ArchivedLogs:Returned

Returned
Dead Battery
Dramatis Personae Dorian, Parley
In Absentia	2013-10-22 '
Location <NYC> 603 {Greyhouse} - Village Lofts - East Village
This apartment is 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 small living room. 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. Another bathroom stands just into the hall and the farthest door leads to the apartment's final bedroom. The decor in this apartment is eclectic, an odd jumbled mishmash of found items that seem to bear little relation to each other. Here, a newspaper article is clipped and pinned to the wall with various lines highlighted in pink and orange highlighter, here an advertisement, here the label off a beer can. The furniture is eclectic, too. A milk crate for a table, a soft (orange!) suede ottoman (with no armchair to match), a very /bright/ magenta vinyl couch. Someone has helpfully affixed a sheet of paper to the wall over the couch, with the label 'COUCH' and an arrow pointing downward. A combination corkboard/whiteboard near the kitchen entryway more often bears odd scribbled drawings than helpful information. Bread-smells and garlic smells laden the apartment, pouring under the door and down the hallway outside to coax a third or fourth wave of refugees to come, collect a recyclable plate of noodles and sauce, a side of asparagus cooked in the oven with sea salt and olive oil, garlic bread, green beans, fruit salad. There's a lot of mixing and matching based on dietary preference, juice and water refilled from pitchers as they get low. Parley's collapsed presence, leaning in his bedroom doorway, means those that come and go move easily past him without another glance. He's come from work and his dress shows it; charcoal slacks, black belt, loafers, a matte silk shirt with a high mandarin collar to cover the fur and spots lining up the back of his neck. He's /attempted/ to brush back his hair into a short stub of ponytail, but its bristly-spiky texture has gotten free towards the fun, hanging around his black-rimmed glasses as he sips at a coffee. His eyes slide back and forth, watching those that come and go, gently bathed in the clutter of /life/ that comes off their minds. The promise of food has drawn Dorian in form the roof where he has still spent the majority of his time, enjoying the cool autumnal air and playing with the Angry Birds on the tablet that came into his care yesterday evening. Dressed in a baggy tank top that leaves his arms and shoulders bare and open to view, paired with a pair of baggy sweatpants modified to let his tail hang freely behind him, Dorian is nervously creeping his way into the apartment. He has the borrowed tablet clutched protectively to his chest, the screen dark, as he looks around the crowded apartment, trying to find Parley. Sniffing lightly at the food and pausing for a moment, apparently tempted from his mission by the food, though he shakes his head and continues past the kitchen area, wide eyes scanning the assembled mutants for the not-so-freshly-freed labrat. Head tipping thoughtfully, Parley steps back, into the shadows of his bedroom, as Dorian passes by. With arms loosely over his abdomen in a way that uses one hand to prop up his coffee cup beneath his nose, he rolls his hips into a languid stride along just - behind Dorian. A faded gray shadow in the wake of the vibrant-bright and busy mind of the other young man. Studying the backs of Dorian's ears. The slope of the other's shoulders. "You're not lost." He could be asking it. Or stating it. Maybe couching a stable life philosophy. Boo. Dorian is not very stealthy, loping his way along through the dining mutants, occasionally one of the other mutants reaches out towards him unthinkingly, stroking a hand along the thick pelt of his arm or shoulder, a few even tugging at his tail. None of this, however, distracts him from his intention of finding Parley - or, possibly, the power cord for the now dead battery on the tablet. His ears swivel about anxiously, listening, but flattening his ears into the hair as the growing sense of being followed creeps up the back of his neck, the hair fluffing slightly along that same path. It isn't, however, until the figure behind him speaks, that Dorian bounces up on the balls of his feet, bright and cheery in thought and action. The next motion is a little bit of a very bouncy pirouette, as he turns to face the voice, though his ears flatten and his eyes go very wide as he sees who addressed him. "Oh... I... I... I..." Dorian stammers, clinging to the tablet tighter as he bows his head, ears flattened so that, save for the silver tag in the left one, they vanish entirely. "I wanted to bring back your tablet, thank you for letting me