xp_logs | Nathan and Haroun, Tuesday evening

After his conversation with Tommy and his MRI, Nathan, as arranged, meets Haroun at Harry's. He's in something of a mood.

He didn't want to push his luck too far, so he was drinking beer. Nathan wasn't absolutely sure that anything harder wouldn't have closer to the same effect that he'd grown accustomed to over the last year and a half, although some tequila would have gone down very nicely right about now. He took a sip, then set the beer back down, tracing idle patterns in the condensation on the side of the glass.

Haroun was nursing his iced tea - foul stuff, but he wasn't in the mood to break his religious strictures right then - and watching Nate with amusement. "I thought you had the tolerance of a little girl for that stuff." he said with amusement, looking at Nate's beer. "You finally putting some hair on your chest?"

Nathan shrugged. "Maybe I'll wind up staggering back to the mansion, you never know," he said shortly, and took a pretzel out of the bowl.

Haroun grabbed his own handful of pretzels and munched them. "We've had a fuck of a last few months, you're more than entitled to a therapeutic drunk." he said with a shrug. "Doesn't matter any to me. And while we're sitting here, do you know what is up with Alison? She seems twitchy lately."

"I pinch her telekinetically every time she walks by. Call it keeping her on her toes," Nathan said in a conversational tone.

Haroun scowled at that, but let it pass. "It's weird. Not like her at all. Suppose it's one of those woman things that us non-teeps will never understand." he said with a shrug. "At least my own reintegration finally got on the ball. Remind me that I have to cheerfully throttle Forge."

Nathan gazed at him. "You have to throttle Forge? Well, there's gratitude for you." Damn, he was sounding sour and grumpy.

Haroun nodded. "Yep. Kid left a MP3 stash in the MMI when they implanted it. I've had the same song stuck in my head for weeks now."

Nathan managed not to snort his beer. There was a fair amount of coughing and choking, though. "Oh?" he wheezed. "Something good, I hope? You two do have similar musical tastes..."

"It was OK the first three hundred times I heard it." he said with sour amusement. He could see the humor, and even appreciate it, but on the other hand he hated being the butt of the joke. "After that, it got a little old."

"Okay, so some mild throttling is probably justified. Keep in mind, though, you can't hit the kids... as tempting as it is sometimes." Nathan took another healthy swig of his beer.

"Sure I can! I just do it in a safe and educational environment, and call it "class"." he said with a grin. "So I understand your daughter is going to rule the world with an iron first someday. But I think Cain really didn't like the surprise visit you sprung on him a while back."

"Keeps him on his toes," Nathan said, not noticing the repetition. "Besides, Moira got a kick out of it. She's had little enough to laugh maniacally about lately."

"True enough. And Cain's a big boy, he'll get over it." he said with a laugh. "You're right about one thing. Very few of us have had anything at all to laugh about in a long time. Been a pretty serious and not-funny time lately. We should do something completely reckless. Get Charles to sponsor us a really good party."

"Parties are for celebrating," Nathan said, somewhat crossly. "What do we have to celebrate? I'm failing to come up with a good excuse."

"We're all still alive? We've stared Death in the face and not flinched? Besides, the Christians and the Jews have big holidays coming up." he pointed out. "Besides, since when do we need an excuse?"

"Whatever. I'm not in the mood." Nathan drained the last of his beer, and then, after a moment's consideration, signaled Harry for another. Might as well see how far the return of the alcohol tolerance went.

Haroun blinked at that. "All rightie then." he said, and then took another drink of his iced tea. "Even you will have to admit that a stress-breaker would be a really good idea."

"Stress breaker. How do you break stress?" Nathan asked, as his next beer arrived with remarkable speed. "Forgive me if I'm not up for 'la, la, la, in fact life is good, let's pretend none of this other stuff is going on'."

"Didn't say that. More along the lines of 'There is still much in our lives that is good, and we should celebrate that and not let the darkness overwhelm us' or some pretty philosophical bullshit that means pretty much the same thing. That we're still standing, unbowed, unbroken. A giant fuck-you to Fate." he mused.

"You go right ahead, then," Nathan said, raising his glass in mock salute. "More power to you."

"You're usually one who advocates that kind of thing." he said, puzzled. "What's so bad with the idea?"

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I'm just not interested in telling Fate to fuck herself. She then turns around and gets vindictive. Almost inevitably." American beer. Bah. He missed real beer.

