ArchivedLogs:Staying Warm

Staying Warm
Dramatis Personae Dusk, Tag
In Absentia	2013-08-08 '
Location <NYC> 303 {Lighthaus} - Village Lofts - East Village
This apartment is cheerful, in its way -- bright and airy, its floor plan open and a plethora of windows providing it with an abundance of light. The tiny entrance hall opens into a living room, small, though its sparse furniture and lack of clutter give it a more open feel. The decor is subdued and minimalist; black and white is the dominant theme, with occasional splashes of deep crimson to offset the monochrome, though of late myriad bright-coloured dragonflies swarm across the living room wall. The couch and armchair are upholstered in black corduroy, the low wide coffee table central is black wood and glass-topped, and a few large pillowy beanbags provide additional seating by the large windows that dominate the back wall. Towards the back, a couple of doors lead off into bedrooms and bathroom, and to the right, the kitchen's tile is separated from the living room's dark hardwood floors by black countertops. Above the bedroom to one side, there is higher space; a ladder climbs up to a lofted area looking down on the living room. Standing in front of the partition between living and cooking area is a large fish tank: one lone Betta, blood-red, swims regally among several species of black and silver fish. A hallway beyond the kitchen leads further into the apartment. Another bathroom stands just into the hall and the farthest door leads to the apartment's final bedroom, the door usually kept shut to hold in the acrid fumes of turpentine and paints from within. Dusk doesn't knock. Well, he /does/ knock, but it's quick and perfunctory, serving as /announcement/ of his entry rather than requesting such. Because like a whole lot of people in this building, Dusk has a key! It takes him a minute to sort through /which/ key on his LOFTIES keyring belongs to this particular apartment, but then he is letting himself in. In typical Dusk-at-home fashion, he is dressed aggressively casual. Bare feet, tattered cargo shorts, no shirt. Wings folded capelike against his shoulders. "‘lo?" he's greeting the apartment at large as he locks the door again behind himself. "I heard rumours Rainbow Dash had moved in." A pile of sheets on one of the beanbags seems to have grown two feet and a shock of white hair. It stirs when Dusk enters, then wrenches itself upright. Even with half of his face obscured by hair and most of his body wrapped in faded Care Bears sheets, Tag looks noticeably thinner and paler than before. He blinks sleepily at Dusk, white irises uncanny against bloodshot sclera. "Hey. Um, I think everyone else is out. Can I um..." He rises and pads to the kitchen, still wearing the sheet like a cloak. "...would you like something to..." Stopping in front of the refrigerator and if he could not remember how to operate it, he glances back at Dusk. "I missed you guys so much." "Does this apartment just /make/ people all -- hospitable?" Dusk's smile is crooked, a tiny glint of sharp fangs showing through. "You don't need to feed me. I just came to see how you were doing. Apparently the answer is shitty, you look like hell." He follows Tag towards the kitchen, though not for food; only to curl one huge wing outward, wrapping it around Tag's shoulders for a quick squeeze. "Yeah. Same. Game night's been a lot less colourful. What /happened/? Hive didn't really tell me a whole /lot/." Tag leans hard against Dusk, but does not unfold his arms from the fabric cocoon. "Well, /I'm/ gonna get something. To eat." The cocoon extends one pseudopod to pull the refrigerator door open and another to extract a carton of almond milk. "I was in 'rehab', against my will. Sometimes I wish my father would just accept that he is a terrible person and move on, because he is always scariest when he's trying to help." Pseudopod retrieves a glass from the drying rack and fills it very slowly. Inside the glass, the liquid surface turns brilliant blue as it fills, constantly disrupted by the incoming stream of uncolored almond milk. When the glass is finally full, it had averaged out to sidewalk chalk blue. "Hive and Mel broke me out, but...well, I mean, people /saw/ them. I don't want to put people in danger, like there isn't enough of that already." Tag stares balefully at his blue concoction, hugging himself and the sheet. Dusk's wing relaxes while Tag pours his milk, but curls in snugly against him once more when the pouring is through. "Rehab, what. Weren't you clean when you left us?" His brow furrows, wing squeezing and then loosening once more. "-- /Danger/? How scary are we talking? Cuz, I mean, between everyone around /here/ I think we're probably equipped to handle /most/ scary." Tag lifts the glass in both