tampered | (no subject)

(no subject)

When; Late evening, the 25th.
Rating; PG13 probably.
Characters; Nick & Remy
Summary; Interrogating the new telepath will obviously go much better if he's hammered first.
Log;

Nick's Christmas has been quiet, really; he and Ein meandered down to midnight mass behind the Pied Pipers of Merriment on the eve before, was startled to receive a book about chess from Jean Paul and otherwise largely ignored the holiday. (Except for the parts of a party upstairs that were hard to miss even when you weren't attending.)

When it's quieted down all around, he leaves the corgi to his own devices a while and makes his way to meet with Remy, as per previous arrangement.

(People that'll understand explanations he'd give if he were inclined to have been few and far between; his actually giving the explanation is even rarer. When any sort of ability of the sort is generally considered to definitely not exist and be the realm of hoaxers and the delusional, and on top of that half of yours is invasive by nature, one gets out of the habit of volunteering much. He's pretty sure this'll be interesting from either side of the conversation.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Whatever you wanna call it, like I said, I've known a lot of telepaths." He's even been one's personal hit man, but let's not go there.

"Start explainin' that whole bit, there - gave her somewhere to put it."

"I can read her mind, but I haven't gone that deep," he says, shrugging his shoulders backward. "When we first met, she had a set of surface thoughts that acted as a sort of - barrier, if you like, she was hiding the rest of her mind underneath. I'll look if I can, but I don't break barriers without reason, so I haven't."

The explanation is...hm. He exhales, sitting down properly. "I refined it a bit from something that was used to hide Ann- someone from me. It's like building a tower in someone's head. They're in there, but they can't be touched. Like incredibly effective compartmentalization. I can't sustain it the way Rose Red could have-" he didn't exactly mean to say that, but he doesn't bother taking it back, "-but for a couple of weeks, sure. Three at the outside."

He pauses, shrugs. "The side-effect's that no one else can read her mind right now. What I refined it from was designed to keep nosy telepaths from cocking up plans."

...he's a little bitter, there, but it's private.

He can accept that. Non-psychics get taught how to make lock boxes inside their minds all the time. And it's true Wanda could have done with some intensive therapy a loooong time ago.

"Okay. Why?"

"Why which? Why did I do it?"

"This is a free talk exercise," he says, gesturing. "Just go on 'bout whatever aspects."

Remy gets a wryly amused look for that. "Wanda asked nicely and I owed her one. I'm in the habit of making myself useful when I can - I'm a psychiatrist. The primary use of my powers before I took the sabbatical was geared towards finding the best possible treatment plan for my patients. Wanda's certainly not my patient, and I don't treat friends for professional reasons-"

He shrugs. "I owed her one."

Remy seems to accept that as he wipes up a spilled something or another from an end table. He's not a reader, but he's good with impressions, when he sets his mind to it. It's half sensitivity and half 'real world experience'. You hang around people long enough, you start to be able to get a sense for them.

Nick's a weirdo. But Remy doesn't think he's a threat.

"You want a drink?"

Nick's always been odd, a little off; he jokes that his dad used to think he was a changeling, but it's not really a joke. A distant sort of regret, the kind that doesn't hurt, but he thinks it might've been easier in Marske if they'd been able to understand each other better.

He means well, though, even when he's holding onto standing steady by his nails and the skin of his teeth. He's a pain in the ass and he can be a bit of a bastard, but he's well-intentioned and even helpful.

"Good Christ, yes." He's considering looking around for a vacuum cleaner, also. "You mind if I smoke?" He theorizes 'no', by the way, but it's always polite to ask. He does have manners, somewhere in there.

There is a vacuum cleaner lurking in a closet, but somewhere in the apartment, Threnody is probably still sleeping it off, so let's not. Remy fiddles around in the kitchen-

"You want... uh, a beer, what's left of de tequila...?"

You have choices, Nic. "An' yeah, go ahead." There are ash trays somewhere - or there were. He thinks he saw one with limes in it earlier.

