LOG: [Terry, Marius] Routine
Oct. 16th, 2006 08:23 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsTerry donates, and Marius goes about his daily routine.
The cold, too-shallow air outside his respirator always made his breath hitch painfully. Marius took care to hold his breath before lifting the mask from his face to create a space for the washcloth, dabbing methodically at the rough flesh below. The skin around his mouth was flaking under the constant chafe of the respirator coupled with the atmosphere it supplied, and the knobby white cloth was dotted with dirty grey specks when he pulled it away. The salve Moira had prescribed during his last checkup with her sat unopened in the bathroom cabinet. It wasn't as if anyone could tell the difference.
Rinse, wring and repeat, then pat dry. That was enough.
Out of habit he checked his email during breakfast, logging on to the laptop that had, remarkably, been his own. He'd expected Forge would have gutted it for parts by now. Maybe he had worked on it, Marius didn't know; it had simply been left on the counter of the suite a day or so after he'd moved back in. He did have the vague sense it was running rather faster than before.
No new messages in his Inbox. Marius turned instead to his class schedule. Half of it was crossed through in red. He made a mental note to never again determine his electives by what a friend was taking, or at least not to coerce those friends into a life of crime and moral questionability through an inadvertent exertion of incidentally-acquired empathy. Resuming a normal routine was made somewhat awkward by the all-consuming desire to be nowhere within 100 feet of your unintended victim.
Marius studied the schedule for a long moment as he slowly worked his way through his toast, the slices already torn into inch-long sections for convenience. Each piece was slowly navigated under the half-mask and chewed around the slender auxiliary tubing threaded down his throat. The sticky bolus tended to get caught on the plastic. As usual, his interest was exhausted before the meal.
He gave up on the toast. According to the date circled on his calendar breakfast wasn't that important anyway. Or at least, not by comparison.
And now he had somewhere to be. He clicked off the alarm on the watch Forge had given him months ago and glanced at the plate. He should dump the remainder of the toast. Of course, every physical trip out of his room increased the likelihood of running into someone and being forced into a conversation.
Marius teleported.
Terry was running late and her own breakfast of eggs on toast was still clutched half-eaten in her hand as she darted downstairs to the infirmary. Putting herself back on the list for Marius hadn't even been a matter for hesitation but it was a little inconvenient if she overslept her alarm. And Bobby's too. It meant wet hair and half-eaten breakfast and a tendency to yawn instead of watching where she was going. She had a sweater to pull on for after the donation but for now the chill of the infirmary made her shiver. "Marius? You here?" she called as she jogged in.
Marius barely raised his head at the familiar voice. "Mornin', Terry," the boy said from the stack of today's mail. "Tell me, you always have one ear to the ground. Perhaps you can answer this burning bit of trivia: why is it the school's extensive screening process is apparently foiled by the nefarious stratagem of the pre-approved credit card?" He tossed the offending envelope into the trashcan without ceremony.
"The Professor takes bribes from the mailcarrier," Terry replied immediately with a perfectly straight face. She took a chair and took another bite of her breakfast then balanced her toast on her knee, watching him sort the mail, "Anything exciting? Love letters to Dr. Voght from a secret admirer?"
"Your lies can prove nothing," Marius responded automatically. Paper mail sorted, he slit the blade of a boxcutter into the one of today's packages and ripped it open. "Ah look, more of those unbearably fashionable hospital frocks. All patients shall once again be able to enjoy an uncomfortable draft. Let us rejoice." Setting the box of gowns aside he moved on to the next, this one considerably smaller. The force with which he pierced the brown packing tape was perhaps a little excessive. He should just get business with Terry over with and free her to go about her day, but he seized on the opportunity to stall even despite the fact that his sourceless irritability was a clear indication it was time to feed.
"Ha! I knew it was you." Terry grinned and shivered, finishing up her eggs and toast and dusting the crumbs off her lap. "Don't worry, one day she'll wake up to your affections and you'll live forever in perfect bliss." There was, perhaps, not quite enough amusement at the concept in her voice. Hard to be flippant about eternal perfect bliss when you were living in the middle of it. Terry fingered her wedding ring and felt a little smug. "What's that one?" she leaned forward, curiously.
"You an' your undying love of difficult questions." Marius frowned at the wadded newspaper that had been used as padding. Definitely not a professional packing job. He'd just assumed it was more supplies. Perhaps next time I should bother to read the label first. Ah well, so long as she's open . . .
