ArchivedLogs:Capital

Capital
Dramatis Personae Alyssa, Sebastian, Shane
In Absentia	2014-04-03 part of futureytp
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. It's late afternoon and the twins are not actually bothering with knocking, familiar enough faces around here on Friday nights that their presence goes unchallenged the rest of the week. Shane does stop, in the front room, for a brief exchange in Spanish with J.C., the snakelike girl on safehouse-guard-duty today. But after this he's heading straight for the /kitchen/ to deposit a large platter of /cookies/ that he's brought with him. Baked by Jax, no worries, he had no hand in it. The small blue sharkboy is not dressed -- has not /been/ dressed since the fire -- in his usual dapper style. Just Goodwill-bought jeans and a plain blue tee under a Xavier's sweatshirt. Trailing along behind him is Sebastian, pretty much indistinguishable (jeans, plain blue tee, Xavier's sweatshirt) except that he bears no cookies and instead has a messenger bag slung over his shoulder and resting at his hip. He doesn't contribute to the conversation, just squints a little bit as he attempts to follow along. Then sneaks a cookie from the pile once they've been deposited. Not long after Shane and Sebastian's arrival and subsequent cookie-delivery, there is a clatter from above -- of the feet on stairs variety, no worries. It's occasionally difficult to tell a Goodwill-wearing Aly from an in-her-own-clothes Aly, but the presence of a motorcycle tucked up near the front of the building is a clue. Today she's in multiple layered tank-tops and worn-in jeans and a solitary rainbow-striped armwarmer on her right arm; it matches-not-actually the very COLORFUL cast on her left arm, and the scrunchie in her hair. "--did I miss a day and it's Friday already?" she asks once she's partway across the living room; from the tone of her voice this could very well be //likely//, but it's not stopping her from opening her arms and making come-here gestures at both teenagers, nor from flashing a quick smile-hello at the increasingly familiar J.C. "/Can/ we just fastforward to Friday?" Shane offers out a cookie -- espresso-oatmeal-chocolate-chip -- towards Aly with one hand while his other snakes around her waist for a very /tight/ hug. "We could try," Sebastian agrees, nibbling in small bites at his cookie and sneaking in closer for a little bit more timid of a hug. "But we're actually not --" "-- here to /punch/ anything today," Shane continues, mooshing his face up against Aly's side for a moment and then leaning back against the counter. "I don't know, I came to talk money," Sebastian says with a very faint darkening of his cheeks, "that's /sort of/ --" "... like being hit in the gut," Shane agrees then, wrinkling his nose. "How's your arm?" Bastian is looking at the cast with a small frown. "/Broken/," Shane answers for Aly. "I'm sure we could find //somebody// who could make that happen," Aly answers, letting the round-robin of Shane and Sebastian conversation curl around her, much as she curls //both// boys close. (Shane tight-tight, with a brief press of her face against the top of his head; Bastian looser-fierce, with a light-touch brush of her hand down the outside of his arm before she lets go). "Mmph," is said around a mouthful of cookie, "yeah, money's pretty much like that -- I got all my paperwork, now, came with the rest of my stuff--" Shane's answer-for-her gets a tired crinkle-grin, and she substitutes, "Colorful," instead, in reference to her cast itself and the cheerful graffiti that decorates it. "...ly broken." Sebastian hoists himself up to sit on the counter next to the cookies. He sets his messenger bag down behind them, pulling out his laptop to open it up. "Can we doodle on it?" "Isn't that /why/ you break bones?" Shane props his elbows against the counter behind him, weight leaning down against it. "For colourful doodling." "I've never broken a bone," Sebastian answers Shane, puzzled. "We don't --" "-- /have/ bones to break, totally unfair, by the way. Do you think," Shane asks Aly this with a bright grin, "that someone would just make me a cast /anyway/? So I can get everyone to sign it. And then saw it off." Sebastian just -- shakes his head. Very slightly despairing. "We apparently have someone who's /looking/ at the future," he adds in absent musing, "it's probably not such a stretch to find someone to take us there." "-- Which is /creepy as fuck/ by the way." Shane frowns over at the wall. "You remember that dream we had? We're kind of starting to think it wasn't just a dream." "Yes," Aly says as she hoists herself up beside Sebastian, a little stilted-awkward because of the whole cast ... thing ... but also easily enough that it's obvious she's been practicing, "no, count yourselves lucky 'cause it sucks - zero out of ten, would not recommend -, //possibly//, and finally -- I'm not sure if that's weirder than all having combined dreams or not, ew." She makes a grabby hand for another cookie, and leans in to look at the screen of Sebastian's laptop, even though a) there's hardly been enough time for him to get anything interesting up and b) terribly space-invadey and rude of her. Sebastian's laptop mostly just has, currently, its