xp_logs | Nathan and Paul, Tuesday evening (Reply)

After his session with Jack Leary, Nathan succumbs to Bella's charms and takes her over to visit Delphine. He and Paul watch the Further Antics of Cat and Bird, and talk about classes, Angie, Kazakhstan, Nirvana, and possessive females. In that order.

The clock said his session with Jack had been over for forty-five minutes now. It didn't feel like it, Nathan thought, sprawled on the couch, his gaze shifting back to the ceiling and fixing there, dully. Of course, the session with Jack hadn't felt like two hours, either, but it was amazing how a minor meltdown made the time fly.

"Nate?" chirped Bella from her cage. "Nate? Play?"

"Not right now, feathers," he murmured, his voice hoarse.

"Sucky baby! Play!"

He sighed raggedly and sat up, eyeing the bird with a mixture of irritation and weary amusement. "Play what?" he countered.

Bella flapped her wings excitedly. "Gatto!" she trilled. "Bella! Gatto! Play!"

"You want to see Delphine. What, have the puppies been getting out of line again?" Whoa. There was his sense of humor after all.

Bella cackled. "Gatto! Play! Woof!"

"Fine," Nathan said with a sigh, getting up and going over to the cage. "Over to Paul's we go."

Paul was sprawled on one of the couches, 'his' couch, with his feet up and a purring cat on his belly. In one hand he held his PDA, on which he was reading Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, and in the other he had a glass of Chardonnay. His massage therapist had come and gone - nothing like a good bout of myofascial massage to put life in perspective - and he'd managed to put some Bach into the stereo system and get the wine before collapsing where he presently lay.

Bella cooing on his shoulder, Nathan closed the door of his own suite behind him and moved down the hall to Paul and Hank's door. He knocked. "Paul?" he called quietly. "I have a bird pining for her inamorata, here..."

"Come on in, Nate," Paul replied. "Hey, Delphine. Bella's here." Delphine's ears perked and she ran down to Paul's feet to stand with her paws on the arm of the couch, watching the door with her tail flicking in anticipation.

"MEW!" she said loudly, as the door opened.

Nathan opened the door, smiling at the sight of the very excited cat. "Down," he said quietly to Bella, extending his arm. She hopped from from his shoulder, then fluttered to the floor and scuttled over to the couch, squealing.

"Gatto! Play, pretty gatto!"

Delphine leapt down and gave Bella a cat-bow, making happy sounds, before rubbing her face against Bella's in greeting. "That," Paul said, "is possibly the cutest thing I have ever seen. That's appallingly sweet."

"They do have a certain..." Nathan shook his head a little, leaning against the doorframe. "I don't think there's a word," he said with a tired little smile.

"You look like shit, Nate," Paul said bluntly, tossing his PDA onto the coffee table. He got up slowly, pleasantly sore from the massage, and pointed at the couch. "There. Before you fall down. You want some Chardonnay or something else? Gin and tonic? Scotch? Beer? I love grocery services that include the liquor store."

"The wine sounds good," Nathan said, moving slowly towards the couch. Delphine bolted for the coffee table and Bella scuttled after her, trilling joyously. "Jack just left," he said, sitting down. "Well, a while ago. I forgot... I was going to introduce you two, wasn't I?"

"Yes, you were. But from the way you look, you've got every reason to forget the trivial details. How's your head?" Paul poured Nathan a glass of wine and refilled his own. "Do you need to eat?" He waited for Nathan to get settled on the couch before handing over the wine.

"I had lunch late," Nathan said a bit vaguely, managing a smile of thanks as he took the wine from Paul. "But thanks for asking. And he'll be back Thursday. I'll try and keep it in mind."

"Peekaboo!" Bella squealed as Delphine poked her head out from under the coffeetable. "Peekaboo, gatto!"

"And your head?" Paul stood in front of Nathan, one hand on his hip, giving him a sharp look. He quirked an eyebrow, waiting for an answer.

Nathan looked up at him, getting the definite impression that avoiding the question was not an option. "Rather less full of shit than it was before Jack walked in and started giving me that look," he said with a ghost of a smile. "Still didn't throw anything at me," he said, looking down and sipping at the wine. "Patience of a saint, that man..."

"I think you bring it out in people, Dayspring." Paul fell gracefully into the cushions at the other end of the couch. "I'm glad he's doing you some good." He sipped his wine and watched Delphine sneak around behind Bella who was looking under the coffee table to see where the cat had gone. This would be amusing. "How are classes looking for you?"

"So far? Not bad. Quiet. And quiet is good." Nathan's eyes narrowed a little as Delphine crouched down, then pounced on Bella's tailfeathers.

The bird whirled with a shriek and sprang at the cat, who jumped straight up in the air and then backwards. "Sneaky! Sneaky gatto!" Bella proclaimed, and proceeded to chase Delphine around the coffee table.

The bird and the cat circled the table in a flurry of meows and squawks. Paul laughed and poked Nathan in the knee with his foot. "You were saying?" He shook his head, still laughing. "I swear, Nate."

