(no subject)
08 April 2007
Near the lake
It is a relatively dreary day outside, overcast and chilly, but this does not seem to be bothering Piotr overmuch. Seated some way above the lake on the sloping ground leading down to it with both legs crooked at the knees to prop up a board, he has brought outside a set of oil pastels and is currently smudging lines of flinty grey across the paper on his impromptu easel to lay down the dull depths of the water before picking out the highlights with a lighter shade.
The bamf of Kurt's arrival is a little distance away. The curious blue man is suddenly stood atop the roof of the boathouse. Without much hesitation after his arrival, he brings a hand up over his yellow eyes to shield them from sun that is not shining as he looks around. His tail flicks up happily when he spots his target. "Piotr!" He calls out from his perch.
Not particularly engrossed in his drawing, the bamf catches Piotr's attention and draws his head up after a final thread of his thumb across the miniature lake. He is lacking in tails and so can only express his amusement at that display of showmanly searching in a smile and a wave of a hand smudged with green and grey, but the wave is hearty enough and his shout when he replies is full-voiced. "Hallo!"
"Why are you sitting over there?" Kurt calls, as if somehow offended by Piotr's choice of a spot to sit. "Now I have to get down from here!" Laughing, the German mutant steps to the edge of the roof and dismounts with a rather handy little front flip. He lands easily and even raises his arms, like some gymnast landing from the uneven bars.
Laughing and bringing his hands together in applause, Piotr carefully sets aside his drawing board and pastels and pushes himself upright, rubbing his hands quickly against one another to try and get rid of the dark smudges on them with somewhat limited success. "I could hardly sit on the roof. Even if I could get up there, I would probably fall through," he points out.
With an easy gait that deliberately plays down his acrobatic feat, Kurt walks over to meet Pete. "If you were to fall through, you have only to land on your feet and raise both shiny hands. We will say that you stuck the landing, ja? Even if you stuck it through the floor."
"Not quite a landing, I think," Piotr essays with a shake of his head and a faintly wry twist to his expression. "I would end up at the bottom of the lake and having to walk out, which would probably cause you no end of amusement but would not be so fun for me."
A hand goes over Kurt's heart. "To think that I would enjoy to see one of my best friends embarassed? Unthinkable, Piotr." In spite of Kurt's theatrics, he can't seem to reign in his grin. Trecherous expressions and their unwillingness to obey. "How are you doing, mein Freund? Are things better lately?"
Lips thinning into a distinctly dubious expression, Piotr returns Kurt's grin with a pair of raised eyebrows, shaking his head to clear the look before answering. "Yes, things are better," he says with a little nod. "For me, at least. Not perfect, perhaps," he allows, "but I have had too much good fortune to stay unhappy. It is the others I worry about now."
"There are many things in the air that are worrysome," Kurt agrees. Once he stands just before Piotr, he reaches up (uuuup!) to tap a fingertip against the larger man's forehead. "It is you though, that I have come to ask after."
"Truly, you do not need to trouble yourself for my sake," Piotr insists, showing Kurt a smile that is small but light and genuine, for all the slight evasiveness of his answer. "I have my sister back, and my friends. I could not have hoped for anything more than that."
The hand used for forehead poking switches gears and is clapped against Pete's upper arm lightly. "I like the sound of this." Kurt's smile is broad and warm. "Things have begun to settle back to reality, ja?"
A small nod ducks Piotr's head briefly and he catches sight of his hands again, still green and smudged, resting them one inside the other to keep from smudging them on his clothes. "It seems strange to call this reality when it means travelling to my sister's world and negotiating with witches to bring back students she has stranded there."
A hand goes up to the back of Kurt's head, scrubbing through his blue curls. "Our reality, at this school, is perhaps a bit different than most. It is still ours." His smile turns crooked and he adds, "Most people would not consider having a blue man teleport onto a roof to chat with them reality."
"Most people do not know what they are missing," Piotr says with a confident nod, reaching a large hand to clamp around Kurt's shoulder and stopping the motion just in time. "I am going to wash my hands in the lake," he informs his friend with a slightly rueful look, heading along thataway.
Kurt trails after Piotr, "I will fight the urge to try to knock you into the water. Only because I am not so sure I could actually move you without your permission." This second statement is accompanied by a very light push at the younger man's back, which is in no way designed to actually try to move him.
It in no way does, Piotr's considerable stability bringing the extra force into his next step without much difficulty, although the large man does look back over his shoulder to narrow his eyes warningly at Kurt. It is mostly in jest. "I am glad to hear it."
