originallutece | (no subject)

A favor repaid.

It'd make us even, then, wouldn't it?

A debt fulfilled, if you'd like to think about it in those terms.

Come over.

It makes it easier to decide, when you put it like that.

I'm on my way.

[It's summer, but her apartment is cool, and that's all the excuse Rosalind needs to make some hot chocolate for both of them. It's a silly impulse, maybe, but she remembers her mother doing it for her when she was very small. She'd had awful nightmares when she was a girl, and sometimes when she couldn't go back to sleep, her mother would take her down to the kitchen and make something hot for her, talking soothingly all the while. There'd been something wonderfully intimate about those moments, and perhaps that's what she's hoping emulate in the here and now.

Or perhaps she's simply hoping to appeal to his sweet tooth. It might go either way.

She's getting a bit too used to having him over this late. There's no hesitance in the way she opens the door and stands aside to let him in, nor any awkwardness over the fact she's dressed down in front of him yet again.]

[There's no hesitance in her, perhaps, and that makes one of them. Even as he stands at the door waiting for it to open, Fawkes is second-guessing the merits of this idea; there are plenty of reasons why he should've said no, and the justification they'd used to bring this about is flimsy at best and outright laughable at worst.

But she'd told him to come, and so here he is. And before he can think better of it, she's opening the door, and it's too late to do anything but indulge his guilt and trot dutifully inside when she motions him to.]

Thank you for having me, Dr. Lutece.

[You might as well call me Rosalind, she does not say, because there's lines and lines. Why her first name is more sacred than having him over past nine PM she has no idea, but there they are.

Dr. Lutece sounds wrong, but Rosalind would sound worse.]

One of those mugs is yours.

[She nods towards the coffee table. That's where they're sitting, apparently: on the couch, Rosalind curled up on one end and Fawkes sitting as he'd like, facing one another instead of out towards the room proper.]

At this rate I'm going to beggar you from bus fare alone. I'd offer to come to your apartment some time, but I don't think that would work out particularly well, hm?

Oh.

[Well. That's...a unique way of arranging the two of them, but it's not as though this is his house and he really doesn't have any right to complain or critique it. So he simply lowers himself down tentatively onto the cushions, a little more withdrawn than his usual, but not precisely tense, either.]

I — no, I don't think that would be a good idea, honestly. It's not really...

[...]

It's not very suited for entertaining.

[Something in the set of her shoulders relaxes as he sits. There, now, they're settled in and set for the night. Good idea or bad, they've crossed the line from contemplation to action, and so there's no use in being anxious about it anymore.]

It's that small, is it? Or just too messy for me to see?

[Indeed: she's relaxed enough to tease, even mildly.]

A little of both, really.

[Eager for something to do with his hands, he leans to reach for his mug and picks it up without sipping it, simply holding it with his fingers curled around the cylinder of its circumference, almost contemplative in nature.]

It's hardly untidy, but — well, it's precisely as I said. I don't often have guests, so the way it is suits me. And, er, me alone, to some degree.

Well. Make it suitable for guests sometime, and I'll come by that evening. It seems fair, and given we started this evening on the subject of fairness . . .

[Well, actually, they'd begun this evening on a far more depressing note, but who wants to think about that?]

...It's also very much a student's apartment, you realize. It's not exactly what one might call luxurious.

[Especially not in comparison to some people's. But he's either polite enough or embarrassed enough to not say that out loud, and either way he's proud enough to not want to admit to it anyway.]

But if that's what you'd like...

[Admittedly, she'd mostly been teasing, but now she's curious. He's seen her place, all Rembrandt and Monet prints; she might as well get to see an eyeful of what he likes.]

I remember student housing, Fawkes. I'm hardly expecting a mansion. And if you take down whatever video game posters you have up, I'll be quite cross. Did you see Kaiba's running a whole . . .

[She waves a hand vaguely.]

. . . event about them next month?

I did. I'm volunteering for it, actually, as best I can.

[Such modesty. Cut him and he bleeds polygons.]

I suspect it'll be quite the event, with a considerable turnout. Why, were you thinking of attending?

