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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I can hear as you tap on your jar

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

lol three-line tag

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject