ArchivedLogs:Brohug

Brohug
Dramatis Personae Hive, Jim, Shelby
In Absentia	2014-04-28 '
Location <NYC> Sunrise Apartments - Lobby - Clinton
The lobby of this apartment building is shabby, to say the least. The tiling has not been replaced in quite some time, chipped and coming up in many places; there is a faint smell of mildew coming from somewhere by the stairwell. The exterior door has a large crack in it of questionable origin, and the paint is peeling on the interior walls. The elevator is often slow to arrive, though at least the thing /runs/ alright. For now. Some time has gone by, since arriving back at the apartments and meeting Maria; Jim's dropped off his shoulder bag manpurse containing camera and various props and bizarre clothes, coffee and lunch (Jim offers... cold pizza! Totally counts as real food!) have made for a mid day repast and now the two are loiteringly taking their exit again. Possibly to catch a movie - some shitty arty flick Jim has been bitching about because the plot and writing are absurd but the /filmography/, man... "-Pure fucking /poetry/, it's like they stab an ice pick into your god damn ear, and then they give you the best blowjob of your life. VISUALLY." He's grousing this on the way out, hands shoved in his pockets and teeth clenched at the inhumanity. He is looking down at - yes, that is a bridal gown. It looks old, a little tatty, clearly a thrift store find, and he's holding it against his chest, swishing the long trailing skirt as they move. Shelby is wearing exactly the same clothes she did yesterday, with the exception of a knit cap added to the mix. Two braids run from the edge of the cap past the front of her collarbones--someone is badly in need of a trim, the flyaways are like whoa. But who cares, right? She doesn't. Nor is she all that keen on art flicks, looking a little bored as she skips down one step, slouches down another. "Man, I'm all for shaking things up sometimes but I dunno, ice pick plus blowjob doesn't sound like a good time to /me/," she has to say on Jim's concept of poetry. After the third time of almost stepping on the trailing skirt, she finally bends down to sweep it up and play trainbearer. "Whatever curls your toes, I guess." Hive is wearing his usual bland attire. Faded jeans, tattered grey jacket, a black t-shirt with Zelda's Link perched on the /Game of Thrones/ Iron Throne (though it is composed entirely of swords from various video games.) He has heavy workboots in place of his usual duct-taped-together shoes, and is sauntering towards Jim's door as Jim and Shelby are heading towards the exit. Convenient, because now he is thudding his booted toe against the door. Thud. Thud. Thud. Slow and heavy. Seeking ENTRANCE. Jim has probably had conversations like this BEFORE with Shelby - and other people - because he's taking the typical artist's stance, "Man, you just don't /understand/ -- uh oh, it's /this/ guy." He throws it out casual-gruff, which in Jim-ese may as well be warm and welcoming when his eyes land on the HIVE outside his door. But there's something - awkward, like a clenching in his mind. It's hard to read as a surface-thought. Just... << /eugh/. >> He doesn't rush to open the locked entryway doors. Instead he walks up to the glass, presses both his hands against it like he's stuck in PRISON. "/What you bring me/?" He shouts, loud enough to be heard from outside. /This/ guy makes Shelby's heart flop over, a grin appearing and dying just as quickly. Oops. She cuts a quick look at Jim, arms working to gather in the wedding dress before it can touch the floor. Not that it doesn't look as if it's lived on floors before. But. Art, right? Only /intentional/ dirtying up. << He missed you, >> she translates, lying her ass off. Hive's half-smile dies, too, when he sees Shelby with Jim. His shoulders slouch, hands tucked into his pockets. << Yeahno. >> is his answer to Shelby, hammer-hard and blunt. << Telepath, remember? >> "Brought you shit-all, dude. You can have a /cigarette/. Sorry, you're heading -- out?" He steps back from the door, allowing space for exiting. When Hive's half-smile dies, the slouching visits his shoulders, Jim's mind tightens up with - << Argh, don't do that - shut up, brain. >> "I'll take a cigarette." He pulls open the door and walks out onto the stoop, "Heading... around, I guess. Out-ish. Grabassing while the kid's got the weekend." Oh god, he really is like Shelby's DAD, a detail he reflexively seeks to cancel with, "It was this or porn. How y'been?" He has a hand out expecting that cigarette, searching Hive's face with his faded-hard blue eyes. ...And he's thinking, from somewhere deep below, not decided if it's /for/ Hive or just himself. << Mel? Really? >> Shelby squinches one eye shut with Hive's response. << Okay, yeah, he's a little sore. Brohug? >> She trails in Jim's wake, arms full of yellowed froth. "I voted for the porn but he's all /art/. I'm gonna be a model, didja hear? Freckles are the new thing." Some rearranging drapes the dress stole-like over her shoulders, leaving her hands free to tuck inside of hoodie pockets. "Yeah? I mean, shit, I could see it. You'd best be careful of dirty old men promising you model gigs, though, they're never on the level when they tell you they need to take your picture first." Hive reaches into his jacket pocket, pulling out a kind of beaten-up pack of cigarettes, tapping two out to offer them towards Jim and Shelby. Hive's face doesn't have much to it; it's still a little too hollow, his eyes a little too shadowed, but it's /there/ at least in a way that it wasn't while he was plural and /alert/ in a way that it wasn't in the painful wake of de-pluralization. << Yeah, >> his