Lil and Simon - December 10
Dec. 10th, 2017 02:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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ax_mainSimon and Lil take a stab sorting out what wrong the last time they met and succeed... mostly.
A box of cookies, a carafe of hot water, a couple of mugs, and a pocket full of different kinds of (to Lil) fancy teas; Lil packed it all into a large bag and headed down to the lab. It was probably overkill, but Lil needed this talk to go well, and in true Yellowknife fashion the only way she could think to do that was over a kitchen table with tea. Since she was in no position to invite Simon to the kitchen, she'd bring it with her. She wasn't looking forward to this, but she'd been running around like a chicken with its head cut off, getting herself into a fuckton of trouble since their last meeting, and she needed it to stop.
Outside the lab, Lil took a quick deep breath to settle her stomach and then stepped inside.
When the door opened, Simon expected Warren, really and truly. Warren was constantly bugging him when he was working, more now than ever. He looked up with a smile breaking on his lips, then froze, literally, at the sight of Lil.
God, he looked like a deer caught in headlights, and why wouldn't he? The last time Lil had been down here had been a disaster, and although she'd been wrapped up in her own reaction, it had finally started to occur to her that Simon might have felt the weight of that too. "Hey, I don't know if this is a good time or not, but I was wondering if we could talk for a bit?"
Simon swallowed. He knew, knew how horribly Warren's 'talks' had gone with the girl, and he didn't even have anyone here to help buffer or moderate. He almost thought of calling for Sharon to step in, but quickly came to the conclusion that Lil might take offense to that. Turning to face her, he rose slowly from his stool and reached for his phone. At least, this time, he was wearing blue surgical gloves. "May I...may I record this, for both of us?"
Record them? Because he couldn't trust her to stay reasonable or wanted to share the talk with his boyfriends... Jesus, look at her. She'd planned everything out so she could keep calm, and he threw one little curveball and she was ready to go apeshit again. No, he wanted to record it because last time had been a disaster. He was right; this helped both of them. Lil took a breath and nodded. "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea actually." She held up the bag. "I brought, um, stuff. If you want a tea or something. It's a little stupid, but Mom always had tea for big, talks so... "
Simon hesitated, then nodded. "I enjoy tea."
"Okay." Lil found a clean place on nearby counter and set everything out. The bags were a little crumpled from being stuffed in her pocket, but they were all individually wrapped so they were fine. "I just stole everything from the kitchen. There's peppermint, chai, lemon ginger... whatever you want. Cookies too." She pulled a stool over for herself, ignoring the unpleasant flutter in her stomach. "You probably heard, but I'm really not good at talking stuff out like this, so I figured if I can stuff a cookie in my mouth anytime I'm about to say some something stupid, that might help, right?"
"Chai, please," Simon told her as he set up the recording and set the phone on the counter between them, then moved his laptop and some papers to make some room for her. "And I am equally challenged when it comes to speaking to others, so maybe you're onto something."
Lil offered a small smile, then put a chai teabag in each mug and poured the water. "I didn't bring sugar or anything. I don't know if you do that with this stuff?" She took her mug and sniffed. It smelled good, better than the orange pekoe she was used to.
"Milk, generally. But this is fine," Simon told her. "The richness is better when it's creamy, if you decide to try it again sometime."
She took a sip and yeah, it was good. It reminded her just a bit of Christmas spices. "I will, thanks." Well, this was going better now, even if they were just talking about tea, but maybe it was time to get to why she was here. She put her mug down. "Look, I came down 'cause I wanted to settle this whole mess with you. I want to say it's okay. I got pretty upset, but I think I was dumping a lot of baggage on you that you didn't deserve."
“I don’t know about baggage, and I won’t ask,” Simon told her, taking a sip. “But I made you uncomfortable, and I never want to do that, as a person or, eventually, a doctor. You were right - I was not appropriately informing other students about how my power worked, and I wasn’t taking precautions to protect their privacy. While the telepaths here sometimes have no ability to shield what they get from students, I do, and I can control that.
