripping a bit and almost dropping his cane. Still he managed to steady himself and find a seat before he fell over completely. Hopefully Sean would find the table an acceptable choice. Also hopefully, this was the sort of coffee house where someone came to the table to take his order.

“You look well…well enough,” Stefan said. He knew Sean had to be struggling. Though Stefan wasn’t a telepath, he could understand how such an ability would come to be a big part of a person’s life. That was they way he felt about his own ability. Being without it felt like he was missing his eyesight.

“How…how do we do this?” Stefan asked, shaking his head and feeling helpless as he pulled out his flask.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean found nothing objectionable about the table, and so he slid into the both as soon as they reached it, seating himself across from the younger man. Physically, if nothing else, he was doing better than Stefan, even if he estimated that their emotional states were comparable. He looked around, trying to gauge the wait staff so that someone would come take their orders at the earliest possible opportunity; he needed coffee.

“That’s the question to answer,” he murmured, although he was unable to muse beyond that, because Stefan had whipped out his flask.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t drink from that,” the psychiatrist said, gesturing vaguely at the flask. It was too early, and he knew that Stefan was in too fragile an emotional state for alcohol to do any semblance of good. Even if the other man was a functional alcoholic, it would do him better to have a clear head when dealing with the loss of his powers, on which the former telepath knew for a fact Stefan relied more than the average person. Just as Sean himself had abstained from drinking since the loss of his telepathy.

Of course, he could do nothing to stop Stefan from drinking if he chose to ignore than advice.

As for the rest of it... “I think all that we can do is press ahead, in hopes that we adapt or our powers come back.”