14864/Radiating misanthropy: the unexpected therapy of the sociopath

Radiating misanthropy: the unexpected therapy of the sociopath
Date of Scene:	29 March 2023
Location:	Lucifer's Penthouse, Melville
Synopsis:	After a visit from Rorschach the night before, some revelations on the state of mind are had.
Cast of Characters:	Sinister, Lucifer

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Sinister has posed:
There's TV shows with silly premises, canned laughter and a heartwarming moral. And there's telenovellas that ham the acting so much it might as well be an entire pig farm. And then there's life according to the less than ordinary individual. Day to day living, when you are used to waging war on heaven, temptation of entire civilizations or just studying the long-term effects of studied Eugenics is practically worthy of those odd Life Serials.

Which is why, the day after a raving misanthropist who might be one of the best method actors currently alive, followed a mark into the club you live above, the day has turned out bright and cheerful. Almost bouncy, even! Nathaniel Essex doesn't do happy mornings the same way most anyone else in creation does; he is usually up to no good when he's seeing the sunrise from the wrong side, or getting right on with cracking at it. But today? Coffee on the go, music set to some classic rock even an attempt at cooked breakfastery, which actually just involved sending out for croissants. He's humming as he looks over reports on the couch, silk dressing gown and matching black pyjama bottoms abounding, an array of three touchpads floating in the air infront of him.

Lucifer has posed:
Lucifer isn't as 'get up and go' this morning as he likely ought to be. Taking a bit longer to roll out of bed and put his own silk dressing gown, red as the boxers he also wears. There's a pause at the bathroom while he scrubs his face and does a bit of beard trimming here and there. Getting back a tailored but still scruffy look because he likes it that way. Finally, he pads out to the kitchen and pours himself a cup of coffee, then puts a little whiskey and cream into it before grabbing a croissant and heads for the living room. "Looking at anything in particular?" This asked as he sits on the adjacent chair, sipping his coffee and taking a bite into his breaded goodness.

Sinister has posed:
Left: "Genomic anomalies in samples taken from china town, after that little encounter with the brood queen, randomly sampled from the community and in the particulate traces found by multiple swabs and mass spectrometry on the samples I took from it..." middle: "What's on the news." Right: "reports from the various satellites i have orbitting the world, focusing mostly on antarctica and keeping tabs on the other sites offshore and underneath that we took care of in the far east, in the lighthouse and in chernobyl." He replies "My brain is all multitasking on me for reasons only it seems to know and I'm trying to stop myself from setting up a forth." He grins, looking the red number over and the sniffing the scents of aftershave.

"You smell like a moment in the mailroom waiting to happen. Or a broom closet. Or over the bosses desk. What cologne is that?" it might just be soap for all of that!

Lucifer has posed:
Lucifer nods his head, because he really only understands about three fourths of what Sinister just explained. "Well. The multitasking mind might be thanks to letting out the attic...as it were. But then, you've always been able to multitask, and now I wonder if you are truly multitasking of mostly your free will or if I need to revisit your brain space and put some things in place." Though he gives a little smirk after saying that and sips some more of his coffee.

At the comment about his aftershave, he lifts a single shoulder in a shrug. "Eau de Chateau. It was sold as a light musk with a hint of midnight and shadows. I rather like it. Of course, I washed with the Lucifer Special first so...might be a mixture upon the senses."

Sinister has posed:
"Ahh, that would be it, the hint of sulphur beneath the vava-voom just to dip you up to your eyeballs in wicked temptation," Sinister murmurs this, his expression wry. "I must have become accustomed to that, or my olifactory capacity has changed, because I barely notice it any more. I recollect that I wasn't a fan at the beginning," and informed of the fact that that particular malodorous whiffiness was less than pleasant. Rotten eggs and so on and so forth. "I've always been prone to moments of using all my brain that I possibly could. That's nothing new. And I doubt anything had a hand in the early days of my career, so I muchly doubt I've been steered by fate. Mostly, by serendipity if I'm honest." He flicks the american news to different channels across the world, settles on russian for some nice soviet propaganda. "I find with listen to the telegram, it is mostly about what they're not saying, or how they're attempting to focus the masses that tells their big story. No? Japanese would bore you, I'm sure. At least what I listen to, it's the technological and biomedical advances I'm keen on." Nooooooo...

Someone might have dropped ritalin in his coffee

Lucifer has posed:
Lucifer listens, keeping up as best he can, and then he nods again. "So long as all is going as it should be." He takes another bite of croissant. "Do you think we really need therapy? I mean in the sense that therapy is supposed to help you with your troubles. I don't think we have any troubles? Not between us, or personally. Do you?" Perhaps the comment from Nick is still ticking in his brain, or maybe the further question by a one Doctor Quinn from last night. The it-might-be-ritalin addled Sinister could likely hold twelve conversations, read the paper, and watch four screens without blinking an eye.

