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 Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 11:01 pm
WHO: Alex & Banter
WHERE: The cafeteria following his departure; Alex's office.
WHEN: In the middle of the Christmas party.
That's strange, she thought to herself, standing in the doorway to her office and leaning against the frame, nursing a hot cup of coffee between her hands. I thought I saw someone...
Alex furrowed her brows slightly, her over-sized sweater hanging off one shoulder that displayed her lightning bolt scars over the curve of her muscle and disappearing into the neck of the fabric, the sleeves long and almost completely hiding her fingers. Her long hair was pulled over her scarred shoulder in a loose ponytail rather than the tight clip she usually wore it in, trying to relax a little, even if she was working when she should have been in the party with her friends and loved ones. The Italian frowned, pursing her lips and glancing down the otherwise dark hallway where only the shadows gave movement. She was about to return to her the office when she did see movement: in the cafeteria, no less. It wasn't unusual to see someone in there, but what was unusual was that the form slid downwards.
It could mean one of two things: two people were actually in there and she was going to embarrass two frisky individuals rather unabashedly, or someone was playing hooky. Either way, she decided to investigate - just to make sure! - crossing the hallway in a whisper of calf-high boots and gingerly using her fingertips to open the door.
To her relief, it wasn't a frisky interruption; and to her dismay, it was a Frei, one who seemed rather displaced. Quirking her lips in a briefly sympathetic expression, Alex stepped into the cafeteria, making sure the door didn't swing behind her, still clutching her mug in one hand. "Hey," she made herself known in a soft tone of voice, fairly certain she hadn't snuck up on the Frei but still trying to be courteous about it. "Everything okay?" She offered a faint smile that said she figured otherwise, tilting her head to the side to try and get a better look at the Raevan's face.
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Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2014 10:09 pm
Once the adrenaline tapered off, the throbbing in his fist turned constant and annoying. He clenched and unclenched it at his side.
Looking in no particular direction, his eyes happened to land on a wisp of something by the vending machines. A loose arrangement of lint and dust and possibly hair.
'They should really sweep better in here.' He thought.
There was a vent underneath the machine, blowing a current of warm air that made the dust-bunny shiver like a mirage. He didn't know why, but looking at it gave him a lonely feeling. He squeezed his hand, firing a spasm of pain from his wrist to his shoulder. If Basil knew even a fraction of what he'd sacrificed for them, he'd sure have thought twice about stranding him like this.
He was starting to see that he'd set a bad precedent by relaxing the rules for him so many times. It made him wonder; If Basil could do this to him, how far would this thing go? What was going to be next? It made him nervous. That, in combination with the cold coffee-cocoa mixture was making him nauseous. There was a tingling ache between his eyes and a tightness in his throat as though he were very near to tears. He rubbed his eyes until he saw spots.
He hated when he got like this.
'You ungrateful little backbiter. I won't forget this.'
He lost track of how many minutes had gone by since he'd gone to hide in the cafeteria. He was starting to wonder if anyone even noticed he was missing. He couldn't hear Genie. Or at least, not above the threshold of the Christmas music. She was probably still parked at the buffet like a sow at the trough.
Thinking of Genie, he caught his eyes lingering on the negative space in the doorway, and his own pathology revolted him with its obviousness. His quiet want to be discovered. His even quieter want to be comforted...
Maybe that was why he took no evasive action when he felt footsteps in the hallway. Human footsteps. He knew it was a woman before she'd uttered her first word. That soft 'hey', which she'd floated out ahead of her like a canary in a coal-mine. A face soon took ownership of the voice. He looked at her from underneath his greasy bangs, and it was oddly familiar, but in the same way the Demon's face had been familiar. From some distant point in time too far for him to recover. Everything okay?
He glared.
Something he observed was that people seemed so absolutely terrified of making each other uncomfortable. As if there weren't worse things to be afraid of. For most of his life Genie had been his prime case-study, keeping people from getting too close with impersonal phrases like "fine" and "great" and "thanks for asking", any of which he could have used now.
It was a heavily nuanced system in which it was impossible to expect any actual honesty, and for some reason that disappointed him. Maybe because he didn't have much right to challenge it when it was people like him that had the most to benefit from it. The ones with the most to hide.
He was getting just a little sick of that system...
"No," he said hoarsely, "it's really not."
