ArchivedLogs:No Homo

No Homo
Dramatis Personae Hive, Jim
In Absentia	2013-05-04 '
Location <NYC> 214 {Jim} - Sunrise Apartments - Clinton
Jim's apartment is not big, the living room area L-shaped with the entrance at one end and a kitchenette found at the other. Furnished by a scuffed wooden curb-found coffee table, a saggy green couch upholstered in a scratchy burlap material and two chairs, the habitat manages to just barely function as a one bedroom rather than a studio by merit of a walk-in closet sized bedroom you would have to cross through to reach his cramped bathroom. In here, water damage stains the walls. As does rust, around the showerhead in the cramped shower stall. You wouldn't think Jim's bachelor pad could get /worse/ than it had been, but it has - the ground is literally covered in a thin sheet of dirt, with a few random plants sitting around in various stages of Being Potted, with bags of rich dark soil sitting nearby torn open and emitting a lush damp-earth smell throughout the apartment. One window is now BROKEN, with a cardboard box duct-taped over it. Oddly, there are improvements too, however - the counters and stovetop in the kitchen are /clean/, no dishes in the sink and the damp mildewy smell of the standard crappy apartment seems to have faded. Jim is currently standing, scowling, at the window, growing a fig tree's branches up into a living lattice across the broken window to fortify the cardboard. He has a cup of coffee in one hand, the other swatting around leaves to make them do what he WANTS. He's wearing cut offs - though cut off down at the /knees/, the threads along their edge hanging down in little ragged streamers, with a loose white undershirt beneath a... thin blue bathrobe. His feet have gone brown and gnarled in the nice dirt under his feet - his hands as well. All the lighter faded-gray-green brown of the fig tree he's sculpting. Hive didn't call ahead. That might have been polite but the kind of wander-in-at-leisure dorm-feel kept up around /his/ building with his friends just sort of leaks in to permeate his /life/ and so he's just presumptively /here/ like he belongs. He might have trailed someone into the building or might just have put a shoulder to the shitty rundown door and /shoved/, who knows. He's rapping at Jim's apartment door now, though. Quick sharp taps of bony knuckles. He's started to put weight on again, since getting his brain fixed; not a /lot/, his ropy-sparse frame has never inclined itself much to flesh but his face is less hollowed out, his sharp angles less skeletal and more just spare. He has a backpack slung over one shoulder and the paper bag in his hand smells spicy. His clothes are their usual drab. Faded tattered jeans, a black shirt with a stick figure holding flask and calculator declaring 'STAND BACK, I'm going to try SCIENCE'. No jacket today, the weather's gotten /warm/. Shaggy hair grown even shaggier still than its usual, down to nearly cover his ears, badly in need of a cut. Jim wanders backwards from the window, one eye squinted at the craftmanship so far, where the living wood is grown fast amongst the window frame to keep it firmly anchored. He knows his apartment well enough that he knows when he reaches the door without looking at it, and turns to glance through the peephole absently. And then goes about unlocking the door with attention once more directed at the WINDOW. Opens it without a greeting, closes it /behind/ Hive assuming he enters and says immediately, "What d'you think?" About -- the window? "Growing a fucking garden /inside/ the house, man?" Hive does enter imediately. The paper bag crinkles as it taps against his leg. His eyes sweep the floor first, the window only second. "The shit happened to your window, you shoot someone again?" "Didn't even draw on 'em." Jim says like he wishes he /had/ - ksh. He's reaching down to take the bag form Hive. Like it's HIS by proxy, opening it to look into it, ready to screw his face into disgust regardless of what it is, "Some guy broke in. Made eggs for the house. Said he'd wear a French Maid costume next time - Y'don't like it?" He clarifies 'it' by scuffing at the dirt, "Ash's idea." "Uh --" Hive scrubs his hand through his hair at this, mussing it into a shaggy disarray. "You, uh, inviting him back? For. More eggs?" His eyes sweep the floor again. "Yeah? How's the kid doing?" He wanders towards the coffee table, pushing aside whatever he needs to to clear space for his paper bag. "You take root when it's time to sleep?" "Hey. They were good eggs. And I didn't like - INVITEinvite him." Jim's coffee table tends to always be a mess of different newsapers, some with small lines of highlighter over some random sections of the news that he will probably skulk off to the library eventually to look up online for more details. "But for a burglary, wasn't too bad. Guess he ate about three eggs, broke a window. 