play with it. I like that game. I may have run the battery down and couldn't find a charger, so..." he stutters, rising anxiety in the pit of his stomach apparently spilling out in the glut of words. As he finishes, he holds out the tablet to Parley, wincing slightly. Remaining where he is when Dorian wheels around, Parley finds himself face to face with the other befurred young man; on reflex, a light hand has raised, tented fingers come to rest neatly against Dorian's chest to form a polite barrier there. His eyes slip off to the folding back of ears, the flicker of silver tag vanishing beneath brown fringe, seemingly not listening at all as he drifts to the side. And begins an idle orbit around Dorian, looking him over, "You've not grown much." It comes out under-pinned, beneath Dorian's rush of words. Dorian's chatter falls completely silent at the touch of Parley's hand to his chest, old habits falling easily into place again as he remains as still as he can - though if Parley remains in contact with him, the faint, anxious trembling of tensed muscles can be felt. His eyes squeeze shut entirely, his head tilting forward as he is circled, ears still flattened into his mop of hair, the faintest whimper escaping his throat; he's scared, anxious, uncertain, and fighting the urge to run. "No," he mutters quietly, hunching his shoulders at the analysis, eyes screwed shut, "Not much." An extremely deep, shaking breath in an attempt to steady himself, though he now once again clings to the tablet protectively. As ever they were in the laboratory, Parley's features remain fallen inward, fallen inward and drifted distant as he travels behind Dorian again. Trailing the thick waves of feedback falling off his busy mind through his mental fingers. As he comes up on the opposite side, pausing just behind Dorian's shoulder, there's a long breathless silence before his disembodied voice rises up, "It's strange, isn't it." What, he does not specify. Watching the edge of Dorian's cheek, the shape of his lashes, from his background vantage. Dorian is now visibly shaking, despite his best efforts to remain still and calm, his dark eyes squeezed tightly shut as he refuses to look at Parley. "Strange?" he parrots quietly, confused at the use of the word, muted, fuzzy images of looming, masked orderlies and clipboard wielding scientists in crisp lab coats. Hazy memories of terror and threats bubble to the surface of his mind, tense and harsh, stinging with remembered pain and humiliation. Discomfort, painfully brilliant lights. His face contorts into a grimace, his lower lip trembling with a suppressed sob. "Please. They said we weren't in the labs anymore," he whispers, his voice quivering between octaves, "That this wasn't another test." Doubt. Uncertainty. Confusion and betrayal, all surface readily in his otherwise chaotic mind. "I just wanted to play," he says, wrapping his arms around his torso tightly, attempting to make himself smaller, his voice that of a frightened child, "Can I go play now, please?" The accompanying sounds of people giggling, laughing, and the sounds of play well up from within, a sense of the carefree memories of childhood, hazy and idealized, but happy. The splash of water against skin and fur, the joy of wrestling in the muddy banks of the cool river. As though to accompany this last memory, the faint, musty scent of damp earth begins to perfume the air around Dorian. "Dorian." Parley says quietly, from his location behind him. A momentary cringe at the sound of his name, but he forces himself to uncurl slightly, eyes opening just enough to see where Parley stands near him. He blinks a few times, the nictitating membrane actually visible on the second blink, his dark eyes somewhat damp for some reason. A faint whimper is the only acknowledgement, other than a faint twitch his his damaged ear - the furry young man still trembles with anxiety, afraid of what will come next. "You're not in the facility." For a quiet voice, Parley's is hard. Unbending. Calm. He steps forward, past the young man, eyes only facing forward as though Dorian's company were already a foregone conclusion, "I keep the charger over here." It's almost as if a damn breaks, when Parley mentions the facility. Dorian stifles a shaking sob, but the tension just melts from his posture, leaving him shivering for a long moment as he finally looks up at Parley. In his mind, there's still an undercurrent of uncertainty, distrust, and disbelief that this isn't some sort of illusion in the facility, or a grand hallucination. He lets out the breath he didn't realize he was holding, and follows Parley in search of the power cord for the tablet, which is still held tightly and protectively against his chest.