Anders & Ellie; backdated to April 9th
Apr. 9th, 2013 05:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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om_mainAs Anders learns there are just some powers he can't stand up against, Ellie finds herself feeling very unsympathetic to his problems. It goes about as well as one would think.
The art rooms where fast becoming one of Anders favourite places in the whole school. He loved that no one judged him for spending time out of class in there, one of the few things lately he wasn't judged for. Since for the actual class they were expected to be doing all sorts of arts and not just their strengths he was sitting with a large art pad open as he used a pencil and pastels to try to make something for next class. Absorbed in his work and listening to the radio, he was pretty much in a little escape from his life shit for now.
Classes had ended for the day and Ellie was looking for a place to work on some of her costumes. Her bedroom was not nearly as spacious as the art room was and she also didn't want to burden Betsy with her mess. However, she realised that she would not be alone when she arrived and for a brief moment she considered going elsewhere. After all, the rec room or one of the other classrooms would work if she pushed the tables together.
But then she decided not to.
The boy had hurt Jeanne-Marie and Jeanne-Marie was someone Ellie held dear. While she did not want to start a fight with him (enough people had done that already), she refused to cower in fear from him. She would take her place and he would deal with it, yes.
"Bonjour," she replied curtly upon coming inside, and dumped her materials on the table. "You will share this space."
Anders glanced up and shrugged "Yeah, sure." It wasn't like he cared much. Of course he recognised the girl, the one Jeanne-Marie had scolded him for calling her a 'scarey looking goth girl'. He couldn't remember her name though.
He then turned back to his work. With his mind still thoroughly on that video chat from home, he'd been drawing Dawn and Ty. Both had been texting him throughout the day. Was he going to come home to attend the funeral? Did he want to talk? They knew how tough it must be to be so far from home right now. Blah blah blah. Sympathy wasn't something he was used to handling.
"Perhaps that is why you have been so unwilling to be sympathetic toward those you upset," Ellie replied calmly as she laid out her dress. "Sympathy is difficult, yes, hard to understand. How do you give when you do not know how to receive?"
Anders looked up sharply "Excuse me?"
Sharp blue eyes moved upward, gaze settling on Anders' face. "You are excused."
Confusion followed by an eyeroll. "Yeah, very funny." Shaking off the weird feeling she'd given him from that sympathy malarkey the best he could, he picked up a pastel. Ice blue to match Ty's eyes.
He wished he could get an artistic opinion from someone else but so far the only one he trusted wasn't speaking to him. In fact Kevin had specifically told him he wasn't going to talk art with him anymore. And that...really sucked.
This boy had such loud thoughts and Ellie couldn't turn them out if she tried. How was she supposed to get any work done if, no matter where she went, she could not get any peace and quiet? Boys who were having trauma and fights and other sources of emotional distress were very much the loudest voices of them all, unfortunately.
"Kevin holds a very hard and long grudge," Ellie whispered and rubbed at her temples. "He is very, very protective of those he cares for...Jeanne-Marie included."
Ander looked up again quickly, eyes narrowing a little. "Mind reader, huh?" He said quite calmly though he was anything but. "And I'm well aware of that, Kevin and I have had words." Was a way to put it. "He made his feelings about me abundantly clear." His voice was a neutral as it was possible to make. Like he didn't care.
"I do not have to read your mind because your mind is reading itself to me," Ellie murmured. "You care what he thinks...you care more than you let on...I believe. You are lonely."
Actually, Anders seemed to care what Kevin thought a little too much.
"Lonely? Nah, not me. Must be picking up on somebody else there." Anders insisted with apparent confidence and a flash of a grin. Of course he was lonely, people who weren't lonely didn't spend their free time hanging out in art rooms because they had no one else. Still, that's not something he ever actually admitted, not really. Not even to himself.
"You think loudly," Ellie insisted, tugging at her hair a little as her frown grew. "You think about fleeing the school at times, but you have no where to go. There are people who don't want you here. They're all so thick! What's so hard to understand about things you can't control? Blame everyone but yourself, but you're still lonely...
"Thinking about a funeral does not help, no, makes things much more complicated. You miss home but you can't go back, am I correct?"
"None of your business, Little Miss Emo." Anders told her defensively, not his best retort but he was working under pressure.
