Logs:Brain Freeze

Brain Freeze
Dramatis Personae Hive, Naomi, Roscoe
In Absentia Charles, Lael	2024-01-17 "Everyone hates telepathy."
Location <XAV> Back Patio - Xs Grounds
This patio is expertly laid out for relaxing singly or in groups. The section nearest the back door is a more or less conventional veranda, the mansion's eaves--supported by elegant white wooden columns joined with matching railings--extending out to shelter the long porch swings, rocking chairs, and a chess table from the elements. Down the stairs or the ramp from this is a fan-shaped expanse of slate flagstones populated by clusters of deck chairs and picnic tables, always changing in number and arrangement, and stone planter boxes bursting with seasonal flowers and ornamentals. The centerpiece is an elegant pavilion with a hot tub open for use year-round, even if the transition in and out may prove chilly in snowy weather. There's still snow heavily blanketing the grounds, and with the biting freeze it's unlikely to go anywhere any time soon. The patio is, at least, a small break from it, overhung enough to miss some of the fall and the rest meticulously cleared by the mansion's groundskeeper. The mansion itself blocks the worst of the wind, small help though that is to the skinny sour-faced telepath currently tucked beside the door back inside. For once Hive has actually found a proper jacket, a drab-colored but warmly lined North Face affair. He's still draped a blanket over that, and a slouchy knit hat covers fuzzy hair and garish scars alike on his head. He has been trying to light a cigarette, though his unsteady hands are finding little success with the flint wheel on his cheap plastic lighter. The door to the mansion is opening onto this peaceful wintry scene; Roscoe saw Hive from inside already, but doesn't take much notice of him until he's opened the door. He has a disposable vape (rainbow freeze) for his own nicotine needs, which he's fidgeting restlessly with in the pocket of his bright blue, too-big DBZ hoodie -- this is as warmly as he's dressed, no overcoat and otherwise wearing side-stripe joggers and red Chucks that won't keep him dry if he goes in the snow -- but he says brazenly anyway, "Can I have one?" On the spectrum of winter preparedness Naomi has tacked hard in the opposite direction from Roscoe -- probably somewhere in the many layers of the black Arctic-rated parka trundling out after Roscoe is Naomi, but with the hood up and full neck zipped it's hard to see anything but dull scales and green eyes. She's grudgingly unzipping the top just a touch with thin-gloved hands when Roscoe asks for the cigarette. << ❓ >> annotates an image of the other teenager's vape in her mind, << ⁉️ >> afixed to the live feed of who he's asking. "Do you need a hand with that, sir?" Naomi asks, pointing at the misfiring lighter. Her inner monologue considers the concept of cigarettes and decides, hypocritically, that they're gross. "It is gross," Hive non-hypothetically answers, the unlit cigarette bobbing between his lips as he asserts this. His eyes have narrowed contemplatively at Roscoe before he evidently decides fuck it, and pats at the pocket of his oversized jacket to withdraw a mostly-full pack of American Spirit. He fumbles the top open, offers it to Roscoe, but it's Naomi he's addressing (while gratefully holding the lighter out), "Please tell me his mutation keeps the cold away. Some fucking duality of teenager here." << Wut, >> Roscoe is thinking idly, as Naomi calls this dude "sir", but his amusement at what he puts off immediately as Southernness doesn't break onto his face -- he zeroes in on the cigarette carton as Hive reaches for it in his pocket. He thinks rather ungratefully when he notes the branding, << ick >> but fishes one out with a somewhat more gracious and vaguely self-satisfied, "Thanks." << ohshitright, >> jangles in Naomi's mind as she takes the lighter << thee telepath telepaths, duh >>. "He's tryna prove something," she says out loud, while simultaneously supplying, immediate and derisive, << he's from Bahston >>. "I'm just cold." She focuses on the lighter, fiddly for a moment before the flame catches, and holds it up to Hive's cigarette. Naomi's not altogether sure she's doing this right, but this is how it looks on TV, so, maybe? "Ain't lighting yours," she pre-empts Roscoe, holding a hand out for the forgotten object in his pocket. << how you keep smoking if you think it's gross >> is thought of Hive, then, embarassedly, to Hive, with another amended << sir >> on the end. "I telepath," Hive confirms blandly. He's dipping his head to touch the cigarette into the flame; it's probably some kind of placebo effect that his hands are shaking considerably less when he takes it out of his mouth and turns his head aside to blow the smoke Not At The Teenagers. "You're cold cuz it's fucking cold." This sounds oddly approving -- probably of Naomi's correct judgment and not about the bitter weather itself, because