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xp_logsMonday, early morning. Now that Haroun has returned from 'getting away' in London, it's time for he and Alison to talk about things...
She'd been good about keeping the sound baffles on a lot since Friday. So much so that even though she'd been allowed sound on Saturday, she'd still kept them going until now for the most part - except for the rare moments where she would sit cross legged in her room, on the floor, and listen. It was a meditation of sorts, really. The window was open just a touch, the coolness from outside going unnoticed compared to the warm light Alison still radiated. The brilliance still surrounding her shifted slightly every now and then - the banging of a door outside cause a faint shimmer of reaction. Voices yelling outside cheerfully sending ripples of light through the room lazily. Each sound hurt as well, but Alison didn't care. Since she'd read his comment to Wanda's post and as time went by, she'd been left wondering. It wasn't fun. And he'd been back since yesterday evening.
Alison didn't know since when exactly, which meant she'd been very deliberately Finding Things To Do. Because otherwise, she'd have gone stir-crazy from the wait or something and she'd already done crazy not long ago, so that would have been overdoing things just a bit. Probably. Maybe. And she'd hoped he'd come by the previous evening and she was trying to respect the whole 'needing to get away from her' thing as best she could but knowing he was actually back and watching each moment tick away further without any sign of him was killing her. And it was getting harder and harder to not just curl up and think everything was lost.
Haroun walked slowly over to Alison's new room. This talk was long overdue, and in many ways he was dreading it. Still, he had to hope that the situation was salvageable. His time in London had provided him with a lot of time to think away from the distractions and the cat dander of his everyday life, and he really didn't like what he saw. He knocked on her door, forgetting in his absorption about her difficulties with sound.
The knock was sharper than the other sounds surrounding her - the light flaring in response brief but far more discernable from the regular glow she was no emitting, compared to the distant sounds from outside. It was still muffled, of course, but after so long without any sound at all, it was still about as clear as a bell to Alison herself. She took a slow breath, then rose to her feet carefully, opening the door only after a moment's hesitation.
Haroun looked absolutely miserable - but Alison looked radiant. Almost literally radiant. "Hey." he said, fairly lamely. "May I come in? Figure we've got a lot to talk about." he said sheepishly. "And I wanted to give you this." he said, producing a single red rose from behind his back and offering it to her.
She looked at him searchingly for a moment, the first thing that came to mind being how much she'd missed the sound of his voice. It felt good to hear it, even as dim and indistinct as it was now. Her eyes then flickered down at the rose. Peace offering, red for love, don't turn me away. So many things, embodied by a single fragile bloom. So - maybe it hadn't been as bad as she'd thought. Her mind lingered on the entire weekend, all the wondering and the worrying - she stopped thinking about that, fingertips brushing against one of the petals lightly for a few seconds before closing on the stem. Now was more important. Alison looked back up at him, nodding once before moving away from the door so he could step inside the room.
Haroun exhaled and stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. "I've had a lot of time to think - away from you, away from all of this. And the only conclusion that I can come to is that I am a gigantic idiot." he confessed. "We had - have! - a good thing here. We haven't named it, but I think it's good and I want it to stick around for a long, long time. I think I damaged it with my words, with my actions. That's why I had to get away - I needed time to think, time to sort it all out."
If he said 'had' again, she was either starting to cry or hitting him with the damn flower. She simply held the rose though and stared at him while he spoke, listening and watching intently for the nuances in his voice and his expression. "You left." Her voice was a bare whisper to start with and she had to repeat herself to be heard above the sound baffles, if barely so. "You just left." She'd had no clue how things would stand between them when he returned, and what he was saying was comforting at least - in an adrenaline crash sort of way. The relief caused her hands to tremble even as it mingled with the lingering emotions of the weekend.
"I know." he said, slumping into his usual chair. "I know, and it was dumb to do so without saying anything. I'm sorry." he offered. "You look good." he said, eyeing her from head to toe. "Really good. It's remarkable how much you've improved in just a few short days." He grinned. "But anyway, to get back to the topic of me being a complete heir to a kingdom of idiots ... I have decided something. That not knowing what this is, what we have, is really doing bad things to my heart. So I have to know - and this sound so incredibly stupid when I say it like this - if you will take me back. To be your whatever-I-am-to-you. Friend, confidant, playmate, lover, whatever you want. I want to be a part of it with you."
Complete Heir to a Kingdom of Idiots, she thought faintly, was such a good way of putting it. Except, in his defense, they never had clearly said anything. She supposed. Feeling a bit dizzy, she took a deep breath and stepped into the bathroom. Rose in water. That was important. It also kept her from whapping him upside the head with it, because now that she wasn't so damn afraid she'd lost him anymore she wanted to strangle him. And it also gave her a brief moment to hide the fact that she badly wanted to cry.
Taking a deep breath she walked out again, only too aware that her expression was a dead giveaway to everything running through her mind, Alison walked right up to him. "Whatever-I-am?!" Huh. Not what she'd been planning to say. And she was louder than she'd been I in a while, which meant she was more audible than before - even if it still wasn't much. "What do you mean whatever-I-am?! Did you really think I'd-" Loss for words. A total loss for words. He was an idiot. Her idiot, but an idiot. "I don't let someone grope me in a car on the side of the highway unless I'm damn well serious about them!" Wait. That sounded bad.
"Considering what I know about Samuel, I'd say it's been a long time since you've been groped at all." he joked weakly. "And you make an excellent point. Heir to the Kingdom of Idiots and all that." he said with a shaky grin. "So how serious are we talking here?" he asked her in a low voice. "Because there are things I can't do. I want you - you have no idea how much I want to - but I can't. I want as much as you want to give me. Probably want it too much." he confessed.
"Leave Sam out of this." That was a sore point, although she was remarkably calm in informing him that Sam wasn't to be brought up just now. "There is nothing in this conversation which is about Sam." There. It was about them and nothing else. Wait - she'd better make that clear to her idiot, just in case. "This is about you and me. And nothing else." Alison paused, looking fragile for a moment. "And nothing less." There was, she reflected, nothing more uniquely hard to do than to just not plop oneself in someone's lap when it was pretty much all you wanted to do both for comfort and the sheer need of it - only it would hurt. She edged closers, seriously contemplating it anyway. "I told I talked to Madelyn - I knew what I was getting in to start with. I- I don't do things halfway. Ever. Especially not this."
Haroun blinked. "And here I was beating myself up all the time I was away because I thought I'd fucked it all up with my gorgeous rockstar. Looks like I'm not the only one who fell." he said, burning to kiss her, throw her down on the bed and ravish her. But he couldn't - she was hurt. The nasty part of his brain pointed out that he couldn't do that, either, but he kicked it hard to make it shut up. He took a deep breath to steady himself, and continued. "In some ways, I can't help but do things halfway. But in everything else, I'm here if you want me." he said. "Just tell me what you want."
"No more leaving for other countries with other women when we've just had an argument would be nice for starters." There was a touch more bitterness to that than she'd meant to let slip through, but the weekend had frayed her nerves to a level where the emotional matched the physical on that level. Alison closed her eyes, hugging herself in spite of everything at that - now was not the time to get snappish at him. Not now. "Weekend was bad." She wasn't going to say sorry though. Not on this. She gave in on something else though - needing to be touched too much to be able to bear it any longer, the need for physical reassurance eating away at her. "Please get up? I need a hug. Badly."
