xp_logs | Cecilia and Nathan / Cecilia and Scott (Reply)

Two logs in one!

Tuesday afternoon, Cecilia goes up to peek in on Nate, and invite him and Moira out to do something dull and normal over the weekend. Nate is loopy, she offers a picnic on the grounds instead. Loopy-Nate answers a question Cecilia didn't ask out loud, and she makes a note to have a freak-out over it later. She tells Bella she's pretty, instead.

As Bella launched into That Same Damned Aria for the sixth time, Nathan growled, and told himself that throwing the book he was trying to read at his bird was not acceptable behavior. "Could we give La Boheme a rest? Please?" he asked, exasperated.

Bella stopped mid-phrase and tilted her head at him alarmingly. "Vaffanculo!"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Ti prendo a calci in culo!"

Cecilia paused with her hand poised to knock on the door to the suite, blinking once and trying not to look too horribly amused. Well. It certainly sounded like somebody was awake in there. With a shrug, she allowed herself a brief grin before she went ahead and knocked.

Nathan gave the bird a warning look, then turned his attention to the door. "Come in?" As the door opened to admit Cecilia, he smiled a bit half-heartedly and then glared at Bella. "Behave. Company."

Bella abruptly lost interest in the 'let's abuse Nathan' game and bobbed her head at Cecilia. "Hello! Pretty! Hello!"

"I was wondering who you were talking to in here," Cecilia mused, closing the door behind herself before she wiggled her fingers towards Bella. "Why, thank you. Hello to you, too."

"Say hello to Cecilia, Bella," Nathan said, almost automatically.

"Ceelia! Hello!"

Cecilia grinned, and began to make her way in the couch's general direction. "Close enough for me. Hello, Bella. How's your human doing this afternoon?" She cast a teasing look towards Nathan, though she did arch one eyebrow expectantly.

"I'm reading," Nathan muttered, then looked down at his book and realized it was upside door. Flushing, he turned it right-side up again, but not before Cecilia caught him doing it. "Or I was. She's been making a lot of noise." He cast a harassed look at the bird, who cooed at him as if she was trying to be soothing.

"Birds do that," Cecilia observed, sitting down on a free portion of the sofa in a comfortably lazy slouch. She eyed the book as it was turned right-side up, but didn't make any note of it, apart from a quietly amused smile. "I have a confession to make. I have come here with a motive other than seeing how you're feeling. Can you possibly find it in your heart to forgive me?"

Nathan blinked at her. "I'm actually glad to hear that," he said, "because I don't really want to talk about how I feel." Which was terribly inconsistent, given the reasons he'd given Charles to remove the posthypnotic suggestion, but there you had it.

Cecilia nodded, cracking another grin. "Can't imagine that you would. I wanted to ask if you thought you and Moira might be up to getting out of the house this weekend - I've decided you both need to be dragged out for lunch, or dinner, or something equally dull and normal."

Nathan swallowed, his hands tightening around the book for a moment as he thought about it. "That... would probably be a good thing, wouldn't it? Something normal..." His jaw clenching a little, he avoided looking right at Cecilia, not wanting to betray anything more than he absolutely had to. "I... I'll ask her. She's having some... problems feeling safe. After the kidnapping."

"I can certainly understand that," Cecilia nodded, watching Nathan for a moment before she offered him a softer smile. "If actually going out might be a bit soon.. how about some take-out? I can go pick something up, and the three of us could go out into the garden and picnic it." She paused, and added, "Bella could come." Bella would protect them, surely.

Nathan blinked and looked at the bird, who immediately started cooing again. "If you come outside, you need to stay out of the flowers," he said.

"Flowers! Roll!"

He managed a faint smile as he looked back at Cecilia, wrestling himself back under control. Charles had warned him, after all. The snooze button only stayed deactivated as long as he stayed reasonably calm. "That would be nice... I probably shouldn't speak for her about the idea of going-out, though. She might surprise me."

"Just as long as you speak for you," Cecilia replied gently, keeping her smile. "I don't want to drag you anywhere before you're feeling comfortable with it. See what Moira thinks, and we'll take it from there. How's that sound?"

"Sounds good," he said, managing a slightly more natural-seeming smile this time. "I hadn't got the chance to tell you yet how grateful I am that you and the rest of the medical staff took care of her while I was... gone."

"Bah, don't mention it," Cecilia chuckled, waving a hand dismissively. "She's a great lady - which I'm sure you know, I have this hunch - so it was really the least I could do." Not to mention the only thing she could do, but she'd have done it anyway, really.

"She's doing better," Nathan murmured, looking back down at the book. Bella chirruped from her perch. "Seemed a little more like herself this morning..."

"You seem a little more like yourself this morning, from what I can gather," Cecilia observed, grinning wryly. "You both seem to be more or less pacing each other in the return to sanity thing. Makes sense."

He did? Well, that was good. No one needed to know he was still half-expecting the house to turn into somewhere else when he gave himself too much time to think about it. "The psi-link's good for a lot of things," he said a bit vaguely, with a small, crooked smile. "And it's getting back to what it was before they broke it pretty quickly."

