Delicate balance
So, Jason Wyngarde isn't the only one who needs a little discipline. Or a little venting: punishing her was for my benefit, but the offer to fight was for hers. Get that anger out, direct it safely at me instead of a less prudent target (the Friends, say, or the Brotherhood, or even the White Court, for all I know) . . . and let her steep in it awhile longer. It'll make our next time, fighting or fucking, all the sweeter.
-And he wants weapons from me? Not even for Warren Worthington's broken body at my feet, not anymore. He and his group (and his cause!) are radioactive, and Purity is on the rise. I can only hope the hysteria will die down instead of cresting into some kind of permanent enshrinement. More laws, perhaps. Would they register all of us now? Do we have the votes to defeat that?
Or . . . Wide Awake. If the government knew about it, had access to it, especially now of all times, after the rally - shit. I need to talk to Frost. Frost and Grey.
11/10/2005
Logfile from Shaw.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hellfire Clubhouse - Kitchen
With facilities for making meals of one course or ten for one person or one hundred, the large and very modern kitchen provides anything one could desire. Black marble countertops stretch around and between brushed steel equipment, with several different types of ovens or stoves made for different types of cooking. A bewildering array of pots and pans, copper or otherwise, hang from the ceiling cupboards.
--
The servants are long gone, and the cooks and club patrons, too, leaving the kitchen to the Hellfire Club's Black King, who is systematically slamming through the cupboards in search of ... something. His tuxedo's jacket lies neatly folded over a counter, black cloth on black marble; his tie, released from his open collar, lies looped atop the folds. Slam. Step sideways. Open. Slam. He's nearly to the end of the row, hard up against the wall. Step sideways. Open.
It's the slamming that gets her attention -- and a slow, cautious look from around the kitchen's corner. Sal blinks, equally slowly. Yawns, before padding on silent, bare feet, further into the kitchen. "Need something?"
"Midnight snack," Shaw says shortly and slams the last cupboard closed and turns to her. His hair's falling out of its neat, thick queue, onto the crisp white spread of dress shirt over shoulders. Irritably, he puffs back a stray strand and glowers at his Rook. "Haven't had anything to eat all night except hors d'oeuvres. That new exhibit at MoMA -- what are you doing up?"
"The same," is delivered cooly -- for her part, curls are tucked back, back! bound into a long, chaotic ponytail, from which curls escape to frame the lines of her face. She, it might be noted, does /not/ puff at the offenders, but resists temptation to brush Shaw's aside. "How was the exhibit?"
Shaw stalks past her to try a new set of cabinets, these ground-level. Crouching and peering around the first door, he mutters, "Fine. Ridiculous. Bad art and worse champagne and even worse company. Barnes and Wilkens cornered me to talk financial woes, a mutant outed herself to me, and so on and so forth. --Ha!" The exclamation cuts off his grousing, and he waggles a container of Pepperidge Farm cookies at her over the cabinet door, grinning. "I knew we had things hidden around here. Drives the cooks nuts, but I need to be able to find snacks at all hours, any day of the week."
Sal only rolls her eyes a little bit, as she leans over a counter -- the nightgown, while decent, is still silky and black, and (to her) makes the sweetest sound as it brushes against the marble. "So noted. Is my timing good enough that we'll be able to share?" Eyebrows lift in question, before she asks, "A mutant outed herself to you? Sebastian Shaw, well-known mutant-hating bigot?"
"What can I say? I'm charming as hell," says the man himself, acidly cynical, and climbs back to his feet. He leans on the counter, too, facing her; fingers work busily at the container's top. Paper rustles. Hair falls forward over his brow and eye. "She's that one who got on the news for registering herself. Dana Tomlinson. Businesswoman. I don't think she's a Hellfire member, but maybe she wants to be. Mutants in our halls. Horrors." And he snorts.
