Alisha and Simon - Backdated
May. 5th, 2014 02:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
om_chroma posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
om_mainAlisha talks to Simon about wanting to control her powers. He is, of course, completely supportive.
Alisha wasn't looking for Simon, per se, except that she had absolutely no reason to be in the gym. And she definitely didn't have a reason to be there just as he was finishing up all the jumping and spinning and whatever the hell else he was doing with his body that she hadn't realized someone could do outside a Hollywood studio. At first she hadn't thought to talk to him. No, that wasn't quite right. She hadn't wanted to tell him until it was more than just an idea in her head, but with Tam and Scott, it was already starting to feel too real. So she wasn't looking for him exactly, but she knew she ought to talk to him.
But then she saw what he was doing and it became less about talking to him and more about watching what he was doing. She knew he looked differently than she'd remembered from back in London, but she hadn't realized quite how he'd got that way.
But then they were finishing up and she fought the urge to duck away and just waited. He'd see her and they really did need to talk.
Philip and Simon finished up their training session with a spar, as usual; Simon wasn't working out to be fit, but to be as efficient as he could not only when tracing, but also when fighting. He thanked Philip when they were done (once again, Philip had bested him, but that was par for the course), and walked over to pick up his towel and wipe his face dry. On his way over, he noticed Alisha, and immediately frowned. He hadn't seen her in a little while, had in fact been wondering whether he should stop by her room and check how she was doing. But here she was. He toweled his face dry on his way over and greeted her with a quiet but curious, "Hi."
"Hi," she said and promptly forgot what she was going to tell him. He wasn't supposed to be sweaty and looking like some kind of regular person. He was supposed to be Simon. The creepy kid who always hid behind his camera. She shook her head at her thoughts and made a shooing motion at him. "Go take a shower and we'll talk when you get back."
"Are you alright?" Simon asked, searching her eyes, because he wanted to make sure, first. A shower could wait, if she wasn't.
She rolled her eyes at him. "I'm fine. I didn't come weeping my eyes out, did I? Go."
That answer made it very clear to Simon that Alisha wasn't, in fact, alright. But he did not want her to shut down on him because he pressed matters, and he knew how she felt about being vulnerable. So after holding her gaze for a moment longer, he nodded and turned to jog towards the locker room, and the gym showers.
He emerged from them ten minutes later, hair still damp but now back in his more usual button-down and trousers, carrying a backpack as he headed for Alisha.
Alisha relaxed a little once Simon had slipped back into his usual clothes. At least those she remembered from back when everything had seemed mostly normal. Not like what he was doing with Philip. She almost expected him to have his mobile in his hand, ready to film at a moment's notice. It made her smile a little. "Are you going to keep giving me that look like I might do something mad any time?"
"Wrong look," Simon told her with a small smile. "This is the look I give you when I'm worried about you." That he could be this honest with her (and without blushing) said a lot more about how he had changed than his training with Philip ever could. "Do you want to go somewhere?" She had tracked him down, apparently, to talk to him, presumably? But probably not in the middle of the gym.
"No, that's exactly the look I mean," she retorted. She thought about it and shrugged. "Let's go back to mine." And then she added a pointed, "And I don't think you have to be invisible as we walk there, either. The profs don't care who we bring to our rooms, believe me. If they did, they'd be separating a lot of roommates."
"I'm not turning invisible," Simon assured her, a little sheepishly. He still didn't like walking into the girls' wing for everyone to see, but he had always been very aware that his little trick wouldn't fool Professor Xavier if he had a problem with it, anyway.
"Don't sound as if you've never done it before. Say, the last time you came 'round?" He'd changed, but it was comforting to know that he hadn't changed completely. It was one of the reasons she liked Nathan so much. He was the familiar bastard.
"And the time before that," Simon acknowledged easily. He hadn't meant to imply that he would never do it. He was just not turning invisible this time around, but would probably do so next time he visited her. He liked it better that way.
"You're impossible," she said under her breath. Confident sometimes and then reserved the next. She didn't understand him. She didn't know where he fit. She just knew he did.
