Logs:Fine

Fine
Dramatis Personae Lucien, Matt, Joshua
In Absentia Elie, Fury, Charles	2024-12-31 "I'm sure it's nothing so very important."
Location <PRV> Tessier Residence - Greenwich Village
Understated opulence claims this spacious and well-kept townhome, the decor throughout the whole of it of the highest quality and carefully chosen. The front door opens onto the entrance hall, a closet close at hand to receive coats and shoes -- the pale hardwood floors gleam underfoot, unsullied by tracked-in mess from outside. The living room beyond the entrance is all dark woods and pale earth tones, comfortable couches and armchairs and a thick soft rug laid down beneath. Two large and painstakingly aquascaped aquariums flank the entrance to the dining room, with several brightly coloured species of fish within. Most of the rest of the wall space, notably, is taken up with shelves -- shelves crammed with books of every subject and genre. A study branching off of the main hall is cozy, small, done in pale blues and lined with books as well around the large computer desk and smaller futon, though these rarer books are cased behind glass. Another securely locked door leads to the basement, and another to the full bathroom downstairs. The kitchen connects to the living room; in contrast, it is sleek and modern and well-appointed, stocked by someone who takes their cooking seriously. And takes their alcohol equally seriously -- to one side of the kitchen there is a fully-stocked bar. The back door to the kitchen looks out on a small well-kept garden. The world is quiet here. The warm scent of tea and eggs and toast feels almost like a kind of haunting, in a house so nearly still and so nearly empty. Matt is gathering his loose ends methodically if not very efficiently -- the thermos here, the suitcase there, the tie...isn't really the right tie, not quite. He's otherwise sharply dressed for the last day of the year in a freshly ironed white shirt, a green velvet burnout vest that gives an impression of layered, leafy shade, and black trousers, the jacket thrown over the back of the living room armchair where he's deposited his other items. Except for the green and silver striped tie, which he's untied yet again. There is a knock-knock-knock at the door, quick and sharp. The powered signature outside is at once familiar and not -- something almost recognizable there for sure, but it's been shifted, twisted into a register that sits fuzzy and partially-obscured to Matt's senses. The face outside is extremely familiar, though. Lucien is dressed down considerably compared to Matt, jeans and a maroon button-down under his leather jacket. His fingers are clenching repeatedly at the handle of his computer bag, but other than this small tense tic his expression and posture are almost aggressively neutral. The answer does not at once, and when Matt does open the door he stares for a moment before stepping back to make way for Lucien. "Salut." He looks like he might have forgotten he was holding the tie, and now isn't altogether sure what to do with it as he retreats into the living room. "Would you like a cup of tea?" For a moment Lucien doesn't move. He's frowning directly at the tie, lips pressing thinner in displeasure. When Matt steps back he does step inside, slipping his boots off -- his eyes haven't left the tie, though. "{I have tea.}" He is following Matt into the living room, where he -- takes the tie. His head is shaking. He is heading straight upstairs with it. Matt holds very still and relinquishes the tie almost reflexively. A reflex he's clearly questioning, given his frown, but only after Lucien has made off with it. "Luci..." He scrubs a hand over his face. "Sorry about the mess." He pitches his voice a little louder than he probably needs to. The master bedroom is not messy enough overall to impede navigation, though the state of the closet's organization is dire, indeed. He wanders over to retrieve his thermos from the preparatory pile in the armchair. Lucien slips back down the stairs in short enough order. The tie has been swapped out for another, plainer in solid green. He is holding it up assessingly. Apparently he is satisfied with this one, because he's also moving over to pull it around Matt's neck, tuck it under the collar with an ingrained familiarity that almost carries through to tying it as well. He's only barely wrapped the first loop when he catches himself, hands freezing and then dropping as he steps back. "{I expected the mess.}" Matt goes still, again, both hands wrapped white-knuckled around his thermos. He looks down at the tie, then back up at Lucien, his jaw tightening momentarily like he is spooling up for some kind of argument, but ultimately what comes out is just a quiet "Merci." He rolls his thermos between his hands and looks, now, a bit like he isn't sure what to do with that. "{I'm sorry about Mother, also.}" "{I did not come here for an apology.}" Lucien is only now allowing himself a brief look around the house, eyes skimming over this place that once was home. Brief -- his shoulders are a little tighter, his hand clenched a little harder on his bag when he returns his gaze to his brother. "{But I would like an explanation.}" "{I haven't got one. Not one that makes any sense now.}" Matt puts his thermos down again without drinking. "{At the time --}" His eyes search the floor between them and his memory alike. "{-- I thought this was it for her. Her reputation is wrecked, her career is over, so what's the harm? She only wants but a little time more with me, and she won't hurt me. I could handle her, and I know --}" He lifts a hand to cover his mouth, then drag it down the side of his face. "{I know now it's madness. I thought it through, careful and determined and stone cold sober -- and it seemed a perfectly sound decision.}" Lucien considers this in silence for a considerable stretch. There is something ticking at work hard in his mind, but though Matt can feel the edges of his careful recalibrations, quite unusually the intricate details are fuzzily out of reach. At the end of this consideration, though, Lucien is setting his bag down and moving closer to his brother again. First to pick up the tea (where is his own tea that he claimed to have? Who knows) to take a sip, and then to continue, deft and precise, tying the tie. "{Director Fury slept with her.