'S about it. And I got breakfast out of it. Think he lives in the complex. The /kid/," Jim drops the bag onto the coffee table for Hive to sort out, heading for the kitchen to pour a second coffee for Hive, prepped as he takes it, "'s doing great. Got a job in construction or something already. Haven't bothered charging him rent yet, he buys most the food. Think he might want internet sometime, though." SCOWL. He shoves the coffee cup at Hive, "Though, say, speaking of someone I shot?" "'course he'll want internet some time, he lives in this fucking century." Hive swipes the coffee cup, sipping at it. The food he takes out of the paper bag is -- some rice containers in typical chinese-food cartons, some plastic containers of vegetable panang curry, coconut and lemongrass chicken soup, some sort of marinated fried chicken drumsticks, some sort of spicy beef dish. Thai. "Good. Getting back on their feet is --" He shrugs a shoulder, taking a longer gulp. "The fuck, dude. Guess if you gotta have a burglar one who cooks for you is --" Something. Whatever this is is perhaps too baffling to comment further on. Just a shrug. "Speaking of --?" His eyebrows raise. "That guy, with the face?" Jim makes a kind of woobling gesture at one side of his face, signifying /something/ wrong with it, "One I shot in the foot? Ran into him a while back. He's still lookin' for your ass. Says he wants to talk." Jim isn't saying it like he's convinced. He's just repeating what he heard - while tearing open a set of chopsticks and sitting down. His bathrobe falls open around his cutoffs like a set of curtains. "Oh, momma, gimme that chicken." Grabby-grabby, snag. "He wants to kill me," Hive says, and it's sort of bland; one might mistake it for unconcerned in its casual-nothing tone but there's a tightening through Hive's jaw, a steady focus on the food as he passes the drumsticks Jim's way. He drops down to the couch, fishing out a plastic spoon to grab the soup. "Not my biggest fan. He aright with you?" "He can have a good-fucking-luck with that," Jim isn't saying it like a brag for Hive's ability. Just fact. Also: OM NOM drugstick, he tears off a bit with the side of his teeth. "Me? Yeah, sure. No problem. We chatted. He wandered off to go do whatever crazy homeless guys do. How's the cranium? You set t'go under the knife yet?" "The fuck?" Hive just looks at Jim blankly with this. "Head's fine. Got it fixed up." He shrugs, prying the lid off his soup. "Melt people's faces, I guess. Though I'm kinda hoping that's not going to be a homeless dude /trend/, this city'll get a lot fucking creepier." "What, like if homelessness just kind of /came/ with face-melting at the door? Here's your shopping cart, your cardboard sign and your /facemelting/ packet?" Jim barely keeps from spraying chicken while talking by pinning the back of his hand over his mouth. It's kind of muffled-garbled. "The fuck what? Knife. T'get that that uh..." He jerks his thumb at the side of his own head like 'who's got a thumb and a skull? THIS GUY.' "Chip thing out. You could fucking /stand/ to get your head shaved sometime soon, you're looking like a hatchetfaced /woman/." Because everyone knows brain surgery is, in fact, just an excuse to get a short haircut. "Ffff." This might be a hiss or it might be a laugh, Hive is bemusedly side-eying Jim as he slurps soup directly from the container. Who knows why he bothered picking up the spoon. "Facemelting comes in packets? Shit. Where can I pick me up some of those, I know a few people. Could stand to get their faces melted." Slurp. And then frown, Hive's hand moving reflexively to his head, fingers tracing a path through his shaggy hair along the side of his head. "Fuck you, my hair is great. Keeps my head warm." "Well, what would /you/ say it came in. Packet, bucket, /mechanical chicken egg/," Jim hooks fingers under the rice container's lid, unleashing a wall of steam and starchy-warm smells. "Summer time's coming, anyway. Not gonna need to keep your head warm. What. Thought you'd have /leapt/ at a chance to get that thing taken out." SLRURPSCARF, he chopsticks up some veggies. "I'd say it came in a scraggly sack of /crazysauce/," Hive says of the origins of facemelting. "I'm Thai, it can't ever /be/ fucking warm enough," he grumbles into his soup. He fishes a piece of chicken out of it with his fingers. "I don't," he answers into his soup, "leap at many chances to deal with doctors." "Yeah, 'cause