Bit of Leverage

/In which Conrad takes flying lessons./ "It don't much matter who does it, me or Hanna," Worth says with a grin Conrad doesn't like at all, "cos either way, one of us is droppin' you off a roof and one of us is gonna possibly 'forget' to catch ya."

Shit, I had to write more of Conbat. 'Cause he rocks. And I love to write Worth, for the same reason. I guess this is a sort of companion piece to Fight or Flight? Whatever. Also, sorry for the difference in tense from my other fic. I always write in present tense, but I tried to write past tense for Fight or Flight and didn't like it, so I switched back for this.

(I disclaim all rights to "Hanna is Not a Boy's Name")

"What is it with you and trolls?" Doc Worth grumbles as he fastens the last of the gauze around Hanna's head and pulls off his glasses to slap an ice pack over his blackened eye. "You always manage t' get rid of 'em, but they always send ya to me lookin' like ya got run over by a fuckin' tractor."

Hanna smiles sheepishly, tiredly, picking idly at the stitches on his arms and says, "Well, they're big! But totally dumb. Easy to take care of if you don't mind getting a little bruised up."

"A little bru - you split yer fuckin' head open and you've got a concussion, y' little idiot!" Worth snaps. "Am I gonna hafta add trolls to the list of shit I don't want you fuckin' around with?"

Hanna ignores that and hops down from the table he'd been sitting on to pick up a needle and thread and gets to work sewing the zombie's leg and ear back on. Worth's lip twitches in annoyance and then he whirls to jab a finger in Conrad's direction. He's sulking in the corner, nursing a blood bag Worth had given him upon their arrival, with red scratches decorating his face, scratches that refuse to bleed without a pumping heart.

"An' you," Worth snarls, "you got no excuse fer lookin' like that."

"Wh - me?" Conrad is bewildered, and then he glares. "I was attacked by trolls, I think that's an excuse!"

"Yer a vampire, ya fuckin' moron! Vampires can fly away!"

Conrad's face is all pinched and pissy, but now he looks embarrassed, and Hanna coughs behind Worth. "Yeah, uh...about that..."

"He doesn't know how to fly," says the zombie - Sitting Bull, currently - and Worth looks torn between irritation and amusement, but finally settles on amusement.

Conrad isn't quite sure whether or not he prefers condescending oh-how-cute-you-suck-at-vampirism Worth to angry it's-absolutely-pathetic-how-much-you-suck-at-vampirism Worth, but either way, he definitely doesn't like the slick, derisive tone he takes on when he says, "You haven't figgered out how t' fly yet?"

"I haven't had the opportunity," Conrad says stiffly. It's a lie, but who cares? He doesn't like turning into a bat, and he hasn't tried to do it since the first time.

"Well, ya do now," Worth says casually, lighting a new cigarette.

Conrad falters. "I - um, what?"

"Yer gonna learn t' fly tonight, Confag," Worth grins. He points to Sitting Bull, who is tugging experimentally at his reattached ear. "You stay here an' help me. An' you," he points sternly to Hanna, "you go get some rest. Stay with Sharkboy 'r Toni 'r someone and have 'em wake ya up every two hours. No comas. Got it?"

"What? No!" Hanna is indignant. "I'm not getting left out of flying lessons! If Conrad and Truman get to - "

"Conrad don't sleep at night and the zombie don't sleep at all. You are a human with a goddamn head injury." He glowers fiercely into Hanna's stubborn expression.

"It's not even a really bad concussion, Worth!"

"No, Hanna, you ain't comin', and that's final."

Conrad - uncomfortable in his bat form - perches nervously on Hanna's shoulder as he, Truman, and Worth wander down another darkened alleyway, Worth leading the way.

"What exactly do flying lessons entail?" Conrad asks suspiciously. Worth doesn't answer, and instead stops at the very end of the alley and gestures grandly to an old fire escape spiderwebbing its way up the dirty brick wall. Conrad doesn't understand. "What - are you gonna drop me from the roof and hope for the best?"

