Guy was stuck.

If he had been any less of a man than he was now (and he liked to convince himself that he was manly), he would have probably broken down and sobbed like a baby. He had no idea what was going on. One moment he was walking normally, the next his toe seemed to have made friends with an upraised crack on the sidewalk and he was airborne! Quick reflexes had saved him from an embarrassing encounter with the asphalt. He’d grabbed the stop sign to his left and managed to thankfully reverse fate (but did nothing to repair his slightly wounded pride).

However, the most curious thing happened when he grabbed the metal. He wasn’t entirely sure how to explain the feeling - just that it was almost as if there was something pulling on his very bones. And then - connection. Just like that and he couldn’t move. It was as if someone had secured a latch in place that locked Guy’s hand to the metal. He couldn’t even wiggle a finger. But it wasn’t as if someone had smeared superglue all over the pole - it was just like -

A giant magnet.

Well, whatever the hell it was, Guy was in trouble. When people passed by he managed to pretend like he was just leaning on the stop sign (though some gave him uneasy glances at his supposedly reassuring smile), but as soon as they had their backs to him he was using his free hand to try and yank his stuck hand off. It would possibly have been less embarrassing if Guy hadn’t tripped into his closet all decaffeinated right after he woke up late and came out wearing the most preposterous thing in his closet. What the hell was he thinking? It was hardly appropriate - ever, to wear a pink Hawaiian shirt. Especially not over a faded yellow long-sleeved shirt that he believed was once orange. He would have been more pleased that he seemed to have put on a normal pair of jeans that morning if the horribleness of his shirts didn’t automatically cancel out any normality caused by said pants.

Even his socks were mismatched.

Guy was having a bad day.

This is the kind of weather that Ronnie has never fully learned to deal with, the held-breath waiting period between the vestigial warmth of early autumn and the torrent of November rain. It's always thrown him off, tightened his skin, made him warier. Made him the lesser version of himself.

In the last two years he's learned how to manage a lot, but the vagaries of atmospheric pressure and up-drafts and air humidity still sink into him. He's spent too much of the day walking against the wind, hair hastily pulled-back but chunks still breaking free to whip into his eyes. He loves the heedless recklessness of it, of the late-migrating city birds still throwing themselves into flight, but there's an expectance, too. He finds himself waiting for something, and that's a distraction from what had promised to be the day's mundane tasks.

He's two blocks away from the apartment - his apartment, or his for now, as long as he can get a job in the next week and continue paying it off - when something in him shifts and turns and straightens. It's just mid-day traffic, pedestrians, two motorcyclists (one without a helmet, and Ronnie winces in their direction), the heavy squat and hum of buildings, power lines, public transportation.

And a guy wearing what is one of the worst color combinations Ronnie has ever, ever seen, and in hostels you see everything, and that's what gets his attention long enough for him to notice.

First is the awkwardness, the 'don't notice me' wormhole pull that draws the eye of everyone passing. From here Ronnie can catch the glint of piercings, the musculature (not kept up, but Ronnie's is worse, he's gone lean and rangy and he swears his shoulders are narrower than they were when he was 18), and the subtle growing panic.

Without thinking Ronnie takes the opposite intended turn at his crosswalk, narrowing in, watching. This could be perceived as threatening, this stalking hunter behavior, but it isn't Ronnie's intention despite being more obvious than he'd like. The kid has a weird - vibe, is the only word Ronnie can think, because he refuses to use 'aura', and once Ronnie's a few yards away he settles in at the corner like he's waiting for someone, offering a measured smile after a few moments of silence.

"Hey. Nice day, yeah?"

Grey eyes, black hair, grey-black jacket, black jeans, black boots. Ronnie fits right into the sky and the dingy city coloring, but he's a little too focused to blend.

Oh, who the hell felt the need to talk to him right now? Guy immediately stopped struggling with his hand and acted as if he had been leaning against the pole the entire time. An image of casualness, he was not.

Guy squinted myopically at the man across from him. Along with his proper fashion sense, Guy forgot his contacts and his glasses at home. That would explain, at least, why he managed to so gracefully trip over the sidewalk.

The man across from him seemed a little younger than Guy. Maybe it was the lankiness. Maybe it was because Guy couldn't really see a damn thing at the moment. From what he could tell, however, this boy bore a striking resemblance to himself. Grey eyes, black hair, tan skin. It was like they could have easily come from the same ancestry.