Simon was surprised by the statement, and his expression clearly said so as he looked at her, but as they walked into the main hall, headed for the girl's wing, he offered a bemused, "Sorry?"
She gave a similar look in response. "If you're going to say it, you might look it."
"I'm not sure what I'm apologising for," he sheepishly admitted. It made it difficult to look it.
"Men," Alisha said, shaking her head and implying, for just that moment, that Simon was typical of his species and not some unusual case like she normally did.
"I'm not sure I want to take on that kind of responsibility," Simon joked as they walked into the girls' wing. He still didn't feel as if he had a right to be there, hence going invisible when Alisha wasn't walking with him.
"For being a man?" Alisha asked as she opened the door for them. "I'm not sure it's one you can get away from."
"And you'll shoulder the blame for everything women do everywhere?" Simon asked with an amused expression. No, really, best each person be responsible for themselves.
"Simon," she chided. "I'm half the reason women are blamed for the things in the first place." She smirked at him and gestured for him to sit as she settled on her bed.
"Close the door behind you? she added before he could follow her first direction. This was not a conversation she wanted half of the girls' wing to hear.
Alisha's words reminded Simon of her choice of codename, even as he closed the door. Fatale was only a small step up on Eve, he supposed, if even that. He silently walked over to sit beside her on her bed. A little while ago, he would not have done so without blushing, even with the distance between them making it a very proper thing. But now, he barely thought about it.
She glanced at him in a vague sort of surprise that probably shouldn't have been there at all - of course he'd sit next to her - and took a breath. Jack. Sirius. Those had been easy conversations compared to how she felt about this one and she wasn't even asking Simon to help.
"I'm...I'm about to start practicing. My powers. I had a conversation with Simon Tam about them," and here she winced, "and he says I should be able to control them. And that the memory thing is my fault, too."
Simon was frowning, not in disapproval but in concentration. This was such a big step forward for Alisha, and he was a little in awe of her for it. "That's amazing, Alisha," he told her quietly, but he sounded as if he meant every word, and then some.
She grimaced. "Nothing's amazing yet. I don't know if it'll even work. I never had to do anything. Not like yours." He had to concentrate in order to turn invisible, or so it seemed.
"Not completely unlike mine," Simon contradicted her softly. "It used to simply happen. I didn't control it at all." It was different since his hadn't been on all the time, but he certainly didn't use to do anything.
That just made her flinch. "I've been an idiot," she said, so softly that she might not have even meant him to hear except that she added, "Haven't i?"
"A little," Simon allowed, with a small smile to soften the blow. It wasn't meant as a blow at all, but he didn't want to lie to Alisha. "But it takes some courage to admit it." That, that was amazing.
His honesty surprised a little laugh out of her. She wasn't sure there was anyone else - maybe Scott - who would give her that kind of blunt honesty without at least trying to soften the blow first. After didn't count. "I have to do something. After Pietro... I have to."
"That's what amazing," Simon told her, just as honestly. "That you're ready to do this." He knew how much it cost her. It didn't come easily to her at all.
"I'm not ready," she said, shrugging her shoulders as much to express her ambivalence in whether she was really ready as to try to work out the knots that were forming in her shoulders. "I'm really not. I just can't do anything else."
"Of course you can," Simon countered. "But you're choosing to take control, instead." Definitely amazing.
"It sounds better when you say it." She still half-thought Pietro was right and she was utter shite.
"Feel free to ask me, any time you need to hear it," Simon offered. "Or want to." He paused, then asked, "So what did Simon say about how your mutation worked?" Much as he was curious, and concerned, he was fairly certain that Alisha would appreciate him not asking how he had come to know anything about it.
"I was a proper patient," she muttered, reaching into her pocket for her phone. A quick flurry of button presses and she'd forwarded the conversation onto Simon. "There. Maybe you can help me make sense of it. He's speaking biology-talk."
Simon was surprised that Simon Tam hadn't explained it to her, afterwards, but knowing Alisha, she might very well not have asked for an explanation. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and thumbed his way to the message in question, glad for the speed of Stark technology. He started blushing as soon as he heard the beginning of the recording. The way Simon Tam sounded... But then scientific information made it into the pleas for release, and Simon started making mental notes of what he was hearing, still blushing but ignoring his own discomfort. Hypothalamus. A mental power - did he mean psionic? It seemed that he did, as he went on to compare it to telepathy. She affected the brain's neurotransmitters.
