ArchivedLogs:You Catch More Flies

You Catch More Flies
Dramatis Personae Jackson, Jim, Spencer
In Absentia	2013-02-02 Cupcakes, creamer, and robot spiders.
Location <NYC> 303 {Holland} - Village Lofts- East Village
This apartment is cheerful, in its way -- bright and airy, its floor plan open and a plethora of windows providing it with an abundance of light. The tiny entrance hall opens into a living room, small, though its sparse furniture and lack of clutter give it a more open feel. The decor is subdued and minimalist; black and white is the dominant theme, with occasional splashes of deep crimson to offset the monochrome. The couch and armchair are upholstered in black corduroy, the low wide coffee table central is black wood and glass-topped, and a few large pillowy beanbags provide additional seating by the large windows that dominate the back wall. Towards the back, a couple of doors lead off into bedrooms and bathroom, and to the right, the kitchen's tile is separated from the living room's dark hardwood floors by black countertops. Above the bedroom to one side, there is higher space; a ladder climbs up to a lofted area looking down on the living room. Standing in front of the partition between living and cooking area is a large fish tank: one lone Betta, blood-red, swims regally among several species of black and silver fish. A hallway beyond the kitchen leads further into the apartment. Another bathroom stands just into the hall and the farthest door leads to the apartment's final bedroom, the door usually kept shut to hold in the acrid fumes of turpentine and paints from within. Morning has come and gone, long ago. Jax made breakfast, went to work. He's coming home, now that it's evening, a little bit more tired than when he left though he seems cheerful enough as he opens the door to his apartment. He has a small boy in tow, freckle-faced, bright-smiled, who is chattering away to him as they take their shoes off in the entry hall: "-- a /ray/. Can we put one in our tank? You know at the aquarium you can /touch/ them -- well. Not now but later, can we go? Sharks, too, but I mean, I already /know/ what sharks feel like." Jax is leaning against the wall to remove his chunky silver-and-black sneakers, listening with a small smile. "Some weekend, sure. I don't think we can get a ray /here/, though. They take a bit more space than we can give them." He isn't skirted, today. He has black jeans liberally adorned with straps and D-rings and zippers, and a purple fishnet shirt with a silver-studded black sleeveless shirt over top. His sweatshirt is bright red, with a swallow flying near its base, and though his makeup has been glittery-bright too it fades once he is in the house. His eyepatch stays the same, though, silvery with a bright blue star on it. "Oh, hey," Jim's voice comes from the hall, a bare hairy-toed foot catching it before it closes. "You in for a sec - oh, hey, a kid. Hi, kid." He'd been coming down the hall when Jax arrived, a cup of coffee casually in hand. His non-coffee hand jerks a thumb over his shoulder, "Their outta cream up there. You got any?" "Hi!" Spencer says this brightly, unslinging a very colourful backpack from his back and peering up at Jim. "Who's out of where, do you live here? I live here." "N-- o, he doesn't, um, hi, sir," Jackson has been rubbing at the space beneath the eyepatch but he drops his hand self-consciously upon seeing Jim. Also self-consciously, he belatedly takes a step back, gesturing Jim inside. And kind of -- blinking, at his living room wall. Once upon a time it had been painted white, with black trim; now it is painted white with black trim and a number of pink and blue sugar skulls. "Uh -- hi," he says again, a little more bemused. "I have -- cream/er/. Spence, this is Mr. Morgan. Jim, Spencer, my -- youngest." "That's right, you did say something about another kid -- Hey, dude," Jim says in the absent breathless curtness he'd greet any adult friend of a friend, tossing down a hand to shake with Spencer, "Jim's fine. 'Mister' is for people I'm working forrrrholy smokes, that wasn't like that, was it?" He says, frowning at the skulls with his brows furrowed. "Uh. Creamer's. Fine. Uh." He grinds to a slow halt, staring. Spencer reaches up to grip Jim's hand, pumping it enthusiastically. "Hey, dude," he repeats, brightly. "Hi, are you working for who? Why are there things, did you paint the wall?" "I -- didn't. Paint the wall." Jackson is still eying the wall. He scrubs at his eye. Looks at the wall again. "I'm pretty sure it wasn't like that when /I/ left, um, was everyone still high this /morning/?" He bites down at his lip, eying Jim. "It wasn't like that this morning, cool, maybe Shane did it, do /you/ know Shane and Bastian?" Spencer is asking Jim, trotting over to inspect the skulls at close range. "They're my brothers, they're older." "/I/ wasn't here this morning," Jim tears himself gradually away from the wall to wander past Jackson, heading for the kitchen, "Been workin' on some projects upstairs." He glances down under his coffee cup to answer Spencer as he goes, "/I/ work for a lotta guys. I take