ArchivedLogs:Green Eggs and Ha...ngovers

Green Eggs and Ha...ngovers
Dramatis Personae Hive, Tag, Flicker, Dusk
In Absentia	2013-01-15 Tag wakes up in a strange man's apartment.
Location <NYC> 403 {Hive} - Village Lofts - East Village
There's kind of a college-dorm feel to this place, though some of its occupants have left college behind. Entering the apartment finds visitors greeted by the perpetually messy living room, a mismatched assortment of couches and chairs (and milk crates) surrounding the wide table in the center. The wall holds a range of posters; some political, some sporty, some from video games, and a string of white lights strung over the kitchen doorway might be a holdover from Christmas. The kitchen adjacent is just as cluttered, its table unfit for eating due to its perpetual covering of books, papers, cereal boxes, projects; the fridge is usually sparsely populated. Ketchup. Beer. Not a lot of food. There are two bedrooms here, split between the four people; the fold-out couch in the living room (often folded out!) suggests that at least one of them does not actually claim a room as their own. It's not really /quiet/, this morning. From the bedroom next door there is music; guitar and keyboard in what is actually fairly skilled harmony. Something soft and indie-rock-ish, from what can be heard; there's singing, too, but that's harder to make out through the walls. From the kitchen outside there is the clanging of pans. Hive is participating in none of these noises; he sits in the living room, perched cross-legged on the edge of the folded-out bed in black sweatpants and a white undershirt, a ragged blue sweatshirt with sleeves full of holes worn over top. He's poked his thumbs through the holes and clipped his shaggy hair back away from his face, keeping it from spilling into his eyes as he leans over the living room's central table. There's a laptop on it, that has had two large external monitors attached, all three currently taken up with what looks like the floor plans of a building. In the kitchen, a young man with dark hair and bright green eyes is attempting to extricate a pan from a pile of dishes stacked up in the sink. And in the second bedroom (just as cluttered-messy as the living room outside), Tag has been left in a bed that, at least, has had its mess of what was probably clean laundry swept off to the floor. There's a tall glass of water on the nightstand beside a small red origami X-Wing, a lamp, a book (China Mieville's /The Scar/), and a DVD case for the first season of Better Off Ted. The water is on top of the DVD case. It's a small nightstand. In his dream, Tag is a dragon turning lazy spirals on an updraft above an emerald green coastline. He glides down to investigate music coming from a cave on a cliff face, stretching his long neck as far down the tunnel as he can, then further. His body compresses painfully, and he struggles to get back out, but cannot. Up ahead, however, he sees a light. He has little choice but to press onward. The light is dark red, and grows to envelope him. It has not textures or features, just the color itself, sort of faintly back-lit. He tries to make it a different color, but fails. Panicking, Tag flails and his eyes open, then squeeze shut again because even the dim light seeping through the blinds seems too bright. The music is plainly audible now. He blinks, slowly, taking in his surroundings. The room doesn't look right: it has a bed and other stuff in it. Turning over, he sees the red X-Wing and remembers. He sits up, wincing--his head does not hurt, but his chest does--and drinks as much of the water as his stomach will allow him. His boots sit beside the bed, and he pulls them on clumsily before venturing out into the brighter living room. "Hey..." he says groggily, spotting Hive. "I'm really sorry about last night. Also, thank you." This last he said as much to his feet as to Hive. "He doesn't mind," the man in the kitchen is saying with bright cheer and a triumphant extrication of Pan from Pile Of Dishes, "he loves bringing home strays. It's like a mutant kennel in here. You want eggs? I'm eggs-ing." "I want eggs," Hive answers without looking up from his computer, his tongue pressed up beneath his upper lip as he changes a few lines on one of the screens. "How're you feeling, man?" Presumably this is to Tag, but his eyes are still focused on the screen. "Do dragons get hangovers?" Tag's stomach answers with a gurgle, and he with, "I would love some eggs." He sits down beside Hive and nurses the glass of water. "I feel...weird?" Like his brain has been shaken loose from reality just a bit. And he wasn't even tripping. "I don't think dragons get hangovers, but in any case, /I/ don't." He /wishes/ he were a dragon! "Which might have somethng to do with why I never learn how when I should stop drinking." "Yeah," says the man