Gabriel and Emily | Interruptus
Jan. 21st, 2025 01:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsGabriel meets Emily on his way back from the boathouse.
Even with his ability to warp the way he moved through the world, Gabriel found the walk to the boathouse vexing. It was just long enough to require exposure to the weather, too short for his powers to feel like they were of any value and the return trips back to the mansion almost always felt longer. (This last part, at least, he understood.)
On this particular occasion, those particular irritations had combined. It wasn't too cold, but the gusts of wind had twice threatened to carry his cigarette along with him. And though he'd enjoyed what had been a particularly lengthy visit to the boathouse, Gabriel was eager to return to his own space. If anything, he needed a shower.
Absent his headphones or a smoke, he shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans and trudged on, headed around the mansion toward the back so he would be closer to the kitchen and could at least raid the fridge on the way up.
“Watch out!”
Emily waved her hand slightly at the ground Gabe had been about to traverse. She’d just spent the past twenty minutes painstakingly drawing a bunch of runes and double checking them against the notes in her book.
Not that her particular brand of magic actually used runes, or not that they’d been able to tell anyway. Still, learning to write in mystical languages was at least a foundation and she’d figured practical was better than theory when it came to making sure you didn’t open weird portals to alternate dimensions.
Especially not when you had exact examples of the fact that the many worlds theory was 100% a thing and apparently provided snack machines on good days.
“That is to say, hi and um, try not to muss up the ancient Sumerian glyphs, please and thank you. Not that it would really do anything bad but I wouldn’t be able to take a selfie with them and send it to Amanda if you did, which would suck because I’m especially proud of that one glyph on your right. It took forever to get the little curly bit at the end.”
After letting out an almost involuntary grunt, Gabriel stared blankly at the small redheaded girl, who he felt fairly certain he did not recognize, as he tried to process what the hell she was even saying. He followed her gesture toward the glyph, staring equally blankly at it, but at least knowing from context clues that magic was involved.
"Oh." He was not in the mood for magic and did little to hide his irritation. "What?"
Oooh, a grumpy one. Emily was beginning to wonder if there was something in the mansion water that made the men here especially cranky.
“It’s a magic rune. I’m practicing for just in case scenarios, you know? It’s much easier to draw things quickly if you’ve got multiple people doing it.”
Not that she would be deliberately put in spots where she’d need the knowledge but random kidnappings and the things she heard made it apparent that no matter how prepared you were, shit just happened. She’d decided that rather than meet that whole thing with fear, she’d just find the nearest adult and stick to them like glue.
Which mostly meant making sure she knew all the adults to stick to.
“I’m Emily, by the way. I don’t think we’ve met yet.”
"Gabriel. I don't think we have." If they had, she hadn't stuck out to him. There were so many people moving in lately with more remarkable characteristics — an entire Appalachian family, the cat people — that the girl in front of Gabriel would have easily been lost in his memory anyway. He tried to look interested in her work, as if it hadn't disturbed his journey and he wasn't just trying to be polite. "Did Amanda put you up to this? Makes sense."
“Yeah, nah,” Emily replied with a slightly self-conscious grin. “I’m just trying to be useful, you know? It’s um, well, I’m not a fighter type and I figured if bad guys came along it’d be better to have someone who wasn’t involved in the dust up doing the scut work. You know, keep the useful people in the fight and all.”
She hasn’t exactly shared any of that with her teachers, or her parents but it seemed fairly obvious to her that if you were a non-combatant in a fight, better that you were useful rather than just hanging about like a bump on a log.
“What do you think? Does it look enough like this?”
She bent down and picked up the book she’d been copying from, pointing out the rune circle she’d been going for.
“It’s meant to be a protective circle.”
Gabriel looked from the book, then looked to the rune and shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so. I mean I'm not really, like, magically inclined, so..." Another one of Amanda's ducklings. Go figure. The wind picked up, and he frowned. "How long have you been here that you're already preparing protective circles? Or are they just more honest these days about the chaos that comes with living here?"
“About nine months? I’m a refugee, so there’s not a lot they could do to keep things from me when I already had to leave home,”
Emily’s voice had softened, and the look in her eyes was a mix of resigned and determination. She shrugged and took the book back from him, closing it as she reached for her phone to take a quick picture of the runic circle. She’d need to make sure she wiped it all out before she left. Even without any magic power in it, you didn’t leave that sort of thing around
“Besides, there’s worse places to be, I could have ended up in the Brotherhood and they really did a number on Madin so they’re already on my shit list.”
Gabriel raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Emily's seeming innocence only served to emphasize how much he wanted a shower. "Sorry to hear that," he said, referring more to her forced exile than to Madin's ordeal, with which he was more familiar. "Australia, I take it?" He wasn't sure how to feel about this white girl from the suburbs calling herself a refugee, but that wasn't really his place to litigate.