pictures for people. I met your brothers, yeah. They paint the walls a lot?" "Pictures of what? Pictures like this? Pa paints pictures. Not the wall though." Spencer rubs his hand against a skull, curiously. It doesn't come off. "Projects?" Jackson's eyebrows raise. He heads for the kitchen, too, opening the door to pull out a small carton of coconut-milk creamer. He glances at the clock, next, biting his lip and then starting to collect other things and set them on the counter. Yogurt (coconut milk, too.) Oil. Sugar. Vanilla. "I don't why that's there. Shelby was still here when I left, this morning, though, so. Um." "Oh, hell, kid, I can't paint for sh-...oes." Jim eyes the image of the coconut on the creamer, picking it up slowly. And turning it around, to read the back with a frown. "I use a camera for my pictures. Shelby -- ohyeah. She does pictures, doesn't she. Man, never get used to this, huh? Guess her talent would make it easy to clean up if anyone else drew on the wall." He opens the creamer and sniffs at its contents dubiously, "Uh, just project-projects. You know Hive's caught up in building that mutie clinic. I'm helpin' him get through some of the red tape." He pours a touch of the creamer into his cup, sipping it, asking Spencer idly, "You do pictures, too?" "I don't do any pictures, Bastian does /cool things/ and pa paints /cool things/. Maybe I can learn to paint, yeah?" Spencer moves away from the wall, climbing up onto a stool to watch Jax get out Things. "Do you have camera-pictures? /I/ have a camera. I put it in Jerusalem. He spies. Like a /creeper/," he tells Jim. /Proudly/. For some reason this description makes Jackson smile, an amused twitch of lips. "Yeah, I'd heard about the clinic. Can't say it surprises me it's getting hung up. Did the creamer spoil?" Jax eyes Jim's sniffing worriedly. "I thought it was new." "It's fine," Jim says with a tight smile, sipping his coffee, "Been a long time since I've had non-milk milk. Don't mind me, old dog-new tricks. I've /seen/ some of Bastian's shhh-stuff. With the bones? Pretty rad. What's a Jerusalem?" "Oh. Sorry," Jackson says with a wrinkle of his nose, "I don't drink milk and the twins can't so we don't --" "He's a /vegan/," Spencer says, with an air of great authority, "that means he doesn't have the cow kind. Jerusalem's my spider, /he's/ a robot. You wanna see? S'pretty cool." "You sleep up at Hive's?" Jackson asks. He's still collecting ingredients -- or, okay, he's collected them, now he's arranging them in a tidy-neat row. "Not a reason to apologize," Jim snorts dryly, slurping his coffee, and while he keeps looking into his cup as though it were a dear friend he'd caught LYING to him he's not exactly spitting it out, either, "I'm in /your/ friggin' house, man. Didn't know that about the twins - just milk straight, or all shi-stuff with milk in it?" He widens his eyes at Spencer a bit, one bemused eyebrows raiiising, "A spider? Hell yeah, I wanna see that. Where'd you get him?" He jerks a chin back at Jackson, coming back around to a more immediate, answer: "Yeah, stayed over. Dunno if it was a plan-plan but I hit the couch upstairs and that was about it for me. I'm gonna be makin' my way out after this." He indicates 'this' but mildly toasting coffee. "Most things, actually," Jackson says with a shrug. He starts to pull out other things. Measuring bowls, cups, a sifter. "I mean, milk straight is terrible. But anything that /isn't/ protein they have a hard time digesting so they can't eat very /much/ that isn't meat." "I eat their desserts," Spencer says. /Happily/. "Shane takes a bite and gives me most." He's scrambling down off his stool to /run/ towards his room, calling back over his shoulder: "WAIT THERE!" "What, uh, /did/ happen when you -- smoked the --" Jax's nose crinkles. "Cactus." Jim is staring after Spencer with a grin fastened to his face. "...there /was/ a cactus, wasn't there." He takes another drink of coffee, adding mutely, "I guess I got really fucking stoned." "Bastian has a lot of cactuses. They're prickly. He likes them." Jax measures out things. Sifting. Stirring. Intermittently quietly humming while he does. "Yeeeah kinda seems like," he eyes the skulls across the way, grimacing faintly at his wall. "Maybe you made a new -- thing. Shane was wondering if he could sell it." He sounds a little tired at this thought. "Hey did they, um, you, have any lunch or dinner or anything?" He pokes a finger up towards the ceiling." "Yeah, he's got a mini-desert flourishing in there," Jim is vaguely remembering now that Jackson mentions it. "Kids're fuckin' weird." He doesn't say it like it's a complaint, more like he's just remembering this otherwise obscure and amusing fact. He looks upwards, "Uh, I did some scrounging. There's food around. Pizza crusts an' shit. Good times." And he means it - you can tell by the thumbs up. He wanders to the wall to run his own hand over the skulls. "So you gonna keep 'em?" "Pizza crusts." Jax echoes this like it pains him. Or maybe like it worries him. "Um -- I don't know they don't really /match/." He bites down on his lip, stirring at one of his