A welcome overstayed (and not really welcome, either)
[OOC: Backdated to set after the events of last night.]
Last time I ever try that.
Though I suppose I could have been less the sadistic bastard and more the-
Well, no. Not really.
On top of everything else, my foot is now killing me. Dammit. I wonder if I can redirect Grey's attention to that instead of my knee or metabolism or family history. . . .
The wheels never stop turning. But I need to get some sleep, so they will, right now.
Ah, well.
7/13/2005 [backdated to 7/12/05]
Logfile from Shaw.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If there are to be reports, let them state that the White Queen was seen storming into the clubhouse, with an expression on her face that sent the servants scrambling for the hills, and the ones too dumb to look for cover are now looking for jobs, if they dared approach her. The slam from her door had reverberated throughout the clubhouse, and a steady flow of unintelligible mutterings, punctuated by thuds and crashes had continued for a solid hour thereafter. Things have quiet down, though there is still the occasional, defiant sounds of expensive things getting shattered.
Shaw gives it a good half-hour, which he passes flat on his back in bed, glowering up at the ceiling, before deciding to do something about the sleep he's losing. Out of bed, then, and into the robe snatched off a chair on the way -- still charged up as he is, he hardly pauses in flowing, boiling, irritated motion from his quarters to hers, and it is quite the stern knocking he administers to her door.
"WHAT!?" is the quickly shouted reply. Oh, no, no answering the door for our Ms. Frost. Whoever is on the other side enters at his or her own risk.
Knock. Knock-knock-knock. Knock-knock. Knock. Knock-knock-knock-knock. Slouching with his back against the frame, Shaw seems quite content to reach out just his arm across the door to keep up that steady, unpredictably numbered rhythm until she deigns to give him the courtesy of an invitation. Not for him, walking into fire, no, thank you.
Aw, and here we were hoping he'd just push the door off its frame. Emma storms across the room and throws back the combination of bolts and locks securing the room. "So help me...," she growls, flinging the door open and stopping in blinking surprise at the sight that greets her, her other hand dropping to her side, an ornate vase held by the neck in it. "Sebastian..." Her eyes narrow and she turns her back on him. "Sorry. I haven't managed to pencil you in yet. Go away. I've a headache." Over her shoulder, the room is, quite simply, a mess.
So Shaw moves carefully into it . . . but he does move in, right on in, with long years' long familiarity guiding him past the door's swinging shut, into a spot safe for his bare feet. At least, safe for now: he eyes the vase and then her. "What the hell is going on?" he asks tiredly and shoves his hands into the robe's pockets. "Did the cooks spoil your dinner again? Rip their spines out tomorrow and braid them in a macrame plant holder for all I care, Emma -- but /tomorrow./ Some of us have work in the morning, you know."
She continues to grip the vase in a white-knuckled hold, her other hand balled in an empty-handed echo. "Shut. Up." she grits out, her eyes squeezing shut as she steps forward, taking her face and all its flushed cheeked and red-rimmed eye evidence out of his line of sight.
"Well, that /is/ why I came down here." Shaw's irritation leaks into his voice now, and his shoulders are as tight as his braced legs in an otherwise slumped slouch, balanced by those pocketed fists. "To get you to shut up. Quiet down. Knock it /off./ What happened? Not the cooks, I guess. One of your students? Worthington? Me?"
A short bark of laughter, and she finally turns to glance over her shoulder slyly at him. "Don't flatter yourself so. I fully expect /you/ to be the bastard you always are." She completes the turn and faces him with a bitter and brittle smile. "No. Not Worthington, nor a student. Not anyone, not to me, not anymore..." her voices grinds down, and she looks away, looks into her memory and tightens even further, her shoulders rising and the vase in her hand trembling under the pressure.
Shaw snaps. He does; it's been a long day for him, too, and no sly glance or happy fun trip through memory is going to change that /or/ his full-steam-ahead approach. "Then fuck him or her or who the fuck /ever,/ Emma, and let me get some sleep. Jesus. Stop thrashing around like a goddamned drama queen -- ha. Yes. /Drama/ queen, not White. Keep it up, and I'll start to expect some ranting about wire hangers." He breathes out a low, growled sound. "Get it out of your system on your own time, not mine. All right?"
