milliways_bar | (no subject)

Earlier, the door opened to let in a patron, who took the relative quiet of the bar as an opportunity to slip through the main room unnoticed. After a check of the stables, which including looking in on all the stock and ordering a batch of supplies, he'd gone over some paperwork and his 'mail' at the bar (including the note from Will about the falcon residing in a quiet stall, which he probably should have bothered to check before coming across the bird on his own) and then headed upstairs.

When he comes down tonight, he's dressed warmly, and finds an open booth with a seat that will put his back to the wall and give him a relatively good vantage point of the room. The chill in the air and the few months he's spent out in the 'real world' are motivation plenty for old habits to flare back to life.

He places an order for a mexican hot chocolate and pulls a small notebook and pen from his pocket, and begins to write - though most of his focus is on the room around him, and not the words being inked onto the page.

[Open until I say otherwise, thought with being moved, I'd try to refresh a quieter voice...]

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Doc glances up and for a moment he thinks it's Will asking him the question, but then he realizes that no - the hair is wrong, and the eyes aren't right either, and then the accent...

"They call it 'Mexican' hot chocolate," he says. "But I have t'admit I don't see much about what's 'Mexican' about it. S'just ain't as sweet and some kinds y'can git here."

There's something reassuring about being mistaken for someone else, Milliways' reassuring,

"I might try it. The weather seems to have turned here."

He doesn't say an order aloud but a hot chocolate appears for him as well as a small glass of Scotch.

"It feels like someone's done left a window open, we got a bit of a draft goin' through the place. Lake was awful choppy tonight, too."

He eyes the suddenly-appearing drinks, then looks back at the man's face. Still trying to place him. There's an edge of upper-crust refinement that Will lacks on his features, and not nearly enough scars or stubble.

He's also a few inches shorter than Will, "Yes and there are symbols about."

One's been drawn on a coaster and Charles starts tracing it before as he looks around, scanning mentally and physically.

...okay, this guy is a little off. And Doc isn't really keen on any creepy symbols mysteriously showing up around the bar, for any reason. It can't be good.

He sips at his own drink, quietly watching the man as he looks over the bar and the patrons. Doc's thoughts wander to flashes of nightmares about the Old Kingdom, and the bone-chilling cold of the morgue they had him laid out in, the steel against his back as he was strapped to the table. This cold reminds him of that.

(He wishes he had something stronger.)

Doc's memories and the cold cause Charles to take a quick drink of his hot chocolate.

He rubs his face as none of this feels right and moves the coaster away, "I'm sorry, I think I must be coming down with something. Its probably just an unusual cold spell."

"If you're comin' down with somethin', they do have an infirmary here," he offers with a slight shrug of one shoulder. "Good folk run it. They could find somethin' to help if you're feelin' ill."

"I know, I've met Guppy and I should talk to him. I'm sorry, I'm being rude. My name's Charles Xavier,"

He offers his hand with a tired smile. Though this doesn't feel like being sick, perhaps its a particular Milliways' issue.

"Guppy's a fine physician," Doc says. "He'll help you if he can."

He shifts from his seat in the booth to take Charles' hand, giving it a firm shake. "Josiah Scurlock," he replies.

"Yes, I've probably just been working too hard."

"What exactly is it that you do, Mister Xavier?"

"A number of things, I'm a professor of genetics but at the moment I'm working with the government to help people. It's not an easy job as there are some difficult personalities involved but we're making progress."

That explains the refined edge and also the vague air of professionalism that Doc has noticed around Charles, though he tenses inwardly at the mention of working for the government, mainly because in his mind, the government rarely ever helps people and he's quite wary of anyone who works for them.

"That's got to be complicated," he says.

"It is, as my aims and those of my friends don't match exactly with the government but they provide some things that we wouldn't have on our own. Including the chance to find each other and others like us,"

Erik doesn't trust the CIA and Charles trusts some people more than others, but Cerebro is an opportunity that must be used.

"You're lucky to have the opportunity to use the resources while you can, then," he says, mainly because he has no idea (and doesn't really want to know) what Charles and his friends might be trying to get a group together for.

"Yes, we're lucky for the chance. What do you do? Can I safely assume that you're from an earlier era than myself? I'm from 1962,"

If he turns the conversation away from his work, perhaps that will make Josiah relax, he knows the government is the most trusted of organizations.

"1884," he says. "At the moment in my world I'm sort of between work," he adds. "But here, I'm on staff. I manage the stables out back. It keeps me busy."

"Ah, they're charming stables, I've walked around them,"

He learned to ride as a boy, but it was never one of his favorite things to do. Books were far more interesting or whatever ideas Raven would get.

That gets a wry smirk form Doc. "Horses ain't your thing, I'm guessin'?"

"No, not like some people I grew up with who would live in the stables if they could. I would always choose to be reading if I could, though my sister did a good job of making certain I didn't read all the time.

"It takes all types," is all Doc says, because he has no problem with people who choose literary pursuits over athletic or practical ones - sometimes he has moments where he wishes he'd had the same luxury as a boy, but there was just no way that was happening in his time and place in the universe.

"Yes, it does. A balance tends to work best when people are being and working together,"

Its part of what makes him hopeful about mutantkind, the great diversity present in known mutants.

Reaching for his mug of chocolate, he nods. "I hope your group finds what they're lookin' for," he says.

"So do I though I think we'll end up creating much of it,"

He yawns and takes a long drink.

He shrugs a bit at that. "Sometimes that's what you have t'do to get things done right," he says, before returning his attention back more towards his notebook and his poetry efforts.