ArchivedLogs:Sensitive Types

Sensitive Types
Dramatis Personae Anette, Hive, Jim
In Absentia	2014-02-20 Friendly coffee.
Location <NYC> Montagues - SoHo
Montagues harkens back to the day when SoHo was filled to the brim with artists, with its mismatched furniture, all plush and decorated heavily with carved wood, but remains trendy enough to keep its newer patrons by making sure that furniture is clean, in good repair and inviting. The antique tables all have been reinforced to seem less creaky. The real draw of the cafe is the smell: fresh roasted coffee mingles with perfectly steeped teas. Spices from crisp pastries mingle with the tang of clotted cream but don't overwhelm too much the scent of chalk on the menu boards. Today's been the first blessed suggestion of WARMTH from the harsh winter months and the city's been rife with weirdos and pedestrian traffic all cluttering up during the sunlight hours. Now that evening has begun to creep in, the thickest of the crowds has begun to thin, but the reminders of previous activity remain - slush and street salt have been tracked thick and crunchy across the entryway of Montagues, where a heavy rug has been thrown down alongside a Wet Floor (Piso Mojado) sign. The room is thick with the smells of winter wear and damp snow and /coffee/. And cigarettes. Jim's bringing that smell in amongst the folds of his ratty tweed coat, shoving the door open with a shoulder while flicking a spent cigarette butt towards the street. His hands are then crammed ill-temperedly in his pockets, holding the door open for his current company. He's muttering, "They need to make coffee into a fucking powder. Just /snort/ it in with one of those god damn stirring straws." Behind him, Hive has his hands shoved in the pockets of his battered old canvas jacket, shoulders hunched up, head ducked down. He has a soft fleece cap pulled down over his head, deep red with the greek letters Theta Tau embroidered on the front in gold thread; the cap is as well-worn as the rest of his clothes. Faded jeans soaked at the bottom where there much-frayed edges have been dragging over his sturdy but beaten workboots. Old beaten backpack hanging off his shoulder. "... they /do/ make coffee in a powder. Suppose you could snort it if you really fucking wanted." His posture is tightening as he enters the store, the corners of his eyes tightening as well; the minds of the store wash in against his senses and he reflexively winces against them as the myriad stream-of-consciousness thoughts of those around him trickle in and out of his awareness. Meanwhile, taking a table to herself and flipping through the newspaper, is Anette, clutching a large mug of steaming, black coffee. She sits, hunched over the table and ignoring the rest of the world as she reads. Despite the warmth outside, she's still wearing a long, leather jacket, though it's unzipped, revealing the tanktop underneath. She's also wearing simply grey jeans and leather, mid-calf high boots. Every once in a while though, she focuses on a convernsation, sometimes the next table over, sometimes across the room. They don't seem to capture her attention long and she moves on, either to another table or back to her paper. All the while though, she never looks up or gives an visible inclination as to what she's really doing. "Not the same thing. You can't like," Jim doesn't /need/ to give the door a moody final thump before letting it swing closed, but he does anyway, "/metabolize/ that shit, you'd just have god damn coffee grounds sandblasting your mother fucking -- /nasal/ cavity." He doesn't seem to overly notice Hive's coiling away from the mental bombardment, and even mentally himself he's perfecting the art of /ignoring/ a lot of his own minor priorities even while /indulging/ them. In that one of his elbows kind of incidentally ends up hooked near the side of Hive's elbow. Otherwise, he has /cafe/ to scowl around - almost instantly barking a hip against the empty chair across from Anette,. He has the kind of snooping broad presence of a man walking a whole pack of invisible dogs on leashes. NOTHING is safe. "Grind it up fine enough and you'd probably metabolize it. After you flayed the inside of your nose. Tissues in there absorb things pretty quick." Hive drags his feet when he walks, scuffing in across the squelchy-damp rug, in across the wet floor beyond it; there's an uneven unsteadiness to his gait that maaaybe-incidentally leans his arm up the elbow Jim totally incidentally hooks by him. Beneath the weatherbeaten old coat, his arm trembles. He digs his wallet out of his pocket, surrendering it to Jim and not bothering with walking up to the counter and waiting in the line -- instead he just collapses down into an empty seat at the table beside Anette's with a heavy thump, leaving his wallet in Jim's hand. His heavy collapse into his seat is like a domino effect of ungainliness, thudding up against the side of his table which in turn nudge-bumps one of the empty chairs /opposite/ him over into Anette's table. << I need -- like a giant-ass fucking coffee. And a cup of whatever soup they have. >> It slams hammer-heavy into Jim's head without any kind of /please/; Hive is busy trying to extricate himself from his backpack, which apparently is proving to be beyond his current skills once he's already sat down. Not enough room to maneuver his arms with the backpack mostly pinned between him and the back of the chair. Maybe not enough room to maneuver /himself/ unless he pushes his chair out further. Maybe he just can't figure out how /arms/ work, they seem to be causing him some level of confusion. Anette flinches with each crash and bump the two make, glaring angrily at them, even as they sit down at the table beside her. "Aren't there chairs on the other side of the room you haven't knocked over yet?" she replies under her breath (though very loudly in her brain), before folding up the paper she had been reading and pulling out the page with the puzzles. She finds a pen hidden in her jacket pocket and begins solxing them, taking her time. When Hive knocks a chair into her own space, she immediately twists her head around to glare angrily, her head at an odd angle, and she releases a quick, bird-like hiss before resuming her crossword. "Yeah yeah yeah," one of Jim's eyes kind of squinches up at the side for Hive's mental bombardment, already heading away with Hive's wallet. It's hard to tell though; he has a pretty squinchy face to start off with, between deep lines around his eyes and mouth, the twisting scar denting down the side of his cheek, the grizzled gray hair. He orders /two/ large cups of coffee, a cup of soup (opting for the chorizo chili over creamy mushroom) and a side of grilled cheese. << I'm dipping my toast in your chili. >> It's mentally stated /at/ Hive. Somehow, it manages to imply an awkward << thx >> beneath it. While shelling out Hive's perfectly good money, Anette's rapid movement earns from him such a slight shift - a subtle tip of head. Eyes slipped to the corner to watch. "Jesus, you need to chill the fuck out." Hive's jerky attempt to dislodge his backpack nudges at his table yet again -- ripple, nudge, /tap/. It's a light tap, really, of empty-chair up against Anette's table. He finally does get an arm free of the strap, though, shucking his backpack to drop it onto the floor. He slumps in against his table afterwards, resting elbow against it and drooping his head -- /towards/ one shaking palm, he actually /misses/ his hand the first time and has to try again before he rests his cheek properly in his hand. << Dip your toast wherever the fuck I'd kick this cuntwaffle's chair over, >> his mental voice to Jim sounds sulky and /petulant/ at nearly losing the fight with his own backpack, << ... but I'd probably miss. >> Anette turns to glare at Hive again, though she can't help but watch in disbelief as he apparently fails at operating his arms. "Um, having some troubles there?" she asks, more out of curiousity than concern. She doesn't wait for an answer though as sets her paper down and grabs her mug, heading towards the counter for a refill. << Settle down there, Jackie Chan. >> Jim volleys dryly, leaning on the counter while he waits for his grilled cheese to... grill. << You were never a master kick boxer to start with. >> He's thinking of that time Hive /punched/ him. Not like the memory is extremely clear, what with the alcohol that had lead up to it. He has discovered a free toothpick dispenser, freeing one to tuck into the clamp of his left upper and lower eye teeth. It makes a default bearing of teeth when he turns to Anette arriving at the counter. Openly staring at the side of her HEAD. EYEBALLIN. "Got ninety-nine problems," Hive answers half under his breath with a dry twitch of lips -- though it's pretty much to /himself/, given that Anette has not actually bothered to stick around long enough for further interaction. He slouches down further in his seat, dropping a hand to fumble around towards his backpack, eventually claiming a tablet from inside it to fire it up. << Got more than enough fucking kick without raising a finger, >> his voice slams hard and heavy back towards Jim. Anette grumpily orders a refill, her voice devoid of politeness or kind words. As she waits for her order, she looks over to Jim, looking him over carefully, before grabbing her refilled coffee and making her way back to her table. She sips at her coffee, relaxing a bit. "Sorry, I get a tad nervous when stuff is being knocked around. I'm....sensitive to loud noises," she murmurs quietly once she's settled into her chair near Hive, the closest thing you're going to get to a proper apology from her. The sensitivity might have something to do with her supersonic hearing.... Looking Jim over carefully will find a severely unshaven man in his middle age, with a sell-deceloped frown, heavy-built and rough-skinned, a sort of psoriasis-like flaking of skin peeling along the sides of his jaw, the surface