Logs:Upaya

Upaya
cn: messy/impaired consent, references to child sexual abuse/trafficking, references to partner abuse
Dramatis Personae Charles, Lucien
In Absentia Rasheed, Erik, Elie, Matt, Fury, Hive, Ryan, Anahita	2024-01-25 "How do you coax these people into spilling things you don't even know they know?" (followed, but not immediately, by ... still not actually eating food.)
Location <NYC> Luci's Apartment - Le Bonne Entente - Astoria - Queens
Nestled just below the belfry and above the gardeners' workshop and storage rooms, this penthouse apartment is accessible only at the proprietor sufferance via a special panel in the elevator and a locked utility stairway. The whole of it is psi-shielded, and equipped with a largely unused power suppression grid as well. Spanning one and a half levels, this space could be mistaken for an extension of the conservatory below, with plentiful bookshelves and greenery spilling from every nook, but even a cursory examination will reveal the personal touches that went into its design, softening the neoclassical aesthetic of the building at large with paradoxically fastidious whimsy. The elevator shaft bridging the full level and the loft is, save for the doors, encased in the coral reef of an immense cylindrical aquarium that houses a thriving tropical community. The sitting room immediately adjoining this is bright and airy, open to the empty half of the story above, with a plush circular sectional couch, a low tea table, a sideboard and a bar, its walls covered with lush trellises where not taken up with recessed bookshelves. Opposite the oceanic entryway on the western wall, tall french doors lead to a crescent balcony with views of the waterfront and city beyond as well as the restaurant terrace and garden far below. To either side of the doors, floor to ceiling waterfall windows feed twin pools connected under a thick glass floor panel, an indoor pond lined with smooth river stones and stocked with hardy freshwater fish. On the other end of the apartment, tucked under the loft and behind the elevator shaft, is a large kitchen bracketed by a well stocked pantry on one end and a breakfast nook on the other, its culinary conveniences--even the the refrigerator and ovens--hidden behind opaque glass panels that light up at a touch with lists of their contents. An elegant floating stairway spirals up around the elevator cum aquarium, its balusters and those of the loft's railing above twined with well-trained philodendrons. The long wall of the loft showcases a variety of bows from historical and modern, humble to ornate. A no-nonsense workshop at one end of this gallery stores the less picturesque archery paraphernalia as well as a wide range of tools, striking a quaint contrast with the cozier if no less utilitarian study at the other end. Open offset doorways at either end lead to a capacious bedroom with a king sized bed, its walls graced with myriad orchids and other epiphytes in Greek sconces. The generously sized bathroom is tiled in mosaic scenes from classical mythology and has an entire corner dedicated to the antique clawfoot tub. The walk-in closet is similarly generous, with specialized storage for every imaginable accessory, and a hidden staircase leading to the belfry above and the exit below. The elevator doors open smooth and fast, but Charles emerges only at a very slight delay. Certainly he is no stranger to opulence, and has had several occasions lately to see far more extravagant parts of the building, but perhaps the entryway framed by a tropical reef still manages to impress. He's dressed sober and dignified as is his habit in a navy blue three-piece suit, its classic silhouette thoughtfully tailored for better comfort and drape for someone who spends his days sitting, and black oxford shoes just boring enough not to draw the eye. His signature blue-and-gold striped tie cinches the white spread collar shirt in an impeccable full Windsor knot, and the gold Xavier's School crest pinned to his lapel coordinates with circle-X cufflinks. He pivots his sleek silver powerchair slowly once he's clear of the watery archway, gazing around the expansive room with undisguised delight. His quiet "huh" is perhaps a little anticlimactic on its own, though he's still busy admiring, his eyes following the column of the coral reef/elevator shaft up to the second floor balcony. There's a slow trickle of warmth spreading around him that isn't warmth, exactly -- the unfurling of his aura that comes with the easing of the psionic shields he presumably kept up with particular rigor while meeting with the movers and shakers of the mutant nonprofit industrial complex in the business center below. "Goodness," he adds, still understated, "this is really quite remarkable." "Hive has something of a gift for taking a client's imaginings and vastly improving upon them." Lucien's presence is as ever unobtrusive until he speaks, his mind its typical glassy quiet. Over in the living room he is busy setting a tray down on the tea table, the tea set flanked by fresh lemon-rosemary scones, crisp airy gougeres, flaky cinnamon kouign-amann. He is dressed more casually than Xavier, coming straight from his meeting, in a luxuriously soft cream angora sweater over a forest green button down, evenly faded blue jeans that only stand out today because of how well-tailored they aren't, noticeably looser than his normal impeccable fit. "We do not have to stay here, if it is not comfortable --" Here there's a delicate ripple across the surface of his mind, unspooling into a suggestion of the psi shielding his apartment contains. "-- but I had a thought that perhaps after all that," the tapestry reweaves itself to this time indicate a tense and -- hopefully productive? the inquiry is mild -- meeting downstairs, "it might be welcome to relax." The smile that touches Charles's lips is small, but the image he projects is vibrant, a dynamic composite of Hive's gruff complaints over his work -- not just on Le Bonne Entente, though the celebrated relocation of the belltower does feature prominently. "He likes a good challenge," doesn't seem in any way at odds with this sketch. "Oh no, it's lovely here, and I appreciate your consideration. The shielding is..." He looks back at the massive aquarium again, overlaying his visual perception of it with a shimmery-soft susurrating texture that feels like the ocean, as well as the comfort and relief he associates with it. "...rather pleasant, actually. It's a bit like being at sea. Much quieter, but not eerily silent." His mouth tugs hard to one side. "Mind you, after two hours of nonprofit compassion theatre, the prospect of eerie