Haroun stood up from his chair like he's been expelled from it, and wrapped Alison up in a too-hard hug. "Done." he said with real relief. "Done, done, done." he babbled as he reveled in the hug. It had been Too Long, and she'd got into his blood in the worst way. "So before I give in to my urge to test your new pain tolerances by kissing you until you pass out from lack of oxygen - what are we, exactly? More than friends, less than lovers? Boyfriend/Girlfriend, as little-boy as that sounds?"
She bit down on a whimper and clung to him, shivering from mingled ache and pure relief - being held just helped in so many ways she couldn't even begin to explain it, nor did she want to at this point. She just didn't want it to stop, prickles of pain dancing under her skin or not. "Boyfriend/girlfriend, as little boy as it sounds," she said, voice strangling a bit over the words, still audible over the sound baffles however. "Lovers soon as I can handle it, too. Damn it." However uneasy she'd been about that being one-sided, the notion that he needed it just as badly anyway and for more than one reason was starting to become awfully clear to her. "Ask more questions." They weren't done with this - not yet.
Haroun could not believe his good fortune. "You have given me everything I could have asked for and more." he said, the tears coming to his own eyes unashamedly. "Everything else is inconsequential. I accept, with my whole heart and soul." he said, tightening his hug a little bit before backing it down entirely. "I am sorry." he said with a smile. "I was wrong. I am a very great fool, and I know that I hurt you badly. I can swear to you by Allah Himself that I will never do anything so foolish without talking to you first."
The difference between him loosening the hug and Alison actually moving away was vast - she didn't, remaining steadily nestled against him, body adjusting slowly just as it did each time she laid down on the bed or tried to curl up in a chair. Slowly and painfully, but adjusting nonetheless. Besides, she was dizzy just a touch and leaning on someone wasn't a bad idea. "Good. Talking, period, is going to be important. Not knowing things messes with my head. A lot." The weekend had been one big mess that way. She took a short breath, looking up to focus on him. "No games. Okay? If something's not clear, we ask? Always?" she knew better than to think they'd always be successful at that, but at least the implied promise that asking, anything at all, would be inherently ok was a start.
"Absolutely." he said with a wide grin. "Not knowing was also driving me nuts, and then I drove you nuts, and that's a whole lot of nuts." he said. "Anything else you want from me? Anything you want to know? I'm yours - ask away." he said firmly, pulling her down as gently as he could so that she was parked on his lap.
Ow. She didn't want to be anywhere else though, unless they relocated to the bed later to curl up (together!) and she'd probably just suggest that at one point because she was feeling greedy and the pain was going to be there in one shape or another anyway. Until then she gingerly settled in his lap, leaning against him while being perfectly happy with staying right there even if there'd probably be a price to pay later, light still spilling from her softly and shifting with every word he spoke. "Why weren't you sure?" Madelyn calling him an insecure doofus was one thing, but understand the reasoning behind things was good. And it was making him talk more, the sound of his voice very much something she craved now that the part where he was holding her and not letting go was settled.
"Because I've never been in this situation before. I didn't know what to look for, how to interpret what you were telling me. My female-to-English translator was broken." he said with a grin. "My
last attempt at anything like a relationship came before I burned." He admitted. "And you know how children are - petty and cruel. Then I had my accident and spent two years in-and-out of surgery while they grafted the cyberwear on and I taught myself how to use it. How to walk again, that kind of thing. Not a lot of time for romance. And I was struggling for the first year with hormone problems on top of that before the artificial reservoir was implemented."
She didn't move other than to shift slightly closer to him, breathing slow and regular, listening to him attentively - she knew only too well it wasn't only children who could be petty and cruel. That still left some time. Fine, he'd been probably busy blowing things up back in Morocco during some of that time, but still. "And then no one since now..." Half question, half statement, Alison's expression not really changing in the least as she quietly put all of that together in her mind.
"And then no one because I am in a dangerous line of work. I couldn't ask someone to accept that and not try to change me until now." He said with a Significant Look at Alison. "I could be called on to die at any moment. And I would, for the greater good. It's too much to ask most women to be able to live with that, to accept it in their heart-of-hearts. But I think you can - for you take the same risks I do, lay your life on the same line. You KNOW in ways that most women cannot what I face, for you face it too."
That threw her breathing right off, and not for good reasons. The latent fear that was still very much present at the entire concept, though forgotten most of the time, was more than happy to let itself be known at the reminder of exactly what living like this meant. And the memory of the mall's roof being peeled open above her flashed briefly through her mind. "It scares me every day." The admission was candid, although not one Alison had really wanted to make. "Not just the chance that I might lose someone to this. All of it does." She shrugged a bit, calm taking over a bit more easily than it might have a few months ago. "Just has to be done." And she couldn't walk away anymore - the knowing had been there for a while now, even though the realization of it was fairly recent. "So I guess you could say I know, yeah."
Haroun winced at her reaction. "Shit, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you, not so soon after being hurt. I'm an idiot." he said glumly. "And it does have to be done - we risk so that people like Miles, or Sharon, or any of the kids has a chance at a life. It's a good trade, I think."
She reached out, fingertips brushing along his cheekbone lightly. "I'm a wuss." It wasn't quite the grand confidence, but a touch of amusement lingered in Alison's voice as she said this. "I'm really bad about pain." This particular experience wasn't going to be something she'd forget anytime soon, that way. But this did bring her along to another Thing she'd meant to bring up. "Yeah, we do it so that the kids can go out and live, instead of do this. Even though I have a sinking feeling those I'd love to see go the most won't." She sighed, looking down. "It's why I try to keep Miles so very separate from my being an X-Man. I try never to mix the two. Ever."
Haroun nodded. "Your choice to make - I'll do my best to respect it." he said with a quick kiss on her earlobe. "I'm used to pain, having lived with it for so long. Don't really notice it anymore."
"It's why I reacted so badly when you brought him up, last Friday." Touch was good, even if it hurt and that entire concept was getting confusing rather quickly right now, so Alison ignored it, content to just enjoy being held by Haroun. "I know I can't protect him forever. Mag- Magneto just made that blindingly obvious."
"You can protect him from as much as you can for as long as you can, though." he pointed out with a quick snuggle. "Am I hurting you too much?" he asked her. "So is there anything at all you want to know? When you're better I'll drag my file up here - if we're thinking about going to bed then you deserve the full presentation."
"It hurts anyway." Damn the wincing. "If it's going to hurt no matter what I do, and trust me even not breathing doesn't help, I might as well get a little bit of something I like out of it, right?" Alison gave him a woeful look, not really inclined to let go. Besides, it was perfectly fair to flirt with her boyfriend, even if it involved weird ways to deal with pain. "Going to bed sounds good." It was hard to look that innocent but Alison was trying. "More comfortable for me maybe than here. I could lean on you? With lots of pillows and stuff. And you can tell me whatever you want about your file and you," she paused, smiling slowly as she totally segued into something else, "have read my file already, haven't you?"