Temptation is given in to, finally, as she watches him work on the container -- fingers flick out as she shifts her weight, and brushes the errant strands of hair away from eye and brow, tucks them behind his ear. There. "Lovely! Just ... lovely." Her words are quiet, her tone weary.
Shaw chuckles. "What, my hair?"
Sal snorts. "That too. I /meant/ Tomlinson."
"Fine, fine. Here, have a cookie." Shaw pries one out for her and hands it over before biting into one of his own. Chewing, he eyes her. "...Tomlinson was talking to someone I think might be a member. Randall Knightly. Look him up tomorrow; maybe the two are connected somehow, and he was -- well, he bugged me. A bit too wordy. Too British. Like Percy Talhurst."
Sal accepts her cookie with all due solemnity, biting into it (savoring!) before she answers. "Percy," is not laced with as much bile as it has been in the past, though there is still something unsettled about it -- his relations, perhaps? "I'll definitely look into it, however. I know the feeling."
Shaw sighs. "I should've had you there. Had you smelled him for me or something. My gut leaps to the wrong conclusion at least as often as it does to the right one." He slouches forward on splayed elbows, runs a hand back over his hair, tips his head at her. Eyes sink dark and quiet; mouth drags tired. "I've been out of the clubhouse all day. I miss anything?"
Sal waggles her cookie. "And what good would that have done you, except to've had another set of instincts to run on? I leap to conclusions just as often as you do." The drag of his mouth prompts a sigh, and she passes a finger -- so lightly -- across it. Takes his measure for one long moment -- and something clicks, in her head, behind the cool, grey regard. And so, the words, with only the slightest smoothed-out hitch in her voice: "In the clubhouse? No, nothing. Everyone's been focused on that rally."
A soundless snarl. "The rally. Jesus fucking Christ -- the rally." Shaw growls into another bite and so moves right past that hitch (and the touch before it, for that matter). "What a clusterfuck. The Brotherhood attacks Purity. Purity membership skyrockets. Sentiment, for the moment, turns against mutants. /Not/ what we want, Harper, speaking for the Circle. It can hide our existence, sure, but it gunks up the lines of our influence."
"Do you think I don't know that?" returns the snarl, and a fist impacts the marble, though not hard enough to damage. "It's the last thing we fucking needed. The last thing /anyone/ needed, really."
Shaw quiets immediately. Goes still, like a serpent before the strike. "So I'm thinking aloud. Forgive me. This has me on edge, too, obviously."
Sal is unrepentant, on-edge. "Obviously," is snapped back, before nimble fingers and quick reflexes procure her another cookie, and she paces off to stalk the kitchen. Where Shaw is stilled, she is restless.
Shaw twists a smile before having another bite. "Someone's feeling bitchy. Even bitchier than me. If you're looking for a fight..."
"Are you offering one?" This time she stills, to toss a smoky, roiling look back at Shaw.
Slowly Shaw shakes his head. "You're welcome to hit me all you like, but you know it doesn't do anything except charge me up. I was going to say, if you're looking for one, go find a Friend of Humanity. I told you about the fight clubs, right? They must be connected." A thought narrows his eyes, but he shakes his head and moves on, to stare back at her with bland, even amused challenge. "You can't defeat me, anyway. Why bother?"
Sal snarls a wordless challenge, and starts stalking again. "Because I can't break you, either," is finally admitted, on a swing back near enough that the low growl will carry. "Because I won't fucking kill you if I try to put my fist through your face."
Shaw smiles, turning on his elbow to follow her visually. He crunches another bite of cookie. "Low-level use of my mutation won't kill me. Probably. I could be just trying to hide behind that excuse."
Still snarling, but paying attention. "Define 'low-level'."
For answer, Shaw curls his free hand into a fist and thumps it, hard, against the marble countertop. Then he hikes his brows peremptorily at her: see?