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Dangerous Conversationalist
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Posted: Fri Jan 24, 2014 10:19 am
Dark brows lofted in slow response at his quiet return, her smile taking a slightly sadder twist. This wasn't new to her. No, it seemed whenever Alex had the time to speak with a Raevan, it was because there was a bad circumstance at hand. There was no virus or hell-spawn eyeball just then, it was true, but as far as she was concerned, the personal struggles within were always greater than the external factors. She'd seen what the loss of self could do, with Lucia...with Lulu. The woman could scarcely imagine the havoc the cobra could wrought if he tapped into his essence and let free.
"I'm sorry to hear that," she responded in earnest, her fingers readjusting on the mug. "Does it have something to do with the hub-ub out there?" She nodded her head towards the dull throb of the party that was audible even from where they were, her eyes squinting as though even the sight of the distant Christmas decor was visible. Far be it from Alex to be a grinch, but this year...things changed.
"Irregardless if it is or isn't," she added after a moment of consideration, her green eyes sliding to the side to observe the dark-haired Frei, "is there something I can do?" She paused. It wouldn't hurt to be less intrusive with the question. "Even if it's as simple as getting you a cup of something warm?" Alex just wanted the Frei to know he wasn't alone. She knew who he was in the way she knew who all her Raevans were, but...she didn't need the same knowledge back at her. She could easily be a nameless human that wasn't a total s**t. It seemed to be a rare commodity these days.
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Posted: Sat May 17, 2014 1:02 am
“I’m sorry to hear that,”
He flashed his eyebrows skeptically, making a point of ignoring her next question. She'd guessed correctly, but still.
He was sensitive to the fact that she was standing above him. But then, if she had chosen to stoop down at his level it probably would have offended him more. Both came off as terribly patronizing. For Alex, there was just no correct course of action here. No way to open this encounter without meeting some measure of his disapproval, and his suspicion...
As he often did, he resorted to visual aggression. A long and unbroken stretch of eye-contact as he raised himself back to a floating upright position. For his purposes, it helped to minimize the awkwardness of standing up out of her shadow. He knew how it looked. His thinking was if she was focusing on his face she wouldn’t notice it so much.
God, he just wanted to go home.
They met at face-level. Like Alex, he found some small comfort in having his hands preoccupied with his mug. He hugged the counter, his fingers making a fidgety—and vaguely fiendish—wringing gesture around the handle. He blew out his cheeks, throwing glances at the vending machine, keeping the doorway in his periphery.
In the very back of his mind, the same thought repeated on a loop, as it always did in these sort of exchanges.
What would Basil say? What would Basil say? What would Basil say?
His mouth squirmed. Basil was a lying sonofabitch.
...What would he say?
“I suppose…” he whispered after a considerable pause, clearing his throat and starting over, “I suppose that’d be fine.”
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Dangerous Conversationalist
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Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2014 10:29 am
Yikes. Alex had been in anthropology once and had gotten as far as the psychology portion to pick up some cues in body language -- and this Frei was screaming of disdain and derision. Her heart squeezed painfully at the display, wondering what could have possibly caused such a dark presence in the other's countenance. It almost made her angry - a flicker of a brightness in her eyes the only indicator of her inwardly squashed reaction - but it wasn't about her right now. It was about getting the Raevan somewhere more comfortable with a moderately friendly face.
She gave him a small but no less honest smile, turning on her heel to glance out the door as though considering something. Turning back, she freed one hand from the mug, hooking her thumb over her shoulder. "There's an office across the hallway, it has a coffee maker and a bit more privacy than here -- and no Christmas decor. C'mon, it smells better than this place anyway." Alex chuckled under her breath, thankful she'd already started the brew, knowing the scent of black coffee was far more agreeable just then than even the holiday cheer. Her own brand of celebrating the holiday was in the form of a peppermint creamer, one of many that she used to get by with the bitterness.
Turning again, she pushed open the cafeteria door and peered down the hallway, making sure they'd have a clean getaway. Glancing over her shoulder to the Frei, she nodded, and then tilted her head towards the office that was open, a dim light from within the only sign it was inhabited at all. Alex wanted to hold the door open for him, but she decided on a whim to give the Frei the time he needed to decide if he wanted to follow or not. She wasn't going to force it. Instead, she offered a lift of her brows and an expression that spoke of patience on the matter, slipping into the hallway and letting the door shut behind her.