desktop. Which is entirely devoid of any icons -- apparently he likes a /tidy/ desktop -- though his computer background does sport a very vividly colourful picture in surreal-nightmare style that is /clearly/ Jax's art. It's a thin young man, bloody and nude, getting his (very /large/, very batlike) wings torn off by robotic arms that are, evidently, in the process of /grafting/ the first disembodied wing to a woman on a table beside the man. (The original oil-paint copy of this image, now just cinders, /had/ hung on Hive's bedroom wall before the fire. /Possibly/ just to troll Dusk by making him shudder every time he walked into the room.) Almost withut thinking he reaches to hand Aly a cookie. "It's -- strange. There's been a /lot/ of people having these shared --" "-- but the thing is it's not even a shared fucking dream," Shane says with widening eyes, "it's a shared /story/. Like -- like I said in our dream that Pa was /at/ Pippin? And that /same fucking night/, he and Ba had a dream where they had gone to /see/ Pipping. That's -- somehow fucking -- /stranger/ than just sharing a dream at all, I mean, I know plenty enough telepaths who -- I've shared dreams with lots of people when we're all hived together." "Yeah, but they don't all have the same narrative. And it's --" Sebastian frowns at his screen as he pulls up Very Exciting sheets full of /numbers/. "-- it's not a /good/ narrative." "It's a little creepy," Shane agrees. "Because Hive and Flicker keep being dead in it. But the thing is I don't think it's just dreams, I think it's -- /actually/ just seeing the future? Or -- or /making/ the future happen which might be even worse. Because after ours you moved out here to start Evolve with me and the other night we --" "-- had a dream where Shane was playing violin and the next day a friend bought him the /exact/ violin from his dream to replace the one he lost in the fire." Sebastian doesn't seem to mind Aly's shameless space-invasion, because now he's tipping the screen up towards her. "We've kind of run into a problem," he says apologetically. "With -- Evolve." Alyssa asks, this time, a, "May i?" and a vague gesture toward Sebastian's shoulder with her cookie-hand, combined with head-tip, that hopefully implies she wants to //lean// --. It's distracted, though, both by what the boys are saying -- she glances back and forth between them, and the laptop. "--No, that's awful, I don't want to -- I mean consider, though, it's not //unlikely// that he would be -- they, that they would be -- but that's still not," she bites off like half the cookie, chews determinedly. "Good. I'm guessing -- they're money-problems?" This is -- offhand. A little negligent, but only because of distraction: she's focusing on the spreadsheets, and reaching over to down-arrow scroll. Bastian answers the question by scooting just a little closer, shoulder bolstering up alongside Alyssa. "Yeah, Shane had already been --" "-- talking to the owners," Shane continues with a small grimace, "and we /were/ going to be all set to buy the place but, um." "Then our house got exploded," Sebastian explains sheepishly. "A little bit. And the thing is that wouldn't have even been so bad except Pa --" "-- lost like half a year of work that was supposed to be his graduation project. So we kind of -- offered some. Financial help so that he can stop /working/ till June and just focus on graduating. But --" Shane nods towards the numbers Bastian is displaying for Aly. "But it's going to be a little hard juggling that /and/ paying for Evolve. There's -- a little wiggle room, maaaybe, because the Clinic is putting him on disability leave instead of just leave-leave so he gets /partial/ pay and that -- was an unexpected help but it's still -- going to be pretty tight. Between paying for the Commons and --" Sebastian shakes his head, teeth digging into his lip as he flicks webbed fingers towards the screen. "Well. Like I said. Kind of -- tight." Alyssa scoot-scoots a little closer too, and leans comfortably, an Aly-girl drape against Sebastian's side as she keeps tab-tabbing through the numbers. "--is this just with your capital figured in?" she finally asks, looking up from the computer's screen to focus on Shane. It's directed at both of them, though, says the bunt of her head against Sebastian as she watches his twin brother. Sebastian nods, looping a hand loosely against Alyssa's waist as she drapes. "Just what I've got tied up in investments right now. 