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dr. stephen strange ([personal profile] rehandle) wrote2024-11-09 08:48 pm
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STRANGE


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sink: (☣ 041)

[personal profile] sink 2025-01-27 07:37 am (UTC)(link)
[ Silco knows the way those scars feel against his tongue, the neuropathic twitch of them against his own clasped fingers; they weren't the first thing to draw him to Strange, but they were where he tipped over into something less controlled than he'd like. The commonality of scarring, of holding your physical trauma so visibly on such a vital part of the body.

He's watching Stephen intently, waiting out his chewing, his amusement at knowing he has Silco hooked to reel in. That's fine. They both like to play with their food, metaphorically.

An answer finally comes, explanatory but unsatisfactory.
]

Meaning you couldn't go back to surgery. Why?

[ Dragged out of him. He serves himself some carrots, a little less gracefully than usual because he's still watching Stephen. ]

Don't try and tell me there's a cost. You use magic too flippantly for that.
sink: (☣ 065)

[personal profile] sink 2025-01-27 11:58 am (UTC)(link)
[ Could Stephen consider not simply throwing out information that clearly has a wealth of story attached to it (or at the very least, a two hour film)? Silco's attention sharpens, and then he forces himself not to chase, to stay on the philosophy rather than demand more action/adventure. ]

And you feel healing your hands fully would stop you from being able to serve that higher calling.

[ He's chewing over the words rather than the food, considering what he's been told about the situation, dismissing that there is some — magical shortage, where spending his resources on the selfishness of his physicality would leave him less to offer as saviour.

His tongue touches the inside of his cheek, where he can feel the lower tip of his scarring, eased by the ReSculpt but still keloid.
]

No, you want the reminder. That what feels like the worst thing to ever happen can really just be the turning point to something better.

[ Barely even pretending to eat his food now, avid. ]
sink: (☣ 025)

[personal profile] sink 2025-01-27 01:28 pm (UTC)(link)
And who were you?

[ Since if ever there was a time for reminiscing on the state of selves past, selves young and left in the dust, it's been this week. ]
sink: (⟡ 111)

[personal profile] sink 2025-01-27 01:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Ah.

[ Mm. A jump of the brows, a twitch of the lips, glancing away; he's picked up that Stephen likes to show off. It hardly bothers him, he finds it charming, but he can see how perhaps, younger and arrogant at the top of his field, it could have been... detrimental. Immature.

Still. The idea that he doesn't try to impress... Silco returns pointedly to cutting up his steak, lashes briefly low.
]
sink: (⟡ 116)

[personal profile] sink 2025-01-27 02:09 pm (UTC)(link)
I can imagine. That's all.

[ Fighting his own smile, murdering his steak. Thinking about alternate applications for that drive to impress. ]

I'm very impressed you henceforth decided to live a life of humble modesty.
sink: (⟡ 102)

[personal profile] sink 2025-01-27 02:35 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Silco's own smile breaks slowly over his face. He tips a shoulder up, not particularly thankful. ]

I like that you know your worth.

[ At a conference or otherwise. They're circling back around to what they actually should be talking about, now, but it feels easier than he expected. Playful. He doesn't even try to redirect into discussion of the food, though there is a moment here where he tries the gammon and pineapple and wrinkles his nose in light bemusement, having not expected fruit. ]
sink: (☣ 050)

[personal profile] sink 2025-01-27 03:53 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Silco is coming to terms with the pineapple; he doesn't dislike it, but the presence of sweetness in the meal has been startling enough to temporarily confuse his preferences. The carrots are sweet too, but in a different way, artificial and sticky and expected. He puts the pineapple to the side, to be reattempted later; refreshes his palate with a sip of wine; all of this allowing him to seem stoic in the face of conversation turned confessional. But fllirting has its own unexpected sweetness, too.

He puts the glass down, thumbing the stem a moment.
]

I've thought about you quite a lot these last few days. Mostly in the context of my own history with these kinds of things. Which, I suppose is inevitable, given the mirror becomes a window to the past.

[ But he's digressing. Glancing eye contact, trying to keep himself on track. To actually say something meaningful and honest so Stephen can understand a little better what he's getting himself into, even if Silco is growing concerned that the moment he's seen in any real clarity, this enjoyable flirtation will end. ]

Understand that aside from my daughter my relationships for the past fifteen years have been — transactional, in one way or another. And before that was something ill-defined.
sink: (☣ 005)

[personal profile] sink 2025-01-27 07:14 pm (UTC)(link)
Yes.

[ One simple word made burningly earnest, silken voice gone rough on it.

He hadn't known, of course, that he was starving himself, had been very deliberate about seeing to the distraction of his needs with ruthless efficiency. But "intimacy with a man his own age" hadn't been on the list.

There's more in him but he doesn't really know how to talk about it without the scaffolding of a negotiation.
]

It does mean I can be, I suppose, defensive. Of my autonomy, of the vulnerability that passion requires of me.

