bakerstreet | thursday pic prompt

thursday pic prompt

the picture prompt meme

i. COMMENT WITH CHARACTER
ii. OTHERS LEAVE A PICTURE (OR TWO OR THREE....)
iii. REPLY TO THEM WITH A SETTING BASED ON THE IMAGES.

THIS POST WILL BE IMAGE HEAVY.

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[Oh Japan is wonderful! We were there for a month in 2014 and we absolutely loved it! Whereabouts are you going? Have you got it all planned already? Also, when you get to thinking about your London trip, I can make lots of suggestions for nice neighborhoods to stay in, things to do, etc.]

Once again there was a pause of assessment, and then presently:

"All right then," Aurus spoke as though he accepted this rather oblique and still evasive answer as sufficient purely at face value. (He did not.)

At some point, he thought, the other shoe was going to drop for Charles on this whole matter, and he dearly hoped that when it did it would be too late for him to backpedal his way out of the thing to save himself the risk.

That wasn't a malicious sort of hope. It was actually quite well-meaning. The trouble was, that the more Charles evaded, the more he made Aurus's interest in him grow. It was not a matter of conquest or anything so blunt as that, but there was something alluring about forging a connection in the face of high odds. (What were Aurus's relationships with every Legend that he'd collected if not connections forged against high odds, after all? How many people not only struck out to find the spirit of the most venerated being in their culture, but found him, studied under his tutelage, and then convinced him to accompany them through life as friend and companion as much as spiritual advisor or tutor?)

"We can try tonight, if you're amenable. Of course I will need to be asleep or at least something close--a sort of trance-state. And though I understand you wish not to use any enhancements yourself, I will be taking something to facilitate my own openness to the Dream. Something to make sure that the channel is stretched wide, as it were.

"Would you prefer to attempt it in my bedroom or yours--or do you have some other place where we can be comfortable and undisturbed?"

[I *wish* I could go for a whole month! I'm excited for my 15 days... it's a lot of money but this is my dream vacation. Going to do so many things I've always dreamed of being able to do there including to one of the oldest onsens out in the mountains! Also yesssss I would love an insiders opinion on the places to go in London instead of the typical touristy things.]

"I do not need to be asleep, only able to touch you. Your room would be fine, so you can lay down in the state you require." It seemed simple enough, but Charles was... excited. Honestly, this would be the sort of situation perhaps he would never get to experience again and while in reality, he was a little bit over his head in a manner he didn't understand. That unknown was exhilarating, in its own way. All of this was.

It would go as it went, and he would learn as it happened, in the end. Still, he gave a smile and a quick nod, quite pleased about the whole of this. Aurus' open willingness to this was a pleasant surprise, and the other's open mind and way of speaking had proven to be fascinating. It was rare, though he would not have said so to any, to find a mind on an equal level to his own. Erik had been, had given him a challenge, a partnership, that had not come since. Aurus, he was finding, was decidedly able to not only keep up but proved an equal in thought.

[Yeah, our whole trip was crazy expensive too. It's 100% worth the cost though. We went to Yuenessun in Hakone for our onsen experience--it looks a little gimmicky on the surface but it was absolutely incredible. I'm sure wherever you go will be amazing, and you can see tons of stuff in 15 days! I will send you a PM at some point with loads of London tl;dr--there's too much to put here. Also, how did your yard sale go over the weekend?? I was thinking of you when it poured rain here on Saturday. I hope your weather luck was better!]

"Agreed."

It did all sound very simple on the surface, and really the mechanism wasn't complicated. Complicated was everything else--the magics, the metaphysics, the ideas and the feelings that the whole experience would undoubtedly invoke for them both. It was an unknown for Aurus as well, but arguably he was better prepared, if only because he was ready for whatever happened to deeply touch both of them.

He was also--and perhaps this was really a bit sneaky of him--very well aware that as far as quid pro quos went, he was now in quite an advantageous position. He meant to make good on the opportunity their path had opened for him, not to back Charles into a corner or pin him down, but simply to assert that they were going to stand on even ground as far as learning about each others lives went.

"And now I'd like to ask you something," he said. "I know you've said that you'd prefer not to be asked prying questions, so I hope you'll forgive me for this one: That--" he paused a moment to remember the word Charles had used earlier, "--photography of you standing by the blond haired woman. That's a likeness from a time when you could walk.

"Would you tell me what happened--how you came to lose the use of your legs?"

[We're going up to the Takaragawa Osenkaku in Minakami! I'm beyond super stoked. Sadly, the yard sale didn't happen for exactly that reason. ;__; it poured. However, my SO is now moved in and I cooked her dinner, we made cupcakes for my birthday tomorrow, and watched a movie. Still a good day over all!]

Really, that was a question he hadn't been expecting but on reflection, he probably should have. Here it boiled down to three options - it was someone who had been there for the experience and knew the answer, someone who assumed he had been born with this disability, or someone who didn't know but believed in the social agreement not to ask about such a thing. Aurus was neither of the first two and technically not bound by the same socialital agreement of the culture. "Photograph," he corrected quietly. "The item itself is a photograph. Photography is the art of taking a photograph." Very much a teacher.

