maskormenacelogs | I can hear as you tap on your jar

Entry tags:

† hank pym | giant-man

I can hear as you tap on your jar

WHO: Logan and Emma...and Hank "stupid sexy" Pym.
WHERE: Residence #014
WHEN: Evening of 2/11
WHAT: Uncomfortable conversations and alcohol; neighboroonies.
WARNINGS: None.

The house had that just-normal-enough government aura. Nothing was wrong, but something was missing—it was like no one with human empathy had ever touched anything in there. It was easy to imagine it springing up out of nowhere, all plastic and particle board: slap on some fancy windows, a tile roof, and yellow paint, and you had yourself a secret in plain sight.

Logan had already given himself a cursory tour. Five bedrooms was a little much—it suggested that they expected to bring more people in. The upstairs bedroom with a view of the street would be the best place to sleep, tactically, but if and when he slept, it would be on the couch. Bedrooms implied ownership, permanence. He was going to do his damndest to make sure this was a very short vacation.

The second thing he'd done was check for alcohol. The pool in the back yard was a nice touch, but if they wanted to have more than a snowball's chance in hell of convincing him to stay, he thought, they should have given him a mini-bar. Or a regular bar. He was trying to come up with a solid plan, but it was rapidly becoming get beer, then think.

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Oh good lord. Cape swirling around her ankles, Emma stopped short in the driveway, double-checking the paperwork through her freshly-acquired sunglasses, even though she knew her memory didn't fail her. The place was bright yellow.

Absolutely nothing about Florida was okay.

"I owe San Francisco an apology," she said to no one in particular before squaring her shoulders and finishing the short walk to the front door to try her key. Part of her hoped it wouldn't fit and she could take the opportunity to go charm her way somewhere not-yellow, like, oh, New York...but no such luck. The tumblers turned smoothly and the door swung open on an entryway that looked like it had been staged by a low-performing real estate agent.

"Tract housing." It was an imprecation when Emma said it. Too wrapped up in her growing sulk to notice Logan's mind--her subconscious didn't class him as a threat, after all--she tossed her shopping onto a chair and glared around the room as though that would change the furnishings to her taste.

Edited 2014-02-12 00:55 (UTC)

Heels clicking on the walkway had made him look up and shut the fridge. Whoever she was, she wasn't trying to sneak up on anybody. He waited out of sight anyway, listening to the key in the lock. He only moved when he realized who it was.

He was quieter than she was—mainly because he didn't know what to make of her presence here. He cleared his throat and leaned against a doorway, one hand in the pocket of his jeans, eying the things she'd put down.

"Cyke here with you?" There was a wary edge to it, like he thought it might be a stupid irrational question and hoped to hell he was right. (Evidently, that was much more important than the existing terrible situation.)

Edited 2014-02-12 03:20 (UTC)

"Logan?" Emma wasn't quite startled enough to go diamond, but she whirled around in a mixture of surprise and pique that she'd missed hearing his mind...incidentally giving Logan a good view of the white-caped X-Men uniform that, as far as he was concerned, she'd stopped wearing during the Phoenix affair.

The suspicion radiated off him in waves Emma didn't need telepathy to pick up, and she cast her mind out through the house and into the surrounding yard to see if there was anyone else around who might be making him nervous--and unless Logan had suddenly developed a phobia of songbirds, the answer was no. "It's just me. What's wrong?"

He could almost have laughed. What's wrong.

Instead he stared at her, turning over the little differences in his mind. That couldn't happen, could it? Stupid question—of course it could, and Emma wouldn't play dumb. She wasn't the type.

Now he just had to figure out how to bring it up.

Logan dropped his gaze, running a hand through his hair. "Nothin'." He paused. "'Sides the fact that there's no beer in the fridge and we're stuck in Florida." And forced into some kind of insidious government army, but you know—beer first.

Emma was not even close to buying that answer, and she stared right back at him, watching the quick, subtle play of emotions over his face and the surface of his mind as he tried to hide what he was feeling.

