ArchivedLogs:Avoiding Trouble

Avoiding Trouble
Dramatis Personae Ash, Hive, Mirror-edFlicker
In Absentia	2013-06-01 '
Location <NYC> 214 {The Mancave} - Sunrise Apartments - Clinton
Jim's apartment is not big, the living room area L-shaped with the entrance at one end and a kitchenette found at the other. Furnished by a scuffed wooden curb-found coffee table, a saggy green couch upholstered in a scratchy burlap material and two chairs, the habitat manages to just barely function as a one bedroom rather than a studio by merit of a walk-in closet sized bedroom you would have to cross through to reach his cramped bathroom. In here, water damage stains the walls. As does rust, around the showerhead in the cramped shower stall. Jim and Ash's apartment is finally becoming a real, honest to goodness man cave. All of the walls, floors and ceiling have been sheeted over with thin, nonporous rock, providing a ground work for the earth building that has taken place there. Rock columns line the walls and corners, good thick earth covers the floor, drawing attention to the closeness of the earthy ceiling, now covered in moss and hanging vines. A general green covers the apartment, with shrubs by the windows, grass on the ground in some places and moss everywhere that is not as well lit. There's even a small vegetable garden, one or two plants producing something tasty for meals. Ash is laying quietly in a grassy bit, his feet kicked up on a stone bench, his toes wiggling in the air. He's wearing jeans and a sleeveless undershirt and a pair of bandages, one on his hand, one on the other arm's triceps area. He's eyeing the large bare spot where his roommate used to stand and is quiet, considering. Maybe another ficus is in order. Hive is outside the door. You can tell by the thud of sneakered toe against the door, the rattle of keys, the gruff announcement, "-- M'coming in." It's nowhere near morning -- even afternoon is rapidly becoming a thing of the past -- and YET he still manages to look kind of bleary-sleepy-eyed. Half-lidded. A little rumpled in his jeans (torn at the knees) and brown blue-painted hedgehog t-shirt. He has a large paper bag in one hand and the other is unlocking the door like he /belongs/ here. Ash stirs when the door starts to open, a small hopeful look crosses his face. He is up after the ground a moment later, looking like he is going to bound toward that door and pounce the person entering, but then he stops. He freezes. He looks around, then he moves back to settle on the bench, looking cool and suave. Oh? Someone is entering? No big deal. Then he looks nervously toward the kitchen, then back toward the door, then just stays where he is, waiting to see who will come in. But he's looking not quite at the door, so he's not staring. Coool. That's it. Relaxed and cool. Hive is not alone outside the door. There is a not!Flicker with him, casual in shorts and green v-necked t-shirt; the combination highlights his brilliant green eyes but does nothing to hide the wealth of pitted scars that pockmark just about all of him. At least, Hive is not alone outside at /first/; soon he /is/ alone outside the door because not!Flicker vanishes! Reappears a short distance away. Shimmer-ghost-vanishes and reappears closer! Then /inside/ the door and then out of it again, just quick enough to leave an odd ghosting /impression/ of a person having been there without actually staying long enough to see much /of/ him. His mind would be erratic and hard to trace with this bouncing (blinkblinkblink) if not for the hivemind link tethering it to the telepaths. As is it is just -- bouncing. Flitflitflit, flitflit/flit/; he's having a hard time grounding himself anywhere but is not too /bothered/ with this. Like a rollercoaster ride, whee! Except an exhausting one. Beneath the cheerful-bright (hummingbird-flit) Flickersurface of thoughts there is a cooler one, reserved, analytic. Taking each of these erratic bounces and focusing on the impulses behind them. It's like trying to isolate muscle movement from a muscle you never /had/ before. The door pushes open. Hive still looks bleary as he steps inside. "Jesus," he is muttering half to himself; there's a kind of brusque-abrasive mental /tug/ that reaches for Mirror!Flicker's mind, less like a tether and more like a flashing beacon: hey! hey, over here! "Yo. Sup, kid." Even if Ash is hardly much younger than him. "Starting to feel like I'm going fucking mountaineering when I step in here." He doesn't sound like that's a /bad/ thing. "Brought Thai. Where's