[ Weakness, he'd called it, and he makes Stephen fight for every inch of it, but that's ultimately what it is to him, the soft underbelly, the ruinously exploitable desires, the loss of total control. Silco eyes his potatoes, a little tense. ]
sink: (⟡ 101)

[personal profile] sink 2025-01-28 04:47 am (UTC)(link)
[ This is the main difference, Silco thinks, between the two of them: Stephen is good. He really means that, Silco can see it, studying him carefully, that he wouldn't exploit Silco's avaricious hunger at being made to come apart. And it's true enough that Stephen hasn't presumed anything about him from Silco kneeling in the bathroom to suck him off, or crawling drunk and slutty over the bar to him. There's safe harbour in this, beyond anything he's had before.

He exhales a small slow breath.
]

I trust you.

[ Mostly. When he's rational enough for trust, when trauma doesn't slap that decision from his hands. It's not the first time he's felt it, but somehow it's easy to share here, mild-mannered, almost quiet, in between another bite of steak. He's almost finished his plate, and he's not sure what he's going to do with himself then, how to distract his hands and eyes. ]

That doesn't mean I'm going to make it easy for you. I think it's better when we're both playing to win.

[ Sexually, anyway. This domestication, deeply held truths about himself shared over a candle-lit dinner, this is much less of a battle. If there was still a chance he could return home to Zaun he'd be reluctant, but that death freed him from certain responsibilities. Now there's only Jinx — and, newly, this.

He's flushing again. Maybe he can blame the wine.
]
sink: (☣ 063)

[personal profile] sink 2025-01-28 11:06 am (UTC)(link)
[ Silco has a manipulators acute awareness of how power flows — politically, sexually, conversationally. Stephen stutters, tenses a little, and it shifts the direction of what they're doing. Silco's defenses (around research, autonomy, weakness, sex) were being, if not attacked then softened.

And now they're not.

He puts his fork down with a careful click, sits back in his chair rather than leaning in. Dabs his mouth with his napkin, letting Stephen stutter through what he's trying to say, considering the spaces of what he doesn't, words swerved. It's fine, he finds that as much a game as the rest of it.

He resists the urge to point out that nobody's here on purpose. Not the point.
]

The place with 'a lot of sex'.

[ Tenderness you took where you could get it. He can imagine where this is going, or at least the shape of it. Regrets doing it on the table rather than with the advantage of touch and teeth to stop Stephen stepping so carefully. Though Silco isn't any less deliberate. ]

Will you tell me about it?
sink: (☣ 003)

[personal profile] sink 2025-01-28 11:52 am (UTC)(link)
[ Silco doesn't particularly catch the plurality simply because it doesn't strike him as odd. Piltover has monogamy, of course, it's how they solidify their power, by creating houses and passing wealth and title down to their offspring. But it's not the same in the undercity.

No, what strikes him is the usual need: to be the best. The most valued, of many. But it's without particular jealousy. They've known each other a month or two, things are only newly unfolding between them. Silco knows that his history, with so few people allowed in it, is not the norm.
]

All right.

[ He props his chin in his hand, fingers covering his mouth. Considers his emotional response: it doesn't quite correspond to that logic. The drugs — the ReSculpt — does tend to twist the psyche towards insecurity. Irritating. He ignores it; if it bothers him once the withdrawals are past he'll revisit the topic. ]

My ex showed up, as it happens, so I do take your point.

[ Sometimes the world simply shifts on its axis and takes the best laid plans with it. ]
sink: (☣ 003)

[personal profile] sink 2025-01-28 12:18 pm (UTC)(link)
Vander.

[ There's a yes in his tone, the tip of his head. Silco at least seems unperturbed. Death doesn't stick here, so he can't just quietly make the problem go away, but he's got it handled. ]

He's agreed to a — truce. For Jinx's sake. Missed her whole teens and still considers himself her father. It's touching, really.

[ Silco does not seem touched.

He spears the pineapple he set aside with a fork and bites into it, considering the flavour more seriously now that it's not such a surprise.
]
sink: (☣ 006)

[personal profile] sink 2025-01-28 01:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Her parents were our best friends, once. They died when she was four, in our attempted revolution. And our relationship with them.

[ Those last words dry, bitter. Pain too old to really hurt anymore.

He finishes the pineapple, letting the silence hang for a moment. Just when it seems he mightn't be going to say more, and they can end this digression.
]

He blamed my explosives. Gave up on our dream. Co-operated with Piltover enforcers to bring the survivors to heel. Everyone returned to their miserable lives. I was furious, at the time, but I understand it better now. He would rather Jinx and her older sister live to experience a hard world than lose them fighting for a better one.

[ He'd made the same choice in the end. Is there anything so undoing as a daughter? ]

But no, we never co-parented. So I imagine this will be a learning experience for us all. But we weren't talking about my past.

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