The vase sails past his ear and shatters against the door behind him. Emma spins, not even looking to see if she'd clipped him or not, and heads for the other door into the room, the one leading to her private quarters, muttering as she crosses about assholes and the acrobatics involved with letting them fuck themselves in various public venues: busy highways, bridges, and such. Also prominent are references to one-eyed bastards hiding their blindness behind their powers. Summers.
Shaw does duck in time to avoid the vase and its splashback, but his automatic sidestep lands him on a shard of one of her other projectiles. "--Shit! Goddamn son of a--" and so on from there while he stops to lean into a hand's splay against the wall and examine the bloodied sole of his foot through a scowl's hard, dark mask. He picks out the bit of glass, mutters a fresh oath as he steps forward carefully to test the wound. Then he keeps stepping, and very carefully, right after her into her quarters, in a contained fury of black-silked hunch. ". . . Summers." Flat. "Did I hear you right?"
Emma rounds on him as he follows her into her quarters. "How dare you! Get. Out." she hisses, closing the distance with such palpable anger that it'd be a rare man indeed who wouldn't fall back at least a step or two. "Yes. Summers. You can blame your interrupted sleep on him. Though I doubt he'd be in much state to provide you any satisfaction."
And is Sebastian Shaw that rare man? Oh, isn't he just: with a wicked grin, he lifts his head a little and twitches his shoulders back to emphasize the difference in their heights and sizes . . . and then politely retreats a small step. "Scott Summers, is it?" he requires, still coasting on the smile's energy even as it fades back into the background rumble of anger, then annoyance, then reluctant intrigue. "I met him tonight. Ran into him, in fact, and nearly literally, given his state."
Emma is paying little mind to the size differential. In fact, she's paying little mind to much of anything, coming to a stop mere inches from him, her hands on her hips and her head tilted back to look up at him with a ice-wrapped glare. "Yes. Scott Summers," she spits, eyeing him suspiciously. "Did you now..." Her voice dips into a lower register, rough silk as she lifts a hand to his chest and fingers the robe's material. "How was my precious pet, hmm? I do hope you didn't find him where I left him. Alleyways are much too dangerous a place for you to be wandering..."
"Outside Jean Grey's apartment," is Shaw's judiciously clipped summary, and if he isn't exactly grabbing her hand to keep it under control, there's the shadow of that intention in his glower and his mind's foremost aspect.
"Jea.... rrgh," Her fingers tightening thoughtlessly now in the material, curling into a fist. "Figures. Of course he'd trot home to his precious bitch," she mutters to herself, turning away from Sebastian, but keeping her handful secure.
Shaw perforce lurches along with her -- helluva leash, and he doesn't want the pretty robe ruined by the White Queen's rage. "Christ! You /are/ in a rare, fine mood, aren't you? Does he live there, then? I didn't see any signs of it when I was there, except for the robe she offered to me to wear."
"Wha-?" Emma turns back to him, the incredulousness dissolving quickly back into anger and she releases the hand hold, only to plant both hands on his chest and shove. For all the good that it'll do. "Get the hell out of my room, Sebastian!"
Shaw rocks back with the shove: pure astonishment, not physics. His wide eyes ride high and dark in a blanked face. "Do that again, and I might push you back, my dear," he says because he must, it's traditional, but his heart isn't much in it, not while he's still making swift calculations of the situation. He does grab her wrists, though only firmly, to pin her arms between them in safe control, and just stares. "This is entertaining as hell," he admits then, "but not especially enlightening. Want to tell me about it?"
"Why? Are you appointing yourself my relationship counselor," she snarls, struggling half-heartedly against the grip on her wrists before forcing a series of deep, centering breathes in and out of her nose, calming herself and relaxing her control over her steel-tensed muscles. Bad idea. They begin to tremble, slightly, but noticeable. "What is there to tell? He's merely another in a series of bastards. He was just a little more canny about finding the chinks in my defenses to slip the knife through."
