INVINCIBLE.

Unbelievable good fortune. Jump City has pushed an unsupervised telekinetic into his path. For a second, the second Ness’s attention is diverted, his eye widens; he stares at the laces tying themselves and doesn’t dare to blink.

When the second is over, his unimpressed appearance slides back into place. It’s a practiced shift, and, to his mind, it has all the significance of a starting flag: race conditions optimal, grand prize waiting, on your mark, get set…

Go.

There’s a telekinetic fifteen-year-old who talks like he’s five years younger, minimum, brazenly showing his powers to a stranger. Where is he headed? Are there parent or guardian figures in the picture? How deep does the naivete run, assuming it’s not an act; does it dampen his fight-or-flight instinct? (Do the Titans know him? Could this all be a very unlikely trap?) If he’s not careful, he will bring those answers down on himself in the worst possible way. Best to keep the ‘reasonably concerned adult’ act going for the moment.

"Hmph." Sounding too dismissive might push the boy away, so he balances the rumble by making it sound considering. Slade grips with his captured hand, makes an impromptu handshake out of Ness’s overeager gesture.

"Slade Wilson. Not ‘Mr. Fox’, though I’ve been told I’m crazy like one." Small talk tastes almost as saccharine as those ridiculous hooting laughs—he’s going to put a stop to those, if the kid comes to work for him—but it’s a necessary evil. Countering the possessive urge that’s already sprung up, he breaks the handshake. (Though if Ness wanted to keep hold, he wouldn’t have to try too hard.)

"Slade Wilson! Sla--ade. Wilson!" Tested in his mouth, the name sounds good; he grins again at Slade, bright as the sun, and shouts, "Hoo-- hoohoohoo, it's real nice to meet you Slade Wilson!

Something glints in the corner of Ness' vision, a starburst distraction from the question posed to him. He turns his face half-away, tracks the movement of light for a half-second. No threat, the glass and chrome parts of his thought process supply. Just light reflected on metal-- remember how adults don't like it when your focus shifts?

"--Nah!" He chirps, belated, "Mommy's at home still in like a whole other state or something, probably. Hoohoo-- 'less she got smashed!"

So maybe the kid—yes, you, don’t be cute—isn’t so bright, and not fond of being touched. It could be that easy. (Slade really hopes it isn’t that easy.)

Ness? Loud? Who names their child Ness Loud? 

None of this internal analysis comes anywhere near his surface expression, except to lend a dose of added emphasis to a quizzical head-tilt. He doesn’t bother to attempt to even the height difference between them. “You’re fifteen and you can’t remember to tie your shoes, Ness Loud, but you flirt with senior citizens?” Slade glances pointedly down at the offending shoelaces, lets his eyebrows do the real talking. That should buy him one more moment to think.

Unless this is an unusually dull fifteen-year-old, which isn’t entirely out of the question, he should have provoked more alarm in Ness. The shoulder-hold wasn’t exactly gentle. And the only other explanations for such a lack of concern are either that the boy is mentally unstable, or that he somehow thinks he can handle himself against a grown man.

Of course, the blessed moment of confusion (and Ness Loud's complete and total silence) comes to an end almost before it begins. He looks away from his laces, lets them knot themselves into sloppy Gordian tangles with a burst of thought; and instead of thinking about what he just did, in public, he raises his little chin to look the stranger in the eye.

"I only flirt with really attractive people, 'specially if they're senior citizens--" the strange emphasis place on the phrase gives it away: Ness has no idea what a senior citizen is, "--an', you're like a silver fox, Mr. Fox!"

He also doesn't quite understand the phrase silver fox, except in the basest of terms, but Ness has really never let that sort of thing stop him. Instead of ruminating on his own cluelessness, he bounces forward and catches one of the man's hands with all the earnestness and gravitas of someone who really and truly believes that flirting is the key to human happiness.

Slade doesn’t quite take a step, but he’s leaning, edging around the boy and the predictably inane sentence that he won’t be sticking around to hear—

—or not.

Two moments pass. In one, he blinks, frozen, thought suspended. Internal error. Reloading….

Then the second moment comes, and he’s got this anomaly by the shoulder, and they’re moving off the sidewalk into the shade of a bistro’s awning. There’s something to be gained here. Naivete, innuendo, possible lack of internal filter, and offhanded mentions of illegal conduct. Life might as well have written ‘pet project’ in bright yellow paint on the concrete where they stand.

Instead though, the hard twitch that the man's touch elicits is followed with another much-too-bright smile, all guileless edges and sharp stupidity: the firm grip is a sense-memory of white corridors and K's pinching grasp, played out in a crowded city street and a too-strong stranger.

(Though Ness' instincts seize and flutter to throw the man, his training keeps his feet on the ground and his entire body an invitation-- one that says, "I'm harmless, I like you.")

"Hoohoo-- who, me?" His lungs whistle on the inhale, a wheezy and light-headed noise of warning utterly ignored in favor of dragging his gaze up and up and up-- he declares, as matter-of-fact as he can, "I'm fifteen and a minute an' my name's Ness Loud!"

Look, cities are busy places, he understands that. But it’s one thing to bump into someone and it’s another to flat-out collapse onto them.

How old is this kid? Ten? All right, so he’s being uncharitable, but the boy would certainly look a bit older if he bothered to tie his shoes.

It’s all he can do not to haul the brat up by the back of his shirt.

"I was watching where I was going see, just--" Here, Ness interrupts himself with a hooting laugh, bouncing on his toes with a little more force than strictly necessary and only just clinging to the illusion of gravity. Whatever he had been about to say fades into silence, and he drags a twitchy gaze over the man's features before breaking into a bright, sincere smile.