the asshole." He's wandering over to check on the FISH. His finger taps at the glass of the fishtank. "Dunno. He went out before I got up." Ash gets up from his bench seat, utterly relieved that while the newcomers are not Jim, they are also not thugs, goods, or crazy mad ladies with knives and guns. He also takes a very long sniff of the food and smiles a little brighter. "Oh, that sounds good." He meets Hive in the kitchen, the only place that doesn't seem overgrown with nature. Yet. Flicker is glanced at. Well, Ash /tries/ to glance at him, but he keeps disappearing. Crap. Rather than make himself dizzy he focuses on Hive a little more. "What's up with Flicker?" "Hi!" Flicker stays still long enough to issue this greeting, then vanish-flits over to stand by Hive's shoulder. "Woah. Hi. We brought --" He gestures towards the bag. "There's shrimp and duck and some kind of veggie curry -- thing. Oh and calamari. How's Sushi?" He glances over towards the fishtank. "Sorry, are we inter" blink, reappear over in the kitchen, "rupting?" "Not Flicker," Hive gives by way of answer, sprinkling a bit of food into the goldfish bowl and then turning to unpack the food onto the counter. "How're --" He waves a takeout container of rice in Ash's direction. Or maybe the direction of the bandages. "You holding up?" There are even cups of DRINK, sweating chilly condensation off their plastic sides; two pale murky-green-white limeades and two orangey iced teas. "Before /you/ got up, that must've been early." By... Hive standards. Like. Before 2 pm. "OH. Hello, not Flicker." Ash smiles at the Flickershaped being and gives him a little wave, shaking his head a moment later. "No. Not interrupting. I was just sitting around thinking. How about you? What are you up to today?" He reaches for the box of rice that Hive waves at him, opening it up and putting it on the counter. "Maybe. Might have been early. The treeman does not always acknowledge the standard clock as a means of telling time." He leans on the counter. "I... I itch. I can't tell if it is the stitches itching or if I am just itchy because I can't get them dirty and I /want/ to. I don't feel like I'm me, being this clean." Blinkblinkblink. There is a ghosty succession of not!Flickers in various places around the apartment before he settles down by the counter again. "Stitches itch a lot. Put a cool cloth over them. I guess that doesn't help with getting them dirty but it might help the itching." His mind manages to settle -- ish, reaching for Hive's. /Like/ a tether this time. "How'd you get them?" "Sitting around thinking what," Hive asks offhand, although it's possible the telepath has already over/heard/ some of the answer. "Up to -- food. Brought dinner. Asshole isn't here for it, you can have /all/ his duck." He is lazy-reflexive in answering that mental reach, a heavy push of presence reaching out for Mirror. Stable and solid, anchoring. "Not much else. Yelling at some contractors." "Oh, well, you wouldn't believe me. It's a crazy story. I kind of fell out of a building after someone unknowingly set off a flash bomb. It's mostly window glass and bruises from tripping down the fire escape. They really don't make those very well. I mean, seriously. I get that they are not supposed to reach the bottom floor to discourage theft, but at the same time, it's kind of a pain in the ass when the ladder doesn't work and you're trying to get down." Ash gives a big shrug and itches his elbow. "Oh, hey. Yeah, I'll try the cool cloth thing. At least then I'll know if it's too clean or just the stitches." Ash conveniently leaves out the part where flashbomb was there to save their asses and maybe he has a psychotic mutant with a deathwish and a murderous streak maybe after him by proxy of Murphy. Who needs that info? Ash has either forgotten how telepaths work or just doesn't feel like saying it out loud. "Man, Jim'd sit on me if I ate all his duck. He loves that greasy water fowl." He exhales and doesn't bother answering the thinking question. He doesn't remember. "I could believe a lot of crazy stories." unFlicker is settling down with this buoying mental post to cling to, strolling away to lean against a pillar of rock. "You could just eat most of his duck. It's not as good when it's gone cold, anyway. Loses the crispy." He pushes away from the rock to -- blinkblinkblink! Whisk around the apartment kind of /erratically/. It takes a while before he makes he bathroom, emerging eventually with a washcloth dampened with chilly water. He /walks/ back over