in the kitchen, "but then you don't come /here/ and get eggs. Scrambled okay? I've got, uh, tomatoes. Garlic. That's probably all I can put in them." "That's Flicker," Hive introduces, belatedly. "He lives here." He sounds so /grumpy/ about this fact, too. "I didn't /think/ I was going to pass out," Tag grumbles, rolling the glass between his hands. "At the time, it seemed like the logical thing to do." He tries to take a deep breath, but it does not come easily. "Scrambled is good, thank you! So are tomatoes and garlic." Tag peers in the direction of the kitchen. "'Flicker' like the verb, or the woodpecker? I'm Tag. Like the verb." "Flicker like the verb," Hive answers for his roommate. "Flicker like /annoying/ as the woodpe --" Flicker cuts this off as he gets out from the fridge and starts peeling garlic, speaking right over Hive cheerfully: "Hive just disapproves of anyone /smiling/ before he's had his third cup of coffee in the morning." Which, from the smell in the kitchen, is probably brewing currently. "He'll be better in a few minutes." "Did you have /fun/ last night, at least? I suppose in the scheme of things that's the important part. Waking up in strange men's apartments happens to everyone." "Oh, I had a lot of fun!" Tag replies, perking up a little. "I probably should have just gone to the Batcave to begin with, rather than clubbing. I don't always pass out when I drink, but I do end up in strange men's apartments...often." A flash of some punk house in Atlanta and the guy who had brought him pressing his face into the penguins penguins penguins penguins. "I...um, probably shouldn't be going out at all, come to think of it. Not until I find a job, anyway." He shrugs. "Did you have fun? I hope I did not cut your evening /too/ short." A wince passes across Hive's face, and he reaches out automatically to squeeze Tag's knee once, brief. His tone is light, though, as he shrugs. "Naaaah. That asshole," he jerks his thumb towards Flicker, cooking in the kitchen, "was cutting my night short already. Beat me in five straight rounds of air hockey at the end there, how am I supposed to enjoy my night after a demoralizing blow like that?" In the kitchen, the smell of sauteeing garlic is mingling with the coffee -- some of which Flicker is pouring into a cup to bring out to the living room and set down beside Hive's laptop. /This/, finally, earns a smile from the telepath, snagging the mug quickly as Flicker disappears back to the kitchen. Rather literally, too, blinking out of the living room and reappearing in a rapid series of ghostlike flashes that end back where he started. Hive takes a quick sip from his coffee, wincing at the heat. "I feel you on the going out, though. Spent a long time out of work. I guess I'm still /kind/ of out of work. What sort of job are you looking for?" Tag's eyes try and fail to track Flicker's progress back to the kitchen. "Wow!" he cries, amazed. "You're like a blink dog! I don't mean you're /actually/ like a dog or anything, just...the blinking part." He scrunches his face up a little, considering Hive's question. "Pretty much anything, I guess?" But preferably one that doesn't suck. "/Even/ one that sucks," he insists, "since I don't really have a lot of marketable skills, or references, or work experience." Or legal documentation. This comment earns a grin from Flicker, flashed bright and broad across the low wall into the living room. "Less toothy," Hive says with a snort, "but pretty much Lawful Good." He does not say this like it's a /compliment/. "Can you make coffee? I think I saw a help wanted sign at Evolve, last time I was there. Don't know about not sucking, customer service pretty much always sucks. But. There's caffeine. And a club upstairs." "That depends on your definition of 'making coffee,'" Tag says sheepishly. "I mean, I am capable of operating a coffee machine and producing a caffeine-infused drink, but the look of horror on my housemate's face the last time I tried tells me I need some work in that department." It tasted fine to /him,/ but whatever. "Still, I guess it doesn't hurt to try. I think I would be good at customer service, maybe. I bore easily, and people are interesting." Sometimes terrible, too, but it's not like being unemployed has done anything to shield him from terrible people. "I meant to go job hunting on West Side last night before that guy invited me to a club." "They'll probably teach you," Flicker says brightly, emerging from the kitchen again, this time with a plate in each hand, scrambled eggs dotted with red chunks of tomato and a spoon stuck in each. "I mean, I bet lots of people in coffeeshops never -- worked in coffeeshops before." He sets the plates down on the table, leaving them there with an absent scuff of knuckles against Hive's head. His own is not in a plate but a lidded tupperware tucked under his arm, and he