"Well," Shaw measures out and sways grandly forward to lean brow to brow and stare into her eyes with jovial satisfaction, "then you're be heartened to hear that I played with the boy the length of the hallway until he dumped himself in her apartment, disoriented and roughed up and smelling of vomit." He blinks placidly, smiles a bit. "It was fun. I'd claim I was doing it for you if I had any idea you'd done it. And you did do it, I assume from your vitriol? You did very bad things to Mr. Scott Summers. Ah, Emma. You do make me proud."
Emma straightens proudly, holding firm against the pressure, her eyes crossing as they focus on his. So close. God, so close. They narrow, and a thin, humorless smile crosses her lips. "I am indeed, sir. So very much. I hope you kicked him while he was down too, for good measure." A brow slides upwards, more a squirm against his forehead than an identifiable expression. "He did very bad things to me," she replies with a shrug for justification.
Shaw murmurs, "How dare he," and lets her go, backing away with that previous small courtesy. Leaning against the wall behind him, he folds his arms and regards her bright-eyed. "What'd he do, love?"
Again a shrug, accompanied by a small exhalation and relaxation of her posture. "What all men do. Lie, betray, abuse. Promise the heavens and the earth, and drag through hell." She's suddenly so tired, so miserable. Her hand flutters up to run through her hair as she moves away from the doorway and Sebastian. A bitter chuckle. "You'd think I'd have learned..."
Shaw lingers where he is, but his gaze follows her with a crow's brilliant interest. She's so /shiny./ Must be plucked and added to the collection. "My dear. With teachers such as your father and myself, I do wonder why you /haven't./ You are," he mourns softly, brows lowering to balance out the twitch of a smile, "far too trustful for your own good. It's adorable, but it's dangerous. We will have to harden you up. How did he get through your armor? Verbally?"
"Shut up, Sebastian," she repeats irritably, a tired echo. "I've had enough of your lessons, thank you." A dodge. Sullen resentment misdirected. Or perhaps not so much.
Laughing, Shaw wiggles his shoulders into a more comfortable position against the wall and drops his hands again into pockets' open mouths. "Not tonight, then. We have all the time in the world, after all. But /tell/ me, Emma, do. I know how desperate your passion was, between you two." Emotions gild his deep, dark voice: amusement, scorn, frank jealousy. He's not hiding anything tonight; why should he? Far, far too entertaining, all of it. "Did he throw that back in your face?"
Emma flinches visibly, her shoulders lifting and hunching. A solid hit, Mr. Shaw. She responds by striding through the open door of the bath and slamming it shut behind her. This audience is at an end.
Juuuuust as soon as Shaw decides it is. Trailing the edges of soft laughter, he follows her at a casual stroll (the injured foot's ignored, definitely, in the favor of fun) to the door, where he stops to test the knob curiously. He tips his head against the wood and wonders through it, "Emma? My very dear. I have said a bad thing. I'm sorry. I am. Please come out. Or let me in. I promise not to peek!" What was that, about tearing doors off hinges?
The door is locked, and there is no reply, save the muted rustling proving that, alas, Emma hadn't been smart enough to ask Shaw to invest in a few more 'secret passageways' for the upper levels of the Clubhouse during its construction. Or to install them during his absence. Water starts to pour, drowning out his words.
Shaw leans into the door, then, but putting only his own weight into it, not powered-up strength. Yet, anyway. And he can raise his voice just as well as she can, and with access to longer, lower, and thus more charged frequencies, too, to cut through the white noise inside. "Did you fry him?" he wonders at a good volume and depth. "He looked it. I could almost have felt sorry for him. /Emma./ Please. I'm sorry, all right? Just exactly how often to you get do hear your Sebastian say that in all sincerity?" Because that's exactly how he's giving it to her, and with an edge of frustration in voice and manner that she's not even doing him the courtesy of /believing/ it.
Inside, slid down into crouch in the corner between tub and wall, Emma levels a shiny-eyed glare onto the door. << I still don't think I have, >> she slides into his thoughts, her mental voice laced with stitches of white pain, muffled through the protective layers wrapped around his mind.