Sal raises her brows up at him, conterpoint to his expression: seen. It is a moment before she stalks back into range -- and there's a hitch in the motion, a gathering of self before she launches herself up and over the countertop. It is not elegant, it is not calculated -- it is just a mass of flying weight, designed to impact and off-balance. And once she does, she strikes, with a hard and fast fist to his nose.
Shaw drops his cookies, and that bothers him a lot more than the flying mass of Rook knocked into him. He rides out the mass, the blow, with a step back, a catch of his balance without noticeable anger or annoyance -- but huffs at the sight of his snack tumbling to the floor. Casually, he cracks her backhand across the face. "I was still eating."
Her head snaps back at the backhand, and she uses him to push back off of -- winds up, crouched and ready, back up on the counter. "You say that like I'm in a mood to care."
A cold smile creases Shaw's face. Idly he flexes his striking hand. His scent's heightened: androgens and adrenaline and more exotic compounds speaking of stress and aggression and arousal in hot, seeping urgency. "Well, /I/ care, and I'm your boss and your ruler, aren't I? Let me have my snack, woman. Go beat up one of the pawns. Might get a fair fight that way, instead of the royal -- and I do use the word advisedly -- ass-kicking you'd get with me."
A smile twists Sal's features for a moment, the expression unpleasant in its mockery. "Yes, my King," is purred, and she launches herself off the counter again -- toward Shaw, yes, but only to a point. She lands, inches away, and stopps to sweep the cookies up with an efficient, deadly motion. "Your snack?" She teases, dangling the cookies in front of him -- then deposits them on the counter, and turns to leave.
Shaw grabs her arm and yanks her back, hard into him, spine to belly, and he lowers his head to hiss in her ear, "Those are /mine./" And he twists her arm, slow and methodical, grinding tendons around her wrist and wrenching the shoulder joint.
Sal hisses slowly, arching up onto her toes to ease the pressure on her shoulder joint. "I put them," she points out quietly, angrily, "on the fucking counter."
"But," Shaw says with tender, solicitous care as his hand tightens still harder, twists still further until ligaments must be screaming for release (before dismemberment, and oh, with his strength, he could do that, he could), "you did take them from me. And you taunted me with them. That's not very mannerly of you, Harper. Not very proper of you, Black Rook." His voice drops. His head drops. He is heat and iron behind her, against her. "I should punish you for that."
"I returned them to you," is quiet, dangerous. But she does not struggle against her bonds -- though with her strength, she could. And could repair herself, should it come to that. Fingers wiggle, and tendons and ligaments groan with the effort expended. Balance shifted, she snakes a foot around Shaw's ankle.
Shaw laughs short and sharp at the touch, and quickly snaps her out away from him with an easy flick of his own shoulder and wrist, like cracking a whip. And he lets her go, and he reclines on an elbow on the counter again, smiling aslant. "Returned them to me. I see. Should I thank you for that? No. You're upset. You're angry. You're probably hurt, but healing. And aroused?"
Sal hits the counter with enough directed force that the marble fractures slightly -- ribs possibly follow suit, but already begin regeneration, healing. "I am," is answered, though she does not specify -- simply steadies herself against the counter, but does not wince.
"Good. That's your punishment." Shaw straightens, brushes his hands and then his shirt. "I'm going to bed, alone, and I'm setting my suite's security measures to lethal. Even your healing couldn't save you from them, believe me, so please don't try to circumvent the system. It gets cranky, much as I do." He crinkles the corners of his eyes at her, and they twinkle black and cold. "Go fight a pawn, as I said. Or fuck one. I'll talk to you tomorrow afternoon at our workout. Bring the latest news on Wyngarde and the others on your watch. Good night, Harper."
"Good night, Shaw," stands in stead for other, more appropriate phrase, though the tone leaves none to the imagination -- it is nearly spat out, as she stalks off into the darkness. "Tomorrow. Afternoon."