“If you like, I can take some time to explain my power now - what little I understand about it so far,” he offered.
"Sure, 'cause yeah, I was right as far as you said, but I handled it like a fucking 12 year old and understanding a bit more about what you can do... well, I should've done that before now." Especially since Nolan had done far worse and yet the two of them had still managed to work it out.
Simon gave a small nod. "It's difficult to express how I absorb the information. I don't see like our eyes see. I feel, I hear, I...sense," he told her, a little frustrated at his inability to give words to how his power worked. "But what I sense is any and all workings of the body, which includes DNA, cells, tissues, organs, and the various systems that work throughout an organism. When it comes to the human body, that includes such things as the circulatory, nervous, lymphatic, and, yes, the integumentary system, which comprises a person's skin, hair, and nails."
"When I told you that I had already seen your body, I was being unnecessarily ambiguous. It's true, I see a person's anatomy, but it's on a much deeper level than one might see without clothes on, and to be quite honest, with so much information input, I look at the pieces, rather than the whole. Maybe someday I might be able to handle the input faster and easier, but for the moment, my brain just can't absorb all of it at once. So when you seemed shy, I was attempting to comfort you that anatomy...it doesn't mean to me what it does to you."
"See it's not like those airport x-ray things where you see sort of, um, a naked ghost thing? 'Cause that's sort of what I had in my head." Oh Jesus, what the fuck had she just wasted a couple of weeks of worry on?
Simon coughed softly into his tea. For a moment, he thought to get a little insulted. He was so much more effective than one of those machines. "It's more like...feeling that kind of scan in my mind, and a hundred different scans as well," he told her. "All overlapping, all working in sync, all briefly as much a part of me as they are of you. It's a flash of instinct that soaks into my consciousness within seconds. It takes longer to process that information and put it into words."
"Okay, but you get me, right? It's not like you open up a Playboy and the centerfold falls out and you're staring at that?"
"No, but I can - can put the pieces together to know someone's breast size or penis shape if I wanted to - and I'm being totally honest with you about that. I never have, but the ability is there," Simon told her.
Lil's relief bubbled over into a grin. "And yeah, you should let people know that but, that is so totally not what I had in my head. Also, when you said you were trying to reassure me... God, I took that the wrong way too."
Simon gave a slight nod of understanding. Clearly, he needed to come up with a better explanation for his power. "I'm sorry I upset you. In any case, all I got from you personally was the presence of your aura and a flash of unbearable pain. I saw nothing else."
"I wondered. I was so wrapped up in how it felt for me, I didn't ask. I'm sorry about that." Lil pushed the box of cookies toward Simon as an offering. "It wasn't just me that got hurt."
Simon started to wave off the cookies, but took one anyway, as a peace offering. "It was the interaction of our powers, which I'll ensure won't happen again."
"But... if I wanted to try it, would you be willing?" Lil wasn't sure she did, and certainly not anytime soon, but there might come a time when the information was needed.
"No," Simon told her firmly. "Not until we understand more about what's going on. I won't hurt you like that again. Not willingly. Your aura has kept you blanketed from sensory perception for so long that taking it away is akin to torture. Besides which, I don't know how much it's functioning with the rest of your body. If it's working to stabilize a vital organ or your nervous system, then it's entirely possible that removing it for any period of time could kill you."
The 'no' wasn't good to hear, and Lil felt her temper light up. Stuck-up rich boy thinking she couldn't handle a bit of pain to get some answers... she grabbed a cookie, stuffed it in her mouth so her temper couldn't talk, and listened to the rest. Okay, death was a reasonable worry. Maybe this wasn't a stuck-up rich boy, maybe this was someone concerned that he could do real harm. Lil finished the cookie and nodded. "That's fair. I mean, I'd like to know more about myself, but I get it."
"Give it some time. I want to know more about how my power works. Maybe you could have Sharon do some basic scans - to see how your organs are faring," Simon suggested.