She had no idea what the hell a psi-link was, but she wasn't about to ask Nate while he was still on the mend. And ever so slightly loopy. She'd have to ask Madelyn when she got back downstairs. "That's a good sign, I'd think," Cecilia said instead, nodding once.

He sensed the question in her mind, though - Charles had eased up on more than just the "Nap! Now!" nudge - and answered it without thinking. "It's a permanent connection...telepathic, because I'm a telepath. They broke it when they restored my conditioning, though." Nathan frowned a little, his hands going white-knuckled on the book again. "Charles fixed it."

Cecilia blinked once, looking vaguely puzzled at having an unspoken question answered, then realized what had happened. Ah. No, Cecilia, now isn't a good time to have a wiggins. Put it in a bottle and deal with it in the gym in five. Good girl. "Charles is good at fixing things, I'm finding," she observed, eyeing his hands for a moment. "You're probably going to have achey knuckles if you keep that up," she said lightly, smiling and shifting to get to her feet. "I should probably let you get back to your reading. And let Bella get back to being pretty at you."

"You shouldn't encourage her," Nathan murmured, his smile turning a bit strained as he released his death-grip on the book. "She'll get vain."

"Vaffanculo!" was Bella's opinion of that.

"Me? I'm just encouraging someone to have a positive self-image." Cecilia beamed sweetly. "You get some more R&R in, honey," she chuckled, sobering as she began to make her way towards the door. "You just give me a yell if you need anything, huh?"

"Thanks," Nathan said a bit dimly, and took a close look at what he'd been reading as Cecilia let herself out. One of Moira's genetics books? No wonder it had wound up upside down.

----
Then, instead of going to work out her wiggins in the gym, she decides to go check up on Scott and make sure he's feeling less concussed. They wind up discussing telepaths, he offers to teach her how to shield her thoughts, and she declares that a nice soothing cup of coffee is in order.

The trip to the gym to work with her mild case of the Weirded Outs would have to wait - on her way there from Nathan's suite, Cecilia realized there was somebody else she hadn't peeked in on in a while, and she decided to postpone the workout in favor of doing the work thing. Work made everything easier.

So, with that in mind, she'd set out in search of Scott. Office first - no dice.. and she had no idea where his room was. But, he'd been making car-related noises on the journal earlier in the day.. so, she decided the garage was probably a likely bet, and set off in that direction.

Even since Haroun had shown up and stolen the Blackbird, Scott had been spending as much time with his other babies as possible. They appreciated the extra attention, he told himself firmly, closing the hood of one of the SUVs and turning away, wiping his hands on a rag.

A-ha. Bingo. "Hey," Cecilia called, grinning and lifting a hand to wave as she approached. "I hope I'm not interrupting a vitally important surgery," she added, nodding at the SUV. "Will she live?"

"She just needed a tweak or two," Scott said with a smile. "Optimum efficiency and all. How are you?"

"Doing alright, I suppose," she chuckled, giving the car a curious looking-over before returning her attention to Scott. "Head's feeling better, I hope?"

"Oh, fine," Scott said easily, then grinned a bit sheepishly as he went over to pul some of his tools away. "I ought to have gotten more sleep last week than I did - the headache kind of lingered. But I think I caught up over the weekend, and I feel fine this week."

"Then I shan't nag you for pushing it," Cecilia replied, grinning and hanging back near the car. They weren't her forte - no need to go into someone else's turf, right? "Besides, you're a smart enough guy to call McCoy if you need your noggin looked at."

"So were you just down here to check on me?" Scott asked, shooting a look back over his shoulder at Cecilia as he carried his toolkit back over to the cabinet at the side of the garage. "You have a rather wide-eyed look."

Cecilia couldn't help but look a bit embarassed. "I do?" With a sigh, she shook herself, self-consciously rubbing at the nape of her neck. "Well, originally, yes, just to come and check on you.. but if you're going to be all inquisitive, I suppose I can indulge in a brief moment of wigginess at you instead of at the gym. I'm told talking is a healthy and productive venture."

"Wig away," Scott said, turning back towards her and giving her an assessing look. She didn't look too unsettled, at least. Whatever had happened didn't have her running for the hills, which was good.

Still looking a bit embarassed, Cecilia lifted a hand and lightly tapped the side of her head. "I'm allowed to be slightly freaked out whenever somebody casually answers a question I didn't ask out loud, right?"

Scott blinked. "Ah," he said finally, leaning back against the side of the SUV. "One of the telepaths catch you off-balance?"

"Nate," Cecilia confirmed, smiling wryly. "Since he's still talking like he's drugged up to his eyeballs, I'm going to wait to give him a poke about it, but it's still.. very, very unsettling."

"Ah," Scott said again, with a bit of a grimace this time. "We've got to cut him some slack, Cecilia - I doubt he's meaning to do it. According to Charles, his shields are all but gone after everything he's been through this week. He's picking stuff up whether he wants to or not; that's why Charles was warning people to watch what they were projecting when they were around him." He smiled at her, more sympathetically than before. "It takes some getting used to for us headblind folks," he confessed. "Telepathy isn't the most... comfortable mutant ability. Not for us, and not for them, believe it or not."