of his nose, gnarly badly formed hands. Steady, deeply squinted blue eyes. Fiddly toothpick. It wobbles at Anette in his teeth until she walks away. He follows her steadily on her journey, studying her right back, studying her jacket (still worn indoors...) and her features. << Asshole, >> because ow, ow, /brain/. He awkwardly gathers up two coffees, stacking his plate of grilled cheese on an arm, cradles a soup cup in his other hand, and travels at a lumber towards Hive's table. "Yeah well," he BUTTS INTO Anette's conversation honestly before she's even entirely done talking, "I'm sensitive to douchebags." He isn't even looking at her when he says it, too busy unceremoniously /clunking/ each unit of food and/or drink. Fuck this thing. This thing, too. Fuck that thing in particular... "Yeah you seem like a real sensitive type." Hive's eyes are narrowed on the table as he clatter-clunks his tablet (noisily) down in front of himself. He stretches a leg out beneath the table to wrap an ankle around the leg of the chair opposite, dragging it with a heavy scrape of legs back in towards the table just so that he can /thunk/ a kick into it to send it back out again -- /away/ from Anette's table, this time, in offering for Jim to sit down. Legs scraaaaaping against the floor as his shoulders tighten up beneath his coat. He pushes himself back up heavily, struggling out of his jacket with every bit as much irritable difficulty as he had with his backpack. "Buy yourself some gorramn earplugs." Studying Anette won't reveal too much other than the fact that her back seems to be slightly odd shapped, as if she's hiding something large beneath her jacket... She raises a brow at Jim's comment. "What a coincidence, so am I. Could you please keep the clunking to a minimum? Didn't realize I had front row seats to a demo derby," she replies, with a sarcastic polite tone. Her eyes dart towards Hive as he throws his two cents in. "I'm in a coffee shop. I didn't think I'd have to listen to an earthquake while I was here. Forgive me if I didn't pack earplugs." "Could I keep," Jim stops the chair kicked his way with a raised foot - CLUMP -, "the clunking down?" CLACK, he uses a heel to kick it into position and then drops down into it with a creak of wood beneath his heavy weight. Then leans back with his eyebrows hiked really far up, opening his hands to either side, "Sure. Soon as you go /fuck/ yourself. You believe this shit?" He has to yank the toothpick out of his MOUTH to say this at Hive and probably the whole damn room at /large/, he is apparently THAT incredulous. A few people side-eye glance his way but this /is/ New York. << This is gonna get real funny, real fast, >> he adds to himself, << if she's got a bomb or something under that coat of hers. >> He leans forward to drag a coffee towards himself. Hive actually laughs at the request to keep the clunking down. His coffee scraaapes and sloshes against the table as he pulls it towards himself. His spoon /clatters/ and clanks against the side of his bowl when he reaches for it and he finally drops it with a loud clang back against the rim of the ceramic. His shoulders are shaking, teeth bared in a dogged snarl of silent laughter. "No. Fuck. No, actually I fucking can't. Though you're still more than welcome to go fuck yourself." << Doesn't have a fucking /bomb/, a bomb I'd feel. People get /twitchy/ when they're about to explode. >> Anette may be twitchy right now but it's not from a bomb. She is, however, instinctively trying to flex her wings out but they're safely kept beneath her jacket. The two knives hidden on her persons are a different story... "Oh, right, my fault for trying to expect peace and quiet in a coffee shop, right? Silly of me, wasn't?" Once he brings up New York, she laughs quietly. "Right, the city of assholes that never sleep. Forgot about that." Her eyes immediately dart over to Hive as he begins purposely making as much noise as he possibly can. "Yep, that's helping, mmhmm..." The constant loud noise is beginning to give her a headache, which is really only making her mood and attitude worse. "H'huh? Y'seem to fit right in t'me," Jim seems absurdly cheerful when he says it, raising his coffee cup towards Anette, "Sweetheart, I'll give you a hint - you'll get a lot more /quiet/ time somewhere outside a coffee shop in the middle of god damn winter." He's pretty savage about separating his sandwich, dragging out strings of gooey cheese and leaning across the counter to drown a corner of it in Hive's soup like a bag of /puppies/. "I got pissed enough they got rid of indoor smoking sections in restaurants." "Do I look like helping you is," Hive is saying this through teeth that are /gritted hard/ even as his mouth curves up into an almost /savage/ smile, his hand shaking as he reaches again for his spoon, gripping it tight with a hard rat-rat-tat-/tat/ clack against the side of his bowl before he finally lifts a mouthful. Almost to his mouth before just tipping the chili off it back