A laugh actually slipped out as Nathan watched Delphine and Bella race around the table. "I was saying, they've been quiet. No visible disruptive influences - " Of course, he hadn't had international relations yet, had he? " - and they all come across as reasonably focused. Oh, I'm sure that'll change, but it wasn't a bad start."

"Maybe they'll study to keep their minds off of all the other crap." Paul sighed and settled back into the couch cushions. "If they put half the energy into really mastering their abilities that they put into complaining, or flirting, or eating..." He shook his head. "I missed out on being a teenager, I think, Nate. I mean. I'm glad they're not doing half of what I was doing then. But I sure was focussed as well. Driven. Paige has it. The rest of them, I don't know."

"Jack pointed out to me that I have no idea what a teenager should be," Nathan said after a moment, sipping at the wine again. "Thus I need to watch what I say to them when they are in the middle of one of these... dramas."

"Anyone who wants to be treated like an adult should be expected to act like one," Paul said with a shrug. "However, I'm not going to blow a fuse if my expectations aren't met, I'll just re-evaluate. Really, we're not that different from them, Nate. God knows I'm not."

"I talked to Angie last night," Nathan said after a moment. "We're going to get back on track with her meditation exercises. Asgard interrupted, and then I got myself kidnapped again so soon afterwards that we'd barely established that her powers had undergone changes while she was away."

Paul gave Nathan a positively evil look. "/Got/ yourself kidnapped? Nate?" He shook his head. "And, well, now you can work on things. It's not like you could have done much differently... and this isn't open for argument. Don't make me come down to that end of the couch. I know you, and you do the best with what you have. End of story."

"She worries me," Nathan said vaguely, his eyes drifting back to Delphine and Bella, who had caught up to each other and were now mutually grooming. "Because of the precognition. Not a fun ability. And it strikes me I have probably provided the worst possible example for her - we keep telling her she doesn't need to feel obligated to help everyone, but it must sound kind of hollow coming from the man who invited a couple of million ghosts into his head because of what he saw."

"That's not a bad example, Nate. You were overwhelmed and your position is unique. From the sounds of it, Marie-Ange is talking about pushing herself too far right now. You didn't have a choice. She does."

Nathan shook his head slowly. "She came stumbling down to see me, just before Columbia happened... just raving, Paul. I had to carry her up to her room." His hand clenched around the wineglass for a moment before he forced himself to relax again. "Damned precognition. One of Mother Nature's less funny jokes."

"Cassandra's not a legend for nothing. It's an awful thing, to know the truth and to not be believed. As long as she doesn't burn herself out." He watched Delphine roll over on her back, purring and patting at Bella's face with a paw. "Precogs are notorious for over-reaching and being over-responsible. You know that as well as anyone. I'd guess that's why Samson's trying to hold her back. Do you think she believes at all that she's not responsible for things?"

Nathan considered the question for a moment. "No," he said quietly. "Not deep down. Angie is... well, she's a more complex personality than a lot of the other kids. She's a deeply ethical person, which does not necessarily serve a precog very well."

"Then she's still at risk," Paul said simply. "And you need to be a good example for her about taking care of your resources, then. Somehow, she has to be convinced that discretion will serve more people in the long run than excessive valour."

Nathan looked sideways at him, then looked away, nodding. "Jack and I talked about it," he said, then smiled very wryly. "Jack and I talked about a number of things today. I sent him an email last night, instead of going to kill our last remaining full-size punching bag."

"Good." Paul looked quite pleased. "It was saved from my wrath by my cellphone and me making plans to get the hell out of here tomorrow night. I'll bet it's breathing a sigh of relief."

"Plans? Fun plans?" Nathan smiled again, a bit more naturally. "Good." Bella squealed suddenly, erupting up off the floor into a flurry of feathers, and Delphine rolled back to her feet and jumped after her. Bella hooted at her, circling the room smoothly and then coming to rest on top of a bookcase.

"Hah! Hahah!"

"Yes, fun plans. I am an expert at those," Paul said, watching the animals with some amusement. "I just needed to give myself a shake and remind myself of that."

"I should really prod Moira about camping out for the night," Nathan said almost wistfully. "We were going to do that on Sunday." Maybe out in the tent, with her, he'd actually sleep.

"I think a good friend would help her set up the tent and then make sure you got out there even if you had to be hog-tied," Paul said mildly, sipping his wine and watching Delphine problem-solve getting Bella down from the bookcase. "Or vice versa. But, that's just me."

"She keeps laughing at me about my fondness for tents. But I think it just reminds me of Kazakhstan." Nathan smiled, then reflected that was about his only field experience at Mistra that ever made him smile, and it did it without fail. "Did I ever tell you that I spent a year in deep cover in Kazakhstan? As a horse nomad?"

"No, you didn't." Paul didn't miss the smile. "A horse nomad. I suspect it was a rather dusty piece of work, yes?"

"Dusty, dirty, smelly. Absolutely no amenities, lousy food, and a whole lot of very empty steppe." Nathan shook his head slowly, still smiling. "I was nineteen years old," he said quietly. "First time I'd ever spent significant time away from Mistra, and they had me on a very long leash. I heard from them maybe four times over the course of the year."