"I have." he said with a grin. "Hold on." he said and effortlessly stood up, relying on the artificial legs to provide all the lifting power. He carried the both of them over to her oversized bed, laying her down and arranging the pillows just so for maximum comfort. Then he climbed in as well to make himself available to be snuggled, should she so choose to. "I didn't read your file in any depth. Most powers stuff."
It took her a moment to register that moving was done and now it was time to curl up, pain flaring up briefly from being carried like that and fading only after a moment of clinging stubbornly to her - it would have been excruciating a week ago, she suspected. "Fair trade?" Moving slowly, Alison nudged a pillow closer to him, curling up so that while her cheek was resting on his chest, she was actually looking up towards him, body angling away safely. "You ask me something, I ask you something, we ramble on?" Keeping him here as long as possible was a delightful idea. "We should have done this ages ago."
"If we had done this before, we'd get far too distracted by each other to concentrate on the questions." he said with a quick grin. "You go first, as the sinned-against party."
"Point." She shivered, but smiled a bit at that. "Definite point. We do bad things to each other's attention span." Alison was smirking at that, because being able to do that to him pleased her greatly, plain and simple. It did good things to her ego, too. She shifted one last time, finding the least painful way to lean on him and then went still, almost unnervingly so. "We might as well start with the beginning, right? And just see where that takes us... What was your childhood like?"
"Pretty standard. Only child, from what I was told later was a power manifestation during labor." he said with a smile. "My father was educated by the French, so we were relatively well-off by Moroccan standards. Went to mosque on Friday nights, studied hard in school. I was a good student, if not terribly well-liked by my peers. The money thing." he said with a shrug. "Then I applied for the Massachusetts Academy scholarship and won it. I was fifteen." he said with some pride. "Your turn."
Alison was going to wheedle details from him, she decided. Just a few at a time, but she was - she was to know more. "Some would say standard, up to a point. Mother was a former soap opera star, father was a lawyer from a long line of lawyers. Big on family tradition there - my half-sister is one now. I was the perfect little daughter and did everything my parents wanted, while doing what I wanted the rest of the time when they weren't paying attention. Up until I turned down both Harvard and Julliard and decided to try and hit it big as a rock star instead." She smiled a bit crookedly. "That part didn't go over so well. But it was an interesting change of pace in my life, after that. Kinda like the Chinese curse interesting. Your turn."
"I always knew I wanted to be an engineer - my father was one, and he passed the love down to me." he said with a grin. "School in America was very interesting. America and Morocco are so very different. It was a lot colder in Snow Valley, for one!" he laughed. "My English was fairly good before I came over, and I quickly picked up the slang and put the final touches on it. Emma helped me bring my power forth consciously. Flying for the first time, even though it was just a short distance, was quite possibly the best thing I have ever experienced."
The mention of Emma Frost, so very casual, left Alison feeling a touch uneasy - she did not like the woman, never had. But she knew where the software running the hardware of Haroun's cybernetics came from. Knew he'd been at that school, before. This was lost at the look on his face as he remembered his first flight though, and she grinned in response. It was her turn. "I got my love of music from grandmamma. Father was always irked by that but it looked good for the society things they hosted at the house and Mother was proud of it. That's why Julliard was one of the choices." She shook her head at that, remembering the unique dread she had regarding that school - and the competition students engaged in, within. "Don't regret leaving one bit - but let me tell you, being a limo driver is a unique experience."
"You drove limousines?" he said with a laugh. "I did not know that. I myself have never really held a "real" job like that. I went from student to terrorist to X-Man. Well, no real jobs before my teaching gig." he said with another laugh. "My time in America spoiled me. I couldn't handle the fundamentalist approach of the clerics very well. Asked too many questions, was too concerned for the plight of all men, white, black, human, mutant, male, female, whatever." he said with a grin. "I started fighting back. Initially on my own, then with the aid of some others. That's where I learned Krav, from the Jew."
This was fun - a lot of fun in fact and was distracting her from everything else very nicely. She nodded at his question, smiling contentedly. "I was a limo driver, a waitress and a courier. I also helped a photographer with lighting. He found out what I could do by accident and was deliriously happy to hire me as a lighting expert. Did my portfolio for me for free, in exchange. He helped me a lot - I think some of the jobs he gave me were just to make sure I could pay the rent, at times." Alison moistened her lips a bit, looking curiously at him. "You've mentioned the Jew before... and I think I overheard Nathan mention the terrorist part."
"The Jew wouldn't give me his real name. Veteran of the Six Day War, some really ugly stuff. Older than dirt and as mean as a scorpion, he was." Haroun said with a grin. "But he took the scrapper, the brawler, and made a fighting machine out of him. The discipline alone was worth everything else." he said fondly. "Sadly, he didn't make it out when the clerics torched the warehouse we were using as a headquarters. I went a little wild for a while - I'd bomb their mosques, assassinate their imams, harass their recruitment efforts, lecture their children, whatever it took to get the message across."
She blinked, rather blankly thinking that just maybe there had been a mild case of overkill on the 'passing the message' part. Or maybe not so mild. "Hrm. Weeeeell... I can kinda see why they went for the whole 'get him out of the country now' bit..." she reached out to touch his cheek in apology for pointing that out. "You turn, if you have a question." She wasn't sure she wanted to bring up Donald Pierce today.
"Yeah, it was a pretty easy choice on their part." he admitted. "Anyway - you've mentioned your love for music. Ever considered acting or modeling or something like that?"
"Did some modeling on the side to make ends meet but it's more vicious than singing as businesses go. I tried to stay out of that. Acting was a go, actually. Even started filming - that went belly up when I came out as a mutant at the Baltimore show. Studio closed down the picture and locked away the films. Things went downhill pretty fast from there. " Hrm. It was the first time she'd gone through that recitation without feeling like crying. Interesting.
Haroun scowled. "That's not right." he said. "We didn't get your music at all in Morocco. Mostly it was Islamic favorites, Cat Stevens, or bootlegged rock from the West. Singer-songwriters weren't in much - the bootleggers and the kids liked Limp Bizkit and the Wu-Tang Clan more." he admitted with a shrug. "You thought I despised Zamfir - you haven't me go off on Cat Stevens yet."
"I can see where my music didn't quite fit in," she replied, highly amused at the notion of inflicting some Cat Stevens on him at one point, just to see his reaction. Haroun's general look of horror could be highly entertaining at times. "I still think you have horrible taste when it comes to that noise you call music. It's kinda scary, even."
Haroun smirked. "Hey, blame Brainy. He's the one who turned me onto it in the first place. It fit really well with my mental state at the time, and then after I burned, well, that cinched it. Nothing like angry, hard music for an angry, broken man, don't you think?" he said with a slight smile. "The music talks to me." he admitted.
Well, that settled that. She'd have to see about tickets to surprise him at one point, and put up with an evening listening to truly atrociously bad noise. And somehow ignore the lyrics. The things she did... "I don't think of you as a broken man." Alison reached out, fingertips running down the side of his face as she looked at him contemplatively.
Haroun shrugged to that, leaning just slightly into the touch. "I do, but I have accepted it. Learned to live with it. It was either that or go mad. Pretending that I am normal, that I am just like anyone else, is foolish." he said. "That way, too, lies madness."