It was true he couldn't go home though and the funeral would be a bad idea. Mike may be beginning to forgive him, sort if, but being in the same room as him and Val? No way could they ignore the Coma-Rob sized elephant in the room with Anders around.
He looked down at his picture in which you could only sort of recognise the subjects, his hands covered in colourful dust.
"Leave my thoughts alone girl, got it?"
"Invading people's privacy is not preferred, I have learned that," Ellie mused right back, a little too casually. In fact, upon thinking again what Anders had done to Jeanne-Marie, the younger girl could not even feel guilty about accidentally hearing these things, like she normally did. That didn't mean she was pushing her way through his head, merely just listening to what he projected.
Though, admittedly, it seemed justified to watch him squirm, just a little. "The mind says very personal things, yes, perhaps even things that the individual owner may not even know. Subconscious, yes? I'm sure you are familiar with the term."
If this was her twisted version of an ethics clase, Anders was not amused. Any other time he'd be impressed by her powersbut he didn't like this, her knowing and being so matter of fact about shit that tore him up, shit he tried to bury as much as possible.
"You know I am." He confirmed, voice as calm and settled as he could manage. "You know what my powers are like the rest of them, what's your point?"
Ellie watched him, calm and casual, and blinked innocently. "What's a poof?"
And why the hell would she ask that?
"A poof is a queer. Like, like Josh and Kevin..." He stumbled with his words a little, voice tight.
"Like you," Ellie countered. These thoughts about Kevin...
"I don't know what you've heard but I am straight." He told her firmly, as he wondered what Young had been blabbing to the rest of the school. Those stupid pictures were just pictures, they weren't a gay thing. "Don't have a problem with that stuff but it's not me. I like girls."
"All I have heard is what I hear from your brain. The subconscious is a strange thing, remember? It knows things that you may not think you know." She paused, and drummed her fingers on her chin thoughtfully. "Or, perhaps, it says things that you refuse to know. Is that why you kept saying the word 'poof' even after you were told not to?"
"I haven't used it since Kevin asked me not to." At least not outloud and that was what counted, right? "And either way I'm not one, ok? I like girls not guys, that's who I date and that's who I fuck because I am straight, got it?" Jesus, did he need to make a fucking sign up? Doing extra hours in the sodding art room did not make him gay.
Ellie watched him, not looking the least bit fazed. "Kevin likes girls, too. He is not gay. That does not mean that he is not attracted to Josh, you see?"
"That's his business not mine. I'm not a queer, got it?" He was starting to get seriously ticked off.
An idea suddenly came to him and, though he didn't understand exactly how her power worked he figured staring her down and thinking at her would be a good start. Deliberately thinking about the girls from the night out with Brian, of Val and whatever other girls he'd picked up lately. In detail. Just to prove his point to her. "See? He smirked victoriously "Straight as can be. I've never gone near a guy like that."
The thoughts were not anything she hadn't picked up from people before, so Ellie looked far from disturbed. In fact, she actually looked a little amused and her lips quirked upward. "Do you know why they say men with small penises drive large vehicles?"
"Small? Oh trust me, that's not an issue I have." Anders grinned wickedly at that, as though daring her to question it more. Moving from his seat he headed to the sink to wash his hand of pastels, it was clear he wasn't going to get much work done. "And so we're clear? I'm very sick of people questioning my hetero status, just ask the last one to do it. He certainly regretted it." And served Young right for what he did.
"No, I believe they say they overcompensate. You are beginning to sound like you are overcompensating for a part of you that you are keen on rejecting. And I do not mean your penis. I have no interest in your penis," Ellie informed him and climbed up on her table to lie on her back. She was not scared of Anders and his threat because he could not do to her what he had done to that beautifully curly haired boy.
She lifted one of her legs into the air to admire her knee-high, platform boot. "I have no interest in your implied threats, either. Oooh! You know what would be fun? If you tried to trick my mind into listening to you. You should try it, yes!"
When Anders turned back from the sink and saw her interesting new position, he tilted his head thoughtfully. OK, she was annoying and the gothic look was usually a total boner killer for him but she was showing off some pretty decent pins there.
"Let me get this straight: you are asking me to use my powers on you?" He chuckled darkly and shook his head "Do I look like a moron to you? I use my power on you, invited or not, and all your little buddies will be lining up to mash me again." Between Jeanne-Marie, her harem of mental boys and Kevin, he was sure plenty of damage could be done too. "I'm not falling for that."
