Logs:All In A Row

All In A Row
Dramatis Personae Lucien, Matt
In Absentia	2019-04-04 "{Ah, that.}" (CW: addiction referenced)
Location Tessier Residence, Greenwich Village
The upper floor of this apartment holds the bedrooms; one master bedroom and three smaller ones. One has been converted to a lounge, couches and more books and a large desk by its window. The other two smaller bedrooms upstairs, in strange departure from the rest of the house's style, seem decorated more with younger occupants in mind. One of them, styled largely in purples and blues with a strong butterfly motif, has a lofted twin bed and an antique writing desk. The other is very green, its bedspread green-and-black striped; the walls are covered with a host of movie posters. Between the two bedrooms stands a bathroom, cheerfully decorated with colourful mosaic fish in its tiles. The master bedroom, in contrast to the paler, earthy scheme outside, is warm and rich, decorated in deep reds. The exquisitely crafted furniture is dark, with reddish undertones to the mahogany wood. The king-sized bed is stocked with an overabundance of pillows, and more cushions rest in the windowseat. One wall holds a spacious walk-in closet. A table, low to the ground, sits on a thick rug between the bed and the entrance, the right height for kneeling rather than chairs; the checked pattern carved into its surface marks it as a chessboard, though the pieces are not in evidence. The master bathroom adjoins the bedroom; it is large, done in black marble, with an overly spacious glass-walled shower and a similarly large jacuzzi bathtub. It's late at night, and currently there is a light on in Matt's bathroom. Intermittent rattling inside, the door ajar. It has been this way some time now. Occasional soft muttering from inside, but mostly quiet, to most people's senses; though to Matt's the tightly regimented order of Lucien's mind has been getting steadily more strained. A bit taut, a bit fraying. At intervals the rattling quiets long enough for Luci to smooth over some of the frazzled mental edges, but it's never long before they start curling back up. Matt has been in bed a while, evidently unfussed about the invasion of his bathroom. Wearing a white t-shirt with a red filigree heart on the chest, bracketed with ornate capital A's in playing card fashion and light black pajama pants adorned with little red hearts, he's reading by one of his bedside lamps dozing on and off. Nodding awake again, he glaces at his bathroom door with a small frown, setting down his book--April Daniels's /Dreadnought/. His powers extend even as he climbs out of bed, stretching ahead of him to quest gently at his brother's, soothing the frayed edges. He leans against the doorframe and studies Lucien, eyebrows slightly uplifted. "That bad, huh?" Lucien is dressed for bed as well, more or less. Soft black pajama pants, sleeveless black undershirt. The contents of Matt's medicine cabinet have, evidently, been entirely emptied onto the bathroom floor around him. Some of the items are slowly making their way back into orderly rows on the shelves. Or were making there way, anyway; right now Luci has frozen, staring down into his lap where he holds a book -- /Hex and the City/, says the title. He isn't currently getting much done at all, although when Matt appears in the doorway he holds up a pill bottle, without looking up. "It's been years since you have even taken this. You've been dead and back since you last took this." "Oh hey, /that's/ where I left it." Matt nods at the book in his brother's hands with a fond smile. His eyes flick to the label on the pill bottle. "Toss it," he replies promptly. "It's as useful to me now as it was then." He kneels just beyond the edge of the arrayed items--/mostly/ in fact medicinal, interspersed here and there with a bath bomb or polished stone or wind-up skull. "I know it's rather egregious, but you needn't set it right just this moment." He cocks his head slightly, the quiet brace of his powers starting to shift focus, and then stopping. "Did you actually /take/ the melatonin?" "I cannot very well leave it on the floor, now." Lucien tosses the bottle of Marinol in his hand into the trash, and frowns at the rest before slowly returning to setting it back. Carefully. Mulling over each bottle in turn. "Did I take the -- oh." The slump of his shoulders is a minute shift of thing. "{I did feel I had forgotten something.}" He doesn't, though, reach for the one bottle he'd come in here to get in the first place. Just continues working. Mildly, as he does: "{Are you predicting a significant need for pain management, soon?}" "I'd offer to help, but considering that my prodigious organizational skills are what drove you to these lengths in the first place..." Matt does, however, pick up the melatonin and shake two of the round white tablets out into his palm before putting the bottle--hesitantly--beside the other supplements the have thus far been returned to the cabinet. "{The chaos was very distracting, I'm sure.}" He says this with no note of sarcasm at all, reaching over to pluck up the lumpy ceramic mug by the sink and fill it with water. "{There's likely medications that /I/ start forgetting to take, when I let it get this bad.}" He tosses back one of the tablets and holds out other one--and the mug--for Lucien. "{Not in any specific way, unless you count finals season. Why?