silence was downright appealing." His eyes tick over Lucien as he rolls up to the tea table, the appraisal brief and touched with concern that he does not voice -- but does not conceal, either. "But then, I'd have missed out on the much more interesting meeting next door. It so happens your new lawyers are also on retainer to one of Toure's colleagues, likely the subject of their sealed instructions." Charles translates the overheard thoughts into a dossier on the scientist in question, appending relevant professional knowledge he already had on the man. "How do you coax these people into spilling things you don't even know they know while still conducting hotel business? They clearly don't think you've anything to do with Toure, much less some obscure epidemiologist in Chicago." "You hear the fish?" Lucien's voice is even, but there's a briefly brighter shimmer along the intricate textures of his mental tapestry before it folds itself neatly back away into stillness. His eyes have gone just slightly wider as he looks from Charles to the flourishing aquaria. With the spill of information he lowers his gaze again, fixing on the Earl Grey he is now pouring. "Mmm. It so happens." He's preparing Charles' tea first, and as he hands the cup and saucer over there's a brief and casual brush of fingers, a flutter of warmth that eases some of Charles's headache and lightens his exhaustion. "Please, they are consummate professionals. They told me very little." His tone is still neutral, but there's amusement warming his eyes. "Perhaps you are simply good at listening." “I hear the fish,” Charles confirms, following Lucien’s glance. “I hear a lot of animals, though I can’t understand them for the most part. One could call it white noise, though there’s a sort of musicality to it, at times.” He refocuses his interpretive relay of the reef, the alien thoughts of fish and other creatures blending into something like wordless, whisper-soft plainchant. He accepts the tea, answering Lucien’s attending assistance with a flush of gratitude that doesn’t make his spoken “thank you” sound any less sincere. “I do like to fancy myself a good listener, but I could only risk so much ah…active listening." He gives Lucien a glimpse of his own meeting through one of the lawyer's eyes, behind which thoughts are wandering away from the very decidedly L'Entente-centered discussion to -- some obscure epidemiologist in Chicago. "It cannot be coincidence that they both kept straying to information they consider so highly confidential. Those men are extensively cross-trained in several schools of psionic self defense.” He takes a sip of his tea and lets his appreciation of its flavor, bold yet round, diffuse into the warmth of his presence. There's a small hint of pride in his voice when he adds, “Not mine, though.” Lucien pours his own tea slowly, and as he settles back into a corner of the sectional he's intently watching the colorful fish drift and dart through the water. He is quiet, his expression still, and his head tilts just slightly as if it's his ears that are picking up the feel of the reef in Charles's mind. His breath has caught, and a faint shiver runs through him as he lets it back out, pulling his eyes back away and taking a slow sip of his tea. "Mmm." It's more audibly pleased, this time, though his mind gives little indication as to what -- perhaps the glimpse into the aquaria's alien melody or the warmth and flavor of the tea or the confirmation that his subtle probing of the lawyers bore worthwhile fruit. He sets his cup back down, his finger tracing slowly against the matte surface of the saucer. "{They are. I am no telepath, though.}" The corners of his mouth twitch up in a short-lived amusement when he adds, "-- just an actor," as if this is explanation in itself. But after a small deliberation he continues: "Trying to understand people's motivations, their feelings, it is at the heart of getting into character, no? Steering a conversation takes much the same study. What are they proud of? What do they fear? I think, perhaps, it --" Through the slight hitch in his words there is a faint tightening around his eyes. "-- says something admirable, that you have not honed the skill of prompting people to the corners of their minds you find useful. {But. You could learn.}" The chorus of the reef recedes from Lucien's perception but doesn't vanish altogether. Charles folds it neatly into and around and through the warmth of his aura. He plucks up "just an actor", turns it over as beneath it his mind scintillates with consideration and ultimately offers up a memory of Lucien -- on stage, in character as a Steve Rogers mid-duet with his younger self, on the cusp of violating his orders to do what's right. "Never again!" cry both Steves, in unison for the first time to a heroic swell of music. The focus pulls back to show that memory itself nested behind Charles's words as he tells Lucien, an objective three months and a subjective lifetime ago, << {I can be more than a little dangerous.} >> In the present, he annotates this with distantly self-conscious gratitude for the reprogramming, however unintentional. "{Language may be a clumsy tool, but you wield it masterfully on many stages. As do I, though I see nothing admirable in my failure to master that particular use of it, or of my power.}" The twitch of his smile is rueful. Less so, after another sip of tea and the ripple of warmth that it brings. "{But I will learn.}" The stir of his eagerness at what doors that learning may open comes up short with a more immediate curiosity. "Do you?" He darts only a brief glance at his host's face before looking past him at the artificial waterfall that ripples the glass separating them from the balcony, at the quieter chorus from the pool it feeds. "Find it admirable?" "Goodness, do you really think of it as failure?" This comes mild but immediate; Lucien's uncannily vivid eyes alight on Charles with a frank curiosity. He pauses after this -- long and then longer, his gaze lowering instead to fix on the flow of water that runs beneath the glass floor. When he does speak again it's slower, an uncharacteristic weight of deliberation still audible in his voice. "I have spent quite a lot of my life in the company of powerful men. As have you, no doubt, though I expect from a somewhat different --" The flick of his gaze back to Charles is very brief, and the quirk of his mouth slants somewhat askew. "-- position. {I have met vanishingly few who, once holding immense power, do not then wield it against those with less.