"No. I do not have friends the same way Jeanne-Marie does. Just Kevin and he already is angry at you," Ellie replied, shaking her head and turning it so she could see him. "I have been listening to your thoughts, and now I am inviting you to play with mine. What is it they say? Tit for tat?"
"If I did, and I'm not saying if I will yet or not, no telling Kevin." Because he wanted to find a way to make things ok there, or at least more ok than they currently were.
Ellie dropped her foot back to the desk, but kept her knee propped up. Honestly, she didn't quite care if he looked or liked her legs, so that hadn't been a deterrent either. "I will not tell Kevin. Hm, I think that it is possible he would be angrier with me than you."
And she did not want to deal with his shit, to be quite honest.
Of course Anders was enjoying the view, if would be rude not to when she was laid out across the table like that! He started approaching the table as he commented "Very trusting really, I could suggest anything I liked after all. Of course, it'd be up to your own sub-conscious what happened but sometimes people don't like what their subconscious does. Noriko didn't and she blamed me for it."
Ellie nodded, watching the boy's face with curiosity. She had faith in her own abilities, so she was more interested in how this would play out after the fact than anything else that Anders may or may not have wanted. "Suggest whatever you feel the need to suggest then, yes? My mind can be rather unpredictable even to myself--conscious or subconscious. It is a very funny thing, really!"
The proposition was an enticing one to Anders, never before had anyone actually offered themselves up for him to use his gift on. He ran his fingers along the edge of her table thoughtfully for a moment.
"Ok then, I'll give it a go. Just to see what happens. And whatever happens after is on your own head got it? I'm not getting anymore detentions or work detail for you."
Propping herself up on her elbows now, Ellie pursed her lips together and nodded. Mhmm.
"Good uh," performing on demand had thrown him for a moment but the confident grin was back almost instantly. "Ok then, you need to sit up coz you need to be looking at me properly. Unless you want me to join you on the table?" The grin turned wicked as his eyebrow rose suggestively.
This was getting funny to her, and Ellie wasn't sure why. However, she kept going along with it, checking out the table briefly, and then gave him some space to climb up with her. Consider that an invitation! "I suppose you would like for me to watch you very carefully, yes?"
She was grinning.
"Ok then." He easily lifted himself up and hopped onto the table with her. "Now, read my lips. Tell me, what's your name?" Using someone's name always helped, touching them helped even more though neither was absolutely necessary.
Too easy. "Ellie Phimister." The words were articulate, though still laced with her thick accent, and Ellie's eyes remained on Anders' mouth for show. She felt no compulsion whatsoever to answer the question, but did so anyway, just to see if he'd keep trying.
Anders hadn't started yet. He was studying her, considering his words. Words were important to him, until recently he'd always prided himself on the fact that he never issued flat out orders. It was suggestion and persuasions he dabbled with, not dictating. Not usually.
He ran his hand over her arm and he began to speak, voice dropping a register as it always did when he used his power. "Ellie, do you really want to attack me like that? I'm a nice bloke but I can only take so much, you know? We could get along pretty well, Ellie, we really could but you need to stop calling me those things. Think you can do that for me?" His hand moved rhythmically up and down as he spoke. He wasn't sure if it was working, he didn't now how it worked with a brain conscious of his invasion after all.
Ellie tilted her head slightly as she watched him, eyebrows furrowing inward. "I do not wish to hurt you, Anders. I feel so badly for saying what I said." She pursed her lips together, looking a little sheepish. "I got in trouble for saying...similar things to Kevin, many months back yes. I should know better."
"There we go, much better." Anders expression was of smug satisfaction now. "Saying the truth wasn't so hard, was it?" His hand still ran up and down her arm lightly.
That smug look, in a way, reminded Ellie of Kevin in the rare moments that he was actually feeling somewhat happy. It was strange, and she wasn't sure that her best friend would appreciate the comparison, but alas.
She kept her eyes on his lips still, and wet her own. "No, it was not. I...do not like to lie. I was trying to be tough on account of my friends, but perhaps that was wrong of me. You are a nice person...we could get along pretty well, yes. Why did I not see that before?"
"I can be very nice when I want to." Anders agreed, not really using The Voice anymore, satisfied for now that she'd gotten a taste of his power. "No shame in sticking up for your friends Ellie but I really didn't do anything wrong. They made the decisions, not me."
