(no subject)
It is approximately a quarter past ten when Jean Grey turns up at Harry's, with no car keys evident and with a black wool coat thrown over a stylish little empire waisted dress in shades of blue with a ribbon of grey silk to tie it with. A calf-length hem flares and flutters as she tracks unerringly over to the bar, claims a seat, and bids a weary "Beer, please. Pick a kind."
A constellation of empty glasses is splayed across the empty barspace two seats over. They are all squat. Some still have ice melting in them. Others contain only a film of water and backwash. One still has whiskey in it. It is to this glass that Erik Lensherr returns once he has checked his fly and emerged from the men's restroom. His collar and cuffs, pinstriped, are open beneath the more formal fit of his vest, which is a dull, shadowy shade of taupe. He doesn't notice Jean immediately, and reclaims his stool with a drawn out sigh. Not at his most observant.
Jean, for all the vaunted sensitivity of telepathy, is lost to the world for a few moments once the beer has been brought to her by a slightly ironic Harry. Rich red-amber, with a proper head of foam to crown the glass, the beer is lovely, dark and deep. It is also nearly dropped in Jean's lap after the high mental walls around her drop in turn, and her mind trips over a Magneto on its doorstep. Slowly, her bar stool rotates, as she takes in the long row of glasses first, and their consumer later. A fortifying sip of beer later, she nods to him. "I appear to be adopting a Japanese electrokinetic. How about you?"
Magneto's head tips down at the sink of Jean's familiar voice through his unusually thick skull. Both hands settled upon the bar, he's slow to turn and face her, as if he's rather /resentful/ that she should happen along to interrupt what was otherwise a cheerful evening of getting drunk alone in a bar. One eye is squinted, as skeptical of the coincidence of her presence as it is of her attempt at small talk.
Jean offers no further small talk after that greeting, instead taking an advanced course in beer study before surveying the glasses. Counting them, perhaps, for there's a mild wince at the end of it.
Aware of her survey, Erik follows the line of her gaze, and frowns. There are too many of them, all too closely collected to be easily blamed on anyone else. Still, he is conscious enough, perhaps having been here for long enough to space things out...reasonably. Somewhat reasonably. His fingers tap while he contemplates ordering another while she's staring at him.
Staring Jean is Staring. Eventually though, she stops staring, or at least resumes studying her beer, and reaches up a hand to pop the tiny and decoratively metal collar button of her dress. "Does it help?" she wonders, in a tone of nothing so much as curiosity, with just a bit of a speculative look turned on Harry's whiskey bottles herself.
"Hoping that you will leave me alone?" A faint slur brushes soft over the gruffest, most deliberately dense retort he can manage, and he reaches for the half-empty drink that he has left. "Apparently not."
"I am nothing if not persistant," Jean murmurs, looking away from the bottles in favour of sticking with the unknown beer. A few more minutes pass, with Jean's initial attempts at cool quiet giving way to twitchy shifting in her seat to snag looks at him, mind peeping right along with them.
A thin fog of hatred compromises the atmosphere of Erik's thoughts. Everything is cold and black and touched with the acrid scent of superheated metal. Upon recognition of Jean's prying, what visible thought there is flinches inward, and he turns stiffly aside in his seat to stare back, drink in hand, with eyes cold enough to burn. "What is it that you expect to find?"
"I'm not sure." Charles, Jean is not. 'Hope' is not considered statistically probable. Her mind studies the dark and the cold for a moment more, before withdrawing back to its own business, or at least back to its own skull. "Some sign that you're finding your way out of the blackness, perhaps."
Silence, is what that answer gets. Also, anger, evident in the sustained scorch of his glare. "What is it about this society that you hold so dear that you are willing to /settle/ for it?"
Silence from Jean now, as the eruption gets not her usual quick riposte, but a thoughtful study of her beer and a slight hunch of her shoulders. "I suppose," she says "Because I can't think of a way to be sure what might replace it will be any better."
No eruption, really. Not yet. For all that Harry might wish that this conversation would take place somewhere else, it is not taking place loudly. Erik chuckles, derisive in the face of Jean's doubt, and thumps his glass down with just a hint of unnecessary force. "So I should /hope/ that our situation will resolve itself. Do you really think I am going to stop? Do you think I am going to set aside my sword in favor of optimism? And peace?" He may not be shouting, but there is a special kind of hatred in the way his speech bites after her.
"Hope," Jean notes, "Has always been Charles' wish for you. He's not here," she points out, somewhat unnecessarily, as Forge has not built a shrink ray, and therefore there is not a tiny bald man in her pocket. Glass rumbles against polished wood as she passes the beer mug from hand to hand on the bar top, idle fidgeting away of energy. "And you're not suited to peace. But have you decided on where to point your sword?"
