(no subject)
OOC: Backdated to the night of Lucy's extra finger.
Having abandoned the serving size of his glass, Erik has relegated himself to something that is part slouch and part drape upon the half of his couch that is lined up directly with the television with a bottle of whiskey that is, as usual, approximately half-empty. On the flat screen television, rhinoceros are attempting to do something obscene, and he watches past the open flare of his collar with a critical eye.
Rattle rattle, knob turn: the front door jerks open and Ellen stumbles through, catching herself with a white-knuckled grip on the knob and a startled glare of pale eyes flicking this way and that. Balance and dignity retained after a frozen moment with pulse racing and jaw set, she straightens and closes the door behind her with the deep concentration and exquisite care of the mildly inebriated.
Magneto jolts somewhat predictably, and the television image flickers right about the time that Mr. Rhinoceros attempts to make his move. Fortunately, he is past the point of mild inebriation, and so is quick to relax again when a positive ID is made, and Ellen closes the door. "Hello, Ellen."
Ellen unbuttons her suit jacket and then pulls it off, folding it over her arm with a slightly irritated frown. She crosses towards the couch on slow, extremely even steps, as though proving to herself that she is perfectly capable of walking in a line. "Good evening. The world is full of fools, concentrated locally."
"Yes," Erik agrees huskily, whiskey sloshing when he tips his bottle back for another swallow and bends his right leg to allow her more room to sit down, should she wish to do so. His trousers are black, and still neatly pressed. His shirt is azure; oddly vibrant given that he has found cause to take up drunken residence upon his couch.
Her shirt is blue of a much paler shade, the soft fall of cotton shifting against her torso as she folds down to perch upon the edge of the couch, at first as stiff and upright in her seated posture as ever she is. She lifts a hand, wiggles each finger in turn, and then drops it to her lap and slumps back, half against the couch and half against his leg. There is a certain vodka scent on her breath that accompanies the weary exhalation of a sigh. "I hate all of them," grumbles Ellen.
"As do I. They should be destroyed." Erik lowers the bottle, and then chuckles into it before offering it to Ellen. He does not sit up to extend his reach, and there is a patch of darkness spreading across the tendons in the back of his hand.
Ellen starts to reach to take it and pauses with fingers outstretched to frown seriously down at his hand.
"’Tis a terrible pity that we've already tried our very hardest and come away without hope of victory." Voice rasping again, Erik tilts his chin back and up to focus briefly back upon the television, and so does not notice her frowning, seriously or otherwise.
"What did you do to your hand?" Ellen asks, squinting down at it rather than precisely listening, and then looking up at him with something like reproach. There are a smattering of tendrils of hair coming loose from her ponytail to curl and stick at the sides of her face.
"Oh." Erik lifts his head again, and the hand in question curls back in so that he can squint at it, and the whiskey bottle it's wrapped around. "Mystique came by."
"Oh." Ellen scoots back against the back of the couch and draws her legs up with her, toeing out of high heels to let them fall to the floor. "I see."
"I know this will...probably be very difficult for you to believe..." Erik shakes his head to place emphasis on as much while he shifts and leans enough to set his bottle on the hardwood floor at the couch's side, "but we had a disagreement."
Ellen curls her arms around her legs, hugging her knees to her chest, and looks at him with sad blue eyes. "It is imaginable somehow, sir."
"I've no idea how she found us." While Ellen curls in on herself, Erik stretches -- long legs and socked feet flexing so that his right foot and knee nudge warm against her again, and the left readjusts down against the couch side. "I hit her in the face and she cried and ran out again. 'That's' right,' I said, but she just kept running."
"I met one of the younger ones in the bar. But the girl was a stupid child and pretended not to know me and I left." Ellen lowers her head, bowing it towards the press of her knees. She stares down at herself, the grey fabric and the blue, the smoosh of breasts against knees. "She was pride and anger and pride," she mumbles to her knees. "I cannot imagine her tears."
"She didn't really." Nudge. Erik is having difficulty getting comfortable now that his leg space has been somewhat reduced. Something pops, possibly in his back. "I've never seen evidence that they exist, or I would describe them to you."
"I wonder if her natural eyes possess the correct ducts. I never looked. She does not seem to blink very much," Ellen rambles, with a long, slow blink of her own eyes. She looks down at the bottle on the floor but it seems far away.