}" He's lifting his tea for another slow sip, eyes falling half-lidded as he swallows and his small smile now hidden behind the rim of the cup. "But, then, if temptation were easy to forgo, my life would have looked quite different." Charles draws breath as if to answer, but does not immediately. The quick considering flick of faded blue eyes over Lucien's posture suggests he is waiting, though the faint flutter of his warmth -- and the aquatic symphonies piping through it -- tells of his own contemplation, too. He also looks down at the floor, the shift of his attention drawing the otherwise much softer riverine chorus from beneath it into the forefront. His eyes do not lift at once when Lucien speaks again, and when he does look up at that crooked tug of a smile his echo of it is faint. "A position I've not used to best effect." There's a flare of heat behind his psionic shields, only indirectly sensible to Lucien though still legible as anger. No flames make it through, but fragmentary memories coalesce and disperse like smoke through his aura: a haggard young Rasheed almost but not quite speaking his mind, a parade of legislators he helped elect politely making excuses for inaction, Erik's cold warning not to get in his way, Erik returning to and abandoning him at whim, Erik's madness and desperation and rage threatening to consume their community. He lifts his tea back up, breathing in its aroma slow and deep until the fire subsides, banked but not extinguished. It's still another moment before he trusts his voice to continue. "{I see so much cruelty and so much callous disregard for it. In my youth I swore never to take part, nor look away if ever I learned how.}" His lips compress, and he ventures, delicately, "I've not been wholly successful, though I have tried. The antipathy most harbor toward my power spurred me to guard it closely, for fear of myself as much as them." Here a glimpse past the singing mist of his aura to its source, a light that gathers, brick by gleaming brick, into a tower -- or a colossal rook piece. "I don't count my compassion or the discipline and mindfulness of power it fostered as failure. But I have often failed to discern when using my power against others isn't abuse -- and when choosing not to is just another kind of looking away." He shakes his head and finally takes another sip of his Earl Grey. Finally looks at Lucien again, too. "I have always played too defensively." Lucien's fingertips press slightly harder against his cup, and his eyes (pupils gone just slightly wider) lift again to Charles. As that smoke curls over him, the surface of his mind ripples in response. Against Charles' contained anger the touch of Lucien's mind is contrastingly cool where it washes up against that heat. "Oh --" The soft breath he exhales isn't quite a laugh, but there's a wry amusement in his voice. "Where is the line between justice and cruelty -- between abuse and love? I rarely find people in consensus on the matter." The glassy surface of his mind shifts, turns inward to reflect the tapestry beneath in bright kaleidoscopic intricacy. The fractured-memory wisps of smoke curl against the weaving threads, and where they touch they contradictingly illuminate rather than obscure. In this brief glint there's a voice echoing across the years, a glimmer of Lucien himself in the contemptuous elegance, {I'll be damned if I let more of my children follow in your footsteps} and the threads that stitch it carry a reeling feel of being perpetually off-balance, and a deep inadequacy. In this small flash another voice (entirely unlike and entirely kin to the first), {It is simply not possible you can be this stupid!} woven in a shatter of heartbreak and a flush of shame. Here, just a sliver and it's Lucien's own words, Am I your enemy?, the threads of foolish hope and aching desire disappearing tangled out of view. It's just a glimpse, brief and imperfectly redacted even in Lucien's studied care; the images shift and blend into others, too (here there are fish whose darting path flows like music through the water; here a twin to Charles' immense tower is stitched in black by threads full of exhaustion and laughter; here an everpresent desire burns hot through Lucien's veins, hammering to be noticed and shoved reflexively back down) but none resolve into a full clear picture before the cool waters wash the images away again. Instead it frames a question, contextualized in the fragments of threads that underly Lucien's quiet statement: "He hurt you badly." At the edge of Lucien's perception, Charles is fussing over his shields and annotating it in gentle apology as an effort to dampen his lingering anger. He stops, though, when Lucien refocuses his tapestry to make it legible to him -- however brief and however carefully de-(re-)contextualized. The smoke has dispersed from his psionic aura, which almost shimmers with the reflection of his rapidly churning thoughts. It's gradual, not very obvious at first, but his warmth intensifies -- an attempt to soothe, normal enough for him and perhaps not fully conscious given he is not supplying context as he habitually does. But somewhere in or around or through the flow of images Lucien weaves for him, it changes. The aura is still soothing -- it's almost always soothing -- but where it's usually diffuse and directionless it's now sensibly focusing toward Lucien. Charles notices it in short order and resumes adjusting his shields, more hastily than before. His unapologetic if slightly embarrassed explanation for the lapse is entirely sensory, overlaying the reflexive reach of his warmth with a brief impression of aerial roots descending from a banyan tree. This dissolves back into mist before reforming in a concrete recollection of his more involved telepathic contact with Lucien himself while they worked together to mend Hive's ravaged nervous system. Another unconscious tug of his telepathy shifts the focus of the memory he's projecting fluidly to the physical warmth of Lucien's hand curled beneath his on the edge of the hospital bed. His work on shielding falters again at the spoken words and the question behind them. The fluttering of his aura stills infinitesimally. He stills infinitesimally. There's no flustered return to arranging his shields this time, and no explanation, either. In the memory, still vivid but strangely abstracted now, the hand resting in Lucien's no longer feels like his hand. Then the memory scatters into mist that swirls and scintillates with other moments, isolated snapshots of Erik down through the decades disjointed and little resembling his usually polished mental communication. The thought he wants to convey has to fight its way through, clumsy despite its simplicity: I allowed him to. He finally manages