You were one of my first and finest failures, Jason, but I think you have been surpassed.

I am very tired.




This is a bar. What bar it is is not really important, beyond that it is not precisely a usual bar, or at least, a usual bar where one might think to come across a Talhurst. Few bars are truly quiet on Saturday night late, and this one is no exception to that general rule. There is drunken singing and carousing elsewhere in the bar, and loud music of the youthful pop rock variety to clash with it, and a lot of young women of the college crowd who are certainly underdressed for October.

But this bar also does contain a Talhurst. He forms a small pocket of quiet, through the judicious use of the blanding influence of his mutation; a solitary island at one end of the glossy black bar-counter, lingering over a whiskey of indifferent quality. He is a black cloud of mood and clothing. And he is not nearly drunk. His fingers form an imperfect roof of interlaced hands over the top of the glass, and he leans on his elbows, and pretends at contemplation.

Out of the mess and jumble that is youthful hormones and energy, there is always the spoilsport, even without aid of pheremones. Jason, undisguised, quite visible, and undrunk, has been threading in and out of the crowds for the past half hour without interest. It is just as he's decided to affect a cigarette as an accessory that he backs into the bland island of Percy. He does not notice the blanding. He does notice the general quiet, and as he turns toward the bar, he does notice the Percy. His reaction is initially simple; he raises his eyebrows the better part of the distance to his hairline.

Head tipped slightly down and frown aimed toward the glass, Percy does not immediately notice the emergence of a Jason from the general crowd of (annoying) youngsters. His thumb slides up and down the side of the glass, and his frown continues to crease a furrow in his brow.

"Hah," Jason breathes out in a snort. He snaps away his cigarette and soft-treads his way toward Percy. Or to the quiet seat next to him, perhaps.

It has been some time since anyone has ventured into the quiet bubble that he has made his own; the pressure of his mutation has been largely lifted, leaving only the quiet subdual that is the primary thread of his own mood. It draws his attention on the slow slide of his gaze, and then he lifts his chin, eyes narrowing in startlement. "Fuck," is maybe not the most pleasant greeting that Jason has ever received.

"I think not," Jason says, his tone measured, purified of all amusement or much of anything. He is a sensitive creature, and his mood has been rather subdued regardless. He stops short of actually taking the empty seat. Not there yet. He folds his arms instead. "You're a long way from your usual frolicking grounds."

"And you? Is this where you frolic?" Percy drags his gaze back away from his old friend to, perhaps, an older one. That is, the whiskey glass. He circles its mouth with the tip of his forefinger.

"I don't do much actual frolicking. But my tastes are a bit more plebian, yes." Jason unfolds his arms and, uninvited as usual, takes the empty seat. His arm fold is now a rest of elbows on the bar. "I'd think you'd have your own private bar."

"I do. It's called my apartment." Percy turns his glass slowly on the bar, watching as the light reflects differently off the dark gold liquid. "Hello, Jason."

"Drinking at home versus drinking alone in a dive. Well! You have me now." Jason's lips pull back from his teeth in a not quite grin. Not enough enthusiasm for that. "Hello, Percy."

"I cannot contain my joy." Percy does not actually seem particularly inclined to /drink/ the whiskey. He slants a sidelong look at Jason along the bar, and breathes out in a low snort.

"Really? You're doing it very well." Jason slants a sidelong look to sidelong look and links his fingers under his chin. "And you're very lucid. You'll be a teetotaller like me yet."

"Oh, yes." Percy straightens a little from his slouch, and leans his elbows against the bar. "Teetotalling. There is not much point to drinking."

"It can be very dangerous after all. Especially when you are a psychoactive drug in and of your sweet self," Jason says, his subdued manner driving his tone down to a scarce-more-than-whispered undertone. "So how are you?"

