Logs:Trouble

Trouble
Dramatis Personae Desi, Lucien	2019-05-31 "{If you were really fighting me, I'd have lost already.}" (Set just after getting Desi out of jail.)
Location <NYC> Tick-Tock - Greenwich Village
The quiet sound of soft music and softly running water greets the entrants to this tea house, playing from speakers hidden and trickling waterfalls cascading down the rocky fountains by the entryway. The ambiance here is subdued, a quiet escape from the bustle and noise of the city, focused on only one thing: tea. Tea of very good quality. They serve it in over eighty varieties, black and white, green and oolong, rooibos and herbals and mate, flavored and straight up. The seating here comes on cushions or kneeling chairs around low tables, the decorations in earth tones, and the knowledgeable wait staff is always helpful with a recommendation or a snack suggestion to pair with your drink. Behind the long counter along one side is an entire wall of bins of loose-leaf teas, available for purchase by weight. The efforts of the jail support crew have been commendable, keeping all-night vigil in expectation of the detainees release, waiting at the jailhouse with supplies and moral support when they have eventually (despite the city's threats to charge them all and continue holding them) been released without charges. Still. All the best intentions and moral support in the world cannot fill in for /some/ things. A proper hot meal, a /fresh/ brewed pot of tea. Some peace and quiet. It's this last that Lucien has been nurturing, allowing it to stretch long and gentle between them. Through the first plates that come out, through the slow calm ritual of pouring the tea. Through the next round of small foods that come out. Kneeling on a cushion in impeccably tailored pale grey seersucker suit, now he just cradles his latest cup of tea carefully in his hands. Watches his sister through the veil of rising steam, his bright green eyes half-closed but no less keenly attentive for it. Kneeling across from Lucien, Desi keeps her posture studiously upright, assisted by a tightly cinched green corset over a gauzy purple tunic, her brown skirt pooling around her. Her clothes are only a touch rumpled, her hair neatly combed and braided, her makeup freshly applied, though the eating did fade her nude-pink lipstick a bit. She sips her tea carefully now, inhaling as she swallows. When she looks up at Lucien, her eyes take almost a full second to focus on him properly. "{Thank you, for all this,}" she murmurs quietly, her French colored with a Quebecois accent. "{We might have gone straight home.}" Lucien pulls in a slow breath, his head inclining slightly. "{We might have.}" He takes a small sip, sets his cup down. Leans forward to quietly transfer a small serving of seared citrus-glazed tuna to Desi's plate. "{Ought we to have?}" The question is soft, no particular weight given to the words. Just a thoughtful upward flick of his eyes to look from the plate back to his sister. Desi looks down the tuna. Picks up her fork, but does not put it to use just yet. "{They'll be fretting,}" she says. Then, at a considerable delay. "{I suppose we needn't. Just yet.}" She spears the tuna delicately and eats it, eyes fluttering shut. Her posture sways, very slightly. Her breathing grows just a little faster. When her eyes finally open again, her pupils have dilated visibly, making her bright eyes look eerily dark. "{They have reason.}" Lucien takes some of the tuna for himself, setting it down neatly on his plate. He doesn't pick up his own fork. "{And we have time.}" His fingers twitch -- just slightly -- where they rest against the table. He shifts his hand, lacing fingers together and watching Desi quietly. "{I will see to it that the fretting stays contained until after you have had a chance to nap.}" "{I am entirely unharmed.}" Desi picks her tea up and drinks from it. "{Alas that I cannot say the same for Alice. Or the others who were injured.}" She presses her hands against the edge of the table, trying not to look /too/ much like she is holding on for balance. "{Or killed.}" Her eyes drop to her half-drunk tea, her shoulder hunching in tight. "{Forgive me.}" She takes a deep breath, which comes out with a shiver she can't quite disguise. "{You are uninjured,}" Lucien replies mildly, "{there is a difference.}" He unlaces his fingers, reaches across the small table to rest a hand lightly over one of Desi's. "{This past day would have been much to deal with even at the best of times, and the pressure you have been under --}" His lips compress faintly. "{You ought not be asking /my/ forgiveness. It should not have taken jail for me to see you to some proper food and decent rest.