Logs:Personal Pronouns

Personal Pronouns
Dramatis Personae DJ, Hive
In Absentia Dawson, Lucien	2024-11-04 "How have you put up with that headache?"
Location <PRV> Rang Phueng Design - Soho
Located on the third floor of a narrow brick-faced office building in SoHo, the lobby of Rang Phueng Design is a comfortable place to wait. There are a number of paintings hung on the walls, brightly colored though somewhat fantastical cityscapes. A large aquarium on one wall, clean and carefully tended, hosts brightly colored marine life swimming through a number of plants and coral. The table amid all the large cheerfully blue-and-silverygrey microsuede couches has a sampling of architectural magazines as well as popular ones, magazines and newspapers generally actually up to date. Off to the side of the large receptionist desk, a small table has a little refreshment stand set up, a Keurig coffeemachine with a large selection of tea-coffee-cocoa choices and a minifridge beneath the table with juice and water and soda. Through the door in back of the lobby is an enormous workshop space, wide and airy. Spacious drafting tables take up much of the center of the room, a number of glass-topped desks edging the sides though only one of them against the back windows actually boasts a computer. Walls painted white and paneled in glass turn most of the wallspace into whiteboard, generally covered with notes and measurements. The back wall's large windows look out onto the streets, and two side doors lead into a smaller enclosed office spaces. It's early -- okay, it's not that early, really, at all, the stock market's opening bell soon to ring. Over in Staten Island the Mormons have probably been up and obnoxiously, cheerfully productive for hours already, but for Hive, who calls it an early night if he's in bed by two a.m., to be up and in the office and solidly deep into a project by Normal Business Hours, it's early. In the lobby his poor frazzled receptionist has been having A Morning, not just for his unusual presence but for his higher-than-usual surliness, funny to her when it's turned on clients but entirely unamusing in the surprisingly rare occurrences she's been on the receiving end. She is at the moment hoping to ameliorate Hive's Terrible Mood with the extra good Kona coffee, and is ameliorating her own by adding some extra extra good coffee and a pricey new drawing tablet for herself to the upcoming office shipments. Hive's noticed. She knows he's probably noticed, but a comfortable working relationship with a telepath means a lot of looking the other way and she's hoping he isn't cranky enough to step over that unspoken assholery boundary right now. Which, in fairness, he isn't, nursing his most recent cup of excellent coffee and downing four Advil with it, not holding much hope that they'll do anything about the throbbing pain in his head. Definitely won't do shit for the blurring of his vision or the self-directed crankiness that he should've slept more, should be eating better. The long (long) list of notes and half-drawn sketches in front of him might, one day, become a new library, part of an ambitious revitalization project in whereverthefuck, he should remember can't remember doesn't currently give a shit to remember but at the moment he's been staring at them so long the detailed thoughts he'd been working up with their starry-eyed city planners have blurred into just -- "Fuck." Try to pick up coffee; knock coffee all over his workstation. Thank god the holographic interface doesn't suffer for it -- his jeans do, and though his first irascible instinct is to call (crankily!) for his receptionist he checks his irritability and checks his brain, instead fumbling for his cane as he pulls himself to his feet to go fetch paper towels. How many arms did Hive have, again? More now than a moment before, and though a combination of psi shielded room and tightly regulated partitioning have been keeping this half of him disconnected-then-opaque for a day now, it feels as natural as ever when DJ materializes in a flutter. From the street outside to by Hive's side to the bathroom and then back, paper towels in hand. He's crouching, steadying Hive with one hand as his other blots damp-then-dry against the splotch. Bleeding around the edges of his careful control, the frazzled-heightened edges of keyed up awareness. Jittery anxiety. An odd emptiness he keeps pressing at, like the copper-raw socket of a missing tooth. "I can grab you new pants." A brief consideration of how long it'd take to flit to Staten Island and back, alongside how long it'd take to grab a brand new pair from the closest store. A vague unconscious chiding: he has a go bag and fresh clothes at his office, why doesn't everyone? Another consideration: how long it'd take him to pack one for Hive while he's home. "And breakfast, while I'm at it." Against that careful partitioning there's a powerful rattle, a fury elemental-strong surging to batter against the careful fencing woven between branches Hive should rightfully be able to feel. With it, there's thought, in angry snips. << fuck happened to leaving a fucking message >> feels, internally, more justified than << the fuck did I do you need Lucien goddamn Tessier to protect you from me >>. Swift on the tail of these, a pulling-back, deliberate though the roots that bind them still shiver with worry and hurt. << unfair) >> << crazy, not crazy, still needs his damn space. >> These aren't directed, really, an internal and automatic hurt that Hive himself is less equipped to hide from DJ than the reverse. He drops his hand to DJ's shoulder and squeezes. When he reaches for words there's still only a confused mouthful of headache and hurt, so instead he just waits. Tugs DJ to his feet, kisses him, hard. "You good?" comes only a heartbeat before the part of his brain that is them is