Shaw watches her go and lets out a held breath slowly when she's gone. His fist thumps again on the countertop, but lightly this time, careful of the cracks and his power. Then, with a wrenched-wry grin, he picks up the cookies and heads off, too, upstairs for that secure and lonely privacy.
[Log ends.]
-And he wants weapons from me? Not even for Warren Worthington's broken body at my feet, not anymore. He and his group (and his cause!) are radioactive, and Purity is on the rise. I can only hope the hysteria will die down instead of cresting into some kind of permanent enshrinement. More laws, perhaps. Would they register all of us now? Do we have the votes to defeat that?
Or . . . Wide Awake. If the government knew about it, had access to it, especially now of all times, after the rally - shit. I need to talk to Frost. Frost and Grey.
11/10/2005
Logfile from Shaw.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hellfire Clubhouse - Kitchen
With facilities for making meals of one course or ten for one person or one hundred, the large and very modern kitchen provides anything one could desire. Black marble countertops stretch around and between brushed steel equipment, with several different types of ovens or stoves made for different types of cooking. A bewildering array of pots and pans, copper or otherwise, hang from the ceiling cupboards.
--
The servants are long gone, and the cooks and club patrons, too, leaving the kitchen to the Hellfire Club's Black King, who is systematically slamming through the cupboards in search of ... something. His tuxedo's jacket lies neatly folded over a counter, black cloth on black marble; his tie, released from his open collar, lies looped atop the folds. Slam. Step sideways. Open. Slam. He's nearly to the end of the row, hard up against the wall. Step sideways. Open.
It's the slamming that gets her attention -- and a slow, cautious look from around the kitchen's corner. Sal blinks, equally slowly. Yawns, before padding on silent, bare feet, further into the kitchen. "Need something?"
"Midnight snack," Shaw says shortly and slams the last cupboard closed and turns to her. His hair's falling out of its neat, thick queue, onto the crisp white spread of dress shirt over shoulders. Irritably, he puffs back a stray strand and glowers at his Rook. "Haven't had anything to eat all night except hors d'oeuvres. That new exhibit at MoMA -- what are you doing up?"
"The same," is delivered cooly -- for her part, curls are tucked back, back! bound into a long, chaotic ponytail, from which curls escape to frame the lines of her face. She, it might be noted, does /not/ puff at the offenders, but resists temptation to brush Shaw's aside. "How was the exhibit?"
Shaw stalks past her to try a new set of cabinets, these ground-level. Crouching and peering around the first door, he mutters, "Fine. Ridiculous. Bad art and worse champagne and even worse company. Barnes and Wilkens cornered me to talk financial woes, a mutant outed herself to me, and so on and so forth. --Ha!" The exclamation cuts off his grousing, and he waggles a container of Pepperidge Farm cookies at her over the cabinet door, grinning. "I knew we had things hidden around here. Drives the cooks nuts, but I need to be able to find snacks at all hours, any day of the week."
Sal only rolls her eyes a little bit, as she leans over a counter -- the nightgown, while decent, is still silky and black, and (to her) makes the sweetest sound as it brushes against the marble. "So noted. Is my timing good enough that we'll be able to share?" Eyebrows lift in question, before she asks, "A mutant outed herself to you? Sebastian Shaw, well-known mutant-hating bigot?"
"What can I say? I'm charming as hell," says the man himself, acidly cynical, and climbs back to his feet. He leans on the counter, too, facing her; fingers work busily at the container's top. Paper rustles. Hair falls forward over his brow and eye. "She's that one who got on the news for registering herself. Dana Tomlinson. Businesswoman. I don't think she's a Hellfire member, but maybe she wants to be. Mutants in our halls. Horrors." And he snorts.
Temptation is given in to, finally, as she watches him work on the container -- fingers flick out as she shifts her weight, and brushes the errant strands of hair away from eye and brow, tucks them behind his ear. There. "Lovely! Just ... lovely." Her words are quiet, her tone weary.
