Don't Make Me Regret This (Reeve)

[Mia Keystone]

Mia had a little black box. It was not as traditional as a little black book, but Mia had issues with books. They were seriously outdated, why did no one see that? Anyway, Mia’s little black box was her backup’s backup. All her files, all her scanned documents, every image and video and audio file was in that black box. And usually, she slept with it under her pillow. But given the last week, Mia was very much doubting the security of her room. And Jonah was too close to her, besides, the information needed to be decrypted without needing the decryption engines given to you with step by step instructions on how to use them.

No, she needed someone who would understand how to unlock the data, and someone who would understand why she had the data locked in a box of black plastic and metal wires and microchips. So, even though she’d only really talked to him once in circumstances that might be considered strange (spying outside his window in camouflage trying to break into his computer) there was an understanding between Mia Keystone and Reeve Rzeznik that can only be reached by people who like computers more then, well, people.

Her hard drive tucked under her jacket, Mia tugged ideally at the cat eared beanie pulled over her head and ears. It took a moment for her to be able to actually reach up and knock on the door, a moment full of teeth gnawing on her lip rings and wondering if she could maybe bury the hard drive, before she could bring herself to actually knock on the door.

Her expression fixed in disinterested scowl, Mia pushed her bangs to the side. Her beanie pushed them flat against her forehead and they got in her eyes way too easily. If Mia’s eyebrows were hidden, her powers of intimidation were weakened. The technopath shifted from one leg to the other as she tapped her fingers on the plastic casing.

[Reeve Rzeznik]

When the knock on the door was heard, he suddenly began to wonder when the heck he began to get so popular all of the sudden.

As usual, Reeve was sitting in his room, recently-showered as he seems wont to be, clad in a pair of basketball shorts and no shirt. He leaned back in his chair as the knock resounded against the door, craning his head through his open door towards the main door into the dorm suite. It occurred to him that his meta-human ability was technopathy and not X-Ray vision, and so, he made a mental note to rig up something that do some sort of full body scan and match the biometrics up against the school medical records and alert him exactly who was knocking on the door via a text message on his phone or IM alert on BC.

Or, you know, at the very least a camera. Or something.

Sighing, Reeve half-stepped, half-rolled out of his chair, snatching at a crumply shirt hanging on his closet door and missing. By the time he realized he hadn't grabbed the shirt, though, he was already two steps into the living room, and the idea of going back just seemed so wasteful, he couldn't be bothered. He simply soldiered on, shirt or no shirt.

Without even thinking, Reeve grabbed the doorknob and swung the door open, and the sight of the girl on the other side made him suddenly wish he'd thought to go back and get the damn shirt after all.

"Mia. Hey..." he said, trailing off quickly as he wallowed in self-consciousness. Looking to ease his own tension, he tried to just push it all off on her.

"Nice hat."

[Mia Keystone]

He had a nice body. Mia’s eyes flicked down then up and she nodded once in approval. ”Hey Reeve, nice, you know,” she waved over the whole topless thing and smirked. ”I know, eh? Love this thing.” It was very hard, nay, impossible to make Mia feel bad about anything she chose to wear unless you made a crass comment about her boobs. And then, you would only gloat for a moment before she kicked your ass so hard you could taste leather for a month. ”Need to talk to you about something. It’s important.”

She didn’t feel the need to tell him to put a shirt on. It was a nice view, after all.

With a resigned sigh, she held out her hard drive. ”Look, I need a favor. You need to look after this,” Mia nodded down to the black box, and scowled at nothing in particular. ”Look, Hammel security’ve been riding my ass harder then usual and I can’t loose this stuff.” Chewing on her lip rings, Mia looked around the room with agitation then back to Reeve and raised her eyebrows. ”Ok? They’re all encrypted, but youd be able to figure it out. Just making sure you wont do a Chuck and turn into the intel.”

Mia huffed again, stamping her feet slightly. This was really hard for her; she was having to, well, trust that Reeve wouldn’t screw her over. ”Look, you mess with this and I’ll do messed up things to you,” she added, scowling hard to make sure Reeve knew she wasn’t bluffing. ”Things you will not enjoy.”

Even when being threatening, Mia could still make it sound like she was talking about sex.

With a final sigh, Mia thrust the 20 TB hard drive at Reeve and tugged her beanie down more snuggly over her ears, then paused. There was something else... She’d been mentioning to Ginny, something about February. Ah, right. Dance. An opportunity to see her beloved fellow students at their most vulnerable and ridicules. And Mia would be there with a camera in hand. ”Here. Also, you should go to that dance thing with me.”

[Reeve Rzeznik]

Instantly, Mia, in a way that seemingly only she could, managed to not only completely deflect Reeve's own attempt to make her uncomfortable, but also completely redouble his own self-consciousness by drawing even more attention to the fact that he was shirtless. Despite his nervousness over the whole thing, though, Mia's actions reminded him of a movie he'd sat through a few weeks back, and the urge to be a nerd and make a reference to it overpowered his desire to rush back inside immediately and put on every shirt he owned.

