ArchivedLogs:Spider-Friends

Spider-Friends
Dramatis Personae Ivan, Kai
In Absentia	2013-03-31 Ivan and Kai meet on the lawn, and Ivan gets a new spider.
Location <XS> School Grounds
Xavier's School is situated on grounds as luxurious as the mansion itself. The tree-lined drive brings you up to the lush green sweep of front lawn and the wide front porch with its bench swing, often frequented by students studying in pleasant weather. The large oak tree in the front yard is home to a tire swing, installed long ago beneath the sturdy old treehouse. The lawn rolls out all the way down to the thin rocky pier at the edge of the glittering lake. The water stretches huge and wide off into the distance, the boathouse a small blip at its shore. Along its bank, forest stretches dense and shady to one side; to the other cliffs start to rise, high and rocky, providing trails for hiking or climbing, for the adventurous. Weekends are noticeably quieter here. One might even be convinced the whole /atmosphere/ of Xavier's school is different when those who are able and willing to go and visit family or friends have left the scenery, whether or not that is actually true. Ivan doesn't know if it is, and honestly, he doesn't look like he cares; He's taken to sitting outside on a patch of new, spring grass, his back leaning the large oak tree outside of the school, schoolbook-filled backpack next to him. His black, wool coat is folded halfway across it, and he's dressed in a plain, light grey t-shirt and jeans, seemingly unbothered by the cold. He holding a ballpoint pen in one hand, aimed straight at a postcard, picture side down, in the other. He looks /stumped/, staring down at the card as though it had only just materialised. But nope. It's been /minutes/. Spring! It might not be technically warm enough to call it so, but Kai doesn't seem to care. In what appears to be an uncharacteristic show of hyperactivity, the boy bursts from the doors of the school, a wide smile on his face as the sun hits it. He's dressed in jeans and a blue long-sleeved t-shirt that seems a bit baggy on his slender frame (although there's a bit of thickening around his waist, after a couple of weeks of big meals), but the long sleeves seem his only concession to the cool air. He jumps over the steps up to the porch, hitting the ground with a small oof before he's tearing across the lawn towards the oak tree. "Ivan!" he calls, waving his hand as he goes. "Ivan! There is su -- oof!" He trips, then, somersaulting in the grass and sort of rolling the rest of the way, coming to rest against Ivan's backpack in a face-down prostrate position. He's very still. Maybe he's unconscious. Though his head snaps up when he is called out for, Ivan seems reluctant to abandon his mission- the pen is held there on the card and WILL BE until he thinks of something to write there, damn it. Unless-- something that just happened happens. Upon Kai arriving at the base of the big oak in a less than conventional way, Ivan promptly drops his pen and postcard. His eyes widen and he plants both hands into the grass underneath him as he pushes himself off and up to scoot over and kneel next to Kai, reaching a hand for the other boy's shoulder to carefully /shake/ it. "-- ... Kai?" He tilts his head, looking about as curious as he is /already/ apologetic. This is what you get when you make friends, Ivan. They get HURT. Apparently. Kai's body is limp, under the shaking, and there's a small breathy noise that might be crying. Until the boy rolls over, and there's a wide smile on his face. "I have not run for joy in a long time," he says in his thick accent. "I did not remember what it felt like." He pushes to his elbows, and looks around the lawn. "I will run every sunny day," he decides, or maybe he's agreeing with Someone. Ivan gets another wide smile. "What are you doing?" he asks, looking over to the abandoned postcard and pen. "Are you practicing letters? I can write all of them, now." He frowns, and looks around, lowering his voice. "They do not look very good when I do." Ivan... just stares for a little bit. After one or two of Kai's sntences, he just leeaans back and thuds back onto the grass again, legs folding in front of him. He doesn't actually seem aware that he's been asked a question for quite a few seconds, until finally he shakes his head-- just once. Not practising letters, no. Blindly, without looking, he swipes his hands along the grass for the items he dropped, offering Kai a smile that is thin, but no less genuine. Similarly, his voice is quiet, but the amusement clear within his tone. "You are going to be twice as good at speaking English than I am. By /next week/." Kai tilts his head, the amusement confusing him enough that his brow furrows. "You do not watch the television?" he asks, jutting out his bottom lip. "I have learned a lot from it. And listen to the discs Dr. McCoy gave me." He sits up, then, folding his legs under him in a mirror of Ivan's position. His hands come down in the grass again, and he threads his fingers through the brightening blades. "I am sure he would give