“Does the Pope shit in the woods?”
Emily wasn’t quite sure what to make of the man, to be honest. She wasn’t used to people being quite so contained and he wasn’t giving her much to base an opinion on right now. She wondered what he did, given she hadn’t really met him before. Not that that was an indication of anything, so many people seemed to come and go around here.
She pondered the charcoal she’d used to draw the runes and wondered if they had a tap anywhere nearby…and a bucket. She hadn’t exactly thought the whole getting rid of the circle part through before she’d started. Did you even use a tap in winter here? She was vaguely cognizant of things like ice and something about wrapping duct work so it didn’t freeze. She’d watched all those Canadian reality shows with the builder guy.
“You wouldn’t happen to know where I can grab a bucket of water?”
"Oh, uh... there's a shed up that way." Gabriel pointed away from the mansion, considering that. He had never thought about how yardwork got done here. "I've actually never poked around, but there has to be a bucket in there. Can probably just scoop some water out of the lake if it's not frozen." He was half-certain there was a tap somewhere near the boathouse, but she was too earnest to send that close to Namor.
"For the record," he added after a second, "all you guys sound the same to me. Aussies, Kiwis, Brits..." He shrugged.
“At least you’re not asking me if I’m South African,” Emily noted with a wry smile and pondered the lake that wasn’t a terribly long walk away. She supposed she could ask Namor if he had a bucket. Did people who spent a lot of time in the water need buckets?
Probably best to just check the shed.
“Um, do you mind if I go find that bucket? I don’t want to be rude and leave you just standing here but it’s probably not best practice to leave random magic lying about, even if it’s not powered.”
"Please." Gabriel said, keeping his voice neutral and glad he'd spent enough time with Kevin to learn how not to betray his relief. "Don't let me stop you. The last thing we need is another magic situation." That he felt deeply; it would prove even more of a nuisance than Emily had already been. Not that she'd done anything but interrupt him post-post-coitus. Next time, he'd make Namor come to him. "Not sure either of us could handle it," he said, sizing her up.
“You’d be surprised,” Emily said with a mischievous grin as her hair suddenly flashed to fire before she turned and dashed away.
Gabriel watched her go, more annoyed that she thought she was being clever than he was surprised. But then the years of living at Xavier's meant his threshold for being startled had grown remarkably high.
At the very least, she could have offered him a light.
Even with his ability to warp the way he moved through the world, Gabriel found the walk to the boathouse vexing. It was just long enough to require exposure to the weather, too short for his powers to feel like they were of any value and the return trips back to the mansion almost always felt longer. (This last part, at least, he understood.)
On this particular occasion, those particular irritations had combined. It wasn't too cold, but the gusts of wind had twice threatened to carry his cigarette along with him. And though he'd enjoyed what had been a particularly lengthy visit to the boathouse, Gabriel was eager to return to his own space. If anything, he needed a shower.
Absent his headphones or a smoke, he shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans and trudged on, headed around the mansion toward the back so he would be closer to the kitchen and could at least raid the fridge on the way up.
“Watch out!”
Emily waved her hand slightly at the ground Gabe had been about to traverse. She’d just spent the past twenty minutes painstakingly drawing a bunch of runes and double checking them against the notes in her book.
Not that her particular brand of magic actually used runes, or not that they’d been able to tell anyway. Still, learning to write in mystical languages was at least a foundation and she’d figured practical was better than theory when it came to making sure you didn’t open weird portals to alternate dimensions.
Especially not when you had exact examples of the fact that the many worlds theory was 100% a thing and apparently provided snack machines on good days.
“That is to say, hi and um, try not to muss up the ancient Sumerian glyphs, please and thank you. Not that it would really do anything bad but I wouldn’t be able to take a selfie with them and send it to Amanda if you did, which would suck because I’m especially proud of that one glyph on your right. It took forever to get the little curly bit at the end.”
After letting out an almost involuntary grunt, Gabriel stared blankly at the small redheaded girl, who he felt fairly certain he did not recognize, as he tried to process what the hell she was even saying. He followed her gesture toward the glyph, staring equally blankly at it, but at least knowing from context clues that magic was involved.
"Oh." He was not in the mood for magic and did little to hide his irritation. "What?"
Oooh, a grumpy one. Emily was beginning to wonder if there was something in the mansion water that made the men here especially cranky.
“It’s a magic rune. I’m practicing for just in case scenarios, you know? It’s much easier to draw things quickly if you’ve got multiple people doing it.”
Not that she would be deliberately put in spots where she’d need the knowledge but random kidnappings and the things she heard made it apparent that no matter how prepared you were, shit just happened. She’d decided that rather than meet that whole thing with fear, she’d just find the nearest adult and stick to them like glue.