"You just gestured to all of me," Hiccup Reeve said, his eyes narrowing slightly as he looked at her, suddenly wondering if she had been doing that for the same reason.

Regardless of whether she had or not, Mia trudged on, explaining to him that she needed to speak to him. Reeve cleared his throat and stood up a little straighter without thinking. Whatever this was, it sounded important, and Reeve wanted to help. Much like Mia herself felt about Reeve, being the only other Tech-Meta in the school felt like it came with a certain built-in camaraderie. Despite only knowing each other scantly, at best, their shared abilities gave them an insight into each other's minds that few others would really ever fully understand. On Reeve's end, it was doubly important, considering how hard it was for him to achieve a real personal connection with anyone at all. He was quiet, but nodded once, silently urging her to continue.

When she held out the black box, Reeve took it in his hands without even thinking. Even unplugged, in his hands as it was, the machine spoke to him, tiny little surface whispers that gave away nothing of great importance. Even as she was saying he needed to look after it, the basic schematics of the drive already popped up into his head.

"Oooh, twenty telobytes," he mused off-handedly, only half registering her first words. Something about the word choice of the second sentence, however, pulled him back to the world of today, if only for a moment.

Riding her too hard?

Reeve quirked an eyebrow at her, openly questioning her word choice, and simultaneously wondering what she would look like dressed up in a sexy cowgirl outfit-

He shook his head suddenly, remembering what had happened last time he spaced out and making sure to not let it happen again. It was timed perfectly, thankfully, as she'd spent the last moments glancing around the inside of the room and not looking at the likely-spaced out, single-eyebrow raised expression on his face. Instead, he nodded again at her urgency, and did his best to assuage her.

"I can't even do that anyway, so don't worry." He tapped his temple twice with an index finger. "Still fleshy gray matter up here. Haven't quite figured out how to convert it into a hard drive yet."

He started to chuckle, but cut himself short. The look in Mia's eyes told him this wasn't a joke. Whatever was on this drive was serious, and even though he could even now feel the encryption explaining step-by-step how to unravel through it, he ignored it. Even the thought of kinkified 'messed-up things' (and oh, did the thought once again cross his mind) wouldn't deter him from helping her out.

Besides, if nothing else, between this and the night-vision shades, she'd owe him a favor or two down the line, too.

Just before Reeve could go off on another wonderfully vivid idea about what exactly that favor could entail, Mia dropped another bomb into his lap.

The dance?

Reeve blinked, and his hands fumbled a bit, but he held the drive securely. He was quiet for a moment, and then cleared his throat. He tried to put the right words together, and realized that there was only one word he really needed to say in response to that.

Yeah![/color]

"...yeah?"

Well, not quite how he had wanted it, but no turning back now.

[Mia Keystone]

Mia’s scowl twisted into a smirk. ”Just the naked parts, Rzeznik,” she scoffed, her tongue struggling with the unusual last name. The reference passed her by, for while Mia enjoyed children’s movies, her tastes lead more towards Wall-E then How to Tame Your Dragon. His awkwardness was making her laugh, though she was keeping most of it on the inside. It never worked out well to ask someone for a favor while laughing your face off at them.

She eyed the boy with unease as he took the hard drive from her, his eyes lighting up. ”Yeah, she wasn’t cheap,” the short statured girl muttered, her hands twitching slightly. Her impulse was to snatch it back and run back to her room but no, this was needed. It was a necessary annoyance that she could live with. Even if it went against everything she’d ever worked by, this was someone who at least partially got her. Well maybe he didn’t get her (no one got Mia, after all) but they had something in common that when a whole lot deeper then liking the same tv shows or food. And if anyone would be able to understand the importance of her information, or even understand it at all, it would be a fellow tech-meta.

It was a good thing Reeve’s reaction to her comment had been missed, and even more so that he didn’t laugh for too long or Mia may have punched him. Given the, well, excitement Mia had been through recently she was starting to realize she had been grossly underestimating the value of information. She would be facing serious consequences from the school, hell from the police if things got any messier. That, she could live with.

Loosing the last four years of research? No way.


Mia kept thinking she couldn’t quite hold Reeve’s attention, and had to restrain herself from either clicking in front of his face or slapping him. Sure, her word choice was maybe a little swayed by her desire to see how well the reflexes of a gamer would help in, well... other situations but now was not the time for that.

It was strange, last time Reeve had not been responsive enough, now he seemed to keep responding to the wrong things.

Which could be good, when this random social event the school was suggesting rolled around.