The recording finally came to a stop, and Simon realised that his face felt very, very hot. He tried to ignore the thought of how red it must be, and focused on what he had heard. "It sounds like he's saying that it's a psionic power. They can usually be controlled." Except when the Facility cut into your brain, apparently.
"Yeah, that's what I was afraid of," she said softly. Simon had explained it, actually, but she just hadn't wanted to believe it was her fault. All of it. The memory loss, the lusting. It all came down to what she made people believe and do. Maybe she was exactly what Pietro believed she was. It was the thing she was wrestling with.
"That's a good thing," Simon stated with a frown. How could it not be?
"That everything I did is my fault?" Alisha shot back.
"That you can learn to control it," Simon pointed out evenly. "That you can stop doing it. That you can have the life you want, eventually."
"I wish I could just get rid of it." She'd much rather be without her powers than have to control them every single time. What if she had to concentrate every single time? There were times when she just couldn't keep up that level of thought. Especially when things were getting good.
"Barring that option - this is good news," Simon insisted. "You should celebrate."
"I'm not throwing a party to celebrate the fact that I might someday be able to control my powers. Most people still don't know what mine even is." And she preferred it like that. Otherwise, she'd have people like Jeanne-Marie and Lydia blaming her for a lot more than just looking at their boyfriends.
"I didn't mean a party," Simon protested. Not only did his mind never go the party-organisation way, but it would be too odd a party even for him. "I meant have a drink. Mark the occasion. This is a big thing."
Wait a minute. She needed to make sure she was hearing this right. "You're asking me out for a drink?"
Was he? He didn't he had been, but... "If you like?" he offered with a small wince, clearly not sure that he ought to.
It was a bad idea. It would give him a wrong impression. Fuck, it would give her a wrong impression. But, damn him, she was going to do it anyway. "All right. A drink. One."
"When do you want to go?" Simon asked. He was far from getting the wrong impression. Not only was he convinced that he was firmly in the friend zone with Alisha (and that in itself seemed like a small miracle), but he was with Eileen. There could be no misunderstanding here.
"You're the one who decided a celebration was in order. When are we going?" she replied.
"I... we can go today, if you like?" he offered. Classes were over for the day and he had nothing special planned, now that he had seen Philip. Since it was just a drink with a friend, there was no reason to postpone it. He would tell her about Scott's offer, at some point, but he didn't want to steal her spotlight.
"Today?" She almost wanted to say that it was too soon, but when he asked the inevitable question 'too soon for what', she wouldn't be able to give him an answer. "Sure."
"We can grab the bus into town?" he offered. He would just need to stop by his room to drop off his sports bag and grab a jacket, and his wallet.
"The bus? Not a car?" she asked. She had her license now. She could just as easily drive them into town.
"Do you have your license?" Simon asked with raised eyebrows. Until recently, he had not had a valid identity he would dare to use for such things. Now, of course, he did, courtesy of Tessa, or he could not have applied to film schools, but he had been too busy with that to care about getting his driver's license.
"That means you don't? Preparing to live in New York City already?" she asked. "Because I'd have thought you'd want one here." And the only place she could imagine living in the places she'd seen so far without a car was New York. Everything else seemed to be in the middle of the woods. Or farm country.
"I've had too much other things going on, since Tessa set up my new identity," Simon admitted sheepishly. He really ought to take his license before he left, actually, if the headmasters would let him linger a little longer.
"Who are you if you're not Simon Bellamy?" she asked as she stood up and grabbed her purse.
"Simon Nichols," he answered. Keeping his first name made sense; it was what he was used to answering to, and it would make keeping things straight much easier. "I'll meet you in the garage in ten?"
She made a face as she nodded. "Doesn't suit you," she said as she watched him go. But at least he was still Simon. That was something.
