ArchivedLogs:Updates

Updates
Dramatis Personae Hive, Jackson, Ryan, Shelby
In Absentia	2013-05-15 '
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, though of late bright coloured sealife has made its way into being painted on the wall. 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. It's evening time when Jax returns to his apartment. Kind of in a stormcloud of a mood, roiling dark and turbulent over the default sunny-warm-energy of his usual state. And stormy mood means Kind Of Wired; not overly given to /dwelling/, Jax has instead thrown together some cookie dough and is filling his apartment with the warm scent of baking. Oatmeal-espresso-chocolate chip cookies, because Lord knows what he needs right now is /more/ caffeine. He's also working. His easel has been set up in the living room and once the cookies are in the oven he is sitting down in front of it to work. Whatever the painting is /going/ to be is hard to tell; at the moment it is a base layer of oil paints, inchoate in swirled pale colours. He is less pale, vivid-bright, fire engine red hair streaked with black, glittering red nails, a black t-shirt dotted with purple and blue stars ('believe in faeries', it says on the front; on the back it has a large blue pair of butterfly wings); red skinny jeans. Around the apartment light swirls in a hectic skitter of colours. Occasionally they form into vague shapes. Usually they just swirl. Shelby is here! She hasn't been here long, given the length of the train ride between Westchester and the city, but here she is! Bright, and eager, and studenty! Awaiting news on the police chat, doing homework-- Okay, no. She pretty much just crashed in Sebastian's bed when she got in and found no one home. Since then, the teenager has been doing what teens do best--sleeping. Zzzzz. Eventually the smell of baking dough drifts through the air and brings a nap-mussed, groggy ginger into the living room. Still wearing jeans and one of Bastian's t-shirts, she wanders through with a grunt of greeting for her host, idly scratching at her ribs and veering towards the kitchen to inspect the cookies for their suitability as consumables. Or, alternately, to poke at them and wince because, "Fucking /hot/, /ow/!" Whine whine. Sucking on her finger, she wanders back out into the living area and throws herself on the couch, all injured like. Hive is here, too. He also hasn't been here long. About as long as Jax has, really, save a brief stop up at his apartment to drop off dinner with his roommates. Then back down here to help baking. Where by 'help' he means 'get in the way and then eat the leftover cookie dough once the cookies are in the oven.' Now he is up high, tucked away in the little lofted area that overlooks the living room. He is up here because it is that much closer to his own apartment, and his laptop is still connected to /his/ own wifi, since Jax is too much of a luddite too poor to have joined this century with regards to internet. He rolls over onto his side when Shelby emerges, dark eyes peering downwards. "Shit's hot when it comes out of the oven," he says, so-so helpfully. A rebel rockstar no more, a returned Ryan dozes in the soft, warm haven of Jackson's bed. A bi-coastal up-and-comer as of late, the musician arrived earlier that morning, returning via a flight into John F. Kennedy airport from Los Angeles, where the indie almost-star has been in talks with record producers. After his red-eye, the three hour time difference, and lost luggage, he crashed in his best friend's open apartment rather than search for his spare key and sleep in his own (or text one of his roommates or even KNOCK on the door). He really missed the people in apartment 303, ok? Emergent now, drawn into the land of the waking by the wafting aroma of cookies, the door to the bedroom down the hall opens with a creak. Out trudges a sluggish Ryan, clad in little: a fuzzy, navy bathrobe, draping open to reveal numerous tattoos, pale skin, and crimson boxers. Shameless, he strolls into the kitchen, drops his elbows on the counter, and //leans// in heavily. "Mmmf...'spresso...mm." His head dips forward drowsily. Give him a moment to notice people. "Looks like you need it straight-up, not in no cookie form," Jackson offers, light and amused. At least, a quiet draping of amusement, warm and genuine even if its laid over a backdrop of worry. "While /you've/ been lazing about asleep we've been hard at work visiting your most /favourite/ of people." But he doesn't elaborate on this just yet, instead humming quietly to himself -- a few bars of one of Ryan's own songs, actually -- as he quietly dabs more paint on his canvas. The swirl of colours around him shifts to match the faint cool blue he is brushing on. "How was the left coast, they give you a violin made'a solid gold yet?" << No shit, Sherlock, >> Shelby headgrumbles, her fingers still stuck in her mouth. She doesn't stir from the couch but she does flop from side to back and crane her head back to find the source of Hive's voice. Oh. There he is. Because she is terrible, she makes a slow show of sliding her fingers /out/ of her mouth but Hive is saved from having to see whether or not she was going to return them by Ryan wandering by. Oh hello half-naked man. He is tracked until the back of the couch cuts off her view. Then she flops back again. "So how'd it go?" she inquires of either--both?