He leaned back, looking over to that picture of himself when he was young, less scarred physically and mentally by the world, and Raven was by his side with the world as his oyster. The old twin serpents of anger and frustration rose up in him at the memory, replaying in his mind as the distance memory of searing pain arched through him and the terrifying realization he couldn't feel his legs as he laid there on the damp sand of a Cuba beach, not even as Erik pulled the bullet from his spine. One the arm of his chair, his fingers tightened hard in unconscious response and it took effort to push it all back. It didn't work completely; his gaze stayed haunted.

"...an accident," he finally said, after a steadying breath that was anything but. "A stray bullet-- projectile." He wasn't sure if guns and bullets were even a thing in the world Aurus came from. "There was-" Nothing would ever make this easier, would it? Even years later. "It was an instant severing of key nerves. They regrew, after time, but the connection between mind and body was... gone." It was why Hank's drug had worked. Somehow, it brought back to life that connection in a way they could not replicate otherwise... but took his power from him. Giving with one hand, taking with the other. For a time, he had been more than happy to pay that price in the rage that came from his loss and what his powers had cost him and the others.

[Ahh that's an area we didn't go to at all. Closest we got was Nikko, where we stayed in the most amazing historic self-catering cottage out in a little farming village. Japan has some of the most beautiful mountains I have seen anywhere, so I'm sure going farther into them will only get more grand! Boo on rain, but happy birthday!! and also hurrah for getting the move sorted!]

As he listened, Aurus gave a small nod of understanding--they had guns in Tyria. Conceptually, he had no trouble knowing just what Charles meant.

The real meaning, though, was not in the gunshot or the severing of nerves. It was in the cruel irony: Charles had lost the connection between body and mind, while in its place, the connection between mind and mind--his and others'--flourished. Of course Aurus didn't know how literally true this irony was, that Charles had to make the choice between his legs and his powers. To him it seemed only to have the force of a metaphor, but it was a powerful metaphor.

It was also, in its way, exactly what he had been waiting for: a crack in the facade through which another side of Charles was revealed.

It mattered very much, Aurus felt, that neither of them were inviolable. For all their mutual confidence and composure, neither of them had been untouched by life. Charles, arguably, was more damaged. Not physically damaged, Aurus didn't think of him that way--but his emotional wounds were still more raw, whereas Aurus's had spent more time working over his own. Perhaps, he thought, that might mean the incipient connection between them could become a sort of balm. But no salve would ever help unless the wound was cleaned and exposed first.

Reaching out, he placed his hand over Charles' where it gripped the arm of his chair. It was a risk, he knew--the man might recoil, pull away from him, but he chose to do it anyway. "I'm sorry. Chance can be very cruel." He meant these words in earnest, and they were reflected in his eyes which looked at Charles not with pity but with empathy and that same timbre of warmth that they'd held before this tale was told. However haunted Charles might be, it was by specters of which Aurus was not daunted.

[Our list right now is Tokyo, then up to the onsen, out to Osaka after that, I'm making the day trip down to Nara, then to Eko-in where we'll be staying over night in the temple. ^_^ So happy the move is over and she's even happier. And Thanks!]

Everything was made all that much worse by the situation that surrounded the injury - that it was Erik's callousness that had caused it, that Moira had been firing at him, that any of that had been happening... that part, no. He hadn't discussed with anyone at all. It hurt too deep, was the subject of nightmares. It had all led to his absolute willingness to keep taking that drug, more and more, without a care to the loss of his powers until Logan had come and forced him to realize what was going on his world. Quite the blow, in some ways, to get him to wake up out of his own spiral downwards into anger and self-pity.

Ironic, perhaps, that while Aurus didn't believe him physically damage, it would be many, many years before Charles didn't think the same of himself.

Aurus would feel it beneath his fingertips as Charles' muscles tensed further, that initial flinch away from the comforting touch, before he calmed the reaction and left his hand where it was, though he did loosen the grip he had on the armrest. His gaze tilted enough to meet Aurus' foreign eyes, recognizing the expression in them without even needing to reach out to the other's mind. He took a breath, managed to keep his voice level. "...It can be, but... what's done is done." It wasn't something to push onto someone else, to force them to deal with his demons. His was supposed to be the strength of this place, and to undermine it with things he could not control would leave him in that place he had been before.

[Ahh your route is totally different from ours--we skipped Osaka, went down to Shikoku, stayed in Matsuyama, took the ferry to Hiroshima and stayed on Miyajima for a few nights, then north along the coast to the Sea of Japan and did Kyoto on the way back. We did lots of train riding lol.]

The interpersonal elements at work in the events surrounding Charles' injury were something that Aurus could never possibly guess. Probably no one could, at least without having known all the people involved when it happened.

What he could sense in the momentary tensing of Charles' hand, however, seemed to compound an impression he'd already gotten about the interpersonal dynamics at play in the present: Hank might be a sort of right hand in the running of this school, but when it came to the more personal side of things, Charles bore the weight on his own shoulders alone. He wasn't used to talking about this issue or touching this pain in the presence of others.