Shaw rolls his temple into the door's support, eyes half-lidding while he processes and ponders. He sticks to the audible for his stiff reply: "I'm not going to beg, if you're waiting. /You/ promised /me/ a prostration the other day, not the other way around, so don't get greedy, my girl. But . . . yes, I'm sorry I drove you in there. I hadn't honestly meant to. I'm not a skilled interrogator; you're aware of my limitations there as in--" a breathed snort "--so many areas. I'm dying of curiosity, and I'm completely contemptuous of the puppy I pushed around the hall tonight and made spit up on himself. I want to know what happened. I want to know if I get to go /back/ to Mr. Scott Summers at any point and do more than push because of what he's done to my White Queen."
The door opens almost before he finishes his statement, Emma exiting in barely better shape than she entered. "I don't /want/ you to beg, Sebastian. I want you to leave me /alone/." She stalks closer and closer still, so close that unless he backs up, she will crawl /over/ him. "I want you to grant me the /respect/ of allowing me to compose myself and time to determine what information I /want/ to divulge. But if you insist on satisfy your curiosity at the expense of my dignity, so be it. He /did/ throw what little feeling I still carried back in my face. He taunted me, accused me..." Push, step. "If you want to snap his neck and shove it up his ass, feel quite free, my /Black King/."
Shaw does back up, if only because he doesn't seem ready for hand-to-hand combat /quite/ right now. Instead, intensely quiet and intently sober, he gives back through trembling-tight control, "Assaulting Scott Summers wouldn't be the smartest thing I've ever done, Emma, and that's a long enough list as it is, without adding to it. So, we'll have to take my offer in the spirit, not the letter, in which it was offered. I regret that he's hurt you. He's set off my protective instincts now, and I fully hate him for that on top of the contempt and wondering what in God's name Dr. Grey sees in him." Control, control: her thoughts might be white-stitched pain, but his are black-ravelled paranoia, and they're damned well going to stay that way, over any lurking projects and plans. A deep breath. A spread of his hands before him. "You want me to leave. I will. You want me to respect you. I do. Just -- don't push it. A /lot/ of water under the bridge, Queen, and a lot of it deep and red with blood. If we are to be partners even for Wyngarde and FoH business, you can't -- push it. Push /me./"
She backs off as quickly as she'd begun the encounter, peeling away from him and stumbling back into the door frame, one hand behind clutching it desperately. So close. Musn't. Musn't. She rubs at her temple, pain creasing the corners of her eyes and blanching her skin tone. She won't play, no. "No, darling. Summers is nothing more than an inconvenience I'm now cured of. Don't trouble yourself," she replies tiredly, fighting to keep upright, fighting to keep her composure.
Almost as wearily, and not entirely without reluctance, Shaw steps forward again to cup one of her elbows in his palm. "You don't look cured, I have to say. If you are, I'd hate to have seen the disease itself." So quiet and level is his voice, his eyes, his manner. Control, control. "You should sit down at least. Do you want me to ring down for something from the kitchens? It's been a helluva night for us both, but you're getting the worst of it."
"Detox, darling, detox," she mutters, her voice catching at the last. His hand burns her. The heat, the yawning maw, so tempting. She pushes up off the frame and stands, not entirely steadily, but without danger of falling, and crosses to the nearest chair, one stuck in the corner. Decoration. She'll not fall sobbing across her bed. Control indeed.
Shaw hands her down into it and then stands there, momentarily at loose ends while wheels turn. Slowly, true, and reluctantly, but they can't /not./ "I did mention that he threw up?" he finally asks brightly, with deliberate cheer. "And I ruffled his hair before he fell through the door."
Emma leans her head back and looks down... up? her nose at him, eyes narrowed to glittering slits. "Mm... He was probably suffering from vertigo so extreme he couldn't tell his ass from his head. I hope he retains /that/ memory, thank you."
"I'm sure he will," says Shaw dispassionately. "You do your work very well. Was it worth it?"
"Depends. Am I content with the events of tonight? Yes. Conditionally. Was it worth it in the long run? Only for the reminder of lessons I'd thought I'd long since learned."
Shaw decides, "Then it wasn't without worth," and twists a smile. "Good night, Emma. Sleep well. Sleep the sleep of the innocent, on pillows of lessons learned. I'll see you later."