"Don't lie to a telepath, Logan. You know I don't like going into that cesspool you call a mind, but I will if I have to." She was not going to play twenty questions to pry whatever his problem was out into the open the polite way. Mental privacy was for people who weren't being difficult.

"There ain't enough booze in this house to have this conversation," he said flatly. Second reminder in less than a minute: there is no beer in the house. None.

He half-turned away, as if he were giving serious consideration to ignoring her warning—but sat down on the arm of a couch, instead, serious as the grave. "Last time I saw you wasn't exactly friendly, Em. I'm guessin' you don't remember that."

"When Scott disbanded the X-Men? Tempers were running high, but..." Emma trailed off. Something didn't add up, and if Logan wasn't willing to come out and say what was wrong, it had to be serious, and it had to be about her, and by extension, probably Scott as well.

She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, consciously relaxing the muscles in her shoulders before they could ball into a mess of outright knots without Scott anywhere to fix it. "This is Florida. I think they sell beer in convenience stores."

Look at how willing she was to meet him halfway. Look.

He got up maybe a little too immediately. "You got any cash?" Forget gas stations; he could have found a liquor store two miles away, blindfolded.

There was no need to tack on some extra lie of a reason, like it'll give you time to pick a room, or something—he needed a few minutes to sort useful observations from unhelpful ones (as likely as they were to come out anyway), and that was it.

Emma rolled her eyes but reached into her cleavage--her pants had small, technically usable pockets, but more than a few bills left a visible line, and that simply wouldn't do--and came out with a roll of paper printed in that telltale green ink. Having no idea what Logan's preferred swill cost, she peeled off a few twenties and handed them to him. That ought to cover it.

The cash wasn't from their universe; the designs were different and no book or website would have turned up the names of the Treasury Secretaries whose signatures appeared on them. Given that none of them had been handed a stack of bills on arrival, the question of where Emma had gotten it would probably come with an interesting answer, assuming she could be convinced to provide it.

Edited 2014-02-12 05:53 (UTC)

Logan barely raised an eyebrow, though the ghost of a smirk threatened to ruin his you're-not-gonna-like-this gravity. Of course that was where she kept her money.

He gave the bills a curious glance, stuffed them in his pocket with a muttered thanks, and headed out the door.

It only took him ten minutes to find a place. Not having a car prevented him from spending everything on beer, which was fine—scotch was also good (and Emma, he reasoned, would be almost as likely to need a drink after he'd explained).

He had a package under each arm when he came back in. He nudged the door shut with his boot, listening for Emma.

She preferred to use the credit cards that were in the almost-worthless pockets, but those cards were now good only as lockpicks. Even the Centurion Card didn't let the bearer charge across universes. A travesty, truly.

While he was out, Emma poked around the house, looking in rooms and cupboards and silently judging, then staked a claim on a bedroom by throwing her shopping bags and sunglasses on the bed. Worrying about what Logan was going to tell her would accomplish nothing. Being censorious over the quality of the bed linens and soap in the bathrooms was a much better use of her time.

When Logan returned, Emma had torn herself away from finding everything wanting and settled in the living room, where she was glaring at fishbowl full of seashells. Yes, they were in Florida. She got it.

"In here, Logan."

Logan set the beer and scotch on a coffee table wordlessly and went into the kitchen. After some shuffling around and the clink of ice on plastic, he came back to the living room and set a bright blue cup decorated with festive bubbles in front of Emma.

"Guess they didn't wanna spring for real glasses," he said, mainly to preempt her disgust. He popped open the bottle of scotch and set that in front of her, too: all yours.

He took a beer for himself and settled back in a chair opposite her. "What's the last thing that happened before you got here?"

The cup wasn't as much of a horror as the fact that he'd bought twenty dollar scotch, but Emma knew how to use etiquette for its intended purpose of putting people at ease, even if she rarely chose to do so, and she merely glanced at the label before pouring herself a few fingers.

"We'd just put paid to the Skrulls and their little holy war, and I think 'Director Stark' is about to lose his job over the matter." Emma looked into her drink, wrinkling her nose not at the cheap scotch but the politics. Putting Tony Stark in charge of anything was a mistake, obviously, but Norman bloody Osborn seemed to be making a play for SHIELD, which would prove once and for all that the world had gone irrevocably mad.