Maybe, Aurus reasoned, it was the reality of this world that made the man treat himself like he had to be the emotional rock for those around him. It was hardly Aurus's place to say otherwise. But as he was an outsider to this world he could also confidently say that Charles didn't need to be an emotional rock for him.

"You'll forgive me saying, but 'what's done is done' cannot alone bring you peace or comfort in your skin." Leaning slightly forward in his chair, he let his hand continue to rest where it was, his fingertips on the contours of Charles wrist, his palm lightly covering the man's knuckles. It was a soft touch, and Aurus's skin was slightly cool on the surface, like a leaf in the shade, but his hand was big and it had the weight of living wood--not like a tree trunk, but like a thick braid of vines.

Maybe he should back off rather than press on this point, but though Charles had begun to flinch away, in the end he'd paused and let this touch of their hands continue. Perhaps he was only forcing himself out of politeness. It was hard to say--this could all be Aurus badly overstepping. But it was clear to him that if he didn't take the risk, Charles would retreat into himself rather than do so. If he caused offense, the sylvari figured he would simply apologize. "I may not know you very well yet, but I'll be so bold as to suggest that I might have something to offer you. If, that is, you'll be so bold as to accept."

[We're hitting up Osaka because we have a friend who lives there, actually! Your trip sounds absolutely amazing... ug I wish I had all the time in the world to see the entire country! Also, if I haven't said it enough, I love this thread. ^_^]

Sometimes, to his own discredit, Charles underestimated Hank. In so many ways, Hank had been his rock after the Cuba incident and it could be quite literally that Hank was the reason he was alive. The school had been shut down upon his return mostly thanks to Hank, who in turn basically became his caretaker. He wouldn't have bothered going out to get groceries or eaten or cared, in any way, if it wasn't for his friend. His sorrow and loss and pity had been too much to bear at the time, and he had sunk beneath those dark waves. Hank had kept them both going, still working on the serum that had eventually given each of them their own measure of sanity (though in reality, perhaps not the best for Charles), still being a lifeline into the world.

With that behind them, with the knowledge of the future, he knew he had to be the backbone to this school if he truly wanted it to exist. The students needed someone strong, reliable, calm. How could he be anything less?

Charles' expression went from that smoldering sadness within to a rapid confusion, studying Aurus' face and trying to divine from what he saw alone what Aurus could have meant by that. "Peace and comfort... are far from a guarantee from anything in life," he pointed out, a part of him wanting nothing more than to with draw his words from before. This was a subject he wanted away from, both for his own selfish reasons as much as not wanting to burden it upon Aurus.

Beneath Aurus' fingertips was his opposite - the boney but wide wrist, the warmth of vein and artery and blood - but it didn't pull away any further. Not out of politeness, but more out of confusion and a lack of fear even as Aurus leaned forward. "What are you suggesting?" he asked quietly, not sure what Aurus could be thinking. After all, so very many of the things Aurus had spoken of thus far had been quite alien (including drugs, less alien) and he had little idea of what moved behind those strange eyes. It took a great deal of effort not to reach out in that moment, to find out for himself like he might have with Hank or Raven, but something kept him within.

[We were very lucky on time--I'd just finished my PhD and my partner was just about to start his MA so we had this gap between things (plus an old friend who had to be home in Tokyo for a month and encouraged us lol). We could happily have stayed longer everywhere though. We just didn't want to leave. Also, this thread is absolutely giving me life right now, omg <3]

Though Aurus truly wouldn't have minded if Charles searched his thoughts for an answer, it would also have pleased him very much to know that he did not, that he chose to accept and maintain the boundaries out of a mutual respect that was growing between them and not out of any blunt demand.

Of course he couldn't know this for certain, but he trusted Charles, and he trusted his gut feeling that there was no duplicity here.

In a way, Aurus felt, what he was suggesting was already underway. It was there in that moment when the sadness in Charles's eyes shifted. You didn't have to replace sadness with joy for a difference to be made, after all. A difference was made regardless.

Besides, in Aurus's opinion, uncertainly was one of the most useful and productive postures a person could be in. To be at ease in uncertainty was to be alive in a world of wide open possibilities. It was the sort of thing he liked.

He ran a fingertip over the contours of Charles' wrist, following the lines to the outside, the heel of his hand, the edge of his palm and slowly down his little finger, hooking his own hand smoothly under Charles' so that the pads of their fingers rested against each other. It was a chaste touch, technically. But it would be hard to escape the erotic potentials it implied.

"I find it feels so clumsy to put words to these sorts of things." He smiled, knowing that Charles would take from this garden of hints precisely as much as he was willing to take, and not wanting to press him towards more.

"I suppose that I'm suggesting we allow tonight to lead us and see where we might find ourselves in its wake."

[That IS lucky! It's a perfect set up! It took... a lot of years and some luck to finally end up in a job that gave me enough vacation + enough money to be able to actually travel. I'm so damn happy to be in it. XD Also I apologize for Charles. He's... got a lot to get over. *pats him*]

The sheer amount of thoughts that crossed Charles' mind in that moment was both comical and staggering. They ranged from a cool, calm, collected 'it seems my first intuition was correct' to a near panicked non-thought of recoil that came from somewhere deep inside that came and went so quickly that it left him frozen in place. There was no mistaking what Aurus was suggesting at that point, not with that more explict suggestion hanging in the air between them. He let out a slow breath, feeling it rattle in his throat, before he swallowed it down, eyes still locked to Aurus'.