[Log ends.]
Last time I ever try that.
Though I suppose I could have been less the sadistic bastard and more the-
Well, no. Not really.
On top of everything else, my foot is now killing me. Dammit. I wonder if I can redirect Grey's attention to that instead of my knee or metabolism or family history. . . .
The wheels never stop turning. But I need to get some sleep, so they will, right now.
Ah, well.
7/13/2005 [backdated to 7/12/05]
Logfile from Shaw.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If there are to be reports, let them state that the White Queen was seen storming into the clubhouse, with an expression on her face that sent the servants scrambling for the hills, and the ones too dumb to look for cover are now looking for jobs, if they dared approach her. The slam from her door had reverberated throughout the clubhouse, and a steady flow of unintelligible mutterings, punctuated by thuds and crashes had continued for a solid hour thereafter. Things have quiet down, though there is still the occasional, defiant sounds of expensive things getting shattered.
Shaw gives it a good half-hour, which he passes flat on his back in bed, glowering up at the ceiling, before deciding to do something about the sleep he's losing. Out of bed, then, and into the robe snatched off a chair on the way -- still charged up as he is, he hardly pauses in flowing, boiling, irritated motion from his quarters to hers, and it is quite the stern knocking he administers to her door.
"WHAT!?" is the quickly shouted reply. Oh, no, no answering the door for our Ms. Frost. Whoever is on the other side enters at his or her own risk.
Knock. Knock-knock-knock. Knock-knock. Knock. Knock-knock-knock-knock. Slouching with his back against the frame, Shaw seems quite content to reach out just his arm across the door to keep up that steady, unpredictably numbered rhythm until she deigns to give him the courtesy of an invitation. Not for him, walking into fire, no, thank you.
Aw, and here we were hoping he'd just push the door off its frame. Emma storms across the room and throws back the combination of bolts and locks securing the room. "So help me...," she growls, flinging the door open and stopping in blinking surprise at the sight that greets her, her other hand dropping to her side, an ornate vase held by the neck in it. "Sebastian..." Her eyes narrow and she turns her back on him. "Sorry. I haven't managed to pencil you in yet. Go away. I've a headache." Over her shoulder, the room is, quite simply, a mess.
So Shaw moves carefully into it . . . but he does move in, right on in, with long years' long familiarity guiding him past the door's swinging shut, into a spot safe for his bare feet. At least, safe for now: he eyes the vase and then her. "What the hell is going on?" he asks tiredly and shoves his hands into the robe's pockets. "Did the cooks spoil your dinner again? Rip their spines out tomorrow and braid them in a macrame plant holder for all I care, Emma -- but /tomorrow./ Some of us have work in the morning, you know."
She continues to grip the vase in a white-knuckled hold, her other hand balled in an empty-handed echo. "Shut. Up." she grits out, her eyes squeezing shut as she steps forward, taking her face and all its flushed cheeked and red-rimmed eye evidence out of his line of sight.
"Well, that /is/ why I came down here." Shaw's irritation leaks into his voice now, and his shoulders are as tight as his braced legs in an otherwise slumped slouch, balanced by those pocketed fists. "To get you to shut up. Quiet down. Knock it /off./ What happened? Not the cooks, I guess. One of your students? Worthington? Me?"
A short bark of laughter, and she finally turns to glance over her shoulder slyly at him. "Don't flatter yourself so. I fully expect /you/ to be the bastard you always are." She completes the turn and faces him with a bitter and brittle smile. "No. Not Worthington, nor a student. Not anyone, not to me, not anymore..." her voices grinds down, and she looks away, looks into her memory and tightens even further, her shoulders rising and the vase in her hand trembling under the pressure.
Shaw snaps. He does; it's been a long day for him, too, and no sly glance or happy fun trip through memory is going to change that /or/ his full-steam-ahead approach. "Then fuck him or her or who the fuck /ever,/ Emma, and let me get some sleep. Jesus. Stop thrashing around like a goddamned drama queen -- ha. Yes. /Drama/ queen, not White. Keep it up, and I'll start to expect some ranting about wire hangers." He breathes out a low, growled sound. "Get it out of your system on your own time, not mine. All right?"