"That's th' plan," Worth snickers.

"That's - what?" Aghast, Conrad tangles his claws into Hanna's hair and says, "No way. Fuck this. Put me down, I'm changing back!"

"No, no, let's not be hasty, ow, watch the hair, Connie," Hanna says, wincing and pulling Conrad off his shoulder. "Um, heh - is that, uh, really what we're doing, Worth?" He looks worried. "What if he doesn't get it on the first try?"

"Feh," Worth snorts. "Quit yer worryin', someone'll be down 'ere t' catch 'im if he don't."

"I am not getting dropped off a roof!" Conrad says, horrified.

"You have to learn how to fly somehow," Truman points out gently, and Conrad can't help but silently wail traitor! I liked you!

"Raymundo's right," Hanna says. "If you get attacked again, you should be able to fly away. Just 'cause we can't doesn't mean you shouldn't get to safety, yanno?"

Conrad splutters uselessly for a moment, trying to skip around his logic and find a good reason to justify but I don't want to!

After a moment, Raymundo says, "I suppose you could wait until Casimiro takes it upon himself to teach you, using whatever methods he thinks would be effective..."

Oh God. "Nnnnrgh, fine! But you," he points at Worth, acid oozing from his voice, "are not dropping me."

Worth shrugs. "Fine, I'll catch ya."

A thrill of terror lances through him. "No!"

"What if Darius drops you?" Hanna suggests.

"No, I want him down here to makes sure someone catches me!"

"Okay, so he stays down here, and either Worth can drop you or I can drop you."

Conrad knows that if Hanna drops him, the only place he has to go is down, but he can't help but imagine Hanna haphazardly tossing him three yards too far and Conrad just falls and falls and splat! - but the other option is Worth, and he doesn't -

"It don't much matter who does it, me or Hanna," Worth says with a grin that Conrad doesn't like at all, "'cause either way, one of us is droppin' you off a roof and one of us is possibly gonna 'forget' to catch ya."

Conrad is only barely aware of the pissed-off, feral hissing sound seeping around his teeth until Worth starts to laugh at him, and stops only when Hanna's hands curl protectively around him and angle him away from Worth, saying, "Knock it off, Worth. Nobody's 'forgetting' to catch him."

Worth snickers quietly and there's a long pause. Conrad is distressed, but he sees no way of getting out of this, and he can't deny the usefulness of flight. Defeated, he asks, "So...what the hell am I supposed to do? Just...flap?"

"Just flap," Hanna says happily. Conrad swallows nervously, and sends a sharp look to Darius.

"Make sure I'm caught, alright?"

Darius gives him a small smile and nods.

"Alright then, up we go!" Hanna cheers, placing Conrad back on his shoulder and clambering atop some trashcans to reach the bottom rung of the fire escape latter. Conrad hangs on for dear life as Hanna clumsily heaves himself up, kicking his legs wildly and wobbling.

"Fer Christ's sake - be careful," Worth calls testily up at Hanna, who chuckles quietly.

"See?" he says sotto voce to Conrad. "He's just worried about you."

"I'm pretty sure he's telling you to be careful," Conrad disagrees, looking up at the bandages wound tightly around Hanna's head and thinking of his concussion. "And you really should."

"No, I mean that he's making you do this," Hanna laughs. "He wants you to learn to fly so you won't end up in his office looking like you did today."

Conrad makes a noncommittal noise, thinking yeah, so we don't waste so much of his time, but if Hanna wants to think it's because Worth's got a soft and squishy and caring underbelly, well, whatever. The climb to the top of the building doesn't take long from there, since it's only three stories. Conrad clings to Hanna's hair anxiously when Hanna leans to peer over the ledge of the roof down to Darius and Worth.

"Oh," Conrad says weakly, nauseously.