Which mostly meant making sure she knew all the adults to stick to.
“I’m Emily, by the way. I don’t think we’ve met yet.”
"Gabriel. I don't think we have." If they had, she hadn't stuck out to him. There were so many people moving in lately with more remarkable characteristics — an entire Appalachian family, the cat people — that the girl in front of Gabriel would have easily been lost in his memory anyway. He tried to look interested in her work, as if it hadn't disturbed his journey and he wasn't just trying to be polite. "Did Amanda put you up to this? Makes sense."
“Yeah, nah,” Emily replied with a slightly self-conscious grin. “I’m just trying to be useful, you know? It’s um, well, I’m not a fighter type and I figured if bad guys came along it’d be better to have someone who wasn’t involved in the dust up doing the scut work. You know, keep the useful people in the fight and all.”
She hasn’t exactly shared any of that with her teachers, or her parents but it seemed fairly obvious to her that if you were a non-combatant in a fight, better that you were useful rather than just hanging about like a bump on a log.
“What do you think? Does it look enough like this?”
She bent down and picked up the book she’d been copying from, pointing out the rune circle she’d been going for.
“It’s meant to be a protective circle.”
Gabriel looked from the book, then looked to the rune and shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so. I mean I'm not really, like, magically inclined, so..." Another one of Amanda's ducklings. Go figure. The wind picked up, and he frowned. "How long have you been here that you're already preparing protective circles? Or are they just more honest these days about the chaos that comes with living here?"
“About nine months? I’m a refugee, so there’s not a lot they could do to keep things from me when I already had to leave home,”
Emily’s voice had softened, and the look in her eyes was a mix of resigned and determination. She shrugged and took the book back from him, closing it as she reached for her phone to take a quick picture of the runic circle. She’d need to make sure she wiped it all out before she left. Even without any magic power in it, you didn’t leave that sort of thing around
“Besides, there’s worse places to be, I could have ended up in the Brotherhood and they really did a number on Madin so they’re already on my shit list.”
Gabriel raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Emily's seeming innocence only served to emphasize how much he wanted a shower. "Sorry to hear that," he said, referring more to her forced exile than to Madin's ordeal, with which he was more familiar. "Australia, I take it?" He wasn't sure how to feel about this white girl from the suburbs calling herself a refugee, but that wasn't really his place to litigate.
“Does the Pope shit in the woods?”
Emily wasn’t quite sure what to make of the man, to be honest. She wasn’t used to people being quite so contained and he wasn’t giving her much to base an opinion on right now. She wondered what he did, given she hadn’t really met him before. Not that that was an indication of anything, so many people seemed to come and go around here.
She pondered the charcoal she’d used to draw the runes and wondered if they had a tap anywhere nearby…and a bucket. She hadn’t exactly thought the whole getting rid of the circle part through before she’d started. Did you even use a tap in winter here? She was vaguely cognizant of things like ice and something about wrapping duct work so it didn’t freeze. She’d watched all those Canadian reality shows with the builder guy.
“You wouldn’t happen to know where I can grab a bucket of water?”
"Oh, uh... there's a shed up that way." Gabriel pointed away from the mansion, considering that. He had never thought about how yardwork got done here. "I've actually never poked around, but there has to be a bucket in there. Can probably just scoop some water out of the lake if it's not frozen." He was half-certain there was a tap somewhere near the boathouse, but she was too earnest to send that close to Namor.
"For the record," he added after a second, "all you guys sound the same to me. Aussies, Kiwis, Brits..." He shrugged.
“At least you’re not asking me if I’m South African,” Emily noted with a wry smile and pondered the lake that wasn’t a terribly long walk away. She supposed she could ask Namor if he had a bucket. Did people who spent a lot of time in the water need buckets?
Probably best to just check the shed.
“Um, do you mind if I go find that bucket? I don’t want to be rude and leave you just standing here but it’s probably not best practice to leave random magic lying about, even if it’s not powered.”
"Please." Gabriel said, keeping his voice neutral and glad he'd spent enough time with Kevin to learn how not to betray his relief. "Don't let me stop you. The last thing we need is another magic situation." That he felt deeply; it would prove even more of a nuisance than Emily had already been. Not that she'd done anything but interrupt him post-post-coitus. Next time, he'd make Namor come to him. "Not sure either of us could handle it," he said, sizing her up.
“You’d be surprised,” Emily said with a mischievous grin as her hair suddenly flashed to fire before she turned and dashed away.
Gabriel watched her go, more annoyed that she thought she was being clever than he was surprised. But then the years of living at Xavier's meant his threshold for being startled had grown remarkably high.
At the very least, she could have offered him a light.
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Date: 2025-01-21 11:07 pm (UTC)