I'm sure the /rest/ of them were thrilled about it." Jim has to say this in one and two-word intervals around licking his fingers, eyes directed down on his food. Hive shrugs a shoulder. He's drinking soup with a slow slurp, fishing out a slice of carrot, next. "Their chips were on, still. Mine's pretty much just a piece of scrap." "A piece of scrap that fucks up your mutation 'n makes you wanna eat brains time to time." Jim pulls the dish of vegetables to himself to hold under his chin while he eats. There's a long moment of not-quite-silence, full of the sounds of chewing and swallowing and chopsticks poking through various contents. Jim's voice is lower, rougher. "...that hard to even think about, huh?" "I always want to eat brains," Hive dismisses reflexively, but he's looking at the table and not at Jim. He fishes out another piece of chicken, sucks it out of his fingers. "Y'know, since getting out I've been stabbed and shot and burned and got fucking pneumonia and --" Possibly this list goes on but he just shrugs again. He reaches over to swipe a piece of baby corn from Jim's food. "Let you guess how many times I've seen a doctor for any of it." Jim shoves a couple other babycorns over to the Hive-side of his tray for easy access. Maybe their diminutive corn-form freak him out. He remains silent. Eating. Like he's waiting for Hive to say more. Chewchewchew. Yoink. Hive nabs the baby corn. One at a time, dipping them into his soup and then eating them. He doesn't say anything more. He munches baby corn, sucks his fingers clean, and frowns at his soup. His fingers rake through his hair again, pressing against the side of his skull. "Thought everyone wanted to eat a little brain now and then," he mutters eventually. Jim exhales slowly though his nose, and sets down his food. It's a lazy, casual process as he cleans off his hands with a napkin thoroughly, wipes his mouth (while still kind of chewing for a while with his mouth open), tucks everything aside. Then he reaches out his hand towards the side of Hive's head. He doesn't just grab him - his open fingers hover open an inch above the rounded curve of the telepath's skull, and only once their presence couldn't be mistaken does he slowly lower his palm to rest against over the hidden scar. If the contact is allowed he'll curl a really loose handful of stupid-mop hair. "Hivey." Up to now, his thoughts have fit so steadily alongside his words and actions that their audibility has been a white noise. But something is swelling now, tense and uneasy. Rising up like a thermal, in concern. << You can't just run from this, man. Don't let them get away with it. >> Hive is exhaling slowly, too, and his hand drops away as Jim's approaches. He neither shies away from this touch nor openly welcomes it, just kind of sitting with a quiet acceptance as his hair is scrunched. The scar beneath is thick, a snarled mess of flesh easily hidden by his (stupid shaggy boyband) hair but just as easily /found/. "Fuck," he grumbles at his soup. "I guess none of the others are dead." In a perfect world, this moment would be wordless. Silent and shrouded in it's own pockets if personal enigma and mutual privacy. << -dammit. >> Instead, Jim is quietly cursing inside. Steadily. While slowly running a thumb over the shape of the scar beneath Hive's hair, tracing its shape in entirety. "It's your choice this time around," he says. His thumb goes -- /poke/. His mushed up handful of hair gives Hive a slight /shake/ before letting go. "I'll buy you a hooker afterwards." This touch, Hive does shift towards. Not much, just a very faint tip of head that presses into Jim's thumb as it traces the long knotted path around his skull and behind his ear. "Hhhah." His lips curl upwards. "Shiiit, I hope you find one who's into domination," he says, wryly, "people are weirdly /prickly/ about having their brain eaten mid-coitus." "All the more reason to get all the control you can of it." Jim goes back to eating, digging into Hive's soup for something juicy. "You get a lotta practice in of snagging people. Maybe you could stand t'get some practice in getting tempted and resisting it." In the small clumsy manner of a non-telepath, he grips for Hive's mind. Tugs. Feels for a moment like it's opening wide to him. It's entirely impulsive, pushing out before /he/ can think too much about it. "Ksssh," Hive's hiss is an abrupt thing, his hands shaking sudden and hard enough to slosh coconutty soup down into his lap. It comes with an inward curl of shoulders, a clench of teeth, and his eyes slice towards Jim sharply. In his expression there is anger, not his default low-level cranky or his frequent prickles of