to catch one of the flitting memories. In it, Erik is looming over him to undo his tie, wearing the hateful helmet that obscures his mind and renders him disturbingly unreal. The Charles in the memory feels unreal, too, but his terror and desire are both stark. He wants to touch Erik, because maybe that will make him real. Maybe then he wouldn't be afraid. Maybe then he could feel safe in Erik's arms again. But he doesn't. At the shift of warmth radiating off of Charles Lucien slowly lowers his cup, and ultimately sets the tea aside entirely. His elbows now rest on his knees, his hands clasped and fingertips tracing slow between the ridges of his knuckles. His eyes have lowered to the tea spread, fixing on the untouched pastries so neatly arranged on their plates. These memories wash over him, too, and his mind washes back steady and cool. His eyes only lift when that clumsy thought finally stumbles its way to the surface -- and then his gaze snaps sharp and focused to Charles with a noticeable hitch of breath. For just an instant his jaw has gone tighter, but his next slow exhale sets his expression back to its wonted neutrality. One of Charles's memories is carefully echoed back, Lucien's hand in his at Hive's bedside. The threads that stitch together this borrowed recollection unravel. Reweave into -- the same picture, the same memory, the painstaking work of mending Hive's fraying mind, but this time arrayed in dizzying depth from Lucien's own perspective. Around the edges of memory some of the threads are only blurry, impartially obscured, but here and there are glimpses visible. Hands that are probably just touching him and not rending him asunder but to a child's mind it feels one and the same. Dingy motel walls and thin creaking mattresses, luxurious silk sheets and the gilded halls of the Club. The odd shame of knowing what hurt he's opening up to and feeling no less heated a desire for it. Framed by these incidental wisps are threads colored crisper and brighter in more deliberate thought. The drowning-dizzying feel of his mind wrenched out of his own control in the middle of a (drowning, dizzying) meltdown, aligning itself reflexive and casual to the more stable rhythm of his brother's mind. Matt's steady gaze and steady voice, {I know it's a lot to ask, and I don't do so lightly, but--I beg you to reconsider.} and the shattering that follows feels shockingly like an echo, resolve broken and realigned with the simple request. The sense of Charles's mind turning deliberately away when Lucien's unfurls exposed and immediately legible before him. Lucien leans forward and reaches a hand out to rest against Charles's. The calm that glasses the surface of his mind expands, with his touch. In counterpoint to the telepath's usual aura, Lucien's touch radiates cool where the feel of him washes over the other man. There's nothing rooted here, no sturdy anchor, just swells of tranquil comfort that flow in malleable buoyancy around the disjointed shards of the older man's thoughts. In the scene still playing out in the periphery of Charles's mind, his remembered body feels real again at least with Erik's hands roaming hot over too-sensitive skin that hasn't known a lover's touch in a decade. Charles is coming undone already, barely able to separate the desire and ecstasy he shares with Erik from the terror and agony he hides behind crumbling shields. He can't block out the lustful glimpses of Erik's other conquests, certain now he doesn't want Charles, not really, but he needs someone to quiet the storm in his mind, for their people's sake if not his own… It's hard to say for sure how much Charles is attending that memory in the present, evincing no reaction to the torrid chaos of Erik's mania battering his mind across the gulf of not so very much time. The fluctuation of his aura -- now scorching and now chilling -- and the faint shimmer of his thoughts behind fast weakening shields rise and fall to the rhythm of Lucien's memories. He wants to answer -- wants to do something -- but his mind is not answering him as it ought. Lucien can just barely sense the frustrated, brute-force restructuring of his labyrinth that folds the memory of Erik into a different recollection. << I want him, because I'm a bloody fool, >> he's telling Hive with a mind exhausted and dysregulated and fraying with overuse, << I don't know what I need. >> "{Apparently a goddamn hooker,}" Hive answers, as kind as he is cantankerous, reminding Charles what comforts he could seek but certainly has good reason not to. He doesn't want Lucien to hear the epithet, nor see him weep, but clings to the memory with a quiet desperation anyway, wanting the roots Hive dares not sink into him just yet and needing the weight of his friend's hand in his. The Charles sitting in L'Entente's bell tower blinks and looks down at Lucien's hand resting on his -- strangely distant, still, but his. Probably. His aura riffles the cool swell around him, and the memory of Hive cocooning the memory of Erik dissipates into a sluggish but brightening wonder at the fluid meshing of their metaphors. He finds the chorus from the reef easily and passes it to the watery calm buoying his broken heart; repeats the operation with the river as well, with more difficulty. It's not an apology, exactly, but his glimmering aura radiates indefinable solace as he turns his hand over to clasp Lucien's. As if the shift of his gaze could afford Charles some privacy, Lucien's eyes lower to where his hand rests on the older man's. There is no privacy, of course. Though Lucien's thoughts are less easily scrutable in their constant shifting refraction, the feel of it is by now familiar to Charles as the overheard memories are dissolved into their component threads and restitched into the larger contexts of Lucien's understanding. He's patient, while Charles is recollecting himself. The cool comfort of his mind remains there in undercurrent, supporting the work but not interfering -- at least not until Charles's hand turns over. His fingers curl down more firmly, and the feel of him running through Charles shifts minutely, at once quieter and less passive -- no longer offering simply a soft place to land but actively lapping at old hurts and deep sorrows, gentling their edges without pushing them back. His mouth has curled into an amused twitch of smile, but there's no mockery in it when he informs Charles solemnly: "{If it helps, I happen to know where you can find a goddamn hooker.