--of the more conscious people. "Anything show up on Hive radar?" "Oh my fucking /god/," is Hive's exhausted answer as to How It Went. "I mean, yeah, we got a ping. Longshot. But ping. But then we got fucking grilled for hours on Peter's /terrorism/ holy fucking shit and I was /drowning/ in fucking cop-brain. Put me in the mood to taze some motherfuckers." Hive is kind of inched over towards the ladder, head tipped against the edge of the loft, chin propped on one forearm as he looks down. "Yeah, shit, Ryan, tell me you signed some mega-jillion dollar contract and we can all retire to Hawai'i." On Ryan's dime, of course. "Mmmf...'spresso's 'nywhere," Ryan mumbles, sleep-addled as he pushes the heel of his palm to one eye, rubbing furiously. Slumping even further forward, he pushes his nose forward, olfactory senses excited by the sharp smell of coffee and warmth emanating from the fresh baked cookies. It revives him some, bringing his eyes from droopy-closed to half-lidded, brain slow to parse the status of events Back Home mentioned around him. Mentally, he's sort of flatlined, <....>, primitive imagistic thought conjuring a picture of whatever's before him -- in other words, BORING for the telepath in the room. Accompanying a vision of a palm tree, verbally, there's, "Nawp, fuckers want me to fly back in three weeks to record another demo track. Had sex under the Hollywood sign though." Lying comes so easy, of course it's the FIRST coherent sentence he manages, lifting his gaze to blink in lieu of actually wide-eyed curiosity. "S'going on here?" Please, update him while he cookie-munches. "We stopped by the police station," Jackson's emotions reflect his intense /displeasure/ at this; if there /was/ anyone the cheery illusionist could manage to hate it would probably be the institute of Law Enforcement but as-is it just leaves a tight sort of discomfort lingering in him. "Cuz we -- with the kids gone missing we -- tracked Peter's webshooters to the station. And they had them there. But they weren't exactly real forthcoming with information." He's still painting as he works. His thoughts, as ever, are too-loud, too-bright, a hectic swirl of images more than words that flit from one to the next with hummingbird rapidity. "There's other stuff that's not espresso. Um. Box on the counter. Mint julep cupcakes or passionfruit tart -- things. But you seemed kinda like you need the espresso." His hand is steady as he paints, even if his thoughts are not. Dwelling heavily on the missing sharktwins. Peter. Jim. Trying /not/ to dwell heavily on them. "Under the Hollywood sign. Living the dream." A note of amusement manages to break into Jax's voice. Even if he doesn't believe Ryan. Maybe /because/ he doesn't believe Ryan. Why is Hive all the way up theeeere? And how come Ryan gets a cookie and she doesn't have one? And whyyy--wait. "What?" Shelby sits up, pushing the ratty mess of her hair back from her face. "The /cops/ got Peter's goo-guns? How'd...they can't have those! He doesn't ever take that shit off. I think he even /showers/ with them, it's totally gross and unhealthy." She is unleashing /all/ of the frowns. Even Ryan's picturesque description of the sex paradise that is Hollywood doesn't distract her--and that's how one knows she is /serious/. "And they know he's the Spider? What the fuck, guys?" "Picked them up at some fire. He must've been there doing his dumbass hero shit. Ryan, I am disappoint. I would've thought you'd have, like, ten /billion/ fucking record deals by now. You're fired." Hive is still lounging. Laaazily. up in the loft. Though he's sort of eying the baked goods with a hungry look. Maybe wishing for telekinesis. "Anyway, there's /something/ fucking weird going on. I mean, aside from, uh, they kept us in a fucking room for hours grilling us cuz they think Peter's a gorram /terrorist/. Keeping the fucking webshooters as evidence in some FBI case against Spider-Dude. But, like. The /non/-terrorist cops -- before we brought up the webshooters when we were just talking about missing persons cases the dude kept thinking about his -- lieutenant. Guy in the missing persons division. Apparently he's been picking /out/ cases of missing mutants and kind of sitting on them. Not really moving forward with the search. Don't know if he's just a bigot or if it's something more but I want to look into the guy." "Fuckin' pigs," Ryan says through a mouthful of espresso cookie, gooey , still-hot, and melting in his mouth, palm cupped under his chin to catch stray crumbs and shovel them back in with his next bite. "Sogoodnexttimebakemesomeforthetrip." As to his first comment, it's unclear whether he means the stingy record producers or the police. Possibly both, given the grimace that interrupts his baked goods euphoria. A panging hunger evidently awakened along with him, he's grabbing for the cupcake and tart, trying to grasp them all in his hands. He's mobile, though! And generous, the tails of his robe dragging on the floor as he silently shuffles to the loft to offer sweets to Hive. For the artist at his easel, and the griping teenager, he shrugs. "So, fuck the police, let's go do some ass-kicking, check out all the usual suspects in the usual haunts. Or, I dunno, steal a police scanner thing-y. Like what they use to radio each other?" Hey, he's no sound technician, that's all built in to his mutation. Of course, he *never* auto-tunes or eavesdrops or anything. "I'm -- not /entirely/ sure --" Jackson is hesitant, and he quiets for a moment as, instead, thoughts of Prometheus and police and the FBI rattle around in his head. "I mean, I don't really know whose ass we'd /kick/, here. I think --" Another hesitation. His hand scuffs through his hair, brow furrowing in time with a snapshot-memory of Murphy talking to him at a Ridiculously Cheerful bakery. Perhaps where the tarts came from. "I don't really know what's -- going on. I mean. It's all -- it's a mess. Things don't really add up. I'm going to get in touch with Eric, though. I mean, if it's the /cops/ we want to poke at a little more, he should be good to at least -- I mean, at the /least/ if he can tell us who signed those webshooters into their evidence locker it might give us somewhere to look for who might have seen Peter last." Inside there's a sick hard /tightening/ that he does not want to acknowledge. A maybe-lead for Peter. No leads for his sons. Ryan is /not mobile enough/. Shelby watches the delivery of sweets go directly by the couch. Then she huffs and /struggles/ to her feet to go see what plunder might be left in the kitchen. "Peter wouldn't take them off at a fire," she maintains. "You guys don't even know, those were like his babies. Only way they'd come off and just be /left/ somewhere is if they got /taken/ off." Which leads to a host of unpleasant mental images, all of them involving fire and villains and Peter heroically falling to one or the other. She shudders. And begins gathering up oven-warm cookies for the solace sugar and caffeine will bring. "Eric would be all over that shit," she mumbles through the first gooey melty mouthful taken. Hive might need to translate. Hive drops a lanky-lean arm downwards, swiping a tart out of the box. "He gave the twins webshooters. They're still here," he says with a touch of distraction. "Flying sharks." He cups his hand carefully as he eats. Not wanting to spill crumbs all the way down from the loft to Jax's immaculate floor. "So we'll talk to Eric. He'll --" His lips press together kind of distastefully. "Be all over it, yeah, I'm sure." His next bite of pastry is kind of savage. CHOMP. He might be channeling sharktwins. "We'll kick all the fucking asses," he says. "I'll eat every fucking brain in this city if I have to." "What Hive said." Ryan endorses kicking ALL the asses. After dessert, and probably donning proper clothing. For now, he scratches his bare chest, holding the box still for the telepath while he selects his treat. "Well. I wouldn't put it past the police. I mean, they arrested me for having an unidentifiable //plant// in my apartment." Among a LOT of other drugs, but he seems to have forgotten or intentionally edited that from his retelling of that whole fiasco. "Man, Jax, you stay trying to bail people out of jail. Maybe we should take to locking all our friends up //before// others can. 