Both palms are held up innocently when he is looked at like that. "I am innocent!" He also ducks, for good measure. "What do you think, Piotr, of our newest crop of students? It seems we have been gaining more girls than boys, but I am sure you have at least noticed them, ja?"
Reaching the edge of the water, Piotr crouches down to wet his hands, rubbing them together to swirl green and grey into the mix of the water, a tiny smile spared for the close match of the colour. "I have seen them around, if not spoken to them all," he replies, looking back up towards Kurt. "Sofia, Switch, Sophie and Katrina," he rattles off the name like a good RA. "And Illyana, of course."
Crouching down beside Pete, for no reason other than to be doing so, Kurt nods his head. "What do you think of these new girls, then?" There is, obviously, a weight behind this question, as yellow eyes seek to meet Piotr's.
"Sofia or Katrina, I could not say. Switch I have not even /seen/ for several days," Piotr admits, lifting now clean if wet and rather cold hands in a shrug in front of him. "Sophie, I feel very sorry for. She is having a difficult time here, I think, with her power. And you know I am delighted to have Illyana back."
Nodding his head slowly, Kurt watches Pete's face. He is trying not to be unsubtle about this, but it is hard to temper his concern out completely. "Sophie is an interesting girl, ja? Are you having a difficult time with it? With her?"
It is only then that Piotr realises what Kurt is asking, and he shakes his hands to clear the water off them, bringing them into a neat fold with his forearms rested across his knees. "No," he says, simply and honestly. "Have you spoken with her, Kurt?" he asks, looking across towards his friend with earnestness pursing his brows above the bridge of his nose. "Have you seen, have you /felt/ how much she suffers because of this? I wish I could do more to help her."
"I have not had the chance yet, nein." Kurt looks down toward the water with a faint smile, just a ghost of the expression. "I have felt though, how desperately I wanted to help someone else very recently. I think I understand."
"Her situation is so like what she has caused in others," Piotr says quietly, still looking in Kurt's direction though not particularly looking at Kurt. "A terrible accident, something she-- she had no control over. She tries to carry all of our guilt together."
"And you want to help her let go of her guilt, ja? Over this terrible thing that she could not control?" Kurt's tone is quiet and warm as he draws the parellels out more obviously.
Instead of a cheery realisation, Piotr's brows pull together, darkening his expression as his eyes are shadowed. "The guilt will lessen in time," he says with a weary shake of his head as he turns to look more directly at his friend. "But she will have to live always knowing what might happen if she were to lose control again."
"But she will learn that she is not a bad person for what happened," Kurt says firmly. "There is the capacity for darkness within all men. Temptation, sin, we all feel one and have all done the other." A hand gestures out, sweeping and vague. "Today is a day to reflect upon the fact that we can come out of these things better people for it." The temptation to fall into pure preaching is heavy and it is shown in Kurt's lowering his brows as he stops himself.
Piotr's head tilts minutely in question at Kurt's mention of the day before the answer strikes him and he looks away, blue eyes dimming in reflection of the darkness of the water below them as he gazes out across the lake, thinking about the words. "Hm," is his only reply, and it is a long time coming.
With his tail hanging low, Kurt speaks more quietly. "I did not mean to stick my finger into old wounds, Piotr. I wanted you to see how..." He shakes his head, a heavy sigh pulling itself out of him. "I apologize." The word is hardly even done being spoken before the older of the pair has teleported away.
As Kurt speaks again, Piotr looks back around to his friend, only to be left blinking away the smoke of Kurt's disappearance. "Kurt?" he calls to the surroundings, standing and looking around him for a matching cloud of inky whisps somewhere nearby before blinking once more and heading back despondently up the slope to fetch his his drawing things.
Easter philosophising. Poor Kurt's good humour suffers.
I could not find you after you left earlier. I suppose that was your intention. I did not mean to make you glum. (there is a little comic doodle of an elfin face with rather droopy features) If you can still walk after dinner, come and find me and I will beat you at pool. Piotr.
08 April 2007
The Living Room
Whether or not one actually believes in the theology behind Easter, nobody in their right mind would turn down the feast generally associated with the day. And in the case of Xavier's, it has been quite a feast! For all her particularly snipey guarding of the kitchen in the past several days, Madame Vargas outdid herself in both quality and quantity of food, assuring that even the most ravenous of teenage bellies wouldn't be leaving the dining hall until their hunger was sated. Julio Richter may still appear as skinny as ever, but he feels like he's about twice his normal width. Thus, his sprawl on one of the living room couches is even less graceful than usual; his back is actually to the back of the seat, but all four limbs are splayed out and his chin rests against his chest. A paperback book rests on his abdomen, though he's /looking/ at the cover rather than /reading/ anything at this point.