scoops up a backpack from the side of the couch. "Gotta go. Class. Come back sometime! Maybe without the passing out first." He disappears -- in another quick series of flashes -- without time for much response. Clearly used to this, Hive takes his eggs, closing his laptop screen to pick up his spoon instead. "I mean, I know a /few/ other places that'll be cool with the whole freak thing, but they're few and far between. My roommate -- not Flicker -- he's got wings. Works at this weirdass vampire store over in the Village, lots of goth teenagers, they think it's the coolest. Though. They might think it's a gimmick," he admits, with a crooked smile. Picking up his plate, Tag inhales the scent of freshly scrambled eggs. Delicious! "Wow, I would be terrible in a gothy shop. Black is great and all, but I like /all/ the colors." The eggs on his spoon turn leaf green before disappearing into his mouth. "I did some courier work when I was in D.C., that was cool. Nobody cared what you looked like or you did between drops as long as you made them." He grins, suddenly remembering his dream--the languid sweep of oilslick black wings across the azure sky. "A guy with wings would make an /awesome/ courier. I wonder if there are any mutants who look like dragons..." "There are mutants who look like dragons," Hive says, with a passing frown. It shifts soon into a quick smile at the eggs. "Should get ham next time," he muses. "Some of the bike courier places here are pretty easygoing about -- everything, too, so long as you're fast." His grin spreads. "How far can you bike in a day?" In the other bedroom, the music has stopped; his head tilts slightly at the lack of sound, and he starts on his eggs, too. They stay yellow. "You've lived a lot of places." It would be /awesome/ to look like a dragon. "I guess it would be kind of awful, actually," Tag muses. "Even /I/ have a hard time, and I can 'pass', you know. Besides, most furniture isn't really made for people with tails and wings." He looks up, as if expecting to find the answer writting on the ceiling. "I haven't done much long distance biking, but I bet if I had a decent bike I could cover 40 or 50 miles." He would probably get bored /long/ before that, though. "Down the coast and up again. Mostly I get between cities by hitchhiking, bussing, or train-hopping. Usually I don't stick around long, but I've shacked up with people here and there." Jason, arm draped over his shoulder, handing him a beer. "I had planned to keep going north, maybe go to Boston. But my siblings are here, and I dunno..." They need me. "Definitely makes life more complicated if you can't pass," Hive agrees thinly. "My neighbors downstairs are, uh, blue. There's no hiding that. Would it really be boring? I think every day out there's taking your life in your hands, bike messengers are fucking crazy. So are drivers around here. It'd be like racing /death/ for each package. Why don't you stay long?" His eyebrows raise, questioning, in between bites of egg. "In all the places you live, I mean." Tag chews on his lower lip. "I guess I don't really think of it as very dangerous. Biking in traffic, I mean, or running through it, or whatever. Been doing it since I was little--I grew up in Chinatown." Maybe his danger sense is just miscalibrated? "At first, I kept moving because I was afraid people would find out I was a mutant, or a queer, or both." He pushes the last of the eggs around his plate and stares fixedly at them. "Then I kind of got used to moving all the time. I traveled with a sort of gang for a while, up from Florida to Atlanta. Then some bad stuff happened." It was hard to breathe with his face pressed into the pillow and the weight of the penguins penguins penguins. Tag reaches under his shirt and tugs at the bandages, pulls in a deep breath with difficulty. "It's just what I always do when I get in trouble." He turns and looks at Hive, blue and purple hair hanging in his eyes again. "Nothing wrong with that, right?" "No. Nothing wrong with it," Hive says slowly, flicking a glance to Tag's hand as he reaches below his shirt. "I mean, people do what they gotta do. Sometimes that's moving on from bad shit." His lips twitch upwards, though it's not a very /cheerful/ smile, one shoulder lifting in a quick shrug. "I ran across half the world, I can't really knock it. But," here his smile /does/ grow more cheerful, and after polishing off the last of his eggs he sets his spoon down, hand lifting instead to brush hair back from Tag's eyes, "finding people who help keep the bad shit /away/ can be as good as leaving it behind." "You mean run across the world like Forrest Gump?" Tag asks, raising an eyebrow at Hive as the latter pushes his hair back. "I thought I'd found people who could keep away the bad shit, first in Atlanta, then in Philly. Mostly punks, kind of rowdy and fighty, but pretty