ArchivedLogs:Keeping Company

Keeping Company
Dramatis Personae Dusk, Hive, Flicker
In Absentia	2014-04-22 Takes place simultaneously with visiting Mel.
Location <NYC> BoM Safehouse - Lower East Side
Tucked away off a little-used side street in the Lower East Side, sandwiched between a youth drop-in center and a taqueria, this narrow three-story townhouse has very little to catch the eye. Boarded-up windows, a door peeling its paint, shabby grubby brickface; from the outside it does not look like much. Inside someone has gone to great lengths to renovate the building into something more habitable. It isn't glamorous but it is comfortable, old furniture dragged in, the place generally swept clean. The first floor holds a large living room, a smaller dining room, a spacious kitchen, a half-bathroom. There are three bedrooms and a full bathroom on the second floor; the attic is just a large empty space crammed full of boxes with a window out to the large flat roof. The basement, much like the attic, consists of a lot of empty space. A bare concrete floor, no windows, occasional poles running up to the ceiling. A tiny half-bathroom down here, too. Not a whole lot else. There's a sign on the attic door that says 'NO ADMITTANCE', secure heavy locks on it; these things don't mean much to Hive and Flicker. There's a familiar /mind/ pressing up against Dusk's, a heavy touch reaching out to navigate Flicker past the door into the dark attic space. The teleporter isn't coming close. Just guided by Hive's mental reach, funneled through Dusk's sensory awareness and jumping into the cluttered dark. It helps that he's been up here many times before -- he lands just on the inside of the door, breathing quiet in the dark. Doesn't say a word, just lets his eyes acclimatize. Dusk isn't sleeping; not immediately obvious to Flicker's eyes but glaringly clear to Hive's senses. His own mind is clearly /awake/, a roiling mass of pain and anger and burning clawing hunger that is, at the moment, taking stock of the people he can hear moving on the floors below. The city outside. He's lying curled on his side on the mattresses, clean and neatly bandaged over his plentiful injuries where someone has clearly been tending them. Something in his mind stirs, latching on ravenously to the familiar mental touch, snapping towards it with a reflexively predatory hunger. Flicker still isn't coming any closer. Just lingering by the door, fingers tracing against it and his expression blank as his eyes trace the dark shapes in the attic, a silent mental outpost for Hive to work through. The telepath's heavy touch presses back, when Dusk's does, draping thick and heavy over his friend in a solid press that provides toothsome-meaty /substance/ for Dusk to latch onto. << (here) >>, he's offering quietly. Dusk's mind batters up against the heavy drape of Hive's as best it can, lashing back perhaps just as much for the sake of having something else there /to/ lash against. At first it's just blind and undirected, a torrent of mental fury that whips outward, sinks with tooth and claw and digs in in mindless /reaction/ to the feel of another presence pushing up against him. It's only slowly that it becomes more focused than that -- more /angry/ than that, a savagery that /wants/ to tear at the familiar mental voice and lacks the tools to do so. << (where where where), >> it's seeking, reaching, /screaming/, but. Not psionic /himself/, his mental swipes don't have much oomph to them. Hive's claws do, though. Curling in as Dusk curls out, digging in in hard firm press that sinks and holds. << (here), >> comes this time as much from inside Dusk's own mind as from without. Pushing deeper; it's uncomfortable, a hard squeeze that jams its way in and -- then it's /not/ uncomfortable anymore; a background rush of exhaustion and worry and strain that integrates itself into the background of Dusk's mind seamlessly. << (here) >> this time may as well be Dusk's own thought, but it's Hive's voice next, quiet, that murmurs up from the back of his awareness even as another is distantly slipping away to be untethered from the fold, Flicker's traded out now that Dusk's has been claimed. The teleporter vanishes as Hive starts speaking. << -- I'm here. >> There's still a solid-blanketing /presence/ to him, warmer, now, an enveloping /drape/ that curls itself around Dusk. << It's Hive. Boring as fuck up here, dude, thought you could do with some company. >> Dusk isn't putting up any resistance to the prying of Hive's mind; his own, for all it is tumultuous, is remarkably easy to get /into/, worn down by weeks of agony and fear and confusion battering away at his mental defenses. In exchange for the exhaustion and worry and strain what he gets in return is a sickening crush of crippling pain, searing down his back and stabbing in at his eyes but spreading from there out to the rest of his body as well; past this there's fear and loss and anger and /hunger/, a fierce predatory rush of it pulsing warm and bloody. It doesn't quite quell at the sound of Hive's name but something shivers in him, pressing up against the blanketing touch of Hive's mind. In the darkness of the attic his soft growl isn't so much angry as just tired, a low wounded-animal whine of a sound. << Thought I'd put on some Community later, >> Hive's just blithely continuing over the pain and anger. << Figure you could do with distraction, yeah? I mean, unless you have plans. >> The heavy blanketing touch squeezes inward, pressing-rubbing like a slow stroke. << Just gonna stay a while. >> The growling continues, very soft and very low. There's some dim niggling sense of -- something almost like awareness, stirring in the back of Dusk's mind, that wakes and then fades back into just a snarl-tangle of pain and hunger that thrashes beneath Hive's mind restlessly. Hive's mind brushes against that tiny spark of awareness, fanning at it gently. << (there) >> In his mind there's a brief light of hope waking, quiet and warm. << (there you are.) >> He pokes at it, trying to get it to /stir/ back into something more tangible rather than just fade away again. << I mean, could do something else if you wanted, too. Been working through Arrow. Not sure I like it. Kinda meh. You /do/ have a thing for archers, though. >> Beneath the gentle urging of Hive's mind, Dusk's is -- /exhausted/, buried deep under a thick slodge of pain that is hard to make his way /back/ from. His mind trembles, pressing up against Hive's now with almost a desperation for the contact rather than his previous battering anger, sudden recognition turning latching-claws into just a fierce /cling/. There's a shiver that feels akin to a sudden drawing of breath, as he listens to Hive speak, and beneath the comforting warm blanket of Hive's familiar mental presence he is settling down for perhaps the first time in a long while into something like restfulness. << (don't go) >> comes pleading without really meaning to. And in quiet grateful acceptance: << I like archers. >> << Get my computer a bit later on, then. Get you all the goddamn archers you can stomach. >> Hive's mind curls in close against Dusk's. And holds, tight.