ArchivedLogs:Somewhere to Start

Somewhere to Start
Dramatis Personae Jax, Steve
In Absentia	2017-05-08 "Fair or not, I bet the Patriots'd have you in a heartbeat."
Location <NYC> {Workhaus} - Harbor Commons - Lower East Side
The wide entryway leads into a semicircular sitting area with plush modular chairs, sofas, and huge beanbags arranged around two low tables. The bright, open expanse of the house fans back and out from here, executed in stunning industrial style with extremely conservative usage of rough stone walls. Through a door on the right is a library boasting an eclectic but extensive collection of books, a cozy reading nook, as well as a state-of-the-art computer work station. Opposite this is a media room with a projector mounted overhead and a formidable sound system on all sides, the windows still admitting plenty of light when the blackout curtains are pulled back. Beyond the sitting area, toward the back of the house and separated from adjacent areas only by plentiful black granite counters, are a pair of kitchens, each stocked with their own appliances, cookware, servingware, and utensils. Adjoining the (vegan and kosher) kitchen on the right is a simple dining room with a long oval table and chairs designed to accommodate a range of body shapes. On the other side, tucked between the general-purpose kitchen and the media center, is a guest room and a full bath. At the center of the entire house is a cylindrical elevator shaft of steel and glass with two floating stairways coiled around it like an immense double helix. Both elevator and stairs lead down out of sight and up to a circular landing joined to the second storey wings by walkways that leave the space above the sitting area open. Above the kitchens is a sun-drenched split-level recess, the lower half a conservatory enclosed by glass and the upper half a rooftop garden. The whole is walled with glass and lets in copious quantities of natural light softened by lush greenery. It's well after dinnertime now, the evening outside unseasonably chill, but when Steve finds his way across the courtyard, hair still damp from the shower, he's only in a plain black t-shirt and a pair of jeans, carrying his shield over one shoulder on its harness. He lets himself in and pads into the kitchen to root unselfconsciously through the refrigerator. Obie had been napping in the library and comes skidding out to greet him, wuffling solicitously at the hand he reaches down. He straightens up and gets the beagle a treat of his own before ducking back into the refrigerator and emerging with a sandwich that he devours on the spot, still standing at the counter. He washes it down with a tall glass of cashew milk, cleans up after himself, and heads upstairs, his own quiet steps dogged by the click of Obie's claws. He comes to the door of Jax's studio and hesitates, just for a second. Then he knocks, and without really waiting for a reply slips inside, closing the door behind him. The inside of the studio is a somewhat disorienting riot of sound and colour. Angel Haze is playing on the sound system, and the room itself has been taken over by a shifting technicolour phantasmagoria of disembodied twisting melting body parts (recognizably human and otherwise), jagged rocks and yawning crevasses where the floor should be, tumbledown ruins of what might once have been buildings. Somewhere in it Jackson is standing, armed with a small trowel-shaped palette knife and armoured in an almost painfully bright aurora of silvery light. Amidst all the chaos, it is difficult to tell what might be on his actual /canvas/. Steve looks around the room, marveling with some mild horror at the nightmare landscape before taking a couple of determined steps in, shielding his eyes from Jax's brightness and trying to peer at the work in progress. "Do you mind if I watch?" he asks, somewhat belatedly. "Oh! Um!" Around them, there's a distortion in the landscape. A number of limbs are melting into the surrounding rockface. In front of Steve, one deep chasm is rapidly widening -- on its distant precipice, a goat-legged figure is diminishing into the distance. "Right, you can. Apologies, I." The bright flare around Jax dims. "That ain't helping, is it?" "Wasn't the easiest on the eyes," Steve admits, "though you /yourself/ are." He blushes, adds more quietly, "I would've adjusted." Skirting the chasm in front of him, he grabs a stool and perches himself on it from an angle where he can see the canvas around Jax. "Have you talked to them?" Jax's eye lifts, briefly following the satyr's silhouette before it vanishes entirely into the distance. He shakes his head as he looks back to his canvas -- in clearer view, now, it's half a city and half a craggy mountain range, one growing out of the other in a messy jumble. It's made messier by the cracks opening up in the ground between them, the gnarled twisted fingers of something enormous starting to reach up from the crevasse that is being torn open. "Have you?" "No." Steve's eyes are fixed on Jax's canvas now. It's hard to say whether he's quite so fascinated with the art itself or trying to avoid eye contact. "I keep /wanting/ to." He hesitates. "Just don't really know where to start. I miss them, though. I hardly know what to do with a Monday night without them." Jax's lips press together thin. He exhales slowly, a flutter of darkness briefly shivering around him. When his hand lifts again it's slower, small deliberate flicks of motion texturing the rocky crags in front of him. "Watch football?" he finally suggests, the levity in his tone pushed just a little too deliberately light. A small crinkle at the bridge of his nose is all the reply Steve gives to that suggestion. "I worked out instead, but I don't intend to..." His head gives a faint shake. "I don't want Luci to think that's some sort of judgment on them, or that our friendship is over. I guess...maybe I should tell him /that/ first. Worry about what to ask as it comes to me?" There's a sort of helplessness in his tone, a verbal grasping for straws. "You know them both so much better than I, what do you think?" "Don't intend to try out for the NFL?" Jax's nose wrinkles. "I think Luci ain't the type to make assumptions 'bout your intentions. But both'a them'd probably appreciate hearing from us, I don't doubt." His shoulders sag, hand lowering again. "Especially lately. Ain't a good time for them to be losin' friends." "Wouldn't be fair." Steve's head dips, kind of an abbreviated shrug. "Football, I mean. And it's...difficult, I'm sure. Even without assumptions. /Especially/ lately." He runs his hand through his hair. "Gosh, I wish I'd just gone. I'll -- I'll drop them a line." "Fair or not, I bet the Patriots'd have you in a heartbeat." Jax drags the tip of his knife through a mound of grey paint, not really picking it up. "They stay up late." Steve guffaws, the sound not devoid of amusement, though much dampened. "Athletic bioethics aside, if I ever express interest in playing for /any/ New England team, I'll need my head examined." He drags his glittery pink phone from his back and swipes one-handed at the screen. Then adds, "Well. More closely than it already is." He watches Jax work in (evidently) comfortable silence for a while. When his phone buzzes, he checks it and nods, swiping out a quick reply. "I'm going over, then." He rises and goes to Jax, reaches for him but thinks better of gathering him into an embrace, just squeezes his shoulder, hard. "Good." Jax doesn't look up from his work, though he does lean -- heavily -- into Steve's touch. "That's -- that's --" A long silence. "... that's good."