Once upon a time, it wouldn't have surprised Noah to have someone pop out of seemingly nowhere and talk to him. As it was, he was years out of practice. So he jumped, and in doing so managed to spill coffee on his shirt and the Daily Prophet article he had been reading.
"There is absolutely nothing wrong with banana nut muffins," he said, looking otherwise unruffled and grabbing for a napkin. "I don't see why my breakfast habits are a cause of concern for you." It looked like Noah was going to have to retrain himself, because he couldn't afford to ruin shirts every time Claude came popping in. It wasn't like he had a job anymore.
Hey, at least neither one had tried to kill the other yet. Though they were only three seconds into the conversation, so the trend might not hold.
"Sure," Claude agreed, one eyebrow going up in a definite amused expression at Noah's jumpiness. That was new. Well, all right, not new. But it'd been a long time since he'd been able to startle Noah. It was definitely something he'd have to take advantage of. "It's not the banana nuts themselves that are the issue, here. More the lack of options in your life. The perpetual closed-off nature of your breakfast choices." A tiny smile was curving the corner of his mouth and there was a faint, hopeful expression in his eyes as he sat there, elbows propped on the table, talking around a mouthful of muffin.
Noah hadn't told him to fuck off. So maybe there was a possibility that they could have a conversation that didn't end in shooting. Maybe.
"My breakfast is not closed off. I have waffles and cereal sometimes." He mopped up as much of the coffee as he could and set the napkin aside for later disposal. "I just happen to like banana nut muffins. And apparently, so do you." He gave Claude a pointed look. Smug bastard, chomping down on the remains of his breakfast. Almost like old times, except that he looked like someone you'd expect to be ringing a bell and shouting "The end is near!" downtown.
"Ooh, daring." Leaning back, tossing the last of the muffin into his mouth, Claude gave Noah a smug grin. "Course. Banana nut is a perfectly safe and reasonable choice. If I felt the need to be boring, I'd probably eat them every day, too." Reaching over, Claude snagged the cup of coffee, finishing it off. "You know, Freud would have a field day with you, friend, with your obsession with order and your bland breakfast choices. Almost as if you're making up for something." Raising his eyebrows, Claude sat forward again, folding his arms on the table. Of course Noah would order his life out, lists and neat creases in his pants, and hair always cut just so. Claude was an almost painful contrast with his shaggy beard and ill-fitting clothing. But he'd left the Company, and with it his illusion that things - any thing at all - made sense
( ... )
Ouch. "It's not every day," he protested. "Just when I feel like it." He chose to ignore the Freud dig. Yes, Noah liked order. He liked it when things were right where they should be. He liked well thought out plans, and he liked to keep his clothes clean while carrying them out. He certainly wasn't making up for anything. He just liked it when things made sense, that was all.
He raised an eyebrow, folded his paper neatly and put it aside. "If you have a board and some pieces, I'm game." He hadn't quite mastered the art of conjuring things out of nowhere yet. He was a master at warding, but spending so much time on that had left him behind in other areas.
"Ah, but you feel like it quite often, don't you?" Claude's smirk grew, eyebrow raising. "Been a bit scattered lately, haven't you? Everything blown to shit and you with no safety net to fall back on. Not a good feeling, yeah? So you eat your banana muffin and you pretend like there's some rhyme or reason to the whole cuckolding mess." Some other emotion flashed across his face, quickly hidden in the mocking superiority. "Poor little Noah, in over his head."
Okay, so, maybe he wasn't quite ready to give up the bitterness. But before they could disintegrate back into the same boring fight, Claude stood, flashing into invisibility. There was a man with huge glasses and a rather severe look playing chess with some fat guy at a table across the room. Or they were playing; Claude effectively put an end to that by picking up the board and pieces, walking away with a grin as the two men discussed whether or not regular chessboards in a magical castle could suddenly turn invisible
( ... )
"Some people like poptarts," he said, stubborn as ever. Again, no mention of the rest of Claude's rant. Though there was a slight tightness to his face, if you knew to look for it.
He was glad for the quick break from the argument. Claude had been right, Noah had been wrong. Noah shot Claude, Claude was being an insufferable jerk. Couldn't he just drop it? No, Noah thought, I suppose not. Shooting a friend three times in the chest isn't quite on par with teasing me about my choice of muffin.
Composed again, he couldn't help but smile at the theft. "Fine with me," he said, taking the black pieces and arranging them.
Of course Claude noticed the expression on Noah's face, that familiar tightening that meant he was pushing buttons. Thing was, he just didn't care. Or maybe he did. Maybe he wanted a reaction.
'You're just going to off me, like it's nothing?'
Maybe he wanted to break through that bland mask, to get Noah to stop behaving as if nothing that had happened mattered. That he wasn't affected.
That he hadn't missed him.
Setting up his pieces, Claude made the first move, glancing up at Noah and then back down to the board. "What're you reading?" he asked, nodding absently towards the now-coffee-soaked paper.
Given enough poking, Noah would snap the same as anyone else. He had just become so used to keeping a poker face around just about everyone that it took a lot more effort for the breaking point to be reached these days.