}" "{The counter on your FloVent has barely moved.}" Lucien eyes the melatonin bottle for a long moment, but leaves it be. He does take the pill and mug both, swallowing it down quickly and returning to intent contemplation of where on the shelves an unpolished chunk of serpentine might best be suited. He picks out another nearly full prescription bottle while he is considering the piece of rock, setting it down on the sink counter near Matt so that its label -- Tramadol -- is easily visible. "Just so! I should probably..." Matt peers into the partially populated cabinet, pulls out an inhaler, gives it a cursory shake, and doses himself. He puts the FloVent back--where he had found it, no less!--and eyes the bottle his brother had just set aside. "{Ah, that.}" He doesn't touch the bottle, but sits down on the edge of the tiled platform that his bathtub is set into. "{Hank prescribed that to me after the bite incident--reluctantly, as he was concerned it might plunge me back down the sordid path of addiction.}" The corner of his mouth twitches up. "{Or concerned that /Xavier/ thought it might.}" Lucien tucks the rock into the cabinet alongside the melatonin and some herbs. "{Mmm. I did not realize you had talked with Doctor McCoy about --}" he begins, but then stops. Something ripples and tightens across the surface of his mind; his lips press together. "/Ah/." Matt trails the tips of his fingers idly over the smooth, gleaming ceramic tiles. "{He told Hank when I returned to work after my last treatment cycle. To keep an eye on me. In case all that codeine went to my head.}" His tone is light, almost flippant, but where his power had twined but gently with Lucien's before it clenches hard--then eases with a deliberate quickness. "{It put /Hank/ in a rather awkward position, but even more so, how he reacted to the confrontation was...telling.}" "{Yes, I'm sure it was the Professor's deep concern for you that led to that egregious violation of your privacy.}" Lucien's hands drop to the counter, fingers brushing in short quick strokes against its surface. He offers little by way of mental resistance, his own tight-held tension easing as Matt's grip bears down. Pulling back tighter once the pressure slackens. "Oh?" Whether in answer to Lucien's tension or his sarcasm, the press of Matt's power grows harder again--but more deliberately this time, a slow gathering. He does not answer at once, his eyes fixed on the orange prescription bottle on the counter. "{He kept defending Xavier, which...}" His frown is more thoughtful than troubled, though inwardly he is a chaos of shame, worry, and seething anger--sensible to Lucien now through his heightened abilities. "{Of course I /expect/ that, at some level, but...}" He tucks one leg up under himself, props an elbow on that bent knee, and covers his mouth with that hand. "{Luci, he knew it didn't make sense, knew he should have been angrier--on my behalf if not his own. He /knew/.}" The short quick swipes of Lucien's fingers against the sink grow less jerky. One forefinger and thumb continue a slower circular motion, brushing against the smooth countertop as his eyes slip half-closed and the careful regimenting of his mind begins to relax once more. He allows a slow trickle of that relaxation to spill over to Matt, seeping in among the swirl of shame and anger. "{He has been at the school quite some while, no?}" The tight hunch of Matt's shoulders eases a little at the spillover, and he leans into it inwardly. "{Since the beginning, yes--since he was a teenager, and Xavier a young postdoc.}" He curls his fingers in and rests his chin on the fist they form. "{Many of the alumni from that first class have spent the better part of their adults lives there, but Hank most of all, I think. He's a brilliant, kind, and thoughtful man. And Xavier treats him like--like a /pet./}" Lucien takes a step back, arms wrapping around his chest. "{The impression I have gotten is that Xavier would treat all of you that way, if he could get away with it. Some are just --}" Once more, his lips thin. He gives his head a short sharp shake, brows creasing as he tucks the rest of the bottles back into the cabinet. Most of the rest of the bottles. The Tramadol stays out on the counter. "{In a position to believe that accepting it might be their best course of action. Would you like to continue storing this in here?}" Matt's jaw tightens, then relaxes with a soft exhalation. "{The thing of it is...I couldn't offer him a better alternative. Not many people could. That doesn't put Xavier above criticism, and it certainly doesn't make him right, but I don't think Hank is wrong, either, to accept it."}" His shoulders hunch back in now. "{But he isn't the only one it affects. I can handle this nonsense about the drugs, but what of faculty and staff with less support elsewhere? Or, dear gods, the students?}" He shakes his head, too, eyes skate back to the bottle left sitting out. It takes him a long moment to say, "{No. I'm sure someone will need it eventually, but it can go into storage until then.}" "{The students --}" Lucien glances up, his gaze briefly flicking to his brother's reflection in the mirror. "{Will hopefully have plenty of other support to look to, at the school.}" He swipes the bottle back off the counter, straightening and closing the cabinet doors. "Support that looks at them as more than just their problems."