milliways_bar | (no subject)

[OOC: Ack! I'm so sorry -- I missed this EP last night. Do you still want a thread, and if so, is it okay if I tag in tonight? :)]

[OOC: Yes, I still want a thread, tag whenever you like =)]

Sylar's seated at a table not far away, absently nursing a mug of coffee. His attention's been drifting over the crowd of patrons.

"Been," because as soon as he notices Raspberry, he's watching her to the exclusion of all else.

When Raspberry sees Sylar she beams and waves.

"Hi Nathan! Long time no see! What's up?"

And she knows Nathan.

Sylar lifts his chin with an easy, practiced smile, nodding a greeting. "It has been a while," he agrees genially. "How've you been, Raspberry?"

"I've been great." She gives 'Nathan' a thumbs-up, grinning. "Did I mention I'm a whore now?" This news is delivered as though it is the best thing that has ever happened to her, ever.

Beat.

A rather long beat.

Calmly, "I don't think that came up in our last conversation, no."

(Oh, yes, he thinks dryly. How could he have ever managed to -- well, not forget, but ignore the memories of this one.)

"Yeah, well, best career move I ever made, let me tell ya." Raz grins brightly. "Sorry for hitting on you during the whole amnesia thing, by the way. I didn't remember you were married. Obviously."

He dismisses this with a chuckle and a wave of his hand, even while thinking, amnesia thing, that means it couldn't have been more than a couple of weeks here --

"No harm done," he tells her. "It wasn't as if I remembered either, was it?"

"Well, yeah, but you were this close to being number three on the 'dudes at Milliways who cheat on their women with me' list. Whatever, though. It's all good if you ain't mad."

"Would other people be?"

He sounds genuinely curious.

"About something they couldn't control that way?"

And here we run into Raspberry's perennial inability to understand things.

"Huhwhat?"

Patiently, "The amnesia was out of people's control. Wasn't it? They're blameless in their actions. I just find that strange, that people would be angry at you for something that wasn't your fault."

This is a statement he would never be able to make back home. There are too many who believe that abilities can't be controlled in some way.

(It amuses him, even today, to find Sylar sympathizers, the ones who are so convinced that killing millions in a single violent act wasn't his fault.)

"Oh!"

The lightbulb going on over her head is very nearly visible.

"Huh. Nah, I guess they wouldn't be." Pause. "...okay, I know a guy who probably would, but that's just 'cause he's an asshole."

"Who's that?"

He tilts his head, curious.

"Draco Malfoy." She shakes her head, looking highly annoyed. "He blamed me for the fact that he didn't tell me he had a girlfriend before he fucked me. I'm pretty sure he'd blame me again if he did the same thing while both of us had memory loss."

"Sounds as if that's his problem to worry about, not yours." Mildly.

Mild enough, almost, to be just this side of disinterested.

"...Is something up?" she asks Nathan, staring. "You're usually..." A vague wave of a hand. "More cheerful." Not more interested in Raspberry, no. Never that.

"Hm? Oh, no," he says with a shrug and a genial, practiced smile. "I've just had a long couple of days."

Years, really. But there's no need to mention that.

It's not quite the same genial, practiced smile she's used to. But it's close enough.

"Sorry to hear that, man. Anything I can do to help?"

He shakes his head. "It's mostly just issues on the outside. You know how it is." Dryly, before he pauses to take a sip of his coffee. Once he's swallowed: "But thank you. It's appreciated."

"I don't, actually. I've been Bound since I got here. Fuck, I've been in Milliways most of my life now." She chuckles. "I gotta say, given a choice between staying here whorin' it up and going home to get my ass kicked, I'm startin' to like the first one better."

Sylar's eyebrows go up. Even in this, where his surprise is evident, it's tightly reigned in, kept to a minimum.

"I wasn't aware of that," he says. A brief, considering pause. "Still. I wouldn't want to be trapped here for that long. The few times I've been Bound were more than enough."

"Well, I do miss my friends," she admits. "But I got some new ones here, so it ain't all that bad."

A nod.

"And fewer people who, uh." A short, soft chuckle. "Want to kick your ass?"

Brightly, "And more people who want to fuck it!"

Eyebrows going even higher, Sylar just presses one fingertip to the space between his eyebrows, closes his eyes for a moment, and takes another sip of coffee.

Utterly without inflection, "Of course."

Raz will just be cackling now.

Apparently even when he's actually Sylar, Nathan's reactions to her lewdness are hysterically funny.

In response, all she gets is a steady, level look. His eyebrows stay fixed where they are.

Sylar does remember to blink, eventually, but only after the stare goes on for several seconds longer than it should.

Even through the cackling, that gets noticed.

She shakes her head and gives him a look composed of three parts weirded-out to four parts sarcastic.

"Dude. That's just creepy."

Sylar, on the other hand, doesn't seem concerned at all.

"I thought you would've gotten used to being stared at by now," he remarks, lightly.

It might be possible to pass it off as a joke. Possibly not.

"Yeah, but not by you," she insists, somewhat teasingly. "You're married. And that wasn't even a creepy you're-hot stare, it was a creepy I'm-batshit-insane-and-I-forgot-to-blink stare."

"Well." There is a very precise amount of wryness in his tone, just enough to convince and no more. "I did mention that it's been a long few days. I'm sorry."

"Okay," says Raz with a shrug and a half-smile. "Whatever, dude. Take care of yourself, okay? Get some sleep, drink some coffee, have really great sex, whatever you do to make yourself feel better when everything's gone to shit. You look like you need it."

One side of his mouth lifts into a slight half-smile. "I will. Thank you."

And there it is again: the stare that lingers a little too long before Sylar remembers himself -- remembers that Nathan Petrelli cannot hear the crackling, minute explosions shifting inside Raz's body, or see the patterns that twist in ways utterly unlike anyone else in the bar -- and returns his gaze to his coffee.

Perfunctory, polite: "And you do the same."

Two thumbs up, and a grin that makes asking which of the three choices she's going to go for entirely superfluous.

"I got it covered, buddy."