}" Past the first few detached moments -- unhurried by conscious choice as he settles his breathing -- Charles puts his mind back together with impressive alacrity. He starts annotating that process before even completing it, recounting to Lucien the abbreviated and mildly humorous evolution of his frequently needed dissociation coping strategies. From boyhood all the way to Utopia, every outwardly manifestation is Charles staring blankly past the pages of a Proust novel. Notably, nothing after Utopia. << It's no great secret, mind you -- just imagine me dissociating to Proust from a wheelchair. >> Few of his techniques, home-grown or otherwise, seem to do much to soothe his pain, though he has plenty for deploying on others in need of emotional first aid, telepathic or otherwise. He idly follows Lucien's work, unobtrusively examining the biokinetic processes for anything he might replicate or at least emulate. He has finally resumed his tea when Lucien speaks, mercifully early enough that Charles just pauses with the cup lifted half-way, not scandalized but amply startled at the vulgar diction delivered in Lucien's soft voice and polished accent. His brows furrow as he considers whether Lucien might be joking -- Hive had seemed serious enough. "{I'm sure you're aware that your…retirement from public service has been much lamented in certain quarters.}" Here a brief montage of melodramatic reactions from Hellfire Club members upon receiving such devastating news. "{In principle I think it's a sensible solution, but as for myself, in practice...}" He doesn't quite gesture at himself with his teacup, but takes a very delicate sip before returning it to the saucer. "I am sure many of your colleagues are competent to accommodate my disability, but expect that vanishingly few of those -- even among our kind -- would be comfortable with my particular sort of X-gene mediated neurodiversity." He says this last with an entirely straight face, and his attention sharpens just a touch as he does so. "Mmm." If Lucien is imagining this it's hard to say, but there's a faint spill of amusement that ripples through Charles, mingled in gentle flushes through the sensations that wash over him. << I ought refine my tastes. Like a terrible cliché, I dissociate to Foucault. >> Gradual but intentional, the threads of his power are curling more neatly through Charles, subtly shifting his ministrations as the older man examines them to offer more grounding to the telepath's mind, more soothing to allay the pain. His work is deliberate, a sense there not simply of comforting but of demonstrating for the future. His other hand curls loosely, knuckles pressing to his lips as he breathes out a quiet laugh. "{I have chosen my remaining clients quite well, then, if the rumours claim I now have none.} I also have some experience, navigating --" His fingertips trace gently against the back of Charles's hand, and Charles can feel the shiver that ripples out along Lucien's nerves where they sync themselves to the older man's feelings. The feeling fades after this, something like-but-not-like a telepathic shielding where the spillover from Lucien's mind closes off again, returned once more to only the intentional soothing. "-- certain types of neurodiversity. {And if you have heard the talk I am sure you are aware I am quite good at what I do.}" His eyes lift again, and fix on Charles with a thoughtful intensity. "{Would it help? I know well it can be painful, when the simple act of touch is fraught. Some of that difficulty is beyond my reach, but some --}" His free hand turns up, turns over, in an elegant sort of a shrug. << Proust would not stand for that. >> There is the sense of a chuckle in Charle's psionic presence. << Foucault would simply write another book about it. >> He follows Lucien's more detailed demonstrations with a keen, delighted interest. There's a far more dramatic shift of his attention when Lucien demonstrates the particular neurodivergence. "Oh," he breathes, "that's rather familiar, I fear." He's still trying to infer the edges of the biokinetic shield he cannot directly perceive. "{I don't know,}" he says quietly. His focus does not waver with Lucien's question. He does blush, though, and feels faintly absurd for it. "{I've not been with anyone but Erik in…}" He trails off and looks away, but cannot hide his dull, familiar shame. "{...a long time.} He was the first one to want me in his mind, and that made the sex -- made everything we shared -- feel more whole." He does not even try to convey what he means by that, and no discernable reflex reaches for where it must certainly dwell in his labyrinth. "Nobody else much wanted me anyway, after I was paralyzed. Not the way he did." The grief and desire and anger warring in him would not be easy to parse by what trickles through his shielding alone, and he does not project this deliberately. Whether he wants to communicate the tumult or not, Lucien will know it in greater detail by the biokinetic sense suffusing his nervous system in any case. "I kept hoping he would come home, even after…" He smiles and shakes his head, embarrassed in a more matter-of-fact way this time. "{Goodness. I suppose it might help, at that.}" This agreement comes slow and hesitant. It's only after the words leave his mouth that his eyes widen and fix on Lucien's briefly before flicking past him to the waterfall. He gives the latest crop of emotions -- sorrow, concern, regret, a touch of guilt -- a moment to arise and subside. "Are you certain," he's asking, very gently, "you do not know too well? I had recourse to learn this at a remove." He taps his temple with his index finger by way of designating "it", then glances down at their hands. "I found what answers I could in safety even if not love. {You were badly hurt, and I don't want to hurt you more.}" A shiver ripples across Lucien's mindscape. It isn't visible in his placid expression or the quiet surface of his mind but it's sensible, a distinct ache quivering through the biokinetic touch at Charles's talk of Erik. His carefully demonstrated lesson recedes, too; though Lucien's senses still coil through Charles's the work he is doing slips more arcane once more, noticeable in the relief it brings but harder, now, for telepathic senses to parse. "Oh, my learning was hardly all hurt." Lucien's voice is light, as is the flutter of his fingers in dismissal, though these are belied by the grief and longing that twists brief and strong in him and then subsides. "I had support; I rather imagine my learning would have looked quite different, without Matthieu's help." "I am sorry, for the ways you have been hurt." There's little in Lucien's voice that resembles pity, for all this, just a quiet consideration in the words and in the frank gaze that he's fixed on Charles. "{There are many types of grief I cannot know, and cannot balm. And still, I think, there is something -- not just powerful but necessary in connection.