Kevin, Sharon: Baited
Sep. 12th, 2024 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsKevin impresses upon Sharon that she is not as subtle with her bad moods as she believes.
(Backdated to September 12, 2024)
The tip of Sharon's tail flicked an impatient counterpoint to the quiet tick of the lounge's antique clock. She had been waiting for some time now, and the other occupant seemed more than happy to make her wait longer still.
Finally, tired of being ignored, her tail went as still.
"Is this not the appointed time?" she demanded.
"Is it? I got a rather angry email that said you are no longer bound by the schedule system of humans. I would have tried to parse what that meant, but I realized I don't care. So I am going to enjoy this fantastic Dominican cigar made from transported tobacco plants from Cuba and... fuck if it isn't excellent."
"No such message was sent," Sharon replied, ignoring the fact it was nonetheless something she probably would have. The normal scent of oiled wood and leather was completely overpowered by the cloud of cigar smoke. Her hair and clothing would be soaked with the vile stench for the rest of the day. She felt Kevin had done this intentionally.
"Just because a natural scent is not yours does not mean compensation is required. This is the lesson? To withstand sensory abuse?"
"Could be. Could be about understanding that you're not in charge or factored into the consideration of every environment." Kevin said, drawing in a deep draft and letting it roll around his tongue before blowing it out in a sequence of tight rings.
Sharon's eyes narrowed. "Kevin Sydney may speak to me of lack of physical accomodation when he has spent half a year with a form fixed to twelve pounds. Or even half this time human-sized, but quadrupedal. I am the most adaptive."
"Adaptive isn't the word I'd associate with you these days." He leaned back in his seat. "It's funny. Back in 1956, I was in Hungary, trying to stay ahead of the Soviet troops pouring in. Borders were shut, every escape narrowing. Now that was about being adaptive. No powers, don't speak the language. Fortunately, there was an old woman who sold flowers from her stand in the middle of Tatabanya. Now Gizike had lost her husband to cancer in the 1930s and her son during the Second World War. He was a pilot and had joined up with some Polish pilots to fly for the RAF. She'd get letters back from him about stopping the fascists and how much he liked the Brits. AK fire got him over France in '44. She mistook me for British, but said I reminded her of poor Zoltan. So she's going to help me get across the border into Austria." Kevin rambled, building the story inbetween smoke rings.
"Austria," Sharon repeated flatly.
"Austria. You should go sometime. I know the whole schnitzel thing is a bit of a stereotype, but there was this place in Eisenstadt that Chris Kane and I ended up at in '58 that served a jaeger schnitzel that overflowed the platter on all sides. I mean, I'm not talking about a plate. I'm talking about a platter. All the sides got served separately. Oh, and the owner used to make his own schnapps in the basement." Kevin smiled and took a sip from his drink. "I mean, dill schnapps. Who does that? It even had a hint of garlic, but the garlic was sweet. We bugged the guy for an hour but he wouldn't tell us. Lately, Chris tells me he roasted the garlic first before infusing it. I guess the owner's sister took a shine to him. It's all about the accent with him."
The girl's tail twitched with impatience. "These people I do not know," she snapped. "There is a point to such reminiscence?"
"Of course. See, if Chris doesn't figure that out, we have no clue what is in the schnapps. So later, when Alpine Haus opened down in SoHo in '68, my wife and I were there and guess what was on the menu? The same jaeger schnitzel recipe we had in Austria. I mean, my wife hadn't had it before, but I had. So I gave the waiter a fin and he brought over the chef. Turns out, the chef was from Linz! What are the odds?" He paused to refill his drink from the decanter of amber liquor. "The weird thing is his name was Bjorn. His mother was Norwegian but he was pure Austrian in his cooking. He explains his Kartoffelkrapfen recipe to Beth, who is taking notes in her little address book. I had a pen, but she liked to keep these little golf pencils for her notes."
"Now you are simply making up words," Sharon accused, even angrier because she knew curiosity would compel her to google jaeger schnitzel later. "What is the point? Psychological torment to accompany the olfactory?"
