ArchivedLogs:Lazy Sunday

Lazy Sunday
Dramatis Personae Dusk, Hive, Violet
In Absentia	2014-06-15 '
Location <NYC> Harbor Commons - Courtyard - Lower East Side
This courtyard is the lush central hub of the surrounding Harbor Commons, bound in on three sides by rows of duplexes and triplexes, cutting upward at the sky with the sharp thrift of a minimalist's style, neat lines and bountiful windows, boldened with accents in wood towards the upper stories, stone towards the base, the whole of the compound sealed in by a low stoneworked wall that opens entrance gates to the streets beyond at its two far corners, smaller gates at building back doors. The fourth side of the courtyard is open to the East River, the ground forming a slight decline, controlled on one side by micro-retaining walls to form wide steps where picnic tables sit beneath the nominative shelter of a trio of dogwood trees, accessible by ramp. The other side is allowed to slope at its natural angle, a wide open yard space, until its cut off at the river's edge, where a massive pair of oak trees stand, a staircase leading away up one of their thick trunks. The yard itself is carpeted in an organic flow of emerald grass swirled through with wending channels of smooth-paved cement walkways, flowing naturally away from the building's front entrances, where some are arced by trellis, some flanked by hosta plants, fern and lilies, a few laid in gentle switch-backing ramps for wheelchair access, before forking off at matching angles to sites of small garden installments. Bird feeders and baths suspended from the necks of small lamp posts, a rock-lined koi pond, a sleek gazebo tucked to one side in simplistic varnished wood, its southern side overgrown with a mass of thriving grapevine and a caged-in barbecue pit under its sheltering roof. A play area and proper garden are within sight off another branch, until finally all paths spiral in like wheel spokes to a shared common house at the center of all traffic flow. It's bright and warm as the morning tips over into afternoon, sunny and cheerfully springlike. Hive is not looking particulaly springy /or/ cheerful, though; there's a scowl on his face and a drag to his steps as he wanders away from the unfinished workshop under construction at one side of the courtyard. He leans heavily on a cane as he walks, a slow-unsteady gait more suited to someone much older than his twentysomething years, though he is /looking/ the part of Invalid fairly neatly today. Black pajama pants and a baggy grey tee that both hang too loose on his bony-emaciated frame, a sunken expression with deep-shadowed eyes. He makes his way over to the oak trees adjoining the river, not attempting to manage the stairs that climb up one tree trunk but sinking down to nestle in their roots, eyes fixing out towards the water. He digs a phone out of the pocket of his pajamas, bare toes scrunching into the dirt as he sets his cane down and flicks open his email. Dusk, on the other hand, /does/ have a spring to his step. He's only just returning to the block after being out for breakfast and a long stint of Wandering. He's more dressed than Hive is, black corduroys, Vans sneakers, and a blue-on-darker-blue striped V-neck tee that has been very neatly modified to allow for the wings that sprout from his back; big enough that their clawed tips drag on the ground when he walks, they look currently a good deal smaller than they /are/ by dint of being tightly folded in at his back. He has large dark glasses on his face and /he/ has his phone out as well -- not to email, just to a map dotted with glowing blue and green where he's been playing Ingress on his walk home. He almost heads in towards one of the houses but veers away from its door to head instead towards the river when he sees Hive. To the telepath's senses his mind is a /good/ deal more cheerful than it was before he left -- a good meal does wonders for perking up an ohgodwhyisit/morning/already mood. "Dude it's like noon where are your clothes." He /does/ climb up onto the staircase, but only far enough that he can climb up into a lower branch and perch over Hive's head, wings draping down to either side of the branch. Despite this greeting, he is /shedding/ clothes already, peeling off the shirt with a tug-wriggle of wings. Those who've never owned an urban garden before probably are not aware of the challenge of keeping urban-based wildlife out. Cats, in particular, are known for staking a claim on patches of greenery. Fortunately this cat isn't intending to do what cats /usually/ do in gardens; Violet is here not in search of