irritation but something sharper and harder that grips at his features, pulls them into -- A sharp sudden exhale, and he slumps back on the couch, shoulder bumping up against Jim's with his sudden deflating. His hand wipes at the damp patch on his jeans and then he lifts it, sucking soup off the side of his fingers. There's a painful stabbing /spike/ of mental presence, not just touching but drilling in deep, but it's not the vice-squeezing sinking-in-claws that comes with Borging. It's just /Hive/, sharp-stabbing voice rendered /even more/ sharp and stabbing for not /being/ a voice, this time, but a knotted dump of /feeling/, clumsy, harsh, inelegant, the heavy force of his power not really fine-/tuned/ enough to make gentle work of this transfer. Beneath the brainstab what he gives Jim is, at first, void. A deep gnawing hollow, dark and aching-hungry. And, around it there are flashes, a wealth of myriad beacons that are vivid and bright, that don't just /beckon/ with appealing warmth but actively shift closer, sucked closer like magnets, sucked closer like vacuum, sucked closer like a deep black /hole/ that screams to be filled. "That," says Hive, around this mental noise and around the more present physical muffle as he sucks soup off his fingers, "is your building, right now." The first gut-response in Jim is to sink in and hunker up against the hammering, the sense of him trying to glance over every small message signal fed to him for signs that this is going to be another BATTLE. When it's not, he allows his curiosity to look (in body, he has the heel of his palm /mashed/ into one of his eyes, hissing but making no protest) at what is shown him. He's cautious with his interest, to keep from that blossoming /ease/ in which wanting to look closer might transform into a welcome. But he looks. He looks at anything shown him without wince. << -if you gotta go through this, I will-. >> The little glints of minds showing up, the minds of his neighbors - << That'd be Mrs. Teller. And her kid, Kale. Tss, Carlisle's still got that freeloader living on his couch... >> "Yeah." He agrees, gritted. "It is. We'll just have t'deal. C'mon - Try it partway. Then /back off/." He gives Hive's mind another careful /yank/, and at the same time grips Hive on the wrist, a thumb pressing into his pulse. Hive's wrist is still bony. It's pretty inescapable, fleshing back out does not extend to the sharp sparrow-bones there, and right now his knobbly bony wrist as a bit of tremor to it; the pulse beneath Jim's thumb is easy to feel, throbbing too hard and too fast. Even this, Jim's mind opening to Hive, is visible in this jarring brain-dump of feeling; one of those bright points of light blossoming into something wider, warmer. The dark heavy hunger inside uncurling. Hive's mind slams in against Jim's. It's not subtle or careful, it's just a heavy hard crush of force, and this time it /is/ vicelike, /is/ sinking in sharp teeth and squeezing them down relentlessly. "Ah-ah-/ah/--!"" Jim snarls, fingers clamping down /hard/ onto Hive's bony wrist, his whole body going rigid and-- curling. /Cringing/ in, chin lowering towards chest, chest lowering towards /knees/. "/Alright/!" He cries out, a little more shrill than he'd really like to hear his own voice. << /Okay/! Now /ease/ up ease up ease up jesus you're strong-- >> "He thrusts - nrgh," Jim mentaly shoves /back/ (even if, in a mind against Hive's, it's nearly the pain of breaking bones, creaking dangerously), "- his fists -," SHOVE, there is no contest on who the actual winner of strength would be, in the end. The sense of toes /digging in/, losing ground, always losing ground. But they are /dragging/ it out. "-against the /posts/-..." There's a moment when the cringing-curling-pain seems to be encouragement; that force increases in a greedy clench, /taking/ ground where it can find it, unchecked in a heavy mental weight that crushes down and down and, in Jim's hand Hive's /twists/, sharp. Not pulling away but turning, bony fingers curling around Jim's arm instead. Hive's eyes snap open, lock on to Jim's face. Those digging mental teeth withdraw, slowly loosening their clench on Jim's mind. It isn't a /proper/ finish to the sentence but it's there all the same, << ghosts ghosts ghosts ghosts >> and the more his presence is withdrawing mentally the harder he /grips/ physically, fingers squeezing down around Jim's arm. "Fff." Jim crumples so slightly in relief when the grip eases up, filling up his cheeks with air and then letting it out slowly. And then -- he /pats/ a hand down on Hive's hand. "--good." Gack. He runs the back of his other arm over his forehead and slumps back against the