"I'm trying to tell you about an important thing that happened in my past. It relates to what you've been facing. Where was I?" Kevin took a sip. "Right, Greece. So you need to understand that in the 60s, well, late 60s, a military coup took control of the country, The were neo-fascist but anti-Communist which at least put them in our camp. I went over with John Day, the diplomat, who was trying to balance King Constantine and Georgios Papadopoulos. We did a little sitdown in this tiny country inn that made the most incredible dolmades from the same vines they made their retsina with. I don't need to tell you, after a couple of glasses, we nearly had an American client state. But the chef agreed to give me his recipe for Beth who was collecting them. Do they still have those recipe card boxes? Beth had four, all red-brown for some reason."
Sharon's head dropped in a way that, in a big cat, would have indicated it was contemplating violent action. "Kevin Sydney has altered his respiratory system. Is no other way but increased lung capacity that he could say so little for so long."
"You should know I regulate my physical reactions precisely. Are you having feedback issues with your senses." Kevin looked concerned. "I had this sniper I served with in Korea. Bob Dobson. What a name, right? He kept getting pink eye in his right eye, so he had to teach himself to shoot from the opposite side. Brilliant. I mean, one eye streaming crap and he could still shoot the wings off a mosquito at 200 yards. In college, they called him the 'long man' on the football team supposedly because he could connect at over sixty yards, but turns out, he was just really hung. His ex... she was from Wisconsin by way of El Salvador... which was not as common as it is now. She was the one who came up with the nickname."
Kevin may not have needed to breathe, but he didn't rush a bourbon. Sharon tried to slip a claw into the space it created. "I am allowed to speak, or we are to continue with the etymology of an explicit nickname?" Her eyes slitted in suspicion. "Feedback issues, what is meant by this?"
"If you think I've stopped breathing, obviously your senses are messed up. Should I call Doc Grey? Book you some time in the Danger Room to check your power loss?" Kevin's eyebrows rose. "I can contact Vi to do a full assessment of your powers right now."
That was enough. With a lightness that belied the size of her human frame, the girl leapt onto the bar to perch just inches from the triptych of bottle, decanter, and glass.
Staring Kevin directly in the eye, Sharon reached out and knocked the still quarter-full bottle of bourbon onto its side.
"Always you talk at me," she spat, "never to me."
Kevin watched the bottle tip over and then roll off the bar to crash against the tiles. "No." He said finally. "I talk to you a lot. But when you're angry, you only remember the parts I don't agree with you."
He took another sip and drained his glass. "You're angry. And that anger is looking for a direction. Which it doesn't have." Kevin gave a half smile. "So try again."
"Right now is aimed at you," she hissed, "for wasting my time."
For making her feel so small, so ignorant, talking about all these places he'd been and people he'd met.
"You can leave at any time. I haven't kidnapped you." Kevin tossed back the rest of his drink, something he never did, and then refilled it. "Or you can admit anger isn't enough this time. Otherwise, you would have left mid-way through Austria."
Sharon glared at him as the last of the amber liquid sputtered onto the polished wood of the bar. "Could" was a technicality. If she left, Kevin would cease to teach her. That he was doing this as a favor to Felicia didn't matter. If Sharon flounced off, she believed he would lose no sleep watching her go.
"Solution is what, then?" she demanded.
"Figure your shit out. Splashing anger around feels great, but until you can direct it, it just turns into a replacement for a personality. And it gets in the way of learning, because angry people are the first to tell you that they've already figured everything out and anyone who disagrees has to be wrong. That sound a little familiar?"
Sharon did not dignify the spy and his perfectly neutral expression with a response to that. "And Kevin Sydney has no anger?"
"Kevin Sydney has decades of experience knowing how to use his anger and not let it use him. Try again."
Sharon wished her human ears could flatten to her skull. It wouldn't intimidate Kevin, but it would have made her feel like her stance was being appropriately communicated. With herculean effort, she attempted to dial back her irritation and formulate a more even response.
"Is unreasonable to feel anger in the face of deliberate provocation?" she asked. "To turn this on the provocateur, this is inappropriate?"