"...Aurus..." Raven would have thought it hysterical to see Charles on the receiving end of flirtations when he was so blindsided by it. He took a few moments, eyes slipping closed, before he spoke again. "I think... you are asking for things..." No. Where had his silvertongue gone? Why did it desert him now of all times? Then, with a tightening in his throat, his head turned to the side. "You don't understand what you're asking for."

He had most certainly not had any sort of relations since the accident. What he did know was that he still functioned, but it was... clumsy. Without the use of his legs, even with himself alone it became rough, clumsy, and frustrating. He could imagine the disaster it would be with another involved. Why would someone want such an experience? That roll of negative emotion threatened him all over again, but he swallowed the bitter pill until it sat rolling in his stomach. "Not that I'm not honored, truly." He was being honest with that, but he believed he knew how it would end.

[One thing I will say for England (at least right now--who knows what will happen in the next few years), there's actually really good assurances for workers that they'll get paid annual holiday time. It's like 23 days a year of paid annual leave, so if you bank it up you can take one loooong holiday! The US system is much more brutal. Also, poor Charles. Not to worry though, Aurus is very patient.]

Not for a moment did Aurus consider accepting that answer at face value. To let go at that point, it seemed to him, would be a very cruel act indeed. So he didn't let go, instead closing his grip steadily on Charles' fingers. "Look at me." It was an earnest request but certainly not a demand.

"I'm not naive, Charles. And I do know how human bodies work--I know a few things about how human minds tend to work when it comes to the topic of sex, too. You tend to all have tunnel vision on the mechanisms of reproduction even when you're not trying to make babies." Clearly, judging by his tone, Aurus considered this focus to be a bit silly and misguided.

"Being a sexually sterile race gives one a rather different perspective. So, let me speak bluntly: the fact of you coming to my room tonight for purposes of visiting the Dream notwithstanding, on the subject of inviting you into my bed, I have been, and still remain, undecided. I hadn't phrased my offer as such because I really wasn't sure what I thought you'd make of the idea.

"That isn't to say that you've misunderstood me, though. You've understood me perfectly. You've only construed my meaning in its narrowest and most restrictive terms, for it's only in those terms where anatomical questions take the foreground to begin with."

Here he released his hold of Charles' hand, but only to reach out, to touch the back of his elbow and then, leaning forward a little more, to brush his fingers down the man's jaw.

It mattered very much to him that Charles had not declined on the basis of a lack of attraction or interest, but rather on a perception of limits and inadequacies. That made all the difference in the world. It was why he persisted even in the face of an initial refusal, now looking searchingly into the man's eyes with an expression that tried to draw out something less defeated, something more hopeful: "Please do not tell me, with everything that you can do and everything that you know, that you're still laboring under the misconception that your cock is your most important or most powerful erotic organ."

[I have 12 days this year, 13 next year... goes up by 1 each year. We don't have sick time, though, which is awesome. If you're sick, stay home or go home, don't get everyone else sick. Doesn't come out of our vacation time. Also, I am pretty sure the last bit of your post killed me. Ded. I know it's serious but I just ended up laughing really hard because I wasn't expecting it, so you win the thread. XD]

It took a moment, two, but Charles' eyes did open and look to Aurus' face. He wasn't ashamed of that offer or of the act itself, but it all came from himself. If it had been years before, he would have given a cool smirk and taken the suggestion on easily enough, happily flirted right back. He had no personal experience with males when it came to the physical, but there was so much more when it came to the mental. In so many ways, Aurus was very much right, and the logical part of Charles knew it to be true. It was what had brought two men like Erik and Charles together - that deeper connection, the intellect, the same emotional level of understanding, and commitment to their cause. In this case, he could feel the beginnings of this with Aurus. It bypassed most normal means of 'attraction' and became something in of itself. Really, even physically, there was that age old curiosity of wanting to see more of something unknown and new.

Within Charles, though, that not-so-old anger crept into his voice, a certain bitterness slipping in. In time, he would be a master of controlling such a thing, but for now he was still a young man. "No," he said tightly, lips thinning, "however, there is connection. You do not understand what you are asking of me. There's a great deal I'm no longer... capable of." It hurt. It hurt on a level he couldn't quite express even to himself to utter those words aloud that he knew (believed). "There is that connection of mind and body that would come and in the end, be... lacking." The word was almost spat, shone in his eyes. It wasn't meant to be cruel, but perhaps a touch edged, cutting away the touch on his jaw and the kindness in Aurus' eyes because all of this was pulling open on the unhealed wound.

[Not having sick time come out of vacation time is a huge boon in a US job! That's awesome! (Here it's just a legal matter--they can't take sick days out of your vacation time. You're simply legally entitled to be sick without penalty.) And hahaha! It didn't even occur to me that it would be unexpected--maybe I'm too used to Aurus and what a weirdo he is lol!]