Marius drew out the layers of loose newspaper until he found the actual contents. It was a wooden carving about a foot long, though of what he couldn't say -- it looked like a toy ladder that had been gently twisted into a spiral, with a small heart worked into the center rungs. Marius turned the thing over in his hands, examining it for some kind of maker's mark, and was unsurprised to find none. It had a rather homemade look to it, which was a gracious way of saying some of the rungs were crooked and the bottom half was obviously pinched.
Marius glanced at the box. The return address was smeared beyond legibility; cheap ink, Marius supposed. The recipient's address was still clear enough, though. "Who's Hank McCoy? --Ah, bugger. Used to work here, right?"
Terry nodded, "He and Dr. Bartlet moved to Scotland about a year ago. Weird that someone would send him something." It was an odd looking piece and she wasn't sure what the point of it would be. Maybe it was a paperweight? "We can forward it to him, probably. The address has to be around here somewhere." She shivered again. "I don't mean to rush you but I'm freezing over here."
"Ah, of course. How tremendously thoughtless of me." Marius put the thing back in its box and swiped his hands across his sweats a few times to wipe away the fine layer of sawdust they'd accumulated. The brushing went on a little longer than was strictly necessary, which disgusted him. Feeding on Terry should have been no more difficult for him than feeding on Rahne or Kyle. Which shouldn't have been difficult either. At all. They were willing to provide something he needed. That should have been all there was to it.
Just bloody get over it, he told himself angrily.
"Apologies," Marius said as he drew up a seat next to the redhead and eyed her bare arm, "the normal manner of repayment is sadly somewhat complicated at the moment. Perhaps I can cook in lieu of the extravagant dinner out."
"You can contribute to my electric guitar fund instead." She presented her arm without any hesitation or change in demeanour. If she noticed his unease, she didn't show it. "I want to get one before Christmas."
"Ah, yes, well. Therein lies the complication. I am now rather embarrassingly devoid of assets. Unwise investments were made." Well, that was one way of putting it. Not that he'd tried to negotiate with his parents on that subject. He did not enjoy the prospect of attempting to justify a personal allowance after having exceeded the last to buy a young Albanian girl.
The boy spread his hands with more nonchalance than he felt, which he was aware was not the most reassuring gesture when the hands in question looked like his. Fortunately Terry had long ago been inured -- if Terry had ever been shocked in the first place, which Marius rather doubted. The hands dropped, then his eyes. "As I said, apologies. For the time being my gratitude is literally the only thing I have to offer. I personally would prefer to accompany that gratitude with nauseating piles of money, but there it is."
Terry shrugged, "Bother. I'll have to beg my dad instead. I'll try to work it into the standard 'seven years of neglect' guilt trip but I don't know if he'll buy that this year." She pulled her sweatshirt over the arm she wasn't holding out in his direction. Why did they have to keep the infirmary at polar levels? Her husband (hee!) might not have minded but Terry had limits. "Gratitude is perfectly acceptable currency for now."
"That works out nicely, then. And if the guilt fails, simply flutter your fetchingly long lashes at Bobby, an' I'm sure he'll find some way to oblige. That's what boyfriends are for, after all." Marius paused in mid-hand extension. "Unless a falling out has occurred in my absence, in which case I request we defy both reason an' reality an' pretend you were conveniently deaf for the utterance of the preceding sentence."
Terry burst into giggles. If only he knew what they'd been up to. "No, we're quite the blissful couple. We've a suite now even and Sean's blessing on top of it." The fact that they did was still surreal. How could she have ever guessed that he'd be so accepting? It was a miracle, right enough. "I don't like to ask Bobby for gifts. He's more cheerful when he thinks of them on his own."
"Yes. It is generally more satisfying for the other party when they are allowed some small illusion of control. I have learned." With the notable exception of their ill-fated date Marius had never been terribly adept at keeping up with the saga of Terry and Bobby even before he'd ceased to care about mansion gossip, but at least someone was happy. Marius' eyes fell from Terry's glowing face to her bared arm. "Right. Well. I suppose I should just accept that I am destined to be in the debt of beautiful women for the rest of my existence so we can have done with this an' you can return to your merry life of sin. Shall we?"
"Hardly sin," Terry chirped without bothering to explain and shifted her in seat. "Aye then. Hurry up already. The sooner you're through, the sooner I can put my sweatshirt on and stop turning blue." She grinned, "Though it does match my eyes quite prettily."
"One of several fine features that shirt sets off rather nicely," Marius said, though making his mouth smile was somewhat less effective with half his face covered. Nonetheless, he tried to be as gentle as he could closing his hand around Terry's arm. Her pale skin felt slightly slick beneath his when his fingers curled around her. Perhaps he hadn't gotten all the sawdust off. Oh well. The teeth had already fastened. Washing the extraction site afterwards was SOP anyway.