"It's a common last name," Simon shrugged, slightly awkwardly. That mattered; he didn't want to stand out. He picked up his sports bag and gave her a small smile. "I'll see you in ten."
Alisha wasn't looking for Simon, per se, except that she had absolutely no reason to be in the gym. And she definitely didn't have a reason to be there just as he was finishing up all the jumping and spinning and whatever the hell else he was doing with his body that she hadn't realized someone could do outside a Hollywood studio. At first she hadn't thought to talk to him. No, that wasn't quite right. She hadn't wanted to tell him until it was more than just an idea in her head, but with Tam and Scott, it was already starting to feel too real. So she wasn't looking for him exactly, but she knew she ought to talk to him.
But then she saw what he was doing and it became less about talking to him and more about watching what he was doing. She knew he looked differently than she'd remembered from back in London, but she hadn't realized quite how he'd got that way.
But then they were finishing up and she fought the urge to duck away and just waited. He'd see her and they really did need to talk.
Philip and Simon finished up their training session with a spar, as usual; Simon wasn't working out to be fit, but to be as efficient as he could not only when tracing, but also when fighting. He thanked Philip when they were done (once again, Philip had bested him, but that was par for the course), and walked over to pick up his towel and wipe his face dry. On his way over, he noticed Alisha, and immediately frowned. He hadn't seen her in a little while, had in fact been wondering whether he should stop by her room and check how she was doing. But here she was. He toweled his face dry on his way over and greeted her with a quiet but curious, "Hi."
"Hi," she said and promptly forgot what she was going to tell him. He wasn't supposed to be sweaty and looking like some kind of regular person. He was supposed to be Simon. The creepy kid who always hid behind his camera. She shook her head at her thoughts and made a shooing motion at him. "Go take a shower and we'll talk when you get back."
"Are you alright?" Simon asked, searching her eyes, because he wanted to make sure, first. A shower could wait, if she wasn't.
She rolled her eyes at him. "I'm fine. I didn't come weeping my eyes out, did I? Go."
That answer made it very clear to Simon that Alisha wasn't, in fact, alright. But he did not want her to shut down on him because he pressed matters, and he knew how she felt about being vulnerable. So after holding her gaze for a moment longer, he nodded and turned to jog towards the locker room, and the gym showers.
He emerged from them ten minutes later, hair still damp but now back in his more usual button-down and trousers, carrying a backpack as he headed for Alisha.
Alisha relaxed a little once Simon had slipped back into his usual clothes. At least those she remembered from back when everything had seemed mostly normal. Not like what he was doing with Philip. She almost expected him to have his mobile in his hand, ready to film at a moment's notice. It made her smile a little. "Are you going to keep giving me that look like I might do something mad any time?"
"Wrong look," Simon told her with a small smile. "This is the look I give you when I'm worried about you." That he could be this honest with her (and without blushing) said a lot more about how he had changed than his training with Philip ever could. "Do you want to go somewhere?" She had tracked him down, apparently, to talk to him, presumably? But probably not in the middle of the gym.
"No, that's exactly the look I mean," she retorted. She thought about it and shrugged. "Let's go back to mine." And then she added a pointed, "And I don't think you have to be invisible as we walk there, either. The profs don't care who we bring to our rooms, believe me. If they did, they'd be separating a lot of roommates."
"I'm not turning invisible," Simon assured her, a little sheepishly. He still didn't like walking into the girls' wing for everyone to see, but he had always been very aware that his little trick wouldn't fool Professor Xavier if he had a problem with it, anyway.
"Don't sound as if you've never done it before. Say, the last time you came 'round?" He'd changed, but it was comforting to know that he hadn't changed completely. It was one of the reasons she liked Nathan so much. He was the familiar bastard.
"And the time before that," Simon acknowledged easily. He hadn't meant to imply that he would never do it. He was just not turning invisible this time around, but would probably do so next time he visited her. He liked it better that way.
"You're impossible," she said under her breath. Confident sometimes and then reserved the next. She didn't understand him. She didn't know where he fit. She just knew he did.
Simon was surprised by the statement, and his expression clearly said so as he looked at her, but as they walked into the main hall, headed for the girl's wing, he offered a bemused, "Sorry?"