Aurus let his hand fall away and he sat back in his chair with a small sigh. Not a defeated sigh though. He could accept Charles' anger, his bitterness--he didn't even take those personally. He appreciated that he was opening wounds, treading on insecurities, and it didn't matter how lightly he tried to step when the terrain was so sensitive. That didn't mean he was going to be easily backed off now that he'd opened this door though.

"I don't believe that," he said frankly. "And I don't believe that I would judge you anywhere near as harshly as you judge yourself. There may well be differences in what your body now can do--I won't say otherwise, but I will not concede it as a matter of 'lack.'

"I won't concede that you are forever barred from erotic pleasure due to a stray bullet either, if only because it seems to me that someone should insist that you're wrong on that point.

"For sylvari, sex is a way of expressing joy and affection and living pleasure, and I don't think that a day goes by when someone doesn't invent a new way to have it. So if you're going to try and convince me that that chair you're in means the doors are all closed to you, I'm afraid you're going to have a very hard uphill battle."

[It is! I love it so much. And honestly, that should be how it is for the whole of the US. My old company would give us three sick days a year. THREE. That was it. Charles is just in deep in his own sadface.]

"It isn't that simple!" Charles said with far more of a snap than he truly meant to. He looked hard towards Aurus, his eyes narrowed, the set of his mouth tight. "You make it sound like merely an inconvience, something to be dismissed in order to achieve something else. What I am and am not forever barred from isn't the point, but you have no idea of what it is, what it feels like-"

His voice clipped off as he turned his head away again, a hand coming up to run through his hair in a gesture that attempted to settle his nerves while it pushed aside strands of hair out of place. There was that feeling of anger that came with Aurus even suggesting such a thing when he had no idea what it was to live like this. To have lost something so personal, sometimes that it felt like the loss of half of his own body. Still there and yet infinitely far away.

He guided his chair back, turning it and rolling to the nearby window, eyes focusing on the lush greenery outside while his hand came up, covering his mouth. Becoming cross like that with someone he barely knew was not his way. ...At least not for some time, now. He could remember snapping so easily at Hank for a while.

[Srsly. These are the things that really worry my partner and I if we do move over to the states. They're also the things that make me willing to put up with a lot of less-than-ideal stuff in the UK. And oh Charles, I feel so bad for him. Poor guy.]

It might have seemed strange how accepting Aurus seemed to be of Charles' anger, just letting it calmly break on him like a wave on the shore, as though he didn't take being snapped at personally at all. He was sorry, on the one hand, for causing this sort of emotional turmoil, but on the other hand, he wasn't sorry in the least. He might be receiving Charles' anger in this moment, but he didn't feel that he was really the target of it.

The more they spoke, the more keenly Aurus felt the weight of all the unresolved hurt and rage that Charles kept bottled inside. It rested around the man's shoulders like a mantle, disguised beneath his composure and deportment. If Aurus had known the situation more intimately--known who Erik was and the past that he'd lived through--he might have pointed out to Charles how ironically like him he'd become in his response to pain and loss. But of course he didn't know.

He gave the man a moment at the window before he spoke again, still seated where he was. Now, he felt, was not the time to press the physical. In this moment, his tactic should be different.

"You're right--I don't know what it feels like. I lost my arm once. My student cut it off while we were sparring. It took nearly three months for it to grow back, but it did grow back. It's not the same.

"It is not my intention to trivialize what you have to live with. But I have no doubts at all that the physical limitations aren't absolute. I think you know that too, even without me telling you. So I can only believe that there is something else--a pain that frightens you too much, something that happened to you beyond the injury itself. Injuries, after all, do tend to become magnets for all sorts of meanings.

"I don't ask for you to tell me about it. I don't think we know each other well enough for that yet. But if, in time, you decide to speak of it with me, I assure you that I will listen."

[I don't blame you, honestly. @_@ I've never gotten to play out Charles and sex when he was in his chair, so this is actually really interesting for me to try. I hope it's something like authentic.]

Really, the snapping wasn't personal. It was anger at the situation, anger about his own feelings of helplessness, anger at why it had to happen at all. Maybe the anger was at one man, a selfish, childish thought when he knew Erik had meant nothing of the sort. He had knelt there beside him, looking as terrified as he felt--

In another situation, it would have absolutely fascinated Charles to know more about the regrowth that Aurus was capable of and curious to find out more about it (though he would never range into that psychotic manner of needing to know first hand). In another situation. When he wasn't trying to push down again everything that wasn't just threatening to well up but was in a manner that almost disgusted him to feel again. He wanted to believe himself better than the seething pit he had been years before, even if perhaps it wasn't true all the way through.

He licked his lips, a sign of his nerves, as he stared blankly out the window. Everything outside was as it should be - tranquil, peaceful, sunshine, and calm. Everything he didn't feel in that moment and should.

"...It goes beyond the injury. Imagine if you could never speak to the Legends again, or Dream again, or travel the Mists again. A part of you is gone." Hoping that might explain it all for him in a few words, something he didn't know how fully to explain. "...that's all there is."

