Logs:Joint Session

Joint Session
Dramatis Personae Sera, Spencer
In Absentia	2021-01-07 "I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to avoid me."
Location <XAV> Rec Room - Xs Second Floor
School this may be, but life for Xavier's students certainly isn't all studying. Outside classes, this is a popular spot to find students in their downtime. An enormous tribute to slacking off, this room is a wealth of fun and relaxation. Comfortable armchairs, couches, and beanbags offer plentiful seating scattered throughout the room, and the cushioned windowseats by the high windows offer a cozy nook to curl up and look out on the grounds. The room is often filled with the noises of gaming -- whether it comes from the big-screen television (tall racks of DVDs beside it, if nothing can be found on the multitude of cable channels), tricked out with consoles from retro to the latest releases, or the less electronic clatter and thump of the pool table, air hockey, or foosball. For those a little more subdued in their gaming, the cabinets hold stacks and stacks of board and card games, ranging as classic as chess and go to as esoteric as Dixit, Catan, and Gloom. More days than not, there's some variety of snacks to be found on a table beside the gaming cabinet -- quite often in the form of fresh-baked desserts. The desserts ran out around midnight under the combined might of so many teenagers stress-eating, but it's well past 2am now and they've largely taken their stress to bed, whether or not they're able to sleep. Spencer has managed to fall asleep, though he did not successfully make it to bed before doing so, curled into a corner of the couch and wrapped in not one but two throw blankets. On his head is a black Bucharian kippah embroidered with stylized stars and planets in many colors, and despite its large coverage it's still obvious on closer inspection his head is shaved. The television is still on and tuned to C-SPAN, with the sound muted and the closed captions on, somewhat disjointedly keeping up with Congress's debate on the challenge to the Pennsylvania electoral vote they are meant to be certifying. Sera creeps quietly down the hall, her feet padded with soft fuzzy house shoes covered in iridescent white sequins. She's certainly dressed for bed in pale blue long sleeve pajamas featuring a smiling Elsa (ringed with ice sparkles) from Frozen with matching pajama pants, and her touseled hair suggests she's at least tried to sleep, though perhaps that plan did not long survive encounter with the pillow. She's hugging a much-worn hardback copy of Terry Pratchett's I Shall Wear Midnight, casting around with an appraising eye as she enters the rec room. She freezes when she spots Spencer, looking conflicted for a moment. Then her eyes go wide with recognition. Her careful control over her power lapses, seizing hold of Spencer with an intensity that takes her breath away. Before she has a chance to reel it back in, it's already wracking her with his agony and exhaustion, and him with her longing and grief. She sways and starts to collapse. Spencer does not wake when Sera enters. He does not wake when she stops to stare. He does wake when her power takes hold of him, though, his eyes squinting open and his breath hitching. Wakefulness brings even more pain for Sera's power to borrow, bone-deep aches all over his body as he struggles to sit up, and a powerful wave of nausea to boot. Though still bleary, his eyes go wide when they fix on her. Then he vanishes -- -- and is abruptly at her side, steadying her. Or trying to, anyway, his own limbs weak and wobbly enough without any additional load to bear. Now that he's standing and left the blankets behind he looks frightfully skinny in a leaf green t-shirt with the silhouette of a dancing faun-creature bowing and extending one hand to a child above the words 'Amongst the Green and Growing Things' written in flowing cursive and soft blue jeans almost worn through at the knees. Just when his legs are about to buckle he -- -- blips them both over to the couch that he promptly flops back down onto. Sera tries to jerk away from Spencer, but her body isn't really obeying her. She does not object further to his help, though, perhaps too distracted now. Not too distracted to continue staring at him. When he teleports them she drops down onto the couch gratefully, then scoots to the far end of it from him, green eyes still huge and fixed on him. Waves of confused emotion pass through her -- anger, guilt, solace, and concern -- all distressingly strong, none of them replacing her deep, hollow sense of loss. She open her mouth, hesitates, then settles on, "Thanks." Spencer looks down when she withdraws from him, the wave of his own guilt meshing with hers. He slowly rights himself and tug-tug-tugs the blankets up around him. "No, I -- should have asked first, I just woke up and you looked like you were gonna fall over and --" All this comes out in a quiet, breathy tumble of words. His head ducks. "Sorry. Um. Nice to meet you?" He probably hadn't meant for it to come out sounding like a question. Breathing slow and steady, Sera tries -- and fails -- to disengage her power from him. "Yeah, you should have." She doesn't sound angry, and though he can feel her anger return, it does not have much heat it in, and fades away in short order again. "But I probably was gonna fall over and I'm glad I didn't, so. Thanks." She huffs a soft, humorless laugh. "I don't think it's at all nice for either of us." Her gaze has softened somewhat as it searches him, her concern blossoming into sympathy. "I'm sorry you're not feeling well." Spencer bobs his head, chastened and relieved all at once. His pale cheeks blush very visibly, his embarrassment sudden and sharp. "Yeah, I guess that was...kinduva silly thing to say." Something shifts in the midst of his grief -- her grief? Their grief. Something careful and tender. "I haven't been like -- avoiding you. I'm just too tired to walk much and I kinda just teleport everywhere." He's very earnest about this. "I'm recovering, though. It's not the cancer, it's the chemo." This last part sounds like something he's said a lot, something meant in a lighthearted tone, but he just isn't light enough of heart now to make it come out quite right. His huge gray eyes skip aside to the TV screen with a wash of deeply unimpressed frustration. "Oh no, they're still debating. I can turn that off, um...like, I'm pretty sure the country is still gonna be a wreck whether they certify it or not." Sera curls in tighter around the book, misery rolling off of her in heavy, palpable waves. Her eyes brim with tears at the change in their grief, her breath speeding up again. "I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to avoid me." This is kind of dull and matter-of-fact. "But I -- it's wonderful to hear that you're mending." This comes out just a touch stilted. Her gaze follows his, fixing on the news with some confusion and -- not exactly apathy, but a sheer inability to cope with further strangeness. "No, it's okay, I'll go. It's not," she adds firmly, "because you did anything wrong. I just -- it's hard, because of my power." She rises carefully, starts to reach for him, then pulls the hand back. A desire to stay, however much it may hurt, overwhelms her, but only for a moment. She swallows, fighting it down. "I'll see you around, alright?" Then she's hastening from the room -- and almost manages to get far enough away quickly enough that he doesn't feel the fading edge of her heartbreak.