The vase sails past his ear and shatters against the door behind him. Emma spins, not even looking to see if she'd clipped him or not, and heads for the other door into the room, the one leading to her private quarters, muttering as she crosses about assholes and the acrobatics involved with letting them fuck themselves in various public venues: busy highways, bridges, and such. Also prominent are references to one-eyed bastards hiding their blindness behind their powers. Summers.
Shaw does duck in time to avoid the vase and its splashback, but his automatic sidestep lands him on a shard of one of her other projectiles. "--Shit! Goddamn son of a--" and so on from there while he stops to lean into a hand's splay against the wall and examine the bloodied sole of his foot through a scowl's hard, dark mask. He picks out the bit of glass, mutters a fresh oath as he steps forward carefully to test the wound. Then he keeps stepping, and very carefully, right after her into her quarters, in a contained fury of black-silked hunch. ". . . Summers." Flat. "Did I hear you right?"
Emma rounds on him as he follows her into her quarters. "How dare you! Get. Out." she hisses, closing the distance with such palpable anger that it'd be a rare man indeed who wouldn't fall back at least a step or two. "Yes. Summers. You can blame your interrupted sleep on him. Though I doubt he'd be in much state to provide you any satisfaction."
And is Sebastian Shaw that rare man? Oh, isn't he just: with a wicked grin, he lifts his head a little and twitches his shoulders back to emphasize the difference in their heights and sizes . . . and then politely retreats a small step. "Scott Summers, is it?" he requires, still coasting on the smile's energy even as it fades back into the background rumble of anger, then annoyance, then reluctant intrigue. "I met him tonight. Ran into him, in fact, and nearly literally, given his state."
Emma is paying little mind to the size differential. In fact, she's paying little mind to much of anything, coming to a stop mere inches from him, her hands on her hips and her head tilted back to look up at him with a ice-wrapped glare. "Yes. Scott Summers," she spits, eyeing him suspiciously. "Did you now..." Her voice dips into a lower register, rough silk as she lifts a hand to his chest and fingers the robe's material. "How was my precious pet, hmm? I do hope you didn't find him where I left him. Alleyways are much too dangerous a place for you to be wandering..."
"Outside Jean Grey's apartment," is Shaw's judiciously clipped summary, and if he isn't exactly grabbing her hand to keep it under control, there's the shadow of that intention in his glower and his mind's foremost aspect.
"Jea.... rrgh," Her fingers tightening thoughtlessly now in the material, curling into a fist. "Figures. Of course he'd trot home to his precious bitch," she mutters to herself, turning away from Sebastian, but keeping her handful secure.
Shaw perforce lurches along with her -- helluva leash, and he doesn't want the pretty robe ruined by the White Queen's rage. "Christ! You /are/ in a rare, fine mood, aren't you? Does he live there, then? I didn't see any signs of it when I was there, except for the robe she offered to me to wear."
"Wha-?" Emma turns back to him, the incredulousness dissolving quickly back into anger and she releases the hand hold, only to plant both hands on his chest and shove. For all the good that it'll do. "Get the hell out of my room, Sebastian!"
Shaw rocks back with the shove: pure astonishment, not physics. His wide eyes ride high and dark in a blanked face. "Do that again, and I might push you back, my dear," he says because he must, it's traditional, but his heart isn't much in it, not while he's still making swift calculations of the situation. He does grab her wrists, though only firmly, to pin her arms between them in safe control, and just stares. "This is entertaining as hell," he admits then, "but not especially enlightening. Want to tell me about it?"
"Why? Are you appointing yourself my relationship counselor," she snarls, struggling half-heartedly against the grip on her wrists before forcing a series of deep, centering breathes in and out of her nose, calming herself and relaxing her control over her steel-tensed muscles. Bad idea. They begin to tremble, slightly, but noticeable. "What is there to tell? He's merely another in a series of bastards. He was just a little more canny about finding the chinks in my defenses to slip the knife through."