}" Is this a non-sequitur? In tone he delivers this as if it is a thoughtful response to Matt's statement. Matt doesn't actually get as far as opening his mouth to amend his explanation after a full beat of silence, but there's a minute not-quite hitch in his shoulders when he draws a deeper breath to speak and almost immediately releases it unused as he, too, lapses into thought. His eyes refocus when his brother moves, but his brows only unfurrow when Lucien reaches for his tie. The slight widening of his eyes might mean any number of things, but the befuddled downward flick after suggests he had forgotten about the tie again. This time his stillness is obedient muscle memory. "{Mm. So he did. That night was a bit of a blur for me -- because I was busy throwing up, mind you -- but he made us breakfast the next morning.}" Then, as if this also follows logically, adds, "{The man is quite in love with you.}" "{Doctor Xavier also went to speak with her some time before and came away thinking the whole ordeal was quite alright. At the time...}" Lucien does not say what he thought at the time. He makes a minute and fiddling adjustment to the tie knot and then sets it precisely into place. He has reclaimed Matt's tea when he steps back and sinks onto an end of the couch. He turns the thermos several times in his hands before taking a slow drink. "Merci." This comes at a small delay, after Matt touches the tie knot -- lightly, with just the tips of his first two fingers. It's not thorough enough an exploration to check whether it's seated properly, but he clearly doesn't think that necessary. "{Oh. Yes. He read her mind, she explained the situation, and at the time...}" He drops his hand, then drops into his armchair. "{Nothing I thought about that has made any sense, either, since the...}" He puffs out his cheeks and mimes a small explosion with one hand just above his left ear. "{I had started to think I hallucinated that visit. They were geeking out about powers by the second pot of tea.}" He scoffs, reaching out and waggling his fingers for the thermos. "{He even offered to help figure hers out, which was a bit shady considering I was right there.}" "{It isn't that shady, you've not had any more luck than Prometheus in isolating it. If it is some kind of mind control, wouldn't Xavier...}" Here again, though, Lucien falters. His brows are knitting deep. He pops the thermos cap -- clicks it closed -- pops it again. Clicks it closed again. "{Wouldn't you,}" he tries again, and stops. "{I can too sense it,}" Matt objects immediately, indignant, "{and Chaz can't, which doesn't mean it's not mind control, I suppose.}" It's only here that he starts to sound even idly curious, sitting up a straighter and eyeing the tea with a bit more animation. "{It does fluctuate when she's interacting with other people, which isn't surprising considering the rest of us. She claims she can't control it, but who knows.}" "You can what." Lucien is sitting up straighter, here. His frown vanishes, expression collapsing back into blankness. "Did you just -- not think to mention that? Ever?" "I can feel her power." Matt picks up frowning where Lucien left off. "I -- no? I'm sure it's nothing so very important. It just hasn't seemed worth..." His frown, too, is fading, if more gradually. "...mentioning. Maybe that's odd." Lucien taps slowly at the side of the thermos. "...mmm," is all he says, at first. His fingers tap a few times more. "Do you suppose Joshua would be amenable to making a lot of money? I think I have some questions we need to answer." --- At some point, one of them must have thought it would be a good idea to move the testing into the study. This has not borne out in their meager progress, but they have better things to worry about than where they're sitting, probably. Matt has slouched farther and farther down into the futon since the last time his caffeine was replenished, and presently has an arm thrown over his eyes. But no matter how lethargic he looks and how apathetic he sounds, the feather-light touch of his power is focused keenly on the others. "Alright, I'd call that a...three? Four at most. She's regularly at six just noticing someone exists, and we're pretty sure there is in fact no volitional control." He lowers his arm and squinches one eye open to study Joshua. "You know, maybe you actually need to be a messy bitch to really work it. Channel the evil drama queen in your heart. Let the hate flow through you." Joshua has, for a time, been glowering at his coffee as though he really wishes it were something stronger. Alas that he is On the Clock and being very responsible about all this experimentation. He is slouching lower and lower into Lucien's desk chair, somehow managing to retain a certain tenseness through his shoulders even as he slumps down -- his posture has not been comfortable once since he arrived in this house. He sits up when Matt speaks and transfers his glowering smoothly to the eldest Tessier. He bites his lip and grinds the heel of his hand into his eye, pressing down in vain attempt to squeeze out his discomfort and frustration. It spills over anyway, gruff and sharp: "This funny to you?" His hand drops down heavily; he twines one of his tzitzit around his finger one way and then the other. This seems to calm him, somewhat. At least, some of the edge has gone out of his voice, some of the glower drained out of his expression. He's looking to Lucien with something like sympathy, now, and dropping his voice -- not quite sotto voce, still gruff, still quite audible: "Other ways to skin a cat, you know. These fucks say no murder-backs? Be quicker." Probably he's joking, right? It does sound awfully reasonable, though. Lucien is not sitting at all. He's been leaning up against his windowsill -- or, well, the windowsill in the room that used to be his, one arm crossed over his chest and the other hand rubbing slow and tired at his temple. "A grave oversight, but I do not believe they did." Is this a joke? He is saying it like a thoughtful musing, and nodding to himself afterwards as if this is a terribly reasonable suggestion. "-- and I'm sure I would have far more success than they did, when --" For a brief instant, here, his hand presses harder to his head, just before it drops entirely. The oddly foggy landscape of his powers are shifting in rapid readjustment as they work to counterbalance whatever quiet pull Joshua's stolen power has had. His quiet, "Oh, goodness," is far less alarmed than it might have been, had he worked this particular puzzle out without being Under the Influence. There is a very small twitch of his lips, though, as he reaches over to touch his hand to Matt's -- now there's a clearer picture of exactly where this insidious influence is pulling at him and being pulled back in return. "{I cannot believe we didn't see it all these years,}" he is murmuring, and for all the strange surreality, there's a clarity in his voice now, and a strange kind of calm. "{But you know, I do think everything is going to be fine.}"