oo2. partially open.

[xerampelinae]

CHARACTERS: Charles Xavier + Natasi (Caprica Six) + Peter Parker; and others as they happen.
LOCATION: To be added.
WARNINGS: To be added also.
SUMMARY: Only one of these people is getting anything done, turns out.
NOTES: Monthly catch all! This is only partially open because I'm not providing a fixed narrative thing to reply to. Hence, please let me know if you'd like to do anything, and I'll be happy to set up a thread (unless you feel ambitious).

Comments

[forgodssake]

[ His actions are so automatic and thoughtless that she'll probably only get a sense of what he's doing when he draws back up, takes her hand, gently claps something against it -- two pills, a standard mild dose of painkiller courtesy of the medical bay.

Water is next; he typically keeps a carafe with a glass or two, and the former is filled by the latter.

While these actions pass thoughtlessly, he can't help but draw his mind back to when they last spoke, his prickling feelings that echo jealousy without being as simple as such. True irritation. More recent memories, his checking in after communications was lost. He at no time thought she (and Erik) wouldn't return-- ]

I asked him along to the shooting range, later in the month. Perhaps you'd help arrange it, or accompany us, if you like.

[mindtricks]

[ she takes the painkillers, and the water, and washes them down with several large sips. there is no immediate effect, but then she didn't expect one. ( with anyone else, she would have asked what the pills were. with him, she doesn't have to. )

she's too tired to properly sort through the emotion he remembers, something jealous and irritated and later worried without being hopeless. she's too tired, but she still tries, head tilted. the only question she has is why.

why feel irritated or jealous? because she didn't listen entirely to his warnings about erik? because she made her own choices, made up her own mind? maybe it's worry that she'll get hurt the way he did —

the question isn't pushed at him, not forcefully at least, because of the tiredness. ]

Whichever you prefer. I'm at the range almost every day.

[forgodssake]

[ Her tired is catching, or maybe Charles is inclined to respect it. Either way, there's a conscious shift of his feelings about all that aside, filed away as both nonsense and later. Never, optionally.

His hand has eased to rest high on her back, palm and the flat of his fingers easing a small circle to soothe feelings of unwell and off-balance. ]

I'll give you some notice. We both might need some supervision.

[ He pushes his thoughts towards that exchange with Alex. Alex with his awesome capability that makes a gun seem laughable; then there is Charles, who doesn't much use them, but can, and should practice. ]

[mindtricks]

[ she'd prefer later to never because she wants to understand, but there's gratitude at the conscious shift away from the topic, too. her head hurts, and that might be a conversation requiring brainpower and compassion in greater degrees than she feels capable of currently.

she doesn't quite lean into the touch, but she does list towards his side a little. ]

I can do that.

[ it's part of the work she does here. she enjoys teaching, too, enjoys the feeling of doing something useful.

a moment later, not said out loud, she thinks that if this is the consequence of drinking larger amounts of alcohol, she isn't particularly interested in repeating the experience. ]

[forgodssake]

[ She tips inwards; Charles moves hand from the centre of her upper back to cap her other shoulder, drawing her against him in lazy half-embrace.

You're meant to keep drinking.

He echoes this back to her, more articulate than idle thought and non-serious. ]

Hair of the dog, [ is out loud. ]

[mindtricks]

[ it's nice, to be able to rest her head against his shoulder and to have the warmth of his arm around her shoulder, grounding her, anchoring her in place. it doesn't physically lessen the effects of the alcohol in any way, the world around her doesn't stop spinning just because he's holding on to her now, but it's still nice.

that's the best word she has for it, in her current state. ]

I don't think I'd want to. [ if he had been serious, that is. ]

[forgodssake]

Close your eyes.

[ It doesn't help, probably. At first, there's that sense of vertigo, like the world really is turning now that she's bereft of being able to see that it isn't. His thoughts imply that she wait it out, for a moment. Focus on being held. (His other hand has come up, touching fingers to temple.)

It's a struggle, to do this, to do more than just powerlessly listening to thoughts around him; projecting a memory more complex than direct words and impressions. To not let it slip somewhere painful, to divorce it of feeling. But music and lyric have a way of sinking into memory, leaving an imprint.