a bathroom but rather because the prospect of a sweet sunny day requires surroundings similarly sweet. Like...the smell of green growing things, moving water and a nice breeze. She has her hoodie up and old sneakers covering her feet, along with faded jeans. With her hands pushed into the belly pockets of the greyed sweater, she's still easily pegged as mutant but a peaceable one, fuzzy face turned skywards and tail swaying gently. She has sauntered through the gates as if at home, walked the paths, circled the courtyard and finally also drifts riverwards. Cat-thoughts are present, sensory impressions and pleasures atumble through her mind, without the need for words. Her aim is a puddle of dappled sunlight filtered through branches, though the gentlemen are given the side-eye upon approach and their presence keeps her from pouring herself into that patch of warm light, as she'd hoped to do. Caution wars with piqued interest--wings!--and a certain low-key speculation. One freak, two freak... "Clothes where the fuck are /your/ clothes, Jegus. You lose your shirt more than --" Hive doesn't actually look /up/ at Dusk to start his grumbling, narrowing his eyes on the phone in his hands, but he trails off at the feel of an unfamiliar approaching mind. "-- They didn't plant any catnip in the garden, did they?" His head is tipping back against the tree trunk, now, hand rubbing through his short scruff of dark hair as he turns his eyes towards the approaching young woman. Dusk drops his shirt down off the branch, in answer, letting it fall own towards Hive's upturned face. "My clothes are right there." His wings shift at his back once they are free of clothing, rolling in a slow-lazy stretch and then settling back in with a just slightly /off/ feeling, a vague discomfort of not-quite-/right/ that he has not managed to shed since getting the wings /back/. "Huh? I don't know, I think there's a shit ton of herbs, there might be --" It's only at a /delay/ that he catches on to the catalyst for this questioning; his brows lift from behind his sunglasses, a brief glint of sharp long fangs flashing in the smile that turns up his lips. "... if someone did, I'll have to thank them," is a much softer murmur. He lifts his voice back to a slightly more than conversational volume in order to call over to Violet, "Hey! You looking for someone?" The drape of the hood over Violet's head shifts. Ears are being pricked; senses are being deployed. She even sniffs lightly at the air as orange eyes rove between the winged chap up on the branch and the skinny one below. Briefly, she is considering the merits of simply sliding off and finding some other patch of waterfront property to haunt this afternoon, but that idea is set aside when she's addressed directly. Her thoughts dart through a wrly amused sing-song of, << cat-bat-shark-chameleon >>, before she opts to answer. Georgia has laid a liberal hand on her accent, drowsy slow slur--and fang-prompted sibilants--a happy match for the brightness of the day. "Someone? No. Just a quiet spot to have my lunch. You fellas okay with that or should I be moving along?" "Chameleon, we don't have any chameleons here. Shit. Do we have any chameleons here?" There's a thud of Hive's mind up against Dusk, idly considering either Joshua or Jackson to fit this slot. He exhales sharp, tugging the shirt off his face to crumple it in a ball and toss it /back/ up towards Dusk -- though he /misses/, both aim and force falling rather short to just -- flop the shirt back own on his own lap. "I don't think there's any sharks home, either. Some Father's Day bullshit turned this into a shark-free zone. I still wouldn't go in the water, though," he says with an absent wave of phone-holding hand towards the water and a crooked smile, "no sharks but maybe zombies." "Chameleon, what are you on about?" Dusk is totally not smirking as Hive fails miserably at his throw. Totally not. But there is a sharper gleam of fang for a moment that only brightens as Violet speaks. He smells of Old Spice body wash and cigarettes and coffee, lingering scents of breakfast clinging in a nip of bacon as well. "Nah we've been zombie free since about the time this place was built, he's full of shit. And we're good, there's plenty of sunlight to spare. Can't promise quiet, though, I don't shut up." Violet's tail takes on a new energy, lazy swishing replaced with a sharper back and forth twitch. Pupils dilate as she refocuses on Hive with fresh interest. << Psychic? >> "Mindreader?" she asks in the same moment. "Met a chameleon...mimic octopus, the shark called hir at some coffee