Holding his wife and kids at human-nuclear-bomb-point, for one. Someone he had previously thought that he had killed after years of friendship chipping away at his resolve, for another. It would happen. It was just a matter of time.
"It's what passes for a newspaper around here. Every bit as boring as anything back home, except every now and then they'll mention goblins or dragons." He slid it over to Claude while studying the pieces carefully. Careful, that really was how he did things. It suited him just fine. When you took the time to analyze situations, people, places, or what have you, things had a tendency to go smoothly. He made his move.
Taking the paper, Claude flipped through it, apparently absorbed. In fact, he was watching Noah over the top, one corner of his mouth barely turned upward in what could almost have been construed as a fond smile. That was Noah. Spend all bloody day staring at the board only to make the first move he'd thought of anyway. Never trusted his instincts. Had to think things through first, over-analyze and compare options.
When Noah's fingers finally left his piece, Claude, seemingly carelessly, reached over and darted a bishop forward, relaxing back with the paper again. He, on the other hand, put a lot of stock in his gut instinct. True, he had the ability to see the larger picture, to put together the pieces - one of the reasons the Company had recruited him; one of the reasons he'd eventually defected. But Claude saw no point in wasting time dithering over things. Move forward, hope for the best, and keep an eye on the exit.
"Hell, you'd think that Wizards would be more interesting," he remarked with a snort, idly turning the
( ... )
Noah's second move was much quicker than the first, as one of the things he had spent so much time thinking about was options after Claude had moved his second piece. He pushed another pawn up and waved the house elf back over to refill his mug, since its contents were now partially on the newspaper and his shirt. "People see what they want to see. What they've trained themselves to see." An admission of wrongdoing? Not really. He sipped his coffee and pointed to one of the Prophet's moving pictures, a couple of professional Quidditch players duking it out hundreds of feet above the ground. "You have to admit, though, that looks a hell of a lot more interesting than baseball."
One of Claude's pieces darted out, taking Noah's pawn. And Claude barely gloated at all. "People are stupid, you mean," he said, arching a brow, propping his head up on one hand and alternating glances at the board with even quicker looks up at Noah. "Whole world could be crumbling around them, and they'd just turn on some sitcom with a laugh track and call themselves normal."
Letting his eyes follow Noah's finger, Claude rolled his eyes. "Sports are sports," he dismissed. "Bunch of men mucking about with aggression they're too pansy to get out in every day life, pretending as if who gets a ball where actually makes a sod all bit of difference tomorrow. It's a false sense of accomplishment. Boring and trite." A shadow of a grin may have flickered across his face. "But it's bloody entertaining."
"You could chose to interpret it that way, though I'd have to agree with your assessment of their end-times reaction." He already knew what move he planned to make, but studied the board nonetheless, assuring himself that it would be still be optimal in the event of the moves Claude was most likely to make.
Of course, there was always the distinct possibility that Claude would just make the moves that made the least sense, just to screw with him.
"I think the entertainment factor goes up exponentially when they're flying on brooms. It seems like it would be uncomfortable, but I suppose that never stopped anyone from playing hockey, either."
When playing chess with Noah Bennet, the entire goal became to knock the other man's carefully constructed sense of superiority and confidence down onto its well padded ass. Claude considered it a win if he forced Noah to acknowledge the fact that he could not predict everything, if there was a long pause while Noah's brain had to stop, reorganize, and reprocess.
And a total knock out was if Noah had to blindly guess.
So Claude considered the board for a moment. Divining possible plans of attack. And then moving his bishop forward in what was not even close to any accepted or traditional chess move. Grinning smugly, he leaned back. "Hockey's not uncomfortable so much as suicidal," he returned, taking a drink of coffee. "But broomstick riding - who was the first idiot who thought to stick a bit of wood between his legs and jump off a building? Wizards are just as insane as the rest of the world, friend, they just have a greater capacity to blow things up. But..." He hesitated, studying the picture of the Quidditch match
( ... )
Noah considered himself a decent judge of how people were going to act. Most people were even more predictable than he himself was. He even considered himself good at thinking outside the box, particularly these days.
Claude, however, was a kind of random in his own league. And Noah was years out of practice in second-guessing him.
Still, raising two teenaged kids lent him patience that he hadn't had before. He continued to take his time and study the board. "If you ask me, it sounds like a terrible idea. It's Darwinism in action. Which isn't to say it's not amusing, of course. Have you even seen half those things that so-called normal people put up on that Youtube thing? Idiots, all of them." He finally made his move, putting a rook up as bait.
Starting to laugh, Claude rested his folded arms on the table and studied the board and Noah by turns. "You're old!" he chuckled, sounding almost surprised. "Listen to you, ranting on. Sound like my dad." With a smooth move, he bypassed the offered rook and took one of Noah's pawns. "Lost a bit of your spark of life in your advanced years, Rookie. Stupidity in its purest form should always be a form of entertainment -the whole point of things like Youtube, mate. Normal people getting to be idiots for the enjoyment of other idiots. It's like the mall for the internet."