Edited 2008-12-26 03:32 (UTC)

Even Nick's not going to try drinking, smoking and vacuuming all at once (as entertaining as that could end up being, let's not pretend). "I'll take a beer, thanks," he says, fishing out his cigarettes and a lighter.

"I think Wanda was a bit concerned about how this'd go," he says, exhaling smoke. He got this impression from how many times she repeated they'll be nice! and because he is not an idiot. "Had I ever actually met anyone's parents, I'd probably make a really tasteless joke here."

Remy hands him a beer. It's Canadian.

"Well, I'll be honest, these sort of things have gone different with me before. I haven't dropped you off a buildin' or nothin' yet."

"I've already died," he says, the weariness half mocked up for laughs and half...genuine, for assorted obvious reasons including actual failure to sleep very well. "I really appreciate your restraint in not giving me more post-traumatic stress." And, for the beer: "Ta."

"Hey, I would have caught you." Probably. He gets a beer for himself. "Sorry 'bout the whole death thing. It sticking?"

... Because, uh. Sometimes death doesn't.

"Inasmuch as it would then, it did 'til I came here." He has vivid memories of how hard it stuck, though he remembers best in his dreams. This isn't really anything he's mentioned to anyone prior, but occasionally his attempts to be more honest provoke more openness than he intends initially. He shrugs, drinking with the sort of absent-mindedness of someone who probably isn't all that picky about their alcohol, "So a pleasant surprise, this place, really."

"Far as other realities go, it ain't so bad," he says. He's not a very openly sentimental man, so he doesn't longer on the whole 'I'm sorry you're dead' thing. "I been in one where they make you fight in reality tv competitions to the death for all eternity. ... We don't speak his name, mostly."

"Rose Red was more about building, and - well, suffering." He pulls a face at the innate melodrama of that statement.

"I can see why you wouldn't."

"Suffering blows. People should knock that off." He pauses and takes a drink.

"...Well. You never know. If we say it too many times he might jus' appear."

(Like Beetlejuice!)

"And be trapped here like everyone else," Nick contributes, helpfully, "inconveniently." He considers this over the end of his cigarette. 'Bugger that' seems to be the sentiment at hand.

"If dimensions were meant to have doors they wouldn't be dimensions," he says with a shrug. At far as he's concerned, it's not Mojoverse and Apocalypse isn't in charge, so, whatever. Also, no in-timeline time travel. That's a plus. He hates that.

"Have another beer. I don' have room in de fridge for half of this."

"Happily." Nick will probably never turn down free drinks. He didn't turn down free drinks from a malevolent house at 7AM. (What is wrong with him.) "Though, Rose Red had doors. More of a pocket psychic phenomena than a proper dimension in and of."

...yes, that.

"I met somebody like that once."

...

Somehow, Nick doesn't think Remy is kidding. Probably because he's almost certainly not. "That's an unsettling thought."

"Mos' thoughts are, when you get right down to it."

He lights a cigarette - using a lighter this time. He's had too much booze over the past twenty-four hours to go dicking around with his powers.

"So, did Wanda explain mutants to you?"

"Not really," Nick shakes his head, sitting down with his (second, headed towards his third) beer and his cigarette. "I got a vague impression, but I couldn't say much on the subject."

Remy grabs a couple of shot glasses and the leftover bottle of tequila. The living room is clean enough to sit in - just uh, not that sofa.

"Homo sapiens superior," he says. "Mutants. Still human, but evolved. S'a variant on what we call de 'x gene'. There's no rules about what de x gene will go do you. Wanda manipulates reality an' probability. I have bio-kinetic energy generation. Blink teleports. An' she's purple. Some people are telepaths, some people can fly, some people control de weather."

As he speaks, he sits down and sets out the glasses, filling them.

"So. De government don't like this, 'cause people can do crazy things suddenly. De people don't like this 'cause they're scared. De church don't like this 'cause evolution ain't supposed to be real. But there ain't no hidin', 'cause kids are wakin' up and settin' their homes on fire by accident and screamin' an they don't understand what's happenin' to them, babies are bein' born wit blue skin. I was born wit my eyes like this."

He does a shot.

"You can imagine how well this all went over."