shop. Shark too. Smelled like sushi. Caffeinated sushi." Here she smiles, a wide glint of teeth to match Dusk's own, with a touch more mischief to it. The okays given, she slides into that patch of sunshine she'd been eyeing and folds her legs beneath her. A push of fuzzy hand clears the hood from her head, exposing more fuzz, and those pointed ears. One turns towards the boys, while her other hand clears a cellophane wrapped sandwich--slightly battered--from the hoodie's pocket. Tuna, natch. "Talk all you like," she graciously allows. Hive dips his chin in an affirming nod, tapping the corner of his phone against a temple. "Yeah. I hear things. Huh. Mimic -- octopus?" The press of his mind butts up this time against Dusk and Violet's minds both -- it's not a /comfortable/ thing, a thudding heavy /whomp/ of mental energy that comes with a puzzled mental image of a teenage boy, bald and pitch-black skinned and with a /lot/ of long black tentacles. "Not a mimic though -- you've met Shane, then? Unless there are /other/ coffee sharks in the neighborhood, huh. You never know." "/Coffee/ shark is kind of specific. His shop's just like half a mile from here." The top of Dusk's wing flicks off in some vague direction where possibly a distant Evolve lies. His smile fades into a small grimace at the mental touch, though this fades soon. He leans back, wings shifting again to droop lower as he takes a moment to settle himself against the tree trunk. "Kinda warm for a hoodie, isn't it? Nobody's going to bother you -- well, not /here/ anyway. Hive'd give 'em like a mental bitchslap if someone came around looking for trouble. I'm Dusk, by the way. We live here." He's looking down at Violet just a little long as she unwraps the sandwich, turning his head away slowly to watch the river instead. "Sushi doesn't bite back, though, he'd make for /extreme/ eating. Like that -- blowfish shit. Dinner that /might/ kill you." Caught in the act of lifting the sandwich for a bite when that hammerstrike hits her brainmeats, Violet unleashes a low feline growl of pain and lays her ears back. In the same moment, her appears to grow three dress sizes as bright-and-dark fur goes poof. << Painpainhurtsbadpsychic, >> goes her thought stream, lazy sunshine drift of mind contracting into something dark and coiled and tensed to spring. Outwardly, Southern manners means an attempt at covering this feline lapse. The sandwich is placed in her lap so she can begin smoothing down her pelt, moving palms over head and throat to force fur down again. "Shane. And...Rasa was the other? No tentacles. Color changing and a tail..." She hesitates then tilts forward to pull the hoodie up and over her head. Beneath is a dull white tank top, and a lot more black and cinnamon fur. "Violet." That's her. "Sushi was a joke, honest." Hive winces, faintly, lifting a hand to circle a fist briefly against his heart in a signed apology at the twinned cringing from the heavy mental bludgeon. "Oh. Rasa." He nods at this identification, giving it a moment of consideration. "Yeah okay, mimic octopus. You live around here? And yeah, if I /actually/ thought anyone was getting eaten --" He sets his phone down in his lap so that he can lift his scrawny stick-arms, fingers balling into so-intimidating fists. He stretches his legs outward, hand dropping back to his side. "I could take 'em." "Apologies," Dusk offers reflexively at Violet's abrupt POOF, "he's a little on the headachey side." He is shifting, now that he's settled, to pull one leg at a time up so that he can remove sneakers and socks and leave them, for now, on one of the slatted wood stairs winding up towards the treehouse. The fidgeting rides the cuffs of his corduroys up, for a moment, a boxy black device visible strapped securely around his ankle. There's a small curl of a smile at Rasa's name, though mentally it comes with a host of tumult, memory-echoes of pain that leave his wings briefly twitchy. "I eat people all the fucking time and we never get into fisticuffs." Grooming is a soothing act. Businesslike at first, to cover that defensive impulse, soon enough Violet's claw-raking through her fur along her arms and shoulders eases into something meditative. When the last of it's done, she gives a sigh that radiates sunshine and contentment. "No harm done, yeah?" Then it's back to the sandwich. "Around here," she agrees--docks, shipping containers, seagulls, working men seen from higher up, securely perched and out of the way filter through--before a bite is taken. The mouthful is chewed while merrily narrowed eyes study the battle pose adopted by