Logs:Cousinhood of Mutants

Cousinhood of Mutants
Dramatis Personae Dusk, Hive
In Absentia Jax, Erik, Dawson, Ryan	2022-04-01 << What could possibly go wrong here? >>
Location brainspace
<NYC> Riverdale Dusk is not sleeping. Most of Riverdale is sleeping, by this hour. There are still a few night owls hanging around the town square swapping stories over beer. The night patrol is keeping a vigilant eye out for interlopers. Down in the basement of this particular mansion a couple of people are up still binging Abbot Elementary. It is otherwise largely still, quiet, the mental landscape chaotic with the surreal clutter of many overlapping dreams. Dusk's addition to the psionic noise is a raw ferocious hunger. He's lying on his stomach on the bed in a tiny attic nook of a bedroom that provides absolutely no room to stretch his wings. His chin is resting on one folded arm, and though his laptop is open in front of him he's paying the lines of code there very little mind. He breathes in, breathes out, tries to push down the howling instinct to get up get out find something more juicy than debugging code to sink his teeth into. Another breath. In an adjacent room someone shifts, coughs, settles back into sleep. Dusk clamps his jaw shut tight and steadily does Not think of the warm bodies so close at hand. Somewhere far across the city, Hive is a mirror of Dusk. He's lying in his bed, laptop on the pillow in front of him but his attention straying far from the game on its screen. The mental touch that curls up against Dusk's mind is soft, gentle questing fingers squeezing lightly and then almost withdrawing. There are no words to accompany this pseudo-greeting, only a distant feeling of care and worry. It's a jumble that answers Hive -- a surge of hunger and desire clawing ineffectually out at the incorporeal presence, almost immediately joined by an grateful warmth. Dusk's wings start to flex, claws scratching the walls before he pulls them tight against his back. He swallows hard, forcing down the lonely ache that's risen; the << miss you >> that rises unbidden is likely fully unnecessary. << You good? >> is more intentional. Hive's touch settles back around Dusk, soft and blanketing like the wing that can't, currently, drape around his shoulders. << Better than you, shit. You want us to come up there? Seems like you could use... >> The worry increases, through the hesitation. << A lot. >> << pleaseyespleaseyesplease >> Desperate and loud, this reflexive cry comes with a sharp mental picture; Dusk's hands on Hive's body, his fangs buried deep in the other man's throat. The shame that follows is loud, too. It renders his chosen answer: << Nah, I'm good >> dissonant in its casual tone. << Maybe later? Got work to finish. >> Though he's closing his laptop, cheek pillowed against his arm and a quieter ease filling him as he nestles into the mental touch. << You're up late. >> Hive doesn't shy away from the keener thirst; doesn't seem much surprised by it. He waits for Dusk to ease, setting his own laptop aside and hugging his arms around the pillow now under his head. << Time is a fiction, >> he answers -- too-casual as well over the stress underneath, worry for his friends, sharp knife of grief that twists every time he tries to fall asleep in this empty bedroom. << Went to see Jax the other day. He sends his love. >> << Shit, they let you visit? He okay? >> There's a conflicted contextualizing beneath this thought, what even is okay trapped in a cage while politicians debate your execution. << How long's he gotta be in there before we do something about it? >> << He's in jail. S'not Prometheus, anyway. Sounds cushy, for a jail. >> Which doesn't much mitigate Hive's anger over the whole situation. << Figure he'll make the call on that. It's not Prometheus, you bust out of there and you'll be on the run forever. >> His fingers press tighter into the pillow. << Kind of a luxe celebrity mutant jail. Putting all the high-profile freaks in one place. >> << Guess cushy jail is better than torture jail. >> Dusk is very reluctant with this admission. Some of his hunger is waning, even the discorporated mental presence soothing the touch-starved fervor. << Celebrity jail? >> piques his curiosity. He's racking his mind for other recent high-profile arrests << -- definitely not Ryan, he's home -- >> and coming up short. << I've been startled by their incompetence a lot but I gotta imagine even the government isn't stupid enough to house Jax and Ryan together anyway. >> Hive's touch now comes with a leak of secondhand mental imagery -- a very familiar old man with a shock of white hair in a pilled old prison uniform, sitting and sketching opposite Jax. << Though if you ask me that's pretty fucking dipshit, too. >> Dusk startles up from where he's lying, claws scraping against the floor as he levers himself upright. The curiosity flares brighter in his mind, and it takes a verrry conscious redirection to stop his thoughts immediately straying to other people in his orbit who would be Very Interested in this information. << Pff, what, it's not like Jax was in the national news for repeatedly breaking mutants out of prison or anything. What could possibly go wrong here? >> With an effort he's settling himself back down on the mattress. Dusk doesn't want to share and Hive doesn't want to hear, the mental grip loosening for a moment as though he's consciously turning his attention elsewhere. He settles back comfortably in when Dusk lies back down, a soft flutter of amusement carrying through his touch. << Feel like Jax is very uninterested just right now in getting too much deeper into hot water. >> Too much, though, has its own conditional undertone: Hive did get this info straight from Jax, after all. There's a further trickle of information that follows -- the location of the prison, a rough idea of its layout and defense measures as gleaned from the minds of the guards he's been inhabiting. When Dusk sits up next it's more deliberate. He's stowing his laptop away, grabbing a shirt to carefully maneuver himself into it. << I gotta get back to work. >> He's decidedly not thinking about his abandoned laptop, here. << Really do miss you. >> The << (thanks) >> beneath this is just a whisper of feeling. << Yeah? Next time maybe I'll swing by for real. >> Hive isn't prying after all that Dusk is not saying, but he can't help the redoubling of worry that passes through him. He's gentle as he starts to pull back from Dusk's mind, leaving in his wake the suggestion of an embrace and a firm, << Just stay safe, okay? >> The wave of longing that follows this offer is more muted than the first. Dusk's wistful mental image is torn -- curled up on a couch with Hive, his wing around the other man's bony shoulders -- undergirded with a wrenching grief that he does not need to name. << This world is never safe. >> He muscles the grief back down, following this up with a softer: << -- but I'll try. >> --- It's still a ways until dawn when a darker shadow passes over the moonlit island. Dusk drops down through the canopy, landing with a quiet whump just outside the porch of one of the small cabins dotted throughout the woods. There are no lights on inside, but this gives him only a moment's pause before he approaches Regan's door, his knock -- three times, then three times more -- firm. There's no apology in his mind for the hour, only a quietly urgent: << Got news. >>