he's wrapping his blanket a little more around his neck like the World's Biggest Scarf. "It's gross, but I need to keep some vices around. Stave off the Good Samaritan aura this place infects people with. Anyway, my brain is gonna crap out long before my lungs catch up with me." He leans back against the wall and squints at Roscoe. "You actually gonna smoke that? I don't think it's as good currency 'round here." Roscoe apparently did not realize until now that Hive was The Telepath; this revelation triggers an instinctive << don't think about anything, think about nothing >> that runs in the background even as he says dishonestly, "It's not even that cold." He produces the vape, a fuschia-periwinkle ombre pod, from his pocket and holds it out silently for Naomi to take. In fact he was about to stash the cigarette in his pocket for later, but he says, "I'm gonna smoke it." This is with a weird blend of guilt and embarrassment, first at taking the cigarette without even having the decency to give Hive secondhand smoke, second at being called out this way. He does have a stash in his dorm that he is trying without much success not to think about; he sticks the cigarette in his mouth and holds one hand out for the lighter. "Boy, it's literally freezing," says Naomi, leaning into an idle thought of how Avi might spin this into an ice pun (leaning away from fear-laced snow-sense-memories) as she swipes the vape. Hive's lighter follows a moment later with a bright thought-image of the "press X to doubt" meme. She looks down at the vape, one touch self conscious but then immediately confused -- << how in hell does this work (there should be a button!!) >> and lets that distract her from the questions bubbling up about Hive and where he might have learned, like Roscoe, to barter cigarettes. << (be normal) >> "Tch, I didn't mean --" Hive starts, but then gives up on this to just take a long drag of his smoke. His eyes cut to Naomi -- briefly, and then to the colorful vape. "Yo, Boston, how's your fancy-ass -- digitized -- smoke technology work?" Hive is jerking his chin towards the device with a look of intent suspicion that all but blares kids these days. His small snort comes with a heavy stream of smoke. "Normal? Shit. I have yet to meet a single person who's normal in the brain." << You are Vietnamese you can smoke one cigarette, >> Roscoe is rallying/reproaching/reassuring himself as he lights up. He inhales a little too fast, and can't quite smother a tiny but totally mortifying cough that utterly crushes him until he realizes, moments later, that Naomi doesn't know how to use his vape, and his good mood bounds smugly back to be the expert in the room. "It's auto-draw," he says, like this will mean anything to Naomi. "You just inhale, same way you'd smoke one of these --" he gestures with the cigarette, not considering at all that she might not know how to smoke this either. << Normal? >> he echoes -- though he initially accepts readily that Hive is just saying this entirely unprompted, he then theorizes, << ohhh they are talking with their brains. >> Immediately he tests this hypothesis with, << telepathsayswhat? >> Naomi is dedicated to being a good friend acquaintance-from-Torture-Jail and therefore doesn’t let herself laugh at Roscoe’s smoking failure. Too soon the heat of Not Knowing Things is back on her, and her gratefulness that Hive saved her from at least the mortification of asking is immediately drowned out with << auto-what? >> The followup makes more sense to Naomi, she’s smoked weed before, but there is still quite a bit of distrust in her eyes when she finally lifts the vape kinda-sorta towards her lips. "What about animals," she asks instead, "do they have normal brains?" << ok but do brains get weirder sounding when people TRY to braintalk to him — you, sorry >> "What," Hive replies, flat if obliging. "And she's talking with her brain, I'm just listening. When I talk with my brain nobody likes it." His brows crease, and his shoulders pull inward with an uncomfortable shift -- or maybe just bracing against the slight shift of the wind. "Usually don't hear animals, thank fuck. World's noisy enough already." His thumb is flicking restless at the butt of his cigarette. "Brains get weirder sounding," he decides, "when people try to stop sounding weird. -- have you all not pestered the Professor endlessly yet about how goddamn weird telepathy is? He loves people thinking weird-ass shit at him." Roscoe grins broadly when telepathsayswhat, which coincides conflictually with a strong spike in anxiety. << I hate telepathy, >> is barely conscious and certainly not intended for Hive to hear -- he's trying very hard not to think anything at all. "I wouldn't want to hear animals' thoughts," he declares. << Are we being weird? >> he wonders idly; he quickly decides, << Naomi is. >> He takes another drag of his cigarette, a little more smoothly this time -- "You can just think stuff at people?" he