}" His biochemical influence is pulling back, now -- no sensation trickling through except the warmth of his hand in the older man's. With some better idea what to look for, now, Charles can likely feel some of the bounds of his power in relief, the shape of his tightly-regimented control defined by where he holds it back from surging hungrily through the other. "{In touching and being touched. In the release of tension you've held far too long. In allowing yourself to need and feeling someone not just know that thirst but be keen to slake it.}" His eyes drop to their hands, to the slow brush of his thumb against the older man's skin. "Shall I tell you that you will not hurt me? I would quite mislike to lie to you. {So yes, Dr. Xavier, if you open me up and pour yourself into me, I expect there is a chance it may hurt.}" His other hand turns up once more, then drops back to his knee. "{In my experience, that in no way dulls the profound pleasures it can bring.}" Charles gives Lucien another considering sidelong glance. His long hesitation and the flurry of thoughts behind it culminate in a somewhat anticlimactic "mm" attended by the arch of one eyebrow. The concern has not gone, but he holds his peace about it. He just listens, eyes far away as he mentally palpates the biokinetic shielding with a quiet fascination. He shivers at the brush of Lucien's thumb, and lowers his gaze. "{There are many kinds of hurt,} he ventures thoughtfully. "{It can be difficult separating the physical from the mental from the emotional, even for those with conventional nervous systems. I would hardly forgo connections for the risk of pain.}" He gives a faint, rueful smile. "{Or even the certitude of it, if you so choose.}" Though Charles can no longer feel Lucien's biokinesis at work in his body, he evidently assumes it still is. He closes his eyes and slows his breathing, the wholesale shift of his autonomic nervous system dramatic to those who can perceive such things. Against this unusually quiet backdrop, the ensuing sharp spike of activity in his somatosensory cortex is dramatic, too. It lights up uneven patches of his hips and legs -- areas he still has sensation, even if only faintly, after the incomplete severing of his lumbar spine. << That's not telepathy, >> he tells Lucien, perhaps a more smug than is decorous for, << it's Buddhism. >> Though he admits -- wordless, incredulous, even a bit indignant -- that he hasn't learned to isolate pain receptors this way. << But I'm sure you've had the displeasure of making my neuropathy's acquaintance. >> He opens his eyes and lets his nervous system return to its…actually somewhat more pleasant than usual functioning. "Trying to move any of that does tend to exacerbate it, and doing so vigorously..." A recently recalled memory helpfully tries to fill by way of illustration, and this time he shunts it away before it can quite get…vigorous. "If my shields or control slip -- then it also gets rather unpleasant for anyone who might be touching me." His lips compress. "You can call me Charles, if you like." << I have noticed it, >> Lucien allows, which doesn't stop him paying close attention to the shifts in the older man's sensory mapping. "I could try teaching you," sounds a little distracted as his power flexes out although inwardly his focus is honing keen on the older man. He's feeling out the places that Charles had illuminated, some more deliberate attentiveness coiling into the delicate nerves. "I can only speak to the non-Buddhism-assisted method, but singling out the correct receptors can be finicky work." Finicky work that, all the same, he is handling deftly -- Charles's own awareness, his internal body map, does not precisely shift, but where the neuropathic pain trends worse there is a noticeable easing. "You may have to guide me, but I am sure we can find an appropriate level of vigor." Lucien is leaning forward, now, to take a sip of his tea and set it back. Through this he is considering, and eventually looks back to Charles with a subtle warmth lighting his eyes. "{I think if you so choose is the relevant question, here. You are allowed, you know. To want. To take, if that suits your fancy. I am --}" The hesitation here is extremely subtle, easy to miss in his voice and more noticeable where his biokinetic shielding is shoring itself up firmly. "{-- no stranger to powerful men, and I do know how to say no.}" Charles is attending Lucien's work with such intense interest that the thought processes behind his psionic shielding shine through bright enough to set his warm halo aglow. << It fascinates me endlessly how mutually intelligible our powers can be when you observe neurons from the processes that drive them and I from the perceptions they generate. >> He projects a glimpse of light his mind has spun from the demonstration, gathering into a book for the immense literal-figurative library of neurology in his labyrinth -- a section of it Lucien has not seen before, where one of the many connecting passages is barred by an imposing steel door. << Translating this onto my own neural map will make for a welcoming distraction, the next time I'm in crippling pain. >> There's no sarcasm in this or in his smile, even if the slant of it is just a little grim. His eyes refocus on Lucien, and his smile gentles. "{I know. But it's dangerous --}" His breath hitches and he reflexively tightens what's left of his shields, little though that keeps the frisson of desire from Lucien. "{-- it's dangerous for someone like me to want. I want so very fiercely when I allow myself, and take so much more than what most would willingly offer -- or perhaps can willingly offer, without understanding how all-consuming it is.}" He looks down at their joined hands as if he could see Lucien's own shields there holding the biokinetic back. His eyes flutter shut, but his long-practiced breath control is failing him and his pulse races with a sharp spike of need. "{I think that you do understand, but I cannot read you and that is a relief and a thrill and a danger in its own way.}" The words pour from him in a rush, and when he opens his eyes again his pupils have gone wide, stark against the pale, pale blue. "{I want you. But I need to know what it is you want.