ArchivedLogs:Blasé

Blasé
Dramatis Personae Hive, Tag
In Absentia	2014-11-21 '
Location <NYC> {Geekhaus} - Harbor Commons - Lower East Side
There's an open airy feel to the floorplan of this unit. The door opens up into a wide expanse of common space that is not so much divided up into rooms as it is simply multipurposed. Ash-grey resin flooring underfoot runs up against the paler grey of the exposed stone in the walls; between the stone support there are wide floor-to-ceiling windows looking out at the river on one side of the home and the Commons' central yard on the other. Half of the space has a ceiling at one-floor height, though half of the space is left open with a balcony up on the second floor overlooking the living space below. A slatted stairway heads up to the second floor balcony; on the other side of the room, a fireman's pole running straight down the the basement provides a quicker way /down/. The wide open space here is combination living and dining room; near the windows there are a pair of couches and large armchair around a wide coffeetable; further off a steel-and-glass dining table is surrounded by eight tall black chairs. A full bathroom behind the stairway is done up in dark granite; the glass-doored bathtub/shower is rather expansively large. The kitchen is tucked off in back, beneath the half-height ceiling; in here the appliances and cabinets and shelving recessed into the wall are in brushed steel, wide grey sweeps of tempered glass countertops running around the edge of the room and a large central island holding stoves and oven and deep double sink. Adjacent to the kitchen, beneath the ceiling as well, is a sitting area structured largely around the enormous television against one wall, a wealth of video games for a number of consoles held on the shelves around the television. Crates and beanbags and one low futon folded against the floor are arranged in good viewing distance; opposite the television, a sturdy large pen built out of wood shrines a couch amid a sea of brightly colorful playpen balls. A door in one wall opens up to the apartment next door; a door opposite leads down to the basement. The television is playing. This week's episode of /Gotham/, filling the room with erratic light in an otherwise dark room. The house is otherwise quiet, Dusk and Flicker off, no doubt, beating on people. Getting beat on. Hive is in the ballpit couch, mostly submerged beneath the playpen balls; he's in pajamas, though that can't really be seen. Just the edges of blanket, and a soft fleecey cap pulled down over his head. He's maybe not watching the show very well. Possibly he'd been trying, at one point. At the moment, though, just sinking lower and lower in the sea of balls; they rattle every so often as he sinks downward. His eyes have been slipping further closed, though a buzz from his phone wakes him with a start. One bony hand reaches into the sea of balls -- though kind of futilely. Who /knows/ where the phone went, in all this mess. On a beanbag, under of heap of blankets, Tag was also drifting in and out of sleep until Hive starts groping about for his phone. His hair, fluorescent purple at the moment save for a blaze of vivid emerald green across his forehead, is long enough to obscure his vision almost completely now, and he runs a hand over it reflexively, reaching for his tea before fully cognizant. The movement unseats a sketchbook from his lap, and it falls to the floor with a whump and a clatter of pencil tumbling after. “Duay bu chi,” he mumbles, putting the tea back and stretching one skinny arm out to retrieve book and pencil without actually getting up or emerging from his nest. Catching sight of the screen, he stops and tilts his head. “Oh man, I don’t even know what is going on, which episode is this?” "Mmngh." Hive has all but faceplanted down into his sea of playpen balls, mostly disappeared beneath them as he tries to find his phone. Unsuccessfully. It's uncertain how successful he'll be at retrieving /himself/ from this predicament, either. An uncomfortable -- somewhat painful, really -- squeeze of mental pressure butts up against Tag's mind, a little uncertain-lost in a wordless mental /shrug/ at the question. Who knows. Muffled, a more verbal answer comes back from somewhere in the pit: "Crime." “Blergh.” Tag’s reply is also muffled. He has twisted himself into an unlikely, half inverted position and finally caught hold of the sketchbook. Even so, he does finally haul himself upright and onto his feet. “Guess Gotham didn’t get any less dark and gritty while I wasn’t looking.” Peering around the floor for his writing implement, then sidewise at Hive, lost in the ball pit. << Did you lose something, too? >> “Want a hand?” << My goddamn mind. >> Hive's mental touches have gotten very much /worse/ than even his old sledgehammer-thud, /brief/, thankfully, but briefly /crippling/. A brief image of his phone accompanies the words, distant, somewhere in the background behind the words and the /pain/ that comes with the words. "... {Sorry.