"I'd noticed the very in your face way you approach things there." Alison nodded - she wasn't about to go knocking down someone's coping mechanism, not if it seemed to work perfectly well for them. She kept stroking his cheek lightly though, remembering the graph Madelyn had showed her - right now, Alison was leaning half on the man, and half on the cyberware, in fact. "I hear you talk about the 'ware more than I do about the rest of you, when you do that though."
"The body's just another machine. Made of meat and not steel. I keep it in good shape, take care of it, and fix it when it breaks." he said coldly. "There's not much else to tell. I could tell you how much I can bench, how much I can curl, all that, but I really don't think you care. I like to think that I have a good heart - I stay obedient to God as best I can, I give to charity, I care about the children and I am devoted to mutant rights." he explained. "Working on the Blackbird is almost like a devotion - there's so many possibilities, so much that could be done. It's exciting, the very depth of it."
Yep. Alison wasn't pushing that button any further. "I-" She started to say something and then froze, eyes growing round as another of those unnerving flashes of memory she was still having sometimes unlocked and settled into place smugly. "I did not. I'm not remembering that right." Looking mildly horrified, she gave Haroun a pleading look. "Tell me I didn't slice up the cargo bay?"
"OK, I won't tell you." he said calmly. "Damage has already been patched, nothing critical went up. Got some parts on order to finish the job. Took care of that before I left to clear my head." The less she knew about the damage that was actually done, the better she'd feel.
The mention of the fact that he'd left brought a faint shadow to her eyes, and she shifted, pressing her cheek against him for a moment. When she looked back up her gaze was clear once more, and she just nodded slightly. "Okay. And we're getting off track." Resolutely, she winked at him and after a bit of shifted, settled down once more, this time her hand resting flatly just over his heart. "Your turn to ask a question."
Haroun hrmmed as he thought. "I know only that you dated Sam for a while. Care to tell me more about that, and where it went wrong? I know this isn't about him, but I'm curious. If anything, I'd like to avoid the same mistakes he made."
There were things Alison assiduously avoided thinking about, and that was one of them - she'd never dealt well with resounding failures on the personal level. And considering Sam was one of the easiest to get along with man she knew... "I'm not sure." It was an old pain, with a touch of confusion - but one that was softer around the edges than she'd expected, now that she was prodding it directly. "There was a lot going on. We just - drifted apart. It wasn't just him, Haroun. We both messed up there somewhere."
"Fair enough, I suppose." he said with a smile, but his eyes said 'disappointment'. "Your turn." he added, then shifted to make himself a trifle more comfortable with his upper body.
She followed the motion by reflex, settling right back where she'd been with a faint wince as soon as he seemed comfortable. It was a hard look to be subjected to, but she didn't know what else to say. And Haroun wasn't Sam. Not in the least in fact - it wasn't the same mistakes that would crop up, she knew and she found she preferred to deal with things new, rather than trying to avoid something old. "What did you think of, when you were away?"
"You, mostly." he admitted. "And me. The things I'd said, the things I'd used to make a point. I was not proud of myself. You deserved better, even if I do still think I was right. I didn't make my point well, and I left things hanging. Especially when you stopped using the console and I couldn't hear you well."
That hadn't been the smartest thing to do. Alison sighed a bit, curling up just a bit more closely to him. "It scared me. The way you left, and when you said we'd talk once I was healthy again." She was far from being healthy - that would take a while, in fact. And she'd not the slightest clue how he'd interpreted her gesture. "Why did you leave though? Just then? I mean, I know we weren't getting anywhere with my not using the console but-" She hadn't thought he'd back down from an argument that way.
"I was trying to keep a bad situation from getting even worse." he admitted. "Not my smartest idea ever. I'm a passionate person - I feel things deeply. And what I was feeling right then was frustrated, angry, and scared. Those aren't positive feelings, and if I had stayed they only would have grown stronger. I wanted to spare you that. Dumb, I know." he said with a small laugh.
The faint murmur that answered that was lost to the sound dampeners, Alison nodding quietly, fingertips tracing random patterns on his shirtfront. "Scared is bad." She couldn't argue much with that one, not that she was inclined to argue at all just now. Smiling just a bit, she studied the patterns she was drawing out, perhaps a bit too intently. "Well. Both of us have rather spectacular tempers when we let loose. Should be interesting."
"We do. That's one of your most attractive features, actually." he said, for a second forgetting her medical condition and brushing a hand across one of her breasts. "I like that passion, that drive. I can't help but wonder if it translates into other parts of your life..." he said with a wickedly slow grin.
She didn't quite twitch away from the touch, although she came close - it was a distinctly disconcerting feeling to say the least, when you expected one sensation and your body served you up another entirely. Along with the memory of just enough to remind you of what you weren't going to be feeling for a while. Ow. Damn. I'm going to get really cranky about this. Alison couldn't help but respond to that smile of his though. "Raincheck on finding out about that? Only one way for you to find out properly and I'd hate to spoil the surprise."
Haroun just grinned. "But of course." he said with a now openly wicked smile. "I am practically counting the minutes." His pleasure in the idea was obvious, given the wide grin that just Would Not Go Away. "I should stop tormenting you - I keep forgetting that touch causes you pain. I don't want my touch to hurt you." he said. "Sets a very bad precedent, it does."
It was an infectious grin, at that, drawing a low chuckle from Alison as she reached up to trail a fingertip down the side of his neck. "Good to know I'm that distracting. And I wouldn't worry too much about precedent if I were you... s'already been set, mmm?" She sobered up quickly however, sighing softly. "They have no idea how long it'll take for me to heal or my power to go back to normal."
"Didn't you realize? I'm stubborn." he said with a laugh. "However long it takes - days, weeks, months, years - I'll be waiting for you when it's all said and done." he said quite seriously. "You know I don't give up easily."
She found herself staring at him for a while at that, with a somewhat silly smile. It was horribly sappy (or so she was telling herself) but at the same time she freely admitted to herself that it was a very nice thing to hear even when one was healthy and whole - hearing it now of all times was making feel very wobbly, obviously so. And she wasn't tearing up in the least, no. At a loss for words she settled pressing her fingertips lightly to her lips and then to his own, in silent thanks.
"You're welcome." he said, understanding her gesture completely. "I like to think that were our positions reversed, you would do the same for me." he said quietly. "Now - you should rest. It's been a hell of a ride today, and you need to keep your strength up so that you can get all better so that I can make you scream all night long, you hear me!" he mock-scolded.
"Wild horses couldn't drag me away." After the talk they'd just had, it didn't really serve any purpose to protest the eventuality - even though Alison had no other intention but to wish it would never become necessary. Laughter escaped her briefly however, at the scolding. While her body still wasn't inclined to sleep all that much, the mental fatigue was another thing entirely, she had been discovering. "I'm going to hold you to that," Alison purred out softly, with a lazy wink. "Does that mean I get to rest like this, or are you doing to wander off and leave me by my lonesome?"
"I believe the phrase is "Wild horses couldn't drag me away?" he parroted back at her with a grin. "I'm not going anywhere unless you want me to." he added with that same wide grin.
"Nuhuh. Want you right where you are..." And with that Alison let her eyes drift half-shut, slipping into that state of not really thinking she'd been discovering a fair bit of late. She couldn't really go to sleep but was still more than content with the notion of just not moving for a while, with Haroun staying right where he was.