[I love how this is all going and how real it does seem! Sex and disability is one of those cultural taboos that so rarely gets touched, and Charles' resistance to the idea is just very human--it's not simply his own hang up, but something reinforced by a world that by no means validates a man in a wheelchair as a sexual being. I'm trying to think of movies that deal with the subject and the only one I can think of is Born on the Fourth of July. It's just such an invisible topic that almost no one talks about. (Also omfg this week is kicking my ass something fierce. I don't even.)]

"I don't think any of those would really compare," Aurus returned honestly, pushing himself up from his chair. "There's something singular and irreducible about paralysis. The part of you that's gone also isn't: you see it there every day. I think that must be harder."

Taking a few steps across the room, he paused a half stride behind Charles' chair, just to his side--like he was standing at his shoulder, though perhaps the height different between them didn't make it seem so.

"You have no real reason to trust me. Certainly not with a matter like this. I know that. I still think that you should trust me though." He paused. He wanted to reach out and lay a hand on Charles' arm, or touch his hair. In his mind, he could see himself kneeling beside the chair, bringing the two of them nearly level. He could see the ways that they might touch, all the things those touches might convey. But his hands stayed by his sides.

"How long has it been since the accident? How many years since you've let yourself be touched--I don't just mean sexually, but intimately. And have you not taken a lover in all that time?"

[*nodnod* You couldn't have said it better. I couldn't imagine someone like Charles taking easily to the idea, in particular when you see the beginning of DoFP with Logan finding him or even more so, when he's on the plane with Erik. Someone who was such a tom cat before everything happened, giving up Moira, and losing Erik and his ability to walk all in a short time... I just think would have left him curling in on himself when it comes to that sort of subject, protecting himself within and projecting that calm, stable rock he saw his future self to be. Logan and his own-self got him out of it, but he's always been the one in charge, the big brother, the protector... who protects the protector? Also... going off the timelines I can find for exact years...]

Touch, in that moment, might have felt like pity. It might have gotten a backlash, another snap. In his chair, Charles was coiled tight, defensive in unconscious ways to protect himself from the internal pain he had been unable to escape. While Hank had tried, oh and he had tried to help Charles, there was a major difference between Hank and Aurus - Aurus was still trying even when it hurt. Hank had been willing to pull back, not trying to further the pain, but perhaps Aurus' distance from the matter and even the person at its core made him more willing to do the part that would still hurt Charles. Pull the bandage from the wound and tear the scabbing away to expose the skin to healing air and salve.

The silence stretched as Charles gave no reply. He did not so much as move, other than to breathe and blink, staring over the top of his hand with an unbreaking gaze. Just when it seemed like he would not answer, when he would ignore those questions until Aurus gave in first, his voice came in a broken sound, "...ten years." Two words that answered all of those questions with as minimal information as possible, yet it told everything.

Why? Why was he even so much as telling Aurus this information? Hank alone knew the full truth, Raven, wherever she had gone, undoubtedly would have guessed correctly, but that might have been all. Of all of the lives he had touched, helped save, changed forever, those might have been the lone two with any true idea of how his life had been. Aurus didn't know. Yet... for all that he had kept it to himself, he spoke it aloud. Despite himself, really. Despite his anger and the unfair anger towards the one who was pulling those words from him.

Edited 2016-10-05 22:01 (UTC)

[Yeah, it makes sense--from Charles perspective I think a lot of these things might have seemed momentarily inevitable at first...and then they just got more and more entrenched. He's kind of made himself an emotional island, and Erik is just too caught up in his own pain to ever really focus on what the aftermath of Cuba has meant for Charles. And also, lol, wow X-men movie verse, that's not a convoluted timeline at all.]

Aurus really didn't think he needed to say that ten years was quite long enough for something like this to go on without question. He was quite confident that the sentiment was already in the air. If he said it, it would only serve to hammer it home, and this was not a time for hammers.

So what he said instead was, "Well, it's not that I don't appreciate asceticism..." and then he just left the rest alone.

For a moment he was quiet, then he stepped over to the window. He stood slightly to the side, not blocking Charles view and surveyed the scenery for a moment before suggesting or, more to the point, requesting: "Show me around the grounds. It's a beautiful day--we should be out in the sun."

It was a way of changing the subject, not a resolution of any question, which it seemed to him could not happen in this moment at any rate. It was, he felt, appropriate to leave this proverbial keg open to air, let it settle and breathe and return to it in time. If he was reading the matter right, he had given Charles something to think on--something, probably, that would occupy his thoughts and refuse to fully leave him be until it came to a head one way or the next. To be fair, it might very well distract and occupy him incessantly, given how he seemed, from what Aurus knew so far, too cerebral a person to just ignore the thing now that it had been dragged out so starkly and lain at his feet.

Was it possible that he would just make Charles resent and dislike him for what he'd done? Of course Aurus knew it was a risk. One never got anywhere without taking some risks though. Besides he trusted Charles as much as he already found that he cared for him, and he did not think that was how this would end.

[I think it comes back to a lack of equals thing. Charles builds himself up and without an equal, he can't express it out, work it out, and by the time someone comes along who could be, he's so used to holding it in that it doesn't come out easily.]