"Me being late and the cigar isn't what you're angry about. If it was, you would have asked me to put it out or walked away and put a bug in Felicia's ear about me being a jackass. But you stayed. Each time I poked you, you stayed because it kept that anger nice and bright instead and that is what is driving you right now." He ashed the cigar carefully and set it down behind the bar near the intake hood. "This is where we're at, Sharon. I can't teach you - especially shapeshifting - when your emotions are in charge. If you want to talk to me or anyone else about what is really eating you up, we're here. But if I can make you incandescent and willing to break shit with only a ten minute delay, a cigar and some rambling old man stories, you need to get a handle on what is eating you up."
"I am captive to your ramblings if I am to acquire your secrets. This price is known to me. To Kevin Sydney also." There was no heat in the remark. Huffing with frustration, Sharon wrapped her arms around her knees as her tail wound around her ankles. "Is no sense in human society. So much discussion of the appropriate way anger is to be expressed. Of how rights and safety may be demanded. How speech must be respected when lives are not. Tame, pretty mutants are held up to speak as if the responsibility is ours when is us who are taken from the streets. This you will solve? Or tell me I am feeling in the wrong way, as I always do?"
"You're not wrong to feel that way. The flipside of anger is fear. Things happened to you that shouldn't... made you fear for your life; accept being targeted for what you are. It's terrifying. So the natural reaction is to avoid processing the fear by turning it into anger instead." Kevin said, refreshing his drink and sitting down. "If you want to talk more, we can. If you want to walk out, I'll still be here for our next session. And I will not stop training you if you disagree with me. I will if you stop putting in the effort or show me you're not serious, but you can come in here and spit in my eye before every session and I won't cut you off for that."
The girl watched Kevin from over her knees. She still couldn't read him. He gave few of the standard nonverbal cues she was coming to recognize in humans, and if it were possible for him to experience emotions strong enough to spike his otherwise undetectable scent she had yet to see it. All she had were his words.
Slowly, it began to occur to her that some things might be neither trap nor test.
Maybe.
The tail coiled around Sharon's ankles loosened.
"I may leave to think," she ventured, "and this shall incur no penalty? Offer to be spat upon is noted," she added, "but is unnecessary."
"Take your time. I'm not going anywhere." As if to punctuate his words, he picked up a paper from beside his chair. "And neither are you."
(Backdated to September 12, 2024)
The tip of Sharon's tail flicked an impatient counterpoint to the quiet tick of the lounge's antique clock. She had been waiting for some time now, and the other occupant seemed more than happy to make her wait longer still.
Finally, tired of being ignored, her tail went as still.
"Is this not the appointed time?" she demanded.
"Is it? I got a rather angry email that said you are no longer bound by the schedule system of humans. I would have tried to parse what that meant, but I realized I don't care. So I am going to enjoy this fantastic Dominican cigar made from transported tobacco plants from Cuba and... fuck if it isn't excellent."
"No such message was sent," Sharon replied, ignoring the fact it was nonetheless something she probably would have. The normal scent of oiled wood and leather was completely overpowered by the cloud of cigar smoke. Her hair and clothing would be soaked with the vile stench for the rest of the day. She felt Kevin had done this intentionally.
"Just because a natural scent is not yours does not mean compensation is required. This is the lesson? To withstand sensory abuse?"
"Could be. Could be about understanding that you're not in charge or factored into the consideration of every environment." Kevin said, drawing in a deep draft and letting it roll around his tongue before blowing it out in a sequence of tight rings.
Sharon's eyes narrowed. "Kevin Sydney may speak to me of lack of physical accomodation when he has spent half a year with a form fixed to twelve pounds. Or even half this time human-sized, but quadrupedal. I am the most adaptive."
"Adaptive isn't the word I'd associate with you these days." He leaned back in his seat. "It's funny. Back in 1956, I was in Hungary, trying to stay ahead of the Soviet troops pouring in. Borders were shut, every escape narrowing. Now that was about being adaptive. No powers, don't speak the language. Fortunately, there was an old woman who sold flowers from her stand in the middle of Tatabanya. Now Gizike had lost her husband to cancer in the 1930s and her son during the Second World War. He was a pilot and had joined up with some Polish pilots to fly for the RAF. She'd get letters back from him about stopping the fascists and how much he liked the Brits. AK fire got him over France in '44. She mistook me for British, but said I reminded her of poor Zoltan. So she's going to help me get across the border into Austria." Kevin rambled, building the story inbetween smoke rings.