Hive. "Okay." That's Southern for yeah huh sure. "Guess it's all in how you bite down. I'm not gonna nibble on your friend though. He's bringing in peach cobbler Tuesday. Good cobbler's better than people. How many ya'll got around here? Our folk." Hive's lips twitch, smile brief and thin. He drops his head back against the tree trunk, eyes closing as a muscle jumps in his cheek. "M'a lot on the headachey side," he replies, dryly. "And eating people's okay if you /ask/ first. Though when was the last time you really sunk your fangs into someone?" The smile fades from his face, though in quiet repose he looks a good deal /more/ content than the thin expression had seemed before. "Oh shit. You're not wrong on the cobbler. I could go for some of that /now/. Dammit." Having no cobbler, though, he instead pats at his other pants pocket, frowning when it turns out empty. "Dude," he asks up to Dusk instead, "you got a smoke? -- Do you mind?" he adds in afterthought attempt at polite to Violet. The last question takes a moment of thought, fingers lifting to brush through his short hair along the side of his head. "Uh. A lot? Though half these buildings are empty right now. This place is /brand/ fucking new, people just started moving in this month. Hopefully not so many as to attract too much attention, though with fucking registration now I just hope nobody's hunting down where a lot of registered folk turn up." Dusk's breath shivers in slowly at the talk of sinking his fangs into someone. There's a sharp spike of hunger in his thoughts, glistening and crimson-red, and his fingers clench down against the tree branch. << Asshole, >> he grumbles to Hive, but that doesn't stop him from digging a pack of Camels out of his pockets, a cheap plastic lighter following. Thump, thump, he leans down low on the branch to drop first one and then the other towards Hive's lap. "You fucking kidding? Registered, /un/registered, goddamn --" His thoughts stray towards Ryan's house, towards Jax's, his /own/, famous or /notorious/ names that would draw attention these days regardless of registration status. "-- only gonna be a matter of time before /someone/ shows up looking for trouble. I guess we'll just have to be scary enough they won't want to." << Empty, >> Violet thinks. And, << Good to know. >> Not that she means for Hive to overhear that but there's a speculative glance towards the more distant buildings before she tucks her gaze back to conversational range. But details remain, idly stroked through with little bats and flicks of thought -- windows, doors, roof heights. But "a lot of registered folk" puts those thoughts on the back burner. << Yeah newp. Easy targets(not registered), clustered, don't want to be caught in that. >> What she says, however, is, "Smoke 'em if you got 'em. But the cobbler's mine." As is this day old tuna sandwich, which she takes another bite of while turning thoughtful eyes up wards Dusk and his own subtle set of tells. "Vampires, sharks, brain hammers...you folks seem to have scary covered." There's another twitch of almost-smile at Hive's mouth at Violet's thread of thought. Or maybe Dusk's. He fumbles for the cigarettes, tapping one out to slip it between his lips; his hands are notably unsteady with the attempt to /light/ it and it takes a number of tries before he manages. "Yeah. Last place I lived in got blown the fuck up," he informs Violet of this casual-conversational, pulling in a long drag of smoke with a blissfully relieved relaxing of posture. "And that was before registration really took /off/." His brows crease slowly, some wayward thought putting a frown into his previous relaxing. "Don't let the fangs fool you, though, Dusk's a goddamn kitten. -- Some people," his eyes slant between Dusk and Violet before shifting back out to the river, "make easy targets no matter /what/, though. Nice to have people around watching your back if people are going to be giving you shit anyway." Dusk snorts, and behind the sunglasses his eyes shift down to Violet's feline face when Hive says he's a kitten. He's taking thoughtful stock of /her/ fangs, of claws, lithe build, quietly tallying these things on some mental /spreadsheet/ to an echo of << have scary covered? >> His mental tally is, more, weighing how Normal People view these things than how scary /he/ thinks they are. "Think /all/ freaks are scary to someone. And s'always a trade-off, isn't it? /Congregating/ just makes a bigger fucking target. But kicking around the streets alone never did me any favours. Probably a harder equation for /you/ people," and here his mind is at least clarifying -- those like Hive who /can/ pass, who /can/ hide. "Don't think you're gaining much by hanging around all the freaks. I don't know about peach cobbler, though." This thought is tacked on in abrupt shift. "I'm thinking more of a nice raspberry pie." Exploding housing: not conducive to swaying a girl's opinion towards hanging around, even on the sly. You can't sneak around in 'being blown the fuck up'. All thoughts that Hive will, of course, be privy to though Violet says nothing. Her half-smile is response enough. The rest of the sandwich is eaten--quickly and neatly--before she speaks again, words sprinkled in between licking crumbs and flecks of tuna from the pads of her fingers. "Anyone watching my back's gonna have to keep up with it. Position's still open." The cellophane is wadded into a tiny ball and tucked into a back pocket. The rest she dismisses in favor of stretching, arms above head, back bowed forward, sigh heavy and happy. Dusk has her pricking her ears as she sinks back onto her hands, legs stretched and crossed before her. "Y'got any of that around?" Pie. Raspberry. For that she might set aside her scruples, for a time. "Sure I'm gaining. Fucking rents in this goddamn city, who else is going to room with me." Hive's tone is dry. When Violet stands and asks about pie he just settles in in a more lazy droop, taking another cigarette from Dusk's pack and tucking it behind his ear. He closes the box back up but doesn't, himself, move, just wraps the lighter and pack in Dusk's discarded shirt to offer it up to his roommate. "We're New Yorkers, dude. /Everyone/ moves fast around here." "Mixed berry do you? S'black and raspberry both." Admittedly, he /doesn't/ actually have pie, but Dusk is shamelessly going to offer pie from Lighthaus next door to his own place. It's not like they're /home/ to care or anything. He swings his legs over the branch, climbing back onto the stairs to scoop up his sneakers and, then, the wad that Hive offers him. He tucks this all beneath a wing, flicking a wingtip off in indication of his house. "C'mon. Might even have ice cream to go with." "Like I said, position's open. Taking resumes. Only calling candidates chosen for an interview though, y'know, this economy, so many applications." Violet rolls her hand through the air, adopting a briefly world-weary and resigned demeanor--it's hard, being on the hiring committee. But the perkiness returns as talk of pie proves to be truth. "Oh yeah? I think I could swing that." Ice cream and pie? Sure. For that she'll sling the discarded hoodie up over her shoulder and turns to study the indicated house before continuing, gaze-wise, onto the gardens. "Gotta say, ya'll got yourselves a pretty nice set up here, not gonna lie. Should put some catnip in." "Rough market. And nobody even looks at you if you don't have at least a Bachelor's -- though I have no fucking idea what major'd qualify you there." Hive is happily content to stay where he is, settling back into lazy-Sunday relaxation as the others prepare to head off. "Yeah?" For some reason the compliment puts a noticeable trace of pride in his voice, more than would be expected for just /living/ somewhere. "I'll suggest it to the hippies who do the gardening." "Tch. /This/ might be one position I'm better educated for than you and your fancy-ass fucking degree." Though Dusk knows perfectly well who actually /chooses/ the plants that get planted, the mention of hippies gardening plants a briefly absurd mental image of Jim with flowers woven into streaming long locks, a flowing skirt, tie-dyed peasant blouse. His fangs flash in quick grin. "They probably will if you ask. And yeah, s'nice here. Had a pretty kickass architect design the place." It's not attempting to be subtle; this comment comes with an amiable squeeze of Hive's bony shoulder before he starts leading the way off towards the house. "Yeah," Violet confirms. Yeah. Nice set up. She approves enough that a buzz of contentment--of << this is nice for now I'll take it >>--streams through before surprise! Dusk's sideways compliment of Hive gets the unwinged of the two a speculative glance. << Brains /and/ brains, cool. Still skinny though. >> Then she's off, trailing after Dusk in an idlish zigzag pattern that lets her peek around as she goes. "Guess you'd have better luck than others with cheating and all," she says along the way, the implication aimed at the batman's wings. "But how're you at crawling through small holes, huh?" Hive's eyes close again, answer coming now only in a slow exhaled stream of smoke and a faint contented smile that sees the others off.