Lil nodded. "If they work, that's a good idea I guess. I never really thought that it could cause any problems for me but who knows?"
"You had a negative reaction to the aura dropping. We don't know if it could be worse than sensory overload," Simon pointed out. "If Sharon determines that she can't find anything else amiss, then I'd be willing to do it again...but only with supervision from her and Dr. McCoy."
"And I'd be okay with that, especially since we figured out the other stuff that I got upset over." Lil wrinkled her nose. There were other things she had to fix around that, weren't there? "I have to admit though, I did tell a couple of people about that when I was tryin' to sort it out. I'll clear it up with them, tell them what you told me and maybe, I don't know... if you need any help figuring out what to say to people so they don't freak out, I can help. I mean, if there's a way to misunderstand something, I'm that one that'll do it, so I make a good warning system I guess."
Ah. Simon's stomach twisted. So his worst fears had been true. She'd been telling the whole school about the incident. He swallowed, just trying to wrap his head around that for a moment. How many people would refuse to come near him now? This, on top of his reputation of a goon of a scientist...more people would see him like Shepherd did. The enemy.
How was he supposed to help anyone like this?
"I realize you're already going to take this the wrong way, so I won't bother asking you not to, but you're not exactly the best person to help me out in that regard," he told her, staring down into his tea. God, Warren might not even be able to help him now.
Lil snorted. "Things are sort of all prickly shit between us right now so no, I get it. I just thought I'd make the offer. Unless you mean clearing it up with the two friends, 'cause that's sort of my mess to take care of."
Simon nodded slightly. "Do what you need to." Because he sure as hell was not going to tell her how to handle the situation.
"Okay. Um, my turn to probably insult you though, sorry. Did you tell anyone? Like your boyfriends or... " Who else did he know? Lil couldn't really imagine him doing it, but fuck, now that she knew what a screw-up the whole thing had been, there was no way she'd want JP knowing any of this.
He hesitated, then released a soft breath. "Warren kept pressing me to do the question and answer session. I finally told him that I'd screwed up with you - that it was my fault - and wasn't comfortable with it, but I didn't give him any details."
Lil looked thoughtful. "I think that's fair. You can't walk around feeling bad and not say something, right? I mean, I'd rather it didn't get around, but we're not talking about that." She took one more cookie, this time as a reward for managing to stay reasonably calm through the tougher stuff.
Simon gave a small nod. "I..." he paused, then continued. "I agreed to do the Q&A. Because he believed that I might be needed to answer questions about my research. I hope that won't be uncomfortable for you."
"No! We got this stuff sorted out, at least for me, so I'm good. Besides, even if it did, " she shrugged, "the Q&A's important, right? And fuck, I sort of started that too with that talk with Warren so I can't turn around and worry about it now. Nah, you're good."
He nodded again. Okay. She was still sitting there. Was she expecting something else. Maybe agreement? "Good. Ah. Great, I mean."
"Okay, awesome." Lil stayed, waiting for something more from Simon until she realized that she'd let things turn awkward. This was the end as far as he was concerned and honestly, she couldn't think of anything else to say. She got up and started packing up. "So, um, thanks for talking to me. You can keep the cookies if you want."
Simon stared at the cookies and opened his mouth to refuse them...until he remembered that he didn't have the luxury of calling in for sushi or those high priced truffle fries he loved so much. No accounts, no money, no fancy take-out. If he wanted to eat at all while he was in the lab, he couldn't turn his nose up at free food, cookies or not. "Th-thank you," he finally forced himself to say. "I appreciate that."
"Hey, anytime you want stolen cookies, you know who to call." She didn't expect him to of course, but again, it was the offer that was important. Lil picked up her bag, gave him a small wave, and headed towards the door.
"Right." Stolen cookies. Great. "Uh, thanks."
