ArchivedLogs:Keep the Beanbags Happy

Keep the Beanbags Happy
They make the saddest faces.
Dramatis Personae Micah, Tag
In Absentia	2013-08-12 Micah and Tag have a chat over dinner.
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. It is late by the time Micah gets home, even for a workday. In anticipation of the insanity that was Sunday, he shifted the start of his Monday back for the sake of snatching a spare few hours' sleep before jumping into the work week. This made for a better morning, but a fairly late night. The door opens after the sound of keys jangling and locks turning, admitting one Micah in a TARDIS blue polo shirt and khakis with rather rumpled auburn hair, then closes again with a soft thud. His fingertips flutter lazily to his mouth to cover a little yawn before he crouches to pull off his shoes. Every light in the living room is lit and the smell of cooking fills the apartment. Tag is in the kitchen, singing in Quenya--well, English with Quenya thrown in--and stir-frying. A bandana covered in purple and pink fractals holds back his electric blue hair. He wears a sky blue t-shirt adorned with Escher's House of Stairs and black cargo shorts with blue stitching. He does not initially notice Micah's return, not even when he turns to search the refrigerator. When he emerges with his prize, however, he jumps and shrieks, nearly dropping the garlic bulb in his hand. Then the refrigerator door swings shut with a muffled rattle of bottles and he jumps again. “Sorry!” Tag mumbles, cringing as if he expects something else to move abruptly. “Um...do you like garlic?” Tag's shrieking times itself well with Micah pulling off his second shoe, startling him in turn, into stumbling back a step into the closed door. Thud goes the shoe on the floor, and /thud/ goes Micah against the door. He looks around blinkingly like /maybe/ he accidentally ended up in the wrong apartment. Several blinks later, he determines that he is in the right place. “Um. Hi. Sorry, I...door'd at you, I guess? Don't usually think much of somebody bustlin' 'round the kitchen when I get in. So many people in an' out of here an' Jax's always cookin' a thing. I like garlic.” He pauses a beat, brow furrowing. “You okay?” His approach is slow, out of consideration for Tag's potentially still-raw nerves, and ends in slouching himself casually against the opposite countertop. “Jax is gonna be late gettin' home. Apparently somethin' caught fire in Harlem an' traffic is please-hang-up-an'-try-again.” "Yeah...I just forgot that people...come in through doors. Apparently." Tag blushes. His left index and middle fingers are adorned with tie-dye band-aids. "I didn't know if I was supposed to, but people weren't home yet and there were vegetables that I could turn into stir-fry." He peels out four cloves of garlic and mashes them with the flat of a knife. "I'm okay, just still a little twitchy. Brain stuff." Smashed garlic gets stirred in with veggies and tofu. "I guess...something is always catching fire /somewhere/ in the City." He does not sound very reassured. "I hope it isn't a very /big/ fire. I like Harlem." Tag ducks back into the refrigerator and comes out with scallions. "This is almost done, but there is already rice, if you're hungry." “Mostly people come in here through the door. Not always,” Micah says with a shrug. Tag's blush summons a pale echo of colour in Micah's cheeks. “No, it's okay. Food's there t'be cooked an' eaten an' all that. Like I said, folks're in an' out of here all the time. Fridge is kinda fair game.” His head tilts as he regards the bandages. “Did you cut yourself? Mmn. I ain't had a chance t'check the news yet. Figure I won't until after I've settled in for awhile in case it's /horrible/. Wouldn't say no t'food. But I can wait. No need t'poach rice.” "Oh!" Tag looks down at his hand as if noticing the band-aids for the first time. "Just a bit. Haven't cooked much lately, but I don't know if you can really /forget/ how to use knives. It's supposed to be one of those things--" The hissing of the stir-fry interrupts him and he leaps back to it, turning the heat way down. "I /hope/ it isn't horrible. But that chances of horribleness seem kind of high. I never watch the news. Maybe should, but..." He trails off as he starts chopping scallions, a