"It would be less unsettling if this were the first time, I imagine," Cecilia grumbled, tucking her hands into her pockets. "He spoke in my head during the whole Hurricane Charley relief thing. I just got too busy making him sit down before he fell down to really make an issue of it." She shrugged helplessly, though she paused, and added, "I'm not projecting. I'm thinking."

Scott regarded her thoughtfully. "You are projecting," he told her gently. "At least, to them, you would be. You strike me as someone with a strong personality, Cecilia, and that almost inevitably means that you think loudly. It doesn't mean that they're digging in your head or anything - and at the very least, I doubt Nathan would be, given that he's a beta-level telepath and more of a receiver than a sender." He smiled. "There are ways you can learn to think less loudly, if it bothers you to have telepaths picking up on your stray thoughts. Mental exercises - I could show some of them to you, I've certainly had enough experience with them by now."

"That might not be a bad idea," Cecilia mused, nodding slowly. "I'm a big fan of privacy, and if I can't have it in my own damn head, then we've got some problems."

"The key is to keep your thoughts within your own head," Scott said seriously. "If you're particularly concerned with something, it's harder - your mind would be 'shouting' it, and even a shielded telepath will pick up on ambient psychic noise."

"Well, see, when I wanted to keep my thoughts in my own head before, I just kept my mouth shut," Cecilia observed with a grin, and an amused roll of her eyes. "If you can help me quiet them down, though, you're very welcome to. We can't have any of the telepathic students hear my thoughts, after all. They're at a very impressionable age. The trauma would be unimaginable."

Scott studied her for a long moment, trying to assess just how wiggy she really was, and whether or not she was just trying to brush it off now. "I've had two real relationships in my life," he said with a bit of a wistful smile. "Both of them have been with telepaths. What took me a while to learn, with... Jean, is that the loss of privacy isn't just on the part of the person whose thoughts are being overheard. Telepathy doesn't have an off-switch, Cecilia. You're constantly being bombarded by the thoughts of the people around you - you can't ever not shield, or you risk losing yourself." His expression grew serious again. "I worry a little more about our telepathic students, in general. Hell, I worry about our telepathic staff more than I should, probably. Psis have a particularly tricky path to walk, I think."

"And I don't think I ever disputed that," Cecilia pointed out gently, giving Scott a mildly apprehensive look. "You're sounding like you're on the defensive, Scott, and you don't need to be. I said why I was looking wide-eyed, you said you could help me fix it, I said fixing it sounded like a good plan."

Scott looked away for a moment, then took a deep breath and went on. "It's been... a little over a year since Jean died. Her powers... changed, got too strong. She couldn't deal with it properly, and I couldn't help her." He forced himself to look back at Cecilia. "I was afraid for her, Cecilia, but I've always wondered if she maybe didn't sense that I was afraid of her a little, too." He shook his head slowly. "And too many of the other psis around here have had or are continuing to have problems with their powers." Betsy, Nathan, Jono, Manuel... "I'm scared to death of losing more of them," he said very quietly. "They wind up so isolated in so many ways, because of their powers..."

Ah. Guilt issues. It always seemed to be guilt issues. "You sound like you have as difficult a time of feeling helpless as I do," Cecilia replied gently, offering what she hoped was a reassuring smile. "This Jean of yours.. you loved her, didn't you?" She waited a moment for confirmation, then smiled a touch more wryly. "I'm pretty sure she could sense that, Scott. Can't say as to the fear, but if it didn't stop you from loving her, it probably wasn't as big an issue as your head's probably making it out to be."

Scott smiled back wryly. "We've gotten rather off-track, haven't we? I was telling you that there was a way to ensure a reasonable level of mental privacy, and then suddenly I'm rambling about one of my touchy subjects." He leaned back against the car a little more, sighing. "I suppose this last couple of weeks have just brought it to the surface."

"If I can wibble at you, you can wibble at me," Cecilia chuckled, shaking her head. "It's only fair, and honestly, I don't mind. Besides, the occasional little trip off-track is healthy." She paused to think for a moment, glancing to the car Scott was leaning against. "You know, I think it is our solemn duty to make sure the car you were working on when I got here is now operating properly," she said slowly, looking to him again with an innocent smile. "Surely a quick trip into town to pick up a nerve-soothing cup of coffee would be a long enough drive to find out."

Scott thought about it, then smiled. "I never turn down coffee," he said dryly. "And besides, it'll give us a chance to talk about those exercises I mentioned. They're not difficult to learn, they just take practice after you've picked up the basics." He frowned down at his hands. "Need to wash up first, though," he said, making a face.

"Go wash car-innards off your hands," Cecilia agreed, grinning and inclining her head. "Gives me a chance to run back inside to snag my wallet. I can meet you back here in five, ten minutes?"

"Sounds good," Scott said briskly. Meant he had time to change his shirt, too, which from the looks of it would be a good idea. "See you back here in a bit."