ArchivedLogs:Trying

Trying
Dramatis Personae Ash, Jax
In Absentia	2014-12-15 Of future dreams.
Location <NYC> {Lighthaus} - Harbor Commons - Lower East Side
Bright and sunny-light, this house lives up to its name. With a plethora of enormous windows flooding the place with light and an open layout, the ground floor feels more spacious than it is. The small entryway has a closet space for shoes and coats, and doors at either side leading to the neighboring apartments. Past this it opens straight into the living room, a wide expanse of space bordered on one side by a curved set of stairs leading up (with colourful glass tiling on the risers between each stair) and next to these, the half-wall into the kitchen. Cool pale tile underfoot and many dark cabinets with a small walk-in pantry, plentiful custom granite countertops, black and speckled faintly with rainbowy flecks, lots of hanging space overhead for cookware, a large double-oven. There's a strip of rather detailed mosaic-work in the kitchen backsplash, colourful glass tiling depicting strange fantastical herbs and small faeries and firelizards darting among them. In back of the kitchen, a door opens up to a small sunroom, wide and two-stories high with a balcony overlook from the second floor; two of the windows here have cushioned windowseats, and there's a wealth of herbs growing in hanging pots and small window-boxes. The back wall of the living room is nearly entirely dominated by windows, huge and allowing a view of the river beyond with bench windowseats lining the sills. There are plentiful paintings on the wall, surreal and fantasy-inspired, mostly in shades of blacks greys with bright bursts of colour that are mirrored in the decor -- monochrome upholstery on the couch and armchair but colourful throw-pillows, black and white huge corduroy beanbags (and one large red doggie-bed,) soft throw rugs also in mostly black and white with splashes of rainbow woven in. The hand-built furniture -- tall chairs by the kitchen/living room counter, dining table and chairs in the kitchen, low coffeetable in the living room -- has been hand-painted as well, black with bursts of colourful abstract designs. Along the living room's other wall, doors branch off to a full bathroom -- in white and deep blue with one wall of the shower done in colourful intricate mosaic too, an underwater scene full of strange mythical water-creatures; tiny water-sprites have been interspersed at random points in the rest of the wall tiles, as well. There's a small studio space beside the bathroom, large windows as well and a gratuitous amount of shelving and cabinets along the walls; this room has very /little/ colour in it, just white walls and black furnishing. It is at the very least a bright day. Temperatures have gotten all the way up to fifty degrees and only wispy clouds lace the skies. Unfortunately, this all didn't amount to a full day of work - still, a half day is money in his pocket. Or, rather, money to spend at the grocery, which then prompts Ash to spend time cooking. The fruits of his labor are then packed into a basket and taken to his neighbor's for sharing. Wearing his usual Carhartt brown coat over a plaid shirt and dusty jeans, he kicks any extra grime off the bottoms of his heavy work boots before knocking on the door. It is no time at all before the door is answered -- or at least responded to, small paws scampering over, a snuffling at the door, an eager frisking sounding behind it. It takes a bit longer, though, before it's actually /opened/; Jax is not quite as mobile as Obie is, at the moment. Despite it being the middle of the day he is in pajamas, long soft black yoga pants and a grey-and-rainbow stripey sweatshirt pulled on over a pale blue henley. Fluffy rainbowy socks on his feet. He's nudging Obie back from the door with one foot when he tugs it open, offering Ash a warm smile. "Hey, honey-honey. Woah. You come bearin' -- basket." "Yep. Bearing basket. It's got some tasty food inside. Hoped you wouldn't mind if I stopped by with something hot. Heard you were a bit under the weather." It's a nice way of putting it. He lifts one of the lids to let some of the delicious aromas waft out. "There's garlic naan and chickpea masala, and if you're more in the soup mood, I have some of that too. That's just sealed, so not as easy to show off. How are you doing?" "I don't mind. That's awful sweet." Jax steps back, gesturing Ash inside. He closes the door behind the other man, moving slow and stiff over to settle himself back onto the couch where he's evidently been -- there's already a nest of blankets, his laptop, tablet, a thermos of tea. "Sleepy? I don't know, I been nonstop-sleepy. Kinda glad for the visit, I don't /want/ to jus' sleep m'day away. Didn't -- exactly. Sleep so good las' -- well." His nose crinkles up, a deep blush in his cheeks. "I'm guessin' not much of nobody around here did, though. How are you?" "Oh, you know. Okay. Messed up. It's all the same these days, yeah?" Ash kicks off his boots, their laces only loosely