}" In Thai. "This is like twenty years before Batman, Gotham's got to stay a shithole a good long while. Um. I might. Need. Uhhhh." Now Hive actually has disappeared. Only brightly primary-colored balls where a telepath used to be. “Aiya!” Tag sucks in a sharp breath and staggers, catching himself on the side of the ballpit. He draws another breath, deep and deliberate this time, and sets his sketchbook down. On the exposed page is a chimera whose breath of flames is in the midst of blossoming into a firebird. << Yeah, I’m no help in the mind department, I mean...you’ve been in here. >> Leaning over the edge of the pen, he extends an arm into the sea of plastic spheres. The wide sleeve of his threadbare jacket, forest green today and shot through with flowers of many colors, starts gathering balls as he feels around gingerly for Hive. “This would be the part of the horror movie where I get pulled in by some kind of face-eating monster, right?” There's no response from the ballpit. At least not at first. After a moment, though, there's a rattle of plastic, and a bony arm lifts out of it, fumbling around blindly until knobbly fingers grasp for Tag's jacket. Hive's yank is admittedly not all that /strong/, counting more on Tag's lean than any actual strength to lever the other man over the edge of the playpen wall and into the pit. “Aagh!” A wave of bright plastic balls spill over the edge of the pit as Tag topples forward into it. Though startled, there’s no real fear in his mind, only a brief splash of giddy childlike joy. The colors of the balls shift and blend in their chaotic flight, such that they land and roll away in various marbled patterns as though dipped in a maelstrom of paint. “Kinda set myself up for that one, huh?” << Unless you’re actually a face-eating monster. >> Twisting to right himself, Tag pulls Hive to the surface with him. “But we can still be friends, right?” "Kinda did." Hive is easy to pull, not much weight to his bony form and not much resistance either. He flops against Tag, nestling head against shoulder -- there's an exhaustion to his posture that doesn't really /leave/ him lately but an amused smile on his face. "More. Brain-eating. Usually." His hand drops from Tag's jacket to trail fingertips over the recoloured playpen balls. "Oh shit. Why didn't we get you to do this before. -- I'm pretty sure Dusk eats a lot of his friend's faces, so. Probably. Yeah. Got a -- liberal. Definition. Around here. Of..." He trails off, eyes closing. "That. Thing." “What’re friends for, huh?” Tag wraps one arm around Hive, his other hand tapping the spheres around them and tweaking their colors one by one. “Maybe cuz I charge for this kinda thing now?” The grin comes fast and bright. “Got friend rates, though Isra just makes up the difference in tips. Not that I would /actually/ charge you for, uh, recoloring your stuff, without permission.” He squeezes the other man gently, gathering him closer. “Not sure it’s so much about how liberally we define it. Just, it’s love, is all.” There’s a twinge of sorrow in him, and then, << Well, being blasé about face-eating probably helps. >> "Would you charge per. Individual ball. Because fuck." Hive flicks a finger against one of the nearer balls, sending it skittering along the surface of the others to get lost in the sea of colors. His breath sighs out, contented now more than exhausted, though there's a definite tremor to his shoulders as he lets himself melt into Tag's hold. "Face-eating still a -- pretty fucking. Liberal --" He swallows, a brief physical twinge of tension shivering through him to echo Tag's mental twinge of sorrow. His head shakes, as though he could push this back. "Think we've got blasé about a lot of shit. Around here." “Nah.” Tag extends a slender index finger and touches a ball that looks a lot like the one Hive just flicked. “It’s by area, duration, and difficulty.” The surface of the ball pulses with waves of iridescence, metallic sheen, and glitter. “Also, how much I enjoy the job.” << Don’t tell, but that last one makes it /kinda/ arbitrary.>> He shakes his free arm and a few balls roll out of the sleeve, their classically solid primary colors suddenly looking exotic amongst their multichromatic, patterned brethren. “Maybe too much. I dunno.” Only his hand squeezes down on Hive’s shoulder his time. “There’s still passion enough to go around.” "Around here? Always been a. Excess." Slow, a little unsteady, Hive snakes his arm around Tag's waist. "/I/ bring the blasé. Make up for the rest of you. Passionate motherfuckers." His grip tightens. Little by little. “/You,/” Tag says, the gentle smile on his face belying the fierce affection in his mind, “are just passionately blasé.” He tilts his head and rests it on Hive’s, green and purple fringes falling across both of their foreheads. “Or blasé about your passion.” << I’m so frakking Zen. I am thinking this really hard so you won’t have to deal with the rest of what I’m not thinking. >> His fingers are digging into Hive’s shoulder. "I'm goddamn /committed/ to my apathy," Hive agrees. Laaaazily. Even with a /still/ tightening squeeze pulling himself hard as he /can/ against Tag. His head slides forward further, dropping down to rest against Tag's shoulder. Shaking. "You're okay. I meditate all goddamn /day/. My mind is calm as fuck. It can deal. S'/way/ the hell above this. Fucking. World." "I gotta respect that." Tag shrugs. There is more strength than one might expect in his skinny frame. "You don't have to, you know. Be above the world. Above anything." He kisses Hive's head. "Just be here. Right here, right now." There's -- about as little strength as would be expected in Hive's emaciated one. "But I don't know -- how much. Longer I... Can --" He shakes his head, his own hold relaxing as he just lets Tag carry the /hug/ part of this. "But right here. Right now. Okay."