Entering her office, she quickly shoved the files aside that she'd been working on and turned the monitor off to the PC. She didn't have to worry about her pictures that were already taken down and in file cabinets: the office had been repainted recently and the actual medical side was being redone to better conform to her new magical practice. The room smelled of rich coffee, probably one of the big brand names given to the Lab for Christmas, and it was in that warmth that she reveled and tried to remain a stranger. The less aware the Frei knew who she was, the better, she suspected.
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Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2014 10:35 am
A stillness drew over his face like a curtain. The only activity in his expression came from the narrowing of his eyes. Not his pupils, but a squeezing of the eyelids like twisting a bloody hangnail.
He certainly didn't smile, much less return her chuckle. The sound fell flat on the floor with the rest of her good intentions.
He could tell she was making an effort here. Like there was an inside joke and she was letting him in on it. It was the kind of transparent, over-reaching familiarity that got on his nerves.
Maybe it was her use of the word privacy just now. In his experience, there was no way of introducing that word into a conversation without it sounding fishy or scandalous on some level, especially now. Why was she trying to corral him into some office? There was a coffee machine right here.
She left the room, and he knew what she was up to. It wasn't subtle. Making friends didn't work, so now she was feigning disinterest. Letting out a little line.
He weighed his options, lingering in the cafeteria for all of five seconds. He slowly rounded the corner, catching a last-second glimpse of her going into the only open door in the hallway.
He looked down into his mug. The contents were cold and filmy, a whitish raft of foam on top. He wrinkled his mouth and promptly splashed it into a decorative ficus.
He couldn't believe he was falling for this. Knowing how much this place scared him. What he knew to be waiting behind this bland, beige-carpeted, OfficeMax exterior. He wasn't fooled.
His mind strobed with flashbulb images, one after the other. The first needle sliding into his arm. Mouthless men in surgical masks stirring his brain with their stainless steel instruments. Pieces of his frontal lobe sliced up like birthday-cake, wafer thin between microscope slides. Blinding white lights. The antiseptic and medically-sanctioned torture they'd reserve for him...
When he finally appeared, he knew his face had gone spongy with sweat and several shades paler. There was no helping it now, so he didn't try to wipe his forehead and make it worse. He stirred up his confidence by telling himself, hey. He wasn't going to be alone in a room with her. She was going to be alone with him.
And who was he?
Why, a nice ********' guy. That's who.
Nice, and normal.
When he came in, he was holding the mug out in front of him, in both his hands. Noticing, he quickly switched it to his left hand to look more casual. Not so much like Oliver Twist with a begging bowl.
He was quietly impressed by the room's two dominating smells. Coffee, and paint. The paint wasn't fresh, but there was a lingering chemical trace in the air. Like it hadn't been painted all that long ago. He was surprised to find the two smells were oddly complementary. They opened up his passages, made him light-headed.
He subtly looked around. There was no name-plate on the desk. No pictures hanging up. No label outside the door. Not a single thing that was personal or intimate. There were a few sticks of furniture, but the office looked like brand-new.
Was this her office? Was she new to the building? Did she recently replace somebody? Or did she just know this room was here?
There was a chair in front of the desk. Lowering himself into it, he felt like a disciplinary case getting called to the principal's office, which made him feel conscious of his image. He flashed her a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, and there was a little nod that was meant to express appreciation.
Thank you. This is very nice.
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Dangerous Conversationalist
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Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2014 9:13 am
If she seemed unfettered or unmoved by his indifference, it was because she was used to the treatment. Raevans were rarely ever happy to meet her or be around her. She was just a human, and in her experience, the Raevans did not have good experiences with humans. The woman would never dare to hope they'd know how much she loved them, or that she'd move heaven and earth to spare them their pains and woes...but she would try to be there for them and fight for them all the same. She couldn't push it, but she could leave the door open if they needed somewhere to go.
It's why Alex lit up when the Frei did come in, though he looked a little worse for the wear. Concern lit a sick heat in her stomach, but she didn't act on it, merely acting as an observer. They were strangers. For once, she had to keep it that way.
"It's not much, but it's not out there," she filled the silence easily, putting her mug down on one of the side tables and moving towards the coffee machine. Alex didn't need noise, didn't need to hear voices; she just wasn't sure he would be comfortable in her silence. He wasn't exactly trusting, and it was easier to be judged for words she offered than what his mind might conjure in the quietness. Pouring a fresh mug of hot coffee, she tapped on a tray near it. "Do you like it black or with creamer and sugar?" Unmoving until he indicated she could approach him with the drink, she gave him her undivided interest.