}" Desi shakes her head, but does not draw back from Lucien's touch. Contact with her nervous system comes with an unpleasant jolt of exhaustion so keen that it registers as actual pain. Past this, a massive build-up of stress and anxiety, a desperate need for physical contact, and a very tenuous restraint on her telepathy that feels less like /control/ and more like holding her breath. "{I was hardly in jail for twelve hours,}" her retort comes out faint and uneven. "{In any event, I am perfectly capable of seeing /myself/ to food and rest. You...}" She trails off, shutting her eyes tightly to concentrate--her telepathy strains reflexively for Lucien, and she struggles to smooth it back down into quiescence. Lucien takes over easily where Desi struggles, his own mind curling outward to coil gently around her psionic impulses, not /stifle/ them so much as smooth them into less of a tumult. The trickle of soothing that comes with this to ease the edges of her exhaustion and stress, lighten some of the mental load, is a gentle and gradual thing. "{I have no doubt you are capable of it,}" Lucien agrees. "{But /doing/ it is another matter entirely. Hypothetical rest only gets you so far.}" Desi sags just a little against the table when Lucien takes over managing her unruly power, but the relief she /doesn't/ show outwardly is far more profound. Parts of her nervous system are actually beginning to shut down, edging her toward sleeve even while she sits stubbornly upright. "{I will,}" she insists. "{You needn't trouble yourself so. You've battles enough to fight of your own.}" Then, much more quietly, "{You /all/ do. And I ought to do more to support /you./}" "{Goodness, but yes, I've more than plenty.}" Lucien's agreement comes with a lift of eyebrows, a quiet breath of soft laughter -- barely audible but /tangible/ in the thread of warmth that ripples out through Desi. "{And it would be so much the simpler for me if fighting my own family for the privilege of caring for them were not among them.}" He picks up his fork, spears his fish. His mind continues the quiet work of bolstering his sister's, shoring up the places it is ragged and fraying. "{We are well prepared for the fight, though. If you insist on running yourself to the point of collapse, we will be there to pick up the pieces, but. It would be better for your health and ours if perhaps you rethought your approach some before it got there.}" Desi's soft laughter is isn't quite as warm as Lucien's; there's something faint and wan in it. "{If you were really fighting me, I'd have lost already.}" She slowly collects herself as her brother puts her nervous system back into some semblance of functioning order. "{I don't have to do that,}" she says, finally. "{Only...I'm not so sure how to rethink it.}" Lucien takes his time chewing over the morsel of fish. "{I'm afraid for that I do not have one singular clear answer. I suspect that the ways I elect to organize my life are not, largely, applicable to most other people.}" His thumb rubs against the handle of his fork, a small furrow between his brows. "{I imagine that it could not hurt to carve out enough time for rest, and proper meals. Sorting through your schedule might be easier when you are not running so close to empty.}" "{I know I do not have your...}" Desi spends almost a full second searching for the proper word. "{...advantages in that. For all the bravado, I /do/ try to eat and sleep.}" From beneath all her weariness, a slow horror creeps up, overtaken almost immediately by a rush of anxiety, sharp and aimless. "{Those things do not come easily, of late.}" "No." Lucien's voice is soft, a brief tension tightening his jaw. "{We should discuss ways to ease some of the daily load you have been juggling. It will not be a solution, but -- perhaps some breathing room in which to work towards one.}" Desi nods, the motion jerky and tight. "{I'm sorry I've turned out so much trouble.}" Her hand turns over beneath Lucien's to clasp his. "{I had meant to do just the opposite.}" But even so there's an easing inside her now, and though the fear and anxiety do not /recede/, exactly, they seem less suffocating. "{Can it wait, though?}" Her cavalier tone sounds only a /bit/ forced. "{Until I've learned, at long last, what alcohol tastes like?}" "{Trouble. Mmm. What sort of Tessier would you even /be/ if you were not giving us cause to fret? I fear none of us would know what to do with ourselves if we all sorted our problems out at once.}" Lucien's hand tightens against Desi's. The curl of his smile is small. "{To help your discovery along I've been keeping a choice Condrieu La Doriane in the cellar. Alas that we have no prior history to predict if it shall meet with your approval. I expect the rest can wait until after we find out.}"