task that clearly demands his full attention. "And...done," he says, tipping the scallions off of the cutting board and folding them into the stir-fry. "Probably. /Hopefully./ Like I said, it's been a while." “Just shallow cuts, I hope?” Micah is opening cabinets to fetch bowls, drawers to retrieve chopsticks and cloth napkins. The items are used to create appropriate place settings at the table. “Y'like lemonade or sweet tea? Think we got a pitcher of both in the fridge. Prob'ly gonna mix the two, m'self. Um...s'a whole lotta sugar. Dunno if that's your taste or not.” He retrieves a pair of glasses from another cabinet before opening the refrigerator to find the advertised pitchers of drink. He fills his own glass half-and-half from each. “I'm sure it'll be fine. Smells good, at least! Bad as my bakin' gets? I don't really judge harshly at other folks’ cookin', either way.” He flashes a reassuring smile at Tag. "Lemonade," Tag echoes, "or tea. Oh man, that's tough." He pauses, stares up at the ceiling, still brandishing spatula in one hand. "Wait, what am I saying?! Both please thank you! Oh, and yeah, the cuts... It's not that bad, I wouldn't have even bothered with covering them except to be sanitary and all." Stirring the food one last time, he turns off the heat and hovers by the stove, looking uncertain. "Should I put this on a /serving dish/ or something? I'm not sure...we don't usually even do place settings at my house 'cuz everyone's got such different schedules so mostly it just ends up in the 'fridge..." He trails off again, then suddenly adds, "I'm sure your baking isn't /that/ bad. I don't bake, so you've got to be better than me. Unless it's /so/ bad it makes people sick, and baked bads are definitely worse than no baked things at all." Giggling, Micah replicates the half-tea/half-lemonade concoction in Tag's glass, then returns the pitchers to the refrigerator. He carries the cups to the table and deposits them at the place settings. “Easiest thing would be t'bring bowls back in there for fillin', I guess. Whatever you'd rather is fine.” He arches a brow at the assumptions of baking. “Oh. It's that bad. Usually it's just underdone or, more likely, overdone. But sometimes burnt /and/ underdone happen at the same time. I don't even know.” A thought has him back to giggling. “Though, at least, I'm usually usin' edible /ingredients/. This is not Pinkie level baked bads.” "Thank you. Right! Bowl." Tag heads toward the table, realizes he still has spatula in hand, and runs back to deposit it on the stove before returning for his bowl. "Yeah, that is kind of why I never bake. Also, I never have much incentive when other people keep supplying delicious baked goods to me. I turn them colors, yes! But not so much baking them..." Tag piles rice, then stir-fry into his bowl, then tops the whole thing with a spiral of hot sauce. "Dunno if I ever burnt anything that also turned out underdone, though I would love to see that!" He reins in his enthusiasm with an obvious effort, readjusting his bandana. "Physics /is/ pretty awesome..." Micah snags his own bowl and follows behind Tag to dish up food! With so much Sriracha. “Exactly. With Hanna an' Jax in this buildin', other people bakin' is /kinda/ unnecessary. Pretty colours is nice, though.” He shakes his head, going exaggeratedly wide-eyed at the burnt-underdone foodthing. “It was a thing that should never be repeated. Ugh.” He immediately swipe-changes from horrorface to bright smiling as he traipses back to the table for nomming. It is late for dinner and there is probably a significant /hungry/ going on. Tag sets his bowl on the table and sits down across from Micah. "Oh, c'mon! How can you do /science/ if you don't repeat your mistakes?" This with a broad, teasing grin. He looks down at his food, and the grin fades into a smile. "Thank you, by the way," he says. "I never thanked you properly. For sending me to the hospital that time. Even though I hated it." Taking up chopsticks, Tag mixes in the hot sauce after a slight hesitation. "And also for putting me up. I know there's a lot going on, and I don't wanna cause anymore trouble. There's plenty of it to go around." “Thanks for the food!” Chopsticks are already being applied to Micah's bowl, stirring its contents and shovelling