to Ash to offer it out with questioning eyebrows. "There any fucking clean dishes here," Hive grumbles this before he even /checks/, scooting around to poke into cabinets. "You know," he's answering thoughts instead of words, "trouble seems to /follow/ that motherfucker, have you tried /not/ hanging out with him?" Ash looks up and smiles when he sees Flicker return from somewhere with a cloth. He looks to his arm and starts to peel back the bandage taped there and expose a line of stitches not a week old yet. He reaches out for the cloth. "Thank you." And then Hive is speaking once more. "Sure there are clean dishes," Ash replies, pointing toward the dish cabinet quietly. "Well, he's asked me to stop for the time being, so I guess I'll stop. He's pretty fun, when things aren't exploding." Flicker relinquishes the cloth, eyes skimming over the stitches before the cool compress goes onto it. << Trouble follow who? >> He's missed the silent not-quite-exchange about Murphy. "Why was there a flash bomb to begin with?" FLICK. He vanishes into the (bathroom-bedroom-outsidehallway) /kitchen/ to help collect a stack of plates and set them down beside the food. "Fun enough to balance exploding?" "Murphy, and who the fuck /knows/." Hive dishes himself out a few pieces of battered calamari, drizzling sauce over them. Then some curry over rice. A bit of some kind of appetizer -- shrimp and coconut and peanuts and lime and ginger on spinach leaves. "Then again, trouble kind of follows /all/ of us." Which puts a deep frown onto his expression. "-- If someone's /telling/ you not to hang out with them, though, they probably know what the hell they're on about." "If you ever find yourself in the place where Murphy lives, it's probably good just to leave the way you came. Quietly." Ash smiles fondly for some reason and waggles his eyebrows at the food selection. He starts with the appetizer, munching as he moves on to some of the curry, pleased to find a spicy dish. Om nom nom. "Apparently, the only safe thing was the couch. And Yeah. I'm pretty much doing like he asked. Guy impressively knows his stuff. I am not going to challenge that." "Oh. Murphy." Flicker turns over this information, matching it up to what vague non-knowledge he has of the man. Lurker. Creeping around outside the buildings. Loud brain. Nosy. "I," he informs them lightly, "have been avoiding trouble. It's an unhealthy addiction." "Could take up skydiving instead," Hive suggests. "All the adrenaline rush, none of the exploding. And Murphy --" Hive snags one of the iced teas, leaving two limeades and another tea up for grabs. "Is probably proof that knowing shittons of stuff doesn't make you /smart/. But not always wrong, either." Ash chuckles quietly and takes one of the limeades, popping a straw in it and starting to sip. "Yeah. I don't know. I think something that makes us mutants also attracts some intense elements." He smiles at Flicker. "Good job. do you go to an anonymous group? do they award you chips for how well you are doing? I could come some time and say, 'Hello, I am Ash and I am an addict. I haven't gotten into trouble in five days." "You get pins," not!Flicker informs Ash seriously. He taps at his chest, perhaps indicating where such a pin would go. Five whole days sans trouble. "Has it been five whole days? Congratulations." He does not awaard Ash a pin. He awards Ash a piece of calamari. /Presented/ to him solemnly, with a flourishing bow. "Jesus. A meeting of trouble-addicts just seems like a fucking /recipe/ for getting that shit crashed by some asshole with a bomb." Hive's lips twitch slightly, amused. "Should have a pill for that instead. Detox." The smile is quick to fade. He grimaces over at the corner where there is no Jim! and then looks back at his plate. "You know," he comments instead, looking over the rock sheeting the room, "rock is heavy. This building is /not/ structurally sound enough for all that addition you've made. Not on the second floor. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole fucking thing came crashing the hell down one of these days. Does anyone live /below/ you?" "Thank you," Ash accepts his reward for five days clean. "I'd treasure it forever and show it to everyone, but I think I'd rather just eat it." and so he does. He then looks to Hive and considers. "Perhaps I can show you the basement and we can see if there are some ways I can slip some support upwards to brace this." He starts in on his curry, discussing the finer points of architecture with the available resident.