"The way you can multi-task has always been incredible to me. Even I don't think I could do all that at the same time." Commenting at least a compliment before he sips a little more coffee.

Sinister has posed:
He probably could. And then if he actually WAS able to receive the benefits from the drug, it might be truly frightening. "Therapy? Between us? No. We work things out and all things considered with the rest of humanity, have a rather open conversation playing field. But in our complex tangled neuroses, that don't really impact how we interact so much as they hinder our psyches and annoy the begeeze out of us at times? Possibly. The world we live in is fantastic, you can pay people to listen and to attempt to problem solve. And you can say 'you're a quack' and get on with the next one, until you solve it. You can even pay people to cut your brain to shreds, if you can find someone unethical enough." At this, he smiles, chuckles a little to himself and leans over Lucifer to grab a croissant. "Fond memories." He explains, looking over the round of his bicep with mischievous eyes that sparkle.

He eases back, sets the news to idly flashing in his peripheral vision and three quarter faces Lucifer, an entirely open posture that has an arm on the back of the couch and his whole front angled toward the devil. "Are you second guessing yourself? Us?"

Lucifer has posed:
"I'm not second guessing us. Us is a good thing. We like us." He says this much after having listened fully and intently to all that Sinister says. "I might be second guessing myself, but I'm not sure. I might also be projecting a bit of that annoyance I feel regarding the ones inside your little brain palace, whether it's in the dream scape or out. The one in the attic is lucky I didn't punch him before I kicked the door." He offers all this and then chuckles. "I've been to therapy tho. It worked. Sort of...until it didn't." He wiggles fingers so that his silver cigarette case comes floating over, pulling two out to light himself and then floats a lit cigarette over to Sinister.

"If I ever begin to doubt us, you'll be the first to know."

Sinister has posed:
Sinister grunts a little, snorts with it, a sort of all-encompassing self-derision and agreement at the same time. "I wouldn't have blamed you. I don't like the non-lucid dreaming so very much, I have less control. Which is probably why 'no' was the answer I got given, as it meant you got to the roots. Mind you, you could equally have dived in to my obsession with thimbles and spoon collecting as a boy, whilst riding a penny farthing, or something similar." He picks apart his croissant, so he can have it in little pinch-fingered morcels, taking the cigarette with a pluck an setting it to lips for a deep, satisfying drag. He blows the smoke from the corner of his mouth, up past his ear and rests his head back. A cursory glance at the screens and russia goes to UK. "I'm on the fence about the possibility of therapy. Mostly, I suspect, because I'm procrastinating over the notion of it being a sign of weakness on my part. I don't like the notion that I cannot handle myself exactly how I am, but that is proving... squirrelly, I think they call it."

He toes the bare foot near him. "Never want to hear that, even if I /would/ be first in line. Did the stupid there, don't need to repeat it."

Lucifer has posed:
"It's only proving squirrelly right now because you really did have a bit of a mind fuck. Considering you pushed yourself out of your mind, got it back, took out the bad bit only to still have a bad bit inside you. But the bad bit was locked away in a tower like it was being punished." Lucifer sips, smokes, and eats - in that order. "Now you're all back together again, I think, but with a little bit extra in the mix cause the part of you that was emotional to a point has been added to the pie." He shrugs. "I don't think we need therapy. Together or apart. We do very well for ourselves, despite what people on the outside of us may think."

He doesn't even remark on that last bit because, in his mind, it won't get to that point anyway so why even give it life.

Sinister has posed:
"Indeed," picked apart, but devoured quick, the croissant is left with but a few crumbs, the smoking taking most of Sinister's occupation thereafter. "Amongst other things. I think it went a little more complicated than that -- I have a feeling I've given myself a few nightmares because of the feelings. I'm not accustomed to them and I don't have a great track record of facing that sort of thing in a way that I can sublimate it. I tend to cut away what I consider to be chaff. A surgeon's approach. But my own mind was harder to shave off. Not in small part because it's greater than the span of myself, these days. Being capable of being an army of one person..." he exhales smoke. "I don't think I can equate that in any terms that make them reasonable to wrap the mind around."

The cigarette is finshed, pinched off and handed over. "I agree though. In general, we do seem capable of sorting ourselves out -- mere mortal types don't understand infinite patience and wanting an immediate result at the same time. I don't have the inclination to be rooting for a complex answer for years, do you? Not when it comes to that sort of thing anyway. We have better things to do."

Lucifer has posed:
Both cigarettes are disposed of the way that Lucifer always disposes of them. He listens intently and wholly before giving a nod once again. "You're right. Bigger fish to fry, problems to solve and business to carry out. Though I'm sorry to hear you're having nightmares." He pauses some, looks down at his nearly finished coffee and then proceeds to precisely finish it off. "If you need me to lock him up again...I would do it. If it meant giving you a better frame of mind." Though the 'lout' as he was called may not like it...and Lucifer - while still getting accustomed to randomly emotional Sinister - doesn't really wish to lose that part of him. Yet, he would sacrifice his own desires for the sake of the man adjacent to him.