pseudopodia and drinks several long gulps. "Yeah, I was fine! I mean, more or less? But I was off the speed, anyway. Not that Dad cared. He was more hoping to /fix my life/ in general." He does not put the glass back down. "My dad's pretty scary, but I guess I'm kinda /trained/ to find him scary. He's a...telepath. And he works for an international crime syndicate. So, yeah, nothing this building couldn't /handle/ I guess, but that's not exactly the sort of mess I want to drag my friends into." Bumping his head catlike against Dusk's chest, Tag shuffles back into the living room and settles back into the divot he had left in the beanbag chair. He meets the other man's eyes again, perhaps surprisingly fearless given the subject matter. "I don't think I should stay here." "Your dad what." Dusk says this in a flat tone, his eyebrows raising. "Wow. /Uh/." For a moment he is quiet; he drifts back to the living room after Tag only at a long stretch of bemused delay. "Has it ever occurred to you that we live in a frakking movie?" He settles down onto an arm of the couch, feet resting on the cushion and his wings draped behind him. "I mean on the other hand, cool. International crime syndicate'll be a nice change of pace from butting heads with creepy government torture labs or evil corporate thugs." He leans forward, elbows propping on his knees and his dark eyes fixing on Tag. "Where else would you stay? You need to be somewhere safe." "Like I said, my dad is a terrible person." Tag shrugs and drinks his blue milk. "Fortunately for everyone involved, he is also a terrible telepath. At least I can only assume he is, since he failed to brainwash me into that perfect child he wanted. Man, if this is a movie, I want my money back. Where's the spaceships and robots and stuff?" He pauses, frowns. "Wait, I guess we have those. Anyway, I think we're probably more like living in a /comic book/ or something. Movies always make organized crime seem so interesting, but for all the Triad's mytho-historical bullshit, it's the same as any bunch of stuffy businessmen who hire armed goons." Tag finishes his drink and, sliding over to the coffee table, sets the glass down. "I really dunno. I could leave town, but I'm sick of running from him. Honestly...I wanna take him down. I haven't worked out how, but I don't want it to come back to Jax and Micah and...anyone." "Man, I don't even know what a perfect child would be. I guess some people have pretty specific ideas about that kind of thing." A quick smile flits across Dusk's face. "There's probably a half-dozen pretty awesome robots right over there in Spence's room, if you want to grab one. I'm not /quite/ signing up for that trip to Mars yet, though." He snorts at the comic book comment. "I hope it's like. My Little Pony comics and not fucking /Warren Ellis/. I want to believe that at the end of all this, the good guys win." His brow creases slightly, eyes tipping down to watch his fingers lace tightly together. "-- even if I'm not always sure who they are anymore." For a long moment he is silent. Then shakes his head, abrupt. "I feel like all the shit that keeps happening just makes it /better/ if you stick around here, not worse. I mean, you vanish again -- everyone's just going to drop everything /anyway/ to try and hunt you down. There's a reason we all have keys to each other's apartments. Nobody /wants/ anyone else to worry all the time, but we're going to do it /anyway/. Think we've all just sort of learned to accept that /danger/'s kind of here to stay." "For Dad? The perfect child is my sister, so it seems kind of redundant to worry about making me perfect, too." Tag sits down on the floor beside the couch, though there are plenty of actual seats available. "I was really kinda hoping for /giant/ robots and FTL spaceships, but Mars is starting to sound appealing." He extricates one hand from his cocoon and rubs the white stubble on his chin. "It must be one of those morally ambiguous grown-up comics. /Watchmen/ or something. /I'd/ prefer My Little Pony, but I'm pretty sure some of the shit that's been going on is rated R." Tag sucks in a deep breath and lets it back out. "I won't just /vanish/, not if I can help it. Promise." He tries to smile, but it doesn't quite happen. "How have you been holding up? I know crazy horrible shit had been going down while I was away..." "BigDog's pretty big but -- not really giant," Dusk laments. "Also, /kind/ of creepy." His smile grows, a little wider but a little more crooked. "You been on the internet lately? I've seen some /pretty/ R-Rated My Little Pony stuff. But, uh, I guess that's not -- exactly the /sanctioned/ comic." The smile fades at those next words. "Not if you can help it is kind of the problem. We don't spend a whole lot of time worry about