decent people" He sighs, but it's not a particularly downtrodden sort of sound. "I always seem to mess it up, somehow." By not looking before he leaps, mostly. "Every time someone says 'YOLO', I want to tell them it's not actually a good motto." He suddenly grins as the Rebel Alliance theme plays in his head. "Unless they mean 'Yavin Orbit Looming Overhead' or 'Y-Wings Obey Landing Orders' or something." "Well, I took a plane, much quicker that way." Hive leans forward to set his plate aside, opening his laptop back up; all three screens wake up again, his diagrams springing back to life. "But I left home far behind. You know, I'm not sure those are good mottos, either," he muses thoughtfully. "I mean, they're only applicable in very /specific/ situations. Maybe better than the alternative, I guess. Nobody's ever actually /said/ YOLO to me, though. You're the first and I'm not sure that counted. You planning to mess it up this time? Or you gonna stick around New York a while?" "I think it's better to have a mostly useless motto than an actively bad one," Tag says. "I took a plane once, when I was a kid. I thought it was the best thing ever." The curve of the green coastline terminates in bone-white cliffs far below the sweep of his iridescent wings. "I never planned to mess up before," he mutters. "I never plan much of anything, really. Things didn't turn out very well back when I did bother with planning." His parents berating him while he stared straight past them at the teak cabinet in their dining room. "I'll stick around for a while--as long as I can." As long as he can keep out of trouble. "Are those blue prints?" he asks, cocking his head at the laptop screen. "Sorry, should I avert my eyes? Maybe it's top secret Shadowrunner stuff..." "I guess most people don't /plan/ to mess up," Hive acknowledges with a crooked smile. "It just sort of happens." He looks over with a slight frown, glancing towards the closed bedroom door that had once had music, and picks up a pillow from the couch-bed behind them, hurling it over towards the door -- just as it opens to let a very thin, very pale man out from behind it. It hits the other man in the face. Hive looks back at his work innocently. "It'll be blueprints some day," he says with a shrug. "And some day after that it'll be a building, maybe. Right now it's just a boatload of work I've got to get through in the next couple weeks. First job I've had in ages. Maybe it's top secret. You gonna rat me out?" The pillow is sailing back towards him, but he bats it away with a hand before it hits. Surprising a telepath is hard. The other man is slipping over towards the kitchen to retrieve a plate full of eggs before they go /too/ much colder. Away from the door, it's easy to see the large wings that unfurl from his back; dark and soft and more batlike than feathery. "You're waaay more poetic about plane rides than I was. I was just sort of angry and glad to see Bangkok disappearing behind me." Tag actually blushes slightly. "That wasn't the plane ride, that was being a dragon, which is about a thousand times more awesome than being on an airplane." His gaze follows the man's wings, mesmerized. Pretty... "I won't tell anyone," he replies, indicating the floor plans. Looking down at his plate, he remembers he still has food and hastens to polish off the eggs. "I don't know anything about buildings anyway, so I would have a hard time ratting you out even if I wanted to." He glances at the winged man again. "Hello, I'm Tag. Hive rescued me from the Batcave. Is everyone who lives here a mutant?" "You were a dragon?" The other man stops, leaning a shoulder against the doorway between kitchen and living room with his hands now full of eggs dished out onto one large plate. Behind him, his wings stretch out, wide, and then settle back into place. When he smiles, it's with a sharp glint of fangs. "Woah, what gave me away?" He looks to Hive, then looks to the door of his room, in confusion. "Rescued you from -- what were you doing in my --" "The arcade," Hive corrects, amused. "Yeah. We're all freaks here. Uh. There's another apartment just below me where everyone's a mutant, too. Two apartments on that floor, actually. I think when people find building management that won't freak the fuck /out/ we tend to congregate. I could explain to you something about buildings," he adds, thoughtfully looking at his computer screens, "but I'd end up going on for hours and it'd be boring as hell." "Alas I was only a dragon while I was asleep," Tag laments, flexing his shoulders with a slight wince. "I don't think I've lived in a building /legally/ since...college, pretty much. If I had a credit rating, it would be abysmal." He rose and rinsed his plate off in the sink, since he did not feel right adding to the pile. "Speaking of my rescue, I could do your dishes to sort of repay you," he