The problem, at least a problem on Charles' part, was that Aurus was right. It was set deep into his mind and it wasn't going to go away easily, even with a change of subject, as much as he might want it to. He looked up towards Aurus, studying him in silence and weighing his request, before he gave a small nod. Really, every part of him wanted to smear those thoughts into the dirt, the offer that was made, forget it ever was spoken and go back to the comfortable numb it had become. What right did Aurus have to force it back into the light, to make it hurt all over again? The thoughts of what he had lost, emotionally even more so than physically, still dug deep, like barbed wire around his heart. A millstone that weighed a little more with every year, even as he tried to strengthen himself to carry it.

"...as you wish," he said after a long pause, knowing that it was on purpose to some degree. "I imagine we could fit that in before you're supposed to meet Hank." It wasn't quite a smile that he gave, but he did set the wheelchair to roll backwards, turning it carefully not to hit Aurus in the process.

Really, his face showed that his mind was anywhere near this conversation or subject as they moved outside, the halls quiet with students mostly in class. Some were outside, though, as they came out. The grounds were beautiful, almost English-countryside in the way they were kept. Open, yet the grounds felt alone compared to the world outside of it. A private place of peace, a sanctuary in a growing world. "...my family owned this estate for several generations," he commented after a time. "My parents passed when Raven and I were still young." The words didn't come exactly with a sadness. A warm family home hadn't exactly been the childhood he remembered. Distant. A bit cold. Too posh for what his heart wanted, but he had Raven to make it bearable.

[It's good for both of them that Aurus is so damn stubborn then lol. Also ooh what adventures did you have this weekend?? Boo on being sick. Hopefully that part will pass soon, but yay for a weekend filled with the good kind of craziness!]

It did honestly sting a bit to have Charles answer him that way--with that coolness, that subtle undercurrent of animosity, as though his company was almost a burden, a bothersome distraction from the usual routine of the school day. Aurus understood it, yes. He could very well imagine the resentment that Charles might feel at having him, a stranger, come into his home and rip back the veil on his most carefully guarded pains. He could only hope--no, not hope, trust that the resentment wouldn't be what calcified.

That was what he reminded himself as he and Charles left the office: trust and respect went hand in hand. Aurus might firmly believe that Charles was wrong to deny himself physical intimacy, but that belief did not for a moment alter his respect. Respecting the man mean trusting the sort of person he was and how this would play out in the end. That's all there was to it.

For now perhaps the fresh air and the sun would provide a bit of comfort and ease. Aurus did feel that they helped a little. They seemed to help thaw the conversation a bit at least.

"It's a beautiful place--very human. It reminds me a little of Queensdale and the lands outside Divinity's Reach. Though where I come from it would only be the very richest and most influential of noble families that would have something like this," he gave Charles a sidelong smile, a sort of question implicit in the remark.

"Raven is your sister?" He did not ask if she was here now, feeling that he'd asked enough sensitive questions for the time being and sensing a bitter-sweetness even in the way Charles spoke of his his family home. There were, it seemed, no few ghosts that haunted Charles, and Aurus didn't know enough yet to gauge whether Raven was one of them.

[We went to the Ren Faire here and had a fantastic day. It was a 70% chance of rain and it rained pretty much everywhere BUT where we were, so we got super lucky on that! Last night, we did an Escape Room which was INCREDIBLE. You get a scenario (we were burglers trying to break into a rich man's house and crack open his safe) and you have to solve all of these clues and puzzles to figure out how to do it -- in an hour. We were SO CLOSE!! We only had to figure out the very last puzzle to win! Time got us though, sadly. We had the safe open, all we needed to do was figure out the combo for the keypad to exit and we would have won. So close!]

In the end, Charles was and always would be human, even when he seemed unbelievably powerful to some and weak as a kitten to others. He hated and loved and angered and saddened and everything else despite the fact he tried to hide some of it. It wasn't a hate that came to him about what Aurus was choosing to do but an anger, one that if he sat and disected it from top to bottom was an anger at himself, but lashed out towards Aurus because he was the easier target than himself. It was no surprise, in many ways, that Charles and Erik were the best of friends and the worst of enemies, given how very much alike they could be.

"You wouldn't be wrong, exactly, to think that of my family, either. I would be the first to admit money has never been something I had to worry about." This was a far better way to be using his family's wealth, in his opinion. He didn't immediately answer Aurus about Raven, his expression difficult to read before he let out a breath. Things were... good might not be the word after everything that had happened in Washington, but better. Things were better. It was easier to talk about. "Raven is my sister in every way that counts." Which suggested not by blood. "That blonde girl you saw in the photograph with me in my office. She's currently out there, learning about herself and her place in the world. You would approve of her, I can tell. She thinks very much like you... that you must fight to defend what you believe in. I can tell you would both get along."

[Oh gosh that all sounds like a blast! It's been SO long since I've been to a Ren Faire. I used to be hugely into them. Collected all sorts of garb at one point or another. I've also been hearing about Escape Rooms quite a lot lately, despite never having heard of them at all before like 2 weeks ago. The Student Services folks at the place where I teach said they did one as a team building exercise and they're thinking of doing one for the students? The whole concept sounds super fun.]