people who /want/ to be gone. It's the ones getting kidnapped that put everyone on edge." His shoulder lifts and falls kind of jerkily. "None of the crazy horrible shit's happened to /me/." "Maybe I will /draw/ some giant robots," Tag muses, his gaze defocusing, "remind people what we should be building. I've been online, but the library kinda frowns on porn, for some reason..." He looks up, express oddly both neutral and intent. "I bet Jax worries about people even when they wanna be gone. But, uh, I guess he isn't exactly representative, either." He stretches out one free hand, scratched up, bandaged about the knuckles, and lays it on Dusk's foot. "There's a lot of ways to be hurt, and there's a lot of ways to deal. I just meant...are you doing okay, is all. And if you don't wanna say, that's okay, too. I'm just glad you're here. Now." "I have /two/ computers upstairs," Dusk offers, amused, "if you ever need your fix of, uh, Mane Six-ways." The snort he gives after this is amused, too. "Alright, yeah, well, Jax would worry about /everyone/ whether they're here or not. The point is if you want to be gone, the /being/ gone isn't worrying." His eyes drop down to Tag's hand, his toes wiggling beneath his fingers. There's quiet a long while, his wings brushing softly against the corduroy couch upholstery as they tighten against his back. "I don't think," he says eventually, quieter, "that I've been doing okay for a while now. But I don't -- know how else to be." Tag nods and rests his head against the arm of the couch. "I don't think you /can/ just suddenly /be okay/. It's like winter. You just...keep going, and eventually it gets warmer. At least that's how it always seems to me. My problem is just picking the wrong ways to stay warm." He extends an index finger and drags it along the cushion as if striking a match, then flicks it at his own head. His white hair explodes into a shifting palette of yellow, orange, and red. "It just feels like it's getting colder," Dusk admits, his eyes following the path of Tag's finger. One wing stretches out, brushing an edge gently against Tag's now-colourful hair. Just for a moment, though, and then he pulls it back, folding it in against his shoulders. "I guess when you're kind of starved for heat, it's really easy to just gravitate towards -- whatever, though. Get burned pretty bad." "I have done that a few times, " Tag says, "and I definitely don't recommend it. Funny how slowly we learn some things, when other stuff gets etched in for no apparent reason." He shakes his head like an animal coming in from the rain. Some of the flame colors cool and shift down the spectrum, but not all. When the hair settles, it has resumed the rainbow pattern Tag favors. He stands, unwinding himself with some difficulty from the twisted sheet. Beneath it he wears an oversized white t-shirt and threadbare white gi pants. "I figure I will start by not setting myself on fire /today/. So, no patricide. /Today/, anyhow." "Hheh." It's a slow quiet exhale. Dusk rises slowly, too, stretching one shoulder then the other in a slow roll after he stands. "Today, anyhow," he echoes, a little wan. "Still leaves so much room for tomorrow to burn." "Yeah, but that's /tomorrow." Tag gathers the sheet and returns it to the beanbag, then runs his empty cup to the sink. "Today, I'll add something to the mural on the roof. It's easier to stay warm when you're moving. And, you know," he adds with a fey smile, irises relinquishing white in favor of when fuschia, "when it's 90 degrees out." A small quick smile flits across Dusk's face, at this. "Yeah," he agrees, a little tired in contrast to the smile. "But you have to stop sometime." He watches, as Tag moves back to the kitchen, and his hands drop to tuck thumbs into his pockets, shoulders curling slightly inward. "It's good to have you back. You need anything, we're all right upstairs." "I guess I'll worry about that when I stop." Tag bounces up onto his toes a couple of times. "No one ever accused me of having an abundance of foresight." He wraps skinny arms around Dusk and squeezes. "Thanks. I really appreciate it. I'll /try/ not to draw any giant robots on your roof. Unless you want me to." "Try? Do you often just /accidentally/ spew out giant robots? Like a really specific form of visual Tourette's?" Dusk's wings curl around Tag in return, squeezing back tight. "Man, draw /all/ the giant robots. Who /doesn't/ want a roof full of giant robots?" His head tips down, forehead briefly resting against Tag's colourful hair. He squeezes the other man a little bit closer, and then releases him, stepping back towards the door. "If you could draw some badass monsters fighting them, all the better." Tag grins, and every color on him--rainbow and white alike--grows brighter. "Consider it done."