suggested, scrubber still in hand. "I won't even turn them any funny colors." "You can turn them funny colors?" The other man presses wings flat against the wall as Tag passes by into the kitchen, eying the pile of dishes curiously. "We could use some more exciting dishes, it's like a bunch of mismatched stuff we snagged at Goodwill. If you can spice 'em up go for it." He tucks a spoonful of egg into his mouth, disappearing back into his bedroom with a muffled sound of voices from behind the door. "I should probably protest or something. That's the polite thing to do, right? No, no, it's okay, you don't need to do that. But." Hive grins, quick and sharp. "Nobody else is gonna get to it for at least a week. If you are dishes-inclined, go for it. I'll rescue you from a dozen more arcades if it means we'll have a sink again every time afterwards." Tag smiles brightly. "Well, I don't /plan/ to need any more rescuing, but like we said before, it just happens sometimes." He stretches again and rolls up his sleeves, exposing skinny wrists and a rainbow-hued tattoo of the cursive letters T-a-g on his right forearm. Selecting a the largest pot, he fills it with warm water and detergent. "So, are you really all right with new color on your plates? I can do more than just solid colors..." "Sure, why not? I mean, uh, what you do, that's not /lead/ paint or anything is it?" Hive asks this with some amusement, glancing over as Tag starts working. "Go wild. Mm. You got any plans for tonight?" he asks this in distracted offhand, eyes returning to his screens as he gets back to work himself. "More booze to drink, more Imperial forces to take down?" "I don't have access to advanced laboratory equipment," Tag replies, "but I've done my own share of experimenting on my powers. As far as I can tell, I just change what parts of the spectrum a surface absorbs. Magenta sugar is still sweet, cerulean salt is still salty." He shrugs. "If it /is/ poisonous, I'd be in trouble, because I'm always coloring my food. Tonight? Nope, no plans, though I'll be a lot more conservative about my imbibing if I do go clubbing again." He bites his tongue lightly as he scrubs a bowl clean. "Why? Do you?" "You know," Hive says, his tone solemn though his expression unreadable behind his bank of monitors, "it /could/ be toxic. Possibly all the poison in your coloured food's been leading to bad decisionmaking." There's a brief spell of quiet, a series of clicks of Hive's mouse, and then he peers over the top of the screens towards Tag. "Yeah, sorta. We --" His hand waves, vaguely, around his apartment in general, "have games -- night. Thing. Tuesdays. My roommates, couple of other friends now and then. You should come. S'pretty heavy on the geek, though, just so you're forewarned." This warning comes with a hint of amusement. Possibly he is not too concerned about the man who folded him an X-Wing being scared away by geekiness. "I think we're going with Twilight Imperium tonight." Twisting around and cocking his head at Hive, Tag snickers. "Nah, I've done plenty of other stuff that can /probably/ account for bad decision-making." E, acid, DMT, stuff he can't even identify and probably isn't even illegal yet. Should probably stop doing that before he starts chewing on faces. "I love games, and the geek is strong with me--it's not just Star Wars, but you never forget your first fandom." He pauses while he turns on the faucet to fill a mug that clearly will not come clean without a bit of soaking. "So...by that you mean you're going to /finish/ playing Twilight Imperium around Thursday?" He winks. "I'll be here." "Thursday, pfft, I've cleared my schedule through the weekend. You should've seen us try to do Android. We were still working on it come /next/ game night a week later." This may be an exaggeration. But then again, it may not be. "We start, uh, generally whenever Flicker gets home from class. Usually some time after six. My neighbor's bringing dinner. He cooks like a beast." Hive smiles brighter at the accepted invitation, but then turns his attention back to his work. "Thanks, by the way. For the dishes." Tag hangs up the dish cloth and admires his handywork: a rack full of plates bedecked with new colors. Some feature scenes from fantasy and science fiction--a cartoonish Millennium Falcon here, an Art Deco D&D party there--and others bright geometric designs, and at least one Golden Spiral filled with a bleed of rainbow hues. "See you tonight, then!" he piped, head filled with colors, as he lets himself out. "Holy shit." That is Hive, glancing over towards the new dishes. That is all the goodbye Tag /gets/, as the telepath gets up to move to the kitchen and look at them closer, with no small degree of appreciation. His "See you," comes far too late to be of any use, long after the door has closed behind Tag. Oh well. There's always tonight.