Kurt had still been alive, hadn't he.

Jesus.

Logan looked tired, suddenly. He thumped his beer against his leg. "Yeah, well. I hate to tell you this, but that was a while ago. Things have happened." It only sounded terrible because it absolutely was. He took a swig.

"It got pretty bad, on the mainland. Slim kinda moved us out. Everybody." He paused, turning the bottle in circles, conspicuously not looking at her.

"Long story short, I finally told him I didn't think he should be throwing all the kids, the youngest ones, into combat all the time. He thought it was necessary. I don't." Another pause; his fingers tapped out an irregular rhythm on the glass. "Anyway, I...started up a school, in Westchester. Most of the kids came with me. Some of the X-Men, too. Some stayed with him."

He took another drink, bracing for impact.

Edited 2014-02-12 07:42 (UTC)

She frowned at Logan, puzzled by why he thought she was about to explode at him. Emma didn't see what was so bad about what he'd told her, except possibly the idea of Logan being in charge of a school. That was reasonably terrifying.

"So? I know you and Scott's primary mode of interaction is mutual testosterone poisoning, but you're acting like you decamped to the bloody moon, not just back to Westchester." She spread her hands--well, hand; one of them was burdened by an ugly plastic cup full of bad scotch. "It's a four-hour flight, Logan. A quarter that in the jet."

Clearly there had to be something more. Emma was now wondering if Scott had lost his temper on live TV and blasted Logan through something important, like the Statue of Liberty or a bus full of orphans.

Edited 2014-02-12 08:06 (UTC)

"Hang on, darlin', I haven't told you the best part," he said darkly, leaning forward. He was hunched over, elbows propped on his knees, staring sullenly at the label on his beer.

"So we knew the Phoenix was comin' back around. Cyke wanted to open up the doors and let it in, figured somebody could control it. The Avengers and everybody else thought different. Don't really matter what we all thought about it; it was gonna happen, and it did."

He lifted his eyes to meet Emma's. "It split up into five. You, Scott, Petey and his sister, and Namor. We figured out that if one host got beat up, or they beat each other up, the other ones would get more powerful. So—after Scott was the only one left, Chuck tried to shut him down. Now Chuck's dead." And he wasn't going to linger on that. "After that, Scott went to prison. Busted out. Now you and him and Magneto and a bunch of kids are hidin' out somewhere, and he's scaring the shit out of people every time he gets around a news camera."

Emma's usually iron self-control failed her, and she set her scotch down hard on the coffee table in a movement that was almost a fumble. If Logan had wanted her to take things seriously from the start, he should have led with the Phoenix.

Bobbing somewhere in that sea of shock were questions--Five parts? Herself, she understood, but why four non-telepaths? What about Rachel or the Cuckoos? Or Quentin Quire, god forbid? Had the Shi'ar gotten involved? When had Magneto's powers returned? Why was Namor of all people part of it? What had happened to the fallen hosts? Why hadn't Scott immediately repented and brought back the man who was essentially his father?

But mostly...

"Jean?"

Edited 2014-02-12 17:39 (UTC)

"Jean had nothin' to do with it." A little defensiveness had somehow gotten into his sympathy—barely noticeable, but it was there. "Far as I know."

There was the whole issue with her teenage self, but the less said about that, the better. (Christ, he missed Jean right now—not that Jean, his Jean.)

"Anyway, I'm sorry. About everything that happened. Maybe when we get out of here, and you go back to your own time, you can, you know—warn people." He picked at the label of his beer. "Oh, yeah, and tell Slim not to send Kurt after Hope, or I'll fuckin' kill him."

Clearly he wouldn't, but it was the thought that counted. Sort of.

Emma was too busy grinding the heels of her hands into her eyes in overwhelmed frustration with the multiverse in general to pick up all the nuances solely from Logan's voice and posture, and she reflexively reached out to pull the knowledge of who "Hope" was from his mind--

"Kurt. Oh god, no."