A box of cookies, a carafe of hot water, a couple of mugs, and a pocket full of different kinds of (to Lil) fancy teas; Lil packed it all into a large bag and headed down to the lab. It was probably overkill, but Lil needed this talk to go well, and in true Yellowknife fashion the only way she could think to do that was over a kitchen table with tea. Since she was in no position to invite Simon to the kitchen, she'd bring it with her. She wasn't looking forward to this, but she'd been running around like a chicken with its head cut off, getting herself into a fuckton of trouble since their last meeting, and she needed it to stop.
Outside the lab, Lil took a quick deep breath to settle her stomach and then stepped inside.
When the door opened, Simon expected Warren, really and truly. Warren was constantly bugging him when he was working, more now than ever. He looked up with a smile breaking on his lips, then froze, literally, at the sight of Lil.
God, he looked like a deer caught in headlights, and why wouldn't he? The last time Lil had been down here had been a disaster, and although she'd been wrapped up in her own reaction, it had finally started to occur to her that Simon might have felt the weight of that too. "Hey, I don't know if this is a good time or not, but I was wondering if we could talk for a bit?"
Simon swallowed. He knew, knew how horribly Warren's 'talks' had gone with the girl, and he didn't even have anyone here to help buffer or moderate. He almost thought of calling for Sharon to step in, but quickly came to the conclusion that Lil might take offense to that. Turning to face her, he rose slowly from his stool and reached for his phone. At least, this time, he was wearing blue surgical gloves. "May I...may I record this, for both of us?"
Record them? Because he couldn't trust her to stay reasonable or wanted to share the talk with his boyfriends... Jesus, look at her. She'd planned everything out so she could keep calm, and he threw one little curveball and she was ready to go apeshit again. No, he wanted to record it because last time had been a disaster. He was right; this helped both of them. Lil took a breath and nodded. "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea actually." She held up the bag. "I brought, um, stuff. If you want a tea or something. It's a little stupid, but Mom always had tea for big, talks so... "
Simon hesitated, then nodded. "I enjoy tea."
"Okay." Lil found a clean place on nearby counter and set everything out. The bags were a little crumpled from being stuffed in her pocket, but they were all individually wrapped so they were fine. "I just stole everything from the kitchen. There's peppermint, chai, lemon ginger... whatever you want. Cookies too." She pulled a stool over for herself, ignoring the unpleasant flutter in her stomach. "You probably heard, but I'm really not good at talking stuff out like this, so I figured if I can stuff a cookie in my mouth anytime I'm about to say some something stupid, that might help, right?"
"Chai, please," Simon told her as he set up the recording and set the phone on the counter between them, then moved his laptop and some papers to make some room for her. "And I am equally challenged when it comes to speaking to others, so maybe you're onto something."
Lil offered a small smile, then put a chai teabag in each mug and poured the water. "I didn't bring sugar or anything. I don't know if you do that with this stuff?" She took her mug and sniffed. It smelled good, better than the orange pekoe she was used to.
"Milk, generally. But this is fine," Simon told her. "The richness is better when it's creamy, if you decide to try it again sometime."
She took a sip and yeah, it was good. It reminded her just a bit of Christmas spices. "I will, thanks." Well, this was going better now, even if they were just talking about tea, but maybe it was time to get to why she was here. She put her mug down. "Look, I came down 'cause I wanted to settle this whole mess with you. I want to say it's okay. I got pretty upset, but I think I was dumping a lot of baggage on you that you didn't deserve."
“I don’t know about baggage, and I won’t ask,” Simon told her, taking a sip. “But I made you uncomfortable, and I never want to do that, as a person or, eventually, a doctor. You were right - I was not appropriately informing other students about how my power worked, and I wasn’t taking precautions to protect their privacy. While the telepaths here sometimes have no ability to shield what they get from students, I do, and I can control that.
“If you like, I can take some time to explain my power now - what little I understand about it so far,” he offered.