"Um. It's fine. Great. I mean, it's great." Could he be anymore awkward? He closed his eyes for a moment and tried very hard to look as if he was not going through a crisis.

"It's nostalgic," he answered more honestly, before smiling uncomfortably and looking towards the street. In the fall, he usually got this strange feeling in his skin - one that made him feel excited and euphoric and alive again. He loved the strange transitional stage between hot and cold, when the entire world was electric with change.

"Er, waiting for someone?"

Nostalgic, Ronnie thinks, measuring it against his own remembered history, his personal timeline through this city. He can see that, and he gets it, even if it doesn't connect for him the same way (his nostalgia requires ice crystals and slush and his breath fanning out in front of him as he runs), but he finds himself angling more towards the man, a different curiosity rising up underneath.

"In a way, yeah." Ronnie doesn't lie as much anymore. He isn't sure when that changed.

Up close, the guy looks vaguely familiar - like one of Ronnie's cousins, maybe, the ones he hasn't seen in ten years from his mother's side, except the bone structure is off. He notices that the man's squinting, a little, though the sun's in the other direction, and wonders how much leeway that gives Ronnie to look without being fully seen. Probably not enough.

"How about you?" This is Ronnie's Fellow Traveler voice, something that came up organically from nights in bus stops and subway stations and hostels, casual and non-threatening but interested. He's never fully been able to wipe the fight out of his body language, but it's mellowed over time. Here he's just a guy on a street corner, pretending that he's not mentally picking at the incongruities of another man's body language.

The panic caused by Guy's current situation caused him to stand straighter, to look more alert. This was considerably different than how he usually was - slumped, slouched, and tired with the world. He hoped he didn't look like - like he was somebody dangerous, even though his eyes were constantly moving and, despite the slightly lower temperatures, he was sweating a bit.

He tried wiggling a finger. No go.

It was interesting that this strange phenomenon seemed located only in his left hand. Though he felt as if he was being tugged to stop sign from his very core, it was only his hand that refused to move.

Okay. But why?

"No." He paused. Well, then, why the hell was he standing there? "I mean, yes." He sighed. "Not willingly, though." He tried to make it sound as if he was in a lover's quarrel or something, and that was why he replied negatively. In a way he also got around lying. Yes, he supposed he was waiting for someone to help him off from this damn pole. And he definitely wasn't waiting there willingly.

Guy was woefully unaware of his companion's scrutiny. Normally he was conscious of people's interest, since he spent half of his life avoiding it and the other half seeking it, but at the moment he was too distracted by the stop sign.

"I'm Guy," he offered, then held out his free hand. Luckily, Ronnie was angled in a way across from him that he could pull this off without moving his other hand. But, damnit, he had a feeling this would get awkward really quickly. He tried to suppress the wave of panic that clenched his stomach from showing on his face, but a couple of lines on his forehead deepened from concern. Shit.

Ronnie nods. He gets waiting, gets unwilling. Gets that there's something underneath that, too, but he can be patient, can wait; he's had a half-dozen strangers try to teach him meditation techniques over the last few years, and by now some of the calm's seeped in deep enough to show.

With the man still propped against the stop sign, Ronnie is the one required to the step forward, to close into the boundary of personal space. He's willing to let himself be drawn forward, but he's aware of the blocking; Ronnie is the one off-balance, and the other man is literally grounded.

"Ronnie," he says. A few years ago this might have been 'Harper'.

By habit, Ronnie shakes hands like a man raised on Wall Street, all alpha male display tamped down by every kind of modern civility. It's a specific show, hardwired into him, and he doesn't think as he does it until his palm meets Guy's and there's the pull of something alien, not on Ronnie's side but Guy's, and he clamps down a little harder than he means to in surprise.

By this point what Ronnie can do is passive, usually just another layer of observation; he can navigate rooms in the dark, he doesn't bump into others by accident. He can feel the weight and placement of objects, the pull of forces, and humans are just humans, they follow all the rules that govern them. There is no deviation, except in Ronnie. Except in Azrael.

Guy doesn't feel like Azrael. He doesn't feel like anything - he feels like a man waiting for someone on a sidewalk getting his hand crushed, and Ronnie drops his hand, apologetic.