She'd been good about keeping the sound baffles on a lot since Friday. So much so that even though she'd been allowed sound on Saturday, she'd still kept them going until now for the most part - except for the rare moments where she would sit cross legged in her room, on the floor, and listen. It was a meditation of sorts, really. The window was open just a touch, the coolness from outside going unnoticed compared to the warm light Alison still radiated. The brilliance still surrounding her shifted slightly every now and then - the banging of a door outside cause a faint shimmer of reaction. Voices yelling outside cheerfully sending ripples of light through the room lazily. Each sound hurt as well, but Alison didn't care. Since she'd read his comment to Wanda's post and as time went by, she'd been left wondering. It wasn't fun. And he'd been back since yesterday evening.
Alison didn't know since when exactly, which meant she'd been very deliberately Finding Things To Do. Because otherwise, she'd have gone stir-crazy from the wait or something and she'd already done crazy not long ago, so that would have been overdoing things just a bit. Probably. Maybe. And she'd hoped he'd come by the previous evening and she was trying to respect the whole 'needing to get away from her' thing as best she could but knowing he was actually back and watching each moment tick away further without any sign of him was killing her. And it was getting harder and harder to not just curl up and think everything was lost.
Haroun walked slowly over to Alison's new room. This talk was long overdue, and in many ways he was dreading it. Still, he had to hope that the situation was salvageable. His time in London had provided him with a lot of time to think away from the distractions and the cat dander of his everyday life, and he really didn't like what he saw. He knocked on her door, forgetting in his absorption about her difficulties with sound.
The knock was sharper than the other sounds surrounding her - the light flaring in response brief but far more discernable from the regular glow she was no emitting, compared to the distant sounds from outside. It was still muffled, of course, but after so long without any sound at all, it was still about as clear as a bell to Alison herself. She took a slow breath, then rose to her feet carefully, opening the door only after a moment's hesitation.
Haroun looked absolutely miserable - but Alison looked radiant. Almost literally radiant. "Hey." he said, fairly lamely. "May I come in? Figure we've got a lot to talk about." he said sheepishly. "And I wanted to give you this." he said, producing a single red rose from behind his back and offering it to her.
She looked at him searchingly for a moment, the first thing that came to mind being how much she'd missed the sound of his voice. It felt good to hear it, even as dim and indistinct as it was now. Her eyes then flickered down at the rose. Peace offering, red for love, don't turn me away. So many things, embodied by a single fragile bloom. So - maybe it hadn't been as bad as she'd thought. Her mind lingered on the entire weekend, all the wondering and the worrying - she stopped thinking about that, fingertips brushing against one of the petals lightly for a few seconds before closing on the stem. Now was more important. Alison looked back up at him, nodding once before moving away from the door so he could step inside the room.
Haroun exhaled and stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. "I've had a lot of time to think - away from you, away from all of this. And the only conclusion that I can come to is that I am a gigantic idiot." he confessed. "We had - have! - a good thing here. We haven't named it, but I think it's good and I want it to stick around for a long, long time. I think I damaged it with my words, with my actions. That's why I had to get away - I needed time to think, time to sort it all out."
If he said 'had' again, she was either starting to cry or hitting him with the damn flower. She simply held the rose though and stared at him while he spoke, listening and watching intently for the nuances in his voice and his expression. "You left." Her voice was a bare whisper to start with and she had to repeat herself to be heard above the sound baffles, if barely so. "You just left." She'd had no clue how things would stand between them when he returned, and what he was saying was comforting at least - in an adrenaline crash sort of way. The relief caused her hands to tremble even as it mingled with the lingering emotions of the weekend.
"I know." he said, slumping into his usual chair. "I know, and it was dumb to do so without saying anything. I'm sorry." he offered. "You look good." he said, eyeing her from head to toe. "Really good. It's remarkable how much you've improved in just a few short days." He grinned. "But anyway, to get back to the topic of me being a complete heir to a kingdom of idiots ... I have decided something. That not knowing what this is, what we have, is really doing bad things to my heart. So I have to know - and this sound so incredibly stupid when I say it like this - if you will take me back. To be your whatever-I-am-to-you. Friend, confidant, playmate, lover, whatever you want. I want to be a part of it with you."
Complete Heir to a Kingdom of Idiots, she thought faintly, was such a good way of putting it. Except, in his defense, they never had clearly said anything. She supposed. Feeling a bit dizzy, she took a deep breath and stepped into the bathroom. Rose in water. That was important. It also kept her from whapping him upside the head with it, because now that she wasn't so damn afraid she'd lost him anymore she wanted to strangle him. And it also gave her a brief moment to hide the fact that she badly wanted to cry.
Taking a deep breath she walked out again, only too aware that her expression was a dead giveaway to everything running through her mind, Alison walked right up to him. "Whatever-I-am?!" Huh. Not what she'd been planning to say. And she was louder than she'd been I in a while, which meant she was more audible than before - even if it still wasn't much. "What do you mean whatever-I-am?! Did you really think I'd-" Loss for words. A total loss for words. He was an idiot. Her idiot, but an idiot. "I don't let someone grope me in a car on the side of the highway unless I'm damn well serious about them!" Wait. That sounded bad.
"Considering what I know about Samuel, I'd say it's been a long time since you've been groped at all." he joked weakly. "And you make an excellent point. Heir to the Kingdom of Idiots and all that." he said with a shaky grin. "So how serious are we talking here?" he asked her in a low voice. "Because there are things I can't do. I want you - you have no idea how much I want to - but I can't. I want as much as you want to give me. Probably want it too much." he confessed.
"Leave Sam out of this." That was a sore point, although she was remarkably calm in informing him that Sam wasn't to be brought up just now. "There is nothing in this conversation which is about Sam." There. It was about them and nothing else. Wait - she'd better make that clear to her idiot, just in case. "This is about you and me. And nothing else." Alison paused, looking fragile for a moment. "And nothing less." There was, she reflected, nothing more uniquely hard to do than to just not plop oneself in someone's lap when it was pretty much all you wanted to do both for comfort and the sheer need of it - only it would hurt. She edged closers, seriously contemplating it anyway. "I told I talked to Madelyn - I knew what I was getting in to start with. I- I don't do things halfway. Ever. Especially not this."
Haroun blinked. "And here I was beating myself up all the time I was away because I thought I'd fucked it all up with my gorgeous rockstar. Looks like I'm not the only one who fell." he said, burning to kiss her, throw her down on the bed and ravish her. But he couldn't - she was hurt. The nasty part of his brain pointed out that he couldn't do that, either, but he kicked it hard to make it shut up. He took a deep breath to steady himself, and continued. "In some ways, I can't help but do things halfway. But in everything else, I'm here if you want me." he said. "Just tell me what you want."
"No more leaving for other countries with other women when we've just had an argument would be nice for starters." There was a touch more bitterness to that than she'd meant to let slip through, but the weekend had frayed her nerves to a level where the emotional matched the physical on that level. Alison closed her eyes, hugging herself in spite of everything at that - now was not the time to get snappish at him. Not now. "Weekend was bad." She wasn't going to say sorry though. Not on this. She gave in on something else though - needing to be touched too much to be able to bear it any longer, the need for physical reassurance eating away at her. "Please get up? I need a hug. Badly."