Jean is nearly permanently svelte, with occasional stress-induced lapses into downright skinny. But she, too, is ambling somewhat more slowly than normal, pleasantly full of turkey, ham, and other delights. A single, last piece of cheesecake is on a plate before her, a single cup of tea balanced on a saucer in the other hand. There is a copy of the Sunday Times. A crossword is an ambitious plan. Turning the corner and passing through the french doors, there's a quiet "Oh!" of startlement. "Julio, I didn't expect to find anyone here."
Piotr is a man who is very conscious of his limits, even when it comes to delicious food, and thus it is that despite having eaten somewhere in the region of twice as much as most of the others he shared the meal with he is still walking with all his usual fluidity of movement -- even more so than he has of late, perhaps, with the interestingly shaped wounds along his front and back in the final stages of healing. He enters the room empty handed, far enough behind Jean to miss seeing her turning the corner, and offers a smile of greeting to the room's occupants from the door before he heads in himself.
At the sound of Jean's voice, Julio's head lifts abruptly; when his eyes fall on the entering Doctor, he attempts to haul himself into a more upright position in general. The book slides off his lap and onto the floor in the process, though he leaves it be momentarily, responding to the startled statement with an, "Oh!" of his own. "Uhm. Am I not supposed t'be in here now?" he wonders, brows raising. It is at this point that he also takes note of Piotr, who he regards with a questioning glance and raised hand.
"Oh, god, no," Jean assures quickly, with a soft clatter of her teacup. "I'm just not used to seeing students here -- not enough things that make noise," she quips, taking a seat at the other couch and carefully arranging tea and dessert.
Returning Julio's questioning look with a similar one of his own, Piotr steps further into the room and across to one of the small tables, from which he retrieves a tiny, postcard-sized sketchbook. He cannot keep a small chuckle from his lips at Jean's answer as he rights himself and heads round to join her on the sofa. "Do not discourage this," he warns, eyebrows raised pointedly.
Julio slips back into a more gravity-friendly position on the couch again as he's assured he's allowed to stay. "I...guess I had enough noise for today," he explains with a small smile. "'s probably a bad idea t'have too much food and too much noise at the same time, and I definitely had too much food, so..." As Piotr retrieves his sketchbook, Julio blinks and adjusts his posture yet again to facilitate picking up the book that he dropped on the floor.
"Unless we move the air hockey table in here, we should be safe," Jean reflects to Piotr, carefully and methodically laying out newspaper, cup and saucer and cheesecake in precise arrangement on the coffee table, with as little jostling to an overstuffed tum as possible. "And welcome to holidays at Xavier's, Mr. Richter -- Christmas is even worse." Reading glasses are produced next, and balanced on the bridge of her nose.
Tipping his head with a wordless smile at Jean's no noise policy, Piotr manoeuvres himself comfortably back into the corner of the sofa and rests the sketchbook on the arm, reaching into his pocket for a pencil but for the moment simply holding it against the closed sketchpad with one large hand on top of both. "Madame Vargas is an excellent cook," he says, plentiful food earning his approval whatever the time of year.
"Even worse? Woah." Julio's tone of awe and disbelief would perhaps be better suited to a discussion of the discovery of life on a distant planet rather than the discovery of even more food. "I already have t'worry about shaking...I don't need t'be worrying about /exploding/ too!" He experimentally pokes at his abdomen with one index finger. "Though, if I'm gonna explode at all, having it happen cause of too much of her food's a pretty good way t'go." His unorthodox but unconditional agreement with Piotr's statement is accompanied by a nod.
A planet of endless food -would- be quite a discovery to make. Jean's smile is small, as sitting still long enough allows the pack of troubles chasing her time to catch up and settle back on her shoulders again, but it's a genuine smile, at least. "So far, we've managed to avoid any explosions. Well, Jeremy aside. But how are you doing, Julio?" she asks. "I haven't seen much of you outside of classes and training, lately."
Looking aside to Jean as she speaks, just in time to catch that smile, Piotr purses his lips a little and turns back to face the hand pressed down on his sketchpad, rolling the pencil across its cover for a moment with his thumb before picking both up and flipping the little book open to a blank page. He does not add to Jean's question, instead flickering a glance to Julio for his answer.