bowls. "They look kinda cool, though. Maybe if they were a different color." Like. Black. And red. There's not much color in his living room, really. Spencer /bursts/ back out of his room, clutching a spindly metal contraption against his chest. He holds it up, proudly -- a large metal spider, one green eye and one red, /thrusting/ it towards Jim. "Jerusalem!" he says, cheerfully. "He can walk." "--woah, holy sh--adows on the wall!" Jim's face opens up wide into genuine fascination at the sudden explosion of spider! "Where'd you get this guy? Christ, that's a lotta legs. Lemme see it walk. You serious?" This is perfect drinking-coffee entertainment, and he /grins/ over the top of his cup. "I /made/ him," Spencer says, /even/ more proudly. "See look watch." He flicks a switch and then sets the spider down on the floor, its suction-tipped legs quiet on the wood. From one sweatshirt pocket he digs a remote; his tongue pokes out of the corner of his mouth as he fiddles with the dials. The jointed legs shift, lifting the body slightly off the ground as Jerusalem begins skittering forward, slow at first until Spencer pushes him faster. He runs straight for a wall, pauses, starts to creep up it considerably more slowly after a recalibration from the little boy. "See? He spiders around. I want to make him have a web but I don't know how yet. Bastian says he'll help me." "Wah!" Jim demonstrates a few million years of evolution in the making with a reflexive half-recoil when the spider picks up speed, even while still grinning wide-eyed, "Jesus, kid. You made that? How long'd it take? Don't think I'd like to see what kinda things he'd /catch/ in a web. Man, I'd have killed for one of those when I was a kid." As it begins to mount the wall, Jim walks after it, head tipped to the side to watch the points where its feet fasten to the vertical surface. "Man, it can even go up walls..." "Uh huh! My dads got parts for me for Chanukkah and Bastian and Shane helped me built him. UM I don't know that was /last/ year Chanukkah maybe it took all year?" Jerusalem is still climbing the wall, edging towards a corner as he approaches the doorway between living room and kitchen. "Cuz we /built/ him in the first month but then we keep adding things like his /feet/ so he can climb and the camera so he can /spy/ and we fixed him so he moves better so maybe we're /still/ building him." "He's a work in progress," Jackson agrees, finished now with his stirring. He gets out a pair of muffin tins, setting brightly-colored cupcake liners in each. Some of them have skulls and crossbones. Some have monkeys. "This time next year, he might shoot lasers." A bright BEAM of light shoots briefly from one of Jerusalem's mismatched eyes. "/Woah cool/ can we make him shoot /lasers/?" Spencer sounds so hopeful about this. "/Can/ you make him shoot lasers?" Jim asks to Jackson almost as hopeful as Spencer, his baffled expression still caught back at 'I didn't know you could even make /spiders/!' "Pa can make him do /any/thing," Spencer says with complete confidence. Jax blushes, ladling batter into the cupcake tins. "Well -- not /any/thing," he says a little sheepishly, "but I can make him shoot lasers." Jerusalem has crept a leg around the corner of the wall. Turning corners, it seems, is a tricky operation. Spencer still has his tongue poked out, his expression one of /intense/ concentration as he manoeuvers the spider. "Boy, you must be some kinda fuckin' genius!" Jim sounds genuinely impressed, /staring/ at the spider with great speculation. He shakes his head and /whistles/. Spencer grins all the brighter. "Yeah, I /must/ be," he says, quite serious about this. In the kitchen, Jackson laughs, quiet. He opens the oven, glancing at a thermometer inside, and frowns. He carefully adds tiny scoops of raspberry jam to the center of each batter-filled liner, tamping them down gently with his spoon before sticking both trays in the oven. "He's pretty cool," he allows, "and I bet you'll only make him better." "I went to camp over the summer," Spencer tells Jim, wide-eyed, "and they /taught/ robots. You wanna learn? I'll teach you." He's magnanimous in this offer. "Yeah, I think you better," Jim says with a grimace, "Though I think the technology of today's gonna be resting in your hands, kiddo, more than mine." He finishes off his coffee with a final swig and with a last /long/ admiration of the spider, he shakes his head, "But listen, you'll have to show me a little later. Hey, Jax!" He calls to the kitchen, "I'm headed out, buddy. Thanks for the cream..er...ish, huh?" "Yeah, sure. You see anyone upstairs tell 'em I'm making cupcakes." Apparently, communal cupcakes. Jackson waves, from the kitchen. Jerusalem pulls a leg off the wall to wave it, too. "Okay! I'll teach you later!" Spencer actually sounds excited about this possibility. "Bye Mr. Jim!" "Hah," Jim has a boring grown up wave for Jackson - for Spencer and the spider, one considerably wider, "See ya, Jax. Mr. Spencer. Mr. /Jerusalem/. Jesus christ." This is said to himself with a shake of the head, heading out the door. But in a good way. The door closes behind him.