Logs:Breaks from Reality

Breaks from Reality
Dramatis Personae Sam, Steve
In Absentia Lucien, Matt, Elie, Fury	2024-08-11 "They can't all be murderers."
Location <PRV> Sam and Steve's Apartment - Harlem
This is a third-story walkup in an aging historic building which, while not entirely crumbling, has a certain worn and shabby look, its plumbing and fixtures often in need of repair. The apartment has two small bedrooms, but makes up for it with capacious common areas. A single long space serves as living room and dining room combined, is semi-open to the kitchen, and has a surprisingly large bathroom with an antique claw-footed tub. Tall, drafty windows let out onto the fire escape from the living room and both bedrooms, and let in excellent light from the southern exposure. The sleek art deco motif that runs through the living room furniture, while not strictly matching, has clearly been worked to coordinate. The dining set, coffee and end tables have been crafted with complementary geometric patterning, ebony accents providing a dark contrast to the warmer swirls of maple burl that feature most prominently. The sofa, love seat, and chair fill out the rest of the living room, a matching set upholstered in plush burgundy. The numerous lamps do not all match, some of them clearly temporary supplement for the inadequate overhead lighting. If Steve went to church at all today he's changed out of his Sunday best with a quickness. He's now slouched in the armchair by the window in a purple Chimaera Arts t-shirt featuring a creepy-cute cartoon rendition of the collective's mascot, and soft navy blue pajama pants covered with little cartoon versions of his iconic shield. His sketchbook is open to a barely-begun sketch of someone with head bowed, not yet identifiable, and has been abandoned along with his pencil box on the table beside him, He's frowning instead at his tablet, scrolling up and back down over whatever he's reading. Zenobia is dozing at his feet with her head pillowed on an oversized plush hedgehog. Sam definitely went to church and he's just coming back home, now, in an elegantly fitted cream suit that contrasts well with the rich deep red of his dress shirt. He's taking off his shoes as he closes up behind him, disappearing briefly into his bedroom to emerge again sans dress shoes or jacket. "Woulda brought you with me if I knew you'd just be moping here, we was on fire today. Music woulda perked your soul right up. -- Want coffee?" He's ambling towards the kitchen to make himself some, at any rate. "Hey." Steve does perk up a little even without being serenaded by Sam's choir, and considerably more at the offer of coffee. Zenobia pads into the kitchen after Sam and sits beside the counter with the treat jar, wagging expectantly. "I'm not moping," he protests, looking down at his tablet again before setting it aside on top of his sketchbook. "Probably should've gone with you anyway. Coffee would be great, though. How's your pa?" "On fire, too. Bet he'd be real glad, you come 'round for brunch again soon." Sam scoops some fresh beans into the grinder, falling silent momentarily while the machine whirs loud. "Was a little light for brooding, not nearly petulant enough for sulk, but if your thoughts' too weighed down for God --" He lifts his shoulder, his glance across the counter a mild concern rather than a judgment. "What's on your mind?" "That'd be nice." Steve fishes a dog biscuit from Zenobia's jar and tosses it for her to catch out of the air. "Haven't really had the heart for a lot of things. Haven't really felt like God's been listening and I know, I know He is. It's just..." He shakes his head quick and leans on the edge of the counter. "It's been a heck of a year, and I've let so many folks down, but every time I turn around there's someone or another calling me a hero." His eyes have been fixed on, or maybe through the coffee grinder, but he finally lifts them to look at Sam. "Luci was over yesterday. You know, about the whole making us heroes business. Matt showed up, too." "Yeah, you stop one invasion of genocidal aliens and it's wild what people will call you." This is casual, but Sam's eyes narrow after. "Can't imagine that was a coincidence." Steve huffs a not-quite laugh. "I haven't got any trouble recognizing how amazing the rest of you were. I reckon I was broken well before that." He shakes his head, firmer this time -- a negation rather than a dismissal. "He must've glimpsed my schedule somewhere, or I let something slip and he extrapolated. I was about to send him packing when he started going on about chess, of all things." "Shoulda sent him packing." This time, there is judgement in Sam's worry. "Think Luci's been pretty clear that man isn't part of his life, now. Keep crossing his boundaries you might find yourself down a good friend, one of these days." There's a grim set to Sam's mouth. He only now remembers to actually take the grounds, add them to the hopper and start the machine. "-- Or two." "I know." Steve sounds resigned. "Think I was already down one. I was trying to help, but I made a hash of it and I can hardly fault him. I only hesitated because he was listening, for a hot minute. I couldn't make head nor tails of it -- some childhood code, I guess." His eyes follow Sam's hands as he sees to the coffee. "Then Matt said Luci killed their mother, who's clearly alive, but then so is Luci. He didn't deny the charge -- neither of them