"I've been doing..." Julio pauses for a second, lower lip sticking out slightly before he concludes, "...better, I think. I haven't really...you know," he shakes one hand in the air, "not in maybe even a month." This realization causes a more emphatic blink and wider-open eyes in general, not to mention a slightly larger smile. He reaches up and brushes his bangs off his forehead, adding, "I've been spending more time outside and stuff, now that winter's starting t'go away. Or before today it was..." There is unpleasantness out the window, and Julio gives it only a brief glance. "Feels nice that spring's coming." He finishes speaking and looks between Piotr and Jean, blinking again. "Uhm. How're you?"
Jean's look is absent as she picks up her teacup, cradling it and the saucer between her palms as she blows steam from off the surface. "Rebirth. New life... and god knows we can use some of that," she reflects, lips thinned and expression pensive now. "But I'm glad to hear you're settling in -- it can take a little bit of adjusting to get used to things here."
Piotr nods in agreement with Jean's sentiments, managing a smile to continue it for Julio. "You are not so much the new student any more, yes?" he says, lifting his free hand in a little gesture of a question. "When you have others to help, that can sometimes make things easier for you. Have you spoken with any of the new girls?"
Julio says, "'s good t'not be the newest anymore," Julio admits, bobbing his head slowly. "Though I still feel kinda weird when I haveta explain what I do for people the first time. Like with Switch, and then she ended up /seeing/..." The motion of his head stops, though his bangs immediately revert to their position partly covering his forehead and dangling over his eyes. "Haven't met the two newest yet, though I think I saw the older one in the hall. Maybe I aughta try and talk with them, since it was awkward for me t'show up in the middle of the year and stuff, so it's probably also for them..."""
"Sophie could use a friend," Jean murmurs, staring thoughtfully at her teacup, in her own world, but one adjacent to that of the two others in the room. "But she might be a little hard to befriend, just to warn you."
"That will get easier as you learn the words and become more comfortable with your powers," Piotr assures Julio with a supportive smile. "Perhaps one day you will even be able to show your powers, in just a very small burst, so you do not have to explain at all."
Julio pulls himself more upright in his seat again, then rests the back of one hand against the underside of his chin as he gives Piotr a long look of consideration. This look in itself is progress from what would have been a vehement dismissal of the suggestion even a few months beforehand. "I...think I've got the words down ok now," he says slowly, "'s just making myself say them. I kinda scare myself again, a little." He shuts his eyes for a few seconds; when they open again, he's looking at Jean. "Why?"
"Her particular gift is empathy," Jean explains, looking up from her tea and taking a moment to focus her eyes on Julio. "Both receptive and projective, and she's been untrained to this point. She has a lot of guilt about her mutatio--" There's a pause, and for the first time, a crooked little smirk ghosts across Jean's features. "You know, you really -should- look her up," she decides.
"Only," Piotr cuts in after Jean, a little too quickly to be entirely at ease, "be in a good mood when you do," he suggests, managing to rein his urgency in to something more mild, delivering the words with a smile. "And respect her wishes if she says she would like to be alone, though I am sure you would do this anyway."
Julio takes note of both the smirk and the haste of Piotr's response. He squints slightly, reaching one hand around to scratch the back of his head, one foot lightly tapping the ground. "If I'm gonna be insistent on people not startling me and stuff, 's the least I can do t'not get in her face about stuff," he decides. "Though d'you think she'll even let me talk to her if she's that guilty. I..." he takes a longer breath, "I know I was bad about letting people talk when mine first happened."
"You don't have to talk about mutation," Jean points out, smile a mixture of crooked and absent as she thinks back to old memories. "But she could use someone to help her settle in. And to see that Mutant High isn't as full of freaks and hateful strangers as she thinks it will be."
"She likes art," Piotr supplies in case this will be of any use in finding alternate topics of conversation. "She draws-- fantastical creatures." The hitch in his words is barely recognisable as a hitch, a brief pause perhaps to choose an appropriate word instead, and he does not lose his mild smile over it. "In truth, I think she would welcome the chance to talk about something else."
"She's gonna realize nobody here's hateful fast." Julio's response is also quite quick. "'s the first thing I noticed. She's gonna have t'notice it sooner than later, anyway." He nods, pushing himself even further upright in his seat now that digestive processes are at play. The book resting on his lap, though, once again thumps to the ground as he moves. He frowns briefly. "I think I've gotta take art or something. Everyone else here knows about it! I...could get her t'tell me more, maybe." He looks at Piotr, with a vaguely apologetic smile, "I mean, you already talk with me about other stuff..."