And so she gets to listen to the distant memory of Across the Universe, textured a little by the memory of his cluttered room, still orderly, but full of books that haven't been put away and instead make stacks, and the same thing with records tilted against one another next to his turntable. Music, mainly, filling that space, something that could soothe him when he couldn't focus on a page of paper, whether from the pain or the blur of drunkenness or the strange relief from the serum but in this case

when he was too hideously hungover to function. Here, he focuses away from himself, more on the sensory input of the moment. They'd gone insane in Britain and the States both for this band, Charles remembers.

He backs off projecting the memory; Cassandra can chase it and draw from it, if she likes. ]

[mindtricks]

[ he says "close your eyes" and she does, and promptly the vertigo becomes stronger, accompanied by a slight sense of nausea — nothing as bad as it is after the jumps, though, and so she pushes it aside.

instead, she focuses on the music that he's projecting, and the associations that come with it, the sense of lying still and letting songs fill the air and his mind. when he stops projecting, she follows, seeks out the rest of the song and then others.

there hasn't been a great deal of music in cassandra anderson's life, not after the death of her parents. she likes his memories of it. ]

There's a lot I've missed. [ is idly said, without any real sense of regret to go with it. her life has been defined from a young age on by the hall of justice, by wanting to make a difference and become a judge. it means that the things he did, the drinking and camaraderie of college days, those are experiences she never made.

it's strange to think that she's making some of them now, here. ]

[forgodssake]

Going home meant I did a lot of catching up, myself.

[ Charles remains still, half-holding her, mind open to her following through mellow memory. He has a lot of it, long days and evenings just like this. It'd be easy to trip over some of the more negative emotions associated, but that's why he's talking about the music instead. ]

I don't know if I'd just never paid attention before, but it felt like the last decade catapulted it all into a plethora of choice, new ideas, different sounds. International recognition on a world stage, music from Britain crossing the Atlantic and cluttering up every radio and television in America. And when it wasn't that, it was soul music from Detroit, psychedelic beach rock from the west coast.

Bob Dylan, the Doors, CCR, Janis Joplin. Rebellious music, as if the whole nation had something to say. The whole world.

[ But he wasn't a young man getting high with his friends during this revolution, but he had enough vinyls to fortify his time with sound. ]

[mindtricks]

I don't know any of them.

[ there is rebellious music in her time, but the songs by the people he lists have fallen into obscurity — or maybe it's just anderson who has never heard of them.

she tilts her head further against his shoulder. ]

What were they angry about? [ she knows some history, but having read a history book, having talked about it in class — that's different from having been alive at the time the way he was.

even if their universes aren't the same, she's interested.

( they didn't do that much history. no one really cares. ) ]

[forgodssake]

[ When she asks that, Charles hesitates; he feels a little in danger of talking about his home like it's a fairytale, romanticising it and the attitude of the people when there are so many pitfalls in either camp. Or talking about it like he's at all informed, from the dim, shadowy recesses of his remote estate.

The anthems of his time, played on vinyl, received in cardboard, turned off when he wanted it turned off. Nevertheless-- ]

There's been a war on for the better part of two decades. An ugly one that's costing many lives, that should probably have never happened. A lot of men were drafted, and a lot of them died.

[ He can't help but think of his school, and how he couldn't bury his students and colleagues in the secrecy he'd promised, and how many of them were forced to leave. His thoughts are in danger of meandering sideways, the littler, secret pressures and dangers against mutants in all the noise, that no one even had words for, but--

--well, she asked, but he doesn't want to talk about it in detail. ]

[mindtricks]

It's strange.

[ not romantic, not a fairy-tale, just strange: she's heard of the war he talks about, she's read about it in history books, briefly. in light of world war three, in light of everything, it had never seemed relevant or particularly real.

too long ago, in her world, even if it had meant a great deal back then. ] I'm sorry.

[ a beat, and she follows it up, quiet now in a careful way: ] Alex? [ was he drafted? she thinks he must have been. it's hard to think of the man who'd fallen asleep in her arms, exhausted and drunk as a soldier not because she can't imagine it, but because she can. ]