a first mouthful. He takes a moment to chew and swallow. “Some mistakes just ain't worth repeatin'. An'...you're welcome, I guess, for all the good it did. Kinda my fault you were hurt t'begin with. Sorry I didn't check up on you, but I didn't know how t'contact you at the time. An' they wouldn't tell me nothin' at the hospital once the police figured out the story.” He blushes, clearly aware that 'story' is a kind choice of words. “Nothin' of it. We got crazy amounts of room here for a city apartment. Mostly it just sits. No sense leavin' a body someplace as ain't safe when all this space is just sittin'. Furniture makin' puppy eyes 'cause nobody's layin' on it.” "I'm kind of hard to contact," Tag admits. "It's intentional, but pretty inconvenient, too. For the people I actually /want/ to find me..." There is a shadow of a flinch in his eyes, but he quickly looks down and re-decorates the food in his bowl. He replaces the stirred-in hot sauce with a red spiral of his own, and embellishes upon it. Little squiggles radiate from it, then a rainbow gradient fills the spaces in between the lines. "It was a clever story, by the way! Probably not the best one for avoiding scrutiny... And anyway, I don't think it was your fault, I kind of ran out in front of you. There was a taxi." Tag starts digging into his food, and frowns while chewing his first bite. "Why is it always /taxis/, anyway? Also, this needs more soy sauce." He runs to fetch the condiment in question. "Man, a beanbag chair making puppy eyes is pretty much the saddest!" “Yeah. Well. It's not like I even knew a full /name/ to try'n contact you. Or that you would even have necessarily wanted me to! I was...just some random person who ran you over. Not exactly 'here, have my phone number' material,” Micah says between mouthfuls, though he's watching /Tag's/ bowl more than his own. That one has entertainment value! “Not clever so much as more likely not t'get questioned by folks as aren't tryin' t'start trouble.” He shrugs, pausing to sip at his lemonade-tea. “It's always taxis 'cause there's /fleets/ of 'em an' most of 'em drive like they just stole their cars.” His eyes finally return to his own bowl. “I didn't notice it needed soy sauce. But I might've put in enough Sriracha t'make up the difference.” A grin slides over his lips as the sadness of the beanbag image has its desired effect. “See? How could y'say no to that? Y'gotta stay an' keep the beanbags happy.” "It's Hua Tsai-hong," Tag says. "My legal name, that is. It means 'Rainbow.' 'Flower Rainbow,' if you count the surname. It wouldn't've helped you much, though." The way he shovels food into his mouth, he might as well have used a spoon instead of chopsticks. "I don't really /use/ it much, and my documentation is all over the place. At the time, I didn't even have a phone. In fact, I don't have a phone /now/, either. Or...ID, even. Maybe should get that fixed sometime." He does not actually sound all that concerned about it. "I'm kind of /addicted/ to soy sauce." An awkward chuckle. "Uh, not like /actually/ addicted, just...I like soy sauce." A smile warms his face as he spreads the remaining food in his bowl back out to make a better canvas. This time, he draws an yellow cartoon blob with big, sorrowful eyes and a quivering moue. "It's a tough job; beanbags are kinda emo." This last with a roguish grin. "I'll do my best, though." “It's pretty. Kind of...appropriate. You'd rather I call you Tag still, though, right?” Micah finally slows down in his food-inhaling, toying at the remnants in his bowl with the chopsticks in exactly that way that parents would tell children /not/ to do. “Can't promise I'd even pronounce the other one right without practicin',” he admits with a self-deprecating grin. “Ohgosh, yeah, prob'ly oughtta figure out the ID thing. Could pick up a pre-paid kinda phone, too. Let me know if y'need help gettin' things or goin' places or whatever. “Ohgosh. Now your /food/ is emo. I can't tell if it's sad at bein' eaten or not bein' eaten. Good luck with that.” "Yeah. Just 'Tag'." He finishes the remainder of his dinner in a few (probably over-large) bites and washes it down with a large gulp of sugary Arnold Palmer. "I'm not going to worry /too/ much about the rest. Cross those bridges when I come to them."