ArchivedLogs:Calling In Favours

Calling In Favours
Dramatis Personae Jim, Masque
In Absentia	2013-04-19 Or rather, aren't. Sort of a half-call.
Location
Smoke thrashes like an endless tail at the unsteady warm New York springtime. Jim is bracing up a brick wall, alongside a dumpster alley riddled in its upper levels with networks of fire escapes. He's smoking, with one hands shoved in his pockets, only vaguely breaking up the vision of 'miscreant' by being a few decades too old and wearing a swear-to-god argyle sweatervest under his brown spring coat. He hasn't shaved. But he's combed his hair back from his face. Like a GREASER. He looks at his phone, then glances across the street at the apartment complex looming in boxy 1940's rowhouse architecture. Either he's expecting a call... or he's /timing/ something. A car no more than a block away gives a loud BANG in a violent cough of its exhaust pipe and struggling engine, and just then... something has crept closer, the sound of its nearest steps concealed by the sick metal beast. In a clothy thud, Masque's shoulder hits the wall at the end of the alley, within arm's reach of Jim. He looks better than when the two last met, though the way he leans on those bricks implies he is, at least, tired. But his hand has healed up for the most part. His face... well. It's still the same. A perpetual sneer on one side, and decidedly less-than-impressed on the other. He's peering in roughly the same direction as Jim, eyes half lidded, and grates, "Whatcha doin'?" "Check this out." Jim's eyes had glanced to peripheral, where that tell-tale red coat, and then move back to the apartment again. "I'll give 'em five more seconds-" BAM! The door across the street bursts open, erupting with the back of a man wearing a Yankees jersey toppling outwards into the street with his arms /bewilderingly/ full of clothes, a towel, a /dustpan/, an open suitcase and a... /birdcage/? "-zero more seconds." Jim corrects, sucking his teeth, "New /record/, Ms. Belle. Oo, she's /mad/." 'She' would be the petite blond in the powersuit /stomping/ out the door after the Yankee man, screaming in a thick Brooklyn accent, "You no good cheatin' fuckin' /worm/," though she pronounces it 'woim', "you take your lyin' fake-tan guido ass back down /shore/! I see you around here again I'll rips your eyes out! The bird in the cage is sqwawking. "Fourth time they've been through this," Jim mutters, sounding somehow satisified and disgusted equally, blowing smoke in the couple's direction. Though he adds, after a moment, "--bird's new." He -- offers Masque a cigarette? Shakes the box in his general direction anyway, eyes still directed forward. "This what you do, then." Masque's head angles, chin forward, eyes locking briefly on the cigarettes before they go back to the couple at the other end of the street. He sort of /sounds/ like he may have worked back a few thousand lungfuls of smoke in the past, but apparently now is not the time. "Seekin' people out. Snoopin'. Occasionally turn into a fuckin' rosebush." Despite mild annoyance in his voice, his attention stays on the lovers' spat. Squinting his twisted-skin-surrounded eye at them. "... Why the /bird cage/." "Because...," Jim pinches out a replacement smoke with his lips for the spent butt he flicks at a passing cab, shrugging, "/bird/." He flicks his lighter, it's an /orange/ one today, a mini convenient store fifty-center, a few times to get a light going. "Don't /be/ like that Priscilla! C'mon, Prissy! Baby, don't be like that!" It's essentially the trashiest scene one would expect in the city; a few children lurking on a stoop next door are all hushed and wiping their noses and watching with practiced sneers, while Priscilla Belle stalks /after/ Yankee boy, kicking a shirt he'd dropped into a gutter. There's screaming. And /protesting/. And fists shaking and the man is cringing away nearer and nearer to the curb, where the little blond woman begins furiously waving for a /cab/. To SHOVE Yankee into. "Some of it," Jim is answering, from the bland-faced peanut gallery. "Don't advertise the last one so much. Hows'a foot." His cigarette /sizzles/ when he takes a drag off it. "Lost a toe or three," Masque honestly and genuinely sounds like he may not know the exact number. "Still walkin'." A pause. "He'll be back. And she'll walk 'm right in." He inhales slowly, then, head dipping back down as he reaches a hand upward to drag it across his face until he's just pinching the bridge of his nose. Even past his fingers, though, his eyes track dear Ms. Belle. "Favours are a funny thing." Not the sort of funny he likes, from the sound of it. The sort of funny to darken a tone of voice to the border of murderous. "You'd think they got off on it." Jim agrees - about this whole song and dance, which is now dying down into the cab door slamming shut with a last audible squawk of the bird (it wounds like it's saying 'Cheese and crackers' or possibly 'Jesus crackers' - who knows!) And Ms. Belle gives the cab's bumper a good solid KICK as it drives away. She actually HISSES and LUNGES at the children on the stoop in full primal animal mode, and they respond with solid city-kid instincts by scattering like cockroaches indoors. Jim rolls away from the walls and starts wandering off, apparently just assuming Masque will be following, unless he's talking to himself, hands crammed in pockets, "I don't see you laughing." It's like watching a bunch of mentally deficient tigers at the zoo, fighting and pretending they have /anywhere/ else to go before storming off beyond that weird, semi-transparent flap. You always sort of