Whatever metal exists on Jean's person encounters a heavy-handed drag in place of the usual pre-attack probe as Magneto leans away from his barstool. Precision and subtlety have gone the way of his third and fourth drink, and are effectively non-existent. All current signs suggest that he /has/, in fact, made a short-term decision to point his sword at Jean Grey. "There is no longer anything to gain in differentiating."
The buttons on Jean's dress are not happy. Another one pops loose, although thankfully for the sake of modesty the empire waist means they only go so far down her cleavage. Her cell phone is even less happy, as the unsubtle probe does not kill it, but -does- send its wee little operating system into a hard freeze. Harry, who is not Jean's in any way, shape or form, is unhappiest of all, and vents a significant rumble. Jean, uneasy and unsettled in her body language, but not inclined to turn her back on this particular bear, sits up a little stiffer in her seat and attempts, from her squirming, to try and simultaneously teleport out of her metal-buttoned dress while fidgeting the buttons back into order. "There's still a good deal to -lose- by it," she says.
"How long until I kill again, just see one writhe? You know it will happen. Charles knows. The administrative staff of American Idol /knows/. And you do nothing. You sit, and hope, and perhaps pray that I will come to my senses." An ill-suppressed sneer loses some of its impact in a sideways lean that he hedges by bracing his right hand against the bar.
"Are you asking me to kill you, then?" Jean wonders, the squirming ceasing as she detects no sudden attempts of her clothing to kill her. (Harry is not happy about this line of discussion, either. Perhaps it's concern for his bar tab.) An abortive hand-twitch does -not- try and help the Master of Magnetism brace himself, as she turns away slightly to pick up her beer again and reflect that "I guess that would be a change."
Brows knit, Erik leans more of his weight over into the bar. His train of thought has been derailed, and it requires a great deal of effort to clear through it. "...What?" is what he decides to go with eventually, frustration etched deep into his forehead.
"You're sneering at me for waiting for you to snap and kill someone before I do anything," Jean explains, with a gesture with her beer mug for emphasis. "What's your proposed solution, then? Kill you before you can? ...I'm not going to do it in here," she takes a moment to assure Harry, with a sudden colour to her cheeks.
Magneto is confused. As is often the case, the default assumption is that he should be angry accordingly. Jean doesn't get it. She is threatening to kill him. So, he attempts to fling her at the wall, by her buttons. This is probably not a very good decision.
Jean is flung! Or, rather, jerked forward in her seat so that her knees rap sharply against the bar. This is followed by a demonstration of simple physics involving applied forces, shear strength of cotton thread, and, QED, one, two, three, four, five little metal buttons go popping off the bodice of the dress to ping off of Harry's bar room mirror. Dr. Grey left somewhat en deshabille with the edges of a lacy black bra peeking out of sudden decolletage, there is a moment's pause. Then there is a sharp and blushing "Jesus Christ! I didn't say I was -going- to kill you!" Silence. "Shit!" (Jean has noticed the missing buttons.)
The mirror cracks at the initial impact, and bits of shattered glass slack out of the frame under the ongoing assault. The fact that Jean stays (mostly) put is absorbed with a scowl that threatens something along the lines of greater effort expended on his second attempt. The exposed bra gives him pause, though. His brows lift, then fall again. Hm.
It is a very nice bra, or at least the visible edges of it are. Alas, Jean's hand swiftly slaps up to pull her dress closed overtop of it with a huff. "Oh, for the love of God..." she mutters, and glowers over at him before reaching to pull her wallet from her coat pocket to see about settling bills. "You're drunk. I'm going away now."
"Fine," says Erik, who has to pause again when she covers herself up. Briefly. "Go back to your school. Hide with the others while humanity..." does...terrible human types of things. That they do. He is angry again.
"When you're sober," Jean notes, buttoning up her coat (Which has PLASTIC buttons.) with a continued string of grumbling after Harry has been paid for her beer and his mirror. (Because Erik is not likely to.) "And if you decide you'd actually like something to do, I have some files you may be interested in. The scientists from last January have been up to something else." Thus, looking rather more like a ruffled hen than is strictly flattering, Jean begins to stalk for the door.
The offer of mysterious /files/ keeps the mouth left behind shut, if only just, and not without another sizzle of fury at having them held over his head like candy over a child. His glare is left to fix unblinking on the bar surface he is still using to keep his balance, whiskey temporarily forgotten.
Jean, heartless, leaves Harry and his bar to the mercies of a drunk and cranky Erik Lensherr, and steps out into the fall night.