Haroun stood up from his chair like he's been expelled from it, and wrapped Alison up in a too-hard hug. "Done." he said with real relief. "Done, done, done." he babbled as he reveled in the hug. It had been Too Long, and she'd got into his blood in the worst way. "So before I give in to my urge to test your new pain tolerances by kissing you until you pass out from lack of oxygen - what are we, exactly? More than friends, less than lovers? Boyfriend/Girlfriend, as little-boy as that sounds?"
She bit down on a whimper and clung to him, shivering from mingled ache and pure relief - being held just helped in so many ways she couldn't even begin to explain it, nor did she want to at this point. She just didn't want it to stop, prickles of pain dancing under her skin or not. "Boyfriend/girlfriend, as little boy as it sounds," she said, voice strangling a bit over the words, still audible over the sound baffles however. "Lovers soon as I can handle it, too. Damn it." However uneasy she'd been about that being one-sided, the notion that he needed it just as badly anyway and for more than one reason was starting to become awfully clear to her. "Ask more questions." They weren't done with this - not yet.
Haroun could not believe his good fortune. "You have given me everything I could have asked for and more." he said, the tears coming to his own eyes unashamedly. "Everything else is inconsequential. I accept, with my whole heart and soul." he said, tightening his hug a little bit before backing it down entirely. "I am sorry." he said with a smile. "I was wrong. I am a very great fool, and I know that I hurt you badly. I can swear to you by Allah Himself that I will never do anything so foolish without talking to you first."
The difference between him loosening the hug and Alison actually moving away was vast - she didn't, remaining steadily nestled against him, body adjusting slowly just as it did each time she laid down on the bed or tried to curl up in a chair. Slowly and painfully, but adjusting nonetheless. Besides, she was dizzy just a touch and leaning on someone wasn't a bad idea. "Good. Talking, period, is going to be important. Not knowing things messes with my head. A lot." The weekend had been one big mess that way. She took a short breath, looking up to focus on him. "No games. Okay? If something's not clear, we ask? Always?" she knew better than to think they'd always be successful at that, but at least the implied promise that asking, anything at all, would be inherently ok was a start.
"Absolutely." he said with a wide grin. "Not knowing was also driving me nuts, and then I drove you nuts, and that's a whole lot of nuts." he said. "Anything else you want from me? Anything you want to know? I'm yours - ask away." he said firmly, pulling her down as gently as he could so that she was parked on his lap.
Ow. She didn't want to be anywhere else though, unless they relocated to the bed later to curl up (together!) and she'd probably just suggest that at one point because she was feeling greedy and the pain was going to be there in one shape or another anyway. Until then she gingerly settled in his lap, leaning against him while being perfectly happy with staying right there even if there'd probably be a price to pay later, light still spilling from her softly and shifting with every word he spoke. "Why weren't you sure?" Madelyn calling him an insecure doofus was one thing, but understand the reasoning behind things was good. And it was making him talk more, the sound of his voice very much something she craved now that the part where he was holding her and not letting go was settled.
"Because I've never been in this situation before. I didn't know what to look for, how to interpret what you were telling me. My female-to-English translator was broken." he said with a grin. "My
last attempt at anything like a relationship came before I burned." He admitted. "And you know how children are - petty and cruel. Then I had my accident and spent two years in-and-out of surgery while they grafted the cyberwear on and I taught myself how to use it. How to walk again, that kind of thing. Not a lot of time for romance. And I was struggling for the first year with hormone problems on top of that before the artificial reservoir was implemented."
She didn't move other than to shift slightly closer to him, breathing slow and regular, listening to him attentively - she knew only too well it wasn't only children who could be petty and cruel. That still left some time. Fine, he'd been probably busy blowing things up back in Morocco during some of that time, but still. "And then no one since now..." Half question, half statement, Alison's expression not really changing in the least as she quietly put all of that together in her mind.
"And then no one because I am in a dangerous line of work. I couldn't ask someone to accept that and not try to change me until now." He said with a Significant Look at Alison. "I could be called on to die at any moment. And I would, for the greater good. It's too much to ask most women to be able to live with that, to accept it in their heart-of-hearts. But I think you can - for you take the same risks I do, lay your life on the same line. You KNOW in ways that most women cannot what I face, for you face it too."
That threw her breathing right off, and not for good reasons. The latent fear that was still very much present at the entire concept, though forgotten most of the time, was more than happy to let itself be known at the reminder of exactly what living like this meant. And the memory of the mall's roof being peeled open above her flashed briefly through her mind. "It scares me every day." The admission was candid, although not one Alison had really wanted to make. "Not just the chance that I might lose someone to this. All of it does." She shrugged a bit, calm taking over a bit more easily than it might have a few months ago. "Just has to be done." And she couldn't walk away anymore - the knowing had been there for a while now, even though the realization of it was fairly recent. "So I guess you could say I know, yeah."
Haroun winced at her reaction. "Shit, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you, not so soon after being hurt. I'm an idiot." he said glumly. "And it does have to be done - we risk so that people like Miles, or Sharon, or any of the kids has a chance at a life. It's a good trade, I think."
She reached out, fingertips brushing along his cheekbone lightly. "I'm a wuss." It wasn't quite the grand confidence, but a touch of amusement lingered in Alison's voice as she said this. "I'm really bad about pain." This particular experience wasn't going to be something she'd forget anytime soon, that way. But this did bring her along to another Thing she'd meant to bring up. "Yeah, we do it so that the kids can go out and live, instead of do this. Even though I have a sinking feeling those I'd love to see go the most won't." She sighed, looking down. "It's why I try to keep Miles so very separate from my being an X-Man. I try never to mix the two. Ever."
Haroun nodded. "Your choice to make - I'll do my best to respect it." he said with a quick kiss on her earlobe. "I'm used to pain, having lived with it for so long. Don't really notice it anymore."
"It's why I reacted so badly when you brought him up, last Friday." Touch was good, even if it hurt and that entire concept was getting confusing rather quickly right now, so Alison ignored it, content to just enjoy being held by Haroun. "I know I can't protect him forever. Mag- Magneto just made that blindingly obvious."
"You can protect him from as much as you can for as long as you can, though." he pointed out with a quick snuggle. "Am I hurting you too much?" he asked her. "So is there anything at all you want to know? When you're better I'll drag my file up here - if we're thinking about going to bed then you deserve the full presentation."
"It hurts anyway." Damn the wincing. "If it's going to hurt no matter what I do, and trust me even not breathing doesn't help, I might as well get a little bit of something I like out of it, right?" Alison gave him a woeful look, not really inclined to let go. Besides, it was perfectly fair to flirt with her boyfriend, even if it involved weird ways to deal with pain. "Going to bed sounds good." It was hard to look that innocent but Alison was trying. "More comfortable for me maybe than here. I could lean on you? With lots of pillows and stuff. And you can tell me whatever you want about your file and you," she paused, smiling slowly as she totally segued into something else, "have read my file already, haven't you?"
"I have." he said with a grin. "Hold on." he said and effortlessly stood up, relying on the artificial legs to provide all the lifting power. He carried the both of them over to her oversized bed, laying her down and arranging the pillows just so for maximum comfort. Then he climbed in as well to make himself available to be snuggled, should she so choose to. "I didn't read your file in any depth. Most powers stuff."