Emma was tough as nails, in her own way. Seeing her like this was a little like watching the universe unravel.

Logan had nothing to say. There was no silver lining about Kurt's death, or anything else that had happened, save the few extra mutants bouncing around—and good news though that was, it didn't seem to come close to evening out all the losses. Maybe that made him selfish.

He got up and moved around the coffee table to sit down next to her.

Diamond, when placed under too much pressure, would shatter...and ice was never any match for fire.

Emma retrieved her stupid cup from the table, a ring of spilled scotch already staining the white-painted wood, and knocked back half of it in a single gesture. She didn't even grimace at the taste. Everything always burned.

Dry-eyed, she turned in her seat to look at him, and the expression on her face, hollow and resigned, would have been less terrible if it had been tear-stained. "Good god, Logan. Is it never going to end?"

She already knew the answer, of course.

He'd seen that look too many times. It didn't bother him on his own face, but it tore him up a little to see it on his friends.

It was damn good to see her, he realized.

"It ain't all bad. C'mere," he said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "You should come back to my time, instead. I could use somebody who knows what they're doin' with a school. I sure as hell don't."

Edited 2014-02-12 22:37 (UTC)

Emma let Logan pull her into a hug, allowing his concern and affection to wash over her while studiously ignoring any of the thoughts connected to the emotions. The smell of bad beer and worse decisions was, for once, a comfort. Logan was never going to change or die on her, at least not for longer than an hour or two.

"I cannot believe anyone thought putting you in charge of a school would be a good idea," she told the side of his neck.

He snorted. "Nobody put me in charge, lady, I just didn't see anybody else about to step up and do it."

This was Scott's job, he thought—Scott should be here instead of him. He didn't know if Scott was even still capable of this kind of shit, of acting like a normal human being. He'd always been pretty bad at appreciating what he had, asshole that he was, but—

(At this point, with his hand on her bare shoulder, he suddenly and irrevocably realized that Emma had really soft skin. Hugtime needed to be over.)

"Guess we earned a goddamn vacation, anyway," he said, leaning forward to ostensibly set his beer on the coffee table.

Edited 2014-02-13 01:50 (UTC)

Given what Emma spent on cosmetics, she'd better have soft skin.

This close, it was impossible to miss what Logan was feeling, and she rolled her eyes at the back of his head. Scott didn't exactly have the market cornered on not being able to handle normal human interaction.

Emma straightened up and started putting her mask of perpetual faint disapproval back together, brushing her hair behind her ear and taking a more ladylike sip of her scotch, the latter of which proved to be a mistake. Someone seemed to have mislabeled the paint thinner.

"Central Florida is not a vacation, Logan. Purgatory, perhaps."

After an almost obsessively thorough look through of his own housing unit, exploring the nooks and carnies and what have you, Hank stepped out of the house and turned left. He had intend to take a walk around the area, but a look at the housing next to his and the next and the next...

He wondered if they were filled with fellow imPorts. Or more to the question, if the imPorts were being sectioned off rather than integrated into this society.

Hank stood there and crossed his arms. For about a minute, he stayed there, facing his neighbor's house with a thoughtful look on his face. And when the minute was up, he pulled his socks up (figuratively) and politely knocked on the door twice.

Logan had looked up at the sound of someone coming toward the door, ignoring Emma's argument (his position there wasn't particularly defensible anyway, at least against a woman whose standards were somewhere in the stratosphere). He got up at the knock. The distraction was simultaneously annoying and welcome.

"Didn't hear a car anywhere on the block," he said over his shoulder.

And then he pulled open the door.

Oh. "Pym," he frowned.

"I could have told you that," Emma said from the couch, suddenly all cool composure and archness. Henry Pym. Of course. Why not? It was no stranger than anything else that had happened today.

"To what do we owe the pleasure, Doctor?" One couldn't even tell that she thought he was the wrong super-intelligent biochemist named Hank.

Edited 2014-02-13 04:09 (UTC)

The friendly smile he had prepared, the whole speech about sticking together as strangers in a stranger land, all of that seemed a bit redundant. If anyone knew about being strangers in a strange land, it would be these two. Hank's smile dropped and a curious expression replaced it.