I mostly noticed it because I knew you were interested in that kind of thing. But--

[She hesitates for a moment, but then forges on ahead anyway:]

--Tony will likely be there, and I might stop in to say hello. If you're there too, I'll have to make two stops. What are you volunteering as?

Oh — you won't need to let me delay you from any of that. Most of my work is going to be on the front end, I think; once things actually get into full swing, I'll be free to simply enjoy the sights and sounds.

[He shouldn't be weird about this. She's already told him not to be. And yet it's so hard not to be weird about it, when it's just — ]

...So perhaps it'll be me who comes to see you, ah, is what I meant.

[Perhaps she shouldn't have said that. But it's silly to hesitate; he knows there's nothing between she and Tony, and even if there was, it's certainly not her job to shelter him from it. Disapproving or not, he's her assistant, not . . .

Not her friend, but no, that's not quite right, is it? Not anymore. They're blurring those lines step by step, and she isn't doing a damn thing to stop that. But either way, she shouldn't feel as though she has to shield him from a reality that doesn't even exist.]

Are they so appealing? I mean--

[That sounds disapproving, and she doesn't mean it that way.]

. . . I've never been to one. What's the appeal, that you'd want to stay all day?

Oh. No, it's that there's so much to do.

[He frowns a little, though, casting around for an appropriate metaphor before eventually settling on a comparison he thinks she'll approve of.]

Imagine it as similar to going to the World's Fair — only instead of scientific achievements, it's entertainment. New games, new technological innovations, new things to look at and experience. And there's a sense of community, of being surrounded by people like you, of dressing up in costumes as figures from the stories you care about, and being around people who will immediately recognize you and approve, instead of simply thinking you're strange.

Ah.

[Well, all right. She can understand that. There's something breathtaking about being at a proper science fair-- not the childish things in high school, but right proper ones, full of innovation and experiments and five hundred people who love science just as much as she does. She isn't half as interested in video games or comic books, but she can understand the appeal.

Good, then, that he's going. Good that he'll be somewhere that he can fit in and feel accepted, rather than the somewhat solitary figure he normally is. Rosalind smiles slightly and stretches her legs out, nudging him gently with one foot.]

You'll have to show me around a bit, then. Are you dressing up?

[It's not that he freezes, precisely, when the tip of one of her toes brushes against him, but he does settle into stillness. It's not that he falls silent, not that his train of thought momentarily derails, but it does take him a little bit longer to come up with words to offer her in answer than it has before.]

I think so. I...I enjoy it, so.

[...]

I'm not succeeding very well at being a conversationalist tonight. I — I hope this doesn't feel as though you're interrogating me, or something equally so one-sided as that.

Does it feel that way from the other side?

[She doesn't think so, but it can't hurt to make sure. Rosalind ducks her head, trying to catch his eye, and doesn't pull her legs back just yet. It's an overly familiar position, maybe, but given he's already spent the night on this couch, she thinks they're well past overly familiar already.]

. . . or is it that you're still thinking of that other self?

...I'm thinking of what it would mean, to keep the things that matter most to me. It's...a preoccupying thought.

[He hesitates a minute.]

You never asked me how I would've answered it, in return. Was that intentional?

No. I rather got distracted by the rest of it.

[But that's an obvious hook, and she is curious.]

What would you have answered, then, if I'd posed the question to you?

My mother.

[It's an immediate answer, so prompt that he'd clearly already had it ready and waiting before she'd even gotten around to finishing the question.

But it's also not the only answer he gives.]

...And, I think — knowing you.

[And now it's her turn to go still, her muscles freezing into place. For a long few moments she simply stares at him, waiting for the inevitable moment when he scrambles to take them back or lessen the intimacy.

But that moment never passes. He sits there and stares back at her, his grey eyes soft, and lets those words hang between them. And it's not that it was such a shocking answer, but god, she hadn't expected him to actually say it.

It's the difference between Dr. Lutece and Rosalind. There's no words for it, no clear lines crossed, but still, something's changed.]

I mean that much to you?

If this...slipped away from me. If I lost it, if I couldn't...keep it.

[His gaze drifts; he's not quite looking away from her, but he's not precisely holding her eyes with his own, either.]

The thought of this disappearing, somehow...I've been finding the thought intolerable, frankly.