to plop down into the rest, so that by the time his spoon actually /makes/ it to his mouth it's empty. "-- at the top of my /goddamn fucking/ priority list, assclown? -- Jesus fuck," he's glowering over at Jim as he lowers his spoon back to the chili for a second attempt, his other hand lifting to press his palm hard against his temple, "I need a fucking cigarette like I need oxygen." Gripping her coffee tightly, Anette takes a large gulp before setting it down. "Funny, it was quiet enough before you two came in like a pair of wrecking balls." She was also particularly good at hyperbole. "Now, what do you say to keeping your table to a dull roar and I'll return to my coffee and paper, alright? Last thing I want to do is get kicked out of another business." "Kiddo, what part of 'get fucked' wasn't in English?" For a moment Jim isn't paying as much attention to his own argument, his lazy half-smirk half-frown falls into a normal... frown. At Hive's spoon. "We're not here to /negotiate/ with your ass. You wanna sit there and do your fucking - ...So-ku-do... or the hell that shit is called knock yourself out, but you wanna mind our goddamn business, I got a bowl of dicks you can choke on." He leans forward, scooping a hand under the soup cup and saucer to lift it higher. For him to... reach forward his grilled cheese and dunk it again. And maybe while it's there, prop an end of the crust under Hive's spoon part way on its journey. "You're in the middle of the fucking city, you have a problem with noise you're in the wrong -- wrong fucking --" Hive trails off without really finishing his sentence, glaring down at his spoon as it continues to rattle (loudly) against his bowl. His palm presses harder against his temple. "What to you say to minding your own goddamn fucking business." He leans slightly downward, as Jim props his bowl up for him; by their powers /combined/ this time the chili actually makes it the whole way into his mouth. << /Score/, >> thuds into Jim's head in a wry pulse of VICTORY. He even braves a second mouthful, as long as the bowl is up closer to his mouth. But then he's /eying/ his coffee cup like it's a challenge all to itself. Leaning back against her chair, Anette looks Jim up and down again. "Ah, well, forgive me for trying to be polite and give you a chance to redeem yourselves. I'm not originally from around here, I forgot that would be misinterpreted." She narrows her eyes as she watches Hive attempt to eat and the apparent struggle. "Seriously, what's the deal? I've never seen someone struggle to operate a spoon before. At least nobody sober." "So take a fucking picture, you can show your friends." Jim has a way of snapping that somehow manages to sound absent-minded, lowering the soup and shaking out a hand where the heat had just slowly begun to seep through to fingertips. Aagh. "Christ, /tourists/. Where the fuck you coming in from." Jim snorts back at Hive mentally, << Silver medal. Docked for the dismount. >> He raises his brows when he remembers something and rocks back in his chair towards the island, where cream and sugar are stored. Riffles around for the slender coffee straws and rocks back with it. Tossing it into Hive's coffee like a javelin. "I'm drunk as a fucking skunk is why." Hive lowers his hands beneath the table, slouching down a little lower, kind of boneless-exhausted-slump in his seat. For the moment he foregoes more attempts at chili and leans in -- there's a small twitch of a smile when the straw is recovered that might be grateful, before he fastens his mouth around it to suck up some caffeination. He lifts one hand again to swipe at his tablet, on the table beside the soup, afterwards, but the path his hand traces against the screen has to be retried twice before he finally unlocks it. "Polite? Jesus fuck, woman, you've got a shitty-ass working definition of the term. And I haven't done a /fucking/ thing that needs /redemption/, so shove your attitude right the hell up your ass." Anette rolls her eyes and pulls her paper back up, looking down at that as she responds to the other table. "I'm not a tourist dumbass. I'm from Wisconsin and came up here for school, if you must know. And drunk...well, I suppose that would explain everything, wouldn't?" She picks up her mug and takes another sip, filling in a few words in her crossword. "Believe me, this is polite. You -really- don't want to see me not polite. Though your dentist would make a small fortune off of it." Hunkered over his grilled cheese, Jim's head rotates on its thick neck, slowly turning his gaze towards Anette. Leaning forward, it loosens a bit of overlong stringy hair, mostly gray, to fall forward from his brow and swing free. The long scar that splits down the side of his face twists badly, pulling tight around his eyes, when he grins, "Not sure y'supposed to tell strangers that, sweetheart." He looks back down to the table, locates his coffee. Drags it towards himself, returning to steady frown. << Y'know. I don't have a