hope they come back, but it's almost never worth it, is it. Time to find the next enclosure to stare at. Masque pushes himself off of that wall with a shrug of his shoulder, to trail behind a few seconds into Jim's departure. He is limping, that much can be discerned from the sound of his uneven gait alone. But it lacks the careful nature with which limping is usually associated. "Since you're so good at finding things..." A bitter, gnarled smile breaks his lips apart, but only for the length of a scoff. "'Hive'." A word, a name? It is pronounced like he needed to physically dredge it up from the muddy confines of his memory. "Where." "Keh." This is somewhat a laugh-growl-grunt from Jim, not adjusting his gait to accommodate Masque, but not /lengthening/ it either. "You want the honest answer to that, or you want me to lie?" "Tell you what." Masque's voice pipes up from behind, unpleasant and dry as his shoulders bunch forward in an attempt to let his coat's hood sink further down his line of sight. Likewise, he makes no attempt to pick up his speed. Trailing behind like a sickly hyena will do just fine. "I'll be /nice/ and let you pick one, and we'll see if you come to regret it." "I strike you as a guy that regrets a lot?" Jim turns on his heel while he walks. It doesn't seem to be out of any level of wariness so much as a /frank/ habit of periodic eye contact. All he needs is a rose to grip in his teeth, and they could be making the world's least enthusiastic tango duo. Now guess whether Jim goes with HONESTY or not: "You already know that ain't even on the table." Tch. /Eye contact/. Who needs it. Masque keeps limping forward with that hood drawn low, one hand reaching for his jaw to rub his fingers along stubble. "So he /matters/, then." It's only when he speaks the next sentence that he looks up again, straight at Jim with deadish grey eyes, mouth warped into a grimace that seems halfway between a sneer and a grin all at once. "Like I said. Favours. Hilarious." "Funnier yet, y'wrote the fineprint yourself," Jim's eyes are hard faded-watery blue as ever, but they're very much alive by contrast. Sort of lazy-casually sharp, which just looks kind of dubious. "No one gets hurt. Doesn't get a lot clearer than that." Now, there is a chuckle. Something that rarely manages leave Masque's throat quite right, like he's attempting to play an instrument he hasn't even /touched/ since he was but a young child. If he ever did. His crooked teeth drag down past a chapped lower lip, almost hard enough to draw blood. Almost. "You're the one who brought up hurting. I know that it might be hard to believe, but sometimes? Sometimes I just wanna talk. See, see that?" The hand previously rubbing his own jaw now points to Jim's, fingers clawed inward save for pointer. "That's your face. And it ain't dragging all over the floor, sagging off. I'm /talking/." "'cause you ain't /dumb/." Jim slows his backwards walk and rotates, which puts him alongside Masque, eyes aimed forwards. He blows smoke irritably in the direction of traffic. "Ease up.I'm not exactly open /firing/ on you, am I? I hate this shit. Pft. Ptu." He had a bit of /debris/ on the edge of his tongue, and after a few attempts to spit it loose, he goes about licking the material of his jacket sleeve. "Y'wanna get a message through, leave a contact, maybe I can help you out. But I ain't lived long as I have getting involved in other guy's /beef/." Silence. Masque's face relaxes to its angry default again. There is a brief glance from under that hood, then, toward Jim. But not at his face. The contour of the other man's clothes. Searching... maybe for a weapon. A sharp exhale ends the process. "I ain't got time for this." He stops, mid-step, and uneasily shifts his weight onto his good foot to turn around. "Give the Quality Motel a call when you're done bein' a god damn--" Failure to think of a word adequately insulting enough, it seems, just drags another poisonous scoff out of him. "We /will/ talk." "Y'got that right." Jim's clothes are loos under a jacket; it's difficult to gauge whether he's armed or not. But Masque has /seen/ that he keeps his gun holstered at the small of his back, and there is no solid evidence it's not consistently there, either. When Masque turns, he calls flat-casual after him, "Y'wanna coffee for the road?" It's entirely reflexive, jerking a thumb at the Starbucks coming up on the corner. He's already taking a backwards step towards it anyway. /He's/ sure as hell getting one. ... Oh, for fuck's... Masque stops. Again. Even underneath the baggy coat it is clear that he has to take a very deep breath in, and then steadily out again. After what is several seconds of either pure, unadulterated annoyance or... or perhaps temptation, he simply turns around. Straightening just slightly. "Y'know what. Make it a bag of--" He gestures uselessly along with a shrug, clueless as to the finer points of coffee shops, "-- donuts or something. To make up for you bein' fucking useless." He doesn't... look like the type to enjoy donuts. "Powdered sugar or chocolate glaze." Jim asks this while already slump-shouldering open the cafe door. "Whichever one /kids/ like best." If ever there has been a voice and face that shouldn't be producing those words, it is Masque's. At least he's just standing there with a scowl, and not grinning and holding open a van door as he says it. "And two normal fucking coffees!" This is added just before the door closes. Later that day, an unopened bag of donuts is left in the Morlock tunnels. With a note that reads in big, friendly letters, FOR ANOLE & NOX. SHARE IF YOU WANT. - M