Logs:Just a Feeling

Just a Feeling
Dramatis Personae Ion, Chef
In Absentia Jax	2024-12-05 "{We ain't really a low burning kind of group.}"
Location <NYC> Hellhound Bikes - The Hole
Located not far from Jamaica Bay in a predominantly Latinx sector of East New York, this garage doesn't look like much from the outside. A low-slung squat dingy brick building with a hand-painted sign over front proclaiming it to be HELLHOUND CUSTOM CYCLES, this garage has a small office area with its own pedestrian entrance from the street at the front, containing a minifridge usually full of beer and beaten down old desk with a ledger and an antique cash register that no one ever seems to use. The rest of the space is roughly L-shaped, its walls lined with racks of tools and heavy workbenches with built-in steel drawers full of hardware and spare parts. There's a raised platform in the wider leg of the space for working on one motorcycle, and there's space in the narrower leg for parking at least three more. Church has been over for hours, but the party for the club's latest addition is still ongoing. Tian-shin Chef has been circulating and toasting extensively, sporting her grown-up colors--the skull on the back of her cut has a Chinese longsword and calligraphy brush in place of crossbones--over a red mandarin shirt, slim black jeans, black lace-up boots. Her hair had been bound in a single tight braid, but she's recently untied it and it is slowly unweaving itself into glossy waves. She's sitting next to the fire out back nursing a mostly-empty Corona and staring up at the hazy, nearly-starless sky. Ion has been tending the food for quite some time, but is making his way out back now with a beer of his own. He's in jeans, his own cut over a thickly lined flannel, boots, blue knit cap pulled down low on his head and blue scarf wrapped around his neck. He's unwinding the scarf as he nears the fire's warmth, plonking himself down on an upturned crate alongside Chef. "What's cookin'." Chef pushes herself slightly more upright with Ion's approach, saluting him with her bottle as he settles beside her. "Nothing as good as yours," she replies brightly, "but I got an exciting menu planned. Working on a poem. Ideas for my next tattoo. Killer hangover tomorrow." She tips her head back to study the sky again. "Feel alive, you know?" "Shit, where you get new ink." Ion is looking her up-down-over as if he might perhaps spot the ideal new tat real estate right now. "What? How else you gonna be? {Breathing, ain't you? What were you before?}" Chef sets down her beer carefully--and still has to do so twice, it almost topples the first time--and unbuttons her right cuff. There's an iridescent sphere filled with electrical arcs on the inside of her wrist, too deep to be painted on but certainly not a real tattoo, as it couldn't have healed over so quickly since the last time Ion has seen her wrist bared. "A black dragon, all up along here..." She traces an undulating path all the way up her arm to her shoulder. Then back down to tap the sphere. "I've decided this pearl, but still playing with what the rest of it will look like. Tag has been sketching stuff out for me." She looks back up at Ion and smiles.. "It's just been...this whole last year, I've felt like I was a little dead inside. {I know, it's dumb! Of course I'm alive.}" The flush in her cheeks is probably just inebriation, or the warmth of the blaze so near. "{It's just a feeling, right? Since that run at the bigwig slug we done in Mojo.}" "You know who gonna be needling? -- What that mean." Ion is waggling his hook indicatively toward the sphere, small shivers of spark arcing off the end of it to fizzle into midair before they actually reach Chef. He does not look entirely like he follows, really -- he's nodding along as she speaks but it's kind of slow, kind of like he's trying to puzzle out this question of feeling dead inside. Perhaps he does not come to any greater understanding but he's still just nodding, taking her at her word for this baffling phenomenon. His grin spreads bright, and he takes a long swig of his own beer. "That shit wild, fuck. {First time I really picture you rolling with us, you know? Damn shame the dogs not around to see it.