"Austria," Sharon repeated flatly.
"Austria. You should go sometime. I know the whole schnitzel thing is a bit of a stereotype, but there was this place in Eisenstadt that Chris Kane and I ended up at in '58 that served a jaeger schnitzel that overflowed the platter on all sides. I mean, I'm not talking about a plate. I'm talking about a platter. All the sides got served separately. Oh, and the owner used to make his own schnapps in the basement." Kevin smiled and took a sip from his drink. "I mean, dill schnapps. Who does that? It even had a hint of garlic, but the garlic was sweet. We bugged the guy for an hour but he wouldn't tell us. Lately, Chris tells me he roasted the garlic first before infusing it. I guess the owner's sister took a shine to him. It's all about the accent with him."
The girl's tail twitched with impatience. "These people I do not know," she snapped. "There is a point to such reminiscence?"
"Of course. See, if Chris doesn't figure that out, we have no clue what is in the schnapps. So later, when Alpine Haus opened down in SoHo in '68, my wife and I were there and guess what was on the menu? The same jaeger schnitzel recipe we had in Austria. I mean, my wife hadn't had it before, but I had. So I gave the waiter a fin and he brought over the chef. Turns out, the chef was from Linz! What are the odds?" He paused to refill his drink from the decanter of amber liquor. "The weird thing is his name was Bjorn. His mother was Norwegian but he was pure Austrian in his cooking. He explains his Kartoffelkrapfen recipe to Beth, who is taking notes in her little address book. I had a pen, but she liked to keep these little golf pencils for her notes."
"Now you are simply making up words," Sharon accused, even angrier because she knew curiosity would compel her to google jaeger schnitzel later. "What is the point? Psychological torment to accompany the olfactory?"
"I'm trying to tell you about an important thing that happened in my past. It relates to what you've been facing. Where was I?" Kevin took a sip. "Right, Greece. So you need to understand that in the 60s, well, late 60s, a military coup took control of the country, The were neo-fascist but anti-Communist which at least put them in our camp. I went over with John Day, the diplomat, who was trying to balance King Constantine and Georgios Papadopoulos. We did a little sitdown in this tiny country inn that made the most incredible dolmades from the same vines they made their retsina with. I don't need to tell you, after a couple of glasses, we nearly had an American client state. But the chef agreed to give me his recipe for Beth who was collecting them. Do they still have those recipe card boxes? Beth had four, all red-brown for some reason."
Sharon's head dropped in a way that, in a big cat, would have indicated it was contemplating violent action. "Kevin Sydney has altered his respiratory system. Is no other way but increased lung capacity that he could say so little for so long."
"You should know I regulate my physical reactions precisely. Are you having feedback issues with your senses." Kevin looked concerned. "I had this sniper I served with in Korea. Bob Dobson. What a name, right? He kept getting pink eye in his right eye, so he had to teach himself to shoot from the opposite side. Brilliant. I mean, one eye streaming crap and he could still shoot the wings off a mosquito at 200 yards. In college, they called him the 'long man' on the football team supposedly because he could connect at over sixty yards, but turns out, he was just really hung. His ex... she was from Wisconsin by way of El Salvador... which was not as common as it is now. She was the one who came up with the nickname."
Kevin may not have needed to breathe, but he didn't rush a bourbon. Sharon tried to slip a claw into the space it created. "I am allowed to speak, or we are to continue with the etymology of an explicit nickname?" Her eyes slitted in suspicion. "Feedback issues, what is meant by this?"
"If you think I've stopped breathing, obviously your senses are messed up. Should I call Doc Grey? Book you some time in the Danger Room to check your power loss?" Kevin's eyebrows rose. "I can contact Vi to do a full assessment of your powers right now."
That was enough. With a lightness that belied the size of her human frame, the girl leapt onto the bar to perch just inches from the triptych of bottle, decanter, and glass.
Staring Kevin directly in the eye, Sharon reached out and knocked the still quarter-full bottle of bourbon onto its side.
"Always you talk at me," she spat, "never to me."