Ellie sighed and watched Anders. "You do not think what happened with Valerie was wrong? That you did not have some fault?"
Anders shifted a little though didn't back off from her not that he really could when they were both on a not particularly big table. "I think what she's doing now is wrong. Moving on from her comatose boyfriend straight onto my brother and convincing him it's love. It's not, she's substituting Mike for Coma-Rob and Mike feels guilty for having put her boyfriend in a coma. That's wrong and it's gonna screw up his whole life if he stays with her. I was trying to save him."
"If it was not for the fact that you harbour such bitterness, pain, guilt, and regret about the fact that your mother killed herself for birthing you, I would be quite content to say that you are a sociopath and that you have no heart," Ellie spoke evenly, eyes narrowed in such a way that even their light blue colour didn't stop the glare from looking dark and dangerous.
This boy...he toyed with people. He toyed with them and blamed them for everything that went wrong in the process, and then proceeded to blame them more afterward. He was selfish and Ellie was sure that his moral standards were so loose that they bent on a whim as easily as rubber.
"My power didn't touch you at all, did it?" Anders frowned sitting back a little. He wasn't stupid, in fact he was smarter than he usually gave himself credit for despite the stupid stunts he pulled, he knew when he was being messed with. He did it himself plenty after all.
He hadn't wanted anyone to know about his mother, that whole mess had been horrific, but apparently it wasn't his choice anymore.
"My mother," his voice wavered very slightly "My mother showed me what people are really like. It doesn't matter how much love or kindness you show them because they will always turn on you in the end. It's not sociopathy, it's survival."
"No, you have no power over me," Ellie informed him, frank and to the point. "And though your mother pains you so...I cannot feel sorry for you anymore. You are selfish and cold and it scares me. You are not a good person...and I don't feel sorry for you!"
"Good, I fucking hate pity." Especially from freaky chicks like you. He added that simply because he knew she could hear it and he also had to have the last word.
He hoped down off of the table easily and started to walk back to his own.
Collecting her things up now, Ellie decided that she didn't want to share her space with him anymore. However, before she left, Anders would hear her thoughts invading his. Do not anger me again, or next time I will not go so easy on you.
Then she was out the door, as silent as a ghost.
The art rooms where fast becoming one of Anders favourite places in the whole school. He loved that no one judged him for spending time out of class in there, one of the few things lately he wasn't judged for. Since for the actual class they were expected to be doing all sorts of arts and not just their strengths he was sitting with a large art pad open as he used a pencil and pastels to try to make something for next class. Absorbed in his work and listening to the radio, he was pretty much in a little escape from his life shit for now.
Classes had ended for the day and Ellie was looking for a place to work on some of her costumes. Her bedroom was not nearly as spacious as the art room was and she also didn't want to burden Betsy with her mess. However, she realised that she would not be alone when she arrived and for a brief moment she considered going elsewhere. After all, the rec room or one of the other classrooms would work if she pushed the tables together.
But then she decided not to.
The boy had hurt Jeanne-Marie and Jeanne-Marie was someone Ellie held dear. While she did not want to start a fight with him (enough people had done that already), she refused to cower in fear from him. She would take her place and he would deal with it, yes.
"Bonjour," she replied curtly upon coming inside, and dumped her materials on the table. "You will share this space."
Anders glanced up and shrugged "Yeah, sure." It wasn't like he cared much. Of course he recognised the girl, the one Jeanne-Marie had scolded him for calling her a 'scarey looking goth girl'. He couldn't remember her name though.
He then turned back to his work. With his mind still thoroughly on that video chat from home, he'd been drawing Dawn and Ty. Both had been texting him throughout the day. Was he going to come home to attend the funeral? Did he want to talk? They knew how tough it must be to be so far from home right now. Blah blah blah. Sympathy wasn't something he was used to handling.
"Perhaps that is why you have been so unwilling to be sympathetic toward those you upset," Ellie replied calmly as she laid out her dress. "Sympathy is difficult, yes, hard to understand. How do you give when you do not know how to receive?"
Anders looked up sharply "Excuse me?"
Sharp blue eyes moved upward, gaze settling on Anders' face. "You are excused."