"Logan?"

A peak over Logan's shoulder and his eyebrows raised another inch.

"Emma Frost?"

Together? That, he doesn't say. There are already a billion questions popping up in his head regarding that.

"You two are my neighbors?"

There were a few ways he could have answered that: obviously was the first one that came to mind, followed by different varieties of sarcasm.

Instead he turned and walked away from the door. "Looks like." It was as much of an invitation as Hank was going to get—but it was an invitation. If nothing else, his being there made it a pattern.

Edited 2014-02-13 05:44 (UTC)

He's surprised to see us together. From closer to your end of things than mine, it seems, Emma said into Logan's mind. Courtesies about not reading thoughts did not apply to people who weren't X-Men, and certainly not to debatably-stable Avengers. No ulterior motives beyond some nonsense about solidarity, however.

"You haven't been here long, then?" was all she said aloud, with the amicable calm of someone discussing the weather or the local sports team's chances, smiling slightly up at Hank from her seat.

There was a moment of pause, a hesitation, before Hank stepped in. You don't need to be a telepath to see why it was there. The concerned look on his face, like something is going to go awry, should tell you everything about his worries about being here.

The X-Men and the Avengers are still on shaky terms, and seeing Logan reminds him too much of Ultron and that spiral he doesn't want to sink down again. But as he has discovered recently, there is nothing to do but step forward. He took a deep breathe and relaxed his shoulders.

"I got here this morning, where ever here is. And before you tell me it's Florida, I know it's Florida. Have either of you had any contact with the rest of the X-Men?"

He might have sneaked a glance at Emma and wondered quickly if she was reading his mind right now and how he knows the fractions between the mutants exist and what a mess all that was. Shut up, Hank. Shut up.

"Not me." He sat down across from Emma and picked up his beer again. (He might have offered one, but fuck that—there weren't enough left to be generous.) He could smell the unease on Pym, and he knew it wasn't because of him. There were more than a few reasons for somebody like Pym to be wary around a telepath, and specifically an intimidating telepath, and really specifically Emma Frost.

Logan hadn't said anything back at her—nothing besides a not-specifically-articulated assent, anyway—but now he had a little bit of an idea, and he chose his words with a clarity that came from years of dealing with telepaths: He must be tripping over himself trying not to think. Wouldn't it be funny to make Hank Pym really uncomfortable?

Of course it would.

Emma only replied to Logan with the mental impression of a wicked grin, which of course didn't touch the polite smile on her face. Nothing helped bad feelings like unloading them onto someone else, and if she was understanding Hank's thoughts about Ultron's latest performance correctly, he deserved a little discomfort.

"Of course I'm reading your mind, Dr. Pym," she said as though it were the most obvious thing in the world--which to her, it was. Asking a telepath not to read your mind was like asking one not to look at you, and to Emma's way of thinking, just as unreasonable. "At this range I can hardly avoid it, and geniuses tend to be...loud."

Think clean thoughts would have been the first thing in his head but they have had run-ins with telepaths before. Heck, they probably had training regarding mutants on Emma's level. There was nothing to do but resume the natural course of things. She can read his thoughts or not, it's just going to be repeated out loud later. Like now.

"Sorry, Emma. I'll simmer down. But if you've read my thoughts then you know why it's disorientating to see you two", a pointed look at each of them, "...together."

Time travel seems to be in fashion lately, maybe it's that. Or alternate realities. Christ, when did the world get so confusing. Maybe Scott Summers died as an child. Maybes and possibilities ran through his head and Hank doesn't even realize it as he looked for some light in this. Trying not to think? That becomes a bit difficult now that he's forgotten about it.

Logan wasn't even remotely ready to stop having fun at Pym's expense.

"Well, you know—we figured solidarity was more important." Solidarity had been the exact word Emma had used to describe his thoughts, hadn't it?

She was paraphrasing, Logan.

