Logs:Sabbatical Plans

Sabbatical Plans
Dramatis Personae Joshua, Mirror, Tag
In Absentia	2023-03-21 "I can buy you all the booze, without the torture."
Location <NYC> Greyhaus - Village Lofts
This apartment is not exactly capacious, but it's reasonable by New York standards. The common area and kitchen are partially open to each other, with a half-wall separating the two. One small bedroom and two even smaller ones share a full bath. The place seems to have been decorated by either a large number of people or fewer, more indecisively eclectic ones, and the color of various furniture and appliances are constantly in flux. The art on the walls range from rough, mass-printed protest art to exquisitely detailed oil paintings, and also change (or at least move around) periodically, while murals come and go with disorienting regularity. A long, low sectional couch with a long, low table to match is the center of the living room, across from a television hooked up to a few game systems. The dining table is small and round and modular, most commonly pushed up against the wall of the dining room with one half folded down to take up as little space as possible. Is it late or is it early? Does it matter? It's New York, and this house keeps odd hours even by normal Never Sleeping standards. There is mapo tofu in the crock pot and the window is open to let in the actually reasonably fresh spring air pulling gently off of the East River. Tag (probably) is draped over more of the couch than he really needs, though there's only ever so much of Tag to drape. He's wearing an ancient soft cropped tee styled like a blue sky dotted with white clouds and similarly ancient black gi pants. His shaggy shoulder-length hair is a melange of pale pinks, and his eyes intense fuchsia where they are fixed up at the ceiling and the swirls of topographical lines slowly shifting colors there. The shifting stops with the lines in sharp rainbow gradient and the fields in between shaded in coordinating pastels. He squints at it, then squints down at the rough reference sketch on his tablet. In the kitchen, Joshua (probably not) is busy dishing himself up a bowl of mapo tofu generously over rice, hefting the bowl and his eyebrows both living-room-wards in silent query as to whether Tag would like a portion. When he brings (supper? breakfast? does it matter?) over he seems very unfussed about Tag's couch-hoggery, simply settling himself down right atop the other's legs and offering out the second bowl. Then tipping his head back to peer up at the ceiling as well. Then Tag's tablet. Then the ceiling. "Be sick if someone actually put that on their ceiling instead of having you tweak it from eggshell to ivory." Tag is equally unfussed about being sat upon, though he does wiggle himself upright to receive the food with a bow and a thanks. "Wouldn't it?" It's the kind of question that's really just an agreement. "Don't get me wrong, tweaking the ceiling from eggshell to ivory is easy money, why are people so boring about their interior design." He kind of shrugs with the tablet before setting it aside. "In fairness to these hipster climbing gym bros, they need their ceiling for climbing." Joshua (almost definitely) has certainly not been home until now, but even though the door doesn't open it's quite unsurprising to hear movement now in his room. He emerges soon enough, peeling off his canvas jacket and dropping it onto the back of the couch as he starts toward the kitchen -- then, self-conscious, doing a sharp about-face before he actually reaches the kitchen to pick up his discarded jacket. It abruptly vanishes from his hand instead of becoming Clutter. Somewhere in here he's definitely forgotten he was about to get food because, instead, he just drops down to sit on the floor at the base of the couch, peering up at the mural as well. His perpetually raccoon-shadowed eyes are, today, kind of bloodshot. "Damn," he comments, on the mural, "fucking sweet if your clients have grown interesting tastes." "It's not going into anyone's house," Mirror!Joshua informs hir doppleganger with a mild disappointment. "Some hipster climbing bros getting the benefit of Tag's genius. You look like shit." Though even as he says this he is frowning, focusing -- the change is small, but his eyes grow bloodshot to match Joshua's. "Feel like shit," he amends. "Have you given up on working? If this week is for Drinking Only I'll go save lives for you." Tag passes his as-yet untouched bowl to Joshua Prime. "Not going on their ceiling, either, even though it definitely gives good ceiling. Just their non-climbing walls." He literally brightens at the praise and, looking up again, adds some shadow to the edge of the topo lines. "Hopefully jobs like this will get me more jobs like this. Not that I'm hurting for business." He glances between the Joshuas. "You could go on spring break anywhere, obviously, but if you stick around town I will buy you all the booze. We can like binge The Last of Us or something." "I haven't given up, I'm taking a sabbatical." Joshua accepts the bowl kind of unthinkingly, stirring at it but not eating. He's still staring at the ceiling, though with a growing frown that probably isn't inspired by Tag's redecorating. "We could binge The Last of Us right now." "Oh?" !Joshua sits up with an excessively keen interest at this announcement. His bowl is held in one