couch again. Against Hive's shoulder. Catching his damn breath. Hive slumps, too. His shoulder presses up against Jim's. He reaches for the plastic carton of drumsticks, setting it down to rests across both their legs. He takes one, chomping into it with a hard clamp of teeth. Ferocious chomping. "You," he tells Jim, "are a crazy-ass fucking bastard." It's practically fate that Jim goes for the /same/ chickenleg Hive does, which makes an awkward overlapping of hands. /Bastard/. He goes for Leg number TWO instead, tearing off a lusty hunk and chewing it slowly. "You," he shoots back around his second bite, with the drumstick practically crammed into his mouth, "are one vicious god damn telepath." Why does it sound like they're /complimenting/ one another? Chew chew, gulp. Bite. Chew. Jim's head drops back against the couch, "--ready t'try again?" "Hhhah," Hive answers, which really might feel a lot like no, from its skeptical derision of this suggestion. Hive tears another chunk of chicken off the bone. "Fuck it," he says, slumping back further. "S'fucking do this." Jim takes his time, finishes chewing, wipes off his hands, sets the box of chicken aside. He hovers his hand just kind of -- /there/ over the middle point between them a moment like he's thinking of slapping a hand down on Hive's /knee/. Except he drops it down instead on Hive's hand and just kind of gets it over with, shoving his fingers through the other man's << - this is the gayest shit ever. >> Then, he swallows. Nestles deeper down into his seat, and, still mind-sore but /more/ than stocked yet in willpower (/more so/ now, even, armed with the knowledge he is) - he grits is teeth and punches out again at Hive's mind before possibly /either/ of them can think about it. Hive does the same, but more jittery-rapid, making quick work of the rest of his chicken, dropping the bone into the upturned plastic cover of one of the entree cartons. He licks his fingers clean, wipes them dry against his knee as Jim takes his other hand. The mental thought is answered with a /smirk/. Hive's fingers tighten in Jim's. << Shit, you've /been/ around our building you've /seen/ gay -- >> and even with the stabbing-sharp cadence of his tone it's more raw amusement than anything else. Hive's hand tugs, and the amusement lingers as he turns, << gayest shit ever, >> and presses his mouth to Jim's with a barely-restrained laugh on his lips. Just in time for the other man's mind to reach for his again, and what started out amused turns to something harder. Hive's fingers clench in Jim's and the steeltooth grip of his mind snaps down against Jim's in a heartbeat, clamping tight, pulling /in/, digging fingers in deep to clench and grip hard. Here is the central nucleus of Jim's BattleMODE: it's a hard concentrated resistance stocked up, stubborn, hard, rough and /deeply/ rooted. << Agh, you pervy asshole- >> Jim is all set to shove Hive off like you /would/. Except Then he has other far more pressing fights to wage, as the eclipsing teeth of Hive's power clamp down again. The bemused << -gaywad- >> chagrin vanishes in a very serious fight for his - not /life/, but he engages in it as though it were, his own and Hive's as well, sinking in toes and pushing /back/ with all of his--. "Rgh!" He pushes back /hard/, focused and /growling/ against... Hive's mouth. (<< what oh -agh, hang on, ease up! >>) He drops his head and /thumps/ his brow against Hive's shoulder, grinding his fingers down on Hive's knuckles, scrabbling in with his nails to gouge long tear-tracks as he inevitably loses ground. "Nrgh- 's... fists against--," he shoves Hive against the couch back. << You're the one who keeps /opening/ yourself up -- >> Hive is sort of /laugh/-growling back with a requisite tacked-on: << no homo. >> Except that this comes while his mouth is still against Jim's, while his mind is sinking in deeper to the other man's, curling tight and biting down hard against that fighting. His teeth clench when Jim's head drops, when those nails dig in against his hand. << ghosts >> echoes somewhere in there, but it's weaker. The brute-force weight of Hive's mind crushes down and as it sinks harder into Jim it comes with feeling, no hivemind but just /Hive's/ mind, irritable-gruff cranky-rough and right now kind of ravenous, wantneedhunger that is kind of /drowning/ consuming. In body Hive is about as outmatched for fighting as Jim is mentally, skinny-wiry bones shoved easily back against the couch as his fingers tighten though Jim's. As his mind tightens through Jim's. "-rust his," Jim bears his weight down harder, head shaking hard and snorting like a bull trying to throw off something stuck to its