Confusion followed by an eyeroll. "Yeah, very funny." Shaking off the weird feeling she'd given him from that sympathy malarkey the best he could, he picked up a pastel. Ice blue to match Ty's eyes.
He wished he could get an artistic opinion from someone else but so far the only one he trusted wasn't speaking to him. In fact Kevin had specifically told him he wasn't going to talk art with him anymore. And that...really sucked.
This boy had such loud thoughts and Ellie couldn't turn them out if she tried. How was she supposed to get any work done if, no matter where she went, she could not get any peace and quiet? Boys who were having trauma and fights and other sources of emotional distress were very much the loudest voices of them all, unfortunately.
"Kevin holds a very hard and long grudge," Ellie whispered and rubbed at her temples. "He is very, very protective of those he cares for...Jeanne-Marie included."
Ander looked up again quickly, eyes narrowing a little. "Mind reader, huh?" He said quite calmly though he was anything but. "And I'm well aware of that, Kevin and I have had words." Was a way to put it. "He made his feelings about me abundantly clear." His voice was a neutral as it was possible to make. Like he didn't care.
"I do not have to read your mind because your mind is reading itself to me," Ellie murmured. "You care what he thinks...you care more than you let on...I believe. You are lonely."
Actually, Anders seemed to care what Kevin thought a little too much.
"Lonely? Nah, not me. Must be picking up on somebody else there." Anders insisted with apparent confidence and a flash of a grin. Of course he was lonely, people who weren't lonely didn't spend their free time hanging out in art rooms because they had no one else. Still, that's not something he ever actually admitted, not really. Not even to himself.
"You think loudly," Ellie insisted, tugging at her hair a little as her frown grew. "You think about fleeing the school at times, but you have no where to go. There are people who don't want you here. They're all so thick! What's so hard to understand about things you can't control? Blame everyone but yourself, but you're still lonely...
"Thinking about a funeral does not help, no, makes things much more complicated. You miss home but you can't go back, am I correct?"
"None of your business, Little Miss Emo." Anders told her defensively, not his best retort but he was working under pressure.
It was true he couldn't go home though and the funeral would be a bad idea. Mike may be beginning to forgive him, sort if, but being in the same room as him and Val? No way could they ignore the Coma-Rob sized elephant in the room with Anders around.
He looked down at his picture in which you could only sort of recognise the subjects, his hands covered in colourful dust.
"Leave my thoughts alone girl, got it?"
"Invading people's privacy is not preferred, I have learned that," Ellie mused right back, a little too casually. In fact, upon thinking again what Anders had done to Jeanne-Marie, the younger girl could not even feel guilty about accidentally hearing these things, like she normally did. That didn't mean she was pushing her way through his head, merely just listening to what he projected.
Though, admittedly, it seemed justified to watch him squirm, just a little. "The mind says very personal things, yes, perhaps even things that the individual owner may not even know. Subconscious, yes? I'm sure you are familiar with the term."
If this was her twisted version of an ethics clase, Anders was not amused. Any other time he'd be impressed by her powersbut he didn't like this, her knowing and being so matter of fact about shit that tore him up, shit he tried to bury as much as possible.
"You know I am." He confirmed, voice as calm and settled as he could manage. "You know what my powers are like the rest of them, what's your point?"
Ellie watched him, calm and casual, and blinked innocently. "What's a poof?"
And why the hell would she ask that?
"A poof is a queer. Like, like Josh and Kevin..." He stumbled with his words a little, voice tight.
"Like you," Ellie countered. These thoughts about Kevin...
"I don't know what you've heard but I am straight." He told her firmly, as he wondered what Young had been blabbing to the rest of the school. Those stupid pictures were just pictures, they weren't a gay thing. "Don't have a problem with that stuff but it's not me. I like girls."
"All I have heard is what I hear from your brain. The subconscious is a strange thing, remember? It knows things that you may not think you know." She paused, and drummed her fingers on her chin thoughtfully. "Or, perhaps, it says things that you refuse to know. Is that why you kept saying the word 'poof' even after you were told not to?"
"I haven't used it since Kevin asked me not to." At least not outloud and that was what counted, right? "And either way I'm not one, ok? I like girls not guys, that's who I date and that's who I fuck because I am straight, got it?" Jesus, did he need to make a fucking sign up? Doing extra hours in the sodding art room did not make him gay.