"Perhaps she is simply a horrible insane person with no capacity for human emotion," Erik suggests blandly, only to knit his brows a moment later, whiskey temporarily forgotten. "I don't understand."
Ellen looks confusedly down at the floor, and then turns her gaze towards him, chin lifting. "What?"
"I don't know." Scruffy chin tucked briefly to his collar, Erik rolls his eyes into a slow blink at himself and lifts his injured hand lazily up into the space between himself and Ellen. "Would you be so kind as to fix this?"
Ellen partially unfolds herself, letting one foot slide to the floor and curling the other leg beneath her rather than before as she shifts, leaning towards him as she takes hold of his hand. She presses her palm to his, aligning each of their fingers together as she frowns down at both. It is a long moment she spends with this mild frown, holding quite still in this position, before she closes her eyes and sets to healing the wound.
Magneto's hand is squared in its dimensions, with bones that are not slender or particularly elegant so much as they are practical and much worked upon. One of the lighter ones is fractured nonetheless, difficult to discern from the exterior with old flesh having already coaxed forth a colorful performance. As is usual, his fingers curl somewhat automatically into hers, and he keeps his head propped up enough to keep an eye upon her progress.
The work proceeds much slower than it usually does, nor does she allow herself to be distracted throughout the process: the usual multitasking abandoned, she heals only. When she has repaired the damage, Ellen bows her head again press a kiss to the newly healthy skin on the back of his hand. Her breath puffs warmly against it in a soft sigh and she neither lets go nor opens her eyes.
Well. That is a new addition to the usual dance. Erik's brows lift unevenly, and fall again in much the same way before his loose grip on her firms, and he shifts into a more accommodating position in order to tug her over into him. Onto him, really. "I take it your day was not any better than mine."
Her body is a long drape of heat against and over him on the couch, fabric warming between her skin and his. She murmurs a noise with the shift as her eyes blink open, for whatever reason surprised but not at all displeased. "I am adrift in a sea of idiots," is what Ellen has to say to that question, though she permits herself a small smile that quirks the corners of her mouth as she adds further, "--if I am something of an iceberg."
"Increasingly I suspect that I am a fool like any other." The material of Erik's shirt is stiff-starched and not particularly comfortable, but it is warm at least, and alcohol has eased away some of the tense muscle and bone that usually take the form of hard, uninviting edges. He is tired as well, but there is nothing really very new about that. "So. Who was the Titanic?"
"No one in particular." Ellen closes her eyes again, shifting against him in something of a nestle: herself built of angle and bone and muscle, there is yet softness to her. "I did not kill anyone."
"Probably for the best." In terms of the NYPD or FBI hunting them down, anyway. Content for the moment to be a bit squashed, Erik does not protest her shifting, and the bristle of his jaw eventually turns comfortably enough back in the direction of the television. Now there are water buffalo.
"Medical procedures are stupid," Ellen slurs quietly after a moment of puzzling silently after water buffalo through the crack of an eye. "It takes weeks to do anything. Months. Months and months."
"It is unfortunate." His breathing having slowed and relaxed a great deal against the added warmth and weight of Ellen, it's only a matter of time before he begins to have difficulty keeping his eyes open. "Particularly given that it takes nothing at all to inflict an injury."
"It is inefficient," Ellen grumbles. She is already having such difficulties: a system less accustomed to metabolizing alcohol, for all that she may watch it as it works. Her eyes close again and she makes a sort of annoyed growling noise into his shirt.
"Life is inefficient," Erik mutters in return, the bulk of his attention turned back over into the area of her hair. "You shouldn't be drinking."
"My liver and kidneys are in excellent condition," Ellen says with the shadow of a smile, her eyes still closed. "I am very efficient."
That really isn't the point, but Erik is really in no place (or mood) to argue. It is much easier for him to manage a half-smile and agree. "You are."
Ellen mumbles, "You are drinking."
"That hardly means that you should."
"Mmm." Ellen makes a vague noise in the back of her throat and blinks her eyes open only to close them again. "Tired."
Magneto readjusts enough to loop an arm loose around her back, and the lights are kind enough to turn themselves off. The glow of the television takes over, casting odd highlights and shadows about the room while he settles in against her for the night. Tired.