horn, "-/fists/ against the /posts/ - Come ON!" Though mentally, the message is the opposite. << -okay ease up ease up, that's enough- nngh! >> It's again the shrill smothered voice of a battle losing desperately, ground lost, lost, lost and any reckless attempt made to regain it costs him more. He tries to pack in, to regroup (his back muscles, his biceps, his shoulders all coil up) and SHOVES- Dragging Hive off the cough, he thumps him back-down against the floor, hands fisted up in his shirtfront with a knee braced on Hive's chest, body making small spasms and twitches in regards to who, exactly, is giving them signals - and deals Hive a smack on the cheek. KIND of a pat, but a little hard, followed by a few more, "Let's go, buddy - thrust his FUCKING FISTS against the god damn mother fucking POSTS--" << Nnnngh, too hard, you're pushing in /too hard/, man, you gotta back off or you're gonna - >> That hard definitive line in the sand starts to slip. Hive's breath rushes out of him, a quick hard gasp as he is thumped down to the floor. His knees curl up, his hand lifting to grip -- Jim's bathrobe sleeve, Jim's shoulder, /clenching/ in an aimless curl of fingers into flesh. << posts, >> there's a slight easing here of the mental pressure as Jim's knee presses against Hive's chest. But only slight. As that line starts to slip Hive /takes/ ground, clawing forward to lodge himself in sharp hard spikes in Jim's mind. The definitive moment that this fight is lost is hard to track; for /Hive/, perhaps, it is signalled when the hard clenching of his fingers shifts into hard /tugging/, pulling at Jim to draw him nearer. For Jim it's a shift of pressure, the hard sharp teeth that have sunk into his mind not so much easing as /incorporating/ with something that, were it voiced, would likely be a deeply contented sigh. << thrusts his fists against the post, >> it's easy /now/, soft in Hive's voice -- his /speaking/ voice, more or less, smooth and quiet now rather than stab-hard. << thrusts his -- >> The easing of his mind can be felt, now. Settling in. Relaxing. There's a soft hunger, though, that has not quite /left/. << - oh, shit, shit, sh- god damn, I'm not gonna- >> Jim shudders down, for a moment gripping Hive /tightly/ against him on reflex as things less break than... sag. Folding over like a vassal in kneel, his elbows are braced on the ground to either side of Hive's head, twitching felt subtly in his abdomen, pulse thudding where both men can feel it equally now. << - /damn./ >> Is his first coherent thought once the whirlwind jumble eases and Hive burns around and makes himself cozy. << Like a god damn cat. >> Bubbles up. << Hey. Cockmonkey. You ain't staying. >> He nudges at the relaxing HiveLump. << Out. >> On some perverse curiosity, he raises a hand to see if he can still /smack-pat/ Hive, frowning down just inches above his face. Beneath Jim, beneath that twitching, Hive is tense. A little bit of twitch to him, too, a little jerk-shudder but it's calming, melting down into a soft relaxation as he just sinks between Jim and the floor. His pulse pounds, too, and as it relaxes it starts to pound more in /tune/ with Jim's (or maybe Jim's starts to pound more in tune with his?), slipping into a near synchronization. His hand lifts, and for a moment it braces his palm against Jim's ribs like he is going to try and push the other man away. But he doesn't; instead, after a pause, it just settles there, slowly fisting the side of Jim's robe into a clump. << You opened up, >> Hive says, a little /tired/, a little quiet as he opens his eyes again, looking up the short few inches to meet Jim's, and in tone here it's equal parts cranky-accusation and deep knotted-twisted /apology/. << Fuck. >> Jim's hand raises, sure, and it comes down again too but there's something here that restrains it. It arrests the motion into less of a smack and more just a touch, coming to rest rather than pat against the side of Hive's face. It draws Hive's eyes half-lidded again, not quite closed, not quite breaking eye contact with Jim, watching him through dark lashes as his head shifts fractionally. Pressing into Jim's (his) palm, Jim's fingertips reflexive-unthinking settling like old worn habit against the uneven snarl of scar against the side of Hive's (his) head. Hive's fingers unfist, not clenching but just settling flat against Jim's side. "Tsss." Fingers run reflexively through Hive's hair; whether from Hive's own habit or Jim's observation of it isn't all that relevant now. His mind is exhausted under Hive /nesting/ in it, like a hammock loose and sagging. Though he continues to nudge-poke-/toe/, though with weakening momentum. << -you're