"Nice to meet you," he says, by rote and necessity. There's something off but Ronnie can't tell what, can't feel anything except the itching awareness of some known quantity in Guy not operating as it should. There's not a great explanation for spasming during a handshake, and Ronnie steps back a little into his own space, watching Guy's face intently.

When Ronnie let go, Guy flexed his fingers. Years of training kept him from being hurt too bad, but he was distinctly aware that his fingers were just short of being crushed by an overenthusiastic handshake. "Nice to meet you. Quite the grip you've got there," he murmured, raising his eyebrows.

There was something different about Ronnie. Guy couldn't quite place it. It seemed often in the city of Bayfield that he would run across people that just seem different, seem older, seem special, seem aware of a certain secret that everyone else is oblivious to.

Ronnie seemed like that.

There was an air of something around him. Knowledge, maybe? Guy couldn't tell, he didn't really know.

This awareness of the difference in Ronnie was probably what caused him to ask his next question. Of course, coupled with this awareness was a bit of desperation. He was stuck and everything he tried to do was useless. And, if this guy thought Guy was weird, well, whatever. Bayfield was a large city. He could easily never see Ronnie again.

"Uh." He chuckled a bit nervously and dropped his eyes. This may have given a hugely wrong impression, as if he was going to ask Ronnie for a drink or something, but Guy was totally unaware of this. He was just trying to figure out how to properly word his request without seeming too crazy. "Okay. I'm stuck." He gestured to his left hand with his right. "I mean, my hand. It won't come off the pole, and I don't know why." There was a hint of panic in his voice. "I've tried everything I could to get they damn thing off, but it won't move."

The unspoken "help" was conveyed rather loudly by the look he gave Ronnie.

Well, what was the worst that could happen? Ronnie could leave, and he would just be in the same situation he was before.

There are undoubtedly worse things, but Ronnie isn't thinking of them.

He manages a quick apology for the grip (it's probably best for all concerned that Ronnie hasn't worked out properly in months, but he could still feel the tendons grind a little) before the sudden slide into hesitance, diffidence. When Guy's eyes drop Ronnie registers, without thinking, the shift in power; any ground Ronnie lost by losing control pales in comparison.

"You're stuck."

There's no obvious disbelief under the wariness and weight of sudden, sharp focus, but Ronnie takes a long moment to break eye contact before finally stepping forward. He moves at an angle, as if toward a hurt or questionably tamed animal, stopping nearer Guy than his outstretched arm. By most laws of courtesy Ronnie's much too close, but there's room for Guy to move back before he hits the street and Ronnie gives him the time to do it before shifting to examine his hand.

It's too warm out for the skin to be frozen to metal, but Ronnie reaches out anyway, fingertips pausing a few inches above Guy's palm before curiously tapping the pole. It's cool, smooth, and feels as he would expect it to.

Ronnie examines Guy's hand itself - he can't see calluses from this angle, but he registers the whorl of knuckles, the naturally reflective sheen of nails, the bones and muscles at the surface of the wrist. His hand raises to touch, watching the man's face, giving him time to move away before enclosing his hand lightly around the wrist.

It's just skin, human flesh, solid bone underneath and the impression of a pulse if he were to pay attention. There's no hum, no stomach-dropping vertigo like there was with Azrael. Ronnie tugs, gently, away from the pole, but there's - an immediate, strange resistance. He rubs inquisitively at the tendon of the thumb, but there's no grip force on Guy's part, no tension from pressure.

His eyebrows crease, and he turns to ask one of a dozen questions when he feels - something. The same something, the same pull, the same awareness of force where there shouldn't be, and his hand jerks at Guy's wrist before he pulls it away, shifting backward in surprise, eyes wide and dark at Guy's.

"What the hell is that?"

Ronnie doesn't step back any further, and they're already attracting looks.

Ronnie had gotten close. A little too close. He was strongly aware of this closeness. Perhaps it was that difference he felt when he first met Ronnie, but his stomach twisted a little bit. And when Ronnie slid his thumb over Guy's tendon, well, his stomach twisted a little more.

But then Ronnie sprung back as if electrocuted and Guy underwent a bitter sense of understanding. Ronnie wasn't the different one.

Guy was.

