originallutece | (no subject)

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.

I know. Ah-- that is to say, I know the feeling. That-- that fear of losing this.

[Rosalind falls silent for a few seconds, pressing her lips tight together as she watches him. She doesn't quite know what to say, how to phrase this or what to keep to herself, but she can't simply ignore it.]

. . . you're worried it might disappear for a reason other than our memories resurfacing.

I don't know. Perhaps? It's just...

[He looks down, picking at the hem of his sleeve with his fingers for something to do while he deliberates.]

I like this. I like who I am, how I fit into...this. It makes me feel like I know who I am, even without all the difficulty caused by hallucinomemories that make me think I might not.

I don't want those memories to take this away, but I don't want something mundane to take it from me, either. I don't want to lose...this feeling, that it's right for me to be who and what and where I am.

There's nothing to say you will.

[She doesn't nudge him again, though she's tempted to. Let him glance away and fidget, if that makes him feel better; her gaze on him is steady enough for the both of them.]

Neither supernatural or mundane. Unless there's some factor I'm not aware of, I should think this state of affairs will go on for as long as you'd like them to.

A factor you're not aware of...?

[He glances up, blinking gray eyes in her direction for a moment, and then seems to settle again as he reexamines the notion she's presented.]

You're fine with it, then. With things continuing like this?

Yes.

[Perhaps I shouldn't be, she almost says, or it's not precisely normal . . . But in the end, she bites her tongue. She's very selfish, she knows, and she's being particularly so tonight, when the right thing to do would be to demur and redirect. You should go home, a responsible teacher would say, but what Rosalind Lutece wants is for things to continue precisely down this path.]

So long as you are, then . . . yes, Christopher, I am. Very much so.

I'm not the one who —

[Mm, no. That's the idea he wants to voice, yes, but that's not the method he wants to use to do it, and it shows in his expression.]

...I think what I mean is, there's a distinct possibility that I will prove more of a detriment to you than you ever could be to me. In a number of ways.

It's not that I don't think you've considered that. But I think acknowledging the possibility, for me, needs to be explicit — not merely implicit.

[Mm. She isn't so certain about that. Certainly she's considered the drawbacks for each of them, and god knows it would make life more difficult if . . .

Well. They haven't done anything yet. There's no law against being friends with your assistant. And though the university might frown on it, she doesn't think there'll be any lasting repercussions. But ah, something more . . . that would lead to disaster. That would be ruinous for both of them, but she still thinks he would be worse off than her.

Is he talking about that? Perhaps. Perhaps not. And she's selfish, yes, and selfish enough not to want to check, for fear that he'll answer in the negative and shatter her hope.]

Present your evidence for it, then. That it would be so much worse for me than you.

[Which is a serious request, but also something a touch teasing as well. They've done this before, when he's said something she thought was wrong. Present your evidence, prove your point, whether it be for a point in his thesis or something far more intimate.]

The time you spend on me could just as easily be spent on someone else. You have options and resources available to you that I don't.

[He pauses a moment, long enough to gather his thoughts, and it shows in the way his voice changes when he resumes. Somehow, the hesitant reticence has fled, replaced by simply a calm and even tenor that doesn't shy away from laying out a picture for her to examine.]

You said as much yourself, earlier. Didn't you? "At this rate I'm going to beggar you from bus fare." Coming to my apartment "wouldn't work out particularly well." We're not equals. And I think we can both agree that it's indisputably a step up for me, when I move into your spheres. So it stands to reason that it's the opposite if and when you move into mine.

Even without putting you on a pedestal, Dr. Lutece, we're not equals. But I think that pretending to be, without first confronting that, will only make things worse in the long run. Because it's not sustainable, is it? So paradoxically enough, I have more to lose by losing you than you do by losing me, but you stand to lose more by investing in a rapport with me than I do in you, because I'm hardly in a position to do better than a friendship with you — but you could certainly do better than me.

[She listens, just as she listens to all his evidence, because rarely does Fawkes give her something poorly done. And he does have a point: certainly there's a difference between the two of them that goes beyond even age. They're at two different stages of life; he's a student and she's already an accomplished scholar (though not yet as accomplished as she'd like). And yes, he's correct in that they ought to confront that, because to not do so would simply make things worse later on. But . . .]

. . . you act as though friendship is a game of achievements.

[She tucks her hair behind her ear, but her tone is as steady as his.]

As though I ought to aim higher than you. You're right, we're not equals, and we ought to acknowledge that, but don't act as though I should stop seeing you because you're not as accomplished as I am. I'm not somehow degrading myself by spending with you, Christopher.

[A beat, and then:]

Doing better . . . that's the second time you've mentioned that to me. First it was with Tony, and now you. Precisely what kind of person do you imagine I should spend time with?

[There's a note of danger in that last sentence. He isn't in trouble, but he ought to watch what he says next.]