"We're already giant glowing Fate-magnets." he said. "By the nature of what we do. So consider it not so much as a fuck-you to Fate but a celebration of life."

"Semantics. Same basic idea." Nathan shifted in his seat, then scooped up another small handful of pretzels. They danced around in a small, discreet pattern.

"All right, forget I mentioned it." Haroun said, snagging one of Nate's dancing pretzels and eating it.

The pretzels fell, and Nathan sighed, picking his beer up again. His concentration was fairly shitty this week. "I shouldn't be drinking. Training sessions tomorrow. Afternoon, at least."

"Who with?" he asked out of curiously. God Above, he missed training. Physio was a pale, pale compensation.

"Solo. TK training runs. Amping up the precision requirements... it's one of the last batch of things Scott programmed before Seattle."

Haroun ah'ed. "You need anyone up in the booth?" he asked, trying to keep his blatant whiny need out of his voice. "Best I've got for tomorrow is physio. Pretty standard day." he said with a sigh.

"If you'd like," Nathan said dispassionately. "I doubt it's going to be all that interesting. The DR attempting to slip past my guard and all that..."

Haroun fought down his wild urge to say yes. "Probably right. Milk run." he said. "Nothing to get excited about."

As usual, Haroun's reactions were like an open book. "So," Nathan said, eyeing him for a long moment. "Thought any more about what we talked about after the riot?" Because the sudden enthusiasm for REMF work was a bit of a switch.

Haroun exhaled sharply. "I'm going to stay." he said slowly. "I still have my misgivings, but I'm going to tough it out. With Scott down and not likely to come back any time real soon, even what I do behind-the-scenes is needed."

"He's being overly aggressive with the getting back on his feet," Nathan said. "It'll bite him in the ass shortly, I think."

"That an Official Pronouncement or just an educated guess?" he asked, curious as to what the answer would be. Precognition still struck him as fundamentally wrong, but he recognized the utility of the power.

"Educated guess. He's being stubborn. It's been what, two weeks, and he's not really let himself absorb any of it yet."

Haroun nodded. "Maybe I could talk to him. I have some experience with what he's going through." he mused. "Scott and I aren't particularly tight, but maybe I could help him face the ugly reality that he seems to be ducking."

Nathan raised an eyebrow. "Your grasp on psychology leaves a lot to be desired, at times," he said. "You do have something somewhat in common, but he won't respond predictably, like I do when you poke me. Watch what you do." The warning was a sincere one.

Haroun shrugged. "Maybe you're right." he said. "As usual, my heart's in the right place but I fuck up implementation." he said. "Ah well, Alison usually sees it for what it is, I'll take some comfort in that."

Nathan slouched in his chair, running a finger along the rim of his glass. "I'm tired," he said, after a moment, going for the subject change rather than trying to hammer in the point. "Too much on my mind, no way to resolve half of it..."

"So quit drinking and go snuggle your wife. I hear it's good for resolving the blues." he said with a laugh. "Not that I'm in any hurry to snuggle your wife - I don't know who would kill me first, Moira, you, Alison, or me." he said with a grin. "Go on, you meatbag, get out of here. Get some sleep."

"I don't want to sleep just yet. It reminds me..." Nathan trailed off, his finger still running along the rim of the glass. "Not just yet," he finally said, quietly.

"At this rate we'll have to get you a spot up on the roof so you can brood with the kids." he joked weakly.

"You know," Nathan said almost conversationally, "I've been thinking about last March. Those few days before we went to Youra, when Mick and Tim were here to help with the operational planning. I've been trying to remember," he said, lifting his glass and taking another sip before he went on, "if it felt like an ending."

"The end of one chapter and the beginning of another, maybe?" he asked, draining his iced tea. Bah. He really hoped Alison had some of the mint tea on. This stuff was awful tonight. "You're gloomy tonight. Think I may go seek out a happier clime."

"You do that," Nathan said calmly. Drinking in peace without Haroun trying to be Mr. Sunshine seemed like a perfectly acceptable plan to him just now. "I'm just going to sit here and have a staring contest with the future, I think. See which one of us blinks first."

"I fight authority and authority always wins." he sang badly as he got up out of the booth. "If you're staring down time, Time wins. Dealer wins all bets, the game is rigged. But don't let that stop you from playing."

"Go find your blonde, you loon," Nathan murmured.

Haroun cheerfully flipped Nathan the bird as he headed out of Harry's - stiffing Nathan for the bill.