did the other's, but maybe they're both out of touch with reality." He takes a deep breath, the aroma blooming in the air a balm. "I don't know. He also claimed their mother was going to kill someone -- Matt did. He sounded awful scared. I don't think it was an act, and Luci didn't seem to, either, but they can't all be murderers." He doesn't seem very confident on this point. Sam's brow creases. Though there's no anger in his expression, Steve has known him well enough to clock the brief shift of his eyes away to fix on a stained glass cross on the window as a deliberate attempt to marshal any before he speaks. His voice is warm all the same, if carefully so. "Where'd you be if thinking someone's 'out of touch with reality' meant tossing 'em back at the people they were running from? Know that's how a lot of people roll, but you gotta be better than that, man." He's braced his palms against the counter as the coffee starts to percolate, and for a moment as he squeezes down the muscles in his forearms flex hard. He shakes his head as he looks back to Steve. "Plus, it don't seem like a sound assumption anyway. How many people you think cracking up, here? The cops and medics who reported him dead? Scott Summers just making up wild tales? Reality is, the world's full of crazy shit. Just gonna have to slot 'sometimes people don't stay dead' up next to the rips between dimensions and hungry alien bugs." Steve looks down. "S.H.I.E.L.D., probably. Don't think they'd've hurt me, but Fury would've made it hard to find folks who have my back on my own merit," he looks up at Sam, "not because I'm some superhero." Then he frowns. "Cops and medics can make mistakes, and overdose can make a body seem awfully dead. Summers -- I don't know, but he only had it from Luci, like us. Maybe..." His head shakes slowly, his brows wrinkle deeper. "If they did die and got resurrected, I don't see how two of my closest friends killing their kin left and right makes more sense than the both of them projecting paranoid delusions onto accidental deaths, or near-deaths. That kind of -- some of those illnesses run in families, don't they?" He runs both his hands through his hair and starts pacing. "But whether real or delusional, the fear was real, and I should have prioritized making sure he felt safe. I did, for months. I couldn't understand it, but I believed him, and in retrospect --" He stops and looks to Sam, wide-eyed and bewildered. "Was that the right thing to do, to begin with? He was losing his mind out there all alone. I trusted him -- still trust him -- but he wasn't okay and I didn't know what to do." "Think people sometimes get mad, if someone does 'em a violence. Was a time if I'd got my hands on the man who shot my ma..." Sam shakes his head, and turns to get a pair of mugs from the drying rack. "I dunno, man. It's a weird mess either way but I think in this case there's a lot less people in on the insanity if he's just telling the truth. Man rolled up here that day with fingermark bruises all 'round his neck. You ever seen heroin do that? I sure haven't." He sets a sugar bowl on the counter between them, and a carton of half-and-half, then just eyes the coffee machine as though this will make it hurry up. "Sometimes you don't know what to do. Sometimes you fuck it up. Best we can do is do better next time." "Their ma said they'd fought that night -- over the ah...matricide, I guess, if that actually happened -- and he overdosed after," Steve recounts this slowly, frowning down at the counter all the while. "I can hardly imagine Matt even raising a hand to Luci -- to any of his siblings -- but you're not wrong, and he does have a temper. She was incredibly reasonable about it all, and relieved to find that her son had turned up alive. Upset about the circumstances, of course, but..." His brows knit deeper and he looks back up across the counter at Sam. "Not upset the way I'd expect of a woman learning a man who allegedly tried to kill her was still out there when she thought he was dead. Even if he was her son. Especially if he was her son." He scrubs his face as if that would clear the morass in his head. "She told me Luci gave her and Matt to Prometheus while they were in the hospital, then faked their deaths. They're all very strange people, but either way it seems like they should have been at least a bit alarmed." He's eyeing the coffee machine and the liquor cabinet in turn. "I know I did Luci wrong regardless of what actually happened in March. But if they really did kill him, I've gotta do something." His hands tighten on the edge of the counter. Zenobia whines and leans on his leg. "Couldn't before without endangering Luci while he was in hiding, but now he's exposed -- because I told them, why the hell did I do that? If Matt is having some kind of psychotic break he might try again." He reaches down to appease his dog with a gentle scratch behind the ear. "Normally, I'd be asking Luci to help me untangle this right about now." "-- Aiiiight, now this story's getting stranger and stranger. Why did you do that?" The coffee is done, now, and Sam does get up to pour it. He also gets a whisky down, in case Steve wants to doctor his own. He's just putting sugar and half-and-half in his, stirring it slowly. "Not sure I can make heads or tails of alla that, but shit." His smile is just a little bit lopsided. "Aren't we supposed to be Earth's Mightiest Heroes? I'm sure we can protect one man."