→ never once has any man I've met been able to love,

[mentis]

Who: Charles Xavier ( O P E N )
What: What do you mean normal people don't deal with their problems via alcohol? AKA the British are repressed.
When: Day 68 ( Evening )
Where: The bar and then stumbling back to House 8. Pick your poison/location.
Warnings: Overly obnoxious use of 60s slang. Probably a fair bit of swearing ( British wearing so you probably won't be too scandalised ). Excessive feeling for a man with too many teeth.

It's not as though he weren't expecting it. Charles knew. The minute he opened his mouth the world shifted, lines were drawn, pieces set. And the thing is, the thing is, that he's so constantly aware of Erik that he saw how this would play out before it did. But could he have stayed quiet? Could he have pretended that he was something he's not any longer. Because gone are the days where he could fool himself that he was just the vaguely daft bumbling professor. He is capable of being as terrible as those he fights against and that had set something cold into his bones.

My name is Charles Xavier and I am a mutant.

You have every right to be afraid of me.

So he'd slipped away from the library and from Erik's dark but ever watchful gaze. He'd walked at first, feet carrying him round and round the cape as though he could simply tire himself out enough to not think. How he ends up by the bar is a conundrum. Why he goes inside is less so. Charles has always been a great advocate of drowning the problem until it goes away. He does almost feels guilty liberating a dusty bottle of something dubious but to hell with guilt. If he's going to be hung for anything it won't be because he's got a vague ambition towards alcoholism. So he drinks amidst the dusty chairs and thinks about his expansive cabinet at home and the steel in Erik's blue eyes.

He's so tired of being old. He's tired of being responsible.

Comments

[plaidsamurai]

At this point Logan lived at the bar almost more than he lived in the house he'd picked out. He was used to people coming and going at random and the sound of the door being pushed up doesn't phase him as he pops the top off his something-th beer. He'd lost count, and the sad part was he was barely buzzed.

That scent though, it caught his attention, and with a barely audible sniff he stiffened up and turned to look at the newcomer. It was strange how someone from another reality still had the same basic scent.

"Chuck," He greeted the man. He wouldn't be an easy read. His metal skull made it difficult and the training from both Jean and Xavier himself regarding telepathic defenses would make it even more difficult. But this was Xavier, if the man wanted to he could make Logan prance around believing he was a pretty pony.

[mentis]

"Logan," he says brightly, his smile lifting but not quite reaching his eyes, "Hello what are you -- oh yes, Jubilee said you were here more often than not."

He looks down at the bottle in his hand then up again, a little guiltily, "I'm sorry, I forgot."

[plaidsamurai]

Logan could smell the alcohol on him, but he didn't really have any room to judge, nor would he.

"Yea. Takin' advantage of the free booze until they blow up this place too." They'd had free food before, but that had ended pretty quickly, so he wasn't about to let the replenishing alcohol go to waste.

"Kinda unusual for you," He pointed out, nodding at the bottle in Charles' hand, "Somethin' up?"

[mentis]

"Oh dear, don't tell me that the poor other Charles has no hair and doesn't even drink to get over it."

He lifts the bottle to his mouth with mirth written across his features, "He seems rather boring."

[plaidsamurai]

"He's got 'responsibilities', or somethin' like that. He drinks sometimes, though I ain't ever seen him drunk. Not like this at least," He said, sneaking in the slightly snide remark about how tipsy Charles really was. Maybe it was just the jealousy speaking.

[mentis]

"Poor sod."

Charles offers a smile, uses the bottle to prop himself up against the table. His cheek rests on the back of his hand, watching Logan carefully. "He doesn't sound like he's very fun, actually. Running a school must take a lot out of him."

At least nobody's told him the truly horrifying bits yet.

[plaidsamurai]

"Nah. I think you-he- likes it. Helpin' other mutants learn control an' givin' 'em a place where they don't feel like freaks. He likes it a lot, or he wouldn't be doin' it," He pointed out and downed the rest of his beer, efficiently replacing it with his next and tossing the empty in a large pile of bottles.

"You can't see yerself doin' that?" He asked curiously, "Could be you're from a completely different reality. Wouldn't be the first time..."

[mentis]

"Well."