It took her a moment to register that moving was done and now it was time to curl up, pain flaring up briefly from being carried like that and fading only after a moment of clinging stubbornly to her - it would have been excruciating a week ago, she suspected. "Fair trade?" Moving slowly, Alison nudged a pillow closer to him, curling up so that while her cheek was resting on his chest, she was actually looking up towards him, body angling away safely. "You ask me something, I ask you something, we ramble on?" Keeping him here as long as possible was a delightful idea. "We should have done this ages ago."
"If we had done this before, we'd get far too distracted by each other to concentrate on the questions." he said with a quick grin. "You go first, as the sinned-against party."
"Point." She shivered, but smiled a bit at that. "Definite point. We do bad things to each other's attention span." Alison was smirking at that, because being able to do that to him pleased her greatly, plain and simple. It did good things to her ego, too. She shifted one last time, finding the least painful way to lean on him and then went still, almost unnervingly so. "We might as well start with the beginning, right? And just see where that takes us... What was your childhood like?"
"Pretty standard. Only child, from what I was told later was a power manifestation during labor." he said with a smile. "My father was educated by the French, so we were relatively well-off by Moroccan standards. Went to mosque on Friday nights, studied hard in school. I was a good student, if not terribly well-liked by my peers. The money thing." he said with a shrug. "Then I applied for the Massachusetts Academy scholarship and won it. I was fifteen." he said with some pride. "Your turn."
Alison was going to wheedle details from him, she decided. Just a few at a time, but she was - she was to know more. "Some would say standard, up to a point. Mother was a former soap opera star, father was a lawyer from a long line of lawyers. Big on family tradition there - my half-sister is one now. I was the perfect little daughter and did everything my parents wanted, while doing what I wanted the rest of the time when they weren't paying attention. Up until I turned down both Harvard and Julliard and decided to try and hit it big as a rock star instead." She smiled a bit crookedly. "That part didn't go over so well. But it was an interesting change of pace in my life, after that. Kinda like the Chinese curse interesting. Your turn."
"I always knew I wanted to be an engineer - my father was one, and he passed the love down to me." he said with a grin. "School in America was very interesting. America and Morocco are so very different. It was a lot colder in Snow Valley, for one!" he laughed. "My English was fairly good before I came over, and I quickly picked up the slang and put the final touches on it. Emma helped me bring my power forth consciously. Flying for the first time, even though it was just a short distance, was quite possibly the best thing I have ever experienced."
The mention of Emma Frost, so very casual, left Alison feeling a touch uneasy - she did not like the woman, never had. But she knew where the software running the hardware of Haroun's cybernetics came from. Knew he'd been at that school, before. This was lost at the look on his face as he remembered his first flight though, and she grinned in response. It was her turn. "I got my love of music from grandmamma. Father was always irked by that but it looked good for the society things they hosted at the house and Mother was proud of it. That's why Julliard was one of the choices." She shook her head at that, remembering the unique dread she had regarding that school - and the competition students engaged in, within. "Don't regret leaving one bit - but let me tell you, being a limo driver is a unique experience."
"You drove limousines?" he said with a laugh. "I did not know that. I myself have never really held a "real" job like that. I went from student to terrorist to X-Man. Well, no real jobs before my teaching gig." he said with another laugh. "My time in America spoiled me. I couldn't handle the fundamentalist approach of the clerics very well. Asked too many questions, was too concerned for the plight of all men, white, black, human, mutant, male, female, whatever." he said with a grin. "I started fighting back. Initially on my own, then with the aid of some others. That's where I learned Krav, from the Jew."
This was fun - a lot of fun in fact and was distracting her from everything else very nicely. She nodded at his question, smiling contentedly. "I was a limo driver, a waitress and a courier. I also helped a photographer with lighting. He found out what I could do by accident and was deliriously happy to hire me as a lighting expert. Did my portfolio for me for free, in exchange. He helped me a lot - I think some of the jobs he gave me were just to make sure I could pay the rent, at times." Alison moistened her lips a bit, looking curiously at him. "You've mentioned the Jew before... and I think I overheard Nathan mention the terrorist part."
"The Jew wouldn't give me his real name. Veteran of the Six Day War, some really ugly stuff. Older than dirt and as mean as a scorpion, he was." Haroun said with a grin. "But he took the scrapper, the brawler, and made a fighting machine out of him. The discipline alone was worth everything else." he said fondly. "Sadly, he didn't make it out when the clerics torched the warehouse we were using as a headquarters. I went a little wild for a while - I'd bomb their mosques, assassinate their imams, harass their recruitment efforts, lecture their children, whatever it took to get the message across."
She blinked, rather blankly thinking that just maybe there had been a mild case of overkill on the 'passing the message' part. Or maybe not so mild. "Hrm. Weeeeell... I can kinda see why they went for the whole 'get him out of the country now' bit..." she reached out to touch his cheek in apology for pointing that out. "You turn, if you have a question." She wasn't sure she wanted to bring up Donald Pierce today.
"Yeah, it was a pretty easy choice on their part." he admitted. "Anyway - you've mentioned your love for music. Ever considered acting or modeling or something like that?"
"Did some modeling on the side to make ends meet but it's more vicious than singing as businesses go. I tried to stay out of that. Acting was a go, actually. Even started filming - that went belly up when I came out as a mutant at the Baltimore show. Studio closed down the picture and locked away the films. Things went downhill pretty fast from there. " Hrm. It was the first time she'd gone through that recitation without feeling like crying. Interesting.
Haroun scowled. "That's not right." he said. "We didn't get your music at all in Morocco. Mostly it was Islamic favorites, Cat Stevens, or bootlegged rock from the West. Singer-songwriters weren't in much - the bootleggers and the kids liked Limp Bizkit and the Wu-Tang Clan more." he admitted with a shrug. "You thought I despised Zamfir - you haven't me go off on Cat Stevens yet."
"I can see where my music didn't quite fit in," she replied, highly amused at the notion of inflicting some Cat Stevens on him at one point, just to see his reaction. Haroun's general look of horror could be highly entertaining at times. "I still think you have horrible taste when it comes to that noise you call music. It's kinda scary, even."
Haroun smirked. "Hey, blame Brainy. He's the one who turned me onto it in the first place. It fit really well with my mental state at the time, and then after I burned, well, that cinched it. Nothing like angry, hard music for an angry, broken man, don't you think?" he said with a slight smile. "The music talks to me." he admitted.
Well, that settled that. She'd have to see about tickets to surprise him at one point, and put up with an evening listening to truly atrociously bad noise. And somehow ignore the lyrics. The things she did... "I don't think of you as a broken man." Alison reached out, fingertips running down the side of his face as she looked at him contemplatively.
Haroun shrugged to that, leaning just slightly into the touch. "I do, but I have accepted it. Learned to live with it. It was either that or go mad. Pretending that I am normal, that I am just like anyone else, is foolish." he said. "That way, too, lies madness."
"I'd noticed the very in your face way you approach things there." Alison nodded - she wasn't about to go knocking down someone's coping mechanism, not if it seemed to work perfectly well for them. She kept stroking his cheek lightly though, remembering the graph Madelyn had showed her - right now, Alison was leaning half on the man, and half on the cyberware, in fact. "I hear you talk about the 'ware more than I do about the rest of you, when you do that though."