"Is that bothering you?" Percy glances at him with the flicker of a slight smile. The drape of chemistry lifts, chased loose by the burned off counteragent. He leans his head against the splay of fingers, thumb and first finger leaned against jaw and cheek, and rolls a dark look at Jason. "Let's not talk about me," he says, faux-sweet. "How are you?"

"Is what?" Jason asks, and his artificial calm lifts to be a nervy not-quite calm instead. "Oh. Well." Jason slides one hand from under his chin and flicks it. "I haven't much to talk about. I'm fine."

"How nice." Percy's subdual has not dissipated with the artificial vanishment of the aura, and the twist of his mouth is wry.

"Mm hmm." Jason slips his hand back under his chin. "I am much as I normally am, barring attempting not to be crazy. You, however, seem to be quite in a state. I'm sorry," he segues so apologetically. "I'm talking about you. It's not every day I find a Talhurst in the dredges."

"I am old and miserable," Percy says, with a note of brisk, false cheer. He drums the fingertips of his free hand on the bar. "Thereby not worth discussing. How is attempting not to be crazy working out for you?"

"You're not that old. Miserable, maybe." It is Jason's turn to be briefly, falsely bright. "And worth discussing. Me, it works out most days. Unless I use psychoactive drugs. Then it does not." He lifts his chin and stretches his head back a fraction before dropping it again. "I have been positively boring, in fact."

"Boring Jason." Percy rubs at an eye with his finger and then drops his hand back to the counter again. "What a strange thought. Just can't stay away from the psychoactive drugs, huh?" He does not quite manage the leer; too depressed. He picks up the glass, and looks at it. Then he puts it down again.

"Sometimes, I bore myself. Then what can you do?" Jason's hands grow weary of touching each other, so he unclasps them and pulls a cigarette from his front pocket. Which he lights with the power of ennui (well, a fake lighter for a fake cigarette, really). "You know, if you need some diversion, there /are/ a thousand options."

"It may be morbid curiosity that leads me to ask," Percy says, tapping his thumbs together over the undrunk whiskey. "That wasn't a come-on, was it?"

"Tch. I am straight as an arrow. I did it for Sabby sometimes. For some others now." Jason takes a non-drag and puffs out some non-smoke. "I don't sleep with these people. But, hey, I'm really freaking good at diversions. It's like going to Vegas without the expense for the plane." This is all delivered rather flat.

"Rather a dangerous path to walk, don't you think? You or I could either of us become an addiction. Besides, I grow weary of excitement. Too much stimulus; one must simply withdraw." Percy gestures with a curving hand, indicating the makeshift shelter of his quiet, chemical bubble -- now dissipated, but still nominally intact, in that they remain unbothered. "To one's corner. The next step is the drunken stupor, but I find I lack the motivation."

"So we could. But there are worse addictions." Jason gestures his cigarette toward the whiskey. "Perhaps or perhaps not. You choose an unusual corner. Protecting yourself with isolation while they," and now the cigarette jerks toward the college kids, "mill around outside your aquarium. And you stay sober. In lieu of getting drunk, what, exactly, were you going to do?'"

"Sit here, I suppose." Percy sits up a little straighter, and rolls his shoulders, working some stiffness or other out of his neck and spine, contributory to a shrug. "I usually spend the weekend holed up in my home. So today I went out to watch them. Or ignore them. You know. Scenery. Change of scenery."

"Which does not appear to be working. I'd suggest anti-depressants, as you don't seem to have my drug issues, but the scenery would still be loud, inane, and mostly bored. They," Jason sticks the cigarette back in his mouth, "probably aren't feeling much better than you. Life sucks for everyone. Just a matter of degree." At this bit of pontification, Jason glances back, direct, at Percy. "And what happens when you go home?"

"I sit alone in the dark." Percy's laugh is low and dark, edged slightly bitter. He dips a fingertip into the whiskey, and then slips it past his lips, sucking the alcohol off and then dropping his hand to the bar with an outward turn of fingers. "What happens when you go home?"