"Ah. So dusty, dirty, smelly heaven, then?"

"Absolutely heaven," Nathan murmured, leaning back into the couch a little and sipping at his wine. "The Kazakhs are an amazing people," he said, a little enthusiasm creeping into his voice despite how tired he was. "So welcoming. I could've... well, I could have stayed there happily."

Paul watched Delphine use some reverse psychology. She rescued one of her toys - a Kooshie-type jingly ball - from under the bookcase and batted it across the floor. She watched it bounce away, then bounded after it.

"It always feels that way, doesn't it?" Paul shook his head, remembering his own past. "And then... sometimes you can overstay your time in such places. Better to leave when you want to stay."

Bella shrieked and fluttered back down to the floor, scuttling after Delphine. "No! Bella! Play with Bella, gatto!"

Nathan shook his head. "You're easy, feathers," he chided her lightly, and then glanced sideways at Paul. "You're probably right," he admitted. "I suppose I just haven't had very many years like that one. Looks like nirvana in comparison." He grinned suddenly, wryly. "I may or may not have taxed the water heater in the barracks when I got back with the number of showers I took, though."

Delphine made a slight noise and flicked her tail, peeking coyly at Bella over her shoulder with the ball in her mouth.

"I know what you mean," Paul said, smiling a little. "About the showers and all. But trust me when I say it's good to leave when you're longing for it still. There's something sweet about being out without a phone or a television and nothing but the weather and the wilderness to answer to. When your horse and your dogs come first and your big worries are the hole in your boot and the colour of the sky and where your next drink and meal are going to come from. But you know they'll come from somewhere. Just maybe not easily. Like you said. Nirvana."

"I hunted from horseback with golden eagles," Nathan murmured, "and sang poetry around the fire at night. I've never really had an experience like that, not in all the time since." Bella hooted at Delphine, and Nathan sipped his wine. "I intend to inflict stories on my kids in that one class," he said briskly. "Possibly even poetry."

"I'll make sure to come," Paul said, pleased at the way the tension had started to drain out of his friend. "You can inflict your stories and poetry on me any time."

Delphine played coy for a moment, then relented and turned to put the toy down at Bella's feet with a soft, inquisitive "Mrrt?".

Bella cooed and pushed at the ball with her beak. "Gatto," she trilled, then sent the ball bouncing across the room. Delphine bounced right after it.

"I've been thinking of lending her to Leonard as a therapy tool," Nathan said dryly, his eyes on his bird. "I think it's actually impossible to be morose with her in the same room."

Paul smiled at the two animals, at Delphine prancing back to Bella with her multicoloured "kill" in her mouth. "The two of them are a mood-altering substance, apart or together. I didn't know it would be like that when I bought Delphine. It's probably pathetic to say so, but she's made me a better person." Delphine presented the kill to Bella with a mew and a cat-bow, her tail curled expectantly.

"Good! Good gatto! Pretty!"

"I tell you though," Nathan said, mock-gravely, "I am much happier now that she and Moira have buried the hatchet. Except now she tries to eat Moira's pillow whenever she's given the opportunity. It's very bizarre."

Paul shook his head. "They're possessive. You should see her with my sister. They fight. As in they yell at each other. It's horrible." He rubbed his forehead and took a sip of wine. "A grown woman and my cat having a scene in my living room. They've done it at a party when Delphine deliberately ruined Aurora's purse. It was dreadful."

"Why, Del," Nathan said reprovingly at the cat, who raised her head and gave him a perplexed look. "A social gaffe? I'm astounded."

"Mrr?"

"Bah!" Bella said enthusiastically. "Bah, Nate! BAH!"

"A deliberate insult, actually," Paul said dryly. "Delphine made off with a very expensive silk handbag with crystal beading and gutted it enthusiastically in the middle of everyone. There was eyeshadow and shredded powderpuff everywhere. The women in my life don't get along. That's all there is to it."

Delphine gave a very smug "Mew!" to Nate and then moved to rub up against Bella happily in something of a cat-hug.

"I suppose I should be glad that mine do, then," Nathan said, shaking his head at the cat and bird, who were now purring at each other again. He sipped at his wine again. "I think I will see about that tent tonight," he said after another long moment. "I sort of made a deal with Jack, and he'll kick my ass on Thursday if I back out."

Paul smiled, pleased. Someone was catching on. This was good. "Yes, I think the tent is an excellent idea. Do you want to leave Bella with us?"

"Would you mind? I can cart her cage in here..." He snorted. "Watch, Delphine will wind up sleeping in the cage with her again. That was bizarre."

"Does she need the cage?" Paul watched the two conferring in whatever language they'd invented to cross the species barrier - purrs and chirrups and meows and head-tilts. "I'll just let them sleep on Delphine's side of the bed together."

"Feathers," Nathan said. Bella raised her head and cooed at him inquisitively. "You'll be good in the morning, right? No opera. And no eating Paul's pillows."

"Good! Bella good!" she assured him.

"Famous last words."

"Vaffanculo!"

Paul laughed. "We'll all be fine. Just think, when Hank gets up here, you'll have someone else blue to talk to, Bella!"