"All you gotta do is flap your wings," Hanna says, prying Conrad away from his hair. "Bat bones are hollow, like a bird's, so it's gotta be easy, right? And don't worry, Worth will catch you. And Kumar's there as a backup. And, well," he grins nervously, "you're already kind of technically dead, so you probably won't even die if - uh - yeah, that doesn't help much, does it..." He cringes at Conrad's disbelievingly livid expression and holds him out over the edge.

Conrad is praying to a thousand gods he doesn't even believe in, trying to think of all the Egyptian and Roman ones in hopes of somebody having mercy on him - Buddha, I visited a temple of yours on a field trip my senior year and thought it was great, please make sure this ends well -

"One..."

Please God let this work -

"Two..."

I will convert to Scientology if you guys help me out here, I'm not even joking -

"Three!" Hanna drops him.

Hollow bones or not, Conrad feels like weighs thirteen tons and gravity just bitchslapped him as he plummets three stories, warm summer air whipping viciously past him, terror gripping him too tightly for him to even think about flapping his wings, and all he can do is scream but it's not his scream, it's a bat's scream, "Skreeeeeeee - "

And he's jarred forcefully to a halt, his face colliding with something warm and fleshy that smells like dirt and smoke and nervous sweat and he jerks back in disgust because he realizes he's lying face down in Worth's hands. He makes plans to take a boiling hot shower the second he gets home. But then he feels a trickle of relief, because he's not a bloody smear on the ground and hey, Worth did catch him.

"The hell was that?" Worth is frowning down at him, scornful. "Ya didn't even try."

"Sorry I can't quite focus after being chucked off a roof," Conrad snaps. He looks back up at the roof, searching for Hanna. "How do I get back up?"

"Well, we could always wait fer Hanna to clamber all th' way down here to getcha and then wait fer him to clamber all th' way back up, or I can save us all a lotta time and jus' do this." And before Conrad can comprehend, he's reeling Conrad back and shouting, "Oi, Hanna! Heads up!"

And suddenly Conrad's airborne again, screeching as he sails upward, Hanna's startled face spinning madly as Conrad does somersaults, and he thinks Hanna might be trying to reach for him, but he stretches out his wings and beats desperately at the air. He catches wind beneath his wings and feels the tug of gravity lessen, and his dead heart leaps hopefully so he flaps again and he stays.

"You're flying!" Hanna whoops joyfully. "Look at you, you're flying! Way to go, Conrad!"

"I'm flying," laughs Conrad. "Holy shit, I am flying!" He looks down at the ground far below him and sees Worth and the zombie staring up at him. Kumar reveals another rare smile and extends two thumbs up to Conrad in the the sky.

"That's th' way t' do it, Connie," Worth cackles, very clearly proud of himself, and Conrad glowers down at him.

"Oh, fuck you, Worth!" he snarls. "I have every reason to come down there and claw your eyes out!" But Worth only laughs.

Hanna starts climbing down the fire escape, and Conrad carefully experiments lowering his altitude. It's clumsy, but he reaches Worth and Kumar's level at about the same time Hanna does, and he concentrates on the moments before he'd turned into a bat. His normal feet touch down on the rocky asphalt, awkward and heavy, and he stumbles a bit, but the moment he regains his footing he delivers a sharp uppercut to Worth's smirking face.

He knows better by now than to bother punching Worth since the man seems to get off on that sort of thing, but fuck it, it makes Conrad feel better. And so when Worth's head snaps back, Conrad says waspishly, "I'm not a baseball, you prick!"

He kind of wants to beat the hell out Worth some more, but across town the sky is turning pink with sunrise and Worth notices it, too, and says with that stupid grin of his, "Go home an' get in yer jammies, Confag. It's 'bout yer bedtime."

Argh, I fail so hard at HINABN fanfic. Oh well. It's still fun to write. And again, I finished typing this and checked the website and there was a new page. I will fool myself into assuming Tessa loves me, thanks.