He pauses, drunken haze of a mind struggling to think of the right words. "I think it's a wonderful idea. Very recently a few young mutants have come to live in my home. Training with them has been an eye-opener. But watching them grow and adjust - I think I'd like that. To offer that to every mutant who needed it. I'm just having difficulties thinking about actually managing it, so to speak."

He takes another long gulp of his drink, a little creased around the eyes in thought, "My sister would certainly enjoy the company though. It's a drafty old house."

[enchangement]

So this is...worrisome. River isn't certain what's happened but she's certain she dislikes the fact that the adults in her life are drinking so much, and that this one in particular - the one of the two who should be happy, or at least not ...whatever this self-poisoning moroseness is. She hates the taste of it in her head, much the same as she isn't terribly find of the physical smell of alcohol right now either.

For a while she debates just not. Not poking, not prodding, not bothering. They'll deal. They'll adjust. They'll stop...whatever is making gin-soaked storms brood in here.

That isn't her way, though, to ignore these things. To ignore suffering of he loved ones (this is suffering and Charles is loved), this. River enters the bar and hovers in the shadows, worried and waiting before she pulls up a seat and steals Charles' drink before he can stop her.

She totally slams it. "GAH. Why?!"

[mentis]

His straight face lasts about 0.01 of a second before he's laughing. In essence it's a rather undignified hiccup of a giggle, the laugh of the man he used to be - drunk and free and clinging to human emotion - but River genuinely delights him and he can't help himself.

So he leans forward, a consoling hand on her wrist and his mind a soup of half-formed thoughts, "Pernod isn't for everyone, dear. In fact, it should probably be banned for its aftertaste alone."

But it's alcoholic and it's soothing the bruise on his soul, so.

[enchangement]

"It tastes like the suffering of poets who have been breathing in paint! Eugh." The teenager gives one of those full-body shudders, drawing her shoulders up to her ears and wincing. "Could at least choose a sweeter poison to stew yourself in."

Because its doubtlessly poison, they way it assaults the nose and burn the throat. What do they see in this stuff, she wonders, but Charles' mind is a haze and maybe she can understand. Sometimes distance is useful. Sometimes River is she, an sometimes she wakes up thinking she's on Serenity but then the unfamiliar thoughts come screaming in and she knows better.

River covers Charles' hand with one of her own before leaning in and kissing him on the cheek. "Thought if it were declared, what can be done, what can't be controlled, that would be met with resigned understanding slim stead of fear but even the truth isn't enough if they're all afraid ...and they are."

[mentis]

"That's a very romantic notion, darling." A hum, his smile small but still there. River has a unique habit of charming him and lifting his spirits. He lifts the drink back, swilling the liquid in the glass, "And sometimes it isn't sweetness a person craves. Occasionally the taste of bitter despair washes away everything else. Or so I was told by a man who extolled the virtues of gin to me every Sunday."

The kiss makes him blink, a slow and soft kind of affection that before now only Raven would have given. He ducks his head, listens to her words carefully, "I knew they would be. They have every right to be."

Because he knows what his ability means, if Charles wanted it he could have the world at his feet. And yet the very thought makes him sick to his stomach. Swallowing down another vile gulp of the drink. "There'll be no fooling anyone now."

[enchangement]

"Ancient history - could have served, bodyguard and muse, for some poor fool who put pen to paper. Could have. Maybe. the mind twists, it turns, and poetry comes out. Better flowers than daggers." Better rhymes than inarticulate screaming.

In River's current, opinion, anyway. Not that there isn't a great time and place for inarticulate screaming.

"I didn't know." Because when she got here, she thought that being upfront was the best way. That telling people she may have been the most dangerous person they'd ever encountered would somehow get that fear out and banished from tainting future interactions.

It didn't quite work that way. "But you're stronger than I am."

So why are you sitting here drinking, is the question.

[mentis]

"I'm not actually."

Because he feels old and young all at once, because Raven isn't here and Erik is, because they fight and yet the man he lives with is the most important thing in the world to him. He rests his cheek in his hand and regards her thoughtfully.

"I've never consciously thought to tell someone beyond when Raven showed up at my door twenty years ago. Often times my hand is forced. I ... rather wish I could have gone on pretending. Perhaps I am a coward."