"Well," Shaw measures out and sways grandly forward to lean brow to brow and stare into her eyes with jovial satisfaction, "then you're be heartened to hear that I played with the boy the length of the hallway until he dumped himself in her apartment, disoriented and roughed up and smelling of vomit." He blinks placidly, smiles a bit. "It was fun. I'd claim I was doing it for you if I had any idea you'd done it. And you did do it, I assume from your vitriol? You did very bad things to Mr. Scott Summers. Ah, Emma. You do make me proud."
Emma straightens proudly, holding firm against the pressure, her eyes crossing as they focus on his. So close. God, so close. They narrow, and a thin, humorless smile crosses her lips. "I am indeed, sir. So very much. I hope you kicked him while he was down too, for good measure." A brow slides upwards, more a squirm against his forehead than an identifiable expression. "He did very bad things to me," she replies with a shrug for justification.
Shaw murmurs, "How dare he," and lets her go, backing away with that previous small courtesy. Leaning against the wall behind him, he folds his arms and regards her bright-eyed. "What'd he do, love?"
Again a shrug, accompanied by a small exhalation and relaxation of her posture. "What all men do. Lie, betray, abuse. Promise the heavens and the earth, and drag through hell." She's suddenly so tired, so miserable. Her hand flutters up to run through her hair as she moves away from the doorway and Sebastian. A bitter chuckle. "You'd think I'd have learned..."
Shaw lingers where he is, but his gaze follows her with a crow's brilliant interest. She's so /shiny./ Must be plucked and added to the collection. "My dear. With teachers such as your father and myself, I do wonder why you /haven't./ You are," he mourns softly, brows lowering to balance out the twitch of a smile, "far too trustful for your own good. It's adorable, but it's dangerous. We will have to harden you up. How did he get through your armor? Verbally?"
"Shut up, Sebastian," she repeats irritably, a tired echo. "I've had enough of your lessons, thank you." A dodge. Sullen resentment misdirected. Or perhaps not so much.
Laughing, Shaw wiggles his shoulders into a more comfortable position against the wall and drops his hands again into pockets' open mouths. "Not tonight, then. We have all the time in the world, after all. But /tell/ me, Emma, do. I know how desperate your passion was, between you two." Emotions gild his deep, dark voice: amusement, scorn, frank jealousy. He's not hiding anything tonight; why should he? Far, far too entertaining, all of it. "Did he throw that back in your face?"
Emma flinches visibly, her shoulders lifting and hunching. A solid hit, Mr. Shaw. She responds by striding through the open door of the bath and slamming it shut behind her. This audience is at an end.
Juuuuust as soon as Shaw decides it is. Trailing the edges of soft laughter, he follows her at a casual stroll (the injured foot's ignored, definitely, in the favor of fun) to the door, where he stops to test the knob curiously. He tips his head against the wood and wonders through it, "Emma? My very dear. I have said a bad thing. I'm sorry. I am. Please come out. Or let me in. I promise not to peek!" What was that, about tearing doors off hinges?
The door is locked, and there is no reply, save the muted rustling proving that, alas, Emma hadn't been smart enough to ask Shaw to invest in a few more 'secret passageways' for the upper levels of the Clubhouse during its construction. Or to install them during his absence. Water starts to pour, drowning out his words.
Shaw leans into the door, then, but putting only his own weight into it, not powered-up strength. Yet, anyway. And he can raise his voice just as well as she can, and with access to longer, lower, and thus more charged frequencies, too, to cut through the white noise inside. "Did you fry him?" he wonders at a good volume and depth. "He looked it. I could almost have felt sorry for him. /Emma./ Please. I'm sorry, all right? Just exactly how often to you get do hear your Sebastian say that in all sincerity?" Because that's exactly how he's giving it to her, and with an edge of frustration in voice and manner that she's not even doing him the courtesy of /believing/ it.
Inside, slid down into crouch in the corner between tub and wall, Emma levels a shiny-eyed glare onto the door. << I still don't think I have, >> she slides into his thoughts, her mental voice laced with stitches of white pain, muffled through the protective layers wrapped around his mind.