"The body's just another machine. Made of meat and not steel. I keep it in good shape, take care of it, and fix it when it breaks." he said coldly. "There's not much else to tell. I could tell you how much I can bench, how much I can curl, all that, but I really don't think you care. I like to think that I have a good heart - I stay obedient to God as best I can, I give to charity, I care about the children and I am devoted to mutant rights." he explained. "Working on the Blackbird is almost like a devotion - there's so many possibilities, so much that could be done. It's exciting, the very depth of it."
Yep. Alison wasn't pushing that button any further. "I-" She started to say something and then froze, eyes growing round as another of those unnerving flashes of memory she was still having sometimes unlocked and settled into place smugly. "I did not. I'm not remembering that right." Looking mildly horrified, she gave Haroun a pleading look. "Tell me I didn't slice up the cargo bay?"
"OK, I won't tell you." he said calmly. "Damage has already been patched, nothing critical went up. Got some parts on order to finish the job. Took care of that before I left to clear my head." The less she knew about the damage that was actually done, the better she'd feel.
The mention of the fact that he'd left brought a faint shadow to her eyes, and she shifted, pressing her cheek against him for a moment. When she looked back up her gaze was clear once more, and she just nodded slightly. "Okay. And we're getting off track." Resolutely, she winked at him and after a bit of shifted, settled down once more, this time her hand resting flatly just over his heart. "Your turn to ask a question."
Haroun hrmmed as he thought. "I know only that you dated Sam for a while. Care to tell me more about that, and where it went wrong? I know this isn't about him, but I'm curious. If anything, I'd like to avoid the same mistakes he made."
There were things Alison assiduously avoided thinking about, and that was one of them - she'd never dealt well with resounding failures on the personal level. And considering Sam was one of the easiest to get along with man she knew... "I'm not sure." It was an old pain, with a touch of confusion - but one that was softer around the edges than she'd expected, now that she was prodding it directly. "There was a lot going on. We just - drifted apart. It wasn't just him, Haroun. We both messed up there somewhere."
"Fair enough, I suppose." he said with a smile, but his eyes said 'disappointment'. "Your turn." he added, then shifted to make himself a trifle more comfortable with his upper body.
She followed the motion by reflex, settling right back where she'd been with a faint wince as soon as he seemed comfortable. It was a hard look to be subjected to, but she didn't know what else to say. And Haroun wasn't Sam. Not in the least in fact - it wasn't the same mistakes that would crop up, she knew and she found she preferred to deal with things new, rather than trying to avoid something old. "What did you think of, when you were away?"
"You, mostly." he admitted. "And me. The things I'd said, the things I'd used to make a point. I was not proud of myself. You deserved better, even if I do still think I was right. I didn't make my point well, and I left things hanging. Especially when you stopped using the console and I couldn't hear you well."
That hadn't been the smartest thing to do. Alison sighed a bit, curling up just a bit more closely to him. "It scared me. The way you left, and when you said we'd talk once I was healthy again." She was far from being healthy - that would take a while, in fact. And she'd not the slightest clue how he'd interpreted her gesture. "Why did you leave though? Just then? I mean, I know we weren't getting anywhere with my not using the console but-" She hadn't thought he'd back down from an argument that way.
"I was trying to keep a bad situation from getting even worse." he admitted. "Not my smartest idea ever. I'm a passionate person - I feel things deeply. And what I was feeling right then was frustrated, angry, and scared. Those aren't positive feelings, and if I had stayed they only would have grown stronger. I wanted to spare you that. Dumb, I know." he said with a small laugh.
The faint murmur that answered that was lost to the sound dampeners, Alison nodding quietly, fingertips tracing random patterns on his shirtfront. "Scared is bad." She couldn't argue much with that one, not that she was inclined to argue at all just now. Smiling just a bit, she studied the patterns she was drawing out, perhaps a bit too intently. "Well. Both of us have rather spectacular tempers when we let loose. Should be interesting."
"We do. That's one of your most attractive features, actually." he said, for a second forgetting her medical condition and brushing a hand across one of her breasts. "I like that passion, that drive. I can't help but wonder if it translates into other parts of your life..." he said with a wickedly slow grin.
She didn't quite twitch away from the touch, although she came close - it was a distinctly disconcerting feeling to say the least, when you expected one sensation and your body served you up another entirely. Along with the memory of just enough to remind you of what you weren't going to be feeling for a while. Ow. Damn. I'm going to get really cranky about this. Alison couldn't help but respond to that smile of his though. "Raincheck on finding out about that? Only one way for you to find out properly and I'd hate to spoil the surprise."
Haroun just grinned. "But of course." he said with a now openly wicked smile. "I am practically counting the minutes." His pleasure in the idea was obvious, given the wide grin that just Would Not Go Away. "I should stop tormenting you - I keep forgetting that touch causes you pain. I don't want my touch to hurt you." he said. "Sets a very bad precedent, it does."
It was an infectious grin, at that, drawing a low chuckle from Alison as she reached up to trail a fingertip down the side of his neck. "Good to know I'm that distracting. And I wouldn't worry too much about precedent if I were you... s'already been set, mmm?" She sobered up quickly however, sighing softly. "They have no idea how long it'll take for me to heal or my power to go back to normal."
"Didn't you realize? I'm stubborn." he said with a laugh. "However long it takes - days, weeks, months, years - I'll be waiting for you when it's all said and done." he said quite seriously. "You know I don't give up easily."
She found herself staring at him for a while at that, with a somewhat silly smile. It was horribly sappy (or so she was telling herself) but at the same time she freely admitted to herself that it was a very nice thing to hear even when one was healthy and whole - hearing it now of all times was making feel very wobbly, obviously so. And she wasn't tearing up in the least, no. At a loss for words she settled pressing her fingertips lightly to her lips and then to his own, in silent thanks.
"You're welcome." he said, understanding her gesture completely. "I like to think that were our positions reversed, you would do the same for me." he said quietly. "Now - you should rest. It's been a hell of a ride today, and you need to keep your strength up so that you can get all better so that I can make you scream all night long, you hear me!" he mock-scolded.
"Wild horses couldn't drag me away." After the talk they'd just had, it didn't really serve any purpose to protest the eventuality - even though Alison had no other intention but to wish it would never become necessary. Laughter escaped her briefly however, at the scolding. While her body still wasn't inclined to sleep all that much, the mental fatigue was another thing entirely, she had been discovering. "I'm going to hold you to that," Alison purred out softly, with a lazy wink. "Does that mean I get to rest like this, or are you doing to wander off and leave me by my lonesome?"
"I believe the phrase is "Wild horses couldn't drag me away?" he parroted back at her with a grin. "I'm not going anywhere unless you want me to." he added with that same wide grin.
"Nuhuh. Want you right where you are..." And with that Alison let her eyes drift half-shut, slipping into that state of not really thinking she'd been discovering a fair bit of late. She couldn't really go to sleep but was still more than content with the notion of just not moving for a while, with Haroun staying right where he was.
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Date: 2004-11-22 06:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 06:53 am (UTC)*grins*
Besides, his kneecaps are bloody expensive. ;)
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Date: 2004-11-22 06:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 06:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 07:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-22 09:53 am (UTC)*woeful look*