hand; he leans forward, resting the other elbow on his knee to peer oh-so-curiously at Joshua. "A sabbatical. So you're gonna rest? Study? Go somewhere exciting?" Tag's "whoa!" overlaps with Mirror "oh?", and he embellishes the mural draft on the ceiling in time with his roommate's questions. One of the fields between the topo lines turns into a cartoon beach where a stick figure with a kippah lounges on a blanket. Another field transforms into a massive library where the same stick figure has built himself a book nest. In a third scene he's wandering through a fantastical bazaar. "How long are you taking off? Isn't it like a year, traditionally? C'mon spill." Joshua's grip tightens on his spoon as he watches Tag's art evolving to include his potential Sabbatical Activities. It's Mirror's contributions that make him actively wince, his head ducking. "Fuck, you already fucking know," sounds a little guilty. "I don't know how long. We're always short-staffed and I'm the best fucking paramedic in the city so they'll take me back whenever I'm back." His jaw tightens, and he exhales hard. "I'm not not studying. I'm going back to Prometheus." Mirror's form is melting and warping -- an odd mooshy shift for Tag to feel where ze still lounges across hir housemate's legs as ze shrinks, grows much brighter, now swimming in Joshua's borrowed clothing as he becomes an echo of his other roommate instead. He's making no comment -- out loud, but another section of the mural changes, too, now a cartoonish operating room where a second stick figure wielding a scalpel is brandishing it, gleeful and menacing, over where Stick-Joshua has been strapped to the table. Tag doesn't seem much bothered by his roommate turning into him, right on top of him. Probably being sat on by Mirror now is more comfortable than it was a moment ago! But even if it were less comfortable, he's a bit distracted now. He looks at Mirror!Tag's sabbatical doodle, then back down at Joshua, then back up, then back down. "Again?!" is what finally comes out. Then, plaintively, "Why? No wait that's dumb I know why but why you?" "He's trying to his stamp card filled," Mirror interjects, oddly light. Joshua's eyes squeeze shut tight, but it doesn't stop him from answering blandly: "Fifth one and I get a free drink." He is not looking at the cartoon Torture Lab, at least not after the first brief glance. "I know the labs better than -- most. Lucien's got some fucking plan. Might end them for real. Needs spies, though." "Spies." Mirror!Tag is leaning heavily on this plural, half-turning to ask Tag, a little wider-eyed, "and do you know who his super trustworthy and levelheaded mission companion for this bit of insanity is?" Color drains steadily from Tag's--everything, really, his eyes now the color his hair had been and his hair stark white, his skin weirdly pale in a way human skin doesn't generally pale. "Okay but, again, I can buy you all the booze," he offers, probably not as hopeful as he's trying to sound, "without the torture. Where does Luci get off assigning people--do Jax and Ryan know about this? Is this Matt trying to do some--I don't know, raid team mutiny--" He comes up short and stares at his...not quite mirror image, anymore, Mirror!Tag not having blanched with him, "'Mission companion' oh hell no, DJ?!" "You can buy me all the booze when I get home," Joshua answers, determinedly even. He ignores all the questions about Who Knows and instead just says: "Wrong Mormon." "Wrong twin. I think that would be better." Mirror is melting again, but this time just back into their own body, Joshua's clothes still baggy on their lean form but not quite as nonsensically pooling. "And kind of poetic, seeing as they're going to Lassiter." Tag subsides a little, though it's not very clear at what. "I don't even know if Prometheus would take him. DJ I mean--wait, Lily?!" He blinks powder-pink eyes at Joshua. "Is she going back as a researcher?" Mirror's scalpel-wielding stick figure grows two pigtails and long eyelashes. "If she got outed, if they figured out you were up to...." He leaves off annotating on the ceiling. "Is there a 'plan b'?" "Yep. All doctored up and ready to..." Joshua's brows slowly knit. "Spy. I guess plan B is, if we're not back in six months, y'all call in the cavalry -- wait, Lassiter?" He doesn't quite pale, but his breathing has slowed. "Cavalry might not be..." He sits bolt upright and turns to level narrowed eyes on Mirror. "How do you know, she hasn't answered my texts for days." "That's because she blocked you," Mirror supplies helpfully. "Might be having second thoughts about whose side she's on in all this." "Six months!" Tag has evidently moved past incredulity and has only shock and dismay left, because there's no trace of an interrogative in this exclamation. He doesn't even echo "Lassiter" at all. "At least Lily can be in contact with the outside, right? And if no one hears from her..." He trails off, cocking his head at Mirror, now. "Ohhh. Is she still going back, but...for real, then?" "What?" For just a moment Joshua's expression crumples. "She --" His mouth presses into a tight line. He he hands Tag back the bowl of tofu, untouched, and gets to his feet. "No, she wouldn't. She's probably just..." There's no end to this sentence. He scrubs his hand over the side of his face, pulling his long expression even longer, and then -- simply vanishes.