(no subject)
10/16/2007
=NYC= Lab - Shaw Research Center
While security is not oppressively emphasized, there are all the little, quiet touches you would expect in a lab more or less funded by a major defense contractor. There are big machines and small, and all the computers and screens and gizmos one could want, as well as the simpler luxury of plenty of space. It is a lab space well-stocked, with the big-money machines just down the hall.
Dawn's cool fingers are retreating from the City, reluctantly giving way to the light and warmth of day. In the City that never sleeps, people scurrying around at all hours of the day is not an unusual sight. On a college campus, however... Thin heels that just /sound/ like they belong to pointy-toed shoes as they slap against tile propel the statuesque form of Emma Frost down hallways with little hesitation, despite her relative unfamiliarity with the research center. She doesn't knock either.
As expected in any research center named after the late Sebastian Shaw, there is security present. However, Emma Frost appears on a number of lists, all of which more or less say, 'Let her through, leave her alone.' So as she slap-clicks her way down the halls, she is watched, but simply to see if she needs directions.
Apparently, she doesn't. Only just in, Bahir is seated in the quiet of his lab. There is no one else in, not research assistants, not undergraduate bitches, and not Natalie, either. It is just him and his coffee. Seated in his chair, he leans back with the cup pulled close to his chest. Vapors drawn in with a breath, he wakes slowly.
The door opens with a muffled thump as it hits the counter that protrudes just a little too far into it's path behind it. Emma doesn't even look apologetic as she sweeps in, false smile pasted brightly into place. "Good morning, Bahir, dear," she carols sweetly, shooting a totally unnecessary glance around the room before adding, with equal unnecessity, "No one else here? Must be early yet, hm?"
Startling slightly at the thump, Bahir's thoughts reflect a wild, startled flare before folding back into a flat, muted neutrality. He sits forward and sets his coffee down, sucking at the flesh between finger and thumb where a drop spilled. He rolls a look over toward Emma, hand falling. "Ms. Frost."
"Emma, please. We've worked together long enough for first names, haven't we?" she weaves around tables to approach, discarding purse and jacket along the way. Telepathy precedes her, wrapping like paper mache around the inflated balloon of his own power. "I came to see how you were doing."
"I wouldn't refer to Dr. Lensherr as Erik," Bahir counters mildly. He watches her with something like suspicion: wary and uncertain. Doubtful of her motivations, an ashen resignation answers the wrap of her power, and he thins shields, pulling them tight over the core of his mind and letting the surface lie bare. How's he doing? He's been better. Emotionally, a burnt shell of anger is brittle, fragile protection for raw hurt beneath, but his thoughts are turned toward his work, and an upcoming conference about mutation and laws.
His suspicion wounds. /Woun--/ Ok, so it actually makes her laugh. Just a little. Silently, though not privately. Emma slides onto a labstool at a table near him and crosses her legs, making her perch more precarious and more slinky, even if it is lost on Bahir. "Mm. But Dr. Lensherr is a bit more... reserved. And old. Fashioned, that is." Telepathy slides like wet plaster against telepathy, cool and soothing and sickening.
"It's about the respect owed a monarch--" Who you aren't fucking, haven't fucked, have no plans to fuck, would rather stick your dick in a rice thresher than fuck. "--rather than personal dignity and age." She lacks both. Bahir picks his coffee up again, taking a slow sip, and continues to watch her closely. There's no reaction to telepathy's touch, but his shields firm reflexively, just a touch, against the intrusion of an outside mind.
Accidents can be arranged! Emma inclines her head in disinterested concession to his notions of formality and rests an elbow on the edge of the table. Her hand curls under her chin. "How are things progressing in your research?" Small talk. So... small.
"Fine." How's that for small? Bahir continues to watch her as one might watch a viper.
"Mmm. Are you this informative with Er-- Dr. Lensherr?" Emma asks smoothly, her smile brittle and bright in the aspiring snake charmer's eyes.
Not a charmer. A snake-dodger, maybe. Snake-flee-er. "Dr. Lensherr doesn't seem particularly thrilled with my research, so we don't really discuss it," Bahir says in a flat tone.
"I see." Emma drops her hand to the table surface, and watches her fingers while she draws patterns on the tabletop with her finger. Telepathy is better than body language, especially in this case. She brushes a bit of dust from the table, and asks bluntly, "What is the situation with Percy all about?"
Bahir goes stiff in his seat, fingers clenching on the paper cup. "There's no situation," he says with brittle precision. He can't /quite/ form the words 'broke up with me', but the idea lingers in cranky fragments through his thoughts.
Emma straightens and turns her eyes on him, letting incredulity and disbelief leer clearly at him from her expression before tucking it away and pursing her lips. "I see. So the black-clad, black eyeliner-wearing ghost we have haunting the mansion halls and scaring the members with manic depressive fits that swing from beating them over the head with chess pieces to self-flagellation that may or may or may not involve stoic sufferance is a figment of my imagination?"