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Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2014 12:18 pm
Although you wouldn't think it, given its total lack of personality, the little office was quite warm. He didn't mind, except it was starting to make his scalp itch under the hat.
Setting down his first mug on the desk, he made a move as though to swipe it off his head, remembering at the last moment, suddenly and with a jolt, that it was the only thing concealing the bruise on their forehead. He modified the gesture, unsuccessfully, into a stretch. Reaching up toward the ceiling like there was a stitch in his shoulder. He lowered it to his side, the itch left biting and unrelieved. His fingers twitched.
Although he'd caught himself in time, it annoyed him that he'd come so close to making a mistake like that. He seemed to be making a lot of those tonight. Even this encounter took on an excessive amount of risk.
But Alex did have a point. At least here he wasn't keeping tabs on dozens of people at once. There was just one person, in plain sight, in one room, sitting across from him making coffee and small talk. He had this under control. If he'd just settle down.
But first.
He threw a glance behind him. He'd shut the door when he came in, but the feeling of it there was a constant reminder. He didn't like facing away from exits. He got up and turned his chair more to an angle. Mostly facing Alex, but with the door on the fringe of his vision. He spoke as he moved.
"Uh, cream. Two spoons. Three for sugar."
Between the two of them, he had the sweet-tooth. Go figure.
She prepared his drink in silence and they entered into a delicately orchestrated hand-off of the new mug, avoiding direct contact.
When he took it, he grabbed it by the base, not the handle. The ceramic burned, and was painful. But good painful. A penetrating heat, like a hot bath. It soothed the sting in his cabinet-punching arm. He held his face over the steam, rising damply against his skin.
He didn't say thank you.
He did lift his eyes in a way that anticipated further conversation. Maybe it was his essence, maybe just his inclination, or some accordance between the two, but he always felt anxious when a topic hit a lull. Felt an overwhelming need to fill all silences, even when it was probably in his best interest to shut up.
Except just now, he didn't have anything to say...
Or at least, not out-loud. So many questions had entered into his mind since he sat down. Maybe she saw them dancing in his eyes.
Have we met before? Why did you bring me in here? Who's office is this?
But he couldn't bring himself to ask any of those things, because they came so close to verging on... personal. If he dragged this to a personal level, it facilitated asking personal questions of him, and he refused to accept one more screwup from himself.
So what if every word from her mouth was superficial and patronizing. He'd keep this going.
He took a test-sip from the mug, tapping his finger on the edge. "This is... good."
Brilliant.
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Dangerous Conversationalist
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Posted: Tue May 19, 2015 11:04 am
With the coffee made and handed off, she was not unaware of his antics. She'd seen the strange sort of dance-stretch and that he moved his seat; she was aware of his choice to grasp the hot mug by its base rather than the handle. His silence and lack of responses were noted. The mistrust - the judgment in his eyes was not missed.
Alex sat across from the Frei, legs crossed, sipping her coffee and listening distantly to the thrum of music and the din of indistinct chatter. It wasn't in the room, but it still seemed so close. Green eyes flickered to Basil as he spoke, and amused, she lifted a brow. "It's hard to ******** up coffee, but I'm glad you approve." Her brow ticked briefly at her choice of words - if he was watching, he might see her subtle shake of her head at herself - but this wasn't supposed to be formal. Just an escape. Who needed it more, she wasn't sure.
"So, uh, despite the obvious," she lifted her mug to him sitting across from her, "can I do anything for you? I have a truck and I know how to drive it if you need some air." Alex chuckled, lightly tapping her fingers over her own hot mug. "It's cold out but sometimes we all need that burn in our lungs to know we're alive, eh?" She shrugged, noncommittal to her offer and certainly not expecting him to accept. She was just trying to maneuver the small talk into something slightly more productive. "Makes the old wounds ache - the cold - but I imagine you're not too much of a fan of it." Her eyes flickered to his face again. He was a snake, after all. Even she could see that. "There's a small heater by that desk if you'd prefer."
An acknowledgement of what he was without familiarity. An offer of something tangible that he could have control of. It was all she could do until he gave her a little more to work with.Twintastic HELLO I AM AWFUL BUT I LOVE YOU Q_Q
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