Erik and Ellen are going to be v. sore and cranky in the morning.
Having abandoned the serving size of his glass, Erik has relegated himself to something that is part slouch and part drape upon the half of his couch that is lined up directly with the television with a bottle of whiskey that is, as usual, approximately half-empty. On the flat screen television, rhinoceros are attempting to do something obscene, and he watches past the open flare of his collar with a critical eye.
Rattle rattle, knob turn: the front door jerks open and Ellen stumbles through, catching herself with a white-knuckled grip on the knob and a startled glare of pale eyes flicking this way and that. Balance and dignity retained after a frozen moment with pulse racing and jaw set, she straightens and closes the door behind her with the deep concentration and exquisite care of the mildly inebriated.
Magneto jolts somewhat predictably, and the television image flickers right about the time that Mr. Rhinoceros attempts to make his move. Fortunately, he is past the point of mild inebriation, and so is quick to relax again when a positive ID is made, and Ellen closes the door. "Hello, Ellen."
Ellen unbuttons her suit jacket and then pulls it off, folding it over her arm with a slightly irritated frown. She crosses towards the couch on slow, extremely even steps, as though proving to herself that she is perfectly capable of walking in a line. "Good evening. The world is full of fools, concentrated locally."
"Yes," Erik agrees huskily, whiskey sloshing when he tips his bottle back for another swallow and bends his right leg to allow her more room to sit down, should she wish to do so. His trousers are black, and still neatly pressed. His shirt is azure; oddly vibrant given that he has found cause to take up drunken residence upon his couch.
Her shirt is blue of a much paler shade, the soft fall of cotton shifting against her torso as she folds down to perch upon the edge of the couch, at first as stiff and upright in her seated posture as ever she is. She lifts a hand, wiggles each finger in turn, and then drops it to her lap and slumps back, half against the couch and half against his leg. There is a certain vodka scent on her breath that accompanies the weary exhalation of a sigh. "I hate all of them," grumbles Ellen.
"As do I. They should be destroyed." Erik lowers the bottle, and then chuckles into it before offering it to Ellen. He does not sit up to extend his reach, and there is a patch of darkness spreading across the tendons in the back of his hand.
Ellen starts to reach to take it and pauses with fingers outstretched to frown seriously down at his hand.
"’Tis a terrible pity that we've already tried our very hardest and come away without hope of victory." Voice rasping again, Erik tilts his chin back and up to focus briefly back upon the television, and so does not notice her frowning, seriously or otherwise.
"What did you do to your hand?" Ellen asks, squinting down at it rather than precisely listening, and then looking up at him with something like reproach. There are a smattering of tendrils of hair coming loose from her ponytail to curl and stick at the sides of her face.
"Oh." Erik lifts his head again, and the hand in question curls back in so that he can squint at it, and the whiskey bottle it's wrapped around. "Mystique came by."
"Oh." Ellen scoots back against the back of the couch and draws her legs up with her, toeing out of high heels to let them fall to the floor. "I see."
"I know this will...probably be very difficult for you to believe..." Erik shakes his head to place emphasis on as much while he shifts and leans enough to set his bottle on the hardwood floor at the couch's side, "but we had a disagreement."
Ellen curls her arms around her legs, hugging her knees to her chest, and looks at him with sad blue eyes. "It is imaginable somehow, sir."
"I've no idea how she found us." While Ellen curls in on herself, Erik stretches -- long legs and socked feet flexing so that his right foot and knee nudge warm against her again, and the left readjusts down against the couch side. "I hit her in the face and she cried and ran out again. 'That's' right,' I said, but she just kept running."
"I met one of the younger ones in the bar. But the girl was a stupid child and pretended not to know me and I left." Ellen lowers her head, bowing it towards the press of her knees. She stares down at herself, the grey fabric and the blue, the smoosh of breasts against knees. "She was pride and anger and pride," she mumbles to her knees. "I cannot imagine her tears."
"She didn't really." Nudge. Erik is having difficulty getting comfortable now that his leg space has been somewhat reduced. Something pops, possibly in his back. "I've never seen evidence that they exist, or I would describe them to you."
"I wonder if her natural eyes possess the correct ducts. I never looked. She does not seem to blink very much," Ellen rambles, with a long, slow blink of her own eyes. She looks down at the bottle on the floor but it seems far away.