Scratching absently at his chin - maybe he should shave; his beard was getting out of hand - Claude glanced up at Noah with amusement. "And what do geriatric, cranky old men do for fun, then? If you're not watching idiots beat themselves senseless over some pointless prize."
"There is absolutely nothing wrong with banana nut muffins," he said, looking otherwise unruffled and grabbing for a napkin. "I don't see why my breakfast habits are a cause of concern for you." It looked like Noah was going to have to retrain himself, because he couldn't afford to ruin shirts every time Claude came popping in. It wasn't like he had a job anymore.
Hey, at least neither one had tried to kill the other yet. Though they were only three seconds into the conversation, so the trend might not hold.
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Noah hadn't told him to fuck off. So maybe there was a possibility that they could have a conversation that didn't end in shooting. Maybe.
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He raised an eyebrow, folded his paper neatly and put it aside. "If you have a board and some pieces, I'm game." He hadn't quite mastered the art of conjuring things out of nowhere yet. He was a master at warding, but spending so much time on that had left him behind in other areas.
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Okay, so, maybe he wasn't quite ready to give up the bitterness. But before they could disintegrate back into the same boring fight, Claude stood, flashing into invisibility. There was a man with huge glasses and a rather severe look playing chess with some fat guy at a table across the room. Or they were playing; Claude effectively put an end to that by picking up the board and pieces, walking away with a grin as the two men discussed whether or not regular chessboards in a magical castle could suddenly turn invisible ( ... )
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He was glad for the quick break from the argument. Claude had been right, Noah had been wrong. Noah shot Claude, Claude was being an insufferable jerk. Couldn't he just drop it? No, Noah thought, I suppose not. Shooting a friend three times in the chest isn't quite on par with teasing me about my choice of muffin.
Composed again, he couldn't help but smile at the theft. "Fine with me," he said, taking the black pieces and arranging them.
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'You're just going to off me, like it's nothing?'
Maybe he wanted to break through that bland mask, to get Noah to stop behaving as if nothing that had happened mattered. That he wasn't affected.
That he hadn't missed him.
Setting up his pieces, Claude made the first move, glancing up at Noah and then back down to the board. "What're you reading?" he asked, nodding absently towards the now-coffee-soaked paper.
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Holding his wife and kids at human-nuclear-bomb-point, for one. Someone he had previously thought that he had killed after years of friendship chipping away at his resolve, for another. It would happen. It was just a matter of time.
"It's what passes for a newspaper around here. Every bit as boring as anything back home, except every now and then they'll mention goblins or dragons." He slid it over to Claude while studying the pieces carefully. Careful, that really was how he did things. It suited him just fine. When you took the time to analyze situations, people, places, or what have you, things had a tendency to go smoothly. He made his move.
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When Noah's fingers finally left his piece, Claude, seemingly carelessly, reached over and darted a bishop forward, relaxing back with the paper again. He, on the other hand, put a lot of stock in his gut instinct. True, he had the ability to see the larger picture, to put together the pieces - one of the reasons the Company had recruited him; one of the reasons he'd eventually defected. But Claude saw no point in wasting time dithering over things. Move forward, hope for the best, and keep an eye on the exit.
"Hell, you'd think that Wizards would be more interesting," he remarked with a snort, idly turning the ( ... )
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Letting his eyes follow Noah's finger, Claude rolled his eyes. "Sports are sports," he dismissed. "Bunch of men mucking about with aggression they're too pansy to get out in every day life, pretending as if who gets a ball where actually makes a sod all bit of difference tomorrow. It's a false sense of accomplishment. Boring and trite." A shadow of a grin may have flickered across his face. "But it's bloody entertaining."
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Of course, there was always the distinct possibility that Claude would just make the moves that made the least sense, just to screw with him.
"I think the entertainment factor goes up exponentially when they're flying on brooms. It seems like it would be uncomfortable, but I suppose that never stopped anyone from playing hockey, either."
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And a total knock out was if Noah had to blindly guess.
So Claude considered the board for a moment. Divining possible plans of attack. And then moving his bishop forward in what was not even close to any accepted or traditional chess move. Grinning smugly, he leaned back. "Hockey's not uncomfortable so much as suicidal," he returned, taking a drink of coffee. "But broomstick riding - who was the first idiot who thought to stick a bit of wood between his legs and jump off a building? Wizards are just as insane as the rest of the world, friend, they just have a greater capacity to blow things up. But..." He hesitated, studying the picture of the Quidditch match ( ... )
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Claude, however, was a kind of random in his own league. And Noah was years out of practice in second-guessing him.
Still, raising two teenaged kids lent him patience that he hadn't had before. He continued to take his time and study the board. "If you ask me, it sounds like a terrible idea. It's Darwinism in action. Which isn't to say it's not amusing, of course. Have you even seen half those things that so-called normal people put up on that Youtube thing? Idiots, all of them." He finally made his move, putting a rook up as bait.
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Scratching absently at his chin - maybe he should shave; his beard was getting out of hand - Claude glanced up at Noah with amusement. "And what do geriatric, cranky old men do for fun, then? If you're not watching idiots beat themselves senseless over some pointless prize."
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