(no subject)
Magneto has been a difficult man to find, of late. Not here or there, or within phone contact, or even particularly present when he's...present. Such seems to be the case at the moment. He hasn't been at the apartment for long, and he has been quiet. Seated at the kitchen table, he has a small scattering of news clippings spread out before him - the eldest of which is being taped into a notebook. "United Flight 839 Declared Missing."
Ellen is an elusive creature as well, with a growing accumulation of books and academic magazines in her room and a minor increase in the number of times a day she considers it permissible to shower. At the moment, she has emerged from one of these, fully dressed but with a towel turbaned about her hair, to pad barefoot into the living area and then the kitchen, where she pauses.
Having shed his coat and been reduced to an only marginally more comfortable combination of vest and stiff-starched dress shirt, Erik sits up straight at the sound of Ellen padding in from the hallway. He glances to his watch, which still doesn't work, and then at the microwave clock before lifting the scruff of his chin to squint at /her/, a bit of clear tape still stretched between his fingers.
"Hello," Ellen says. There is a moment's pause wherein she is very still. Then she tips her head slightly to one side and studies him, clean-faced and clear-eyed.
Erik is reasonably clean cut as well. The close shear of his beard is neat around the edges, his hair is styled, his vest is unrumpled. The deep circles under his eyes are the only indication that anything might be amiss, and even they are common enough of late that they are not in themselves particularly alarming. "Evening."
"You are busy," Ellen observes, with a flicker of her eyes towards the tape between his fingers before her gaze returns to his face. "I am not particularly. Is there any assistance you require?"
Tack. Tack. Erik's fingers curl a little self-consciously against her glance, unsettling the tape, and his eye contact, which drops to her chin before it lowers back to the table. "No. Thank you."
"Oh." Ellen withdraws half a step and inclines her head, aware on some vague level that is beneath consciousness that his reaction is one that should be answered with respect for privacy. "All right. I have been catching up on my reading," she volunteers information.
"Oh?" The curl of his hand continues on into a fist, and Erik uses his free hand to paw over the cover of his notebook with the rest of his clippings left loose inside.
"Yes. There are a number of current essays in the field of biology that I have had occasion to prove incorrect, or at least, incomplete." Ellen turns out a hand, showing the curl of her fingers with the slight upturn of her mouth at the corners, and lifts a shoulder in a shrug. Then she drops her hand and brings the other to meet it in a loose clasp of fingers before her waist.
"The field of biology is limited by human misconception and inflexibility," Erik mutters, accomodating the subject change with deft arrogance while he pushes back his chair and then up onto his feet. He steps past Ellen for the living area, dragging the notebook off the table after him. "I met with Mortimer."
Ellen turns to follow him out, easily distracted from whatever goal initially led her steps to the kitchen. "Did you?" she asks, curiosity brightening her expression to a sharper alertness.
"He seeks alliance between myself and what remains of the Brotherhood." Voice having fallen quickly enough into a mutter, Erik trails around to the couch, but does not move to take a seat.
Ellen tips her head slightly to one side, a puzzled crease touching her forehead. "Alliance," she repeats.
"He hadn't yet spoken with Raven about it." Apparently thinking this an acceptable explanation, Erik peers down at the couch, and then back up at Ellen before he walks on -- this time in the direction of the hallway. "I told him I was not interested."
Ellen hesitates a moment, and then hastens after him -- only to stop when she realizes she's not sure what she's about to say. "Why?"
Perhaps caught slightly off guard by the question (or the fact that there is a question at all) Erik stops and half-turns back, brows raised and notebook in hand. "Because...I am not interested."
Ellen blinks at him without understanding. But she turns her gaze away and nods once anyway. "All right."
A head-to-toe glance scanned quickly over Ellen's person, Erik offers no more detail, and no reassurance. He turns back into the hall and continues for his bedroom. The door is opened, the door is closed. He left the tape on the table.
Magneto is scrapbooking, but does not want any help!