Because of Love.

"What -is- on our agenda next? Do we have anything important that needs immediate tending to?" A pause. "You still owe me Rome."

Sinister has posed:
"I do. I /do/ indeed. And it shall be a thing," Sinister shakes his head though. "It took me two hundred years to become a whole man once again and I don't think, despite the snarly hiccups, that I should undo that. I must adapt. Adaptation is the key to evolutionary leaps, I would be a poor shepherd," or machiavellian prince "if I denied that in myself. Beside which, the depth of feeling is sometimes raw, but it's also powerful. And new. And a little intoxicating and overwhelming and... I might want to run away from it, or deny it, or go to pieces over it, but..."

Now he looks at Lucifer, tipping his head with a wry, self-effacing expression. "...Now I think I understand you a little better, also. How it must have been challenging and new for you, when the beast inside the source of soul, was roused. But it has shown us a thing: We are up to the task. We have to be. Nobody else in all creation will ever stand face to face with us and look us in the eyes to the fullest measure of who and what we are."

Lucifer has posed:
Lucifer gives a little smirk. The way Sinister describes how it feels to be a whole man, with emotions included, leaves him to wonder a few things. Yet he'll wonder them in silence for now and bring them up when more intimate times are being had. "Well. This is all true. Just know that I would do it. Even though I am truly loving the whole man you've become. Not that I didn't love you before. The entire package is interesting and lovely. If I do say so in my own bias opinion." There's a tilt of his head as Sinister continues and then he shrugs his shoulders. "It's a very hard beast to tame sometimes, especially after it's roused with no release after the rousing. But you're right again. We are up to the task in conquering ourselves and each other. To do this and move forward to the next challenge, whatever it may be." He floats his coffee cup away to the kitchen, stands and gives a swipe of his arm to move those floating screens away a bit. Then he's looming over Sinister with a grin on his lips and a gleam in his eye. "Fuck it. I'll ask. This whole new you phase you're going through. Does anything else feel any....different? Like lust or passion? When you experience it?"

Sinister has posed:
Sinister's eyes track the screens as they're swept, a goodly portion of himself having been invested in cogitating and rhuminating on words shared, feelings aired and their ilk. He blinks back, looking up at the looming presence of his partner in all things -- the whole and the all of it, from man-scaping to cunning artifice of scruff. Dark and devilishly handsome indeed and demanding things whilst wearing nothing but the red silks of having really just got up. He looks at Lucifer's eyes, down the length of him, up again.

"At this particular juncture in time," he says mildly and carefully but with a glint in his eye "I do not think any answer I give will be particularly safe." The grin that starts to form has the feel of a burgeoning affair. "You know when you feel the bite of winter, my dear? How you can still feel it, although there is a blanket about you and the warmth envelopes and mutes it? You still know the cold, even if you don't feel its full effects? Like that. Only now I'm skinny dipping in an ice lake."

Lucifer has posed:
Lucifer raises a single eyebrow in a cocked sort of fashion and that grin doesn't fade. It's not like he's any more or less dressed then Sinister is! Still, eyes roam because they can and then his head tilts just so one way - as a snake's would perhaps. "Are you trying to tell me that you need me to warm you up? Cause otherwise it sounds like you're saying all I make you feel is ice cold, and that's not good now - is it?" Asking this while looming ever just a bit closer before he actually shifts to stand up more straight again. "Also, I don't think you ever answered me on if we have matters to attend to or not."

Sinister has posed:
"Well, I was trying to make an analogous comparison so you could appreciate the depths and breadths of the new, unvarnished me. If you note, I said when -you- feel the cold, not when I feel it. Metaphor and simile are sometimes an unexact science." Deadpan. He leans back some more, sliding down in the seat so that his dressing gown falls open a measure more, lazily crossing legs at the ankle... between and beneath the looming lord of hell. "And well, as to the answer to the pressing matters, I assumed that was a bit rhetorical. There's always something on the agenda, it's just a matter of where on the itinerary it actually is. Right now everything but the here and now is very low on my scale of priorities. I'm vastly occupied by feeling rather like I'm under your spotlight." The grin gets wider.

Lucifer has posed:
Lucifer blinks and then chuckles, mostly at himself. "I missed that key word there. Or at least, the emphasis of it. Mistaking it meant a general observation and not a personal one." Lucifer begins with this, then watches as Sinister sinks a bit, revealing a little more of himself. "Right. I think I've intoxicated you with scentful delights and have made you wanting. I shall not keep you such, this much is for sure!" And he decidedly scoops Sinister up, wedding style, in one swift move and then moves precisely and decidedly back to the bedroom with him. Course, what's done there remains for only the shadows and the lovers to know.