Ellie watched him, not looking the least bit fazed. "Kevin likes girls, too. He is not gay. That does not mean that he is not attracted to Josh, you see?"
"That's his business not mine. I'm not a queer, got it?" He was starting to get seriously ticked off.
An idea suddenly came to him and, though he didn't understand exactly how her power worked he figured staring her down and thinking at her would be a good start. Deliberately thinking about the girls from the night out with Brian, of Val and whatever other girls he'd picked up lately. In detail. Just to prove his point to her. "See? He smirked victoriously "Straight as can be. I've never gone near a guy like that."
The thoughts were not anything she hadn't picked up from people before, so Ellie looked far from disturbed. In fact, she actually looked a little amused and her lips quirked upward. "Do you know why they say men with small penises drive large vehicles?"
"Small? Oh trust me, that's not an issue I have." Anders grinned wickedly at that, as though daring her to question it more. Moving from his seat he headed to the sink to wash his hand of pastels, it was clear he wasn't going to get much work done. "And so we're clear? I'm very sick of people questioning my hetero status, just ask the last one to do it. He certainly regretted it." And served Young right for what he did.
"No, I believe they say they overcompensate. You are beginning to sound like you are overcompensating for a part of you that you are keen on rejecting. And I do not mean your penis. I have no interest in your penis," Ellie informed him and climbed up on her table to lie on her back. She was not scared of Anders and his threat because he could not do to her what he had done to that beautifully curly haired boy.
She lifted one of her legs into the air to admire her knee-high, platform boot. "I have no interest in your implied threats, either. Oooh! You know what would be fun? If you tried to trick my mind into listening to you. You should try it, yes!"
When Anders turned back from the sink and saw her interesting new position, he tilted his head thoughtfully. OK, she was annoying and the gothic look was usually a total boner killer for him but she was showing off some pretty decent pins there.
"Let me get this straight: you are asking me to use my powers on you?" He chuckled darkly and shook his head "Do I look like a moron to you? I use my power on you, invited or not, and all your little buddies will be lining up to mash me again." Between Jeanne-Marie, her harem of mental boys and Kevin, he was sure plenty of damage could be done too. "I'm not falling for that."
"No. I do not have friends the same way Jeanne-Marie does. Just Kevin and he already is angry at you," Ellie replied, shaking her head and turning it so she could see him. "I have been listening to your thoughts, and now I am inviting you to play with mine. What is it they say? Tit for tat?"
"If I did, and I'm not saying if I will yet or not, no telling Kevin." Because he wanted to find a way to make things ok there, or at least more ok than they currently were.
Ellie dropped her foot back to the desk, but kept her knee propped up. Honestly, she didn't quite care if he looked or liked her legs, so that hadn't been a deterrent either. "I will not tell Kevin. Hm, I think that it is possible he would be angrier with me than you."
And she did not want to deal with his shit, to be quite honest.
Of course Anders was enjoying the view, if would be rude not to when she was laid out across the table like that! He started approaching the table as he commented "Very trusting really, I could suggest anything I liked after all. Of course, it'd be up to your own sub-conscious what happened but sometimes people don't like what their subconscious does. Noriko didn't and she blamed me for it."
Ellie nodded, watching the boy's face with curiosity. She had faith in her own abilities, so she was more interested in how this would play out after the fact than anything else that Anders may or may not have wanted. "Suggest whatever you feel the need to suggest then, yes? My mind can be rather unpredictable even to myself--conscious or subconscious. It is a very funny thing, really!"
The proposition was an enticing one to Anders, never before had anyone actually offered themselves up for him to use his gift on. He ran his fingers along the edge of her table thoughtfully for a moment.
"Ok then, I'll give it a go. Just to see what happens. And whatever happens after is on your own head got it? I'm not getting anymore detentions or work detail for you."
Propping herself up on her elbows now, Ellie pursed her lips together and nodded. Mhmm.
"Good uh," performing on demand had thrown him for a moment but the confident grin was back almost instantly. "Ok then, you need to sit up coz you need to be looking at me properly. Unless you want me to join you on the table?" The grin turned wicked as his eyebrow rose suggestively.
This was getting funny to her, and Ellie wasn't sure why. However, she kept going along with it, checking out the table briefly, and then gave him some space to climb up with her. Consider that an invitation! "I suppose you would like for me to watch you very carefully, yes?"
She was grinning.