Jean sips her tea, gently and carefully, attempting to sneak it past the already-stretched limits of her stomach. "I'm sure you'll think of something," she assures, quietly optimistic about that, at least.
"There must be some things," Piotr agrees with a nod and a fairly confident smile on this matter. "This school is small enough that I think we all find something in common with one another, sooner or later. Perhaps simply playing a game would give you enough to speak of."
Julio bends over to pick up his book, emitting a quiet groan as his overstuffed abdomen protests the motion. When he straightens up again, he now deposits the book on the couch beside him rather than on his lap, avoiding further need to bend and retrieve it. After a second or two of sitting upright, his eyes suddenly widen and the corners of his lips creep upward with inspiration. "Game! There's that game that Honor and people are trying t'organize. I'm in it, and I've never played that kinda thing before, so maybe Sophie could play. All kinds of fantasy creatures in the book about it Honor lent me."
"Dungeons and Dragons?" Jean supplies, having picked up on at least that much school scuttlebutt. The quiet, absent smile appears again. "I knew a few people who played it, when I was at college. If you can get her past the geek factor, it's a good way to have some fun." A pause, then, which eventually turns into a fully-fledged trailing off out of Jean running out of things to say. She picks up the Times and leafs through it, too quickly to be actually reading anything.
Piotr looks faintly bewildered at this, eyebrows peaking at the centre as he tries together pieces of the informational puzzle. "What is that, exactly?" he asks of Julio, from one man not properly initated into the circles of geek to another. "Kitty has mentioned it and I did not understand, so she explained, but," he reaches a hand up to wipe a little awkwardly at his forehead, "I did not understand the explanation either, and did not like to say."
"Yeah, that," Julio points an index finger toward the ceiling as Jean states the name of the game. At Piotr's question, he squints, now lowering his hand and looking at his fingers as if calculating something. "It's a thing where you have a character - but you have to make it up with all these rules and statistics and stuff - and you roleplay it in a quest with other characters. I never played before, so the only part I've done at all is the making the character part, and I don't know if he's any good."
"I only lasted one session myself," Jean admits, with a briefly cautious look out and around the newspaper to see if anyone else is overhearing this. "And it was back in the early 90's, so I was mostly doing it to terrify my mother, who'd bought into the whole 'D&D teaches your children actual magical spells' thing. But I do recall that it's how you play the character as much as how you make it." A pause, again, and this time she elabourates after it with "Playing pretend for big kids."
Sadly, Piotr does not look much the wiser for Julio's explanation, although Jean's last sentence brings a ray of clarity that perhaps helps other pieces to fall into place. "I see," he says, and then his eyebrows furrow a little. "I think. Kitty said it is quite simple, though, once you get started," he offers a little more brightly, reassurance for Julio.
Julio emits a quiet snicker at Jean's one-sentence abstract of the whole D&D phenomenon, though the expression of amusement shifts to one of skepticism, one eyebrow higher than the other and nose slightly wrinkled, as Piotr passes on Kitty's words about the game. "The rulebook's really /long/," he points out. "I don't think it's that long because they just felt like it. 's complicated, but it'll be fun, I think."
"Let me know how it goes," Jean requests, before she disappears behind her newspaper again, expression abstracted in the moment before it disappears.
There is a glance aside for Jean as she speaks, but nothing more tangible from Piotr as he looks back to Julio. "Yes, I am sure it will be. To be with friends will be good, however difficult the game proves to be, yes?" He pats at his sketchbook, folding it closed once more a little thoughtfully.
"I will," Julio responds to Jean; his gaze drifts toward Piotr as he continues with, "I think it'll be good for that, yeah. If we're having fun with it and it doesn't get all tense and weird in a bad way, it'll only be fun."
"Good," Piotr says with a nod and a smile of approval as he eases himself forward on the couch and then up to standing. "I think I will leave you both now. There is something I wanted to check before my class tomorrow and I do not want to forget it. Have a good evening," he bids them both.
Julio appears rather disappointed that the conversation is dissipating as he lifts one hand in an otherwise-motionless wave to Piotr. "You have a good one too," he returns, before stretching his arms out in front of him and picking up the book that lays beside him on the couch and flipping through to locate where he left off.
Wait, there aren't any freaks at mutant high?