But Ronnie's reaction was strangely disappointing. Though, upon reflection, of course Ronnie would be shocked by this bizarre situation. Guy supposed at some deeper level he was operating on the idea that everyone besides him knew what the fuck was going on, and that this was all just some elaborate joke set up to make him feel like a dumbass. Of course, this idea now seemed slightly narcissistic. Why would someone go out of their way to stick Guy's hand to a pole? This meant that Guy was going to have to do a thorough evaluation of himself later - as in what the fuck was he?

Ronnie's surprise brought out that panic again and Guy jerked back a little bit. "I don't know!" More people looked, confused, curious glances, passing like someone would an accident. Rubbernecking. A sort of morbid inquisitiveness about something unnatural. They slowed down. One little girl pointed, and her mother, who was also staring, tugged her away and told her it was rude to point.

Consciously aware of the looks he was getting, Guy lowered his voice and lowered his eyebrows. "I don't know. Never mind. It was a joke. Haha." It really wasn't, and Guy turned his head to hide his expression, because the disappointment and fear and desperation were too strong to cover. The tendons and muscles in his hand and wrist and arm strained as he once again attempted to move his hand. So this was it. He was going to die stuck to a goddamned pole.

"Stop, stop."

His voice lowers, evens out - it's instantaneous, and in another world there might be a hushing sound here, or soothing words. Ronnie quiets, stills, tracking Guy's face; this isn't a test or a joke, at least not on Ronnie, and if the guy panics they're only going to attract the wrong kind of attention. As much as Ronnie would be fascinated to see the protocol in removing a man from a traffic sign, he doesn't think much good would come of it for Guy.

Ronnie does his best to catch his eye, but with Guy's face turned down and the light in the other direction, Ronnie can't see. He gives the man a few seconds to move away, if he wants to - even with his hand attached Ronnie thinks he should have some leeway to step back before the shoulder starts seriously twisting - and brings his own hand back, cautiously, to the pole.

"You don't know how this happened?"

Bracing his fingers over the back of Guy's hand, he carefully slips his thumb under the wrist, trying to pry the heel of Guy's hand away from the metal by levering the pad of his thumb underneath. There's nothing adhesive that he can feel, just the edge of a spark that he can't quite catch, an awareness of something he's letting his mind skitter away from to focus instead on Guy and the passing crowds at his back. Ronnie's experienced a lot of very abnormal things, but rarely has he wished quite so much for the privacy to explore them.

Guy jerked again when Ronnie touched his hand, adrenaline running too high, body and mind too set on edge. His eyes were wide now, frightened and confused. This was so far from normal that even this stranger was taking pity on him for his insanity and strange adhesive qualities. He laughed wryly but it sounded scared even to his own ears. All those kids when he was younger were right. Guy was as big a freak as possible.

He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, eyebrows drawn together in concern. "I was running late to work. Hence the wardrobe malfunction." What a funny time to be vain. Please don't believe I always dress like this. "Forgot my glasses and contacts, too.

"So I ran. I was trying to make it to the bus stop on time since I can't see well enough to drive right now. I didn't see that crack—" he gestured to it with a wave, "—and I tripped. I caught myself and—" He shrugged. The rest was pretty obvious. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Panicking right now was a bad idea.

He'd called work. Said he was sick. They were okay with it, since he'd built up a pretty decent number of sick days.

"I'm sorry to drag you into this. Look. You don't have to help me. I'm just desperate."

((I had more but it seemed like too much for one post. *confused handwave*))

"It's okay. It's fine."

Ronnie's given Guy his privacy through this, hands still working gently at the the place where Guy's skin meets metal. Levers and immovable objects, he thinks, but that isn't true; Ronnie can't slide his thumb under Guy's palm, even now that they're both sweating a little, and there's no way to apply the necessary force.

He's angled his body over the last few minutes as best he can so that the slow but increasing trickle of people passing by can't catch the details of what they're doing. Ronnie doesn't want any further offers of assistance, even if Guy might; Genovese Effect aside, Guy is in too much obvious distress and the situation looks too harmlessly curious not to attract eventual attention.

"Nothing like this has ever happened to you before?"

Mostly this question is so Guy can continue talking, if he'd like to. Ronnie can feel Guy's pulse climbing, and as much as this situation is alien to him, Ronnie does understand the blind panic of helplessness.