'Sides, the food here is way better than that shit they feed you in prison. I //know//." Now, he is in need of milk, lifting the box to pass it off to Hive so he can amble back towards the kitchen, swooping by the couch to...pat Shelby on the head. Good teenager. "Ryan, honey-honey, I'm pretty sure all that weed was /pretty/ identifiable." Jax lowers his palette to his lap, perching on the stool in front of his easel with one foot on the floor and the other on one of its rungs. "I could lock you all in here," he says with mild amusement, and a faint shimmer of forcefield appears across the little entryway hall. "... but only for about ten minutes and then I'd be pretty tired so maaaybe just, uh, don't all get yourselves arrested. -- I don't think they've all been arrested." His brow furrows. "I mean Lord knows I can't stand the cops but there's usually, like. Some kind of -- record of that kinda thing right?" Jax's entire Being Arrested experience centers around protests. He is rifling through these memories kind of fuzzily. Protocol is different when you are arresting a hundred people at a time. "OK. So. Eric next. Ask about what the cops know. I don't -- I can't --" His cheeks flush slightly, fingers tightening around his paintbrush. "-- can't really think about this more just now can we think about something less terrible for a while?" Shelby is too slow to manage a swat at Ryan's hand but she /tries/. With gooey crumb-coated fingers, no less. There might be sprayage. Take that, pretty boy. "No eating brains," she says, attention moving to the box Hive has come into possession of. "Eat sugar. What's in there?" Sure, sure, Jax already told them but she was waking up! Now that she's more alert... "I failed my algebra quiz?" she decides to suggest as a change in topic. "That's less terrible than having to talk to the horndog cop, right?" Okay, maybe not. The grin says it was a joke. "Hey Hive, you tell Jax about your new modeling career?" "I am not fucking modeling I don't know what the hell everyone's obsession is with putting me in fucking dresses." Hive fishes a tart out of the box, but then just takes the whole /thing/ when it's passed off to him. "It's, uh, cupcakes? And tarts. Passion fruit. Some kind of cream filling. You need help in Algebra? I can help. I'm, uh." He takes a bite of the tart thoughtfully, then a second more appreciatively. "-- Asian." Clearly all the qualification he needs for math help, in his opinion. "Pfft, whatever. It's practically legal. Or gonna be. I bet I can get a cannabis card next time I fly down to LA. They practically give them away for free over on Venice Beach." Ryan regales them with yet another debauched detail about his recent west coast visits. "Not sure if those...transfer from state to state though." It won't stop him from trying though! Navigating around the counter as he licks gooey oatmeal fingers, he yanks the fridge open to grab for -- almond milk! A vegan's best friend. "You model now, Hive? I can refer you to a few contacts. //I// used to model. S'what got a pretty Southern boy like me so far up here in the Yankee north. Agency paid for it all." Why he bothers fibbing to the telepath, well. Who knows. "Eh, you don't need math anyway. So long as you can count money!" is his cheerful comfort for Shelby, complete with milk-mustache grin (he drank straight from the carton). "Ryan," Jax is not a telepath but! But. He has /known/ Ryan long enough to know: "/We/ got you so far up here in the Yankee north, dude, you probably would've bailed right after the labs otherwise." His manner is easing, a quick smile on his face at the banter in the room. "It's your build. All willowy. Model-like. Did you really get him to model?" The look he gives Shelby is hopeful. Pleasesayyes. "You gonna wear the dress if I let you tutor me?" It's as if Shelby is doing /Hive/ the favor! Being in her presence is an honor, y'know. She leaves the couch too, to ascend the ladder towards the loft in search of her weakness--cream fillings. As she climbs, she cheerfully shares his shame: "Got him in a wedding dress, there's a /ton/ of pictures. Unless he's snuck into Jim's place and burned 'em all." Don't think about Jim, /don't/ think about Jim...so she moves on quickly. "Me too. You should paint us, Jax. Never been painted before. Like, cover art for /my/ first album," she says with a Flicker-quick glance and grin down at Ryan. "Once you get me that contract." "Dude. I'm not fucking /paying/ to tutor you. I don't even like algebra much I'm not /that/ fucking Asian." Hive's face has collapsed into a scowl, although his spike in cranky might have more to do with Not Thinking About Jim than to do with algebra. He scoots as Shelby climbs the ladder, making room for her to slip up into the loft. It's liberally strewn with pillows that Hive has collected into a little loft NEST. "There's no wedding dress pictures. She's lying. Gaaah. Let's," he's offering this suggestion to Jax but not actually making any move to HELP, just nestling closer to Shelby comfortably on the bed of pillows, "have some food that /isn't/ sugar before /everyone/ explodes." "Mmf right dinner." Jax flicks a glance up towards Hive. SNORT. << Like I'm your freaking waiter. >> And /yet/. He is slipping into the kitchen to put away his palette, wash paint from his hands. And PROBABLY provide them all with Real Food. If anyone has room left for it after all the sweets.