"Ok then." He easily lifted himself up and hopped onto the table with her. "Now, read my lips. Tell me, what's your name?" Using someone's name always helped, touching them helped even more though neither was absolutely necessary.
Too easy. "Ellie Phimister." The words were articulate, though still laced with her thick accent, and Ellie's eyes remained on Anders' mouth for show. She felt no compulsion whatsoever to answer the question, but did so anyway, just to see if he'd keep trying.
Anders hadn't started yet. He was studying her, considering his words. Words were important to him, until recently he'd always prided himself on the fact that he never issued flat out orders. It was suggestion and persuasions he dabbled with, not dictating. Not usually.
He ran his hand over her arm and he began to speak, voice dropping a register as it always did when he used his power. "Ellie, do you really want to attack me like that? I'm a nice bloke but I can only take so much, you know? We could get along pretty well, Ellie, we really could but you need to stop calling me those things. Think you can do that for me?" His hand moved rhythmically up and down as he spoke. He wasn't sure if it was working, he didn't now how it worked with a brain conscious of his invasion after all.
Ellie tilted her head slightly as she watched him, eyebrows furrowing inward. "I do not wish to hurt you, Anders. I feel so badly for saying what I said." She pursed her lips together, looking a little sheepish. "I got in trouble for saying...similar things to Kevin, many months back yes. I should know better."
"There we go, much better." Anders expression was of smug satisfaction now. "Saying the truth wasn't so hard, was it?" His hand still ran up and down her arm lightly.
That smug look, in a way, reminded Ellie of Kevin in the rare moments that he was actually feeling somewhat happy. It was strange, and she wasn't sure that her best friend would appreciate the comparison, but alas.
She kept her eyes on his lips still, and wet her own. "No, it was not. I...do not like to lie. I was trying to be tough on account of my friends, but perhaps that was wrong of me. You are a nice person...we could get along pretty well, yes. Why did I not see that before?"
"I can be very nice when I want to." Anders agreed, not really using The Voice anymore, satisfied for now that she'd gotten a taste of his power. "No shame in sticking up for your friends Ellie but I really didn't do anything wrong. They made the decisions, not me."
Ellie sighed and watched Anders. "You do not think what happened with Valerie was wrong? That you did not have some fault?"
Anders shifted a little though didn't back off from her not that he really could when they were both on a not particularly big table. "I think what she's doing now is wrong. Moving on from her comatose boyfriend straight onto my brother and convincing him it's love. It's not, she's substituting Mike for Coma-Rob and Mike feels guilty for having put her boyfriend in a coma. That's wrong and it's gonna screw up his whole life if he stays with her. I was trying to save him."
"If it was not for the fact that you harbour such bitterness, pain, guilt, and regret about the fact that your mother killed herself for birthing you, I would be quite content to say that you are a sociopath and that you have no heart," Ellie spoke evenly, eyes narrowed in such a way that even their light blue colour didn't stop the glare from looking dark and dangerous.
This boy...he toyed with people. He toyed with them and blamed them for everything that went wrong in the process, and then proceeded to blame them more afterward. He was selfish and Ellie was sure that his moral standards were so loose that they bent on a whim as easily as rubber.
"My power didn't touch you at all, did it?" Anders frowned sitting back a little. He wasn't stupid, in fact he was smarter than he usually gave himself credit for despite the stupid stunts he pulled, he knew when he was being messed with. He did it himself plenty after all.
He hadn't wanted anyone to know about his mother, that whole mess had been horrific, but apparently it wasn't his choice anymore.
"My mother," his voice wavered very slightly "My mother showed me what people are really like. It doesn't matter how much love or kindness you show them because they will always turn on you in the end. It's not sociopathy, it's survival."
"No, you have no power over me," Ellie informed him, frank and to the point. "And though your mother pains you so...I cannot feel sorry for you anymore. You are selfish and cold and it scares me. You are not a good person...and I don't feel sorry for you!"
"Good, I fucking hate pity." Especially from freaky chicks like you. He added that simply because he knew she could hear it and he also had to have the last word.
He hoped down off of the table easily and started to walk back to his own.
Collecting her things up now, Ellie decided that she didn't want to share her space with him anymore. However, before she left, Anders would hear her thoughts invading his. Do not anger me again, or next time I will not go so easy on you.
Then she was out the door, as silent as a ghost.
