[Genome]

Mal had never been awake this long without some sort of caffeinated beverage and he was already feeling the strain of coffee-withdrawal. The scientist's only states were highly-strung and comatose...and there was no way Mal trusted the people around him enough to even close his eyes, let alone go to sleep.

"Anna, he's looking at me again," he said urgently for what must have been the fifth time, scooting closer to the girl with the two-toned hair on the dingy bench that was their only choice of seat other than the equally dirty looking ground. The 'he' in question was a man of rather questionable sobriety sitting in the corner and Mal was positive that he'd just seen the drunk leering at him and, fuck him, was he licking his lips?! The scientist resisted the urge to try and hide behind Rogue. "Remind me why I couldn't try and bribe them to get a private cell?"

As far as Mal was concerned, this was an outrage - he hadn't done anything worthy of having been thrown in a holding cell overnight. Except, okay, maybe he'd resisted arrest a little. And tried to kidnap a mutant girl who'd caused several car accidents. And, fine, he might have possibly called the police officers racist. But still, he was far too pretty to have been tossed in here with the worst the flatscans had to offer and they had rejected his very reasonable request for some sort of disinfectant.

He really hoped he didn't get herpes from the rather questionable looking hooker who was sat on his other side. Even with her dangerous skin, Rogue was still the safer option to sidle closer to.

...this was so not his day. Sliced up by a red-skinned mutant, threatened by a girl with claws, having to watch that equine shapeshifter escape him again. And that was all on top of his horror at what was currently seeping into the fabric of his best Dunhill suit given the lack of sanitation in this large, communal holding cell.

Hopefully, someone from the Brotherhood would be here to post his bail soon enough. Because they wouldn't leave their favourite scientist here to rot with drunks, hookers and crazy thugs longer than they had to, right?

....right?

[Rogue]

She’d never been arrested before. Which she guessed was odd. She’d done plenty of bad things during her life, things that constituted law breaking and made arrest seem like the only possible option. But there’d always been Mystique or Magneto or someone to prevent such things from happening, each using their own skills and morals (or lack there of) for them to get away with as much as murder. Today, though, Rogue had been doing good, or trying to, hoping to help the girl that had gotten stuck in the middle of it all. The poor girl that was still out on the loose with that other one. Well, better her being locked up than them, she mused. With red skin that appeared to be sharp and an overly aggressive sidekick, Rogue didn’t think that their experience in the HQ of the NYPD would be nearly as pleasant as hers currently was.

Could you think sarcasm?

“You ever think he might be lookin’ at me, sugah?” She replied to Malcolm’s paranoid question, looking sideways at her friend, lips curving up into a half smile. “Ah am the better lookin’ of the two of us. What with your suit being so dirty an’ all.” It was difficult to repress a snort after her last statement, the comment a biting one to the young man who so concerned himself with his appearance. It wasn’t really fair for her to pick on him, but she wasn’t particularly agitated by their predicament, things had been worse, and it was easier to be amused at the whole thing. Plus, Mal’s current state lent easily to being tickled pink.

“You look just about a nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rockin’ chairs.” She jibed, elbowing him lightly. “No one’s gonna eat you. Least not yet.” A tilt of her head indicated a scrawny drunkard curled in the corner. “That one looks mighty hungry though. Better keep an eye on him.” Green eyes hunted brown as she reached for the wrist of his injured hand, ruined tie still wrapped artlessly around gouged palm. “Still hurt?” She asked softly, turning the palm upward to see if the bleeding had stopped yet.

[Genome]

Mal was vaguely irked by how calmly Rogue was taking all of this. Except, no, he never did anything 'vaguely' because that would imply a comprehension of the word 'subtle' when Mal himself lived at extremes of scale; a superlative lifestyle if you will. So he was more accurately flabbergasted by the fact that their outrageous incarceration hadn't seemed to have ruffled a single hair on Rogue's head. Even the white ones.

The scientist snorted and gave her Mal look #7, the one that said 'don't be ridiculous and go back to worshipping my obviously superior powers of deduction.' "Rogue," he said, as if his tone of absolute condescension was an answer in itself, though he added an all-encompassing gesture at himself in all his besuited glory. "Come on." She was very lucky that he felt for her an emotion that, in anyone with a normal personality, would have been called 'like' because, really, she was hopelessly naive sometimes (or so he thought.) "He'd be looking at me even if I was rocking polyester."

Then he caught the guy looking creepy again and had to wonder just why he was suddenly defending his right to be eyed up.

Hurriedly moving on and turning pointedly towards the Southern mutant as a way of having an excuse to ignore the other inmates, he glared at her, his eyes dark and accusing in his almost painfully young-looking face. "Don't give them any ideas," he hissed, as subtle as a moose in a wheat field. "These idiots might take you seriously." He caught the eye of the large, tattooed man who was currently giving him an incredulous look and grinned, wide, nervous and insincere. "Not idiots," he said seamlessly and seemingly without a break in his sentence flow. "Lovely people. Nice people." He turned back to Rogue and made a noise that was a cross between a despairing sigh and a springbok in labour. "Please tell me that Twinkletoes is going to come and pay for my freedom sometime soon. I'll even take his company over this. Fucking hell, I'll take Hyena."

He was still grumbling when she took his hand and he rolled his eyes at the heinous outrage that was his lily-white skin being cut open in any way. "No, the razor-sharp bipedal knife we met slicing me open didn't hurt in any way whatsoever," he said, his sarcasm made all the more obnoxious by close proximity, nerves and the fact that the only exit was locked and under guard. Lucky Rogue. He winced a little at the movement of his injured hand. "I'll live," he said, for all that he didn't sound very convinced. "Though I know I'm going to need all sorts of booster vaccinations when I get out of here - fuck me, I want to put this entire room through an autoclave. Even - no, wait, especially that one." He squinted myopically over Rogue's shoulder. "...is she wearing a trash bag? And crocs?" According to Mal's scandalised tones, the latter was the greater offense.