tied to make the short walk between buildings. He heads for the kitchen first though, starting to grab some dishes. "You getting a lot of them dreams, or are you just getting the normal ones? Normal ones aren't so nice either, but the futurey ones are full of new complications." He starts out with soup bowls and spoons, the liquid less likely to stay warm than the thickly stewed chickpeas. He tears a naan in half and adds it to a plate. He grabs spoons and heads over to Jax's couch. "Anyway. I can understand wanting to avoid sleep, but it is also when the body does the most healing, so it's probably okay you do some extra sleeping." "Ah --" Jax's teeth scrape down over his lip, his head shaking. He tucks his legs inward, making room on the couch for Ash. "No, I -- those future dreams been sparin' me, lately, which I'm glad of. Sounds like kinda a nightmare, what I been hearin'. Sometimes when Micah wakes up, it's been --" He frowns. "Don't sound good. You been gettin' 'em too?" He reaches up for the bowl, smiling warmly in thanks. "I jus' got some secondhand pain is all. Jus' fleetin'. Can't really complain. Jus' got me up earlier'n I'd planned on." "Rasam with the aforementioned garlic naan." Ash offers the bowl laden plate to Jax before settling into the couch with his own appetizer. He inhales deeply, drawing in a great lung full of the cilantro and citrus in the soup. He exhales and turns his attention back to his host. "Well. Part nightmare, part ... not. I don't know. How does a person find something good in a nightmare? How does one ... bah." He dips a spoon into the soup and brings it to his lips, still needing to blow on it to cool it down. "Yeah. Dreams. I've lost my powers again and I'm a prisoner in a detainment camp guarded by robots, dying slowly, being thrown in solitary. Having a boyfriend." "I find good in nightmares all the time." Jax shrugs a shoulder, fingers fluttering around the house they sit in. "Pretty much most of m'family -- y'all all come outta Prometheus. Even when I was /in/ there, me an' Ryan --" His cheeks flush, eye dipping down to the soup as he blows lightly on his first spoonful. "There's good in the middle'a horror all the time." He slips the spoon into his mouth, humming in quiet appreciation. His eye lingers on Ash thoughtfully. "... y'think it's true?" "Yeah. You're right. I just. I'm thrown." Ash's shoulders shrug, but his hands remain steady as he holds his food. "Do I think the dreams are true? They're shared, that's for sure, even if I haven't confirmed it with Dusk yet. It's hard though. Part of me wants to ignore everything about it and hope it's not real. The problem is, if it is real and we do nothing, it's bad. Bad for everyone. Hell, I've never had dreams hurt so much or feel so real." "There've been shared dreams before -- but those were nice. Happy -- not nightmares. This -- this is." Jax shivers, and dips his head for another mouthful of soup. "If it is real..." He hesitates, tongue flicking against a lip ring. "What would we do? Last time. Last time. Last time..." His eyes fix on his soup, head shaking once. Faint wisps of shadow curl around his arms. "It's just a lot. I ain't even havin' these dreams an' I think it's -- throwin' me a little, too." "I remember the nice ones." Ash admits quietly, his hand continues to move his spoon to his mouth to continue eating while Jax tries to explain. He shakes his head slowly, rubbing a knuckle against the side of his nose. "Yeah, trying to change things doesn't really work. Still. Not trying seems wrong. Very wrong. I rather try and fail than accept that I'm probably going to die in in a camp, freezing to death or challenging one of those damn machines and getting smashed flat." He shakes his head. "Not having them is throwing you?" "Not trying seems wrong," Jax acknowledges, "but tryin' also seems like -- playin' God a little an' last time we did that we --" He exhales heavily, fidgeting where he sits. Then wincing at the fidgeting. "Jus' don't really seem like a lotta good choices." His teeth wiggle at a lip ring, brows furrowing uncertainly. "I don't know. Maybe not havin' 'em is -- is that strange? Like egotistical -- I don't know. Jus' feels a little unsettling. But I don't hardly /want/ 'em neither. Jus' kinda want it all t'go away." "Playing God?" Ash's face wrinkles a little, his lips pressed into a disconcerted line. "Dunno. Succeeding at it for once might make me more concerned about God like powers. Right now, it feels more like the slow torture of knowing what's going to happen and being utterly unable to stop it. Like a nightmare." He abandons his spoon and takes to drinking right out of the bowl before he sets it aside and starts eating again. "You worried about why you don't see stuff about the future when you dream? Like there's nothing to see? Like maybe - I know Kay's locked away in my dream, deeper and darker than what I went through, mainly because he's an asshole who can't keep his mouth shut, but I don't really want to rush out and ask him where he is." "If we succeeded