'Cuz pretty much all my actual /income/ and Dai's too are going to /our/ portion of house-building. And, I mean, also if we just put less /down/ than we'd been planning that would -- but then the mortgage each month would be a lot higher. And I /had/ enough to take a /huge/ chunk of that -- but not with --" "-- explosions tend to derail plans a little bit it turns out?" Shane says this with slightly wide eyes, slightly raised brows, like maybe this comes as a shock. "Those motherfuckers had /no/ respect for timing. If they'd just waited till /after/ the Commons was done --" "-- then we'd all have been living /there/ and they'd have blown that up instead." Sebastian's teeth are just a little clenched, his gills rippling open alongside his neck. "Okay, hang on," Aly's got her thinking voice on, so it sounds a lot like she isn't paying attention -- except for how the arm bracing her weight against the counter (behind Bastian) comes up to curl tight around him and squeeze. "Guys, hang on, hang on -- you didn't think I was coming into this with just my experience on-offer, right? Because -- okay." She straightens up, so that she can put both hands in her lap and fidget her right-hand fingers against the thumb-hole edge of her cast, "Carter's wasn't huge, but it was //mine//, and I already took care of what's owed from the capital to open //it//, so-- your numbers are wrong." She's not even touching explosions, not yet. "Huh?" Shane stretches up onto tiptoes to peek in at the sheet. "No, we went over this like seventeen million times with Dai and --" "-- she means /her/ money." Bastian nudges a toe against his brother's side. "I mean, I didn't know -- how much you --" "-- Just moved across the /country/ without anything over here I guess we just -- figured your savings would be for, like. Living. Until we started actually making any money." Shane baps at Bastian's foot with the nudging. "/If/ you ever start making any money," Sebastian answers with a sudden quick closed-lipped smile. "Hey, the future already /told/ me we did," Shane answers, his grin brighter and toothier than his twin's. "That's like cheating, right? I feel better about this because I've already seen it happen." "--technically I was crashing rent-free at the apartment, I just //was going to start paying rent// because I felt bad about that, um. I," Aly flushes under her freckles, and shakes her head. "Figured that it just meant I wasn't going to have to //work// for a while, and then you texted me, and I realized I'd probably be sinking a fairly big part of that in as capital," she bites her lip again, considering. "--before that, I was planning on getting a job, um, I've actually //got// an offer on the table from Plastic Plans, I'd still been freelancing for them while I-- I'm rambling, sorry. I can accept their offer, and we can work on figuring out finances //with// my money figured in, too ..." Right? "And now you're squatting rent-free /here/ so I guess that all works out alright," Sebastian muses, eyes fixed down on the screen. "Wait. So you could -- I mean, you'll have a job and -- and we could still --" Shane's grin is still bright, still toothy, but now there's a suspicious bright wetness to his eyes, the only forewarning Aly gets before he leans in (knocking the laptop lid nearly closed in the process) to /squeeze/ her prooobably a little too tight. Sebastian thumps his heels against the side of the counter, his smile smaller but warmer. "... we were kind of worried the whole idea was going to fall through," he explains quietly, "after the bomb and all." "--I'm cooking," Aly interjects, "and paying for groceries so that I //can//, but -- yeah, basically, I'm, I mean, I don't know how long they'll let me //stay// but especially after I //do// have a jo-- ohgod," the last smush-words come out as a bit of a squeak, but she pulls her arms around and hugs Shane //back// just as fierce, then rocks sideways a little again to thump back into Sebastian. (It's an //implied// hug, that one). "I'm sorry," she says, but she only sounds a little apologetic -- it's because she's laughing too, just a little bit. "If I'd realized that you didn't realize I was planning to put money in //too//, I would have -- said something sooner?" "Cooking is /excellent/ rent." Sebastian leans back into the shoulder-thump, then /forward/ to press a small kiss to Shane's temple. Shane still is determined, it seems, to squeeze the breath out of Aly, though finally at her little laugh he lets up on the crushing hug. He stays leaning in against her, though, butting his head up against her chest. "Everything's just -- been chaotic, I think I started assuming --" "... pretty much the worst." Sebastian wrinkles up his nose, sneaking a hand in to reclaim his computer. "Do you want to set up a meeting, then? With Evolvepeople. 'Cause after we /re/budget we can -- do this." Shane pulls his head back, peering up at the two on the counter with a continuation of toothy-wide-bright grin. "For real?" Sebastian just turns a hand upward, head bobbing in one quick nod. He's rearranging his neat columns of figures, adding in space now for stealing Aly's delicious moneys. "Really for real. I mean, of course, this does kind of mean we're one step closer to /that/ future." His teeth press down against his lower lip. "So I guess we'll just have to figure out other ways to make the rest of it not come true." Alyssa doesn't actually seem to //mind// the hugs, and she is grinning wide and bright again once she's released. She lets Sebastian reclaim his computer, too, and settles back against the counter (after stretching around behind him to grab another cookie). "Meetings," she agrees around a mouthful, "an' then worrying about -- futures. After we see if the deal will even still go through." "It'll go through," Shane says, brightly. "I mean. We've already seen it, right?" Sebastian has a very small smile at this as he turns his attention back to Numbers. "I think that's one part of /The Future/ that's going to work out alright."