you some." He frowns in sudden memory, and raises a hand to tap a finger against his temple. "And there is Him. He learns it very fast." The smile he offers this time is bleak and thin. "You do not want His help." Again, a simple headshake is given in answer to Kai's question. Ivan finds his postcard and pen, but they get sat in his lap without use for now. Now is procrastintion time. "It is okay." He admits, smile brightening just slightly as though in response to Kai's growing thinner. "I know enough." Though his look of amusement wanes, another returns twofold when 'He' is mentioned. His tone, then, easily betrays that which got the proverbial cat killed. The following question is asked calmly, flatly, in that similarly heavy but oh so different accent. "Does /he/ like it here, also?" Kai is quiet a long moment after the question, his gaze going distant. There's flicker of yellow along his irises, and then he blinks slowly. "He is content," is the only answer he gives, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. "It is enough." He looks across the lawn, watching as a pair of robins tumble around each other in flight before he turns back to Ivan with a small smile. "What are you writing?" Ivan's brows draw closer together, if only slightly, as a thumbnail-sized dark spider lowers itself out of his hair along one of his ears, then down the back of his neck. Whether the boy saw that brief flicker of yellow remains unsaid, and a moment later, his face is back to neutral. If he is at all concerned, he does not show it. In fact, he's fairly quick to turn the post card over and present it to Kai-- it shows skyscrapers and bright lights and an atrociously wide street absolutely filled with yellow cabs: a collection of things Ivan has hardly even seen during his stay here, but it has the words 'New York' on it, and that's apparently all that matters. "Writing home." Again, the two-word answer is given matter-of-factly. There is, however, a brief glance upward toward Kai's face as he says it, though. Almost scrutinising. Kai takes the card with a small bob of his head, studying it carefully, and tracing his fingers over the letters. There's a sort of empty recognition for the imagery, and then he smiles. "New York," he offers softly, glancing at Ivan. When the other boy mentions home, though, it flickers and threatens to gutter out before it stabilizes. "Where is home?" "Khimki." Comes a quick answer and another meek smile. Hinting, perhaps, at fond memories. But when Ivan realises that his answer may not be entirely useful, he looks up again and adds quickly, "-- Russia." Immediately after the word leaves his mouth, he narrows his eyes. Eyes which now stay on Kai's face, /studying/ it in favour of what would, most likely, just be the same question returned back. Kai's face grows a bit troubled at Ivan's point of origin, and he frowns, dropping a hand to tug at the grass a bit. "We were in Russia," he offers softly. He offers a small smile, and lifts his shoulders. "We did not stay long." There's no answer forthcoming to Ivan's unspoken question, it seems, because Kai presses on with his own interrogatory. "Do you have a big family?" A nod, this time! Ivan sits up, that same spider from before reappearing on the opposite side of the neck it crawled down, only to crawl onto the adjacent shoulder. It's a little jumping spider, angling its whole body as it peers around on its perch. "No grandparents, uncles, aunts--" He starts, with a slightly stifled tone that is not present in what follows, "-- but eleven siblings and two parents." He seems unabashedly /happy/ about this, even if the look on his face is fleeting and quickly makes way for a more absent smile again. His own hands fidget idly with the hem of his shirt, straightening it between his fingers. This time he chooses not to leave things to chance, angling his head inquisitively as he tacks on, "And you?" Kai seems surprised by the answer, his eyebrows popping up as his eyes widen. "That is a big family," he agrees, rubbing his jaw with a knuckle. The return question gets a small lift of his shoulders. "I had mother, father, two brothers," he says slowly, furrowing his brow perhaps in an attempt to recall. "They are dead, I think." He lifts his head and bobbles it in a 'what can you do' sort of shake. "They met Foom." Quiet as Ivan is already, he somehow manages to go even /quieter/ without even speaking, now. The spider on his shoulder taking a few tiny steps back is the only movement on him for a moment, because he even forgets to breathe. When he /remembers/, it comes back to him in a loong inhale before he decides to speak again, smile slowly withering without his consent. Eye contact steadily remains, however. "Are you..." He pauses, "... not angry? At Foom?" Jut then, the spider on his shoulder does its name proud and /jumps/, landing in the grass in front of Kai with a silvery, barely visible safety line of webbing trailing behind it. Kai's face is largely without expression. "They were not nice people," he says after a moment. "I can not be angry at someone who saves my