"Cheers," Marius murmured.
The cold, too-shallow air outside his respirator always made his breath hitch painfully. Marius took care to hold his breath before lifting the mask from his face to create a space for the washcloth, dabbing methodically at the rough flesh below. The skin around his mouth was flaking under the constant chafe of the respirator coupled with the atmosphere it supplied, and the knobby white cloth was dotted with dirty grey specks when he pulled it away. The salve Moira had prescribed during his last checkup with her sat unopened in the bathroom cabinet. It wasn't as if anyone could tell the difference.
Rinse, wring and repeat, then pat dry. That was enough.
Out of habit he checked his email during breakfast, logging on to the laptop that had, remarkably, been his own. He'd expected Forge would have gutted it for parts by now. Maybe he had worked on it, Marius didn't know; it had simply been left on the counter of the suite a day or so after he'd moved back in. He did have the vague sense it was running rather faster than before.
No new messages in his Inbox. Marius turned instead to his class schedule. Half of it was crossed through in red. He made a mental note to never again determine his electives by what a friend was taking, or at least not to coerce those friends into a life of crime and moral questionability through an inadvertent exertion of incidentally-acquired empathy. Resuming a normal routine was made somewhat awkward by the all-consuming desire to be nowhere within 100 feet of your unintended victim.
Marius studied the schedule for a long moment as he slowly worked his way through his toast, the slices already torn into inch-long sections for convenience. Each piece was slowly navigated under the half-mask and chewed around the slender auxiliary tubing threaded down his throat. The sticky bolus tended to get caught on the plastic. As usual, his interest was exhausted before the meal.
He gave up on the toast. According to the date circled on his calendar breakfast wasn't that important anyway. Or at least, not by comparison.
And now he had somewhere to be. He clicked off the alarm on the watch Forge had given him months ago and glanced at the plate. He should dump the remainder of the toast. Of course, every physical trip out of his room increased the likelihood of running into someone and being forced into a conversation.
Marius teleported.
Terry was running late and her own breakfast of eggs on toast was still clutched half-eaten in her hand as she darted downstairs to the infirmary. Putting herself back on the list for Marius hadn't even been a matter for hesitation but it was a little inconvenient if she overslept her alarm. And Bobby's too. It meant wet hair and half-eaten breakfast and a tendency to yawn instead of watching where she was going. She had a sweater to pull on for after the donation but for now the chill of the infirmary made her shiver. "Marius? You here?" she called as she jogged in.
Marius barely raised his head at the familiar voice. "Mornin', Terry," the boy said from the stack of today's mail. "Tell me, you always have one ear to the ground. Perhaps you can answer this burning bit of trivia: why is it the school's extensive screening process is apparently foiled by the nefarious stratagem of the pre-approved credit card?" He tossed the offending envelope into the trashcan without ceremony.
"The Professor takes bribes from the mailcarrier," Terry replied immediately with a perfectly straight face. She took a chair and took another bite of her breakfast then balanced her toast on her knee, watching him sort the mail, "Anything exciting? Love letters to Dr. Voght from a secret admirer?"
"Your lies can prove nothing," Marius responded automatically. Paper mail sorted, he slit the blade of a boxcutter into the one of today's packages and ripped it open. "Ah look, more of those unbearably fashionable hospital frocks. All patients shall once again be able to enjoy an uncomfortable draft. Let us rejoice." Setting the box of gowns aside he moved on to the next, this one considerably smaller. The force with which he pierced the brown packing tape was perhaps a little excessive. He should just get business with Terry over with and free her to go about her day, but he seized on the opportunity to stall even despite the fact that his sourceless irritability was a clear indication it was time to feed.
"Ha! I knew it was you." Terry grinned and shivered, finishing up her eggs and toast and dusting the crumbs off her lap. "Don't worry, one day she'll wake up to your affections and you'll live forever in perfect bliss." There was, perhaps, not quite enough amusement at the concept in her voice. Hard to be flippant about eternal perfect bliss when you were living in the middle of it. Terry fingered her wedding ring and felt a little smug. "What's that one?" she leaned forward, curiously.
"You an' your undying love of difficult questions." Marius frowned at the wadded newspaper that had been used as padding. Definitely not a professional packing job. He'd just assumed it was more supplies. Perhaps next time I should bother to read the label first. Ah well, so long as she's open . . .
Marius drew out the layers of loose newspaper until he found the actual contents. It was a wooden carving about a foot long, though of what he couldn't say -- it looked like a toy ladder that had been gently twisted into a spiral, with a small heart worked into the center rungs. Marius turned the thing over in his hands, examining it for some kind of maker's mark, and was unsurprised to find none. It had a rather homemade look to it, which was a gracious way of saying some of the rungs were crooked and the bottom half was obviously pinched.