fucking /strong/. >> He grumbles back, against the accusative edge of Hive's crankying, though the undercurrent is somewhat a sense of shaking a head 'no'. << We knew this wasn't gonna be easy. Or we wouldn't need to fucking /working/ on it. >> Shift. Drag. Jim pushes down against the ground, surprised to find his /body/ taxed to exhaustion, and scoops an arm under Hive to haul him up too. Sitting on the floor, he leans back against the couch and pretty unceremoniously deposits Hive across his lap, a hand draped over the scar beneath his hair. Running a thumb over it, not exactly awkward but - resigned. Less resigned: << You can't stay, buddy. >> << I've worked out a lot, >> Hive says this with a kind of wry edge in amused acknowledgment of his hardcore exercise regimen of lots of tabletop and board games. Lots and /lots/ of staring at the computer working. Lots of sprawling on the couch reading. (But tucked underneath that, quieter-buried, less amused: lots of fierce taxing /battles/ pitted against other telepaths, stronger telepaths, pushing and /pushing/ for mental dominance; lots of other-minds /fed/ to him like warm-ups, power-ups, seeing how many it /takes/ before even the stronger telepaths don't stand a chance. Lots of minds crushed and crumbling just to see if he /can/. Lots of minds hammering /at/ his, his alone, his bolstered by a strengthening web of hivees, testing his control as well as his strength. Lots of sharb stabbed pain for mistakes, lots of teeth-gritted fighting-back against it but lots of resigned compliance, too, possibly equal parts to avoid further agony and for the sheer ravenous /relishing/ of actually stretching his mental legs.) Hive is closing his eyes now and the nestling is as much physical as mental, tucking down against Jim's lap, eyes closing the rest of the way and much of his focus turned to the simple familiar feel of finger (his hand Jim's hand his mind is not making much /distinction/) tracing against his head. << I could stay, >> it's quietly musing and quietly /tired/ and in sentiment not actually arguing so much as just idle. He isn't planning to stay but even so: << I could stay. We'd forget, eventually. >> We/you/me the line here right now is blurred. "Or," Jim closes his fingers in a handful of Hive's hair, protective and angry but choosing to remain on the surface level - on the stupid amusing thought of Hive 'working out' by playing on the god damn computer, "instead. We could /not/ do that. C'mon. You got it in you. Heave-ho." He shoves - ineffectual, yes, but /hard/ - at Hive's presence in his mind. << You gotta get used to being able t'let go if you /do/ snag someone, dude. No /naps/. Scat. >> Hive reflexively shoves /back/, /quashing/ down that battling in Jim's mind with an almost lazy-dropping paw of weight to pin the struggling down. It's an easy-effortless flex of strength that pushes shoving down into subjugation. Swat. But in the next moment this curls back, /coils/ back, lifts away with a suddenness that is not so much apologetic as kind of sickened. << so easy to -- > << gahhh. >> Hive curls a hand up, hooking against Jim's leg to squeeze down, half against the ragged edge of cut-off shorts and half just against skin. Inwardly, the pressure eases, mental ropes slowly unbinding as his fingers press harder. His hand is shaking by the time he withdraws, a sharp tugging /rip/ free like tearing off a particularly stubborn bandaid. "Mnngh," he isn't moving and isn't letting go, fingers clenched and teeth clenched. "-ngh!" Jim stiffens, hunkering up his shoulders and sinks in his chin when his will is quashed. It's all a sharp /bristling/ under Hive's Paw of Subjugation that wants to thrash. And /can't/ - << --....!! !! -- AGH /fucker/! >> You can /pinpoint/ the moment Hive lets go, his pulse abruptly elevated to hard /rapid throbs/. He endures the bandage-ripping withdraw without complaint, familiar enough by now that he knew it was coming and prepares - as much as one can. And then they sit, both tense and rigid in the resounding aftermath. Jim gradually begins to shrug out of it, chuffing through his nose and eventually returning to running fingers over Hive's scalp. And they just sit like this for a while. Jim even reaches over to snag bits of food eventually, snacking while he just kind of -- scrubs and scritches on Hive's head and arm. "Not bad, for a first time around." He comments at length. Hive just exhales a heavy breath at this. << no homo, >> he tacks on to Jim's comment in a sharp crack of amusement. The twitch of his lips might be a smile. It might just be a twitch. "I need some fucking food." Which he'll probably reach for. Eventually.