life." He shrugs, and he juts his lower lip out slightly as he tips his head to watch the spider, extending one finger towards it carefully. . "Sometimes, I am sad. But I do not miss them." He looks up. "Do you miss your family much?" Ivan pulls up his legs to rest his arms against them, momentarily stuck in an expression of sheer /thoughtfulness/. But he still nods, three times, when asked another question. His gaze, though, lowers to the spider, which rears up to wave a few front limbs up in the air at the oncoming finger, likely in a desperate attempt to make itself look bigger. AAAaaa, finger. It's HUGE. Ivan, after his spot of thought, concludes, "It is good you were saved." Kai watches the spider rear up, his smile genuinely warm for the little spider's bravado. He stills his finger, to allow the spider time to inspect it. Ivan's words get a bob of his head. "Yes. I am thankful for Mister Jackson and the others." He smiles at Ivan, lifting his chin. "They brought us here." Then his attention is back on the spider and his finger, his gaze studious on the little arachnid. "We like your spiders and bugs." Though Ivan's eyes remain on the spider, it acts as one would expect it to behave, rearing up one last time (even HIGHER) before inching in short bursts toward that unknown finger. It seems, for now, that it is free of its back-seat driver. After angling around to give every one of its eight eyes a good look at things, it JUMPS, almost faster than the eye can see, on top of that finger. Only to rear back once more at the view. TRIUMPH. "'We'?" Ivan mumbles, a bit uselessly, before looking up and somewhat hastily clarifying, "Why-- does Foom like them?" Though confusion is probably more appropriate, only curiosity shows itself in his expression. Kai's smile goes wider when the spider jumps on his finger, and oh-so-slowly, he lifts his hand. Maybe he's helping the spider take a proper bow. "He likes creatures of the earth," he says, looking up at Ivan. "He does not like people, but he is fond of things that crawl in the dirt." He wrinkles his nose. "I do not understand it," he admits. "He is so very...what is the word?" He frowns. "When a person likes to talk about how perfect they are?" There's something ever so careful about Ivan's movements. Ever so still. It may be a little hard to spot in someone usually quite reserved anyway, but it's there. "{Narcissistic}." He offers, a bit uselessly, again, in Russian. Unfortunately the word bears very little resemblance to its translation. "I-- suppose it depends if they /are/. Perfect." AAaaaa moving. The spider sticks along for the ride upward, but starts to move toward a knuckle instead, body low against the skin as its legs propel it forward in tiny little jumps. Kai's brow furrows at the Russian, and he shakes his head. "I do not think that is the right word," he says apologetically. "But Foom thinks he is perfect, so it is odd that he admires the low creatures." The hand stills when the spider scurry-jumps for the knuckle, Kai's face lowering close enough that his soft exhalations ruffles the feathery hair on the spider's legs. "They are pretty, though. I like the blue one that you have sometimes." He tilts his head. "This one makes me think of Peter." Ivan can't help but smile again, at which point the spider on Kai's knuckle peers upward, right into that big giant face. No rearing up this time! Just four of its biggest eyes peering back, through the breathwinds. Defiantly! "Lena." Ivan says, "The blue one. She is my oldest." He grabs the postcard from before, then, and stuffs it into his backpack along with the pen. "I do not think they are low." He does not sound judgmental, only stating fact. "Maybe I will keep this one and call it Piotr." Kai's smile widens at the show of defiance, and his chuff of laughter is probably a hurricane wind, for a moment. "I meant low as in, the smallest of creatures," he says. "They are His words, not mine." He looks up. "I like them. They are your friends, and you are mine." He waggles the fingers of his other hand at the spider softly. "So they are my friends." He beams at the idea that Ivan will keep this particular spider, and he echoes the name softly. "Piotr...that sounds like Peter," he says, as if Ivan weren't aware of that fact. "It is a good name." When Ivan starts putting his postcard away, Kai looks up, and glances at the school. "Would you like to go and get a..." he narrows his eyes. "I think it is called a snack?" He lifts his free hand toward the mansion. "Maybe there are cookies." The spider BUCKLES DOWN at the laughter, opting only to explore the rest of that hand after the winds have died down. Whether or not through controlled efforts or not, it starts to move towards Kai's shoulder soon, instead. Bit more secure. Ivan himself nods again, closing his backpack to sling it onto his shoulder. "We will /find/ cookies." He exclaims, then. And indeed, if there are any upon the school premises, he wanders off determined to find them. Because Kai just called him a FRIEND. And if that is not cookie-finding fuel, Ivan doesn't know what is.