"I design castles." Jason shrugs and the smoke comes as a sickly trickle from the end of his cigarette. "And then they go away. Essentially the same thing, I suppose."

"You should go to Europe," Percy says, in a musing tone. He eyes Jason's cigarette a moment, and then glances away, nudging at his glass with a sort of meager interest. "--see some castles. Throw a rock, hit a castle."

"Maybe. I'll never, however, really build a castle. So Hollywood sets and storybook illustrations will do. You should take up painting," Jason quite ends up countering.

"I think that there are parts of Bavaria that you would enjoy." Percy nudges the glass a little further away from himself. "Venice. Marseilles. Paris is overrated. Jason on the Riviera; there's a thought. I don't draw very well," he adds, actually coming close to answering this suggestion. "Stick figures. Entertaining ones. I did write a poem once."

"The climate is supposed to be excellent," Jason muses, and drags the cigarette from his mouth to mash it into the ash tray (already grody). "Drawing is theraputic. Doesn't have to be good. And poetry works. Hell if I know what's eating you, but I'd get it out."

"Art is only a solution if your heart is in it." Percy looks sour and drags the glass back over to him, drawing it close to his chest. Like a security blanket. He sniffs it, and makes a face. "Mine is not, really."

"Is there anything your heart would be in?" Jason brushes his fingers against the side of the bar.

"It's funny, running into you," Percy says, glancing along at him and curling his hand into a fist, resting knuckles against his cheek. "Almost a kind of cyclic." He raises his eyebrows and adds, "I am pretty sure I don't have to tell you who you'd best steer clear of. You've earned some dangerous antipathies that I don't much envy."

"The last time I ran into Emma Frost, she destroyed my control over my powers. Magneto has no love for me. I know." Jason's wandering hand hooks itself under the bar. "You haven't answered my question."

"You were always sharp." Percy presses the palm of his other hand to his eye and smiles at him, one-eyed.

"Not terribly. But I am curious." Jason, in constrast to Percy's lean, has gone taut, the nervy-not calm undissapated. Not fear. Anticipation.

"I don't know the answer." Percy laughs, and drops his hand again. There is more voice and little breath to his laughter. "It's very tired. I don't think I have much use left in it, really. Stupid old thing."

Jason starts to say something, and then stops. His thumb, tauter than the rest of his bar-hooked hand, goes white with tension. Thinking tension. A line creases between Jason's now pulled-in brows and he exhales. "Well, that's no good, is it? A big blow or too many little blows and functioning at all seems purposeless, huh?"

"Just one blow is all it takes when it's hard enough, in fact." Percy snorts. "With respect, old friend, what do you care?" He straightens again, palms pressed to the edge of the counter, and gives Jason a look edged sour and dark. "Gauging my vulnerability?"

"Vulnerable people are hot. If I weren't straight," Jason flippantly demurs even in the face of dark, but swiftly turns serious again. His grip on the bar does not ease. "Wasn't so many months ago you were /fiercely/ passionate about what you were doing and who you were. Now, you're starting to sound like me. Which is not, in fact, encouraging."

"Oh," Percy says, and shakes his head on the slow curve of a smile. "This isn't that, hardly at all. I'm still doing what I'm doing, and I'm still proud of the work." He scruffs fingertips through his hair and lets his gaze fall away again. Hmmmph. "It is only /personally/ that I am a failure."

"Mm mmm." Jason gives his head a single, sharp shake. "Metaphorically speaking, the heart is the center of passion, and yours is so worn out that even a perfectly mundane passion for whiskey has no place, right? Personal affects work, /unless/," Jason finally unlatches his hand so that he may hook it back under his chin instead, "this is all about being dumped, in which case it is usually temporary. So I hear."

"Fuck you." Percy is succinct. He pushes his glass first one way, and then the other way.

"So it /is/ about being dumped." Jason has just enough sense to make this thoughtful and at least tonefully respectful. He examines the side of Percy's head.