dentist. >> He just REALIZES this. << The Clinic has some. You know they offer their shit free if you're a punkass hobo. >> "Oh, I am /dying/ to see you not-polite." At the mention of dentists Hive's teeth bare in a grin that seems more snarl than smile. Up against Jim's mind there's a faint mental /prickling/, barbed and sharp and glittering like the edges of so much broken glass. "Crazyass fucking idiot. You know since the zombies most of this fucking town's armed to the gills, right? You might be too much of a douchebag for manners but you'd be smart to have some caution before you go shooting your mouth the hell off with dumbass threats. Never know who the hell it is you're talking to." His smile has faded, eyes returning down to his chili again, one hand -- trembling, still, but shaking less badly than before -- reaching slowly for the spoon like he's afraid it might bite him. Anette chuckles softly, filling out a few more words in her puzzle. "Oh, don't worry, that was a threat. Just a friendly warning." She sets her empty mug down on the table. "And what did I say that I shouldn't have? That I'm not a tourist? Oooh, the scandal!" At the mention of zombies, she shakes her head. "Yes, and I am one of them, though I armed myself long before the zombies. I don't trust many people." Her face fades into a scowl. "And -you- never know who you're talking to. I appreciate your concern but I am more than capable of taking care of myself." Her eyes narrow slightly as she watches Hive attempt to eat the chilli, though for once remains quiet about it. "Pfff, nothing friendly about it," Jim comments dryly, watching Hive more than he's watching Anette. It doesn't seem to have much to do with the savage spoon the other man is hunting, beyond a hand that lifts the cup again once the spoon is captured. The dazzling prickle against his mind is where he's most present, locking hard and solid to give these miniature teeth something durable to sink into. << Easy. Shape you're in, she moves - /anyone/ moves - you're stayin' OUT of it. You're on vay-fucking-cay. >> And, still not looking at Anette, still just looking at his own coffee, which he collects to himself with a free hand, he murmurs, "--what's your name, kid." << Nobody in this fucking coffeeshop /can/ move before I hear them thinking about it. My brain's broken but my /mind/ sure as fuck isn't. >> WIth mental radar still very /keenly/ attuned to the minds around him Hive doesn't seem overly concerned, either in his offhand-cranky mental tone or in his lower slouch into his seat, struggling back upright again only to lean forward so he can lean forward and take another slow bite of chili. "I'm not fucking concerned. And no, /I/ always know /exactly/ who I'm talking to. And if you had any inkling of being not-fucking-polite, it's not either of us I'd be fucking /concerned/ about either." Anette folds up her paper and slips it inside her jacket. "Well, it was friendly. Maybe next time we'll all hold hands and sing kumbaya." She pushes her empty mug off to the side and rises, zipping her jacket up. Those with mental radar should be able to pick up there is no threat. "Well, lucky you knowing exactly who you're talking to. Some of us weren't so gifted and rely on assuming everyone is the enemy. And I'm not particularly concerned about either of us either, though I do suspect we do so for completely different reasons." That bit about the enemy is rich, considering her mind is essentially a dark cloud filled with...potential. "Now, if you'll excuse me," she dramatically bows for you two, "I need to be going. It was a...pleasure meeting both of you." << I'm not worried about your /mind/. >> Jim assures Hive, vaguely surprised to find just how much of a relief he feels, for this. And it puts a lot more ferocity and steady black /humor/ in the absent << Though I'm expecting a fuckin heads up if you're clocking in. >> << been a while since we were doing business with our backs together. >> Anette's exit is watched rather intently, and once fully gone he snorts into his coffee. "/Wisconsin/. Christ eat me, I swear Hivey, I hate this fucking city but at least these people have had the fear of GOD put in them with all this zombies bullshit." << You get a bead on what the fuck was up with her back? >> << Trust me, you'll /feel/ the damn. Heads. Up. >> Hive has turned his attention away from the laborious work of feeding himself so that he can suck at his coffee once more. "Mean streets of fucking. Wisconsin. Bet she came out goddamn. Formidable. Stupid -- fucking --" Hive closes his eyes, pressing a hand to his temple again and just sipping slow at the coffee through the straw. His other hand grips the edge of the table, hard. His eyes slant towards his stew, muscles tensing like steeling himself for battle. He /doesn't/ watch Anette's exit, though there is a faint echo of the sharp-shard-prickling up against Jim's mind; it soon subsides as he turns his attention to chili once more. "This fucking city, man."