answer comes to Jim this time, thudding-heavy. It takes a moment before the kind of uncomfortable still-heavy: << Sorry. >> "Oh, I already got the free pics out of it. The kid's an easy mark." Jim is trying to be mad. That, or he's trying /not/ to be mad. It's a frustrated tug-of-war inwardly while he takes the cigarette and crams it into the side of his mouth. << Just. >> He makes a growly sound, hooking at the material of Hive's shirt, dragging him forward into a back-smack hug... thing, his eyes still firm, jaw set. << Talk to me next time, asshole, if it's a girl I've already been hooking up with. Shit. I don't even know if I'd have minded. But this is weird enough without having to hear about it at a god damn party. >> His sense of privacy and discomfort is vast and deep, cluttered with thoughts of ex-wives and cheating and all the baggage one might expect. It's complicated, because it also has a grumbled inwardly directed, << ...-good seein' you out and around. >> << Jim was kinda standing there when Mel told, >> Shelby shares privately, her wince more of a mental thing. << Thought he knew. >> But whatever apprehension she might have felt is salved by the brohug--see? she knows her stuff--and allows her to go in for the offered cigarette when the coast seems clear. "Hey, I kept my clothes on, I know the drill. Nothing comes off til the cash comes out," she remarks as she pokes the filter between her lips. Her thumb is then hoisted to make a flameless lighting gesture. C'mon boys. Make with the fire. "You should let him shoot you. His shit's really good. Don't tell him I said." << Jegus fuck she has some /timing/, >> Hive's answer to Shelby comes dry and kind of irritable in return, but by the end irritation is /fading/ as drags a lighter out of his pocket. Shelby gets offered the flame first, then Jim. << Yeah, I -- shit. I don't have an excuse, >> he cuts himself off even as he almost starts trying to /make/ one, << Just, shit. >> 'Shit' in his mental tone sounds a lot /like/ his 'sorry' did. "Yeah? He pay up front cuz I'm not stripping down till I got the cash in hand." This comes a little gruff as he is pulled into /hug/, hand lifting with lighter still curled into a loose fist to thump at Jim's back. The mental beating is stood up to like clenching up ones stomach and taking a punch. There's no elaborate answer, no reassurance, no - single tangible message. Just a weathering, and the sense of tension beginning the process of sloughing off as though long conversations had been had by saying nothing at all. Relaxing of a mind that has a bizarre happiness and relief in its place. "You guys say it like I /want/ to see your skinny asses naked," Jim releases Hive into the wild, fishing out his own god damn lighter. He's sizing up Hive critically, swiping the wedding dress off Shelby and holding it up against Hive's skinny front, "You got that supermodel coathanger build, probably look better /covered/. Put this on." Yes. OVER his clothes. Maybe... maybe it's a little vengeance lingering around. Time to switch to out loud talk--Shelby's starting to look like a pirate without her patch. "I think she was trying to do the right thing." A mild defense, and put on hold as she bends in to dance the tip of her cigarette through the flame. "But yeah," she says on the exhale, pluming smoke towards the sky. "Timing. Like...I think right now is the /perfect/ time for you to get into that dress," the girl goes on, joining Jim in eyeing Hive critically. Her own mind is a froth of bubbles, light as champagne and just as ticklyamused. "I probably wasn't gonna be able to do jumps in it anyway." "Uh. Why am I putting this on?" Hive is taking out a cigarette of his own, lighting up before tucking away the pack and the lighter. And /yet/. Even though they are outside, even though there are people passing by the building, he just strips off his jacket, hands it to Jim. Strips off his shirt, drapes it on Jim's /head/. Then tugs the dress on over his coathanger-skinny frame, leaving jeans and heavy workboots. "Jumps, what the fuck jumps I'm not jumping anything in this shit." He says this around a drag of cigarette. Jim takes a shirt-draping like a good coatrack tree, only pushing it back off his face enough to see but leaving it draped over his head like a mini-tent. That is smoking. "We did a series down at this old church, pulling tricks on her board. Y'know this kid could skate? Like, actually skate?" Like people DO this? He pulls form an inner pocket his trusty 33mm camera. "S'not bad, with the shitty building face behind you," he comments critically, "Try with the hat." The one Shelby is WEARING. He swivels his camera sights back and forth between Hive and Shelby, and there's this quiet... mental sigh. Something kind of like broken glass clenched in his heart. A thought encompassing these two in his sights. And Melinda, too. Jax. The twins. << God. They're so young. >> Click. He turns to head down the stairs, "C'mon, lets try a few down by this graffiti wall across from the park." Shelby pins the cigarette between her lips and pulls the cap off, leaving her hair frizzy and rumpled. At least she's washed it recently, the cap smells like shampoo when she steps forward to tug it down over Hive's hair. A few minor adjustments over his brow and ears--shut up, she's not dawdling--and then she slides back to study him anew. "Hot," is her determination. Her smile isn't quite as quippy or dismissive, though it is quick. Then she's bopping down the stairs after Jim. "I'm trying to convince him to give it a try," she says of the board, "but he thinks he'd kill himself or something." Maybe Hive will be less stubborn about trying new things.