says. "Telepathy is so goddamn weird." "Why would I do that," says Naomi, confident that there are more better things to bother the Headmaster about — how to make sure that money in the bank stays big enough for college tuition/music gear/rent, for example, or maybe what would Kant say about her summer extracurriculars — and continuing with fierce familial pride, "I got telepaths at home." She doesn’t say that she used to think Xavier was the most boring telepath in her orbit, but now, post-Battle Wheelchair, she’s not sure what she thinks of him. She doesn’t say that there is some reversal of that same phenomenon going on right now, as she holds Hive’s pretty legendary actions up against Blanket Scarf somewhere in the Judgement Zone of her brain. "Duh, of course you can," she’s telling Roscoe, lifting the vape to her lips and finally inhaling. She doesn’t choke up. Naomi 1, Roscoe 0. "Please, Xavier's financial advisors have financial advisors, the fuck does he know about money. Ask someone who didn't always have it." Hive pulls the blanket up over his head to morph it from Blanket Scarf to the possibly even less intimidating Blanket Cowl. "Everyone hates telepathy." He seems fairly unbothered by this, at least. "And it's a pretty sure bet that if you're at this fucking place --" he's gesturing with his cigarette towards the school behind them, "you're being weird. -- Xavier's still boring as shit, don't worry." Beneath the fleecey blanket one shoulder hitches. "But so are most people, if you don't get to know 'em." Despite Hive's earlier warning about this exact thing, Roscoe is trying to be less weird, without having much idea what he was doing that was weird in the first place or how to stop doing it. He taps the ash off the end of his cigarette, thoughts drifting directionless and unrushed to the most boring people he'd gotten to know in Lassiter, people who only talked about their kids or their dogs or their guns or their music, but who had been willing to talk about their boring lives to some pipsqueak playing chess. His shoulders hitch up too, defensive on behalf of boring people everywhere. "I'unno," he says stubbornly, "A lot of people are boring." "Like who, you?" Naomi shoots back, as Hive rapidly (and possibly temporarily) moves from Adult One Should Not Talk Back to a Sass-able Old designation. DOES Hive have money. Naomi has no clue, he looks too boring in fit to have money, which is maybe proving his point about strangers being boring. << I don’t hate telepathy >> is more confident, rooted deep by love for her brother as well as some sort of psionic solidarity — as far as bog mutants go, telepaths are closer to being like her than most. This train of thought veers too close to Lassiter, to boring strangers across from her and Lael in boring testing rooms — Naomi takes another hit off Roscoe’s vape (<< this doesn’t feel like anything 😠 >> ) and breathes the smoke out slowly, head tilted back. At the Boring Lassiter Memories in stereo Hive's posture is tightening further. One eye has scrunched shut, and for a moment there's an alien feeling bearing down in uncomfortable pressure; probably, minds do not have nerves but it feels constricting all the same, for just an instant a strangling-tight presence that cuts off thought rather than air. It pulls back sharply as Hive digs the heel of his hand in against his eye. He hasn't finished his cigarette, but he's stubbing it roughly out against the mansion wall and turning abruptly to the door. His head shakes quickly in something like apology, but when he speaks it's clipped and gruff: "In a cage, everyone's fucking boring." When the pressure in his mind lifts, Roscoe's first thought, aghast and wounded, flooding in icy-hot like pins and needles, is << Oh. >> He backs hastily away from the door, staring first at Hive, then at Naomi like she will know the correct response to this. "Sorry," he says, suddenly and uncharacteristically timid; his face pinches into a piqued frown. Emerald-green glows from Naomi's snake-slit eyes as soon as she can think again, eerily lighting the dissipating vape smoke above her still tilted-back head. << ohshit (that's what he meant)/ ohshit (don't look at Roscoe) >> Hive's kind of scary, kind of fascinating braintalking she will compare/contrast with Lael's later -- right now Naomi's focused on keeping her eyelids tightly shut until she's wrestled her power back into conscious control. When Naomi does open her (dull, human again) eyes, she immediately glances back to Roscoe, meeting his "what the fuck???" look with a milder echo of the same. She recovers faster, and she does have a response -- << Thanks for the (company/cigarette/rescue from hell) >> Naomi thinks at Hive as he leaves. It's another moment before she hands the vape back to Roscoe, probably he needs it. "Chill," Naomi says to the younger teen, going for a nonchalant air that is almost enough to cover the shakiness in her voice. Almost. "You're gonna make it weird."