Shaw chuckles. "What, my hair?"
Sal snorts. "That too. I /meant/ Tomlinson."
"Fine, fine. Here, have a cookie." Shaw pries one out for her and hands it over before biting into one of his own. Chewing, he eyes her. "...Tomlinson was talking to someone I think might be a member. Randall Knightly. Look him up tomorrow; maybe the two are connected somehow, and he was -- well, he bugged me. A bit too wordy. Too British. Like Percy Talhurst."
Sal accepts her cookie with all due solemnity, biting into it (savoring!) before she answers. "Percy," is not laced with as much bile as it has been in the past, though there is still something unsettled about it -- his relations, perhaps? "I'll definitely look into it, however. I know the feeling."
Shaw sighs. "I should've had you there. Had you smelled him for me or something. My gut leaps to the wrong conclusion at least as often as it does to the right one." He slouches forward on splayed elbows, runs a hand back over his hair, tips his head at her. Eyes sink dark and quiet; mouth drags tired. "I've been out of the clubhouse all day. I miss anything?"
Sal waggles her cookie. "And what good would that have done you, except to've had another set of instincts to run on? I leap to conclusions just as often as you do." The drag of his mouth prompts a sigh, and she passes a finger -- so lightly -- across it. Takes his measure for one long moment -- and something clicks, in her head, behind the cool, grey regard. And so, the words, with only the slightest smoothed-out hitch in her voice: "In the clubhouse? No, nothing. Everyone's been focused on that rally."
A soundless snarl. "The rally. Jesus fucking Christ -- the rally." Shaw growls into another bite and so moves right past that hitch (and the touch before it, for that matter). "What a clusterfuck. The Brotherhood attacks Purity. Purity membership skyrockets. Sentiment, for the moment, turns against mutants. /Not/ what we want, Harper, speaking for the Circle. It can hide our existence, sure, but it gunks up the lines of our influence."
"Do you think I don't know that?" returns the snarl, and a fist impacts the marble, though not hard enough to damage. "It's the last thing we fucking needed. The last thing /anyone/ needed, really."
Shaw quiets immediately. Goes still, like a serpent before the strike. "So I'm thinking aloud. Forgive me. This has me on edge, too, obviously."
Sal is unrepentant, on-edge. "Obviously," is snapped back, before nimble fingers and quick reflexes procure her another cookie, and she paces off to stalk the kitchen. Where Shaw is stilled, she is restless.
Shaw twists a smile before having another bite. "Someone's feeling bitchy. Even bitchier than me. If you're looking for a fight..."
"Are you offering one?" This time she stills, to toss a smoky, roiling look back at Shaw.
Slowly Shaw shakes his head. "You're welcome to hit me all you like, but you know it doesn't do anything except charge me up. I was going to say, if you're looking for one, go find a Friend of Humanity. I told you about the fight clubs, right? They must be connected." A thought narrows his eyes, but he shakes his head and moves on, to stare back at her with bland, even amused challenge. "You can't defeat me, anyway. Why bother?"
Sal snarls a wordless challenge, and starts stalking again. "Because I can't break you, either," is finally admitted, on a swing back near enough that the low growl will carry. "Because I won't fucking kill you if I try to put my fist through your face."
Shaw smiles, turning on his elbow to follow her visually. He crunches another bite of cookie. "Low-level use of my mutation won't kill me. Probably. I could be just trying to hide behind that excuse."
Still snarling, but paying attention. "Define 'low-level'."
For answer, Shaw curls his free hand into a fist and thumps it, hard, against the marble countertop. Then he hikes his brows peremptorily at her: see?
Sal raises her brows up at him, conterpoint to his expression: seen. It is a moment before she stalks back into range -- and there's a hitch in the motion, a gathering of self before she launches herself up and over the countertop. It is not elegant, it is not calculated -- it is just a mass of flying weight, designed to impact and off-balance. And once she does, she strikes, with a hard and fast fist to his nose.