}" At first, Lucien doesn't answer. He's gone very quiet, though internally his mind is busy -- a questing slip of power that curls in exploring but uninsistent strokes against Charles's strengthening shields. "{I have some familiarity,}" he finally ventures, "{with that danger. Consuming and being consumed by, the risk of losing where your desires end and another's begin. I have --}" His brows crease, and he draws in a slow breath. "{-- a tangled relation to desire, myself. Independently, I am not sure I can --}" But this hitches, and falters. In place of words there's a slow and careful shifting of his tightly held restraint. Where biokinetic processes had been securely walled off, now they cautiously start to mingle with Charles's awareness -- need that blossoms as action and as reaction, singing to life in first in echo of Charles's but then finding its own ardent harmony. << How can we want in a vacuum? >> In mental space the we here is exclusive, not some idle musing on human nature but focused bright to uplift the shared context and intertwined desires of -- a particular sort of X-gene mediated neurodiversity. It's colored with blurred fragments of thought that seep in -- the heady thrill of being wanted, the breathless rush of borrowed need pouring in clear and visceral in place of the cooly regimented processes his mind usually runs along, the (dangerous) (liberating) terror of surrendering to someone else's choice. Lucien is shifting closer, now, and when the couch's arm proves obstacle instead slips from his seat to kneel. When his other hand comes to rest on Charles's thigh this registers, not just in the compromised nerves there but in the warmth of proximity that flushes through Lucien. "{What I want can be so complicated.}" His own control is reasserting itself, the echoed thrill of desire receding from their shared processing space -- but reflected, now, in vivid-bright eyes where they mirror the intensity of Charles's. "{You could make it very clear.}" Though his breath still comes shallow and quick, the inscrutable churn of thought inside Charles eases along with Lucien's biokinetic control, and he shores up his shields with more care and less urgency. He does not have Lucien's neurochemical eloquence, but his body understands and echoes each refrain, preternaturally intense. Each wave of desire ripples the warmth of his halo, igniting it here and there in sensory-conceptual spindrifts that dance and dissipate back into warmth. The dizzy delight of tracing fingertips over a lover's skin and feeling the same caress on his own. The breathtaking awe of touching a mind entrusted to him, an entire universe cradled in his light. The thrill of power at the yielding of another will to his, body and mind freely offered up for his taking. The weight of Lucien's hand on his thigh is only barely sensible to him, but the echo of it from Lucien's body sets his senses alight with a longing deeper than lust. He shudders when Lucien withdraws, sucking in a sharp breath at his quiet words, meeting and holding his eyes just before his own lose all focus. Where Lucien's power explores the edges of Charle's psychic defenses, there's a sudden burst of neural activity he does not recognize. That's all the warning either of them gets before Charles's metaphorical shields shatter -- like a lightbulb, like a jeweled lotus, like his heart -- burst open with impossible force from within. The blast of heat it releases is intense but does not burn, like a single moment of fierce summer sunlight stretching into an eternity of profound relief. What had been inside and is no longer shines so brightly it blinds Lucien, until the light wells up around and engulfs him and pulls him in -- -- into a kiss, Charles's hands clenched tight on Lucien's sweater. Charles is stronger than he looks, but it still hurts to lean forward like this and he does not care. He is claiming Lucien -- this beautiful young man, this bright incomprehensible tapestry, these pathways that wind through deep forests and dark marble halls -- dragging him closer and lifting a hand to cup the back of his head. Lucien's eyes close as if they could block out the blaze that surrounds him -- but he isn't pulling away. Bathed in Charles's bright warm light the intricate work of his tapestry grows clearer -- though in that first breathless instant what it illuminates is chaotic swirls of feeling and thought searching for something to measure this against, place it against, and finding -- the strangling control of Hive's mind wrapping tight around his and the reflexive jolt of pain that protests the intrusion the practiced flex of Matt's power coiling through his own and pulling him from a seizure the dreamlike euphoria after shooting up that pushes back everpresent pain and exhaustion in a blissful rush The touch of Ryan's power washing over him, washing through him, with a fierce exhilaration that's hard to separate from the music that dances nimble off his bow -- nothing, ultimately, these snapshots held up and discarded as wholly inadequate to the present moment. The images surface and the images fade, and with nowhere in his own experiences to thread this into Lucien, for a moment, stops trying. He presses his mouth back hungrily to Charles's, rising higher on his knees to meet the kiss with slightly less straining. Charles's pain echoes through him alongside his desire and somewhere in the tether between them Lucien is easing, is breathing all of this in and then back out again. The pain begins to ease, suffused instead with warmth and with the waves of desire that crest ever higher. Somewhere in the back of Lucien's mind there's a thought trying to form, written in the distant blurry outlines of a small but well-appointed dungeon, of conversations about boundaries and safewords, of -- -- the thought is fading again before he's quite grasped it and he's melting into Charles's hold, his own hands drifting to the knot of the older man's tie with a silent plea that finds no words. The blinding brightness of Charles's mind has receded enough that Lucien can sense the white tower (rook) (prison), its crenelations blasted open to expose the star inside gone nova, casting off waves of light that pulse -- like a heartbeat, like the swell of the sea, like music -- into a sky no longer domed with the prismatic tessellations of intricate psionic shields. The tower is collapsing, spilling yet more star-stuff into the surrounding labyrinth, memories forming and dissolving with each crest and break -- There's no need for words here. Charles shivers at the plea and Lucien simply knows -- as if he's known all along even if the streams of light that weave it into his tapestry are new -- he should continue. -- a different pair of hands plucking at the knot of his tie, the man behind them rendered nightmarishly incomplete by the absence of the mind he's aching and fearing to touch -- The knowledge comes in distracted fits and starts, too -- Charles