LOG: Marius and Catseye

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Forge is gone, so Catseye finds other things to occupy her time. Like the new kid.



The private bathroom was a step up from a bedpan. Marius couldn't complain about that. Still, it had its drawbacks. The fact that using it allowed visitors the opportunity to enter unnoticed, for example. He disliked having to dress in his own bathroom, even to the extent of donning a pair of sweat pants, but he'd learned quickly that some things could not be anticipated. For all he knew, this could be the day Magneto came crashing through the ceiling. Despite the staff's (suspiciously frequent) assurances to the contrary, Marius wasn't going to take any chances.

Until this point the intruder had more often than not turned out to be one of the medstaff with a new and exciting way to prod him. Just now, the middle of his bed was showing signs of cat. Purple cat. Alert, and staring at him.

Or . . . not.

A mutant. That was the information his gut supplied even as his eyes were submitting the purple fur to his dubious brain. Well, that cleared some things up, at least. Marius had halted halfway into the room, paused in the act of drying his hair. Now he lowered the towel to regard the cat with interest, the water running down the back of his neck a distant memory.

"Didn't know they were technically allowin' me visitors," he said, tilting his head. "Not the unsupervised sort, at least."

The cat stared back unblinkingly for a moment, sitting on his bed with its tail curled about its feet in the traditional pose of all Egyptian statues, gaze remarkably similar as well is inscrutability. A long moment passed with both cat and teenager staring at each other in blank silence, until a quite deliberate blink broke the moment, shielding purple eyes from Marius' sight for an instant, replacing them with the still cat-like eyes of a girl instead. Shifting to sit on the edge of the bed slowly, Catseye resumed the staring, before finally answering.

"Catseye was curious."

"That makes two of us." Marius continued to match her stare. It was the first time he'd seen a mutant actually use her power, and he was a little startled to realize he hadn't been startled. It wasn't that he'd been able to grasp her ability, as such -- it was more like the feeling he got when a teacher quoted a lesson he'd read but momentarily forgotten. As if he'd been reminded of something he'd already known.

"I'm Marius," he said, remembering his manners. They'd been a little stalled by the penetrating lavender eyes. "I'd offer you my hand, but I'm not supposed to be doin' that anymore." It wasn't an uncomfortable stare, exactly, but . . . direct.

Marius found his lips twitch in an involuntary smile. He had no problems with direct.

"Catseye does not need hands." The slight motion of his lips had been all the signal Catseye needed to know there'd been a settling of matter somehow, even if human signals still weren't always entirely clear to her - the rest of his body language spoke loudly enough for her to put together all the small signals nicely enough. Lifting both hands, she showed them to him gravely. "Catseye has her own and they do quite nicely."

She knew what he'd meant, of course. But taking things literally still tended to put people at ease, sometimes. And the medlab was about as neutral ground as it could get in the mansion.

Marius glanced at the proferred hands, noting the claws. He grinned.

"Better than mine, I'll bet," Marius said, slinging the towel over his shoulder. He raised his own hand, displaying the mouth. "Every time I towel off I have to pick lint out of my palm." While the mouths didn't bother him much anymore, he usually wore the gloves as much for courtesy as hygiene. Somehow, though, he doubted this girl was the squeamish type. And besides, it was his room.

In a heartbeat, the girl had scooted over to the edge of the bed, leaning forward until she was slightly cross-eyed while starting at the palm of Marius' hand. If she'd had whiskers in human shape, they'd have been pricked, likely temptingly close at that, but even without those to make things clear it was obvious she was entirely focused on observing what the removal of the glove had revealed.

"Catseye thinks that is the weirdest thing she has ever seen." And, after a short beat. "If they bite Catseye will bite back!" The warning was delivered with utter glee, Catseye clicking her teeth lightly in warning.

"If it came to a fight, I'd lay odds on you," Marius grinned. His hand, aware a mutant was in close proximity, stirred to life; the mouth blossomed in a flower of teeth, kneading the air. Marius suppressed the urge to scratch again.