She gave a similar look in response. "If you're going to say it, you might look it."
"I'm not sure what I'm apologising for," he sheepishly admitted. It made it difficult to look it.
"Men," Alisha said, shaking her head and implying, for just that moment, that Simon was typical of his species and not some unusual case like she normally did.
"I'm not sure I want to take on that kind of responsibility," Simon joked as they walked into the girls' wing. He still didn't feel as if he had a right to be there, hence going invisible when Alisha wasn't walking with him.
"For being a man?" Alisha asked as she opened the door for them. "I'm not sure it's one you can get away from."
"And you'll shoulder the blame for everything women do everywhere?" Simon asked with an amused expression. No, really, best each person be responsible for themselves.
"Simon," she chided. "I'm half the reason women are blamed for the things in the first place." She smirked at him and gestured for him to sit as she settled on her bed.
"Close the door behind you? she added before he could follow her first direction. This was not a conversation she wanted half of the girls' wing to hear.
Alisha's words reminded Simon of her choice of codename, even as he closed the door. Fatale was only a small step up on Eve, he supposed, if even that. He silently walked over to sit beside her on her bed. A little while ago, he would not have done so without blushing, even with the distance between them making it a very proper thing. But now, he barely thought about it.
She glanced at him in a vague sort of surprise that probably shouldn't have been there at all - of course he'd sit next to her - and took a breath. Jack. Sirius. Those had been easy conversations compared to how she felt about this one and she wasn't even asking Simon to help.
"I'm...I'm about to start practicing. My powers. I had a conversation with Simon Tam about them," and here she winced, "and he says I should be able to control them. And that the memory thing is my fault, too."
Simon was frowning, not in disapproval but in concentration. This was such a big step forward for Alisha, and he was a little in awe of her for it. "That's amazing, Alisha," he told her quietly, but he sounded as if he meant every word, and then some.
She grimaced. "Nothing's amazing yet. I don't know if it'll even work. I never had to do anything. Not like yours." He had to concentrate in order to turn invisible, or so it seemed.
"Not completely unlike mine," Simon contradicted her softly. "It used to simply happen. I didn't control it at all." It was different since his hadn't been on all the time, but he certainly didn't use to do anything.
That just made her flinch. "I've been an idiot," she said, so softly that she might not have even meant him to hear except that she added, "Haven't i?"
"A little," Simon allowed, with a small smile to soften the blow. It wasn't meant as a blow at all, but he didn't want to lie to Alisha. "But it takes some courage to admit it." That, that was amazing.
His honesty surprised a little laugh out of her. She wasn't sure there was anyone else - maybe Scott - who would give her that kind of blunt honesty without at least trying to soften the blow first. After didn't count. "I have to do something. After Pietro... I have to."
"That's what amazing," Simon told her, just as honestly. "That you're ready to do this." He knew how much it cost her. It didn't come easily to her at all.
"I'm not ready," she said, shrugging her shoulders as much to express her ambivalence in whether she was really ready as to try to work out the knots that were forming in her shoulders. "I'm really not. I just can't do anything else."
"Of course you can," Simon countered. "But you're choosing to take control, instead." Definitely amazing.
"It sounds better when you say it." She still half-thought Pietro was right and she was utter shite.
"Feel free to ask me, any time you need to hear it," Simon offered. "Or want to." He paused, then asked, "So what did Simon say about how your mutation worked?" Much as he was curious, and concerned, he was fairly certain that Alisha would appreciate him not asking how he had come to know anything about it.
"I was a proper patient," she muttered, reaching into her pocket for her phone. A quick flurry of button presses and she'd forwarded the conversation onto Simon. "There. Maybe you can help me make sense of it. He's speaking biology-talk."
Simon was surprised that Simon Tam hadn't explained it to her, afterwards, but knowing Alisha, she might very well not have asked for an explanation. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and thumbed his way to the message in question, glad for the speed of Stark technology. He started blushing as soon as he heard the beginning of the recording. The way Simon Tam sounded... But then scientific information made it into the pleas for release, and Simon started making mental notes of what he was hearing, still blushing but ignoring his own discomfort. Hypothalamus. A mental power - did he mean psionic? It seemed that he did, as he went on to compare it to telepathy. She affected the brain's neurotransmitters.