A twitch at the corner of Bahir's eye will have to suffice for cringing flinch, provoked by Emma's description. He looks away from her, gaze restless. A flare and twist of shields over his thoughts allow for only the briefest leak of emotion before shutting down over them, jaw setting.
Emma waits until the silence draws out and crystallizes his lack of response. "Right. So. Try again?" she says cheerfully, lacing her fingers around her knee and fixing an attentive look on Bahir.
Bahir puts the words together slowly. Each one fights its way free, leaving behind another small cut across the vast wound already beneath. "Percy broke up with me."
"Mhm. And did he have a reason in the midst of his undoubted drama queening?"
A dry, bitter powder coats Bahir's words: "In a way. He said he couldn't do that to me. Are you asking for a reason, Ms. Frost?"
"For his reason, or is there one for why /I/ wish to know?" Her smile turns edged.
"Why you wish to know."
"Which would you believe? That I'm concerned for a friend, or that it is a Circle matter?" Her thumbs circle each other.
"I would believe that you were concerned for a friend, Ms. Frost, but I'm not entirely certain that it is a Circle matter." Bahir's thumbs do not circle.
"Well, let's go with the less maudlin explanation. It's more fun to argue and I've had my fill of sentimental drivel. What do you want, Mr. Al-Razi?"
"Why are you asking, Ms. Frost?"
Emma lifts her hand and ticks off her points against her fingers. "One, your conflict has already disrupted the internal mechanisms of the Court; two, your conflict is siphoning valuable energy from at least one of you, if not both." She eyes him at that, as if daring him to speak up and claim no ill effects. "Three, this has the potential to escalate and further damage your Circle relationships; and four, I don't like to see Percy unhappy. Or any of my pieces." At least, when she's not the cause.
Bahir looks away again, slouching slightly. He pulls his coffee closer again, taking a sip before it can cool past the point of saving. Nooo comment.
"I answered your question. I think I deserve an answer to mine."
Shaking his head marginally, Bahir frowns, looking down. "Well, since what I /want/ right now is to be left alone -- it seems that I just won't get what I want. I'll work to keep the disruption to Circle interests at a minimum, Frost." No 'Ms.' this time. The cranky is beginning to wear through the veneer of courtesy.
"You can get what you want, in a manner of speaking," Emma says airly, suddenly, insincerely indifferent. "If you /really/ wish it." Her eyes narrow as she dangles the verbal bait.
Lifting a single dark eyebrow at her, Bahir is pointedly skeptical and continually suspicious.
"Percy told me not to. I thought you should at least have the option of refusing for yourself."
"What are you talking about." The words are flat, less question than demand. Bahir's mood sours and curdles and generally does cranky things at the P word.
"Making you forget. Or at least blunting the edges. If you really wish to be left alone and to leave this mess behind you." Emma slides off the stool and tents her fingers on its seat for balance. "If you wish help concentrating on something else."
Once again, Bahir's fingers clench. He looks away, AGAIN, and frowns (AGAIN!!!). The immediate longing for the salve she offers is clear, but he hesitates and asks, "Why did he refuse?"
She shrugs a shoulder and circles the stool. "Something about the pain being earned."
Bahir is Conflicted. He doesn't immediately reply, but rather pokes and prods at the edges of his own hurt like a child. Measuring. Thinking.
Emma waits, infusing her telepathic presence with a sense of expectation (and trustworthiness. She's trustworthy, right? At least she's never /actively/ screwed him over.)
Trustworthiness. Bahir reacts to that like a cat to water, drawing away with a bristle along his spine. "I don't know what your game is. I don't know why you are offering. I'm fine," he lies. "And I need to get back to work, if there's nothing else."
"No game. I'm offering because this is stupid and messy, and the longer it stays stupid and messy, the more opportunity for something to go wrong. Percival is suffering because he thinks he deserves it. What is /your/ reason?"
"Because I don't trust you. I don't believe you. I'm tired of this, but I'd rather deal with it on my own than have you plunge into it," Bahir says with prickly defensiveness, shields drawing ever tighter over the threat of vulnerable nakedness.
"Why?" Emma leans against the table, hands wrapped over the edge for balance.
"I don't want you in my head," Bahir says crisply.
"Fine, but that wasn't my question." Emma pushes off the table and turns around, pulling her power in as she goes like a silk scarf sliding off a pumpkin. Hi, pumpkin. She moves to gather up coat and purse.
"What was your question?" Roll of his eyes backed by a revival of anger, life yet to those brittle coals, Bahir glares after Emma.
Emma stops and half-turns to look back. "Why do you distrust me? We may not like each other, but that doesn't make our mutual benefits any less... beneficial." She folds her jacket over her arm and smoothes it down as she adds quietly, "There are precious few who understand the need to save face as much as I do, Bahir. This stubbornness is simply false pride." She sets into motion again, heading for the door now. "The offer stands, darling. Think about it."
Folding his arms over his chest, Bahir is nothing so much as a child sulking. He doesn't stand for her as she exits, and he watches her go in silence.
10.16.07 - Hmph.