"Sure, 'cause yeah, I was right as far as you said, but I handled it like a fucking 12 year old and understanding a bit more about what you can do... well, I should've done that before now." Especially since Nolan had done far worse and yet the two of them had still managed to work it out.
Simon gave a small nod. "It's difficult to express how I absorb the information. I don't see like our eyes see. I feel, I hear, I...sense," he told her, a little frustrated at his inability to give words to how his power worked. "But what I sense is any and all workings of the body, which includes DNA, cells, tissues, organs, and the various systems that work throughout an organism. When it comes to the human body, that includes such things as the circulatory, nervous, lymphatic, and, yes, the integumentary system, which comprises a person's skin, hair, and nails."
"When I told you that I had already seen your body, I was being unnecessarily ambiguous. It's true, I see a person's anatomy, but it's on a much deeper level than one might see without clothes on, and to be quite honest, with so much information input, I look at the pieces, rather than the whole. Maybe someday I might be able to handle the input faster and easier, but for the moment, my brain just can't absorb all of it at once. So when you seemed shy, I was attempting to comfort you that anatomy...it doesn't mean to me what it does to you."
"See it's not like those airport x-ray things where you see sort of, um, a naked ghost thing? 'Cause that's sort of what I had in my head." Oh Jesus, what the fuck had she just wasted a couple of weeks of worry on?
Simon coughed softly into his tea. For a moment, he thought to get a little insulted. He was so much more effective than one of those machines. "It's more like...feeling that kind of scan in my mind, and a hundred different scans as well," he told her. "All overlapping, all working in sync, all briefly as much a part of me as they are of you. It's a flash of instinct that soaks into my consciousness within seconds. It takes longer to process that information and put it into words."
"Okay, but you get me, right? It's not like you open up a Playboy and the centerfold falls out and you're staring at that?"
"No, but I can - can put the pieces together to know someone's breast size or penis shape if I wanted to - and I'm being totally honest with you about that. I never have, but the ability is there," Simon told her.
Lil's relief bubbled over into a grin. "And yeah, you should let people know that but, that is so totally not what I had in my head. Also, when you said you were trying to reassure me... God, I took that the wrong way too."
Simon gave a slight nod of understanding. Clearly, he needed to come up with a better explanation for his power. "I'm sorry I upset you. In any case, all I got from you personally was the presence of your aura and a flash of unbearable pain. I saw nothing else."
"I wondered. I was so wrapped up in how it felt for me, I didn't ask. I'm sorry about that." Lil pushed the box of cookies toward Simon as an offering. "It wasn't just me that got hurt."
Simon started to wave off the cookies, but took one anyway, as a peace offering. "It was the interaction of our powers, which I'll ensure won't happen again."
"But... if I wanted to try it, would you be willing?" Lil wasn't sure she did, and certainly not anytime soon, but there might come a time when the information was needed.
"No," Simon told her firmly. "Not until we understand more about what's going on. I won't hurt you like that again. Not willingly. Your aura has kept you blanketed from sensory perception for so long that taking it away is akin to torture. Besides which, I don't know how much it's functioning with the rest of your body. If it's working to stabilize a vital organ or your nervous system, then it's entirely possible that removing it for any period of time could kill you."
The 'no' wasn't good to hear, and Lil felt her temper light up. Stuck-up rich boy thinking she couldn't handle a bit of pain to get some answers... she grabbed a cookie, stuffed it in her mouth so her temper couldn't talk, and listened to the rest. Okay, death was a reasonable worry. Maybe this wasn't a stuck-up rich boy, maybe this was someone concerned that he could do real harm. Lil finished the cookie and nodded. "That's fair. I mean, I'd like to know more about myself, but I get it."
"Give it some time. I want to know more about how my power works. Maybe you could have Sharon do some basic scans - to see how your organs are faring," Simon suggested.
Lil nodded. "If they work, that's a good idea I guess. I never really thought that it could cause any problems for me but who knows?"