The recording finally came to a stop, and Simon realised that his face felt very, very hot. He tried to ignore the thought of how red it must be, and focused on what he had heard. "It sounds like he's saying that it's a psionic power. They can usually be controlled." Except when the Facility cut into your brain, apparently.
"Yeah, that's what I was afraid of," she said softly. Simon had explained it, actually, but she just hadn't wanted to believe it was her fault. All of it. The memory loss, the lusting. It all came down to what she made people believe and do. Maybe she was exactly what Pietro believed she was. It was the thing she was wrestling with.
"That's a good thing," Simon stated with a frown. How could it not be?
"That everything I did is my fault?" Alisha shot back.
"That you can learn to control it," Simon pointed out evenly. "That you can stop doing it. That you can have the life you want, eventually."
"I wish I could just get rid of it." She'd much rather be without her powers than have to control them every single time. What if she had to concentrate every single time? There were times when she just couldn't keep up that level of thought. Especially when things were getting good.
"Barring that option - this is good news," Simon insisted. "You should celebrate."
"I'm not throwing a party to celebrate the fact that I might someday be able to control my powers. Most people still don't know what mine even is." And she preferred it like that. Otherwise, she'd have people like Jeanne-Marie and Lydia blaming her for a lot more than just looking at their boyfriends.
"I didn't mean a party," Simon protested. Not only did his mind never go the party-organisation way, but it would be too odd a party even for him. "I meant have a drink. Mark the occasion. This is a big thing."
Wait a minute. She needed to make sure she was hearing this right. "You're asking me out for a drink?"
Was he? He didn't he had been, but... "If you like?" he offered with a small wince, clearly not sure that he ought to.
It was a bad idea. It would give him a wrong impression. Fuck, it would give her a wrong impression. But, damn him, she was going to do it anyway. "All right. A drink. One."
"When do you want to go?" Simon asked. He was far from getting the wrong impression. Not only was he convinced that he was firmly in the friend zone with Alisha (and that in itself seemed like a small miracle), but he was with Eileen. There could be no misunderstanding here.
"You're the one who decided a celebration was in order. When are we going?" she replied.
"I... we can go today, if you like?" he offered. Classes were over for the day and he had nothing special planned, now that he had seen Philip. Since it was just a drink with a friend, there was no reason to postpone it. He would tell her about Scott's offer, at some point, but he didn't want to steal her spotlight.
"Today?" She almost wanted to say that it was too soon, but when he asked the inevitable question 'too soon for what', she wouldn't be able to give him an answer. "Sure."
"We can grab the bus into town?" he offered. He would just need to stop by his room to drop off his sports bag and grab a jacket, and his wallet.
"The bus? Not a car?" she asked. She had her license now. She could just as easily drive them into town.
"Do you have your license?" Simon asked with raised eyebrows. Until recently, he had not had a valid identity he would dare to use for such things. Now, of course, he did, courtesy of Tessa, or he could not have applied to film schools, but he had been too busy with that to care about getting his driver's license.
"That means you don't? Preparing to live in New York City already?" she asked. "Because I'd have thought you'd want one here." And the only place she could imagine living in the places she'd seen so far without a car was New York. Everything else seemed to be in the middle of the woods. Or farm country.
"I've had too much other things going on, since Tessa set up my new identity," Simon admitted sheepishly. He really ought to take his license before he left, actually, if the headmasters would let him linger a little longer.
"Who are you if you're not Simon Bellamy?" she asked as she stood up and grabbed her purse.
"Simon Nichols," he answered. Keeping his first name made sense; it was what he was used to answering to, and it would make keeping things straight much easier. "I'll meet you in the garage in ten?"
She made a face as she nodded. "Doesn't suit you," she said as she watched him go. But at least he was still Simon. That was something.
"It's a common last name," Simon shrugged, slightly awkwardly. That mattered; he didn't want to stand out. He picked up his sports bag and gave her a small smile. "I'll see you in ten."