With the the tip of his right thumb still trying to slip beyond the concavity of the semilunar bone at the wrist, Ronnie brings his left hand up to pry carefully at the corners of Guy's fingers and palm. The skin is still elastic, but whatever surface has adhered to the metal is holding fast, and Ronnie tries to project an aura of calm capability, working as gently as practically possible.

((Hey, I'm all for long posts! In fact, I'll prove how much I love them by writing an extremely long one myself! *dies*))

Guy relaxed slightly in spite of himself. It was hard to stay so agitated in the face of such calm. Ronnie's words could have had another affect, of course. He could have panicked now. Could have shouted, "How the hell could it be fine?! I'm stuck to a fucking pole!" but it seemed unnecessary now. He wasn't facing this alone anymore. This little crisis that was becoming internal as well as external was easier to deal with when someone was standing beside him and trying to help. It made it almost bearable.

He thought about Ronnie's question seriously. Had anything weird been happening lately? The only thing different about his life was that Buddy was living with him and was being annoying, but that was expected. That shouldn't result in him gluing himself to a pole.

"No," he said quietly, Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed. "Nothing like this."

He didn't think of computers that had been breaking down around him lately. That he blamed on the manufacturers. He also didn't consider the picture that fell from his wall the other day. He hadn't realized it was because the nail had been jerked out of the wall. He didn't mention about how various things in his room were strangely misplaced, as if they were pulled towards him at night, because the difference wasn't that noticeable. There was no need to bring up the paperclips he found in his bed one night, since he was sure they had just fallen out of his pocket at some point.

But he had definitely never found himself stuck to something before.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath through his nose. Maybe if he tried concentrating, or something. Find that thing, somewhere in there, and turn it off. He tried picturing a giant switch. A little too giant. The little guy he imagined trying to push it down was way too small. That didn't work. He had to find whatever was doing this and make it stop. Maybe—

A car honked. Guy's eyes snapped open, and then widened in horror. The car skidded towards them, before the driver seemed to regain control and swerve away, running the stop sign. She'd looked horrified. She wasn't the one who had lost control of the car. The wheels had been faced forward, but she had skidded to her right, as if pushed by a strong gust of wind.

Or pulled by something. Guy winced. People had looked at them in shock and fear, but since they hadn't been hurt, hadn't stopped. That was one good thing about living in a city. Everyone was too busy with their own lives.

Ronnie doesn't think to say that anything like this has happened to him, because it hasn't. Not like this, not like - Ronnie's planted his feet, giving himself leverage, prying, and as much as he isn't paying attention (and if you took Ronnie out of this moment and asked him to recreate it, he could give you every line of Guy's arm, every whorl of knuckle, all of the tightness of pressure, the brushed-metal finish of the pole, and every word between them but he isn't paying attention), Ronnie's still aware enough, awake enough to know that whatever's happening to Guy it isn't what Ronnie can do.

What Ronnie can do is the amplification of the natural attraction between objects. Anything beyond that, anything, and Ronnie doesn't know because in this time, this place, no one knows. Whatever Ronnie manipulates - field, wave, particle - it isn't what's keeping Guy's hand to the pole.

Whatever Ronnie's manipulating isn't what, after Ronnie takes a deep breath and reaches (into himself, into Guy, to check, again), causes a 3500 pound block of metal and textile and terrified flesh and blood to come shrieking toward them.

Ronnie knows, because he tries to stop it, and in the split-second reaction time he has before it straightens, he can't.

There's a moment that feels longer than it is (Ronnie's head still tries to sort out subjective and objective: subjective is the oversaturated color of Guy's skin and shirt, objective is his blood in his ears, slowing but still too fast), and Ronnie gentles his hand on Guy's without removing it, taking a half-step back to face him properly.

"Are you okay?"

This is necessary, and Ronnie waits. Guy is in one piece but he wouldn't have been able to move himself of the way, if that were necessary or even possible; Ronnie's been held immobile, and it isn't something he'd do again.

His voice drops, here, and takes on just the shadow of rough edges. Ronnie's eyes are more dilated than he's aware of, black and fresh-concrete grey.

"Did you do that?"

It isn't an accusation, and it's nowhere near breathless or timid or reaching. Ronnie doesn't sound like this would be an outlandish thing to do, or that to ask is unreasonable; he sounds serious, and very slightly urgent, and he doesn't look away.