Shaw rolls his temple into the door's support, eyes half-lidding while he processes and ponders. He sticks to the audible for his stiff reply: "I'm not going to beg, if you're waiting. /You/ promised /me/ a prostration the other day, not the other way around, so don't get greedy, my girl. But . . . yes, I'm sorry I drove you in there. I hadn't honestly meant to. I'm not a skilled interrogator; you're aware of my limitations there as in--" a breathed snort "--so many areas. I'm dying of curiosity, and I'm completely contemptuous of the puppy I pushed around the hall tonight and made spit up on himself. I want to know what happened. I want to know if I get to go /back/ to Mr. Scott Summers at any point and do more than push because of what he's done to my White Queen."
The door opens almost before he finishes his statement, Emma exiting in barely better shape than she entered. "I don't /want/ you to beg, Sebastian. I want you to leave me /alone/." She stalks closer and closer still, so close that unless he backs up, she will crawl /over/ him. "I want you to grant me the /respect/ of allowing me to compose myself and time to determine what information I /want/ to divulge. But if you insist on satisfy your curiosity at the expense of my dignity, so be it. He /did/ throw what little feeling I still carried back in my face. He taunted me, accused me..." Push, step. "If you want to snap his neck and shove it up his ass, feel quite free, my /Black King/."
Shaw does back up, if only because he doesn't seem ready for hand-to-hand combat /quite/ right now. Instead, intensely quiet and intently sober, he gives back through trembling-tight control, "Assaulting Scott Summers wouldn't be the smartest thing I've ever done, Emma, and that's a long enough list as it is, without adding to it. So, we'll have to take my offer in the spirit, not the letter, in which it was offered. I regret that he's hurt you. He's set off my protective instincts now, and I fully hate him for that on top of the contempt and wondering what in God's name Dr. Grey sees in him." Control, control: her thoughts might be white-stitched pain, but his are black-ravelled paranoia, and they're damned well going to stay that way, over any lurking projects and plans. A deep breath. A spread of his hands before him. "You want me to leave. I will. You want me to respect you. I do. Just -- don't push it. A /lot/ of water under the bridge, Queen, and a lot of it deep and red with blood. If we are to be partners even for Wyngarde and FoH business, you can't -- push it. Push /me./"
She backs off as quickly as she'd begun the encounter, peeling away from him and stumbling back into the door frame, one hand behind clutching it desperately. So close. Musn't. Musn't. She rubs at her temple, pain creasing the corners of her eyes and blanching her skin tone. She won't play, no. "No, darling. Summers is nothing more than an inconvenience I'm now cured of. Don't trouble yourself," she replies tiredly, fighting to keep upright, fighting to keep her composure.
Almost as wearily, and not entirely without reluctance, Shaw steps forward again to cup one of her elbows in his palm. "You don't look cured, I have to say. If you are, I'd hate to have seen the disease itself." So quiet and level is his voice, his eyes, his manner. Control, control. "You should sit down at least. Do you want me to ring down for something from the kitchens? It's been a helluva night for us both, but you're getting the worst of it."
"Detox, darling, detox," she mutters, her voice catching at the last. His hand burns her. The heat, the yawning maw, so tempting. She pushes up off the frame and stands, not entirely steadily, but without danger of falling, and crosses to the nearest chair, one stuck in the corner. Decoration. She'll not fall sobbing across her bed. Control indeed.
Shaw hands her down into it and then stands there, momentarily at loose ends while wheels turn. Slowly, true, and reluctantly, but they can't /not./ "I did mention that he threw up?" he finally asks brightly, with deliberate cheer. "And I ruffled his hair before he fell through the door."
Emma leans her head back and looks down... up? her nose at him, eyes narrowed to glittering slits. "Mm... He was probably suffering from vertigo so extreme he couldn't tell his ass from his head. I hope he retains /that/ memory, thank you."
"I'm sure he will," says Shaw dispassionately. "You do your work very well. Was it worth it?"
"Depends. Am I content with the events of tonight? Yes. Conditionally. Was it worth it in the long run? Only for the reminder of lessons I'd thought I'd long since learned."
Shaw decides, "Then it wasn't without worth," and twists a smile. "Good night, Emma. Sleep well. Sleep the sleep of the innocent, on pillows of lessons learned. I'll see you later."
[Log ends.]