Though he didn't realize it, the disorganized welter of Hank's thoughts was doing a reasonably good job of protecting him from Emma. He was skipping too quickly from idea to barely-connected idea, and not in the way she was accustomed to from Tony or her Hank.

He's...mercurial, isn't he? she said to Logan as she waited for Hank to respond to the verbal prodding. Emma wasn't really acquainted with the man through anything more than recollections of him skimmed from others' minds, which didn't include telepathic impressions. For all she knew, this was normal for him.

There was a look of relief on his face. That's the word he was looking for, solidarity. And whether or not Emma had plucked it out of his head and told Logan or whatever, the fact it was said gave him hope that he won't have to break up incidents between them.

"Solidarity. That's good. That's fantastic to hear."

Hank rubbed the back of his neck and chuckled. Of course they were going to get along. They're mutants. It made sense for them to stick together. C'mon Hank, old boy. You're falling behind

"I don't know what to tell you. I'm really glad to hear you two are getting along. I wouldn't want to be the one that stepped in between a fight."

He was almost abnormally talented at sucking the fun out of things without meaning to. (Probably to be expected from a guy with an ant obsession.)

He's gonna be bloody if he doesn't shut up about this shit, he thought back at Emma.

Actually—

"You can drop it any time you want, Pym," he said, slinging an arm over the back of the couch.

Do not injure the almost certainly easily-manipulated supergenius. They did not need to start making people, especially useful people into enemies this quickly. Time, in her experience, would see to that on its own.

"It's not an act, Logan. The inside of his head really is a cross between an ant farm and a Boy Scout Jamboree." Yes, she'd meant to say that out loud. Given Hank's widely-known feelings about insects, it could be considered a compliment, if you tilted your head and squinted. To get a straightforward compliment from Emma generally implied that she would hypothetically be willing to sleep with the recipient--or that said recipient was out of earshot.

"An ant farm and a—what?", Hank muttered, mostly to himself since it seemed that there was some confusion between the mutant duo. He took on a more incredulous expression and crossed his arms. Though, in retrospect, Hank's heard worst said about him, in front of him, behind his back. Being called a Boy Scout is the least offensive of that list.

"There is no act, Logan. I am glad you and Miss Frost here are getting along enough to be in the same house. I live right next door and I have intentions to stay there for at least a month. And we all know that incidents between mutants—among people with powers above the norm—aren't small scale events."

He didn't mean to say mutants first but he did, and he can't take it back now.

"Pym. You wanna talk about all those times the Avengers acted stupid and tore everything up?" He hadn't meant to rhetorically remove himself from the Avengers, but he had, and in the present company, he didn't really feel like amending it.

"No," he continued, "you don't. Change the goddamn subject. Let's hear whatever ideas your big scientist brain came up with about how to get outta here." He didn't expect a solution—he expected a long-winded explanation as to why there was no solution, actually—but anything was better than rehashing their failures over the past few years.

Emma managed to maintain her aura of amused detachment despite Hank's ongoing implication that mutants were particularly troublesome, though she drummed her fingers once on the couch cushion next to Logan's leg. Now was not the time for sensitivity training, no matter how desperately certain socially inept scientists might have needed it.

"Yes, I'd really rather be at home, philosophical differences notwithstanding." Emma looked around the room and let her distaste peek through. She was not prepared to forgive the place for being Florida.

Hank crossed his arms and said nothing; if they're both fine putting it aside for a moment, he's not going to be the jackass that brings it up again (though, maybe he will, at a later date). And he's thankful that Logan didn't go into specifics, god knows they have a long enough laundry list.

"I don't have any viable solutions yet. We have a whole new world here, that's relative to our own. It means there's a couple possibilities that can describe our situation. We could be in a completely parallel world with delineation in terms of technology and probably other minute things, or we're in a new world that's separate from our own. There's too many variables to consider. It's not something I can figure out on my own, never mind the possibility of going home. Where we'll have to pinpoint the location and consider time in the equation."

Hank pinched his temple and summarized neatly, "So, no. There is no way to go home. If I had the Pym Portal, then maybe we have something to work with."

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I can hear as you tap on your jar

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lol three-line tag

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