Shaw drops his cookies, and that bothers him a lot more than the flying mass of Rook knocked into him. He rides out the mass, the blow, with a step back, a catch of his balance without noticeable anger or annoyance -- but huffs at the sight of his snack tumbling to the floor. Casually, he cracks her backhand across the face. "I was still eating."
Her head snaps back at the backhand, and she uses him to push back off of -- winds up, crouched and ready, back up on the counter. "You say that like I'm in a mood to care."
A cold smile creases Shaw's face. Idly he flexes his striking hand. His scent's heightened: androgens and adrenaline and more exotic compounds speaking of stress and aggression and arousal in hot, seeping urgency. "Well, /I/ care, and I'm your boss and your ruler, aren't I? Let me have my snack, woman. Go beat up one of the pawns. Might get a fair fight that way, instead of the royal -- and I do use the word advisedly -- ass-kicking you'd get with me."
A smile twists Sal's features for a moment, the expression unpleasant in its mockery. "Yes, my King," is purred, and she launches herself off the counter again -- toward Shaw, yes, but only to a point. She lands, inches away, and stopps to sweep the cookies up with an efficient, deadly motion. "Your snack?" She teases, dangling the cookies in front of him -- then deposits them on the counter, and turns to leave.
Shaw grabs her arm and yanks her back, hard into him, spine to belly, and he lowers his head to hiss in her ear, "Those are /mine./" And he twists her arm, slow and methodical, grinding tendons around her wrist and wrenching the shoulder joint.
Sal hisses slowly, arching up onto her toes to ease the pressure on her shoulder joint. "I put them," she points out quietly, angrily, "on the fucking counter."
"But," Shaw says with tender, solicitous care as his hand tightens still harder, twists still further until ligaments must be screaming for release (before dismemberment, and oh, with his strength, he could do that, he could), "you did take them from me. And you taunted me with them. That's not very mannerly of you, Harper. Not very proper of you, Black Rook." His voice drops. His head drops. He is heat and iron behind her, against her. "I should punish you for that."
"I returned them to you," is quiet, dangerous. But she does not struggle against her bonds -- though with her strength, she could. And could repair herself, should it come to that. Fingers wiggle, and tendons and ligaments groan with the effort expended. Balance shifted, she snakes a foot around Shaw's ankle.
Shaw laughs short and sharp at the touch, and quickly snaps her out away from him with an easy flick of his own shoulder and wrist, like cracking a whip. And he lets her go, and he reclines on an elbow on the counter again, smiling aslant. "Returned them to me. I see. Should I thank you for that? No. You're upset. You're angry. You're probably hurt, but healing. And aroused?"
Sal hits the counter with enough directed force that the marble fractures slightly -- ribs possibly follow suit, but already begin regeneration, healing. "I am," is answered, though she does not specify -- simply steadies herself against the counter, but does not wince.
"Good. That's your punishment." Shaw straightens, brushes his hands and then his shirt. "I'm going to bed, alone, and I'm setting my suite's security measures to lethal. Even your healing couldn't save you from them, believe me, so please don't try to circumvent the system. It gets cranky, much as I do." He crinkles the corners of his eyes at her, and they twinkle black and cold. "Go fight a pawn, as I said. Or fuck one. I'll talk to you tomorrow afternoon at our workout. Bring the latest news on Wyngarde and the others on your watch. Good night, Harper."
"Good night, Shaw," stands in stead for other, more appropriate phrase, though the tone leaves none to the imagination -- it is nearly spat out, as she stalks off into the darkness. "Tomorrow. Afternoon."
Shaw watches her go and lets out a held breath slowly when she's gone. His fist thumps again on the countertop, but lightly this time, careful of the cracks and his power. Then, with a wrenched-wry grin, he picks up the cookies and heads off, too, upstairs for that secure and lonely privacy.
[Log ends.]