"Perhaps she is simply a horrible insane person with no capacity for human emotion," Erik suggests blandly, only to knit his brows a moment later, whiskey temporarily forgotten. "I don't understand."
Ellen looks confusedly down at the floor, and then turns her gaze towards him, chin lifting. "What?"
"I don't know." Scruffy chin tucked briefly to his collar, Erik rolls his eyes into a slow blink at himself and lifts his injured hand lazily up into the space between himself and Ellen. "Would you be so kind as to fix this?"
Ellen partially unfolds herself, letting one foot slide to the floor and curling the other leg beneath her rather than before as she shifts, leaning towards him as she takes hold of his hand. She presses her palm to his, aligning each of their fingers together as she frowns down at both. It is a long moment she spends with this mild frown, holding quite still in this position, before she closes her eyes and sets to healing the wound.
Magneto's hand is squared in its dimensions, with bones that are not slender or particularly elegant so much as they are practical and much worked upon. One of the lighter ones is fractured nonetheless, difficult to discern from the exterior with old flesh having already coaxed forth a colorful performance. As is usual, his fingers curl somewhat automatically into hers, and he keeps his head propped up enough to keep an eye upon her progress.
The work proceeds much slower than it usually does, nor does she allow herself to be distracted throughout the process: the usual multitasking abandoned, she heals only. When she has repaired the damage, Ellen bows her head again press a kiss to the newly healthy skin on the back of his hand. Her breath puffs warmly against it in a soft sigh and she neither lets go nor opens her eyes.
Well. That is a new addition to the usual dance. Erik's brows lift unevenly, and fall again in much the same way before his loose grip on her firms, and he shifts into a more accommodating position in order to tug her over into him. Onto him, really. "I take it your day was not any better than mine."
Her body is a long drape of heat against and over him on the couch, fabric warming between her skin and his. She murmurs a noise with the shift as her eyes blink open, for whatever reason surprised but not at all displeased. "I am adrift in a sea of idiots," is what Ellen has to say to that question, though she permits herself a small smile that quirks the corners of her mouth as she adds further, "--if I am something of an iceberg."
"Increasingly I suspect that I am a fool like any other." The material of Erik's shirt is stiff-starched and not particularly comfortable, but it is warm at least, and alcohol has eased away some of the tense muscle and bone that usually take the form of hard, uninviting edges. He is tired as well, but there is nothing really very new about that. "So. Who was the Titanic?"
"No one in particular." Ellen closes her eyes again, shifting against him in something of a nestle: herself built of angle and bone and muscle, there is yet softness to her. "I did not kill anyone."
"Probably for the best." In terms of the NYPD or FBI hunting them down, anyway. Content for the moment to be a bit squashed, Erik does not protest her shifting, and the bristle of his jaw eventually turns comfortably enough back in the direction of the television. Now there are water buffalo.
"Medical procedures are stupid," Ellen slurs quietly after a moment of puzzling silently after water buffalo through the crack of an eye. "It takes weeks to do anything. Months. Months and months."
"It is unfortunate." His breathing having slowed and relaxed a great deal against the added warmth and weight of Ellen, it's only a matter of time before he begins to have difficulty keeping his eyes open. "Particularly given that it takes nothing at all to inflict an injury."
"It is inefficient," Ellen grumbles. She is already having such difficulties: a system less accustomed to metabolizing alcohol, for all that she may watch it as it works. Her eyes close again and she makes a sort of annoyed growling noise into his shirt.
"Life is inefficient," Erik mutters in return, the bulk of his attention turned back over into the area of her hair. "You shouldn't be drinking."
"My liver and kidneys are in excellent condition," Ellen says with the shadow of a smile, her eyes still closed. "I am very efficient."
That really isn't the point, but Erik is really in no place (or mood) to argue. It is much easier for him to manage a half-smile and agree. "You are."
Ellen mumbles, "You are drinking."
"That hardly means that you should."
"Mmm." Ellen makes a vague noise in the back of her throat and blinks her eyes open only to close them again. "Tired."
Magneto readjusts enough to loop an arm loose around her back, and the lights are kind enough to turn themselves off. The glow of the television takes over, casting odd highlights and shadows about the room while he settles in against her for the night. Tired.
Erik and Ellen are going to be v. sore and cranky in the morning.