ArchivedLogs:A Proper Homecoming

A Proper Homecoming
Dramatis Personae Briar, Kay
In Absentia	2013-04-02 After the reunion, another reunion.
Location <NYC> Howard Johnson Express Inn - Bronx
The Howard Johnson Express Inn in the Bronx is... not the nicest place to stay in the city. In fact, it is probably down near the bottom of the list. All the classic warning signs are there: bulletproof glass in front of the clerk, small rooms with rickety beds, shabby, cigarette-smoke yellowed walls, and their rental prices - cheap, and by the hour. Still, for those with no money to stay someone better, and for those who want to stay out of the eye of the police, it is a frequent destination. Staying out of the eye of the police is a good plan. Staying out of the eye of the /government/, even better. No better place for that than the Howard Johnson. Besides, it fits their budget--traveling cross-country is fucking expensive, gas prices being what they are these days, and the crew being cut off from its funding base. The Mutant Mongrels have had two rooms reserved at the motel for about a week now. One for Munch'n'Gerry, one for Briar. It's the second of these that Briar leads Kay to, hip-bumping the door open after turning the key in the lock--no fancy keycards here, no sir--and keeping it open with her ass while Kay mosies inside. The interior is about as impressive as the exterior, which is to say not impressive at all. Two queen beds, a TV that still boasts actual antennae, one wrapped in foil, and a tiny bathroom that has more rust stains than grout left between the tiles. It smells like mildew. There is an ashtray on the table between the beds, full of half-smoked and butted out cigarettes. Someone has neglected her resolution to /finally/ quit smoking. Again. Mosey Kay does, with great professionalism: thumbs hooked off back belt loops, his long torso upright in spine with head jutted forward like a cobra, eyes alive with quick-snatch glances along floor, at the corner of each wall and then up to inspect the water-damaged ceiling. He has a grin slashed thin and default across his face, but it's closed-mouth and there's only (pure, cackling, incendiary) business in them. His story, in the abbreviated form, has been sketched out; a curbstomp battle in the desert, incarceration and medication and sedation and experimentation (phrased just as that, in fact, with eyes rolled up and hand /rolling/ on the end of his wiry wrist). The brainchip and the psychic Hivery as well; there are no secrets kept from his brothers (okay, and sister). Nor is the restlessly set date to have his chip removed sometime in the upcoming days. There had been much smoking through the course of the talk. And Kay isn't done yet, fishing his Welcome Home pack of Camels from a thigh pocket of his cargo jeans. White t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off, a bandana tied around a bicep, his singed and patched and REpatched kutte make him finally seem at home in his clothes. He falls facefirst onto the bed. "Uwagh." It's... ragged. Briar did as Briars do best--provides a backdrop of silence for the full story while it's being told. She'd remained silent as they got up and filed out of the Boys' Room. Once inside the other room, she makes sure the door is closed, the bolts done up properly, then crisscrossed with the chain that had previously been wrapped belt-and-bandolierlike around her torso. This is accomplished without her hands, the metal slithering and chattering on its own as it arranges itself netlike against the door. In the meantime, the chain's controller has moved to the bed to knee-walk her way up--with knees on either side of Kay's skinny legs--to sit on his ass. Hands are bunched into fists, fists are applied to lower back, rolling up along the flanking muscles of his spine. "Shit," is her only comment, after /all/ of that. For possibly one of the few times in his life, Kay says nothing when Briar settlers her weight on his tailbone. He just breathes in slow - and then exhales under her strong hands. He's lean and mean as catmeat, the twin columns of muscle flanking up his vertebrae tight and hard and ready to spring -- a spring that gradually begins to unhook and unwind under the grind of equally hard muscles. He knits his fingers over the back of his head like he's getting ARRESTED, or the ceiling is falling, save for, y'know, the onset of slowly returning familiarity. "How'sa drive up?" Mufflemuffle. "Enh." This could mean anything from "uneventful" to "attacked by 50 foot aliens from outer space, kicked their asses". Briar does not clarify immediately because she has reached mid-back, and there are more muscles bunched there, ready to be beaten into submission. Only when they're felt unkinking does she draw a breath--it having become somewhat shortened--to elaborate. "Weather was terrible. All those people, they hear you right now?" The question has a grim note to it. A /dislike/. Pretty much as long as Briar's 'Enh' implies the last half of her journey ends with 'kicked their asses', Kay will be eternally satisfied. He's quiet for another long while, seeming mostly intent on ignoring the chick beating hell out of his body (save little satisfied /grunts/ it punches into his breathing). His head turns to the side, arms maneuvering around over his head to blindly withdraw a smoke from the pack lying on the mattress with them like an old friend. He fits it into his mouth, regardless of his mashed up cheek pressed to the comforter, and produces a flame enough to bring an ember to life. After he inhales, then exhales, he hands the cigarette over his shoulder to Briar. ...and is, in the privacy of this room, frowning silently at the far wall. "...'f they wanted, I guess. Can't kick 'em out," he thumps a knuckle against the side of his head, where a scar worms just beneath his hair. "'Til I get this thing out." He says it casually. Even humorously. But his jaw is clenched. The only thing likely to save Kay from further pummeling is that cigarette. Briar puts the massage on hold to take it, pinching it between her knuckles as she curls down over him. He makes for one hell of a bony mattress but she has padding enough for two, and seems comfortable. A drag is taken, the smoke curling from her nose as she then transfers the filter to his lips. It's held there for a reciprocal inhalation while the fingers of her other hand begin to probe at the dimensions of the scar. This time, her touch is light, almost gentle. But very thorough. And once she has tactile knowledge of the mark, fingertips graze along the knotted muscles of his jaw. "We'll end them," she tells him quietly. "All of them. And then every building. Every brick. It comes down." This is quite the speech for her. Briar is silent against afterwards. "Mph." Kay's turn to grunt; it's not /thrilled/ at the investigation, though more at the existence of scarring than the exploration: it's long and surgical and neat, standing up slightly like a long pink worm. Ahah, nicotine, Kay's oldest friend. The offered filter gets firmly clamped onto firmly by his lips, and then he's /a'squirm/, using his skinny dude-hips to his advantage to twist around under Briar's thighs until he's on his back. All with his chin pushed forwards in a stern businesslike way, cigarette jutted from the corner of mouth. "Yeah," he says. Casually. Furiously. Jaw locked and grinning. "It'll be biblical." Then the grin vanishes, like a concealed weapon. And he looks up at her with eyes narrowed. Just smoking. Then he pulls the cigarette from the corner of his mouth, holds it out to the side. Reaches up to hook a hand behind her neck to draw her down. Squirming is /nothing/ compared to riding a chopper. Briar is hardly jostled at all but the Kay-wriggling, riding that turn like an old pro--and not bothering to dismount. She does keep hands and feet inside the ride at all times, however, and greets his arrival to his back with another faint half-smile. One calloused hand drives into the tatty, no longer quilted coverlet to support her head and shoulders over his. Her hair hangs down in lanky wings around her face, white-blonde mingled with pink. The scrutiny does not draw so much as a batted eyelash just a long and steady return of the same, calm, even accepting, where he is probing. So it is probably fitting that kissing follows the pronouncement of biblicality. Before Briar allows herself to be draw, she waves the smoke away but that is the last of her resistance. Her mouth settles over his with an ease and finesse not shown by the hands that gather double-hands of his kutte. Kay has been away for a long time, after all. And it is doubtful that government-run torture labs provide amenities like hook-ups for their inmates.