His lackluster reply to her less then gracious command was greeted with the raised eyebrow it deserved. ”No need to wet yourself over it,” she said dryly, ”I want to plant some bugs, pretty much observe people at their most ridicules. You’re the obvious choice.” She smiled crookedly and huffed a laugh, unable to resist another little dig. ”Might even get lucky if you play it right. Now,” her arms crossed over her chest and she looked at the other technopath with disapproval. ”You going to invite me inside or what? It’s fucking cold outside.”

[Reeve Rzeznik]

Reeve blinked a few times at Mia's affirmation. He was no empath, but he could feel the discomfort in the whole situation radiating off of her. Everything about this hard drive just screamed 'srsbsns', which made the temptation of cracking it all the greater. For the first time since he'd met her, Reeve started to wonder just what, exactly, she got herself into when she got bored. He had met her after she'd snuck into his room to spy on him just for cracking World of Warcraft, after all.

He had slipped the little black box under his arm for more comfortable storage as Mia continued to talk. Now that they were on the idea of a dance, Reeve didn't quite hold the same confidence he did when talking about guarding a hard drive. He bit his lip and raised his eyebrows as she told him not to wet himself, offering a sort of half-apologetic smile that he could only barely plaster across his face. Getting into situations like this often simply caused him to embrace the weirdness inside him, to retreat into his shell, so to speak, until the awkward social situation had passed. Not wanting to do this in this particular circumstance, Reeve warred his his nature, willing himself not to clam up and listen to Mia's proposition.

The idea was interesting enough, and very Mia-like. Reeve nodded, simultaneously amused at the thought and honored she thought he was the 'best choice' to accompany her. "Bugs, huh? That's pretty good. I could probably rig up some super-secret cameras, too, if I put some time into it." Reeve tried to sound nonchalant, but the warring emotional state, coupled with the sudden intruding thoughts on just how one could create a tiny but clear camera that adhered to any surface and could transmit wirelessly through the network, maybe to a little viewscreen he planted on a digital watch-

"So yeah," Reeve said, trying to focus on something other than techie brainstorming for the moment. "That sounds like it could be-" Reeve was suddenly aware of something that Mia had said. Whether she had only just then mentioned his possibly 'getting lucky', or if he'd heard it moments before and only just now processed it, it was certainly in his head now. He blinked, his eyes meeting Mia's for a second, their usual quietness lit up by a faint, but distinctly there sense of... something.

"...huh?" he finally managed to utter, realizing even as the words left his lips that it was all too useless a question. Somewhere, the single part of his brain that was not trying to wrap itself around Mia almost out-and-out telling him she might sleep with him (or at least that's what he thought he was getting out of that comment) went ahead and bothered to realize that Mia had not, actually, finished speaking, and was actually demanding to be let inside. Reeve shook his head, trying to clear his mind and re-focus himself on the situation at hand.

"Yeah, sorry. My manners, where are they, et cetera."

He stepped back and gestured her inside. "My roommates aren't here. They, uh, usually aren't, actually. You want anything?"

He offered another crappy attempt at a smile. God, he was so lost all of the sudden.

[Mia Keystone]

Super secret cameras? Mia grinned; she had expected nothing less. ”I’ve got button mikes to slip into pockets,” she nodded, thinking to the little gadgets Ollie had sent over. They didn’t have a long range normally but Mia had amped them up considerably.

”Cameras I’m working on, but maybe you can....” He was already starting to glaze over, with ideas Mia hoped. The glasses he’d made her had worked a treat, if he could pull something like that again, something small that could be easily hooked up to a data base, with limited time to set it up on a range of surfaces... And the images she could get would be priceless. As long as she was in the room it would go fine.

She’d caught his tongue again, cat that she was. He caught her eyes, and Mia’s smirk slipped for a moment (had she seen that, whatever that was before) before she raised an eyebrow and let him come back to reality. ”Did I stutter?” she asked, hands on hips now. Her teeth were starting to chatter together, and she abandoned her hands on her hips in favor of hugging herself and rubbing her arms quickly. Mia was low in natural insulation, and she was getting cold enough to be cranky...er.

Slipping past Reeve, Mia glanced around the room. She knew the layout and who lived there already, and she wondered ideally if Reeve had found the camera-jack she’d fixed to the security camera already there to piggyback the feed to her computers.

She sank into the couch and shook her head when he asked what she wanted. ”Naw, I’m good,” she muttered, eyes flicking to the black box still in Reeve’s hands. ”You have Crisis 2 yet? The leak’s been out for ages.” she mumbled, feeling strangly deflated now she’d actually given up her information to someone. It felt weird. It felt wrong. She sniffed and glanced around.

”You keep your consoles in your room or what? Can I say hi to Comrade Brains?” Yes, Mia considered his computer to be worth speaking to. Though she was already very comfortable on the couch and had spread out to take up as much room as her five feet would allow, she glanced at Reeve with a I’ll get up if I have to smirk.

Mia had many, many smirks.