He should look at her then, some small desperate part of him thinks. Raise his eyes and meet hers, allow himself to be a hard immovable sort of wall. So bloody what if she says no? She may technically be his boss, but after this long of cleaning up the messes she's left he's due a bit of getting his way.
Instead he continues to flip pages, thumb trailing over marks in the margins and washed out black and white photos of lonely deserts. "Suppose I'd cross that bridge when I came to it then."
Call it an attempt at reclaiming something too far gone to be resurrected. Grasping at straws through memories eroded by sessions spent with a needle in her arm. With Talbot's voice no more than a few inches off though it seemed repulsively close and exceedingly distant all at once. Copper and heat and the sting of bright, bright lights.
Charlie's refusal isn't a catalyst or a brick wall, isn't something that ought to be offensive to her.
Still, she takes it personally. As if evidence itself is the cancer, the cause. "Am I so unappealing to you that you'd rather work than sit in with me?"
It's a smile he doesn't see with his head still bowed, still thumbing through the pages of the book. There's loose paper tucked into the pages - notes for something that he can't quite puzzle out and for a moment the niggling itch of something like recognition scratching at the back of his head is more compelling than the question asked through the narrow gap between her top and bottom teeth. T.E. Lawrence is scribbled on a scrap of a photocopy. How absurd.
But he does glance up eventually. And while he means for it to be a brief glance, he finds his gaze settling there.
"Ah, yeah. You're a complete monster. I mean look at you, all next to naked and rumpled. You'll sour the milk in your very tea at this rate."
She rolls her eyes. Drops the smile quickly enough to roll across and drape herself over the back of the couch. Hardly matters if Cutter's tossing out compliments when the man's jamming his nose into a book with every chance he gets.
So for a moment or two he's ignored while she contrasts and compares where he falls short of Talbot regarding the matter of dedication: when he's not chomping at the bit to take her coat while they're dealing with problematic contacts, or how he spends too long mulling over his own drink to notice hers is nearly gone. How she has to empty it entirely and let the glass sit before he's on his feet and working over towards the bar. Habits they can't effectively seem to train out.
And it occurs to her then, belatedly, that for all the frustration it breeds that those differences are, sat alongside his sharpness, part of what keeps him entertaining. Aggravating at times, but entertaining.
Frazer turns back towards him. Cranes her neck and nothing else. "I'll go dress then, shall I?"
He makes a low little noise without looking away, mouth pulling. It makes for a thin edge of teeth - momentary, but nonetheless there. A quirk of his eyebrows.
"Do what you like," he says, as if it's politic and not inflammatory. As if he doesn't know exactly what he's doing.
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no subject
Instead he continues to flip pages, thumb trailing over marks in the margins and washed out black and white photos of lonely deserts. "Suppose I'd cross that bridge when I came to it then."
no subject
Charlie's refusal isn't a catalyst or a brick wall, isn't something that ought to be offensive to her.
Still, she takes it personally. As if evidence itself is the cancer, the cause. "Am I so unappealing to you that you'd rather work than sit in with me?"
It's said with a smile.
no subject
But he does glance up eventually. And while he means for it to be a brief glance, he finds his gaze settling there.
"Ah, yeah. You're a complete monster. I mean look at you, all next to naked and rumpled. You'll sour the milk in your very tea at this rate."
no subject
So for a moment or two he's ignored while she contrasts and compares where he falls short of Talbot regarding the matter of dedication: when he's not chomping at the bit to take her coat while they're dealing with problematic contacts, or how he spends too long mulling over his own drink to notice hers is nearly gone. How she has to empty it entirely and let the glass sit before he's on his feet and working over towards the bar. Habits they can't effectively seem to train out.
And it occurs to her then, belatedly, that for all the frustration it breeds that those differences are, sat alongside his sharpness, part of what keeps him entertaining. Aggravating at times, but entertaining.
Frazer turns back towards him. Cranes her neck and nothing else. "I'll go dress then, shall I?"
wow excuse my crap icons sry
"Do what you like," he says, as if it's politic and not inflammatory. As if he doesn't know exactly what he's doing.