"Not really." Percy pushes his glass further the other way, towards the end of the bar. Perhaps he will knock it off and make a mess. Maybe not. "Being dumped implies a sort of passivity that doesn't really apply here."

"So you did the dumping," Jason infers and scoots his elbow closer to the center of the bar. "I'm not experienced. Only woman I ever actively dumped betrayed me in a quite literal fashion first. That hurt. Perhaps not in the same way. Long-term relationship, right?"

"Years." Percy turns slightly on the barstool, studying Jason contemplatively. "You were murked up in the beginning, sort of. Not really. Imagining this was ever simple is ridiculous," he adds, flattening his hands over the dark surface of the counter. "There was no betrayal. No explosive, tragic doom. Just a long, slow, complete collapse. We pretended really hard it wasn't there for awhile. But well -- you know how well /that/ works."

"Years. Really. I didn't you were--" And Jason . . . pauses. "I don't know how well that works. I don't usually persist enough to drift. But I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you loved someone who didn't explode, betray, or what have you, and it still didn't work."

Percy does not say anything for a moment, and runs his thumb over the mouth of the glass, and then closes his eyes. His mouth twitches at one corner. He says, quietly, "Thank you, Jason."

Jason nods, his expression blankening. He looks away. And then he looks back, abrupt. "Was it /Bahir/? /Seriously/?"

Percy eyes him askance a moment.

"Sorry." Jason looks back away, almost as abruptly.

"I have no idea what to make of your reaction, but it is probably annoying," Percy says, and snorts into a laugh. The heels of his hands press against the edge of the bar, and he shifts back slightly on the stool.

"I didn't even know he was /gay/," Jason mutters.

"Well." Percy reaches up and flicks a finger against one of his earrings. "He doesn't exactly advertise."

Jason lets out a brief snigger and glances at Percy's earring flick. And away. "Yeah, I suppose not. Is Adel gay, too?"

"Nope." Percy tips his head slightly. "I don't think he's very picky, but he does generally require female parts."

"Just double-checking. Now /I/ need a drink." Jason, however, does not order. He is back to clasping his hands. "Well. Enough of that sidetrack, hmm?"

"I might go home," Percy says, although he doesn't actually get up. "Our lives are sort of bizarre."

"Me too." Instead, Jason ducks his head and barks out a humorless laugh. "You're right, of course."

Percy finally picks up the whiskey, and drinks it. Too quickly. This is probably significant in some way, or else he was just tired of looking at it. His voice rough, he adds, "Really."

"Really." And now that Percy is drinking, Jason dares a direct observation of him again. Almost direct. "There's your passion. That whiskey will never sit evaporating on a bar again."

"Uh-huh." Percy laughs, low and yet rough, and rubs his eyes. Then he pushes himself up to his feet in a slow, syrupy unfolding of his limbs. He drops a hand on Jason's shoulder, and then turns away and tucks his thumbs in his pockets instead. "You're the best friend I have in the world tonight, Wyngarde," he says. "Isn't that nice? Let's say good night before I propose marriage."

Jason stiffens at the touch, but he stretches it away almost as if it were a natural extension of the tension. And he stands himself, propping elbows on the bar and hefting his body upright as if he were drunk. "Heh. I don't even know how to respond to that. Thanks? Good night? Find a better best friend?"

"Yeah," is Percy's reply to that. He ducks his head, shakes it once, and then shuffles off to pay for the solitary drink that has been his excuse for occupying the bar for a sizeable portion of the evening. "Take care of yourself. Don't do anything too dumb to survive."

"Don't intend to. Good night. I--" But Jason cuts himself off with a head-shake of his own and pushes away from the bar. "Good night."

"Good night," Percy agrees. It is a slow, ambling stride that takes him out of the bar and into the dark.

Jason lingers in the empty space left for a moment, and then vanishes into the thinning crowds.

Percy and Jason meet over a drink. Well. Sorta.