Kevin watched the bottle tip over and then roll off the bar to crash against the tiles. "No." He said finally. "I talk to you a lot. But when you're angry, you only remember the parts I don't agree with you."
He took another sip and drained his glass. "You're angry. And that anger is looking for a direction. Which it doesn't have." Kevin gave a half smile. "So try again."
"Right now is aimed at you," she hissed, "for wasting my time."
For making her feel so small, so ignorant, talking about all these places he'd been and people he'd met.
"You can leave at any time. I haven't kidnapped you." Kevin tossed back the rest of his drink, something he never did, and then refilled it. "Or you can admit anger isn't enough this time. Otherwise, you would have left mid-way through Austria."
Sharon glared at him as the last of the amber liquid sputtered onto the polished wood of the bar. "Could" was a technicality. If she left, Kevin would cease to teach her. That he was doing this as a favor to Felicia didn't matter. If Sharon flounced off, she believed he would lose no sleep watching her go.
"Solution is what, then?" she demanded.
"Figure your shit out. Splashing anger around feels great, but until you can direct it, it just turns into a replacement for a personality. And it gets in the way of learning, because angry people are the first to tell you that they've already figured everything out and anyone who disagrees has to be wrong. That sound a little familiar?"
Sharon did not dignify the spy and his perfectly neutral expression with a response to that. "And Kevin Sydney has no anger?"
"Kevin Sydney has decades of experience knowing how to use his anger and not let it use him. Try again."
Sharon wished her human ears could flatten to her skull. It wouldn't intimidate Kevin, but it would have made her feel like her stance was being appropriately communicated. With herculean effort, she attempted to dial back her irritation and formulate a more even response.
"Is unreasonable to feel anger in the face of deliberate provocation?" she asked. "To turn this on the provocateur, this is inappropriate?"
"Me being late and the cigar isn't what you're angry about. If it was, you would have asked me to put it out or walked away and put a bug in Felicia's ear about me being a jackass. But you stayed. Each time I poked you, you stayed because it kept that anger nice and bright instead and that is what is driving you right now." He ashed the cigar carefully and set it down behind the bar near the intake hood. "This is where we're at, Sharon. I can't teach you - especially shapeshifting - when your emotions are in charge. If you want to talk to me or anyone else about what is really eating you up, we're here. But if I can make you incandescent and willing to break shit with only a ten minute delay, a cigar and some rambling old man stories, you need to get a handle on what is eating you up."
"I am captive to your ramblings if I am to acquire your secrets. This price is known to me. To Kevin Sydney also." There was no heat in the remark. Huffing with frustration, Sharon wrapped her arms around her knees as her tail wound around her ankles. "Is no sense in human society. So much discussion of the appropriate way anger is to be expressed. Of how rights and safety may be demanded. How speech must be respected when lives are not. Tame, pretty mutants are held up to speak as if the responsibility is ours when is us who are taken from the streets. This you will solve? Or tell me I am feeling in the wrong way, as I always do?"
"You're not wrong to feel that way. The flipside of anger is fear. Things happened to you that shouldn't... made you fear for your life; accept being targeted for what you are. It's terrifying. So the natural reaction is to avoid processing the fear by turning it into anger instead." Kevin said, refreshing his drink and sitting down. "If you want to talk more, we can. If you want to walk out, I'll still be here for our next session. And I will not stop training you if you disagree with me. I will if you stop putting in the effort or show me you're not serious, but you can come in here and spit in my eye before every session and I won't cut you off for that."
The girl watched Kevin from over her knees. She still couldn't read him. He gave few of the standard nonverbal cues she was coming to recognize in humans, and if it were possible for him to experience emotions strong enough to spike his otherwise undetectable scent she had yet to see it. All she had were his words.
Slowly, it began to occur to her that some things might be neither trap nor test.
Maybe.
The tail coiled around Sharon's ankles loosened.
"I may leave to think," she ventured, "and this shall incur no penalty? Offer to be spat upon is noted," she added, "but is unnecessary."
"Take your time. I'm not going anywhere." As if to punctuate his words, he picked up a paper from beside his chair. "And neither are you."
no subject
Date: 2024-10-03 02:48 pm (UTC)Yeeeeees good. Wonderful from both sides, thank you babes.