"MouthyBiteyBoy is very clever. Catseye would win, yes," was the somewhat absent reply, Catseye narrowing her eyes a bit at the mouth, nose still a mere few inches away from it. She hissed at it absently and then pulled back, aware that it wasn't really sentient in its own right, other than in the way it represented overweaning hunger. "Does it ever try to bite MouthyBiteyBoy?" she asked curiously, resting both hands on the side of the bed and staring once more at Marius' face.

At Catseye's withdrawl the mouth settled back into passivity. "No," Marius said, taking the opportunity to scratch; he was still getting used to having muscles there. "It's only other mutants. But they have ruined a few perfectly good sheets, and once or twice the teeth've got tangled in my hair. --But you can forget that last bit, because that would be ridiculous, and I don't do ridiculous things." He wasn't particularly offended by the hissing -- he'd gotten worse reactions, and she showed no signs of leaving.

Marius folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the wall, aware that something about the girl was nagging at him. Something about her hair . . .

"Oi, were you in Forge's room here the other night?" Marius asked suddenly. That's what it was. He'd seen purple hairs on Forge's sheets, but he'd assumed they were fibers from some sort of cloth or cushion.

A slight frown answered that, the mention of Forge bringing easy to see worry to the surface. "Yes. Catseye is keeping an eye on ShinyBitsBoy." She paused, then clarified, since extra face parts in Marius' case seemed to require it. "Two eyes." She nodded wisely at that, tail curling slowly on the bed, first in a right sided loop, then a left one. "MouthyBiteyBoy went to visit?" She figured Marius had dropped by to see Forge in his room in the infirmary while Catseye was out - she remembered the lingering scent, which was in fact why she'd come over to see him now though he didn't need to know that.

Marius nodded. "He came back the first day I was allowed to walk around properly. Wasn't supposed to, but his room was close, and I was . . ." and here he smiled a little, "well, curious." But even the joke couldn't save his mood -- the memory of Forge's obvious pain was too fresh in his mind for that. Marius shook his head. "First student I met, really -- they were still a bit dodgy about lettin' me round the volunteers just then. He was . . ." Marius groped for a word again, and failed as usual. "He looked like he could've used the company."

Curiosity was, really, a perfectly acceptable reason for well... near anything. And Marius was making a good impression over all with that last statement, though of course Catseye was entirely biased and just as entirely fine with that fact. "ShinyBitsBoy did. Catseye kept him company lots, but Catseye still had to go out once in a while." Hunching her shoulders a bit, Catseye stretched her back slightly -not a full body stretch, just enough to work out the kinks from her back. "Catseye thinks MouthyBiteyBoy can stay," she declared firmly, out of the blue. "MouthyBiteyBoy belongs."

"Thanks," grinned Marius, "even if you are talking about a place half the residents call a madhouse while the other half looks to be in the process of either suffering or recovering from injury." He thought about his experience with rugby and ammended, "Though maybe that last bit isn't such a big change."

And sudden as the declaration was, it did feel good to be told. It wasn't that he'd been doubting, exactly, but this place was . . . different. He would get used to it, he was sure, but for now he was still just a step out of sync with his surroundings. Marius wasn't used to feeling like an outsider, but he was surprised by how far the approval of a stranger went towards making him feel less of one.

"Will you be around, then?" he asked, allowing her stretches to draw his mind away from the last of the uneasiness created by the mention of Forge. While she wasn't classically beautiful, Marius approved of any girl who had that much lean muscle.

A half-nod answered that, Catseye finishing the stretch meticulously before going boneless in that inimitable way cats possessed and Catseye managed perfectly well in human shape. So long as she didn't think about it. "Of course Catseye will be around. For one thing, Catseye has to keep a very close watch on ShinyBitsBoy's bed while he is gone." She nodded wisely at this, sidling off Marius' own bed to stand up, matching him in height for all but an inch.

She headed towards the door, then looked over her shoulder once she stood in the threshold with a suddenly impish look. "Catseye will check in on MouthyBiteyBoy too, yes."

"Honoured," Marius said, and for an instant, held by those supremely confident lavender eyes, he half-felt he should be.