reflexively shifting a pronoun that didn't even make it into the spoken English, chopping that you from plural down to singular and then deciding that because English is dumb and bad it was fine either way. There's something else bothering him, uncomfortable and warning, with this intuitive reflex, but his brain isn't DJ's and has Not Quite caught up there yet. "I --" << (don't know) >>, comes back, genuinely contrite for the worry he's caused; the last day, last night, patchy in his memory in a way not too unusual for this stage of Craze. It's filtering through as he presses back into the kiss. Leaving the Refuge while Hive slept to try and burn off some of that energy, try and be less of a constant nuisance in his brain when he woke, and then --? A gap, there, splintered. Quiet-burbling fountain and soft fur on their fingers. A pleasant clackclack rattling in his mechanical hand. The unobtrusive but distinct woodsy-citrus custom scent filtering through L'Entente. The unobtrusive but distinct pink peppercorn-rose-gin blend of Lucien's own custom cologne. Fragments of roots lopped off or half-grown until waking up this morning (alone, he's quick to assure), hot herbal tea and exquisite breakfast spread delivered a prompt ten minutes after an alarm he didn't remember setting. "-- wasn't trying to worry you. I've got a psych appointment. Soon, we'll --" Frown, poke, poke. "Maybe get this a little in hand if my meds are --" He shrugs, his arm still curled around Hive. "C'mon, breakfast, how have you put up with that headache?" "Always have a goddamn headache, the world won't shut the hell up." Kind of a performative grumble that is simultaneously acknowledging this one is Kind Of Bad, not just the aggregate noise of thousands of dipshits going about their annoying-ass lives. He doesn't let go, and this is partly out of affection -- partly to get his cane in a better grip before he trusts his weight to his own physical limbs again. But with the headache is a lot of nausea and for the briefest moment he is considering the absolutely absurd option of lying to DJ and saying he already ate to spare himself some nagging (it's his goddamn turn to be worried here, bastard should let him have it). He snorts, quiet, at the potential futility of such an effort, and purely to amuse himself is saying flatly as he sits: "Don't need your momming, I ate already." Their mind betrays him easily, not just in hunger pangs and wobble and headache but in easy recollection of his morning, cigarettes and coffee and crankiness and not much else. Under the vocal speech he's filling in somewhat more amiably: << If you bring me back some fan tuan I'll pack an emergency bag tonight. >> Here, again, some reflex is annotating his English in quiet background habit, this time considering you in the singular --> plural and once again deciding he had it fine. He hasn't gotten as far as his usual disdain for English when a wind ruffles through these thoughts, cold and dreading. << wait, where -- >> "... what happened?" "I could shut it up for you." DJ's tight regimenting is easing up. As he slips comfortable to allow their skin to be his, his skin to be theirs, his thoughts (disjointed, still, but drastically less so than before) flutter in to alight easily again among Hive's canopy. This particular thought, at once reasonable -- << (could help shield the noise) >>, far too much work to do consistently when he has life to live but for an hour or two respite, he'll happily put in the work -- and wildly not, fleeting whims of putting everyone for blocks to sleep, hiving the neighborhood-city-world and turning off a switch for a while. He's leaning toward the former, luckily, but jarred out of any actual movement by Hive's question. His own internal stock-taking is much, much quicker, and guiltily, comes with a faint relief rather than dread. "I -- don't know?" It's not really a question to Hive but an attempt to review his own Past Day; he comes up just as unsure as before. The next shiver of wind feels cold, a sinking kind of despair that DJ no longer just sees but feels tugging chill at the roots that bind them. "What did you do." "I didn't do any --" DJ is protesting immediately, but he stops short as that dread takes him, becomes his own. The patchy-missing places in his memory. The instinctive relief he felt (guilty, yes, worried for Hive's sake, but relief) upon realizing his mind was his own again. Did he --? He's scrabbling through his consciousness and realizing he can't answer. The relief is what Hive is latching onto -- is he aware this is maybe not entirely fair, yes, but that doesn't stop it from sticking sharp and bloody in his craw. He clenches the head of his cane tight, turning his scrutiny inward -- digging through those memories as if he might find more answer. When none comes he's jerking back -- mentally, outwardly he's frozen sick in place. There's a brief flit of review, the last few days << resentful at being here at all >> << (not him) (wrong him) >> and when it tumbles into some kind of judgment his mind uproots swift and rough, tugging free in abrupt disorienting shift. His words come out clipped, sharp but fumbling. "I don't -- how could you -- get out." There's no defense -- no answer of any sort from DJ. By the time Hive finishes speaking, there's nobody standing there at all. As a result -- well, it's Hive's own fault, really, that there's nobody else in his brain to notice when the headache stops -- fuzzes -- blips into the erratic spasming twitches of a seizure. As his cane clatters to the floor (just a moment before he does) some lingering misplaced don't-be-an-asshole reflex pulls his painful thumping voice back just shy of actually reaching out to his beleaguered assistant, and so it's a passing courier on the street below who gets the THUMP of headache and the misfired, cranky: << Oh, fuck. >>