}" "I wanted to ask Jax, but he's so busy and it feels cruel because I'm pretty sure he'd do it even if he doesn't have the energy or the heart." Tian-shin shakes her head and drains the rest of her beer. "I might ask old Master Wong, on Bowery. He doesn't usually tattoo women, but it's worth asking. I know, those would be two very different dragons." She chuckles self-consciously. "The pearl, it's..." She traces the edge of the not-tattoo with the pad of her thumb. "It's kind of...power and wisdom that comes from pain. This treasure that the dragon creates and spits out, and chases and consumes, and spits...out...again? That sounds kind of gross now. It's just..." She kind of waves her empty bottle vaguely in the air. "...symbolic, right? Like I didn't literally think I was dead, it was like, something is missing from in here." She taps her chest, just over the heart, but her fingers find the new "PACK MEMBER" patch and she smiles again. "{Not missing no more.}" "Dragon... {cud}? Little gross," Ion agrees, holding up his hook and pinching the prongs just a skosh apart. He doesn't look all that critical of the grossness, though. He leans forward, arms propped on his legs as he watches the crackle-pop of the fire. "Shit, girl, {shoulda got you abduct by some aliens sooner.} Wake you right the hell up, huh?" Tian-shin shakes her head, as she clumsily re-buttons her cuff. "I don't think it was the aliens. {I always knew.}" She taps her chest again. "{There's fire in here. All my life I kept it low, and it was you showed me...}" One of her hands waves at the roaring fire in front of them, and suddenly she's blushing hard enough to show even through the flush of the drink and the heat. "Sorry about all the metaphors, it's that poem I have on the back burner." She picks up her bottle, immediately remembers it's empty, and lowers it again, and when she continues it's not in English or Spanish but Mandarin. "{I love you.}" "{We ain't really a low burning kind of group.}" Ion shifts, lifting his beer in salute to his newest packmate. "Be damn glad to have your fire. Maybe later we hear that poem?" He's taking another gulp of his beer when this last comes, and he follows Tian-shin's declaration with a bump of his shoulder against hers. His Mandarin is coarse, if not much less so than his English. Or Spanish. "Shit, {you know you been my dog. Way before it official.}" "Not gonna be a good poem," Tian-shin warns. "Gonna have some fire in it for sure, though." She bumps Ion back, harder. "{I know, that's -- me too! But I mean kind of like back when we were pretending to date -- but not pretending.}" The last part tumbles out fast and she lets the rest of the breath out in relief, and clarifies in English, "As in I want to be with you with you. But I don't even know if you want that with anyone, much less me. Not that I'm less, it's..." She cringes, pressing the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. "I'm sorry I did not plan this, exactly. It just wasn't appropriate while I was prospecting. To say." "{Wait hold up,}" Ion's attempt at clarification -- in Spanish -- is sort of overlapping with the first part of Tian-shin, "{did I go forget some whole -- when did we not pretend to...}" He's slowly catching up to this line of conversation, though, and his eyes go open wide. "Ohdamn. You -- ohdamn." He gulps at his beer again, and then shifts, turning to look more squarely at Tian-shin. "Huh. {This whole time?}" "{Not the whole time.}" Tian-shin does not lower her gaze when Ion turns to her, though something in the set of her shoulders tells of the effort in it. "Well. I don't know when it went from love to love. I'd never been in love before, and we were already doing so many things couples do. {But I definitely knew it that night you came back.}" She looks down at the hook that's replaced Ion's hand, then back up at his face. "I wanted to tell you right then, but you didn't need that kind of drama. From a prospect." "{Would have be some drama,}" Ion agrees pensively. He sets his bottle on his knee, one finger tapping absently at its side. "Shit." He draws in a breath, head shaking. "You ain't no less than, shit. {Been a bright spot in my life years now.} Life funny sometimes, huh." His eyes are straying back to the fire, gleaming from the bright flame before he exhales hard and turns a rueful smile back to Tian-shin. "I'on date none my dogs, though, Chef." Tian-shin does not look surprised or even particularly upset, though she blinks a few times with her answering smile. "Life is funny," she agrees. "I could have bowed out when you turned up alive, but I'd fallen in love with the Club, too. And when I strip away all the complicated stuff what I want is to be your family." She bumps his shoulder again. "{Think I also knew deep down, I was gonna be no matter what.}" This brightens Ion's smile again. Wide, easy, for all the wistfulness that lingers in his eyes. His shoulder rests against hers, and with her drink gone he passes her his beer. "{No matter what.}"