needs help with the jacket in the narrow confines of his chair. It doesn't really interrupt Lucien's efforts to let Charles pull the sweater off of him and then kiss him again, the abrupt return of their biokinetic link devastatingly intense. -- an anchor crashing down onto the deck beneath his feet as he shakes off his breathless wonder just in time to throw himself out of its devastating path -- This is quite premature, but Charles can't really hold an erection with significant chemical or mechanical assistance, which he doesn't just carry about with him for some reason. The vest is gone, too, but really, this would be a lot easier if they were on the couch and Lucien is certainly strong enough to lift him but it will hurt a lot unless he does it just so. -- a sandy beach slamming the breath from his lungs, the agony in his back flaring loud enough to drown out for just one instant the cries of beloved minds snuffed out one by one -- Charles is shivering again and trying to ignore it, conveying the knowledge of re-mapped senses that make touch on his back and sides rather more intense than one might expect. Lucien has worked the buttons of his shirt open far enough to expose the steel ring he's worn on a chain around his neck for three decades. -- a small brown girl dancing and spinning and laughing around the chuppah made from a white tallis on a sunny promontory, scattering wildflowers from a basket in her hand -- Charles lifts the chain from around his neck with trembling hands, unashamed of the tears that roll down his cheeks. It's so heavy, for something so small. He isn't really conscious of letting it go, but he is thinking, somewhat absurdly, that Hive would approve. -- a great banyan forest shot through with jewelike shards and alive with the song of unseen birds, spreading strong protective roots around Charles, willing him back to life -- Lucien does it just so -- the telepathic guidance no doubt helps greatly, here, as he's moving carefully to sink down with Charles onto the couch. The borrowed memories or borrowed senses put a shiver through him as well, and he's not ignoring it but leaning with a curiosity and a thrill into the intensity of the connection. His hands trace up Charles's sides once he's gotten the other man's shirt off, and where they linger over extra-sensitive nerves his power is accentuating the response in hungry licks of pleasure that -- -- oh, right, chemical assistance? The knowledge that spills over from Lucien is warm, amused, << as it so happens -- >> but it's teasing, too, not going there just yet but humming pleased reassurance that if Charles is concerned, there, he needn't be. Lucien is breaking the kiss -- if only to travel lower, lips pressing hungry to Charles's neck, to his collar, pressing soft to his chest where that steel weight has just slipped away. By the time his mouth finds the older man's again there are tears on his cheeks, too, pulled unbidden along the neurochemical link and even as he's marveling at the novelty of his body Doing Things without his permission there's a thrill of fear at his body Doing Things without his permission -- but rather than pull back, he's leaning into this, too, with a shudder and a surrender that relinquishes his careful control, meticulous shields dissolving like so much sand under the pounding tide. It's no longer a carefully harmonizing echo but a cacophony of raw feeling, giving up on trying to make sense of the (pain)(pleasure)(fear)(relief)(need) and instead yielding it all to Charles to do with as he will. If Charles was concerned about his ability to perform (he was not), he certainly isn't anymore. He reaches up to trace with trembling fingertips the paths of tears on his lover's cheek. His hand freezes as it slides back along Lucien's jaw, the rest of him going still in the very next instant at the deliberate dismantling of biokinetic shields. The jarring discordant spill of neurochemical bliss is almost too much in itself, and the sense-concept-knowledge of Lucien's surrender blasts away anything resembling voluntary thought. As the last of his volition evaporates, he whispers "Lucien" soft and wondering by the young man's ear, but there's nothing gentle in the rapacious thoughts that follow. He could subsume Lucien's indomitable will. His caress strays down Lucien's neck, brushing his knuckle along smooth soft skin. He could unravel his magnificent consciousness thread by thread. His hand slides around to the back of his neck. He could mold him into someone -- something else entirely. The very thought is intoxicating, but he doesn't want any of those things, he just wants to overwhelm him and hear him beg. His light coils around and into and through the other man's power. A million pleasures -- some unknown and inconceivable by human minds -- flood from his body into Lucien's and from Lucien's mind back to his and again, and again, like a catastrophic storm on the open ocean. This time, the kiss is hard and demanding. Lucien's eyes have gone very wide, and the tears still bright in them make their vivid green seem even more uncanny. His face turns in against Charles's hand, cheek brushing at the other man's palm. His arm has curled around Charles, fingers pressing against the smaller man's back as if he's holding on for support, though the couch is cushioning him comfortable and firm. The violent thoughts spilling over from the older man stoke his fear, catch his breath with a whimper in his throat -- which does not stop him from returning the kiss fiercely. Charles' desires crash into him, stirring a new connecting cascade of thoughts, memories, desperately attempting to assemble this current drowning feel into a coherent picture -- but what he comes up with is a lifetime of confusion, disjointed fragments of rape and of lust, comfort and danger, of the solace and the helpless terror of being shaped by others, that blend together until he can't quite tell them apart. Somewhere amid the flood of memories he is trying, this time, to assemble them into context -- trying to find a wait, a stop, but all he finds here is desire fierce and claiming. The intricate tapestry in his mind is unravelling, is trying to stitch itself back together, is coming up with fragment-images and feelings too bright and overwhelming to be contained in imagery, but where they manage shades of meaning it comes in the feel of Charles's powerful light blazing through him, in the feel of being consumed in this flame and poured into new mould entire. He grasps again but falls fully short of language and though he's still reaching for no what finally comes through, desperate and desperately wanting, is << (more) >>