at it I wouldn't be concerned," Jax bursts out, sharper and harder, the dark coils around him deepening into thicker ropes of shadow. "We just got a bunch of people /killed/ playing at being heroes. What gives us the right to -- to what. Play at changin' the whole freakin' /world/, all of /time/, just in /case/ we do it right this time -- who /knows/ who's gonna live an' who's gonna die this time an' -- jus' because /we/ decided --" His spoon clatters against his bowl, hand lifting to press ragged-bitten nails to his chapped lips. "'pologies," he whispers, softer, "I --" He shakes his head. "I don't know. I expect m'probably dead. Seems like a lot of people are." He sounds oddly calm about this, in contrast to the previous sharpness." Ash reaches out to put his plate aside before moving closer to Jax to wrap an arm around his shoulders, if he doesn't reject the motion. "Jax, those people were killed by Prometheus. They wouldn't thank us to leave them in there, scratching our heads and trying to figure out an impossible puzzle that only gets more complicated the longer we worked at it. What should we do, let them rot away in tortured misery until Prometheus came up with another way for them to die alone? We had to try." He gaze is vacant and distant as he disappears into his own thoughts for a while, his voice returning hollow and empty. "I wanted to die in there. Knowing I'll go back to one of those places..." He stops, head bowing. "Nothing I can say will make you feel better about what happened. Nothing makes me feel better. I just know I had to try." Jax sags forward into Ash's hold, his breath pushed out shakily. The darkness around him shivers, twining around Ash as well. "I don't dream about the future, it's. Every night I -- I can't /shake/ the -- I keep thinking it's getting better and it never --" His eye clenches shut, teeth digging hard against his lower lip. "Maybe you won't. We don't know. We don't /know/. We ain't gonna stop tryin'. Right?" Ash rests his head against Jax's, breathing slow and even. "It doesn't. It never gets better. Some days, I feel like everyone in the whole world is trying to kill us." He wets his lips. He squeezes the other man's shoulders and leans back into the cushions. "But I have to keep trying. Can't stop. Just... can't ever stop." Some of Jax's soup splashes down over his fingers as he leans back against the cushions, too. "But things out here /have/ been getting better. /I/ just haven't. I don't know. Except for these dreams. That may or may not even ever happen. The /world's/ been pretty okay --" Jax hesitates, sudden laughing, short and ragged -- a tired burst that puts a pained wince on his face, hand moving to curl protective against his torso. "... I guess it says something about where my barometer's landed if 'shot full'a arrows' is 'pretty okay' to me. Just feels like life's been good lately. The nightmares don't never leave, though. I don't even know /how/ to stop fighting no more." Ash is still for a while, his eyes closed, his face turned toward the ceiling. There's a bit of a delayed reaction before his goofy, nervous energy picks back up again, like he hears Jackson's wince only after he stops talking. "Shot full of arrows." His eyes pop open and his eyebrows climb his forehead. "Oh, gosh. Jax. That's not so okay, okay? We gotta aim for something a little better than that. Okay. Soup. Drink your soup, rest, get better, then we'll go for a picnic in the sunroom. And maybe after that, the snow'll fly and we can do a snowball fight. Those're nice. We'll keep it in the commons and no cops'll show up and it'll just be fun. Maybe we'll get some syrup and paint the snow tasty colors and then drink cocoa around a fire." He sits up and reaches for his soup as if to show Jax how. See? Drink soup, eat food. Get better. "May be about time to get you a bodyguard for your bodyguarding." "We could put maple syrup in the snow." A bright smile crosses Jax's face at this, though there's still thick tendrils of black shadow twined around his arms. "That's always tasty. I do love snowball fights. The pups take the /fight/ part kinda literal." He says this with equal parts laughter and exasperation. "Should do a proper one. Once it's." He lets his eye droop closed, fingers fluttering around the room. Snow starts to drift down from the ceiling, the floor and furniture accumulating a thick carpet of glittering white. "Soup's delicious." "Can we put chiles in the maple syrup?" Ash's smile brightens, but there's still something quiet and distant in his eyes. He inhales deeply and looks around the room, leaning a shoulder against Jax's again. "Like this snow. It's warm." "Spicy sweet. I like those." Jax nods agreement. Small whorls of colour skate and dance over the surface of the snow he's summoned up. Shimmering-iridescent. "I'm cheating." As though it's a /confession/ that Ash could not have figured out on his own. There's a small smile curling onto his lips, hand lifting to lick spilled soup from his fingers. "Sometimes you just need some warm."