Marius glanced at the box. The return address was smeared beyond legibility; cheap ink, Marius supposed. The recipient's address was still clear enough, though. "Who's Hank McCoy? --Ah, bugger. Used to work here, right?"
Terry nodded, "He and Dr. Bartlet moved to Scotland about a year ago. Weird that someone would send him something." It was an odd looking piece and she wasn't sure what the point of it would be. Maybe it was a paperweight? "We can forward it to him, probably. The address has to be around here somewhere." She shivered again. "I don't mean to rush you but I'm freezing over here."
"Ah, of course. How tremendously thoughtless of me." Marius put the thing back in its box and swiped his hands across his sweats a few times to wipe away the fine layer of sawdust they'd accumulated. The brushing went on a little longer than was strictly necessary, which disgusted him. Feeding on Terry should have been no more difficult for him than feeding on Rahne or Kyle. Which shouldn't have been difficult either. At all. They were willing to provide something he needed. That should have been all there was to it.
Just bloody get over it, he told himself angrily.
"Apologies," Marius said as he drew up a seat next to the redhead and eyed her bare arm, "the normal manner of repayment is sadly somewhat complicated at the moment. Perhaps I can cook in lieu of the extravagant dinner out."
"You can contribute to my electric guitar fund instead." She presented her arm without any hesitation or change in demeanour. If she noticed his unease, she didn't show it. "I want to get one before Christmas."
"Ah, yes, well. Therein lies the complication. I am now rather embarrassingly devoid of assets. Unwise investments were made." Well, that was one way of putting it. Not that he'd tried to negotiate with his parents on that subject. He did not enjoy the prospect of attempting to justify a personal allowance after having exceeded the last to buy a young Albanian girl.
The boy spread his hands with more nonchalance than he felt, which he was aware was not the most reassuring gesture when the hands in question looked like his. Fortunately Terry had long ago been inured -- if Terry had ever been shocked in the first place, which Marius rather doubted. The hands dropped, then his eyes. "As I said, apologies. For the time being my gratitude is literally the only thing I have to offer. I personally would prefer to accompany that gratitude with nauseating piles of money, but there it is."
Terry shrugged, "Bother. I'll have to beg my dad instead. I'll try to work it into the standard 'seven years of neglect' guilt trip but I don't know if he'll buy that this year." She pulled her sweatshirt over the arm she wasn't holding out in his direction. Why did they have to keep the infirmary at polar levels? Her husband (hee!) might not have minded but Terry had limits. "Gratitude is perfectly acceptable currency for now."
"That works out nicely, then. And if the guilt fails, simply flutter your fetchingly long lashes at Bobby, an' I'm sure he'll find some way to oblige. That's what boyfriends are for, after all." Marius paused in mid-hand extension. "Unless a falling out has occurred in my absence, in which case I request we defy both reason an' reality an' pretend you were conveniently deaf for the utterance of the preceding sentence."
Terry burst into giggles. If only he knew what they'd been up to. "No, we're quite the blissful couple. We've a suite now even and Sean's blessing on top of it." The fact that they did was still surreal. How could she have ever guessed that he'd be so accepting? It was a miracle, right enough. "I don't like to ask Bobby for gifts. He's more cheerful when he thinks of them on his own."
"Yes. It is generally more satisfying for the other party when they are allowed some small illusion of control. I have learned." With the notable exception of their ill-fated date Marius had never been terribly adept at keeping up with the saga of Terry and Bobby even before he'd ceased to care about mansion gossip, but at least someone was happy. Marius' eyes fell from Terry's glowing face to her bared arm. "Right. Well. I suppose I should just accept that I am destined to be in the debt of beautiful women for the rest of my existence so we can have done with this an' you can return to your merry life of sin. Shall we?"
"Hardly sin," Terry chirped without bothering to explain and shifted her in seat. "Aye then. Hurry up already. The sooner you're through, the sooner I can put my sweatshirt on and stop turning blue." She grinned, "Though it does match my eyes quite prettily."
"One of several fine features that shirt sets off rather nicely," Marius said, though making his mouth smile was somewhat less effective with half his face covered. Nonetheless, he tried to be as gentle as he could closing his hand around Terry's arm. Her pale skin felt slightly slick beneath his when his fingers curled around her. Perhaps he hadn't gotten all the sawdust off. Oh well. The teeth had already fastened. Washing the extraction site afterwards was SOP anyway.
"Cheers," Marius murmured.
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