"She doesn't take after her namesake then," Aurus smiled when Charles said that Raven was blond. He remembered her face from the photograph, the way that she and Charles had looked standing side by side, and he put the pieces together on what Charles said to make what he thought was a fairly educated guess--that she was likewise a mutant, and that it was being mutants rather that being born of the same parents that struck the kinship bond between the pair in their youth.

"Perhaps someday I shall get the chance to meet her, but you won't be surprised at all when I say that finding one's way and one's place out in the world can be a uniquely compelling experience. I hope her journeys are safe as well as fruitful." In a sense, Aurus thought, he and Raven might have more in common than just beliefs about the need to fight. Not wanderlust exactly, but the need to strike out on a road from home, to go somewhere beyond familiar borders and learn from doing, from seeing, from stretching one's muscles. It was a very different sort of learning than that which took place within a school, but it was an education nonetheless, and he would understand easily if she was gone for a long time before coming back again. Regardless, it sounded to him like Charles was probably right to predict that they would get along.

"Your family was involved in politics then? Have you inherited the role?" It was a question based on what Aurus knew--and what he presumed--about nobles, and on the operations of human politics in Kryta (which were, at this point in history, the human politics of Tyria as a whole). Nobles were not uniformly government ministers, but many of them were, and even if they weren't, they were still the people with the greatest political influence. The ultimate decision making power sat with the Queen, and she ruled with the interests of the common people in mind, but it was largely the nobility whose consultations she heard.

It was also, not coincidentally, a tactical question--something to hopefully continue the diversion from their earlier conversation, let the tension continue to dissipate. Not that Aurus was any stranger to being made the proxy for another person's anger. Hakkyuu had always been masterful at doing that. At sixteen he'd been almost nothing but a snarl of misdirected, avoidant anger, and given that the two of them had been alone in a desert for a solid year, Aurus was generally the most convenient target. If the sylvari hadn't already been skilled at letting it all role off his back with a practiced demeanor of unconcern, he certainly would have been by the time the two of them headed back to civilization again.

None of that, however, meant that he believed anger didn't matter, especially anger that was really meant for oneself. And especially for a man like Charles, who was even more different from Hakkyuu than night was from day (since night and day at least had the commonality of a sun and a rotating planet to connect them).

[We go to the PA Ren Faire every year at least once - it's been my birthday tradition for a few years now! That escape room was some of the most fun I've had in a long time. A lot of screaming and laughing and actually figuring things out. It was great!]

"You may, but she hasn't returned home in quite some time while she's been journeying, so unfortunately I would doubt it." Really, a small part of him wondered if he should reach out and tell her about their visitor. It might be something she would be willing to come home for and in so many ways... he missed her deeply. Raven had been the constant in his life in a way no one else had ever been and to lose her, that strength at his side, had been part of why he had collapsed so hard.

"Politics..." Charles hesitated, thinking carefully on the best way of putting it. "My father was a scientist who had done a great deal to further his field, and the wealth has been passed down through generations from intelligent men and women who tended more towards merchents and scientists than politics. I think both my mother and father would be surprised to find me involved in any sort of politics. I would say I'm surprised to find myself here, but in many ways, I'm not. I wanted to make a difference in the world, so here I am." It was a good way to get him to think on another topic like this, letting some of his anger slowly sluice off even as the back of his mind kept worrying on the original problem.

And it was doing that very much, pushing and pushing at him, shown by the careful watch of his fingers. His fingers were tapping slowly on the arm of his chair by the controls of his chair, the other hand curled in his lap.

[That's a fabulous tradition. My "home" Ren Faire was of course the NY state one, but I went to the one in AZ several times when I live there too. The UK doesn't actually have them. Maybe it's because castles and other such things are just a part of the landscape, so there's less interest in recreating the atmosphere with temporary structures and such. Also, I am sorry about this tag. I cannot blame Aurus for this one. This is all me. /shame]

It wouldn't have occurred to Aurus to suggest that Charles in some way call Raven back, or even just call out to her to tell her of his presence there. In no small part, that was because he didn't know the reach of Charles' powers. He assumed that a person had to be relatively close by--in the same room or at least the same building--for his telepathy to work.

Of course if he had met Raven, would it really have stayed secret that he was interested in her brother? Would she have picked up on the subtle clues, or would some remark of Aurus's have unwittingly tipped his hand? It was impossible to know, but perhaps even the risk made it easier for Charles if she were not here to meet Aurus, at least not right now.

"It is still strange to me to find humans with an interest and gift for science," Aurus admitted as Charles spoke of his father's work. "There are certainly merchant dynasties among the nobility in Divinity's Reach though, so I believe I understand what you mean."

He paused for a moment by a low stone wall to take in the view, and there found that he was wholly distracted: he had meant to ask Charles who it was that he needed to convince of his case for mutants, whether there was a king or queen or body of counselors. Instead, he couldn't help but stare at the massive white disk out in the distance, like a slightly concave dish held atop a huge stand. He couldn't even begin to imagine its purpose.

"What in the world is that?"

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Then I hit go before I wanted to >.<

no worries <3

This weekend was NUTS! I'm sick, exhausted, but it was absolutely beyond fun!

Welcome back though!

Thanks!

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