"You had a negative reaction to the aura dropping. We don't know if it could be worse than sensory overload," Simon pointed out. "If Sharon determines that she can't find anything else amiss, then I'd be willing to do it again...but only with supervision from her and Dr. McCoy."
"And I'd be okay with that, especially since we figured out the other stuff that I got upset over." Lil wrinkled her nose. There were other things she had to fix around that, weren't there? "I have to admit though, I did tell a couple of people about that when I was tryin' to sort it out. I'll clear it up with them, tell them what you told me and maybe, I don't know... if you need any help figuring out what to say to people so they don't freak out, I can help. I mean, if there's a way to misunderstand something, I'm that one that'll do it, so I make a good warning system I guess."
Ah. Simon's stomach twisted. So his worst fears had been true. She'd been telling the whole school about the incident. He swallowed, just trying to wrap his head around that for a moment. How many people would refuse to come near him now? This, on top of his reputation of a goon of a scientist...more people would see him like Shepherd did. The enemy.
How was he supposed to help anyone like this?
"I realize you're already going to take this the wrong way, so I won't bother asking you not to, but you're not exactly the best person to help me out in that regard," he told her, staring down into his tea. God, Warren might not even be able to help him now.
Lil snorted. "Things are sort of all prickly shit between us right now so no, I get it. I just thought I'd make the offer. Unless you mean clearing it up with the two friends, 'cause that's sort of my mess to take care of."
Simon nodded slightly. "Do what you need to." Because he sure as hell was not going to tell her how to handle the situation.
"Okay. Um, my turn to probably insult you though, sorry. Did you tell anyone? Like your boyfriends or... " Who else did he know? Lil couldn't really imagine him doing it, but fuck, now that she knew what a screw-up the whole thing had been, there was no way she'd want JP knowing any of this.
He hesitated, then released a soft breath. "Warren kept pressing me to do the question and answer session. I finally told him that I'd screwed up with you - that it was my fault - and wasn't comfortable with it, but I didn't give him any details."
Lil looked thoughtful. "I think that's fair. You can't walk around feeling bad and not say something, right? I mean, I'd rather it didn't get around, but we're not talking about that." She took one more cookie, this time as a reward for managing to stay reasonably calm through the tougher stuff.
Simon gave a small nod. "I..." he paused, then continued. "I agreed to do the Q&A. Because he believed that I might be needed to answer questions about my research. I hope that won't be uncomfortable for you."
"No! We got this stuff sorted out, at least for me, so I'm good. Besides, even if it did, " she shrugged, "the Q&A's important, right? And fuck, I sort of started that too with that talk with Warren so I can't turn around and worry about it now. Nah, you're good."
He nodded again. Okay. She was still sitting there. Was she expecting something else. Maybe agreement? "Good. Ah. Great, I mean."
"Okay, awesome." Lil stayed, waiting for something more from Simon until she realized that she'd let things turn awkward. This was the end as far as he was concerned and honestly, she couldn't think of anything else to say. She got up and started packing up. "So, um, thanks for talking to me. You can keep the cookies if you want."
Simon stared at the cookies and opened his mouth to refuse them...until he remembered that he didn't have the luxury of calling in for sushi or those high priced truffle fries he loved so much. No accounts, no money, no fancy take-out. If he wanted to eat at all while he was in the lab, he couldn't turn his nose up at free food, cookies or not. "Th-thank you," he finally forced himself to say. "I appreciate that."
"Hey, anytime you want stolen cookies, you know who to call." She didn't expect him to of course, but again, it was the offer that was important. Lil picked up her bag, gave him a small wave, and headed towards the door.
"Right." Stolen cookies. Great. "Uh, thanks."
no subject
Date: 2017-12-19 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-19 10:23 pm (UTC)Also, Lil definitely didn't know about the old style Playboy centerfolds because she found her dad's old collection in a box and spent some time examining them 'for the articles'. Definitely not.
no subject
Date: 2017-12-21 06:52 pm (UTC)Also, he totally CAN help you, Simon. Have some faith <3