[enchangement]

"No." River is very certain on this, firm on a nearly terrifying degree. If conviction could hold heat, her's would burn to the touch in this moment. "There is a difference between knowing, the way we know, and remembering ...when the worst is written in physical memories, when it claws from the dark corners into dream, when it is more solid than fear then what is the worst that can happen?"

This is how River sees it. Knowing evil and losing everything means that evil no longer frightens. "That which holds the greatest power has already done it. There's nothing else to lose, nothing else to risk but disappointment. See? To be unused to that, that isn't cowardice. You want them to be better. To make understanding be trust. It's what you want for everyone."

[mentis]

"I just --."

He stops, stares at the liquid in the bottle as he turns it in his hands. "I want to make a difference, River. I want the people I care about and those I haven't even met yet to be free and safe and content. But nothing will change."

He takes a deep swallow of the burning liquid, "When I met Erik I thought that things would be different, that together we could make people understand that mutation is not to be feared. But they're right, aren't they? I'm to be feared. No length of kind words and thoughtful speeches can change that."

[enchangement]

"Can't see the future, but change takes time. More than words, more than truth murmured into unwilling minds. Longer than one life. But one life can build the foundation. Doesn't mean it's pointless."

She wonders if Erik is at all interested in trying to convince people they aren't dangerous. Charles wants preventative measures, wants to prepare others to understand and let go of fear. "It won't be easy. It won't be simple. People aren't easy or simple."

[blackmagus]

Drinking to cover your problems was a strategy that has worked well for Fortescue in her life. That's what she told herself, anyway. The bar in town is an interesting place that seems to attract plenty of people, and it's been helpful to go there just to see how many people are around and how varied the population is. Old habits.

She makes a note, today, of the man she'd spoken to over her wrist communicator, Jazz perched on her shoulders around her neck as she walks in. She aims a smile in Charles' direction, eyeing the selection that's available as she steps behind the bar.

"Hello there."

what is Jazz? >.>

[mentis]

He aims a smile at her, squinting a little, drunk enough by now that he is no longer seeking out solitude. What's the point in burying his head in the sand.

"Hello again, settled in?"

His voice is only just starting to shift into deeper, broader turns. When he drinks he loses a little of his clipped English accent.

Sorry - kitty!

[blackmagus]

"I have a place to stay, now. I suppose I am," she says, as Jazz, fur gleaming, leaps down to the bar counter a foot or so away from Charles. He flicks his ears, even the one that's only half-there, and peers at the man curiously while Fortescue scrutinizes the drink selection and then pours herself a small one. Likewise, she isn't sure what it is, but she lives dangerously the rest of the time. Why shouldn't she when there's drinking involved?

"And you?" She raises a teasing eyebrow. "I see you've been at this a while."

[mentis]

"Did you really bring a cat to a bar?" He asks in lieu of responding, a little slow on the uptake and a little hazy around the edges. He actually quite likes cats, in that absentminded way of a person who has never been allowed pets.

"And I find the place charming, who doesn't love a little dust with their - well, I think it's pernod but it could also be bottled death."

[blackmagus]

Fortescue shrugs. "He goes everywhere I do," is all she says about that, because she hasn't felt comfortable leaving him behind yet. She doesn't trust that this place won't just swallow him up, if they're apart, and what with he's carrying — that's a very unpleasant prospect. Hurting him hurts her, too, and that's a unique advantage their captors could have.

"Bottled death?" She chuckles. "Is it that bad?"

Meanwhile, she has a swig of her own glass and just barely restrains a wince while her drink burns its way down. This, from a woman who spends most of her free time drinking or thinking about drinking.

"...perhaps it is," Fortescue agrees. "I wonder if you could sell a brand named that."

[mentis]

"It's not pleasant, is it?"

He almost laughs, mouth curled up at the corner. "I've had a number of awful drinks in my life and this might just take the cake."

[blackmagus]

"I once had a type of gin, I think it was, that was worse. It's a matter of semantics." She swirls the remaining alcohol around in the glass. "Still. The end result is the same."

[mentis]

"Getting absolutely bollocksed."

Charles tends to transform into the kind of student he used to be. Which means while still more mild-mannered than most, his educated and calm demenour slips. So he raises his bottle - absolutely classy - in a toast.